IV.

SHADWELL.

The Salesman had fled the Gyre as the first dissolution began in the Fugue outside. His escape had therefore not only gone unchallenged, but unseen. With the fabric of their homeland corning apart on every side, nobody paid the least attention to the shabby, blood-stained figure that stumbled away through the mayhem.

Once only was he obliged to stop, and find a place in the chaos where he could give vent to his nausea. The vomit splattered his once-fine shoes, and he spent a further moment cleaning them with a handful of leaves, which began to evaporate in his hands even as he put them to the task.

Magic! How it revolted him now! The Fugue had enticed him with its promises. It had flaunted its so-called enchantments in front of him until he - poor Cuckoo that he was - had been blinded to all sense. Then it had led him a merry dance. Made him dress in borrowed skin; made him deceive and manipulate: all for love of its lies. And lies they were; he saw that now. Even as he'd reached to embrace his prize it had evaporated, denying him ownership, and leaving him to look like the guilty party.

The fact that it had taken him so long to see how he'd been used, however, was proof positive of his innocence in all of this. He'd intended no harm to any living thing; he'd wanted only to bring truth and stability into a place sorely deficient in both. For his pains, he'd been cheated and connived against.

What could history accuse him of then, other than naivete: a forgivable sin. No, the true villains in this tragedy were the Seerkind, the wielders of rapture and unreason. They it was who'd twisted his benign ambition out of true, and so invited these horrors upon them all. A grim spiral of destruction that had ended in the Gyre - with him - a victim of circumstance - driven to murder.

He made his way out through the decaying Fugue, and began to climb up from the valley. The wind was cleaner on the slopes, and it shamed him. He stank of fear and frustration, while it smelt of the sea. Inhaling it, he knew that in such cleanliness lay his only hope for sanity.

Disgusted by his condition, he pulled off his bloodied jacket. It was excrement: corrupted and corrupting. In accepting it from the Incantatrix he'd made his first error: from that all subsequent misdirections had sprung. In his repugnance he tried to tear at the lining, but it resisted his strength, so he simply bundled the jacket up and threw it, high into the air. It rose a little way, then fell again, tumbling down a rocky slope, its passage starting a minor avalanche of pebbles, and came to rest spreadeagled like a legless suicide. At last it was where it had belonged from the start: in the dirt.

The Seerkind belonged with it, he thought. But they were survivors. Deception was in their blood. Though their territories had been destroyed, he didn't put it past them to have another trick or two up their sleeves. As long as they lived, these defilers, he would not rest easy in his bed. They'd made a fool and a butcher of him, and there was no health for him now until every last one of them was laid low.

Standing on the hill, looking down into the valley below, he felt a breath of new purpose. He'd been tricked and humiliated, but he was at least alive. The battle was not yet over.

They had an enemy, these monsters. Immacolata had dreamt of it often, and spoken of the wilderness where it resided.

The Scourge, she'd called it.

If he was to destroy the Seerkind he would need an ally, and what better than that nameless power from which they'd hidden, an age ago?

They could never hide again. They had no land to conceal themselves in. If he could find this Scourge - and wake it from its wilderness - it and he would cleanse them at a stroke.

The Scourge. He liked the sound of the word mightily.

But he'd like better the silence that would come when his enemies were ash.

V.

A FRAGILE PEACE.

1.

Cal was happy to sleep for a while; happy to be at ease in the embrace of gentle hands and gentle words. The nurses came and went; a doctor too, smiling down at him and telling him all would be well, while de Bono, at the man's side, nodded and smiled. A night later, he woke to find Suzanna with him in the room, mouthing words which he was too weary to hear. He slept, happy that she was near, but when he woke again, she'd gone. He asked after her, and after de Bono too, and was told that they'd be back, and that he wasn't to concern himself. Sleep, the nurse told him. Sleep, and when you wake all will be well. He vaguely knew this advice had failed someone he knew and loved, but his drugged mind couldn't quite remember who. So he did as he was told.

It was a sleep rich with dreams, in many of which he had a starring role, though not always wearing his own skin. Sometimes he was a bird; sometimes a tree, his branches laden with fruits each of which were like little worlds. Sometimes he was the wind, or like the wind, and ran unseen but strong over landscapes made of upturned faces - rock faces, flower faces -and streams in which he knew every silver fish by name.

And sometimes he dreamt he was dead; was floating in an

infinite ocean of black milk, while presences invisible but

mighty distressed the stars above him, and threw them down

in long arcs that sang as they fell.

Comfortable as it was, this death, he knew he was only dreaming it, indulging his fatigue. The time would come soon when he'd have to wake again.

When he did, Nimrod was by his bed.

'You needn't worry,' he told Cal. 'They won't ask you any questions.'

Cal's tongue was sluggish, but he managed to say:

'How did you do that?'

'A little rapture,' Nimrod said, unsmiling. 'I can still manage the occasional deceiving.'

'How are things?'

'Bad,' came the reply. 'Everyone's grieving. I'm not a public griever myself, so I'm not very popular,'

'And Suzanna?'

He made an equivocal look. 'I like the woman myself,' he said. 'But she's having problems with the Families. When they're not grieving, they're arguing amongst themselves. I get sick of the din. Sometimes I think I'll go find Marguerite. Forget I was ever Seerkind.'

'You can't.'

'You watch me. It's no use being sentimental, Cal. The Fugue's gone; once and for all. We may as well make the best of it. Join the Cuckoos; let bygones be bygones. Good God, we won't even be noticed. There's stranger things than us in the Kingdom these days.' He pointed to the television in the corner of the room. 'Every time I turn it on, something new. Something different. I might even go to America.' He slipped off his sunglasses. Cal had forgotten how extraordinary his eyes were. 'Hollywood could use a man with my attributes,' he said.

Despite Nimrod's quiet despair, Cal couldn't help but smile at this. And indeed, perhaps the man was right; perhaps the Seerkind had no choice now but to enter the Kingdom, and make whatever peace they could with it.

'I must go,' he was saying. 'There's a big meeting tonight. Everyone has a right to have their say. We'll be talking all night, most likely.' He went to the door.

'I won't go to California without saying goodbye,' he remarked, and left the patient alone.

2.

Two days passed, and nobody came. Cal was getting better quickly; and it seemed that whatever rapture Nimrod had worked on the staff had indeed diverted them from making any report of their patient's wound to the police.

By the afternoon of the third day Cal knew he was much improved, because he was getting restless. The television -Nimrod's new love - could provide only soap opera and a bad movie. The latter, the lesser of the two banalities, was playing when the door opened, and a woman dressed in black stepped into the room. It took Cal a moment before he recognized his visitor as Apolline.

Before he could offer a welcome she said:

'No time to talk, Calhoun -' and, approaching the bed, thrust a parcel at Cal.

Take it!' she said.

He did so.