Now, in 1862, little evidence remained of the prehistoric lizard race. They were depicted in carvings in a few Cambodian temples, such as Angkor Wat, but whether these representations were accurate could never be established.

What fascinated Sir Richard Francis Burton, though, was that this myth of a lost reptilian civilisation existed not only in Cambodia but also in South America, where the lizard men-known as Cherufe -were also overthrown by the expanding human race. Their kingdom had been invaded, there had been mass slaughter, and just a few of them had escaped. This small group, carrying their sacred black diamond, had been pursued almost the entire length of the continent, far south to Chile, where they had vanished and were never heard of again.

In Africa, too, there were the Chitahuri of the Zulus, called the Shayturay by the tribes in the central Lake Regions.

It was, of course, surplus information that didn't, as far as he could see, have much bearing on the unsolved theft of the Francois Garnier Collection, but Burton possessed a self-confessed “mania for discovery” which drove him to peel away layer after layer of whatever subject he studied. It at least enabled him to establish a wider and, to him, more interesting context.

There was one more thing.

The Cambodian fragments had been discovered in 1837, when a priest became aware of a low humming while meditating in his quarters. He'd lived in that room for forty-seven years and had never heard the low musical tone before. He traced it to the base of a wall, and a loose brick. The five diamonds were behind it.

It was to that year Edward Oxford, the man from the far future, had been thrown after his arrival in 1840, where he'd accidentally caused the assassination of Queen Victoria.

A coincidence, surely.

At around six o'clock, Burton got home and was hanging up his hat and coat when Mrs. Angell came down the stairs, looked at him askance, and said: “There's a nasty sheen on your brow, Sir Richard. A relapse?”

“It seems so,” he replied. “I just need to sleep it off. I'll take a dose of quinine and work on my books awhile.”

“You'll take a dose of quinine and go straight to bed!” she corrected.

He didn't have the strength to argue.

Ten minutes later, she brought him up a jug of water and a cup of tea.

He was already asleep.

His afternoon of study invaded his dreams.

He became aware of a fierce light, which burned through his eyelids. He opened them expecting to see firelight flickering on a canvas roof. Instead, he squinted up at a blazing blue desert sky.

Turning his head, he found that he was on his back, with limbs spread out, and wrists and ankles bound with cord to wooden stakes, which were driven deeply into the ground.

Dunes rose up on either side of him. From beyond them came the sound of voices, arguing in one of the languages of the Arabian Peninsula. He couldn't make out the words but one of the voices belonged to a woman.

He opened his mouth to shout for help but only a croak came out. His throat was dry and his skin was burning. The sun had sucked every particle of moisture from the air.

Grains of sand, riding a hot, slow breeze, blew against the side of his face.

He couldn't move.

Something nudged his left hand. He looked. There was a fairy standing by his wrist; a tiny female figure with transparent butterfly wings fluttering from her shoulder blades. She had a colourful mark painted on her forehead-like a bindi, though designed to more resemble an actual third eye.

Burton blinked rapidly. He had the sense that he wasn't bringing the little creature into full focus, despite being able to see her clearly. She seemed only partially present, as if imposed onto something else by his own mind, and he struggled, but failed, to pierce the illusion.

The strange being regarded him with golden-coloured eyes, then turned, bared her tiny pointed teeth, and started to chew at his bonds.

A second fairy appeared, also female, and clamped her jaws around the cord binding his right arm.

Movement at his ankles told him there were fairies at work there, too.

A fifth fluttered onto his stomach and ran up onto his chest. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at his face.

Burton felt his mind manipulated until words emerged from it, and he heard, in his own voice: “The long slow cycle of the ages turns, turns, and turns, O human. Thou art one of the few who knowest how an individual of thy strange kind didst spring from the next level of the spiral into that which thou currently inhabits, into that which thou callest thine own time. This action marked a dividing. Yet the path thou treadst echoes the one that is lost, and upon both a transition begins-a melting of one great cycle into another. Be warned!-tumultuous the change that comes! The storm shall wipe many of thy soft-skinned kinsfolk from the Earth, and thou shall be present when the thunder sounds, for the time allotted to thee is filled with paradox. There is a role assigned to thee, and thou must play the part out to its end. Thy kind infest a world in which there is only dark because there is light, there is only death because there is life, there is only evil because there is good. Be thou aware that a world conceived in opposites only creates cycles and ceaseless recurrence. Only equivalence can lead to destruction or a final transcendence. Remember that, Richard Francis Burton. Do not forget it. Only equivalence can lead to destruction.”

Or a final transcendence, he wanted to add.

The bonds fell from his ankles and wrists.

The five fairies backed away from him, floated into the air, landed on the sand, fell onto all fours, scampered like lizards, and burrowed into it. They vanished from sight.

He lifted his arms and rubbed his wrists.

A figure strode into view and looked down at him from the top of a dune. It was Isabel Arundell, dressed in flowing white robes and looking radiantly beautiful.

She opened her mouth to speak.

He sat up.

Light was filtering through his bedroom curtains.

It was late on Tuesday morning.

He stretched, reached for the bell cord that hung beside his bed, and gave it a tug. Moments later, the door opened and his valet stepped in.

“The usual, please, Nelson.”

The clockwork man saluted and departed.

Only equivalence can lead to destruction.

Meaningless nonsense. As for the rest of it, obviously Countess Sabina's words had become jumbled with his research, populating his nocturnal imaginings with little people and gobbledygook about vast cycles of time.

The little ones are not as they appear

The king's agent sat and pondered until his valet delivered a basin of hot water and a breakfast tray. He got out of bed, took a small bottle from a drawer, and poured five drops from it into a glass of water, which he swallowed in a single gulp. Dr. Steinhaueser had instructed him to use quinine and nothing else when his attacks came on, but, secretly, Burton had also been dosing himself with Saltzmann's Tincture, which Steinhaueser scorned on the basis that its manufacturer had never disclosed the medicine's full ingredients. He'd warned that it almost certainly contained cocaine, which could lead to dependency.

Burton washed and shaved at the basin. A warm vitality soaked into his flesh as the tincture took effect-honey and sunlight oozing through his arteries. Nevertheless, he was still feeling weak and decided to spend the rest of this Tuesday wrapped in his jubbah, dedicating himself to driving out the last vestiges of malaria with strong tobacco and perhaps a brandy or two.

After finishing his toilet and winding the brass man's key, he repaired to the study, lit a Manila, and began to leaf through the morning newspapers. A great many of their pages were devoted to the Tichborne case, and he quickly realised that he was still lacking sufficient background information about the affair. It was time, he decided, to start earning his salary.