Clive Barker - Weave World

Without further exchange, they began the march towards it.

There was no sign of any structure rising on the far side, but its builders must have valued whatever it had been made to enclose and protect, for with every yard they drew closer, its sheer scale became awesomely apparent. It rose fifty feet or more above the desert floor; yet such was the skill of the masons there was no visible sign of how it had been constructed.

Twenty yards from the wall the party halted, leaving Shadwell to approach it unaccompanied. He stretched his hand out to touch the stone, which was hot beneath his finger-tips, its surface so smooth it was almost silken. It was as if the wall had been raised out of molten rock, shaped by intelligences that could mould lava like cold clay. Clearly there was no practical way of scaling a surface so innocent of niche or scar, even if any of them had possessed the energy to do so.

There must be a gate,' said Shadwell. ‘We'll walk ‘til we find it.'

The sun was well past its peak now, the day beginning to cool. But the wind was not about to give the travellers a moment's respite. It seemed to be keeping guard along the wall, lashing at their legs as though eager to throw them to the ground. But having got so far without being slaughtered, the party's fears had been replaced by curiosity as to what lay on the other side. The Arabs had found their voices again, and kept up a constant dialogue, doubtless planning how they'd boast of their find once home.

They walked for fully half an hour, the wall unbroken. There were places where cracks had appeared in it - though none low enough to offer hand-holds - and others where the top edge showed signs of crumbling, but there was neither window nor gate in its length, however small.

‘Who built this?' said Hobart as they walked.

Shadwell was watching their shadow on the wall, as it kept pace with them.

‘Ancients,' he said.

To keep the desert out?'

‘Or keep the Scourge in.'

The last few minutes had brought a subtle change in the wind. It had given up nipping at their legs, and gone about braver business. It was Ibn Talaq who first spotted what.

‘There! There!' he said, and pointed along the wall.

A few hundred yards from where they stood a stream of sand was being carried out through the wall, bellowing as it went. As they approached, it became apparent that this was not a gate, but a breach in the wall. The stone had been thrown down in heaps of rubble. Shadwell was first to reach the scattered pieces, many the size of small houses, and began to scramble up over them, until at last he looked down into the place the walls had been raised to guard.

Behind him, Hobart called:

‘What do you see?'

Shadwell didn't speak. He simply surveyed the scene behind the wall with disbelieving eyes, as the wind that roared through the breach threatened to throw him from his perch.

There were neither palaces nor tombs on the other side of the wall. Indeed there was no sign, however vestigial, of habitation; no obelisks, no colonnades. There was only sand, and more sand; endless sand. Another desert, rolling away from them, as empty as the void at their backs.

‘Nothing.'

It wasn't Shadwell who spoke but Hobart. He too had scaled the boulders, and stood at Shadwell's side.

‘Oh Jesus ... nothing.'

Shadwell made no reply. He simply clambered down the other side of the breach, and stepped into the shadow of the wall. What Hobart said appeared to be true: there was nothing here. Why then did he feel certain that this place was somehow sacred?

He walked through the mire of sand that the wind had heaped against the rubble of the breach, and surveyed the dunes. Was it possible that the sand had simply covered the secret they'd come here to find? Was the Scourge concealed

here, its howl that of something buried alive? If so, how could they ever hope to locate it?

He turned back, and squinted up at the wall. Then, on impulse, he began to climb the open edge of the breach. It was heavy going. His limbs were weary, and the wind had polished the stone in its many years of passage, but he eventually gained the summit.

At first it seemed his efforts had been for nothing. All he'd won for his sweat was a view of the wall, running off in both directions until distance claimed it.

But when he came to survey the scene below, he realized that there was a pattern visible in the dunes. Not the natural wave patterns that the wind created, but something more elaborate - vast geometrical designs laid out in the sand - with walkways or roads between them. He'd read, in his research on wastelands, of designs drawn by some ancient people on the plains of South America; pictures of birds and gods that could have made no sense from the earth, but had been drawn as if to enchant some heavenly spectator. Was that the case here? Had the sand been raised in these furrows and banks as a message to the sky? If so, what power had done it? A small nation would be needed to move so much sand; and the wind would undo tomorrow what had been done today. Whose work was this then?

Perhaps night would tell.

He climbed back down the wall to where Hobart and the others were waiting amid the boulders.

‘We'll camp here tonight,' he said.

‘Inside the walls or out?' Hobart wanted to know.

‘Inside.'

IV

URIEL

Night 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.