Downs-Lord Doomsday

by John Whitbourn

Genres: Religious & Inspirational; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alternative History sci-fi

Synopsis

Meek and mild curate Thomas Blades discovered an alternative earth where humanity languished at the base of the food-chain. Over eventful years, Blades defeated the bestial Null master-race and carved out the empire of 'New-Wessex'. Shedding all former inhibitions, he ascended its throne as unchallenged 'god-king'. Exiled in turn by overpowering new enemies - the 'angels' - Blades was rescued by his own descendant, Guy Ambassador, after centuries of absence. Under Blades' strangely charmed leadership, the enigmatic and merciless angels were repulsed and humanity enjoyed a respite of liberty. But now, decades later, the venerable god-king broods in seclusion, refusing to die; the fountainhead of bitter thoughts and deeds. Meanwhile, Wessex sinks-into anarchy and neglect. Guy Ambassador travels amongst the bickering princedoms and warring states, wavering in the faith that has cost him family, friends and home. All around him the world of New-Wessex is moving towards resolution of its ultimate destiny and reason for being. Forces beyond human comprehension invade the already baroque realm.

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 192

Sample

Thomas Blades, a seventeenth-century curate, discovers a magical door to another world – or rather to an alternative Earth. But here, humanity is not the top of the food chain, as Blades finds when the poor, burrow-dwelling humans he stumbles over are hunted and eaten by the Null – mighty, ravening beasts whose intelligence and killing ability make them top predator.

Returning to our own world for weapons, Blades fulfils his vow to become humanity’s saviour on this new Earth and, over the years, builds an empire of which he becomes the first god-king. Power shifts between humanity and Null but, as the humans grow in sophistication, so come treachery, jealousy and murder – and god-king Blades changes much from the timid cleric who first happened upon ‘New-Wessex’.

Decades later, new enemies appear, worse and less natural than the Null, and merciless ‘angels’ usurp the realm. With confidence in his creation already shaken, Blades goes into chastened exile back on Earth, seeking solace in poverty and repentance.

However, life goes on and in New-Wessex the god-king is sorely missed. To his abandoned and oppressed children, even after the lapse of four centuries, the return of Blades ‘Null-Bane’ remains their only hope …

Blade’s distant descendant, Guy, hereditary ‘Ambassador’, is commissioned to cross the void to find and fetch the living God back from Old Earth. After braving many dangers together with Nicolo, his brother, and devout devotee, Hunter, he discovers Blades in the sybarite isle of Capri, reduced to broken beggary, seeking pardon for his sins. Guy piously concludes that the people’s faith is once again being put to the test.

Brought back at gun-point, the siren temptations of god-kingship slowly weaken Blades’s resolve. Guy, together with his strange and sorcerous, but dearly beloved, young wife, Bathesheba (or ‘Bathie’) of the Fruntierfolke tribe, rouses Blades from his slumber and sets him against the angels and evolved-Null. Null-Paris dies in flames, the yoke of slavery is thrown off, and yet avenging angels prove unable to harm Blades – or Guy …

At the cost of brother, father, friend and home, Guy reinstates Blades in New-Wessex to set the world aright. Great matters, beyond his understanding, are afoot and only Bathie and his faith sustain Guy through savage loss and tribulation.

Now, under curious protection, god-king Blades and Guy Ambassador oversee a new beginning for mankind …

The Downs-Lord Triptych offers three connected scenes from a baroque Empire in the making, dovetailing to create a portrait of eventful centuries. Here is an exotic saga of transformation and a hymn to the exuberance of unfettered life.

‘Dead men tell no tales,’ stated Guy Ambassador, a dry voice echoing in the emptiness. Despite all the stress, his stutter lay dormant. Just like the figure before him.

The man on the quay wouldn’t confirm or deny the saying. In fact he said nothing – but at the same time said a great deal. Normal towns don’t have corpses for doormen, nor leave cadavers to greet guests.

However, Yarmouth had never been a ‘normal’ town at the best of times, which was why they now approached it with such caution. The day was crystal clear and promising, the Isle of Wight’s beauty never more enticing. Nevertheless, the Lady Bridget stood offshore for ages, gun ports and rigging aquiver, ready to fire or flee at the slightest sign of wizardry.

Then, when even the liveliest imagination failed to discern life, the longboat had made for land as if they never expected to arrive. The oars cut the waves with the strength of resignation, their wielders not the usual American slaves but Wessex freemen with lives to lose, capable of grasping their dreadful project.

Judging a book by its cover, an outsider would never guess that ‘King’ Guy (to give him his proper, hand-me-down, title) was in his rightful place. The old-fashioned wig and mere militia colonel’s scarlet coat and cocked hat were a snare to the unwary. Snow on the roof, other than wig powder, needn’t imply the fire had gone out. That this man of the world had gained around the equator signified nothing. He retained that world’s measure and inner light still glittered from deceptively mild eyes. Guy was where he should be, at the boat’s prow and leading the way, foremost in breeding and danger.

His companions begrudged him neither distinction, each knowing they wouldn’t be there but for him – in more senses than one. Even hardened veterans of the seaways and Sicily gunpowder run deferred to a man who’d fought with angels – and prevailed; the same man who’d razed Null-Paris to the ground! Likewise, a score of years might have passed since, but the return of Blades the Great remained daily acclaimed. The god-king’s guide home fully merited the gift of kingship and pre-eminence in any vessel.

Therefore he had the privilege of meeting and greeting the quay’s sole inhabitant. It was for him to assess and pass judgement. Guy’s gratitude knew no start.

It wasn’t a long-standing carcass. From a kindly distance you might even expect him to rise again. The eye-sockets were still occupied and the face he’d finally turned to the sun was tanned but not blackened. Hair on the head which lolled over the quay’s edge played at the wind’s behest, although its master no longer could.

The whim of the tide took them right past his unseeing gaze, giving every mariner the chance to wonder what sights he now saw and when they might share the same view. Every sensible calculation suggested quite soon.

‘Make fast.’

Guy’s words snapped them out of their spell and they pondered that mere singleton death no more. Given that Wight equalled wizardry, there were better things to worry about.

Bosun expertly got them into position and encircled the mooring. After a second’s deference to the choppy sea, it was possible for Guy to disembark with dignity.

He could see properly now. A long seax knife, up and under the rib-cage had parted their friend from the world. An expert job, putting his starry gown only a few stitches short of perfect repair. Guy leaned down to close two sightless eyes – whilst simultaneously making sure. His pistol hovered ready to finish the job.

It proved completed hours or even days before. Those eyelids stubbornly resisted his compassion. Their tale was told; they saw no more. Which was a relief.

Then, for all – or maybe because – they’d served as life-windows for a wizard, Guy commended the late owner to God’s mercy. He’d probably well need it.

But after that there was no escaping progression. Guy was free to look around and people were expecting him to. The opportunity was there and wide open to him, but for a space he stayed staring down, modest as a maiden.

Of course, it couldn’t go on. Therefore he had to. Guy forced himself and surveyed the scene.

The place was so steeped in legend, he hardly expected the quay to be plain tar and timber just like any other. It bore his weight, then that of his team. It did just what any old quay would do and no more – bar cradle a dead man. At the very least Guy anticipated effigies and tendrils and a baroque slipway into wonder. Here though was simple sunshine and the slap of the tide against wood. Looking right up revealed just standard sky. If you stunned the imaginative faculties it could almost be normality.

Life doesn’t like self-deception – Guy knew from experience. It disapproved of heads in the clouds. The stiff-necked stumbled and fell to their ruin. Wisely, he lowered his vision and beheld.

The fortifications could almost pass for normal: squat stone creations adapted to the cannon age and bristling with fine examples of same. They’d given the Imperial fleet a bloody nose and hulls awash with gore during the one and only reincorporation attempt. In conjunction with the horrible fate of the marines put ashore, it had been a purchase price and more to buy the centuries of solitude the Wizards of Wight apparently craved.

All the same, in its simple utility, Yarmouth castle might well have been something made by normal men – except, that is, for the layers upon layers of paint. Thick coats splashed or poured on, in vivid purple and yellow and blue and anything else that came to hand, saved the day for the cause of the uncanny.

The quay penetrated between twin bastions. Guy waved men towards the gap but led the way himself.

He walked alone, which felt highly novel. His generally inseparable ‘huscarl’ bodyguards, the two ‘P’s, so christened for their names and alikeness, were today separate and sullen back aboard the Lady Bridget. Guy hadn’t seen any sense in using them up in a foregone conclusion when his other body, no less precious than the one he lived in, required guarding. Lady Bathesheba Fruntierfolke-Ambassador was flesh of his flesh, as well as wife. Living on, she would still require protection. Her welfare justified the present strangeness of solitude.

Planks protested underfoot, as though they’d had a long holiday from boots. Other than that and a few spectator gulls, all was silence below the eternal breath of the wind. On Guy strode, expecting a cannonball or lightning-bolt any second.

You didn’t need to be an antiquarian. First the functional: forts and quay and port, and then the earliest portions of four centuries ago. With an overly indulgent eye they could almost be conventional. Guy recognised places that were obviously houses: constructed in the New-Wessex rustic-baroque vernacular. However, after that it was anyone’s guess. Given its head, Yarmouth stretched back and went wild: a mad architect’s green and gold (his favourites apparently) daymare, plunging deep into the island’s own greenery or brown mud of the Yar estuary.

There were gaps: whether paths or orifices Guy didn’t care to say. For the moment he was just happy to be alive, without vain hopes of making sense of anything. Here was hardly the place for that.

Behind the quay and boat berths and harbour barrier was St James’s Square, a sane survivor from the little space of years before the wizards turned in on themselves. It was expansive compared to the creations which hung over it and might have beckoned you in elsewhere. Here though was different.

Even Guy hesitated and lost half a pace, a blemish in his elegant, albeit gangly, gait. If he hadn’t got a grip the sailors might have borrowed the tone and bottle-necked behind him: a prickly ganglion of rifle-armed suspicion. Undignified.

Sooner death than that. Guy told his legs to recall their status and follow instructions. He boldly walked into the naked light of Yarmouth town square.

The revolver was an affectation. He recognised that and let it hang upon its lanyard. Thinking last thoughts, he crossed to the very centre, alone.

First a graceful bow, then recovery and finally arms spread wide, to reveal a merely gold-brocade-waistcoat-protected breast. It was the traditional ambassadorial gesture of presentation. He was here and harmless, at their service, even to the extent of them killing him – if that was what they really wanted.

The windows like eyes and mouths and other less mentionables made no comment. There was a quality to the silence that made Guy suspect he actually was all alone, save for his drag-along company of nervy mariners.

Mad Yarmouth, home to magecraft and dark researches, self-isolated hermitage of mystery for centuries, looked back at the Ambassador and was speechless.

Guy had to suppress the little fountain of joy that sponsored. He was not here to talk to himself. On the other hand, if that was the only option … For the very first time, a vision of himself sailing back out of Wight, home to wife and home and years beyond, gained a sliver of credibility.

‘Helloooooooooooo!’

There, he’d said it, out loud, causing the sailors to cringe against the walls, trying to merge with bricks and mortar.

The words played around the square, finding cosy corners in which to fade and die. The wizards’ city swallowed them up. It had no reply, save for the gargoyles’ echoes. The weirdness-in-stone was self-sufficient, hearing all but saying nothing. It had grown wise during the days of seclusion, learning many things. Apparently, now was the time to silently ponder them.

But to an Ambassador discourse was the very stuff of being: its circulating, driven-under-pressure, lifeblood. Guy couldn’t be doing with taciturn opponents.

‘I am here! Where are you?’

They wouldn’t say. Assertion and question followed his other brave words into oblivion.

Beyond the few homely streets, eccentricity soon blossomed into raving madness. One aperture, whether pathway or entrance, looked as good as another.

Guy took up his pistol again. He’d have them speak to him, even if it were only to moan.

Once! Twice! Thrice! Gunpowder expressed his wishes into the sky. Anywhere else it would have prompted a show of birds but here, beyond the carpet-edge of civilisation, the fusillade was lonely. In time, Guy even heard the distant clink of a returning cartridge against a tiled roof.

Now was the moment of greatest danger for an Ambassador: that of appearing ridiculous. He had to recover lost ground.

‘They are scared of us!’ he announced to deeply unconvinced colleagues. ‘Therefore, we shall have to flush them out …’

Feeling as conspicuous as a pea on a drum and 10 feet tall besides – without the accompanying assurance – Guy headed for the nearest promising avenue. For a while he was all alone in the dark there, but in due course arriving company shed light on the matter with tinderbox and tar-torch.

It was a chamber of sorts, irregular but just about functional, set as if for a gathering that had turned violent. If you so chose, you could read a certain story into the upset chairs and wall gouges.

Again, to an Ambassador such loutishness was anathema. The very antithesis to diplomacy. Guy accordingly regarded it with disdain for the minimum possible period. A far door offered exit from the nonsense and Guy took it, his armed and wary friends trailing behind him like ducklings.

At the beginning they had a semblance of military order: a rearguard and Guy-vanguard, moving forward by sections, clinging on to the option of ‘covering fire’. However, it soon became apparent that this was neither the time nor place. Amidst the sepulchral twists and turns, even a conventionally armed enemy could have taken them any time, let alone masters of the dimensions-beyond. So the group bunched together for mutual support and comfort and Guy did not have the cold heart to rebuke them. What would be would be, and there was little dignity in striking martial postures before an invincible foe. Nonchalance was the proper response to here and now, and Guy deepened his supercilious expression, even if there was no one to see it.

The door led to stairs which travelled up for ages, and then plunged straight back down, for no apparent reason and without arriving anywhere meaningful meanwhile. They took its route like a centipede: travelling but without sense or purpose. The landing midway was thick with dust, virgin before their trampling boots came violating through.

By rights they should have reappeared where they started, according to Guy’s reckoning, but the stairs inexplicably descended to an entirely different place: a corridor seemingly snaking on for ever.

Guy wasn’t having it. He’d left hide-and-seek behind long ago, in the brief space allotted him to serve as childhood. He called a halt, intending to say something pithy, but both inspiration and the moment were marred by those foremost bashing into him. His black hat was dislodged and wig pigtails jostled.

‘Do not,’ he instructed, once they disengaged, ‘for one moment, think that we are lost or chase in vain. No indeed. We are conquerors, annexing what no – normal – man dared tread before.’

He didn’t even believe it himself, but clever tutors had decades back dug out any danger of insincerity. An Ambassador could state that black was white and make it sound like his deepest belief. Usually that sufficed, but right now it required more than honey tones to convince some wide-eyed sacrificial lambs. They were in the dark and mislaid and yet supposedly conquering heroes. Each looked within to double check and received an instant negative.

Still, Guy had said it and God would have heard. If they should all die immediately, then at least his last words would be honourable and manly. The merciful Deity surely didn’t insist that you mean them.

The only alternatives were forward or back. The former was at least progress or novelty and that swung it. Guy strode on and everyone followed.

All along the walls, to either side, were portraits – or possibly landscapes, for it was hard to tell. They started off readily graspable, in rich detail and colour, but rapidly succumbed to a minimalist trend. Only a minute or two of marching sufficed to take the invaders past puzzled-looking wizards of yesteryear and the beauties of Wight nature, to opulent frames surrounding almost nothing. Finally, sketchy lines gave way to blank canvas and they were absolved from looking. Only meticulous Guy remained on duty to notice that even the white voids were proudly signed.

Far too long later, the stone lane terminated in a vault. Its sole – but more than sufficient – furnishing was a huge sculpture, rich in writhing life stilled into one bronze second. From its erotic depths a heroic figure tore free from the tangled orgy to study the heavens. The abstainer, with hips that could be either sex, was struggling from beseeching hands and offered parts to glimpse something beyond. One hand shaded its gaze to better see the heart’s desire. It was well done but disturbing on a wealth of levels.

According to their varying tastes, Guy and the sailors studied different aspects of the work: the heaving loins or desperate escapee. Some simply admired the skill displayed, for all it seemed more a triumph of casting, poured from molten, rather than laborious carving.

Then Guy drew close and saw that the flow had been uneven. He observed a patch in which white flesh and bone peeked through.

He drew back before any other could follow his example.

‘On!’ Guy kept it level, so as not to alarm. They were jittery enough without learning what wizards considered ‘art’.

There was a choice of routes, until choice became tedious and instinct led the way. They progressed up and down rampways, high over echoing halls and refectories, or squeezed through claustrophobic dorms and womb-like laboratories. The ways ranged from obstacle courses dripping with excess plaster like rainbow stalactites to passages royal-visit clean and bare. Others were distressingly intestinal-shaped and scented, plus hock-high in waste. One memorable corridor was a maze of spikes, thrusting out of every surface, requiring threading through like a giant shark’s mouth. Every second they expected the walls to close and clench and then digest them. Rhyme or reason had never alighted there.

Guy was powerfully reminded of the termites’ nest confines of Null-Paris, to the disruption of his innards and freezing of his spine. They also met no one, which, in one sense, was the worst of outcomes. In time, an enemy unseen is more formidable than a tangible foe at your throat. Any army can be defeated by its own imagination, before the firing of a single shot.

Then, without warning, they were back in the square, and even that watery sunlight was like a long-lost love. They tumbled into the open air like drunkards and drank it in.

Fortunately, Yarmouth’s heart was empty. A platoon of determined toddlers might have routed them at that moment.

Guy scolded himself for his lack of direction. That he’d fully expected to be blasted away in short order was no excuse. A real Ambassador was always an arrow, a single-shot, not buckshot spread promiscuously. If the Grim Reaper failed to show then Guy should have a plan. The present lack was scandalous. What would his father have said? Perhaps it was just as well an angel had toasted Sir Tusker Ambassador to a crisp twenty years before.

St James’s Church presented itself at the square’s northwest corner, a survivor from Yarmouth’s earliest days, prior to the falling of the curtain and birth of mystery. It still looked like a church, with proper spire and crown: a fit place to fall on your knees and thank the Almighty – even for sending you to God-forsaken places.

Guy suddenly longed for it like relief from long pain. Allegedly, there lurked in such places the one fine fact above all others. Granted, there was also the likelihood of Blades icons galore, but averted eyes and focused mind could maybe overlook those in the quest for refreshment. Certainly, at that moment, desire was easily up to marching over little difficulties like risk, fear and discretion. By comparison, false gods ought to be easy meat.

Dispensing with unwelcome prominence in the square, Guy led them on and in.

In the event, he need not have feared distraction. There was none of it to combat. The interior of St James’s had been rendered utterly void and pitch black. Not a speck of furnishing or holy accoutrements remained. The overlapping layers of actual pitch on every surface swallowed any stray ray of light that might intrude. This was interstellar dark, a void: easy to fall into and be lost in eternal night.

Guy charitably wondered if that was the intention. Rather than a frenzy of desecration, it was possible the house of God had been cleared for pondering on the very deepest matters.

A brace of sailors were first to enter, pushing wide the already open doors, but neither felt inclined to linger. They could see nothing worth taking, nor pierce the dark corners where sitting tenants might skulk. Consequently, to their wisdom it held no appeal.

Guy, however, strode straight in and past his minions, intrigued by those self-same features – and to set an example. Cocked hat resolutely undoffed, he surveyed in awesome wonder.

Perversely enough, after the initial shock, he found the vacuum to be well stocked: packed with interest and strange attraction. With the total absence of anything to dwell upon, there came opportunity to contemplate everything, in the round, without cease. The hard world beneath his feet seemed less … undeniable. In time it might even leave you alone and slowly fade away …

As a pious man, Guy ought to have deplored the expulsion of all that was holy, but there in the dark and silence he again sensed the possibility of fine intentions behind the ransacking. This was, in its way, still a sacred place, undiminished – or perhaps even enhanced – by its lack of brazen Blades and other fripperies of god-king worship. Like the still inkier darkness of the spire and bell tower he now stared up at, there might be such a thing, he supposed, as a search for higher truths.

For a second, the notion winked at him, luscious as a houri, and he had to draw back. This was not for him, at least not right now.

His unsophisticated friends proved less easily seduced. From behind he heard them curse the place and wish it ill – and by implication, his overlong stay there also. For the moment he could not totally depart from the majority view: a distressing dilemma for a New-Wessex aristocrat. He had perforce to go along with the mob and pretend to value its opinions.

‘Disgusting!’ he said, emerging from St James’s. ‘Blasphemy of blasphemies!’

They moved on, a rifle-hedgehog of prickly disapproval, into the rest of a lengthy day.

Those they had so feared and yet now almost hoped for had not been gone long. In hours of exploration into Yarmouth’s crazed depths, time and again they came upon the remnants of recent meals – and other, less wholesome, indulgences. Dried blood and dinners were frequent hallmarks of having just missed their quarry. Yet, save for the lone token on the quay, people, alive or dead, remained elusive, even if their spoor grew strong enough for the toughest stomach. A field of crucifixes proved thankfully unoccupied, though plainly veterans of hard use. In one snug parlour it looked as though an entire daisy-chain of people had slit each other’s throats – and then strolled elsewhere, leaving only lifeblood. In another, scarlet, hall, a sizeable gathering seemed to have gorged themselves to death on sweet pastries and then, alone among the consequences, tidied their own bodies away. The landing party looked and learned but were not detained.

If they’d been unnerved before it was as nothing to their trepidation now. They jumped at every shadow even though (or because) they were in amazing abundance. They trembled at the Solent wind’s caressing of the rooftops. The garish colour schemes contrived to set nerve-endings and vision atingle. The wizards had lived amongst starbursts of the most vivid orange and within walls of shocking pink, so that every glance left an afterglow burning in the eyes. There was no comfort to be seen and Guy knew he could not restrain his rabble much longer. Very soon one man-miming slice of shade would earn itself a bullet, provoking a suicidal firefight in a confined place.

He could hardly blame them or think the less of these normally valiant men. They had imbibed the fear along with their mother’s milk. Centuries of legend had left their mark even on his refined sensibilities. Every New-Wessex child heard of the wizards who no longer talked to men and who’d taken their own island out of the busy, silly, world. They were co-opted as an ever present threat to keep infants in bed and urge them to sleep. To naughty children the wizards were always ‘coming to get you’.

Adults were not immune either. The fate of the fleet that once sought to gatecrash Wight’s reveries was well known. It was the prime material for winter fireside tales, better and more chilling than any ghost story. After that festival of drowning and horror, only madmen would dare to try and elbow in on the sorcerers’ solitude. It was thus no great mystery if the sailors accordingly behaved as men mad. They were simply acting in role. Guy had to sympathise – even if only in invisible, undetectable form.

Finally, at midday, a noon only the wild optimists amongst them had expected to see, they found the stairway to the highest minaret in Yarmouth. From each successive landing window they beheld ever better views of the Solent and the Lady Bridget at anchor, far, far, below.

Further across the water, the decayed little port of New-Lymington beckoned like the best of places, more tempting at that moment than hearth or home or marital bed. There was New-Wessex, albeit its perilous edge. Here was beyond the pale. A few miles made a world of difference. As they filed past the windows every man lusted after Lymington, no matter what his previous opinion.

Nearer to, the island’s green Downs rose up to meet the chalk cliffs and set of needle-like pinnacles which terminated them. Everything looked sunlit and innocent enough but reputation stole away all charm. Over such beauty, word had it, the wizards hunted their sacrificial victims, chasing men like foxes or hares to the place of holocaust at Mottistone. For the informed spectator, given the choice, the cruel sea was the unlikely sweeter prospect.

Bosun suggested showing the ‘Long Man’ banner from the uppermost window when they arrived, to inform the Lady Bridget they were still alive. Guy nodded approval, seeing little harm in it and the off-chance of eternal fame. Someone had to be the man who raised the New-Wessex flag over reconquered Yarmouth. It might as well be Guy Ambassador – even if he delegated the actual wagging.

It was not to be. A whiff of death, that discernible sweet meatiness of the air, alerted them they were drawing to some or other conclusion. And so it proved. What they sought was waiting for them at the top.

The last wizard of Yarmouth reclined on a lush divan, surrounded by rotting meals and bodies. Pale as bone, but starry-silk clad and still superior, he surveyed them as they emerged from the stairs.

It seemed both futile and pedestrian to raise weapon or voice. He was what they were after and here he was. The rest was up to him.

Sheepishly, the group coagulated in the sky-high chamber. They were divided whether to honestly gag on the stench or suppress their heaves for fear of giving offence. Maybe mage nostrils were more robust than mortals’, or perhaps this one had been around long enough to acclimatise. His whey-face supplied no clues to assist them.

Similarly, the wizard wasn’t minded – or possibly strong enough – to converse and the pregnant pause grew way overdue. Guy presumed to perform a caesarean and queried the mess.

Apparently it was a presumption. The wizard matched Guy’s raised eyebrow with one of his own. It carried infinitely greater weight.

All the same, the man deigned to oblige.

‘Diversions,’ he said of the piled-high plates and man-middens: assorted tattooed slaves interwoven in death. ‘Diversions and companions. They wore out.’

Guy looked and nodded, as if he entirely understood. He did not. They were many but by no means an island’s worth. Nor wizards. The larger mystery still remained.

‘You were laggard,’ the emaciated face continued. ‘Timid, cautious, insects! So careful of what is not worth keeping! You have tried my patience. I was willing to wait but not for ever. Not at the price of boredom!’

He waved a skeletal hand at the offensive array.

‘