Weaveworld

  And, as the night fell on their fourth day in the Quarter, that desire came still closer to being realized.

  Jabir had just set the fire when the voice came again. There was little wind tonight, but it rose with the same solemn authority as before, tainting the air with its tragedy.

  Ibn Talaq, who’d been cleaning his rifle, was the first to his feet, his eyes wide and wild, either an oath or a prayer on his lips. Hobart was on his feet seconds later, while Jabir went to soothe the camels, who had panicked at the sound and were tearing at their tethers. Only Shadwell stayed beside the fire, gazing into the flames as the howl – sustained as if on one monumental breath – filled the night.

  It seemed to go on for minutes before it finally died away. When it did it left the animals muttering, and the men silent. Ibn Talaq was first back to the fire, and the business of rifle-cleaning; the boy followed. Finally, Hobart too.

  ‘We’re not alone,’ said Shadwell after a time, his gaze still on the flames.

  ‘What was it?’ said Jabir.

  ‘Al hiyal,’ Ibn Talaq said.

  The boy pulled a face.

  ‘What is al hiyal?’ Shadwell said.

  ‘They mean the noise the sand makes,’ Hobart said.

  ‘The sand?’ said Shadwell. ‘You think that was the sand?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Shadwell. ‘That’s the voice of the one we’ve come to meet.’

  Jabir threw a handful of bone-white sticks onto the fire. It devoured them immediately.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Shadwell asked.

  Ibn Talaq looked up from his work, and stared at Shadwell.

  ‘They understand,’ said Hobart.

  ‘I thought maybe they’d lose their nerve.’

  Ibn Talaq seemed to sense the implication of this remark.

  ‘Rub al Khali.’ he said, ‘we know. All of it. We know.’

  Shadwell grasped the point. They were Murra. Their tribe laid claim to this territory as its own. To retreat before the mysteries of the Empty Quarter would be tantamount to disinheritance.

  ‘How close are we?’ said Hobart.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Shadwell replied. ‘You heard it the same as me. Perhaps very near.’

  ‘Do you think it knows we’re here?’ said Hobart.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Shadwell. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘If it doesn’t know tonight, it will by tomorrow.’

  2

  They set out at dawn the next day, to cover as much distance as they could before the sun mounted too high, following the same bearing as they’d followed on the previous four days.

  For the first time in their journey the landscape they were crossing showed some subtle change, as the rhythmical rise and fall of the dunes gave way to much larger, irregular rises.

  The sand of these hills was soft, and collapsed in sibilant avalanches beneath the feet of animal and human alike. Nobody could ride. The travellers coaxed the animals, still jittery after the night before, up the ever steeper slopes with curses and kindness in equal measure, only to reach the top and find a yet larger dune ahead of them.

  Without any words being exchanged, Ibn Talaq had relinquished his position at the head of the quartet, and it was Shadwell who now set the pace, leading the party up the faces of the dunes and down into the troughs between. There, the subtlest of winds blew, more distressing in its ingratiating way than any storm, for it seemed to whisper as it ran over the sand, its message just beyond the reach of comprehension.

  Shadwell knew what words it carried, however:

  Climb, it said, climb if you dare. One more hill, and you’ll find all you ever wanted waiting.

  – and with its coaxing he’d lead the way up the next slope, out of the cool shadow and into the blinding sunlight.

  They were close, Shadwell knew; very close. Though, in the early afternoon, Jabir began to complain, demanding that they rest the animals, Shadwell would have none of it. He forced the pace, his mind divided from his body’s discomfort; almost floating. Sweat was nothing; pain was nothing. All of it could be endured.

  And then, at the top of a dune it had taken the better part of an hour to climb, the murmurs in the wind were confirmed.

  They had left the dunes behind them. Ahead the terrain was absolutely flat as far as the eye could see, though that wasn’t many miles, for the wind carried a cargo of sand that veiled the horizon like smoke. Even in the Rub al Khali this wasteland was a new refinement of desolation: a connoisseur’s nowhere.

  ‘God Almighty,’ said Hobart, as he climbed to where Shadwell stood.

  The Salesman took hold of Hobart’s arm. His breath was rapid and rasping; his sun-skinned face dripped sweat.

  ‘Don’t let me fall,’ he murmured. ‘We’re close now.’

  ‘Why don’t we wait awhile before going any farther?’ said Hobart. ‘Maybe rest, until tomorrow?’

  ‘Don’t you want to meet your Dragon?’ Shadwell asked.

  Hobart said nothing to this.

  ‘Then I’ll go alone,’ was Shadwell’s response. He dropped the camel’s reins and began to stagger down the slope to meet the plain.

  Hobart scanned the sterility before him. What Shadwell said was true: they were close, he felt it. And that thought, which days ago had excited him, now put a terror into him. He’d seen enough of the Quarter to know that the Dragon that occupied it was not the glittering monster of his dreams. It defied his imagination to conjure the terror that nested in such a place.

  But one thing he knew: it would care not at all for the Law, or its keepers.

  He might turn from it still, he thought, if he were resolute. Persuade the guides that Shadwell was leading them to extinction, and that they’d all be wiser leaving the Salesman to his insanity. Already Shadwell was at the bottom of the slope, and marching away from the dune, not even bothering to glance behind him to see that the rest were following. Let him go, a part of Hobart said: let him have his Scourge if that’s what he wants; and death too.

  But fearful as he was he couldn’t quite bring himself to turn his back on the wasteland. His mind, which was narrowed now to a tunnel, showed him again his hands alive with an unconsuming flame. In that rare moment of vision he’d tasted power he’d never quite been able to put words to, and nothing his subsequent experience had brought – the defeats and humiliations – could extinguish the memory.

  Somewhere, far from here, those who’d defeated him – who’d perverted the Laws of the real and the righteous – still lived. To go back amongst them with fire at his fingertips and lay their wretched heads low – that was an ambition worth enduring the wasteland for.

  Dreaming of flame, he took up the reins of Shadwell’s camel, and followed in the Salesman’s footsteps down onto the mirror-bright sand.

  III

  THE WALL

  1

  istance was impossible to judge on the plain they now crossed. The dunes at their backs were soon obscured by the sand-thickened air, and ahead, the same veil shut the vista from sight. Though the wind was insistent, it did nothing to alleviate the assault of the sun: it merely added misery to misery, dragging at the legs until every step was a torment. But nothing slowed Shadwell. He marched like a man possessed until – after an hour of this inferno – he stopped dead, and pointed through the blur of heat and wind.

  ‘There,’ he said.

  Hobart, who’d come abreast of him, narrowed his dazzled eyes and followed the direction of Shadwell’s finger. But the sand clouds defied his scrutiny.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Shadwell seized hold of his arm.

  ‘Damn you, look!’

  And this time Hobart realized Shadwell was not deceived. Some distance from where they stood the ground seemed to rise up again.

  ‘What is it?’ Hobart shouted against the wind.

  ‘A wall,’ Shadwell said.

  It looked more like a range of hi
lls than a wall, Hobart thought, for it ran along the entire visible horizon. Yet, though there were breaks in its length here and there, its regularity suggested Shadwell’s judgement was correct. It was indeed a wall.

  Without further exchange, they began the march towards it.

  There was no sign of any structure rising on the far side, but its builders must have valued whatever it had been made to enclose and protect, for with every yard they drew closer, its sheer scale became awesomely apparent. It rose fifty feet or more above the desert floor; yet such was the skill of the masons there was no visible sign of how it had been constructed.

  Twenty yards from the wall the party halted, leaving Shadwell to approach it unaccompanied. He stretched his hand out to touch the stone, which was hot beneath his finger-tips, its surface so smooth it was almost silken. It was as if the wall had been raised out of molten rock, shaped by intelligences that could mould lava like cold clay. Clearly there was no practical way of scaling a surface so innocent of niche or scar, even if any of them had possessed the energy to do so.

  ‘There must be a gate,’ said Shadwell. ‘We’ll walk ‘til we find it.’

  The sun was well past its peak now, the day beginning to cool. But the wind was not about to give the travellers a moment’s respite. It seemed to be keeping guard along the wall, lashing at their legs as though eager to throw them to the ground. But having got so far without being slaughtered, the party’s fears had been replaced by curiosity as to what lay on the other side. The Arabs had found their voices again, and kept up a constant dialogue, doubtless planning how they’d boast of their find once home.

  They walked for fully half an hour, the wall unbroken. There were places where cracks had appeared in it – though none low enough to offer hand-holds – and others where the top edge showed signs of crumbling, but there was neither window nor gate in its length, however small.

  ‘Who built this?’ said Hobart as they walked.

  Shadwell was watching their shadow on the wall, as it kept pace with them.

  ‘Ancients,’ he said.

  ‘To keep the desert out?’

  ‘Or keep the Scourge in.’

  The last few minutes had brought a subtle change in the wind. It had given up nipping at their legs, and gone about braver business. It was Ibn Talaq who first spotted what.

  ‘There! There!’ he said, and pointed along the wall.

  A few hundred yards from where they stood a stream of sand was being carried out through the wall, bellowing as it went. As they approached, it became apparent that this was not a gate, but a breach in the wall. The stone had been thrown down in heaps of rubble. Shadwell was first to reach the scattered pieces, many the size of small houses, and began to scramble up over them, until at last he looked down into the place the walls had been raised to guard.

  Behind him, Hobart called:

  ‘What do you see?’

  Shadwell didn’t speak. He simply surveyed the scene behind the wall with disbelieving eyes, as the wind that roared through the breach threatened to throw him from his perch.

  There were neither palaces nor tombs on the other side of the wall. Indeed there was no sign, however vestigial, of habitation; no obelisks, no colonnades. There was only sand, and more sand; endless sand. Another desert, rolling away from them, as empty as the void at their backs.

  ‘Nothing.’

  It wasn’t Shadwell who spoke but Hobart. He too had scaled the boulders, and stood at Shadwell’s side.

  ‘Oh Jesus … nothing.’

  Shadwell made no reply. He simply clambered down the other side of the breach, and stepped into the shadow of the wall. What Hobart said appeared to be true: there was nothing here. Why then did he feel certain that this place was somehow sacred?

  He walked through the mire of sand that the wind had heaped against the rubble of the breach, and surveyed the dunes. Was it possible that the sand had simply covered the secret they’d come here to find? Was the Scourge concealed here, its howl that of something buried alive? If so, how could they ever hope to locate it?

  He turned back, and squinted up at the wall. Then, on impulse, he began to climb the open edge of the breach. It was heavy going. His limbs were weary, and the wind had polished the stone in its many years of passage, but he eventually gained the summit.

  At first it seemed his efforts had been for nothing. All he’d won for his sweat was a view of the wall, running off in both directions until distance claimed it.

  But when he came to survey the scene below, he realized that there was a pattern visible in the dunes. Not the natural wave patterns that the wind created, but something more elaborate – vast geometrical designs laid out in the sand – with walkways or roads between them. He’d read, in his research on wastelands, of designs drawn by some ancient people on the plains of South America; pictures of birds and gods that could have made no sense from the earth, but had been drawn as if to enchant some heavenly spectator. Was that the case here? Had the sand been raised in these furrows and banks as a message to the sky? If so, what power had done it? A small nation would be needed to move so much sand; and the wind would undo tomorrow what had been done today. Whose work was this then?

  Perhaps night would tell.

  He climbed back down the wall to where Hobart and the others were waiting amid the boulders.

  ‘We’ll camp here tonight.’ he said.

  ‘Inside the walls or out?’ Hobart wanted to know.

  ‘Inside.’

  IV

  URIEL

  1

  ight came down like a dropped curtain. Jabir made a fire in the shelter of the wall, out of the remorseless assault of the wind, and there they ate bread and drank coffee. There was no conversation. Exhaustion had claimed their tongues. They simply sat hunched up, staring into the flames.

  Though his bones ached, Shadwell couldn’t sleep. As the fire burned low, and one by one the others succumbed to fatigue, he was left to keep watch. The wind dropped a little as the night deepened, its bellow becoming a moan. It soothed him like a lullaby, and at last, his eyelids dropped closed. Behind them, the busy patterns of his inner-eye. Then emptiness.

  In sleep, he heard the boy Jabir’s voice. It called him from darkness but he didn’t want to answer. Rest was too sweet. It came again, however: a horrid shriek. This time he opened his lids.

  The wind had died completely. Overhead the stars were bright in a perfect sky, trembling in their places. The fire had gone out, but their light was sufficient for him to see that both Ibn Talaq and Jabir were missing from their places. He got up, crossed to Hobart, and shook him awake.

  As he did so, his eye caught sight of something on the ground a little way beyond Hobart’s head. He stared – doubting what he saw.

  There were flowers underfoot, or so he seemed to see. Clusters of blooms, set in abundant foliage. He looked up from the ground, and his parched throat unleashed a cry of astonishment.

  The dunes had gone. In their place a jungle had risen up, a riot of trees that challenged the wall’s height – vast, flower-laden species whose leaves were the size of a man. Beneath their canopy was a wilderness of vines and shrubs and grasses.

  For a moment he doubted his sanity, until he heard Hobart say: ‘My God,’ at his side.

  ‘You see it too?’ said Shadwell.

  ‘I see it …’ Hobart said. ‘… a garden.’

  ‘Garden?’

  At first sight the word scarcely described this chaos. But further scrutiny showed that there was order at work in what had initially seemed anarchy. Avenues had been laid under the vast, blossom-laden trees; there were lawns and terraces. This was indeed a garden of sorts, though there would be little pleasure to be had walking in it, for despite the surfeit of species – plants and bushes of every size and shape – there was not amongst them a single variety that had colour. Neither bloom nor branch nor leaf nor fruit; all, down to the humblest blade, had been bled of pigment.

  Shadwell was puzzlin
g at this when a further cry issued from the depths. It was Ibn Talaq’s voice this time; and it rose in a steep curve to a shriek. He followed it. The ground was soft beneath his feet, which slowed his progress, but the shriek went on, broken only by sobbing breaths. Shadwell ran, calling the man’s name. There was no fear left in him; only an overwhelming hunger to see the Maker of this enigma face to face.

  As he advanced down one of the shadowy boulevards, its pathway strewn with the same colourless plant-life, Ibn Talaq’s cry stopped dead. Shadwell was momentarily disoriented. He halted, and scanned the foliage for some sign of movement. There was none. The breeze did not stir a single frond; nor – to further compound the mystery – was there a hint of perfume, however subtle, from the mass of blossoms.

  Behind him, Hobart muttered a cautionary word. Shadwell turned, and was about to condemn the man’s lack of curiosity when he caught sight of the trail his own footsteps had made. In the Gyre, his heels had brought forth life. Here, they’d destroyed it. Wherever he’d set foot the plants had simply crumbled away.

  He stared at the blank ground where there’d previously been grasses and flowers, and the explanation for this extraordinary growth became apparent. Ignoring Hobart now, he walked towards the nearest of the bushes, the blooms of which hung like censers from their branches. Tentatively, he touched his fingers to one of the flowers. Upon this lightest of contacts the blossom fell apart, dropping from the branch in a shower of sand. He brushed its companion with his thumb: it too fell away, and with it the branch, and the exquisite leaves it bore; all returned to sand at a touch.

  The dunes hadn’t disappeared in the night, to make way for this garden. They had become the garden; risen up at some unthinkable command to create this sterile illusion. What had at first sight seemed a miracle of fecundity was a mockery. It was sand. Scentless, colourless, lifeless: a dead garden.

  A sudden disgust gripped him. This trick was all too like the work of the Seerkind: some deceitful rapture. He flung himself into the midst of the shrubbery, flailing to right and left of him in his fury, destroying the bushes in stinging clouds. A tree, brushed by his hand, collapsed like an extinguished fountain. The most elaborate blossoms fell apart at his merest touch. But he wasn’t satisfied. He flailed on until he’d cleared a small grove amid the press of foliage.