Weaveworld

II

DUST AND ASHES

1

he saints on the facade of the Church of St Philomena and St Callixtus had long since lost their faces to the rain. They had no eyes to see the visitors that came to the door in the early evening of 21st December; nor did they have ears to hear the debate on the step. Even if they had heard, and seen – even if they’d stepped off their pedestals and gone out to warn England that it had an Angel in its midst – their alarms would have gone unheeded. England had no need of saints tonight, nor any night: it had martyrs enough.

Hobart stood on the threshold, the Scourge’s light visible through the flesh of his throat and darting from the corners of his mouth. He had hold of Shadwell’s arm, and would not let him step out of the snow.

‘This is a church …’ he said, not with Uriel’s voice but with his own. Sometimes the Angel seemed to give him the right to self-government for a while, only to pull the leash tight again if its host grew fractious.

‘Yes, it’s a church,’ said Shadwell. ‘And we’re here to destroy it.’

Hobart shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t do that.’

Shadwell was too tired for argument. This was not the first of the day’s visits. Since leaving Chariot Street the Angel had led them to several sites around the country, where it remembered the Seerkind taking refuge during the last holocaust. All had been wasted journeys: the places – when they were still recognizable – were devoid of magic or its makers. The weather had deteriorated by the hour. Snow now blanketed the country from one end to the other, and Shadwell was weary of both the trek and the chill. He’d become anxious too, as each pursuit ended in disappointment; anxious that Uriel would grow impatient, and his control of the creature would begin the slip. That was why he’d brought the Angel here, where he knew there was magic, or its leavings. This was where Immacolata had made the Rake: a place part shrine, part womb. Here Uriel’s hunger for destruction would be assuaged, for tonight at least.

‘We have work to do inside,’ he told Uriel’s host. ‘The Scourge’s work.’

But Hobart still refused to cross the threshold.

‘We can’t destroy it …’ he said, ‘… God’s house.’

There was irony aplenty in the fact that he. Shadwell – raised a Catholic – and Uriel, God’s fire, should be ready to demolish this pitiful temple; while Hobart – whose only religion had been the Law – refused. This was the man who kept not the Bible close to his heart, but a book of faery-tales. So why this sudden fastidiousness? Did he sense that death was close, and it was time to repent his Godlessness? If so, Shadwell was unmoved.

‘You’re the Dragon, Hobart,’ he said. ‘You can do what you like.’

The man shook his head, and at his denial the light in his throat brightened.

‘You wanted fire, you’ve got it,’ Shadwell went on.

‘I don’t want it,’ Hobart said, his words becoming choked. ‘Take … it … away …’

The last syllables were forced through chattering teeth. Smoke came too, up from his belly. And after it, Uriel’s voice.

‘No more argument,’ it demanded.

Though it seemed to have reclaimed the reins of Hobart’s body, the man still fought to keep control for himself. The conflict made him shake violently, a display Shadwell was certain would draw unwelcome attention if they didn’t soon step out of public view.

‘There are Seerkind inside,’ he said. ‘Your enemies.’

His coaxing went unheard by either Uriel or Hobart. Either the Angel was losing its grip on its vessel, or Hobart had developed new powers of resistance, for Uriel was having to fight hard to regain total possession. One or other of them began to beat the body’s fist against the portico, perhaps to distract its opponent. The flesh, caught between man and Angel, burst and bled.

Shadwell tried to avoid being spattered, but the Inspector’s grip was fiercer than ever, holding him close. The wasted head turned in Shadwell’s direction. From the smoky cavern between his teeth Hobart’s voice emerged, barely decipherable.

‘Get … it … out of me,’ he pleaded.

‘I can do nothing,’ Shadwell said, wiping a fleck of blood from his upper lip with his free hand, ‘It’s too late.’

‘He knows that.’ came the reply. Not Hobart’s voice this time, but Uriel’s. ‘He’s the Dragon forever.’

Hobart had begun to sob, his snot and tears boiling away as they reached the furnace of his mouth.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Uriel, its tone a parody of Shadwell at his silkiest. ‘Do you hear me, Hobart?’

The head nodded loosely, as if the muscle of the neck it was carried on was half cut through.

‘Shall we go inside?’ said Shadwell.

Again, that dislocated nodding. The body was free of twitches now; the face a blank. As final proof of the Angel’s triumph, Hobart dropped his hold on Shadwell, then turned and went ahead of the Salesman into the church.

It was deserted, the candles cold, the smell of incense souring.

‘There are raptures here,’ said Uriel.

‘Indeed there are,’ said Shadwell, following the creature down the aisle to the chancel rail. He had expected the crucifix above the altar to win some response from the Angel, but Uriel passed it by without a glance, and crossed to the baptistery door. It laid Hobart’s broken hand upon the wood. The boards smouldered, the door flew open. It was the same procedure at the second door. With Uriel-in-Hobart leading the way they descended into the crypt.

They were not alone there; a light was burning at the far end of the passage along which Immacolata had come to meet Shadwell: from the Shrine, presumably. Without further word Uriel began along the corridor, ribbons of its hidden self flowing from Hobart’s torso and grazing the caskets in the walls, pleasuring in their stillness, their silence. It was half way between stairs and Shrine when a priest stepped from an intersecting passageway and blocked the path. His face was pale, as if powdered, a streak of blue dirt – some sign of obsequience – daubed in the centre of his forehead.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Step aside,’ said Shadwell.

‘You’re trespassing,’ the man retorted. ‘Get out of here!’

Uriel had stopped a yard or two from where the priest stood, and now threw its hand out and snatched hold of one of the casket ledges, its other hand taking hold of Hobart’s hair and dragging the man’s face towards the wall as if to beat its own skull open. This was not the Angel’s doing, Shadwell realized, but Hobart’s. Using the distraction of the priest’s appearance, he was again attempting to seize control. The contested body immediately became epileptic, a throttled roar emerging from its throat, which may have been intended as a warning to the priest. If so, it went uncomprehended. The man stood his ground as Uriel twisted Hobart’s head back in his direction – bone and cartilage audibly grinding upon each other. A moment passed: priest and Angel face to face. Then Uriel’s flame erupted from Hobart’s mouth.

The effect, in the confined space of the passage, was more impressive than anything Shadwell had witnessed in Rue Street. The shock-wave threw him backwards, but he was too much the voyeur to be denied the spectacle, and hauled himself upright to watch Uriel’s lethal theorems proved on its victim. The priest’s body was lifted against the ceiling and pinned there until the flames had devoured it.

It was over in seconds, and Shadwell squinted through the smoke to see Uriel moving off towards the Shrine, with Hobart loosing a sobbing howl of horror at what had been done. Shadwell followed, dwindling motes of fiery ash falling around him. The fire had not just caught the priest, but was eating at the very brick of the passageway, and consuming the caskets in the niches. The lead of their inner linings dripped from the ledges, and the bodies came with it, shrouds burning around their illustrious bones.

As he approached the door of the Shrine Shadwell’s feet slowed. This had been Immacolata’s domain. Here she’d been all-powerful, worshipped by unmanned men whose abeyance to Christ and his Mother had been a sham; men who’d believed her a Goddess. He’d never believed that himself. So why did he have this sudden fear upon him?: a desecrator’s fear?

He stepped inside the Shrine, and there had his answer. As he surveyed the bones on the walls he knew as only a lover could know that the creature he’d lusted after, and finally betrayed, was still holding court here. Death had no hold on her. She was in the walls, or in the air: somewhere near.

‘Goddess …’ he heard himself say.

There was no time to warn Uriel. A second priest, younger than his dead brother, appeared from the shadows and ran at the Angel, knife in hand. Hobart’s cry stopped, and he turned his mutinous hands to the task of preventing a second slaughter, clamping them to his face to dam the coming fire. The device gave the attacker time to deliver a cut, the knife entering Hobart’s side. But as the priest withdrew it for a second stab Uriel’s benediction spurted between Hobart’s fingers, then broke out entirely, taking the flesh and bone of his hands with it. The fire caught the priest head on and flung him across the Shrine. He danced against the bones for a heart-beat, then he, like his brother, was ash.

He’d done serious damage to Hobart, but it took Uriel less time to cauterize the wound with its glance than it had taken the knife to deliver it. The task done, it turned its gaze on Shadwell. For a breathless moment the Salesman thought it meant to burn him where he stood. But no.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ it said.

It had offered the same meagre comfort to Hobart mere minutes before. The sentiment had sounded hollow then, but more so now, in the light of the way it had maimed its host. Hobart’s hands, which he’d once envisaged burning with righteous fire, had been reduced to withered claws in the act of trying to prevent that fire from doing its work. Hobart was sobbing again, as he or the Angel held the stumps up to be examined. Had Uriel left him with the burden of pain his nerve-endings must be suffering, or did he sob that his body was an instrument in these abominations?

The arms dropped, and Uriel turned his attention to the walls.

‘I like these bones,’ it said, and wandered over to the most elaborate of the designs. Tendrils, thin as sewing-thread and lightning bright, skipped from its borrowed torso and face, and ran over the skulls and rib-cages.

There was a moment of hiatus, the fire roaring in the niches outside, the ashes of the second priest still hanging in the air. In that moment Shadwell heard Immacolata’s voice. It was the most intimate of whispers, a lover’s whisper.

‘What have you done?’ she said.

He glanced across at Uriel, who was still entranced by the macabre symmetry of the wall. It made no sign of having heard the Incantatrix. Again, the question.

‘What have you done?’ she said. ‘It knows no mercy.’

He did not need to voice his response. Thought was enough.

‘And you did?’ he answered.

‘I didn’t know myself,’ Immacolata told him. ‘I think this Scourge is the same.’

‘It’s called Uriel,’ Shadwell reminded her, ‘it’s an Angel.’

‘Whatever it is, you have no power over it.’

‘I freed it.’ Shadwell responded. ‘It obeys me.’

‘Why lie?’ Immacolata said. ‘I know when you’re afraid.’

The din of destruction broke the exchange. Shadwell looked up from his thoughts to see Uriel, its tendrils extended across the wall, sweep all the bones from their places like so much crockery from a piled table. They fell around it in a dusty litter, the remains of fully half a hundred people.

Uriel laughed – another trick it had caught from Shadwell – the sound made more distressing by its artificiality. It had found a game it liked. Turning to the next wall it proceeded to vandalize that in the same manner; then on to the third.

‘Tell it to stop …’ Immacolata’s ghost whispered, as bones large and small joined the myriad on the ground, ‘If you’re not afraid: tell it to stop.’

But Shadwell simply watched as the Angel cleared the fourth wall at a stroke, then turned its attention to the ceiling.

‘You’ll be next,’ Immacolata said.

Shadwell flattened himself against the now naked brick as remains rained down.

‘No …’ he murmured.

The bones stopped falling; there were none left on either walls or ceiling. Slowly, the dust began to settle. Uriel turned to Shadwell.

‘Why do you whisper behind my back?’ it enquired lightly.

Shadwell glanced towards the door. How far would he get if he tried to run now? A yard or two, probably. There was no escape. It knew; it heard.

‘Where is she?’ Uriel demanded. The demolished chamber was hushed from one end to the other. ‘Make her show herself.’

‘She used me,’ Shadwell began. ‘She’ll tell you lies. Tell you I loved raptures. I didn’t. You must believe me. I didn’t.’

He felt the Angel’s countless eyes upon him; their stare silenced him.

‘You can hide nothing from me,’ the Angel pronounced. ‘I know what you’ve desired, in all its triviality, and you needn’t fear me.’

‘No?’

‘No. I enjoy the dust you are. Shadwell. I enjoy your futility, your meaningless desires. But the other that’s here – the woman whose raptures I can smell – she I want to kill. Tell her to show herself and be done with it.’

‘She’s dead already.’

‘So why does she hide?’

‘I don’t,’ came Immacolata’s voice, and the bones on the floor churned like a sea as the ghost rose from them. Not simply from them but of them, defying Uriel’s destruction as her will made a new anatomy from the fragments. The result was far more than a sum of its parts. It was, Shadwell saw, not one but all of the sisters, or a projection of their collective spirit.

‘Why should I hide from you?’ the monument said. Every shard in its body revolved as she spoke.

‘Are you happy now?’ she asked.

‘What is happy?’ Uriel wanted to know.

‘Don’t bother to protest your innocence,’ the phantom said. ‘You know you don’t belong in this world.’

‘I came here before.’

‘And you left. Do so again.’

‘When I’m done,’ Uriel replied. ‘When the rapture-makers are extinguished. That’s my duty.’

‘Duty?’ Immacolata said, and her bones laughed.

‘Why do I amuse you?’ Uriel demanded.

‘You are so deceived. You think you’re alone –’

‘I am alone.’

‘No. You’ve forgotten yourself; and so you’ve been forgotten.’

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.’

‘You are not alone. Nobody – nothing – is alone. You’re part of something more.’

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.’

‘There’s nothing left to guard,’ Immacolata said. ‘But your duty.’

‘I am Uriel. I–’

‘Look at yourself. I dare you. Throw the man you’re wearing away, and look at yourself.’

Uriel did not speak its reply, but shrieked it.

‘I WILL NOT!’

And with its words it unleashed its fury against the body of bones. The statue flew apart as the fire struck it, burning fragments shattering against the walls. Shadwell shielded his face as Uriel’s flame ran back and forth across the chamber to eradicate the Incantatrix’s image completely. It was not satisfied for a long while, scouring each corner of the Shrine until every last offending shard was chased to ash.

Only then did that same sudden tranquillity descend that Shadwell loathed so much. The Angel sat Hobart’s wretched body on a pile of bones, and picked up a skull between the fire-blackened hands.

‘Might it not be cleaner …’ the Angel said, its words measured, ‘…if we emptied the whole world of living things?’

The suggestion was floated so delicately, its tone so perfectly a copy of Shadwell’s Reasonable Man, that it took him a moment to comprehend the ambition of what it proposed.

‘Well?’ it said. ‘Might it not?’

It looked up at Shadwell. Though its features were still in essence Hobart’s, all trace of the man had been banished from them. Uriel shone from every pore.

‘I asked a question,’ it said. ‘Would that not be fine?’

Shadwell murmured that it would.

‘Then we should see such a fire, shouldn’t we?’ it said, rising from its seat of bones. It went to the door, and stared off down the passageway, where the caskets still burned.

‘Oh …’ it said with yearning in its voice. ‘… such a fire.’

Then, eager not to delay its goal’s consummation by a moment, it started back towards the stairs, and the sleeping Kingdom beyond.