'As well as a heartbeat, no doubt,' Shart muttered.

'As well as a heartbeat,' Nai echoed with strange enthusiasm. 'And we prefer to keep a low profile, especially as tempers in the city are running somewhat high.'

'Have there been riots?' Major Amber asked.

'Nothing overly dramatic, but the mood in the city has changed. There is no desperate scarcity of food yet, but that hasn't stopped fights breaking out most nights.' Nai gestured up at the pale blue sky and said gravely, 'Since the weather turned, the people of Scree have been acting like animals. They rut and fight and scream in the street. Before long the city will begin to tear itself apart.'

He turned back to the house and gave a heavy sigh that seemed to begin in his feet and rise all the way up to his strange sweat-flattened hair. Then he shook himself abruptly and pushed aside the gate for the soldiers to enter.

'Welcome,' he intoned as each passed him. Mikiss felt a shiver run down his spine, as though some malevolent spirit had stroked the hairs on his neck and then fled. The fact that Nai carefully replaced the broken, rusting gate just confirmed to Mikiss that something un¬holy prowled the grounds.

A weed-infested gravel path led from the gate up to a tall stud-tied door flanked by a pair of columns covered in rusty lichen and a vibrant green creeper that covered part of the building, obscuring several windows.

The rubbish and broken planks piled up on the doorstep led Shart to assume there was no way in from the front. He led the way round to the right, following patches of gravel that were all that remained of the original drive to the rear of the building. The fence was fifty paces or so from the house, yet somehow Mikiss felt crossing that distance would be a harder trek than it might at first appear. Buried in the undergrowth, partly swallowed by Jan untended rhododendron bush, he spotted a small stone housing, some two feet high, with some sort of metal grille at its entrance. Mikiss wondered how the people of Scree buried their dead and shuddered.

Around the back of the house was the first sign of habitation, a neatly swept courtyard surrounded by a low wall. The rest of the grounds remained wild and untended. One enormous pine overshad¬owed the area. Next to it were three smaller trees, just shy of twenty feet tall, spreading their spiky-leaved branches in a dome that reached almost to the ground.

'Gentlemen, leave your packs here,' Nai said, gesturing at the courtyard floor. He had barely finished speaking before four thumps indicated they had acted immediately. Nai smiled, noting that the soldiers might have shed their packs, but they had not cast off their weapons.

He crossed the courtyard and walked past the sun-blistered door to a large iron panel, almost five feet square, set at an angle on the floor. He gripped the thick iron ring, grunted in effort and hauled the panel up and open.

Mikiss noticed that the panel was more than an inch thick. He was impressed. Nai was neither tall nor particularly solid, yet he hadn't been hugely taxed by the fortified cellar door. Clearly there was more than just strange feet to this servant; he would bear close watching.

Nai stepped back, a lopsided smile on his face and a triumphant edge to his voice as he announced, 'Gentlemen, allow me to present my master, Isherin Purn.'

Looking into the cellar, Mikiss could see nothing at first, then out¬lines started to suggest themselves. The faintest of lights grew out of the darkness, not lamplight, but a strange green glow with no visible source. He made out steps leading down to a wide room, with a table, or maybe a bench further back, with smooth curved shapes upon it. He didn't look too hard because at the foot of the steps was the silhouette of a man, quite still and silent, with that strange green light playing around his head and shoulders. Mikiss could not suppress a shiver.

Fires danced in the twilight, the heat prickling his skin. Fragments of stone and brick under his feet made his footing treacherous as he picked his way down the street. Somewhere behind him he heard a scream, a voice he knew as well as his own – wife, lover, friend? He couldn't tell. His memories were filled with clamouring voices, mingling in his ears, drowning each other out before he could identify any of them. Each one triggered a new wave of guilt, but faded before he could attach a name or deed.

In the distance came other sounds: people shouting, the splinter of wood, the groan of disintegrating walls, the high ring of steel meeting steel. The voice behind him screamed again and this time he turned to face a misshapen creature with blood on its claws and bodies lying at its feet.

Gripped with fury, he left his shining sword in its scabbard and leapt forward, mailed fists outstretched and reaching for the crea¬ture's throat. They slammed together and spun off into the wall of a building that crumbled under the impact. They collapsed with it in a cloud of dust, still holding hard to each other. He felt the clouds massing above, growing in intensity and power; their strength filled his arms and he twisted his fingers around the creature's wrists, feeling something snap. His thumb drove deep into the desiccated flesh of his foe.

The creature howled and broke its grip on him, scrabbling to escape but unable to evade his swinging fists. He connected, watched its chest crack and crumple like dried plaster struck by a hammer. He kicked out, smashing it to the ground, then used his own great weight to pin it down.

He roared with triumph as his lingers surrounded the paper-like skin of its throat and began to squeeze, harder and hauler. It scrabbled

ineffectually, beating at his huge shoulders to no effect, emitting a stifled whimper of fear.

His hands tightened, breaking bones and crushing its windpipe until the creature moved no more – and only then did he see the fear in its eyes. Only then did he look at its face and realise that during the struggle it had become his own face, haunted and afraid, even in death. He released his grip, stumbling backwards in horror from the armoured corpse that lay beneath him. As he retreated he fell, but there was no ground beneath him to stop him, only high banks of earth rising up on either side as he fell deeper and deeper. The light from the fires grew distant as he descended into the darkness of the grave.

Isak flinched, suddenly realising how fast his heart was beating. The dream that afternoon was a new one, wrecking his sleep as he hid from the relentless sunshine in the cellar of the house they had taken. It lingered in his memory even now, several hours after nightfall. He recognised the taste of fear in his mouth, the vivid images in his mind and the ghosts of sensation on his fingertips. This was no ordinary dream; the similarities to his long-standing nightmare about Lord Bahl's death were all too apparent. Even in the hot night air he could feel Death's cold touch on his skin. He wondered if this too was pro¬phetic.

'But what does it mean?' he whispered to the night. 'How could I have been fighting myself? I died, but the black knight wasn't there. Is anything set, or has my corrupted destiny now turned me away even from that?'

He wiped a hand across his brow, feeling a slick sheen of sweat under his fingers. They had been in this city less than a day and already he was hating it. Even on the Chetse plains he'd never felt such heat. He didn't need his Crystal Skulls to tell him that this was far from natural; every fibre of his being told him so. There was magic in the air; a bitter, dirty pall hanging over the city that made his head throb. He felt both light-headed and disembodied, and yet burdened by the weight of the Land. He found himself unable to separate one confused thought from the next and his foul mood only deepened.