Weaveworld

IV

SYMMETRY

1

o trace of the route Cal had described across the field behind the hill was visible when he and Nimrod reached there; the blizzard had erased it. All they could do was guess at the path he would have followed, and dig in the vicinity in the hope of chancing upon the lost package. But it was nearly hopeless. His route to the hill had been far from direct – fatigue had made him reel and wander like a drunkard; and since then the wind had re-arranged the drifts so that in some places they were deep enough to bury a man upright.

The driving snow obscured the hill-top most of the time, so Cal could only guess at what was happening up there. What chance did anyone have of survival against Shadwell, and the Scourge?: little or none, probably. But then Suzanna had brought him out of the Gyre alive, hadn’t she?, against all the odds. The thought of her on the hill, distracting Uriel’s fatal gaze, made him dig with greater devotion to the task, without really believing they had a hope in hell of finding the jacket.

Their digging steadily took he and Nimrod further apart, until Cal could no longer see his fellow searcher through the veil of snow. But at one point he heard the man cry out in alarm, and turned to see a flickering brightness in the wastes behind him. Something was burning on the hill. He started back towards it, but sense prevailed over heroics. If Suzanna was alive, then she was alive. If she was dead, he was wasting her sacrifice turning his back on the search.

As he began again, any pretence to a system in the work forgotten, the roaring in the hill began, climaxing in the din of erupting earth. This time he didn’t look back, didn’t try to pierce the veil for news of love; he simply dug, and dug, turning his grief into fuel for the task.

In his haste he almost lost the treasure in the act of finding it, his hands already covering the glimpse of paper before his distracted brain had registered what it was. When it did he began to dig like a terrier, shovelling snow behind him, not quite daring to believe he’d found the package. As he dug the wind brought a voice to him, then whipped it away again, a cry for help, somewhere in the wilderness. It wasn’t Nimrod, so he kept digging. The voice came back. He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the onslaught. Was there somebody wading through the snow some way off from him? Like the voice, the sight came and went.

The package was just as evasive. But even as he was thinking he’d been mistaken, and there was nothing to find, his frozen fingers closed on the thing. As he pulled it from the drift the paper, which was almost mush, tore, and the contents fell in the snow. A box of cigars; some trinkets; and the jacket. He picked it up. If it had looked unremarkable at Gluck’s house it looked more so now. He hoped somebody in the wood had a clue as to how to unleash its powers, because he certainly didn’t.

He looked around for Nimrod, to give him the news, and saw two figures trudging towards him, one holding the other up. The bearer was Nimrod; the man he was helping – the same Cal had heard and glimpsed presumably – so swathed in protective clothing he was unrecognizable. Nimrod had seen the prize Cal had lifted up to show him, however, and was coaxing the man to pick up his speed, yelling something to Cal as he approached. The wind stole the words away, but he yelled them again as he came closer.

‘Is this a friend of yours?’

The man he was all but carrying lifted his snow-encrusted face, and fumbled with the scarf that was wrapped around its lower half. Before he’d pulled it down, however, Cal said:

‘Virgil?’

The scarf came away, and Gluck was looking up at him with a mixture of shame and triumph on his face in equal measure.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I had to be here. I had to see.’

‘If there’s anything left to see,’ Nimrod shouted over the din of the wind.

Cal looked back towards Rayment’s Hill. Between the gusts it was apparent that the top of the hill had been entirely blown open. Over it a pall of smoke was rising, its underbelly lit by flames.

‘The wood …’ he said. Forgetting Nimrod and Gluck, he began to plough through the snow, back towards the hill and what lay beyond.