Clive Barker - Weave World

‘Who?'

‘Balm de Bono.' ‘ - de Bono?'

‘He was at Rue Street last night.'

She fell silent, thinking of the brief time she'd spent with de Bono, and of their debates together. Now he was gone. And how soon would the rest of them follow?

‘What do we do, Nimrod?' she murmured. ‘Do we try and hide again? Another Weave?'

There aren't enough of us to fill a prayer mat,' Nimrod said mournfully.

‘Besides, we don't have the raptures. There's very little power left between us.'

‘So we sit back and wait for the Scourge to pick us off? Is that what you're saying?' Nimrod drew his hand over his face. ‘I've fought about as hard as I can ...' he said. ‘I think we all have.'

He fetched a tobacco tin from his pocket, and began to roll himself a cigarette. ‘I've made my mistakes,' he said. ‘I fell for Shadwell's lies ... I even fell in love.'

‘You did?'

He made a slight smile, which reminded Suzanna of the irrepressible creature he'd once been. ‘Oh yes...' he said. ‘... I've had my adventures in the Kingdom. But they didn't last long. There was always a part of me that never left the

Fugue. That still hasn't left.' He lit the match-thin cigarette he'd rolled. ‘I suppose that's ludicrousI he said, ‘given that the place doesn't exist any longer.'

He'd forsaken his dark glasses as soon as the waiter had retired. His eyes, their gold untarnished, were on her now, looking for some sliver of hope.

‘You can remember it?' she said.

‘The Fugue? Of course.'

‘So can I. Or at least I think I can. So maybe it isn't lost.'

He shook his head.

‘Don't be sentimental,' he chided. ‘Memories aren't enough.'

It was fruitless to argue the niceties of that: he was telling her that he was in pain; he didn't want platitudes or metaphysics.

She turned over in her head the problem of whether she should tell him what she knew: that she had reason to hope that all was not lost; that the Fugue might be again, one day. It was, she knew, a slender hope - but he needed a life-line, however tenuous.

‘It's not over,' she said.

‘Dream on,' he replied. ‘It's finished.'

‘I tell you the Fugue's not gone.'

He looked up from his cigarette.

‘What do you mean?'

‘In the Gyre ... I used the Loom.'

‘Used the Loom? What are you saying?'

‘Or it used me. Maybe a bit of both.'

‘How? Why?'

To keep everything from being lost.'

Nimrod was leaning across the table now.

‘I don't understand,' he said.

‘Neither do I, fully,' she replied. ‘But something happened. Some force

She sighed. She didn't have the words to describe those moments. Part of her wasn't even sure it had happened. But of one thing she was certain:

‘I don't believe in defeat, Nimrod. I don't care what this fucking Scourge is. I won't lie down and die because of it.'

‘You don't have to.,' he said. ‘You're a Cuckoo. You can walk the other way.'

‘You should know better than that,' she said, sharply. The Fugue belongs to anyone who'll die for it. Me ... Cal...'

He looked chastened.

‘I know,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's not just you who needs the Fugue, Nimrod. We all do.'

She glanced towards the window. Through the bamboo blinds she could see that the snow was coming down again with fresh vehemence. ‘I never believed in EdenI she said softly. ‘Not the way the Bible tells it. Original sin and all that crap. But maybe the story's got an echo somewhere in it.'

‘An echo?'

‘Of the way things really were. A place of miracles, where magic was made. And the Scourge ended up believing the Eden story, because it was a corrupted version of the truth.'

‘Does it matter?' Nimrod sighed. ‘Whether the Scourge is an Angel or not; whether it comes from Eden, or not, how does that alter anything? The point is, it believes it's Uriel. And that means it'll destroy us.'

The point was incontestable. When the world was coming to an end, what did names matter?

‘I think we should be together,' he said, after a pause, ‘instead of spread across the country. Perhaps we can muster something if we're all in one place.'

‘I see the sense in that.'

‘Better than the Scourge picking us off!'

‘But where?'

‘There was a place...' he said, ‘where it never came. I remember it vaguely. Apolline will tell us better.'

‘What kind of place?'

‘A hill, I think it was.' he said, his unblinking stare on the white paper tablecloth between them. ‘Some kind of hill...'

‘We'll go there then, shall we?'

‘It's as good a place to die as any.'

II

DUST AND ASHES

The 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.