The sand hissed around Shadwell's feet.
I had forgotten.
‘It's been a long time.'
And you came here, to tell me?
To remind you.'
Why?
The barbs twitched again. It could kill me at any moment, Shadwell thought. It's nervous, and that makes it dangerous. I must be careful; play it cunningly. Be a salesman.
They hid from you,' he said.
Indeed.
‘All these years. Hid their heads so you'd never find them.' And now?
‘Now they're awake again. In the human world.' I had forgotten. But I'm reminded now. Oh yes. Sweet Shadwell.
The barbs relaxed, and a wave of the purest pleasure broke over Shadwell, leaving him almost sick with the excess of it. It was a joy-bringer too, this Scourge. What power did not lie in its control?
‘May I ask a question?' he said.
Ask.
‘Who are you?'
The Scourge rose from its throne of sand, and in an instant it grew blindingly bright.
Shadwell covered his eyes, but the light shone through flesh and bone, and into his head, where the Scourge was pronouncing its eternal name.
I am called Uriel, it said.
Uriel, of the principalities.
He knew the name, as he'd known by heart the rituals he'd heard at St Philomena's: and from the same source. As a child he'd learned the names of all the angels and archangels by heart: and amongst the mighty Uriel was of the mightiest. The archangel of salvation; called by some the flame of God. The sight of the executions replayed in his head - the bodies withering beneath that merciless fire: an Angel's fire. What had he done, stepping into the presence of such power? This was Uriel, of the principalities...
Another of the Angel's attributes rose from memory now, and with it a sudden shock of comprehension. Uriel had been the angel left to stand guard at the gates of Eden.
Eden.
At the word, the creature blazed. Though the ages had driven it to grief and forgetfulness, it was still an Angeclass="underline" its fires unquenchable. The wheels of its body rolled, the visible mathematics of its essence turning on itself and preparing for new terrors.
There were others here, the Seraph said, that called this place Eden. But I never knew it by that name.
‘What, then?' Shadwell asked.
Paradise, said the Angel, and at the word a new picture appeared in Shadwell's mind. It was the garden, in another age. No trees of sand then, but a lush jungle that brought to mind the flora that had sprung to life in the Gyre: the same profligate fecundity, the same unnamable species that seemed on the verge of defying their condition. Blooms that might at any moment take breath, fruit about to fly. There was none of the urgency of the Gyre here, however; the atmosphere was one of inevitable rising up, things aspiring at their own pace to some higher state, which was surely light, for everywhere between the trees brightnesses floated like living spirits.
This was a place of making, the Angel said. For ever and ever. Where things came to be.
To be?'
To find a form, and enter the world.
‘And Adam, and Eve?'
I don't remember them, Uriel replied.
The first parents of humanity.'
Humanity was raised from din in a thousand places, but not here. Here were higher spirits.
The Seerkind?' said Shadwell. ‘Higher spirits?'
The Angel made a sour sound. The image of the paradise-garden convulsed, and Shadwell glimpsed furtive figures moving amongst the trees like thieves.
They began here, said the Angel; and in Shadwell's mind he saw the earth break open, and plants rise from it with human faces; and mist congeal ... But they were accidents. Droppings from greater stuff, that found life here. We did not know them, we spirits. We were about sublimer business.
‘And they grew?'
Grew. And grew curious.
Now Shadwell began to comprehend.
They smelt the world,' he prompted.
The Angel shuddered, and again Shadwell was bombarded with images. He saw the forefathers of the Seerkind, naked, every one, their bodies all colours and sizes - a crowd of freakish forms - tails, golden eyes and cox-combs, flesh on one with the sheen of a panther; another with vestigial wings - he saw them scaling the wall, eager to be out of the garden -
They escaped.'
Nobody escapes me, said Uriel. When the spirits left, I remained here to keep watch until their return.
That much, the Book of Genesis had been correct about: a guardian set at the gate. But little else, it seemed. The writers of that book had taken an image that mankind knew in its heart, and folded it into their narrative for their own moral purposes. What place God had here, if any, was perhaps as much a matter of definition as anything. Would the Vatican know this creature as an Angel, if it presented itself before the gates of that state? Shadwell doubted it.
‘And the spirits?' he said. The others who were here?'
I waited, said the Angel.
And waited, and waited, thought Shadwell, until loneliness drove it mad. Alone in the wilderness, with the garden withering and rotting, and the sand breaking through the walls ....
‘Will you come with me now?' said Shadwell. ‘I can lead you to the Seerkind.'
The Angel turned its gaze on Shadwell afresh.
I hate the world, it said. I was there before, once.
‘But if I take you to them,' said Shadwell. ‘You can do your duty, and be finished with it.'
Uriel's hatred of the Kingdom was like a physical thing; it chilled Shadwell's scalp. Yet the Angel didn't reject the offer, merely bided its time as it turned the possibility over. It wanted an end to its waiting, and soon. But its majesty was repulsed at the thought of contact with the human world. Like all pure things, it was vain, and easily spoiled.
Perhaps... it said.
Its gaze moved off Shadwell towards the wall. The Salesman followed its look, and there found Hobart. The man had taken the chance to creep away during the exchange with Uriel; but he'd not got far enough.
‘... this time...' the Angel said, the light flickering in the concourse of its eyes, ‘... I will go... ‘ The light was caught up by the wheels, and thrown out towards Hobart.... in a different skin.
With that, the entire engine flew apart, and not one but countless arrows of light fled towards Hobart. Uriel's gaze had bound him to the spot; he could not avoid the invasion. The arrows struck him from forehead to foot, their light entering him without breaking his skin.
In the space of a heart-beat all trace of the Angel had gone from the hill beside Shadwell; and with its disappearance into flesh came a new spectacle. A shudder ran through the ground from the wall where Hobart stood and through the garden. At its passage the sand forms began to decay, countless plants dropping into dust, avenues of trees shuddering and collapsing like arches in an earthquake. Watching the escalating destruction, Shadwell thought again of his first sight of the patterns in the dunes. Perhaps his assumptions then had been correct; perhaps this place was in some way a sign to the stars. Uriel's pitiful way of recreating a lost glory, in the hope that some passing spirit would come calling, and remind it of itself.
Then the cataclysm grew too great, and he retreated before he was buried in a storm of sand.
Hobart was no longer on the garden's side of the breach, but had climbed the boulders, and stood looking out across the blank wastes of the desert.
There was no outward sign of Uriel's occupancy. To a casual eye this was the same Hobart. His gaunt features were as glacial as ever, and it was the same colourless voice that emerged when he spoke. But the question he posed told a different story.
‘Am I the Dragon now?' he asked.
Shadwell looked at him. There was, he now saw, a brilliance in the hollows of Hobart's eyes that he'd not seen since he'd first seduced the man with promises of fire.
‘Yes,' he said. ‘You're the Dragon.'
They didn't linger. They began the trek back towards the border there and then, leaving the Empty Quarter emptier than ever.