Sprawled in a tangle of silver spars at the base of the navigation table, Tomb the dwarf struggled with his harness. His ugly face was frantic. 'Take her up! Take her up!'he shouted. 'Help me out of this, someone -'

'We can expect a bit of fuss when we get up there,'said the pilot. 'Ah. Got her. Do hold tight -'He opened his throttles. The ship began to climb steeply.

Cromis, stumbling toward the dwarf, was thrown to the deck. He dropped his sword. He hit his head on the fire control of the energy cannon. As he passed out, he recognised the woman in the purple cloak: it was Methvet Nian herself, the Young Queen.

We are all insane, he thought. The Moidart has infected us all with her madness.

Chapter Seven

Shortly after Cromis came to his senses, the airboat was rammed.

Clinging grimly to a staunchion as the daring young Courier flung his ship about the dangerous sky, he felt as if he were sitting behing the eyes of a tumbler pigeon: earth and air blurred together in a whirling mandala of brown and grey, across which flickered the deadly silhouettes of the Northern airboats. He was aware that Tomb had finally escaped the embrace of his own armour; that Grif and the Young Queen had wedged themselves against the rear bulkhead of the command-bridge.

But his concern with events was abstract – since he could in no way influence the situation – and he had something else to occupy his mind: a speculation, a fear stimulated by the sudden appearance of Methvet Nian -Abruptly, the portholes darkened. The ship gave a great shudder, and, with a sound like destroyed bells, its entire prow was torn off. Shards of crystal spat and whirred in the gloom. Five feet in front of the pilot, leaving his controls undamaged only by some freak of chance, an enormous hole opened in the hull: through it could be seen briefly the tumbling, receding wreck of the craft that had accomplished the ramming. An icy wind rushed in, howling.

'Oh,'murmured the courier. A twelve inch spike of crystal had split his skull. Three fingers could have been got in the wound with ease. He swayed. 'We still have power – if any – body can fly this thing -'he said, puzzledly. 'I am sorry, My Lady – I don't seem to be – 'He fell out of his seat.

Tomb the dwarf scuttled on all fours across the listing deck to take his place. He fired off the energy-cannon, but it tore itself away from the wreckage. 'Benedict Paucemanly should see me now,'he said. He turned the ship in a wide loop, swung once over the battlefield. He flogged and cajoled it and nursed it over the Waste, losing height. Beneath the cloudbase, the sole uncrippled ship of the Queen's Flight fought a doomed action against the two remaining Northerners.

'Look down there,'said Tomb, as they veered over the scene of Waterbeck's rout. 'What do you think of that?'

The valley was a gaping wound filled with Northerners and dead men and thick white smoke which surged up from wrecked airboats, obscuring the dark figures of the geteit chemosit as they performed their acts of skull-rape. The Waste surrounding the battlefield was crawling with reptiles: hundreds of stiff, dust-coloured forms, converging slowly from south, east and west, their motions stilted and strange.

'Every lizard in the Great Brown Waste must be down there. What are they doing?'

'They seem to be watching,'said Cromis. 'Nothing else.'And, indeed, the ridges that flanked the valley were already lined with them, their stony heads unmoving as they gazed at the ruin, their limbs held rigid like those of spectators at some morbid religious observance.

'We fascinate them,'said Birkin Grif bitterly. With the boat's return to stability, he had regained his feet. His leg was still bleeding freely. 'They are amazed by our propensity for self-destruction.'He laughed hollowly. 'Tomb, how far can we get in this machine?'

The ship drifted aimlessly, like a waterbird on a quiet current. The Waste moved below, haunted by the gathering reptiles.

'Duiriish,'said the dwarf. 'Or Drunmore. We could not make Viriconium, even if Paucemanly had postponed his flight to the Moon, and sat here at the controls in my place.'

Methvet Nian was kneeling over the dead courier, closing his eyes. Her hood was thrown back and her autumn-rowan hair cascaded about her face. Cromis turned from the strange sight of the monitor-lizards, his earlier fears returning as he looked at her.

'There is nothing for us in Duirinish,'he said, addressing himself only partly to Tomb. 'Shortly, it will fall. And I fear that there is little point in our going to the Pastel City.'He shook his head. '1 suspect you had a reason for coming here, Your Majesty -?'

Her violet eyes were wide, shocked. He had never seen anything so beautiful or so sad. He was overcome, and covered his emotion by pretending to hunt in the wreckage of the cabin for his sword.

He came upon the limp carcass of Cellur's metal vulture:

like the young Courier, it had been torn o p en by a shard of crystal; its eyes were lifeless, and pieces of tiny, precise machinery spilled out of its breast when he picked it up. He felt an absurd sympathy for it. He wondered if so perfect an imitation of organic life might feel a perfect imitation of pain. He smoothed the huge pinions of its wings.

'Yes, Lord Cromis,'whispered the Young Queen. 'This morning, the rebels rose again. Canna Moidart will find resistance only in Duirinish. Viriconium is in the hands of her supporters -'My Lords,'she appealed, 'What will become of those people? They have embraced a viper-'

And she wept openly.

'They will be bitten,'said Birkin Grif. 'They were not worthy of you, Queen Jane.'

She wiped her eyes. The Rings of Neap glittered on her thin fingers. She drew herself up straight and gazed steadily at him.

'You are too harsh, Birkin Grif. Perhaps the failure was not in them, but in their Queen.'

They drifted for some hours over the Waste, heading south. Tomb the dwarf nursed his failing vehicle with a skill almost matching that of his tutor and master (no one knew if Paucemanly had actually attempted the Moon-trip in his legendary boat Heavy Star: certainly, he had vanished from the face of the Earth after breaking single-handed Carlemaker's air-siege of Mingulay, and most fliers had a fanatical faith in the tale…) and brought them finally to Ruined Drunmore in the Pass of Methedrin, the city thrown down by Borring half a century before.

During that limping journey, they discussed treachery:

'If I had Norvin Trinor's neck between my hands, I would break it lightheartedly,'said Birkin Grif, 'even with pleasure, although I liked him once.'

He winced, binding up his leg.

'He has blackened all of us,'murmured Cromis. 'As a body, the Methven have lost their credibility.'

But the Queen said, 'it is Carron Ban who has my sympathy. Women are more used to betrayal than men, but take it deeper.'

It is the urgent and greedy desire of all wastes to expand and eat up more fertile lands: this extension of their agonised peripheries lends them a semblance of the movement and life they once possessed. As if seeking protection from the slow southward march of the Rust Desert, Ruined Drunmore huddled against an outfiung spur of the Monar Mountains.

In this, it failed, for drifts of bitter dust topped its outer walls, spilling and trickling into the streets below every time a wind blew.

The same winds scoured its streets, and, like an army of indifferent house-keepers, swept the sand through the open doors and shattered roofs of the inner city, choking every abandoned armoury and forge and barracks. The erosion of half a millennium had etched its cobbled roads, smoothed and blunted the outlines of its ruins, until its once-proud architecture had become vernacular, fit for its equivocal position between the mountains and the Waste.