Zurfina had her ticket on the B511 out of Brech to Flander on the southern coast, where she had already arranged to meet a boat that would take her to a ship bound for Mirsanna. There was no way that she could stay in Brechalon any longer. The government had refused to accept her independence. They would have her join the military or they would see her destroyed. They had already sent a dozen wizards and two sorcerers against her. But Zurfina was the greatest practitioner of sorcery in the Kingdom and was more than a match for any wizard.

A man in a brown suit stepped out from behind a pillar. To the other people in the station, he seemed nothing out of the ordinary, but to Zurfina he glowed bright yellow and was surrounded by a sparkling halo. She didn’t wait for him to cast a spell. She pointed her hand toward him and spat out an incantation.

“Intior uuthanum err.”

Immediately the man doubled over, wracked with uncontrollable cackling laughter. But before Zurfina could smile appreciatively, she was thrown from her feet as the world around her exploded in flames. She had been hit in the back by a fireball, and only the fact that she had previously shielded herself prevented her from becoming a human candle, as four or five innocent bystanders around her now did. Rolling to her feet and turning around, she found that she faced not one, but four wizards. The one who had evidently cast the fireball was preparing another spell, while the other three were casting their own. Her shield protected her from the lightning bolt, and the attempt to charm her, but one of the four magic missiles hit her, burning her shoulder as though it had been dipped in lava.

“Uuthanum uastus corakathum paj—Prestus Uuthanum.” Zurfina ducked into a side alcove as one of the wizards turned to stone and her own shield was replenished. Several more magical bolts struck the stone wall across from her, creating small burnt holes. Peering quickly around the corner, she saw the four wizards just where she left them, the three trying to use their petrified comrade as cover. Looking in the other direction, she saw that the wizard cursed with laughter had recovered and he had been joined by two more.

Seven wizards—well, six. That was a lot of magical firepower. But then Zurfina looked across the station platform. Directly opposite her was the open door of a train; not the B511, but a train bound for somewhere else. If she could reach it, she could get away. She glanced quickly around the corner again. The smell of burnt bodies mixed with thick black smoke in the air, but though there was plenty of the former, there was not enough of the latter for Zurfina’s taste.

“Uuthanum,” she said, and a thick fog began to fill the station platform.

“Maiius uuthanum nejor paj.” The three wizards to her right suddenly faced a dog the size of a draft horse, snarling and foaming at the mouth, and they felt their spells were better aimed at it than any blond sorceress.

Turning to her left, Zurfina cast another spell. “Uuthanum uastus carakathum nit.”

The cement that formed the other end of the platform turned to mud. The petrified wizard, deprived of his secure foundation toppled over onto one of his comrades, crushing him, while the other two struggled to pull themselves from the muck. Zurfina shot out of the alcove and ran toward the train. She had almost made it, when Wizard Bassington stepped into the open doorway in front of her.

She stopped right there in the open, unbalanced, unsure now whether to run left or right or back the way that she had come. She felt uncomfortably like an animal caught on the road in the headlamps of an oncoming steam carriage. Bassington didn’t move. He stared at her with his beady eyes. His eyes went wide though when Zurfina reached up to snatch something out of the air. Normal, non-magical people couldn’t see them, but he could—the glamours that orbited her head were spells cast earlier, awaiting the moment when she needed them.

She crushed the glamour and pointed her hand at the spot where Bassington stood, just as he dived away. The entryway where the wizard had been, and the passenger coaches on either side of him exploded, lifting much of the train up off the track as metal and wood shrapnel and human body parts flew in every direction. The flash knocked Zurfina herself back onto the cement and sent her sliding across the pavement and into the far wall. Before she could get up, she was hit with a dozen bolts of magical fire, some but not all of them deflected by her magic shield. It was a spell of weakening, followed by one of sleep though that finally dropped her head unconscious to the ground. The last thing she saw was Bassington’s hobnail boots walking toward her.

“So can you see the eclipse?”

“Sure. It’s ace,” said Saba, standing in the courtyard. Then he turned and saw who was speaking and flinched.

“Would you like to take a look, Miss?” he asked, offering Iolanthe the magic glass pane.

Taking the almost opaque square, she held it up to her eye and pointed her face toward the sky.

“Interesting. It looks like a halo.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does look like a halo, um… Miss.”

“It doesn’t feel like a halo, though, does it?”

“Miss?”

“Look at it again,” she said, handing back the magic glass. “This time, tell me what you feel.”

The boy looked again and suddenly shuddered. When he looked back at her, his face was accusing. She had made him aware of something he hadn’t noticed before. There was something evil about the eclipse, and though he had looked forward to the event since he had first heard about it from his mother, now all he wanted was the return of the sun in its full glory.

* * * * *

The thing on the other side of the membrane between two worlds tested it once again, and a moment later it burst through. It was long, thick tentacle, necrotic grey and covered with suction cups. It searched along the stone floor of the cell, tentatively at first. Then it touched the sorceress sitting naked and chanting and suddenly it shook and thrashed throughout the chamber.

“No!” shouted Nils Chapman and he jumped in front of Zurfina. The tentacle found him and wrapped around his waist.

“No!” he cried again, and then it yanked him so violently that the snapping of his neck was clearly audible, as it pulled him beyond the shimmering veil.

Suddenly the room was filled with a hundred tentacles, touching every inch of the cell, caressing the woman like a demonic lover. She slowly rose to her feet, the tips of the alien appendages touching every inch of her skin.

“Uuathanum eetarri blechtore maiius uusteros vadia jonai corakathum nit.”

A black fog poured into the cell from all four walls. It filled up the tiny chamber and sprayed through the openings in the door, creeping down the corridors of the prison and into every room and every cell, every nook and every alcove.

* * * * *

“How is it?”

“It was ace,” replied Saba. “Now I just want the sun to come back.”

“Don’t be like that.” Yuah stepped down the stairs from the back door and put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Let me take a look.”

Saba held the square of magic glass up and Yuah pressed her eye to it, leaning back to find the sun. “There. The sun’s starting to move out from behind the moon. In a few minutes everything will be just like it was before.”

“Good.”

“You shouldn’t let Miss D ruin your fun. She’s a right bitch, you know.”

“No, she’s not.”

“She is.”

“Well, it’s not her fault.”

“What do you mean?” asked Yuah.

“Nothing. Here. Do you want this?” Saba pushed the magic glass into her hands and started up the stairs into the house.

* * * * *

Zurfina smiled as the dead grey tentacles caressed her.

“Now I will leave and now I will lay my vengeance on this stony prison and this little kingdom and this world.” She raised her arms and began her final incantation. “Uuthanum…”

At that moment a thin streak of light entered from the small window high up on the wall. It was so tiny that it might have gone totally unnoticed, had it not stuck the first and largest of the grey arms moving around the cell. But the tiny sliver of sunlight burned through the tentacle like a hot ember through a slice of bread. The great tentacle jerked and thrashed about the room and the other appendages did too, one of them striking the woman and throwing her halfway across the floor. More sunlight entered through the window and all of the unearthly, unholy members were yanked back through the portals that shimmered where the walls of the cell had once been.

“No! No, I’m not finished!” screamed Zurfina.

“What do you have there?” asked Zeah.

“It’s magic glass,” replied Saba, holding up a small square of very dark but very shiny material.

“This conversation sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale. Did you trade your magic beans to get this magic glass?”

“Don’t be silly Mr. Korlann. I didn’t have any magic beans and this cost me 75P.”

“Good heavens. Why would you pay 75 pfennigs for that?”

“For the eclipse.”

“Eclipse?”

“Sure. There’s an eclipse today. Almost a full one. If we were in the channel it would be full. It would get dark in the middle of the day.”

“Oh yes, yes. It was in the paper. I imagine it will be spectacular enough right here in Brech City. But what is the glass for?”

“Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t stare at an eclipse because you’ll go blind?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t tell you how much that has worried me since I found that out,” said Saba. “I’m always afraid that I might accidentally look at the sun and it would be just my luck that there was an eclipse going on right then and I would go blind.”

“Well, first off, there’s nothing special about an eclipse that is worse on your eyes. Stare at the sun anytime, eclipse or no, and you risk damage to your…”

“Anyway,” the boy interrupted. “I got this glass so I can watch the eclipse. You can stare at it all day through this and not get blinded. Can’t see a bloody thing through it now though.” He tried to look at the head butler through the small pane held to his right eye.

“Let’s hope it really works,” said Zeah skeptically. “I trust you bought it from a reputable dealer.”

“Sure. I got it at the potion shop on Avenue Phoenix. They’re selling loads of them. If it doesn’t work, they’ll be hip deep in angry blind people.”

* * * * *

“It’s almost time now, Pet,” said Zurfina looking at the sun, through the tiny window high up on the wall.

Nils Chapman was crawling on his knees next to her. Shaking and twitching uncontrollably, he no longer had the ability to stand on his own. This didn’t bother him because he no longer had the ability to think on his own either. He crawled along on all fours drooling like a dog to the center of the cell.

Zurfina peeled off the filthy rags that had been her only clothing since she had been brought to this hellhole one thousand nine hundred eighty-four days before. She tossed them aside and sat down cross-legged in the center of the cell. Chapman pressed against her, but she pushed him away. Closing her eyes, she began to chant.

“Uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum.” She repeated the word over and over again. Twenty times. A hundred times. Slowly the room became darker and darker. She continued to chant. The eclipse was at his height.

Chapman screamed. Zurfina opened her eyes and smiled. The four walls were walls no more. They were shining, rippling, silvery surfaces like the surface of frighteningly cold and deep water. Sounds could be heard from the other side—freakish, awful piping noises that tugged at one’s sanity. Then the surface directly in front of her bubbled and churned, touched by something on the other side of that boundary between the cell and the abyss beyond.

“Yes!” Zurfina screamed. Then she began reciting a new set of words. “Uuathanum eetarri. Uuthanum eetarri. Uuthanum blechtore. Uuthanum blechtore. Uuthanum maiius.”

“I make a hundred and fifty feet,” said Lieutenant Arthur McTeague, without taking his eyes from the binoculars.

“Decrease elevation two degrees,” called Lieutenant Augie Dechantagne.

“Ready!” called Corporal Worthy from the centermost 105mm howitzer.

“Fire!” There was a long pause and then a distant explosion.

“Oops. You’re long,” said McTeague. “I mean, longer.”

“Kafira damn it!” yelled Augie. “I said decrease elevation! Decrease!”

“Sorry sir! Ready sir!”

“Fire!”

“On target,” said McTeague, after the wait.

“Lay down a pattern of fire!” The five guns began rapidly firing, only to be immediately reloaded and fired again.

McTeague lowered his binoculars and pulled his earplugs from his pocket. Stuffing them into his ears, he walked over to stand next to Augie.

“Why are we shelling this village again?”

“I didn’t ask,” Augie replied.

“Do you suppose they’re going to counter-attack?”

“It’s not my job to worry about it. It’s theirs.” Augie pointed to the line of Royal Marines, their red coats and white pith helmets clearly visible halfway between the guns and the lizzie village that was rapidly becoming a flaming hell.

“Well, I suppose they needed to be taught a lesson. Put the fear of God and his Majesty into them.”

“This will certainly teach them something,” said Augie.

* * * * *

“It says here that the remaining robber will be moved to Herinnering Gaol as soon as he is ready to leave hospital,” said Mrs. Colbshallow, her face buried in the morning paper. “And Miss D is being considered for a Citizen’s Safety Award.”

“It’s considered safe to shoot two people now, is it?” It was Merriman, the main floor butler. “If I’d shot two men, I’d be in prison. She shoots two men and they give her a bloody medal.”

“Best not to think things like that,” said Zeah.

“Especially out loud,” added Yuah.

“It’s you, Yuah, that she usually wants to shoot,” said Barrymore, the upstairs butler, grinning.

“She can’t shoot me. She couldn’t live without me.”

“Don’t get cheeky,” said Zeah. “I had to hire four new ones this week.”

“Well, it’s not as if these men didn’t deserve to get shot,” said Mrs. Colbshallow. “Imagine trying to rob someone in broad daylight. We need more police, that’s what we need.”

“I’m going to be a copper in a few years,” said Saba, walking in from the front hallway and sitting down.

“No you aren’t,” his mother informed him. “I would be forever worrying. It’s far too dangerous for any child of mine.”

Saba didn’t reply to his mother or point out that he was the only child of hers. He just scooped up large mounds of fried eggs, white pudding, and sausages. Mrs. Colbshallow went back to commenting on the news, particularly how information of the coming eclipse did not belong in the weather section. With Saba’s addition there were eleven people eating breakfast in the servant’s hall at that moment, a good portion of the staff having already eaten and started on their morning duties, and those few who had the overnight shift had mostly already gone to bed. Marna, one of the last of the latter group came in from the side hallway, looking like she could fall asleep on her feet at any moment.

“Yuah, Master Terrence wants to see you,” she said.

“I’m not interested.”

“I’m just the messenger.”

Yuah turned to look at Marna, and saw Terrence standing in the hallway several paces behind her.

“I’m not his valet.” With careful precision, she lifted her chin into the air and turned back to the table. “I’m the dressing maid.”

A minute later, under the guise of reaching for a scone, she cast a sideways look at the spot where he had been standing to find that he was now gone.

* * * * *

Karl Drury was a shadow of his former self—literally. As far as anyone knew, he still made his rounds through the fortress of Schwarztogrube, he still hurled insults at almost everyone, and he still stuffed his ugly face in the mess hall. If he beat some of the prisoners less than he used to or abused the boys less than he used to, who was going to complain about that? The only one who seemed bothered by Drury these days was Nils Chapman. He began to shake every time Drury entered the room and he refused to look at him. But Chapman knew what nobody else did. That was not really Karl Drury. The real Karl Drury was dead. He had dropped the sadistic guard’s body into the ocean himself. Of course Nils Chapman was a shadow of his former self too—figuratively. His eyes had gone dull and his skin was pale. He didn’t sleep anymore and he could hardly eat.

“One thousand nine hundred eighty-three days,” he muttered to himself over and over again, from his spot, curled up in a ball in the corner of the cell.

“Don’t worry, Pet.” Zurfina reached down and stroked his hair. “It’s almost over. This time tomorrow we’ll both be gone.”

Chapman grabbed hold of her leg and held it close as he kept his eyes pressed tightly shut. He couldn’t bear to see the walls, all four of which were covered in ghastly markings of smeared blood, and all four of which pulsed and throbbed sickeningly.

It was a large spider crawling across his face that woke Nils Chapman up. It tickled his right nostril and then continued on its way down his right cheek and over his right ear. He turned his head and watched it as it went over the edge of the mattress. He didn’t want to get up. He wanted to count—one thousand nine hundred seventy-nine… No! No, he wasn’t going to do that. He felt sick to his stomach. He had felt sick to his stomach ever since he had seen the impossible undulating movement of the wall in prisoner 89’s cell. He hadn’t gone back to the cell since, but the uneasiness, the slowly creeping nausea did not go away.

He turned over and looked toward Karl Drury’s bunk. The sadistic guard was not there. On the one hand, this made Chapman happy, because he found that he was increasingly happy whenever Drury was not around. On the other hand, if he wasn’t here and he wasn’t on duty, he was probably in 89’s cell, abusing her. Chapman shuddered. He had become increasingly sickened by Drury’s treatment of women in general and this one in particular, but now he felt even more ill at the thought of the cell itself, and the wall, and the strange writing, and the undulating movement… He shuddered.

He sat up and rolled out of bed. Taney was the only other guard in the bunkroom.

“Where’s Drury?” he asked.

“The filthy bastard’s got duty at the loading dock,” came the reply. “I wouldn’t want to be one of the boys working down there.”

“Somebody should stop him.”

“Go ahead,” said Taney, “if you want a knife between your ribs.”

Chapman didn’t want a knife between his ribs, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he went down the ancient spiral stone steps to the docks. Six boys were unloading a skiff, but Chapman didn’t see any guards. But as he stepped out into the open, he noticed something strange. There was a shadow in the middle of the dock where a shadow had no right to be. As he stepped closer, he realized it wasn’t a shadow—not in the real sense of the word. It was a man-shaped blob of shadow, occupying the same area that a man would occupy had he been standing there, but with no mass and no substance and completely translucent.

“What is that?” he asked.

The boys stopped and looked at him.

“What is that?” he asked again.

“What is what?” asked one of the boys.

“Where’s Drury?” he asked, his voice rising.

“He’s standin’ right in front of you, you great tosser,” the boy replied, pointing at the shadowy blob.

“That’s not Drury! I don’t know what that is!”

Turning, Chapman ran up the stairs, oblivious to the open-mouthed stares of the boys. He ran past the bunkroom and down the corridor to the north wing. He ran into the door of prisoner 89’s cell, banging it with his fist, as if she could open it from the inside. Finally he rummaged through his pockets for the great key and unlocked the door, rushing inside.

Chapman screamed. Karl Drury was hanging, naked, upside down from the ceiling. His neck had been sliced open and his blood had been drained into the piss pot on the floor beneath him. His gut had been sliced open and long lengths of bowel and a few internal organs hung down like ghastly wind chimes.

Chapman screamed again, as he felt the feather light touch of the woman on his shoulder.

“I needed more ink.” Her sultry voice cut into his soul like a knife cutting through pudding.

She stepped past him and picked up the bucket of blood, tip-toeing like a ballerina to the north wall of the cell, where she dipped her fingers into the gore and began painting strange images onto the stone blocks. As she drew, she spoke to herself. Chapman didn’t need to hear what she was saying. It had been bouncing around in his head since he had gotten up.

“One thousand nine hundred seventy-nine days.”

“Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it! Stop counting!”

The woman turned toward him and grinned fiercely. “Not much longer now— just a few more days. Go on back now. Don’t want to draw suspicion.”

He crept out of the chamber like a dog that had been beaten. He didn’t go back to the south wing though, instead climbing the stone stairs until he found an alcove with a small opening to the outside world. Here he dropped to the ground and curled up into a ball and wept.

* * * * *

“That’s pretty,” said Senta. “Is that a sunset or a rainbow?”

She was walking down Contico Boulevard, hand in hand with her cousin Bertice. Mrs. Gantonin, who lived next door, had told Granny about a family whose boys had died and who were now giving away their clothes. With a house full of children, free clothes were not to be overlooked lightly.

“What are you talking about, you little bint?”

“Up there.” Senta pointed off to the right.

“Didn’t you learn that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? That way is south. How could it be sunset? Besides, it’s only half past four. I’d still be at work if they hadn’t run out of number four thread.”

“A rainbow, then?”

“There’s no rainbow. There’s not been a drop of rain for a week. How could there be a rainbow. I don’t see anything at all.”

“Well, I see something. It’s swirly with red and yellow and blue and purple, like a storm that’s coming, only made out of colors.”

“You need to get your eyes fixed, you do,” said Bertice, giving her arm a yank.

“What do you suppose this is supposed to be?” asked Arthur McTeague.

“I suppose it was a city a long time ago,” replied Augie Dechantagne, with an emphasis on the second word.

The two lieutenants and the full platoon of soldiers were standing on a smooth surface of stone slabs that had been fitted together. There were steps here and there, breaking the area up into several terraces of varying heights. In a few places there were piles of stone that might have indicated that a wall had once stood there, but there were no buildings. On the far side of the clearing were a series of seven large stones. Each stood about eight feet tall and they were roughly oval in shape. At either end of the row were the remains of other similar stones that had once stood in the line, but had long ago crumbled, either from exposure to the elements or from ancient vandalism. Though those that remained were weathered and worn, one could see that each had been carved long ago to represent a dragon.

A loud squawk announced the arrival of eight or ten creatures that burst out of the trees and ran across the ancient stones. They were only slightly larger than the average chicken and were covered in hairy feathers, though their faces looked all too reptilian and their mouths were full of needle sharp teeth.

“Now, are those birds or dinosaurs?” asked McTeague.

Augie shrugged, but pulled out a book from his tunic.

“And what’s that?”

“That my friend is called a book. People, not artillery officers mind, but other people, sometimes read them.”

McTeague gave him a withering look. “What book is it, you great tosser?”

“It’s Colonel Mormont’s journal. My brother sent it to me.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of the chap. He was here in Birmisia a few years ago, right?”

Augie didn’t reply. He was busy flipping through the pages.

“What does he say about those little buggers?”

“Hold on a minute. I’m looking.”

McTeague folded his arms and waited. Several of the men were chasing the small creatures around the edge of the clearing.

“Here it is. Here it is. I knew I recognized them.” Augie held up the open page to a drawing that did indeed bear a strong resemblance to the creatures in question.

“Buitreraptors,” McTeague read. “Why do you suppose they all have to have such strange names?

“You know how these naturalist types are. Besides, if you just went with ‘chicken-lizard’ and ‘turkey lizard’ you’d soon run out of names. Face it. That’s really what they look like.”

A much louder squawk than those heard before announced to all the soldiers that something larger and more frightening than the skittish buitreraptors had arrived. A monster burst out of the brush and ran toward the tiny creatures. It was a bird lizard too, covered with feathers ranging from a deep turquoise on the head to a light green around the legs, but it didn’t fit Augie’s earlier nomenclature, if for no other reason than size. Its body was as large as the biggest horse, its head bobbing back and forth about seven feet above the ground, but it’s long, feathered tail stretched straight out behind it to make it more than twenty feet long. Though the puny wings would have made any attempt to fly laughable, the clawed fingers and the huge sickle-shaped clawed toes prevented any such jocularity.

The monster apparently had been stalking its tiny cousins through the woods, but now that it saw the human beings, it abruptly changed its targets. Why chase after a tiny morsel when a much juicier and slower prey could be had? It needed only to shift its weight and maintain the same stride to put it on its new trajectory. With a leap into the air that amazed everyone watching, the beast flew more than forty feet to land on top of Private Holloway, clawing him and bending down to give him a killing bite before anyone could react. A second later, the beast was peppered with more than twenty shots fired from all over the clearing.

“Kafira damn-it!” Augie shouted. “Color Sergeant!

“Sir.” Color Sergeant Bourne ran toward him and came to attention.

“Set up a perimeter watch. Make sure all the men have chambered rounds. And prepare a burial detail.” The Color Sergeant hurried off to his duties. Augie turned to McTeague. “Come on.”

The two lieutenants stepped over to the giant bird and Private Holloway. It was only too obvious that he was beyond hope. His head had been bitten half through, though his extremities twitched slightly.

“Nothing to be done,” said McTeague.

“Not for Holloway,” Augie agreed.