'Aeee! No! Talk to me! Vermi'

Three more branches spurted out of its stem; the tips pointed, quested towards me and coiled around my wrists and other foot, faster than I could move them. I felt my limbs gradually drawn out with a strength I couldn't resist, until I was spreadeagled like a starfish.

The Emperor's horse backed off until he checked it. He was still looking at me, emotionlessly.

The worms kept pulling me taut. My shoulder joints cracked. I screamed, 'Oh, G.o.d, no!'

They stopped pulling and suddenly whipped me the right way up. I was standing in the air, twenty metres above the battle. I had never been upright and stationary in the air before, and the chaos was going on all around me.

Among the rivers of soldiers streaming past in retreat, people were pausing, making a slower flow of steel helmets and heads looking up. Some had stopped completely to gawp and the flow went around them; there were collisions here and there. An enormous, clear s.p.a.ce had formed where the trunk went into the ground. n.o.body was prepared to approach it. G.o.d knows what they were making of a clearly recognisable Messenger stretched like a spider in a vast flesh vine.

Worms slid over worms, providing a greater strength by far than muscle fibresanother tentacle snaked out from the ma.s.s. Its tip came to within centimetres of my face and seemed to look about, then it flattened, turned upright and formed into a stylized female face, like a mask, with no eyes in the almond-shaped sockets. I could see down to the mud through them. The well-sculpted lips moved quickly but the Vermiform's polyphonous voice was not in synch; it harped out from both the mask and the main trunk: 'What have you done? How could you bring this on yourselves?'

Wonder and despair vied in its voices but I was panicking too much to care. 'I'm sorry I put your worms in a jar. It was wrong. I'

The Vermiform pulled my limbs smoothly. Bands of shredding pain flamed up my back and across my chest from shoulder to shoulder. I shrieked. There was something experimental in the pull, as if it could haul much harder if it wanted to.

It said, 'Not that! The water...' It swung me from side to side and pushed its mask close to my face. 'Where did the lake come from? You stupid, stupid people! You've made a hatching pool!'

'We built the dam to flood the Paperlands,' I said.

'You have caused the death of this entire world!' It sent out thread-thin but steel-rod-strong strands and jabbed me all over my body, which was as effective as a slap. 'You gave the Insects a place to breed! They lay their eggs in still water! Didn't the Somatopolis tell you anything?'

I looked to San; his face raised and eyes narrowed to see me against the bright sky. His horse was trembling and so dotted with sweat his cloak was sticking to it.

Lightning galloped in, standing in his stirrups, his reins tied down and an arrow at string on a longbow. He drew and loosed. The arrow pa.s.sed clean through the trunkthe worms seethed aside making a hole, then resealed.

He came to the Emperor's side, nocked another arrow, his face white. His horse paced back and forth, stomping the mud, pawing and snorting, head lowered, but he wouldn't let it bolt. He kept beside the Emperorhis spurs drawing blood from its white flanks.

'The Emperor...' I gasped.

'Where?'

'Down there.'

The Vermiform snapped its mask back into the trunk and started retracting. It carried me down, still stretched outI saw the mud rus.h.i.+ng up closer and closer. It brought me to the Emperor, though San didn't give me so much as a glance. It stopped, jerking me to a halt a metre off the ground.

The top of the curving trunk overhung San's head but the surface nearest him extruded its mask and brought it close to his face. He returned its gaze equably, without moving a muscle.

Lightning aimed at the mask and loosed. His arrow pa.s.sed harmlessly through itthe worms parted again. The arrow whistled past me and through a sudden gap in the trunk. With the slightest ripple the holes closed and the mask regained its composure.

'Comet,' San said, without moving his gaze from the female visage. 'What is this?'

'It's the Vermiform. And arrows are no good against it.'

The Vermiform addressed the Emperor: 'So you are the one whom Dunlin has told us about?'

San tilted his head as if asking the Vermiform to continue. It said, 'Ourselves in the soil see that larvae are already coming out of the lake. Why? Why did you do it? Do you all have a suicide wish? Do you even know what you've done?'

'What have we done?' the Emperor said emotionlessly.

'Created a breeding pool for Insects in this world! Was there a mating flight? Do you know they lay a hundred eggs a minute? Have you any idea how many more are to come?'

The Emperor said nothing.

The Vermiform threshed, furious. 'Are you going to miss this warrior?' and slowly drew my bonds tighter and tighter. I tried to pull back but it was hopeless: agony flared straight through my shouldersmy arms and legs were riving out. I started screamingI could feel the suck of the cup-joints in my hips stretched to the point of dislocation.

The pauldrons of San's armour moved infinitesimally, as if he shrugged. He did not look at me, only at the mask.

The Vermiform said, 'Dunlin is a better commander than you ever were, San. He is marshalling an army in several worlds that is much better than anything you've managed to establish here.'

San said, 'I thought that would happen.'

'Dunlin will be infuriated when he hears it's come to this.'

'That is the least of my concerns...Could you put my Messenger down, please?' he added, although he said it as if my shrieking was irking him rather than if he cared that I was being torn limb from limb. I was released abruptly. I fell in a loose tangle, hit the ground heavily and curled up in the cold mud, hugging my shoulders.

'These are just the first nymphs emerging,' the worms choired. 'There will be hundreds more of these waves. Larvae are so ravenous that if they all hatched together they would devour each other for want of food. Countless worlds have fallen this way.'

The Emperor said, 'It is an extremely long time since I was last in the s.h.i.+ft.'

The Vermiform continued, 'The older larvae will shed their skins and become Insects, and begin dropping food in for the new larvae. Five moults later, those adult Insects will take flight tooand you'll have yet another generation of millions of larvae emerging. Once that started happening in the Somatopolis we didn't have a chance. You certainly don't have one, with the stupid pathetic weapons you still wield. We can taste saltpetre, aluminium, tungsten, uranium in the earth yet you still fight using wood and iron! You'll be overwhelmed. Every body of standing water in your whole continent will soon become a hatching pool. Every pond, every lake'

Lightning nocked another arrow to string.

'Dunlin is more active than you are!' the worms said. 'He understands that Insects are a mortal threat, but you don't seem to!'

'We are doing all we can.'

'Even when Insects were building bridges here, you did not respond seriously enough. They have overrun our world completely, and many others we have seen. Worlds take thousands of millions of years to form and Insects can destroy them in a decade! But you...it is as if you were deliberately trying to keep a stalemate with them. You never take an inch against them. We know why: without their outside threat, the Fourlands wouldn't need your Circle, your rule, or you. But your plan for keeping the Insects at a manageable level has all gone wrong. First there were swarms, then bridges, now they're breeding! The balance has tipped. You will never hold them in check now.'

The Emperor bridled at the accusation. 'We keep the front and push them back when we can. There are far too many to defeat. This is a stalemate of necessity, not intention.'

'No. Dunlin told me this was a world where a few Insects appeared at first. When that happens, the residents can easily exterminate them. Awia could simply have wiped them out. When they began to spread you could still have made a concerted effort and killed them all. But you let the situation get out of hand in order to get into power, didn't you? They needed you as a leader once the swarms started. And you kept them needing you ever since.'

San shook his head. 'False. We were all ignorant of war before the Insects arrived. We had no way to fight them. They are more difficult to kill than you say. We had no knowledge of their habits. We didn't know they were going to expand so quickly.'

'And when they did start spreading, you let them so the people would put you into power!'

For the first time ever, I saw the Emperor lose his temper. 'We fought tooth and nail! Yes, when Insects first began to proliferate, if we had made a concerted effort we might, might, have killed them all, but more were always following! We were embroiled in a civil war'

Which you ended by dividing the Pentadrica as a prize, I thought.

'It was all I could do to stop three countries tearing a fourth apart and then turning on each other. We had no proper weapons, no strategies; we had no idea how to kill Insects.'

The Vermiform fermented with fury. Eight thick worm-pillars thrust out of the ground in a two-metre circle around San's horse. Like the first trunk they tapered towards the top. As they rose, the main trunk thinned, worms disappearing into the earth to shoot up as the new pillars. They grew to its height, bending over San and his horse. They looked like gigantic octopus tentacles waving around a boat. His stallion reared, but he rode it.

The tentacles joined together above him, caging him in. The mask extended into thin strings and pushed towards San's face. Worms separated and flowed onto his skin, spreading to crawl all over him.

They snaked down his breastplate collar, under his helmet, into his hair, in the folds around his eyes, circled his lips and slithered into the wrinkles on his neck. The Emperor did not move as worms turmoiled out of his armour's joints at armpits and waist, from his wrists to slip between his fingers holding the reins. They wriggled under the plates on his thighs and s.h.i.+ns to the s.h.i.+ning laminae on his feet. Lines of worms formed a moving, living pink net all over him.

Lightning yelled. He spurred his horse over to me, dismounted and helped me from my Jant-shaped hole in the ooze. I poked around among my sodden letters, found my hip flask and took a long swig.

'What's happening?' Lightning said wildly. 'What are these maggots attacking San? What must we do?'

'It's the Vermiform. From the s.h.i.+ft.'

'How can I kill them?'

'You can't.'

The worms stopped writhing over the Emperor, poured up to his breastplate and webbed its surface. From the centre, a rope of worms spouted out and dived at the ground. They pooled on the mud and gathered themselves into a semblance of a man, building from the feet up. All the worms peeled off the Emperor, and onto the man's shape. It gained height, thinned, worms represented hair hanging down to the shoulders, pinched cheeks, a thin nose, a body f.l.a.n.g.ed or curved, closely portraying plate armour. It became a perfect imitation of San.

'We have tales of G.o.d coming back!' Lightning cried. 'And this thing appears!'

'It isn't G.o.d,' I said. 'It's a s.h.i.+ft creature.'

The effigy of San chorused, 'You told them what? You told them there's a G.o.d? You...' Its contempt knew no bounds. 'You gave them the idea of G.o.d?'

'There is always a G.o.d in the minds of men,' the Emperor said quietly.

The Vermiform said, 'Have you used that for your own ends too? No wonder this world is about to be lost to the Insects, if you are waiting for G.o.d to help you. Your people will all die as they wait!'

'We are not waiting,' San said. 'We are fighting.'

The mask bobbed. 'They're being slaughtered! Do they know of the s.h.i.+ft?'

Lightning muttered, 'Is this mountain of livebait saying there is no G.o.d but the s.h.i.+ft exists?'

'G.o.d isn't here but a s.h.i.+ft creature is,' I said.

The Vermiform said, 'San, your Fourlands are lost. Your Circle will break and your Castle will fall. I must warn Dunlin that this world does not have much time left, and I must arrange defences. The Insects here will soon build bridges to other worlds. We hope they will act with more intelligence than you did.'

'Leave the Empire, you foul thing,' said San calmly.

The eight tentacles that joined together above the Emperor, caging him in like the struts of a tent, sent out a thick strand into the air. We could see worms streaming up to its tip, which looked truncated; they were vanis.h.i.+ng there. The thick rope was pouring into nowherean area as big as a buckler that looked the same as the rest of the sky.

The trunks thinned, the caricature of the Emperor dissolved as worms left it and joined them. The trunks shrank to strings, then their bases lifted up from the earth as if being reeled in. They looped into the hole in thin air, twisting together into a rope as they did so. The end of the rope vanished. The Vermiform had gone. I knew it would be appearing like a cable in another world.

The Emperor looked directly at me accusingly. So did Lightninghe had been gaping at the worm-arc, as had all the soldiers standing or on their knees in traumatised silence around us. Streams of retreating riders and men-at-arms coming off the flank were pa.s.sing us, back to town. The Emperor looked at them and sighed.

Lightning said, 'That was a throng of earthworms, wasn't it?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Mmm. From the...'

'From the s.h.i.+ft, yes.'

'Right. Uh-hum. It said flying Insects will lay eggs in every lake. Not in Micawater lake they won't.'

I accidentally put my weight on my bitten foot and yowled. Lightning shook himself. 'Are you injured?'

I honestly could not tell whether I was seriously hurt or not. I had my arms crossed, hands clasped desperately around my shoulders. I said, 'I'll go to Rayne.'

San began to turn his horse but Lightning ran across and grabbed its bridle. The horse, true to its training, stood still. San glared down at the Archer. Lightning, from force of habit, lowered his gaze, then rallied and looked the Emperor straight in the eye. 'My lord,' he said. 'Where are you from?'

I knew what he meant, and so did San, but he didn't deign to answer. The thought of a s.h.i.+ft world full of potential Emperors was enough to make me s.h.i.+ver worse than the horses.

'Where are you from?' Lightning repeated. 'Not from the...From the...You're not like that thing, are you?'

The Emperor closed his eyes and shook his head gently. 'I am from Hacilith...From the place where Hacilith city now stands. I am a man. A man like any other Morenzian. Believe me, Archer.'

'My lord.' Lightning let the bridle go.

A thought occurred to me. 'When are you from?'

The Emperor ignored me, but Lightning took up the question, frowning. 'Yes. That thing said millions.'

San gave the clear impression that he neither knew nor cared what the Vermiform said. He was regarding Lightning closely. He stated, 'No, I am not that old. Yes, I am older than you think.'

Lightning swallowed hard, pressed, 'Then how old?'

San was still scrutinising him. 'You must dine with me tonight, Archer.'

We were astounded. 'Yes, my lord,' Lightning mouthed. 'Yescertainly.'

'Now you must return to your fyrd. You have my full authority to supervise the withdrawal.'

Lightning bowed, white-faced. San glanced at me. 'Messenger, put aside your pain. Find the Architect. We must discover a way to drain the lake. Everything depends on this now, it seems.' He looked slowly around him. 'Everything.'

I struggled into the air. My wing muscles were tender from the a.s.sault and the constant take-offs. If I kept using them now I knew I would be grounded for days. But I had to carry out San's request, and I was anxious to escape from the curious queries of the fyrdsmen still gawking at the air where the Vermiform had vanished.

I soared up above the devastation and circled, looking for Frost. The Imperial Fyrd were now toy soldiers beneath me. Lightning was tiny on horseback as he galloped away from them. The host's advance, seemingly so inexorable only an hour ago had stopped and it was ebbing away.

I searched in vain for Frost. I looked among the east wing that she would have to pa.s.s through. It was a wide stream of men in full retreat. If Frost was heading the other way, her small group would be battling against the current and I'd see the flow of men dividing round them like water cleaving around a rock. But they seemed in good order with no stragglersHayl's cavalry was carefully screening the withdrawal. From the lack of agitation in their ranks they seemed to be still ignorant of the larvae.

I climbed, widening my search. The reserve had formed into a solid s.h.i.+eld wall with archers in tight-packed shooting positions behind them. Lightning's orders reached slow actualisation in the movements of tens of thousands on the field. The archers resumed shooting and arrow volleys sailed by below me, rippling the air. Already the rear echelons were beginning to form into columns, ready to pull out following the east wing. The real battleground was in front of the s.h.i.+eld wall. But I didn't have time to lookI had to find Frost and, even in her recently disturbed state she wouldn't have been stupid enough to go that way, surely?

I circled again, and cast my gaze towards the periphery. A motion caught my attention, so fast I thought it had to be Insects. I angled towards it, and saw it was the orange Riverworks banner accompanying Frost. Her hors.e.m.e.n were out on the east flank, far beyond the retreating troops and moving at a full gallop, something I wasn't expecting in the mud soup. I dived towards them and saw they were heading rapidly towards the river bank, following a narrow supply road of quarry chippings. It was a causeway over the sodden ground, built at the same time as the plunge basin. Frost knew the valley like the back of her hand and was taking a quick detour around the chaos. I scanned the route ahead. Near the diminished river the track met the road, wide enough for wagons, that climbed the ramp to the dam and formed the walkway on top.

I shed height quickly and checked for larvae. Along the entire length of the lake margins they were crawling up the shallow slope, long bodies twisting from side to side. Their claws pushed trails in the gravel. Some turned on each other, and on the carca.s.ses of Insects littering the lakeside.

Scores were emerging onto the dam's face where the lake lapped up against it. In ragged lines they climbed its nearly sheer wall, finding purchase where it would be too steep for an adult Insect. Ripples broke over them, but they hung off its cobbles, moving up with mindless persistence; six legs and hooked feet scrabbling slowly.

Nearly all headed directly to the carnage before them; downstream of the dam the sh.o.r.e was reasonably clear. The adult Insects were likewise occupied. Frost would only have to worry about stragglers as long as the shambles in front of her continued to offer an easy supply of food.

I bit my lip, realising I was thinking of Tornado's and Wrenn's battalions only as bait to draw Insects away from Frost. Guiltily, I decided to take a closer look.