Clive Barker - Weave World

‘And was it Eden? The place it guarded?'

‘You don't believe that any more than I do. But Uriel does. Whatever its true name is - if it even has one - that name's forgotten. It believes itself an Angel. So, for better or worse, it is.'

The notion made sense to Suzanna, in its way. If, in the dream of the book, she'd believed herself a dragon, why shouldn't something lost in madness take an Angel's name?

‘It murdered its discoverers, of course - ‘ Immacolata was saying,' - then went looking for those who'd escaped it.'

The Families.'

‘Or their descendants. And it almost wiped them out. But they were clever. Though they didn't understand the power that pursued them, they knew how to hide. The rest you're familiar with.'

‘And Uriel? What did it do when the Seerkind disappeared?'

‘It returned to its fortress.'

‘Until Shadwell.'

‘Until Shadwell.'

Suzanna mused on this for a little time, then asked the one question this whole account begged. ‘What about God?' she said. The three-in-one laughed, her motes somersaulting. ‘We don't need God to make sense of this,' she said. Suzanna wasn't certain if she spoke only for themselves or for her too. ‘If there was a First Cause, a force of which this Uriel is a fragment, it's forsaken its sentinel.'

‘So what do we do?' said Suzanna. There's been talk of mustering the Old Science.' ‘Yes, I heard ‘Would that defeat it?'

‘I don't know. Certainly I made some miracles in my time that might have wounded it.' Then help us now.'

That's beyond us, Suzanna. You can see our condition for yourself. All that's left is dust and will-power, haunting the Shrine we were worshipped at, until the Scourge comes to destroy it.'

‘You're certain it'll do that?'

This Shrine is sacred to magic. Shadwell will bring the Scourge here and destroy it the first chance he gets. And we're defenceless against it. All we can do is warn youI Thank you for that.'

The wraith began to waver, as its power to hold its form diminished.

There was a time, you know...' Immacolata said, ‘when we had such raptures.' The dust she was made of was blowing away, the bone-shards dropping to the ground. ‘When every breath was magic; and we were afraid of nothingI

‘It may come again.'

Within seconds the three had grown so tenuous they were barely recognizable. But the voice lingered a little while, to say:

‘It's in your hands, sister.. ,' And then they were gone.

V

THE NAKED FLAME

1

The house that Mimi Laschenski had occupied for over half a century had been sold two months after her death. The new owners had been able to purchase it for a song, given its dilapidated condition, and put several weeks of hard labour into modernizing it before moving in. But that investment of time and money was not enough to persuade them to stay. A week later they left in a hurry, claiming the place was haunted. Sensible folks too, to look at them, talking of empty rooms that growled; of large invisible forms that brushed past them in darkened passageways; and, almost worse in its way, the pungent smell of cats that hung over the place, however hard they scrubbed the boards.

Once left empty, number eighteen Rue Street remained so. The property market was slow up that end of the city, and the rumours about the house were enough to deter the few who came to view. It was eventually taken over by squatters, who in the six days of their occupancy undid much of the work the previous owners had put in. But the twenty-four hour a day orgy which the neighbours suspected was going on came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the sixth night, and the tenants were gone by the following morning, exiting in some haste to judge by the litter of belongings they left on the steps.

After that, the house had no more occupants, legal or otherwise, and it didn't take long for gossip about number eighteen to be supplanted by talk of more lively scandals. The house simply became an unsaleable eye-sore: its windows boarded up, its paintwork deteriorating.

That was, until that night in December. What would happen that night would change the face of Rue Street entirely, and guarantee that the house in which Mimi Laschenski had lived out her lonely old age was never occupied again.

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 Delphi, 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.