'That was evening or late afternoon. The light was fading. Squalls of rain blew out of the advancing sea-fog, dotted with large wet flakes of snow. A melancholy heath dipped away inland – shadowy, sheep-cropped turf, black gorse and bent hawthorn trees. Northwards and at right-angles to the coast, defile succeeded narrow defile, each one cutting through the limestone to the underlying metamorphic shales and broadening as it reached the sea. The landscape was scattered with old metal bridges. It had a discarded air. We passed the night huddled at the foot of a ruined stone wall, unaware that a mile or so ahead lay the port of Iron Chine, nexus of a strange war, with its weird banners and demented prince. Rusty iron creaked in the wind.'

Cellur does not relate how on the next morning they found that Paucemanly's ghost had abandoned them, or how they slumped on their soaked and surly animals staring dully at the desolation which stretched away inland: that half-fertile strip of dissected peat and tough ling-heather pocked with lethal seepage hollows which was the merest periphery of the Great Waste. Unpredictable soughs full of brown water threaded its endless slopes of sodden tussocky grass; and queer rocks were embedded along its rheumy skylines, eroded by the wind into vague and organic silhouettes. This was their ultimate destination (it is, in another way the ultimate destination of everything, as the Earth enters its long Evening), or so they imagined: but in the face of its winter they faltered. Instead of turning eastward Alstath Fulthor led them first along the cliffs and then down into Iron Chine. They followed him like a handful of refugees from some chronological disaster, heads bowed against the bitter blow of Time.

The cyclopean quays of Iron Chine are older than the Afternoon. No-one knows who built them, or for what crude purpose. The massive untrimmed blocks which comprise them are not native to this coast but cut from granites formed much further north. Who brought them down from there to bind them with iron and pile them in the cold sea, or when, is not known. They are black, and wet with fog, like the vertical walls of the fjord which contains them, the archaean unvegetated slates of which sweep down to an ebon sea. The enormous quayside buildings are also black; their purpose is quite lost and most of them have fallen into decay. The modern port subsists on fish, gulls'eggs, and mutton. Cowed by geography, time and the sea, its limewashed cottages huddle uneasily amid a greater architecture; above them a road has been pushed through the rotting slates, and winds its way perilously up to the clifftop pastures.

Down this Galen Hornwrack now rode (the dwarf beside him croaking tunelessly), puzzled by the mist that lay in the trough of the fjord. It was ashen and particulate. Inner currents stirred it sluggishly. A gust of wind, exploding over the lip of the cliffs and roiling down past him, parted it for a moment, but revealed only black water patterned by the rain. Yet he sensed it was occupied (although he could hardly have said by what): he stopped his horse, stood up in his stirrups, and craned his neck anxiously until the rift had closed again. 'What's this then?'he asked himself. He shook his head. 'Fulthor,'he called back, 'this may be unwise. Further down, where the air was calmer, he smelt smoke, urgent and powdery at the back of his nose. Now the dwarf became agitated too, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, squinting and sniffing about him like a nervous dog. Behind the smell of smoke was something sharper, less easy to identify.

Lower still, at the edge of the mist, halted before it like a swimmer at the margin of an unknown lake, he became convinced that people were moving about down there on the water in a panicky and disorientated fashion; and distant shouts came up to him, partly muffled by the mist but discernibly cries for aid. 'It may be unsafe, Fulthor,'But Fulthor motioned him on, and from then on events seemed to reach him at one remove, as if he was not quite part of them. It was a familiar feeling, and one that recalled the Bistro Californium, the deadly gamboge shadows of the Low City- Inside the mist was a distinct smell of lemons, and of

rotting pears – a moist and chemical odour which sought out and attacked the sensitive membranes of the body. The light was sourceless, and had the effect of sharpening outlines while blurring the detail contained within them: on Hornwrack's right, the dwarf looked as if he had been cut from grey paper a moment before – a tall queer hat, a goblin's profile, an axehead bigger than his own. Beyond this paper silhouette the path fell away into a whitish void in which Hornwrack made out now and then a localized and fitful carmine glow. While he was trying to remember what this reminded him of, Alstath Fulthor took station on his left. Their throats raw, their eyes streaming and their noses running, they advanced in a cautious formation until the path began to level out and they found themselves without warning on a wide stone concourse bordering the estuary.

Here the mist was infused with a thin yellow light. But for the slap of the waves on the waterstair below, but for the silence and the smell of the fog, they might have been in the Low City on any cold October night. Hornwrack led them to the water's edge, the hooves of the horses clacking and scraping nervously across an acre of worn stone slabs glistening with shallow puddles. A languor of curiosity came over them. Despite their forebodings they tilted their heads tQ hear the distant thud of wood on wood, the faint cries of men echoing off the estuary. Even Fay Glass was quite silent.

Hornwrack narrowed his eyes. 'Fulthor, there are no longer fishermen in this place.'Distances were impossible of judgement. He wiped his eyes; coughed. 'Something is on fire out there.'

The smell of smoke had thickened perceptibly, perhaps carried to them by some inshore wind. With it came a creaking of ropes and a. smell of the deep sea; groans and shouts startlingly close. Now a node of carmine light appeared, expanding rapidly. A cold movement of the air set the mist bellying like a curtain. Hornwrack shook his head desperately, looking about him in panic: abruptly he sensed an enormous object moving very close to him. The mist had all along distorted his perspectives -

'Back!'he shouted. 'Fuithor, get them back from the water!'Even as he spoke the mist writhed and broke apart. Out of it thrust the foreparts and figurehead of a great burning ship.

Its decks were deep with blood. Once it had been white. Now it rushed to destruction on the waterstair, spouting cinders. Its strange slatted metal sails, decorated with unfamiliar symbols, were melting as they fell. Captained by despair, it emerged from the mist like a vessel from hell, its figurehead an insect-headed woman who had pierced her own belly with a sword (her mouth, if it could be called a mouth, gaped in pain or ecstasy). 'Back!'cried Galen Hornwrack, tugging at his horse's head: 'Back!'

Fay Glass, though, only stared and sneezed like an animal, transfixed by the mad carven head gaping above her. Dying men tumbled over the sides of the ship, groaning. 'Back!'as the jean, charred hull drove blindly at the shore; 'Back!'as it smashed into the waterstair and with its bow torn open immediately began to sink.

Down it went, with a roar and a shudder. The deep cold water gurgled into its ravaged hull. Ratlines and halyards fell in blazing festoons about its cracked bowsprit. Horn-wrack pulled the madwoman off her horse and dragged her away. She wiped her nose. Sparks flew about their heads. The hulk lurched, settled a little lower in the water. A sail fell, showing Hornwrack for a moment a curious symbol – a hexagon with eccentric sides, through which crawled orange-throated lizards – before it hissed molten into the sea. High up in the doomed forecastle a solitary figure stood – mantled in blood. 'Murder!'it sobbed, staring wildly down at Hornwrack. 'They've followed us into the estuary!'It hacked with a blunt shortsword at a flaming spar. 'Oh, this damned mist!'Suddenly it was catapulted from its perch and with a thin wail fell into the water.