Weaveworld

III

ON THE HILL

1

he had no plan in mind. But as she’d watched Numrod and Cal creeping towards the hill it had become perfectly apparent that unless there was some diversion they’d be sighted and killed. She was not about to ask for volunteers. If anyone was going to distract the Angel’s fire it surely had to be her; after all, she and Hobart had played this game of Dragons before; or a variation upon it.

Rather than step directly out through the screen, and so give Shadwell his target, she slipped through the trees and out at the flank, moving from drift to drift until she was some distance from the wood. Only then did she move out into full view of the Dragon.

Had she been faster she might have prevented Shadwell from seeing Cal and Nimrod at all; as it was she heard his accusing cry moments before she emerged from hiding. Twenty seconds later and Shadwell would have succeeded in rousing Hobart, and the death inside him, to action. But when the Salesman climbed back up the hill Hobart’s eyes were already on her, and wouldn’t be dislodged.

Before making this appearance she’d watched the two figures at the summit intently, to see if she could make any sense of the politics between them. But their behaviour – or more particularly Uriel’s – confounded her. Surely the Scourge had as much appetite for the chase as Shadwell; but it seemed utterly distracted from the matter in hand, staring up at the sky as if mesmerized. Only once was it moved to show its fire, when – without any apparent cue – the body of the man it occupied spontaneously combusted, flames cocooning him until his clothes were burned from his back, and his flesh seared. He’d not moved an inch as the fire did its work, but had stood in the midst of his pyre like a martyr, gazing over the empty landscape until – again, without any apparent reason – the fire died.

Now, as she climbed to meet him, she saw just how traumatized Hobart’s body was. The flames that had enveloped him were only the most recent of countless assaults his flesh had endured. He’d been wounded several times, some of the holes ineptly sealed; his hands were horribly maimed; his face – hair and brows burned away – was barely recognizable. But seeing the way his eyes stared from his blistered features one impression was confirmed: he, and perhaps the force within him, was somehow mesmerized. There was no sign that he felt pain from his wounds, nor shame that he stood naked before her, not the glorious victim of his dreams but a column of wretchedness, stinking of death and cooked meat.

Meeting that blank stare the fear necessity had kept at bay so far rose up in her. Was it possible she could get beyond this trance, to the Hobart with whom she’d shared that story of Maiden, Knight and Dragon? If she could, perhaps she might survive this confrontation; or at least waylay the enemy long enough for the Kind to prepare new defences.

Shadwell had seen her now. Beside Hobart the man looked positively dapper, but his face told another story. His features, which had pretended so much in their time, were manic now, the sham of courtesy he produced for her more pitiful than ironic.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘And where did you appear from?’

His hands were plunged deep into his pockets to keep them warm, and they stayed there. He made no attempt to take hold of her, or even approach her. He knew, presumably, she could not escape the summit alive.

‘I came to see Hobart,’ she told him.

‘I’m afraid he isn’t here,’ Shadwell replied.

‘Liar,’ she said.

Hobart’s eyes were still on her. Was there a flicker of response in them?

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Shadwell protested. ‘Hobart’s gone. This thing … it’s just a shell. You know what’s inside. And it isn’t Hobart.’

‘That’s a pity,’ she said, playing his civilized game while it gave her time to think.

‘No loss,’ said Shadwell.

‘But we had unfinished business.’

‘You and Hobart?’

‘Oh yes.’ She was looking straight at the burned man as she spoke. ‘I was hoping he’d remember me.’

At this, Hobart’s head sagged a little, then rose again: a primitive nod.

‘You do remember,’ she said.

The eyes didn’t leave her for an instant.

‘Are you the Dragon –’ she asked him.

‘Shut up,’ said Shadwell.

‘Or the Knight?’

‘I told you to be quiet!’ He made a move towards her, but before he could get within striking distance Hobart raised his arm and put the black stump of his hand on Shadwell’s chest. The Salesman stepped back from it.

He’s frightened. Suzanna thought. The stain of fear she saw around his head only confirmed what his face already admitted. There was more power here than he knew to handle, and he was afraid. But he wasn’t so cowed as to keep his silence.

‘Burn her,’ he said to Hobart. ‘Make her tell us where they are.’

Her gut convulsed. She hadn’t taken that possibility into account: that they’d torture her to make her tell. But it was too late for flight. Besides, Hobart showed no sign of obeying Shadwell’s instructions. He simply watched her, the way the Knight in the book had watched her: a wounded creature at the end of his story. And she in her turn felt as she’d felt then: both afraid, and strong. The body before her was a receptacle for devestating power, but if she could just reach into it – oh so gently – and speak with the Hobart whose secret heart she knew, perhaps, just perhaps, she could coax him into siding with her against the Scourge. Dragons had weaknesses; maybe Angels did too. Could she make him raise its throat to her?

‘I … remember you,’ he said.

The voice was faltering, and pained, but it was clearly that of Hobart, not his tenant. She glanced sideways at Shadwell, who was watching this encounter with bewilderment, then back at Hobart, catching sight, as she did so, of something flickering in the unsealed holes of his body. Her instinct was to step back, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t… leave me. It won’t harm you.’

‘You mean the Dragon?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The snow’s made it slow. It thinks it’s in the sand. Alone.’

Now the Scourge’s inactivity began to make some vague sense. Perched on the hill, surveying the wilderness of snow, it had lost its grip on the present. It was back in the void it had occupied for the millennium, where it waited for fresh instructions from its Maker. Shadwell was not that Maker. He was dust; human dust. It no longer heard him.

But it knew the smell of the Kind; it had howled as much from this very spot. And when the raptures failed – as soon they must – the wilderness would no longer keep it from its duty. Seeing them, it would do what it had come to do, not for Shadwell’s sake, but for its own. She had to get to it quickly.

‘Do you remember the book?’ she said to Hobart.

He took a moment to answer her. In the silence the furnace in his body brightened again. She began to fear that his words of comfort had been misplaced; that these two Law-givers were so much a part of each other that the breaking of one trance had alerted the other.

‘Tell me …’ she said. ‘The book …’

‘Oh yes,’ he told her, and with his recognition the light intensified. ‘We were there …’ he said, ‘… in the trees. You, and me, and –’

He stopped talking, and his face, which had been slack, suddenly contorted. There was panic there, as the fires rose to the lips of his wounds. From the corner of her eyes she could see Shadwell stepping back slowly, as if from a ticking bomb. Her mind careered around for a delaying tactic, but none came.

Hobart was raising his broken hands to his face, and in the gesture she comprehended how they’d been destroyed. He’d tried to stymie the Scourge’s fire once before, and his flesh had been forfeit.

‘Burn her,’ she heard Shadwell mutter.

Then the fire began to come. It didn’t appear suddenly, as she’d expected, but oozed from the hurts he’d sustained, and from his nostrils, and mouth, and prick, and pores, running in fiery rivulets through which darts of the Angel’s intention ran, still slothful, but growing stronger. She’d lost the race.

Hobart was not quite beaten, however; he was making one last, gallant attempt to speak his mind. The chattering ceased as he forced his mouth open. But before he could utter a word Uriel ignited his spittle. Fire licked up across his face, the geometries behind it sharpening. Through the flames Suzanna saw Hobart’s eyes on her, and as their gaze met he threw back his head.

She knew the gesture, of old. He was offering her his throat.

‘Kill me and be done,’ the Dragon had said.

Hobart was demanding that same kindness now, in the only way left to him.

Kill me and be done.

In the book she’d hesitated, and lost her chance to fell her enemy. This time she wouldn’t falter.

She had the menstruum as a weapon, and as ever it knew her intention better than she did. Even as her thoughts embraced the notion of murder it was flying from her, crossing the space between her and Hobart in a silver instant and snatching hold of him.

His throat was offered, but it was not his throat it took, it was his heart. She felt the heat of his body fly back along the river into her head, and with it the rhythm of his life. His heart was beating in her grasp; she clasped it tight, no trace of guilt touching her. He wanted death, and she had it to give: that was a fair exchange.

He shuddered. But his heart, for all its sins, was brave, and beat on.

Fire was coming from everywhere about him. He wept it, shat it, sweated it. She could smell her hair singeing; steam rose between them as the snow melted and was boiled away. The geometries were taking control of the fire now; shaping it, aiming it. Any moment, it would be upon her.

She gripped his heart tighter still, feeling it swell against her hold. Still beating, still beating.

Just as she thought it was beyond her, the muscle gave up its work, and stopped.

From somewhere in Hobart a noise rose which his lungs could not have made nor his mouth expelled. But she heard it clearly, and so did Shadwell: part sob, part sigh. It was his last word. The body in which she still had her mind’s fingers was dead before the sound had faded.

She began to call the menstruum out of him, but the Scourge caught its tail and an echo of the void came to meet her along the stream. She had a taste of its lunacy, and its pain, before she snatched her lethal strength back to her.

There was an empty moment, while steam rose and snow fell. Then the sometime Knight and Dragon Hobart fell dead at her feet.

‘What have you done?’ Shadwell said.

She wasn’t sure. Killed Hobart, certainly. But beyond that? The corpse face down in front of her showed no sign of occupancy; the fires from it were suddenly extinguished. Had Hobart’s death driven Uriel out of the man, or was it simply biding its time?

‘You killed him,’ Shadwell said.

‘Yes.’

‘How? Jesus … how?’

She was readying herself to resist him if he attacked, but it wasn’t murder in his look, it was disgust.

‘You’re one of the magicians, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re here with them.’

‘I was,’ she told him. ‘But they’ve gone, Shadwell. You’ve missed your chance.’

‘You might trick me with your deceits,’ he said, his voice full of pretended innocence. ‘I’m only human. But you can’t hide from the Angel.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid. Like you.’

‘Afraid?’

‘It’s got nowhere to hide now,’ she reminded him, casting a look at Hobart’s corpse. ‘Won’t it need somebody? It’s either you or me, and I’m rotten with magic. You’re clean.’

For a fraction of a second Shadwell’s facade dropped, and she had her words confirmed; even amplified. He was not simply afraid; he was terrified.

‘It won’t touch me,’ he protested, his throat constricted. ‘I woke it. It owes me its life.’

‘Do you think it cares?’ she said. ‘Aren’t we all fodder to a thing like that?’

In the face of her questions his pretence to indifference failed him; he began to run his tongue over his lips, top then bottom, over and over.

‘You don’t want to die, do you?’ she said. ‘At least, not like that.’

This time it was his glance that went to the body on the ground.

‘It wouldn’t dare,’ he said. But he dropped his volume as he spoke, as though fearful it would hear him.

‘Help me,’ she said to him. ‘Together we might be able to control it.’

‘It’s not possible,’ he replied.

As he spoke the body in the warm mud between them burst into incandescent flames. This time there was nothing left for Uriel’s fire to devour but muscle and bone; Hobart had been stripped as naked as a man could get. The skin burst, blood boiling up in a hundred places. Suzanna stepped back to avoid being caught by the rain of heat, and in doing so put herself within Shadwell’s reach. He took hold of her, placing her body between him and the fire.

But the Scourge had already left Hobart, and had taken itself into the hill. The ground began to shake, the din of grinding rock and pulped earth rising from beneath them.

Whatever Uriel had gone underground to devise Suzanna wanted to run from it while there was time, but Shadwell still had hold of her, and much as she wished to let the menstruum strike him down he was the only ally she had left. He it was who’d woken the beast, and been its companion. If anyone knew its weaknesses, he was the man.

The roaring in the ground climbed to a crescendo, and with it, the whole hill tipped. She heard Shadwell cry out, then he fell, taking Suzanna with him. His hold probably saved her life, for as they rolled down the slope the ground at the summit of Rayment’s Hill erupted.

Rock and frozen earth were carried skywards, then hailed down on their heads. She had no time to protect herself from its descent. She was still spitting snow from her mouth when something struck her on the back of the neck. She tried to keep hold of consciousness, but it slipped her, and she slid into the night behind her eyes.