planets. Most of it came too fast for her to focus upon, but
Behind her, she felt the beams breaking through the last wall, as though the Loom was coming to meet her, its genius for transfiguration momentarily at her disposal. They hadn’t got long. If she missed this wave there’d be no other.
‘Go on,’ she said to Cal.
He had his eyes closed now, and the images were still pouring out of him. He’d remembered more than she’d dared hope. And she in her turn was adding sights and sounds to the flow –
The lake; Capra’s House; the forest; the streets of Nonesuch –
– they came back, razor sharp, and she felt the beams pick them up and speed them on their way.
She’d feared the Loom would reject her interference, but not at all; it married its power to that of the menstruum, transforming all that she and Cal were remembering.
She had no control over these processes. They were beyond her grasp. All she could do was be a part of the exchange between meaning and magic, and trust that the forces at work here comprehended her intentions better than she did.
But the power behind her was growing too strong for her; she could not channel its energies much longer. The book was getting too hot to hold, and Cal was shuddering beneath her hand.
‘Enough!’ she said.
Cal’s eyes flew open.
‘I haven’t finished.’
As she spoke, the structure of the Temple began to shudder.
Cal said: ‘Oh God.’
‘Time to go,’ said Suzanna. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Of course I can walk.’
She helped him to his feet. There were roars from within, as one after another the walls capitulated to the rage of the Loom.
They didn’t wait to watch the final cataclysm, but started away from the Temple, brick-shards whining past their heads.
Cal was as good as his word: he could indeed walk, albeit slowly. But running would have been impossible in the wasteland they were now obliged to cross. As Creation had been the touchstone of the outward journey, wholesale Destruction marked their return. The flora and fauna that had sprung into being in the footsteps of the trespassers were now suffering a swift dissolution. Flowers and trees were withering, the stench of their rot carried on the hooligan winds that scoured the Gyre.
With the earth-light dimmed, the scene was murky, the gloom further thickened by dust and airborne matter. From the darkness animal cries rose as the earth opened and consumed the very creatures it had produced mere minutes before. Those not devoured by the bed from which they’d sprung were subject to a fate still more terrible, as the powers that had made them unknitted their children. Pale, skeletal things that had once been bright and alive now littered the landscape, breathing their last. Some turned their eyes up to Cal and Suzanna, looking for hope or help, but they had none to offer.
It was as much as they could do to keep the cracks in the earth from claiming them too. They stumbled on, arms about each other, heads bowed beneath a barrage of hailstones which the Mantle, as though to perfect their misery, had unleashed.
‘How far?’ Cal said.
They halted and Suzanna stared ahead; she could not be certain they were not simply walking in circles. The light at their feet was now all but extinguished. Here and there it flared up, but only to illuminate another pitiable scene: the last wracking moments of the glory that their presence here had engendered.
Then:
They set off again, as fast as the suppurating earth would allow. With every step, their feet sank deeper into a swamp of decaying matter, in which the remnants of life still moved; the inheritors of this Eden: worms and cockroaches.
But there was a distinct light at the end of the tunnel; she glimpsed it again through the thick air.
‘Look up, Cal,’ she said.
He did just that, though only with effort.
‘Not far now. A few more steps.’
He was becoming heavier by the moment; but the tear in the Mantle was sufficient to spur them on over the last few yards of treacherous earth.
And finally they stepped out into the light, almost spat from the entrails of the Gyre as it went into its final convulsions.
They stumbled away from the Mantle, but not far before Cal said:
‘I can’t…’
and fell to the ground.
She knelt beside him, cradling his head, then looked around for help. Only then did she see the consequences of events in the Gyre.
Wonderland had gone.
The glories of the Fugue had been shredded and torn, their tatters evaporating even as she watched. Water, wood and stone; living animal tissue and dead Seerkind: all gone, as though it had never been. A few remnants lingered, but not for long. As the Gyre thundered and shook, these last signs of the Fugue’s terrain became smoke and threads, then empty air. It was horribly quick.
Suzanna looked behind her. The Mantle was receding too, now that it had nothing left to conceal, its retreat uncovering a wasteland of dirt and fractured rock. Even its thunder was diminishing.
‘Suzanna!’
She looked back to see de Bono coming towards her.
‘What happened in there?’
‘Later,’ she said. ‘First, we have to get help for Cal. He’s been shot.’
‘I’ll fetch a car.’
Cal’s eyes flickered open.
‘Is it gone?’ he murmured.
‘Don’t think about it now,’ she said.
‘I want to know,’ he demanded, with surprising vehemence, and struggled to sit up. Knowing he wouldn’t be placated, Suzanna helped him.
He moaned, seeing the desolation before them.
Groups of Seerkind, with a few of Hobart’s people scattered amongst them, stood in the valley and up the slopes of the surrounding hills, neither speaking nor moving. They were all that remained.
‘What about Shadwell?’ said Cal.
Suzanna shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ she said. ‘He escaped the Temple before me.’
The din of a revved car-engine cancelled further conversation, as de Bono drove one of the invaders’ vehicles across the dead grass, bringing it to a halt a few feet from where Cal lay.
‘I’ll drive,’ said Suzanna, once Cal had been laid on the back seat.
‘What do we tell the doctors?’ Cal said, his voice getting fainter. ‘I’ve got a bullet in me.’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ said Suzanna. As she got into the driver’s seat, which de Bono had only reluctantly vacated, somebody called her name. Nimrod was running towards the car.
‘Where are you going?’ he said to her.
She directed his attention to the passenger.
‘My friend,’ he said, seeing Cal, ‘you look the worse for wear.’ He tried a smile of welcome, but tears came instead.
‘It’s over,’ he said, sobbing. ‘Destroyed. Our sweet land …’ He wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his
