Then Caldason raised his head and turned to face him. Looking to the left and right, he waved Kutch across. The boy dashed over to him.

Keeping low, they crept from the settlement. Impacted earth gave way to dried mud and clumps of spongy grass. Now they were in open ground, and twenty paces later waist-high bushes. Then the stand of trees loomed over them, their branches cobwebbing the moon.

Caldason tossed the coil of rope to Kutch. Its weight had the boy staggering back a step, knees bent.

‘Tie me,’ Reeth ordered, panting. ‘To that tree.’ He nodded at the biggest. ‘And take this.’ He bent and fished out the knife hidden in his boot. Kutch slipped it into his belt.

Caldason sat with his back against the trunk. As Kutch began winding the rope around him he said, ‘What did you do before you met me?’ It was gallows humour, but Caldason took it seriously.

‘If I was near the innocent I got as far away as I could. If I was facing an enemy, I didn’t bother.’

‘What

is

wrong with you, Reeth?’

‘Just hurry! And make that

tighter

!’

Kutch finished the knots, with some instruction, and stood gaping at what he’d done.

‘Now get away from here,’ Reeth said. ‘No, wait! We have to stifle any noises I might make. I need something to bite on.’

‘Like what?’

‘It’ll have to be rope. Use the knife to cut a length.’

Taking an arm’s length from the coil’s end, Kutch severed it with the razor-keen blade. He fixed it around the tree so that it ran across Caldason’s mouth, like a horse’s bridle.

‘Good,’ Reeth said. ‘When you’ve done this, get out of here.’ His eyes were starting to roll and he was breathing harder. He bit down on the rope and Kutch pulled it tight, knotting it at the back of the tree. Then he did as he was told and withdrew.

But not very far.

All he knew was pain.

Acrid odours prickled his nostrils. The air stank of charred wood and burnt flesh. A blaze crackled somewhere nearby. Further away, there were screams and shouts.

He must have been on his back, because he could see the sky. It was on fire. Flaming crimson overlaid with streamers of oily black smoke. Ashes spinning in the heat.

Then something obscured his view. A figure, bending over him, blurred, indefinite. Laying hands on him. He glimpsed those hands as they came away and they were bloody.

He tried to speak but couldn’t. It was as though he’d forgotten how.

A cup was held to his lips, but he seemed to have forgotten how to swallow, too. The liquid was poured into his mouth. Whatever it was it scorched his throat like molten lead, and when it arrived in his stomach it caused an incendiary spasm.

Pain increased to agony.

The hands were there again. He fancied they made certain gestures over him, complicated arcane movements whose significance he couldn’t grasp. His discomfort was alleviated a little. He thought the person tending him might have been an old man, but he couldn’t trust his eyes.

Time passed. It was filled with the blushing sky and the burning flesh and the far off screams.

Then he was aware that whatever he was resting on was being lifted. They were moving him, whoever they might be, and the deed brought his body fresh agitation. It made him ache anew, every jolt and bump a thrust from a white-hot dagger. Once more he tried speaking, or to be accurate crying out, but no sound came.

He saw, thought he saw, the tops of burning buildings, and trees alight. And always that sky, churning with flame.

At last he was taken into a sheltered place, exchanging the angry sky for a cross-beamed wooden ceiling. To his relief, the movement stopped.

Those veined and bloodied hands ministered to him. Unable to utter a sound, he could do no more than stare at the buttressed ceiling. Tormented, helpless, misery held sway for an indeterminate period.

Then there was a sudden shift in reality.

What he could see of his surroundings – the wooden ceiling, the hazy figures attending him – was wiped away. Or rather, another scene imposed itself. A dream within a dream.

He stood on the edge of an unimaginably steep cliff.

Below, a vast plain stretched out. Cities blossomed there, as though sown. Fabulous crystalline edifices, shimmering spires, arching bridges no more palpable than moonbeams. Clusters of towers fashioned from solidified light, framed with steel rainbows. Gigantic floating structures, bubble-like, anchored by palpitating tendrils. Municipalities where ice and fire conspired in breathtakingly graceful lines and impossible, vertiginous angles.

All in flux.

Everything was constantly changing, evolving, mutating and reforming. Constructs expanded, compressed or dissolved. New shapes emerged; jagged, forked, rectangular, spiked, pyramidal. Their essences rippled, their surface textures continually altered. The colours attending them danced back and forth across the visible spectrum and beyond.

Nearly level with his cliff-top, but far away, mountains slumbered uneasily. They slowly undulated. Peaks flattened, fresh ones arose. Fissures opened and dribbled lava.

Above, the sky changed colour randomly. From green to grey to orange. Purple transformed to yellow, yellow to red, red was flooded with gold.

Hosts of entities were in the air. Metamorphs, resembling beasts one moment, something like men the next; often corresponding to no known being, or taking on complex abstract forms. All inspired wonder. Many, revulsion.

He knew that everything he saw was animated by energies coursing through the earth. A grid of power, sensed rather than seen, permeating the whole of this world and saturating it with vigour. Power that flowed through him too, throbbing in rhythm with the beating of his heart and the pumping of his blood.

His emotions were contrary. He felt a stranger, an outsider in this place, and was fearful of it, but also that he somehow belonged here.

As he watched the cycle of destruction and creation going on all around, he became aware of a presence. A consciousness, near to hand, seeping depravity and malevolence. The impression was of pure mind. Not singular but many; a vast coupling of intelligences that formed a miasma of spite. He couldn’t see it, it seemed to have no substance, but he knew it could snuff him out.

It approached.

A shadow fell over him, though it had no visible source. Its cold touch relayed terror.

He turned and ran.

The black, malignant force pursued him.

He took to the air, lifting as easily and lightly as a bird. It was wholly instinctive. He had no wings; belief elevated him and thought directed his flight. The talent came naturally, and of all the wonders this world had to offer it seemed the least remarkable.

Now he was among the myriad other airborne things, twisting and dodging to avoid them. The dark intelligence was at his back, ready to pounce. He dived, spun, soared, trying to shake it off. His course took him through clouds of the flying grotesques. As he passed, they were drawn into the inky embrace of the multi-mind, swelling its might and rancour.

It brought lightning bolts into existence and hurled them at him. He swerved and spiralled to escape the crackling, dazzling strokes of energy.

Then one struck him. Every particle of his being was ravaged by its intensity. He plummeted down to the ever-shifting, fickle earth, and was seized by a power greater than mere gravity.

Trapped, defenceless, he could only watch as the manifold blackness descended inexorably to engulf him. And he knew that death was the least it could inflict.

He screamed.

Instantly, the fiery sky reasserted itself. Then that was blocked from view as the wooden ceiling reformed.

He was prostrate, staring up at joists and rafters, as the pain flooded back.

Again he screamed, until the dark swallowed him.