Weaveworld

2

Had Cal set eyes on the five figures that entered number eighteen that night it would have taken him some time to recognize their leader as Balm de Bono. The rope-dancer’s hair was cropped so short it was all but invisible; his face was thin, his features set. Even less recognizable, perhaps, was Toller, whom Cal had last seen perched on a rope in Starbrook’s Field. Toller’s ambitions as a rope-dancer had come to an abrupt end hours after that encounter, when he’d fallen foul of the Prophet’s men. They’d broken his legs, and cracked his skull, leaving him for dead. He had at least survived. Starbrook’s third pupil, Galin, had perished that night, in a vain attempt to protect his master’s Field from desecration.

It had been de Bono’s inspiration to visit the Laschenski house – where the Weave had lain for so long – in the hope of finding a pocket of the Old Science to arm themselves against the approaching cataclysm. He had three other allies in this, besides Toller: Baptista Dolphi, whose father had been shot down in Capra’s House; her lover, Otis Beau; and a girl whom he’d first seen in Nonesuch, sitting on a window-ledge wearing paper wings. He’d seen her again, on Venus Mountain, in the reverie the presences there had granted him, and she’d shown him a world of paper and light that had kept him from total despair in the hours that followed. Her name was Leah.

Of the five, she was the most expert in the working of raptures; and the most sensitive to their proximity. It was she, therefore, who led the way through the Laschenski house in search of the room where the Weaveworld had lain. Her path-finding took them up the stairs and into the second-storey front room.

‘The house is full of echoes,’ she said. ‘Some of the Custodian; some of animals. It takes time to sort them out –’ She went down on her knees in the middle of the room, and put her hands on the floor. ‘ – but the Weave lay here. I’m sure of it.’

Otis went across to where she knelt. He too crouched and put his palms to the ground.

‘I don’t feel a thing,’ he said.

‘Believe me,’ said Leah. ‘This is where it lay.’

‘Why don’t we get down to the bare boards?’ Toller suggested. ‘We may get a clearer signal.’

Plush, deep-pile carpeting had been laid in the room, only to be subsequently soiled by the squatters. They removed what remnants of furniture the room could boast, then tore the carpet up. The labour left them shaky: the training de Bono had devised for this expedition – refinement techniques culled from his old master’s teachings – had kept sleep and food in recent days to the minimum. But it paid dividends when they laid their hands on the stripped boards. Their rarefied senses responded on the instant; even Otis could feel the echoes now.

‘I can practically see the Weave,’ Baptista said.

It was a sensation they all shared.

‘What do we do now?’ Otis asked Leah, but she was too involved in the echoes to hear his question. He turned to de Bono: ‘Well?’ he said.

De Bono had no answers. Though he’d theorized at length with any who’d debate on the subject, the plain fact was this: they were flying blind. There was no sure way of getting to the raptures whose memory they were evoking. His unspoken hope was that the ghosts of power here would come to them, sensing the urgency of their mission. If, however, the force beneath their fingertips was unmoved by the gravity of their cause, then they had no way to persuade it. They’d be obliged to face their nightmares unprotected; which was – he didn’t doubt – a sentence of death.