Nimrod looked at him blankly.
‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’
Before Nimrod could signal any reply, Shadwell had settled the buyers and announced:
‘We’ll begin again.’
Then, to Immacolata: ‘Remove the assassin.’
Cal had at best seconds before the Incantatrix stopped his life. He desperately scanned the room for an exit route. There were several windows, all heavily draped. Perhaps if he could reach one he might fling himself out. Even if the fall killed him it could not be worse than death at Immacolata’s touch.
But before she reached him she halted. Her gaze, which had been fixed upon him, now drifted away. She turned to Shadwell and the word she said was:
As she spoke the room beyond the door, where Apolline and Freddy had been left, was washed with a radiance which splashed through onto the carpet. At its touch, the colours seemed to become more vivid.
And then a shriek of wrath – the voice of the Hag – rose from the room, followed by a further spillage of light.
These new sights and sounds were enough to set the buyers into a fresh spin. One went to the door – either as spectator or escapee – and fell back, his hands over his eyes, yelling that he was blinded. Nobody went to his aid. The rest of the party retreated to the far end of the room, while the fury at the other escalated.
A figure had appeared at the door, threads of brilliance describing spirals all about her. Cal knew her at once, despite her transformation.
It was Suzanna. Fluid fireworks ran like veins over her arms, and showered from her fingertips; they danced on her belly and breasts and ran out from between her legs to ignite the air.
Seeing her thus, it took several seconds for Cal to voice his welcome, and by that time the sisters were through the door in pursuit of her. The battle had done grievous harm on both sides. The display of the menstruum could not hide the bleeding wounds on Suzanna’s neck and body; and, though pain was most likely beyond the experience of the wraith-sisters, they too were torn.
Whether weakened or not, they fell back when Immacolata raised her hand, leaving Suzanna to their living sister.
‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘We were waiting.’
‘Kill her,’ said Shadwell.
Cal studied the look on Suzanna’s face. Try as she might she could not entirely disguise her exhaustion.
Now, perhaps feeling his eyes on her, she looked his way, her gaze locking with his, then moving to his hands, which were still palm down upon the Weave. Did she read his thoughts, he wondered. Did she comprehend that the only hope remaining to them lay asleep at her feet?
Again, their eyes met, and in them Cal saw that she understood.
Beneath his fingers, the Weave tingled as though a mild electric shock was passing through it. He didn’t remove his hand, but let the energy use him as it so desired. He was just part of a process now: a circle of power that ran through the carpet from Suzanna’s feet to his hands and up through his eyes and back along the line of their glance to her.
‘Stop them…’ said Shadwell, dimly comprehending this mischief, but as Immacolata moved towards Cal again one of the buyers said:
‘The knife…’
Cal didn’t break the look he shared with Suzanna, but the knife now floated into view between them, as if raised on the heat of their thoughts.
Suzanna had no more idea of why or how this was happening than Cal, but she too grasped, albeit vaguely, the notion of the circuit that ran through her, the menstruum, the carpet, him, the gaze, and back to her again. Whatever was occurring here it had seconds only to work its miracle, before Immacolata reached Cal and broke the circle.
The knife had begun to spin now, catching fresh speed with each turn. Cal felt a fullness in his testicles which was almost painful; and – more alarmingly – the feeling that he was no longer quite fixed in his body, but being teased out, out through his eyes, to meet Suzanna’s gaze on the knife between them, which was moving at such a speed it resembled a silver ball.
And then, quite suddenly, it dropped out of the air like a felled bird. Cal followed its descent, as with a thud it buried its point in the centre of the carpet.
Instantly, a shock-wave ran through every inch of warp and weft, as if the knife-point had severed a strand upon which the integrity of the whole depended. And with that strand cut, the Weave was loosed.
3
It was the end of the world, and the beginning of
First, a column of dervish cloud rose from the middle of the Gyre, flying up towards the ceiling. As it struck, wide cracks opened, bringing an avalanche of plaster onto the heads of all beneath. It momentarily occurred to Cal that what Suzanna and he had unleashed was now beyond their jurisdiction. Then the wonders began, and all such concerns were forgotten.
There was lightning in the cloud, throwing arcs out to the walls and across the floor. As they sprang forth, knots from one border of the carpet to the other slipped their configurations, and the strands grew like grain in mid-summer, spilling colour as they rose. It was much as Cal and Suzanna had dreamt several nights before, only multiplied a hundredfold; ambitious threads climbing and proliferating across the room.
The pressure of growth beneath Cal was enough to throw him off the carpet as the strands sprang from their bondage, spreading the seeds of a thousand forms to right and left. Some were swifter to rise than others, reaching the ceiling in seconds. Others chose instead to make for the windows, trailing streamers of colour as they broke the glass and raced out to meet the night.
Everywhere the eye went there were new and extraordinary displays. At first the explosion of forms was too chaotic to be made sense of, but no sooner was the air awash with colour than the strands began to shape finer details, distinguishing plant from stone, and stone from wood, and wood from flesh. One surging thread exploded against the roof in a shower of motes, each of which, upon contact with the humus of the decaying Weave, threw out tiny shoots. Another was laying zig-zag paths of blue-grey mist across the room; a third and a fourth were intertwining, and fire-flies were leaping from their marriage, sketching in their motion bird and beast, which their companions clothed with light.
In seconds the Fugue had filled the room, its growth so fast that Shearman’s house could not contain it. Boards were uprooted as the strands sought new territories; the rafters were thrown aside. Nor were bricks and mortar any better defence against the threads. What they couldn’t coax, they bullied; what they couldn’t bully, they simply overturned.
Cal had no intention of being buried. Bewitching as these birth-pangs were, it could not be long before the house collapsed. He peered through the fireworks towards the place where Suzanna had been standing, but she’d already gone. The buyers were also making their escape, fighting like street dogs in their panic.
Scrambling to his feet, Cal started to make his way to the door, but he’d got no more than two steps when he saw Shadwell moving towards him.
He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a gun, and took aim at Cal.
But even as he pulled the trigger somebody leapt at him. He fell sideways. The bullet flew wide of its target.
Cal’s saviour was Nimrod. He raced towards Cal now, his expression all urgency. He had reason. The entire house had begun to shake; there were roars of capitulation from above and below. The Fugue had reached the foundations, and its enthusiasm was about to pitch the house over.
Nimrod seized hold of Cal’s arm, and pulled him not towards the door but towards the window. Or rather, the wall that had once contained the window, for the burgeoning Weave had torn them all out. Beyond the wreckage,
