Weaveworld

IV

URIEL

1

ight came down like a dropped curtain. Jabir made a fire in the shelter of the wall, out of the remorseless assault of the wind, and there they ate bread and drank coffee. There was no conversation. Exhaustion had claimed their tongues. They simply sat hunched up, staring into the flames.

Though his bones ached, Shadwell couldn’t sleep. As the fire burned low, and one by one the others succumbed to fatigue, he was left to keep watch. The wind dropped a little as the night deepened, its bellow becoming a moan. It soothed him like a lullaby, and at last, his eyelids dropped closed. Behind them, the busy patterns of his inner-eye. Then emptiness.

In sleep, he heard the boy Jabir’s voice. It called him from darkness but he didn’t want to answer. Rest was too sweet. It came again, however: a horrid shriek. This time he opened his lids.

The wind had died completely. Overhead the stars were bright in a perfect sky, trembling in their places. The fire had gone out, but their light was sufficient for him to see that both Ibn Talaq and Jabir were missing from their places. He got up, crossed to Hobart, and shook him awake.

As he did so, his eye caught sight of something on the ground a little way beyond Hobart’s head. He stared – doubting what he saw.

There were flowers underfoot, or so he seemed to see. Clusters of blooms, set in abundant foliage. He looked up from the ground, and his parched throat unleashed a cry of astonishment.

The dunes had gone. In their place a jungle had risen up, a riot of trees that challenged the wall’s height – vast, flower-laden species whose leaves were the size of a man. Beneath their canopy was a wilderness of vines and shrubs and grasses.

For a moment he doubted his sanity, until he heard Hobart say: ‘My God,’ at his side.

‘You see it too?’ said Shadwell.

‘I see it …’ Hobart said. ‘… a garden.’

‘Garden?’

At first sight the word scarcely described this chaos. But further scrutiny showed that there was order at work in what had initially seemed anarchy. Avenues had been laid under the vast, blossom-laden trees; there were lawns and terraces. This was indeed a garden of sorts, though there would be little pleasure to be had walking in it, for despite the surfeit of species – plants and bushes of every size and shape – there was not amongst them a single variety that had colour. Neither bloom nor branch nor leaf nor fruit; all, down to the humblest blade, had been bled of pigment.

Shadwell was puzzling at this when a further cry issued from the depths. It was Ibn Talaq’s voice this time; and it rose in a steep curve to a shriek. He followed it. The ground was soft beneath his feet, which slowed his progress, but the shriek went on, broken only by sobbing breaths. Shadwell ran, calling the man’s name. There was no fear left in him; only an overwhelming hunger to see the Maker of this enigma face to face.

As he advanced down one of the shadowy boulevards, its pathway strewn with the same colourless plant-life, Ibn Talaq’s cry stopped dead. Shadwell was momentarily disoriented. He halted, and scanned the foliage for some sign of movement. There was none. The breeze did not stir a single frond; nor – to further compound the mystery – was there a hint of perfume, however subtle, from the mass of blossoms.

Behind him, Hobart muttered a cautionary word. Shadwell turned, and was about to condemn the man’s lack of curiosity when he caught sight of the trail his own footsteps had made. In the Gyre, his heels had brought forth life. Here, they’d destroyed it. Wherever he’d set foot the plants had simply crumbled away.

He stared at the blank ground where there’d previously been grasses and flowers, and the explanation for this extraordinary growth became apparent. Ignoring Hobart now, he walked towards the nearest of the bushes, the blooms of which hung like censers from their branches. Tentatively, he touched his fingers to one of the flowers. Upon this lightest of contacts the blossom fell apart, dropping from the branch in a shower of sand. He brushed its companion with his thumb: it too fell away, and with it the branch, and the exquisite leaves it bore; all returned to sand at a touch.

The dunes hadn’t disappeared in the night, to make way for this garden. They had become the garden; risen up at some unthinkable command to create this sterile illusion. What had at first sight seemed a miracle of fecundity was a mockery. It was sand. Scentless, colourless, lifeless: a dead garden.

A sudden disgust gripped him. This trick was all too like the work of the Seerkind: some deceitful rapture. He flung himself into the midst of the shrubbery, flailing to right and left of him in his fury, destroying the bushes in stinging clouds. A tree, brushed by his hand, collapsed like an extinguished fountain. The most elaborate blossoms fell apart at his merest touch. But he wasn’t satisfied. He flailed on until he’d cleared a small grove amid the press of foliage.

‘Raptures!’ he kept yelling, as the sand rained down on him. ‘Raptures!’

He might have gone on to more ambitious destruction, but that the Scourge’s howl – the same he’d first heard days before, as he’d squatted in shit – began. That voice had brought him through desolation and emptiness; and to what? More desolation, more emptiness. His anger unassuaged by the damage he’d done, he turned to Hobart.

‘Which way’s it coming from?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hobart, stumbling back a few steps. ‘Everywhere.’

‘Where are you?’ Shadwell demanded, yelling into the depths of the illusion. ‘Show yourself!’

‘Don’t –’ said Hobart, his voice full of dread.

‘This is your Dragon,’ Shadwell said. ‘We have to see it.’

Hobart shook his head. The power that had made this place was not one he wanted sight of. Before he could retreat, however. Shadwell had hold of him.

‘We meet it together,’ he said. ‘It’s cheated us both.’

Hobart struggled to be free of Shadwell’s grip, but his violence ceased as his panicked eyes caught sight of the form that now appeared at the far end of the avenue.

It was as tall as the canopy; twenty-five feet or more, its long, bone-white head brushing the branches, sand-petals spiralling down.

Though it still howled, it lacked a mouth, or indeed any feature on its face but eyes, which it had in terrifying numbers, twin rows of lidless, lashless slits which ran down each side of its head. There were perhaps a hundred eyes in all, but staring an age at it would not have revealed their true number, for the thing, despite its solidity, defied fixing. Were those wheels that moved at its heart, tied with lines of liquid fire to a hundred other geometries which informed the air it occupied? Did innumerable wings beat at its perimeters, and light burn in its bowels, as though it had swallowed stars?

Nothing was certain. In one breath it seemed to be enclosed in a matrix of darting light, like scaffolding struck by lightning; in the next the pattern became flame confetti, which swarmed at its extremities before it was snatched away. One moment, ether; the next, juggernaut.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the wail it was unleashing died away.

The Scourge stopped moving.

Shadwell released Hobart, as the stench of shit rose from the man’s trousers. Hobart fell to the ground, making small sobbing sounds. Shadwell left him where he lay, as the Scourge’s head, mazed in geometries, located the creatures that had trespassed in its garden.

He didn’t retreat. What use was retreat? In every direction from this place lay thousands of square miles of wasteland. There was nowhere to run to. All he could do was stand his ground and share with this terror the news he brought.

But before he could utter a word, the sand at his feet began to move. For an instant he thought the Scourge intended to bury him alive, as the ground liquified. But instead the sand drew back like a sheet, and sprawled on the bed below – a few feet from where Shadwell stood – was the corpse of Ibn Talaq. The man was naked, and appalling torments had been visited upon him. Both his hands had been burned from his arms, leaving blackened stumps from which cracked bone protruded. His genitals had been similarly destroyed, and the eyes seared from his head. There was no use pretending the wounds had been delivered after death: his mouth still shaped his dying scream.

Shadwell was revolted, and averted his eyes, but the Scourge had more to show him. The sand moved again, to his right, and another body was uncovered. This time, Jabir, lying on his belly, his buttocks burned down to the bone, his neck broken and his head twisted round so that he stared up at the sky. His mouth was burned out.

‘Why?’ was the word on Shadwell’s lips.

The Scourge’s gaze made his bowels ache to empty themselves, but he still delivered the question.

‘Why? We mean no harm here.’

The Scourge made no sign that it had even heard the words. Had it perhaps lost the power of communication after an age here in the wilderness, its only response to the pain of being, that howl?

Then – somewhere amid the legion eyes – a skittering light, which was snatched by the burning wheels and spat towards Shadwell. In the breath before it struck him he had time to hope his death would be quick; then the light was on him. The agony of its touch was blinding; at its caress his body folded up beneath him. He struck the ground, his skull ready to split. But death didn’t come. Instead the pain dropped away suddenly, and the burning wheel appeared in his mind’s eye.

The Scourge was in his head, its power circling in his skull.

Then the wheel went out, and in its place a vision, lent him by his possessor:

he was floating through the garden; high up in the trees. This is the Scourge’s sight, he realized: he was sitting behind its eyes. Their shared gaze caught a motion on the ground below, and moved towards it.

There on the sand was Jabir – naked, and on all fours – with Ibn Talaq impaling him, grunting as he worked his flesh into the boy. To Shadwell’s eyes the act looked uncomfortable, but harmless enough. He’d seen worse in his time; done worse, indeed. But it wasn’t just sight he was sharing with the Scourge; its thoughts came too: and the creature saw a crime in this rutting, and judged it punishable by death.

Shadwell had seen the results of the Scourge’s executions; he had no desire to watch them re-enacted. But he had no choice. The Scourge owned his mind’s eye; he was obliged to watch every terrible moment.

Brightness reached down and tore the pair from each other, then scoured out the offending parts – mouth, and eyes, and groin and buttocks – erasing them with fire. It was not quick. They had time to suffer – he heard again the shrieks that had brought him into the garden – and time to beg. But the fire was unforgiving. By the time it had done its work Shadwell was sobbing for it to stop. Finally it did, and a shroud of sand was drawn over the bodies. Only when that was done did the Scourge grant him his own sight back. The ground he lay on – stinking of his vomit – reappeared in front of him.

He lay where he’d fallen, trembling. Only when he was certain he wouldn’t collapse did he raise his head and look up at the Scourge.

It had changed shape. No longer a giant, it sat on a hill of sand it had raised beneath itself, its many eyes turned up towards the stars. It had gone from judge and executioner to contemplative in a matter of moments.

Though the images that had filled his head had faded, Shadwell knew the creature still maintained its presence in his mind. He could feel the barbs of its thought. He was a human fish, and hooked.

It looked away from the sky, and down at him.

Shadwell …

He heard his name called, though in its new incarnation the Scourge still lacked a mouth. It needed none of course, when it could dabble in a man’s head this way.

I see you,

it said. Or rather, that was the thought it placed in Shadwell’s head, to which he put words.

I see you. And I know your name.

‘That’s what I want,’ Shadwell said, ‘I want you to know me. Trust me. Believe me.’

Sentiments like these had been part of his Salesman’s spiel for more than half his life; he drew confidence from speaking them.

You’re not the first to come here, the Scourge said. Others have come. And gone.

Shadwell knew all too well where they’d gone. He had a momentary glimpse – whether it was at the Scourge’s behest or of his own making he couldn’t be sure – of the bodies that were buried beneath the sand, their rot wasted on this dead garden. The thought should have made him afraid, but he’d felt all he was going to feel of fear, seeing the executions. Now, he would speak plainly, and hope the truth kept him from death.

‘I came here for a reason,’ he said.

What reason?

This was the moment. The customer had asked a question and he had to reply to it. No use to try and prevaricate or prettify, in the hope of securing a better sale. The plain truth was all he had to bargain with. On that, the sale was either won or lost. Best to simply state it.

‘The Seerkind,’ he said.

He felt the barbs in his brain twitch at the name, but there was no further response. The Scourge was silent. Even its wheels seemed to dim, as if at any moment the engine would flicker out.

Then, oh so quietly, it shaped the word in his head.

Seer. Kind.

And with the word came a spasm of energy, like lightning, that erupted in his skull. It was in the substance of the Scourge as well, this lightning. It flickered across the equation of its body. It ran back and forth in its eyes.

Seerkind.

‘You know who they are?’

The sand hissed around Shadwell’s feet.

I had forgotten.

‘It’s been a long time.’

And you came here, to tell me?

‘To remind you.’

Why?

The barbs twitched again. It could kill me at any moment, Shadwell thought. It’s nervous, and that makes it dangerous. I must be careful; play it cunningly. Be a salesman.

‘They hid from you,’ he said.

Indeed.

‘All these years. Hid their heads so you’d never find them.’

And now?

‘Now they’re awake again. In the human world.’

I had forgotten. But I’m reminded now. Oh yes. Sweet Shadwell.

The barbs relaxed, and a wave of the purest pleasure broke over Shadwell, leaving him almost sick with the excess of it. It was a joy-bringer too, this Scourge. What power did not lie in its control?

‘May I ask a question?’ he said.

Ask.

‘Who are you?’

The Scourge rose from its throne of sand, and in an instant it grew blindingly bright.

Shadwell covered his eyes, but the light shone through flesh and bone, and into his head, where the Scourge was pronouncing its eternal name.

I am called Uriel.

it said.

Uriel, of the principalities.

He knew the name, as he’d known by heart the rituals he’d heard at St Philomena’s: and from the same source. As a child he’d learned the names of all the angels and archangels by heart: and amongst the mighty Uriel was of the mightiest. The archangel of salvation; called by some the flame of God. The sight of the executions replayed in his head – the bodies withering beneath that merciless fire: an Angel’s fire. What had he done, stepping into the presence of such power? This was Uriel, of the principalities …

Another of the Angel’s attributes rose from memory now, and with it a sudden shock of comprehension. Uriel had been the angel left to stand guard at the gates of Eden.

Eden.

At the word, the creature blazed. Though the ages had driven it to grief and forgetfulness, it was still an Angel: its fires unquenchable. The wheels of its body rolled, the visible mathematics of its essence turning on itself and preparing for new terrors.

There were others here, the Seraph said, that called this place Eden. But I never knew it by that name.

‘What, then?’ Shadwell asked.

Paradise, said the Angel, and at the word a new picture appeared in Shadwell’s mind. It was the garden, in another age. No trees of sand then, but a lush jungle that brought to mind the flora that had sprung to life in the Gyre: the same profligate fecundity, the same unnamable species that seemed on the verge of defying their condition. Blooms that might at any moment take breath, fruit about to fly. There was none of the urgency of the Gyre here, however; the atmosphere was one of inevitable rising up, things aspiring at their own pace to some higher state, which was surely light. for everywhere between the trees brightnesses floated like living spirits.

This was a place of making, the Angel said. For ever and ever. Where things came to be.

‘To be?’

To find a form, and enter the world.

‘And Adam, and Eve?’

I don’t remember them. Uriel replied.

‘The first parents of humanity.’

Humanity was raised from dirt in a thousand places, but not here. Here were higher spirits.

‘The Seerkind?’ said Shadwell. ‘Higher spirits?’

The Angel made a sour sound. The image of the paradise-garden convulsed, and Shadwell glimpsed furtive figures moving amongst the trees like thieves.

They began here, said the Angel; and in Shadwell’s mind he saw the earth break open, and plants rise from it with human faces; and mist congeal … But they were accidents. Droppings from greater stuff, that found life here. We did not know them, we spirits. We were about sublimer business.

‘And they grew?’

Grew. And grew curious.

Now Shadwell began to comprehend.

‘They smelt the world,’ he prompted.

The Angel shuddered, and again Shadwell was bombarded with images. He saw the forefathers of the Seerkind, naked, every one, their bodies all colours and sizes – a crowd of freakish forms – tails, golden eyes and cox-combs, flesh on one with the sheen of a panther; another with vestigial wings – he saw them scaling the wall, eager to be out of the garden –

‘They escaped.’

Nobody escapes me, said Uriel. When the spirits left, I remained here to keep watch until their return.

That much, the Book of Genesis had been correct about: a guardian set at the gate. But little else, it seemed. The writers of that book had taken an image that mankind knew in its heart, and folded it into their narrative for their own moral purposes. What place God had here, if any, was perhaps as much a matter of definition as anything. Would the Vatican know this creature as an Angel, if it presented itself before the gates of that state? Shadwell doubted it.

‘And the spirits?’ he said. ‘The others who were here?’

I waited, said the Angel.

And waited, and waited, thought Shadwell, until loneliness drove it mad. Alone in the wilderness, with the garden withering and rotting, and the sand breaking through the walls…

‘Will you come with me now?’ said Shadwell. ‘I can lead you to the Seerkind.’

The Angel turned its gaze on Shadwell afresh.

I hate the world, it said. I was there before, once.

‘But if I take you to them,’ said Shadwell. ‘You can do your duty, and be finished with it.’

Uriel’s hatred of the Kingdom was like a physical thing; it chilled Shadwell’s scalp. Yet the Angel didn’t reject the offer, merely bided its time as it turned the possibility over. It wanted an end to its waiting, and soon. But its majesty was repulsed at the thought of contact with the human world. Like all pure things, it was vain, and easily spoiled.

Perhaps … it said.

Its gaze moved off Shadwell towards the wall. The Salesman followed its look, and there found Hobart. The man had taken the chance to creep away during the exchange with Uriel; but he’d not got far enough.

… this time … the Angel said, the light flickering in the concourse of its eyes, … I will go … The light was caught up by the wheels, and thrown out towards Hobart. … in a different skin.

With that, the entire engine flew apart, and not one but countless arrows of light fled towards Hobart. Uriel’s gaze had bound him to the spot; he could not avoid the invasion. The arrows struck him from forehead to foot, their light entering him without breaking his skin.

In the space of a heart-beat all trace of the Angel had gone from the hill beside Shadwell; and with its disappearance into flesh came a new spectacle. A shudder ran through the ground from the wall where Hobart stood and through the garden. At its passage the sand forms began to decay, countless plants dropping into dust, avenues of trees shuddering and collapsing like arches in an earthquake. Watching the escalating destruction, Shadwell thought again of his first sight of the patterns in the dunes. Perhaps his assumptions then had been correct; perhaps this place was in some way a sign to the stars. Uriel’s pitiful way of recreating a lost glory, in the hope that some passing spirit would come calling, and remind it of itself.

Then the cataclysm grew too great, and he retreated before he was buried in a storm of sand.

Hobart was no longer on the garden’s side of the breach, but had climbed the boulders, and stood looking out across the blank wastes of the desert.

There was no outward sign of Uriel’s occupancy. To a casual eye this was the same Hobart. His gaunt features were as glacial as ever, and it was the same colourless voice that emerged when he spoke. But the question he posed told a different story.

‘Am I the Dragon now?’ he asked.

Shadwell looked at him. There was, he now saw, a brilliance in the hollows of Hobart’s eyes that he’d not seen since he’d first seduced the man with promises of fire.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re the Dragon.’

They didn’t linger. They began the trek back towards the border there and then, leaving the Empty Quarter emptier than ever.