Weaveworld

His throat was offered, but it was not his throat it took, it was his heart. She felt the heat of his body fly back along the river into her head, and with it the rhythm of his life. His heart was beating in her grasp; she clasped it tight, no trace of guilt touching her. He wanted death, and she had it to give: that was a fair exchange.

He shuddered. But his heart, for all its sins, was brave, and beat on.

Fire was coming from everywhere about him. He wept it, shat it, sweated it. She could smell her hair singeing; steam rose between them as the snow melted and was boiled away. The geometries were taking control of the fire now; shaping it, aiming it. Any moment, it would be upon her.

She gripped his heart tighter still, feeling it swell against her hold. Still beating, still beating.

Just as she thought it was beyond her, the muscle gave up its work, and stopped.

From somewhere in Hobart a noise rose which his lungs could not have made nor his mouth expelled. But she heard it clearly, and so did Shadwell: part sob, part sigh. It was his last word. The body in which she still had her mind’s fingers was dead before the sound had faded.

She began to call the menstruum out of him, but the Scourge caught its tail and an echo of the void came to meet her along the stream. She had a taste of its lunacy, and its pain, before she snatched her lethal strength back to her.

There was an empty moment, while steam rose and snow fell. Then the sometime Knight and Dragon Hobart fell dead at her feet.

‘What have you done?’ Shadwell said.

She wasn’t sure. Killed Hobart, certainly. But beyond that? The corpse face down in front of her showed no sign of occupancy; the fires from it were suddenly extinguished. Had Hobart’s death driven Uriel out of the man, or was it simply biding its time?

‘You killed him,’ Shadwell said.

‘Yes.’

‘How? Jesus … how?’

She was readying herself to resist him if he attacked, but it wasn’t murder in his look, it was disgust.

‘You’re one of the magicians, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re here with them.’

‘I was,’ she told him. ‘But they’ve gone, Shadwell. You’ve missed your chance.’

‘You might trick me with your deceits,’ he said, his voice full of pretended innocence. ‘I’m only human. But you can’t hide from the Angel.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid. Like you.’

‘Afraid?’

‘It’s got nowhere to hide now,’ she reminded him, casting a look at Hobart’s corpse. ‘Won’t it need somebody? It’s either you or me, and I’m rotten with magic. You’re clean.’

For a fraction of a second Shadwell’s facade dropped, and she had her words confirmed; even amplified. He was not simply afraid; he was terrified.

‘It won’t touch me,’ he protested, his throat constricted. ‘I woke it. It owes me its life.’

‘Do you think it cares?’ she said. ‘Aren’t we all fodder to a thing like that?’

In the face of her questions his pretence to indifference failed him; he began to run his tongue over his lips, top then bottom, over and over.

‘You don’t want to die, do you?’ she said. ‘At least, not like that.’

This time it was his glance that went to the body on the ground.

‘It wouldn’t dare,’ he said. But he dropped his volume as he spoke, as though fearful it would hear him.

‘Help me,’ she said to him. ‘Together we might be able to control it.’

‘It’s not possible,’ he replied.

As he spoke the body in the warm mud between them burst into incandescent flames. This time there was nothing left for Uriel’s fire to devour but muscle and bone; Hobart had been stripped as naked as a man could get. The skin burst, blood boiling up in a hundred places. Suzanna stepped back to avoid being caught by the rain of heat, and in doing so put herself within Shadwell’s reach. He took hold of her, placing her body between him and the fire.

But the Scourge had already left Hobart, and had taken itself into the hill. The ground began to shake, the din of grinding rock and pulped earth rising from beneath them.

Whatever Uriel had gone underground to devise Suzanna wanted to run from it while there was time, but Shadwell still had hold of her, and much as she wished to let the menstruum strike him down he was the only ally she had left. He it was who’d woken the beast, and been its companion. If anyone knew its weaknesses, he was the man.

The roaring in the ground climbed to a crescendo, and with it, the whole hill tipped. She heard Shadwell cry out, then he fell, taking Suzanna with him. His hold probably saved her life, for as they rolled down the slope the ground at the summit of Rayment’s Hill erupted.

Rock and frozen earth were carried skywards, then hailed down on their heads. She had no time to protect herself from its descent. She was still spitting snow from her mouth when something struck her on the back of the neck. She tried to keep hold of consciousness, but it slipped her, and she slid into the night behind her eyes.

2

Shadwell was still beside her when she came round, his hold on her so fierce it had deadened her arm from elbow to fingertip. At first she thought the blow she’d sustained had affected her sight, but it was a fog that had closed off the world around them; a cold, clinging fog that seemed to encompass the entire hill. Through it Shadwell watched her, his eyes two slits in his filthied face.

‘You’re alive –’ he said.

‘How long have we been here?’

‘A minute or two.’

‘Where’s the Scourge?’ she asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It’s not reasoning any more,’ he said. ‘Hobart was right. It doesn’t know where it is. You’ve got to help me –’

‘That’s why you stayed.’

‘ – or else we’ll neither of us get out of here alive.’

‘So how?’ she said.

He gave her a small, twitching smile.

‘Placate it.’ he said.

‘Again: how?’

‘Give it what it wants. Give it the magicians.’

She laughed in his face.

‘Try again.’ she said.

‘It’s the only option. Once it’s got them it’ll be satisfied. It’ll leave us alone.’

‘I’m not going to give it anything.’

His grip strengthened. He crabbed his way through the muck to her side.

‘It’s going to find them anyway, sooner or later,’ he said. He was on the verge of sobbing like a baby. ‘There’s no chance they can survive this. But we can. If we can just make the bastards show themselves. It won’t want us once it’s got them. It’ll be satisfied.’ His face was inches away; every tic and tear was hers to scrutinize, ‘I know you hate me,’ he said, ‘I deserve it. So don’t do it for me, do it for yourself. I can make it worth your while.’ She looked at him with something close to awe, that even now he could bargain. ‘I’ve got stuff stashed away,’ he said. ‘A fortune. You name your price. It’s all yours. Whatever you want. Free, gratis and –’

He stopped.

‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ he said.

Somewhere in the fog, something had begun to howl: a rising wail which he recognized and feared. He seemed to decide that it was no use hoping she’d aid him, for he let her go and rose to his feet. The fog was equally dense on every side; it took him several seconds to elect an escape route. But once he had, he was away at a stumbling run, as the howl – which could only be Uriel – shook the hill.