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.

Part Eleven

The Dream Season

'The sky is darkening like a stain, Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers ' W. H. Auden The Two

I.

PORTRAIT OF THE HERO AS A YOUNG LUNATIC.

1.

That's happened to Cal Mooney? the neighbours were saying: what an odd fellow he's become, full of half-smiles and sly glances. Mind you, weren't they always a peculiar family? The old man was related to a poet, I've heard, and you know what they say about poets: a little mad, all of them. And now the son's gone the same way. So sad. Funny the way people change isn't it?

The gossip rang true of course. Cal knew he had changed. And yes, he probably was a little mad. When he looked at himself in the mirror some mornings there was a wildness in his eyes which was no doubt distressing to the cashier at the supermarket, or the woman who tried to pry some potential scandal from him as they waited in line at the bank.

'Are you living alone then?'

'Yes,' he'd say.

'It's a big house for one. You must find it difficult cleaning.'

'No, not really.'

He'd get a quizzical look from the questioner. Then he'd say: 'I like dust,' knowing the remark would fuel the tittle-tattle, but unable to lie for their benefit. And he could see, as he spoke, the way they smiled inside, filing the remark away for regurgitation over the laundry.

Oh, he was Mad Mooney all right.

2.

This time, there was no forgetting. His mind was too much a part of his lost Wonderland for it to slip away. The Fugue was with him all day, every day; and through the nights too.

But there was little joy in remembering. Only an all but unbearable ache of loss, knowing that a world which he'd longed for all his life was gone forever. He would never again tread its rapturous earth.

The how and why of this loss were somewhat hazy, particularly when it came to events in the Gyre. He recalled in some detail the battle at the Narrow Bright, and his plunging through the Mantle. But what had happened subsequently was just a series of disconnected images. Things sprouting, things dying; his blood, dancing down his arm in a little ecstasy; the brick at his back, trembling ...

That was about all. The rest was so vague he could scarcely conjure a moment of it.

3.

He knew he needed some diversion from his grief, or he'd simply dwindle into a melancholy from which there would be no emerging, so he looked around for a new job, and in early July got one: baking bread. The pay was not good, and the hours were anti-social, but he enjoyed the work - which was the antithesis of his labours at the insurance firm. He didn't have to talk much, or concern himself with office politics. There was no rising in the ranks here, just the plain business of dough and ovens. He was happy with the job. It gave him biceps like steel, and warm bread for his breakfast.

But the diversion was only temporary. His mind went back all too often to the source of his suffering, and suffered again. Such masochism was perhaps the nature of his species. Indeed that belief was supported by the reappearance of Geraldine in the middle of July. She turned up on the doorstep one day and stepped into the house as if nothing had ever happened between them. He was glad to see her.

This time, however, she didn't move in. They agreed that returning to that domestic status quo could only be a retrograde step. Instead she came and went through the summer on an almost daily basis, sometimes staying over at Chariot Street, more often not.

For nigh on five weeks she didn't ask him a single question about events the previous spring, and he in turn volunteered no information. When she eventually did raise the subject, however, it was in a manner and context he hadn't expected.

'Deke's telling everyone you've been in trouble with the police ...' she said,'... but I told him: not my Cal.'

He was sitting in Brendan's chair beside the window, watching the late summer sky. She was on the couch, amid a litter of magazines.

'I told them, you're no criminal. I know that. Whatever happened to you ... it wasn't that kind of trouble. It was deeper than that, wasn't it?' She glanced across at him. Did she want a reply? It seemed not, for before he could open his mouth she was saying:

'I never understood what was going on, Cal, and maybe it's better I don't. But...' She stared down at the magazine open on her lap, then back up at him. 'You never used to talk in your sleep,' she said. 'And I do now?'

'All the time. You talk to people. You shout sometimes. Sometimes you just smile.' She was a little embarrassed confessing to this. She'd been watching him as he slept; and listening too. 'You've been somewhere, haven't you?' she said.