1 '"It is written," he said, to the slanderers, and the besmirchers, and the corrupt. "My House is the House of Prayer; but you would have it a Den of Vice!"' - The Book of the World, ch.46, v.43. The corpses of the fields of Abeyat filled Bligh's days, but also, they filled his nights. In total, he spent eight days on the labour gangs, clearing bodies and body-parts. Soon he learnt to recognise, simply from looking at a dried patch of mud, whether it was worth breaking its crust with his pick. If a body lay buried, the mud would be tinged with green, or it would have dried unevenly, or there would just be something indefinable that made Bligh tentatively probe its surface, waiting for the yielding resistance of decaying flesh, or the hard snagging of a bone. He was rarely mistaken. He prided himself on his skills: where some people could divine water, flowing beneath the ground, Bligh could divine bodies. It was an unusual talent, and one, he supposed, which would rarely have been discovered in the ordinary course of a person's life. On their second day in Abeyat, Bligh and Black Paul were not selected from the men waiting in the town square. Bligh suspected that the priests had learnt to recognise the men's faces and so distributed the work evenly amongst the needy. "Time for moving on, then," said Black Paul, as they retreated from the square, in search of somewhere cool to spend the day. Bligh had learnt to accept Black Paul's decisions without comment, but today he shook his head. "No," he said. "If we're still here tomorrow they'll give us more work. Or the day after. There's a lot to do out there." Black Paul looked at him, surprised. "You wants to go out there again? Am I hearing your words true?" The previous day had been hard for Black Paul. Despite his protestations, he was not well suited to hard work and he had been irritable for most of the following evening. Bligh shrugged. "The Church's shilling is as good as any," he said. "But the tables," said Black Paul. When he got onto the timetables, Bligh knew there was no shifting him. "The tables says there's a coker through at four sixteen this afternoon. Now cokers is mucky but they's beauties still, they'll keep you moving." Bligh shook his head. "I don't know what the reason is," he said. "But I'm staying on for a day or two." "You ignore the timetables, and you're crossing with the luck of the Lord," said Black Paul. "One thing I've learnt is that if you ignores them then trouble's waiting around the corner." "Sorry," said Bligh. "But they're your timetables, not mine." "Ah," said Black Paul, "but they's not my troubles." Bligh was determined, even as he stood in the cutting and watched Black Paul leap onto the rear of a coke wagon and wave his farewell. He realised that he would miss the vagrant. He had learnt a lot from Black Paul: when they had first met, Bligh had still been suffering from the after-shock of the war, but now he felt in command again. He had a lot to thank Black Paul for, if only he had known how to express it. He spent another night in the church. After a time one of the under-priests came around, as he had done on the previous evening. He stopped by Bligh and told him that the Church could only extend its blessing for two successive nights. Tomorrow Bligh would have to go out to the shanty settlement on the edge of town and find somewhere for himself, if he was to stay in Abeyat for any longer. Bligh thanked him and turned away in dismissal. He knew he was being rude, but he could not bare to go through the ritual blessing in the Six Elements that he had endured the previous night, while Black Paul, more forthright, had cursed the priest and then ignored him. The next morning the same under-priest picked him for one of the labour gangs and Bligh spent his second day clearing the fallen from the battlefield. In the evening he wandered through the town, feeling physically and emotionally drained. He paused for a while where the patched-up buildings gave way to a heavily shelled area of rubble which had thrown up a sudden profusion of shelters constructed crudely of wood and stone, and covered with tarpaulins and sheets of rusting, corrugated metal. Among the ruins, women cooked communally in clearings, their large black pots propped up on glowing stones in the embers of fires. Children chased each other around, or climbed the few standing walls in search of pigeon eggs or vantage points from which to spy their friends. Most of the men were too old to have fought in the war, although there were a few younger men, like Bligh, who carried their telltale injuries or fragments of uniforms. He did not feel right, here. This was no place for a loner, it was a busy place, a place for coming together, sharing. He did not know if he was ready for that. "Are you looking for something?" a plump, dark-haired woman asked him, as he lingered uncertainly on the fringe. She was examining him in much the same way the priests examined those waiting for selection for the labour gangs. He felt awkward and he stared at the ground and said, "I don't know. A priest told me to come here. I don't have anywhere ... " The woman flicked her hair back and said, "I'm Lila. Come on." He followed her down into the ruins and listened as she explained the rules. "If you want to eat with my family, or any other, then you share some of your earnings. It's only fair. You want to do it all on your own, then just find a place in the stones and help yourself, but you'll find it easier sharing." Bligh looked around and for a moment he remembered the height of the revolutionary spirit. Here in the ruins, at least, there was equality of a kind. Now, Lila was studying him again. "You're burning," she said. "But so are we all. You touch any of us without her say so and we'll nail your balls to the church wall, you hear?" He ate with Lila and her extended family, handing over most of the five shillings he had earned that day in the battlefield. He soon gathered that, underneath her hostility, Lila was a sad and lonely woman. "My Belahar was killed," she said, when they were briefly alone. "He was a big man, like you. Big inside, like you, too." She had three children, ranging in age from two years to seven. Also eating with them was an old woman who may have been Lila's mother or her dead husband's mother, Bligh was not sure. There was an uncle who could barely hear anything said to him, and who sat in his corner staring at Bligh for the entire evening. And there were others, who were friends and neighbours in the ruins; Bligh lost track of them all after the first introductions. They played a crackling radio set for a time that evening. It was turned up loud so that Lila's uncle could hear, but from his snores that was wasted for much of the time. They sang along to popular tunes, and then Lila dragged Bligh to his feet and he stamped on his good side while she weaved her stocky body around him in a dance he had never seen before. He was slightly drunk by the time the radio announcer broke up the programme for 'News from the Department of Information.' Bligh tried to ignore it, which was easy when the talk was of rebuilding programmes and weighty conferences with 'our friends from Feorea'. But then Bligh's attention was snagged by a story at the end of the news report, clearly designed to sound light although its political intent was obvious. "The Good Lord Domenech," said the announcer with a chuckle. "Or at least that's what some would claim tonight. Rumours that Merc Domenech, self-styled leader of the revolutionary opposition, is really carrying the reincarnated spirit of the first of the Lords Elemental, the Lord of Soul, are being strenuously disowned by Domenech's aides. The story began in a news-sheet pasted illegally to walls around the capital, in a story credited to 'the Fool'." The announcer hesitated, as if leaving a gap for laughter. "Our reporter traced Mr Domenech at his base in the Serenic quarter of Anasty today." Now, the unmistakable voice of Merc Domenech came from the radio. "No," he said. "These stories are not helpful at present. What matters is the continuance of the revolution. The Lords will not walk again among us until the revolution has been won and - " His words were cut off in a clumsy piece of editing and the announcer concluded, "So even the Lord, himself, denies that the Lords will walk again ... Now it's time for us to return to ... " Lila wanted to dance again but Bligh sat, obstinately refusing to move. Later, as the others retired or went back to their own corners of the shanty-town, Lila came to him more quietly. "You haven't made yourself anywhere to sleep," she said. She sounded nervous now, and Bligh shared that feeling. "No," he said. "I didn't think ... " He found her tenderness with him unexpected and strangely touching. A little later, as she lay her hand on the inside of his naked left thigh, he felt its coolness despite his scar tissue. Still uncertain, he kissed her in the darkness, as her children lay nearby. When he was inside her she clamped him tightly with her arms and her legs so that he could barely move, and for a long time she buried her head into the hollow of his shoulder. Afterwards, he realised that she was crying, and also he sensed that she was somehow disappointed. When later in the night he sensed the same response, he thought that perhaps she was always disappointed with sex. The next morning he was too late for the labour gang and so he spent the day searching the debris for anything he could use to construct his own shelter. When he saw Lila later in the day, playing a skipping and chanting game with her eldest daughter and some children Bligh did not know, she nodded at him as if he was an old friend. He ate with her family again in the evening, but at night he crept away into his own shelter and slept to dreams of bodies and mud and the ghost echoes of the barrage on the central plains of a distant, alien land.

After that one night with Lila, Bligh was always waiting in the square with time to spare. The priests learnt to pick him for the labour gangs - he worked hard, despite his lame leg, and he had his particular talent for finding the dead. "It's the lie of the land," he explained to a curious work-mate. "You understand the form and consistency of the mud. You understand the differences between hitting a bone with your pick and hitting stone." The dreams of bodies came to plague his nights, so that by morning, as he stood in the town square, he felt more exhausted than the night before. Somehow, the dreams were more horrific than the real thing. In the day, it was just bones and flesh, but come the night these remains took on new possibilities. A rotting arm, adrift in the mud, could flex the fingers of its hand, a skull could blink, old boots could stamp mud in your face as you stooped to retrieve them. By the morning of his eighth day on the labour gangs, Bligh realised that he was losing control. He would spend maybe an hour or more at a time with his mind wandering or simply blank, and his body working methodically away. In the afternoon, he recognised that familiar pressure in his head - a dull, throbbing ache that rivalled the one in his leg; the sense that he was being squeezed out of his own skull - and he hesitated, by the crate with body parts and bits of uniforms. He looked at the hand in his hand and for a time was fascinated by its waxy texture. It had once been part of a man, he realised. Someone who had known friends and lovers, someone for whom things had mattered. Bligh hurled the hand into the crate in disgust. It was so simple not to think about what you were doing. Now, he was shocked at how easy he had found it to do just that. He backed away from the crate, away from those hands and torsos and heads, those bones with strips of torn flesh where bald vultures and crows had pecked. He put his hands up to his face, then snatched them away at a memory of the hand he had just discarded. His own hands had smelt of earth and rotten meat, a smell which had become something he took for granted. He took another step backwards and suddenly there was an arm across his shoulder, a hand on his arm. He flinched at the touch and a voice said, "Calm, my son. Calm." Bligh pushed at the priest, who stumbled and for a moment looked at him with anger instead of the customary well-practised compassion. "Calm," he repeated. "It affects us all, you know. I dream of the bodies, and of the violence which spawned such folly. It causes great pain." The softness of his tone irritated Bligh. What did the priest know of the violence? What did he know of the bodies? All he did all day was ride his wagon and supervise the labour gangs from a sanitary distance. The priest reached towards him, but Bligh's vision had darkened and his head was roaring and he swiped the man's hand away with a heavy swing of his fist. This time, the priest did a less good job of covering his anger. The priesthood were not accustomed to being treated with anything but subservience. The Church's sympathy was clearly a rationed commodity. The priest stared at him through narrowed, watering eyes. "You ... " He was panting for breath, so that he had to swallow and start again. "You can set off now," he said. "For a child of violence has no place with the Church. Repent, son, and I will talk to you later. Go! And while you walk, think upon your ways of violence." It was at least six miles back to Abeyat, and with his limp it took Bligh until the early evening before he saw the houses and the ruins rising in the distance. At one point, he was passed by the two wagons, ridden by the priest and another. They both ignored him so he watched the heaped bodies instead, as they rumbled along the track. Later, the wagons passed him heading back out, empty, and later still they returned with the two labour gangs. Bligh walked. His anger simmered constantly in the back of his head and there was nothing he could do to control it. The phrase, a child of violence, kept swimming around in his mind. Was that what he was? He did not really understand what it meant. He thought of his mother and the way she had seemed torn about him: what he had taken for love, but also a hostility which had made him think of her as selfish, uncaring. He thought of his travels, and of why he had really joined the Civil War. Had there been ideals involved? Now, he did not know. Maybe he had always had a self-destructive impulse, a wish to damage anything that threatened to be good in his life, a wish to damage himself. Maybe he was, indeed, a child of violence. He thought he was probably mad. In a sane world he would be locked away for the good of the masses, but Trace was not such a place, as it struggled to recover from its war. He needed help, he realised. If there had been a Jahvean church in Abeyat, he suddenly felt that he would have gone there and pleaded his infirmity with the Brothers. Even old Black Paul could have helped. Or the healer in Passerat, despite his Elementalist perversities. It was dark by the time he entered the town. The familiar sewage odour of the streets was threaded through with the smell of cooking. He recognised the sweet smell of caprolea, the local delicacy made from goat meat, olive oil, mushrooms and honey. The people of Abeyat ate well, with the money from the Church for the body-clearing and from the railway for the coke supplies the town had appropriated during the war. He passed the church, with its porch of burning candles, and for a moment he considered spending the night inside. He walked on. He could not bear the prospect of a priest doing the nightly round of the homeless, trying to achieve a spiritual return for the Church's charity. When he reached the desolation of the shanty town he sensed that something unusual was happening. He hesitated near to the place where he had stopped the week before, and Lila had come to him and shown him around and told him the rules. Instead of taking the well-worn path through the ruins, Bligh scrambled up over the heaped rubble, careful not to dislodge any debris as he went. He reached a wall and climbed up to walk along it for a short distance, before dropping down again, on the far side. He descended a steep incline, fearful that he might miss his footing and fall, to be buried beneath a cascade of rocks. Sheltering behind another wall, he could look out into a clear area where the people of the shanty town were gathered. They sat on rocks and on the floor, a radio playing somewhere in the background. Every person there twitched to the rattly drum beat of the music, as if they were all puppets, played by the same wire. The focus of the gathering was a large fire, walled in with a ring of round stones. Bligh cowered behind the wall and closed his eyes. He could sense the electricity - the magic - in the air, and it made him feel sick, dizzy. They were performing the Prayer of the Body, a calling to the world of the spirits, a calling to the Gods. Bligh looked again. The ceremony was being mediated by the old man from Lila's extended family. Her uncle, he thought. The one who sat through meal-times, unable to hear a word that was spoken, spilling most of his food and always staring at Bligh. Now, he was animated, chanting a rhythmical incantation, holding his skeletal hands in the air with his eyes rolled back so that the whites flickered red with the light of the fire. Bligh lost track of time, just watching the people and the merry dance of the flames. He only came to his senses when a woman took up the old man's chant, adapting the rhythm and the speed to her own pattern, tipping her head back and forth so that it seemed her neck would snap. Bligh recognised, with a horrified fascination, that the woman was Lila. Her eldest daughter was clutching her hand, urging her on, crying, "Mama do it! Mama do it!" Lila was wailing now, a note that reached into Bligh and twisted his barren heart. He hugged himself tightly and closed his eyes as she threw herself to the ground in front of the old man. When he opened them again she was hugging herself, too, and then she began to tear at her hair and her clothes as she writhed in the dirt. Now, he recognised the word she was repeating. "Belahar! Belahar!" she cried, the name of the man she had lost to the war. "Belahar!" One hand was pressing at her crotch now, and the atmosphere had changed and there was a new sexual energy pervading the ritual. "Belahar!" she cried in agony, in ecstasy. "Belahar!" Bligh felt enraged and, at the same time, terribly frightened and alone. He pulled himself away, withdrew, but then he realised that his body was moving, regardless, climbing up over the broken wall which had shielded him, hitting the ground with a painful jolt which stopped him for a moment. "No!" he cried, but his mouth did not move and no sound emerged. He dragged himself on, through the twitching onlookers, stopping before the old man and then lunging, pushing him so that he sprawled in the dirt. He turned and kicked the symmetrical stones into the fire and a great fountain of sparks and smoke rose up. He reached down and caught Lila by the hair and threw her aside. For a moment her eyes held that glazed look of the ritual possession and then it was as if a blind snapped down and she was glowering at him, resenting him. "No!" This time the sound emerged from his mouth. He looked around as his pulse raged in his ears and the fire roared. "No!" The people were staring at him, but no one rose to challenge him. The old ones, staring, rocking gently in an echo of the rhythm now lost. The younger men, fit and wounded, staring. The women, glaring and seething like Lila before him. No one moved. "This is wrong," he bellowed. "You can't do this. It's sick. Do you think that if the Lords were among you they would recognise ... this as anything but a cheap sham? Do you? There's nothing Holy about this charade. Nothing! It's sick ... " He was losing track, suddenly scared and vulnerable and wondering what he could possibly be doing in front of these people. He did not know where the words had come from or what he had meant. All he had was the anger that had overtaken him and now that was receding rapidly. He looked around at the gathering, once again, and he felt painfully sad. These poor, pitiful people were desperate ... for something to believe in, for something to give their empty existences some kind of meaning. Once, there had been the revolution, but now this was all they had. He searched the people's faces and a strange realisation came over him. Some were angry and cursing him - the old man, struggling away, kept glaring back and spitting - but they were not going to rise up and beat him, as he had expected. They would not drive him from town. Lila reached up and pulled at him, gently, her hand hooked into the waistband of his trousers. He looked into her face, her cheeks smeared with tears and filth from the ground. Her daughter was there, too, a seven year old with a jug of wine which she pressed at him, her eyes pleading with him to accept it. He did not understand these people's response. He felt the anger rising again, but this time it was distant and he knew it would not erupt. He snatched the wine and took a long drink. Then he passed it to Lila and she drank a little and then stopped and felt her mouth tenderly. Bligh saw that there was blood on her lip. Had he hit her? He did not think so. People were talking now, and someone had turned up the volume of the radio. Bligh sank to the ground, confused. What was happening to him? The thoughts spinning through his head, uninvited, scared him. He knew, now, that he was mad. Lila pushed a piece of greasy meat towards him and watched as he ate for the first time since morning. "I hear voices," he said quietly. He felt, irrationally, that he had to explain himself. "My head ... I can't keep track of it all. I see bodies, too. All day, all night. They talk to me." He drank some more wine, and felt its heat in his belly. "I'm mad," he said, and Lila rested her hand over his wound and her daughter wiped his brow with the hem of her skirt. "Mad." He drank some more. He thought he had said enough, but then, he decided, he had barely started. The wine tasted good and the sound of the radio was relaxing him, although he had never liked this new, southern music. He felt comfortable for the first time in months, with these warm people and their wine. Especially their wine.

In the morning he felt awful. This was the first time he had been so thoroughly drunk since coming to Trace. His head boomed distantly and his vision was blurred. Acid kept rising in his throat and his whole body ached. He remembered Lila's wails of ecstasy, but he did not know if they were from the possession ritual, when he had been a mere onlooker, or if they were from later in the night. He had woken with her lying across his chest. He was still wearing his shirt but his trousers had been lying some distance away in the rubble. His memory did not go much beyond kicking stones into the fire and yelling at everyone. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt as if it was lined with the dry dust of the street. Now, he stood in the square, waiting for the priests, one amongst many hoping for work in the battlefield. He knew that it was unlikely that they would pick him, particularly if it was the priest he had argued with the previous day. But Bligh had always been stubborn. He would not give up without at least trying. He rubbed his eyes and his vision cleared, but that only seemed to make his head hurt more. There were more men today. That would reduce his chance of work, too. There was only so much space on the wagons. He heard voices across the street and he rubbed his eyes again and looked. Two priests approached, talking with two men in the uniforms of the old State Police. Where were the wagons? he wondered. The labour gangs could not do their work without wagons to transport them and to remove the bodies during the day. There was a murmur of interest from the men in the square. Someone complained that they would have to walk to the battlefield today, and another said that at least that meant they would spend less time with the dead. Another hoped that did not mean a cut in pay. The priests and the policemen stopped before the crowd of expectant men and surveyed them, as they did every morning. Then one spoke. "We want a man who goes by the name of Bligh," he said. Bligh did not think he had heard correctly. He noticed that a space had opened up around him and now the four were looking directly at him. "What is it?" he said, although his throat ached when he spoke. "What do you want?" The policemen stepped forward and seized his arms. "What have I done?" he demanded, although memories of his argument with the young priest kept flashing through his mind. "You have been charged with the State crime of Malicious Blasphemy," said one of the policemen. "You are to be detained at Her Majesty's will until such time that a trial can be arranged before a council of the priesthood." "What?" Bligh did not understand. What had this to do with the young priest, he wondered? "What does that mean?" A priest stepped towards him and fixed him with limpid green eyes. "It is Blasphemy to defame the Six, or to misrepresent the Book of the World," he said. "But that is not a State crime. It is Malicious Blasphemy to do so whilst claiming to be one of the Lords, yourself ... "

2 '"He is never alone," said Elachim, to Faluch; "for even the Lord must leave a trail in His wake."' - The Disciples' Story, The Book of the World, 2nd Addend. They kept Bligh locked in a room in the church's accommodation wing for the next three days. When the door thudded shut behind him, he felt a terrible sense of anguish. The Brothers, back at the school in Stenhoer, had locked miscreants in a cupboard for punishment. "It will shield you from the influences of corruption," Brother Benjahmine used to say. "It will give you time and darkness in which to repent your sins against God, Son of God." The Elementalists dispensed with such statements. The room was long enough for Bligh to lie with his head against one wall and the soles of his feet flat against the other. Lying in the middle of the floor, like this, he could touch the remaining two walls with his elbows. There was no furniture, save for a shelf that held a copy of The Book of the World and a dirty cup. In one corner there was a bucket and a small bowl of water; Bligh had drunk the water by the end of his first night but it was never refilled, despite his shouting and hammering at the door. Similarly, although the bucket filled and began to smell abominably in the close heat of the cell, no one came to empty it. Bligh spent a lot of his time dwelling on the charity of a Church which locks a man up without food or water or sanitation. In the wall opposite the door there was a tall slit of a window which admitted a sliver of sunlight that edged its way around the room until mid-afternoon, when it was blocked out by the orientation of the building. Bligh could see out of this window into the street. He remembered walking past here, new to Abeyat, trusting Black Paul's sense of place, his instinct for finding somewhere to sleep and eat, and the possibility of work. Black Paul had warned him that if he did not trust the timetables there would be trouble in store. Right now, that seemed no more nonsensical than anything else Bligh could summon up to explain his situation. He thought, hard and frequently, about the night of the Prayer of the Body in the ruins of Abeyat's shanty town. He could not remember claiming to be one of the Lords Elemental. He had difficulty imagining himself doing so. But, then, he could not believe that he would storm into the middle of the ritual and break it up by force, yet he had done just that. He remembered raving about how the ritual abused whatever there was that was spiritual in the world, and he did not know where he had found such words. Later, he had drunk heavily, trying to hide himself from the realisation of what he had done. There was a lot he could not remember about that night: gaps in his memory, confused images of singing and dancing which he could not make fit with that part he could recall. He did not know what would happen next. The priests had mentioned a trial before a council of the priesthood. He had no doubt about the outcome of that. What he did not know was the likely punishment. He wondered, particularly in the middle of the night as he lay awake on his cell floor, if they could execute him for the crime of Malicious Blasphemy. Even during the day, when he felt he was able to be more rational, he did not think it unlikely that he would be shot or crucified for his crime. He tried to imagine what it would be like to face a firing squad. They would probably do it in the same square where he had waited so often for a priest to select him for work. Somehow, that would be fitting. Crucifixion would be worse, but he knew the method was still used in countries where Jahveism was only a minority faith, and respect for the death of the Son of God was not ingrained. Death on the cross would be slow, but was it mere illusion that a firing squad would be any quicker? Might his life still be ebbing slowly away long after the bullet had stopped his heart - awareness fading gradually to blackness, nothing? By the time Divitt Carew came to his cell, on the morning of his fourth day in captivity, Bligh was too depressed to even recognise him. He stared dumbly at the man who stood in the open doorway. His first thought was of water, then food. Had they finally remembered that he was here, he wondered? Then there was recognition and he almost spoke, but was silenced by the blank look on the journalist's face. "This is him, I presume?" said Carew, eyeing him warily and sniffing the foul air of the cell. Behind him, a priest grunted in confirmation and so Carew said, "You're to come with me, Mr Bligh. You've been placed in the care of the Wederian Embassy." Turning to the priest, he added, "I like this even less than you, Father. But we must represent every one of our citizens, however distasteful we find it." Bligh entered a small corridor and almost before he knew it, he was out in the sunlight and being guided towards a small blue motor car. He sat in the passenger seat in a daze as Divitt Carew climbed in beside him and did something to some pedals to start the engine. Bligh had never sat in such a vehicle before. The closest thing in his experience was the motor buses of Euardice - short trams, riding without tracks through the Feorean capital - or the motor wagons used in Trace. He held on to the edges of his seat as the car pulled away. Looking up, he realised that the vehicle had no roof, or rather, that it had a canvas one which had been rolled back. Sunlight, beating down on his upturned face felt strangely unfamiliar. When he looked down again, they had left Abeyat and fields were rolling away to either side. Many of them had been replanted since the war had finished, and now there were uneven lines of green shoots striating the mud. "Why did they believe you?" said Bligh, finally, turning to Carew. "About the Embassy?" "I know a clerk there," said Carew, as if wondering how much to reveal. "A nice boy. He's useful for information. And forged letters on official stationery." Bligh remembered the last time he had been with Carew and the trick he had played. He wondered why the journalist had taken such a risk to free him, but he did not ask. After another stretch of silence, Bligh said, "Thanks, Divitt." "Don't. You'll make a good story." Carew grinned. "You're already a good story, my Lord ... " "What do you mean?" Suddenly Bligh felt sick. "How do you think I found you, eh?" Divitt Carew fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, making the car slew across the road. He withdrew a crumpled news-sheet and handed it to Bligh. "Read it, go on." Bligh squinted at the tiny, smudged print. His story took up half a column on the front. Much of the detail was wrong - it said he was Feorean and that he had fought with the Land Party - but basically it repeated what Bligh, himself, had been told. He was to be tried for Malicious Blasphemy, for claiming to be the reincarnated spirit of the Lord of Stone whilst simultaneously desecrating the sacred Prayer of the Body. He checked the masthead of the news-sheet and saw that it had been published in Anasty. He slumped in his seat, and put a hand to his forehead. Carew reached down into a pocket in the door and then handed a flask across to Bligh, who drank gratefully. "I'm mad," said Bligh, after a time. "You don't want to stay around me. I only hurt people." "I guessed that much," said Carew lightly. "The madness, that is. I saw that story and I thought to myself, 'Remember that young fool Bligh?' I thought. 'He's flipped,' I thought. It's the obvious conclusion. Do you really think you're Lord of Stone? I need to know for the story I'll write - that's the price of a rescue by the Good Knight Carew." "No," said Bligh, desperately. "I have bad dreams, I do stupid things like breaking up a Prayer of the Body and arguing with a priest. But I'm not playing host to any damn god!" "Why claim that you are, then?" "I don't know ... Sometimes I feel as if I'm being steadily wiped away, as if there's a ... a force, lurking in the depths of my mind, ready to fill the void. I don't know. Someone once told me that we were being prepared to carry the reincarnated Lords Elemental. Somehow that seemed to fit how I felt when I came out of hospital in Passerat. I don't believe it, but I suppose I must fear it. I don't know." Putting it into words helped a great deal. It made him think about things he had been avoiding for a long time. "If you really are carrying this Lord of Stone creature in your head," said Divitt Carew. "Not that I believe it, you have to understand. But if you are, then the Gods must be in a pretty sorry state right now. Strangely enough, the Church never portrays their menagerie of Gods as pathetic - struggling to assert themselves like you describe. Your Lord of Stone sounds almost human." Bligh thought of Salas Benjennery. "I had an argument once, with a man who said that magic was fading from the world - maybe, if God is real, He's starting to lose His grip ... "

Later, when darkness had fallen and they had pulled off the road to eat some bread and dried meat, Carew put a hand on Bligh's arm. "Listen," he said. "You need help. It's no good spilling your guts to an old hack like Divitt Carew. You need someone who knows what they're talking about." Bligh looked at him. warily. He was scared. He had managed to talk to Carew, but it had not been easy. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "You keep saying that. Well I do know. There's a healer I've heard a lot about. He's unconventional: before the war he was tried for blasphemy, for the reason that his healing technique never once invoked the power of the Lords. He won a suspended judgement with the defence that, if the Church believed in its own scriptures then one such as himself could not cure the faithful without the influence of the Lords Elemental. He spoke for two hours and he didn't once admit to any kind of faith himself." Bligh sensed that Carew was missing something out. He waited, and when the journalist said no more, he prompted him, "And?" Divitt Carew glanced at him briefly. "The healer's name is Hammad Fulke." Bligh felt dizzy as a rush of memories bombarded him. His small room in Dona-Jez as Madeleine arrived in the rain and the dark, saying she had to be with him and she did not care what her parents said. The two of them, running hand in hand as snipers fired from Anasty's rooftops. Madeleine, clutching him and gasping, whispering words of love to him as they lay in a heap of sweaty bed-clothes. Bligh had always avoided talking of Madeleine's past. In their time together they could only have mentioned the name of Hammad Fulke three or four times, yet Madeleine had been Fulke's lover for nearly a year. "I don't know," was all he could finally think to say. Would he never escape that man's shadow? "You've been wandering across the country," said Carew. Bligh wondered what he was implying. "I traced your progress - the news stories didn't say where you were being held, so I had to do some detective work. I spoke to priests, I found an old tramp who knew the train timetables by heart - he told me, to the minute, every train you'd travelled on, every town you'd stopped at, but he didn't know anything about where you slept, or where you worked. "You have to understand, Bligh: you were always heading north. It was inevitable that you'd end up in Dona-Jez, whether you knew it or not. Why don't I just make it easy and drive you straight there?" Bligh did not answer, but he climbed into the car when Divitt Carew started it up. "Oh yes," said Carew, when they had been driving for a few minutes. "What do the People's Police want with you?" Bligh looked at him sharply. "When I was talking you out of Abeyat, the priest showed me papers he had received from the UPP in Anasty. I had to pretend I knew all about it and that Embassy custody would save him a lot of paperwork. I only succeeded because the Church instinctively distrusts the revolution." "What did they want?" "They were charge papers," said Carew. "You were wanted for desertion from the UPP militia." Bligh thought for a moment, before producing an explanation. "In Anasty," he said. "I tried to join them, but I changed my mind at the last minute. They'd written up some papers for me, but I never actually joined." Carew was not satisfied. "But what have you done to them, Bligh? If they sent the Police after everyone who could technically be termed a deserter then half of the surviving male population of Trace would be locked up. You must have done something to upset them." Bligh knew the answer. "I think you'd better ask Merc Domenech about that," he said. Just then, he thought madness might be his safest option.

Divitt Carew had interviewed Merc Domenech, only a matter of days after the end of his march on the Citadel and the slaughter of Parliament Square. "He remembered me from four years ago," he told Bligh. "He remembers everything. He did something no one has ever done to me before." Carew shook his head as he drove, a single rubber blade sweeping rain from the windscreen. "I was unable to write about him. I sat down that night and went through my notes, but I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what I could say. I've never known the feeling ... "He's risen so quickly," he continued. "Now, the Transitional Government faces a new threat, if they're not careful. Domenech has a popular appeal that could even rival support for the first revolution." "The country's not ready for another war," said Bligh. "That's what Domenech says, and he'll deny that he's doing anything to provoke it. 'The revolution must be completed,' is one of his favourite lines. But all the time, in the background, his propaganda team is raising the temperature. He thinks he's a God, Bligh. He really does, although he denied it when I challenged him." "It is a common madness," said Bligh. "Is that why he wants you, then? He knows there must be six Lords Elemental - he needs you to fulfil his madness, whether you want to cooperate or not. He's dangerous, Bligh." But Bligh did not need to be warned about Merc Domenech. He wondered if Domenech really did believe that he carried the reincarnated spirit of the Lord of Soul, or if he was as confused and scared as Bligh. He thought, perhaps, that Domenech might be frightened of him, too, frightened of the alternatives he presented. They entered Dona-Jez in the early hours of the morning. It was too late to find a room, so they stayed in the car, sleeping propped up in their seats and waking stiff and unrested. "Where do we find Hammad Fulke?" asked Bligh, but he knew the most likely person who would know. "I have an old address," said Carew. He grinned. "But this is Trace - it won't be as easy as that." They left the motor car where they had parked it the night before. Dona-Jez was a small town, spreading around a junction on one of the main routes down into the heart of Trace from Feorea. The older buildings were built of solid stone, but filling the gaps, and spreading around the fringe of the town, there were houses built since the railway lines had been laid, wooden framed terraces with plaster laid crudely between thin wooden laths. It was strange to be back in Dona-Jez. Bligh felt that if he tried hard enough he could simply blank out the last year and his biggest worry would be the disapproval of Madeleine's parents. But, at the same time, he felt distanced from the place, as if he had never really lived here, never been happy here, never been in love. He knew his first fantasy, of return to an easy past, was no more than an illusion. The wounds of time had changed everything. He kept expecting to see people he knew, but there were none. Only the streets were familiar. Divitt Carew led him to a road by the school where Madeleine had once taught. Bligh had often admired the old terraced row opposite the school. There was nothing grand about these houses and flats, nothing too showy, but to live here was a sign of success. He had often thought that if he had been the settling type then a street like this would be an inspiring goal. Also, it was close to the school, and so, when they had just been friends, he would dream of seeing Madeleine out of his window, having her calling in after a hard day for a drink and a chat. Later, when they were lovers, it would have been convenient for her work. He had not known that Hammad Fulke had lived here. As Divitt Carew told him that this was the place, Bligh's mind was churning with thoughts of how they must have met: Fulke, spying her on her way to work, planning to meet her by chance in the street and seduce her. Or equally - Madeleine had always set out to get what she wanted - it could have been the other way around. It might even really have been chance, he concluded, as they mounted the stone steps that led to Fulke's door. "What do we do?" he said. He did not want to be here. Suddenly, the prospect of explaining his illness to a stranger was nothing when set against the prospect of meeting the man who had won Madeleine's love. It terrified him. He had never understood what had bound Madeleine to him for so long - love was just a word to cover ignorance, he had always assumed. The thought that she could share such a bond with another disturbed him. He eyed the steps, leading back to the pavement, the street. Divitt Carew put a hand on his arm. "Don't think of it," he said. "You couldn't out-run me, with that leg. And you're a fugitive, remember? I'm going to get you healed, whether you want it or not." He clapped Bligh's arm, and then turned and hammered on the door. He thought she was a girl, when the door slitted open and she peered at them from the shadows. Her eyes were haunting - almost circular, with small pupils and rimmed with short, black lashes. Her hair was black and tied hard at the back of her bony head. She licked her lips nervously, and said, "Yes?" Divitt Carew smiled and nodded. "Please, madam, I wonder if I may take a few moments of your time?" His manner had changed totally. Bligh watched him with interest, almost forgetting the reason for their call. "I'm trying to trace a gentleman with whom I hope to do business. Could we come in, for a moment? Please?" The door edged open another inch. "There's no man here," said the girl. Her eyes never left Divitt Carew. "The previous tenant left in the war." Carew sighed and turned to Bligh. As he did so, the door opened wider and Bligh saw that the girl had the body of a woman. She could have been any age between twelve and perhaps thirty. Carew sensed the relaxation and turned his head sharply back towards the woman. "We're not police," he said, shedding his smooth manner of before. "We don't want to cause Hammad any trouble. We have a friend in common. We need his help." "Then go," she said. "Hammad Fulke is dead." Bligh noticed a grimace flicker across her face as she said those words. Dishonesty? Pain? "In the war. You'll only find trouble if you don't go. Please." Her eyes flicked beyond them, into the street, and Bligh sensed that her fear was not simply the result of being confronted by strangers at her door. He pulled at Carew's jacket and said, "Come on. Let's go." He nodded at the woman and then turned back down the steps. "What are you playing at?" demanded Carew, as they walked away from the house. "She was scared," said Bligh. "Couldn't you feel it? She was hiding something. She meant what she said about trouble." He remembered ignoring Black Paul's warnings of trouble. "Of course she was hiding something! Another minute and we'd have known what." They walked in angry silence for a short time, then Carew said, more calmly, "Just remember, Bligh. I make the decisions - you're the mad one around here, not me." Bligh laughed. "We're all mad," he said. "Just in different ways." "You know who we have to ask now?" said Carew. "If she's still living in Dona-Jez, of course." Bligh looked down at his feet. When he glanced up, Carew was still staring at him. Slowly, Bligh nodded.

They waited outside the school until the mid-day break. The playground filled with children, ranging in age from toddlers to early teenagers. Even the previous year, the school had more pupils than this. There was no sign of any teachers, so Carew and Bligh walked in, through the chasing children and the squabbles and the ragged games of football. Carew looked at Bligh and raised his eyebrows, so Bligh nodded to a door and said, "They'll be in there." Carew pushed at the door and led Bligh inside. The classroom held a man and two women, seated on miniature desks as they gestured at a UPP news-sheet and argued politics. Madeleine was not one of them. The three looked up as the door swung shut. Divitt Carew stepped forward to speak, but Bligh beat him to it. "Salas," he said, to the silver-haired man. "You survived." The two women were teachers Bligh had once vaguely known. One of them, he remembered, had tried to dissuade Madeleine from her relationship with him. Salas Benjennery looked at him closely and then stood. "Fresh air," he said, breathing deeply. "I feel the need for some fresh air." He ushered Bligh and Carew out before him and would say no more until they had walked some distance around the perimeter of the playground. "You are a wanted man," he said to Bligh. "Remember Simmen Oate? No? He was in the 16th with us, in Alyk Ammar's Section. He was asking if I had known you well, only yesterday. We were in the same Section together, yes? We were friendly, yes? Had I seen you recently? Maybe we could all get together if you come back to Dona-Jez - share some beer and stories of the war? He's in the Police now. Friendly reunions are not in his plans, I think. What have you done?" "Nothing," said Divitt Carew, quickly. After a short pause, Benjennery said to Bligh, "You limp, Friend." "But I live," said Bligh. "That's enough." "Will you tell me what you've done?" Divitt Carew gave Bligh a warning look, which he chose to ignore. "Divitt thinks I'm part of Merc Domenech's plans to conquer the world," he said, shaking his head. "Ah," said Benjennery. "The Lord of Soul is looking for disciples ... " "No," said Bligh, awkwardly. "Equals, perhaps." Benjennery looked at him with a half smile on his face. "Remember my little obsession?" he said. "My quest for the fantastic? If the propaganda of Domenech's followers is anywhere close to the truth, then I have changed my mind: the death of magic could not come soon enough to please me. If you need help." Carew looked up and started to speak. "We're looking for Hamm - " "Madeleine Palmes," interrupted Bligh. "We're looking for Madeleine."

It did not take much for Salas Benjennery to convince them to hide until dark. They took the car out into the hills and waited by a stream through the heat of the afternoon. Warblers made their scratchy proclamations from the hillside scrub and marbled butterflies of orange and brown skipped through the air. It soothed Bligh greatly. As they drove back into town, Divitt Carew insisted they were making a mistake. "He'll have told his friend, Oate," he kept saying. "You've made a date with the People's Police, not Madeleine." "Leave me here," Bligh told him, on the outskirts of the town. "I'll find her on my own. You've risked enough already." They were to meet Madeleine in the grounds of the school, as the bells rang for evening communion. "You can't go on your own, you young fool," snapped Carew, staring bitterly out of his car's split windscreen. "Look what a mess you've made up to now."

A single figure stood at the edge of the playground as they pulled up in the street. They left the car and passed through the school gates. Bligh hurried as fast as his damaged leg would allow, but he stopped short as Madeleine turned to face him. He could see that she had been crying already and he swallowed grimly. He remembered his own conviction that their relationship was finished, but now doubt fogged his mind. He looked into her eyes, but was unable to think. He longed for the certainties of the past. He knew he should speak, but he had no idea what to say. He watched Madeleine's tongue flick at her lips, as if she was about to say something, and then she stopped and was looking past him. "Remember me?" said Carew, with a false lightness, as he caught up with Bligh and the three stood awkwardly in the school grounds. Now Madeleine looked from one to the other, remaining silent. Bligh was out of his depth. He turned slightly, towards Carew, who gestured at him and said, "Bligh's not well, Madeleine. We need help." "I know," she said. Her voice twisted his insides. He wanted to flee, yet at the same time he wanted to run to her and hold her as tightly as he could. He stood, rooted to the spot. He swallowed, with difficulty, and - reacting in his own familiar manner - he clamped down on his feelings. "We need to find Hammad Fulke," said Carew. Madeleine shook her head. "He's not here," she said. "Not in Dona-Jez. I don't know where he is." "Do you have any idea how we could find him?" said Carew. Madeleine shrugged. "We could start with his daughter, Aline."

3 'So when the people heard His words, they said, as One, "Hail! The Lord: He is come!" And now they did believe it in their hearts, and in their souls.' - The Book of the World, ch.19, v.8. "Follow me," said Madeleine. She dipped her head and walked past Carew and Bligh, hair drifting down across her cheek. Bligh stared at her retreating form and then, as Divitt Carew hurried to join her, he followed. They paused by the school gates as a group of old men worked their way slowly towards the end of the street. Bligh pressed his head against the wall, cooling himself, steadying his pulse. When the old men had passed, the three approached the house of Hammad Fulke. "But ... " said Divitt Carew, but he stopped before saying any more. Madeleine knocked gently on the door and eventually they heard a heavy bolt sliding and the handle turned, the door opened. "Aline," said Madeleine, into the dark crack. "Can we come in? Quickly." The door swung open and the three entered the house. They paused in a poorly lit lobby and Bligh turned to see the closed door being bolted by the woman they had spoken to this morning, the woman with a child's face who had insisted that Hammad Fulke was dead and that they should leave immediately. "I recognised you," she said as she passed Bligh and led them through to a small room lit by a lantern. A leather-bound book lay face down in a chair, a half glass of beer nearby. Aline took her seat again and her three visitors moved into the room. "I am surprised you were not seized, walking the streets in daylight. I believe knowledge is widespread of the demand for your attentions." She smiled, but it was merely an arrangement of her features. "She's right," confirmed Madeleine. Her voice sounded tired. "I report to the Police office every morning. One day I was late and they kept me in jail until the evening bells." "A wonderful thing, the revolutionary spirit," said Divitt Carew. Madeleine was sitting in the only other chair. Her skin was unnaturally pale and her eyes kept flitting around the room. When she glanced at Bligh he looked down at the floor. "You want Pappy," Aline said into the ensuing silence. She took a sip of beer and continued. "It was the truth that he left in the war - I was not lying." "You said he was dead," Carew reminded her. "Ah." She thought for a moment. "Perhaps for me. In a metaphorical sense. We were very close for a long time. Now that he is gone it is as if I have suffered a bereavement. There is a psychological parallel between the two forms of loss. We were very close, before. Mother died when I was four, you see. I had been in school for a week when I contracted the Tradonis influenza. Mother nursed me to recovery, so it took her instead. Pappy raised me, although he had help from time to time." Here, she glanced jealously at Madeleine, and it was the first time any emotion had shown on her face. "Where is your father?" "He spends time at the Citadel. He is trying to convince Queen Minna that Merc Domenech is unworthy of her attentions. He writes to me, but he is less the man he is on paper." "Do you have his address?" "Oh yes," said Aline. "I reply to each letter by the first available postal service. He will not treat you, if you simply knock on his door as you attempted earlier today. He is too busy with the Queen. He loves her, you see, although it is an unrequited attachment. I will come with you. There is still room in his affection for his daughter, I believe. How do we leave Dona-Jez? The Police will certainly be observing the roads." Bligh had thought of that already. Dona-Jez was situated on the crossroads of two main routes, leaving only four exits to watch. He looked across at Divitt Carew and they both smiled. "Check the timetables!" they said together, and laughed at Madeleine and Aline's puzzlement.

They slipped away from the house of Hammad Fulke by a back entrance. "Can we rely on her?" Bligh had asked, as they passed along an alleyway littered with bins and pieces of wood. "You'll be gone before you have to," said Divitt Carew. "You can leave the risks to the likes of myself. We might not need her, in any case: she's already told us Fulke is at the Citadel." Then, to Madeleine, he said, "Is there somewhere we can stay tonight?" "Come home with me," she replied. "It'll be watched," said Carew. "No one would dare watch my father's house," said Madeleine. "Is this wise?" asked Bligh, as they walked. "They never liked me." Madeleine glared at him, suddenly, and he wished he had remained silent. "They would never betray you against my wish," she said in a steady voice. "No matter what you did." Carew and Bligh waited in the shadows as Madeleine approached the front door. There was no sign of a Police presence, but they would take no chances. "Do you trust her?" said Carew, as they waited. "I have to ask, you understand." "I trust her more than I'd trust myself," said Bligh. When the door opened, they rushed across and suddenly Bligh found himself standing in that wide kitchen, being stared at by Rourigan and Adernis Palmes. Rourigan had once been a man of similar proportions to Bligh, although now he had hunched and wasted with age. He had the face of a fighter, with a crooked nose and glowering blue eyes and a jaw that jutted whenever the situation demanded. Adernis, too, was strongly built, although by comparison with Rourigan she looked almost dainty. Madeleine had inherited her straight, dark hair and her sturdy beauty from her mother, but much in her bearing came directly from her father. Rourigan drummed his fingers and stared at Bligh as his wife cut bread and meat and drew a jug of water for the table. "Thank you," said Bligh, awkwardly, as the two left the room a few minutes later. They were the first words spoken since he had entered the house. Bligh and Divitt Carew ate ravenously. Madeleine sat and watched, sipping occasionally from a cup of water. "Not eating?" said Bligh, eventually. He wished he could think of something better to say. Madeleine shook her head. "I've not been well," she said, staring at her water. "Not for some time." "Maybe we could get Hammad Fulke to heal you," said Carew, over a mouthful of cold ham. Madeleine glanced up with what might have been fear flickering on her face, but she said nothing. Later, she showed them through to a set of stairs, and then up to an attic room she said they could use for the night. She waited, as Carew went down to wash in the kitchen, and then she was alone with Bligh. "You left me," she said, poised in the doorway as if ready to escape. Bligh went over to peer out of the window. He wished she would at least come in and sit down. He turned back to face her. "The war," he said. "We were posted to Huesja." There was always a moment of horror, when you revealed that you had fought at Huesja, but this time there was something else in Madeleine's grimace. Understanding. The posting had been coincidence: he would have abandoned her anyway. "I gave you everything you wanted," she said. He had not wanted that. "I know," he said. "I took it." He felt lost. "Will you come to Anasty?" he asked. He did not want her to say yes. He could not bear the thought of seeing her with Hammad Fulke. He had never met the man, but already he could sense his power, his attraction. The thought of bringing Madeleine and Fulke together again made him feel small and inferior. "Do you want me to?" He did not know what he wanted, but he still nodded. The thought of leaving her here scared him almost as much as the thought of taking her to Fulke. They left as the sun was rising. First, they called on Salas Benjennery, who readily agreed to ride in the car with Divitt Carew. "I offered my services," he said, throwing a few things into a leather satchel. "It will be exciting." It was a short walk from Benjennery's flat to the railway. The four covered the distance in a few minutes and soon Bligh was crouching in the undergrowth, partway up the bank of a steep cutting. Madeleine lingered, as Benjennery and Carew walked away. "Take this," she said, pressing something into Bligh's hand. It was the small pistol she had carried in Comeras. Bligh stared at it as it lay in his big palm. When he looked up she was already striding away and even if the words had come she would not have heard. Later in the morning, Madeleine would report to the Police as usual; then she would call on Aline Fulke and they would travel by passenger train to the capital. Bligh glanced at a watch he had borrowed from Salas Benjennery. A goods train was due in a few minutes. He crouched and waited, but he did not worry as the watch's hands edged onwards. He had learned from Black Paul to trust the timetables. It was twenty minutes before the train appeared around the curve of the track. It would have left the goods yard three minutes earlier, but would not gain much speed until after this curve. The engine edged past him and he saw its driver working at some levers, his mate shovelling coke into the furnace. Once they had passed, Bligh scrambled down the bank and stopped as the wagons rumbled past within inches of his face. Timing his move with well-learned precision, he grabbed a rail and swung himself up. Breathing heavily, he hauled himself onto the little platform at the end of one of the wagons, then settled down for the journey.

The train kept stopping and starting all the way to Anasty. It was almost like travelling in wartime again. Bligh realised that he was back in the capital when the train slowed to cross the River Ana. The bridge was long and low, its masonry heavily scarred by the fighting. At one point, he looked down between the wagons and saw only track between him and the river. He wondered how much longer this bridge would stand without repair. What, he thought, had become of the rebuilding programme that received so much attention when the fighting had ground to a halt? Bligh jumped the train, tumbling painfully in the dirt, before it came to the goods yard which was its destination. He had learnt, in his time with Black Paul, that goods yards tended to be kept under guard against black marketeers and the hungry. Now was not the time to risk a beating or jail for the common crime of vagrancy. He walked the streets, believing himself to be safest in a crowd even though it made him feel vulnerable and exposed. Whenever anyone glanced at him he searched his memory frantically to see if he recognised them. He knew they only stared because he stared back, but that did not make it any easier. Eventually, he came to the riverside promenade where a strip of parkland bordered the River Ana. This was where they had agreed to meet, but not until sunset. He had most of the afternoon to fill. He glanced across at the eating house and wondered if he would be recognised if he went for a meal. Divitt Carew had given him a few shillings. He decided against it. He could miss a meal without noticing. Instead, he wandered down to the river, lost in memories of the last time he had been in this place. Soldiers from the Cooperatives or the UPP had lounged here, chewing sugar sticks and cleaning their rifles. Occasionally one of their light field guns would send a volley of artillery fire across the river, blowing apart another wall or - just as likely - failing to detonate. He remembered a bullet ricocheting nearby as he had broken sweetbreads with Madeleine. "Tea?" one of them had said, as if this was how they normally ate. He looked up and the face of Merc Domenech was staring at him from a poster, slightly larger than life, with fierce eyes and an incongruous little smirk. OUT OF THE MAYHEM! the poster yelled at him, from where it had been nailed to a peeling plane tree. He had seen other posters like this, urging the people to Win The Stalemate and to be ready to Proclaim A New Leader. Some had been signed by the Fool, one of the fringe characters from the Elementalist prophecies, but others, like this one, went unsigned. Divitt Carew had told Bligh, during the night, of the relentless rise of Merc Domenech. "The Transitional Government would have him killed," he had said. "But you have to understand: they, more than any, know the value of a martyr, whether in jail or in the ground." "Maybe they think they couldn't kill him," said Bligh. "If they believe his myth." Divitt Carew took him seriously. "Some of them, certainly. It's complicated by his involvement with Minna." Bligh remembered hearing Domenech speak on the steps of the Citadel, denouncing the Queen and the fact that foreign influence should keep her alive and involved in the broking of her nation's power. Yet now she had become a supporter of Domenech and he had stopped attacking her. Perhaps he saw her as a symbol of the authority he craved, Bligh decided. Or perhaps he thought he could topple her from within. "Does she believe he is the Lord of Soul?" Bligh had asked. "Hammad Fulke would know about that, from what Aline says. She's obsessed with Domenech, certainly. Maybe they just see exactly the same thing in each other: a route to power." Now, Bligh stared at the poster. "Do you believe it?" he said. "Do I?" Now that he was in Anasty, he felt that he was wasting his time. He had not blacked out or erupted violently since Abeyat. He knew that he still dreamt, because he would wake up in the night, terrified and soaked in sweat, but the images no longer recurred during the day, confusing him and trapping him into saying or doing things he had not intended. He knew he was deluding himself, though. He recognised that pulse, somewhere in the depths of his mind. The pressure, waiting to explode across his senses. Hammad Fulke was exerting his influence already: Bligh's fear of his encounter with Madeleine's old love was tricking him into believing that he might be better, that he did not have to go through with this after all. He shook his head and turned away. A few hundred yards downriver there was a stone bridge. He had noticed earlier that there was a steady flow of people heading across it and into the Old Town. He thought of following them, losing himself in the anonymity of the crowd, but he remembered the last time he had been in that part of the city. He remembered being a part of that mad panicking mass of people at the end of Domenech's march when anonymity had been no protection from the bullets of the Unified Army of the People's Transitional Government. But even as he decided against going with the crowd, he found himself walking towards the bridge. He stopped where it left the river bank and pressed his hand against the stone of its high wall, trying to steady himself. Once, the bridge had been used by wagons and motor vehicles - he could see the tram-lines set into its paved surface - but now it was fit only for pedestrian use. He looked towards the middle, where the wall fell away and for half of its width the bridge, too, had collapsed. At this point of narrowing, the crowd packed together and their progress was slowed. As he watched, a small boy was nearly sent plunging into the grey waters below, but at the last moment a hand shot out and yanked him back into the flow of people. When Bligh reached the bottleneck, he kept as close to the remaining intact wall as he could. If he was Lord of Stone, he thought wryly, he would have nothing to fear from the drop: the Lords' plans would surely not be defeated by the accidental drowning of one of their number. He walked more slowly than those around him, letting them pass by on either side. Like a rock in a stream, he thought with a smile. He shook his head to see if his God would answer him, but it only earned him a startled look from a woman to his left. Fear had become dominant in this post-war Trace, he realised. It was the new orthodoxy of the revolution. He had once thought the Traians to be the most sunny, open people of the entire world. Now, he wondered how he could ever have reached such a conclusion. There were more posters, here in the Old Town. They were plastered in great swathes across the boarded ruins of the quarter. Some had been posted upside down, or sideways, forming letters and words so that their message was writ large across the city. He saw the hand of the Fool in that, and instinctively he knew that young Gaspar Sech must have taken that role in Merc Domenech's insanity: he had seen them together in Comeras, and on the steps of the Citadel. The boy's native cunning would be well suited to mad poster campaigns and whatever other chaos-rousing Domenech thought appropriate. Last night, Carew had mentioned a raid on the Feorean Embassy in which nothing had been taken, nobody hurt. All that had been done was the distribution of severed chickens' heads throughout the building, in a gesture nobody seemed to understand but which Carew said had terrified every member of the embassy staff. One version even claimed that the Ambassador had woken to find a chicken head staring at him from his pillow and he had only known that it was not a dream when his mistress had leapt screaming from their bed. Only Sech, he thought, could have thought up such a plot. A crowd of singing women, dressed in long robes of sack-cloth, caught up with him now. They were singing fervently and smiling with the same expression Bligh had once seen on the face of a man lying in the mud on the plains near Comeras. His body had been blown away from the hips down, but his blood was so full of the Doc's Answer that he thought he must be somewhere close to heaven and that the muddy, exhausted soldiers who would not meet his gaze were angels come to bear him up. Bligh looked away. "What's happening?" he asked a young man at his side. "We're going to see the Six," he said. "Or so they say. I'm not as sure, myself, but my girl here - " he nodded to a heavy-breasted adolescent a short distance ahead " - she believes, so I go along." Bligh thought desperately of breaking away from the flow but he did not. He had guessed earlier that something of this nature must be happening. Confirmation of his fears would not stop him now. How, he wondered, could they be going to see the Six if Bligh was not there with Domenech? He bowed his head and waited as the tail-end of the procession filed in through one of the archways at the base of the old Arena. He could hear the roar of the crowd inside, booming back along the tunnel, mixed in with the pounding of martial music. He had been to an international football match once, between Feorea and Trace. The sound had been similar, although possibly less intense. He pushed and jostled his way along the tunnel. The ceiling was so low that it would scrape his scalp if he stretched. Ahead, light broke across the people's heads and all the time the noise swelled like the roar of the sea. At the threshold of the tunnel, when he could look out across the massed heads and bodies that lined the stadium, he paused and checked his thoughts. The pressure was still there, but he felt secure, in control. He sensed the excitement of the crowd, the air of anticipation, but it did not draw him as he had feared it would. He let the flow of people coax him into the Arena. He stood on a banked terrace, leaning back against one of the stone walls which he supposed had been built to retain the crush of the crowd. Around him, the noise was intense. People talked and laughed, they cheered and screamed for no apparent reason, and it all built, relentlessly, up. The Arena had survived, in one form or another, for close to 2,000 years. It had stood through earthquakes and wars and plague. It was older than Jahveism, half as old as The Book of the World. The Civil War had battered it severely, but it would endure; Bligh felt certain it would endure. The crowd, waiting to see their Lords, packed the circular sweep of terraces. They pressed down into the arena itself, but were held back by a double line of wooden fencing, guarded by UPP soldiers with Feorean guns. Within the line of barricades there was a circular stage, with seats arrayed to the rear and a solitary podium at the front, with a lectern and a microphone. A man in UPP uniform stood there, gesticulating dramatically and talking in a fierce flow, but the noise of the crowd all but drowned him out. They had not come to hear this man, or the music which had preceded him; they had come for the main act, they had come to hear their saviour. The backdrop of the stage was formed by a high canvas screen bearing a vast picture of the face of Merc Domenech. The portrait was stylised, reduced to two simple tones, the highlights picked out in gold, the shadows and background a seething red. His mouth was open, as if speaking, and his eyes burned with the fever of his madness. Bligh could not understand how he appeared to be the only one to see through to the base insanity of the man. Bligh had a side view of the stage, and he could see, behind Domenech's face, the scaffolding holding it in place. When Domenech finally appeared, the crowd had already reached a high pitch of excitement. First, more UPP guards appeared at the mouth of a tunnel, to the rear of the stage. At this distance, they looked like ants, or a child's toy soldiers. The crowd bayed for their hero. Then, when Domenech appeared, the noise somehow intensified. Bligh watched him as he marched stiffly to the stage and seated himself just below the podium. He held his hand up in acknowledgement, then turned back to gesture towards the others who followed in his wake. Bligh spotted Sadiq Phelim immediately. Then a young woman who held up her hands to the crowd, and to Domenech. This must be Queen Minna; Bligh had seen her picture before. Next came the man Bligh recognised as Alderas Aldivine - the Lord of Air, in Domenech's scheme of things. And then came three men, who made Bligh straighten and lean forwards, trying to see that he was not mistaken. The first was a man he was sure he had never seen, although he looked vaguely similar to Pozas Cantera. Next came his old friend Wink Hawley, his hands behind his back, looking around at the crowd and the guards as if he did not believe they existed. Bligh remembered that look: it had fixed on Wink's face as they had gone into battle, a sheer disbelief that the world around him was real. Back at Huesja, Bligh had envied him of that ability. Finally, there came a man who looked tall and awkward. He had dark hair and a heavy frame, spreading at the waist as Bligh had once done. As he watched this final member of Domenech's circle, Bligh saw that the similarities between the man and himself were only tenuous but they were enough that, should he join with Domenech, he could step easily into this impostor's place. Now, as the six followers settled in their seats at the back of the stage, Merc Domenech stepped up to the podium. He gripped the sides of the lectern and leaned forward and his eyes swept slowly across the vast crowd. "Friends," he said, and paused. "Friends ... we have come a long way together." Bligh remembered Domenech's speech on the steps of the Citadel. He shuddered as he remembered the bullets, too. The crowd had gone magically silent, as Domenech spoke his first words. "But, Friends: there is a long way to go. Blood has flowed, in the land of Trace. Blood has flowed in our fields. Blood has flowed in the streets of our villages, our towns, our cities. If you follow me, and my council of six, there can be no guarantee that more blood will not flow. Indeed. It is likely that more blood will flow. We have not yet won the battle for our own country. First, we must win our own stalemate, the stalemate imposed by those who we thought of as leaders of the revolution. But there will be blood in other lands, too, as the underclass rises up in every nation on this planet!" Bligh watched him talking. He watched his grip on the lectern, his gaze sweeping from one side to the other, and always, the giant printed screen behind him. He watched as Domenech stabbed the air with a finger or a fist, to emphasise his words, to stir the crowd. Domenech used everything he could command to drive the crowd wild in his support. He appealed to their class consciousness, whilst ignoring the presence of Queen Minna, her gaze fixed devotedly on the back of his head. He appealed to their national pride with a hand waving behind him to the Queen. He drew references from The Book of the World, but never did he claim, as the Fool's posters did, that he, Merc Domenech, carried the reincarnated spirit of the Lord of Soul. He left that to his audience, breaking off, near the end of his speech, with his hands spread humbly wide, as they chanted a line from the Book. "The Lord is come!" they yelled. "The Lord is come!" Bligh looked at the people around him. He saw their mouths, opening and closing in frenzied unison. "The Lord is come!" Their eyes stared, bulging in their sockets, their necks strained forwards so that veins and tendons stood rigid beneath tight skin. Their hands punched the air as they chanted each word. "The ... Lord ... is ... come!" He felt the pressure building inside his skull. He did not want to be here. He did not want this almighty barrage of sound breaking across his senses, pounding him, pushing him down, down. A man turned to him, his eyes mad, like Domenech's. Others turned, stared. Bligh could not meet their looks. He opened his mouth, croaked, "Is ... come," in time with their opening, snapping mouths. He saw their tongues flopping, their teeth gnashing. "The ... Lord ... is ... come!" He forced his hands to punch the air, in time with the words. "The ... Lord ... is ... come!" He felt sick, he felt scared. He felt as if he had been reduced to nothing and he was being driven by the desire of the crowd, forced into a shape that was not his own. He felt on the verge of defeat, as if he was about to be subsumed. He knew that it was only his paranoia and the exaggerated emotions of this packed Arena, but that made it no easier. "The ... Lord ... is ... come!" Domenech stopped the crowd with his hands held suddenly up in the air, his head bowed. "Enough!" he snapped into his microphone. His single word cut through the chant, so that its returning echoes rung hollowly around the Arena. "Enough," he said, more quietly. "I am, merely, a servant." But there was a smug ring to his voice, something that broke, momentarily, through Bligh's panic. "We are all servants to a higher cause. We must, all of us, remember that if you are with my council of six, then you are preparing the ground for the Lords of the Elements to lead us all to a new plane of existence, a new world of equality and peace. If you are against us, then you are against the Lords Elemental. Friends, it is that simple." He raised his hands one last time. "Friends," he said and his was the only voice in the stadium. "Friends, we are the chosen ones." He stepped down from the podium and his spell was instantly broken. Bligh looked at those around him and they were normal human beings once again. They no longer stared, they no longer chanted and frothed at the mouth. "The ... Lord ... is ... come," he croaked, but now they only looked at him, pitying him or merely embarrassed. "The ... Lord ... is ... come." The crowd filed out, but Bligh could not make his feet move. They had grown into the ground, melded with the stone of the terrace. He looked down at his heavy grey boots, and he could not see where they ended and the ground began. He tried to lift one foot, but it was like trying to raise a mountain, and he was that mountain. He lowered himself and hugged his knees to his chest. He felt completely drained. He tried but he could not stand again. He closed his eyes and began to rock back and forth, as if that would stop his relentless merger with the stone beneath his feet. "The Lord is come," he muttered, but he no longer knew what the words meant.

He sensed people around him and he opened his eyes warily. In the grey light of dusk, or dawn, he saw the stone terrace, falling away from where he sat. He moved, and groaned at the stiffness which had settled across him like a heavy mantle. "Are you all right?" said a man's voice. Bligh looked to his side and a pair of UPP soldiers were peering at him, their rifles held warily at the ready. "Did you get crushed in the crowd? Is that it, hmm?" Bligh shook his head, grunted. "Okay," he said, eventually, when he had recovered the use of speech. "I'm okay." "Here, don't I know you?" Bligh shrank back into himself as one of the soldiers loomed closer out of the shadows, his teeth startlingly white. "You look familiar. Here, Roddy, doesn't he look familiar to you?" "I don't know you," said Bligh. "He's just got one of those faces," said the second soldier. "You know, one of those faces that looks like you should know him, only you never have." "One of those faces," repeated the first, as if it was a magical phrase. "I suppose so. Only ... " "What time is it?" said Bligh. He needed to know, although he was unsure of the reason. "Ask the time! You're wearing a watch, for the sakes of the Lords." Bligh looked at his wrist and saw an unfamiliar timepiece. "Evening? Morning?" he asked. "Evening, for the sakes of ... " The soldier stopped and looked at his friend. "This one's had too much of the heat, or the crowd. Maybe we should lock him in a cell to cool off. What do you think, hmm? What do you think?" Hands gripped him, pulled at his arms. "No, Roddy," said the soldier pulling at him. His breath smelt of drink. "Lets just get him out into the street. He'll have a home, or some friends who'll be looking for him." "Friends," said Bligh, clutching at the word. He let the soldiers haul him to his feet and then he stood dizzily, until the world settled around him. "I'm okay," he said, stepping down the terrace. "This way," said a soldier, guiding him towards the tunnel. They left him outside the Arena. Which way? he wondered. He took one step and then another. He decided to follow the direction his feet had found. It was now quite dark and he felt that he must be late, although he did not know for what. He found a street he thought looked familiar, but by its end he was lost again. He smelt spices on the air, and the scent of old cabbage and pod beans. He turned back. Eventually, he found himself sitting on the broken bridge, his feet dangling over the water of the River Ana. He knew he had returned to familiar territory, but he was certain that he had missed his friends, whoever they were. It was late in the evening now, a time when most people would be in their beds. He could see the strip of parkland from here, a murky area of trees and deep shadows. He pulled himself to his feet and began to walk. So close, he felt that he must complete his task. He should reach the park, at least. He left the road and walked through dew-laden grass. His crumbling boots were soaked through within seconds. A man sat hunched on the wall which fronted the river. His feet were over the water, as Bligh's had been up on the bridge. He flinched, as Bligh approached, and turned to stare at him. "Bligh?" he said, uncertainly. "Is that you?" "It's me: Bligh," he said, the first time he had spoken since the soldiers had evicted him from the empty terrace of the Arena. Divitt Carew, the man was Divitt Carew. Bligh felt relieved. "Come on," said Carew. "The others have been waiting since sunset. We didn't even know if you'd reached Anasty. What happened? You have to understand that we're risking a lot for you." "I went to the Arena," said Bligh, following Carew, climbing into his little motor car. "There was a rally. Domenech." "You shouldn't have done that," said Carew, harshly. Then, when he had managed to fire the engine, he added, "You okay, Bligh?" Bligh said nothing. They drove off, through streets that held only a few pedestrians and soldiers. "We were stopped," said Carew, after a time. "Leaving Comeras. Salas insisted that he had been travelling with me all along, but I don't know if they believed us. They'd clearly had reports that you were travelling with a companion in a blue car. The priests at Abeyat must have swallowed their pride and reported to the UPP, when they realised that I'd fooled them." Later, he said, "I spoke with Madeleine this evening. She's not well, Bligh. You should talk to her." Bligh emerged from the semi-conscious state he had adopted since entering Carew's car. Madeleine? Not well? He remembered her pale face, he remembered eating while she sipped awkwardly at a cup of water. "I've not been well," he remembered her saying. "Not for some time." "Is it serious?" he asked, his eyes fixed on Divitt Carew. Carew refused to look at him. He stared at the road ahead. "Serious?" he said. "Oh yes, it's certainly serious." They stopped at a small guest house on the fringe of the city centre. Bligh followed Carew in through the front door and up two uneven flights of stairs. The journalist unlocked a door and waved Bligh through. Inside, Madeleine and Aline Fulke were asleep in their clothes on a huge bed, and Salas Benjennery was curled up on the floor. Bligh watched Divitt Carew move a chair and then kick off his shoes and sit with his legs stretched, his feet on the bed by Aline's knees. Bligh eyed the floor, but there was no room for his bulky frame. He squeezed onto the bed and Madeleine stirred in her sleep. He held himself self-consciously for a moment and then rested his head, tentatively, on her lap. He could hear the sounds of her digestion, feel her body moving beneath his head as she slept. He wondered what had happened to them, why he had allowed a gap to open up between them. He wondered if it was possible to heal such a wound. And then, finally, they were together in their sleep.

4 'Here is the church, here is the steeple; 'Open the door and here are the people.' - Nursery Rhyme. "He's had a bit of relapse," he heard someone say. "Went to a rally in the Arena and cracked up again. We were lucky he found us." His head was on the mattress now, his cheek pressed against the coarse rustic weave of the blanket. He opened his eyes and squinted. Sunlight was seeping in through a torn screen over the room's single window. Divitt Carew was standing and talking to Madeleine, who was perched on the edge of the wide bed. The room smelt of sweat and vomit and the heat. He moved a little, and they both turned to watch him. Instinctively, Madeleine reached out a hand, but it stopped in no-man's land and fell to the mattress. "You any better?" said Carew. "You were dreaming." The images hit him like a cudgel. The crowd, the thousands of eyes, fixed on him, piercing him. The feelings of power: the knowledge that he could utter a stream of pure gibberish and these people would take it up as a chant, acclaiming him as leader, or king, or God. "Jah'veh is dead," he kept pleading. "I am merely his Son." And he had tipped his head and raised his hands in modesty, as the crowd began to chant. "The Lord is come! The Lord is come! The Lord is come!" Cool hands on his brow, a stronger grip on his shoulder, turning him onto his back, shaking him gently. "I know some first aid." Divitt Carew's words drifted through his consciousness. "But what good's a bandage or a splint for a complete nutter?" He opened his eyes and Madeleine was glaring past him at Carew. "I'm ... okay," he managed to say. He reached out and stroked the hair away from her face. "My dream," he said. "Flashing back." There was someone missing, he realised. "Salas and Aline," he said. "Have they taken them?" "They went a few minutes ago," said Carew. "They've gone to the Citadel to see Fulke. Aline wanted to go alone, but I don't want us to split up. Salas said it would be a learning experience." He shrugged. "He's eager," he said. "But I have to confess that three hours alone in the car with him was hard, even for a trained listener." "Put him in your novel," said Bligh, heaving himself uncomfortably to a sitting position. "You said you were writing one." "Did I?" said Carew, thoughtfully. "Perhaps I did. Perhaps I will. Come on," he added. "We must leave here before the proprietor starts wondering why three visitors to Anasty should spend the day in their room. The People's Police pay for such information." "There's no trust left," said Madeleine. "The world has changed." "No," said Carew. "It hasn't: it's just Trace that has changed. The rest of the world couldn't care a bit, unless their own interests are threatened." "Feorea armed the revolution," said Bligh. "No, they armed the Unification Party of the People. When the middle classes vanished, they mostly pretended to be workers and joined the UPP. The Party was always the least radical, the most pragmatic, of the revolutionary factions. Once the middle classes found their confidence again, they used their foreign connections to win support: Feorea saw faces they recognised and took the opportunity to establish a government less evil than either the Army or the real revolutionaries. I told you the war was a racket, just like any other." For a moment, Carew's brash facade had faltered and he sounded bitter. "Come on," he said. "We have to get out of here." Salas Benjennery found them at the docks shortly after midday. "Tonight," he said, staring at Bligh. "Tonight, Hammad Fulke will heal you." Bligh thought he should feel something, but instead he just stared down at the froth and flotsam of the harbour and said nothing. The docks were a part of the Old Town, although most of the existing buildings had been erected since the railway had come at the turn of the century. The River Ana opened out abruptly here, so that the opposite bank was half a mile distant. Gulls squawked and yelped over the boats and from their rooftop nesting sites. Terns skipped along on the breeze, pausing to hover over the shallows and occasionally to dive, emerging sometimes with a silver flash of sand eel in their beaks. "Tonight," Bligh repeated, finally. "Tonight." "Where's Aline?" asked Madeleine. It was curious, her relationship with Aline. In age they were only separated by a few years, and there was often a jealous, sibling rivalry between them; but also, at times, Madeleine showed an almost maternal sense of responsibility toward Hammad Fulke's daughter. "She chose to stay with her father," said Benjennery. "When we arrived, the guards held us until Hammad sent word that he would see us." He shook his head. "They greeted each other like parted lovers. I felt that I should not be present. Then he turned to me with that embracing smile of his - " here, Benjennery glanced at Madeleine " - and said, 'I've just come from the Queen, Salas. I think I have met a challenge worthy of my skills and experience. She is obsessed with Domenech. She is drawn to his danger, his sense of threat, and also to his copious charisma.' Then he smiled and said, 'I think it is the sex, myself, but how can one heal such an illness of the mind? Do you know, Salas?' He says the Queen realises he tries to heal her, and she knows he loves her, but she sees his attentions as a game, a diversion while Domenech is busy elsewhere." "Where do we go?" said Carew. "To meet him?" "Hmm? Oh, Hammad Fulke has rooms in an old Government building off Al-Santen Square." "Is it safe?" said Madeleine. Suddenly, Bligh sensed a trap. Surely the healer would be watched, he thought, even if Fulke, himself, could be trusted. "We've come this far," said Divitt Carew quietly. "If Fulke thinks it is safe, then we can only rely on his judgement."

They approached the building through a service alley to the rear. "Pappy told me," said Aline. "Police watch his house from the front. He thinks it amusing." It was dark, now, and Bligh had trouble seeing where he was going. The alley was littered with refuse and rubble, which only added to his difficulties. He kept thinking that this must be wrong, but he did not know why. They entered a small yard and he peered at Madeleine, to his side, but he could not see her expression. He felt sick. They entered the building through a heavy door for which Aline produced a key. They passed along a corridor, up a flight of stairs and then they came to a door with light edging where it rested in its frame. Aline knocked, then entered, saying, "Pappy, we've come." Divitt Carew entered with Salas Benjennery, followed by Bligh and Madeleine. Aline was hugging a grey-haired man of stocky build and kissing him ferociously on the cheeks. "Pappy," she said, "these are my friends." The two separated and Hammad Fulke turned towards his visitors, barely glancing at Carew and Benjennery, nodding briefly at Madeleine, then turning his look upon Bligh. "You want me," he said simply. He fixed Bligh's eyes for a long time and then he snapped his head away and turned to lean his forearms on the mantelpiece of an unlit fire. "I don't know," he muttered. "It's a risk." Madeleine stepped forward and put a hand on Bligh's arm. "Is he too much of a challenge?" she asked. Fulke looked at her. "No," he said evenly. "But do you want him damaged?" "He already is." They spoke of him as if he was a toy, or a household appliance. "I need your help," Bligh said, shrugging his arm free. He stood uncertainly and waited. When Hammad Fulke finally nodded, Bligh did not know what to feel. "We'd better sit," Fulke said, waving at some leather-covered chairs and then sliding into one himself. "Aline and Salas have told me about you. I want to know what you think I can do." Now that he had decided to help, his manner had subtly changed. Bligh looked at the healer, and now his aggression had gone. He wanted to cooperate, to make things easier for Fulke. He glanced at Madeleine, who was watching them both closely. He felt a flicker of his earlier jealousy, but it was quickly banished. "I've been told that I carry the reincarnated spirit of the Lord of Stone," he said. Somehow, the words did not sound as irrational as they had before, circling around in his head. They were better spoken. "I dream like I never have before. I black out and find myself doing things for which I can find no reason. My mouth speaks words which do not come from my brain ... it feels as if they've been relayed from somewhere distant, like ... like a radio set doesn't speak, it's the presenter miles away in his studio. People stare at me, as if they're waiting for something." "And Merc Domenech believes you are Lord of Stone, too," finished Fulke. "It is a madness which has convinced others," he mused. "Have you thought ... ?" He raised his eyebrows and paused, a little smirk twisting his mouth. "Are you suggesting that it might be true?" said Benjennery, in disbelief. Hammad Fulke shook his head. "I am suggesting nothing," he said. "Am I mad, or am I possessed?" said Bligh, coldly. "Madness is a matter of degree," said Fulke. "And before tonight is done, you will be possessed. It is the healing process." "Excuse me," said Divitt Carew. "But I've read of your trial, before the war. How can you heal without belief? You are not a doctor of medicine: you are a faith healer, aren't you?" "The Gods have no monopoly on faith," said Fulke. "The human psyche has deep resources for the healer to excavate. It is my function to open paths that have been closed to the user, to clear the detritus of an injured brain. Like a doctor who re-breaks a leg to set it straight, I re-open the wounds of the spirit so that they can heal in a stronger way." "What's happening to me?" asked Bligh. He did not understand. He felt the calming influence of Hammad Fulke beginning to dissipate, and the pressure in his head rising up. "Why me?" "It depends on your view of the world," said Hammad Fulke, after pausing to consider his words. "Language is merely analogy to the processes of the world, or the processes of the mind. Words are far from perfect, but they are the tool we use to communicate, and so I must try. "Let me start with the paradox of my own beliefs: I do not believe in the Gods, but I do not doubt that the Gods exist. They are, I believe, the product of a deeply embedded psychological need. A desire, if you like. These reincarnation myths which haunt you so mercilessly, they are the physical projection of the collective will. If people need magic, if they need the Gods to walk amongst them again - and if their will is strong enough - then the Gods walk. Such Gods are as real as any which could be explained in more conventional theological terms." "I am God," said Bligh, testing the phrase on his lips. Looking at those around him. "You are what the people want to be God, perhaps. A vulnerable man, with tremendous potential. You are not possessed by some Holy Spirit, Bligh: you are possessed by the needs of the people, stirred by the collective trauma of this awful war." "Why Bligh?" said Divitt Carew. "Why anybody? Fortune, chance, psychological vulnerability ... " "But myth is dying," said Salas Benjennery. "Magic has died with this generation. We are moving into a secular world. There has been an upwelling of religious longing, since the failure of the war, but if you look closely enough you can see that it is desperation. People fear returning to what they rose from. They fear the return of oppression. Look around you: people hope, but they don't believe. They focus on figureheads, instead, as a substitute for their own inadequacy. But magic is dead." "And so, perhaps," said Hammad Fulke, "the Lords Elemental can be defeated."

"The masses call it the Prayer of the Body," explained Hammad Fulke. "You may have encountered it." Bligh nodded but said nothing. "Stripped of its mysticism it could be considered a crude form of regression therapy. It is a means of opening up the basic persona to the desires of those around, or to the desires of the spirit world, depending on your view. We must open you up, Bligh. We must expose you to the desires of the masses so that we may examine the extent of your affliction. It could be dangerous for you, although my skills and experience should counter your weakness and lack of fight." Bligh stared at his hands, clasped tightly in front of him. Such a peculiar arrangement of bones and skin. He ignored Fulke's cynicism and his bragging. All he could think of was that he must get through this awful evening and get away from this place, this city. "Okay," he said. "I'm ready." Hammad Fulke came and squatted before him. Bligh met his look and refused to blink or look away. He thought that Fulke could be hypnotising him, or reading his thoughts, but still he refused to turn away. Eventually, Fulke nodded and then placed his cool, dry hands on Bligh's head. "Hmm," he said. "Aline. Come here. Feel his conflict, his heat." Another cold pair of hands settled on his scalp. He felt foolish, but he did not move. He would endure this for Madeleine, he thought. A mark of repentance. His head began to sweat, but he did not move. After an interval of what seemed like several minutes, first Hammad and then Aline withdrew their hands. They exchanged a glance but said nothing. Bligh felt excluded, but still he did not allow himself to speak. Hammad Fulke stood and went to a tall cupboard, from which he produced a number of items. "Ignore the religious connotations," he said. "The symbolism appeals to something far more basic in the human thought process." He placed a black iron bowl in the middle of the floor and filled it with kindling and coals. Lighting it with a match he said, "The Fire is our passion and our anger. It has a special affinity toward stone: it produces it, in the depths of the Earth, but also it can be retained by a ring of stones. It is your closest ally." He threw a few small gemstones into the flames, and said, "Stone gives us our solidity and bears the fertility of the soil, but also it can move and break when the ground quakes." Bligh thought Fulke was taunting him. He did not know how much of his explanation to believe and how much was disguise for what was really happening. He remembered Divitt Carew telling them that all they could do was trust Fulke. He would try. "The Air is more tenuous," Hammad Fulke continued. "It is all around us. It gives us life, yet we cannot grasp its essence." He threw a handful of herbs into the flames and their scent burst across Bligh's senses, as the gemstones glittered and glowed with the heat and light. "For our purposes we are reminded of its presence by scent and smoke." Returning from his cupboard another time, he bore a tray with bottles and fine glasses. "Aline," he said, and she rose to pour liqueurs for everyone. Glass in hand, Hammad Fulke surveyed the gathering. "There are more appealing liquids than water," he said, and then drank from his glass. "And more functional ones, but water is basic to us all, as much so as the air we breathe. It is the symbolism that counts. "More difficult in such a small, forced congregation," he continued, "is the sense of revelry, of high spirits. The element of wisdom and charisma, but also of depression and insecurity. The Soul of the party. The mood. The tension." Bligh remembered the times he had been present for the Prayer of the Body. All these elements had been there, but it was the atmosphere which had finally taken over and driven the course of events. The soul. "What do we do?" said Madeleine. She was looking at Fulke, leaning forward with her eyes alive and glowing. Bligh could feel the tension rising. Hammad Fulke moved towards her so that their faces were inches apart. Bligh wanted to leap to his feet. He wanted to tear them apart. He wanted to cry. "Laugh!" yelled Hammad Fulke, and immediately he tipped his head back and gave a mighty, booming laugh. "Yell! Cry!" he said. "Create the mood!" He laughed again, and, tentatively, Aline made herself begin to chuckle. The noise sounded wrong coming from her, forced as it was. Bligh had never heard her laugh before. Divitt Carew and Salas Benjennery joined in, Benjennery imitating Fulke in a coarse guffaw, Carew looking uncomfortable, his laugh metronomic and false. Bligh looked at Madeleine, saw tears on her face. She smiled and shrugged and then, "Hm," she said. "Hm, hm." It was the best she could manage. Bligh wondered if he was to try, too. He looked around, uncertain. He folded his arms hard across his chest. The sound was beating at him, but he did not feel that he could add to it. He felt himself withdrawing and then Hammad Fulke caught his eye and held his look. "And finally," said Fulke, an island in this room of madness. "The sixth element must be added. Flux, the source of all change and vigour." "How?" hissed Bligh, through the laughter, and the shouting. Hammad Fulke smiled. "Flux is present at the climax. He is change, he is the element of transformation. Of possession." Bligh felt sick again. He realised that everything was in place and it all depended on him. He did not know what he should do, whether he should try to focus his mind, try to open it, to relax or to centre on the tension of his friends. He looked helplessly at Madeleine, her tear-streaked face, her hair hanging forward as she rocked back and forth. But she only laughed at him, a manic cackle that stirred some primitive fear in him and made him turn away. "It's wasted," he said, helplessly, to Hammad Fulke. "It isn't working." Fulke looked at him, skewering him. He shook his head, slowly. "No," he said. "No, Bligh, it is not wasted." He swept a hand sharply through the air. Suddenly Bligh was falling, tumbling away through the layers of his mind. He was on the mountain, running, naked. Cold stone pounded at his feet, but still he ran. He was on the torn plains of Huesja, Domenech ahead of him in a hail of shrapnel and bullets. Their eyes met and Bligh knew that they were bound together. He stood upright, like Domenech, and then blackness descended as a bullet plunged into his thigh. "Who are you?" A voice boomed through his barriers, broke across his mind. He ignored it. He was back at school and Brother Benjahmine was giving him The Lecture. "Your duty is to God, Son of God," he said. "Your vow is one of abstinence and virtue. Your punishment is the Lord's gift to make you strong." The birch cane whipped painfully across his bare buttocks for the sixth time. "Your duty is to God, Son of God. Your vow is one of abstinence and virtue." He had been caught selling sugar sticks to his friends, breaking the Order's Codes of Commerce, and Indulgence. "Your punishment is the Lord's gift to make you strong." The cane struck him for the seventh time. Later, he watched from the dormitory window as his mother walked away across the school yard, having been informed of the reason he had been forbidden to see her. It was the first time she had come to him since the previous year. He could not believe this sad, drooping figure was the same gay young thing from his one photograph. He never saw her again. "Who are you?" He did not know what to say. And then, he felt it rising, the presence that he suddenly knew was so familiar to him. It was a form, or a shape, something that spread out to occupy larger and larger volumes of his mental space, pushing him aside. He tasted the temptation of surrender. He wanted to sink back and give up struggling. It would be so easy. "Who are you?" He felt the muscles of his mouth, his neck, working, but he did not know what they said. Images seeped into his awareness and he knew that his eyes were open. He was standing precariously by the dead hearth. Madeleine stared at him, her mouth open a little. Salas Benjennery watched, fascinated, appalled. Even Divitt Carew looked shaken. Nobody was laughing any more. He looked across to where Aline and Hammad Fulke stood, clutching each other, little smiles playing across their features. Those smiles. He felt angry. He felt it rising, more powerfully than anything he had known before. Those smiles. What game were they playing? Whose side were they on? What were they doing to him? He forced a sound out: what started as an infernal bellow emerged as a whimper. He swung a hand and knocked china ornaments from the mantelpiece. He swung again and a picture flew from the wall. The Fulkes were cowering now, but the others had not moved. He kicked at the black bowl of fire and gemstones and herbs in the middle of the room. Hot coals flew, settling on furniture and carpet. One must have hit Aline Fulke, because she screamed and clutched at her bare leg. He made a sound and this time it was a roar, as people scurried about, trying to smother the fires he had started. "Who are you?" demanded the voice. "Bligh!" he cried back. "I'm Bligh." "Who are you?" "Bligh." "Who are you?" shouted Hammad Fulke. "Bligh," he said, more quietly now, subsiding onto a leather-covered seat, exhausted. Fulke had deceived him, he realised. The healer had brought out his madness and offered it freedom. If he had told him this would happen, Bligh would never have agreed. "He had already gone a long way toward curing himself," said Hammad Fulke to his daughter, analysing his case history already. Bligh did not feel healed, but then, he conceded, he no longer felt as vulnerable. He had won, he realised. He had offered his madness freedom and then he had risen and knocked it back down. "I can control it," he said, still gasping for breath. "You could always do that," said Hammad Fulke. "You just needed convincing. As I said, it was merely a matter of - " The healer stopped and tipped his head to one side. "Visitors," he said, after a pause. "Quickly." He tugged at Bligh's arm with an unforeseen strength. Bligh stood and allowed himself to be pushed towards the door. The others were there already, filing through, as voices rose from the bottom of the stairs. Divitt Carew looked down the stair-well and came running back. "Police," he said. "Peresh will delay them," said Hammad Fulke, but just as he finished speaking a single pistol shot made him flinch and then feet thudded on the stairs. They hurried along the corridor, through a storeroom and down another flight of stairs. Bligh felt so disorientated that he wanted to stop, but now he knew that he must not. He pushed Hammad and Aline ahead of him down the stairs, so that he was the last to descend. The voices were getting closer behind them, as the Police closed on their quarry. "Out here," hissed Hammad Fulke, pushing at a floor-length window, then cursing when it would not open. He barged it with his shoulder but it still refused to move. Salas Benjennery dragged him aside and then threw a chair through the glass. It shattered and suddenly there was a voice from the doorway. "Don't move!" Bligh dived at the policeman, knocking him back into his colleagues in the cramped corridor. He struggled clear and turned back into the room. "Go!" he yelled. "Go!" He saw Madeleine staggering into the darkness of the back yard, Aline Fulke clutching at her hand. Salas Benjennery made it into the shadows, waited until Divitt Carew had joined him, then moved out of sight. But Hammad Fulke stood, hesitating, in the frame of his broken window. If he fled, he would be a fugitive, Bligh realised, and he would never see Queen Minna again. But if he stayed ... Fulke took a step into the darkness and then there was an explosion and he stumbled, fell to his knees. The gun fired again and the old healer slumped forward onto his face. Bligh stopped, horrified. A hand grabbed his hair and jerked his head back. A knee or a foot slammed into the small of his back and his feet went from under him. "This is him," said one of the policemen. "This is the one." Someone fired off another couple of rounds into the darkness, but no one went in pursuit of the others. Bligh lay amongst the broken glass and looked at the still body of Hammad Fulke. "What now?" he said, but nobody answered. "What happens now?"

5 'There is no sin in temptation, the Seer decreed; but when a man succumbs ... ' - The Book of the World, ch.31, v.60. The smell of the prison reminded Bligh of his time in the trenches. Faeces, body odours, mouldering food, the damp earth of the hard-packed floor. The limestone walls had a gleaming, creamy surface where water ran down from the condensation of the prisoners' breath on the ceiling. The only light came from three small, barred openings set high up one wall. Through these windows you could see the booted feet of soldiers and policemen striding past, and those of a black dog with one white foot which kept trotting to and fro, occasionally pausing to poke its greyed snout through the bars. Thin sunlight swept over the men's heads, highlighting their scraggy hair and the flies and motes of dust in the air. The cell was about six full paces by twenty, Bligh estimated, although it was too crowded for him to test the accuracy of his reckoning. It held more than a hundred men. Those who were able to stood, whilst the ill and the beaten slumped or lay, taking up more than their share of the floor. Nobody begrudged them this extra space, for a strange sense of camaraderie was in place for most of the time, now that Foul Jake had been subdued. When Bligh had been thrown in and the heavy wooden door slammed behind him, all eyes had turned on him immediately. "Kick your balls in, eh?" said the heavily built man who Bligh had stopped himself against. Bligh had been clutching at his injured thigh. "No," he said, straightening and trying not to breathe the cell's foul air too deeply. "It's a war wound." "I'm Foul Jake," said the man, offering his hand formally for Bligh to shake. "What have you done?" "Bligh." He shook. "Nothing," he said. "For Merc Domenech my crime is to exist. I am a figment of his madness." "They'll have heard that," said Foul Jake. "They listen all the time. They have listening devices which burrow under the floor and lie beneath our feet, picking up the vibrations of our voices." He squatted and spoke to the slimy mud floor. "Do you hear me? I said, 'Murderer Domenech is stupid.' Down with the UPP! Long live the Queen!" He grinned up at Bligh and then straightened again. "They keep records. They know all that we say." "The Queen supports Domenech now," said Bligh. "She shares his bed." And so Foul Jake had lunged at him, his hands pressing hard around Bligh's throat, his entire body trembling with rage. He was dragged off by other prisoners, but not before Bligh had felt the ferocious power of his grip. Now, he fingered his bruised neck tenderly and watched the dog at the bars, sniffing the air and scratching the ground with its front paws. He jumped, startled, as a hand fell on his arm. He thought it was Foul Jake again and he wondered desperately if his fellow prisoners would come to his aid quickly enough this time. But the grip was light and was not followed with a disabling kick to the back of the knee or a punch to the kidneys. He looked down and saw that the skin was too dark to belong to Foul Jake. The middle two fingers were missing from this hand. "Sadiq," he said, without turning. With a final scratch at the metal bars, the dog jerked its head up and scampered away from the cell window. "I've been waiting." "I must apologise," said Sadiq Phelim. He had his shoulders raised in a shrug when Bligh turned to face him. Six soldiers were at his back, keeping the curious prisoners pressed back against the walls and against each other. "Administrative confusion," he continued. "You know how it is, here in Trace. Your contact party was supposed to deliver you to the Citadel, but instead they put you in jail. They have been disciplined, of course." "Of course," said Bligh. "Can we go?" He realised, now, that he desperately wanted to feel the sun shining down and to have clean air in his lungs again. "Come." Sadiq guided him to the doorway and the soldiers fell in behind them. They were only in the sunshine for a few seconds, as Sadiq had a big motor car waiting with its engine running; the driver was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel until he saw them and sat upright, to attention. They settled themselves in the back, with the windows open to blast them with warm, moving air as they passed through the streets of Anasty. Sadiq sat sideways so that he could watch Bligh. "You have been difficult to find," he said. "You have been running away." "You set the Police after me," said Bligh. "Did you expect me to wait for them?" Sadiq shook his head. "Trace is undergoing a far-reaching upheaval," he said. "The People's Police is the only agency through which we could communicate." "They held charge papers against me for desertion. The 'contact party' you mentioned killed Hammad Fulke, and probably the man who answered the door to them. There are other forms of communication." "We live through chaotic times," said Sadiq. "Error is inevitable. These two were obstructing the Police." "So was I," said Bligh. "But I wasn't shot." "That would have been counter-productive." Sadiq smiled. "And anyway, you carry the spirit reincarnate of the Lord of Stone. Even if we had wished you dead, a bullet could not have stopped you. We can become the Gods, Bligh. These other matters are trivial, in comparison." Bligh suppressed a shudder. "You've been possessed, then?" he said. "Should I call you Sadiq, or Flux?" "Sarcasm is an easy - but incomplete - defence, Friend." Sadiq lowered his eyes. "I have not been totally submerged, although I have undergone several periods of possession. I feel that it is close, but the time is not yet ready. One can only open oneself up to it, and be prepared." "When does the time come?" Bligh was intrigued, despite his cynicism. He wanted to know what was intended for him. "It comes when the Six are together, in union. Now, we have five, Bligh. We await Water, the universal fluid of the living." "Pozas Cantera," said Bligh, remembering the short Traian from the Lords' Day Festival in Comeras. "So he has evaded you, too." "It will not be long," said Sadiq. "He is in Anasty, now. Like you, he cannot resist the call. We will establish contact with him shortly."

Bligh had only seen the Citadel from the outside before: the low stone facade which made up one side of Parliament Square. Sadiq explained, as they passed through its entrance and into a series of wrecked courtyards, that it spread back five times as deep as it was wide. "Here, there are the offices of Parliament," he said, "with ministerial residences and administrative quarters." If anything, the architecture was more grand here than seen from the Square. The fine buildings had clearly been ransacked during the war, yet somehow the smashed windows, the toppled and broken statues, the fountains that were dry or sprayed askew, all added dignity to the spectacle. Sadiq waved a hand vaguely and continued, "The Palace is over there, a wing once occupied by royalty but now home to the leaders of the People's Transitional Government. The Queen lives in the Council section, now, with the rest of us." Bligh saw how it was possible that, despite his opposition to the new Government, Domenech had been able to establish himself in part of the Citadel. Its scale allowed space for such rivalries, but also, his presence must lead the Government to feel that they retained some influence over his actions. It was a precarious arrangement. They found Domenech in a long office in the heart of his headquarters. Bligh sensed his presence immediately, like a storm cloud just beyond the horizon. He tried to shrug the resulting sense of doom aside, but it was difficult. For the first time since Fulke had cured him, he sensed the presence lurking inside his head. "Ah," said Domenech, rising from a seat and spreading his hands wide as if to embrace Bligh. Their eyes met and, briefly, locked and Bligh felt an answering surge of pressure inside his skull. "At last," said Domenech. His curly black hair was longer than when Bligh had last seen him, and waxed ringlets cascaded over his forehead and cheeks. He had the same, thin moustache, the same arrogant manner. The same glimmer of madness in his eyes. "Bligh," he continued. "Welcome to the Council of Six." Bligh nodded warily, and said, "Domenech." He kept his tone neutral. He did not know what was to happen, but was ready for any kind of trap to be sprung. At that moment a side door opened and a young woman entered the room, fracturing the heavy atmosphere. She smiled at Sadiq and at Domenech, and then her gaze flickered curiously towards Bligh. "Minna, dear," said Domenech. "This is our friend, Bligh. We found him in the night." So this was Queen Minna. She was dressed in a simple cotton dress, which swept to the floor, and a jacket of some light, drifting material which Bligh did n