Weaveworld

2

For years Shadwell had listened to Immacolata speak of the emptiness where the Scourge resided. Mostly she’d talked of it in abstract terms: a place of sand and terror. Though he’d comforted her in her fear as best he’d known how, he’d soon stopped listening to her babble.

But standing on the hill overlooking the valley which the Fugue had once occupied, blood on his hands and hatred in his heart, her words had come back to him. In subsequent months he’d set himself the task of discovering that place for himself.

He had chanced on pictures of the Rub al Khali early in his investigations, and had quickly come to believe that this was the wasteland she’d seen in her prophetic dreams. Even now, in the latter portion of the century, it remained largely a mystery. Commercial aircraft routes still gave it wide berth, and though a road now crossed it the desert swallowed the efforts of any who attempted to exploit its spaces. Shadwell’s problem was therefore this: if indeed the Scourge did live somewhere in the Empty Quarter, how would he be able to find it in a void so vast?

He began by consulting the experts: in particular an explorer called Emerson, who had twice crossed the Quarter by camel. He was now a withered and bed-bound old man, who was at first contemptuous of Shadwell’s ignorance. But after a few minutes’ talk he warmed to the obsessive in his visitor, and offered much good advice. When he spoke of the desert it was as of a lover who’d left stripes upon his back, yet whose cruelty he ached to have again.

As they parted he said:

‘I envy you, Shadwell. God alive, I envy you.’