David S Denny

The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite

First published by David S Denny 2019

Copyright © 2019 by David S Denny

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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To Tamsin, may all your dreams come true ….

Foreword

This novel has taken an enormous amount of effort and time to create! I first started writing it in the late 1980s, this was a period when I also started Tales of Ottisia and read wheelbarrows full of novels! Autors I adored were Ursula K Le Guin, Stephen King and Dean Koontz amongst many. many others.

The most productive writing of this particular took place around 1990 and the entire manuscript handwritten in my lunch hours. It was also n 1990 that’s I decided to be an author, I needed to know about literature and the world of ideas. So I enrolled at Staffordshire University to study Humanities - I dumped English Literature after one year, feeling I would turn into a critic and not a writer. It did however, introduce me to the great classic writers of fiction and poetry. The latter spawning a few volumes of poetry from myself, with which I had a great deal of publishing success.

An unexpected avenue of study for me was Philosophy. As a working class boy I had no idea of what the subject was about, but fell in love with it. I majored it in and Political Philosophy. My love of philosophy was helped on its way by a pivotal figure in my academic life my tutor Peter Shott. His character and attitude to life was something that illuminated philosophy and its ‘subversive’ nature, as he described it, made it particularly exciting.

The subjects and principal themes in philosophy thread through this novel to a certain extent, but as I have always said about my work - it’s a ripping yarn. It won’t win and literature awards, its just a good story.

All of it is entirely written, edited, formatted by me - no expensive publication here, so expect a few errors here and there - please enjoy!

Preface

Acknowledgement

Thanks to all those I bored with my harping about editing costs and how the novel took 30 years to write and edit!

Thanks t all those who encourage me with good reviews and constat encouragement! Especially Nicky Carroll!

Chapter One

Jonathon Postlethwaite ran as he had never run before. Soon his pounding feet would carry him far away from his home of fourteen years, as he travelled swiftly through the shadowy tunnels of filth that twisted through the Underworld of the City of Dubh. He was running for his life.

Danger lurked behind and ahead of him. Few able-bodied or sane people ventured to the lowest of Dubhs’ inhabited levels. For those who lived on the Upper levels there was the constant threat of disease and attack from the creatures that hunted and haunted these lost and half forgotten subterranean realms of darkness and depravity. Yet ironically it was those from the Upper Levels who offered the most serious danger to the young boy, yet his journey took him towards them now.

So, following his grandfathers instructions he covered himself in a greasy, woollen cloak and protected by the historically protective chant of the leper, Jonathon became one of them for a time. In his guise he was ignored or avoided, safe as a member of a paradoxical fraternity of the depraved and the diseased. Here he was temporarily part of the fellowship of living shadows that lurked in deepest pits of a corrupt and malevolent city; shadows who preyed only on the healthier specimens who strayed from the higher levels. “Unclean! Unclean! “Jonathon shouted and even the hungriest of morons and cretins ignored him.As he moved amongst his unlikely companions, Jonathon saw sights to curdle the stuff of the soul, the corruption of mind and flesh was everywhere, as if here in the forgotten lanes and tunnels of depravity beneath the surface streets, here the corruption of Dubh was distilled. The stale underworld air and ether were rank with it. He scuttled quickly past a group of grey, gaunt women, who sat around a fire feverishly gnawing on blackened bones. An aroma like pork reached him, but he knew their victim was not a pig. At regular intervals, he had to skirt around the corpses that lay in pools of unctuous filth. Their demented eyes stared wide above twisted terminal smiles frozen by rigour mortis, their last memories the drug or disease induced hallucinations of a world that cried out for compassionate end. Here the unclean copulated in the inky shadows, moans and groans echoing around him as he sped past.

Jonathon closed his eyes to the physical manifestations of corruption around him as the spirit of this world assaulted his soul, enveloping him with a spiritual caress so different from his Grandfathers.

“Join with us.” it hissed inside his head, “Become!” it cackled. “Be free!” With a great effort, Jonathon managed to cut the invasive voice out of his mind. The voice had chilled his bones. At every stairway, he moved quickly upwards from the threats that inhabited the lower levels.

Through grim level after grim level, he moved onwards and upwards toward his initial goal of the surface streets of Dubh. As he moved upward the number of inhabitants increased. Here they appeared physically healthier, but still they exhibited the slow degradation of the soul that was rife in this malignant metropolis.

If they had sensed what he was he would have been seized immediately. He was a prize they all sought - that of innocent, young and yielding flesh. He would have been repeatedly raped and abused, then ended up on the roasting knives of those grey, snickering, denizens of the deepest, darkest pits of the Underworld, or worse. However, they saw him as a leper. Even killing a leper had its risks of disease beneath the city, so he was given a wide berth and relatively unhindered passage.

Finally, after hours of twisting and turning Jonathon reached a level where the shadowy, underworld warrens opened out to the lacklustre, sour lemon light of an artificial, sky which seeped in between the gigantic, towering tenements of the surface levels.

The streets here were packed with screaming, bellowing crowds. People milled around in a state of drunken and drugged release. Crowded alehouses lined the streets, their occupants spilling out to be consumed by a churning, clamouring mass of humanity, a tumultuous sea of shifting and vying flesh.

This scene was always repeated when a work shift was returned from the forced labour beyond the Great Gate. After weeks of hard labour in an uncompromising world and under the incessant whips of the Tans, the work slaves of Dubh returned for their day of liberty. On this day they celebrated their survival and now they attempted to escape into pleasure for a while, before being returned to the draining toil of the mines, farms and production plants beyond the Great Gate. They were little more than slaves, slaves to their Tan Overlords and slaves to their own acute Hedonism. To work meant life, food, and the occasional release to rest and pleasure.

The pursuit of that pleasure was evident everywhere. Prostitutes of every sex and age were paraded to all that passed by, absolutely every taste catered for and new tastes developed daily. Dubh was the ultimate market for all physical desires. Huge muscled pimps discouraged those who could not pay, those unfortunates lying bruised and battered, bones broken, in the gutters alongside those overcome by the excesses of drugs and alcohol.

Here Jonathon quickly discarded his bell and cloak, lepers were not tolerated in this part of the city his grandfather had instructed him. Here, it was not unusual for the diseased or merely odd person to be shot or beaten to death for sport. He pushed his way through the sickening throng, following the shadows wherever he could, avoiding the moaning, entangled forms who had secreted themselves in every doorway and darkened niche they could find.

Jonathon was terrified by what he experienced here, before he had always had Cornelius his Grandfather to protect him, a skilled psycic who deftly used his powers to avert hungry, seeking eyes from them both when they travelled. Now he was alone; and he already felt something hideous stalking him.

The City of Dubh’s parasitic Geist waxed and waned with the coming and going of the shift workers from the Great Gate. They were its sustenance. That spirit was like the heartbeat of some gigantic and yet insubstantial beast, that consumed yet sustained, always wearing down the uninitiated with its lure of uninhibited pleasure. There where few uninitiated in Dubh and Jonathon’s soul burned in the midst of this dark forest of withering spirits like a beacon.

The corrupting being was always here, even when the shifts returned back through the Great Gate. It whispered in the minds of those who remained, in those exempt from the Tans’ labour conscription, and schemed with those permanently resident in the dark underworld streets through which Jonathon had passed to reach the surface levels of Dubh.

Now it had felt Jonathon, but could not touch him since Jonathon had inherited some of this Granfathers pshycic skills and was able to keep mind closed to its attack. It became angry, its silent wail of frustration causing a thousand revellers, in whose minds it presently worked, to clutch their heads and stare and scream in unconscious accord.

Jonathon kept up his mental defences. He was tired, but dared not rest. He had already narrowly escaped being accosted by numerous men and women as he had struggled through the crowds, all of them intent in practising their own unique brand of perversions on his young and desirable flesh.

He pressed onward with his journey through the narrow and winding streets of the surface levels and, after hours of following the landmarks given to him by his Grandfather, Jonathon realised he had arrived close to his destination. It was growing dark and the advent of a synthetic dusk accelerated the city’s inhabitants into renewed and most debased of hedonistic frenzies, the city echoed with the howling of thousands.

Now Jonathon was moving away from the crowded centre. He felt safer and relaxed his guard as he walked down an almost deserted street toward a bridge over the black, silent river which marked the boundary between the Upper and Lower cities of Dubh.

He crossed the bridge quickly, not daring to look over its sooty, weathered parapets and moved into the tenements beyond. As he slowly ascended a steep street, its cobblestones shining darkly with the wash of the City’s perpetual misty drizzle, he could see the far boundaries of the Dubh. The gigantic Halls of Machines were silhouetted against the eerie dome of an apricot sky and beyond them, the Towers of the Tallmen thrust their nine mysterious, phallus like towers upwards into the carbon monoxide smog which mantled them.

Jonathon shivered as he looked to the horizon. Although the air of the city was always warm and humid, he felt cold. He knew that one day, in the not too distant future, he would travel to the great Halls of Machines where his Father had worked when Jonathon was younger. Jack Postlethwaite had worked beneath those cathedral-like domes as a mechanic, a privileged Mek, as they where known to the less fortunate citizens of the Lower City where Jonathon now stood. That was before his sudden and unexpected dismissal.

Jack Postlethwaite was soon to learn that he had become a rare commodity - skilled labour, uncommon in the Lower City - and hence became the human merchandise in a business deal between the Hall Engineer and the Tans, the tyrannical rulers of the Lower City.

As soon as he and his family had been expelled from the Upper City, the Tans had taken him and his wife. Jack was quickly transported to supplement the Tan’s skilled labour force beyond the Great Gate and his Mother sold into one of their brothels in the midst of the Lower City.

Jonathon had escaped abduction, left in the care of Cornelius for that day. He was safe with his Grandfather, but it was with him that he suffered the grief of his Mother’s death and the beginning of his Father’s insanity.

His Mother died three months later at the hands of sadistic pervert in the Tan brothel. His Father, in revenge for his abduction, had cut off his fingers in a rotating fan whilst at work, the act of revenge making him useless to them. Then he escaped whilst being prepared for execution, only to hear of his Wife’s death which drove him over the edge of sanity and into the vile and welcoming embrace of the City’s corrupt soul. Jonathon stared at the distinctive domes of the Upper City and wiped a tear from his face. Anger swept up suddenly, a raging fire heated by the revived grief at the loss of his Mother and the new anguish from the death of Cornelius and his Father.

It was the latter that he ran from now. His insane Father had been killed by Cornelius defending Jonathon from him, and now Cornelius was dead by his own hand. The last thing Cornelius had done was to send Jonathon away to a place of safety, to meet friends at a pre-arranged destination. Now all Jonathan’s family were dead and he knew who was responsible. It was a man known as the Black Gaffer.

He directed his hatred at the man he saw as the author of the grief carved deeply into his being; a man who ruthlessly pursued his unrelenting appetite for power in the Halls of Machines; a man who would come to know and curse the young Postlethwaite as a thorn in his side and man who would, in the future, find his insane ambitions threatened by the son of a victim he did not remember at all.

This man the ‘Black Gaffer’, whose presence the young Postlethwaite was always aware of like a permanent shadow on his soul, their destinies entwined in a way they would both soon discover.

Jonathon could not resist the temptation to send out his mind and seek out the mind of the man who had filled him with a grief and anger so deep it seemed as if it flowed through the marrow of his bones like a dark faith.

He gasped and recoiled in shock. The Black Gaffer was less than an individual, less than human; he was now an instrument and extension of the city’s perverted soul, bent to its whim and will.

Pre-occupied with his anger and grief, Jonathon had unwittingly stood too long and too still in the night of a corrupt and dangerous place. Something in the shadows noted this and giggled and slobbered in perverse delight and expectation. The watcher grinned sickeningly, licked its sore riddled and pus laced lips, then slid silently like liquid shadow, towards its young and unwary prey.

Chapter Two

Deep in a small room in the depths of the Dubhian Underworld a great and ancient wooden clock, swathed in swirling gun smoke and speckled with Postlethwaite blood, ticked on regardless of the terrible events which had taken place in its proximity ity. It was oblivious too of the hollow and perpetual hum from the Halls of Machines which permeated every level of the city of Dubh and which raised the dust of decay from its few dry places, painting a soothing backdrop to the chaotic lives of the city’s wretched denizens.

Here in this world hot iron and howling engines that was the Halls of Machines worked the man who had traded Jonathon’s Father for Tan favours; his name was Silus Flax, the Black Gaffer.

As a man born and raised in the Upper City, Flax found himself a member of the skilled caste, the Meks, by virtue of his parentage. He was ambitious and gifted and soon surpassed his Father’s position as mechanic and rising to the position of Line supervisor of Line Nine in the Primary Drive Hall.

In these huge Drive Halls, a thousand huge internal combustion engines were coupled together in lines of one thousand to transfer kinetic energy to the Generator Halls on the next level.

Flax’s post gave him the responsibility for the day to day management of mechanics and machines. His goal, through servicing and maintenance, was to produce optimum efficiency through almost continuous operation of the line. And his engines were rarely idle. Flax’s line was considered as an example of perfection. His ingenious maintenance schedules prevented, to large extent, the breakdowns that plagued other lines. This, combined with his savage man management, ensured that his line was by far the most efficient of all lines in all of the exalted Halls of Machine.

As a Line Supervisor Flax ruled over the men under him with a rod of iron. There was no excuse for failure; mistakes were not tolerated under any conditions. One lapse of concentration meant dismissal of the perpetrator from his post and

expulsion to the Lower City -usually for a price. Not that any dismissed from Line Nine ever got to the Lower City.

Somehow the displaced mechanics found grateful Tans waiting to spirit them away from the gates Upper City to their harsh regime in the mines, farms and production plants beyond the Great Gate. Skilled mechanics were a rarity outside of the Upper City, belonging by blood to the caste of the skilled, the Meks, and protected by the laws of the Upper City Council.

But skilled workers were in great demand by the Tans who needed them to tend their machines in the lands beyond the Great Gate. Silus Flax was well aware of the Tans’ need. He had valuable skilled men at his disposal and he knew it. The Tans would pay generously for engineers and mechanics and Flax exploited this fact for his own personal gain.

Payments to Flax varied, the Tans ordered replacements when death or injury deleted their work force. For most in Dubh payment would have involved commodities of pleasure, drugs, and the free use of prostitutes of either sex or any age, or a night of acute perversion in a Tan brothel perhaps, but for Silus Flax these types of pleasure were never enough, never completely fulfilling.

His tastes were distinctly different, his sense of enjoyment came from inflicting pain and he was a sadist beyond compare, even in this foul city. A gift to Silus Flax would would die slowly in a dark place in acute agony, whilst he watched on, savouring the results of his handiwork, a slobbering, laughing, dark-eyed beast fuelled towards toward hi own ecstasy by the cries of pain and despair from his usually young victims.

His appetite for such pleasures was seemingly insatiable. Then one day his demands to the Tans for this type of payment ceased. During the course of a normal transaction, Flax’s Tan contact was surprised when he demanded information, maps of the city and the pressing of adult, healthy and able men into his service in exchange for providing skilled mechanics.

His contact obliged, a little confused, but willing to comply with the Line Supervisors new requirements. When Flax was asked why, he answered dryly that he was to become ‘an explorer’, the greatest explorer Dubh had ever known. As the Tan negotiator left, he laughed all the way to the Lower City, reporting to his superiors that Silus flax had gone mad, syphilis he suggested, which rotted the brains of so many of the inhabitants Dubh, was now chewing on Flax’s sanity.

But Flax was neither mad nor ill, he was a man obsessed with the pursuit of power and now had the means of achieving his goal. Consequently, when Flax was promoted to the position of Hall Engineer, his supply of skilled men increased and he traded them for healthy but unskilled workers, who were pressed into his service in the Lower City.

Flax organised these men and unobtrusively his organisation, dedicated towards his own personal goals, grew. They were known to the Tan’s as the `High Hats’ because of their distinctive and somewhat eccentric attire, of black, long tailed suits and top hats.

The High Hats were immune from any type of harassment from the Tans. Thanks to Flax’s usefulness to the Tan hierarchy in the supply of skilled men into their service. The High Hats activities did, to some degree impinge on the business ventures of the Tan’s, but never affected their revenues unduly. Flax made sure of that.

The High Hats, as far as the Tan’s were aware, ran a string of the usual, lucrative businesses in Dubh food shops and drug stores, whore-houses and drinking halls - all which brought in revenue to fuel Flax’s real venture.

Flax’s new pursuit was truly that of exploration, as he had told the Tans and been pronounced insane. But there was method in Flax’s ‘madness’. He explored Dubh for doorways to power, literally ‘doors’ to other worlds, which he knew existed in the wavering Field Walls which contained the realm of Dubh and its malignancies, and prevented its corruption from spreading into other dimensions.

If the Tallmen could open gates to other places and times, as they did when they needed to ‘vent’ Dubh’s persistently polluted atmosphere and as they had done with the Great Gate, then Flax realised there were ways out of Dubh. He had also heard tales of places of instability in the citys Fields Walls, where for a while, the retaining energy walls opened up worm holes to other realms. Such a dimension door would be found by exploring the Field Walls of this world, Flax rationally deduced and had actually dreamed.

His High Hats would, inch by inch, search for his precious dimension door. No level would be left undisturbed, no field wall anomaly left uninvestigated. This was Flax’s obsession, a door to another world and to the means to power Flax knew lay there. The Tans saw no part of the High Hats exploratory operations, they watched his legitimate businesses closely, but saw nothing to surprise or threaten. It was true that for a time the ranks of Flax’s High Hats swelled, but slowly their numbers and interests stabilised. Flax knew his value to the Tans was worth only so much and he would not exceed his usefulness. His organisation, therefore, grew no larger than needed to finance the search for his dimension door, the only other things he needed were time and luck.

Initially, the master of the High Hats was surprised at how unstable the Field Walls were. His explorers had found or heard stories about hundreds of rifts and places of instability. Holes, which opened invitingly only to snap shut like giant, energy jaws. Brief glances tantalised Flax and his minions and at these places.

They saw deserts and forests, mountains - cities even, which could be glimpsed before the doors closed before his men had the chance, or mustered the courage, to dash through.

At other places the instabilities were less tangible as dimension doors. From the maps supplied by the Tans, Flax’s High Hats were able to judge where the city ended and the Field Walls lay. In very few places were the Walls were actually visible and readily accessible.

Most of them had been physically blocked off, at a time when the inhabitants of Dubh had some degree of feeling for one another’s well being, with concrete and brick to prevent the unwary from straying into them. The normal appearance of the citys Field Walls, when unobstructed, resembled a hazy extension of the city which became less distinct as the view beyond receded, but, as an individual advanced toward it, a solid, yet invisible barrier was encountered.

At other points, usually where it had been hastily walled off, it was possible to walk into this mirage of an extension of the city. Flax’s servants, forever willing to please their tyrannical master, often took this trip, but none of them ever returned. In most instances, those who stayed behind and watched saw the men, who had entered these unstable areas, slowly disintegrate as the vibratory rates in the Field Wall and that of Dubh changed. The man’s body would shudder and sag or collapse as bones softened or as internal organs exploded, to leave only a thick red mist to disperse into the shifting currents of energy that made up the barrier. The unfortunate High Hats colleagues then would studiously mark down the position on their maps and make their observations before reporting back to an increasingly frustrated Suilus Flax, at other locations the dimension doors would collapse periodically into tunnels of multicoloured light which shifted across the colour spectrum the further in the explorers ventured in, but such ‘doors’, although promising, were rare and dangerously unpredictable.

On all occasions when the High Hats had ventured into such a portal, it had collapsed around them, adding their number to the increasing casualties the High Hat exploration teams19 suffered for the sake of Flax’s obession.

Progress towards the goal of finding a stable `dimension door’ was slow, frustrating and, it could be said, costly in terms of human lives, although, of course in Dubh human lives were cheap, especially to men such as Silus Flax.

The High Hats persevered and continued to record and explore every type of Field Wall anomaly, their positions and duration of opening, Flax’s disciples always eager to please him. Eager because Flax’s harsh and uncompromising management extended beyond the Halls of Machines to them. Eager because working for the High Hats meant special privileges, rewards, immunity from Tan laws and enslavement, privileged access to all the High Hats facilities offered by Flax’s business ventures and favourable terms for payment of services received such establishments.

Being a High Hat was a desirable alternative to everything else the city had to offer or the punishing work regime and danger beyond the Great Gate. Flax’s captains now recruited from those who had somehow escaped Tan conscription as well as by the direct exchange of skilled men for unskilled workers to make up for their losses during the exploration of the Field Wall irregularities.

Flax’s organisation worked tirelessly, but it was

over two years before they found a dimension door that was both stable and predictable. Silus Flax was overjoyed, his belief that such a door existed out of control of the Tallmen seemingly justified. He hoped that now that world beyond the ‘door’ was what he desired to further his plans for power. His joy was short-lived.

On their first excursion through this tunnel of light to the dimension beyond, his exploratory party had suffered a similar fate as others had before in different ‘doors’, despite this one’s supposed stability. It was no different from the rest in the initial effect it had on the first unfortunate High Hat explorers who ventured through it.

The transition through the gate had transformed the High Hat party into creatures almost unrecognisable as human beings. Some had lost limbs or whole parts of their bodies. For others their bodies intact were hideously deformed by the apparent loss of bone in limbs or facial structures. All were insane.

Flax slaughtered them all, partly out of frustration and partly to allay fears that all his expeditions into the ‘doors’ guaranteed a living death to his currently loyal High Hats. He did not need his organisation to decide that Tan employment was preferable to being turned into a vegetable. Why did this happen anyway thought Flax? He searched desperately for a solution to this macabre puzzle and was soon to find it.

After lengthy and subtle investigations into the transportation of work crews through the Tan controlled Great Gate, Flax discovered that when workers entered or returned through it their rate of passage was strictly regulated to ensure that the denser parts of the human anatomy adjusted gradually to the vibratory rate of the gate itself and the dimension beyond. The speed, he learned, at which human beings travelled through a dimension door was critical if they were to survive. Flax’s men had sprinted there and back fearing that the ‘door’ would collapse at any moment and consequently their bodies had not properly adjusted, leaving bones and limbs in suspension somewhere in between.

Whilst Flax’s recently discovered ‘door’ remained open, he frantically experimented. Firstly, he tried the same rate of travel as the Great Gate demanded. His volunteer High Hats never returned. Again and again ignorant and newly recruited volunteers, armed with stopwatches and plied with the promise of incentives, trooped eagerly into the undulating orifice never to be seen again.

Eventually, after much trial and error and a terrible drain on Flax’s human resources, one volunteer returned unharmed and still relatively sane. One pace every two seconds had allowed this man to pass through to the other side of the ‘door’ without any major ill effects.

Flax celebrated, hugging his bemused, but terrified High Hats and shrieking unintelligibly. Now all he required was an answer to what lay behind this ‘door’. The successful traveller held out his hands to an attentive Flax, displaying his blackened fingers.

“A great coldness lies beyond and a great blinding whiteness too, no man could ever live there for long.” the survivor informed Flax through black, frost bitten lips.

Flax was angered that he had been again foiled by circumstances. The `door’ opened into certain death! From his High Hats’ meticulous records Flax knew that this portal would remain open for perhaps another twenty hours before it gradually began to close until only a thin and inaccessible crescent remained.

Donning warm clothing and armed with a stopwatch, Flax decided to see for himself the inhospitable, white and cold world beyond this particular dimension door. Once inside the door, Silus found himself in a swirling, shifting, rainbow coloured tunnel of light that wormed its way through the fabric of space and time from one dimension to another.

Flax nervously paced and counted out the seconds. “One AND two AND one AND two AND....”

Flax felt his body tingle slightly as he moved slowly along the tunnel. After several nervous minutes, counting out the seconds with a loud and savage accuracy, the coloured light faded and he found himself in a tunnel of blue-white ice. His breath frosted and billowed out into the bright whiteness of the tunnel. It was indeed cold he thought. The High Hat leader moved cautiously forward to where the tunnel opened into the vast empty spaces ice and snow beyond, devoid of anything at all except the viscous wind sculpted and curious monuments to itself in the snowdrifts and on the ice mountains.

Flax stared out into the bleak and forbidding arctic wastes which seemed to stretch out to infinity. This was not it, there was nothing that he needed here. He knew what he was looking for – a city or maybe a town; a place to seek what he needed, a place to prepare his High Hats and then return to Dubh to lead them against the Tans and then the Tallmen themselves.

Silus Flax despised the Tans’ dominance of Dubh. Although he took from them it was never enough, he desired something which they could never give him. They had power and endured him, so long as he was useful. Eventually he would outgrow his usefulness to them, he knew, and then they would find someone else to fill their needs.

Flax was no fool. He had seen the signs already, the Tans no longer co-operated in the ways they had in the early days, now they questioned his requests and on the streets there was an ominous tension between his men and theirs.

If the Tans no longer needed him, he and his High Hats would become no more, become nothing, and he would die. Flax would not allow it to happen. He needed power, not just the power that the Tans had, but absolute power; that which the enigmatic Tallmen held in their blazing towers of light. He would take it from them and they would bow to Emperor Silus Flax, master of Dubh. He would have god like powers like they had now. All this was powered by the yearning of a corrupted and perverse soul that demanded that Flax the rational animal use his intellect to fulfil its needs by any means. No morality or dogma, only the breadth and dark depth of his imagination bound him; and it was deep and boundless.

He was a slave to part of himself, that part gave him the power when he demanded it and he did so by withdrawing from the pleasurable activities that it fed on. Then it screamed and gave Flax the power to act and think beyond himself and towards the unspeakable pleasures he consciously imagined. It had given him the premonition to search for the dimension doors and to see in dreams that beyond one lay what he would need to destroy the Tans and wrench power from the Tallmen.

But It, this internal yearning, was not just part of him, It was part of most of the unshackled hedonists of Dubh, It drove them all to consume pleasure in its vilest forms. It lived off them and It used Silus Flax. It, the malignant soul of the city which had its iniquitous tendrils in all of their souls, spoke to Flax now as he despaired at the uselessness of the desolate world in which this dimension door terminated.

“Patience, not this place, perhaps not now and not here, but soon, soon, you shall have what I have shown you in your dreams. Your crown still awaits you. Patience. You are close my beloved.” It hissed in unison with the arctic blizzard. Silus Flax laughed quietly to himself and questioned the voice that resonated within his soul.

“Soon Emperor Silus Flax will be rising, my dark soul becoming darker

until all and everything becomes one with my desire, my being?”

“Yes. ”

“And I shall live in an eternity of pleasure? “he drooled.

“I already do, Silus. Do my bidding my beloved and you can join with me.”

Silus Flax had no gods, but he had a dark, dark faith that gave him the will and the power, to pursue his deepest desires and deify his black soul.

Chapter Three

Under the cathedral like domes of Machine Hall Nine, Flax’s domain, the monstrous internal combustion engines thundered on relentlessly and continued to prove to be the most productive in output to the Generator Halls of all the Machine Halls.

Flax’s promotion to Hall Engineer and its increased responsibilities, in terms of numbers of men and machines, had done nothing to dent his impeccable production record.

So there was little to threaten Silus Flax’s position or his activities in the city. Only the Grand Council of the Upper City could dictate to him, but never did, because they all regarded him with the utmost fear.

Fear, because his High Hats had demonstrated on more than one occasion that to oppose Flax was to sign one’s own death warrant. But this was normally a last resort, dead men could do him no favours, bribery and blackmail were the Hall Engineer’s usual course of action when voices were raised against him.

Flax’s position in the Upper City was one from which he could dominate and manipulate all but the Tans and the Tallmen themselves.

The Tallmen asked for little but the energy the city provided them. Rarely were they seen outside of their blazing towers of light and when they did emerge it was to instruct the Council in very short, and normally one way, communications.

Messages were brief:- “We will vent the city at mid-day tomorrow ” “More consistency on Hall Five’s output "

“We you will rectify the output fluctuations of Hall Seven’s immediately.”

Flax had never had more than a fleeting glimpse of the Tallman messengers as they returned home across the great paved concourse between the Halls of Machines and their towers. Yet he despised them with an intensity which made him growl and snarl obscenities to himself.

He wanted and had sworn to usurp the power they possessed. He perceived that they held the ultimate power in the city, that of life or death for all. With one flick of some innocuous switch, or so he paradoxically presumed despite his own technical knowledge, they could collapse the Field Walls and destroy it all. In reality it required technically more than the flick of a switch and practically such an act was impossible for the Tallmen to exercise this absolute power as Silus Flax saw it.

Under ideal circumstances the Tallmen could have collapsed the Field Walls of Dubh at will and moved on to another point in space and time. The reality of their situation here was that they depended exclusively upon the city and the energy from the Halls of Machines to survive.

The Tallmen had arrived where they were today in a desperate hurry, as renegades fleeing from their own Mother race, making an attempt to hide from their almost omniscient power in between the warp and weft of space and time.

Finally with their power reserves almost depleted the Tallmen of Dubh had been forced to inflate an artificial space-time continuum at random; and it had proved to be a disaster. They had calculated that they would annex the matter from some small uninhabited land mass within this bubble-like dimension and, once this had been achieved, renew their energy reserves. Their hasty calculations wrong. Instead they found themselves resting in the midst of some primitive human city, snatched from some other time and place, which completely filled the confines of their manufactured dimension.

So they had improvised.

Under their coercion, and with limited resources, the massive Halls of Machines had been constructed, employing the primitive technology of the inferior race that had been inadvertently and irreversibility ensnared in this dimension. The Halls of Machines and their huge internal combustion engines would supply the massive amounts of energy needed to sustain Dubh in space and time.

Soon they found it necessary to find a new source of raw materials and food to support the machines and the feed the burgeoning human population which, in turn, fed their own vital technology. Thus a huge dimension door was opened at random into various areas the Tallman guessed to be free of habitation and rich in raw materials and food reserves.

Eventually they found an era in Earth history prior to the evolution of modern man, which would supply all they needed. The opening of the Great Gate, as it was known to the inhabitants of Dubh, was an enormous risk. Those who sought the Tallmen had the ability to detect such an event, but did not. The Tallmen had been lucky.

So the Tallmen had no such god-like powers as Flax envisaged, they were stranded in space and time with nowhere to go. The inflation of Dubh’s energy field and the opening and sustaining of the Great Gate, the umbilical cord of Dubh, took all the energy the Machine Halls could produce, the Tallmen were hanging on by the skin of their long teeth to existence, as was the realm of Dubh itself. The creators of this womb of human corruption, could barely keep it sustained and any more drain on the energy supply would herald its demise.

Silus Flax knew little of this and cared even less. He only envisaged himself in their position of total god-like power, himself in their shoes, running the it in its entirety and using Dubh as a stepping stone to other worlds, other cities. His ambition had no limits, but to swing the balance here in his favour he needed the means to overpower the Tans first, and then the Tallmen. In his vivid and prophetic dreams he saw such a means . Flax had seen weapons of terrible destruction, weapons which far surpassed the archaic musketry of the Tans. Automatic rifles, machine guns, grenades and mortars, in his dreams he saw them all being used and the terrible effect they had on the human form of the enemies of those who possessed them. His High Hats would have them too and sweep aside the Tans bearing these terrible talismans of real power. Cutting down all his enemies before him, he Emperor Silus Flax would lead them to bloody victory after bloody victory, first here in Dubh and then in a thousand other worlds. He dreamed and marked these dreams, they were his future. Even during the day visions came to him, vivid glimpses of a place where his talismans of power lay - a society of order, its technologies warped towards weaponry, but still far in advance of the human technology of Dubh. But this place was special, because it too had begun to bend to the forces greed and

corruption. They had what he wanted and he was an expert in the art of corruption.

Once he had taken Dubh then he would return to this fertile bed and sow his seed there too. Dubh was a stepping stone and the world he dreamed of was the next.

Silus Flax’s prophetic dreams and visions and paranoid schizophrenia drove him remorselessly in pursuit of his goals. His search for a ‘door ' into the world he had seen continued twenty-four hours a day, the cost in life and materials never to high, for he knew that somewhere in this city the gateway to his dreams opened and closed with a rhythm that he could feel deep in his dark soul.

He stood high on the observation platform and control room of Hall Nine and watched his workers scurrying around the dim workshop floor like ants around the engines which squatted rumbling, demanding attention to their every need. Flax smiled to himself. Yes! it was only a matter of time before he was crowned Emperor of this insignificant realm; then onwards! He would find this ‘door’, and nothing and no-one would, or could, stand in his way.

Flax turned to the control panels in the halls control room and congratulated himself on another days work in the Hall well done, as the massive banks of dials and gauges in front of him indicated that all lines were performing at maximum output.

The control room door swung open and he turned to watch his night deputy, Amadeus Bolster, waddling into the Hall Nine’s nerve centre and humming some unintelligible tune. Flax’s nostrils flared. With Bolster came the stale odours of whore houses and beer halls. The smell of smoke and scent women’s bodies hung around him like an exquisitely embroidered veil, at least it appeared so to Flax, the result of the unusual olfactory attributes he possessed.

Bolster had actually bathed twice before coming on duty, scrubbing between the numerous folds of flesh on his body in a vain and useless effort to hide his days activities from his superior. Flax grinned at him.

“I’m surprised that whores would have even you my fat friend, despite the high prices you are said to pay. Is blindness and stupidity a new disease sweeping the whore houses of our city? “he sneered raising an eyebrow quizzically.

Bolster giggled nervously, his small beady eyes meeting Flax’s briefly, but enough to confirm to him that he was as terrified of his master as the smell of fear, which oozed from every pore of his sweaty body, suggested. And so you should be, thought Flax amusedly. He strolled to the door, turning before he left to brief his obese deputy.

“All lines are running at maximum Bolster. I expect that there will have been no changes when I return at six. Do you understand?” he growled, holding his terrified underling with a hard and threatening stare for a moment, then left with no word of departure, closing the door quietly behind him.

Flax laughed noiselessly to himself as he made his way down to the workshop floor. Sometime tonight number five engine on line six would breakdown temporarily, Flax had arranged it. A simple loosening of a main bearing cap would ensure that engine would seize slowly, but could quickly be remedied.

This would give him the opportunity to supply another mechanic to the Tans and shake again the precarious sanity of his deputy who had cursed his luck every night since he had been appointed to the position. Bolster would not be dismissed though, Flax would discipline him personally, this would suffice to punish the fat incompetent and fulfil part of Flax’s daily desire to inflict pain. No, he would never dismiss Bolster since the taste of his terror was unusually sweet. Silus Flax may have stopped demanding new victims from the Tans, but it did not mean his desires remained unsatisfied, Silus had found a new and exciting game to play and Bolster was a mere aperitif.

Approaching the East Gate of the Upper City, the off-duty Hall Engineer, dressed in the dark clothes in fitting with his intentions amongst the hovels and slums of the Lower City, waved to the guard on the gate. The guard, recognising him as a regular excursionist, let Flax through without a word. No one challenged the Black Gaffer.

As the gates closed behind him he turned quickly across the wide paved area that gave the gate-guards a wide field of view between the Upper City’s walls and the black, silent river which effectively cut off the two distinctive classes of Upper and Lower Dubh.

When Flax neared the bridge, which would allow him to cross the river, a shout rang out and two uniformed men stepped out from the concealment of the shadows. He turned tentatively toward them, his fingers closing tightly around the knife and wickedly sharp hatchet secreted beneath his cloak.

Dressed in ankle length, brown leather overcoats and breeches, eyes hidden by wide-brimmed pigskin hats which fended off the City’s almost perpetual rain, the two Tans approached Flax levelling muskets. The Tan Captain raised an oily torch that fumed thickly and smiled as Flax’s features became visible in the greasy light. He shrugged and shouldered his weapon and winked.

“Sport, pleasure or business tonight Mr.Flax?” he queried. Flax strode by without glancing at the two Tans.

“None of your business Captain, and please address me, at least, as Sir.” he spat and turned away from them with a dismissive shrug.

As the Tan Captain watched Flax’s back disappearing toward the bridge and the obscurity of the Lower City across it, he longingly fingered the trigger of his musket and muttered to himself. But could do nothing. At least not today, but he knew the Flax’s days were rumoured numbered and perhaps he would soon have the pleasure of dropping the arrogant bastard himself when the order came her thought to himself.

Silus Flax moved across the crumbling, algae streaked stone bridge toward the Lower City. He felt strangely vulnerable out here in the openas he gazed down at the black stagnant river that had been adopted as the waste disposal area and mortuary by the inhabitants of the Lower and Upper cities.

The stench from the river, even to the average sense of smell, was appalling, but for a man of Flax’s nasal sensitivity it was almost unbearable. The scented rag he held to his nose barely kept out the smells of death, raw sewerage and decaying flesh.

As he looked down a pale, bloated corpse drifted into view. Her wide eye-less sockets searching for hope in a heaven full of stars, but found only the smoggy brown imitation of the night sky produced by the Tallmen to give some measure of time to the world of their construction.

The girl’s body was bruised, battered and bloodily mutilated, the victim of some insane mind’s pursuit of perverted pleasure, now just another putrefying piece of flotsam, a value-less life washed out of existence by the tide of corruption that fed its corporeal leftovers to the not too discerning, and always flourishing, rat population. Flax left the bridge, to his relief, because the stench impaired his scent of what lay ahead and slid stealthily into the dizzy maze of city streets and dark, warren-like dwellings.

Here he felt confident, and as the adrenalin began to flow he felt vibrant as he stepped out onto the shining, oily cobbles washed by the misty rain, the venue for his new game. The alleyways in this part of the Lower City were relatively deserted at this hour of the night, only a few drunken souls staggered from the crowded main thoroughfares, toward their lodgings. Tomorrow the shift-bells would ring, summoning them back to the whip-labour beyond the Great Gate.

Failure to return to work would result in hideous punishments. When, and if, tracked down by the Tans, absentees being subjected to public torture, branding, castration, amputation of limbs, anything but death, everything of pain, but no merciful escape from T3a7ns conscription.

Most of those in the city tonight would sleep where they had collapsed, in the morning to be collected, collared and loaded onto wagons and shipped, still unconscious, back to the Great Gate.

Others though, returned to homes with children and wives. After all the Tans would always need future new blood and thus invested in some social stability for the rearing of new generations. So childbearing women and children under ten years received some degree of protection.

Although the great bulk of the population laboured for the Tans, there were a few who offered valuable services to the working population. Shopkeepers selling all manner of goods were considered vital to the city, small engineering workshops proliferated, manufacturing and supplying simple tools and equipment essential to the Tans operations beyond the Great Gate. The freedoms of such entrepreneurs were tolerated.

There were other groups who managed to avoid the Tan conscription. Those who were so physically unfit, diseased or disabled and were of no use to their Tan overlords, so scraped a living as beggars and petty thieves. Deep in the lower levels, the monstrous excuses for humanity Jonathon had seen on his journey to the surface were never bothered by the Tan press gangs, rather the Tans themselves, when they dared to venture into the seething pits of darkness and corruption in the bowels of Dubh, became victims of the beasts that lurked there.

Almost as bad as the underworld were the mazes of dark alleyways and shadowy streets on the periphery of the city, where pursuit of those who escaped conscription was impracticable and unprofitable for those who were not familiar with the area’s labyrinth like geography.

It was these streets and these alleyways that Silus Flax now stalked, seeking a victim for his blood lust. These places excited him, for here was a challenge. In these grim thoroughfares he himself was at risk from attack, vulnerable to the highly alert and cunning beings who had adapted to survival here. A thrill of excitement rushed through Flax as he padded deeper into danger, causing his body to tingle with anticipation.

It was too easy taking his victims from straight from the Tans. It was too easy choosing his victims from the doped and drunken hordes from the crowds of the city centre - they were too easily caught and the killing was of little pleasure. No, Silus had found the thrill of the hunt here, the sense of threat to his own existence, exhilarated him. Pitting his wits against the those beings who lurked in the darkness here and slid from shadow to shadow was a new pleasure he had discovered.

As he climbed up into the maze of cobbled streets toward the outskirts of the city he sniffed the air like a hungry wolf. Keeping to the deep pools of shadow, his whole body alert to his surroundings, Flax the hunter tasted the air for the scent of potential prey. Then, from out of sight and ahead of him, the mingling scent of two people exploded upon his nose’s sensitive receptors.

One was a young boy, the unusual and somewhat unique sweet scent of innocence and fear about him, the other was an older female, although not much older, confident and determined, herself seeking to satisfy her own animal pleasures, the strength of her sexual odours arousing Flax even from this distance. He crept stealthily through the darkness until he had them both in his sight.

The boy was flattened against a wall; the older woman pressed herself hard against him. Naked from the waist upwards she massaged her rain lacquered torso tantalisingly against the boy’s body. Her breasts, small and firm, were thrust into his face as she caressed him with her long, lean and claw-like fingers, which moved inside his clothing with a practised skill. Yet the youth resisted. She whispered in a soft, strained voice, her rising animal passions shaping her vowels.

“Come on boy, don’t you want me? You’ll soon be taken by the Tans and then you’ll have to pay the whores of the city to have you” she purred, as pleasure surged through her body in anticipation of the thought that she would have to force herself upon him.

She pushed him roughly to the hard cobbles and leapt astride him, throwing back her filthy mane of long, lank and matted hair, her large almost black eyes thanking the night for this precious gift she would defile.

“Mine all mine. I never thought I would find one such as you.” she groaned. She leaned down towards him, her sore riddled mouth seeking his, her foul breath suffocating him as her gritty nails bruised and tore his soft skin.

Jonathon Postlethwaite struggled to avoid her scabby lips, shock and fear had almost petrified him yet he still struggled avoid her touch.

He screamed, yet knew that the few that heard his cries would probably ignore them. Yet what scared him most was that something inside of him yearned for this woman, it burned deep and furiously screaming for her, but he refused to submit to it. He struggled with it and with this wild woman.

In the darkness behind Jonathon’s assailant something moved. Jonathon saw it, but she did not, intent on as she was on her prize. The shadow of a man loomed up and hung like a spectre over her, his large, powerful shoulders and pock-marked mien all too real the struggling boy. Jonathan knew him instantly…

The shadow man smiled and his nostrils flared wide as a sharp, shining blade flashed and crunched into the unwary woman’s spine. Her eyes blazed in pain and fear, anger even, yet no sound left her lips as a large hand clamped itself around her lower face and jaw.

She the predator was now the prey. She struggled as violently as she could, but her assailant lifted her effortlessly from Jonathon and hurled her like a rag doll to the floor beside him. She struggled into a sitting position, her legs paralysed by the initial knife wound in the spinal cord just as her attacker had calculated.

The beast stooped and his inky eyes, hanging astride an enormous beaklike nose, burned darkly. The dim light glinted on his saliva coated teeth as the knife flashed down again into her stomach, a warm spray of blood covering her intended victim. She slumped back subdued and the man bore down on her tearing at her hair for a hand hold, a knee across her hips to hold her still.

He produced a hatchet and began to hack at her form, each bone chipping blow calculated to inflict the maximum pain, but avoid killing her. Flax would drag out the assault as long as possible, prolonging her agony as long as her body could take it. She screamed and moaned with each blow and he fed on her pain, consumed her agony. But she was not strong and quickly expired, too soon for Flax, he was still hungry, still unsatisfied. His searing eyes turned now to the boy who had raised himself against the wall. The axe- man smiled. Here was the main course. Yes, this innocent young creature, this beautiful boy was his, he would satisfy him.

Flax inched closer to him, the aroma of acute fear hung around Jonathon. Flax drooled. He moved closer. Bringing his face so close he was almost touching his petrified prisoner.

Jonathon could not move, could not even focus his eyes, his warm, shallow, panting breath drying the saliva and blood on Flax’s lips. Flax chuckled softly. He could kill this beautiful creature here and now, but he knew that he could extract greater satisfaction if he dragged him away to some safe spot and tortured him at leisure. What a feast it would be, it would last for days, a long feast on this delicious whelp’s sweet pain and fear. Jonathon was now a mere spectator, his body no longer his to command, the shock of the past minutes had numbed his senses. The violence and suddenness of both attacks was too much for him to comprehend. His mind was recoiling and, as much as he willed his arms and legs to move, they refused to respond. He could only sit and watch distantly detached into the eyes of the shadow of a man who now had him in his grasp, at his mercy, except knew nothing of the word.

Jonathon felt his consciousness drawn into the Flax’s, sick mind. It was a bottomless seething pit of corruption. He was repelled from it as he had been before and vomited involuntarily into beast’s face which withdrew.

Flax swore as the acidic vomit tore at the lining of his nose and drew back his arm preparing to strike his prize into unconsciousness and facilitate a convenient journey to his Upper City lair. But the blow never came.

The helpless Postlethwaite watched dumbly as a house brick sailed, as if in slow motion, out of the darkness above him and struck the back of assailant’s head with a sickening crack. Flax keeled over backwards, his eyes rolling upwards as he plummeted into a senseless oblivion.

A strong, hand reached down from above Jonathon and, grabbing him by the collar, lifted him upwards toward the top of the wall under which he had found himself at Silus Flax’s mercy. As he rose upwards towards safety he heard a voice speak,

“Erm, sorry we were late young ‘un, but better late than never they say, eh?”

Jonathon fainted.

Chapter Four

Jonathon awoke, but did not open his eyes. The paralysis of fear had left him shaken, but he had recovered enough to realise that the threat had passed. His dreams, during unconsciousness, filled with terror. Over and over again they repeated those scenes he had witnessed on his journey here. His experiences with the wild woman and the Black Gaffer, Silus Flax, returned with such a clarity that they would have driven a lesser person insane, but for Jonathon the repetition had lessened the severity of the effect that the original events had on him.

Now, as he ran over these memories in his conscious state, he was able to examine the unfortunate and terrible episode in perspective. He had been unwary, numbed by the countless and shocking new experiences he was having on the streets without his Grandfather to guide and protect him. The intensity of depravity on the surface streets of Dubh had caught him by surprise. He now realised the extent to which Cornelius had sheltered him from the reality of life and corruption of the city which, when he had come face to face with it, had caused him to freeze.

He had known that death and depravity were common place in Dubh, but he had never, until the events of the previous night, realised either the scale of such things or the depths to which human beings had fallen. Jonathon had woken on this morning to the depressing enlightenment of his own isolated position and his purpose in this world.

The face of the insane murderer, who had violated the security of his naive world, still haunted him, though the events had become mere facts now without emotional content. The dark, leering mien of the beast, who had come so close to taking him on the street, haunted Jonathon in his dreams. His dark pit-like eyes had threatened to devour him, his physical death would have been a mere sideshow for this beast.

Jonathon knew Flax would have devoured his soul. His sensitive psyche had inadvertently touched Flax’s soul and been scorched by it, but he knew much about him now, he knew exactly who he was and what he had done and what he planned to do.

This creature that called itself Silus Flax was the embodiment of evil itself in this city, was its emissary, a man manipulated by an ethereal, but sentient force which was at work here in Dubh. This man was the man who Cornelius called the Shadow Man or the Black Gaffer, this was also the man who had been responsible for the death of Jonathon’s parents.

He would lead Jonathon out of this hell as Cornelius had said, fate had now introduced them and their destinies had become entwined. Yes, Flax might lead Jonathon way from this place, but the young Postlethwaite was now convinced that he must also destroy the monster that he knew as Silus Flax, put to an end to his foul ambitions and the existence of the corrupted city of Dubh itself. But as yet, he had no idea of how he would achieve this task.

Jonathon opened his eyes. He was still in the dark, but sensed that the Tallmens’ daylight had returned. He studied his surroundings in the dim light. He was in a small shack, constructed between the two adjacent tiled roofs. The roof of this dwelling was made of rough flat boards placed between them and covered by canvas. The far end of the shelter was closed by heavy dark curtains that were rippled by a breeze which attempted to push them aside. He found himself wrapped up in musty old coats and bolts of cloth and had been placed in a makeshift bed amongst three others. The place smelled dank and dusty, but was warm and reasonably dry.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light Jonathon realised that he was not alone. Towards the dwelling entrance, a pile of clothes shifted slightly and two wide round eyes blinked at him. Slowly the pile of clothes and blankets crawled towards him. Eventually he could make out the pale face of a girl of his age, her tired eyes giving the impression that she was about to fall asleep again very soon. She didn’t. She spoke to Jonathon in a whisper that she synchronized with the buffeting gusts of the wind that blew around the shelter.

“Oh my master! You does look like your Granddaddy, you really does! ” She smiled at Jonathon’s surprised expression and continued to give half an explanation of how she knew Cornelius.

“So yes, we knows you’s comin’ here and where’s and when’s to be findin’ you. Your Granddaddy makes sure we does master.” she whispered then smiled again and Jonathon smiled back, infected by the child in her personality.

His Grandfather had instructed him on how to get to the place in Bridge Street and where to wait, but Jonathon hadn’t expected to be plucked to safety from the hands of Silus Flax, in the dire circumstances in which he had found himself. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Who.....” the connection between his Grandfather and his rescuers intriguing him, but the girl cut him short.

“Shush master Jonathon! " She hissed. " No speak hear like that, less they down below hear us.” she moved her fingers from his lips. “Speak like us, whisper when the wind blows.”

Jonathon waited for a convenient gust of wind to ask his rapidly multiplying questions.

“Who brought me from the street? Who are you?”

The girl seemed to laugh, although she omitted to make the sounds that would normally accompany her amused facial expressions. She seemed surprised.

“Your Granddaddy no tells you of the Whisperer, that we’s the ones to be finding you?”

Jonathon shook his head. He was surprised that Cornelius had not mentioned these people. The girl looked slightly bemused.

“Well there’s a funny boy, I mean master. I wonder why he’s no telling you, perhaps......” she waited for the wind to rise again.

“Perhaps we not to tell either” she teased

She waited for Jonathon to react. He just sighed, but she noticed his eyes focused intently upon her, and felt his trained mind invading hers. The girl gasped and physically jumped backwards away from Jonathon. He withdrew and smiled apologetically. The girl looked at him open mouthed.

“Wow! You is special like he says you is.” she whispered. Jonathon shrugged his shoulders modestly.

“Tell me your name.” he asked.

The girl shook her head defiantly, but almost provocatively, a sly grin challenging Jonathon to repeat his mental intrusion. Jonathon cupped his hands together and pushed them towards her, cracking all his finger joints noisily, the distraction giving him the opportunity to slip in and out of her mind without her noticing. She shivered and gave him a disgusted look.

“Horrible master! Why you do that? ”

He beckoned her towards her and waited for the wind to rise. ” the wind told me your name.........you’re Milly aren’t you?” he now teased her.

Milly leapt to her feet and, with a look of horror on her face, bolted from the makeshift shelter. Jonathon followed, moving a little stiffly, his muscles protesting after his confinement. He found himself high above the labyrinth of tenements of the Lower City and alone amid a rambling maze of roof tops and chimneys. From here he had a panoramic view of the city, which sprawled out in all directions in a patchwork of irregular roofs, until it dissolved into the blue-grey clouds of smog that seemed to cling Dubh’s boundaries. The strong gusts of wind, which seemed to flow down to the streets below, surprised him with their chill and strength.

Down in the sheltered streets where the stagnant air gathered, the only air movement felt was during a ‘venting’, when the Tallmen opened tiny worm holes to different dimensions, hoping that the difference in air pressures would cleanse the atmosphere. Often it did, but the atmospheric violence which often accompanied it had traumatised the population into the act of sprinting in terror for shelter if anything more than a breeze was experienced at street level.

Jonathon breathed deeply, the relatively fresh air up here enriching his blood and finding its way to his cramped muscles. He slowly took in the new view of the sprawling metropolis which stretched out all around him.

From this elevated vantage point on a large block which was raised high above the others, the roof tops fell away from him towards the black river which encircled most of the Upper City. Behind its dividing walls, the dwellings of the Caste of the Skilled, the Meks, rose gently to nestle under the eaves of the huge, sooty domes of the Halls of Machines. Flax was there, thought Jonathon. In those Halls he moved, lived, schemed. He felt him. They would never be apart now they had been so close, now that he had touched that mind, now that he had tottered at the edge of that well of darkness. They had marked one another for all eternity.

Jonathon’s mind was now attached to Silus Flax in a way which resembled his attachment to Cornelius’s mind used to be. Their destinies had begun to become intertwined. He would always know where Flax was and, if he wished, what he did, but Jonathon would never reach into that poisoned, putrid abyss again unless absolutely necessary, because next time he might not return. Jonathon turned his thoughts away from Flax and returned his attention to the view of Dubh. The Halls of Machines dominated the city. They were immense, crouching like huge volcanic beasts demanding respect from the attentive city. From their summits thick, swirling

blue-grey exhaust gases poured into the atmosphere, darkening the sky, half-obscuring the Towers of the Tallmen beyond the Upper City, in a great stagnant cloud that hung over the Tallmens’ abode.

Turning away from the Halls, Jonathon scrambled to the top of the roof above the Whisperer’s home and was staggered at the view which greeted him. The roof dropped straight down into the street below, so far was the drop that he could barely make out the crowds whose voices drifted up to him.

Gasping and slightly dizzy, Jonathon crept back from the edge of the roof and looked up. Vast expanses of roof tops were visible from here too. Stretching out for miles upon miles the multi-tiered slums and hovels of the Lower City grew upwards, literally a few more feet each day as new living space was needed, towards the glowing Field Wall which was Dubh’s sky.

In some places groups of buildings, like the one upon which he stood, surged upwards like hills above a plain of blackened tile, brick and concrete. A world of metropolitan hills and valleys, buttes and mesas, had evolved out of the undulating mass of brick, tile, concrete and steel.

Jonathon knew that Dubh had many levels beneath the ground, but thought that they stopped at the surface, but it was evident that it did not. It continued upwards, each new level or building precariously perched on the previous one, overhanging the network of gorge- like streets as if they might suddenly plunge down on the milling hordes below; and they often did.

Sitting on the mossy tiles above the Whisperer’s abode, Jonathon felt relaxed and safe. It was so different from life in his Grandfather’s subterranean refuge where terror and fear had always surrounded them.

Here it was almost beautiful, enveloped as he was by the calmness of this roof top world way above the masses below and under the soothing openness of the pseudo sky. But Jonathon would not relax; he had learned that lesson with his recent experiences on the street. He closed his eyes and stretched his consciousness out across the roof tops, searching for the minds of those who might do him harm.

He quickly established that the Whisperers were not the only inhabitants of this roof top world, other small groups and individuals lived amongst the mossy tiles and the damp concrete.

Jonathon detected the presence of huddled forms sleeping or idling, waiting for the onset of night when they would descend into the pits of darkness below to seek out a living. They were thieves, pickpockets - scavengers who found refuge on the roofs here from the Tans. Many were as spiritually sick as the mass of the population below, yet many unconsciously had sought a sanctuary from the forces which preyed upon their human kin on the crowded streets of Dubh.They were not suited to the world which ebbed and flowed with corruption and so sought a refuge and found it in the sea of calm which enveloped the highest points of Dubh most of the time.

The rooftops seemed a safer alternative to the street. Even the dark souls his mind had touched here were strangely restrained. For reasons he could not fathom, Dubh’s spirit of corruption could not motivate them as it did others below, could not physically reach them here. Or perhaps they were just not worth its effort.

Just as Jonathon was about to return to the shack, he spotted two figures moving rapidly in the distance on a route that would bring them right upon him.

At this distance they were merely dark specks, yet moved at an incredible pace. These individuals did not move around in the tentative manner he had done to reach this vantage point, they ran and bounded across the irregular terrain, steep roofs and street chasms seeming to present no obstacle.

They came closer. With giant inhuman leaps they cleared the ridges of the highest buildings until soon they bore down on him. Now only the wide sheer drop to the street was between them and him. Surely they would stop now, Jonathon thought.

At this closer distance he saw that they looked human despite their superhuman performances. He expected them to stop or at least divert from their suicidal path, but they did not. They charged on regardless, hurling themselves towards the edge of the ravine before leaping high into the air above the street to what seemed an unnaturally obtainable height. Once in the air they stretched out their arms to reveal wing-like membranes tied tautly between wrist and ankle. These ‘wings’ stalled their natural fall helping them to glide easily across the open space and land before a gaping Jonathon, who gazed in awe, astonished at their feat.

On landing, their heavily gloved hands, complete with talon like hooks, clattered loudly, seeking purchase between the algae and moss covered tiles. The first recovered himself and stood awaiting his companion on the ridge where Jonathon lay.

He was indeed human. His body was bound in a mummified fashion in leather and padded heavily at the knees and elbows to lessen the force of impact. This man’s face, except for the eyes, was swathed and hidden in dark cloth. The flying man turned and studied Jonathon with his intense blue eyes before moving to sit beside him.

Removing his heavy cloth headgear he smiled a toothless, but reassuring grin at the startled youth who sat on the roof top beside him. He was breathing heavily and rested for a while, continuing to study Jonathon intently while he recovered. Then he spoke, but he did not whisper with the wind as Milly had done.

“Had a good sleep Jonny-Boy..........you feel better now?” his voice remarkably soft and deep, like velvet Jonathon thought, so much like his Grandfather’s voice. Jonathon, still struck dumb by the two men’s impressive acrobatic performances, merely nodded in reply. The toothless man nodded back and sucked in air, he stretched out his taloned glove to Jonathon.

“I’m Tefkin, it was me who collected you on Bridge Street..........sorry I was a little late, or perhaps in the nick of time depending on which way you look at it. Still, at least there was something left to collect. Sorry to tear you away from your new friend though.” he laughed, his sense of humour confusing Jonathon and forcing him to remember the humourless episode in the hands of the wild woman and then Flax himself.

“Thank you.” Jonathon managed in reply. Tefkin shook his head.

“No, thank Dale here, he threw the brick. Good shot eh?” he turned to his companion who sat a few feet away on the ridge of coping stones, staring across the Lower City.

Dale turned and muttered something unintelligible to Tefkin and waved a friendly greeting to Jonathon. “Doesn’t speak a lot, our Dale, but he’s a good friend to have around.”

Tefkin looked across the roofs he and Dale had just crossed, taking in a few deep breaths to control his breathing, then asked with some enthusiasm.

“Do you wanna eat now our Jonny boy?”

Jonathon suddenly realised how hungry he was, but did not need to answer Tefkin as his stomach chose that moment to answer for him. It groaned pleadingly and both Tefkin and Dale laughed out loud.

A short while later, inside the shack, Jonathon, Tefkin, Dale and Milly sat down to eat the succulent hams that been part of the booty from a roof top foray into the Upper City. Then, after a meal in silence, they sat sipping strong tea brewed by Dale over an open fire in the floor.

Tefkin, minus his flying gear, revealed himself as a wiry and humorous, thirty year old with a weather-beaten face topped by a mat of thin, blonde hair and accompanied by an almost permanent, toothless grin. Dale was a man of a similar age who said little.

He was slightly heavier built than Tefkin, and his long black, but grey streaked hair, having the effect of narrowing his chubby, reddened face and deepening his dark brown eyes. A melancholy man Jonathon thought, a troubled man he felt.

Milly was a pretty, dark haired girl with sad, tired blue eyes to which Jonathon’s attention had immediately been drawn to when they had first met had. She continually reprimanded the men for speaking out loud, for failing to comply with the speaking conventions of the Whisperer, but her efforts had little effect.

“Don’t worry little sister, the Tans will never hear us, we’re safer her than anywhere else” he laughed. “There’s no way they can fly here like us.”

Jonathon found it easy to talk to the roof top trio, although Dale, who never seemed to smile, only contributed in a minimal way to the conversation. His expression was always one of deep sadness which caused uneasiness in Jonathon. Despite his mental powers, Jonathon found the route into Dale’s mind blocked. The memory of whatever caused the shadow to be cast onto his spirit was buried deep inside him and had been made inaccessible to someone like Jonathon.

But there was something more to Dale, Jonathon perceived. He was deliberately concealing something, he had the mental abilities to do so, someone had trained him and his powers of concealment were good enough to thwart Jonathon’s gentle probing.

Dale knew that such an attempt was being made and he knew who was doing it, but, despite an uncomfortable sideways glance at Jonathon, he said nothing.

Tefkin, Milly and Jonathon talked of their lives and past while Dale listened politely, entering the conversation only when spoken to or when there was a memory to be shared. Tefkin informed Jonathon that all three Whisperers, as Milly insisted they were called, had been born and lived most of their lives on the roof tops of the city. Once there had been many more, but one by one they had fallen victim to accident or illness.

Now these three survived by stealing into the dwellings of Tans or Meks, anyone who managed to rise above the desperate, poverty stricken mires in which the majority of the population where submerged. In Dubh wealth and power were shown by the vertical distance an individual lived above the street. There they where vulnerable to the Whisperer’s activities, Tefkin had told Jonathon, and there were rich, easy pickings to be had from the highest dwellings.

But perhaps the Whisperers were the richest and most powerful of all the inhabitants of Dubh, Jonathon suggested, that their wealth and powers were to be measured, not in material terms, but by their freedom from the forces which ruled the city and its society, and because of their uncorrupted natures, which brought broad smiles from them from Tefkin and Milly. Dale merely nodded.

The Tans knew of the Flyers, as they called the roof top dwellers, and of the others who sought refuge there beyond the limits of their domain, but could do little about it.

Occasionally concerted efforts were made to bring the roof tops under their jurisdiction, but always ended in death and despair for those not physically or psychologically adapted to the alien environment which was the world of the Whisperer.

Physically life here was very demanding, journeys across the vast hills, valleys and roof top plains, crisscrossed with the maze of street crevasses, needing a special athleticism which was evident in the physiques of Jonathon’s three new friends.

The Tans, when they came here, struggled to cope with the terrain with the ease that those born to and familiar with it could. Psychologically, a very special courage was needed. The nerve to leap from building to building without hesitation was the difference between life and death. Such nerves and confidence in their own abilities highly tuned from whole lives doing such things as second nature, made the Whisperer unique and masters here in what was truly their world.

The Tans could never succeed, unless they had the qualities that the Whisperers possessed. But the process of obtaining them was usually lifelong, hard and dangerous. After many failed and humiliating attempts to bring their special kind of order to the roof tops, the Tans conceded defeat and now rarely ventured there.

Tefkin elaborated when Jonathon pursued the ‘magic’ behind the superhuman feats he had witnessed earlier.

“It’s not magic, we know where to jump, how to jump. We are normal people, a little stronger and fitter perhaps with heads for heights, but it is our skill and knowledge which give us the power to fly where others cannot.” he explained modestly. “We always use the same runs, we now them by heart, we make sure we are never surprised by what we find and what is needed to run them we know is never beyond our abilities. There are some places we cannot and will not jump. Where we sit today, we are surrounded by very wide streets that no-one can jump unaided. The Tans cannot approach us across the roof tops and below us lives a leper colony. No Tan will venture there.” he looked towards Milly.

“So we’re safe here Milly, aren’t we?” Milly said nothing, but gave him a black and unconvinced look.

He returned his attention to Jonathon.

“If I were to try to leap from this building to the others normally, I would fall to my death. But we have secrets which allow us to become birds for the few seconds that matter.” His eyes sparkled and became intense.

“You are to become a bird Jonny-Boy, I will teach you our lore, as your Granddaddy has asked me to.”

Jonathon broke in speculatively and a little apprehensively.

“The wings tied to your ankles and wrists. Is that your secret?”

Jonathon ventured. Tefkin nodded his head and smiled. “Just a small one. They help us to guide ourselves and stall our descent, the secret lies in our knowledge of where to jump and know that we can safely cross.”

He reached under Milly’s bed and pulled out a large metal frame about five feet square, its legs shorter at one end than the other which set it at an angle to the floor. The metal frame supported a thick, canvass sheet connected by means of thick, short metal springs to the outer frame. Tefkin thumped the centre of the canvass sheet and the energy stored in the tension of the springs propelled his fist away.

“Trickery and skill. We hide these at the places we have to jump on our runs, but they are set up at the correct angles so when we hit them at speed they increase the distance we can travel through the air; this technique, our skill, our strength guides us across distances the ordinary man cannot leap.” he smiled broadly,

“The Tans think we are birds! “he chuckled. He looked back to Jonathon.

“You have none of our skills, but you will have. It will be far from easy, but it will happen eventually. You are still supple and young enough for me to mould you into a flyer Jonathon and believe me I will, I owe it to Cornelius. Even if I have to make you hate me Jonathon, I will see you fly.” Jonathon was mortified, he could not visualise himself repeating the feats he had seen that morning and his Grandfather had asked these people to make him a flyer, why? He shivered, a compulsion to flee gripped him, but he knew that unless he wished to be confined to this rooftop refuge forever and renege on his oaths, he had to learn. He had no choice.

Over the months that followed Jonathon was put through a rigorous and painful training programme by Tefkin. For hours he ran around the roof top island that he knew would become his prison if he did not succeed. At first the going was difficult, the padding at his knees and elbows restricting his movement and producing a multitude of sores and blisters to go with his permanently aching muscles, but, on the many occasions that he fell headlong onto the unforgiving surfaces of tile, brick and concrete, he realised the necessity of the padding.

Soon his youthful and responsive body adapted to this new regime of running and jumping, his young muscles becoming accustomed to the unfamiliar exertion of Jonathon’s new life and environment.

As time passed his baby fat dissolved as the exercise was increased and the boy that was Jonathon Postlethwaite grew slowly towards manhood. Jonathon was soon taller, stronger, fitter and leaner than the whelp the Whisperer had rescued from the street.

After a year of rigorous exercise and tuition in the secrets of the Whisperer lore, Jonathon thought himself ready to leap the ravines. But now Tefkin declared that Jonathon must continue the exercise regime with heavy, brick filled backpacks and with weights strapped to his ankles and wrists. He was not ready yet Tefkin declared and the physical agonies began again as his muscles bled anew and grew.

Many times he felt like giving in, but was always driven on by the thought that somewhere below the roof tops the man that had destroyed his parents, and very nearly himself, still preyed on new victims each day and each night. Jonathon had sworn an oath to himself to destroy Flax and could not, would not, go back on it for the sake of his Grandfather, his Father, his Mother and the other countless victims of this creature.

His training routines carried on and the months now become years. Jonathon was becoming a young man, no longer a boy with a declared destiny and goals. Tefkin was right too, Jonathon did hate him at times for the boredom,

for the pain, but during his years of training he had one other ally who, through her devices, ensured a break from the boredom and eased the pain.

Milly antagonised Jonathon most of the time, laughing at his misfortunes, which actually spurred him on, but attended to his cuts, bruises and grazes on the occasions when the padding of his clothing proved ineffective.

She too had grown physically, but retained her childish language, game playing and juvenile insecurity. But Jonathon had penetrated this veil and glimpsed the warm and caring woman who grew behind her self- imposed disguise. She allowed his mental intrusions, there was little he did not know about her thoughts and feelings and she wanted him to know them all. He knew that she feared Dale for some reason that she felt and feared the City’s foul spirit that had managed, briefly, to creep up here on occasions and taunted her. But she was strong enough to resist it.

Milly was far ahead of Jonathon in her mastery of the rooftops, advantaged by being brought up into the world of the Whisperer. She had learned to use the trampettes years ago and now hurtled across the roof tops with the others and, to the dis-ease of all, alone.

When she ventured out alone, she flew across the roofs with a reckless abandonment of the rules and guidelines of the Whisperer Lore. She did not always run the familiar routes and leap where the trampettes enabled easy and safe crossings, instead took risks, and explored the roof tops in many places where Tefkin and Dale had never ventured.

Consequently, she had many scrapes and close calls with what she laughingly called the ‘Biggest jump of all.’ Despite the constant dressing downs and lectures from Tefkin, she continued her dangerous lifestyle. She was a free spirit, living on adrenalin and could not be restrained.

One day Jonathon approached Milly, intent on giving her a lecture of his own, having watched her recklessly, but gracefully, and speeding homewards from a foraging expedition on her own. She leapt the space which separated the Leper Castle from the others that surrounded it and landed with an elegance the men could not emulate. Jonathon confronted her, anger burning in his eyes.

“Milly! You break every rule in the book! You’ll kill yourself!” Milly laughed and shook out her long, raven black hair from its bindings. Her twinkling eyes, which at this moment seemed almost black to Jonathon, met his.

“I likes the danger! It makes Milly, happy. Alive! ” she sang.

“It’ll make you dead you idiot!” Jonathon retorted.

Milly laughed loudly.

“Ooohweee! Who’s a little Tefkin now! ” she mocked, moving closer to Jonathon and looking upwards the six inches or so into his eyes. Jonathon was furious but his anger was abating rapidly as she inched closer. Her smile disappeared as she looked at him from under long, black eyelashes.

“Why?” she asked softly.

“Why what?” Jonathon replied trying unsuccessfully to escape her imprisoning gaze.

“Why you worry about me....really?” the faintest hint of a smile moved her lips and sparkled in her eyes. Jonathon hesitated.

“Well Jonathon?”

“Well, just because......” Jonathon managed to stammer. “Go on.” Milly continued to hold his gaze, prompting a full answer.

“Because I love you Milly’ he croaked and closed his eyes. As he did so Milly planted a kiss on his lips and then began to sprint to the edge of the building, shouting as she ran.

“Well then Jonathon, if you loves me, best to learn how to fly with me quick. Come live for real........ and then you won’t worry no more ‘cos we’ll both be alive together, you’ll see then.”

Jonathon heard her and opened his eyes to see her soar easily and gracefully across the gap she had just crossed on her incoming journey and disappeared amongst the roofs again. His heart pounded inside his chest and butterflies swarmed madly inside his stomach.

He could still taste her on his lips. He would fly soon, he needed no better motivation. He did not want to let Milly out of his sight again. Ever.

And so it was. Jonathon had no hesitation when Tefkin decided he was ready for his first leap across the forbidding and deadly, brick walled gorges which had imprisoned him for years. He was ready and willing to take that nerve shattering first leap to new freedoms.

Within months of that maiden leap Jonathon was completely at home on the roof tops. He now saw that, out in the world of the Whisperer, the Tans and other city dwellers, including many who found refuge here, but did not have the Whisperer lore or training, were no physical match for them.

Jonathon’s now superb athleticism allowed him to travel far and wide across the city, high above its crowded streets, with same relative ease as his friends. No place was safe from them, particularly Milly who broke the rules and took risks to gain access to places which few, if no other human beings, even in this overcrowded place, had never seen.

The Whisperers came and went as they pleased, scaling walls like flies, dropping down from the roofs into the narrowest of recesses and chimneys to help themselves to the necessities of life wherever and whenever they wished.

The dwellings of affluent Tan leaders were their favourite targets. They were always rich in bounty, they supplied the needs of the Whisperers easily and always with the added pleasure that the Tans, the tyrannical rulers of the Lower City, were virtually helpless to pursue them.

Jonathon was happy with his new, free lifestyle, but always in the back of his mind was the spectre of Silus Flax who, Jonathon knew, would haunt him until he had fulfilled his oaths against him. Jonathon would hunt him down and destroy him, but not yet. He would wait until Flax’s had his beloved dreams in sight and then deprive him of them just as he had deprived Jonathon of those he loved.

Flax loved no-one, it was an emotion which he could never feel. Just as many of the inhabitants had lost the ability to love and now lusted for power and pleasure without inhibition, so had Flax. But the intensity of his lust for these things was magnified by the malignant soul of Dubh which was using him as a tool, as a proxy of the physical self it desperately tried to achieve.

But Flax was not merely its a puppet. There was corrupt empathy, a resonance, between his dark soul and Its own spirit which united them. He had his own ideas; his own plans and It relished them too, gave him the motivation and helped to provide the right conditions in the city for Flax’s dreams to germinate. Jonathon aimed to frustrate the lust that drove Flax towards his dream. Just when Flax had all he needed within his reach it would be snatched away.

The more Jonathon observed in his travels across the city, the more he was able to learn of Flax’s activities and the general moral degeneration to which humanity had sunk in Dubh. The corruption and human degradation that the newly fledged flyer saw made him more determined to see it all, and Flax, destroyed. Dubh was spiritually diseased, a corrupt cyst waiting to burst into the healthy tissue of the surrounding dimensions and the life which existed there. The extent of Jonathon’s mission was widening and becoming clearer. As long as corruption remained here, confined, isolated, it might eventually destroy itself. But Jonathon knew, from the minds of his Flax’s minions that these High Hats sought a ‘door’ from this world to others. If, and when they found it, the malignancy that multiplied here could escape to realms beyond. Jonathon would not allow that to happen.

At the moment he could only outline the solution. So far he had neither the knowledge nor means to carry out his oath to foil Flax and limit the corruption to Dubh. He resolved to find a ‘door’ too, he would follow Flax forever if necessary, and hadn’t his Grandfather said that the `Shadow Man’ would lead him to his own destiny?

All he really knew was that somehow he had to prevent Flax from pursuing his goals outside of Dubh. He would destroy the city and Flax together after he, and those he loved, had escaped through the ‘door’ that his nemesis would show him. At present he did not know how this city was sustained, but he would find out, and then he would take Flax’s dream from him in exchange for all those he had loved and lost. Jonathon Postlethwaite had extended and reasserted his oaths, Flax would provide him with what he wanted and then would die with the world that had spawned him.

Chapter Five

At this time, deep in the city, Silus Flax turned his thoughts to the boy who had escaped him in that dark street nearly three years ago, for in his dreams, Jonathon was now prominent. Flax dreamed of a great golden gate to his empires, but the boy, who was now a young man, stood before it barring his way. Flax realised this nameless man’s importance. His dreams, fuelled by the omniscient, dark soul of the city, always showed him things, prophesied the future and prompted Flax to act. Whoever this person was, Flax thought, he would have to be removed before he himself, could achieve his dreams.

Flax’s High Hats were sent to find him and remove the threat of the ‘Guardian of the Gate’; and the dark soul of the city, knowing Jonathon’s importance too, moved its evil tentacles towards him. The High Hats could never find him It knew this, the city and its population were too large and the Whisperers too elusive. But it wanted Jonathon too and It had ways and channels by which to reach him.

As much as Silus Flax dreamed so did Jonathon, he too often awoke in a cold sweat after encountering Silus in his dream world. His nightmare was always the same. It was night in the city and a huge and alien cloud formation loomed over the Halls of Machines. The clouds billowed and swirled into shape, eventually congealing into the visage of Silus Flax, a monstrous apparition which sent the inhabitants of Dubh scuttling in their terrified thousands to their hovels.

Flax sneered at them and turned his evil attention to the roof of their small world, stretching a dirty and bloodied talon to pierce the energy field which contained Dubh. He tore a ragged hole through to another dimension and chuckled gleefully, his laughter deepening into a thunder which shook the city. And then it rained.

It rained blood. It rained people. Hideously mutilated and dying, they fell from another dimension to into the hands of Silus Flax who, laughing hysterically scooped them up in their thousands and cast them back up into the air.

After one of these nightmares Jonathon awoke, soaked by a cold sweat and breathing rapidly and heavily. Slowly he made the transit from dream world to a waking reality. His surroundings became, once more, familiar and comforting. He sighed with relief and checked to see if he had woken any of his companions. Dale lay curled in a tight foetal position, bedclothes wrapped tightly around him as if to protect him from something or to ensure whatever secret he concealed did not escape.

Jonathon reflected for a while, tempted to try, once again, to pierce the barriers Dale had built around his inner secrets, but dismissed the thought. Tefkin lay, half- naked and spread eagled across his bed, lacking any blankets and snoring loudly. He turned to check Milly, but she was missing. The hairs on Jonathon’s neck rose and bristled with an unknown fear.

He shivered as if thousands of cold hands had touched him. Jonathon was now wide awake, as fear pumped adrenalin through his veins. Something was wrong. He dressed and tiptoed quietly out of the dwelling onto the roof tops where the night breeze blew away the last vestige of his nightmare as he set out to search for Milly.

The night was unusually quiet, as if the city brooded. The background hum from the Halls of Machines punctuated only by the occasional terminal scream from deep in the warrens of the Lower City. This unusual quietness created a strange tension in the air which Jonathon detected, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in response again.

Something was very wrong he sensed. His stomach muscles tightened and he shivered. Jonathon stretched out his mind in an attempt to find Milly. It felt like he was searching in a thick, gluey fog; that laughed. It was a thousand times more difficult than normal because something else, a huge and suffocating presence was here on the roof tops tonight, something which had an earnest appointment with both Jonathon and Milly.

Eventually Jonathon located Milly and moved tentatively towards her position somewhere high above him. Jonathon was startled to find her crouched naked on the highest ridge of the block on which they lived. She stared blankly out across the Lower City.

He was startled, but not surprised. Milly was unpredictable and bound by no-one’s will. She could

look after herself. Over the years he had come to know this. Tonight though, he feared for her.

As he watched her, now becoming strangely tense, she stood up revealing her streamlined and subtly muscled figure. She was almost boyish with small rounded breasts, strong muscular legs and small firm buttocks. When she moved her muscles rippled under her soft, pale skin and tonight this caused a tremor inside Jonathon.

Involuntarily he licked his lips as she threw back her head to send her long, raven black hair cascading across her broad shoulders. She stretched out her arms in an invitation to him.

Something awoke in Jonathon, something that Jonathon had always controlled before, now it fought with him for release. To him it was that part of him which, in the inhabitants of Dubh, had conquered their souls and now controlled them. Tonight every corrupted soul in Dubh awoke in response to a summons and turned their attention to Jonathon’s desires.

They gave those primal desires a new energy as inside Jonathon Postlethwaite, his animal nature screamed for assistance and the city answered. Jonathon gasped as the energy it unleashed invaded his nervous system pushing what was Jonathon Postlethwaite, struggling, into the back seat of consciousness; it had control of his body. He could only watch and feel.

Now from the streets below flowed a moist grey, billowing fog. It was the soul of this foul city. It cascaded over the tiles and roof top ridges, began to take on burning eyed wraith-like forms, the ghosts of every deceased and corrupted being that had died in Dubh; and there where millions, melded into one sentient being.

Jonathon was being forced down inside himself, the animal that is inside us all rising with an uninhibited fury for control, it listened to no reason, no moral codes, no religion other than the church of pleasure.

He fought it as his own hands tore his clothing from his body. He resisted, but could only slow his advance to an agonized crawl towards the ridge where Milly’s body, and the pleasure he could take from it, beckoned him like a beacon.

All around him the grotesque watery faces of the dead urged him on, their ice cold insubstantial hands brushing his body as they attempted to physically push him to the roof ridge and his prize. Individually they would have had little effect, but there were millions of them and the pressure of their collective touch propelled him upwards. Still he fought, contradictory signals from his brain throwing his muscles into wild spasms. From every pore of his body sweat poured in torrents. Animal and spiritual where locked in a defining combat inside the vehicle of Jonathon’s flesh. Only one would win and the other would be become the other’s slave, reason enslaved to animal passion or a being propelled by reason and finer feeling.

Jonathon felt as if he were drowning, he felt himself slipping slowly into a grim pit of suffocating darkness. Inch by inch he still crept towards her. He felt himself swollen and hot in his loins.

With his eyes locked upon her radiant body, he moaned and slobbered with expectation, becoming more and more a mere observer of his spiritual demise. Slowly the distance closed. He saw now that Milly too was possessed by the awesome power, the great dark horse of unbridled human passion.

Her eyes were entirely black, her pupils dilated to such and extent that no iris pigments remained. Her hair streamed in the humid rising wind, her body tensed and ready. She stretched out her arms to him again implored him to take her, beseeching him for that savage embrace.

Crowding around her, the misty forms of wraiths coalesced, attempting to paw her breasts, run their hands over her smooth skin, thrusting and rolling their hips towards hers, their devilish muzzles distorted in paroxysms of ecstasy. They looked down at the slowly advancing Jonathon and in their sneers Jonathon saw their anger at what he and Milly were. Their physical purity was an abomination to them and the cause of corruption and degradation they served.

Visions of himself and Milly enveloped in a violent, brutal, bucking embrace filled Jonathon’s mind. The wraiths howled encouragingly. In a few precious seconds Jonathon and Milly would be one with one another and would be consumed, lost forever, swallowed up in the great, dark soul of Dubh. Jonathon searched for the strength to defeat it.

He focused his mind, if he touched her all was lost. He remembered Tefkin and Dale, how they had taken him in, how they had trusted him. He remembered Flax and his oaths of revenge. He remembered his own Mother, the victim of Flax and this city, his Father, his Grandfather, all its victims. If he failed now, he would fail them all. He loved, Milly but he did not want her this way.

Jonathon tried to scream, but could make no sound. Now they were face to face. Almost touching. Still Jonathon resisted. He could feel the warm moistness of her body inviting him to take them into oblivion.

Her short, sharp intakes of breath seemed to pull his lips towards hers. Yet Jonathon saw the fear in her eyes, she resisted too, she fought as he did.

“No,” she moaned. “No, Dale.”

Dale’s name hit Jonathon like a hammer. Why had she uttered it? Did she think he was Dale? Why, now? Had he......?

Jonathon’s mind tore out towards the mind of Dale. With an energy fuelled on anger, he tore down Dale’s barriers and sought the memory he thought he might find. But there was none, only a memory of a brief temptation which Dale had had, and resisted.

Dale was ashamed of it and guarded the memory earnestly. But he could not suppress his desire always and tonight it surfaced in a dream that would fulfil that wish. Through that dream the dark soul of the city had flowed to the roof tops where it could not normally reach, attempting to corrupt and defile Jonathon and Milly, and in doing so, crush Flax’s guardian of the gate. Dale was the portal here Jonathon realised!

Jonathon’s out of control body reached out his quivering arms about to take Milly in their first, final and terminal embrace. His mind reached out to Dale again, his message clear and simple. “DALE WAKE UP!”

Dale awoke, shocked by the voice inside his head and corruption’s gateway to the roof tops slammed shut. On the roof tops a scream finally broke from Jonathon’s lips, a hollow scream which leapt into the wind and tore into the heart of the city. All the inhabitants of Dubh heard it, the clean, cutting edged scream of defiance and victory.

The army of wraiths began to melt away, flowing in black rivers back to the dark ravines and the underworld where they dwelt. Jonathon took control of himself again and the animal was caged, the wild, dark horse back on the bit. He collapsed at Milly’s feet, exhausted and shivering uncontrollably, gasping for breath in the rising, gale which buffeted the roof top fortress from where corruption had been repelled.

Two arms enveloped his shoulders, yet no lust arose in him now, only the warmth of love which had arisen in their mutual struggle. He looked into the tear stained face of the girl he had treated for years as a sister, she smiled and held him closely.

“I could not hold it back Jonathon” she sniffed. “I wanted what the city demanded, but it was truly not me.”

Jonathon shifted to put an arm around her waist.

“It could not have us like that, we would not truly have had one another.....It was devouring us. I never conceived of Its real power before tonight. It lives and preys on the humanity we build around us to cage the beast we have in us all. It is as I have feared. It is running out of humanity here in Dubh to consume and Flax will make way to new pastures for It to harvest, I must stop it. ”

Milly kissed him gently on his sweat drenched forehead.

“I saw and felt it too. I was in Dale’s dream, it tries to destroy him through his dream. It tries to destroy us all. We must destroy it Jonathon.” she implored

Jonathon nodded at her simple statement and realised that Milly no longer spoke in whispers, her childish dialect was gone. The child had left her too. Nothing physical had occurred, but she was now a woman, she had fallen in love with Jonathon in the wake of their mutual crisis and that love, that real and pure emotion, untainted by asexual lust, had confirmed her sexual humanity.

Together they sat high on the roof ridge and watched as the Tallmen’s mimicking of the dawn cast its wan light over the city. It was strangely beautiful. They felt strong, they had fought together and won, reinforced by a powerful, untainted love.

The malignant soul of the city had been defeated, it had retreated. Now it watched and waited. These two could not be tolerated, their seed could spread. It had failed once, but there were other channels to use, other means to defile them and destroy them.

Chapter Six

In the dark alleyway where Silus Flax had encountered Jonathon Postlethwaite for the first time, seven top-hatted men came across the prostrate form of their leader.

The High Hat search party had ventured into the Lower city following information on Flax’s whereabouts from Bolster, now struggling to rectify a failed engine in hall nine, and the city gate guard and the two Tans who had challenged him on his exit from the city.

The High Hats had news for Flax which necessitated the normally taboo disturbance of when he was at play. They had a good idea of where and why he was here, but his prolonged absence from the Halls of Machines disturbed them a little, as was his shocking state when they found him.

After a few moments of attention, Flax began to regain consciousness. His insensible eyes opened to regard the black coated, High Hatted men, who stooped anxiously over him, with a confusion brought on by the concussion he had received. He sat stupefied for a while, mumbling incoherently, until eventually he regained his senses. Now he could recall the events immediately prior to his enforced sleep.

The disfigured body of the street woman had been removed by his minions so as not to attract the attention of the rats, at least what the their vanguard number had left of it and, to avoid the questions from any Tans who might come this way during the morning shift round up. Her remains had now joined the many other hapless victims of the nightly ritual of murder in Dubh, who floated anonymously in the stagnant mortuary of the black river. Flax felt his blood encrusted head gingerly. “Where’s the boy?” he demanded.

The surrounding High Hats shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. Flax remembered the moments before he was struck senseless. The wild and unsatisfying woman, the smell of warm blood, the boy’s sweet aroma of innocence and purity, the odours of his own growing excitement brought about by his contemplation of his forthcoming pleasures, then.... Flax growled - then the scent of two others above him.

He leapt to his feet, punching the nearest High Hat to vent his anger. Deprived! Flax took in a deep breath as the High Hats around him cowered away, expecting another outburst of violence from their master.

Instead he laughed softly. Another time, another place he thought. He would never give up a prize such as the boy. He was something special. He would find him again and those who had deprived him. He knew their scents, he knew where they had gone. He peered upwards toward the rooftops high above.

A High Hat, with one eye and a scarred cheekbone,

cleared his throat and spoke. “Your Eminence, we have news.” Flax turned to the man.

“News? What now!” howled their leader. The one eyed man bowed his head, avoiding the angry glare of a fuming Silus Flax.

“Your Eminence, we have found another promising portal, it is unusual, it has a multi-ported entrance and channels which lead to more than one exit. But one of them leads to a place such as you have asked us to look for.” A broad grin slashed across Flax’ face, revealing his large yellow teeth. He chuckled quietly to himself, then his laughter grew into deep resonating guffaws stretched with an ironic tone.

" Haaaa!” he spat. “Every cloud has a sliver lining.” he said as he hugged the High Hat whose nose he had broken. The assembled High Hats looked on confused at Flax’s sudden mood change, clouds and silver linings meaning nothing to them.

Flax strode quickly towards the Upper City, his minions falling in obediently in line behind him. Not even the pouring pre-dawn rain could quench his growing excitement and happiness. It had to be the one, it had to

be! Suddenly he stopped and turned to his faithful servants, the smile dissolving from his face. The High Hat line blundering into one another as he stopped.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea if one of you showed me the way to it you greasy, pea-brained morons! ” he shouted with amusement and a tinge of humour.

Chapter Seven

The unusual dimension door, reported to Flax by his High Hats, turned out to be as exciting as he sensed. It was located deep within the city, far below the surface streets of Dubh, in a long forgotten, rat infested street which had been walled off long ago. Flax’s surveyors had found it by speculating that the cordoned off area, marked on the Tan maps they possessed, hid something worth their investigation. Such a blank, uninhabited area, usually found at the periphery of the city, had always proved in the past to be evidence of the position of a dimension door. Even though this anomaly was situated well within the boundaries of the city, his men had persevered and been well rewarded.

The High Hats had heard tales of the ‘doors opening dating back several year ago. A local inhabitant had told them of its eerie light which occurred, shining through cracks in the wall which hid it, at regular intervals. He had thought it a sign from some divine spirit to go forth and procreate and told them that he would be soon venturing into the city to find a new slave to bear his seventh child since his nearing again. His knew when to the day and hour. He had watched and recorded and waited and never been wrong. Now the High hats felt confident that they had found a stable and predictable portal and Flax had been informed so that he might inspect this one for himself.

When he did inspect it he found that the dimension door was indeed unusual, not only because of its location, but because there were in fact two openings. The larger of the two was approximately the height of three men high and wide and its companion a third of its size.

By the time Flax arrived the exit points and rate of travel through the tunnels of fluctuating light had been established and reports had been compiled for his examination.

Silus Flax’s elation turned to frustration when he arrived at the scene, for the twin doors collapsed shut before his very eyes before he had the opportunity to explore them. His frustration deepened when he was informed, by the local resident, that they would not open fully again for several years and that, although the door had been open for three days, his minions had been reluctant to inform him until they had been sure of this ‘doors’ importance.

The High Hat leader knew that this was the one, he sensed it and the scouts reports of what lay beyond the larger of the portals was highly promising. The civilisation was there and the evidence of the technology he needed too, all he had to do was wait and. Just wait. Soon Flax instructed his organisation to move its headquarters to the location of this gateway to another time and place, his own residence becoming a shrine to the ,door’ and the prized portal to the fulfilment of his dark ambitions.

After much reorganisation and rebuilding of his High Hats headquarters around the door he placed a great throne like seat, in which he sat for hours daily, facing a blank wall where the door would eventually open again. Day after day he sat and stared, waiting for the moment when its re-opening was predicted. For more than six years nothing happened, six long years since his disappointing encounter with Jonathon on the streets of the Lower City.

But Flax had not forgotten Jonathon. There destinies were entwined he knew, his dreams still featured the young boy as the ‘guardian of the gate’ and now, as the time approached when Flax would enter it, the nightly images intensified and he resolved to find the him again and remove the threat Jonathon posed to his ambitions.

One day Flax had returned to his dwelling from a lone expedition to the Lower City and was greeted by a wall which shivered and trembled in and out of existence. As he watched the ‘door’ stabilised and, for a teasing moment, he could see directly into the world beyond the larger of the openings. The exit point opened into a small concreted yard strewn with beer barrels and empty bottles, a scene of secluded dereliction and neglect.

Opposite the exit there was a brick wall blocking any direct view of the world beyond or indeed the portal from the other side. On this occasion it was night and the world beyond the wall lit by a strange orange glow. Voices occasionally called out into an eerie emptiness and the sound of distant, moving engines occasionally punctuated the darkness.

A gust of cold, clean air blew from the strange world Flax observed, sending a shiver up the watcher’s spine. Once again this was only a tantalising glimpse as the portal to his ambitions became quivered briefly and collapsed.

Flax ignored the smaller aperture, his explorers had informed him that it led back into the underworld of the city and was dangerously narrow with other unexplored and unstable branches. He would concentrate his attention on the larger of the two.

At the time of this opening however, Flax knew that this brief glimpse was to be the first of many, the records secured by bribing and torturing of the local witness of the door indicated such openings prior to the usual three day occurrence. The next time, when the gate stabilised again, he would be ready to move. The meticulous records of his High Hats proved to be correct.

As the months, then years, passed by and the appointed time for the door to stabilise approached, the larger of the aperture began to open as a crescent at thirty day intervals, as the smaller one did too, each time growing wider until Flax could accurately predict the width of the breach in time and space and when it would become fully open and traversable.

He began to plan, collect together provisions and equipment for his expedition, a horde of gold, drugs and jewels. He hoped that gold and jewels would have the same value in the world that he had glimpsed as it held in Dubh. There were humans in that new world, he had smelt and heard them, if he had not actually seen them and weren’t all human beings the same?

Drugs would be useful too, if not already in use there Flax could corrupt the mind of any human here, create a reliance on such things as many of his High Hats had, a desire and that would bring him useful allies and dependants.

Flax became excited, soon he thought, soon! But then, just as he felt as high as he had ever done in his life before, the spectre of the ‘guardian of the gate’ arose in his dreams again and again, with a new and frightening intensity.

Now he feared that his nemesis would come to deny him his right, his ambitions. His dreams warned him.

There was only one thing to do.

Flax knew that the boy, now a man and a roof top flyer, lived seemingly out of the reach of the Tans and his High Hats on roofs of the Leper Castle near the banks of the dark, stinking river. He would make every effort, use all the resources at his disposal to ensure that the ‘boy’ died before the `door’ was fully open again.

Despite his growing excitement and fear, Flax remained organized and methodical in his planning, he had his High Hats to reorganise prior to commencing his tasks in this new dimension he would shortly enter.

Soon an extraordinary and highly secret meeting of the most eminent of the High Hats was called to his private hall and he revealed his plans to them. Reorganization was called for in his absence. The Chief of Flax’s assassins, Edgar Morrel, would assume the position of High Hat leader and run all the business enterprises in the city, as well as day to day discipline, in the ranks.

Morrell was ruthlessly efficient and intensely loyal, Flax knew he would accept no compromises in service from the High Hats. He was also handed a list of Tans who knew to much about Flax’s latest venture. They had been useful, but now was a crucial time in his planning; Morrel would ensure their silence.

Flax would take two companions with him to the other dimension. One was Pinky Makepeace, a plump scholar from the forgotten libraries of the Upper City, who would observe the law and custom of the alien world they would enter, advising Flax on how they would remain unnoticed amongst strangers.

He knew that the place they would briefly inhabit would be very different from Dubh and did not intend to draw attention to himself through some innocent activity frowned upon there, he did not need the attention of the rulers of this world for the three days he would have there, at least not yet and not that type of interest. Along with Makepeace he would take a bodyguard and personal assistant, an assassin named Ivor Scoggins, a man Flax admired for his dedicated service in the past. Scoggins would be useful in many ways, as well as an expert in dealing death he was also a masochist, and Flax’s desire to inflict pain might be somewhat restricted in the realm beyond. Young Ivor would make the perfect travelling companion. Flax’s arrangements were nearly complete. There was only one detail left - how to deal with the ‘boy’.

Flax decided to delegate the task of locating Jonathon to another loyal assassin, Amaril Caldecott, a man who had never failed him. As the day of the portals opening approached Amaril was summoned to Flax’s private residence and filled with anticipation.

The small, hunched, sharp featured man was intensely excited, he knew that something big was in the offing, promotions were rife he had heard, perhaps advancement was a prospect for him too. He entered Flax’s hall and approached his master, eyes upon the ground and humbled by his master’s presence. Flax indicated that he sit and he did, but Amaril never dared look at him.

Flax spoke, looking at the flaky, bald patch on the top of Caldecott’s otherwise dreadlocked head.

“There is my Amaril, a young man in this city who threatens our very existence, our future. He lives, I am told, on top of the Castle of Lepers. There are others there too, but I only want him, the others can die, this boy has eluded my pleasure before - I want him here, alive. Look at me Amaril!”

Amaril raised his eyes nervously to Flax. The assassin grinned. Flax’s stared at him and the grin vanished.

“Do you understand me Amaril? Not dead in a sack in pieces. A-L-I-V-E. Do you understand me? ”

Amaril hesitated, this was abduction, not a killing, it was not his usual work and he was slightly confused. Finally he answered.

" Alive..........Alive not dead, not dead. Seek and return.... alive.”

Flax nodded as Amaril scratched the black, hairy mole on the end of his sharp, rodent-like nose. He decided to repeat the order for good measure; Amaril was good as an assassin but a little dim generally.

“Alive Amaril. If he’s dead then I’ll kill YOU and eat you myself or perhaps I’ll not bother with the killing part. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!”

Amaril nodded vigorously.

“Alive. Alive, your mightiness” he squeaked, forgetting how he should properly address Dubh’s future emperor and knowing that Flax’s last statement was a promise, not a mere threat.

The rat of a man began to vocally run over the novel idea of finding someone and returning them alive instead of killing them. He concentrated hard on the idea, staring at Flax’s boots.

“Alive, boy, Leper Castle by the river. ” he sort of chanted. Flax nodded.

“It will be difficult, I know Amaril, the Tans gave up on the roof dwellers years ago. But I know you are a resourceful man and the reward will be great. Complete this mission Amaril and I will not forget you.”

For a moment Silus Flax smiled, but quickly it faded, his intense, bottomless eyes drilling into his faithful servant. Amaril giggled like some manic child, his eyes shining with glee, overcome with excitement.

“Reward will be great. Never forget me.” he slobbered.

For a moment Flax’s felt his confidence in Amaril Caldecott seemed to be in error. He seemed like a complete idiot now, but looks were deceptive Flax reassured himself, he had never failed him before. He laughed with Amaril, who relaxed and bounced up and down like a five year old, on his seat. Abruptly Flax ceased laughing, his cold, iron gaze paralysing Amaril Caldecott.

“Start today imbecile!” he howled. Amaril Caldecott scuttled quickly from Flax’s presence.

Flax sighed and leaned back in his great chair as the doors closed behind Caldecott and studied the dimension door’s increasing width. Just a three days, he thought. The door would be fully open and the ‘boy’ in his hands to become part of his own personal celebrations before the next and crucial stage of his plans. When he had obtained the weapons technology he knew was there beyond this dimension door, he could sweep the Tans out of existence. Then the Tallmen.

The latter might be difficult, he was not entirely sure of what weaponry they possessed. Difficult, but not impossible, after all his High Hats already did business in the Towers, it would not be difficult to ensure the goods he was now supplying to the Tallmen made fighting undesirable or physically impossible.

They might have their great, lean fingers on the key to Dubh’s very existence now, but they would soon give it up to him, one way or another. But first he had to have the power to get to them, and obtaining that would be his immediate task, once the door was fully open.

Chapter Eight

Jonathon’s abhorrence of the city grew with the more he saw of it. Since his battle with the malignant soul of the city on the roof tops, he had endeavoured to find some island of goodness in the foul, disgusting sea of inhumanity which seethed around him.

He travelled the undulating roof landscapes of

brick, tile and mortar of the Lower City watching and listening in the vain hope that somewhere, someone might have escaped or resisted corruption’s grasp. But it seemed to be everywhere.

The people of Dubh were devoid of any virtue or

emotion that he deemed to be pure, their free time seemingly devoted to the pursuing the insatiable desire to fulfil appetites of sexual depravity bordering on animal desperation.

He descended to street level to observe their exploits, but was forced to return to his roof top sanctuary when the daily routine of the depraved threatened to spiritually suffocate him. He ventured across the great, stagnant black river into the Upper City, to the ordered society of the Caste of the Skilled seeking out some moral or ethical sanity, only to be severely disappointed.

The Meks were just the same if not worse. Their antics were confined to the private parlours of their more civilised dwellings, but there they exercised their corruption to a more extreme and vile extent. The worse thing about the Meks, Jonathon realised, was that they preyed on the Lower City for their pleasure. The Tans shipped in prostitutes and slaves of all sexes that the Meks might extract their pleasure from those not of their caste or class. Jonathon had secretively watched, through half closed curtains and barred windows, the abominable acts which took place during their hours of leisure time. Perversion and sadism beyond his wildest nightmares caused Jonathon to flee the Upper City.

If there was any difference between the two cities it was that nothing, no practise at all, was taboo to the Meks when abusing the unfortunates supplied from the Lower City, Jonathon had soon seen enough of the Caste of the Skilled. Their leisure time skills, it seemed, easily surpassing and more darkly imaginative than their engineering prowess.

Those who sought to ply their trades from the Lower City unknowingly bought themselves one-way tickets to a hell they could have never imagined. Yet Jonathon had not seen all he wished to see in this part of the city, the Towers of the Tallmen were his final destination and a last hope. Perhaps they, the Tallmen, had avoided the spiritual infection that had spawned itself in human the culture of Dubh. Afterall, they were not entirely human. But the fact remained that they had allowed all this to happen and for this reason Jonathon had already condemned them as bad as the human overlords, the Tans and the Meks of the Upper and Lower, who dominated the two halves of city respectively.

If Jonathon had had any doubts about his self-imposed oaths against the city and Flax, his exploration of the Dubh over the past years had pushed him far beyond the threshold of that doubt and reinforced his beliefs in his own moral codes.

He would find a way to destroy it all, he knew that the creators of this realm would now how to undo it. His answers lay with the Tallmen.

Jonathon made his way up onto the huge domes of the Halls of Machines. The very roofs here vibrated in harmony with the rumbling symphony of the multitude of engines below and from where Jonathon stood the brightly lit towers were clearly visible, blazing beacons in the manufactured twilight, gigantic needles blazing with energy, illuminating the great paved expanse that surrounded them.

The area between the Halls and the Towers had been cleared and paved to create a killing zone, to provide the Tallmen with a clear view of who came and went from their domain. Jonathon studied the area with great interest from the edge of the domes, it was brighter than day out there and any movement could be detected with ease and the giant pavement stretched as far as he could see in both directions.

Despite his knowledge of the lore of the Whisperers and the phenomenal athleticism now built into his physique, the distance was far beyond his abilities. Each paved slab below him was the height of a man square and he counted fifty slabs between the domes and the nearest sentry tower.

He sighed in dismay, he could never cross that killing zone and survive. Apart from blindly running across the floodlit area, he could see no way that he could cross it undetected. He knew that unseen eyes surveyed the area. He felt the gaze of many tall beings directed down from their posts at the top of their towers.

The Tallmen were wary of what they had accidentally created around them and waited and watched for violations of their security. Jonathon could feel their presence, cold calculating and unnerving minds of great age and wisdom, unlike any beings he had ever encountered in Dubh before.

Jonathon let his mind drift towards one of these minds who studied the domes from a tower high to his left. He made what he thought was a discreet contact and thoughts and emotions from the Tallman filled his own mind.

He realised that this Tallman was far from happy. He was angry, frustrated at his predicament. He disliked his own race and was disgusted by the corruption in the human city beyond his towers. The Tallman hated himself for allowing himself to get into the predicament he was in. He felt caged and trapped like an animal, with no solution evident to him. He was more though, he was hiding something and feared discovery. Jonathon was intrigued and probed his mind deeper.

Abruptly the subject’s mind recoiled in shock. He had felt Jonathon’s presence. Quickly the Tallman recovered and he swept his own mind outwards following Jonathon’s probe, attempting to ensnare him. Words filtered weakly into Jonathon’s mind, strange words he could not understand, an alien language that was full of fear and excitement. Slowly the Tallman gained control of the transmission and the words changed to the language Jonathon understood, yet still he could feel that the Tallman was disturbed by Jonathon’s presence.

The Tallman was a minor telepath, but Jonathon could have escaped him easily. Slowly, and a little reluctantly, Jonathon began to break the contact. The Tallman felt the ease with which Jonathon was escaping from his psychic grasp. He became strangely agitated, afraid of losing this contact.

“Please, please do not go, I mean you no harm.” he pleaded. “Please, my friend, who are you?”

Jonathon ceased his mental withdrawal to give him enough time to delve deep into the mind of his contact. There was no malice, no hidden emotion behind his words, his soul was open to inspection. He found no reason to fear this soul who was confused and filled with fear and guilt.

The Tallman, unable to establish whether Jonathon was still in touch, made another impassioned plea. “Listen, whoever you are, I need to speak to you.”

He hesitated, awaiting a response and then, almost reluctantly, continued. The Tallman attempted desperately to establish contact on his own terms, yet was defeated by Jonathon’s superior abilities, but Jonathon had sensed

sincerity in the Tallman’s words which tempted him to reply. He spoke again.

“I have waited so long for one of you again, please answer me!”

Jonathon was moved by the genuine and immense despair he felt in the Tallman as he sat unable to locate his contact from his position in the high tower. It would do no harm to speak, Jonathon thought, as long as the Tallman did not know his location. But he was still wary, so he withdrew.

He severed the contact brutally, letting the Tallman know how strong he was, and then tried another cloaked approach which would not allow the Tallman any chance of locating him as he had been trying to do before.

Satisfied of his safety, Jonathon spoke, the words arriving in the Tallman’s head as if from nowhere, untraceable. He was shocked. He had felt Jonathon’s easy and powerful disengagement and now he spoke, his transmission completely disguised.

“I’m Jonathon, who are you.” he replied to the Tallman’s request for identification.

A relieved happiness welled up in his contact, his emotions causing him to transmit words of his own language completely beyond comprehension to Jonathon. Then he gained control again.

“I am called Rislo, Jonathon. Where are you, I cannot feel your presence are you near?”

Jonathon listened, but was wary of a trap, perhaps all the Tallmen had such abilities as this Rislo. Perhaps they were waiting now for him to give away his position.

He quickly scanned the nearest tower to see if the Tallman there was aware of their telepathic conversation. He was not, his mind idled, pictures, emotions, thoughts bubbled, ebbed and flowed on its surface. Jonathon delved no deeper.

Rislo continued, eager for contact.

“Are you there Jonathon? Please do not be afraid, it is so long since I spoke to one of you.”

“One of us?” Jonathon repeated. “There are others?” Unintentionally Jonathon directed his thoughts to Rislo who replied promptly to please his contact.

“Yes, there were others. But it has been so long. It has been almost sixty years since I spoke to their leader, Cornelius, he was the last contact I had.”

Jonathon shivered. Cornelius? Of course there were others of that name in this city of millions. But another with the powers that his Grandfather had possessed and he had passed on to his Grandson? The odds were shortening.

There was a sure way to find out.

“Rislo, did this Cornelius have anther name?” he queried.

There was a short silence whilst Rislo attempted to recall the human’s surname.

“Yes, his clan name I presume, he never used it much and is difficult to remember.” the Tallman went silent for a moment.

" Po-sill-tate perhaps, no, Posil-thwaite, yes, Postle- thwaite. " Rislo seemed pleased that he had been able to remember the alien human name.

Jonathon was stunned, his Grandfather had been here all those years ago. But it all began to fit into place. Questions began to be answered - how his Grandfather had known the Whisperers - and why they had readily accepted Jonathon as one of them when Cornelius had decided it was time to leave this foul world. Hadn’t the Tefkin said that there used to be many of the roof top dwellers like himself, Milly and Dale ? Gradually the city had swallowed all them up. His Grandfather had been one of them too, sixty years ago. A cold, twinge of grief rose up in Jonathon again, the memories of the last moments before he had left his Grandfather’s protection rose to the surface of his mind.

He quickly recovered, for the years had numbed the pain and he had become absorbed in the mystery of this coincidence - here he was in contact with the same Tallman as Cornelius had been in the distant past. It was too much of a coincidence perhaps, had his motives been the same?

He spoke to Rislo intent upon unravelling this mystery. " Rislo, Cornelius was.......was one of us, but he’s gone now.....what did he want when you spoke with him?” Jonathon omitted to mention his blood relationship with Cornelius, but felt that it may have confused Rislo’s response and shrouded the object of his Grandfather’s mission here in a web of emotion. Rislo responded eagerly.

“He and his kinsmen wanted to speak to the Elders. I being merely a soldier in their service could not help. We are too lowly to speak to them. Cornelius wanted to ask the Elders to visit the city to see what a terrible place it was, and to change it, bring order and return to morality; yes, morality was the word he used.”

Rislo seemed to give little importance to his last answer, he seemed more concerned with Cornelius’s other plans. He continued.

“Did he find his portal Jonathon and leave, was the one I found suitable. Did they all leave or is my friend here still here, we meet again perhaps?”

Jonathon was now sure of the Tallman’s sincerity, he could read it in his mind so easily and here also was his secret; he had attempted to help Cornelius.

Rislo was a soldier alone amongst his own people. He was an odd man out, his special gifts and reclusive personality made him different and so disliked by his comrades. But there was something else. Rislo attached a special importance to his relationship with Cornelius, he had invested hope in him. Despite the grief that he knew the news of his Grandfather’s death would bring to the lonely Tallman, Jonathon decided to tell him. He could not hold it back from him.

" Rislo, I must tell you this - Cornelius - my Grandfather is dead and there are only a few of his friends still alive......I’m sorry Rislo.”

A dreadful silence followed. No more words filled Jonathon’s mind from the Tallman. Only Rislo’s pain. Abruptly their contact had ceased and Jonathon, mindful of the shock and grief which was rising in Rislo, withdrew from his mind, withdrew out of respect for the Tallman’s emotional privacy.

Rislo retreated into himself out of the shock of Jonathon’s statement. All the hopes he had built over the years, waiting for Cornelius’s return were shattered. Hopes and dreams which Jonathon knew little of, or the importance they had for his own mission.

High up in his brightly lit tower Rislo wept. Cornelius had been a good friend, although the two had never met. Through their shared telepathic gift they had been closer than many people could ever be. They had shared their lives, their memories, their hopes and dreams and had remained friends even when Rislo had refused to help Cornelius in the one way that he could.

He had thought his human friend mad and desperate when he had revealed the nature of this request. But now Rislo had come to know that Cornelius’s answer to the corruption of Dubh was the only one. Now that Cornelius was dead he could not give his assistance to him even though, during the years of waiting for his return, the Tallman had changed his mind. But now he could help his Grandson.

As Jonathon waited for Rislo to voluntarily re- establish contact, Jonathon explored the roof tops above the domes of the Hall of Machines. All along the edge of the Tallmens’ citadel, the open pavement stretched as far as Jonathon could see. The sentry towers stood tall and menacing, their height changing subtly, they pulsated, as if they were in fact alive. Occasionally a bright searchlight would lance through the darkness of the roof top domes, seeking out any trespasser who lurked there.

Several times Jonathon had to drop to his knees to avoid them, heart pounding, the continual vigilance tiring him. Slowly and carefully he made his way back to the place where he had concealed himself to speak to Rislo before. Something had changed, he noticed as he approached.

Half the illumination of Rislo’s tower had been extinguished, the absence of the lights creating an inky finger of deep shadow which stretched across the security zone and up onto the domes of the Halls of Machines.

Jonathon crept into the concealing shadow and waited for the Tallman to make contact, if he ever would. Just as he felt that he would not, a voice spoke inside his head.

“Look below friend, down in the shadow.” A pale hand betrayed the Tallman’s presence down below in the deep shadow close to the wall of the Halls of Machines. Rislo urged Jonathon to him.

“Quickly, come down before they correct the lights, I have something you must see, something Cornelius wanted from me.”

Jonathon moved swiftly to the building’s edge, dropping down quickly into the darkness below. His steel clawed gloves and iron wedged boots made his descent down the crumbling brickwork easy. When he reached the bottom of the wall and crouched on the great paving stones, Jonathon could not see the Tallman anywhere, but a voice from almost under his feet startled him.

“Here Jonathon” Rislo hissed.

A large, elongated head emerged from beneath a stone trapdoor. Essentially human, Rislo’s head was covered by a thick long mane of shining red hair, his long face terminating in a lantern jaw and a small mouth. Two large, emerald eyes sat astride a broad nose.

“Quickly Jonathon! Down here before my comrade directs his searchlight in this direction again.” he whispered urgently. Jonathon moved toward Rislo and half dropped, half fell into the trapdoor’s aperture. The Tallman reached up and pulled the stone slab back into position, plunging their pit into total darkness as a search light beam swept over them.

He heard his new acquaintance rustling through his pockets before a light, increasing gradually in intensity, illuminated the small chamber enough to allow them to see one another.

Standing upright, Jonathon’s head touched the ceiling above him. Opposite him, Rislo crouched, his shoulders, hunched against the roof. Jonathon was tall at around six feet, taller than most of the stunted inhabitants of the city. Rislo, if he were standing upright, would tower at least two feet above him.

The soft light from the glass orb Rislo held before him lit his long face, revealing his tear reddened eyes, but he smiled.

“We are ‘Tallmen’ indeed, yes? ” he chuckled, responding to Jonathon’s facial reaction to his size. “Yet I am considered small for my race, a ‘runt’ they call me.” he waved a long, slender finger around the small chamber in which they stood.

“Cornelius and I spoke often of the City’s demise and he asked me, finally, how it could be destroyed.”

Rislo squatted low and peered into the orb’s soft warm light. His eyes lifted to meet Jonathon’s apologetically. “But you must understand, I could not help him then. We Tallmen, at that time, spoke sincerely of putting things right.” he sighed deeply and shook his head, his long, red locks brushing his cheeks. “But now they have been infected by the same malign spirit which masters the humans of Dubh, the place has become fouled, souls diseased. There is no honour here now. For me to stay here will mean the darkening of my soul too Jonathon. Now I will help in the way Cornelius asked, before I leave this place – if you still want that help?” he looked into the human’s surprised eyes.

Jonathon had taken in the giant’s statement and the implications that the offer of help had for his own goals, but was still taking in the Tallman’s appearance. He was surprised at his youthful appearance, he knew that he had last spoken to Cornelius at least sixty years ago. His curiosity forced him into questions.

“How old are you Rislo?”

The question did not surprise the Tallman, despite the change of subject. " Two hundred and seventy of your years, a relative youngster, such longevity is natural to we `Tallmen’ as you call us, and it is that longevity that has allowed our Elders to class human beings here as a lower form of life, a lesser order to be used to our ends.” he sneered in disgust. “Our beloved, respected Elders, whose virtues decline year after year, are becoming as corrupt and as despicable as the forces that really rule this world.” he paused and shook his head. “That is why I am giving you the means to unhinge this realm, Jonathon, the gift I denied your Grandfather.

Jonathon studied the disillusioned giant. He meant what he said.

“Where will you go Rislo?” he asked. Rislo shrugged, his eyes narrowing in surprise.

“Out of Dubh, through the rifts in the Field Walls. I don’t know exactly where, but anywhere must be better than here.” he paused as he began to realise the apparent naivety behind Jonathon’s question.

He began again with questions of his own.

“Do you mean that you know nothing of the portals, doors, gates, call them what you wish, from this dimension to others? - Cornelius knew of them.”

Jonathon shrugged his shoulders.

“Only through rumour and another man’s insane dreams, I’ve never seen one.”

Rislo continued, he felt that Jonathon should know more

than he did.

“You have never seen the fissures that occur in the Field Walls and other places in the city where a man can walk through to other worlds?”

Jonathon became uneasy.

“They are real then? I have heard that such doors exist, but never knew that there were more than a few.” Jonathon, shivered. If there were so many had Flax already found his door? Rislo continued and confirmed that the rifts in the energy fields were many and that they were increasing, the Tallmen scientists had no idea why.

But Rislo had a theory of his own - corruption, the malign spirit of this city was feeding on energy from the Field Walls as well as the dark energy of human depravity, the energy loss was destabilising the Field Walls.

“Jonathon? Rislo asked, “I am right to understand that your motives are the same as Cornelius, aren’t I ?” Jonathon nodded.

The Tallman was confused.

“So how would you save yourself, if you know little of the doors, how would you escape, Jonathon?

Jonathon had no real answer to the question, he had only assumed that he would eventually find the gate Flax searched for and use that, but now he realised that his plans lacked any practical substance. He shrugged, embarrassed by his own stupidity.

“I never really thought it all out. The desire to end the ills of this place sometimes overpower me, I don’t think straight. I’m just urged on by something from deep inside of me” The Tallman’s green eyes widened in surprise. “You never planned escape for yourself and your friends, yet you found me just as Cornelius did and share his quest, what drives you drove him. But if you do not think Jonathon it will drive you to destruction too, it will use your anger as a weapon against you!”

Jonathon felt embarrassed. A thousand questions uncovered themselves in his mind. Questions he had never considered. Rislo, however, had never meant to ridicule him. Jonathon’s self-less quest actually impressed him.

“The spirit of your Grandfather lives in you Jonathon Postlethwaite. You are prepared to sacrifice yourself for a greater good. Cornelius would be proud of you..........but even he did not see himself as dispensable.

“Sacrifice....” Jonathon echoed. He had never seen it that way. When he had sworn his oaths against Flax and the city, the consequences of achieving the his goals had never really been clear to him. His love of the roof top dwellers and his deepening relationship with Milly had never affected his plans. But now he began to consider their implications. When the city died so would they. His own safety, his own end, had seemed of no consequence.

Now what? Rislo had brought him down to earth with a bang. He really had to think what he was doing. A shadow of doubt had been cast in his mind. Was he really intent on sacrificing his friends, those he loved, for his own goals? The Tallman sensed his dilemma.

“It need not be that way, the ultimate sacrifice is not necessary. Your Grandfather’s plan’s included a way out for him and his friends. Did he not tell you of it? ”

Jonathon looked at Rislo in surprise. A moment ago he had begun to doubt himself, now a splinter of light had been cast by the very person who had cast him into that darkness.

" I knew nothing of these plans, or that we might meet in this way, but something guides us Rislo, something has brought us together like this.....it’s more than fate or coincidence. We must make the best of this situation...... we’re not alone in our quest. We must work together. You are part of this. “he looked determinedly at Rislo.

“You must tell me all of Cornelius’s plan”

Rislo, until this moment, had felt like an outsider watching some great drama unfold, this historic individual poised to sacrifice all in an emotional, revenge driven and suicidal crusade. If Jonathon had already known the means to the end of the destruction of Dubh, he would already have done it, Rislo sensed; and to hell with the consequences it appeared.

Now the potential suicide was showing some signs of sanity, Rislo felt relieved. And Jonathon was right, he Rislo, was also part of this.

He could just give Jonathon the information he required, but that would have been wrong. Their destinies had become entwined, brought together by some force opposed to Flax and the city, just as Cornelius and he had been brought together all those years ago. And what was more he owed it to his friend Cornelius Postlethwaite, who had made his own life bearable when he had become lost in his own lethargy and cowardice.

Cornelius had been right when he had said that the Tallmen would become like the humans of the city. Rislo had been too proud of his own race, their integrity, and denied that it could happen, but now it was happening.

If Jonathon had not arrived when he had Rislo knew that he would eventually have allowed himself to be swallowed up by it. He had not the courage to do anything on his own. He dreamed of escaping alone, but they were mere dreams. Jonathon was a catalyst. He had the courage and conviction to carry out his task. He had already infected Rislo and drawn him from the refuge of the Towers, where he dreamed daily of escape, but was paralysed by the fear of the consequences of failure.

This young man was a powerful force in Dubh, Rislo saw this clearly. He plunged headlong towards a seemingly impossible goal, despite the odds stacked against him. Something had to give, and it had. He had punched a fateful hole in the web of predictable events of in Dubh, coincidence had bent to fate, they had given Jonathon Rislo who woudl become a weapon in his hands. Now he was no longer alone and the knowledge he required was within his reach in the mind of his giant friend Rislo.

He turned to him now.

“You will tell me how then Rislo, you’ll help me?” Rislo nodded, enthusiastically.

“Of course, I have the means of destroying this place, I have worked for years on it, waiting for Cornelius to return. And there are many potential escape `doors’ I have located which we can use to escape.” He spoke with a new determination in his voice.

“Now is the time then Rislo, we must begin. ” The giant nodded,

“You are right my friend, we must move quickly, soon I will be missed and I have many things to show you and we both have much to do. ”

The giant lifted his pack onto his back and prepared to move from the chamber. Jonathon realised he had moved closer to fulfilling his oaths. Possibilities had become probabilities, thoughts and dreams – now threatened material realities.

The foul soul of Dubh cringed as a chill wind blew through its heart. It feared for its existence, yet the fear spurred it into action and its allies were already scheming. Its enemies were vulnerable and, after all, merely human. Jonathon cared - that was his weakness, she was the key, she was his soft spot, and the Tallman; without him he was weak and fragile. It laughed to itself and all across the city many humans laughed inexplicably with it as its darkness shone through their souls. Already its dark champion was moving against him, It had failed once, but this time It would not fail; It had to destroy the sickly sweet goodness that threatened It, the city and Dubh.

Chapter Nine

Rislo led Jonathon down a steep flight of greasy, steps from the small chamber in which they had met into a maze of corridors that spread out beneath the Halls of Machines. The corridor walls were constructed out of finely cut stones and slabs fitted together with an enviable precision and accuracy, but they now seemed deserted and filled with the dust and cobwebs which accumulate only after years of disuse.

These underground passageways were clearly made for the use of Tallmen, their ceilings high enough for Rislo to walk with ease, tall and erect. Carrying his light globe before him Rislo turned to illuminate the multitude of chambers that led off the corridor they now walked along.

The rooms were small and large, Jonathon strained his eyes too peer into their dusty, dark interiors as they passed by. Jonathon noticed furnishings still intact. These places seemed to have been inhabited by Tallmen once, he deduced by the size of beds and chairs, but now they were silent, eerily deserted, and covered with the dusty sediments of the years.

Above them, the throb of rank upon rank of hungry machines filled these catacombs with a permanent vibration. The hum disturbed the stonework to fill the air with clouds of tiny dust motes, which sparkled in the illumination from Rislo’s light orb as the pair made their way through the former Tallman residences.

A few Tallmen still resided here however. Rislo stopped at a large carved wooden door and pushed it inwards on its stiff creaking hinges that complained noisily at their intrusion. Inside the long, heavy bones of a

Tallman had been laid to rest on a huge bed where they reflected Rislo’s orb light, their stark whiteness contrasting with the grey dust which lay around them.

“Tombs ' whispered Rislo.” Once we lived here before the expansion of the Halls, and now our dead rest here.”

He stood in silent respect for a while and looked at the skeleton. Its dark eye sockets stared, almost accusingly back at him.

They moved on. They passed many more doors closed to the living, denoting their change from living chambers to crypts. The two moved in silence, each locked in his own thoughts. Rislo with memories of the departed who lay here and of whom he had personal memories. Jonathon with thoughts of Milly and his apparent disregard for her safety, whilst he pursued his reckless, vengeful goals.

A cold chill swept suddenly through him, pictures surfaced into his consciousness. Men in black, High Hats, grinning faces flickering yellow and red. He felt threatened, afraid for Milly. He shrugged it off. Of course, she was safe, he told himself. No one could approach her and the Whisperers on the rooftops. The Tans had tried and failed. She had Dale and Tefkin to protect her anyway. He laughed quietly at his illogical fear, yet it persisted, he pushed it from his mind, out of his thoughts.

The two moved on leaving the Tallmens’ tombs behind them. The passageways became bleaker and coarser as they travelled ever downwards, leaving the fine masonry behind them. Now they walked in tunnels cut into the naked rock that cradled the city. Water dripped from above and formed oily black, lightless puddles, which they splashed through on the uneven floor.

The deeper they travelled the brighter Rislo’s orb seemed to glow yet seemed to penetrate less into the darkness which pressed in around them. In the artificial light, Jonathon studied his new ally closely. He was tall, of course, but there was little to make him different from a human.

His head and all of his facial features were elongated, but it made for a friendly combination. Rislo’s eyes drew Jonathon’s attention, deep green but sad eyes, which seemed sparkle when he spoke to him. They were so different from the deathly, glazed look of most of Dubh’s inhabitants.

His dress was of a substantially higher standard of quality than he had seen in anywhere in the Upper or Lower City. Even though his attire was one of a lowly soldier. His one piece leather coverall was alien to human fashions, decorated lavishly with brass buckles and buttons, badges of rank even as lowly as Rislo’s displayed and embroidered with the faces of unknown, and terrible looking beasts.

Despite the attire of a soldier, Rislo seemed to carry none of the conventional weapons Jonathon associated with such a profession. No swords, daggers or muskets, just a long black rod which hung by a coiled cable from a bulky, pocketed belt.

On top of his coverall, he wore a long, red cloak and a large backpack that Jonathon judged not to be part of his regular equipment. He had brought it along for this journey, wherever it would take him, he was not thinking of returning to the towers it appeared.

The passageways cut into the rock now ended. They found themselves travelling through natural clefts and faults in the wet rock, which widened here and there into caverns of various sizes. Here, their footfalls echoed from the pitch blackness of high roofs where Rislo’s light could not reach, a darkness which seemed to fold behind them again as they travelled on. In the darkness, Jonathon heard the screams and shrieks of disturbed subterranean animals, accompanied by the scrabble of many claws over rock or the dry slither of scales through the pebble moraine which gathered on the cave floors.

When the caverns closed back around them they found themselves in narrow, cramped passageways, where Jonathon was forced to crouch low to pass through and Rislo, leading the way, squirmed and crawled to make

progress.

Jonathon wondered where they were going, but the Tallman’s determined progress instilled in him the confidence that they were not lost. He guessed that now it was dawn on the surface and he and his companion had travelled miles beneath the city.

Eventually Rislo halted and beckoned Jonathon into a narrow crevice which struck upwards away from the main tunnel, a mile long fault in the rock strata, they had travelled for the last hour. After a short, steep climb, they came upon steps carved into the natural rock. The stairway wound upwards to end in a large unadorned stone door. There were footprints in the dust on the small landing before the door, indicating that someone used the place regularly.

Rislo adjusted the intensity of his light orb and held it to a rectangular keyhole in the door, so that a beam of light shone into the room beyond. Then followed a loud clunk, and the heavy door swung inwards slightly.

The giant smiled proudly and nodded to Jonathon.

“Light lock” he informed Jonathon. " The light, set at the correct intensity, shines through onto a sensitive plate and activates the opening or closing of the lock mechanism.”

Rislo pushed the door inwards to allow them to pass inside, then closed the door behind them, carefully sliding a plate over the lock aperture.

As they had entered the room, the source of illumination had come on of its own accord, triggered by a similar mechanism to the lock, causing two brightly shining orbs suspended from the ceiling to glow brightly. Rislo smiled contentedly at Jonathon’s surprise and approval. “My hideaway, craved out of the rock with my own hands when I was off duty - many years of lonely and hard work.” he looked around at his handiwork. " The light lock and ceiling lights is my own design - my Father was a technician I learned much from him. The power for the lights comes from a generator driven by an underground watercourse not far from here.”

He removed his heavy backpack and cloak, dumping them amongst the collection of boxes and a vast jumble of unfamiliar equipment, which covered the floor.

Jonathon surveyed Rislo’s hideaway. It had been expanded out of a small natural cave to form a large room the size of the Tallman crypts they had passed at the beginning of their journey down here. There was room for a bed, a table, and chairs. Around the edge of the room hung odd garments and the stone floor covered, in some places, by off cuts of different coloured carpet. Bottles, jugs and cutlery cluttered the table and the numerous shelves which had been fixed to the walls. Rislo walked over to the far end of the room to a large object covered in a large green dustcover. Jonathon

moved to his side as the giant threw back the covering. The contraption that Rislo triumphantly revealed did not immediately impress the Tallman’s companion.

“What is it?” Jonathon asked in bemusement as he studied the tangled network of glass tubes and small orbs that seemed to have been thrown together in a random fashion before him.

Rislo laughed quietly.

“It’s a Field Imploder.” he replied, as a matter of fact. Jonathon shrugged.

“A what?”

“A Field Imploder”. Rislo repeated. “The very opposite of those machines which hold the walls of this dimension apart. His eyes twinkled.

A smile grew on his thin lips.

Jonathon’s eyes widened as he began to understand. Rislo continued.

“We Tallmen.” he frowned and corrected himself, divorcing himself from his race. “The Tallmen have three machines similar to this. One continuously to keeps the Field Walls stable and enables the Great Gate to remain open. The second is a reserve in case that the first malfunctions. A third is kept to replace either at any time.” he turned and pointed to his own device. “I constructed this from spare parts and parts I made or removed from the service expander,” he said proudly. “This….” he said as his long fingers followed the crystal tubes fondly. “This, this works in the opposite manner. It collects energy rather and expending it to keep the dimension inflated - or at least it will when I have a power reservoir.”

Jonathon was slightly confused.

“So you do not have this power reservoir then. What good is this machine then?”

Rislo pointed to a gap in the network of tubes and globes. “All it needs is the power reservoir… and the device will function.” He explained.

Jonathon nodded , understanding what Rislo implied. “And where might we get one then, can you make one?” The giant shook his head.

“The Power Reservoir which fits here is a little like this light globe. The energy from the Halls of Machines is fed into the reservoirs and dissipated through the mechanism of the Field Expanders.......to keep the Field Walls inflated. What we need is one that’s fully discharged. When it is placed in my machine it will draw all of the energy in Dubh into the globe, the Field Walls will fail and all of Dubh will slowly collapse into the reservoir. Do you understand? “he looked quizzically at Jonathon.

Jonathon nodded his comprehension.

“If we get this reservoir, then we’ve the means of destroying Dubh and all those in it, yes? ”

Rislo nodded.

“Yes, but its not quite that simple. The only place we can get one from is the Great Dome, a hall beyond the Towers and it must be from the discharged machine.”

Jonathon saw their plan taking shape.

“So, we enter this Dome, steal the reservoir, set this machine functioning and escape?” Jonathon looked questioningly at the giant who nodded affirmatively again. “In essence yes. The difficult part will be getting the discharged reservoir out of the Dome to wherever we have located our machine, the Tallmen won’t be giving it away” he laughed. “They won’t give up their future that easily.”

Jonathon laughed with Rislo, the two partaking in a false bravado. Both would be risking their lives by entering the City of the Tallmen. Jonathon looked at Rislo’s construction approvingly now.

“Why did you make the machine Rislo? After all you refused to help Cornelius before, so why take the risk of building this?” The Tallman walked over to a small cupboard fixed to a roughly hewn rock wall and extracted a large flagon of wine. After he had taken a large swill he smiled wearily and sat down heavily at the table that occupied the centre of the room. His attention was fixed on the wine jar, his long, slender fingers wrapped tightly around its neck as if he were attempting to strangle it.

" When your Grandfather came to me, more than sixty years ago, the Tallmen were different. Our leaders did discuss the human situation in the city, its corruption, its degeneration. They spoke of intervening, putting things to right. I thought that eventually something would be done about it. I enjoyed speaking to Cornelius, contact with his mind did something for me, I felt refreshed, stronger after speaking to him.” Rislo took a prolonged swig from the jar. “Despite my reluctance to act against my own people, I still had doubts about what they would do. Cornelius convinced me to build the machine. Anyway, after all I had it - no-one else could use it, and I found predictable stable gates that could take me, Cornelius and his people away from here - should I have chosen to act. But I could not act against them........I had friends here.” Rislo began to tremble, tears welling up in his eyes. “You cannot desert your friends, your own people can you?” he said apologetically.

A tear rolled from his eye. He took another draught from the flagon and wine spilled out of his mouth onto his chin. " I was torn between two peoples though, Cornelius and his friends and my own. When it came to it, couldn’t do anything.” he shook his head furiously, his face reddening and the tears flowing profusely now. He looked to Jonathon.

“What would you have done?” his question was aimed at his human ally, but he expected no answer. He knew Jonathon would understand the nature of his dilemma as Cornelius had done. “But things changed. I saw it happening gradually, corruption spread here like a disease. The evil in the city grew more intense, like it was actually a living being. The Elders saw nothing, or didn’t want to. They lost any conscience they had, they retreated into themselves, - all that mattered was that they survived, it didn’t matter how. As long as the city supplies the energy for the machines they seem to care for nothing except that their slide into depravity be as long and

pleasurable as possible.”

Rislo he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. “They had created this monster that has devoured Dubh, Jonathon, and now it is devouring them. Soon It will be master of Dubh! And what do they care! Nothing at all. Now they act as the human beasts from the city do. They debauch human women by the hundred, they spend whole days drunk, drugged and helpless. They have lost, they Tallmen who fled here with their fine ideals, ideals which led me to join them, have surrendered to the most primitive forces in humans and Tallmen, they are sliding back to the pit of animal barbarism. It makes me so angry!” Risloo finished of the flagon of wine and thumped it down so hard on the table that it shattered into a thousand dark pieces.

He remained silent for a while, staring blankly at the tabletop and the broken pottery. He sniffed. “I waited for Cornelius to return. I had decided to act. I made plans, constructed the Imploder.” he strode over to it. “I manufactured their destruction here in my spare time. Years of trial and error, years of toil. But Cornelius never returned, I tried to contact him, but there was nothing. I almost gave up hope.....then you came. I could have run

to many worlds alone, but I had to wait. I had to be sure that Cornelius and his people did not suffer from my actions. Now you are here and can answer my questions. How many are left?”

Jonathon shook his head.

" Only a few, Milly, Tefkin and Dale, I know of no others.” Rislo rose unsteadily to his feet and began to pace the room. The plans he had formulated over many years, now whirring like well oiled machines inside his head.

“They must be brought here soon, we will choose the world we wish to flee to and complete the Imploder.” He sat down heavily at the table his head held in his hands and added, " Before it’s too late.”

Jonathon walked over to the table. “Too late? ”

The giant sighed deeply.

“Yes my friend, before it’s too late. The evil that envelops this world seeks the flesh in which it can manifest itself. It lives now, it schemes. The energy the Tallmen require to support this realm increases daily. They do not know why, but I do. The beast drains it - weakens the Field Walls deliberately - if it can find no other way it will tear this dimension apart and move on to others. It is so strong now, I feel it and its work is almost complete. There are few left to corrupt and feed off. I cannot let it happen, as you cannot. I will not be responsible for its release beyond this realm. I have the means, it must be destroyed.”

Jonathon was concerned about what he had heard, he had experienced the power of city’s malignant soul himself on the rooftops years ago when it had attempted to defile Milly and himself. But it would escape if Dubh was destroyed, it was trying through Flax he realised, but it would tear the dimension apart itself if he failed to open a door for it.

“But Rislo, if we destroy the Field Walls, won’t it escape anyway, isn’t that what it wants? ”

Rislo shook his head.

“The way this machine will destroy Dubh will not allow it to escape. Remember, the Imploder will drain all the energy of this realm into itself. The spirit of corruption is pure, dark energy - it will not be able to escape - it will be trapped forever. It will not have the strength to escape. All those who fed it will be dead, the energy it drains from the Field Walls will be gone, and it will be trapped in the power reservoir, lost between the dimensions.”

Rislo spoke with authority, Jonathon felt it and was confident that his Tallman companion was right. Then the room grew cold. His thoughts became misty. Pictures began to form in Jonathon’s mind. He saw child bound with ropes so tightly it could not move. To a grown man these bonds would have been snapped with ease. But this immature dark-eyed infant was trapped.

Jonathon suddenly felt dizzier. He struggled to the chair opposite Rislo. The visions would not fade, they developed their own momentum.

He began to sweat with the mental effort he was using to escape the hallucination that had developed a life of its own. Jonathon sensed it was metaphorical.

The room receded into darkness and Jonathon fell into the images that developed in his own, or some others mind. He found himself in a room with no doors or windows. The dark-eyed child struggled desperately against it bindings in a cot in the centre of the room. Its terrified cries pierced his heart. He was visibly alone with the child. But he felt that suffocating multiple presence he had felt on the rooftops all those years ago pressing in on him again. As Jonathon adjusted to the surroundings into which his consciousness had been drawn, he realised was not in a room at all, but standing in a sphere of light suspended in pitch darkness.

He knew too that the child was not a child, but even so its cries seared his soul, it touched him and drew him away from reality. He watched as the child screamed, its face turning blue, as its bonds restricted its circulation. Soon it would cease to cry and die. Just as the evil in the city would die as its source of sustenance was removed when it found itself trapped in the Power Reservoir. Jonathon wavered at the edge of reality - was the child real or not? He began to weaken, his grasp of the real and the unreal slipped slowly into one another. He felt a powerful inner compulsion to cease the child’s suffering, release it from its bonds. But he knew what it symbolised and what such an act would mean for him. This was more than a mental image. He heard a murmuring of voices and could see a circle of shadows detach themselves from the pitch blackness which had him trapped. They advanced but

did not venture into the sphere of light.

A hysterical woman’s voice cut through the murmur. She pleaded with Jonathon.

“Release the child, surely the goodness in you must prevail, you cannot let it suffer anddie; you of all people.” Jonathon detected a taunt of mockery in the voice. She continued, her tone starkly different now It accused him. “Does the good boy murder children then!” Voices from the darkness rose in agreement as the child’s howling grew in intensity, it plaintive cries cutting into Jonathon’s heart. He held firm. It was not real! he told himself. A man’s voice rose above the growing tumult around him.

“Bah!” he spat. “You are no better than us then, does this avatar condone the murder of children.......what will you do for an encore......eat its sweet raw flesh? ‘Tis you who are different Postlethwaite, you who are sick.”

Jonathon felt a pang of self doubt, was it real? The circle of light around him drew in closer, the shambling, shadowy figures moving in towards him. Now he could see their grey faces, their dull red eyes lit by his own shining soul. He illuminated this place deep in the heart of darkness himself! And here were the faces of the dead, non-departed souls of Dubh surrounding him, gaunt and drawn skeletal faces, contorted into visages of pure evil and hatred.

They pressed inwards around him, his protective aura of purity flickered and wavered as they pushed against its borders. They were intent on him. Trying to break him down, to get him to doubt who and what he was. If he wavered from his cause they would engulf him and he would be lost. He would never return to the body which slept in Rislo’s hideaway.

“Jonathon” a voice whispered, yet it cut the muttering accusing souls to silence. Jonathon looked in the direction of the child’s cot to see an old man stooped over the child, a shining blade in his liver spotted arthritic hand. It was Cornelius. The old man smiled.

“It’s an illusion built from your own thoughts. The child must die.” Cornelius brought the knife down in a savage arc into the infant’s chest, the howling child jerked and convulsed and was silent. The spirits around them hissed, then slowly turned their backsand retreated into the obscurity of the all-enveloping darkness.

Cornelius came across to Jonathon and stood before. “I have nothing to lose in my actions, if you had released the child you would have condemned yourself to inaction, your conscience would have been distorted. You would never have been able to carry out your tasks.” Cornelius smiled and attempted to touch his Grandson, but his spirit hands slipped through his Jonathon’s outstretched palms.

“Forget the tortured souls here, they are beyond redemption, they built their own hell and forget me. There is no way you can help me here; and there is

much work I can do.” Jonathon’s Grandfather sighed and moved away, slowly walking back, to the spirit world of Dubh where

he would be imprisoned forever, if Jonathon succeeded in his plans.

Cornelius did not look back. Jonathon watched him go, transfixed as Cornelius merged with the darkness and then a voice echoed from the void.

“Do as you must and do not falter, you must brush these evil beings aside. They are lost and irretrievable, destroying them is not an act of evil. ”

The voice faded and Jonathon’s mind blackened. He became aware of a vigorous shaking, fear washed over him in great waves, but it was not his own. Someone was shouting frantically and from the distance, a terrible, soul tearing howling, invaded his consciousness.

When he opened his eyes, it was Rislo who was shaking him, his eyes staring wide at him in fear. Jonathon awoke fully and heard the terrifying, soul chilling, banshee howl which reverberated in distant passageways.

“What is it Rislo?” He stammered.

“The Tallmen are coming.” he blubbered in acute fear. “And they bring, they bring their Turkanschoner.”

Chapter Ten

Rislo only half right with his statement concerning the presence of the Tallmen and the Turkanschoner. In fact only the beast he feared so much had now stalked him in the maze of tunnels beneath the Hall of Machines.

When the Captain of Rislo’s watch had realised that the misfit in his platoon had deserted his post, he had considered pursuing him himself, but he had other ways with which to spend his time. Tonight, the human traders known as the High Hat’s were due to arrive with a fresh consignment of human females for their pleasure and the deserter Rislo would not prevent him from having the choice of the finest wench. No, the Turkanschoner would do the job efficiently enough alone he thought. No-one would mourn the death of the miserable misfit Rislo, so why waste time himself being dragged through cold, damp, underworld by a beast half crazed with hunger?

The Captain had therefore led the huge misshapen, half-human creature on its chain to the entrance to the Tombs and released it to do its job alone in the darkness. He slammed down the stone trapdoor and had forgotten Rislo and the Turkanschoner before he was half way back to the Towers, pre- occupied with the prospect of tonight’s entertainment and confidant in the abilities of the predator that meant certain death to its deserter prey, once it had acquired his scent.

The Turkanschoner crouched in the darkness alone with the scent of its future victim on a piece of clothing attached to its collar. The beast did not fear the darkness for it could see nothing. It did not hear the echoes of its talons scratching neurotically at the stone floor for it could hear little, except its own muffled howls which were transmitted through the bones of jaw and skull to its inner ear. All its sensory consciousness was concentrated into one capacity; its incredible sense of smell. The Tallmen had conditioned it to hunt by this sense alone, its reward was food, the living flesh of the victim whose scent it was locked on to and pursued.

It crouched low in a paved passageway, its permanently arched back bringing its elongated snout close to the ground. The beast’s spinal column arched in a series of sharply defined and protruding metal vertebrae, clearly visible due to the emaciation of its lean and jaundiced flesh.

Its yellow skin was stretched dry and taut over efficient, lean muscles and protruding bones and joints. If it could have stood upright it would have stood the height of a tall human being, once it may have been able to do so, but now it stooped low in a deceptive gesture of servitude, bowing to the cruelty of the Tallmen and the steel rod which had been surgically implanted in its back to permanently bend the beast to its tasks.

Long arms terminated in huge hands with slender, yet powerful fingers that concluded in savage, almost surgical talons. Its feet where large, its toes splayed unnaturally outwards and equipped in a similar way to its hands.

The creature’s neck was long, thin and incredibly supple, capable of turning through almost three hundred and sixty degrees and supported a large, intelligent looking head. From the beast’s head, fine wisps of grey hair exploded in long tufts from a heavily scarred scalp, hair that flowed down over sunken eye sockets, which continually oozed thick, white mucus onto a powerful muzzle and jaw, supporting two pairs of wickedly sharpened and huge incisors.

A long tongue, which assisted its sense of smell, now lolled out between its teeth as it sought to establish the location of its prey. The beast’s nostrils flared, the scent was strong and fresh and the presence of another scent did nothing to confuse it. The Turkanschoner moved forward, adopting a scuttling gait, almost treading directly in Rislo’s footprints as it ventured into darkness that exploded with a panorama of scent and purpose.

The Turkanschoner thought nothing of the fearful atrocity it would perform when it caught up with its prey. It had no conception of failure, since it had never failed But it felt uneasy today, uneasy with the freedom it had. mThe usual choking and restrictive chain was absent, as was the scent of a handler close by, but the presence of another scent, along with that of its prey, reassured it of some normality. It began to reason to quell a rising inner fear. The other scent, the one not its prey, it decided, would command it to kill today. The scent was ahead not with it here, but this did not matter, the other scent must be the master There was always master to command it to kill or reward the Turkanschoner when it had captured its prey... wasn’t there? Today, it decided, would be the same as previous hunts, the `other’ would command. Its reasoning satisfied the conditions of the hunt that were etched into his mind. Things were different today, but it could still pursue its tasks to a satisfactory conclusion. All the right elements where here, it was just that they were not in the right places it deduced; but soon they would be.

Assuring itself of an adjusted normality, the Turkanschoner howled excitedly and sped in pursuit of the two people ahead of it, the discomfort concerning its freedom and the different circumstances of today’s hunt rationally dispelled. Soon it would eat and all would be well.

Chapter Eleven

Jonathon heard Rislo’s anguished words as he was literally shaken back to the edge of reality, but it took him several moments before he orientated himself completely. By this time the Tallman was frantically packing possessions into his large pack, visibly shaking and sweating, beside himself with fear. He noticed Rislo’s uncontrollable trembling as the giant hastily lifted a heavy steel beam onto its wooden stays to bar the door. He muttered unintelligible obscenities as he struggled until, at last, the beam dropped noisily into place.

Rislo leaned back against the door, his eyes closed, terror etched across his forehead, temporarily relieved.

“That ought to hold them for a while at least.” he squeaked, his voice breaking with fear. As he picked up his now bulging pack, he grabbed the groggy Jonathon by the elbow and dragged him roughly across the room, kicking aside a pile of boxes to reveal a natural fissure in the rock wide enough for them to slip through.

Rislo fumbled nervously with his light orb and eventually fixed it to a clasp on the end of the black rod attached to the chain on his belt.

“Come on my little friend, we have scarce time, the door will not hold the beast for long.”

He dragged Jonathon down the uneven and steep rock crevice until they emerged into a larger fissure that levelled out before them. Jonathon, the exertion bringing him back to full consciousness, now felt the fear, which oozed from the Tallman. Feeling stronger and more alert he detached himself from Rislo’s arm and trotted

behind the long striding giant. He could now hear the echoing screams of anger and frustration as the Turkanschoner met with the door Rislo had secured. The beast’s howls seemed to be all around them, coming from ahead and behind as the devilish echoes found their way around the labyrinth of tunnels, caves and fissures they had travelled to their ears.

Rislo’s anxious face was covered in beads of perspiration, partly from exertion, partly from fear. He turned and indicated to Jonathon urging him to move more quickly.

“Come friend, move faster, we must find a way out of here quickly it will soon be upon us” he panted.

“But where do we go, we can’t run forever! Why not fight them, take them by surprise.” Jonathon replied. The gasping giant stopped to catch his breath.

“The thing that pursues us, me in particular, is both faster and stronger than both of us. Hiding is impossible. It has only one intention - which is to tear me limb from limb and feed upon my flesh. That is how it is trained to deal with deserters like me. If we get to the surface we may have a chance. I do not think its handler will risk pursuit in the human city.” Rislo wheezed heavily. “This Tower of Lepers, your home, where is it? Perhaps we can seek refuge there? I will be safe from both the Tallmen and the humans.”

Jonathon nodded in agreement, they would be safe there and he himself, confidant on his own territory.

“It’s close to the bridge that leads across the river to the Upper City, at the top of the rise on a street which leads from the bridge. But how do we get there from here? I’ve no idea of where we are! ”

Rislo rummaged in his pack and pulled out a crumpled parchment covered in clear plastic.

“I have a map, a map of all these underworld ways and the gates and tunnels which lead to the surface.” he pushed it toward Jonathon. “The surface streets are superimposed in red, the ways we now walk in blue.

These black dots are old water wells, empty now, perhaps we may find one that leads to the surface near your Castle of Lepers.” he looked hopefully at Jonathon.

Jonathon took the map and peered at it carefully, taking note of the distinctive landmarks. He found the bridge and traced the red lines of the street with his fingers until he came to a large block, isolated on all sides by wide streets that stood apart from the rest of the city buildings. A black dot appeared within its walls.

It made sense Jonathon thought. The lepers rarely ventured into the city and the well was obviously not dry - it was their water source.

He looked up to the giant who was peering nervously back along the tunnel they had travelled and from where the sound of splintering and crashing of wood now echoed.” Rislo, where are we now? “he asked.

The giant turned and, after a moment of deliberation, pointed to a blue line which snaked roughly towards the well that led up to the Castle of Lepers.

They were less than two hundred paces from it, moments from sanctuary. Rislo’s eyes widened.

“We are close then! We have a chance! “he cried, after Jonathon had explained their location relative to the Castle of Lepers. Jonathon nodded and smiled weakly. Rislo’s face brightened with hope. He clasped his hands together and looked upwards. “Then let us thank God! ” he proclaimed.

Jonathon raised his eyebrows. His Grandfather had spoken of God. Memories of Cornelius’s thick, black leather bound book filtered back. The memories dissolved quickly as Rislo grabbed him again and dragged rapidly him along the rock strewn fissure in the direction of the well shaft.

After a short while, Rislo stopped dead and looked anxiously around him.

“It should be here, but it should be here!” he shouted disappointedly, fear returning to his voice as the Turkanschoner’s excited howls echoed around the tunnels, seeming to get closer every time they heard them. Jonathon also expected the well shaft to be blatantly obvious, situated on the map halfway across the tunnel they now stood in, but there was little to indicate the presence of a well shaft here. Frantically Rislo began to examine the walls and floor around the spot they had stopped. The light from his orb showed nothing that was different from normal.

Now the giant began to scratch and scrape furiously at the crumbling walls. At one point the wall bulged slightly outwards. Running his fingers in the compacted dust that had accumulated over the years, he found what he was looking for - stone mortared blocks, hidden beneath the dust that curved slightly outwards from the rock wall.

“Here!” he shouted, laughing excitedly. “It is here!” and began to tear at the blocks with his bare hands attempting to find a loose one and gain access to the well shaft. But the blocks were secure.

Rislo pushed Jonathon aside and lifted the black rod that hung on the chain from his belt. He twisted the rod and the orb’s light changed from its currently soft, yellow illumination to an angry, burning red.

“Stand back Jonathon” he warned, retreating several yards from the position of the well shaft and then crouching low. Jonathon joined him.

Pressing an unseen trigger on the black rod caused a bolt of blood red energy to leap from the orb to the brickwork of the well shaft. A loud explosion hurled brick and mortar fragments along the tunnel covering Rislo and Jonathon in dust from head to toe.

The roar of the explosion reverberated along the tunnels of the underworld and could still be heard after the debris from the blast had finally come to rest. A wall of thick dust obscured Rislo’s handiwork and caused the pair to cough harshly. But the dust did not settle on the ground, it was moving horizontally into the dark hole left by the explosion. There it streamed up the shaft rapidly on a current of moving air, drawn upwards, soon clearing the dust particles from the confines of the tunnel.

Now the dust had cleared, but the air was still being sucked strongly into the well shaft. Rislo and Jonathon moved cautiously towards the hole where the force of the moving air tugged at their clothes and hair.

The Tallman returned his orb to normal usage and pushed it into the shaft, leaning in himself to peer upwards, his long, red hair streaming vertically with the strong air flow. His eyes widened as he looked upwards, a look of dismay fell upon his face.

“There is a terrible fire burning up there. I can see its glow. The fire sucks in the air, it must be very intense to create

such a draught.” Rislo shouted over the roar of the air into the shaft.

Jonathon felt cold. If the Castle of Lepers burned, what of Milly and the others? He remembered his vision, the High Hats faces reflecting fire. Flax!

“We must go up Jonathon!” The Tallman implored as he looked back along the tunnel as the latest scream of the Turkanschoner hardly echoed at all, it was that close now. “We have a choice, burn or be torn apart, but there is a third choice.” He said as he leapt into the shaft and wedging his long arms and legs against its sides and moved upwards, his pack dangling below him.

His rate of ascent was quick for one with such an ungainly physique, adrenaline giving him the strength he need. Jonathon followed.

He was not big enough to brace himself the way Rislo had done, but he found easy hand and footholds amongst the coarse stonework. Craning his neck upwards he could see the small circle of bright orange light, which was the fire blazing around the wellhead, hundreds of feet above him.

The roar of shifting air in the tunnel made spoken communication between the two impossible, so Jonathon attempted to make a telepathic link with the Tallman above him. The climbing giant was concentrating intensely on his foot and handholds and this made Jonathon’s probing difficult. He was also in a state of profound panic and fear, a barrier that anyone with less than Jonathon’s telepathic skills would have found impossible to penetrate. Rislo refused to communicate, but Jonathon could read his thoughts and emotions, see the memory pictures that now flowed vividly into his mind.

Scenes of carnage filled Rislo’s mind, the aftermath of the Turkanschoner’s missions. Death was not clean with this predator, it tore and ripped into the flesh of its prey indiscriminately with no will to end life quickly or indeed any knowledge, since it was not a natural killer.

All it desired was to feed and it was conditioned to the hunt and the feast at the end of it. Hence it did not kill as such, it fed on its still living victims until they died of shock or blood loss. Rislo felt that there was no hope, above was a furnace and below the pursuing tearing teeth and claws of the beast. He was desperate, he felt trapped. He had used the one emergency charge from his light orb and would probably have missed if he used it on the Turkanschoner.

But he did have his other option, a choice of how he died. He giggled mentally to himself. He would climb as far as he could up the well shaft and then throw himself down into the abyss. Who knows, he thought, he might even take the Turkanschoner and his Tallmen pursuers with him?

Rislo laughed outloud manically.

Jonathon was finding the climb easy, he had been trained well and was accustomed to such feats of exertion, so much so that he found the ascent almost effortless. But his mind raced to find a solution to their present dilemma. Rislo, he knew had accepted defeat, about to give up. The Tallman saw his situation as hopeless, but Jonathon thought differently. He would never give up hope. He considered his options. He could do nothing about the fire which raged above them, but he might be able to fight the beast which pursued them, not physically but he had other weapons. His trip into Rislo’s memory had revealed its strength, speed and blind ferocity, but it had a brain, a mind, he could engage that.

He knew from Rislo’s knowledge of the creature, that usually it needed to be commanded to attack by its handler who cast a file of liquid to the ground that stimulated its feeding frenzy. Above all he knew that the minds of the Tallmen pursuing Rislo were vulnerable to his powers, he might just be able to stop them. He would try them first.

Jonathon stopped climbing and sent out his mind probing, searching for the Turkanschoner’s handler. He found no one except the beast. It was alone. How could it carry out its conditioned response without someone to initiate it? he puzzled. He swept into the beast’s mind to find it filled with bloody intent, its primitive instincts driving it forward in its initial task of capturing the Tallman deserter.

It had just entered the well shaft and knew its prey was above it. It continually checked the scent it followed with the scent on the clothing tied to its neck. Jonathon probed deeper and found the beast to be very intelligent, it was no mere predator at all, but it was driven by the primal desires - fear and hunger, its intellect was paralysed and bound, primal instincts drove it.

It feared the pain of punishment if it failed. It hungered because the meals it was fed, at times other than when it captured its prey were vastly inadequate. It was kept in a state of virtual starvation that always gave its instincts for self preservation supremacy over the moral codes it did possessed deep within its mind. Codes from another time and place.

There was something strange about the Turkanschoner’s mind; much was missing or hidden. It had few memories and its primitive instincts were followed uneasily, an underlying tension existed in its psyche. Jonathon realised that its mind had been altered, conditioned. And now, as it neared the capture of its prey, it faced an almighty dilemma. It needed to feed so badly, but knew that to act in a way other than it had been conditioned meant punishment and not eating meant pain of hunger and starvation.

Now Jonathon heard its thoughts, it yearned for its master to give it the kill scent. But its master, its Tallman handler, was not here. Jonathon pondered a while. He delved into the creature’s thoughts again in an attempt to unravel its confused mind and realised that it genuinely thought that its master was here with it. Jonathon spoke to the beast, his words drifted gently into the beasts head.

“Who is your master? Where is he? ”

The Turkanschoner stopped its ascent of the well shaft abruptly when the strange voice rang out softly in its head. A wave of fear ran briefly through its mind, and then it answered.

“Him up with it” came a nonsensical reply.

“How can he be up?” Jonathon continued his query and the beast attempted to explain.

“Turk obeys master always or pain comes. Here is scent prey. Here is master who is not prey. Me always have master. Always with me. Master commands, no master, no food - no Turk, so prey here yes - other must be master

- yes?” it seemed to ask for a confirmation of its simple

logical deduction from Jonathon.

Jonathon quickly realised that the Turkanschoner thought that he Jonathon, the ‘other’ scent, was its master. Jonathon, it seemed had been adopted in the absence of its handler in order that it might capture its prey and be able to feed within the behavioural confines of its programming.

He decided to try and command it.

“Turkanschoner, I am your master, you must go back to the Towers now.” he ventured naively.

“Cannot!” came the immediate reply. “Must eat or Turk dies, always eat now, never not eat now.” it replied.

Did the Turkanschoner always eat its victim, Jonathon thought. Surely there were times when the pursued needed to be taken alive, what then?

Jonathon probed Turk’s mind and amongst the gory memory scenes of it feasting, were other times when its prey survived. On these rare occasions the beast was rewarded with a meal that satisfied its hunger. He wondered whether the Turkanschoner’s conditioning would hold if it were not fed now. He feared it would not. The creature had completed the hunting of the prey and waited to be fed; how long would it wait until its instinct for self-preservation broke the bonds of conditioning and took the food it needed in the form of Rislo’s flesh? But perhaps, just perhaps, Jonathon realised, there was a slim chance.

He opened his eyes and was startled by what he saw. The Turkanschoner was there with him, its damp nostrils flaring close to his face, its crudely stitched up eye-lids bulging as its eye balls moved rapidly beneath them. The large, but emaciated beast’s arms and legs were braced astride Jonathon as it held onto the side of the well shaft. Jonathon stood, back to the wall on a narrow ledge, staring directly into the Turkanschoner’s horrific visage.

Its protruding hound-like jaws sported huge oversize incisors that dripped with saliva, a long pink tongue lolled to one side over loose brown and yellow dappled lips. Here were the perfect carnivorous jaws of the ultimate in killing machines but, as Jonathon studied the beast further, he saw that all was not what it seemed.

The razor sharp, serrated cutting side teeth showed file marks where someone had modified the original herbivorous molars into the terrible saw blades it now possessed. Its gigantic dagger-like incisors were completely artificial, as were its extended jaws. The teeth were crudely crafted from steel and riveted into place on a metal jaw that was screwed into the original one. Rivet and screw heads were clearly visible. This poor creature was no more a natural carnivore than Jonathon or Rislo were he deduced, it had been physically adapted and mentally conditioned by the Tallmen into a retributive weapon. The method of conditioning had left its physical marks too. The creatures skull was criss-crossed with vivid white scars which had destroyed the hair follicles in places and forced the rest of the Turkanschoner’s hair to grow in great, grey tufts and ragged tails which cascaded down its high fore head and long elegant neck.

Its ears had been savagely removed, torn messily from its head and the apertures plugged with wax. Its senses had been reduced to those of touch, taste and smell. Jonathon guessed that the creature, which he now knew had once been more than a beast, had originally had a good sense of smell, and the Tallmen had worked to accentuate this by depriving it of sight and hearing.

But Jonathon saw more than any other person could. He had seen both its face and brushed soul with his psychic probing; both were tortured landscapes of pain and suffering. The Turkanschoner moved its right hand down and touched Jonathon’s face lightly, a long taloned finger stroked his jaw. In its mind it echoed Jonathon’s unique observation, knowing that he would hear it.

“Pain, my life forever pain.”

The Turkanschoner’s lolling tongue disappeared into its mouth. Sound gurgled in the back of its throat and, to Jonathon’s surprise, words escaped in deep, guttural tones.

“Command to kill. Turk hungers. Must eat now!” it pleaded with Jonathon. When Jonathon did not respond, it asked again. This time Jonathon felt its conditioning to follow order coming under severe pressure. “So hungry, must feed soon, hungreeeee!”

Jonathon re-established his telepathic link and spoke to Turkanschoner.

“No killing today Turk, I command you not to kill.”

The beast visibly flinched, baring his lips angrily and revealing more, but smaller artificial incisors attached to his artificial jaws between these two principal weapons.

“Then you feed me! You command, you feed, you master - I find Tallman runner - YOU FEED NOW...or I kill, can’t help. FEED GOOD NOW!” the beast screamed indignantly at his new master’s injustice.

Jonathon’s mind raced, he had no food. Then he remembered Rislo’s pack. Had he packed food? He was, after all, prepared for a long expedition. He shouted up to the giant who had hidden in an alcove, created in a section of collapsed well shaft wall just above him. Rislo’s silhouetted head peered anxiously down at him and the stationaryTurkanschoner.

Rislo gasped out loud.

“Have you packed any food?” Jonathon called up to him.

The Tallman stared blankly at the Turkanschoner whose mouth was dribbling with saliva. One way or another the beast would soon feed.

“Rislo! Food! All it needs to stop it now is to be fed! ” The Turkanschoner raised its head towards Rislo and saliva seemed to boil back out of its jaws. Its nostrils flared. It moaned. Rislo disappeared briefly and reappeared with a bundle of large black sausages which he tentatively lowered down to the Turkanschoner. The beast snatched his prize from Rislo and lowered his face to Jonathon.

“Pain, so much pain, master helps good.” it groaned “Me kennel now? " it asked innocently. “Help master again?” The beast’s ‘master’ sighed with relief and closed his eyes. “Yes, go now” Jonathon said mentally to the contented hunting machine. When he opened his eyes, the beast had gone. Jonathon was massively tired, drained of mental and spiritual energy. The Turkanschoner’s abyssal soul had drained him of it. He climbed up to the alcove where Rislo crouched and slid along side him. The giant looked at him wearily.

“I thought I was going to die, I was convinced, I was falling apart. Has it really gone?” he whispered, in case it had not. Jonathon smiled weakly.

“Yes, its gone, you’re safe now” he reassured the giant, then closed his eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Twelve

After pursuing its prey to a satisfactory conclusion, the Turkanschoner did as was expected of him, he began an obedient journey back to his kennel in the city of the Tallmen. He did particularly like the idea, but his conditioning carried him back as far as the Tallmen Crypts before he sensed something strange and stopped in his tracks.

He was a beast trained for the hunt and his latest task had been an unusual one, he thought to himself and that free reflection in itself, he realised, was what made this return journey different as well. It was not that unusual to be rewarded with food rather than be allowed to dine on his captured prey - but to remain alone and off his steel chain was. His restricted, yet intelligent brain, puzzled over his present situation. The master had not returned with him, a new and different master who was not a Tallman and did not speak with a whip. Who spoke with words inside his head instead of pain?

The Turkanschoner felt the tapestry of scars which where woven across his skull, he liked this new master. He liked the freedom he had given him. He liked him more the than Tallmen who gave him his life of pain. He hoped he would call him again with the words inside his head because he, the Turkanschoner, would readily respond.

There was still a mental link between the Turkanschoner and Jonathon, even though there was no telepathic contact between them at the moment. The beast’s deprived senses had also resulted in the heightening of his latent psychic abilities, a small strengthening of them which resulted in the Turkanschoner being able to retain a mental link with his new master despite Jonathon breaking his connection.

Even the beast was not fully aware of this bond, since it was at a subconscious level, yet part of him clung on to it like a lifeline, that part being the soul or spirit that was submerged below the Tallmens’ conditioning. It was something which would drive the Turkanschoner after Jonathon because the brief spiritual and psychic contact which had been made between the two had already begun to unravel the Turkanschoner’s conditioning and eventually, would enable the being chained inside the killing machine to resurface.

Even now the beast intuitively knew that the new master must not be lost. It just knew that the master was a better alternative than the Tallmen and it deduced that returning to the Towers was not a good idea or even a necessary one any more. The unravelling of the Tallmens’ conditioning had begun.

In the meantime Turk roamed the Tallmens’ Tombs around him. The smells of long dead Tallmen intrigued him. He pushed open the nearest door and lurched in, his nostrils flaring to examine the odours around him. A death scent was here, but a different scent than that given off when he had killed his prey in the past.

The Turkanschoner entered a tomb and leapt on to the bed of the dead and ancient Tallman who lay here. He examined the dusty bones as the large, sightless skull regarded him impassively. He scratched the dome of white bone with his razor sharp talons and listened to the bone scream and then felt the mass of thick scar tissue of his own scalp.

In his mind something snapped, anger flooded through him, dim memories slipped through the net of conditioning, memories of his real past; dim, distant memories of a free and past life. War and destruction! Capture! Torture! The pain, so much pain! A new life of pain and nothing else! They did it, the Tallmen.

Anger swelled inside of him and his muscles twitched, filling with blood, fuel for the venting his anger. He tore the mocking skull and its frozen, arrogant smile from the neck vertebrae and hammered it against the wall repeatedly until it disintegrated. The Turkanschoner then turned his attention to the skeleton and proceeded to break each bone with a

great satisfaction.

His anger was slowly diffused. He laughed a hollow, satisfied laugh which amused him. His own laughter had been an alien experience to him in the hands of the Tallmen, yet he had heard their cruel laughter on every occasion they had replaced the sealing wax in his ears. He thrust a talon into his ear and levered the hardened wax out and suddenly cringed expecting pain to follow. But then he realised that he was alone now, there was no one here to punish him.

He laughed again and the noise of these

long absent hollow vowels came echoing back from the walls of the crypts. The sound was so different from the noises that came to him through the bones of his skull – so much more vital. He unplugged his other ear and listened to the long lost world of sound in stereo. Suddenly he began to realise the true nature of his existence as a being that was part of a world, rather than being a closed world to himself, alone with only his thoughts and his feelings. He existed, he was! His spirit soared with this strange revelation. He was! And he could be more again! There was another sense which he was deprived of too, his sight. He knew that his eyes still functioned, the Tallmen had never blinded him.

The difference between light and dark had always registered through his eye lids, but he had never needed this information, why should he? He was a beast who could smell the time of day. But there had been brief moments when the stitches which had held his eyelids together had broken, giving him a tantalising glimpse into the world of shape and colour.

The Tallmen had never blinded the Turkanschoner permanently because they had used his sight as a channel through which to condition him and re-condition when the time arose. With the use of hypnotic lights and patterns, the past was buried and the mental entity that was the Turkanschoner was sewn into his mind. He was conditioned with images of torn and motionless corpses This was death. This was his task. He was a Dealer of Death, their detterent for traitors.

The Turkanschoner gently pulled at the stitches in his eyelids. It hurt fearfully, but the pain did not deter him. Blood dribbled down his cheeks and onto his snout. His nostrils flared in recognition. The pain was intense, but nothing to a beast who had inhabited a world of pain.

One by one the stitches were removed from his sore and bleeding lids. He howled when his talons accidentally poked into his eyeballs, blood and tears streamed down his cheeks, yet he persevered because the reward would make it worth it. Finally all the stitches had been removed and his eyes were fully open, but he could see nothing. He hammered on the floor in a fury, the pleasure of sight had been taken away from him. They had blinded him!

He leapt to his feet and began to tear the room apart. The infuriated beast began to hurl all that his claws fell upon against the walls and floor of the sunless crypt, revelling in the glorious cacophony of breaking glass, a symphony of smashing pottery, the crunching of bones, ringing metal and splintering wood.

He laughed when he picked up a new and heavy object. He would destroy this too, what sort of noise would it make he wondered? The new object was strangely familiar in his hands, recognised at a different level of being, an unconscious level. At one end he felt a leather pommel and above it a cross piece that prevented the object from sliding down and out of his hand. Gripping it tightly, the Turkanschoner hammered the object into the wall. It did not break, but the ceremonial sword sent a shower of golden sparks flying into the air. The room flashed into light for an instant and the Turkanschoner was suddenly paralysed.

He blinked in the darkness. He struck the blade against the wall again and the steel and stone surfaces combined to repeat the feat and sent sparks flying onto the clothing strewn across the floor. A small flame was born, it flickered unsteadily, unstable, as yet not fully established amongst the dust and mouldy fibres. New impressions entered the Turkanschoner’s brain.

Now he understood why he could not see before and laughed a laughter which was manic and hysterical ironically reverberating in the tunnels around the tombs of the Tallmen and drowning out even the hum of the engines above, as the Turkanschoner was born again amongst the resting places of his dead masters.

The small fire was growing amongst the shredded rags of a funeral shroud in the centre of the room. The Turkanschoner examined the flame. It seemed to him to be alive, it was eating the cloth and turning it into thousands of floating ash particles. He experimented cautiously with other materials when the flame seemed to be dying. It could not eat bone or glass, but wood and leather were consumed steadily and made the flame stable.

The fire grew larger and hotter as he added more consumable material. He learned how to control the size of the fire by rationing its fuel. The bright flames fascinated him. He watched for hours, seeing shapes in the flame, faces even, some familiar, some grotesque and frightening. Lost memories were stimulated and flickered into his consciousness. A city was burning! He wondered if the fire would attempt to eat him and he thrust his hand into the flame, withdrawing it with a yelp as his flesh blistered.

Memories clawed their way back. The Tallmen came and cities burned. He was angry at the fire. He had given it life and now it repaid him with pain. The Tallmen were in the city, flames reflected in their mirror armour as they came and they killed.

He howled at the flames in derision, but they just crackled back at him in mockery. He grinned a hellish grin. Very well, he thought, he would let the flames starve. The Turkanschoner’s attention drifted from the ungrateful fire and he began to study the broken articles around the room. All the dead Tallman’s possessions had been laid with him in the tomb and most of the breakable items had been broken.

He examined golden jewellery and silver chain and discarded as useless. He was searching for something. He picked up a sword from the floor. It was plain and functional, smaller than the great heavy ceremonial sword of the Tallman.... Swords were no use against the blood fire of the Tallmen..... it felt balanced and familiar in his hands. He swept it through the air this way and that..... unless you got close.....and he had.....He knew how to instinctively use it. It made the air sing, it made him happy, feel more complete, he would take it.....like they had taken him and forced him into a world of pain.

There where throwing knifes here too, in a shoulder scabbard, nine of them and the Turkanschoner knew this was right. His face darkened with recognition. These were trophies. He took them back into rightful hands.

Looking around him, the light of the fire illuminated a life-size relief of a Tallman. The Turkanschoner mimicked the pose as best he could, before hacking off its nose with his sword. He picked up a short leather tunic and put it on. It felt good, it kept away the chill of this place. A suit of finely linked chain mail was discarded - too heavy. He selected a leather helmet with huge, curling ivory horns and put it on, expertly tying up the complicated leather buckle beneath his chin.

A large leather belt was next to be donned, after he had bored extra holes so that it fitted around his thin waist. He recognised the sword’s scabbard and attached it to the belt and slid the weapon home.

A brass bossed shield was soon slung over his back and the Turkanschoner felt relaxed. He felt at home with these swords, shields and daggers, they felt part of him, part of what he was... had been. He had lost so much.

Home, a misty memory came to him of open vales surrounded by tall, cloud topped hills and dense pine forests. Men, dressed as he was now, ran towards the columns of black smoke on the horizon, they shouted in fear. Bells tolled.

“To arms, the Gate has been breached!” Swords and shields flashed in red light of a rising winter sun. He was with them. He felt their fear and their excitement. They shouted and screamed as they ran.

For a moment he was there again. The memory faded. The Turkanschoner sighed deeply, tears welling in his eyes. Such memories had tormented him before, slipped away from his grasp and he had remained incomplete. But today they had been more vivid and prolonged. He knew that part of him was lost, buried within in him, the Tallmen had taken it in exchange for their gift of a colony in their empire of pain. He shrugged his bony shoulders and chipped away the rest of the Tallman’s face from the relief. He stood silent and stared at the faceless Tallman, then spat on it.

“Bad, all bad.”

The Turkanschoner moved over to the bed and lay down. He was tired, today had been a strange day. His head ached. Something was happening to him he realised, doors had been briefly opened in his mind, doors that had been bolted and barred for as long as he could remember.

He sat upright and dozed, the past still filtering through from where it had been buried and now manifesting itself in the form of dreams, some which caused him to growl and hiss in his sleep, others which caused him to weep.

He awoke with a start. A subtle shift in consciousness alerted him to the fact that his new master was awake and moving. The now clothed and armed Turkanschoner trotted into the corridor and sniffed the air. He glanced once at the way which led back to his cage in the Towers of the Tallmen, then the hunched backed warrior turned and lurched into the dust and darkness which would lead him back to the well shaft, his shield beating like a battle drum against his bony shoulder blades. He knew he must not, could not, lose contact with his new master for he held the key to all the Turkanschoner had lost. Already precious memories had begun to escape into his consciousness. He had a vague idea of how he came to be here, who he was and what he had lost to the Tallmen.

But there was more. His master Jonathon would open new doors for him he knew and, in gratitude, theTurkanschoner had already sworn a secret silent oath of undying loyalty to him.

Chapter Thirteen

Rislo had woken from a fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep with a jolt. Slowly he realised where he was as the horrific images of teeth and talons faded from his mind. He trembled involuntarily, his teeth chattering, his breathing shallow and irregular as the physical effects the nightmares of the Turkanschoner lingered in his body. He remembered that the beast had gone. Jonathon had got rid of it somehow. He looked now to see the young man who had saved him slumped in a deep sleep against the alcove wall.

Collecting his thoughts, Rislo remembered why he was here. His plans had taken a detour. The moving of the machine from his hideaway had been the focal point of his arrangements. He had been intent on stealing the final component and then transporting it and the machine to a location close to an escape route in the shape of a dimension door.

Now his plans were in disarray. It would not be that simple. Jonathon’s friends needed to be contacted up there, above the inferno. They might even be dead, but he knew Jonathon would need proof before they carried out their plans to the full; and then there was the problem of the Field Imploder’s location.

It still remained back in his secret workshop, it needed to be dismantled and brought here. Then he had to take the Power Reservoir, that final and vital component from the city of the Tallmen. He decided while Jonathon slept, that each of them should attend to their own tasks. He would return to the Towers, steal the component and dismantle the Field Imploder. Jonathon would search for his friends.

That way each would complete their tasks in the places they where familiar with and neither would become a hindrance to the other. He still worried about the threat of the Turkanschoner, but the initial threat seemed to have passed. He would have to take his chances he decided, and hoped it was now safely locked up in its cage in the Tallmens’ vaults.

When his young human companion woke, Rislo informed Jonathon of his plans and, seeing the logic in his argument, Jonathon agreed. Rislo continued. They would meet again in Rislo’s bolthole in two days time and then, all being well, they would take the machine a convenient location and finish the task they had begun.

If one of them did not return, the other would carry out the plan alone. If it was Rislo who did not return on time then he indicated to Jonathon that he would leave maps of the dimension door locations and details of the rate of travel through them. He would disclose the location of the Power Reservoir in the City of the Tallmen and how to assemble and use the Field Imploder. Rislo had planned thoroughly. Sixty years of careful research had been set into action by Jonathon’s contact with the giant, but now, after a few hours together, they would part, with the chance that they might never see one another again.

The two allies hesitated at the edge of the well shaft. The upward air current had ceased, indicating that the inferno above had considerably lessened in intensity, if it had not been extinguished all together.

Jonathon looked up to see only a dim glow of pale daylight above and felt it safe enough to venture upwards and towards his darkest fears. He feared the worst, but had to know the fate of his friends. Without any evidence of their fate he could not give them up easily.

However, his strong his desire to fulfil his oaths against the city and Silus Flax suppressed any feelings of premature grief. There was a spark of hope though. If the fire had been accidental he felt that the Whisperers would have escaped it easily. But he remembered the vision of the High Hats, their necks inclined upwards toward the sky and the orange glow on the face of a rat faced man. A trap sprung?

Even then there was still a good chance that Milly, Dale and Tefkin could have used their superior physical abilities and knowledge of the roof tops to avoid capture, or worse. “Anyway” Jonathon asked himself, “Why would these High Hats succeed where the Tans had for years failed?” An unwelcome answer, a one-syllable name, echoed inside his skull. “Flax”.

Rislo shook him gently from his private fears, with a large reassuring hand on his shoulder

“Let us go. There need not be any farewells for we shall meet again shortly.” he said, with a slight tremble in his voice, despite the optimism of his statement.

Jonathon nodded, smiled and launched himself up the well shaft. The Tallman watched Jonathon disappear rapidly up the shaft as he himself descended back into the abyss. Rislo descended slowly and cautiously, he was not a trained climber like Jonathon. The coarse, crumbling bricks cut into him as he moved painfully, hold by hold, downwards. A strange and repulsive odour grew stronger the farther down the shaft he went. As he neared the bottom the smell was nauseating and almost unbearable. He adjusted his light orb to send a beam of light downwards in an attempt to locate the source of the stench.

Sealing the exit at the bottom of the shaft was a heap of dead lepers. Their corpses were blackened and broken. The smell of death’s relaxation and that of burned flesh were enough alone to prevent Rislo from moving any farther down the shaft without the physical problem of getting past them.

While Rislo and Jonathon had slept, the lepers had made their desperate plunges to escape the flames. There were perhaps a dozen or so, sealing the breech in the shaft, but the well probably extended hundreds of feet further into the ground. Hundreds must have leapt to their anonymous deaths to fill the shaft and neither he nor Jonathon had seen or heard a thing as the lepers had hurled themselves, in a silent resignation, to eternity.

Rislo was poised to begin another ascent when he heard the sound of movement from below. A shiver ran through him. Surely not, he thought. Surely none had survived. He watched petrified as a corpse slid sideways and out of the well shaft, then another and another. Then he heard a demented moaning, accompanied by a violent retching.

“Argh, bad smell, bad, bad” Words drifted up to Rislo. Someone was clearing the shaft. Another corpse exited and a hole appeared something entered the shaft. Rislo shone his beam onto it.

A horned head stared upwards, eyes narrowed in the orb’s light, massive incisors glinting in the beam as they protruded from its snout. Rislo stared at the Turkanschoner. The beast launched itself towards a petrified Rislo, scrabbling towards his position at furious pace, tearing away bricks and mortar from the well shaft walls as it searched for footholds.

The Tallman braced himself for impact and a talon rammed into his thigh; his life now flashed before him. His bladder gave way.

The Turkanschoner had no intention of devouring Rislo. The creature desperately attempted to escape the vile odours of death Rislo had begun to retreat from, magnified a thousand times by his own highly sensitive olfactory equipment. Consequently it climbed as quickly as possible up the shaft and used Rislo’s thigh as a useful foothold on its way up. The Turkanschoner disappeared into the dim light above him, retching and coughing as it went.

For a moment Rislo stayed still, then realised the beast had gone. He gasped and dropped downwards, landing softly on the dead bodies below and clambered out of the shaft and began to sprint as fast as he could from the smell of death and his personal nightmare embodiment of it, the Turkanschoner.

He ran and ran until he could run no more, until his heart threatened to smash out of his chest and his lungs explode. Eventually he fell to the damp stone floor in exhaustion and gasped in lungfuls of stale, but gratefully odourless, air. Then he threw up.

Slowly he recovered from his exertion and his shock in the well shaft. He had been sure that the creature he had encountered was the Turkanschoner, but why was it still here, was it still hunting? A grave thought slipped into his mind. Was it still hunting him? Had the stench of the leper’s corpses confused it?

Rislo walked slowly back towards his refuge trying to regain his composure. If he had not met Jonathon he would still be back in the Towers - safe from the beast, he thought. He could have made this journey alone and slipped unnoticed out of a dimension door when he was off duty, he would have had plenty of time.

But now he was embarked on some insane and dangerous mission, allied in some maniacal cause which, when it came down to it, was not his own. His thoughts of regret gradually subsided. He owed it to Cornelius Postlethwaite for making him aware of the Tallmens’ unopposed slip into the vile pit of depravity and corruption the human population of Dubh was already immersed in. And, of course, Jonathon had saved him from death at the hands of the Turkanschoner or even his own suicidal hands.

He could not forget these things. He would endeavour to pay his debts. But the dark seed of doubt that had been cast in his mind by the stress and fear of the past hours remained, nagging him.

Rislo was not a brave soul. He was no natural hero. With these thoughts Rislo quickened his pace towards the place from where he had become an outcast and a dangerous rebel. He increased the intensity of the light orb, it seemed to be getting darker here, the shadows around him growing deeper, physically pressing in on him; and it was so cold, his breath turning to a nebulous vapour as moved onwards. Something in the darkness laughed, and Rislo shivered and began to run.

Chapter Fourteen

Jonathon crept out of the wellhead into a dim twilight that lit the remnants of the building that had been the Castle of Lepers. The great shell of the building still stood but its walls, blackened by smoke and cracked by the intense heat, seemed ready to plunge inwards at any moment.

Not one floor or even a piece of wood remained in the building. The fire had consumed all. Jonathon waded, knee deep, through a black and grey ash, unaware that the ashes of thousands of lepers lay beneath his feet, mixed with the carbonated remains of the building’s one hundred stories. There was little sound here now, except the cracking of contracting brickwork as it cooled to its normal temperature. The great drunken crowd, which had gathered to watch and actively take part in ensuring that the diseased occupants of this place were properly incinerated, had drifted away once they were sure the last of the lepers had been consumed by the purifying flames or leapt hundreds of feet to the painless sanctuary of the

cobbled streets below.

For the few who survived the leap, the attendant mob gleefully helped them on their way to another hell with stones and clubs. All in a day’s entertainment in Dubh. In the streets now, the lepers smouldering remains lay in the heaps where they had fallen. No one made any real attempt to remove them. A squad of Tans had been assigned to the task, but were more intent in rifling through the clothing of the dead for booty than attending to the job of disposal, despite the risk of disease. Eventually, when they had completed their pillage, they would attempt to carry out their task by soaking the bodies in oils and setting fire to them.

Jonathon peered up from the floor of the building. The concrete roof remained intact. He doubted his friends were up there now, but it seemed the right place to begin his search. He took to the blacked inner walls like a fly, his taloned gloves and bladed boots finding easy purchase amongst the cracked and fire damaged brickwork. Within minutes he was half way to his roof top goal.

Down below the Turkanschoner watched. From where the hunched and horned shape hid near the wellhead, Jonathan looked like a fly. The Turkanschoner watched in awe, his huge jaws agape with astonishment. His new master was indeed a talented one he mused. However, wherever he went the Turkanschoner would follow. He could not lose him, because to lose Jonathon was to lose the opportunity to continue to find himself.

Jonathon soon found himself close to the rooftop. He found a window and straddled the ledge. Down below he saw that several small fires now burned amongst the heaps of grey rags that surrounded the building on all sides and had once been its occupants. A group of Tans occupied with the cremation of the bodies below, laughed hysterically as one of their number accidentally set light to oil which he had spilled on himself and danced a frenzied jig as he attempted to extinguish the flames. No-one helped him, they stood and watched the new spectacle in state of intense, morbid amusement, as the unfortunate man slowly and noisily lost his battle with the engulfing flames.

Jonathon did not remain to watch the tragic outcome of a battle between man and this essential element. As the man’s pained screaming terminated he completed the final part his climb on the outside of the building and dropped on to the roof top.

In the centre of the roof the intense heat from below had burned everything combustible. The shack he had called home for so long had gone. The smaller tiled roofs around the rooftop had gone too, collapsing inward as their wooden supporting slats had burned through.

Slowly he skirted the roof edge where the concrete had not been so badly cracked. He found nothing to suggest that his friends had perished here. Despite the heat damage he knew that he would have found at least their bodies. Evidently, they had not been here, he decided.

As he prepared to leave the rooftop he checked that the trampet on the east side outrun was undamaged. It was not. Crouching and concentrating in preparation for his run up, he heard a stifled moan. Jonathon’s heart pounded. He moved quickly around a chimneystack to discover a smouldering bundle of dark rags crawling slowly towards the roof edge. The charred, black coat and badly burned, still smouldering, hob-nail boots identified the man as a High Hat. Jonathon stepped in front of the man who peered up at him.

The luckless High Hat’s hair had been burned away and his face was a mass of oozing blisters. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw the Whisperer and he managed to smile through painfully cracked lips.

“Flyer” he croaked. “We missed you then after all, ha ha.”

Jonathon knelt down beside the man, holding a hand to his mouth and nose as the sickly smell of roasted flesh wafted up to him.

“What about the others?” Jonathon asked sternly,

although he felt some compassion for man. “Where are they?” The High Hat coughed raggedly, spitting up blood and black mucus.

“Escaped, captured who knows? I don’t care” he coughed, pain racking his body. “Soon as we roused ‘em by settin’ fire to the place, they flew over there - then the bastards below forgot us! Let us burn!”

The last words rattled in the man’s throat, but he coughed life back into his body again. He lifted the gnarled, blackened stub of a hand on to Jonathon’s knee, the protruding bones sticking into his thigh.

“Do us a favour mate,” he groaned wheezing thickly. ” Just take me to the edge.” Jonathon dragged the High hat to the edge of the building and propped him up to look across the smoke-shrouded city. “I can’t move, I never asked no-one for ‘elp before flyer-man. Now push me off! I can’t do it me self” he pleaded. Jonathon hesitated. “How many flyers did you see?” he asked.

The badly burned man was pre-occupied with the pain from his heat crippled chest again, but he heard Jonathon’s question.

“Three. Three! “he gasped. " Just chuck me over you bastard” he groaned. The Flyer restrained himself from throwing the High Hat over the buildings edge. It was the humane thing to do perhaps, the High Hat would not last much longer, but he needed more information.

“Which way did they go” he asked calmly.

“East! East! you cruel bastard!.” the slowly dying man croaked. “Kill me now!” he wailed.

“Who did this?” Jonathon asked, his calmness was beginning to dissolve; a trap had been set here. He shook the High Hat by the shoulder, who howled in agony as his taloned glove blades slid painfully into his braised flesh.

“It was Caldecott. Amaril Bastard Caldecott.” he grunted as pain reverberated through him. “Do it now.....Please.” the smouldering High Hat gurgled, as a new haemorrhage of pain erupted in his withered lungs and sent a piercing shaft of agony through his chest.

Jonathon mused over the new name, Amaril Caldecott. He asked the tormented man, who had begun to wheeze even more noisily, who this person was. He began to answer, but the name he spat was enough to spur Jonathon into action.

" Flax’s...”

The High Hat had no time to finish his explanation as Jonathon tipped him over the edge. The High Hat laughed as he fell, but his young executioner had no time to listen. Flax! Jonathon thought, why send his minions to attack the Whisperer’s now? He could only be after him....

But why bother? Apart from that brief, but intense, encounter years ago they had never met again. Why should Flax want to do this now? Unless, of course, he knew of his plans; the only way he could know was if the evil alliance Jonathon suspected existed between Flax and the soul of the city was more intimate than he thought.

Jonathon shook his head in resignation. Flax was more than its tool. They were fearful allies who co-ordinated attacks at both a spiritual and physical level. He realised that the closer came to his goal, the worse things would get - all his friends were vulnerable

- the City and Flax would try to get to him through them, if he repelled their attacks. Who would be attacked next? Much depended on Rislo now, would It attack him. Could Rislo resist It.?

Walking backwards carefully to the centre of the roof, fearing the badly cracked concrete might give way under his weight, he lined himself up on the eastern outrun. The High Hat’s words concerning the fate of the Whisperer’s echoed inside his skull. “Gone, captured, dead” Jonathon shuddered. He did not welcome the prospect of finding his friends or Milly dead. This Amaril Caldecott’s plan had been clumsy, but effective. He had some how got men to risk the Leper colony and get on to the roof, and for good measure, set light to the Castle of Lepers to force his friends to flight. How many grinning High Hats would have been waiting for them on the surrounding roof tops, just waiting for his friends to leap into the trap?

Jonathon visualised them, a seething black mass of coats and top hats closing inas his friends took fled their sanctuary their grubby hands molesting Milly.

Anger flooded through his body. “Flax!” he snarled. He had again sought to deprive him of those he loved. Jonathon shook his head in fear and fury as tears rolled down his cheeks. A meeting was long overdue, he thought, he could no longer allow this creature to destroy all those he cared for. Then a terrible realisation struck him. If Milly, Tefkin and Dale were dead then there was only his recent acquaintance Rislo left, he had no other friends - Flax would have taken them all.

Jonathon sprinted hard towards the ledge and hit the trampet hard and accurately. Obligingly, it propelled him high into the space between the two buildings. Rolling himself into a tight ball to increase his momentum, he somersaulted twice, before spreading himself against the rushing air to glide onto the tiled roof before him. His taloned gloves drove into the tiles to anchor him securely. Jonathon lay still, listening for sounds of movement around him. If the trap were still set, his arrival should have sprung it, but no sound of scrambling boots came toward him. No musket shots disturbed the still air.

The Flyer climbed to the roof ridge. A cough from below caused his heart to pound. A murmur of voices drifted up to him, indicating that at least two people were still present below him. Jonathon positioned himself carefully so that he could see down onto the parapet below, but took care that he would not to be visible from their position. There were to High Hats standing guard over two crumpled bodies at their feet. He could not see who they were or if they were dead or merely unconscious; but the way they lay was ominous.

There was only one way to find out Jonathon decided. Two to one were not bad odds if he took them by surprise. The two High Hats stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs to Jonathon. One had a musket slung over his shoulder, while the other prodded the body nearest to him with a short sword.

Jonathon calculated. If he leapt from the roof ridge he could hit them both and possibly immobilise them with the force of impact. He steeled himself for the leap, adrenalin began to course through his veins, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he felt they must surely hear it.

He took a deep breath and hurled himself down at them. The impact felled both High Hats. He hit them hard with arms outstretched. His gloved left hand struck the sword bearer in the neck as he instinctively turned around to face the danger that registered in his subconscious.

The Flyer’s taloned glove hooked into his neck, tearing loose a lump of flesh and severing the jugular vein and brachial arteries. Jonathon’s right fist caught the other less perceptive High Hat a glancing blow across the back of his head. With a loud clatter all three fell into the tiles.

Jonathon was himself stunned by the impact, but scrambled to his feet first and turned to face the fatally wounded High Hat who had managed to raise himself to his knees before him. His gaping neck wound pumped blood into the air as he struggled vainly to staunch the flow with his fists as his life drained from him. He looked at Jonathon accusingly and gasped, gurgled and choked as the blood from his wounds poured into his severed windpipe. His lip curled in anger.

Jonathon was shocked and appalled at what he had done. He had naively hoped that he would have been able disable the two without inflicting such a hideous injury as he had done. The click of a musket hammer being cocked shook him back to his senses. The musket man smiled a mouthful of rotten teeth at Jonathon as he levelled the weapon at his head. He laughed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

His smile drained away as he realised that the damp powder charge had failed to ignite. The High hat fumbled, cursing the perpetual Dubhian drizzle, attempting to cock the musket again but Jonathon’s boot hit him hard in the groin and he doubled up to be hurled into unconsciousness by Jonathon’s knee as it rose under the luckless High Hat’s chin. Jonathon trembled after the speed and ferocity of his own reactions. A mixture of fear, triumph and regret caused his heart to pound hard in his chest again. He in panted heavily, but it was a few minutes before his muscles stopped quivering and his legs felt solid again. He sighed deeply. The dubious prize for his success was the freedom to examine the bodies the two High Hat’s had guarded. They were Flyers and they were dead.

He knew who they were before moving from where he stood. Dale was closest, doubled up, his white face drained of blood. As Jonathon moved toward him he realised that Dale’s usually serious expression had been replaced by a thin smile. Death, it seemed, had released him from the shame of his secrets. He was truly at peace now and he had taken others with him judging from the amount of blood on his gloves and dagger.

Tefkin’s pale face was much as it had been in life. His toothless grin greeted Jonathon as he turned over his limp body. His eyes were half open, but the intense sparkle he had possessed in his blue eyes had been extinguished by death.

A brief, cold wind blew across the roof tops, quickening the tears, which were beginning to well in Jonathon’s eyes. He remembered his happy years with his two dead friends and the fact that they had rescued him from the clutches of Flax only, to die at the hands of his minions. Jonathon sat and stared in shock for half an hour as grief began to well up in him, then crumpled to his knees and cried for them unashamedly until he drifted, exhausted into a shallow sleep.

In the dream, Jonathon ran with them across the roof tops laughing at the attempted pursuit of the High Hat’s. The Whisperer’s flew like birds from roof ridge to roof ridge, safe in the knowledge that nothing could touch them; this was their world, their domain. But something had, a dark laughter invaded his dreams.

Jonathon woke suddenly and grief fell upon him like a leaden overcoat. A name burned in his head and iIn his heart .Milly! He leapt to his feet and searched the roof top for her. Perhaps she had eluded them. He had found no sign. She had not died here!

The rotten toothed musket man had begun to stir from his enforced sleep and Jonathon accelerated his return to consciousness with the feeling of the cold steel of his dead comrades sword at his throat.

The man staggered to his feet, his chin balanced on the sword tip. He looked his antagonist in the eyes and spat out blood and the remnants teeth on to the blade. “Where’s the girl! ” Jonathon growled. The High Hat slowly shook his head, a surprised, innocent look on his face. “What girl!” he gulped incredulously.

Jonathon pushed the sword tip into the skin of the High Hat’s throat, a dribble of fresh blood ran down the sword blade to meander around the broken brown teeth which rested there. He waved his hands in protest. “Please sir.” he begged, " There was a young boy,

I suppose a boy, but we didn’t get much chance to find out” he chuckled thickly. The humour quickly evaporated as the sword tip cut fractionally deeper. He grunted in pain. “Caldecott took him to Flax. Flax wants the boy Flyer real bad.” he said smiling. “Look mate” he begged, but a cunning glint appeared in his eyes. “I had no part in any of this I never killed no-one. Take the sword away and I’ll tell you how to get ‘im back, I know stuff, y’know.” The sword remained at his throat.

Jonathon was not that naive.

“Just tell me where she is, or I’ll kill you just like you killed my friends.”

The High Hat stepped backwards, repelled by the venom in Jonathon’s words, but the sword followed him. Now the High Hat was frightened, a strange brightness burned in this Flyer’s eyes - it scared him.

“I told Caldecott that one was no boy.” he blubbered. “But he said no girl got such fine muscles, so firm.” the High Hat shrugged his shoulders " Caldecott’s eyes isn’t so good you know and he said he had no time to lose, before Flax went, he had to claim his reward "

Jonathon jabbed the sword point into the High Hats neck again and he yelped. “Okay! Okay!, there was a big meeting at the Leopard on Chain Street, all the big knobs went, Amaril had to take the boy, err, girl, some party or something, he had to go quick like.” Jonathon stared into the. man’s eyes - it was the truth. He could feel it. But he could also feel the hatred rising in his prisoner too. Given the slightest opportunity this man would kill him.

As he looked at him the High Hat’s eyes continually

glanced over Jonathon’s left shoulder. The High Hat nodded. It was the oldest trick in the book and Jonathon fell for it.

For one brief moment he took his eyes off his prisoner and dropped the sword a fraction, it was time enough for the High Hat to pull a stiletto from his coat sleeve and slash at Jonathon’s face.

Instinctively Jonathon stepped backwards, but fell over the corpse of the other High Hat, the sword flying from his hand. His assailant fell on him in a flash. A hand around his throat and the stiletto was poised above his chest, the High Hats’ eyes burned triumphantly as he laughed, spitting blood from his broken gums onto his would be victim’s chin.

“Fell for it wanker! Who’s on top now then flying man? You gonna beg me while I cut off your bollocks - you hurt me you did!! “Then, with a jerk and surprised shriek of pain, the High Hat crumpled forward, dead on top of him.

Struggling free of the High hat’s dead body, Jonathon saw a throwing knife buried deep in his spine. He scanned the roof tops and saw the Turkanschoner staring down from a roof ridge, mumbling to himself.

At least Jonathon thought it was the Turkanschoner. Now he looked and seemed different from the naked and savage beast he had encountered in the well shaft. Now he was dressed in a leather tunic, his belt stuffed full of throwing knifes like the one which had killed the High Hat. A great shield adorned his back and a monstrous horned helmet sat on his head. He was now more than the creature which hunted out of desperation and bent to the will of his Tallmen tormentors. Jonathon saw that he had clothed and armed himself but, more importantly Jonathon felt that the Turkanschoner was now more than a trained animal which had wished to feast on Rislo’s flesh and fulfil his fiendish programming.

The Turkanschoner smiled, at least attempted to, although the effect would have sent many running in fear of their lives, but Jonathon recognised that he had nothing to worry about and now the appearance of large, brown eyes did much to soften his fearful visage.

“Bad man” he spat. “like Tallmen " he pointed a talon to the corpse. Smell of badness, we kill all badness master? he grinned again. Jonathon shrugged, heavy with grief. During his previous encounter with this being, Jonathon had seen little to threaten in the soul of the Turkanschoner – he was not evil. The only threat came from his undoubted physical abilities as a perfect merchant of death, propelled by his pain inflicted conditioning.

His new master had been able to glimpse more of the beast’s past than he himself had been able to recall himself. He was a warrior, but had a sense of justice and an abhorrence of unnecessary violence. The Tallmens’ conditioning had changed all that. He had seen himself as a predator that lived for the hunt and the rewards it had brought, his own survival. But now this part of him, the Tallmens’ conditioning, was fast unravelling, prompted by Jonathon’s catalytic psychic contact.

The Turkanschoner was not entirely aware of this. He only knew that he owed this unique person something, he believed him to be the master now, a good master who had rewarded him with the strength to partially free himself from the mental chains of the Tallmen.

He now saw Jonathon as a master who himself was a warrior as he himself had been, but did not know it. He felt an empathy with him and would fight with him against Jonathon’s enemies the malignant soul of Dubh and its dark champion Silus Flax. But the beast saw something else in this young white knight. The purpose and will to destroy his enemies were there, but something else still stood between him and the actual perpetration of the ultimate act of destruction at which he would eventually arrive.

The beast saw that the young man doubted he could do it, doubted that his morals would allow him to send the millions of beings here in Dubh to their deaths, despite their corrupted souls. He had not yet the strength to judge and damn them. This disturbed the Turkanschoner. It would mean defeat for Jonathon and victory for the dark force which had consumed Dubh if he did not find the power to take that final step. He would lose his master and with him the hope the beast placed in him for the momentum for the salvation of his own soul and past Jonathon had already, albeit inadvertently begun.

Jonathon saw all these fears reflected in the mind of the Turkanschoner, who had looked into his soul. The servant beast implored his master to become carry out his oaths, to crash through the barrier of self doubt. The monstrous creatures brown eyes beseeched him to strengthen his resolve. Jonathon felt a soft, grey mocking laughter drifting up from the city.

“Yes, become like us, become like me Me.”

It knew too, It listened to his thoughts…always. But how could he do it he asked himself! How could he commit such an act of mass murder and not become one with the city itself? In such an act he would lose himself, defeat himself His eyes met the Turkanschoner’s. Something flowed between them and the City’s laughter was silenced.

“Love, honour, justice, compassion - It knows nothing, people are lost forever, know nothing but pleasure, pain.” the beast said.

“But I am not a God, I cannot judge and condemn them all.” Jonathon replied.

The Turkanschoner snorted cynically. “No god here, God is dead, only you, Avatar - must do duty! ” it implored again. Jonathon reeled back from the beast’s mind in shock. Something was happening there again, he felt a power there. The lost being, that was before the Tallmen captured him, was reconstructing itself, aided by forces beyond Dubh.

The beast knew of love and all the virtues and more it had managed to recite to Jonathon, and it knew of the quest for spiritual perfection. Now fragile memories began to surface like flotsam from a ship in the dark river itself. The pleasant memories came first welling up warmly and attracting similar fragments.

At first it was pleasurable, but the intensity was alarming, long buried treasured relics lost their dust and began to blaze inside the Turkanschoner’s mind and soul. These too stimulated Jonathon’s memory. He remembered Dale and Tefkin, his Mother, his Father and Cornelius in better times: better times. Jonathon knew the price that was always paid for these memories. He knew what shadows trailed in their sparkling wake, he knew what would happen to the Turkanschoner, he had not experienced these memories for many years. They had lain dormant and emotionally volatile, buried beneath the Tallmen’s conditioning. Jonathon had lit a candle in the darkness of the beasts buried self. The Turkanschoner would soon have his past; if it did not destroy him first.

Jonathon remained in mental contact. He thought he could help. A vanguard echo hit them, a mere breeze of emotion which Jonathon knew was a prelude to the hurricane which would hit them soon and for the Turkanschoner, hit unaware, unprepared.

Then the newly recollected storm of terror and grief struck surged into both their minds, the deep vaults of the shackled past exploded through the fractures Jonathon had made with his probing - the past emerged, intact and terrifying.

The Turkanschoner had lost all in one night of violence and atrocity. His family his wife, his people. His sanity. His faith. His freedom ... Himself. Jonathon heard a silent scream beginning deep inside the battered soul of the Turkanschoner, long before it was to manifest itself physically.

Then it tore vengefully into the heart of the city. A howl of enlightened anguish that hammered the un- hearing walls of the Towers of the Tallmen and reverberated around the domes of the Halls of Machines. Yet no one in the city, apart from Jonathon paid it any attention.

In the city it was just the sound of another collapsing, despairing soul that had been heard a million times before. Jonathon’s catalytic gift had cracked the great dyke which subdued a great reservoir of emotion in the beast’s soul. Now that dyke had heaved and collapsed. The Turkanschoner had the past he feared he would lose with the loss of Jonathon back now, but Jonathon feared he had destroyed him. Guilt lanced into Jonathon’s heart like a hot iron. He could not stay to see what he had done him. He fled, hurling himself across the roof tops with a wild, reckless abandon, a man possessed by the guilt of what he had inflicted on the unsuspecting, trusting Turkanschoner, one ofthe few beings still unaffected by the foul soul of the city and he, Jonathon Postlethwaite had destroyed him.

Jonathon raced without rest deep into the Lower City.

Eventually he stopped, physically and mentally exhausted and as he finally finished weeping himself, he listened and the wails of the still distressed Turkanschoner drifted across the city like a siren, cutting into his heart. He looked down to the street below. Unconsciously he had found his way to Chain Street.

An Inn sign hung like a beacon. The only thing left between himself and self destruction was down there somewhere and he had come here unconscious of his own desperate attempt to save himself from his pain. His flying feet had found the way, carried him to the place where he might restore balance in his own grief stricken mind. Down there was his hope, his love, his handhold on reality and his sanity. Down there was Milly. Jonathon began to weep again. Far across the Lower city, the howls of the Turkanschoner abruptly ceased.

Chapter Fifteen

Rislo’s trembling had almost ceased by the time he reached the passageways which led to the Tower’s of the Tallmen. When he thought that the beast, the Turkanschoner, had passed inches from him without tearing him to pieces he gasped in relief. Yet the memories of what it could have done caused him to weaken at the knees again.

He stood, alone in his bubble reassuring light for a while to collect his thoughts, then took a deep breath before continuing into the tombs of the Tallmen. His orb light, set a deliberately low level, picked out the sparkling dust and ash particles left in the air after the Turkanschoner’s savage desecration of the Tombs. He tip-toed quietly amongst his resting kinsmen, even though his respect for them and their society was, like these Tallmen here, long dead. He felt like the only survivor of a long lost culture of pride, honour and dignity, yet was still shocked when he saw the damage wreaked in the tomb by the Turkanschoner.

The gently shifting layers of smoke from the now dead fire still lingered in slowly shifting layers over the wrecked possessions and smashed bones of the Tallman who had been laid to rest here. Rislo stared in disbelief, noting the clawed footprints in the decades of dust on the floor and wondered how such sacrilege could have occurred.

The Turkanschoner was as much part of the society of the Tallmen as the Tallmen themselves, even more so since he was under a strict mental discipline. Something was sadly wrong, but Rislo realised that that ‘wrongness’ was that which had saved him from a grisly death at the hands of the beast. The creature should never have been let loose in the tombs on its own and its training should have returned it directly to its cage in the Towers and it should never have accepted orders from anyone else but its handler.

Rislo looked around the desecrated tomb and shook his head in dismay then turned and continued his journey back towards the Towers and his mission there. He became extra cautious now. Soon he would be back within the grasp of his failing brothers. He was a fugitive from their justice which demanded normally that he be captured and, if possible and returned to face a deserter’s death in the time honoured tradition of the Tallmen - the garrotte.

The rebel giant avoided a direct route back and after he had passed through the Tombs, for he feared that he might run into maintenance crews beneath the Halls of Machines and so turned right until he entered a small forgotten shaft that led steeply downwards to the lowest levels of the Dubhian underworld far below the Halls.

He squeezed down the passage and, after an hour or so, emerged into a maze of cobbled streets, illuminated by his orb light and revealing part of the original city annexed by the Tallmen hundreds of years ago, which spread out beneath the Halls and their city. Once it had been inhabited, but as space in Dubh had become scarce, the great Machine Halls had been built over this place, almost sealing it off forever. The roof of this world was a network of hastily placed gigantic steel and concrete beams supported by the rows of deserted, terraced houses below. In places the houses and beams had collapsed and had been hastily jacked up with iron pylons and pillars, creating a forest of steel and concrete that

supported the levels above.

The people of this place had lived here for a while until they could no longer stand the lack of air and light. Some had chosen to die here but nothing remained being devoured by the voracious rats who had made this realm their own. Rislo could see them now hissing, squealing, scrabbling and dancing on their hind legs in the shadows outside of the puddle of light created by his orb. The Tallman rebel had explored here before and found little to trouble or interest him. Yet, as he now stumbled amongst the fallen debris from the unstable ceiling, he felt the pressure of surveying eyes. A cold chill rah through him causing him to shiver, as if he had been stroked by many icy hands. Yet no physical breeze lifted the dust of antiquity here.

He moved quietly, his desire to escape this subterranean ghost town’s streets increasing with every step he took. He stopped and looked around him. Countless pairs of dull red eyes surveyed him, blind watchers, their useless retinas reflecting back the light of his orb.

The blind observers no longer scuttled around him. From every vantage point on bare window and door frames, piles of debris, even from perches high in the roof their sightless eyes watched, their pale and almost hair-less bodies, jostling for position to experience a rare spectacle.

Rislo heard a hissing noise which was steadily growing louder and causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. He realised what it was. It was the sound of air being sucked into millions of moist nostrils and through wagging whiskers pointed in his direction. On the stagnant air of this underworld street, every single rat examined Rislo, they saw the intruder with their noses as clearly as he saw them with his eyes.

As Rislo moved on, the rats escorted him, leaping from their ledges to form one great rolling, rustling mass of hairless, scabby flesh that swirled around him just out of his circle of light until he paused again.

The giant stopped and studied them as they studied him. He was surrounded. Many of the rats were as huge as dogs. There had not been this number when he had last ventured here. They watched and, Rislo now realised, were waiting.

They seemed reluctant to enter the sphere of light he stood in. He was sure that if the light was not here they would simply attack him. He chuckled confidently and twisted the orb’s staff to reduce the diameter of the light circle, his sanctuary. The rats shrieked in delight and raced inwards toward him, following the receding edge of light inwards towards their prey until Rislo reversed the beam and the light spread outwards, snaring a few within the sphere of light.

Their shrieks of expectancy turned to squeals of pain and terror. They leapt high into the air and fell squirming in agony to the floor when the light touched their sensitive skins and caused it to erupt rapidly into blisters and ulcers. There was a dull fizzing sound around him as the rodent’s eyes exploded, and soon the ground within the light was littered with the dead and dying creatures, mist-like legions of fleas departing their bodies for a new living host.

When the pool of light reached its maximum extent Rislo sensed the sightless creatures’ attention shift from him to the new source of potential food he had created

around him. The rats waited patiently for Rislo to move on.

As he advanced and the darkness closed in behind him, Rislo heard the rush of advancing paws and the screech of the disabled rats as they were despatched by their brothers and sisters, whose ability to adhere as a social unit evaporated with the smell of burned flesh and the rising of the most basic instincts that told them that to eat was to live.

Rislo left the rats to feast upon one another and advanced directly beneath the Halls of Machines. Here the roof was supported by a great thick forest of huge vertical pillars of stone, concrete, iron and steel, a hastily erected, engineering Mirkwood. Here shadows slipped sideways and unseen things slid and crawled behind the cover of these artificial tree trunks, through which drifted a continual dust sent down by the vibrations of the multitude of engines which throbbed almost continuously above.The Tallman continued, confident in the maps and plans he had himself drawn up or stolen over the years, and soon found himself in a long, narrow alley that led underneath the Tallmens’ killing zone. The girders and beams thinned rapidly, since no great weight or important structures lay above. Ahead of him Rislo would find his entrance to the city of the Tallmen.

The buildings on either side of him were terraced houses, windows gone and door frames empty, the wood that had been there gnawed away and eaten by rats and the other unseen inhabitants of this realm years ago. A flicker of silver, grey light caught Rislo’s eye and, his curiosity overwhelming him, he moved in search of its source. He crept to a house and peered through the doorway and gazed in surprise.

A circle of whirling light was lodged in the rear of the building. Rislo knew that this rainbow whirlpool of colour was a dimension door, one which had not appeared on the maps the Tallmen made when they detected Field Wall anomalies from their control centre. And that was another thing Rislo realised. It was not in the Field Wall at all where such things were usually located. It was here in the middle of Dubh! He simply had to investigate, it might prove to be the very door he was looking for, to a world he dreamed of, a world he could live happily in.

The Tallman advanced carefully into the dimension door. He felt the tingling of his cells being realigned with the vibratory rate of the passage. Rislo moved slowly, adjusting his pace, well aware, as a Tallman of the consequences of a hurried transit. A few minutes later he emerged into a cave, which was the door’s exit in another world, and pushed aside the undergrowth to reveal the nature of this place.

A thousand new or long yearned for sensations hit him at once. The ground sloped away from the small cave to a bubbling brook at the foot of small, steep-sided valley. On the opposite bank thick scrub and undergrowth grew down to the edge of the narrow waterway, following it up and down stream as far as Rislo could see in the dim, silvery light of a new moon and the myriad stars above. At the top of the overgrown bank, opposite a narrow copse of tall thin trees was silhouetted by the neon night glow of a town - the top of a high, straight church spire confirmed its existence.

Rislo sat down on the dewy grass to take in all he heard, saw and smelt, touched and tasted. He laughed quietly to himself, watching his frosted breath drift moon wards as he listened to the background hum of night traffic far off and the sound of the occasional voice from the town beyond the trees. If he had found this gate before, thought Rislo, he would have left the Towers and Dubh long, long, ago.

There had been other doors which he had investigated, but they were to either desolate or hostile environments. The place he looked at now was different, something appealed to him. Yes, it was inhabited, but this was not Dubh, but perhaps these people here could accept him. His talents and skills might be useful here if their technology was inferior to that of the Tallmen. He would be useful and accepted, he assumed rationally and rather naively. This would be the place he ran to when the destruction of Dubh was set in motion, the others could come with him if they wished, and he doubted they would refuse.

Studiously, Rislo marked the position of this new door on his maps, although there was no need, and turned reluctantly to return to his tasks in the city of the Tallmen. He re-entered the Dubhian underworld and the cold blast of reality and fear of the coming hours hit him hard. His visit to the city of his kin would be dangerous to say the least. To fail was to die. But there was no need to fail or die or even try he thought. All he had to do was to strap on his back-pack turn around and disappear out of this world forever.

But there was Jonathon and Cornelius to consider now; he had vowed to help them, his conscience called to him. Jonathon had saved his life, Cornelius had saved him from a life of seemingly interminable loneliness that he might not have survived - both the Postlethwaites had given Rislo hope. He looked longingly at the whirling tunnel of the dimension door behind him. The shadows around him deepened and he shivered.

“Go, save yourself. You are all that matters, friend, both the beast and the garrotte await you here, go while you still can.” a voice whispered in the darkness of his mind so clearly he thought it in the labyrinths with him. “Go! The only friend and ally you have is yourself , you owe no-one anything.”

Rislo stood perfectly still, now he was convinced.

The City’s soul had become more powerful than he imagined, it had spoken to him. He owed it to himself to fight it. All his theories had been correct, it was systematically destroying and corrupting the souls of the Tallmen, his people! The city as a whole. He had to fight it.

A cold laughter echoed around the Underworld streets. “But Rislo, perhaps what you hear is your own voice, the voice of pure reason, rejecting the sentimentality of oath and allegiance. After all how can ‘nothing‘, that which has no body, no earthly vessel speak?”

Rislo screamed at the voice which was now inside his head.

“Be gone from me! I know you and you are not part of me!”

With this Rislo increased the power of his orb light which did little to sweep back the shadows around him and strode out purposefully into the dark street, then stood and faced the darkness in which seemed to flow in deeper, darker veins far back in the thick forest of jacks and beam below the Halls. He pointed a finger accusingly at It. “You may not be whole, but I can finish you forever! There is a great nowhere which can swallow you up and I can open the door!” he threatened the swirling blackness. Mocking laughter reverberated around Rislo.

“Die then fool, you will never escape this place and when you die you will be mine, coward. I have other business now, but I will attend to you soon. Till we meet again.......!”

Rislo was buffeted by a freezing wind which left frost crystals upon him and the area around him as they were swept by Its icy wake. For a moment Rislo shivered and then glanced back at the door again. He thought he heard Its laughter in the far distance. Its words began to repeat themselves in his mind.

Rislo screamed again and then began his journey towards the Towers. The rats did not reappear again as the Tallman walked slowly towards his goal. He knew that at the edge of this lost underground town there was a well shaft that was still in use by the Tallmen. In fact there were many which, unlike the poisoned and dry wells of the Upper and Lower city, still produced drinkable water. But, at the edge of the Dubhian Underworld there was a shaft which led almost directly up to the chambers where the Field Expanding equipment was housed and operated.

If he climbed that shaft at night, which was only hours away, the place would probably be deserted and secured to the rest of the city and, at the very worst, occupied by one usually sleepy technician. It certainly wouldn’t be guarded. The well-shaft would be capped with a large steel door, as all the other wells were, but now his light orb would have recharged itself enough to produce a laser cutting beam to burn silently through bolts and hinges.

He planned to move quickly to remove the spent energy reservoir he required and disappear back into the darkness he now walked. He doubted the technicians would immediately miss it, let alone pursue him into this hazardous environment. By the time they noticed the forced well cap and the theft, the world of Dubh would be literally be collapsing around their ears. He was close now.

The roof of this world lowered dramatically and dripping water which ran into small rivulets to feed the wide black and stinking pools and small lakes, which in turn, fed the Tallmens’ well here. Rislo skirted the pools, his reflection staring back at him as he looked into their impenetrable darkness. He watched as schools of large, blind, white whiskered catfish gently broke the surface, their large, mouths gaping in the air. He dangled a finger in the water and immediately the fish changed direction and swam towards him, their mouths agape and lips pulled back to reveal row after row of carnivorous teeth intent on making a meal of whatever had broken the surface of their lake.

The Tallman jumped backwards as snapping fish launched themselves into the air, searching not only for his finger but the rest of the body that was attached to it. After a moment, the thrashing of pale bodies subsided and once again the fish cruised leisurely in search of wayward rats or any other creature which floundered into their domain.

Rislo continued on his way, skirting the pools and lakes wherever possible. Where he was forced to enter the water he thrashed through quickly and noisily, but the fish now seemed reluctant to attack. Instead they merely gathered in bobbing groups, blindly tracing his progress from lake to lake and gulping in the debris from the sticky black mud his wild progress caused to rise from the pool beds. Perhaps they realised he was too big to attack Rislo thought, or maybe the light from his orb had the same effect on them as it had on the rats. Either way they kept their distance. And that was all he wanted.

Rislo’s explanations as to why they kept their distance were right. Yes, they disliked the light, but it did them no harm. Yes, he was to big for most of them to handle while he remained alive. So they had placed themselves strategically in the ponds and lakes. Their prey as still their prey, they sensed his movements in the water and on the thin bars of soft mud in between. He instinctively moved way from them through waters which looked empty. So, gently they guided him to the last and deepest of the pool which was black and cold and deep.

Rislo did not look behind as see the blind fish skipping on large powerful flippers from pool to pool across the mud bars which separated them. Rislo reached the last expanse of water and stood knee deep in oozing, oily mud at its edge. Beyond it the cavern ended and somewhere in the rock wall across the lake was the shaft upwards to his goal.

He looked at the lake before him. It was not wide, but there seemed to be no way around it, stretching into the darkness right and left. But it looked empty, not a single ripple broke its oily black surface, not solitary white fish broke its calmness.

Rislo sensed something odd, something sinister, about this lake. He was reluctant to enter it, but it was the only way to the rock wall. He could see no way around. He cast a glance over his shoulder and was amazed to see a great mass of white bodies, either floating silently in the pool immediately behind him or drawn up at the edge of the mud bar on which he stood. They did not move. At either side the scheming catfish had taken up positions at an equal distance from Rislo, he seemed to be at the bottom of a giant, glistening crescent which pointed its horns into the black pool.

Rislo shouted at the gathered fish and threw globs of heavy mud in their direction, but they stood firm. He turned the orb light to its highest intensity, but they did not move and their skin did not boil and shrivel. He looked back at the pool.

They wanted him to enter it. There was something there; just waiting. The Tallman sent his mind probing the lake bed. His powers were not in the same league as Jonathon’s, but they were enough to tell him that something lurked at the bottom of this pool. Something very large, but it was sleeping. Perhaps he decided, if he slid silently into the pool, it would not detect him. It was his only hope. A voice spoke inside his head again, but this time he knew its name, it was Fear.

“What are you doing here Rislo when you could have been away from this place hours ago?”

But Rislo knew that he had no option now. If he went back the mutated catfish might attack him in numbers. He would risk going forward. The giant slipped off his pack, boots and the heavy clothing which might have dragged him down. He bundled it all together and, with a truly gigantic effort, hurled it across the lake to the other side where it landed with a dull plop in the soft mud.

A yellow eye on the lake bed flipped open. Rislo slid his naked body into a silky coldness which quickly numbed all sensation rapidly. He moved his arms and legs slowly, attempting not to break the surface of water and bring whatever lurked below him, to the surface. He clenched his teeth around the orb light’s shaft which held in his mouth.

Below him, another eye opened and pivoted upwards toward the surface of the narrow pond it had, for many years, inhabited. It was not blind, it could see clearly that something had been driven to its lair; and it was amused.

The giant breast-stroked slowly and carefully. He was almost half way across now and, so far, all was well. Then a foot broke the water and Rislo sought out the mind at the bottom of the lake. It was awake and alert! Its consciousness directed towards the splash!

Rislo decided that now was the time to really swim, splashing no longer mattered. He launched himself into a furious front crawl and began to devour the yards to the other side. He sensed was moving now, cutting smoothly through the water like a knife. Rislo dragged himself harder through the water, his muscles protesting at the brutal demands of his mind.

Now the yellow eyed creature underneath the giant, its lower jaw slowly opening, it twisted its long slender body towards the shadow at the centre of the bewitching pattern of lights it had watched gliding gently at first, now

sparking brightly across the surface of the pool it had never seen before, only felt.

It was not blind and it had been treated to a once in a lifetime sensory experience which now had it in an ecstatic rapture. It had no intention of eating this beautiful thing in its pond, it liked it and followed it, twisting and turning, gyrating, dancing, with a fluid grace only such a huge eel could, to the rhythms of the ripples of light it now could see. It was mesmerised by Rislo’s light orb.

Rislo reached the far bank breathless and almost crying with relief. He had felt its terrible presence, felt its movement in the turbulence of the water beneath him. He looked back at the pool. A head the size of Rislo broke the surface. Two yellow eyes peered at him for a moment and at the leg that Rislo still had in the water. Then, with a slight flick of its head, it slid gently into to the water and back to its lightless isolation.

The Tallman dressed quickly and made his way to the cavern wall, searching for the well shaft that led to his goal. His heart still pounded his breath shallow and irregular. He had survived and now he tried to forget the terror he had felt by focussing on the task ahead of him.

Soon he found the dark crevice which marked the spot where the Tallmens’ well-shaft descended deep into the bowels of Dubh from their city. Rislo looked up. It was considerably narrower than the one he had ascended earlier, its sides roughly hewn in the hard bed-rock, rather than being made of brick and mortar. But his ascent would be easier today up the rusty, steel maintenance ladder which was bolted firmly to the rock walls.

Even though Rislo had intended to enter the city during the hours of darkness the Tallman night, his curiosity got the better of him. It would be early evening up there and the Tallmen would be largely engaged in recreational activities, rather than being conveniently asleep in their beds.

But the chamber above him would still be deserted, he hoped. Panting, despite his relatively easy ascent, the giant reached the well-head. Cautiously he pushed the well-cap door. It was not secured!

He lifted the door a fraction and manoeuvred himself so that he could examine the entire chamber. It was empty, it was deserted. Tools and equipment lay around the work tops, technician’s robes were thrown untidily about the floor. Not the usual fastidiously tidy state the chamber would have been left in at the end of a shift. At the far end of the chamber, opposite the entrance, a Field expander pulsed brightly as it dispersed its stored energy into the Field Walls. Along side it, the reserve machine stood ready.

To the right of these machines, a huge mass of gigantic cables entered the chamber from the generator halls of the Halls of Machines and disappeared into the charging room, where the electrical energy from the Halls was stored in the Power Reservoirs. The door was wide open and Rislo could see a discharged globe mounted and awaiting charge. In a few seconds he could be in and out of the chamber and away with his prize!

He took a deep breath and threw open the well cap door and leapt into the deserted chamber. The door’s hinges squeaked noisily and flew open with a loud clang which made Rislo’s heart stop momentarily. As he climbed out, his feet encountered something soft and he staggered forward and fell, twisting around to discover the body of a woman, a human woman, naked and severely beaten, lying in a crumpled heap against the well-cap, which protruded above the chamber floor.

Rislo slowly raised himself to his feet. There had been no Tallmen females in their societies, let alone human females, for centuries. They had disposed of the weaker, irrational sex once their science had allowed them to clone themselves. Freed of their burdensome sex, the Tallmen race had claimed to have escaped their biological strait-jacket and gone forward beyond nature. Science was then seen as the partner of the Tallmen, their counsellor and comforter.

Thus Rislo was stunned that the woman had been allowed to enter the city and had obviously been brutally violated in the attempt to satisfy some sexual craving here in the City of the Tallmen. He had observed that this place, its general standards, its own moral standards, had been slipping, but he did not believe that it could have already slid so far. It was a sanctuary from the perversity and corruption of the human world they shared here, things had slid yes - but this far, so quickly?

He had miscalculated; things had to be bad for him to find this woman here. The dark primal energies which had a possessed the bodies and souls of the human population were here. The Tallmen had succumbed. It was even worse than what he had seen himself.

His conclusions were confirmed when a naked Tallman lurched, staggering from behind the raised well head where he had been lying. He laughed at something unseen and then his un-focussed eyes came to rest on Rislo. His face and neck were scratched and bleeding and he slobbered uncontrollably and giggled in delight as his eyes moved to the woman.

He seemed to have forgotten the other Rislo’s presence now his attentions now focussed upon the moaning human woman who he now picked up in his arms. He laughed at the look of fear as she opened her eyes, then threw her down the open well shaft. He stared blankly down the dark hole for a moment then, wiping the saliva from his chin with a forearm, attempted to secure the door. He failed miserably, his hands no longer under the control of his drug impaired brain and collapsed on the chamber floor.

Rislo walked over to him and lifted the chin of his kinsman, his eyes were glazed and his pupils dilated. His arms where covered in sores and puncture marks, some old and some new. Rislo gritted his teeth, he knew such signs, but who had introduced such evils into the city.

A shout from the doorway caused him to whirl around. A small dark human looked him up and down and Rislo deduced from Jonathon’s descriptions that the human was a High Hat. The caller smiled broadly. “Brother!” he laughed “can I ‘elp you! This is your lucky day, late, but still bargains to be ‘ad. Dope and women still available, as you can see.”

Rislo’s eyes narrowed, he felt an anger boiling up inside of him. They were here! High Hat’s in the Towers, the city. Plying their trade openly amongst his kind - corrupting them. What had happened over the past few days, had he been so blind in all his years here that he had never seen the disaster which was so close? He knew that the morals and integrity of his race had been failing, but to this extent, so suddenly? He had grown to hate his own people, but had never thought to see them fall so fast. The High Hat swaggered toward him, trailing a young woman close behind him. “What’ll it be brother.

Somethin’ to escape y’troubles or this delightful specimen. The High hat moved closer pushing the girl before him. Her head lolled from side to side, her eyes dark and rolling with the drugs the High Hat’s had used to pacify her.

Rislo looked at her. Her body was boyish and her muscle structure well defined. The Tallman realised that her life had been one of hard work, each muscle group twitching from years of constant use. She was clearly no High Hat brothel girl.

The High Hat raised his eyebrows suggestively, misreading Rislo’s close scrutiny for something else.

“Nice eh! “he continued his sales pitch. “Nice and clean this, a bit wiry, but look at the ‘air! He grabbed the girl’s raven black hair which cascaded down her shoulders into the middle of her back.

“She’ll be alright for you, if you prefer ‘em firm ‘n’ wild - and don’t forget mate we don’t need ‘em back - do what y’will with it!” the High hat grinned, and prepared to close the sale. “So what’ve y’got to exchange then pal”

Rislo stared at the High Hat and smiled, but there was no warmth in his face. These people were not content with the perversion in their own city - they had come to trade it here, infect the Tallmen with their own primitive diseases of body and soul. He could not believe this was happening. It must have been going on for sometime - how had he missed it?

Rislo smiled at the High Hat.

“I’ve not seen you here before brother. How long have you been trading in the Towers?”

The High Hat shrugged.

" Me? Well, since the beginin’. On and off for the past couple of years. First we began with your bosses, now your Elder’s think it’ll be a good thing if you lot get some fun too, nice of ‘em eh? Once a week t’let you blokes get rid of some tensions, keep you ‘appy. A city without women’s a strange place” he chuckled amused with himself. He winked at the Tallman. “Know wot I mean, bruv.”

Rislo shook his head, his false smile

disappeared rapidly.

“No I don’t actually” he paused. “What do you mean.” he shouted angrily as he twisted the shaft of his light orb and pointed it angrily at the slowly retreating High Hat who was now visibly shaken and, for some reason, shocked by the Tallman’s response. The giant took menacing pace the High Hat.

“Do you realise what’s going to happen if the Tallmen are forever pre-occupied with this.” he gestured to the stupefied Tallman who had awoken and now crawled groaning toward the raven haired girl who had collapsed at his feet.

The High Hat raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “We only sell to those off duty. That was the agreement.” he croaked still retreating slowly. The High hat had been shocked by Rislo’s sober appearance. Hadn’t he drunk from the City’s water supply today? It was obvious he hadn’t or he wouldn’t have been so unfriendly, the High Hat realised that a straight thinking Tallman might jeopardise there real mission here tonight, especially here at one of the places where they had tapped into the water supply.

Rislo shook his head and began to lower his light orb. Perhaps he had over reacted he thought? And so what! Wasn’t he personally going to destroy it all soon. It was absurd to get worked up about things. He had to get on with his plans.

The High Hat saw the Tallman lower his weapon and took his chance drawing a short musket from beneath his cloak. The clicking of the hammer alerted Rislo who squeezed the light staff’s trigger, sending a beam of energy into the human’s stomach. His musket dropped to the ground and the man swayed for a moment, exploring the hole beneath his ribs. Then, when he realised he could feel his spine, he collapsed on his face.

Rislo stared at the smoking corpse, then at the girl who stared up at him, with her tired blue eyes. The drugged Tallman came closer, now crawling on all fours. His arms reached out for him and he began to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog. Rislo kicked him hard in the throat and sent him tumbling across the polished floor and into a still and silent heap.

The girl dropped at his feet by the retreating High Hat watched all of this and the violence of the last few moments seemed to have brought her back to the edge of reality. She stared at the Tallman who stared angrily back at her, her eyes pleaded with him to take her away from this place and the drug induced hell the High hats had placed her in.

The Tallman ignored her. He strode off across the chamber and removed something from the smaller room and stuffed it into his pack. He moved purposefully across to the work benches and took several tools and other pieces of equipment and placed these in his pack too. Then he placed his light orb in a socket and recharged it, before taking two more from a rack above and slipped them into his belt.

His business here complete, Rislo moved to the entrance of the chamber and peered cautiously up and down the corridor. Rislo could still not fully comprehend the sights which he had witnessed this evening, part of him would not believe it and this drove him to further investigation of the state the Tallmen had got themselves into. After all this was just one room of thousands and hadn’t the High Hat said that they did not sell to those on duty? he thought. But then again what were they really up he thought? He had to find answers his own questions, despite the risks. Quickly Rislo searched the chamber for some form of disguise and found a yellow technician’s robe and donned this over his black leathers.

With the robe’s hood dropped over his eyes he walked casually out into the corridor, after hiding of the Tallman and the High Hat in the charging room. He walked slowly along the brightly lit corridors and observed the behaviour of his colleagues who were supposed to be on duty.

Superficially there seemed to be little wrong, except that many waved and smiled at him in a extraordinarily friendly way. At one point a technician left his tasks and congratulated Rislo on his recovery from illness and gave him a suffocating and emotional embrace. The Tallmen were too friendly, their society was a best strictly formal. Rislo could see that they were all doped.

As he approached the dormitories he realised from the screaming and shouting that something was seriously amiss, that his fears were about to be confirmed. At the doorway into the dormitories another sneering High Hat greeted him touting his wares of drugs and an offering him a choice from a string of naked men, women and children chained tightly together.

Rislo pushed him aside and entered the dimly lit sleeping quarters where the Tallmen were not sleeping. Most were furiously engaged with their recent and disposable purchases or each other in a hot, sweaty and sex soured atmosphere. Those who were not were rolling around in a state of drug induced frenzy lay stupefied on the floor. He stared in disbelief. All discipline, control over the savage and powerful side of their physical existence and self imposed morality these once proud beings had, all those things which had made them what they the Tallmen were, had gone. They had fallen and Rislo finally believed what he saw and he had seen enough.

The Tallman, who now thought himself the last, retreated from the dormitory and made his way back the way he had come. He closed his ears to the sound of screaming and psychotic laughter and ran quickly to the chamber and the well shaft. As he approached the doorway he stopped abruptly when he heard the sound of voices from within. Rislo peered around the door to see two Tallmen warriors in full mirror armour standing over the bodies of the technician and the High Hat. Neither were drugged or disoriented. They were armed and their glowing red laser staffs had been primed to kill. Rislo considered his position, and then lunged into the chamber shouting at the top of his voice.

“Guards! Guards! Where have you been! I tried to contact you! The High Hat at the dormitory he did this! he gasped. Immediately the mirror armoured men whirled around and approached him. Rislo stared at his own face in the smooth full-face visor of the Captain.

For a moment the Captain of the Guard seemed to observe Rislo intently, although nothing could be seen of his expression behind mirror. Rislo the runaway shivered. “Which level dormitory brother?” the Captain eventually asked.

“Three! Be quick!” he replied. The two guards stormed out and the rebel Tallman leapt toward the well-shaft. Checking that the discharged Power Reservoir was tucked safely in his pack, he began to lower himself into the dark pit. When he was halfway over the well wall, a small hand gripped his ankle and thwarted his progress.

Her grip was like a vice. He struggled but could not shake her off him. He raised his hand to beat her but merely growled and screamed at her . The raven haired girl looked up at him through her blurry blue eyes, which were now bright and clearand pleaded with a silent stare. Then with great effort she managed to speak.

“Take me with you please” she begged. Rislo was growing angry. He considered his options .He could get her off his leg. He could kill her or take her with him. The first was never an option and so Rislo lifted her onto his shoulders. She had not done any harm. She was, he presumed, just another victim of the High Hats.

With another curse Rislo struggled into the well- shaft and closed the cap behind him, pausing for a moment to weld it shut with his light orb. The girl’s additional weight made little difference to Rislo’s decent into the abyss and he soon found himself at the bottom and stepped over the already rat mutilated corpse of the human woman that had been thrown here previously.

A swarm of blind rats fled from the light of his orb back toward he pool where the unseen horror still lurked and that he would have to face again. Rislo watched the rats as they ran and noticed that they retreated parallel to the pool with no intention of leaping into its cold sinister waters.

Rislo followed, watching intently until the rats apparently walked on water and crossed to the other side. Examining the place closely he found that they had scrambled across at a place where a submerged pillar lay just beneath the surface. With a stifled shout of triumph, the Tallman bounded across and sprinted through the rest of the shallow pools back to the subterranean streets.

He did not stop running until he reached the house where he had found the new dimension door. Once there he dumped his pack and the girl unceremoniously on the floor and himself collapsed exhausted, physically and nervously on the floor.

The girl did not move from the position he had dropped her but, from the slight rising and falling of her chest, he judged that she had fallen into a deep sleep. Rislo covered her naked form with the cloak he had used as a disguise in the city of the Tallman, then took out the spoils of his foray and smiled to himself.

The extra light staffs glowed brightly as he planted them in the cracked concrete floor to create a circle of protective light around them. The egg shaded Power Reservoir, in comparison, was a pit of darkness. No light escaped it and there was not even a reflection on it surface. It was a darkness into which he could now drain all the energy of the city when placed in position in his own device.

He smiled in triumph. Now he could repay his debt to Cornelius and Jonathon and escape the horrors of this foul place for good. He glanced at the huddled form that lay beside him and he hoped that Jonathon

had been successful in his own quest. Then they could all leave. Rislo hoped that Jonathon had been as lucky as he had been. It was true he had been terrified at times, but now the worst was over, they were nearly at their goal. Rislo was close to ecstatic.

He closed his eyes and began to dream. A mixture of the past memories and future expectations came drifting toward him. Images of

and the new world the new life that lay only yards through the dimension door he sat next too. It seemed so easy now, a few hours at the most and they would be gone from here. He smiled broadly as he slipped deeper into sleep, unaware that his friend was finding things far from easy in his own quest and of the old human proverb that you should ‘not count your chickens before they are hatched’.

After a few hours the girl, who Rislo had been forced to rescue, awoke in a cold sweat, the effects of the drugs she had been forced to take, worn off. She was now bright and alert. Her head hurt and the past day was a kaleidoscope memory of colour and emotion. She knew that she had been abducted by the High Hats, she remembered the fire on the Castle of Lepers and the killings. She sniffed back the tears, now was not the time. She accepted that they had gone and there was nothing she could do to bring them back to her. But Jonathon was still out there, he was alive and

this was a time for the living. She would find him. Quietly, she got to her feet and wrapped the cloak tightly around her, tearing off strips and binding the material into the one piece padded suit she was used to. She looked at the sleeping giant. He had been reluctant to take her, she remembered, but she owed her life to him. Milly examined her surroundings and prepared to leave. A great rainbow whirlpool dominated the rear of the building. She gazed at it in awe for a few moments before stepping nimbly over the snoring Tallman and moving towards the door and out of the protection of the light.

She sensed a change in the atmosphere around her. It became charged, her body tensed and a dozen rats leapt out of the darkness towards her, their jaws agape and slobbering in anticipation of rending and devouring her sweet soft flesh. The girl reacted instinctively and somersaulted backwards with a practised grace, back into the safety of the light.

Most of the rats reacted as she did when the light scorched their flesh and disappeared into the darkness appearing again only as hungry red eyes, but blind eyes, gazing from their womb and mother the darkness. Milly grimaced. She was trapped. The rats fled the light. She could not take the Tallman’s light staffs because they protected him from the rats and he had saved her. But maybe he did not need them both. Milly picked up the

nearest light orb and repositioned the other so the giant lay safe within a circle of light. The orb and shaft she held was bright and cleared the way before her.

She left the house and stepped out into the street listening to the mad scrabble of scaly paws and sharp claws as the rats repositioned themselves outside of the light and where it might strike.

Milly looked behind her briefly, before she broke into a trot and moving quickly into the deserted town, guided by instinct, searching for a way upwards out of the abyss and back the roof tops where she knew Jonathon would be searching for her. If the darkness had not pressed in on her so closely at that moment she would have noticed that the swarm of rats, which accompanied all travellers in this place, had deserted her.

Now something else the rats had fled from now lurched along in her wake. It was not blind and it was not afraid of the light, it was not small and it was not furless. Yet, it had teeth and it had claws and it already worshipped her flesh. It hoped she would remain here in the darkness, long enough for it to taste. And if she did not, it would follow, because it was in love with the idea of her death.

Chapter Sixteen

Silus Flax was ready to go. Soon the moment he had yearned for, for what seemed a lifetime, would arrive. In a few moments the dimension door down in the depths of the city he had studied and guarded for so long, would be fully open and he and his two companions would venture into that world beyond. That place which held the key to his dark ambitions.

Flax’s prophetic dreams had revealed the gifts of power he desired lay there, but he had no real idea of what lay beyond the cobbled courtyard that he had glimpsed only once when the gate had been open briefly for hat those few tantalising moments. Soon it would be open again and this time he had calculated that it would be open for at least seven days. Seven days in which he would build the foundations for a new kingdom.

Now he stood high on a thrusting concrete and brick hill of buildings that gave him a view of the city from where he watched the red glow across the city that belched a column of black smoke into the warm, air of the city.

There, beneath dark plume, he knew was the Castler of Lepers burned itself out. He shook his head. The lunatic Caldecott seemed intent on burning down and suffocating half the city and had brought complaints from the Tan’s and the Tallmen themselves had angrily complained to the Council of the Upper City that a Venting was now necessary.

Flax sighed deeply as he watched the smoke plume levelling out and spilling under domed sky of Dubh. The boy was probably burned to a crisp or shot dead by Amaril’s men by now. Still, he boy was dead and that was a satisfactory state of affairs even if he had been deprived of the pleasure himself.

He turned around as footsteps approached him from behind. It was the Scholar, one of his chosen companions for his forthcoming trip.

“What is it.” Flax grunted.

“Your Eminence,” squeaked the chubby little man, his small eyes peering large through his thick glass perched on the end of his nose, magnifying his eyes to make him look like some predatory animal. “It is time.”

“Good man, then we shall go. Is Scoggins ready? “The Scholar nodded feverishly as Flax patted his bald liver spotted head. “And all the supplies and necessaries have been loaded as you instructed” the little man trilled, eager to please

Flax strode off with the Scholar in tow down to the bowels of the city and toward the High Hat stronghold that had been built around the dimension door. Soon they reached the Black Leopard and made their way down level after level now crowded with High Hats. They bowed as Flax passed and then moved rapidly back to their posts and tasks. An atmosphere of anticipation greeted them when they entered the great auditorium which adjoined Flax’s personal apartments. All of the most important High Hat’s had been instructed by Flax to attend, and all had, for this was the single most important day in the history of their organisation. For soon they would be in a position to tear power from the hands of Tan’s with the gifts their master had promised he would bring to them from the world beyond the dimension door.

Flax led an impromtu procession of the most important of his men through an ante-chamber and then into the privacy of his apartments and stood them in a semi-circle before the dimension door.

This particular tunnel of multi-coloured light led only a short distance and beyond its exit to a world in darkness which was clearly visible. It was night there and a most convenient cover for his arrival, Flax thought. He studied the scene beyond the door. A plain, cracked plaster wall obscured the view of what lay around the corner to the left of the exit point of the gate. The cobbles of the small enclosed courtyard were wet with rain and reflected the yellow light which washed the yard from the neon street lamps beyond.

It was raining furiously there, Flax and his High Hat’s could hear the hiss of raindrops as they hit the ground, but despite the roar of the rain there was little else to hear apart from the occasional distant hum of moving engines.

Ivor Scoggins stood close to the door and peered in. He had donned his ankle-length leather coat already, its collar turned up to his pointy ears beneath his top hat which was pulled down over his eyebrows. He appeared bored and now pared his already perfectly manicured nails with a stiletto which he secured in the folds of his clothing as Flax approached.

Flax nodded a greeting as he too donned a long leather coat and top hat. He placed a hand on the masochistic assassins shoulder.

“Have you seen anything else my dear, any people?” he whispered. Scoggins shook his head disinterestedly and looked into the courtyard. This attitude would not have pleased Flax had it been the attitude of anyone other than his favourite playmate. Scoggins rarely spoke or indeed made any other sound which Flax knew from the many intimate hours they had spent in one another’s company. Silus enjoyed inflicting pain and Scoggins adored being hurt – when he wasn’t the hunter himself.

Yet there was more to Scoggins He was a cold viscous and calculating killer, a man who enjoyed, not just inflicting pain, but extinguishing life. He had, on the rare occasions he spoke, told Flax that life was a disease and he was the cure. Scoggins was a twisted monster of the highest order. Even physically he was different. Flax knew that he was a freak of nature, a hermaphrodite. Physically he was closer to a woman. His face was a collection of pale delicate features, studded with pale grey eyes. His body was slim and soft, his limbs long and supple. He moved with the grace and elegance of a woman, yet…

Flax knew the truth about what he described as Shemale. Scoggins could give him all he desired. He had chosen Scoggins because of his unquestioning devotion to him and Flax knew that Ivor would make sure that his beloved master was deprived of no pleasure for the duration of the time he was out of Dubh.

Whilst Ivor Scoggins was a practical luxury to Flax, the Scholar was a functioning necessity. He needed someone to advise him on the customs and laws of a society he would find himself part of for a short while. He realised that to complete his tasks without drawing unnecessary attention to his activities. He would need to be aware of what he could and could not do without flouting the laws and customs of this world he sensed was subtly different from his own and making himself vulnerable to those in power there. The Scholar would ensure that this did not happen, he hoped.

The trinity of High Hats now stood before the gate. Flax felt a tingle of excitement; his dreams were shaping into a reality. Scoggins remained his cool unaffected self. The Scholar was a bag of jangling nerves as his over-active brain churned into overdrive and his imagination plagued his logical mind with irrational fears.

Flax scowled at him as the Scholar’s teeth chattered together noisily. All three had dressed the same. All dressed as they would for a normal day in their far from normal world, hoping that such dress would not attract attention in the world beyond the door. The High Hats leader turned to his gathered captains and smiled a smile which made them all feel uneasy. “To your tasks then and remember that you are all being watched!” he said and his eyes commanded unswerving obedience. In a moment of swirling black cloaks they were gone, the heavy iron doors of Flax’s personal apartment closed behind them and the three stood alone at the edge of the

portal.

Flax picked up the handles of a small, but incredibly heavy cart, which carried all their ‘supplies and necessaries’ as the Scholar had described the cargo, and set off at a measured pace into the tunnel of swirling light, Scoggins and the Scholar stepping in behind him. Inside the door, light whirled in violent vortices around them which captured their images and displayed them in a maddening, distorted kaleidoscope around them. The exit seemed further away now as they became enveloped by the swirling tunnel above them, below them, all round them. Here they were, caught in a vortex where time itself became twisted and torn, displaying images of themselves as they had stood before the door, inside it and, unnervingly, images as they exited it before they actually had.

Step by step they marched through, their pace measured slowed to the extent that it resembled a bizarre funeral march. A strange tingling sensation invaded their senses as flesh and bones adjusted slowly and safely to the vibratory rate of the realm beyond.

At last they emerged, to be greeted by a peal of thunder that shook the cobblestones beneath them. Each gasped as they took in lungfuls of the fresh, cold air around them, such a shock to their systems after their life times in the poor, degraded atmosphere of Dubh.

They moved out of the small outbuilding into which they had emerged and out into the unprotected yard. The rain hammered down unmercifully, drumming a manic tattoo on the cylinders of the top hats and splashing off the rims. Plumes of frosted breath poured into the cold air as they stood in the closed rectangle of the cobbled yard.

Tall flaking brick walls ran parallel left and right. The right wall was eight feet of weathered and flaky, moss ridden red brick, topped with a crown of cement and broken glass. The left was the wall of a house which had be hidden from view by the outbuilding wall. The house rose three stories high into a black night sky so unlike the Dubhian canopy which never came close to real skies.

Opposite them was an extension of the building and another wall and gates, which bordered the roadway. It was silent there now, not even the sound of the moving engines, which intrigued Flax, disturbed the steady hiss of the winter rain. He signalled to Scoggins and the assassin moved along the left hand wall of the building, stopping occasionally to peer in to the long rows of windows that reflected the yellow neon of the town’s illumination, until he came to a door half way along the house wall.

Scoggins nodded to his master and Flax moved out across the courtyard’s slick and uneven cobbles to join him at the door. Silent and secluded, this place was the ideal entrance point to a new and unfamiliar world. It was all that Flax could have hoped for. He smiled to himself, a shiver of excitement slid down his spine. The Scholar watched him nervously.

The door by which they stood now had been left slightly ajar. A pleasant aroma of pastry and cooked meat hit them as Flax pushed the door inwards. They both tiptoed inside. The small room was a compact bakery illuminated by the blue light of a lighted gas oven. The work top was strewn with unfinished pies and a multitude of empty bottles. This baker was a man of great skill and only his thirst for strong beers exceeded to his culinary talents.

A stack of crates reached the ceiling in one corner of the small room and almost every bottle was empty. Scoggins found a half full bottle on the baker’s work top and tasted the contents. He nodded in approval to Flax and handed the rest to him, which he finished with relish. A large oven was the source of the mouth watering aroma which filled the room. Flax assumed the baker was not far away, or else his creations would soon be burned to a crisp.

They searched the room quickly, but the baker was not sleeping off an afternoon binge here. Pulling Scoggins away from the stack of crates in the corner, they crept out into the yard, moving like a pair of silky shadows to the door at the far end of the wall.

As they slid along the wall, they passed large windows that were evenly spaced along its length. Flax peered in through the rain washed glass. It was an ale house he deduced. He saw tables and chairs, strange furniture was stacked against the walls. An odd beer glass stood pathetically alone and deserted on a dusty table.

It was much tidier than any ale house Flax had ever visited. In Dubh were never empty and furniture was reserved only for those which served only the most affluent and powerful clientele. This one was empty and remarkably clean, except for the thick layer of dust which covered everything. This had been an ale house once, but no longer had he deduced. They now stood at its door. The stone step had been worn concave with the feet of the many visitors who had come this way over decades. Flax pushed his large and sensitive nose to the keyhole and sniffed in air like a blood hound.

His delicate organ informed him of the absence of the usual smells of an ale house - sweat, beer, blood, vomit and urine. The place was definitely no longer in use, he thought. Flax tried the door handle and found it locked. He gritted his teeth and sniffed the door seams. There was someone here, although the scent was strange.

The air inside was warm and there was a faint

aroma of perfume, but the woman’s scent here smelt like no woman he had ever run his nostrils over. At least he knew there where no men here, only this strange woman.

His mind raced. What should he do? Kick the door down perhaps? He turned around and beckoned the scholar. The small, fat man scurried to his side at his signal. Flax held him by the neck.

“There’s a woman of sorts inside, will she be armed? How do we get in?”

The little man rapped hard on the door, causing both Flax and Scoggins to jump back behind the wall for safety.

“Let me handle this, just keep quiet.” he commanded Flax, something twinkling in his eye. A humorous irony, thought the Scholar, that he had the power to order his ‘Eminence’ Silus Flax to be quiet. He stifled a chuckle.

Flax was flabbergasted at his servant’s cheek, but his plans hinged on the intellectual qualities of the small, bald bespectacled man and he indicated that Scoggins put away the knife he was aiming at the Scholar’s kidneys. Ivor mouthed an objection, but Flax waved it down. It was acceptable at the moment, but the Scholar would eventually regret what he had just done, he would pay for his moment of amusement at Flax’s expense and the price would be high. After what seemed an eternity of knocking, a light inside lit up the door frame.

Scoggins leapt back from the keyhole. The door opened a fraction, a security chain ensuring that it opened no further than necessary.

A small, round heavily wrinkled and worried face pushed itself up to the gap.

“Yes?” said a voice quivered with age and fear. The scholar moved quickly into the light, his bespectacled smiling face seeming to reassure that these three, strangely dressed men at her door in the early hours of the morning, meant her no harm.

The scholar spoke.

“Ah, my gracious lady of the inn, my sincere apologies for awakening you from your well earned slumber, but we are travellers in sore need of lodgings on this foul night.....would you have rooms to let?” he said injecting a tone of desperation into his voice. Then as an after thought; “We will pay you well.”

Agnes Lovenberry considered her position. She was alone here, she was eighty-eight years old and half crippled with arthritis. These people had obviously mistaken her home for a hotel or inn. It was true that this place had once been an inn, then a public house, but it had not seen a customer for twenty-eight years.

“Oh, dear.” she mumbled to herself. Such a dreadful night, Oh, Well perhaps they could use the empty rooms upstairs, they had beds and sheets although generation after generation moths of would have made a meal of them by now.

The nice mannered man had also said that they would pay her well and the pittance the government paid her as a pension was hardly enough to keep her from starving. A little cash would help her this week,

after all, that drunken baker had forgotten his rent again. She took the door off the security chain and opened it wide to allow the three strangers in. As they entered, Agnes Lovenberry wondered if in fact whether she was not still asleep.

The three men in black top hats and long coats looked very much like undertakers. A shiver of fear ran down her spine. Perhaps she was not asleep at all, perhaps she was actually dead and having one of those out of body experiences she had read about in Take a Break magazine and these three had come to take her away!

The confused thought resided, for a while, in her sleep muddled mind as she pinched her self hard and finally pulled herself back together as gust of cold wind and rain blew in from the doorway and convinced her that she was still very much alive. She slammed the door against the storm and turned to face her guests. They had removed their hats and she indicated that the hat stand was vacant. Obediently and without, a word the three trooped to the indicated object and considered it as if they had never seen one before.

It was a relic of pointlessness to them, hats went on the floor or tables or chairs, but never on a strangely carved piece of wood. The scholar however, figured out what they were to do and placed the hats on the hooks and removed his own coat, then the coats of the others, and hung them on the adjoining coat pegs.

Mrs. Lovenberry was wide awake now and observed the three men intently as they disrobed themselves. Without their long coats and hats the image of undertakers faded. The little chubby man wore baggy, black trousers and a dark blue waistcoat over his scarlet shirt. He was untidy and slightly dirty she noticed as he fumbled with his pocket watch.

The large shouldered man with the huge nose amnd large teeth was crisp and clean. He trousers were of a good cut and quality and he too wore a waistcoat over a white ruffle necked shirt. But he made her extremely nervous, he had not taken his penetrating eyes off her ever since he had entered the house. He looked at her as if he had never seen an old woman before.

The other man, if it were a man she thought, wore clothes which were of a feminine nature with frills of lace and embroidered flowers every where. He moved like a woman too, which added to her suspicions and his

feminine features and well manicured, long fingernails finally convinced her that this was not a man at all or he was some sort of ‘Nancy Boy’, although of course you couldn’t use such names nowadays. He was the first to turn and move toward her. He bent down close to her face, his eyes looking directly into hers.

“Are you ill?” he asked in a contradictory deep male voice. “I have the cure for all known ills.” he licked his lips and smiled sympathetically at her. A loud throat clearing came from the area of the hat stand and Scoggins scowled and moved away from the old woman.

Mrs. Lovenberry returned to her observations of the three men’s attire and noticed their footwear. The two normal, if they were normal men, wore heavy hobnail boots, the other, slim pointed ones. Then she felt a sudden recognition of what she was seeing, it was like her childhood memories, her life was filled with memories of heavy boots, waistcoats, ruffs and top hats too! It was as if part of the past had come through her door tonight and stood in her parlour. The men stood now watching her and, realising that she was staring at them, she coughed nervously.

“Oh I beg your pardons, your rooms of course.” she said.” Silly me, I nearly forgot” Agnes laughed nervously. “Follow me gentlemen.”

The plump old lady hobbled to the bottom of the stairs, her arthritic hips and knee joints cracking loudly in the near silence. Flax wondered whether or not to kill the freakish woman now. How could she have become so old, she was an abomination! In Dubh a woman was lucky to survive to her thirtieth birthday, the only way she could have survived, Flax reasoned, was that she had never been a real woman at all or she would have been burned out by childbearing and male usage years ago, after all that was their purpose as women wasn’t it?

Then he realised that this wasn’t Dubh at all and he had to be prepared for such strangeness, such perversity. Erring on the edge of caution, Flax decided that the old woman could live, at least for the time being. She might be missed and, after all, killing her wouldn’t be much fun.

Staring around him Flax realised he was now in a bar room. The tables were absent and had been replaced by an old and worn settee and two armchairs. The three High Hats followed Agnes Lovenberry as she made her way painfully across the well worn carpet into a small hall way between the bar room and the rest of the public house. Flax was suddenly hit by the silence in this place. Not even the sound of the pouring rain reached here and the absence of the familiar hum of machinery, which had always been part his life, unnerved him. He was used to the clamour and noise of the city, this tranquillity disturbed him. This was a strange world, he mused as he reflected on his short exposure to it, a quiet place where the men allowed their women to grow old, or more disturbingly, perhaps there were no men here. Not a nice place at all.

Mrs. Lovenberry was now staggering half way up the stairs assisted by the Scholar. They chatted together as the Scholar skilfully extracted information about the old woman and her circumstances.

He was doing well, Flax thought. Information was what he needed if he was to succeed in his mission here. He quietly congratulated himself on his choice of companion here. The Scholar already knew that she lived here alone, was a war widow. Her only contacts were a mad, drunken butcher called Victor and Mrs. Simpson, the infrequently visiting, interfering and perpetually nosey, or so Mrs. Lovenberry had said, social worker.

She warned them about Victor. He was a big, aggressive, short tempered man who was at odds with the whole world and everyone in it, it seemed. They must avoid his bakery for it was a sacred place to him. No mortal, except he, could walk there, especially if they were from the environmental health office. On no account must they argue with him when he was drunk, which was most of the time of course.

They had reached the landing now and Mrs. Lovenberry opened a door of flaky, green paint to her right. Scoggins inclined his head towards her suggestively and gave his master a thin smile. Flax knew what he meant and shook his head. Scoggins ground his teeth together again, his displeasure openly displayed.

The door opened onto a long corridor which ran along the wall they had crept under and above where the bakery was situated, terminating in another green, brass handled door. The carpet in the corridor had been removed years ago and the bare floorboards groaned and squealed under their weight.

The old woman opened the first three doors on the right, revealing three single rooms as she switched on the electric light in each, a surprise for all three, since such a form of illumination was rare in ordinary dwellings in Dubh.

In the rooms all the furniture was covered in dust sheets which had been placed there twenty years ago. Mrs Lovenberry removed them with the Scholar’s help, which raised clouds of dust into the air. Agnes coughed and sneezed profusely, attempting to apologise, and promising to clean up in the morning.

All three rooms where the same, containing a dressing table, washstand, mirror, bed, small wardrobe and an armchair. Scoggins took the first room nearest the stair, Flax the second and the Scholar the third. Mrs. Lovenberry yawned and apologised for doing so, then wished them a good night before she retired to her own rooms through the door at the end of the corridor.

After her light was extinguished, the second door opened and Silus Flax crept out of his room bootless and shirtless. He smiled contentedly to himself. It had been a good day, one that demanded celebration. He was here at last and safely ensconced in a strange world without any problems.

He peered through the rain spattered first floor windows which gave him a clear view of the centre of the sleeping town. Strings of pearly white and amber light lit the streets, he was quietly surprised at the liberal use to which these people put their energy - either they had ample supplies or they were afraid of the darkness he much so loved. In Dubh, the Upper City had such light when excess energy was available, which was now seldom, and the Lower city depended on the use of oil lamps. Here it seemed all had the benefit t of such power. n the centre of the town the street, on which the ‘inn’ they were to spend the night stood, led to an open square in the middle of which stood a strange obelisk. It was obviously a giant stone phallus, Flax thought and gave it no more consideration. Beyond the square there was a great church, its tower and spire lancing into the darkness of the night sky. Another phallus he decided. The clock on the church tower struck three.

Flax could remember the church bells of Dubh, it was not since his infant years that he had heard them. But now the churches and their bells had been silenced, empty forgotten husks devoid of congregations, consumed by Dubh’s physical expansion and drained by its spiritual degeneration. The prospect of pleasure was the only thing which drew a congregation in Dubh now. The new Church of Hedonism, unshackled from any slavish morality, now the only religion.

The sound of the bells receded and the memories of his childhood in Dubh too. So long ago it seemed, but now he was close to his goal. What made Flax different from the rest of the hedonists of Dubh was that he made his own rules, no Tan or Mek council ruled him and it was not just pleasure he pursued. It was that which made pleasure possible and that from which pleasure exuded - Power.

Flax had power, but craved more and nothing and no-one would prevent him from having all the power he wanted, although, in truth, he knew that he could never be satisfied. He stared at the floodlit church. The poor wretches here were still slaves to false moralities which denied them their real essence, but their pain, fear and innocence would taste so sweet on the palate of evil beings such as him. Here he could be a god in his own paradise. He moaned at the prospect of what he might do to the unsuspecting here, then he laughed a single single syllable laugh. Tonight he needed a little celebration and he had brought it along with him, in the form of Ivor Scoggins.

Chapter Seventeen

The Scholar was woken early the following morning by a loud cursing from outside in the yard below. He dressed quickly and looked down into the courtyard to see an enormous, red faced man in a dirty red and white apron who was hurling small, blackened objects violently against the gates.

“Fucking bollocks, fucking shit bollocks!” he howled in a highly agitated state. “They’re ruined, fucking ruined” he almost sobbed as he examined the charcoaled remains of

yesterday’s work.

With an unintelligible grunt, he turned his reddened face up to the window, where a puzzled spectator stood watching. The scholar looked into the visage of Victor the Mad Baker in full fury. His face was almost purple now, except for the red, bulbous, porey nose which contrasted with his wild shock of white hair.

The baker’s bloodshot eyes narrowed when he saw the fat, bald man looking down at him. He held up a ruined pie at him and shouted.

“What d’you think y’staring at runt! Want a pie for y’fucking breakfast, eh!” he screamed, baring his brown teeth, and hurled the burned offering at the now frightened observer.

The burnt pie rattled off the window frame and the scholar withdrew from the window taking in a deep breath. He turned and saw Mrs.Lovenberry shuffling down the corridor from the direction of the stairs and in the process of tying on a pinafore.

“Ah " she said.” Good morning. Did you want breakfast, Mr. er, What was your name again.” she inquired, unsure of whether they had been introduced the night before. “Scholar.” said the pale faced little man who still had his eyes on the baker who had now begun to take out his frustration on the yard gates with his boot.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Scholar of course, Breakfast?” she inquired.

Mr. Scholar, as he had been newly titled, was tempted to explain that ‘scholar’ was not in fact his real name, just something that Flax called him. His real name Pinky Makepeace, but he decided that he would keep the new title. It seemed to have a ring to it. “Yes, breakfast.” Pinky replied, still watching the baker who now sat down by the gates with a bottle to his mouth.” Breakfast” he repeated.

He followed Mrs. Lovenberry down the stairs and into a room behind the bar. Agnes apologised for forgetting her guest’s names, even though they had never given them to her, and inquired of the names of her other two guests.

Even though she had not heard the names before, she repeated them after the Scholar with a false familiarity. It was old age she said, it played tricks with her memory. Would his friends be down for breakfast soon? she asked.

Pinky the Scholar shook his head. They had along journey and were very, very tired, he explained. No, he thought, definitely not, judging from the moaning and groaning that had come from Scoggins’s room the night before. They would be completely exhausted.

At breakfast, Mr. Scholar wolfed down the somewhat alien food with relish. It was good, despite its unfamiliarity he thought, and continued to extract as much information about the place he found himself in by asking the old woman subtle questions.

Mrs. Lovenberry was very obliging. Soon Mr. Scholar knew enough about the geography of the small town of Bramston to plan a trip to the local library. The old woman had mentioned it several times during his interrogation when stumped by some of his strange questions. It was “a place of books and knowledge, if you

needed to know anything, you should go there.” she had suggested.

For her part Mrs. Lovenberry had many questions of her own to ask, but found them all adequately answered by the Scholar who had composed a cover story for thier sudden nocturnal appearance which he hoped the old woman would find plausible.

They were travellers from a place far away. They were himself - Mr Scholar, Mr. Flax the man with the large nose and last but no means least Mr. Scoggins. Mrs. Lovenberry was tempted to add her own thoughts concerning the latter, but did not. She had been bought up in an age where one kept one’s opinions to one’s self, even if she did think that Mr. Scoggins was in fact a woman or at least a ‘Nancy boy’. But on this occasion she broke the rules.

“May I ask a question” she ventured. Pinky raised his eyebrows. “Is Mr Scoggins a Gay person?”

Pinky Makepeace shrugged.

“I guess he’s as happy as the rest of us Mrs Lovenberry.” He responded. Mrs Lovenberry sighed.

The three travellers had been caught in the rain and had sought shelter in her yard. Mrs Lovenberry did not ask how they got through locked gates and over the glass topped walls. Mr. Flax was here on business and the other two were here to assist him. No, they were not undertakers, the Scholar explained. Mrs.Lovenberry had been dying to ask that question and Pinky did not know what an undertaker was. So he denied that they were in order to avoid further embarrassment if he and his companions did not behave like undertakers should, and therefore compromise his story.

As for their profession the friendly little, over friendly and definitely a bit odd, Mrs Lovenberry thought, man, said they were here to purchase some equipment. No, sorry he didn’t know what sort of equipment. He was only an assistant. he only knew that they would buy lots and lots of it.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Lovenberry, her eyes suddenly widening in comprehension. “Wholesalers! My nephew Richard’s a wholesaler. He never knows much about what he’s buying or selling either, just how much money he’ll make.”

The Scholar laughed, partly because he was surprised at the success of his story and partly to relieve his nerves. One final explanation was due to the old woman though, one detail Mr. Scholar seemed to have over-looked and which intrigued her.

“But what about these strange clothes you wear, shouldn’t people in your profession wear proper suits?” she ventured her curiosity overcoming her manners.

Pinky was lost for words. Strange clothes? Strange clothes! Of course! He had never looked upon them as strange clothes. His mouth opened in response.

“Well, er we, er, hum....yes.....”

A loud knocking on the door saved him the effort from concocting some strange excuse for their clothing on the spot. The person knocking at the door had knocked impatiently twice again before the arthritic old woman had reached the door. She opened it and the huge, ruddy faced baker stepped a foot inside and towered over little woman.

His face gave the expression that his head would explode at any moment, but he presented an apologetic mood. He attempted a smile, but was unable to manage it, creating the impression he was about to throw up instead. “Ah, Mrs. Lovenberry my dear.” he parted his pink lips to reveal enough of his teeth to mimic some form of a smile. “Thought you were still in bed m’duck. Here’s the rent I owe you and a little extra, since it’s slightly overdue.” he laughed apologetically.

Agnes Lovenberry smiled smugly and stared at the baker as she took the small envelope from his huge hairy hand, then crossed her arms across her chest.

“Well Mr. Burns, let’s not let it happen again shall we?” she said sternly. “Because I’ve got other income now” she warned, pointing to Pinky, who cringed immediately the baker set his beady eyes upon him. “and they’re

wholesalers!” she proclaimed triumphantly. “I don’t have to rely on you pittance of rent! ” she added.

Victor Burns was slightly taken aback by his landlady’s sudden and newly acquired financial independence of him. Yet he laughed and patted Mrs. Lovenberry on the shoulder.

“And I’m very pleased for you, my love.” he slimed. “I know you have a good sense of humour! I was only telling the wife this morning what a good sport you are and not lost a spot of it over the many, many years we’ve been such good friends.” he said as he strode over towards the table where ‘Mr. Scholar’ sat shaking.

Mr. Scholar involuntarily stood up as the wobbling mass of the mad baker approached. It was the Scholar’s survival instinct that told him to flee by throwing him upright out of the chair. The baker stretched out a hand. The Scholar did the same, his face draining of all colour. The baker grasped it tightly.

“Didn’t quite catch the name - I’m Victor Burns, baker of extraordinary pies.” he growled as he began to squeeze the Pinky’s hand in his own gigantic, bear-like paw and pulling him closer as he did so.

Victor’s breath stank of beer and garlic, his tiny bloodshot eyes bore directly into the Pinky’s own. “Wholesalers? Wholesale what? Coffins? ‘cos that’s what you and your mates will need if you fuck with me you little

tosser.” he threatened and then laughed loudly sending a shower of spittle into the Scholar’s face. “Don’t cross me you little twat! Some cunt was in my bakery last night” the low growling continued. “I don’t like trespassers, here or in my bakery. If you’ve got plans for this place forget it. When the old dear pops her clogs, which won’t be long, it’ll be my name on the

will., understand creep?” he finished giving Pinky’s squashed fingers one final violent crush before releasing them.

“Yes “whispered the Scholar, wincing in pain as the blood

rushed back into his fingers to set the nerves on fire.

All this time Mrs. Lovenberry had been slowly counting the cash Victor had given her in the envelope. As she came back to the table, Victor smiled again, this time a self-satisfied grin.

“Ah, Agnes dear, I was just telling thingy here about the Wheatsheaf’s excellent facilities, we’re going to have a drink together sometime.” He laughed jovially, then got up and slapped the Scholar hard between the shoulder blades.

“Cheerio then, and don’t forget what we’ve said my friend” he said and gave the Scholar one final and threatening stare before making his way the door, humming himself out of the room through clenched teeth, pausing only briefly to peck Mrs Lovenberry on the cheek.

Pinky Makepeace, or Mr. Scholar, collapsed into his chair, relieved that the mad ox of a man had gone and resolved to do something about him. He was a High Hat and no-one would have spoken to him like that at home without losing some part of his anatomy in

punishment.

He soon forgot the baker and his threats however, his immediate concern was to brief Flax with all the information he had gleaned from the withered old woman. Pinky excused himself to his host and made his way upstairs, his mind boggling at the thought of what he would find in Scoggins’s room. Outside the door he had second thoughts about disturbing Flax and his playmate. The sounds of heavy breathing and a renewed agonized moaning from within told him that now was not the time to interrupt Flax and that freak with him. He ambled downstairs again and into the room behind the bar where he found Mrs Lovenberry reading a newspaper which she lowered to peer over at him through her horn

rimmed spectacles.

“Oh, Mr. Scholar, I forgot to ask will your friends be coming down for breakfast, I forgot to ask. “she asked again, although she had already asked him once.

“No, er, I suspect they’ll be very tired” he spluttered almost laughing.

“Very well” the old woman smiled. “I’d better think about lunch then. I’m sure they’ll be very hungry when they wake up. Will one o’clock be alright?” looking at the Scholar over her reading glasses. Pinky smiled. She was so stupidly trusting. Then a thought drifted into his head which made him lick his lips, not of dinner of course, but a symptom of a more perverse appetite.

“Of course, of course, Agnes, my I call you Agnes? Lunch at your convenience.” then he excused himself again and putting on his hat and coat telling her that he had some errands the run.

Pinky Makepeace the Scholar left by the side door and walked warily into the yard. The baker was at work in his rented kitchen, his loud singing ravishing the cold air. Pinky Makepeace spat bravely in the direction of the bakery where `Some enchanted evening...’ was being destroyed by the grinding bass tones of Victor Burns.

This man disturbed him, but only because this was not Dubh. He would tell Flax about him, he was a threat to their mission here and no doubt Ivor Scoggins would be detailed to sort him out.

“Baker of Extraordinary pies.” scoffed the Scholar, they’d be extraordinary if Burns found himself to be an ingredient in them he thought and could not stifle his laughter. The singing stopped abruptly but, by the time a bemused Victor Burns had emerged from his bakery to investigate, Pinky had slipped out of the yard and into the narrow street beyond the gates.

Pinky Makepeace now found himself and took him by surprise, lifting his top hat from his head and sending it dancing along the cobbles as if it had a life of its own.

Pinky charged after it, his long coat flapping wildly in the wind and hindering his progress. The alley, in which he now stumbled along in pursuit of his head gear was empty, the high buildings on either side channelling in the winter wind which roared towards the open market square ahead of him.

The top hat continued its quest for freedom and shot out into the market square. But its brief flight came to a sudden end. As Pinky watched, a bright red, horseless carriage howled past, squashing the hat flat as the Scholar stared open mouthed. Flabbergasted, he now stood at the edge of the market street and stared as the engine on wheels disappeared around the corner. Another appeared and roared after it, a green one this time, with a man leaning one arm out of the window and guiding the machine, by means of a wheel, with the other.

Pinky Makepeace wrapped his coat around himself against the unfamiliar cold and walked cautiously around the corner, abandoning his hat to the traffic. The square narrowed into a single street to his left, where a few early risers walked purposefully along the wet pavements, heads down in the squally rain. Most wore overcoats against the weather and on this day the Scholar’s attire drew little attention, although, had it been a summer’s day he would probably still have worn his High Hat uniform.

The Scholar walked along the street gazing through the vast expanses of sheet glass windows into shops which displayed a multitude of goods, flattening himself against the windows every time a motor car roared past until he eventually he realised, that on the raised walk- ways at the edge of the carriageway he would not suffer the same fate as his lost hat.

The variety of goods on sale amazed him. Everything imaginable could be bought here it seemed, at least initially. Food, clothes, boots and shoes - things he couldn’t even recognise. Even the noisy carriages were displayed in some large shops.

There were a few shops, of a kind, in Dubh. Ale houses and food-halls, brothels, multi-purpose slaves if you wanted one and were of the right class and power. But this place was different. It seemed that there was more on sale here. Yet to the Dubhian Scholar, the real basic necessities of life, the brothels and ale houses, where few and far between, if they existed at all. But they definitely did not abound in the profusion they existed at home, he thought.

Some places smelt of ale, but were strangely dark and silent. No drunken singing and the sound of laughter came from them. He finally though he had found a slave shop, but quickly realised that the people he saw were in fact, not real at all, just dummies dressed like people and displaying clothes for sale.

The Scholar spent the few hours wandering along the high street until he found a shop which excited him even more than the pet shop he had spent an hour in, before he was ejected for slobbering over the rabbits.

This was it! Flax would be so pleased he thought. It was a gun shop. Row upon row of strange double barrelled muskets and smaller weapons made him shiver with excitement.

“Gun Seller!” he shouted out loud. Flax said that a gun seller would be here and would provide the High Hats with all they required and he Pinky Makepeace the Scholar had found him - he would go down in the annals of High Hat history.

Pinky entered the shop and approached the glass topped counter. All around him the shop was packed with racks of shotguns and rifles chained together or secured in heavy cabinets with large padlocks. A bell had rung as Pinky entered the shop and now a portly, grey- haired man, wearing a padded green waistcoat and sporting a military style handle bar moustache, emerged from behind a bead curtained door in response to it.

For a moment he stared uneasily at the Scholar, and then a smile grew, with difficulty, on his ruddy face. “Good morning, Sir. How may I help you?” he intoned automatically.

The Scholar nodded a brief greeting.

“You are the gun seller?” he asked. The gunsmith raised his eyebrows.

“Probably.” he responded, his eyes rolling to stare at the ceiling.

“I want to buy some guns” Pinky stated bluntly. The gunsmith looked back him.

“And what type of guns does Sir wish to purchase?” he answered with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. The gunsmith’s potential customer shrugged his shoulders and swung his arm around the racks casually.

“These type of guns?” he ventured, not really sure. The portly man sighed, the horns of his moustache quivering with impatience as he exhaled.

“Small bore, large bore, automatics, shotguns, rifles, pistols - a water pistol or pop gun perhaps?” he mocked. Pinky did not see any joke as he peered around the room. The gunsmith stepped out from behind the counter.

“What does ‘Sir’ want a gun for?” he asked.

“Guns, corrected Pinky. Guns for a war.” then something caught his eye on a rack and he marched towards it. “What about these guns? How much are they?” the gunsmith joined him shaking his head wearily. The world was seething with nutters nowadays he thought and here was a prize winner in his shop.

“Kalashnikov AK 47, also known to its devotees as the Widowmaker. Not an automatic now, a collector’s piece, and retailing at four hundred and fifty pounds plus

V. A. T. “he spat impatiently.

The Scholar whirled around, his eyes wide in amazement. “Four hundred and fifty pounds of what!?” he shook his head in disbelief. “Look, I’ll give you three ounces of opium, no more.” he snapped and held the gaze of the astonished and angry gunsmith whose lips were beginning to curl back over his teeth as his face reddened. He blew up.

“Now look here you buffoon! Get out of my shop before I call the police! What are you? One of these junky loonies they’re turning out of the asylums nowadays?” he barked and grabbed the Scholar by the scruff of the neck and frogmarched him to the door. Pinky protested.

“But it’s a perfectly good price, I could buy three muskets for that price in the city.” The portly gunsmith opened the door and hurled the Scholar onto the wet pavement.

“Now piss off back to the hospital or wherever before I call police ” the door slammed hard and the bell tinkled chaotically for a long time.

An irate, highly confused and bruised Pinky Makepeace picked himself off the damp ground. He had been deadly serious in his offer for the gun, but it seemed that weapons were either very expensive here or there was some subtle detail he had missed when attempting to deal with the gunsmith. Had he offended the man somehow? He had certainly offended him.

Pinky was angry at his treatment by both the baker and this gun seller, they both deserved to be punished and would he would have used his influence to ensure that they did if his were Dubh. But he knew this wasn’t Dubh and consoled himself in the lessons he had learned today, because the learning of such lessons was the reason Flax had brought him here. His master wanted answers. Currency, weapons and the people who held power here. These were the things that Flax wanted to know about.

Pinky Makepeace, the Scholar, had just learned valuable lessons from his visit to the gunsmith. Opium was not acceptable to him and the ‘police’ were obviously an organisation who held some power here. He said he would call them, they must be like the Tans.

The Scholar continued his observation for most of the morning. He watched people trading in various shops and soon learned that people used notes and coins to purchase goods. This currency was the same as an older form which had been replaced in Dubh many ago and gold had been the basis of note value of then. The Scholar was relieved that he would not have to tell Flax that all the cargo he had brought through the gate worthless here.

Pinky’s visit to the town library provided him with a wealth of information on all the subjects he had been briefed by his master to find out about. When he had left the silent halls of books accompanied by curious, and sometimes anxious, stare of its librarians, Pinky Makepeace had in his mind a fuller picture of the strange world they now resided in which would both delight and dismay Silus Flax.

Having committed all the information he had gathered to memory, he left. There were many types of weapon to be had here, the gunsmith catered for a different type of customer than Flax intended to be and the guns he required would be difficult to procure, since they were reserved for the armies of those who held power, and part of the reason that they held power.

The ‘police force’ was part of the army that kept the gunless in their place here. The type of weaponry Flax wanted would bring him into conflict with these people and their rulers. They would stand in his way in all of his activities. But Flax would be happy to know that there were those who would sell him such weapons regardless of the risks – greed motivated.

Drugs were illegal here too, but markets existed out of control of the authorities who declared their use immoral rather than normal. Human beings still pursued pleasure in the same way those did in Dubh, but such hedonism was frowned upon by those in power as it threatened the very structure and order on which their power was built.

Pinky Makepeace believed that those in power here did not understand the true nature of humanity at all and that the deprivation of people of their pleasures made this world a very unstable place indeed. When these people saw through the mesmerising veil of ideas that those in power used to subdue them and saw themselves for what they were, this whole world would begin to disintegrate.

Yet it had remained this way for centuries. One small group controlling the masses, first with the sword and now with the idea....and few guns. The subduing of the masses grew more complicated all the time and the powers which opposed the order which had evolved grew stronger. But the order would not be attacked and toppled from without - it would rot from within. Corruption was growing here, it wished to bring chaos and then grow strong in the despair that followed as it had in Dubh. Flax would enjoy Pinky’s analysis of the situation here, it would please him to know that he could worm his way to power here in the same way as he had at home. Happy with his day’s research, the Scholar turned and made his way back through the winter evening to the Cross Keys.

Chapter Eighteen

From the dark velvet of the winter’s night sky, the full moon cast its reflected light down onto the countryside below. It was a land which starkly contrasted to the tower blocks and concrete of Ben Santiago’s native Manhattan. Yet he knew this place! It was the deep countryside of rural England. Below him the fields and pastures, the ancient oak and birch woods and twisting silver streams were illuminated by the light of the rising full moon.

Santiago swept over this land aware of his

destination and the man who had summoned him to this place in his dreams. For the last nine months, each and every night, it had been the same dream, the same journey, but tonight he felt a difference; he felt a presence.

Now his summoner was here and the dream would no longer fade, he would continue, drawn to the man whose shockingly familiar face haunted him each night as it rose like a dark cloud on the dream horizon and threatened to devour the moonlight.

Tonight the massive cloud face did not rise above the horizon as it usually did. Instead Santiago found himself approaching a diffused dome of neon light that cocooned a sleepy Staffordshire market town. Santiago was sped toward it. He knew this was more than a dream, although he had little control over these nocturnal journeys. Tonight his spirit had been freed and he now viewed that which was real, not a fragmentary construction of the imagination. This town was a real place. As if on cue, Santiago found himself being guided around the identifying landmarks of the small town, being given all the information he would require finding this place and, so that he could, he realised, soon journey here in the flesh.

He paused by the great tower and spire of the town’s large church and then spiralled down into the maze of streets and alleys which surrounded the market square. He moved swiftly up narrow street which was lined by three and four storey Tudor buildings that seemed to menacingly inwards over the street. His attention was drawn to a sign swinging idly in the breeze, squeaking softly on its rusty hinges.

Two gold keys, heavily faded and flaking paint were crossed in the centre of the dilapidated sign. Given time to register what he had seen, Santiago was now guided into the courtyard of the inn and toward a second storey window. Behind the dark glass a shadow lurked, the moon painted the contours of the face of this shadow of a man. A strong, square jaw and large dark mouth were all he could presently make out, a mouth slightly open and into which, or so it seemed to Santiago, the moonlight which illuminated the man’s face, streamed into. Then, abruptly, the moon was obscured by the mass of huge banks of rumbling storm clouds which seemed to raise themselves out of nowhere. His summoner’s face disappeared as the light faded quickly, until a single flash of sheet lightening revealed his face fully to Santiago.

Ben stared in horrified fascination at the face with abyssal eyes and the huge hooked nose that pressed against the glass. There was something familiar about this man, but he failed to make any connection. Perhaps he was a client from long ago he thought. A swarthy pock marked Arab, some failed revolutionary from the middle east, a South American dictator, some tyrant, some megalomaniac, he had done business with in the past; he seemed to be all of them, but then none one of them at all.

The man at the window did not speak, did not look at him, yet a language more powerful than speech emanated from his being - a deep yearning, a desire, something so powerful Santiago feared he was about to be consumed by him. The man needed Santiago’s talents and had drawn him here. Now the arm’s dealer soul had been touched by him and been made promises, promises of rewards which he could not resist. A loud roar of thunder followed the sheet lightening which tore open a rift into core Ben Santiago’s being. The face at the window disappeared sinking into the darkness leaving only a silhouette etched on the arms dealer’s soul.

Santiago jerked awake with a moan in a sweat soaked bed at home in his Manhattan apartment, his boxer shorts sticky with semen. His whole body trembled, alive with energies loosed from his penetrated psyche. He gasped for air in the cool of the air conditioned atmosphere, his desire to find his summoner stronger and more irresistible than ever. He desired this man, if he were a man at all, with an inhuman compulsion. He could never rest until he found him, until his soul was touched by him again. It was not about guns, but something deeper....

He slept for the rest of the morning until, early in the afternoon, a knock on his door wakened him from an uneasy sleep. He rose stiffly from his bed and donned a dressing gown before answering the door. A small, bald and bespectacled man entered the room with a look of triumph in his eyes and waving a photocopied photograph in front of him.

“We’re close Mr. Santiago!” he shrieked. “Look here, I’m sure that one of these is the place.” he handed three copied photographs to his employer who them in detail. His eyes widened with his smile, two of the photographs fell from his hands to the floor.

The photographs were just one of many his researcher had brought to him in an effort to satisfy Santiago’s curiosity about the dreams which had occurred nightly for the past nine months. His researcher spoke. “The terrain you have described in the dream point to an area in rural north Staffordshire, England. Given that you feel you are being drawn to a town there are only a few possibilities - it has to be one of these - is that it?”

Santiago studied the remaining photograph in his hands and nodded. It was. Last night was the first time he had seen it and it was fresh in his memory. All the elements where there. The photograph had been taken from a vantage point above the market square which showed the church, its spire and tower, and the retreat of alleyways around it. Santiago’s aide smiled broadly. “There are more here.” he said, pulling a dozen more photographs from his briefcase, other views of this particular town his employer had identified. Santiago took them and flicked through the photos.

They showed tourist attractions and local industry. One grabbed his attention immediately, a shot of a back street lined with Tudor buildings. Santiago’s jaw fell open.

The inn was there on the right, its hanging sign clearly displaying the symbol of the crossed keys. He thought he heard the squeak of rusty hinges, felt buffeted by the raw air of an English winter gale around him, felt himself being drawn into the cold reality of the monochrome. He gasped. Santiago stared excitedly at the picture.

“Get me there Aldus! Get me there as soon as is humanly possible.” He instructed his researcher and personal aide. “Alone. Economy flight Incognito. Ben Santiago is not a popular man there remember Aldus.” he smiled.

Aldus nodded obediently and left the room. Santiago moved to the window and looked out across the Manhattan skyline towards the east.

Far out there, across the North Atlantic something drew him to it, communicated with part of him that did not think. It did not calculate, but only yearned for something he could not, as a conscious rational being, identify. Santiago had seen a man at a window, a strangely familiar man, if it were a man. But soon he would find out and did not care whether it was human or not. It had touched Santiago deeply and darkly, setting something primal loose within his soul. Now he yearned for a full caress in that boiling, mindless darkness and he knew this shadow of a man would give it willingly in exchange for Santiago’s expertise.

The arms dealer reached for the phone and rang an international number. After a few moments conversation he put down the phone and smiled to himself. Nothing could be easier, he thought and life would never be the same again. Then he made one final phone call, to the man who had introduced Santiago to the world of gun running, his mentor, an enigmatic and elusive individual, whom he had met only once in his lifetime. Santiago could never remember his face, but today something stirred in his memory. For a moment the face at the window in his dream haunted him. Santiago shook his head - no it couldn’t be true, he thought mouth slowly opening. No, it was impossible surely?

Chapter Nineteen

Pinky Makepeace returned to the Cross keys public house at around five thirty. His investigations into the culture and power structure of the world he now found himself had taken up most of a dull winter’s day and now the winter’s evening had crept into darkness.

He walked quickly along the wet pavements which reflected the light of the neon street lamps and illuminated shop signs, oblivious to the natives of this town who walked heads down, their minds turned to their stomachs

and tonight’s television. The Scholar was in awe of the volume of brightly lit machines which roared past him on the central carriageway. The noise was tremendous to his ears, nearly as deafening as the Halls of machines he had visited on the odd occasions. If a technology could produce such machines in such profusion, then what could they produce in terms of military weaponry he thought idly to himself.

He waited in the market square for nearly an hour, his bundle of crumpled papers clutched under his arm. It was cold now and the rain which had fallen for most of the day had ceased. The air seemed to be turning solid, his exhaled breath turning into clouds of vapour as it condensed in the freezing air.

Pinky waited for a gap in the traffic, amusing himself while he waited by attempting to blow rings of frosty breath into the evening air. Eventually the volume of the rush hour traffic diminished and Pinky took his chance to run quickly across the market square to the alleyway where the sign of the Cross Keys hung silent on its hinges in the stillness which had now enveloped the town.

He entered the yard stealthily, his eyes seeking out the bakery for signs of the foul baker, and was relieved to see its lights out and the bakery silent. Pinky entered the inn by the side door, expecting to find the place in darkness and silence, but was shocked to find the bar room lit by bright electric light and inhabited by strangers, or so they seemed.

After he had cleared his spectacles of condensation and his eyes had adjusted to the unfamiliar illumination, he realised that the diners here were not strangers at all, but merely familiar faces in strange clothes. Mrs. Lovenberry sat at the head of the table and to either side sat Flax and Scoggins. Pinky’s master’s attire of a green woolly jumper and brown baggy trousers had lessened, to some extent, his usually menacing appearance. But when Flax’s eyes met his own he felt that familiar and malevolent, ever hungry soul, seeking out his.

Pinky shivered. Something had happened to his High Hat master. Today he seemed more intense, more malign than he had ever been before. Beside him Scoggins sat demolishing the mashed potatoes and beef stew Mrs. Lovenberry had prepared for them, with great enthusiasm and did not bother to look up. He now wore a bright, baggy tee shirt emblazoned with a strange design and the word ‘Motorhead’ in huge letters which, along with his tight, heavily patched, blue jeans made him look as normal as the noisy students, who had called the Scholar a ‘Mosher Fossil’ in the library.

From the head of the table Mrs. Lovenberry looked up and smiled. There was a motherly look in her eyes, Pinky thought. She seemed to have adopted them he realised and stifled a snigger at the absurdity of the idea.

The old woman was seeking some purpose in her life, she was revelling in the ‘family meal’ around her old dining table and this seemed to inject something meaningful into her lonely life again, either that - or the ten gold sovereigns that stood in a pile in front of her.

Flax smiled at Pinky and the astonished

Scholar nearly collapsed in shock. His master’s smile was the portal to a hive of malignancy and evil he thought, the forerunner of some terrible atrocity. Pinky shuddered as he hung his coat on the rack and took his place tentatively alongside Scoggins.

“Good evening my man, have a fruitful day?” Flax asked, grinning at him.

Yes Sir.” the Scholar croaked, totally unprepared for his master’s benign greeting. Flax nodded and smiled again.

“Mrs. Lovenberry has found these clothes for us as our others require washing.” he informed the Scholar. There are some for you too.” He added. Pinky nodded as Flax grinned amusedly. His master had assumed a character so amenable that anyone who did not know him could not be threatened by him, but Pinky was alarmed by it. He tore his eyes way from Flax’s dark gaze and began to eat from the plate Mrs. Lovenberry had placed before him.

Flax continued his strange discourse. “The weather is a little cool for the time of year, is it not Mrs Lovenberry” he droned almost threateningly.

“Yes, I won’t be surprised if we have some snow.” the old woman rattled back automatically.

None of the three strangers actually knew what she meant by snow, but all nodded their heads in agreement. Flax then looked questioningly towards the Scholar who merely shrugged his shoulders ignorantly while Mrs. Lovenberry’s mind, triggered by the mention of snow, drifted into the past.

“Yes.” she sighed. “1947 that was a terrible Winter, so cold, so much snow. I hope we’re not in for another like that one, God forbid” she said as her eyes became unfocused and began to recount to her dinner guests, the much narrated and legendary tale of the winter of ‘47. She had told the tale so many times that she was hardly conscious of what she was saying or perhaps even conscious when reliving it, even though the stories were highly detailed, if not subjected to a little factual embellishment here and there.

She remembered the red faced men with frosted white beards, the tunnels beneath the snow dug out by displaced persons and Italian prisoners of war. So much snow! But things didn’t grind to a halt at the slightest sprinkling like they did today, oh no! People were made of sterner stuff in the olden days. Agnes Lovenberry chuckled often and sighed much throughout her monologue, mentioning her late husband, Ernest, many times.

The three men sitting around the table listened intently at first, the stories of the extreme weather at first strange and fascinating, but gradually grew bored and began to fidget uncomfortably. Scoggins produced his favourite stiletto and began to manicure his fingernails. The Scholar, after rapidly and noisily finishing his dinner, shuffled the notes he had assembled that day in preparation for his briefing that evening with Flax.

Only Silus himself sat as if entranced by Mrs. Lovenberry’s recollections, his dark eyes fixed on the ancient freak of a woman, but in reality he too had his mind on other things.

The old woman continued for nearly an hour then, with a final self-satisfied chuckle, her tired eyes closed and she entered a dream world filled with the good old, bad old days; the memories of a early post-war England.

As she nodded off in her chair head slowly lowering onto her chest, Flax turned to the Scholar.

“You have some useful information for me then?” he queried the old menace returning to his voice. His servant nodded excitedly.

“Indeed I do your Eminence.”

Silus rose from his chair and glanced disgustedly at the old woman, checked that she was asleep by blowingon her head and motioned that Pinky follow him. At the foot of the stairs he stopped and spoke again.

“Let us compare notes then, my man. The old bitch has filled us in on a few details about this place. She now thinks of us as foreigners, ‘Albanians’ in fact. Whoever they are.” he laughed without any hint of humour in his voice. “There are, a few things us ‘Albanians’, us ‘foreigners’, should know and she has informed us of them.” he smiled horrifically. “Let us see if her grasp of reality corresponds with your hard and scholarly facts shall we?” His smile fell away, leaving his pock marked mien expressionless and he led a now nervous Pinky Makepeace up the stairs.

Seeing his companions depart, Ivor Scoggins left the table and donned the blue denim jacket Mrs. Lovenberry had acquired for him from the huge pile of ‘jumble’ that the Women’s Institute stored in an unused room on her premises. He looked curiously at the old woman sleeping peacefully at the table. How had she ever been able to get so old he mused? Whatever world lay out there he was about to find out. With a final glance at the now softly snoring Mrs. Lovenberry and disgusted shake of the head, he slipped quietly out of the door and into the night.

The rain which had persisted during the day had now ceased and an icy breeze caused him to shiver. He stood for a while and looked up and stared open-mouthed for a while at the dark, star studded alien sky and then sniggered to himself.

This world was undoubtedly beautiful he thought, so different to the one to in which he had been born. Yet he felt no different here. His desires, his needs remained the same, yet the prospect of fulfilling them here excited him intensely. It was a challenge and the rewards would be so much greater.

Flax had told him in bed that there was an abundance purity, innocence here that he himself had only ever experienced in one individual amongst the millions in Dubh. To desecrate and destroy it would drive him to an ecstasy Scoggins had never experienced before. Flax had told him of how he had been deprived of that experience in their home world and had now licensed his playmate to experience it for him, by proxy. His only warning had been to leave no trace and no trail back to the Cross Keys. Ivor Scoggins stepped out of the yard and instinctively sought welcome embrace of the shadows. Moving with the fluid grace of a feline predator, he slipped along the alleyway and out into the market square.

The street lights lit up the area here with a light almost as bright as day. Scoggins cursed softly to himself. Here the stalking of his victims would be difficult, no deep pools of shadow in which to become invisible, no protective cloak of darkness from which to surprise his prey. But there would be other alleyways and other places, like the one he had just emerged from, where the artificial light did not reach.

As he walked slowly across the market square towards its central monument, Scoggins observed the movement of people and machines from place to place. There were plenty of people here walking in groups and pairs from the ale houses which were now alive with the sound of music and raised voices, shining like beacons to attract custom.

Scoggins scanned his potential prey, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. He sensed the purity Flax had spoken of. It hit him as whiteness, softness, a smoothness waiting to be darkened, cleaved and corrupted. Not all had it and many bore the dark grain of life, had been tainted by it, though all were a thousand times more pure than their counterparts in Dubh.

The assassin sauntered towards a street corner opposite the huge church and watched as a young couple approached him. The young man was powerfully built, his muscular frame displayed under a tight fitting vest. His dark hair was set in a mass of collar length curls and his face was smooth and devoid of any hair. The youth was dressed in denim and, as he and his female companion approached the stranger who loitered on the corner of the street, he looked up at Scoggins and laughed as she

whispered something in his ear.

They both looked at him as they passed by. The youth was confident and his look was intended to intimidate Scoggins who remained expressionless. His female companion smiled. She was attractive in her culture, but to Scoggins she was attractive because of what she was irrespective of any physical attributes or gender.

She was pure and untouched, yet despite the male on her arm and her innocence, her physical attitude, her body language, reached out to summon Ivor Scoggins. But it was not taking her virginity which aroused Scoggins, no minor physical rupture was his goal.

To fulfil himself he would have violate her soul then end her life in the slowest and most despicable way possible. Unconsciously, he sighed and fingered the knife belt strapped across his stomach and hidden beneath his baggy Motorhead tee-shirt.

As the girl passed close to him, so deliberately close that he could feel the warmth of her body. She looked him up and down, her eyes teasing him, as did her body covered in skin tight, white leggings and an equally tight body stocking.

The assassin’s heart began to pound. Her provocative attire did nothing for an animal which was neither male or female, or a libido which lusted not for its own satisfaction through the gendered procurement of pleasure. Scoggins arousal was centred on the simple prospect of inflicting pain and destruction upon the living flesh of another organism. The non-physical eyes that saw this prospect began to glow darkly; a voice spoke.

“I am the centre of all things.”

The couple passed by and the youth cast another warning look at the assassin, who just grinned back unimpressed by the threat. Scoggins inhaled the perfume of her innocence as the object of his lust went by, his eyes watching her long blonde hair it gently caressed her shoulders. The youth tightened his grip around his companion’s waist as he looked back, now nervously at the stranger who he had failed to warn off and who remained at the street corner staring as they made their way across the street towards the churchyard.

She would be his. He would present no obstacle - him first, then her. He waited until the darkness of the churchyard swallowed his prey then followed slowly. As the inky blackness enveloped him, Ivor Scoggins felt safe and at home. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and he became tense and excited.

Moving with a practised stealth, he followed the couple as they wandered aimlessly amongst the gravestones toward the top of the river bank and thin strip of woodland on the bank top. He could not see them, but did not have to. He sensed her presence, the purity of her life force shone for his dark soul like a beacon, which he must extinguish.

Scoggins kept his distance, moving in the darkest shadows and always in complete silence, he did not even seem to breathe, the couple blissfully unaware of that which stalked them. He was an animal of pure instinct now, his senses heightened by the hunt. He smelt the odours of human arousal as he slipped from the shadow of one gravestone to the next, crouching low as he did so.

He startled a cat which hissed when he materialised at its side. He silenced it automatically with a thin sharp blade that twisted skilfully through its skull. The couple, only a few yards ahead, became quiet, stopped and listened before they dismissed the sound and continued laughing and giggling towards the thinly spaced trees at the top of the river bank where soon they slipped to the floor wrapped in one another’s embrace.

Despite the coldness of the night the youth’s passion did not cool. They kissed noisily and gasped in the icy air. The youth’s instincts had control of him now. His rationality had been used to make this moment possible, had become enslaved to his passion, he wanted her badly becoming more aggressive and, squealing playfully in mock protest, she pushed him off.

Then she looked at him and he knew that they had both been playing the same primal game. The girl peeled off her legging to reveal nothing beneath and lay back on the grass, her eyes holding him. Tonight would be her night. He raised himself to his knees and began to unbuckle his belt unaware, lost in the rising of his animal passions, that a shadow rose up behind him and steel glinted in the starlight. But she could see everything.

The slim shadow solidified into a menacing human form against the moon. Time slowed, almost stopped. Her would-be lover smiled at her terrified expression, he thought she was afraid of him, he himself unaware of the shadow’s arms which had risen slowly above his own head. Two thin, steel blades glinted in the moonlight.

Time froze for her and her heart seemed to stop, its pounding ceasing as she waited for the knives to descend in flashing silver arcs, each one aimed at weak spots in the skull of her naively, grinning boyfriend’s temples.

The shadows mouth opened and a crescent of a smile appeared. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three dark shapes emerged out of the dense undergrowth which covered the river bank. A horned beast stood upright and howled. The smile of her boyfriend and his assailant

disappeared as their heads snapped towards the source of the chilling cry. The boyfriend’s jaw dropped open in disbelief and terror and the shadows teeth flashed in a grimace of anger at the leading intruder which hurtled with an unnatural speed from the bank edge.

A split second later the horned intruder thundered into Ivor Scoggins. The assassin’s knives flashed toward his attacker only to be deflected by the shield it held in front of it. The fist of Scoggins’s attacker struck him in the neck and its sharp talons dug into his throat and he found himself lifted easily from his feet to hang in the air.

The fury of the attack released the shocked couple from the paralysis of fear and they stumbled to their feet and began to flee. He sprinted before her, forgetting her existence in his haste. She stumbled after him, leggings around her ankles, allowing herself only one brief glance toward the scene they had left.

There, behind her, three dark figures stood over a crumpled form which twitched on the ground in front of them. She saw a impossibly tall and gangly man, a crouched and horned monster and one other figure standing over the body of the shadow which had meant to attack her and her would-be lover.

The scene then disappeared as a ragged grey cloud passed over the moon, deepening the shadows and covering her nightmare vision as she ran sobbing through the graveyard towards the sanctuary of the neon lights, wondering where her heroic lover, who only moments ago seemed so keen on taking her virginity from her, had disappeared so quickly.

Chapter Twenty

Jonathon wiped the tears from his red rimmed eyes and shivered involuntarily as he attempted to regain his composure. If he was to find Milly here in Dubh, he would have to his wits about him he realised.

The small tavern below was a hive of activity, its visitors exclusively High Hats. Unknown to Jonathon the great hall Silus Flax had built around his gate was several levels below the Black Leopard and on each level, at this crucial time, his minions swarmed like excited ants.

In the absence of Silus Flax, Edgar Morrell, the Chief of Assassins, ran the High Hat organisation in the Lower City. Morrell was a cold and calculating, yet intensely loyal individual. To him, as with his master, people were no more than commodities, tools, weapons and he used ruthlessly them as such to further his ends and those of Silus Flax, showing no emotion as he acquired and disposed of them on the basis of efficiency. Morrell had always been Flax’s right hand and showed a devotion to him that exceeded all else. If his master had told him that to die, he would have done so immediately without thought or emotion and he expected the evotion and loyalty same from all his subordinates.

At present, he presided in the great ante-room to Flax’s personal apartments and considered the fate of Amaril Caldecott who had failed to carry out Flax’s wishes to the letter. Behind Morrell was the great barred door to the chambers in which the dimension door was now open and above it a huge clock showed the time, day and date, ticking loudly in the silence of the chamber.

Amaril Caldecott stood quaking before his judge staring at his feet and listened to the wooden ticking of the clock which stretched out the seconds while he waited for Morrell to speak. The deputy High Hat leader stood and stared at his underling him through his one good eye, while his false eye attempted to imitate its working companion but failed miserably, appearing to gaze outwards and away from the working eye’s focal point.

After fifteen long minutes of scrutiny, he sat down again on the throne-like chair positioned on a raised dais, his hands cupped under his chin. Morrell’s massive hunched and muscular form terrified Amaril, not to mention his uncompromising reputation.

The Chief of Assassins had questioned Caldecott for nearly an hour and now considered his bungling underling’s fate. Amaril twitched nervously and scratched the mole on his nose. Not even for a second had been able to meet Morrell’s accusing gaze. Smiling menacingly, he laughed softly at the quaking Caldecott.

Amaril looked up briefly and giggled back, trying to peer into the Chief of Assassin’s eyes but could not sustain contact, being forced to turn away shivering. Another long silence ensued. Eventually Morrell sighed and lifted his muscular bulk from the chair. Amaril whimpered as the monstrous ox-like form of Flax’s deputy walked slowly towards him. Morrell stood over him, his good eye burning a hole in the top of Amaril’s skull, his stinking breath torturing his nostrils and stomach.

A large, heavy hand came to rest around the back of the weeping man’s neck. Amaril winced and closed his eyes, but the vice-like pressure he expected to come and crush the life slowly out of him never came. Morrell spoke in a voice like gravel sliding down a steel tube. “So you still have the nerve to claim a reward?” he croaked “A reward for what exactly?”

Amaril replied in a whisper, his answer more of a question, a confused plea.

“For the boy? ”

Morrell bent over and stared directly into Amaril’s face.

“Yes of course! I forgot. Mmm, the boy.” he stood upright, turned away and began to pace around the shaking Assassin. Hands clasped behind his back, his head nodding in mock consideration, Morrell laughed quietly.

“Yes of course. The ‘boy’ ......with tits. Is that what you are claiming this reward for? he grated. “The boy who was in fact a girl.” he chuckled.

“Have you visited a brothel recently Amaril?”

“Tits!?” Amaril Caldecott croaked in genuine surprise. The circling continued.

“Yes, my dear Amaril, under those rags was a girl, a female, a woman. Understand? You burned down a whole block of the City, brought the Tans down on our backs for a girl! And failed Amaril. Failed! Failed! Failed! ” he howled.

Edgar Morrell’s face had turned white with rage, sweat rolled down his forehead into his grey, bushy eyebrows as his burning rage set his body on fire. He marched back towards the chair and leaned heavily on its back while Amaril contemplated the penalty for failure, not just a simple ordinary failure. He had failed Silus Flax and no-one failed him and lived.

He considered escape, but was trapped, the only way out guarded by High Hats who smirked with amusement at his predicament. Amaril’s brain began to work overtime and an idea drifted into his scheming mind. Then he smiled.

He stiffened and stood upright, his shivering ceased and he scratched the mole on his nose again as he smiled broadly at Morrell’s back. He would take a chance, but he knew that Morrell could not challenge the excuse he had concocted under pressure. It was a last ditch effort on his part and an idea was born, necessity was the Mother of its invention and its Father self- preservation and, unknown to him, was almost true.

Amaril cleared his throat confidently and Morrell whirled around. “Did you say something idiot!” he howled, staring at a smirking and confidant Amaril.

“I knew the boy would escape, so I captured the girl....er.....she is the boy’s wench. My plan was that he would come to us seeking her, as he will soon.” he said quietly and assuredly. Morrell stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then laughed and shook his head.

“But my dear, bungling, Amaril. She’s not here and it’s doubtful that she still lives, since she was sent to the Tallmen for their amusement. They don’t last long in the Towers. Surely this ‘boy’ would realise this don’t you think, and why would he bother anyway? Would you risk your life for a female?”

Amaril considered Morrell’s reasoning and realised he had lost.

“There was a chance that he would " he ventured. " if he err .. loved her.”

Morrell roared with laughter.

“Did what! LOVE ? Amaril are you ill? No-one loves

anyone anymore, they never did. It’s just lust dear Amaril, an animal thing. Any thinking man knows that. The boy’ll just find something else to shag, like the rest of us.” he mocked.

Amaril felt embarrassed more than frightened. Of course no one loved anyone any more or so they said. But he had loved his Mother dearly until her death and he didn’t want to shag her. He knew what love was. Amaril was sure that the emotion was still existent in the city, just a little lost, buried. People like Morrell made him sick, they knew but were not man enough to admit it. He grew strangely angry.

“You’re wrong Morrell! Wrong! He did love her I know about love and he wasn’t like us” He screamed as tears streamed into his eyes along with the memories of his Mother’s unselfish affection. “And you destroyed my plan! It’s your fault! You fat bastard! Flax’ll sort you out when he hears about it, he will understand!” he threatened, pointing an accusing finger at Morrell who promptly reached out and broke it with a sickening crack. He laughed as Amaril staggered around in pain.

“Plans! Plans! “the amusement drained from Morrell’s face. “It doesn’t matter anyway, Amaril. No one threatens me! “he spat.

Amaril looked up into Morrell’s face and realised that the Chief of Assassins actually might have believed him. He was frightened that he had made an error and was dangerous. Morrell nodded to the guards and stepped back sneering.

“Better send you to see your Mummy then Caldecott, seeing as you love her so much!”

Amaril whirled around quickly enough to see the flash from the guards’ musket barrels, but did not live to hear the roar of them or feel Morrell’s knife drawn across his throat to make sure of his silence.

Chapter Twenty One

Jonathon crouched low on the rooftop overlooking the Black Leopard and considering his options when the City’s bells began to ring, unaware of the minor dramas taking place below. The Tallmen had decided, because of the result Amaril’s arson, to vent the City of the billowing clouds of smoke which hung above the rooftops, dimmed the light and poisoned the stagnant air.

At the sound of the bells, the crowds below were flung into panic. High Hats, Tans and ordinary citizens alike, began to run in terror for the cover relative sanctuary of the lower levels. Seeing an opportunity to get inside the Black Leopard in the confusion, he and scrambled quickly down the building to the street level. Swiftly he entered a side alley and waited. Down the alley a High Hat sprinted toward the shelter of the Black Leopard.

As the galloping High Hat Captain drew level with the place where Jonathon waited, he threw out an arm to make contact under the High Hat’s chin, snapping back his head as his body continued forward. He hit the cobbles hard and unconscious. Jonathon dragged the helpless man into the darkness at the side of the alleyway then, dressed in his black coat and top hat, ran to join the crowd which jostled and fought with one another at the door of the Black Leopard.

Two large and bar room ugly door men fought back the crowd with heavy sticks, admitting only High Hats and throwing the rest away from safety. A rough pair of hands reached expertly outwards and dragged Jonathon from the crowd and pushed him into the packed bar of the Black Leopard.

A few faces turned and nodded acknowledgement to Jonathon and the other High Hats who had been hauled in from the street. The staff of the Tavern secured heavy shutters on the inside of the building and then the two doormen entered and closed the door, barring it against the crowd outside and the din of the bells which continued their warning.

The inside of the High Hat headquarters was bigger than it looked from the street. High Hats by the hundred sat in their back coats around wooden tables drinking, smoking and laughing, oblivious to the chaos which would ensue outside when the venting began.

There would be no frantic hammering on strangers’ doors for them while watching fearfully as dark, crescents opened in the sky above and heralded the rapid and lethal replacement of the City’s atmosphere. They were safe and that was all that mattered to them.

Jonathon wandered slowly across the sawdust and spittle strewn floor and amongst the tables, studying the relaxing High Hats. They played cards and chatted. Some sat alone and silent, smoking huge reefers. An assassin sat in a corner and cleaned and sharpened his knives.

Another dissected a large rat which he had nailed alive to the table top. No one paid the impostor any attention as he strolled in the dim light yellow light of the oil lamps towards the bar at the end of the room.

Jonathon chuckled to himself quietly, if they only knew who he was, the thought amusedly. He reached the bar and a short, fat and bald man with a large moustache smiled at him from behind the glass and beer strewn bar top. “What’s it to be Captain.” he grunted, his eyes alighting on the red ribbon tied around Jonathon’s top hat. He studied the man closely, his mind slipping gently into the bar tenders. “Has Amaril Caldecott been in today?” Jonathon asked casually. The dirty white aproned bartender guffawed loudly, his face exploding in amusement.

“Sure ‘as Captain. Why y’ask? ‘e a friend of yourn then?” he questioned, an amused tone in his voice. Jonathon smiled and shook his head.

“He has something of mine, I need back.” The bartender laughed again.

" ‘e owes just about everyone ‘ere somethin’ ." he said motioning to the faces who had tuned in to the conversation at the bar. “But I don’t ‘spect anyun us’ll be gettin’ it back now.”

The watching High Hats laughed. Jonathon was infected by the High Hat humour and laughed himself, yet was intensely frustrated.

Jonathon delved into the bartender’s mind and saw the reason for the his amusement. Jonathon examined the memory of a small wiry man being dragged protesting down the steps at the far end of the bar room by two High Hat thugs. Jonathon laughed again and moved towards the

steps. As he began to descend the barman shouted to him. “Bring me somethin’ back Captain, if there’s anythin’ left - maybe the wart off the end of ‘is nose! ” he laughed loudly. Jonathon smiled and waved to the bartender and quickly descended the worn, damp steps which emerged onto the lower street levels below Black Leopard and Chain Street.

The poorly lit street extended perhaps a hundred yards in either direction before terminating in newly constructed walls, which isolated the domain of Silus Flax’s High Hats from the rest of Dubh below street level.

Lining the dim streets were brightly lit shops, brothels and ale-houses, which were the source of rowdy male laughter and squealing and screaming women. Only High Hats were to be encountered here.

Along the gutters patrons of the bars and brothels sat or slept off the hangovers of their days activities. Jonathon could barely believe the numbers of dark coated men here, there were far more than he had ever imagined existed in the whole organisation. The ranks of the High Hats had been rapidly increased recently and the air of expectancy which filled the dens of vice here was overwhelming.

Jonathon crossed the street and, passing through an archway, descended another flight of steps to another street level. The scene was almost the same here as on the other level, except that all the High Hats wore the same red ribbons around their hats as he did, and he realised that this level was dedicated to those of a Captain’s rank only.

Again he moved onwards and downwards. The guard at this level nodded as he Jonathon began his descent to he next street level, letting the Captain pass but never taking his heavy lidded, almond eyes off him. Jonathon sensed a tension in the air here. He could feel the scrutinizing gaze of the level guard drilling into him. Something disturbed Jonathon, causing the hairs on his neck to stand on end.

He quickened his pace and ran down the remaining stairs. He heard a light flutter of footsteps behind him and realised that he was being followed. The stairway led on to yet another street like those above, but here another set of stairs continued his right and downwards. Jonathon moved down these steps and waited in the shadows of a shallow alcove from where he had a clear view of the landing which led out onto the street above.

He could hear no footsteps now, but he could feel the stealthy approach of his pursuer. On the landing a man stopped and looked out onto the subterranean street. Although he wore the garments of a High Hat, Jonathon sensed that this man was not what he seemed.

The light from a smoky, oil soaked brazier extenuated the man’s unusual features; his narrow crescent lidded eyes, his high cheekbones, small flattened nose and perfectly white and shining teeth. But the man’s bronzed and weathered skin gave away more of his identity. He was a Tan. An intruder like Jonathon. Jonathon stepped out into the light and the Tan whirled around to face him.

He stood frozen for an instant and then drew a large curved dagger from beneath his cloak before leaping down the steps towards Jonathon. Managing to dodge the sweeping blade he caught his assailant’s arm as it came down and threw the Tan intruder onto the steps onto the next landing.

The man staggered to his feet, bruised and winded, frantically searching for his dagger. A glint of flame on metal informed him that his intended victim was now armed with his weapon.

The Tan smiled and advanced slowly back up the steps towards Jonathon. The panting Tan was tensed ready for Jonathon’s attack, but it never came. His antagonist smiled and tossed the dagger back to him. The Tan studied Jonathon with puzzlement for a while and then slowly thrust his dagger back into its sheath.

Jonathon sat down on the steps and looked down at the Tan who gazed back at him, then spoke in a whisper.

“It seems I am not the only intruder here today. Since we both share no love for Silus Flax or his High Hats I see no reason why we should become enemies, do you?”

The Tan did not reply, but Jonathon had noticed the Tan raise his eyebrows at the mention of Flax’s name. Jonathon tried again to induce some vocal response.

“Am I right Tan, do we share a dislike of this man Flax or perhaps your superiors do, is there any reason why we should not become allies here today?”

Again the Tan did not speak.

He stared at Jonathon for a while then motioned him to follow him down the stairway and the next landing and the light of a brazier. Jonathon joined him and the small Tan opened his mouth and indicated that Jonathon looked in. Warily he looked into his mouth.

An impressive set of teeth greeted him, but the Tan’s tongue was missing. It had been recently severed, its cut edge still ragged and sealed with a hot iron it seemed. The Tan smiled wearily and grunted, then pointed to Jonathon’s top hat and drew a cross in the air as he shook his head. Jonathon did not understand. The dumb Tan smiled and sighed and rummaged through his pockets before producing detailed drawing of a man’s face. A beak-like nose set on a square, pock marked face a large mouth with teeththat seemed to big for it, were sufficient to reveal the identity. The small, black, bottlemless staring eyes put it beyond doubt. It was Silus Flax. The bearer of Flax’s image took out his knife and drew it across in front of his own throat. Jonathon realised that this Tan was here to kill Flax, he would deprive Jonathon of his destiny. He smiled and nodded in comprehension.

“Where is he?” he asked.

The Tan assassin shook his head and waved his hands in front of his head in a confused manner, indicating that he did not know - that Flax had gone. He had been here, but now was not. Jonathon looked into the Tan’s mind. Flax had gone. The Tan knew that he had been here, but now he had gone, but not by the normal exits. He could not find him. His superiors had instructed him to find the High Hat leader and kill him, but Flax had disappeared into thin air.

The Tan had asked questions regarding his whereabouts, but no-one seemed to know, that was why he had attacked Jonathon. He had hoped to overpower him and torture the information out of a High Hat Captain, who seemed to be intent on important business rather than waiting for something to happen as most here seemed to be doing.

That something, the waiting, was what had disturbed the Tans leadership. They had suffered Flax long enough, now many more men had been recruited into the ranks of his organisation than ever before and his usefulness had been outgrown. He was up to something and they had sent Chan into their midst to find out what. Chan made no attempt to resist Jonathon’s mental intrusion, in fact he seemed used to it, and gave up all that Jonathon wanted to know. Jonathon continued his mental probing.

Chan the Tan was a spy and assassin. Arguments concerning Flax’s fate were high on the agenda in the Tan hierarchy. Certain leaders wanted him dead for no other reason than they feared him. Others, on Flax’s payroll, pressed for more information first, while planning to inform him of the dangers in the meantime.

Some argued that he was no threat at all to the might of the Tans, his High Hats were hopelessly outnumbered despite the recent increases in their ranks. He was useful too, since he was the only source of skilled labour, since with the use of threats and bribery, the Black Gaffer pulled the strings in all the Machine Halls now.

In the end they had sent Chan to find out what Flax was up to and if he planned any action against the Tans, he was be killed. Chan had carried out the first part of the operation half-heartedly, he had been here to kill Flax regardless of what Flax intended to do. A bribe he had received from those who feared Flax and wanted him dead, was all the motivation he needed to find anf kill him. Chan was a simple man. He would carry out orders and if those orders carried reward, those orders, rather than any others, would be carried out.

Jonathon’s gesture of returning his dagger, when Chan was at his mercy, convinced him that Jonathon was an ally in that they were alone together amongst enemies. He questioned Jonathon’s motives no further.

From amongst the information he had gleaned from the Tan, Jonathon knew that he had been here in their stronghold for days, watching their comings and goings. If he had been watching their activities then surely he would have noted Milly’s arrival and that of Amaril Caldecott. “Have you seen a man called Amaril Caldecott” he asked hopefully. Chan nodded the affirmative and Jonathon’s heart skipped a beat. He grasped the Tan’s shoulders and peered expectantly into his narrow black eyes.

“Did he bring anyone with him, a prisoner perhaps?”

The Tan paused for thought, slightly taken aback by Jonathon’s intensity. He had been watching for Flax, but had noted the arrival of a strangely attired prisoner and the triumphant entry of the distinctive character of Amaril Caldecott. He nodded again and Jonathon felt a wave of triumph and reflief surge through his body.

His obvious pleasure seemed to excite the Tan and he smiled broadly in unison. Jonathon could hardly contain himself. She was here!

“Where did he take her!” he shouted. The Tan spy indicated that his excited ally should follow him. With Jonathon in tow, the Tan led his unlikely companion deep into the High Hat headquarters. They moved cautiously through deeper and deeper street levels that were crowded with High Hats who just seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

They passed through large and hastily organised dormitories they had been set up in the streets amongst the ale and whorehouses, until at last they reached a huge hall and moved slowly around the balcony which ran around its entire circumference.

The old Victorian music hall, which served as a great outer chamber to Flax’s apartments, was almost empty, only a couple of guards were posted to the doors which led to Edgar Morrell’s hall of temporary rule.

As the two intruders peered down two muffled

musket shots rang out from the inner hall. The guards outside raised their weapons as the doors swung outwards. A pair of High Hats carried the body of another High Hat between them and then threw it to the ground before returning to the chamber and closing the heavy doors behind them.

Chan nudged Jonathon as the two crouched low on the balcony and mouthed words.

" Cal-de-cott.” Chan mouthed. " Am-a-ril Cal-de-cott.” He repeated it and jabbed a finger at the corpse which lay in an ever widening pool of blood. Jonathon leapt to his feet, fearing that Milly was behind the door too.

Fear and desperation drove him along the balcony until he reached a sweeping stairway which brought him out the opposite side of the hall and the doors from where Amaril Caldecott’s corpse had been carried.

He did not stop. He charged across the floor of the auditorium toward the bemused guards who looked up to see the figure of a High Hat Captain hurtling towards them.

This caused them no alarm until he was close

enough for them to see his wide eyes and bared teeth. By then it was too late. One guard raised the barrel of his musket in his general direction, but did not have time to aim properly. Jonathon felt the musket ball whiz past his head, and then half collided, half charged the man with the musket at full speed.

The guard went down and stayed down, his nose broken and bleeding where his assailant’s head had hit his face. Jonathon was slightly dazed and staggered to his feet as the other guard drew his short sword and raised it above his head.

The sword flashed down towards Jonathon who stepped backwards and fell over the prostrate body of the other guard, his backward fall helping him to avoid the High Hat’s wild slash at his head. Jonathon flailed around on the floor desperately grasping for a weapon as the guard stepped forward again. His hand grasped the barrel of the fallen man’s musket and, struggling upright, swung it wildly towards his attacker. The musket butt struck the guard in the right temple. There was a loud crack of breaking bone and he crumpled onto his knees with a moan, attempted to rise again, and then fell heavily to the floor.

By this time Chan had reached the bottom of the stairway and had begun to run across the hall towards Jonathon. The two heavy doors opened and the guards emerged from inside to investigate the noise. They sighted the intruder sprinting towards them and aimed their weapons at him.

Chan saw them and began a ducking and zigzagging run in a effort to confuse their efforts to make him an easy target. In an explosion of smoke and flame the two guards fired simultaneously, their shots echoing around the auditorium.

The Tan assassin screamed out loud, but whether it was in pain or some battle cry Jonathon never knew. The little man’s course straightened out now as the guards hastily attempted to reload their muskets, their ramrods sliding hastily into barrels, but Chan had produced two pistols and fired them at the two guards.

Both of them fell together and Chan whooped again, in what was obviously a tongue less victory cry, as he leapt over their bodies and sped into the hall beyond.

Jonathon struggled to maintain his balance as he staggered into the inner hall behind the Tan, carrying the sword which he had taken from his own felled assailant. A fight was already taking place inside. A huge muscular man swung a sword at Chan who rolled away from the slashing blade. The Chief of Assassins was alone in the room, his two guards dead outside. Chan had hoped to find Flax here, but finding the Chief of his Assassins was enough to make up for his disappointment.

Edgar Morrell was a large man, but was not hindered by his bulk. He moved swiftly and efficiently and the agility of the Tan assassin was tested to the limit in avoiding the blows of his sword. Chan circled the huge Morrell now, his discharged pistols discarded in favour of his curved dagger.

Morrell laughed and lunged again at his weaving antagonist who rolled athletically away from the deadly sweep of slashing blade. The Chief of Assassins grinned at Chan, enjoying the contest and swept into the attack again.

Jonathon edged around the two combatants, slipping into the shadows which clung to the ante- chamber’s walls. Behind Morrell’s he noticed an iron clad, barred and padlocked door. If Milly was anywhere she was behind that door he decided.

Moving around the ante-chamber close to its cold, damp stone walls, he paused beneath a dimly, flickering oil lamp. He realised that Milly was not behind the door. He had hoped she was, but knew that she was not. He

had known since he entered the auditorium and been consciously afraid to use his psychic powers, because if they had revealed nothing he would have been thrown into the pits of despair. Yet, for an instant during the fight outside he had done so, unconsciously, perhaps because if he had died outside these doors he would have known whether or not he had died in vain.

Now he knew. Now he accepted what his powers had told him in that instant that Milly was not here, but he used his powers again and realised that she had been here and, more importantly, had not died in this place. He found her fear etched into the stone of the damp walls like a shadow, she had suffered here yet still lived. The walls had recorded a thousand such and worse events as prisoners had been brought before Silus Flax for his judgement. Jonathon could now see it all, he had tapped into this reservoir of despair unknowingly in a desperate attempt to find out her fate; and the Ghosts in the Stone spoke to him.

His intrusion had breached the walls and all they held, the energy of pain and despair stored there was now loosed upon him as if the stone could no longer bear its grim secrets. He moaned as the horrors which had taken place here began to materialise before him. The ante-chamber darkened before his eyes and a great weight, like a blanket of cold, iron chain mail fell upon his soul.

The ghosts of the victims of the High Hats and Silus Flax emerged into the hall in their hundreds, their staring horror ridden eyes and pain etched faces seeking out he who had breached the dykes which had held them in the stone sanctuary of nothingness.

Howls of anguish, fear, despair, bombarded Jonathon’s sensitive soul and he braced himself against the now freezing walls in shock. Spectral arms reached out their icy fingers towards him and, as each touched him he felt himself being savagely leeched of energy. The faces implored him to help them but, as their eyes met his, he felt their misery, the very fear and anguish they had felt here and it was transmitted to him for him to experience. They saw him as their saviour and were unwittingly crucifying him.

They pleaded with Jonathon for salvation. He had released them from the nowhere of the halls wall, reunited ghosts with memory. Now they pleaded for him to release them from their renewed agonies. He had to fight them as they came to him and embraced him one after another. He was weakening fast, close to unconsciousness. He grew afraid. He knew of their plight, but he knew who they were, what they were – another product of the corruption of Dubh, their despair the power on which the foul

spirit of this sick City fed and which they themselves, by virtue of their inhumanity, were inextricably a part of. Only Hell would have them and this would be no release, for they were already in another one and, if Jonathon’s plan succeeded, he would condemn them to it for eternity. He was not and never could be, their saviour.

With this thought in his head the spectral horde began to dissolve back into the walls floor and ceiling from which they had come. A few lingered for a while and stared at Jonathon who lay slumped in exhaustion at the foot of the wall close to the door to Flax’s inner chamber.

They had felt hope in his presence but he had taken it away, he had condemned them all, past judgement on them. So they turned back to the shadow and rejoined the darkness.

After a short while of exhausted slumber he awoke to the sound of musket fire and shouting outside in the auditorium. He lifted himself wearily to his feet and focused his attention on the battle which was still taking place in the hall in which he now stood.

In the freezing cold which still gripped the chamber the two assassins still circled one another, oblivious rapid drop in temperature. The cold air frosted their breath and the warm sweat from their bodies shrouded them in a fog of vapour. Both were now bloodied and close to exhaustion.

Morrell’s huge muscled and tattooed torso was covered in deep cuts and tears where Chan’s dagger had found its mark. The great black boars etched over all his body seemed to be ready to join the fray themselves, twitching and shimmering with Morrell’s exertions The Tan himself, despite his agility, had been unable to avoid Morrell’s sword.

He bled profusely from at least two wounds and judging from his pale face, which was contorted in pain, he was loosing blood rapidly and his movements becoming slower. Yet as Morrell charged in again and Chan slipped by the attack, he grinned again. Jonathon realised that despite his bravado the Tan could not last much longer and then he himself would be at the mercy of the Chief of Assassins.

Then gunfire erupted again from outside the chamber accompanied by the screams of men dying. Then a lone, maniacal howl chilled Jonathon’s blood. Whatever was out there, was getting closer and closer and the battle becoming more furious. Jonathon shivered and moved toward the door to Flax’s inner sanctum.

A stray musket ball ricocheted around the stone walls of the hall and rocked Jonathon into action. He had to escape and only the locked door offered any safe exit.

He mounted the steps to the door and swung his sword at the padlock. It took three heavy blows to break it away from its securing chain sufficiently to allow him to break it free completely and push the door

inwards.

It opened easily and Jonathon pushed inside before looking back into the ante-chamber. The battle between Chan and Morrell still continued, but the latter looked uneasy now, his attention flitting from the Tan and Jonathon. He dodged an attack from the tiring Chan who rolled forward and positioned himself between Morrell’s sweaty bulk and Jonathon.

“Get away from there!” Morrell screamed.

Suddenly the Chief of Assassins became strangely diplomatic. “Look it’s been a fair fight” he addressed the badly wounded Tan in calm tone of voice. “But you will lose, you can gain nothing now. So ask your comrade to come away from there and I promise you free conduct out of here - you may even choose to join us if you wish, you have proved yourselves two good men, we’ll need the like of you soon and it’ll be worth your while.” he panted his promises.

Chan spat at the floor.

Edgar Morrell continued. “In a few moments most of the High Hats in this place will be here, you stand no chance at all. Consider my offer - Life or death?”

Neither Jonathon nor Chan responded. It was doubtful that Morrell’s promises would materialise at all. But he was right about the arrival of High Hats. Six musket men dived into the doorway between the auditorium and the ante-chamber and took up defensive positions at the door, reloading their weapons and firing at the unseen enemy that lurked outside. Others now dashed inside to the assistance of their deputy leader.

Morrell smiled victoriously as his men took aim at Chan and Jonathon. The first shot knocked Tan assassin to the ground and the second splintered the door close to Jonathon’s head as he dived for cover onto the floor. As he lay weakened and vulnerable at the entrance to the inner hall, the defenders at the door screamed and backed into the hall as their enemy hurtled, howling into view.

From beneath a hideous, horned helmet, the beast’s jaws gleamed wetly, red in the dim light of the braziers. Two High Hats fell in quick succession as throwing knives arced out from behind his huge, circular shield and thudded into their chests.

Three muskets where levelled at him as he continued his charge undeterred. The High Hats fired, two musket balls rang out denting he shield and the third hit the Turkanschoner’s metal jaws, causing a shower of sparks to erupt like a aura around his demonic visage. He came on regardless and at an astonishing speed. In seconds the three who had fired their shots lay broken and torn upon the floor before they could draw their swords. The remaining defender at the door dropped his musket in sheer terror as the horned devil’s gaze alighted on him and fled towards the auditorium.

Picking up a discarded sword, the Turkanschoner lurched into the ante-room, his eyes wide searching out that which he had come here to find. Morrell and his two companions whirled around to meet the advance of the new aggressor.

The two High Hats who had ran to join their leader did not look too enthusiastic as bodyguards and looked to their master for advice, preferably retreat from the beast who had hacked and torn his way through their stronghold to the seat of Flax’s empire. Morrell’s instructions came loud and threateningly, his sword prodding their backs to emphasise the consequence of disobeying his order. “Me or IT cowards.”

The two High Hats hesitated for a moment then charged forwards at their opponent. The beast leapt at them and decapitated the first before he had moved five paces. The second, observing his comrades rapid despatch, stopped and backed off, dropping his sword. Morrell, true to his word, split the High Hat’s skull to the bridge of his nose as the High Hat retreated.

The Turkanschoner watched silently as Morrell noisily dislodged the sword from the High Hats head and cleaned it casually on the dead man’s cloak. Morrell was ignorant of the nature of the beast that he faced. It found his killing of the unarmed and fleeing minion disgusting and unnecessary. Morrell was confidant now, his adrenalin was running high and he laughed in the face of the beast who, to his surprise, threw down his sword and shield and stood unarmed before him.

The Chief of Assassins laughed and the Turkanschoner echoed Morrell’s last mortal sounds. In one bound the Tallmen’s beast was upon him. His artificial jaws opened up and expanded, hidden hydraulic pistons drove the metal jaws onto his skull, the upper and lower incisors cracking easily through the bone.

Then he began to apply a slowly increasing pressure, he paused for a while as the sound of splintering bone increased and the sound of Morrell’s animal whimpering decreased. With one final effort the Turkanschoner’s jaws closed fully and Morrell’s head disintegrated with a loud wet crunch.

The Chief of Assassin’s body fell to the floor, twitching as the beast spat out the remnants of his brain and skull as if he had eaten something poisonous. The killing machine that slowly regained its calm had displayed its inhuman talents for a reason. It no longer killed to eat, it showed no interest in the corpses which quivered in the silent ante-room around him.

Jonathon, already weakened by his own experience had been pushed to the limit by the horror of the Turkanschoner’s violence. Although he had touched his mind and seen it all in the well shaft below the Castle of Lepers, it had not prepared him for the full graphic horror of what the beast was in the reality of its forced being. Now he watched as its burning eyes searched of the chamber’s shadows, its wiry, but impossibly powerful muscles twitching expectantly beneath the Tallman’s jerkin it had donned in the tombs. The beasts crooked back with vertebrae that protruded, even beneath the leather of its clothing, combined with his blood drenched and salivating jaws and horned helmet, produced an acutely terrifying silhouette against the light of the anteroom doorway. It was primal and demonic

Jonathon knew better though. He had seen the beast’s mind and had found no beast on all just a product of evil minds and their conditioning. He stared at the creature that had endured so much pain, its ‘life of pain’ it had said to him, and been robbed of all that it had ever had by the Tallmen.

Jonathon’s vision began to dim as the Turkanschoner located and walked over to him, occasionally glancing over it’s shoulder for more High Hats.

“Master.” he whispered. “Master, I find you again. Please not desert me....you make me whole again.”

Jonathon neither cared for nor wanted any responsibility as the master of this sad abomination, but again, he realised it had saved his life. It hit him that this creature’s debt to him had gone beyond loyalty to a master for it loved him … for what he had done accidentally.

As he began to slip into a fatigued and unavoidable sleep Jonathon felt himself being lifted gently into its arms and carried through the doors he had forced himself as the sound of running feet and the barking of orders carried into the ante-room from the auditorium.

They approached two whirling apertures of light which seemed to bore into the opposite wall. Without hesitation the Turkanschoner entered the smaller of the two and advanced at a measured pace through it. Slipping in and out of consciousness, Jonathon watched the swirl of colour and images around them left and captured in the fabric of time which spun around them.

He saw faces, distorted and stretched, but recognisable - Flax and two of his men. The High Hat leaders face was set in a victorious grin. A round faced man with a pale visage of fear and a feminine face, but so cold and devoid of emotion. He saw reflections of himself and the Turkanschoner marching slowly and steadily down the centre of the vortex. He saw the future, but not just one...many possible futures.

The Turkanschoner spoke, but it was meaningless to him. “Inversion gate, many branches. Echo of generated primary. I know now. I know!” he said triumphantly reclaiming somthign of his former self.

Abruptly the light and the images were gone as they emerged out of the dimension door into a small building bright with the light of the giant’s light orb.

Rislo leapt to his feet in astonishment, his lantern jaw agape in shock as he was unexpectedly reunited with his allies. The Turkanschoner stared at him and spat. “Bad man.” Jonathon shook his head andwhispered, wheezily to the Turkanschoner.

“No, not all bad, much good is here.” before he slipped into a deep sleep. The beast stared at Rislo and spoke again. “All! " he hissed. " All bad. !"

After a few hours Jonathan awoke suddenly from dreams that involved Flax and himself, Milly – in fact a maelstrom of events past and future, fact and fantasy.

Immediately Rislo rose to his feet and leaned over Jonathon as he awoke and stretched.

“We must act now, you must come and look at a the dimension door – from this side it leads to a perfect escape!” Slowly and painfully Jonathin arose, not sure what the giant talked of, but focussed on the word ‘escape’ and the excited tone of Rislo’s voice.

After a few moments of paced walking they emerged into a small cave that Rislo had visited earlier. It was secluded and the night was dark. A tell tale neon haze lit the sky. Slowly the truth about this dimension dawned on Jonathon. This was linked to the dimension door Flax had left by, as the Turkanschoner had said – same place, different exits. Flax was here. He coudl almost smell him, his presence hung heavy like acrid smoke that stuck to the mind. Jonathon shivered. Flax was here. He pondered anxiously, he had to do something now, had to confront him here, perhaps stop him here? Then there was Milly, he should find her. He felt a pang inside his heart.

Slowly he walked up the grassy bank opposite the cave and climbed over the fence into a dark graveyard. His companions followed behind, the Turkanschoner first and Rislo at a safe distance form the beat, behind.

The church’s tall spire pierced the night sky, moving engine sounds came closer. Whilst Jonathon agonised over this priorities, the Turkanschoner noticed a young couple enter the graveyard and run giggling into its midst. Then he noticed the shadow that followed them, slipping from gravestone to gravestone, getting closer to them.

The couple had laid down behind a tall stone and the shadow crept closer. The Turkanschoner’s nostrils flared. In the darkness he saw the glint of steel blades.

In a instant, and to the surprise of his companions, he hurtled across the graveyard and attacked the shadowy assailant. Jonathon sprinted after him. By the time he arrived all he witnessed was the sickening crack of a neck being broken and the screams of the two young people who fled the hellish apparition who had emerged out of the darkness.

Jonathon was in shock – had the Turkanschoner reverted back to his training? Then he saw his victim. It was one of Flax’s men. He picked up the two stiletto knives and put them in his belt.

“Bad” the beast growled. Jonathon nodded. Rislo arrived and stared at the corpse and then accusingly at the Turkanschoner. Jonathan put his hands to his head.

“We need to do something. I need to find Milly. Flax is here. I must stop him, he may not return to Dubh and all will be in vain!” He was approaching despair, torn in half. Milly or Flax? They need to complete their plans in Dubh too. His mind raced – one thing they must do was to get the final parts for the machine. Rislo could do that. He paced in circles, staring at the corpse. He looked at Rislo.

“Rislo go back and collect the machine. I need to find Milly, but I can’t leave Flax here. The time has come for our paths to cross again, for a final time. I can’t chance him staying here. It has to end.” he stuttered. Then the Turkanschoner spoke.

“I find girl.” He grunted. “You find Shadow Man.” Jonathan stared at him.

“How will you find her?” he stuttered.

“I smell her scent on you, I can find, trained to find”! He pointed at Rislo. Rislo shied away from his taloned finger.” Already I smell scent before.” he added. The beast nodded his horned head affirmatively, he needed no further instruction he knew her importance to his master; he whirled around and disappeared into the darkness. He didn’t add that he also smelled her scent on the Tallman. He saw no need. He would find her as he had promised. He owed this to Jonathon.

Rislo was disturbed by events now. He could not understand why Jonathon trusted the beast to find the most important person in the world to him. How could he trust it? He nodded at Jonathon.

“I will get the machine from where we left it before we fled the Turkanschoner and meet you where we just left, and then we finish this.

Jonathon sighed deeply.

“Rislo, if I am not back in a four hours do as we planned” he said. Rislo’s eyes met his. “Take Milly with you the Turkanschoner he finds her.”

Rislo could not understand why Jonathon had to do this task ... to confront Flax. As far as he was concerned they should flee the world now. But obediently he nodded and left, making sure he did not have to walk with the beast back to the dimension door.

Jonathon was left alone amongst the old and newly dead. He wondered if he was due to join them soon. He looked at Scoggins whose death mask was set wide eyed in astonishment. Then he shivered, and jogged towards the neon light of the town centre…and Silus Flax.

Chapter Twenty Two

Ben Santiago’s trip on a British airway’s economy flight to London had been uneventful. He had forgone the luxuries afforded by his wealth in an effort to unravel the mystery of his recurring dream. His personal jet had therefore been left in his hangar along with his normal entourage of advisers and bodyguards.

He glided through customs almost as if he was half invisible and completely uninteresting to the officer who stamped the passport of David Lopez, a diamond dealer from Bolivia. His alias was half true, he had emigrated from South America in the late nineteen forties after the disappearance his Mother and Father in a light plane over the Andes. No wreckage had ever been found, but after a month the search was called off and Ben pronounced an orphan and a distant relative transported him to New York.

There he grew up and lived on an allowance from the estate of his deceased Father. It was never quite enough to allow him to be comfortable, to fulfil his yearning for the type of lifestyle he glimpsed in the Big Apple’s restaurants and hotels, but it was enough to survive on as a youth who quickly parted company with his benevolent relatives and hit the streets.

He began life dealing in anything which brought a profit. Slowly he advanced from the world of the legal business to drugs and guns. Quickly his business grew and he found a world desperate to use his services and his complete impartiality which, as he moved into international arms dealing he found the to be of particular use.

As he now exited customs he felt a tingle of excitement whip down spine. It was almost like a drug related flashback. For a minute, a myriad of memories tripped through his mind, the places the faces of those he had done his early deals with in far flung corners of the earth.

He had dealt with them all. With provincial tyrants and national dictators, with military governments and desperate rebels. All their causes were his profits, their politics and the outcome of his involvement irrelevant. The catastrophe and misery he fuelled meant little to him, death and destruction gave him the opportunity for profit. He turned no one down.

Now on this visit to England it all came back. He felt the thrills and exhilaration he had done then and it made him feel twenty years younger as the adrenalin pumped through his fifty-five year old veins. He smiled broadly and walked with a bouncing stride as he made his way to the car hire desks.

At the Hertz desk he hired a vehicle from an attentive female clerk. She found his bronzed complexion and cold blue eyes, a result of his German Father and Bolivian Mother sent a quiver through her body. The man smiled at her and his vaguely accented English added to his appeal.

Suddenly she wanted him.

Although she was very attractive, Ben Santiago was not interested in her at all today. He had seen and experienced this reaction many times before, he knew the effect he had upon the opposite sex. Normally, detecting the signs, he would have asked her to dinner followed by an invitation to his hotel room, which they never refused; then left them bruised and exhausted in the morning without a word or a parting kiss.

But today he had deep, more urgent desires and he ignored her as she brushed provocatively past him as she explained the controls of the hire car. He thanked her and smiled knowingly as he slipped into the driving seat and drove off without a second glance.

Dismayed the woman returned to her desk and dreamed unknowingly of what might have been that evening, curious to know why her seductive charms had unusually failed her. She shook her head and smiled. It was his loss, she muttered to herself. And after all, he would return the car and she would be there. Perhaps, when he had concluded his business, he would be in a more receptive mood, prepared to celebrate a little, she’d enjoy that, she thought.

Consulting his map, Santiago picked his route out of Londons annoyingly chaotic road system and eventually slipped onto the relative openness of the motorway and sped North.

The car, which was small by his standards, sat easily in the fast lane and ate up the miles as he mused over the meaning of his dreams and his willingness to respond to their call by travelling half way across the globe to some god forsaken town in the midst of rural England.

Two hours later he had left the motorway and found himself amongst the rolling Staffordshire countryside. He calculated that in half hour he would be in the town he had glimpsed in his dreams and whose existence in reality had been revealed in the monochrome of ten year old photographs. There he would find the reasons for his unconventional and sometimes, unbelievable summons.

He drove almost by instinct now as day turned to the crisp dusk of a winter’s evening. The cars headlamps lit up the narrow country roads which were bordered by squat hawthorn hedges and ivy clad oaks. Santiago had never been in such countryside before, although during his life he had seen much of the world. He now felt strangely relaxed as the compelling call of his summoner quietened in his mind as he responded to its urgency.

Quaint local road signs, stamped in wrought iron and painted black on white, now guided him and counted down the miles to his destination. The town he sought was indicated on every one and soon, some way into the distance, its presence was given away by the glow of an orange aura infused into the pitch of the night sky.

Minutes later he crested the top of a hill and there before him the necklaces of neon and white light told him that Bramston sprawled in the wide, but shallow valley below. He slowed and coasted down the gently twisting road which led down to the town centre.

Beneath the hazy street lights he cruised slowly. It was late and there were few people out on the streets. He decided to find a service station and ask for directions when he filled up his fuel tank.

As he entered the market square beneath a great floodlit church spire that brought his dream into a sharp reality, he was forced to brake sharply as two teenagers leapt the churchyard wall and dashed across the square. He cursed them as his heart pounded heavily. He didn’t need this sort of excitement at his age. He was well into the age when a left handed gift from the gods was all too common.

He shook his head at the couple rapidly disappeared into a side street and then moved off in search of fuel and directions. His circling of the small town was in vain and ten minutes later he found himself back in the town square. He noticed a lone figure standing by the church wall staring out across the cobbles.

Santiago drove slowly until he was level with the youth and then wound down his window warily. The youth

stepped back and stared at him, his eyes wide in shock. “Hey, you.” Santiago shouted. “Do you know of the Cross Keys Public House?” The youth just stared at him dumbly. Santiago was frustrated and tired. He gritted his teeth.

“It’s a simple enough question boy. Nod your head for yes and shake it for no.” he said. The youth still said nothing, but his eyed studied Santiago intently.

The arms dealer returned the stare and felt as if his mind was being invaded, the hairs on his neck stood on end. He shook his head and cursed the youth, putting his foot to the floor and sending the car, tyres squealing, into the square. Ben trembled and looked in his mirror, the youth still stared at him and he still felt something inside his head.

The geek gave him the creeps and he needed to be as far away from him as possible. Then he laughed out loud. He had no need to be frightened of some dumb country yokel in a small town lost in the middle of England. What on earth had got into him?

After all it was he who had the forty five magnum under his coat. Santiago realised that at two o’clock in the morning he had little chance of finding the public house without directions. Despite the town’s relative size to cities that he knew quite well, the complexity of this places backstreets had him beaten. So when the welcoming neon of a hotel sign flickered off and on above a street beckoning him, he pulled in gratefully, roused the sleepy night porter and booked a room for the night.

The stillness of the quaint ‘olde worlde’ decor of `Brampston’s Oldest Coaching Inn’, The White Hart pleased Ben and he suddenly felt tired. The journey had taken more out of him than he expected and he dropped himself down on the four poster bed and was dragged by fatigue into a deep sleep. The reoccurring dream did not return on this night. Another took its place. Again he found himself floating in the night sky, but the city below him was far from the town that he had seen before. He was in a world of twilight and he sensed that it never got any lighter here above the sprawling maze of crevice like streets onto which a thin drizzle washed relentlessly without any cleansing effect. He felt himself descending towards the towering, but tightly packed tenements that lined every street and realised that he was not alone. Someone else was present in his dream. His summoner.

The builders of the city he now glided down towards had given little thought to architectural flair or style, it was chaotic, disorganised – a city of thousands of towering Babels. Each storey of these building had been added without thought or relation to any engineering theory.

Consequently they leaned precariously over the streets below as if the slightest tremor would send them plunging onto the seething masses below.

“The Lower City.” boomed a voice. “My domain.”

Santiago felt his self sweeping down into the City’s ravines, gliding above the jostling crowds where his attention was directed to figures in black whom the ragged citizens avoided. The figures he now regarded seemed arrogant, their attire of top hats and long black coats setting them apart from the others who milled around them in the confines of sewage washed streets.

Both of the men he now watched were armed, one with a ancient flintlock rifle, the other with a rusty cutlass. They stepped back to the side of the street as four men dressed in short leather tunics beat and barged their way through the crowd. The High Hats backed off drifting anonymously down a side street.

“They are Tans.” the voice spat. “They out number us and stand between me and my rightful place in this city - as its master!” the voice became increasingly angry, seeming as if it were reverberating around the City’s canyons. But the Tans did not hear the voice for Ben realised that this was not a dream, this city was a real place. Somehow he was here and the voice was inside his head, its owner guiding him and commentating on the power distribution here.

Compared with the High Hats the Tans wereheavily armed. Although they were still bearing weapons which the arms dealer had only seen in museums or hanging on apartment walls, they seemed almost overburdened in comparison to their potential adversaries and the weapons seemed in better condition.

Ben Santiago slowly began to realise what was happening here and the part he was destined to play. Somehow he would equip these underdogs in order that they might prevail over them and put their enigmatic master in his `rightful’ position. He heard a soft chuckle inside his head and realised that the commentator could read his thoughts and knew that his message had been made clear. This accomplished he felt himself being borne into the air again and flying over the city. They were moving on. Something else had to be explained or so it seemed.

From high above the city he looked down on a great, black river snaked in stagnant loops across the city dividing one section of the population from another from horizon to murky horizon.

On the opposite bank ahead of him, a narrow strip of land gave a clear view from the walls of a divided section across the river to the boundaries of the Lower City. Tans guarded the bridges and gate of the Upper City in number, bristling with muskets, pikes and swords. His flight continued over the Upper City and the terrain below him changed little from the cramped chaos he had left behind. Only the great domes of the Halls of machines were different in their monumentally impressive size, so huge that they dominated the Upper City that the buildings here seemed to be enveloped entirely in their sooty shadows.

Then beyond them Santiago saw the city of the Tallmen. Here was a startlingly different culture that radiated the existence of a technology far beyond that attained by the rest of the city he had seen. It might pose a problem he thought, and different solutions would be needed than those to brush aside the Tans.

The voice ominously remained silent as it waited. Beyond the Halls of Machines, whose bulk cut off the Upper City from the city of the Tallmen, high towers housed searchlights which swept relentlessly the wide, paved killing ground between the two cultures. As if organised to for his benefit, two human figures emerged from the shadow Machine Hall side of the paved clearing and sprinted towards the light towers.

They ran only a few paces before lasers arced from the nearest sentry towers and reduced the trespassers to ash. Here was a challenge. Santiago thought. But one which could be overcome. Technology was never infallible and the more complex it got the easier it was to fool. He laughed as he realised he was rising to the challenge and the voice laughed with him.

Abruptly the dream ended and Ben awoke slowly, readjusting to the surroundings of the hotel room. He lay back considering the dream as a shaft of colds winter light broke into the room through a crack in the heavy curtains. Was it really real? Was there such a place as he had seen or was he going mad, inventing all this inside his own head, living out some fantasy? He reached into his wallet and pulled out the photographs of the town. These were real. He was here. The answers to his questions, Ben knew, lay at the Cross Keys Public House and, there too; his so far nameless, summoner.

Chapter Twenty Three

On the night that Ben Santiago arrived in Bramston and received his dream briefing from Silus Flax his nemesis, Jonathon Postlethwaite, emerged onto its silent, frosty streets. The icy weather that the town had experienced for days had intensified with the coming of the night, the temperature had rapidly to well below zero and transformed the pavements into glittering slippery surfaces Jonathon found hard to negotiate in Scoggins’s unsuitable footwear which he had commandeered.

Shortly after he had left Rislo and the Turkanschoner he made his way warily toward the lights of the town beyond the cemetery. He had been standing by the church wall shivering in the unfamiliar cold and taking in the scene from the alien world in which he now found himself, when a softly humming machine, its headlamps blazing, had glided to a halt beside him and the window wound slowly down.

The man’s harsh voice had taken him by surprise, but he was relieved that the occupant of the machine was in fact human. Astonished that the driver seemed quite normal he had stared in disbelief for a few moments unable to cope with his request which was presented in a language he understood but was confused by an accent.

Normally it would have only been a matter of moments before he got a grasp of what the man asked by delving into his mind, but when he did the familiarity he found there shocked him further. Silus Flax was there! His spirit tainted the man’s thoughts, but there was more. Those very thoughts were like those of the monster he detested, this stranger’s soul was also a yawning abyss like Flax’s. Jonathon recoiled and shook his head dumbly in disbelief and then probed his mind again for conformation. This time the grey haired man felt his psychic scrutiny and feared him.

Anger suddenly exploded in the man’s mind, a vicious coiling serpent that lashed out toward Jonathon. But it wasn’t Ben Santiago’s anger. It came from beyond him. From the mind that had summoned him here and protected the key to his conquest of Dubh.

Jonathon retreated and forced up his mental barriers. The black snake in the mind of Ben Santiago did not have the ability to pursue the intruder beyond those confines in which it currently dwelt and in which it had always had a physical root.

The car’s engine screamed and roared off into the silent streets, leaving a gasping Jonathon to continue his search for Flax. But the chance encounter had give him further confirmation that Flax was close. He had felt his powerfully protective presence in the driver’s mind and the man had asked for directions to a Cross Keys Public House, whatever that was. That was a clue. All he had to do was find this place and he woudl find who he looked

for.

He wandered the rapidly chilling streets hoping for some further psychic clue, a communication between Flax and the man, so that he might eavesdrop and find direction but none came. After an hour or so and no closer uncovering Flax’s whereabouts here, he realised that he needed to find food or shelter or he would freeze to death.

Sucking his fingers and stamping his feet to bring some feeling back into his numbing extremities, he decided his task was hopeless and he should return to the cave and pass through the dimension door, if it was still

there, and return again after he had recovered from the effects of the cold and eaten.

He made his way back to the church easily, using its floodlit spire as a guide through the maze of narrow streets. As he approached the market square he was startled by the activity that was now taking place there. Two brightly coloured vehicles with brilliant blue flashing lights were parked by the roadside. The beams of dazzling lamps arced around the shadowy gravestones as the dark uniformed men searched for the body of a man, who they had been told, had been murdered there.

The courting couple stood at the church wall with a man in a black uniform and a high domed hat. Jonathon slipped into the shadows and watched as more uniformed men arrived with excited, barking dogs in a large white van.

Jonathon shivered, not only because of the cold, but because of their resemblance to Flax’s High Hats, and edged his way into a darkened alleyway at the back of the square.

Tall buildings rose either side hung over him and above the ancient cobblestone street which reminded him of Dubh. Perhaps that was why he felt strangely close to the City here he tried to persuade himself, that and the strange men in the square who looked like High Hats. Yes of course, that was why he felt the way he did.

As he shrank back into the enveloping darkness of the alley way, away from the men with their howling dogs, he came across a pair of large wooden gates which stood ajar. Turning, the smell of baking pastry reached his nose. It came from the yard beyond the gates. The smell made his mouth water and he became acutely aware of how hungry he actually was as he realised it was nearly two days since he had eaten in the well shaft below the Castle of Lepers with Rislo.

Jonathon’s hunger led him through the wooden gates which groaned in protest as he pushed through the gap. He glanced around the empty yard and then, his hunger overcoming him, he dashed to the shadows below the rows of blank windows and crept towards the door this mouth-watering smell was emanating from.

The door was open and the faint blue light from the gas oven illuminated the room. For a bakery it was untidy, to say the least. Half completed pies and empty bottles littered the worktop and the floor. Dirty knives and unclean plates and bowls lay everywhere. Jonathon closed the door gently behind him and shut out the freezing air.

The gas oven heated the room quickly and the feeling returned throbbing to his fingers and toes. Jonathon opened the heavy oven door and a blast of hot hair hit him. He realised that the baker had forgotten to switch it off, which was not surprising if he had been solely responsible for consuming the vast quantities of alcohol from the many empty bottles which lay around the floor and were lined up in regiments on the worktops.

After trying various switches on the oven the blue flames eventually disappeared and the hungry youth reached in and extracted a hot pie. The sizzling meat had a strange taste and burned his tongue, yet it filled him stomach and warmed him from the inside out. Six pies later and a couple of bottles of beer, which the baker had overlooked in the crates in the corner, and Jonathon yawned as fatigue overcame him. He sat down wearily in a corner and, like those in the Cross Key Public House above and around him, fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter Twenty Four

Rislo sighed with relief when he stumbled out of the dimension door and found himself back in the decaying dwelling he had left with the others earlier. He sat down and shivering, his chin cupped in his hands.

He was shivering, not because he was cold, but because of the feelings of self doubt and uncertainty which had surfaced in his mind and heart. He was alone, he thought, as alone as he had always been. His only tie to Jonathon was the one which had been sown by the youth’s Grandfather all those years ago. He had promised to help now because he felt guilty at refusing Cornelius the help he had wanted in the past. He was trying to make it up somehow, by helping now, but he had begun to doubt whether it was all worth it. Jonathon wasn’t Cornelius. Rislo was becoming increasingly afraid. He should have made his own way out of here, if the boy had listened and been reasonable.They could have left this place long ago. But now it dragged on, the fear dragged on. He was living on his nerves. He had no part in this feud. It wasn’t his problem!

He shook his head in despair. Then there was the beast that followed Jonathon like an atrociously loyal dog. The Turkanschoner left him ill at ease every time it stared accusingly at him. It hated him because he was a Tallman, because of what they had done to it. It didn’t see him, Rislo, as an ally, but as one of those who had given it so much pain. It would kill him as soon as it had the chance. It was an animal living on instinct and he was still its prey, Rislo reasoned. He could not understand why it had not killed him yet. Perhaps Jonathon did have some power over its actions but eventually, he feared his tenuous thread of control would snap and the beast’s programming re-assert itself. Then it would tear him limb from limb. Rislo moaned.

Fear! So much fear! He couldn’t cope with it. Everything he had expected to happen had not. Their plans were falling apart. Jonathon’s girl was still lost yet he had deserted her, possessed by the idea of confronting this Silus Flax. No, he wasn’t like Cornelius at all. He was just a boy motivated by his anger. Rislo decided that it couldn’t go on. Why shouldn’t he leave this place now? He knew of dimension doors he could use. He’d known of one for years that opened out into a world of forests and blue skies and no people. The prospect excited him now. Maybe it was preferable, easier to be lonely than to suffer the whims and pain others gave you. The giant rummaged through his coat and pulled out a grubby leather map and studied it intently, studying the places where he had found dimension doors in the past.

He shook his head. Why should he sacrifice his future? Jonathon was disturbed. How could this vendetta with this High Hat mean so much? How could he give up this girl he loved so much to pursue him? How could he take the huge risk with the unstable door? Even if he were successful he might never get back. It was foolish and incomprehensible.

He rose to his feet and put his map away. In an hour he could escape the horrors of this world to the tranquillity, the emptiness, of the other realm he had seen before. He could soon be devoid of any society and the painful complexity of relationships with others, a wild uninhabited place where he could escape all this fear. That dimension door was only an hour away from here, an easy hour travelling long forgotten tunnels and empty caverns. Just an hour!

His alliance with Jonathon seemed crumbling with every second, there were more reasons for going than staying now he decided. His promises to Cornelius carried no weight at all. If he escaped this place, which he now so greatly desired, to his sanctuary, he would only have himself to live with.....and the guilt. The guilt that he had deserted someone who trusted him so much and relied on him almost entirely to achieve his goals. His mind ground on, his heart spoke.

What if Jonathon did return and he was gone? What then? Rislo sighed deeply and closed his eyes to shut in the tears which were welling in them. He could not leave. He could not desert him despite his own fears. The past, the guilt, would pursue him as it does with us all. He could escape this place, but the guilt would always be with him, intensifying with the years slowly devouring him like a cancer from the inside and reduced him to a whimpering, regretful wreck. He could not flee now.

Rislo sniffed back the tears and his resolve strengthened. He would carry out Jonathon’s resolve to destroy this vile world. He would assemble the machine and await Jonathon’s return. He would give Jonathon the time it took to collect the machine and put it together, then he’d set it in motion and go. At least this would satisfy his conscience.

The Tallman collected his belongings and prepared to plunge into the darkness of the Dubhian underworld again, when he heard footsteps behind him. He whirled around hoping to see an enlightened Jonathon emerge from the gate admitting to the foolishness of his actions. His look of delight drained away as the crouched, horned form of the Turkanschoner moved out of the whirling light of the dimension door. His

heart pounded in panic. Jonathon had not returned.

The Turkanschoner stared at the fearful giant for a while and then examined the scents that clung to the damp walls and broken floor of the building they stood together in. Satisfied he had Milly’s faint scent and could follow his master’s instructions he turned to Rislo.

“Why?” he grunted. Rislo shook.

“Why what?” he croaked in shock and confusion. “Why no tell of Jonathon’s friend?” the beast growled

For a moment Rislo stood open mouthed, and then he suddenly remembered the human bundle he had reluctantly brought back from the towers. Then it dawned on him. The girl, the Turkanschoner meant her. It was Milly? He opened his mouth in dumb disbelief, surely not!

The surprise registered on his face and he leapt to his own defence despite the fears that the beast would not understand. The creature was clearly mistaken.

“How could you know it was her?” he asked incredulously. “If it was her how could I have known?”

The beast attempted a smile of understanding, but his face became contorted in a viscous snarl.

“Master feels her presence, I smell here and there.” The Turkanschoner pointed to the dark doorway.

Rislo was dumbfounded, but a new fear arose in his mind. He searched for the light staffs he had stolen from the towers and was relieved to find one missing. She had not ventured out there without the protection of its light. Rislo waved his arms, half in apology, half in apathy. “What now then?” he asked meekly.

The Turkanschoner moved toward the darkness beyond the doorway and peered out, his nostrils flaring the seeking scents on the damp air which painted a picture of the world there as bright as in daylight to him.

“Now I find her and bring back. You go find machine. Make ready. Yes?”

The Tallman stared at the beast who waited for him to force back the inky darkness through the door with his light staff. A chill ran down his spine and he felt sick as he looked at the terrifying profile of the beast lit by the light he carried. Its long riveted incisors gleamed threateningly as he clenched and unclenched his jaws. Its dark eyes accused him. Its razor sharp hunting talons scraped menacingly along the decaying brickwork.

Rislo took a deep breath and passed the Turkanschoner expecting at any moment for those terrible talons and teeth to tear at his body and sink lethally into the soft flesh of his neck. They did not.

The circle of light startled the rats that had waited ignorantly, but patiently, for the light that protected their prey to burn out. The two uneasy allies walked in silence through the lower realms of this forgotten area of the city and eventually found themselves moving upward through natural fissures and up onto the level above.

From here Rislo knew his way back to his hidden workshop and looked back to find the Turkanschoner with his eyes closed, nostrils widened, as he followed Milly’s scent.

He turned quickly away and they continued to walk for half an hour and, as Rislo approached his goal, he checked behind him again. The beast was no longer behind him. Somewhere it had parted from his company, silently without a word of departure. But then why should it. It hated him and when he was no longer useful, Rislo decided that it would kill him.

But now he felt relieved, the threat had been lifted temporarily. He moved on a short distance and looked behind him once more before climbing the narrow steps which led to his workshop. He shone the light through the light lock and smiled with satisfaction when the door swung open, unaware that he was expected and that his visitors were very glad to see him.

A heavy blow from behind, which sent him sprawling to the floor, announced their presence. When his head cleared and he brushed the blood from his eyes he saw several pairs of Tallmen’s boots shuffling around him.

Dazed and numbed, he sat upright and stared disbelievingly at the glaring mirrored armour of several Tallmen soldiers. He was dragged roughly to his feet and spun around to look into his own astonished and bloody face reflected in the visor of a Tallman captain who lifted his visor and smiled.

“Welcome back soldier.” he laughed as his smile drained away. He hit Rislo hard in the stomach which doubled the renegade up instantly. “Take him back to the towers.” he spat as he looked down unsympathetically at the writhing form of Rislo retching on the floor.

Rislo felt chains snap heavily around his wrists and ankles and a heavy iron collar locked with a loud clunk around his neck. He was lifted and pushed onto the steps towards the passage below. Plunged now into deep shock, he stumbled downwards, aided by the captain’s hard boot. Fear coursed through his veins. Fear embellished by regret.

“I should have gone! ” he screamed in dismay.

“You’ll wish you had.” replied the captain. “A traitor’s fate is not an easy one.” he laughed with no humour at all.

Chapter Twenty Five

The Turkanschoner had remained hidden when he detected the scent of the Tallmen ahead and had already been alerted by another more ominous and disturbing odour of something which had trailed Milly. He had considered warning Rislo, but it was already too late by the time the had detected the Tallmens’ presence.

The other scent worried him. It threatened Milly and his task was to make her safe. He could wait for a while, but time was short, he had to get to her before that which followed her did. He slipped back into the shadows as he saw Rislo stumble in chains out into the passageway followed by the Tallman patrol and watched as they marched him, sobbing loudly, away to the Towers. As their lights receded he moved stealthily towards the steps Rislo’s hideout.

Stealthily he moved upward. The scent of Tallmen filled his nostrils and hatred coursed through the body they had enforced upon him. As he rounded the curve at the top of the stairs, he realised that a light still shone from the room beyond the half open door. Someone was still in there.

He inched forward and peered inside. Inside a single Tallman remained. He was leaning over a strange cylindrical construction in the centre of the room, which was made from glasslike tubes and pipes about half his height in size and a similar width.

The Tallman was methodically dismantling Rislo’s glass contraption and placing each part carefully into a large sack. The parts removed were small, but his dextrous fingers were quickly reducing the mechanism to its component parts.

The Turkanschoner watched intently. In a few moments the device was all in the sack. The Tallman engineer completed his task and zipped up the bag with a look of satisfaction on his long featured face, stowed his tools in his belt and turned to retrieve his helmet from the floor.

His eyes met the Turkanschoner’s gaze and widened in terror. The beast leapt into the room and struck the gaping Tallman a powerful and accurate blow to the side of his head. He collapsed in a clattering heap on the floor and twitched uncontrollably as the life ebbed from his form.

The Turkanschoner stood over him, his body trembling violently, jaws opening and closing as saliva flooded into his mouth. His heart pounded as adrenalin flowed into his veins. His conditioning and animal instinct urged him to tear his prey to pieces and satisfy his compulsion to eat, claim his grisly prize. But slowly his newly found being enforced its will over his naked and brutal being. He panted heavily and clenched his fists to hold back the fury that threatened to boil over inside him. Slowly the intensity of these primal feelings subsided and his rational faculties began to function again.

The machine was important he knew. He should take it and return to his task. He glanced down at the Tallman’s corpse and saliva dripped from his incisors, a ripple of hatred washed again through his being. He should take the machine and go. This was important to his master. His body obeyed.

With his precious booty slung across his hunched back, the beast hurtled down the steps into the gloom of the corridor below. The girl’s scent was still strong amongst the stench of Tallmen and with his senses concentrated through his muzzle he could follow it easily. But there was something else too, that something which followed Milly. He could not place the scent at all. Its odour was different from all he had encountered in this world, all he knew was that it hungered, hungered with a grim passion for Milly.

The Turkanschoner sped through the darkness. He feared for Milly. She had moved quickly and upwards at every opportunity, exploring ever upward tunnel and fissure. Her pursuer had followed her. Eventually Milly’s efforts had been rewarded and she had found herself a way to out of these gloomy tunnels. The Turkanschoner followed emerged out of a filthy, broken culvert into the Upper City close to the great, eclipsing domes of the Halls of Machines.

From there she had sought the security of the rooftop world she was born to and had climbed up onto the domes. The Turkanschoner followed slowly, his hunched form not well suited to climbing and burdened additionally with Rislo’s machine.

The continual vibration from great lines of engines in Halls of Machines below him set the Turkanschoner on edge and made him wary. He crept from shadow to shadow across the roof tops as he followed the Milly’s airborne scent. He broke from the inky dimness and climbed slowly up to the top of the first dome and surveyed the scene ahead.

Before him the concrete landscape fell and rose again into the mountainous form of another dark dome. At its summit a large exhaust port poured its toxic gases upwards in a great, choking blue plume, which merged with the others from dome after dome to create a dense stagnant cloud of exhaust fumes which hung, almost motionless, above the Halls and the Upper City.

From where he now squatted he could see far out across the fumes shrouded extent of Dubh. It disturbed him. The city was a foggy expanse of tumbling and chaotic concrete and blackened brick. No- where was a space that could support the grass and trees of the world he could remember from his past before the Tallmen had taken him. No trees, hills or mountains here - just the panorama of the domes. No sky or clouds. Just the huge smog filled ceiling above his head.

His access to memories was becoming easier now. He could remember open grasslands and forests, rivers glinting in the distance. He found himself yearning for the sights and smells of pine forest and dew laden grass. He was homesick for a world, which for a many years, had been stolen from him. He missed people he could visualise, but not yet name. Yet he knew that he could never return to them. They were lost forever because of what he now was. He was an abomination that they would never accept as one of their own.

He shuddered in realisation of what this meant, and he felt an up surge of grief as he had when he had stood upon the real earth of that world which lay beyond the dimension door where Jonathon searched for Flax. He was dead. The Tallmen had sentenced him to a living death.

He growled angrily and tears flooded from his eyes. Then he howled as his anguish surfaced, bursting out of control into agonized cries which escaped his modified jaws to echo around the Machine halls and into the City of the Tallmen, piercing through the perpetual drone of the multitudes of machines below him. Searchlights on the in the sentry towers, alerted by the Turkanschoner’s howls, slicked into being, their powerful beams lancing out through the stagnant exhaust fumes and playing across the domes as their operators seeking to identify the source of the unnerving cries which penetrated the iron and steel of their refuges.

Although confused by the cacophony of long lingering echoes, they swept the roof top terrain of the Halls of Machines with a practised thoroughness and settled for a second on the silhouette of a crouched and horned form that stood arms outstretched accusingly toward the Towers.

In the blink of a Tallman eye, the apparition vanished as the echoes of its anguish finally subsided. One by one the inquisitive beams were extinguished as the sentries shrugged their shoulders and dismissed what they had seen as a trick of the light and the dreadful sounds, the result of the distorted echoes from some innocent source.

Other souls had been disturbed by the Turkanschoner’s howling and the explosion of light which swept through the gloom which cloaked the domes. One was Milly. Curled in tight ball hidden in the shadow between the domes, she was jolted upright from her troubled sleep, aware of the tormented cries which broke her exhausted slumber and dreams of her lost friends. She was spurred in to movement again despite the protests from her aching limbs.

Reality fell upon her in a cold, heavy wave. She was alone here and frightened. Dale and Tefkin were dead and Jonathon was lost, his fate unknown to her. Those who had killed the Whisperers may have taken Jonathon too. Tears rolled from her tired eyes to her cheeks where the dirt and grime from the cities air had settled, tracing new salty tracks alongside those of earlier grief.

The loss of Dale and Tefkin was a heavy burden for her to bear, but she lived in hope. Perhaps Jonathon had escaped too and searched for her right now. It was hope that sustained her. It was all she had. Without Jonathon she knew she could survive in this city, but it would be a life less than a life with one you loved and which made so many things possible. Such a life would seem almost impossible and a short vertical trip from the roof tops to ground might seem preferable, but for the moment she had hope and while it remained she would survive.

As the piercing beams of the searchlights died away, she dragged herself wearily to the top of the dome and glanced over her shoulder. Someone or something was following her, the one who had issued those painful cries which had sent a wave of empathy through her soul. She crouched low as the pursuing phantom descended the side of the dome behind her and merged with the shadow in its lightless lea. Milly did not move.

She searched around for a weapon but found nothing. Listening intently, she heard the metallic scrabbling of claws on concrete as her now invisible tracker made a hasty but painful ascent towards her. The sounds of movement stopped and were replaced by a harsh panting. Then a strange voice drifted up to her.

The voice was deep, guttural and made unclear by a wheezing shortness of breath. Did she hear her name?

Milly dismissed the thought, yet she heard it again. Who...?

The sound of ascent began again, slowly closing on her position. The voice drifted up from the trough of darkness in which the identity of her pursuer was submerged. It came closer and now the voice was clearer. “Milly!” it coughed, a hint of urgency in the call to her. “Jonathon?” she whispered, her heart lifting, yet a shadow of doubt clung to her torch of hope ignited by the speaking of his name.

There was silence. Milly prepared to flee as the clicking and clattering feet and claws moved closer still. It was close now. Yet its shadow against the buildings below was still no more than a vague inky blur. It stopped again. Its heavy laboured breathing was the only sound now. “Who are you?” the she shouted, a tremor in her voice as fear rose in her soul. The climber began to move slowly upward panting loudly as it came.

“You not know me.” he stuttered. “Jonathon sends me for you” the Turkanschoner stressed uneasily as he looked up at the figure of Milly peering down apprehensively from the top of the dome, poised to run the roof tops.

If she did he could never catch her in a world where she was physically and mentally his superior. Milly was preparing to flee. The climber labouring up towards her had not satisfactorily answered her question to calm her nerves, but whatever was down her knew of Jonathon and for the moment it kept her there, her curiosity overcoming her fear.

The Turkanschoner stopped short of venturing into the half light where his appearance might spur the girl into flight. He was also very tired. On the flat surfaces of the catacombs, caves and passageways beneath this city he was a perfect hunting machine, his body modified for short sprints at great speed. But here on the long curving surfaces of the domes the combination of his centre of gravity forever pulling him backwards and the crushing of his already reduced lung space had taken their toll.

He now gasped loudly for air and, when the sense of suffocation had abated, he attempted to speak again. “Milly, not run from me.” he wheezed. “I mean no harm. Friend. But am terrible. All who see fear. I monster.

Please.. Do not run.” he pleaded.

If Milly ran from him it would have been more than him losing her and failing in his task to bring her back. When he had looked at her face peering down on him a flood of memories had returned to him, those faces of his wife his children peered down at him waiting for him to emerge from the darkness.

If Milly ran then he would lose them forever. If she ran then he knew that the effect of his hideous appearance truly would mean that he had lost them forever. If she ran then the tenuous strand of hope, a hope that one day he might return to his world, that wore thinner and thinner everyday, would snap completely. She was a test of that hope. Slowly he moved upwards and out of the shadow.

He was aware of Milly’s sharp intake of breath when she saw him for the first time. But as yet, she stood firm. She was horrified by the Turkanschoner’s appearance, but saw beyond the initial physical threat of his incisors and talons. She looked at his awesome jaws, but saw also the scars of torture on his head and neck where the Tallmen surgeons had crudely modified his bone structure to suit their purposes.

She looked into his fearful eyes and saw the suffering and pain he had endured for long years at their hands and that which he had felt since he had begun to realise what they deprived him of. She stood still and another tear ran down her cheek and the beast fell at her feet and sobbed uncontrollably. She had not run and there was hope to cling to.

The Turkanschoner lay on his side, sweating profusely, his reddened face glowing with a lattice work of angry scars, his temples pounding as he recovered from the effort taken to reach this place and Milly.

She waited in silence until he had recovered enough to sit up. Then he glanced up at her, his eyes a picture of tired triumph and gratitude. She smiled down at him and he gave forth a short laugh. “Why not run?” he asked. “Am I not terrible.” he questioned between short intakes of breath. Milly shook her head.

“You are not terrible. Only the things you have suffered are terrible.” She replied.” And they don’t make you what you truly are. " he put a hand on his jaw.

“Am I not ugly?” he ventured removing his horned helmet to reveal more evidence of the contemptible work of the Tallmen. Milly looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. “Only to those who seek it. You are what you are” she replied.

The Turkanschoner stood up and held out a taloned hand to her and replaced his helmet, his hunched form towering over her. “Must return now.” he growled. “Jonathon soon return. Must be there.”

“Where?” Milly asked looking down toward the city, her heart pounding strongly in response to his name.

The Turkanschoner moved off down the slope of the dome as Milly waited. He stopped and looked back. “Back to where you run from. Giant friend too.” he grimaced and spat realising what he had said. “Come quick not safe here. Must join Jonathon”

Milly adjusted the yellow cloak Rislo had wrapped her in her and moved nimbly after the stumbling Turkanschoner, excited by his last words about Jonathon. She trusted the Turkanschoner completely. She had not only heard him say Jonathon’s name but sensed his presence in the creature, a presence that constantly soothed its tormented soul. Part of him was there within the Turkanschoner, alive and vital and it drew her after her unlikely companion.

Chapter Twenty Six

Rislo shivered in the dimness of a damp, cold cell deep in the heart of the Tallmens’ city. He knew where he was. He was incarcerated in a place reserved for those who had incurred the wrath of the Elders, a transitory place between life and death beneath the Tallmens’ great central pyramid, a dark temple hidden from view behind the blazing lights of the Guardian Towers.

He had lain in for hours trembling as he considered his fate and recovering from the shock of his sudden and traumatic capture. Now his red rimmed eyes scanned the darkness in search of the small scuffling sounds disturbed his sleep and the nightmares which plagued this temporary sanctuary. “So close “he spoke out loud.

So close to escaping this vile world he had come to detest so much and now, now.....

“You should have listened!” spat a voice inside his head. “Loyalty to lower animals!” it scoffed. Rislo shook his head to silence the mocking whispers and the chain which secured his neck collar to the moist, mossy wall rattled like a sarcastic chuckle. “Madness, madness!” Rislo muttered. He was going mad. He had been imprisoned in this dark, cell for at least a day he calculated. Stripped naked and unfed, the cuts and bruises which he had suffered left untreated, he felt his will to resist the Elders’ interrogation and avoid execution slipping away. He was slipping into the darkest depression he had ever experienced. He closed his puffy eyes and whimpered.

To end it all now seemed like a favourable alternative to the fate which lay ahead of him. But the empty cell offered no means by which he could accomplish a suicidal act, as well as the fact that he had neither the courage nor the opportunity to do so. Every hour or so the inspection hatch on the door would slide noisily open and a laughing eye scrutinize him. “A traitor’s fate is not an easy one.” a voice would toll. The words would then rattle inside his skull.

He knew only too well what the captain meant and tried to exorcise the images of a traitor’s death from his mind. The visions of a public humiliation. The savage flesh tearing flogging. Then, then the slow and painful death at the hands of the executioner and his grisly garrotte. He began to shiver uncontrollably. Not because of the cold and damp, but because of the vivid memories of greying faces, bulging eyes, huge protruding tongues and then, then that final spine shattering snap.

The images haunted him and loitered inside his head, threatening to topple his already tenuous sanity from its precarious perch. He sighed deeply in despair, he no longer had the strength to weep and slowly this fatigue dragged him back to the nightmare violated refuge of sleep.

Suddenly the sharp, metallic clank of the unlocking cell door rescued him from one hell and threw him toward another. Bright light flooded in and a rat, hurtled unseen from the cell. Rislo covered his head with his sore arms and moaned. This was it. The time had come. Leapt to his feet and screamed pitifully for mercy.

The guards grinned and then laughed loudly as they threw buckets of ice cold water over him. The captain of the guard threw him a coarse towel and a plain grey prisoners robe, his face a stern command.

“Get dried and dressed runt.” he ordered as he looked down on his quaking charge. “It seems as if you have been afforded the privilege of a trial, the Elders’ seem to want to question you despite your obvious treachery!” he barked disbelievingly and spat in Rislo’s face.

Why Question him? he mused. Yes! That was it. He had a chance! They couldn’t have found the power reservoiur, since he had concealed it well back at the dimension door. He smiled weakly to himself. There was hope yet. They had fgound his machinem, they knew what it was...and also that they were missing the vital power reservoir. They could not kill him without knowing whom, if anyone, had the reservoir. They could not take a chance. He felt some strength returning to him as he was escorted to the Elders. He could perhaps bargain for his life.

The Tallmen Elders, beings of great age and wisdom, sat alongside a great wooden table and awaited the arrival of their prisoner. They were concerned. On discovering that Rislo’s machine had been plucked from their grasp and that the only replacement power globe had also disappeared from their domain, they found themselves shaken from their secure position as masters of the dimension of Dubh.

Without the spare power globe they were no longer in a position to vent the City’s quickly stagnating atmosphere, no longer able to repair the rifts which occurred in Dubh’s field walls and unable to ensure the stability of the Great Gate - the City’s resource lifeline.

These facts alone were enough cause grave concern amongst the Elders, but the retrieval of Rislo’s machine was something else. The Tallmen technicians had briefed them on its destructive function and they feared that more than one may exist, that someone else had power over the future of their race. They had faced many problems in their history but now, it seemed, they had reached a crucial point in it.

Since they had fled their Mother World, many centuries ago, as rebels and renegades, they had overcome many different and difficult situations. No race or situation had stood in their way, their advanced science, applied through weapons technology or otherwise, had always seen them through. When threats proved to be too great they had in the past been able to, drawing on vast energy resources, shift from one point and place in time to another to leave the threat behind.

Then their energy resource had failed and they had found themselves stuck with Dubh without the means to go anywhere. They had solved that immediate problem, by employing an inferior and inefficient technology, but now they where stranded and vulnerable. Now the threat came from within. The reports of Rislo’s machine were bad enough, but when it had been snatched back from them they assumed that there were others in league and for the first time felt fear for themselves.

Rislo now became the key to their survival. His death would only contribute to their destruction. But they knew that he was frightened and unbalanced, reports from the guards confirmed this. It would be a simple job to tip him over the brink of despair and then hold out a helping hand.

Concessions were theirs to give and soon he would be desperate and willing enough to give them what they wanted. As soon Rislo was placed before the Elders his loyalty to Jonathon and the others evaporated completely. He was confident that the return of the power globe would be sufficient to save him from the frightful ritual execution he feared so much. The safety of Jonathon and Milly were now secondary when he considered his own survival.

He wanted to live no matter what happened to others. It was an equation he had only briefly considered before, and before his conscience had called out to him to spare it the pain of guilt, but now it cried out for its

own preservation. He would lead the Tallmen to the power reservoir, he decided, and then risk entering the unstable door to escape them. It might not lead to the same world as it had done before when he and Jonathon and the beast had gone through it, yet he would at least be able to escape his jailers and any place was preferable to

the public execution chamber in the Great Pyramid. But he was still wise enough to realise that once the Tallmen had their hands on the power reservoir that they might suddenly forget any deal they struck with a traitor.

Eventually Rislo was seated in a large wooden chair facing across the table where the Elders sat in their blood red robes, studying him without expression. The huge iron doors to this chamber closed with a dull boom behind him and Tallmen warriors took up positions in front of them.

For a few moments the Elders gazed silently at the wretched brother who held the destiny of their race in his head. Each Elder, a mass of grey-white hair and exotically plaited beards, stared unblinking at him.

Their intentions to pressurize him with silence had little effect, for Rislo schemed furiously as he waited for them to speak and had little time to be intimidated.

He knew the power globe was of great importance to them since he now realised its significance to the city. They had his machine, he wrongly assumed, and that it was now worthless to him. But he had the globe. That was why he wasn’t tied to the garrotte pole at this moment.

He smiled smugly and glanced from one wizened old face to another. Eventually, when the Elders realised that Rislo was not about to beg for mercy, the Elders’ spokesman rose to his feet and spoke. He introduced his colleges in a formal manner, as in the tradition of the Tallmen in court, and awaited Rislo’s anticipated response. He waited a while frowning and then, when it was obvious no response was forthcoming, he sighed in irritation and continued.

“We the Elder Council of the Tallman City of Dubh, having considered your case of treason and theft in your absence, find you guilty of the said charges.” The Elder looked solemnly to his companions and they all nodded in agreement. He turned back to Rislo.

“We therefore sentence you to death.” he said without emotion.

Rislo was shocked. He could not believe what he was hearing. They had not even tried to bargain. He could not believe it. He opened his mouth to speak, but was struck dumb and could only manage a groan. The Elder continued. “Therefore you shall be taken to the Great Hall to receive the Humiliation and subsequently executed in the time honoured manner for traitors. Rislo staggered to his feet, only to be restrained by two guards. The Elder smiled at him triumphantly. Rislo stood opened mouthed and wide eyed in stunned amazement. He had thought they would be willing to bargain.

Thoughts raced through his mind. Had they found the power reservoir? No-one could have found it, only he knew of its location. Then why, why! It made no sense unless, unless. The thought of his miscalculation horrified him. Rislo’s legs gave way and the guards began to drag him towards the black doors. He could already feel the garrotte biting into his neck, cutting off his air supply, tearing into his skin. He began to gasp for oxygen.

As they reached the door the guards were commanded to halt.

“One moment. Return him to the seat.” Rislo was seated again and he felt the damp, warmth of the urine stained robe beneath him as he collapsed into the chair. The Elder’s statement was brief.

“You know what we want. Co-operate and we can come to some agreement.” he smiled at Rislo. “Your acts of treason are of no consequence - give us back what belongs to us and you can go free.” he finished bluntly, but without conviction and sat slowly down in his chair. “A simple bargain.” he looked at the other Elders and they nodded in agreement. “Give us the power reservoir and the whereabouts of your fellow conspirators and the machine, and you are free to go wherever you wish.” he smiled

briefly, and then his face turned into serious and stony glare, enough to reinforce his threat of non-cooperation.

Now Rislo knew what it was like to be led to his death, the Tallmen Elders had ensured that he would not take that trip again.

“A day of thought for you brother Rislo. Do not make things hard for yourself. Your choice is quite simple. Live or die.” he finished sternly and indicated that the guards take him back to his cell.

In his now warm cell, with a full stomach and dressed in a soft dry robe, Rislo was given time to consider the Elders’ simple proposal. Without the interruptions he had experienced previously he relaxed but did not sleep. The Elders’ death sentence resounded inside his skull. He had really thought he was going to die. He wheezed heavily. They had made him understand, given him and experience on the trip to the door he could not forget, and then brought him back from the brink of the darkest terror.

Rislo had been broken by the Elders psychological torture. If they did not get their way he believed they would kill him despite the consequences of that act. In the few seconds that the guards had taken to drag him to those doors which where emblazoned with terror, pain and a lingering death, he had become completely and utterly self-interested.

He had already betrayed Jonathon, now he no longer cared for anyone in any way at all. Jonathon and Milly could die for all he cared, he was now only interested in avoiding death at any cost and here his conscience howled in agreement. Finer feelings such as loyalty and love could be of no use to him. He was no martyr he decided.

He would betray them if he knew where they were, but he couldn’t be sure. That didn’t really matter as long as the Tallmen got their property back but there was a problem. Who had taken the machine?

He knew of only one who could have and he knew where that ‘fellow conspirator’ would take it. He cursed the Turkanschoner. The beast was following him, but must have known that there were Tallmen ahead. The creature had let him walk into the trap. Rislo scowled. It had betrayed him. It deserved to die. Now it had the machine. At least it was predictable enough to return to the place it knew its master would return. Then Rislo smiled and laughed loudly. It had done him a favour by returning the machine to the dimension door and the very place he had hidden the power reservoir. Now it would be a very simple task of leading the Tallmen to that place. There he would reunite them with their abomination and then in, the bloody and ironic consequences that followed, he would slip through the gate and freedom.

Rislo smiled the twisted smile of triumph and treachery. In a few hours he would be free of this place. Just a few hours, he thought. He laughed loudly and tears flooded from his eyes. He laughed and the victorious soul of the city laughed with him.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Ben Santiago awoke early. Refreshed and strangely invigorated by this place he washed, shaved and dressed quickly before bounding down the hotel’s twisting oak stairway to the lounge. A thrill of excitement surged through his body. Today he would meet the stranger who had summoned him to this small, sleepy Staffordshire market town and who had almost completed an arms deal without a single spoken word.

Sitting down in the almost deserted restaurant, he laughed softly to himself as he studied the breakfast menu. Curious he thought, well it was more than curious actually, almost insane that he, Ben Santiago an international arms dealer was sitting here considering the best arms package for a man who he had never met outside his dreams.

Yet despite the fact that he still wasn’t sure that this person existed outside his own mind he was feeling incredibly happy and vital. Perhaps he had flipped, he thought and laughed loudly, his eyes sparkling humourlessly as he noticed a waitress who stood bemused by his table. She cleared her throat.

“Mr. Lopez? ” she asked, caught up in Santiago’s steely gaze. He held her their like a rabbit trapped in the bright beams of a car’s headlights, his eyes had her rooted to the spot. He licked his lips as he examined her slim and youthful form. A rush of desire flowed through his veins.

Then he smiled at her.

“I am he.” he replied to his alias.

“There is a man waiting for you in reception.” she informed the middle-aged, yet attractive guest. She sighed slightly and turned and drifted back to the kitchen. Santiago sat back in his chair. So this was it. Contact. He was impressed; they even knew him by an alias he had not used for some time. Perhaps they were a bigger organisation than he thought and knew him from the past.

He got to his feet and strode into reception. In the reception area, over-decorated with fox hunting memorabilia, a small, chubby, bespectacled and balding man in ill fitting clothes leapt to his feet as Ben approached. The little man smiled nervously.

“Senor Lopez?” he stammered, as he pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. Ben nodded as he studied this curious person.

He was a little concerned. Hardly a revolutionary or military type, he thought. He looked more like a librarian from some long forgotten and dusty hall of unreadable literature. Was this his contact, the man he had summoned him here?

The man began to walk towards the door.

“Come with me please.” he suggested rather than commanded. Santiago stood his ground.

“Where?” he laughed. “Is there not time for breakfast.” a hint of accent slipped through. “Why not join me?” Pinky Makepeace, no longer the inquisitive scholar today, merely an errand boy, which annoyed him greatly, became serious. Flax would not be amused if he had breakfast with this man and he was not in the best of moods as Scoggins had not returned from his foray into the town last night. Flax would wait for no one.

“You must come now. His eminence asks you to come to breakfast with him.” he almost pleaded as he opened the door top the hotel foyer and indicated that he pass through into the street. Santiago looked at his summoner’s emissary. He looked familiar. After a few moments of contemplation he arose from his seat.

“I’ll get my coat.” he stated firmly and returned to his room as Pinky sighed at the delay.

When he returned in his ankle length, grey suede coat, the little man walked rapidly out onto the street gesturing impatiently for him to follow. It was still bitterly cold and the pavements of the small town glittered with a carpet of ice. The light sensitive street lights still glowed.

It was dawn, but the heavy clouds, which had rolled across the country during the night, kept the morning light temporarily at bay. Santiago looked up at the dull, ominous cloud ceiling.

“Looks like it may snow.” Ben ventured, remembering the English pre-occupation with the weather and attempting to stimulate conversation. The little man who skated uneasily over the icy pavements ahead of him looked back, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Snow?” he asked, then shrieked out loud as his feet shot from under him and he landed flat on his back on the cold, frosty pavement.

Santiago helped him back to his feet, an amused grin on his face. “Less haste, more speed?” Pinky shrugged his shoulders and grunted irritably and then continued once again at a suicidal pace ahead of his charge.

After a five minute walk, during which Makepeace had fallen over three times again, they entered a narrow back street and soon approached their destination, the Cross Keys public house.

Santiago stood and looked at the sign. This was it.It was no dream, no insane mission borne out of some form of dementia as he had on occasions feared. He really was here. It was all real. He shivered. Santiago looked up at the Tudor buildings which overhung the narrow cobbled street and realised how easy it had been to miss this place. It was well hidden, quite deserted and silent except for the moan of the winter wind above. The Cross Keys sign creaked gently on its hinges capturing Santiago’s attention almost hypnotically. He stood for a while staring at the golden crossed keys. What did it mean? he thought.

Then a loud cough from ahead of him informed him that his guide was becoming impatient again.

“Mr Lopez, please hurry.” he almost snapped, as he indicated that he should follow him through a set of wooden gates into the backyard of the Public House.

They turned into the backyard and entered the house through a side door. The smell of frying bacon reached Santiago and he felt his mouth water as he studied the ancient oak roof beams that supported the low roof.

A typical English tavern, just like all the replicas they had at home. This example was a little the worse for wear, but the real thing no less. Pinky closed the door behind them and a plump little old woman appeared a friendly smile upon her face.

“You must be Mr. Lopez. “she held out a liver spotted hand and arthritic hand which Santiago dared not to shake to firmly.” I’m Mrs. Lovenberry, Mr. Flax’s landlady she informed him proudly. “Come this way and sit down. He’ll be down shortly.” she warbled as she ushered him to a table which was set for breakfast.

Then, instructing her new guest to help himself, to the toast, bacon and fried eggs piled on her best crockery, she disappeared hoping that Mr. Flax’s ‘very important guest’ would be pleased with her efforts.

The arms dealer picked at the food, contemplating the cholesterol content, while he awaited the arrival of the enigmatic Mr.Flax. He poured himself a large cup of coffee and noticed his guide lurking outside the room. “Come in my friend.” he gestured. “Join me until your boss arrives.”

Pinky Makepeace slid slowly into the room, looking over his shoulder. Flax had told him to keep away from the guest until he had spoken to him. But he was starving and the smell of Mrs Lovenberry’s offerings was irresistible.

He sat down and smiled sheepishly at Santiago, keeping his ears open for the sound of Flax’s boots on the stairs.

“Eat?” Santiago suggested. “There seems too much for just two here.”

Pinky happily began to eat.

“So, what is your name my friend.” Santiago asked. Speaking with his mouth full Pinky replied.

“Mr Makepeace” he gurgled as he stuffed another rasher of crisp bacon into his gaping maw which flew out as Flax’s hand hit him hard behind the head. Pinky yelped and scuttled from the room, choking as he went.

Flax looked disturbed, nervous even, to Santiago, but not of his guest who stood up and stretched out a hand in greeting as he watched as Makepeace fled.

Flax looked at Santiago, a glint of excitement in his deep, dark eyes as he took the hand gripped it firmly. He smiled genuinely.

“At last you are here, a true man of my own blood and ambition.” he said quietly. “Sit and let us talk.” he said as he sat opposite the arms dealer in the chair vacated rapidly by his subordinate.

Here was another face he vaguely recognised, he thought, from a photograph or painting or a obscure memory of an old client perhaps. But try as might, he could not place the man. He smiled at Flax who responded with a grin which sent shivers down his spine. “Have we met before.” he ventured. “Your servant looks remarkably like a man I know in New York.” He thought outloud.

“Perhaps.” Flax murmured, his cold, predatory eyes fixed upon his guest. “But let us continue the business of the day. Can you supply my needs?” he asked bluntly.

Santiago sat silent for a moment, and then nodded. “Such requirements are easily met. A campaign such as this is most common nowadays.” he smiled and almost laughed in disbelief, reflecting on the fact that his brief for this contract had been communicated entirely through dreams.

“When?” his client almost barked as he became intense, his eyes narrowing to slits of depthless onyx.

“A couple of weeks.” Santiago responded. “Enough time to include the necessary advisors to train your men. “Weeks!” howled Flax. “Weeks? I have only days and talk of weeks! “he hammered the table in exasperation sending Mrs. Lovenberry’s prize Wedgwood crockery somersaulting into the air.

Santiago was inwardly shocked by Flax’s rapid mood change, but remained outwardly calm and collected. He had experienced such outbursts from clients as deranged as this man was in the past and knew how to deal with them.

After a period of silence, during which Flax had ground spoon into the table until it bent and finally broke, his potential buyer spoke again, as Ben knew he would. “The reward for you will be great, greater than any other could give you. But you must fulfil my needs quickly, I have very little time.” He whispered, almost imploring Santiago for assistance in his tone.

The two faced one another in silence over the disorderly breakfast dishes. Then Flax stood up looming over his guest.

“Come with me. “he said quietly.

The two left the table and entered the frosty air of the yard. Flax led Santiago across it and around the corner to an open faced shed. Once inside he threw back a large tarpaulin to reveal a rainbow coloured vortex of swirling light and distorted images. Ben stepped back in shock as the lights played across his stunned face. Flax watched him closely.

“A portal to another time, another place.” he said, “When it is full again shortly, I shall return, back to my world, to my destiny of which you are a part.” he explained and placed a hand on Santiago’s shoulder. It was chilling and incredibly heavy, a monstrous threat. “But time is short and the enemy plots my world’s downfall. I feel him! I must have arms by tomorrow, tomorrow when the disc is full and my people come to take me back and crown me emperor.”

Santiago listened intently. Flax observed him. “Look here.” he walked over to a barrow laden with bulky sacks. He plunged his hand into the first and withdrew a fistful of diamonds and rubies. Then the next from which he pulled out crudely cast gold ingots and coins. In the

final sack was a fine white powder. Santiago knew it wasn’t baker’s flour. He dipped in a finger, tasted it and his eyes lit up.

There was enough in this sack alone to pay for a hundred times what Flax needed. The other sacks represented millions of dollars in value. Santiago turned to Flax and grinned, hardly able to contain his excitement. “Give me an hour and I will contact you. I may be able to fulfil your conditions.” he stuttered.

Flax returned his smile.

“All of it is yours. All of it and there can be a wealth of different pleasures to follow our victory.” Ben’s jaw dropped. All of it. He began to tremble.

“An hour “he repeated and almost ran from the shed. Flax watched him go and smiled.

“A man of my true blood and ambition he whispered to himself.” and smiled again.

Back at his hotel, Ben Santiago allowed himself the luxury of a treble vodka at the hotel bar. An hour he smirked. He didn’t need an hour. Someone must have been smiling down on him today or perhaps more accurately grinning upwards at him, he thought and laughed out loud at his own joke to the amusement of the young waitress he had met at breakfast. She smiled coyly at him. Santiago grinned back at her, finished his drink, and returned to his hotel room.

The sight of the wealth Flax had revealed to him had enabled Ben to think clearly. He already had a shipment of equipment in the country destined for another client which, at this moment, sat in two articulated lorries awaiting for the payment of the contract to be finalised and shipped as agricultural machine parts to the Mediterranean. His client would pay in due course, but Flax offered him a thousand times more.

The shipment was just waiting there and it had most of what was required, even some extras which might come in useful. Ben could hardly believe his luck. If it was luck he wondered. It didn’t matter either way. He chuckled to himself as he dialled the number of his English agent and waited eagerly. The phone was snatched of the hook immediately at the other end of the line.

“Harris? Ben here.” he spoke without a trace of emotion to his employee. He exchanged formalities and got down to business.

“The goodies we have there, get it moving now. I have a new client.”

Santiago continued and passed on the destination to the puzzled subordinate. “How long Harris?” Three hours was the reply. “Good. No foul ups and there will be a considerable bonus. Remember Harris, this special consignment for a special customer. No one and nothing get in its way. Do you understand? ”

Harris did and Santiago put the receiver down and sat staring into space for a moment. There was only the problem of advisers now, but that was easily solved. He would go himself. He laughed; this was a time for celebration. He still had thirty minutes to kill before he returned to the Cross Keys gave Flax the good news.

Reclining back on his bed and sighing, he then called room service, hoping that the pretty young waitress his attention had been drawn to was on duty to deliver his celebratory champagne.

Chapter Twenty Eight

As the happily motivated gun runner had left the Cross Keys yard, Flax had emerged into the cold morning air and inhaled deeply through his sensitive organ. His nose told him that there was someone else here. As well as this person’s scent he could feel his presence. He ground his teeth as his nose led him toward the bakery’s dirty window. He peered in to try and pick out movement inside.

As Flax’s profile loomed, huge and forbidding, outside the opaque window, Jonathan ducked down inside. A shudder hacked its way into the core of his being. After all these long years, he was now only yards away from his sworn enemy....... and wished he were not.

He felt a fear like a thousand cold knives plunging into his soul and he could feel his strength ebbing away in the presence of Flax’s corrupt spirit. He was aware of an energy flow from himself to that dark hole of a man which stood peering through the dirty window, from one opposite pole of humanity to another. He felt his vitality being leeched off by his adversary. But he could not run. He was trapped. He heard the door handle turn and his hand ran across the rubbish strewn worktop to close around the filthy meat cleaver the baker had left there. Halting at the door, he tried to identify the scent. It was not the baker. But it was familiar, so tantalisingly

familiar. Memories. Dark streets, the city.....the boy.

His beautiful boy! He began to salvinate, spittle oozed out onto his thin grey lips. But here? Now?

Slowly the dreams and nightmares of this youngster standing between him and his destiny made sense. The prophecies had come true.

He was here! Just when he was hours from achieving his dreams the boy had come to attempt to thwart him! Flax grimaced, he should have made sure of his death before, his bungling servants had failed him. But he would not fail and the boy’s demise would herald the beginning of his new life. Flax grabbed the nearest weapon, a rusty old grass scythe, and opened the door a fraction. Yes, the boy’s scent was strong! Excitement surged inside him as he envisaged his prize, the sweet trophy he that had eluded him in that dark street all those years ago.

He pushed the door half ajar, stopped, listened and sniffed. There was no movement inside. No sound, only the sweet scent of mortal innocence. His muscles tensed as he prepared to enter.

Flax exploded, howling, into the half lit bakery, his scythe held above his head, ready to strike down his prey. His eyes were taking time to adjust to the dimness of the bakery and he knew that he was at a disadvantage. The boy could be standing in a corner ready to pounce.

The curved blade slashed through the air defensively, attempting to deter any sudden attack. Then he crouched low, a snarl frozen on his face, as he prepared himself for the attack. His eyes adjusted, the bakery now took on recognisable forms, light penetrated the filth stained windows in bright shafts which illuminated the millions of tiny dust motes, raised by Flax’s frenzied entry and which now danced in the sullied light beams.

Looking around he realised that his quarry was not here. He clearly saw the baker’s work top, the oven, the piles of beer crates. There was no boy. There was nowhere to hide. He searched under the worktop and threw the crates aside, he wasn’t here.

Flax was confused. His nose was normally so reliable. The scent was strong amongst the smell of meat, pastry and beer. But surely his eyes could not deceive him. He was not here!

Flax shrugged his massive shoulders. This place, its new scents and sounds must have disorientated him slightly. He knew that he had been here though and not too long ago. Of that he was sure and it made him all the more determined that he pursue his goals with a renewed vigour.

Then again, perhaps it was just his imagination. Perhaps coming so close to fulfilling his aspirations had some bizarre psychological effect. He had imagined it, scent and all. He raised the scythe above his head and hammered it down hard into the door. Either way there was no problem. He either wasn’t here or had been and was gone. He was not threat now. With one last glance over his shoulder into the deserted bakery, Flax left and closed the door behind him and made his way back to the house. He had other things to do, plans to make and then there was the problem of Ivor Scoggins’s disappearance. He had still not returned and he was worried, for his plans required that he and his party go unnoticed here. He did not need the complications ofthe local “police becominginterested. And because, because, he admitted to himself, Ivor was, well he was....... useful.

Yes, he was useful.

Inside the bakery’s large oven, Jonathan stopped trembling as he heard the outer door to the building close. His grip on the meat cleaver relaxed, allowing blood to slowly return to his white knuckles. Jonathan realised that crammed into the oven as he was, he would not have been able to use the meat cleaver at all even if Flax had opened the door and found him. The monster would have probably stood there and laughed for a moment, shut the door, switched on the oven and giggled while he was roasted alive.

Jonathan cursed softly to himself as he slowly unfolded himself from the cramped position he had taken up inside the claustrophobic space. He shook his head. He was a coward. He had come all this way to challenge Flax and fulfil his oaths and his courage had failed him and he had failed everyone. But now was not the time. Flax was out of Dubh and Jonathan had misjudged his power. Flax was no ordinary being. It had to be in Dubh he consoled himself that was it; he would face him finally there.

His proximity to the monster who had been responsible for the deaths of all those he had loved had drained him spiritually and physically. If Flax had remained in the room much longer Jonathan felt that he surely would have died. He had felt the will to live draining slowly out of his body to him.

They were not meant to live together in the same world. It seemed as if it were unnatural that these two opposites could not be allowed exist together. They were postive and negative forces, and one would prevail. Jonathan could not face him here, on these terms. But now he doubted that he could ever face him. After all, he thought, why would things be any different in Dubh?

There would still be that weakening of the spirit, the searing pain which erupted in his soul by just being in his presence. Yet he had vowed he would face him, he had sworn oaths to others, to those who were now dead and all who he had loved. He had made vows and, but after today doubted that he could ever fulfil them.

These thoughts tortured Jonathan as he opened the door a fraction and peered out. It was empty now. He had seen Flax lead the grey haired stranger, whom he had seen in the car the night before, around the corner and who had emerged smiling moments later. Jonathan had been intrigued and decided to investigate, so checking again that the coast was clear he sprinted across the yard and around the corner.

In the brick shed behind the tarpaulin sheet, he found the dimension door and Flax’s incentive for Santiago’s involvement. He sifted through the sacks for a moment and then paused as he heard voices

behind him, crossing the yard.

There was nowhere to hide here. Only the dimension door offered a way out. But where did it lead he asked himself? Back to the city obviously, but where in the city. The voices came closer now and he decided that he had no option.

He glanced over his shoulder as he slipped into the swirling mass of colour to see Flax and a small bespectacled figure appear around the corner. As Jonathan walked slowly into the tunnel of trapped and distorted images he felt fear lance through him. Rislo had said that the other door was unstable, that it might collapse unexpectedly or its exit point change disastrously. Could it be true of this one? Had he thrown himself into the unknown? Would he ever see Milly and the others again?

He tried to make sense of the muddled images snared in the vortex’s timeless walls like memories. Hope sang inside of him as he saw Rislo and the Turkanschoner talking by the doorway in the derelict house, deep in the underworld, the house he had left only the day before whilst his co-conspirators had gone off to their own tasks.

Here too, was the image of the great High Hat chamber he had escaped from even earlier. Yet in these images, which flickered in the walls of the dimension door he carefully traversed, it was filled with the milling top hats

of thousands of Flax’s servants.

As he moved along the vortex the images of this hall intensified until the walls were exclusively filled with High Hats, grinning and staring into the dimension door; waiting. If Jonathan continued this way he felt sure he would find himself amongst them, out of the frying pan into the fire. Flax was behind him and High Hats in front.

He was trapped again, but decided he would rather face the mass of High Hats than Flax, he had a chance, after all they did not know who he was.

Slowly he edged towards the exit back into the High Hat stronghold in Dubh. Then, suddenly, the images in the side wall of the tunnel of light and colour flared briefly to reveal a rift from the main tunnel which led away from his exit point.

Jonathan looked in to the new tunnel and noticed that the walls were free from any images at all. Then his own image appeared and multiplied into the bare swirl of nothingness. He did not know here this led, but anything was better than a hall packed with High Hats and it might lead back to the underworld, if he was lucky.

He entered the new dimension door and in a short time emerged at the other end. The emptiness of the realm he now found himself in took him by surprise. In Dubh there were buildings everywhere, people crowding every level, but here there almost nothing at all. No buildings and no people.

Jonathan now stood on this world’s perfectly flat surface and looked around him. Large slabs of white stone extended in perfect symmetry to distant horizons which seemed to melt into soft and pale blue sky. A warm breeze blew steadily into hid face, bringing with it tiny grains of sand which stuck to his hair and clothing and irritated his eyes. From above him a bright, white sun beat down. Jonathan looked up at it shielding his eyes from it intensity.

This was not what he wanted or expected. He needed to return to Dubh and this place was not it. He turned around in an attempt to find the dimension door he had come through to this place but, to his horror, it was no longer there. The only evidence for its existence was a set of indecipherable figures carved into a white stone slab. Now he was lost! Jonathan slumped down onto the warm stone, hoping that the door might open again, fearing that if he wandered from this spot he would lose any hope of ever returning, it here were any at all now. He decided to wait a while and see.

If the gate reopened, he would try and retrace his route steps back to the Cross Keys and then back to the original gate, as he should have done before, if his curiosity has not got the better of him. If the gate reopened, then perhaps he could avoid Flax at the Cross Keys and return to the place where he had originally entered the world and where he had spent the night. If it was still open. If, if, if. If not then...., well, he was lost, completely and utterly lost to everyone, he realised. He would never see any of them again. Never see Milly. He sighed deeply, close to tears. Why had he been so stupid, so selfish, he thought? His selfish desires had lost him everything.

The sand carrying wind had abated now. Jonathan looked up through eyes blurred by tears of regret and irritated by the wind borne sand grains. Something had changed in the sky. A mass of huge, billowing storm clouds had begun to collect on the horizon of the paved, wasteland. Below the clouds bright blue forks of lightening flashed down with an unusual ferocity, but with no thunder at all.

He watched, fascinated as the billowing thunder heads increased in height and darkness and the thunderbolts increased in intensity. Then the sound of thunder began to shake the paving stones beneath him and the sound hit his ears like the monumental sounds of a world tearing apart.

With his attention concentrated on the spectacle on the horizon, he was surprised when a voice spoke from behind him. Quickly he leapt to his feet and twisted around to face the owner of his voice. The man, as he could be loosely described, stood a few feet away, his hands placed on his bony hips.

Jonathan estimated him to be eight feet tall at least. He had a human body, jet black in colour with no item of clothing except the grotesque dragon like helm which covered his head and shoulders. He was also intensely thin, like someone suffering from a wasting disease, yet clearly defined muscle groups rippled beneath his thick and leathery skin. From inside the mouth of the dragon head helm, two grey eyes studied him intently and lips parted beneath them as a deeply resonating voice rolled forth echoing across the paved wastes.

“Who are you boy? ” the naked black giant challenged.

Surprisingly, despite the frightening creature’s appearance, Jonathon did not fear him at all, as an aura of honesty and justice surrounded him. He answered the question simply by giving his name.

The creature took a pace forward, stopped and then began to circle him as if inspecting him.

“Who summoned you here?” the giant asked as he continued his interrogation. Jonathan was confused.

Summoned?

The urge to tell the truth in the presence of this being was overwhelming.

“No one.” he replied to the question and the giant stopped circling him abruptly.

“Then how did you get here?” he asked, seeming bemused. “No one enters this realm unless summoned.”

Jonathan shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the paving stone marked with strange symbols where he had emerged through the dimension door. The giant move slowly toward the stone and knelt down to study the inscription.

“Mmm.” he muttered, then said something in a language that Jonathan did not understand and glance toward the storm clouds.

As the creature continued to examine the inscription on the slab Jonathan became curious and extended his consciousness toward his mind. Immediately the black giant leapt to his feet as if he had been burned and turned to face him. Its eyes beneath the helm glowed an angry red. Jonathan stepped backwards and gasped as the other’s mind repelled his probing. What had he done? he thought.

Evidently his intrusion was not welcomed at all and had produced this defensive reaction. Now the formidable looking creature stooped, his slim hands stretched out in readiness for an attack, physical or mental. He called out loudly an alien language, but did not take his glowing eyes of his antagonist.

Almost Immediately after strange words had left his lips, other figures similar to himself began to appear across the paved landscape. Some where close, others mere specks on the horizon, but they all began to converge on Jonathan and the black giant at great speed.

A crowd of the black giants had soon gathered in a circle around Jonathan, jostling for position and murmuring amongst themselves as more joined the burgeoning throng. He felt their minds brushing his, pressing probing, scrutinizing. He repelled them. All these beings were very similar in physique, the only distinguishing features being their grotesque and fabulous helms. All these were different.

There were birds and snakes, spiders and scorpions, griffins, dragons, great horned beasts and many others. All exaggerated, hideous meant to terrify. The crowd grew, there must have been thousands now and their murmuring had grown into a loud hum.

Surrounded and becoming increasingly intimidated by their attention. Jonathan addressed the original giant. All the others then fell silent.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you, I meant no harm, I just want to go back the way I came. Can I go now? “he pleaded and began to explain his dilemma but the he was cut short. “Do not move mortal.” the giant commanded. “The Sentinel will decide upon your fate here.” he added and gestured to another startlingly contrasting figure who made her way through the pressing crowd.

The woman, her pale white body a contrast to the other inhabitants of this strange realm emerged from the black mass of bone, muscle and masculinity and made her way forward to stand between Jonathan and the giant whose mind he had attempted to probe.

She removed her red plumed helmet and revealed her face. Despite her serious expression she was startlingly beautiful. Jonathan gaped back at her, he saw other faces with in hers, his Mother was there and so was Milly. He felt the warm flow of her mind in his.

After a moment of tension and inspection, she smiled and relaxed.

“A human Avatar.” she said softly although she seemed surprised.

“Avatar.” the others echoed, nodding in an appreciation that Jonathan did not grasp, except that theTurkanschoner had once called him avatar. The Sentinel dismissed them with a wave of a pale and elegant hand and they wandered slowly back, the = alarm call satisfied, from where they had come, talking in low voices and casting the occasional backward glance over their ebony shoulders.

The woman moved closer to Jonathan and knelt down beside him, so that their eyes were level. Despite her height, the Sentinel’s physical proportions were similar to any human woman Jonathan had seen, she was not emaciated as the other giants appeared to be, nor was she naked. A fine gossamer stocking of sparkling spiders’ web covered her body from neck to toe, the tiny golden spinners always present to emerge and repair the rifts torn by the Sentinel’s excessive movements.

Her green eyes studied him for a while and Jonathan felt her mind wash gently through his again. Jonathan needed an explanation of what had just happened to him, but she picked the questions out of his head.

“This world encompasses all time and space. It is our duty here to maintain a balance in the life force which exists in them. To continue to exist the living worlds need a balance in the dynamics of the life essence itself. The imbalances are visible here.” she pointed to the storm which raged on the horizon and a strong gust of wind buffeted them.

“It is our duty to ensure that balance remains in all such living worlds. Because you have left your dimension the balance has swung dramatically. You will return there Avatar. You must counter the forces which grow out of control in the souls of the living being which exist there. This is your destiny.” the Sentinel smiled sympathetically.

" Avatar? Destiny? " he thought out loud.

“You are a special being.” she explained as if it would enlighten him. Then she elaborated. “Or in your case one half of a polarity, there will be another, an enemy who you have already encountered. You will already have felt the presence and will be compelled to face it. Fight it. And fate will make it happen.

She probed Jonathan’s mental and spiritual responses. She knew his thoughts and his fears. “You must face this man and all that which flows through him, it is unavoidable. If you do not he will destroy you.” she said. He looked at her face and saw him there. Flax of course. Jonathan was frightened. In the back of his mind, after his earlier brush with him, he had been ready to flee. He just couldn’t face him at all then. Plain fear. His instinct compelled him to flee. What would be different in the future? Since then he had been prepared to get back to the derelict house and escape to another realm with his friends, leave Flax to his devices. If Rislos’s Field Imploder worked and Dubh was destroyed then fine, but if it didn’t then Flax’s fate was irrelevant, or so he had thought.

“You cannot avoid him, eventually he will seek you out and destroy you.” the Sentinel repeated, eaves dropping on his thoughts. She placed a hand on his head and Jonathan felt her warmth flow through him.

“Do not fear him. You are as strong as he. Bury the fear and triumph. ”

Slowly Jonathan began to consider the oaths he had made to himself and his ancestors, he had a duty to them and the millions of others Flax would destroy if he got beyond the boundaries of Dubh. And he was getting there fast. To merely set in motion the machine and run was not enough to quell the nagging doubts he would always carry with him if he did not know that he had succeeded.

If he did not, it was more than nagging doubts. It was the guilt of failure. He would fail himself and all those he had sworn his oaths for. Oaths resting on love. He would fail his own love. He had to face Flax and see him and the city perish, only then would he really be satisfied. The Sentinel smiled broadly.

“You have the strength and you have allies.” she said, and then the smile dissolved. “Turkanschoner?” she questioned. “There is a Turkanschoner with you?” Jonathan nodded. The Sentinel pointed to the disappearing giants. “They are Turkanschoners too, Guardians of the Dimension Doors to this Overworld. They fled here when their world was destroyed. Now they serve we Sentinels.”

Jonathan tried to explain what he knew about the Turkanschoner of Dubh. He explained what the Tallmen had done to him and how he had inadvertently rescued him. The Sentinel stopped him by raising her hand.

“Tallmen?” she queried and delved into Jonathan’s mind again. He experienced her running through his memories of the Tallmen and their artificially sustained dimension. It was like a high speed slide show running through his head. He felt dizzy and she stopped.

“Sorry, but I had to be sure.” she gave Jonathan a smile of triumph.

“Finally we have found them. These Tallmen are the Shetani, some of my people, who rebelled against our ways and sought to escape into the mortal dimensions. They escaped us and until now we did not know how or where. This is where the darkness in your world has its root. They too must be destroyed, their technology is dangerous as are their souls. I have seen what you have planned in you mind. Carry it out.”

The Sentinel looked deep into Jonathan’s eyes and, as he looked back into hers, he saw the faces of all those he loved appear again in her face. Then he saw his own face. He knew why she did it.

“Go Jonathan, you have little time.” she pointed to the

furious storm on the horizon. “Evil strengthens in your absence. Go now with the strength of true love” she pointed to the slab and raised her arms.

Obediently Jonathan walked towards the inscribed slab. But more than her words propelled him there.

“Just one more thing Jonathan.” she said. “Do not fail or the dimensions will topple one after another and we can do little more than watch. The strength you need awaits you in your world. It is the spark that can create the fire to consume this evil.” she paused for a while and smiled. “It is not enough to love and avenge the dead alone. You must love the living too.”

Their eyes and mind met again and he felt the sincerity and truth in her words. He knew too who and what she referred. She nodded. “He cannot stop you this way, for you have the power he has never experienced. His deeds thus multiply against him. You have love in your heart. It is a force against which his power cannot succeed. His soul and his city are his own grave. Bury him in it Jonathan. Him and the Shetani, these ‘Tallmen’.” she finished.

Jonathan slowly approached the position of the dimension door which was indicated by the inscription on the slab, hesitating when the opening back to his world suddenly erupted in a swirling abyss before him.

“Go quickly now, you have lost much time here. Time passes here at a greater rate here than in you realm. Go now!” she urged as she waved a long elegant hand in farewell.

Jonathan waved and stepped into the madly swirling colours. Back in the rift of time and space through which he had travelled to reach the Overworld of the Sentinels, little in its image sucking walls suggested anyone else had passed this way. When he reached the main tunnel however, its walls seethed with trapped images of thousands of High Hats passing this way and this burdened with packing cases. A whole day had passed during the short time Jonathan had been away.

He studied walls manically shifting murals of the High hats who worked feverishly to transport Flax’s booty back to Dubh. Looking closely, he was able to pick out images of the chamber on the Dubh side of the dimension door. High Hats surged into the hall, breaking open wooden and metal crates and examining their contents.

Jonathan winced at the sight and volume of the unfamiliar, but ominously efficient looking weapons. One image drifted by which caught his eyes. It was Flax and the grey haired stranger standing side by side. They looked so similar in appearance, stature and profile, frighteningly similar. Jonathan gasped.

They must be related, but how was it possible, they came from different worlds. How? He shivered. He moved back towards the other exit, ensuring he

did not move to quickly in the vortex, although compelled by a sense of urgency to do so. Where was Flax now he thought? How long would it take to overthrow Dubh? Had he already done it.? No one could stand in his way now, only him, only Jonathan Postlethwaite.

The burden of responsibility seemed to lie heavily on his heart as he approached the exit at the Cross Keys. But fear had been seared from his heart. His contact with the Sentinel seemed to have enriched him and reinforced is sense of purpose. He would get to Flax, destroy him, because

he knew that if he failed, he knew that sooner or later, the beast would return for him. But he would destroy those Jonathan loved first. Jonathan now knew this. Now was it was his moment. His enemy was preoccupied and when he approached the prize he so desperately sought, he would take it all from him.

His resolve was now strong. There was no fear, no uncertainty. Never more had he known such strength and conviction. He felt it, deep inside him now, solid and potent in his heart. It was a weapon which would end Flax’s dreams and destroy the spirit of evil which fermented in Dubh’s stagnant pit of corrupted humanity.

He emerged from the door at the Cross keys and walked out into the courtyard where broken packing cases littered the cobbled yard. It was evening and snowflakes fell thick and fast onto the torn and bloody corpse of Victor Burns who lay in the doorway to his bakery.

Flax had celebrated the arrival of the two lorries carrying his goods by slitting Victor’s throat. Now the snow lay like a funeral shroud over his still body. Jonathan paused to watch the snowflakes for a while. So white and pure, beautiful, he thought, but they did not retain his interest for long and he picked his way through the debris left in the yard past the long, dark windows of the public house where Mrs. Lovenberry had ended her days face down in the bath, her ancient eyes staring at the plug hole, tiny air bubbles clinging to her blue lips. Flax had disposed of her as he did all that had outrun their use.

Jonathan left the yard and ran through the swirling snow to the churchyard where he leapt the blue and white cordoned tape that sought to keep the public from out of the scene of a murder inquiry.

Two policemen on duty saw only a shadow in the thick snow and dismissed it as a fox, declining the opportunity to investigate it in such foul weather. Soon he was through the clearing where the Turkanschoner had slain Ivor Scoggins and down the slope and through the stream. He ran up the short slope to the cave.

The door was still there! He hoped, above all hope, that she would be beyond the door. Her love drew him back to Dubh. She was the spark, the power that he had to defeat Flax. She had to be there. He would prevail becasue of his love for Milly and not because of his anger and hatred of Flax - he could see that now.

The light of the door shimmered before him, beckoning him, every colour radiated along the vortex. He did not hesitate. Once again he moved slowly enough for his molecular structure to adjust. He reached the exit, closed his eyes and stepped out.

In the darkness of the derelict house, only emptiness and the rats greeted him. They began to advance as Jonathan stood disappointed, half despairing. His hope, his strength, seemed to disintegrate when he found that his friends and Milly were not there.

The rats were happy enough though, he would do for them, a meal standing unprotected in the darkness. The first in their ranks sat back on their haunches and prepared to leap and sink their yellow teeth into his warm and inviting flesh. But they never left the ground.

Suddenly the darkness erupted in explosions of brilliant white light which seared the flesh of the rats and sent them scrabbling in retreat from it, the floor rippling with their grey flesh as they sped for the sanctuary of darkness, their appetites for the moment forgotten.

Jonathon was brought back to his senses by the noise and lightening outside the ruin. Outside amidst the chaos of light and thunderous noise he saw familiar figures silhouetted by the flashes of light. He screamed in disbelief at what he saw there.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Silus Flax was impressed by the destructive power of the weaponry supplied by Ben Santiago. Even his prophetic visions of its use could not compare with the frightful efficiency of twentieth century technology.

He had assembled a group of his High Hats in his personal chambers for a demonstration and had used the Uzi sub machine gun on them after a short briefing from Santiago.

Flax stood wide eyed with sadistic glee as he watched them cut to pieces, reduced them to a bloody heap in a matter of seconds. He continued to fire at the dead bodies until the magazine ran dry. Then he smiled as he turned to his shocked supplier. Ben swallowed hard. “But they were your own men.” he said hoarsely. Flax shrugged his wide shoulders.

“No one is indispensable.” he replied and his eyes narrowed as he looked at him. Ben shivered and Flax laughed as he placed a Fatherly arm around Santiago’s shoulders. “We have much to do, let us begin my friend, let us begin our campaign.”

After a few hours of planning and instruction, Flax deployed his forces around the city and awaited his zero hour. He set his pocket watch to coincide with the Tallmens’ artificial dawn, but was surprised when the realm he craved to master was not gradually illuminated at the appointed hour. Some light came but it was the intensity he expected. The great banks of smog which hung over the city in this dimmed dawn indicated to Flax that all was not well in the towers.

As Flax watched from his vantage point on a high building above his headquarters, he noticed the flickering rifts that opened sporadically in the Dubh’s field walls. Flashes of lightening, in a thousand different colours irradiated the smog banks as energies ebbed and flowed in the unstable walls. Flax was disturbed.

Why was there an energy problem today? The Halls of Machines functioned normally, he had checked the last night. He shook his head. He would be in control soon he thought, soon he would put the Tallmens’ complacencies to right. Then he looked up as first explosions of grenades

and mortars marked the passing of his deadline and his captains lead their men against Tan strongholds. His murderously equipped army was in full scale assault.

Now the city resounded with the sound of fighting, bursts of automatic weapon fire, grenades flashed and thudded, fires began to burn and the dying screamed as the victors howled in depraved triumph. The whole city began to glow bloodily as fires marked the advance of the merciless High Hats.

Flax watched them through binoculars supplied Santiago. These instruments brought the conflict so magically close to him and he so much wanted to be part of it. He felt the surge of adrenalin flowing through him, he wanted to be there to, but he knew that he must co- ordinate the battle himself.

With the help of a radio and its hastily trained operator he was in touch with all his Captains. Reports flooded in through the heavy hiss of static that the Tans were retreating, offering little resistance and dying in their thousands as they fled to the river and the walls of the Upper City. The High Hats were sweeping the Tans aside, their foe’s antiquated weaponry no match for his men’s equipment, even in their hastily trained hands.

Flax smiled. The Lower City was his and now he would join the fray himself. Flax shouldered his sub machine gun and, with his radio operator in tow descended to the battle field of Dubh.

Chaos and carnage reigned on the streets he now walked. Buildings burned fiercely, the bodies of Tans lay sprawled in the streets with their ancient and ineffective weaponry clutched in their dead hands. As the High Hat leader moved along through the aftermath of the carnage towards the river, where his forces now assembled awaiting his next order, he sprayed anything that moved with automatic fire. He riddled the unarmed civilians who peered curiously through doorways and windows and those who had emerged in curiosity out onto the streets. Flax found the pleasure of such destruction of human life intense as he picked off his targets indiscriminately as his troops had done; anyone not in a High Hat uniform was a legitimate target and as he neared the river he found himself clambering over piles of bodies of the ordinary citizens of Dubh.

Eventually, only lack of ammunition brought Flax down to earth and he was able to see reason through the red mist of his blood lust. He shouldered his weapon and increased his pace to join his men who waited impatiently on the banks of the foul smelling river, swearing at his radio operator to keep up with him.

The Tans had put up almost no resistance once they had realised the destructive capacity of the High Hats weaponry and had retreated en masse to the Upper City and the expected sanctuary of its curtain walls. The bottle neck of bridges over the river had been the demise of thousands as they attempted to make their way through the terrified crowds swept ahead of the High Hats advance. The bridges had been crammed with people fleeing in fear of the demons that pursued them in top hats. There, caught in the open and vulnerable, they had been slaughtered as they stood like beasts at an abattoir door.

At the corpse swollen river, all was now silent. The firing had stopped because of Flax’s orders and the simple fact that there was no one in the open outside the Upper City walls left to kill.

Ben Santiago had been swept up in the demonic atrocities of the High Hats advance. He had led the attacks with the same insane savagery as Flax himself would have. He had, with great difficulty, been able to eventually quell the sadistic enthusiasm of the High Hats as he knew they needed to preserve ammunition and he also released that the city would need people other than the High Hats to function after its fall to them.

The High Hats had wasted much ammunition in an attempt to achieve the latter, but Santiago had stopped it and now he oversaw the setting up of mortars and instructed how and where to launch grenades in preparation for the storming of the Upper City.

Now they awaited Flax. They milled around the river banks and on the bridges swapping stories of their personal exploits and itched to continue the rout of their enemy. Flax arrived and smiled as his horde cheered and waved their bloodied weapons in salute.

“Victory is ours!” their leader screamed until he was hoarse, then embraced Ben Santiago. His insane eyes bore into Ben. “Victory is Ours! he whispered into the arms dealer’s ear.

Then he turned to his High Hats again. He looked at the sea of white faces, their wide and manic eyes staring out from beneath the brims of their top hats grinned. Then he looked up at the walls of the Upper City and the dull glow from the field walls which crackled and flashed unstably.

Suddenly he felt cold. Goose pimples arose all over his body and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. He stared at the sky over the walls across the city. A great arc of golden light briefly lit up Dubh, it was the result of the energy imbalance in the field walls, but to Flax it was more than a chance disruption in the field walls. It was gate through which he would have to pass to secure his position as emperor of this place. Beyond it lay the city of the Tallmen, but they could not stop him. His dream of Jonathon standing before the golden gate now returned to him, causing him to shiver. The dream, the boy!

“The boy.” he croaked out loud, his eyes becoming unfocussed as a thin sliver of paranoia crept into his mind. “It’s because of him! He’s destroying my world! My dream! “he shouted at the assembled High Hats. A few looked puzzled a few repeated Flax’s words, chanting them as if they were religious prayer or a profundity from a prophet.

The golden discharge in the field walls faded and Flax recovered his composure. Yet now urgency filled him. The dream hung over him like the smoke from the bloody war he had brought to Dubh. The boy was here. The problems he had blamed on the Tallmen might be something to do with him he realised. The boy was out there, a real threat. Now time was of the essence. He had to find him and find him soon, but he knew that he would find him, that their paths would soon cross. He been close recently, he was alive. Soon, thought Flax. Soon. was silent now, apart from the static crackle from the field walls. It was a silence which slipped inside the soul, creating an atmosphere of expectation and fear.

On the Upper City walls the remaining Tans organised themselves to face the onslaught of the High Hats. They hoped that the narrow bridges, on which many of their number had been massacred, would perhaps give them some advantage as the High Hats advanced.

Santiago dropped his hand, signalling a barrage ofmortars and grenades. The grenades spewed smoke across the river and covered the High Hats advance on the walls of the Upper City which disintegrated under the deadly rain of fire and shrapnel. The Tan remnants died or fled.

Soon the High Hats literally exploded through the gates of the Upper City. There was no opposition and the frenzied minions of Silus Flax sought to fulfil murderous passion on anyone who happened to come within range.

Soon the bodies of Meks, dragged from their dwellings and killed, littered the streets. Flax ordered a halt to the attack. He needed the engineers and mechanics of the Upper City to run the Halls of Machines, without them he could not hope to sustain the realm he would tear away from the Tallmen when he conquered the Towers of the Tallmen.

His orders proved difficult to enforce, but, after halting several berserkers in his host with a hail of bullets from his own weapon, silence fell upon a shocked and shattered Upper City.

Only the hum of the engines could be heard now, perpetual and comforting to Flax. This was his home. He smiled. At least they functioned still, he thought and by the sweet tone the halls emitted, efficiently. Now he knew that the problem that threatened the city was with the Tallmens’ technology or management of it.

But how could the boy have got to them? Even the blazing lights of the Sentry Towers had now almost dimmed out of existence. He ordered his men on to the roofs of the Machine Halls where they gazed through the thickening smog of battle at the City of the Tallmen.

The lights of the Sentry Tower were ominously dull too. The metaphorical significance caused Flax to smile. They guarded his final goal and he knew that the Tallmen would still prove to be a real test. His men were well armed, but the technology of his enemy was highly advanced and they had nowhere to run and hide.

Flax had seen their weaponry used on only a few occasions, but it was lethal and efficient. On the open killing ground between the halls and the Towers they could pick off his men at will. He looked nervously at Santiago, who grinned back at him, his face manically confidant. He assured his client that the Tallmen would collapse with the same ease that the Tans had folded before them.

Leaving Santiago to organise his next strategy and he moved down to the Halls to force his way in. With a few trusted captains, they blew open the main doors and marched inside in jubilant arrogance. Flax was relieved to find that all was indeed, as he wished it to be. He inspected all the Halls and found the lines running normally, although the Meks worked anxiously, as he and his entourage passed by.

Reassured by Flax, the Black Gaffer, of their safety, they continued their work in fearful concentration. They knew of this man who now controlled the Upper and Lower Cities. They knew his reputation, his methods and now feared him more than the sadistic legend of Hall Nine. The new master of the Halls of Machines issued commands to his captains and his faithful servants ran gleefully to carry them out as he climbed the metal stairway to his old control room. He felt good to be back amongst his beloved machines, wrapped in the bouquet of warm oil and hot metal he felt confidence build in him at the prospect of the forthcoming battle with the Tallmen.

As he entered the control room, he heard the sound of gunfire in the Halls. He sniggered. His men were executing the Council of the Halls of Machines, the lap dogs of the Tallmen. Now he had total control of the halls and the Tallmens’ power supply. He had his hand at their throat, soon they would crawl at his feet one way or another. They could not win.

He swung open the control room door and stared at his deputy who fell on his knees at the sight of the Hall Engineer in whose absence he had taken over from. Bolster’s rolls of fat quivered as Flax advanced toward him.

“MMMMMaster!” he stuttered. “They said you absent and dismissed from your post. I am your faithful servant. I did not take your job. I knew you would return master.” he wheezed, unsure of his fate now Flax had returned and controlled the city almost in its entirety.

“My dear Bolster.” Flax laughed. “You are a crawling liar of the lowest order. Of course you didn’t want me to return you fat, slobbering wretch. I’m sure you enjoyed your new post and its advantages to the full.”

Flax moved closer to Bolster and stuck the muzzle of his gun into his left nostril, pushing it hard until the skin nearly split. “But you are right of course. I am your master, so get off your arse and continue your tasks.” Flax snarled and kicked Bolster to his feet and toward the control panels.

Bolster scrambled into a chair in front of the banks of trembling dials which were mounted above the glass windows which gave a view of the hall below were a few pale faces peered upwards from their work.

Flax looked down and the faces quickly concentrated on their work. Bolster turned and smiled tensely at Flax, sweat pouring from his pale face.

“The, the Tallmen have ordered us to increase output of all Halls to mmmmaximum.” Bolster stuttered again. “Shall I master?”

Flax paced forward and leaned over the trembling controller to study the dials.

“There is little left in terms of output without putting the machines at risk of overheating and seizure, what is the problem over there? Why do they need more power now?” he asked Bolster.

The fat man shrugged.

“We have heard rumours of sabotage and rebellion in their ranks, that they can no longer store energy as they used to.” he smiled hoping his meagre information would please his master whose face seemed to be blackening with every moment.

“Rebels?” he whispered. “Rebels and no energy storage?” He sighed deeply. So that was it. That explained it all. “The boy.” he hissed though grinding teeth.

He stood upright and slapped Bolster across the head. The Tallmen were in trouble, they needed every watt of energy just to maintain the field walls. It was the boy. Somehow he had got into the city. He hit Bolster again.

“How!” he stared at Bolster who sat with his hands over his head. “It is only rumour master! I know nothing more.”

Flax was growing angry. Was it the boy? Was it the Tallmens’ incompetence? He punched Bolster in the back of the neck. “Tell me now!” he screamed to a higher spirit than that of the terrified Bolster, a spirit which had given him enough to motivate and guide him in the past. Visions of the golden gate and the boy flickered into his memory, but no prophecy, no guidance, only laughter that seemed to echo through his own soul.

It tormented him with visions of the boy, the boy who stood before him and his prize. And this talk of rebels. He was not alone. He was destroying the city, ruining his dream before his very own eyes. Flax growled and laughed to himself. He began to fume and his face reddened.

Bolster could hear Flax grinding his teeth together, slowly boiling up a terrible anger. He retreated slowly as Flax’s face began to redden and saliva frothed at the corners of his twitching lips. He whimpered quietly to himself, repenting his sins to a forgotten god.

Now his master began to rant and swear unintelligible threats, sweat poured from Flax’s brow as he began to pace the control room and hit out at the nearest objects, he no longer seemed aware of his blubbering deputy at all. He was lost in a world of pure rage as he smashed his bony fists into the walls as his fury intensified and blood and scraped skin fell onto Bolster as he waited for Flax’s destructive passion to focus on him again.

Flax turned to the shivering mound of flesh in the corner and, to Bolster, his dark, bottomless pits of eyes seemed to ignite into glowing embers. Flax’s deputy closed his eyes in silent terror and flattened himself in preparation for his death.

As quickly as Flax’s rage had risen it subsided. The fire in his eyes faded and he stood erect, staring in space as blood dripped from his battered knuckles onto the cold tiles of the control room floor.

His emotions under control again, he lifted his bleeding hands and stared at them. He breathed deeply and then spoke softly.

“These ‘rebels’, what are the Tallmen doing about them?” he asked while he examined the exposed knucklebones of his fists.

Bolster gaped and sobbed. Had he been spared? He felt a dull ache in his chest. He tried to reply, but the words jammed in his larynx. Flax slapped him out of his shocked state and repeated the question. Bolster sobbed and sniffled.

“They say that they have one of them and....” Bolster took in a deep breath that was not deep enough. He began to pant. “They say.....he will lead them....to the others...” he spluttered.

Flax nodded.

“Good.” he said and then smiled at Bolster as he left the room.

The faltering and long abused heart of Bolster could take no more. The years of terror at the hands of Flax and the abuse of Bolster himself had taken their toll and, as Flax left, it ground to a halt, leaving its owners lips

to turn slowly blue as he collapsed face first into the blood splattered floor, his nose breaking with a loud crack.

Chapter Thirty

On the rooftops, amongst the great domes of the Engine Halls, Flax’s eager army prepared for their sternest test. They darted across the roofs in small groups, clinging to the shadows, aware of the Tallmen and their searchlights and searing weaponry.

But the searchlights remained off and the Towers dim, starved as they were, of the energy they needed to function effectively. It was the same throughout the Tallmens’ city, all non-essential power had been diverted to the field expanders in an effort to sustain the field walls which flickered and flashed threatened to collapse. The Tallmen had observed what had happened in the city and prepared as well as they could, and sat and waited watching the scuttling targets on their infrared screens in the Sentry targets, but knowing that the automatic laser turrets would remain still and useless.

The Tallmen warriors had moved down to ground level to meet the High Hats attack. Their hand weapons were all they had to fight off the human advance. They would be able to, they estimated, manage a dozen or so shots from their weapons before their power cells were discharged, then they would rely on ceremonial swords and shields to attempt in an attempt turn back the insane tide of High Hats burning with the desire to shed their blood for Flax’s gold bounty for every severed Tallman head they brought to his feet.

The mirror armoured warriors, feared the worst. They had seen the effectiveness of their enemy’s projectile weapons and knew that they were also outnumbered, but stood silent and still hidden in the shadows of their City preparing for their final hour.

A brooding silence had descended upon the city of Dubh, broken only by the crackle of electrical static from the shifting field walls and the rustling of clothing and rope as the High Hats descended cautiously onto the great paved area surrounding the Sentry Towers . They gathered close to the walls of the Halls of Machines, a hissing murmuring puddle, awaiting a signal from above. Fingers trembled on triggers, knives and machetes slid, singing from oiled sheaths as their eager eyes surveyed the shadows beneath the towers.

The signal came with the dull thud and flash of mortars falling around the Sentry Towers and the clang of smoke and phosphorous grenades upon the hard slabs. The smoke to hide the High Hats advance and the glowing phosphorus to draw the fire of the heat guided laser turrets.

Santiago grinned as the High Hats surged across the open space and the turrets did not reply. It would have been nice to know if his strategy would have worked had they been working, but it didn’t matter now, it was as good as over. Without their technology the race of the Tallmen was as good as extinct he figured.

From beyond the billowing clouds of smoke the Tallmen heard the heart stopping banshee wails of the advancing High Hats. Random shots rang out as they came only to be drowned out by the rising roar of a thousand pairs of hobnailed boots pounding on stone.

A palpable terror rose in the Tallmen ranks as they as they peered into the smoky gloom for their manic and invisible foe. Then after what seemed an age to them, wave after wave of them appeared, snarling, screaming, eyes widened in hatred and the desire for the gold they would earn for the pleasure of killing.

Lasers flashed and High Hats fell charred, but soon the sea of black cloth and top hats swamped them, guns blazing and blades slashing. In moments of thundering chaos the Tallmen warriors were crushed and cut to pieces by eager bounty hunters.

Flax walked amongst the remains of the Tall warriors who had fell to his army. He had realised that to kill them all was a mistake, he need to know how to work the machinery that lay in the dark buildings at the farthest extent of the realm’s field walls. Without Tallmen to operate it, at least briefly and the knowledge of how it was done he would have no empire to rule.

He called off the majority his horde, sending them back to the Upper City to claim their rewards from his paymasters. Now was the time for diplomacy. The soldiers of his enemy had fallen, so under a flag of truce and backed up by a hundred of his personal bodyguard he advanced toward the pyramid shaped building which squatted at the centre of the Tallman city.

Nothing stirred until he reached the stone structure’s door. He was close enough to touch it when it slid noiselessly open, permitting a dull light to send a weak, yellow shaft into the smog around the city.

Flanked by two tall warriors who bore only ceremonial spears, an ancient, white bearded Tallman studied the grinning human who stood at the doorway. The two leaders stood silently surveying one another for a while before the wizened giant spoke. “Who are you?” he spat.

Flax smiled at him, his yellow teeth glistening in the gloom.

“Why I am Silus Flax of course, new Emperor of this realm, Master of the Two Cities and Master of....” he paused for a while and chuckled. “… and Master of the Tallmen.” There was silence and then the old man laughed back. “HA! Master of Nothing.” he sneered back impassively at Flax.

“If I choose, this place will become less than nothing in seconds; I only have to say the word!”

Flax folded his arms and stared at the Tallman leader and shook his head.

“But you have not, have you? You could have destroyed all this before we got this far, as soon as your soldiers were defeated. Yet you did not. We are still here! I ask myself ... why?” Flax’s eyes narrowed. A poor bluff he thought! He moved closer to the Tallman Elder and stared up into his eyes. “What you should have asked me, was “what you want”? Not who are you. Do you understand me old man?” Flax sauntered inside. The guards lowered their lances, but the Tallman Elder waved them away. “You will not destroy this place while there is still hope. Suicide is for the weak and martyrdom the stupid.” Flax put his hand on the Elders shoulder. “You are neither weak or a martyr.”

The Elder narrowed his eyes. The human was right of course. Had the other Elders met to debate this issue, they would have ended Dubh’s existence, they would not fall to a lower race. IF they had met, but now they lay dead in their chairs around that debating table. He alone had the strongest desire for self preservation; he had only one principle - survival.

The Tallmen still had knowledge this human needed, while they had it, they had power. This Silus Flax,

this self proclaimed emperor, would bargain. That was why was here, unarmed and vulnerable. Both of them would negotiate and both knew it. The Elder smiled at Flax and Flax smiled back at him. They both began to laugh loudly. Then the Elder stretched out a hand and shook Flax’s.

“Come in Silus Flax, we have much to discuss.” he said and then bowed theatrically as Flax entered and signalled his bodyguard to follow.

Chapter Thirty One

In the darkened, smog wreathed alleyways and streets of Dubh, in its hovels and crowded tenements, the shaken population began to recover from the violence which had sent them running from their lives. They emerged from their dark warrens into a world of smoke and shadow, into a twilight world illuminated only by the lanterns they bore or from the flames burning out of control in buildings shattered by Silus Flax’s maniacal army.

There was now almost no illumination from the field wall above them now only feeble, flickering and crackling bursts of energy that marked the dimension’s increasing instability. Holes in the field walls had begun to appear and for instants, beams of light seared Dubh from dimensions beyond, blazing in a short lived existence before the Tallmen compensated for the irregularity.

Ragged tears in the dimension walls above Dubh, occasionally poured material instead of sunlight from above. Sea water, earth, pebbles and leaves rained down periodically, to those who dared to emerge onto the streets. Their attention was not focused on the freak showers for long though, soon it was turned toward the corpses that littered the rubble strewn streets. They offered booty, food and other less clearly defined uses. Corpses were stripped, robbed or dragged off to the lower levels, whose scavenging inhabitants now ventured to the surface where the increasing darkness offered better cover for their acutely depraved activities.

In the dimmed light of Dubh, dark puddles of shadow seemed to swirl and flow as the absence of light had released them from bondage. Murky tar pools of lightlessness began to form where shadows could not truly exist, fed by rivulets of pure night that seemed to drain from rooftops or flow upwards from the portals that led to Dubh’s underworld. They increased in size rapidly and began to cover the cobbles and paving stones thoroughfares completely. The long dead lived in these malevolent reservoirs, the malign spirit of Dubh wallowed there now, strengthened by the terror and destruction fostered in the souls of Dubhians by Flax’s horde.

Now it strengthened in the gathering darkness and called out to those who had survived the bloody massacres on the streets commanding them to continue the violence and depravity upon which it fed. Sporadic violence began to erupt in the Lower City, without the rule of the presence of the Tans, with out subjugation to their social order, the population began to consume itself in a violent, anarchic frenzy of hedonism.

Despite, or perhaps in spite, of their uncertain futures, the inhabitants of Dubh pursued the lust for physical pleasure with a renewed vigour, never had such an intensity of depravity existed even in this fouls world. The people of Dubh lost control completely. The possessed darkness oozed from the cracks in the pavement or rained from the walls and rooftops had taken control of their functions, squeezing out reason and furthering its goals of destruction. Thanatos, the driver of self destruction that lurks latent in us all, rose within them and around hem, the ultimate pleasure was now death, the plunge into the imagined and paradoxical ecstasy of non being. Silus Flax had conquered a city, but lost its people. The forces of evil which resided in Dubh’s depths and channelled their energy through him, aided and cajoled him, marched behind him sweeping up the dark spoils of war for itself, consuming souls, dining upon despair. Flax was one of its puppets, a means to an end and a catalyst

for a world’s destruction. He was a key to a door. While he strode in search of his empires, darkness gathered behind him, preparing for the day when Flax would enable its migration to worlds beyond this dying realm, to fertile fields ripe for the disease of despair, a womb in which the seed of corruption could grow.

From the widening pools of pure and distilled corruption came insane gurgles of laughter that echoed around the grim gorges that were the streets of malignant Dubh and reverberated along the lower and deeper lanes of depravity, as an ominous thunder. The people heard it and they laughed with it as they murdered and violated one another.

Such was evil’s lightless intensity now and its anticipation of consummate rule so strong, that when a bright, shining star of purity and untouchable innocence emerged into the very midst of its being, the darkness upon the streets began to howl in puerile indignation. The whole city began to shake with its rage and its own despair.

In the City of the Tallmen Flax heard it howl, outside and inside his head and echo within the vast emptiness of his soul.

Chapter Thirty Two

As the army of howling High Hats advanced toward the river, sweeping the bewildered Tans before them, the Turkanschoner crouched low in a second storey window observing the slaughter taking place in the streets below. He had ventured up from the underworld scavenging for food, leaving Milly safe and secure hidden in the derelict building opposite the one which housed the dimension door.

He had decided to move to the opposite side of the subterranean street because he feared that the house might be visited from the High Hat chamber he had glimpsed on his journey through the dimension door with

Jonathan. Better away from that portal he deduced.

The new refuge was now sealed and accessible only through the front door which, unlike many others still swung on its hinges. It also offered the occupants a clear view of the building opposite and any arrivals could be viewed from a position of relative safety.

The Turkanschoner had shown the machine he had retrieved from the Tallmen to Milly, and explained, the best he could, its importance in Jonathan’s plans. She understood and he had left her attempting to reassemble it from its component parts. She had partly succeeded, easily interpreting the colour coding the technician had added to most of the glass tubes and small globes, so that he might reassemble the device more easily when he returned to the Elders.

The beast had left her pondering over the positions of the remaining parts which had no clues to their place in the construction, while he made a short foray for food while they awaited the reappearance of Jonathan.

Moving rapidly through the darkness aided by his acute sense of smell and ignored only by the most persistent of rats, he soon found his way to the surface streets of Dubh and the battle which raged there.

Once on the streets he moved cautiously in the dim light, made worse by the smoke from the combat, and avoided the fighting around him. Now, from his vantage point on a blasted window ledge, he watched a Tan platoon fleeing down the street beneath him. Even though in superior numbers to their pursuers, they were picked off at will by the High Hats. When they reached a point almost directly below him they took refuge behind a makeshift barricade and prepared for a desperate last stand.

For every round they fired the High Hats fired a hundred. The Turkanschoner could see that they stood little chance against the enemy whose weaponry was vastly superior. Short and metallic, the guns the black coated men bore spewed round after round without the need for reloading, unlike the musket men who struggled in vain with ramrods and powder horns.

The bemused observer watched the conflict intently. The High Hats weapons did actually run out, one of their number crouched below him and removed a magazine and replaced it with another from a bag on his shoulder and then continued to spray the Tan position with long bursts of fire.

The number of Tans had been reduced to two. They cowered below their barrier of overturned carts and shattered masonry awaiting the movement of the two High Hats who had been detailed to finish them off, whilst the main force moved down toward the river. The two High Hats seemed in no hurry to join their comrades. Behind the barricade the two Tans began to argue and eventually one threw down his musket and stood up with his hands above his head. The shooting stopped.

His would be captors called to him to walk forward from the barricade as they themselves remained hidden from view and assured him loudly of safe passage and good treatment. The Tan walked nervously forward as the Turkanschoner watched from above. When he had walked a few paces the nearest Hat High Hat leapt from his hiding place and sprayed him with bullets from point blank range and did not stop until he had emptied a full magazine into the bloody mass that slumped to the ground and twitched with the impact of the lead.

Kicking the Tan corpse, the High Hat laughed as his colleagues in arms joined him and they approached the barricade where the remaining Tan cringed, contemplating his fate.

The Turkanschoner shifted uneasily on the window ledge. He did not enjoy the conflict below him. It wasn’t a fair fight he thought. He studied the swaggering High Hats as they passed below him and was tempted to enter the uneven contest. He had seen the power of the weapons which had devastated the Tans and paused for a while. Should he take the chance, he deliberated. Surprise speed and power would be enough to defeat

these cowards despite their guns.

At that moment the Tan remaining behind the barricade decide to take his chance and leapt from his position and sprinted down the street, zig zagging as he went, in an deluded attempt to avoid the bullets of the

High Hats.

The High Hats mounted the barricade and levelled their deadly weapons at the fleeing target. The Turkanschoner cringed, they could not miss he thought, but he was wrong. A single shot rang out and kicked up the cobbles at the Tans heels, the ricochet echoing around the narrow street. The second Tan scoffed at his comrade’s poor marksman ship and fired himself, hitting the man in the leg and knocking him down to the ground, sprawling and screaming. He began to crawl away.

The second Tan blew across the muzzle of his weapon theatrically and gestured that the other fire again. He took aim again and this time struck the Tan in the shoulder sending a splash of blood and bone across the man’s back. He slumped to the floor moaning and the High Hat whooped in triumph, waving his weapon at the other who chuckled and took aim again. The Turkanschoner was not amused by their twisted idea of sport.

The High Hat fired and missed. The Turkanschoner could take no more and leapt from the window, scrambling quickly down a drainpipe and then launched himself down onto the nearest High Hat with enough force to knock him out. The other turned in horror and stared at the beast which had appeared from nowhere and stood only yards from him, with jaws clashing wetly together. The High Hat panicked and fumbled with his weapon as he attempted to switch it back to automatic.

The Turkanschoner howled and drew two long daggers from his belt and prepared to strike down the High Hat who screamed and discarded his weapon in horror and began to scamper back down the barricade.

The purpose designed killing machine watched the escaping High Hat and grunted amusedly, his killer’s instinct almost absent. The compulsion which normally overwhelmed him at times like these was now subordinated and an ancient code of honour had re- established itself. The monster which the Tallmen had created was now under control of a compassionate mind trapped in a disfigured body.

The High Hat ran and the Turkanschoner shrugged and replaced the daggers in his belt; he felt whole again, another part of his past had been returned to him. He was changing, the Tallmens’ conditioning of his behaviour was disintegrating fast. He no longer had to kill, he felt good, he felt powerful. He was back in control.

The Turkanschoner picked up the discarded automatic rifle and its magazine pouch and walked over to the unconscious High Hat. He relieved him of his weapon too, as well as his ration packs. After checking the Tan, who was now dead, he climbed slowly back to his vantage point and studied his newly acquired equipment. He paused as a torrent of explosions and gunfire erupted away towards the river, and then aimed the weapon across the street and pulled the trigger to fire a few rounds into the opposite wall.

The noise brought the other High Hat back to his senses and he dragged himself to his feet and staggered back down the street. Through the guns sights the Turkanschoner watched him go, following the target as it meandered slowly away from him. A long, taloned finger wound around the trigger as something billowed inside him.

" Kill.” it pleaded. “Kill.”

The Turkanschoner watched the High Hat. Killing was so easy he thought, then shouldered his newly acquired weapons and descended to the empty street, before making his way back to the Castle of Lepers and the well shaft which led to the grim labyrinths below.

Chapter Thirty Three

Silus Flax paced the length of the Council of Elders’ chamber as he stated his terms for the surrender of the Tallmens’ city to himself, its new Emperor. The Elders sat in a nervous silence as Flax spelled out his conditions.

The Tallmen who had survived the bloody capture of the Towers would continue to run their machines in accordance with his instructions while he ran the rest of Dubh in its entirety Flax informed them. He would, by using his special talents as a Hall Engineer, increase the Hall of Machines present output and stabilise the deteriorating condition of the field walls. At the same time the Tallmen engineers would teach his High Hat technicians how to use the field expanders. Then Flax would allow the Tallmen to vacate his realm by any exit or means they chose. His terms where not long and complicated, it was a very simple choice, comply or suffer the consequences.

The leader of the Council of Elders could do no more than nod his agreement. The self-proclaimed Emperor Flax’s conditions where not unreasonable in these circumstances he decided. Their conqueror had even suggested that the Tallmen might, time and co- operation permitting, be able to construct all the equipment they needed when leaving the Dubh.

Consequently the Elder agreed to a state of affairs other than his death, yet as he nodded, an alternative solution to this intolerable state of affairs began to take shape in his mind. “There is, however, one pressing matter which has to be resolved” the Elder concluded. Flax’s eyes narrowed expecting objection. “The rebels have a machine which might, in conjunction with a missing energy reservoir, threaten our Field Walls. You, Emperor Flax” he almost spat,”… you, must resolve this problem before our treaty has any substance. We cannot hope to stabilise the Field Walls until both the machine and the power reservoir are retrieved.”

Flax stood silent for a moment and sighed to hide the shock of the unexpected, Dubh was not yet his, someone else, and he knew who, had its destiny and his almost litterally in their hands. He felt desperately uneasy. He spoke.

“But you have a rebel prisoner do you not” he asked bemused. “Will he not disclose the position of these devices?”

“He has stated that he will co-operate” the Elder replied. “But we cannot trust him.”

Flax shivered as he heard the howling from the lower city penetrate the Elders’ chamber walls. He shivered involuntarily, the hairs on his neck standing on end. What was going on out there he thought, for a moment distracted from the task in hand.

“These rebels - are they all of your race? “he queried, a trace of concern in the question. Abruptly, he began to pace the chamber in an attempt to dissipate the nervous energy building in his body and subdue the glimmer of realisation now born in his mind.

The Tallmen Elder leaned back in his chair causally and could not hide the amusement in his voice. “I cannot see a Tallman and human alliance here being possible, no human could threaten us.” His voiced trailed off as his realised what he had foolishly said. With renewed vigour the wailing from the depths of the Lower City invaded Flax’s soul as the dark spirit of corruption urging its physical partner into action to dispel its dis-ease. Flax turned his attention back to the Tallman Elder.

“But I am human!” he half laughed, half growled. The ancient Tallman trembled slightly as Flax’s abyssal eyes bore into him, afraid he had insulted this crazed, yet powerful, lower form of life.

“But you are different.” he responded attempting to retrieve the situation.

Flax went strangely silent, all colour and expression drained from his face. He moaned quietly, then roared with a triumphant laughter.

“And so is he!” he howled, becoming increasingly agitated, and hurled a chair at the Council of Elders’ leader. “Can you not hear its unease! Can you not feel the presence! He is there, he’s doing it!” Flax thought out loud as he countered the lingering disbelief, the unacceptable fear that Jonathon could be doing this despite all that he knew. His face was now twisted in a grimace of pure hatred, tears of final revelation welling up in his darkening eyes.

Now Flax was sure. The ‘boy’ was here, not dead, his presence starkly contrasted against the deepening tide of evil which surged from the deepest labyrinths of the Dubhian Underworld and raised its depthless shadow over the Lower City and advanced towards the Tallmens’ Towers.

He Silus Flax, was failing in his part of this alliance. Soon It would act and the consequences for him were dire. Its unfettered desire for corruption and destruction would shatter his dream also, untempered by the consensus It accepted in an alliance union with him. But he felt himself failing in this compact and now moved fuelled on the despair generated by the collapse of all order in the city.

“So close.” he blubbered to himself. And Flax had both times been denied, there would be not third time. He threw back his head.

“NO,NO,NO! ” he shrieked as old nightmares crept into his consciousness. He remembered the innocent waif he had beheld on the street all those years ago.

Now his imagination ran away with him. He imagined Jonathon and this ‘machine’ which could destroy Dubh, poised smirking, as he threatened to throw the switch which would end his ambitions.

Flax screamed in horror and confusion.

“But WHY? Why? Why? WHY!?” he snarled, not realising he was directing his questions to the Tallman in front of him who quaked with fear as the howling from the city intensified as Flax grew more distressed. “Revenge.” said a soft voice as if out of thin air.

Flax became instantly silent, then burst out into an incredulous laughter. “Reeeevenge!” he guffawed, what did I ever do to him? I never even touched him.” He quietened and his eyes momentarily glazed before they drfited to Ben Santiago. Santiago stodd in the dooorway grey hair in wild disarray, his handsome Latin face streaked in with dirt and blood. Yet he was

relaxed, his own lust for violence and destruction having been sated in this alien city where he felt younger and stronger and perhaps immortal.

Here in Dubh he more was at home than he ever had in his Manhattan apartments. True he had been in the midst of war and rebellion before, yet here he felt no fear. Here his conscience was silent and his eyes smouldered with the gift he had received here, the city had taken away his soul and his conscience and now the windows of that soul showed no light at all. Flax stared at him and Santiago continued his explanation. “Revenge is the most likely motive. You must have crossed him sometime in the past Silus. He seems deranged to me, no-one in their right mind contemplates the destruction of a whole world, contemplates genocide, especially if they’re in it” he chortled softly and paused for a while, watching Flax scowl. “But if it is revenge, he’ll have to see you suffer first or it’ll take away the satisfaction. Give him time and he’ll come to us before he attempts to blow this place.” he finished confidently. “This thing is personal.”

Flax shook his head.

“You may be right, but we don’t have time! Don’t you understand! This world is tottering on the brink of destruction!” he shook his head angrily and turned to Santiago.” He will not deny me what is mine!”

He turned to the Elder who had watched fearfully as the mad human leader’s composure had begun to disintegrate.

“Where is this rebel? He will lead me to the boy and this score will be settled forever” he growled impatiently. The Tallman Elder rose nervously to his feet and indicated that the conqueror of his world should follow him.

Chapter Thirty Four

In his darkened cell Rislo shivered uneasily, growing concerned. The harrowing wailing from the city had penetrated deep into the Tallmens’ dungeons to chill his bones. There was a tension in the air which set him at the knife edge of anxiety. The tautness in his soul seem to ebb and flow, each wave more intense than the last, as it responded to the City’s demented din. It was as if it talked to him on a deep and essential level. Something was seriously wrong in the city. The sweating giant leapt to his feet as he heard the sound of footsteps approaching his cell.

he iron door’s inspection plate slid noisily back, the shriek of dry iron on dry iron cutting through him. Two dark eyes peered into the cell.

Rislo recoiled and turned away from their piercing gaze. They were not the eyes of a Tallman. They were small, completely black and penetrated deep inside him causing him to shake uncontrollably.

Something evil studied him from beyond the door. Something which threatened almost toyed, with the underpinning of his already tenuous sanity. The inspection plate slowly screeched shut.

The lock to the door squeaked and creaked and protested before it flew open violently, slamming against the wall and raising a cloud of dust which intensified the shaft of dirty light cast into Rislo’s cell, a shaft of light which was abruptly filled by a terrifying shadow. The apparition swept into the room, his cloak flowing behind him like a river of viscous darkness.

The High Hat studied the trembling giant briefly, his eyes riveting him to the spot. Flax stared at him in disgust and hatred, he had helped the boy! Then he smiled at the shivering, ungainly wretch, a smile which threatened pain and violence and which Rislo found unbearable.

Then Flax spoke.

“Take me to your friends rebel” he commanded. The words seemed to cut into Rislo’s soul like sharp coffin nails. “… and you may go free.,” he added with a false conviction.

Rislo did not even hesitate to think. He no longer cared for anyone else but himself. He staggered quickly out into the corridor to find himself surrounded by other High Hats who levelled their guns and even more menacing grins at him.

A rope coiled itself around his neck to prevent him moving forward.

Flax caught up with Rislo and laid an icy and heavy hand on his shoulder.

“I have no axe to grind with you Tallman.” he said softly. “Just take me to the boy and this machine and I will honour my promise” he patted the Tallman’s shoulder reassuringly and added. “Forget the Tallmen, they no longer have any power over my destiny or yours my friend. You need only to listen to me.” Flax then laughed and his minions joined him in a hysterical chorus which echoed deep into the former stronghold of Rislo’s race.

Rislo smiled weakly. Despite his declining mental stability he quickly re-evaluated his situation. It didn’t matter that it would not be the Tallmen who escorted him into the underworld of Dubh in search of the field imploder. His plan needed no modification. The rope slackened at his throat and the procession of High Hats moved slowly up from the dungeons toward the Generating Chambers. Flax controlled the long striding Tallman’s momentum with the rope leash when he moved too quickly, bringing him to a choking halt as the coarse fibres cut into his larynx. The physical shock was merely a minor distraction to Rislo as he was mentally too detached to feel any real pain. His treacherous plans ran through his mind continuously, the mental rehearsal engraving itself in memory.

A twinge of confusion about the Field Imploder’s actual whereabouts worried him slightly. To his knowledge the Tallmen had retrieved it when they had captured him, but he shook off the minor problem, he had decided to take his new captors directly to the Power Reservoir which he had hidden beneath the broken floor in the house where the dimension gate there promised a short sprint to freedom.

During his trip to the Generating Chamber and Power Room, Rislo became dully aware of the absence of Tallmen. This, coupled with Flax’s statement, made him realise that the High Hats really had taken control of the city. But it had little significance to him now. He only cared for his own survival.

He felt no pity in his heart for his former comrades and brothers, their fate was irrelevant to his own destiny. Rislo’s strengthening instinct for self- preservation drove him on now, silencing his conscience. His loyalty to Jonathon and Cornelius had dissolved quickly. He did hope that Jonathon was still in the world beyond the gate as his return might cause complications if he was waiting for his own return to the prearranged rendezvous.

In the Generating Chambers Rislo was not surprised to find Tallmen still running the Field Expanders, although at gunpoint. Tallman Elders, accompanied by two in the distinctive robes of technicians was here too.

Rislo heard the conversation which was now going on between them and Flax. The technicians would accompany the two dozen or so High Hats and dismantle the machine when it was located again. They where equipped with powerful arc-lamps and power packs which they distributed amongst the High Hats as they assembled around the well-head Rislo had used so recently. Half the High Hat company climbed down the shaft, lamps ablaze, before Rislo himself was poked and prodded to follow into the now brightly lit shaft.

When he stepped out into the brightly lit area below, Rislo was greeted by the sound of gunfire. Stepping over the bones of he corpse of the whore thrown to her death during Rislo’s earlier experience here, he moved forward to watch bemused as the High Hats shot nervously at the hissing, grey mass which swirled in the deepening shadows, waiting expectantly.

The Underworld was now colder, darker more threatening than it had been before. And there where noticeably more rats, bigger rats too, human sized rats. Rislo’s frosted breath billowed out beyond the sanctuary of the arc lamp light shafts which seemed to be being absorbed into the darkness which was seemed almost solid and shimmering now.

He could feel the tension he had experienced in the dungeons here too. Only here it was greater, in fact as if the very darkness were about to come into life, that a living being was at this moment poised to overthrow the world of Dubh, attempting to break through the veil of darkness into the flesh of a Leviathan which would destroy and devour them all.

Inside the sanctuary of the arc-lamps, the long stretch of stagnant water ahead of them boiled with the frenzied thrashing of the great blind fish which, excited by the human presence, leapt furiously out of the water to snap at the High Hats who had paddled ignorantly into their domain.

Alarmed High Hats charged out of the pool rapidly as the blind fish bit chunks out of their calves and thighs, turning to fire at the now seething white mass which threw itself upon a hapless humans who had stumbled to his knees and, piece by piece, were being eaten alive.

While the High Hats wreaked their revenge upon the fish in the pools, spraying every inch with lead and throwing grenades for good measure, Rislo stood silently and watched beyond light and into the shadows.

Suddenly a chill ran down his spine as he saw, at the far extremity of his vision a familiar, silhouette within its own small sphere of light. It stood still and silent, scrutinizing Rislo. Its hunched physique with its horned head inclined toward him identified it immediately to the horrified Tallman.

Rislo screamed a warning which was lost in the uproar around him as the High Hats concerned themselves with the large white fish which now recklessly advanced across the soft, flipping and flopping, their jaws gaping for flesh and air. When Rislo looked up the apparition was gone, but above the sound of echoing gunfire he heard an impeaching and defiant howl. The giant now began to sweat with fear. It was the beast he feared most, the creature which had almost had him before and, he knew, had never trusted him for a moment. Only the presence of its adopted master Jonathon had it kept those awful jaws and claws from him. Now he had lived up to its expectations and Jonathon was not here to stop it.

The rest of the party now reassembled on the banks of the now blood red pools. The High Hat weaponry seemed to have driven off the manic fish and, apart from the occasional splash the pools seemed silent. Flax surveyed the scene, the bloody water seemed to amuse him, yet the increasingly erratic vibrations from the unstable field walls wiped the grin quickly from his face.

The jolts were stronger now, sending rubble from the roof of the underworld splashing loudly into the pools before them. The occasional, strobe like flashes of rogue energy lit up the world beyond their lamps. The light from this wild illumination seeming to cling to the ancient masonry and slick cobblestones. Here was a tantalizing glimpse of the world into which they were to venture.

Rislo peered sideways at Flax who stared angrily into the darkness. He now closed his eyes and his nostrils flared above his moistened lips as explored the cold air for the scent he sought. Cordite, ozone, the coppery scent of warm blood, the musty odour of multitude of rats, the fearful sweat of the High Hats who were anxious to conclude their business here and out there, other beasts which roamed and slid inhabited.

Flax swore in frustration and opened his eyes. Nowhere the scent of the one he sought amongst was these other powerful smells.

“Onwards!” he barked impatiently and the procession moved obediently into the blood filled pools.

A nervousness swept amongst the party as soft, submerged objects bumped against their legs evoking fear as they swam across the narrow but deep pool before them. Rislo shivered as he crossed. The monster which

lurked at the foot of the pool was still there, he could feel its presence.

It moved, glided slowly to the surface and took one of the High Hats at the rear of the party in its wide jaws. The hapless straggler slipped quickly beneath the water without a sound, unmissed.

The oscillating hum of the Field Walls and the drone of the engines from the Halls of Machines was now joined again by the eerie wailing from the city itself. Although not as loud as the noise Flax had heard in the chambers of the Elders, it was enough to drown out the patter and swish of the million tiny paws that followed Flax’s party out of the pools and into the labyrinth of subterranean streets. Believing the promise of an easy escape back into the well shaft was secure behind them, the party advanced confidently.

The dark, dank and cold misty air began to swirl around them as they moved forward, a breeze at the moment, but alien to this place where the air had remained stagnant for a hundred years or more. Dust rose into spectres.

Flax moved slowly behind Rislo, flanked by his increasingly nervous High Hats whose eyes followed the thousands of scuttling, scrabbling shadows who kept pace with them just out of range of the arc-lamps.

Gone were the victorious grins they had worn after they had conquered the Tans and the Tallmen, replaced with open mouths and wide eyes as fear slowly gnawed away at their confidence. Buildings long forgotten, ancient and derelict, sprang up now on either side of them. The gaping doorways and windows revealing nothing except the increasing density of the shadows which pressed down on the dome of light generated by their lamps, which now seemed weak and inadequate like glass.

Flax halted suddenly and tasted the scent of the alien beast which emanated from the buildings on his right. He was aware too of the rolling, grey carpet of hungry rats that threatened now to encircle them in the darkness.

This single beast kept itself a fraction ahead of them. Whatever it was, it was basically human Flax perceived, although it reeked of some animal, primitive, threatening and entirely devoid of the scent of fear. Flax shrugged his shoulders, about to dismiss it as some half human relic lurking in the ruins, when a flash of automatic gunfire exploded from its position.

Screams erupted from the High Hats who fell dying in front of Flax, the echoes of the short burst of fire gave the impression to the High Hats that they were under attack from half a dozen different positions.

They began to fire indiscriminately in confusion and panic, swinging the beams of their arc-lamps around in an effort to isolate their ghostly attackers. They shot at their own shadows, at each other and at the arc-lamps themselves, thinking that the enemy would have less chance of hitting them in the dark, but forgetting in the chaos to just switch them off and disastrously ignorant of why the mass of rats around them kept their distance.

The two Tallmen technicians at the rear of the party saw their chance and threw off their robes to reveal the mirror armour of Tallmen warriors.They had been instructed by their Elders to kill Flax at the first opportunity and their laser batons began to cut down the panic stricken High Hats as they fumbled in the shadows with empty weapons and magazines.

Flax whirled around and, realising the Elders’ treachery, directed his fire at the advancing giant warriors. The din of the battle around him drowned out his angry howls as laser fire seared the air around him, filling the street with a storm of flashing light. Arc-lamps went out or fell to the ground sending beams out into the darkness or

up into the air, everywhere but where they were needed.

The High Hats were in complete disarray now. Either dead or dying, fleeing or still shooting at phantoms or one another. Rislo saw his chance to flee in the mayhem too. Flax had dropped his leash to dispose of the would be Tallman assassins and Rislo took a pace forward, only to stumble as a volley of misdirected bullets thudded into his back.

He dropped to his knees and, as he did so, his eyes caught sight of a hunched lump of shadow which detached itself from the cover of the buildings on the right and hurtled toward the fray.

It crouched low, but sped forward at great pace, its steel jaws and long incisors reflecting the explosions of light around him. Rislo whimpered as he attempted to crawl away from the Turkanschoner as it made a bee-line for him, but found his way blocked by fallen High Hats and the mass of gleefully snapping rodents which now surged noisily forward.

Rislo closed his eyes and begged for another life terminating bullet before the beast reached him.

Chapter Thirty Five

Jonathon overcame the shock of the violence that hit him as he emerged from the gate. He stood still as stared as he realised that now was the time, his moment. Anger began to boil in his blood as he wrenched

away part of the heavily chewed door frame he stood in. Grasping the make shift club in both hands he threw caution to the wind and sprinted towards the unmistakable figure of Silus Flax, silhouetted against the flaring bloody light of the combat which took place in

the Underworld, the only one which filled his vision now.

He had seen the Turkanschoner ripping into the fight, he had seen Rislo fall in a hail of bullets. He imagined Milly there. He focussed on Flax.

Kicking his way frantically through the swarming rats, Jonathon advanced rapidly upon him. This was his opportunity to settle his score and this time his courage did not fail him. He gritted his teeth and sprinted hard, hurdling the sprawled bodies of High Hats to bear down on him adversary, who with his back to Jonathon, despatched the last of the Tallmen assassins.

Flax turned to find his High Hats totally submerged in the undulating tide of razor toothed rodents. A familiar scent hit his nose and he began to slobber and grin like a lunatic. He turned to face its source him and raised the muzzle of his weapon toward Jonathon.

He roared with laughter.” My boy! My beautiful, beautiful boy! Where have you been!”

He pulled the trigger. The automatic rifle clicked unimpressively. Flax’s sneer of triumph turned to a look of abject horror as Jonathon hurtled into him, one blow from the make shift club sending Flax into a dark void of unconsciousness and crushing top hat flat.

Jonathon panted breathlessly as he stood astride the now helpless man who had tormented and destroyed his life and many of those he loved. Images of those he had loved and Flax had ruined flashed through his mind. His Mother, his Father, his Grandfather, Dale and Tefkin, all had died because of this monsters evil aspirations.

With just one well aimed blow he could now discharge the oath he had sworn against this evil creature and avenge all those from whom Jonathon had been torn by death. Jonathon took the club in both hands and raised it slowly above Flax’s skull. Just one well aimed blow.

Flax moaned, rolled his eyes and raised himself upon one arm then fell back unconscious. Jonathon spat on his upturned face and threw away the club in disgust at himself. He would not, even for a few seconds, become all he despised in Flax.

To kill a helpless man, even one like Flax, in this manner was not the way he would release himself from his oath. No, Flax would perish with this foul city and remained entombed here, death would release his spirit and escape was perhaps possible. Flax and its putrid corrupting spirit would fall together into the Power Reservoir of Rislo’s Field Imploder. It was were they belonged, together, lost in the eternity of nothingness.

Jonathon became aware of the brooding silence that had arisen around him. The sound of gunfire ceased. The sound of the rats feverish feeding had halted, the wailing of the City’s anguished soul had abated too.

The wind which had arisen so strangely had dropped to no more than a hushed whisper around him. The arc-lamps which where still functioning cast there beams upward towards the ceiling above, the drifting dust captured within them sparkling brightly as it spiralled toward the battlefield of the cobbled street, contrasting with the grey columns of smoke which rose up from the laser scorched bodies of unfortunate High Hats.

Time seemed to standstill.

Jonathon stared around him at the millions of pairs of rubies which burned in the half light, a blanket which spread as far as he could see in all directions, filled every ledge, lined every door frame, every vantage point, filled with the bloody luminescent eyes of the rats.Millions of pairs of eyes. But only one mind looked through them. They watched him as if paralysed. Watched as if helpless, as if stunned. The rats sat immobile as Jonathon walked between them toward the Turkanschoner and the wounded Rislo.

Jonathon trembled in the silence which had become like a pressure around him. He turned and looked at the helpless Flax who had begun to crawl around in a concussed state.

Jonathon’s hatred of Flax rose in him again. A voice began to chant in his head.

“Kill him, kill him, kill him, kill him.Kill him, kill him, kill him, kill him” He gasped as he began to move back towards Flax, he was losing control now. He knew what was happening; it was the same as on the roof tops many years ago. Here they came again, the corrupted spirits of the dead had joined the malignant soul of the city, a great gathering of evil wraiths had invaded the bodies of the rats and now implored him to kill, to taint himself, to become one with them.

Yes, he had killed here in Dubh, but out of compassion and virtue, never in the cold blood as they, and corruption itself, now demanded.

A strong arm fell on his shoulder.

“Bad, bad, bad.” a voice growled “Leave here quick.” Jonathon turned away shaking his head to clear his mind of the murmur of voices which had arisen to beseech him to kill Flax.

He held his head in his hands and the voices grew in volume and intensity. Sweating, shaking almost uncontrollable he whirled around and screamed;

" NO! "

As Jonathon’s voice reverberated around the Dubhian underworld and the voices inside of him, his anger and desire to kill Flax fled. From somewhere and everywhere a dull boom sounded and, then above and below ground level the mournful howl of the City’s corrupt soul rose again with a desperate vigour, and from somewhere deep in the bowls of the earth the dark wind rose into a fury, roaring upwards and striking Jonathon and his comrades so hard they were thrown from their feet. The ruins around them trembled as powerful shocks hit Dubh and the rats now fled in terror towards the liquid darkness that advanced upon Jonathon.

The Turkanschoner lifted Rislo’s limp form gently onto his shoulder and urged his master into retreat. Jonathon looked uneasily at the motionless giant and feared the worst.

Sprinting across the street, fighting against the rising gale, Jonathon followed the Turkanschoner to the ruin where the Field Imploder was positioned. In the doorway a figure appeared, it was Milly Jonathon realised. A surge of cleansing emotion filled him and exorcised the remnants of corruption which still bit into his soul. Tears of joy ran down his cheeks.

He had feared he would never see her again despite the Turkanschoner’s casual confidence in finding her. When he had emerged back into the Underworld he had imagined her dead in the fray. He flew towards her embraced her tightly.

" Yes! " he screeched. Here was power which would defeat the corruption which now flowed and howled in dark rivers in the city streets above and plummeted downwards in a last desperate attempt to rid itself of Jonathon and all it despised in him.

Another powerful tremor tore threw Dubh shaking Jonathon back to the task in hand. Milly grabbed his arm and pulled him through a door way through which the Turkanschoner had taken Rislo.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the hovel, Jonathon’s eyes came to rest on the glittering network of tubes and pipes that been constructed in the ruined building. It was as he had seen it before in Rislo’s hide-away, only the top of the construction was incomplete, a shallow dish-like space clearly visible amongst incomplete glasswork. A few pieces of remaining tubes lay an the floor beside the machine. Milly looked apologetically at her companions.

“It was so easy to start with but grew harder with every piece instead of easier” she sighed in dismay and Jonathon threw an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.

Rislo moaned and the Turkanschoner laid him gently beside his machine. He coughed painfully and opened his eyes gazing at his machine with affection. “Only the power reservoir and you would take me to the peace I seek.” he smiled and caressed the glittering tubes of his construction with blood stained hands. Jonathon crouched down beside his weakening comrade and looked into his eyes.

“But the final pieces, how do they fit?” he whispered gently. Rislo’s eyes widened in shock at Jonathon, he had not expected to see the person he had planned to desert again. The giant stared painfully at him.

“Forgive me” he wept. “Forgive me, I would have sacrificed you all.” he coughed raggedly. Jonathon shook his head.

“It does not matter now my friend. This city corrupts all in its midst eventually, there is nothing to forgive.”

Rislo’s eyes rolled, threatening unconsciousness, but Jonathon gripped his shoulders and shook him gently back. He continued, guilty that he was not allowing the giant to slip gently away into the peace he so desired, but he still needed the Tallman’s help.

“The final pieces Rislo? How do we assemble them ….and where is the power reservoir? ”

The dying Tallman shook his head.

“The final pieces ... no importance.” he said glancing over the machine. “The machine ...will work...Field Walls ... so unstable, so drained ...they cannot resist, already they moan, have heard them.” he croaked his breathing becoming shallower and more strained with each painful intake of air. He shook his head in dismay. “All that is needed ...power reservoir, but you do not have time.... to find it now.” his breathing exploded into a spasm of coughing which brought fresh blood to his greying lips.

Rislo’s eyes brightened for a moment and he smiled at Jonathon. “So near, yet so far, my friend...I’m so sorry...” he sniffed tearfully, before his breath rattled in his throat and he slumped against the machine.

Rislo had gone. He had found his freedom; the weakened walls of Dubh could not hold his soul now. Jonathon held his Rislo’s head in his hands, but had no time for the grief which was rising in him. So near so far! He had hoped, above all hope, that Rislo was not right. Had they really run out of time? What now then? The Field Walls still held, but they would not hold for much longer.

The defeated soul of the city was trying to tear them down, to escape into other dimensions when they collapsed completely, but then it would be dispersed and ineffective rather than concentrated through its tool Silus Flax.

Whatever happened now, Jonathon and his friends needed to escape the dimension before its collapse during which they would surely die. Ideally the destruction of the realm through Rislo’s machine was preferable. The energy of the city its corrupted soul and malign spirits would have been imprisoned forever in the Power Reservoir, a Pandora’s box of all Dubh’s evil, safely locked beyond the boundaries of the living dimensions. This had been was Jonathon’s hoped outcome now it seemed that had been dashed.

Outside the shelter of the ruin the howling of the wind and the tormented wailing of voices, was increasing. They taunted Jonathon, mocked him, and accused him of deserting them, murdering them, judging them, damning them. A taloned hand came to rest on Jonathon’s shoulder.

“Master?” the Turkanschoner whispered almost inaudibly against the rising clamour outside. Jonathon turned slowly to the beast that held out a cloth covered package to him.

“Is this what the Tallman spoke of?” the Turkanschoner asked meekly. “I do not trust. Never. I follow his scent, check his deeds. Found this hidden” he explained, as he unwrapped his hidden prize. The Power Reservoir rested in the palm of his hand.

It was a small dark egg shaped object, reflecting nothing. Even the bright flashes of energy that seemed to be tearing Dubh apart now, had no effect on its smooth, matt surface. It drank them in.

Jonathon took it eagerly, his eyes wide in astonishment. He looked to the Turkanschoner and smiled. It was icy cold and heavy, draining away the warmth of his fingers as he stroked it. His heart leapt. Here it was! He looked open mouthed at his servant. Here was the key to the destruction of Flax and all the evil this place had spawned.

Leaping to his feet he felt the thrill of strange power course through him. He lowered the reservoir toward the awaiting dish. He paused a moment and and turned toward the Turkanschoner.

“Take Milly to the gate!” he ordered his servant. “I will follow soon” he shouted. A look of anguish gripped Milly’s face. Jonathon knew what she was thinking. She did not intend being parted from Jonathon so soon again.

She stood firm and folded her arms resolutely across her chest, her lips set firmly in defiance. Jonathon opened his mouth to speak again when a vice like hand closed around his arm and tore the power reservoir from his hand.

It was the Turkanschoner.

“Jonathon go. I stay. I run faster. Wait until you safe. Then I follow.” He stated firmly.

He looked fiercely down at Jonathon. “But....”

“Go now!” Turk barked.

Jonathon observed the determined beast for a moment and smiled.

“Goodbye my friend.” he said. The Turkanschoner nodded his head grimly.

“Go now!” he repeated. And they did.

The Turkanschoner watched the pair sprint from the refuge of the ruin where he stood and struggle through the chaos of the Underworld to the building opposite, where the dim light of the dimension gate to safety still glowed.

He waited for a few moments and turned back to the machine, studying the power reservoir for a few seconds before placing it firmly in position. Then he stepped back.

The machine glowed brightly and a soft hum filled the room. The sphere darkened further.

The Turkanschoner grunted approvingly at the machine and hesitated. He looked at the body of the Rislo and paused for a while, then he picked up the Tallman’s limp body and raised it over his shoulder gently before trotting through the heightening storm outside, toward the gate and the sanctuary of a world he had tasted briefly through the dimension door whose flickering light beckoned across the rubble strewn street.

There lay a promise of peace. He was only seconds away from it now. A short sprint and his life of pain would end and a new one begin, that was all he hoped for….all he had ever hoped for.

Chapter Thirty Six

Jonathon and Milly sat outside the dimension door from which they had emerged and took in the sights, tastes and sounds of their new world. It was night. Above them, in the deep, dark velvet of a winter’s sky, so different from the Tallmens’ pale imitation, the uncountable stars twinkled a welcome to them. At the foot of the grassy bank below them, a moonlit gurgling stream whispered invitations to a new world . Jonathon embraced Milly tightly and gazed into her eyes as Milly looked back into his eyes and detected anxiety lurking there.

“Is it all over now?” she asked tentatively and then, before Jonathon could reply. “The beast will be here soon won’t he?” she continued, a nervous edge creeping into her voice. Jonathon sighed and turned to the cave where the dimension door, from which they had only emerged a short while ago, still pulsed its rainbow colours.

“As long as the gate remains open there is still a Dubh, still that sick place, still Silus Flax. But while it remains open our friend still has a chance to escape too. I don’t know how long the Field Walls will remain intact after

the Power Reservoir is put in the machine.............I’m worried Milly.” he admitted. “He should have been here by now.”

They kept their vigil until the dull red glow of rising sun diffused itself into the soft dark canopy of the night sky and extinguished the friendly stars. A cold, dawn wind rose and blew steadily from the North, accompanied by the rising of a background hum of car engines as the town awoke.

Jonathon shivered. It was as like the hum of the Halls of Machines, a sound that had always been present in his life. He shivered again. Something dark and cold touched had his soul, a laughing voice echoed faintly inside his head.

“Wait for me my beautiful boy, we are destined to be together”

Milly shook him back to his senses.

“Look! Look in the gate, something’s happening!”

Jonathon looked apprehensively. A shadow was creeping slowly down the tunnel of light. For a moment Jonathon saw an unmistakable hunched form, the horned helmet......

A dull boom sounded from deep tunnel of whirling light, its walls flickered, stabilised tantalising, then flickered ominously again. There was a dark stain creeping up behind the shadow of the Turkanschoner, stretching out grim fingers that slowly enveloped and grasped the familiar shadow. Abruptly the dimension door blinked out of existence.

Jonathon stared blankly at the now dark cave.

“So near yet so far.” he gasped, attempting to hold back the tide of grief which was welling up inside of him. Milly held him tightly. “He’s doing it again Milly. He took him like all the rest. Somehow he’s still there, still somewhere, still alive! "

Together they wept as the dull red orb of the winter sun edged slowly over the horizon and some dark wisp of a cloud cast a shadow on its bloody face.

Chapter Thirty Seven

Silus Flax crawled. The thunderous roar around him heralded the beginning of the end for the city of Dubh. Already in the streets above him the artificial sky had opened in great swirling rifts to the real sky of other dimensions as the Field Walls began to collapse.

The Halls of Machines great and venerated domes cracked and swayed as tremors rocked the city where less well constructed buildings were sliding, like packs of cards, into the streets. Winds generated by the pressure changes sucked out the rubble and ruins of the chaos in black great vortices, in other areas millions of tons earth and rock slid into Dubh from rifts which had opened deep below the surface of other dimensions, only to be whipped up by the hurricane force winds and taken out again.

The unfortunate inhabitants of the foul city, scuttling like ants for sanctuaries they would never find, died by the million. But there was another wind blowing in Dubh, one which began to leech the energy from all things here. It was causing the dimension walls of this place to collapse. Silus Flax crawled toward its source.

He had seen the boy sprinting arm in arm with a young woman through the whirling chaos to the inviting glow of a dimension door across the street. He cursed him.

Moments later another figure, a great hunched and horned beast with the body of the Tallman rebel across its shoulder, had, hurtled in the same direction. Flax spat and crawled onwards towards the hum and glow of Rislo’s machine.

Inside the ruin which hid the machine, Flax crawled and now smiled. In the midst of a vortex of dust and debris, he watched and felt the machine devouring his kingdom, his dream. He felt the energy flowing through the room.

First, the energy of this place, that energy which bound its matter together would flow into its heart, then the whole physical world would collapse into the now bright blue pulsing orb. Flax approached the machine.

The emperor of this dying world launched himself at it and tore the power reservoir from its seat, his fingers sank into it. Wrenched from the machine the orb continued to pulse, it had gone beyond the point of no return. The Field Walls of the now impossible dimension of Dubh had begun to irreversibly contract.

Now Flax had become the machine which had drained the energies of Dubh and channelled them into the reservoir. He was the structure which enabled the process to continue and remained physically intact. Now different energies flowed through Flax. All the corruption and evil which had built up over the long dark years here, sped towards and through Flax and into the Seed of Corruption he held in his hand. He heard the screams and pleadings of legions dark souls as they passed through him. They gave him strength, charged him with their evil. Then the great malign spirit of Dubh itself surged through him howling in derision through Flax into the Power Reservoir. Now he felt a pressure building about him, a great final wall of energy advanced toward him from all directions. The physical matter of the city of Dubh was now beginning to reduce to atoms and piling up around Flax, the single channel into the black hole of the power reservoir. In an instant Dubh had gone.

All that now remained was a dark sphere the size of the room Flax stood in. He seemed to be inside the reservoir himself, but alive and sentient. For a moment all was silent, activity ceased. All that remained of the vile world which had spawned Flax was condensed around him and Flax was holding the walls back, there would be no final blink out of existence for him.

He grinned and globs of saliva glistened at the corners of his mouth. It was all his now, now HE was Dubh! All the corrupt energy that had dictated his life and the lives of millions of others in Dubh was collected in the dark globe now welded into the flesh of Flax’s right hand. They sustained him. It was his! He was the master of this Seed of Corruption. Master! He laughed in hysterical irony.

“You have given me the power of gods my beautiful, beautiful boy! You were the guardian of a golden gate, a gate to my divinity!” he screamed to no-one but himself.

Flax’s face now took on a mask of grim determination, his eyes blazed. Now was his time to fly. All this power had been given to him as the malign spirit of Dubh and its armies of corrupt souls passed through him. They relinquished their power to him. He was their last hope. As long as he survived they would not be lost, even they had a hope of redemption eventually. He had needed power and they, and the soul of the city had given it to him. Now they were his, all their knowledge all their souls and all their evil; his to command and use.

In an instant he tore through the fabric of the realms which sought to crush him out of existence. He had the power and knowledge now. Jonathon had unwittingly given it to him and Flax had one goal, to thank him and his friends personally for this gift of gifts in the best way he knew how and a thousand new ways the knowledge the Seed of Corruption was now showing him. Jonathon could not hide from him; Flax would search the dimensions until he found him, until he found his beautiful boy....and thanked personally in only the way he could, for making him a god.

THE END….but just the beginning

Jonathon Postlethwaite returns in:-

‘The Fields of Despair’

About the Author

David Denny was born in Uttoxeter England in 1959. He grew up in a working class family of 5 on one of the UKs new red brick housing estates in the housing developments of the late 50’s, where a mish-mash of people and cultures from all around the UK relocated, and made for an interesting cultural mix in a small market town.

David failed his 11 Plus Exams in the English selective educational system, and continued his education at an all boys school, one step down from a borstal. He flourished there as a sportsman and captained the school rugby team. Rugby, along with cricket and football were his teenage passions. Very academically able, he eventually achieved a 2:1 in Philosophy, although was often distracted by reading science fiction and fantasy along with horror from his favourite author at that time, Stephen King, amongst many others.

He left school at 16 and worked in the Motor Industry for 15 years before studying English Literature & Philosophy as a mature student. He then spent 25 years as a career adviser, which took him around the UK in all types of illuminating work from Prisons to Universities, meeting many interesting people from all walks and corners of life. He has a published guide to CV writing called CV Create.

David has three self published collections of poetry to date (see books), although the vast majority of his work in these collections has been published in independent magazines. He admits he is not a prolific poetry writer, poems often being spontaneous and flawed, seizing the moment when the muse permits. He lives in North Staffordshire.

Other Works by this Author.

Published Poetry :

The Siege of Beacon Hill 1993

Incident at Congleton 2007

Transformations 2014

Dull Days Indeed 2016

The Blagger’s Guide to CV Writing 2016

All are available at www.thepoetryofdaviddenny.co.uk where you can also hear him read his work.

Twitter : #Englishpoet

Facebook : The Poetry of David Denny

About the Author

David Denny was born in Uttoxeter England in 1959. He grew up in a working class family of 5 on one of the UKs new red brick housing estates in the housing developments of the late 50’s, where a mish mash of people and cultures from all around the UK relocated, and made for an interesting cultural mix in a small market town.

David failed his 11 Plus Exams, a selective educational system, and continued his education at an all boys school, one step down from a borstal. He flourished there as a sportsman and captained the school rugby team. Rugby was his teenage passion, in the absence of girls, even though he was a hot blooded male. Very academically able and achieved a 2:1 in Philosophy later in life.

He left school at 16 and worked in the Motor Industry for 15 years before studying English Literature & Philosophy as a mature student. He then spent 25 years as a career adviser, which took him around the UK in all types of illuminating work from Prisons to Universities, meeting many interesting people.

David is creative in many areas writing, eclectic art, 3D design (virtual worlds) and actor.

You can connect with me on:

twitter logo http://www.twitter.com/englishpoet

facebook logo http://www.facebook.com/DavidSDenny

link logo https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-S-Denny/e/B014TAONAY?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1567096354&sr=1-1

Also by David S Denny

David Denny Poetry and Other Stuff

http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=532310

Take a look at the link for my Store Link at Lulu Publishing where my poetry, other fiction, CV Help books can be found … http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=532310