The Emperor of All Things

PART THREE





14

The Otherwhere



QUARE HAD LONG since put up his pipe, listening to Longinus’s story like a child entranced by a fairy tale. And indeed, as his host sat back and gazed at him, seeming to invite comment by his silence, it struck him that he had been hearing just that. But now, in the comfort of the garden belvedere, with late summer clinging to the afternoon air, the spell of Longinus’s words melted away like some fantastic ice sculpture. While it was true that Quare himself had experienced any number of inexplicable occurrences of late, not the least of which being the wound that by rights should have killed him, he found that something in him remained sceptical in the face of what Longinus had related. For what, really, had he been told? He knew no more about the nature of the pocket watch than he ever had; the timepiece remained as mysterious as ever, both in its workings and its purpose. And as to the town of Märchen and its fabulous inhabitants, angels or fairies or whatever it was they were supposed to be, he had no proof that they were more than figments of an eccentric, if not deranged, imagination. The watch, however uncanny its behaviour, was something he had held in his hands. He had seen it, felt it, witnessed it drinking his blood to provide its motive power. It was unquestionably real. Though he did not understand how it worked, how it achieved the effects he had witnessed, Quare still believed that there must be a scientific explanation for it all. He was not ready to abandon his faith in science for a superstitious credulity in magic. He did not wish to insult the man who, at great personal risk, had rescued him from the dungeons of the guild hall, yet he was not prepared to take Longinus at his word, much less to follow him back into danger.

‘Well, Mr Quare?’ asked Longinus at last. ‘What do you make of my tale?’

‘In truth, I hardly know what to think,’ he answered. ‘The nature of the watch is as clouded to me as ever, and I confess I am utterly at a loss how to account for Corinna and the other townsfolk.’

‘I felt the same as I stood upon that empty hillside all those years ago. Yet I knew that something miraculous had happened to me, something that would change the course of my life, even if I did not understand everything about it. After all, I had the watch in my hands. And the memory of all I had witnessed.’

‘But I have neither of those things.’

‘So, you require more proof, do you?’

‘More? Why, sir, you have offered none at all! Only a tale whose airy wonders I might find appealing enough were I still a child, but which, I regret to say, lacks the substance required by an adult apprehension.’

‘Then perhaps this will be sufficiently substantial.’ Without further ado, Longinus bent over his right foot. Quare watched in bafflement as the older man removed his slipper and then pulled off the white hose that covered his leg from ankle to knee. Beneath it, he was wearing a second slipper, white as bone, that came to just above his ankle.

Quare was about to remark on this curious affectation when he realized that the slipper was not a slipper at all. It was, instead, a foot. Or, rather, a prosthetic that resembled, in all but colour, the appendage it had replaced. Carved, no doubt, out of whalebone, and with an exquisite attention to detail that would not have been out of place on a statue by Michelangelo.

Longinus, meanwhile, gazed at him with an expression of amusement. ‘Is this proof enough for you, Mr Quare?’

‘What … I mean, how …’

The toes of the prosthetic wiggled.

Quare shot to his feet with a cry.

At which Longinus laughed heartily. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, his eyes flashing with mirth. ‘But you cannot imagine how often I have wished to do that.’

Quare could make no rational reply.

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? However, I confess that my first reaction upon encountering this object at the end of my leg was not one of fascination but horror. It was that same night, after I had hiked back down the mountainside and retraced my steps to the town I had last visited, what appeared to have been many months ago. There I obtained a room, and a hot bath … and it was then, when I stripped away the bandages that still swathed my foot, that I made the awful discovery. After I had calmed somewhat, and regained a modicum of reason, and pacified the alarmed proprietors who, summoned by my screams, had first threatened to break down my door, and then to evict me from the premises, what must have happened became clear to me. As I had lain unconscious in the Hearth and Home, Dr Immelman – or, as I now had reason to believe him to be, Herr Wachter himself – had amputated my mangled foot and replaced it with a prosthetic … a prosthetic that in all respects functioned as well as – and in some respects, as I was to discover, a good deal better than – the flesh-and-blood original.’

Quare had by now taken his seat once more. Not because he had regained possession of himself, but because he did not trust his legs to support him.

Longinus crossed his ankle over the opposing knee, bringing the prosthetic near enough to Quare that he could perceive where the white bone – if it were bone – met pale flesh. There was no scar, only a seamless joining. As he marvelled at this, senses reeling, Longinus removed a small tool kit from his coat pocket, calmly opened it, and, holding it in one hand, selected an instrument from within – a slender pick-like tool useful for prising open watches and probing their insides. Quare carried just such a tool in his own kit. But the sight of this familiar object did not soothe him. On the contrary, it underscored the perceptual clash he was experiencing, of two things fundamentally antithetical to each other brought into an impossible proximity.

Setting the open tool kit upon his thigh, Longinus tapped the probe against the side of the prosthetic. It made a sharp clicking sound, as if it had struck marble. Then, though to Quare’s discerning eye the appendage appeared smooth as an eggshell, he somehow found an opening, and with a flick of the wrist caused a narrow panel in the side of the foot to swing open. Beneath, exposed to Quare’s all but stupefied gaze, was a system of gears and fine chains that resembled nothing so much as the insides of a clock – or, rather, a watch. And not just any watch, but one in particular: the hunter he had examined in the work room of Master Magnus.

The bone-white gears turned smoothly, soundlessly, meshing as if they were not pieces fitted together by hand but instead organic parts of a single whole; the chains slid past the narrow opening at varying rates of speed, here a silvery blur, there a measured inching. Behind them, deeper in the recesses of the prosthetic, Quare could make out other gears, other chains; the impression was of constant, complex motion. It dizzied him to look at it. Yet he could not tear his eyes away. Twined through the cluttered insides, as out of place as worms in a watch, were thin red threads that shone against their pale surroundings, seeming to pulse with vitality: veins, Quare registered with some distant part of his mind, or something analogous to them. Then a nearer, more visceral part of him rebelled against what he was seeing, against the wrongness of it, and he lurched to his feet and out of the belvedere, where he spewed the contents of his stomach upon the green lawn of Lord Wichcote’s garden.

By the time he returned to the belvedere, Longinus was once again wearing his hose and slipper. The tool kit was tucked away. He stood gazing at Quare with a look of concern. ‘Are you quite all right, Mr Quare?’

Quare managed a nod. ‘I-I’m sorry, my lord,’ he stammered.

‘Nonsense,’ his host replied, waving away both the apology and, it seemed, the offence that had prompted it. ‘You have seen something I have shown no one else, not even Magnus. Something that by all rights and reason should not exist. It would be a wonder if you did not have a violent reaction to it.’

‘But …’

Longinus raised a forestalling hand. ‘And none of this “my lord” business, if you please, sir. We have been over this already. You must get into the habit of calling me Longinus, for it is imperative that my true identity remain unknown to our enemies – whom we shall soon enough be facing.’

Everything was happening too quickly for Quare to process. ‘I…’

‘Come, Mr Quare,’ Longinus said, gesturing towards the house. ‘Let us go inside. I shall have this mess attended to. But there is more I must tell you. Much more.’

Quare allowed Longinus to shepherd him back into the house. They entered by the same door through which they had gone out some hours ago. The room where they had breakfasted was now arranged for dinner, but the sight and smells of the rich food that had been laid out upon a sideboard left Quare feeling as if he might become ill again.

Alert to his discomfort, Longinus led him through a side door and into a sitting room plainly used by Lord Wichcote and his male guests for card-playing, pipe-smoking and drinking. As with all the rooms in the house, and the belvedere as well, a variety of clocks were in evidence, none showing the same time, the soft, hollow clatter of their ticking like a gentle rain falling against the roof of an empty house.

Quare took the seat that Longinus indicated, watching as his host crossed the room and poured out a glass of brandy. This he brought back to Quare. ‘Drink it down, sir. You will feel better for it, I assure you.’

The warm burn of the brandy settled his stomach and rallied his reason. Longinus, meanwhile, went to the door, where a velvet bell pull hung; this he tugged, then opened the door to speak to someone Quare could not see: a servant, presumably. When he was done, he returned and seated himself in an adjoining chair. Quare observed closely as Longinus walked but could see no evidence that he favoured his false foot over the other; had he not witnessed it with his own eyes, he would never have guessed that the man was crippled in any way. It was extraordinary. He said as much to Longinus, who seemed to take his words as a compliment.

‘Whatever else, Wachter was a craftsman of the very first order. Not once in all the years I have worn this appendage has the mechanism failed or even faltered. In that time, it has caused me pain but twice. The first time was the same night I discovered it, when in my revulsion I thought to have the thing removed. Amputated. Repelled, I swore to myself that I would have it cut off as soon as I returned to London. I felt I should prefer a block of dead wood to such a monstrosity! But the mere idea of it so racked my body with agony that I never again considered it. And the same thing happened again some time later, back in London, when I made an attempt to probe the workings of the mechanism, to learn its secrets. In both cases, the prosthetic defended itself, you see. Just as the great clock in Märchen had done. Like that clock, Mr Quare, my appendage is not simply alive in some sense: it is aware.’

Quare could not suppress a shudder.

Longinus chuckled. ‘Oh, it does not speak to me, sir. I should be a fine figure of a man were I to engage in conversation with my foot. No, speaking with my footman is as far down that road as I care to go. And yet it does communicate after a fashion. It connects me to the realm Corinna spoke of: the Otherwhere. Some men sense changes in the weather by the ache in their bunions. I sense perturbations in that dreamlike dimension, which lies, I am convinced, just alongside our own, separated by a barrier thinner than the thinnest veil yet impossible for humans to cross unaided. That barrier, Mr Quare, is time.’

‘Time?’

Longinus gestured, indicating the gossipy assemblage of clocks. ‘What I have deduced over the years, through trial and error, and from my memories of Märchen, is that time is as much an artifice as the clocks that purport to measure it. It is not some intrinsic property of the universe, an extension of the mind of God or a manifestation of the natural order. It has been imposed upon the world – upon us. Indeed, we have been infected with it, like a plague. Or, rather, we are the plague, for we are not separate from time, Mr Quare. We are its very embodiment.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Quare confessed.

‘Time is foreign to Corinna and her kind. So she told me, and so I have come to believe. It is something strange and terrifying to them. Unnatural, as it were. Yet beautiful, too. It attracts them. Draws them like moths to a flame. And then burns them. Being immortal, they do not die of it. They do not age, as we do – for what else is aging but a slow burning, a fire that consumes itself in the end? Mortality is the fire in our veins. It feeds on us, swells and gutters over the course of our lives, leaving naught but ashes. But it spreads, too, does it not, that fire? Through procreation, we pass it on to our progeny, who do the same in turn, ad infinitum. Do you not see that we are mere vehicles for its expression? We are like lumps of coal endowed with mobility and reason, yet ignorant of our true nature. But not Corinna and her kind. They know what we are, what we carry. And do we not make tribute of it for their sake? Recall the effect that the townsfolk of Märchen had upon me. I was helpless to resist the demands of their desire, whether openly expressed or not. I spilled my seed at their whim. I employed the metaphor of fire, yet you might also think of us as bottles of wine, Mr Quare. We must age a bit to achieve our full potency. But then we must be drunk. And a true connoisseur of wine does not drain his bottles at a gulp. No, he sips them. Savours them. So it is with these connoisseurs of time. They sip at our mortality, at the wine of time that has matured within us. And they do not perish of it, as we do. No doubt that is why the taste of us is so sweet to them, Mr Quare – sweeter than we can imagine. That is why they are fascinated by us. Why they long for us … yet hate us, too. We are their laudanum. Their weakness. They are addicted to us. Addicted to time.’

Quare made an effort to marshal his thoughts. ‘You said imposed. Imposed by whom? And for what purpose?’

‘As to whom, why, Doppler, of course – that is, Corinna’s father, whatever his true name may be. It was plain to me, as I thought back over the circumstances of my escape from Märchen, that Herr Doppler, not Wachter, was the real power in that place. Corinna had told me, you will recall, that the Otherwhere was shaped by strength of will, and that her father’s will was the strongest of all. Wachter, or Immelman, rather, seemed a pathetic creature, frightened, his spirit broken. He claimed to be as human as I. No doubt he had been brought across the border much as I had. They had need of him, just as they had need of me. Indeed, Corinna said that I was meant to replace him. But for what purpose, to what end, I do not know. Only that it must have had something to do with time. With clocks and time, Mr Quare.’

‘What, then, of the watch that Corinna gave to you? What is its purpose?’

‘I cannot say for certain. But I have some ideas. It is plain that Doppler does not rule over his realm unopposed. Clearly, there are factions among his kind. Some, like Adolpheus, are loyal, while others are engaged in a rebellion of sorts. Corinna went in search of the rebels at the end, to join their fight. Why, if the hunter were some powerful talisman, would she entrust it to me, rather than take it with her? The answer must be that it is too dangerous for them to employ, or even to possess. Thus I deduce that it is a weapon of awesome destructive power. And what is it that these creatures seem most to fear … and most to desire? Why, time, of course. The watch, then, must be a kind of bomb, Mr Quare. A time bomb, if you will. Now, let us consider what the effects of such a bomb might be, were it ever to be triggered.’

‘But it has been triggered,’ Quare interjected. ‘In Master Magnus’s study, when it killed his cats in the blink of an eye. And again, when it took Magnus’s life, and somehow spared my own.’

Longinus nodded. ‘Unquestionably, the watch – how shall I put it? – intervened at those moments. I say intervened because it seems obvious to me that the hunter, like other, similar artefacts attributed to Wachter – and for all I know, they were in fact crafted by him, but, if so, at Doppler’s direction – at any rate, the hunter, too, is in some sense alive. Aware. It can choose how and when to act. Perhaps it can even decide the moment of its own detonation. But neither of the instances you have mentioned rises to that level. The proof of it is that the watch still exists … as do we, and everything around us. The world goes on, Mr Quare. Time passes as it always has. But in those effects, can we not see, in miniature, clues to the ultimate purpose and greater effect of the bomb? For what else could be the purpose of such an infernal device but the obliteration of every living thing in a sudden and catastrophic release of time? And yet that cannot be all, for it did, as you point out, spare your life. Therefore that, too, must be part of its design. The hunter is both a destroyer and a preserver of life. But which life will it destroy? And which preserve? I find it unlikely in the extreme that Doppler, whose will is supreme in a place where that is the measure of ultimate power, would create, or cause to be created, a device capable of causing his own death. No, it is far more likely, is it not, that he would instead create a weapon to cow his enemies – his allies, too, no doubt – and maintain his own pre-eminence. That, if my suppositions are correct, is the true purpose of the hunter. To destroy all life – not just mortal life, but immortal, too, for why else would Corinna and the others so fear it? – while preserving Doppler’s life. To return every living thing – save himself – to the primordial state from which it was born. Perhaps, after such an apocalypse, he might, as the sole survivor, begin again, crafting new worlds, new lives, out of the malleable stuff of the Otherwhere.’

‘You speak of him as if he were a god.’

‘What better word is there to describe him, or any of them? There was something that Corinna said to me as we were fleeing – a remark I little noted at the time but have had years to reflect upon. I confess it is behind all that I have told you.’

‘What remark?’

‘I referred to Corinna and her kind as fallen angels. She was quick to correct me, Mr Quare. “Not fallen,” she said. “Risen, rather.” She called it their crime, their original sin. Imagine, Mr Quare, that spontaneously, as it were, out of the primal stuff of the Otherwhere, creatures arose that possessed self-awareness, intelligence, and, most of all, will – that is, the ability to shape the Otherwhere to their own purposes. Now imagine that after untold eons of existence, in which each of these creatures was effectively equal to the rest, one of them, filled with ambition and desiring to rule over the others, to set himself above them and impose his will upon them, created something never before seen or even imagined: time. Thus, I believe, was our world brought into being, and every living thing in it, ourselves included. We exist to serve as receptacles for time.’

‘But what advantage would that give to Doppler?’

‘Why, the same advantage that accrues to any man in control of a substance prized or, indeed, required by others. Do you not see? I have told you that time is a drug, Mr Quare. I meant it as no mere metaphor! Doppler created time, and then addicted his fellow gods – to use your word, if I may – to that drug. No doubt it began with worship, with prayers and sacrifices. It must have seemed harmless enough! A new diversion amidst the stale pleasures of eternity. But now they are in thrall to it, to him. And, in a sense, to us as well, for we humans are, after all, the ultimate source of the drug. In us, it reaches its greatest potency, perhaps because we, of all mortal beings, possess self-awareness, the knowledge of our own inevitable death. Certainly that must confer an exquisite piquancy to the drug!’

‘But this is sheer speculation,’ Quare protested. ‘Pure fantasy … if not madness!’

‘If you can supply a more cogent explanation for the facts at hand, I should be glad to hear it,’ Longinus answered. ‘You have seen my prosthetic. You have seen the hunter – and experienced for yourself its uncanny power.’

‘I do not dispute any of that,’ Quare said. ‘But you go too far, surely, in your suppositions! What place is there for the Christian God in your system? Indeed, sir, you have turned Christianity upon its head, and made the Almighty into a very devil! I am no Bible-thumper, yet neither do I subscribe to rank atheism … or worse.’

‘Perhaps it is Christianity that has turned things topsy-turvy, not I. Yet some shred of the truth, however distorted, can be discerned in the gilded trappings of that religion, and of other faiths, or so it seems to me. But that is beside the point.’

‘And what is the point, if I may ask?’

Longinus shook his head, a superior smile upon his face. ‘You have a long way to go, Mr Quare. You cling to your illusions.’

‘To my sanity, rather.’

‘That is merely another illusion.’

‘For a man who claims to require my help, you have a strange way of going about it.’

Here Longinus seemed to come to an abrupt conclusion. ‘You asked for proof, Mr Quare. Very well. You shall have it, or as much as lies within my power to give. I had not intended a demonstration. I had hoped to convince you with words, with reason. But now I see that I lack the eloquence to persuade, and you the broad-mindedness to be persuaded, by words alone. I must warn you, however. There is some risk involved.’ He gestured about the room. ‘All these clocks, ticking at their various rates, weave a tangle of time that shields this place and those within it from the attention of Doppler and his kind. That is why I carry so many misaligned watches upon my person – so that I may safely leave this sanctuary, enclosed in a cloud of conflicting time that deflects their scrutiny like the magic ring in Plato’s myth, which cloaked its wearer in invisibility. Make no mistake – Doppler has been searching for me tirelessly in the years since my escape. He has bent every particle of his iron will towards finding me … and taking back the watch that Corinna stole from him and placed into my safekeeping. Now, in order to afford you visible proof that what I say is true, in order, as it were, to speak with actions rather than words, I must weaken the barrier, unlock it, for, just as it keeps Doppler out, so, too, does it trap me within.’

‘I require no more proof,’ Quare protested. ‘I have had too much already.’

‘Proof of my madness, you mean.’ Longinus gave him a wolfish smile. And proceeded to divest himself of the watches he carried upon his person, stopping each one before placing it atop the table that held the decanter of brandy.

Soon quite a pile had accrued there; it would have been comical, thought Quare, were it not so bizarre. It almost seemed to him that he could feel a curious lightening of the room’s atmosphere as Longinus progressed. ‘Er, what did you say would happen if Doppler were to find us?’

‘I didn’t.’ Longinus moved about the room as he answered, stopping each of the clocks in turn. ‘No doubt it would be quite unpleasant. But if we are quick, and quiet, we should not draw his attention. Especially since the watch he seeks has been removed from my protection. The guild hall, with its cacophony of clocks, provides protection of a sort – I have made certain of that – but it is less complete, for I do not have total control over that establishment, as I do this one. You have been in the Old Wolf’s den. There the timepieces march in strict conformity to each other, like soldiers on parade. The temporal emanations arising thereby are not chaotic but regular. They do not result in an obscuring cloud, but instead an open window, a doorway – an opening through which Doppler can enter our world … or, rather, through which his influence may enter, for I have reason to believe that Doppler himself cannot cross whatever boundary divides the worlds, or at any rate chooses not to, perhaps to spare himself the addiction he inflicted upon his fellows. Or it may be that none of them has the power to visit our world in the flesh any more, as, to judge by myths and legends, they, or some of them, must once have done. Perhaps something prevents them, bars them from direct access to us. I have my theories about that, but I will leave them for another time. Whatever the truth, their agents are active here – men like Aylesford, corrupted to their influence, who may not even be aware of whom or rather what they truly serve. But no matter. I have strayed from my subject. My point is that the watch is no longer here, under my roof. The Old Wolf has it now, and thus it is no longer veiled from Doppler’s view. No doubt he has already located it. And all his attention is fixed upon it – upon retrieving it. He will not notice us.’

‘Why, if you know all this – or, I should say, are convinced of it, as it is plain to me that you are – would you give up the watch so easily to Grimalkin? And having done so, why would you not take it back from Master Magnus when it came into his possession?’

‘Good questions all.’ Longinus nodded approvingly. ‘I am glad to see you still have your wits about you, Mr Quare. You shall need them. As for Grimalkin, you were in no position to judge what took place in the attic that night, perched as you were upon the rooftop. The fact is, I did not give up the watch easily. The defence of it cost good men their lives. That I did not care to throw my own life away into the bargain cannot be counted against me. As it is, I am fortunate to have escaped alive; why, the brigand held a blade to my throat! You may see the scab, if it please you. As to your second question, the answer is simple. Once Master Magnus had his hands on a timepiece that interested him, there was no getting it away from him – I had ample experience of that, believe me. And so I could only watch helplessly as he turned his prodigious intellect upon the mystery of the hunter. Helplessly, yes … but also with hope, for surely if there were any mortal man equipped to solve its secrets, that man would be my old friend and master. Alas, it was not to be.’

‘So Grimalkin told me, when I took the watch from her.’

Longinus’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Her?’

‘Yes. Grimalkin is a woman.’

At this, Longinus burst into laughter.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Oh, I believe you, Mr Quare, as far as it goes. Which isn’t very far. That woman was not Grimalkin.’

‘Master Magnus was of the same opinion. He did not believe it possible that a mere woman could be such a dangerous and successful thief.’

‘A regrettable prejudice,’ Longinus said. ‘There is nothing a woman cannot do, as I know very well from personal experience.’

‘Then how can you be so certain that this woman was not Grimalkin?’

‘Why, because I am Grimalkin, of course.’

Once more, Quare found himself shocked into silence. Lord Wichcote, Longinus, Michael Gray, now Grimalkin – was there anyone in the world whom his host had not been at one time or another?

‘I had not intended to reveal myself just yet,’ Longinus continued blithely, ‘but as you have raised the issue …’

Quare shook his head. ‘No. This is entirely too much, sir.’

‘How better to pursue my researches into time than as a thief? How better to gain access to timepieces that would otherwise be beyond my grasp? After my return from Märchen, as I resumed my work with Magnus, I resumed as well my solitary search for other examples of Wachter’s work, creating the persona of Grimalkin to hide my efforts from Magnus. He never did learn or, as far as I know, suspect that Grimalkin was yet another of my aliases.’

‘I do not know what to think, what to believe,’ Quare said.

‘I dared not turn my attentions to the hunter Corinna had stolen from her father, for my speculations as to its nature and purpose had convinced me that it was best left alone, untouched, all but forgotten. Still less did I trust Magnus to respect its dangers. So I hid it away and looked elsewhere for enlightenment, using the skills of a regulator and, as Grimalkin, the abilities my new appendage had bestowed upon me. Abilities you are about to experience for yourself.’ He stepped towards Quare, extending his hand. ‘Your watch, Mr Quare, if you please.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You have seen me divest myself of my own personal timepieces. I must ask you to do the same. Even if it is only the one. It may still misdirect us. Unlikely, but under the circumstances, it is better not to take the chance.’

With misgivings, Quare handed over his watch. Longinus stopped it and placed it in the same pile with his own. Then he turned back to Quare and extended his hand once more. ‘Now, Mr Quare. Take my hand, sir. Come and walk with me.’

Quare rose from his seat. But he did not take the proffered hand. ‘Lead on,’ he said cautiously, ‘and I will follow.’

‘You cannot follow where I would lead,’ Longinus answered. ‘To go where I go, you must place your hand in mine. Then, in a manner of speaking, I will carry you along with me.’ And he stretched his hand nearer to Quare, as if in emphasis.

Quare felt giddy with confusion. Part of him wanted to leave the room, leave the house, deny all that he had heard and seen. But he knew too well what awaited him outside this sanctuary. Besides, for all his eccentricities, which verged on, if not crossed entirely over into, madness, Longinus – or whoever he truly was – had not harmed him, though it had lain within his power to do so at any time had he wished. It was this reflection, combined with a sense of rebelliousness that seemed to have no other outlet, that prompted him to grab hold of the older man’s hand.

‘Brave lad,’ said Longinus with a nod. He stared into Quare’s eyes. ‘Whatever you do, whatever you see, do not let go of my hand, or you shall be irretrievably lost. Say nothing, lest you alert Doppler or his allies. Save your questions until we are safe again. Do you understand?’

Quare nodded, his mouth dry.

‘Very well,’ said Longinus with a smile. ‘It has been years since I travelled thus. I find that I have missed it more than I realized. They say that the longest journey begins with a single step, Mr Quare. Let us begin our journey.’