'All right,' said Fitz unhappily.

'Good man.'

The Doctor watched Fitz go, picking his way among the rocks, vanishing from sight, and then reappearing on the moor, heading back to the village. He wasn't moving very fast. Tired, thought the Doctor. Worn out. I've worn them both out. They're human, and I'm wearing their brief time away, faster than it would go if they led ordinary lives. He rubbed his face with both hands. Enough egotism. Fitz and Anji had chosen to be with him well, Anji not so much, but he'd get her back home soon, if there remained a back home to get her to. You're not responsible for the world, Doctor. Except occasionally. Such as now. With a sigh, he lowered his hands.

The Angel-Maker was standing in front of him.

She was good, the Doctor acknowledged. Though he'd known she was nearby, he hadn't heard her approach. He had been sitting slumped forward slightly; now he straightened, his hands resting loosely in his lap. 'Miss Kelly,' he said politely. He didn't ask what she was doing there. He kept his eyes on her face, on her fierce dark eyes, ignoring the glint, at the edge of his vision, of something in her hand.

'I heard you,' she said. 'I heard all that you were saying. You're no good to him.'

'No,' he agreed.

'You won't be hurting him.'

'Why do you hesitate? Do you want me to defend myself?'

'You're a quare creature and no mistake,' she said. 'Is there no fear in you?'

'Whatever you're going to do, do it.' His voice almost cracked, and in shame and anger he shouted, 'Do it now!'

She was quick, but he was still able to grab her hand and make sure the knife went straight into his heart.

Chapter Twenty.

The Doctor descended.

For a long while, there was no pain. He was certain that some time previously in his long, varied and largely unremembered life he must have been stabbed, but he didn't recall it. He had always heard that you didn't feel the cut, only the blow, but he wasn't in any position to confirm that, since he had lost consciousness almost instantly. He had no sense of how he had fallen or where he now lay.

Before, in the theatre, it had been terrible, a swirl of disorienting agony. This time he was better prepared. Even as he seized the Angel-Maker's hand to make absolutely sure that she hit her target cleanly, he was focusing in, shifting out of his ordinary state of consciousness, preparing for transition. He could no more control what was coming than he could a river he'd fallen into, but with some effort he could keep his head above water.

He knew his mind, desperate in the face of no meaning, would quickly make artificial sense of things, construct a sense-metaphor for what was happening to him. There were a few false starts. He was falling down a vertical tunnel, past a shelf with a jar of marmalade on it. He plunged into a watery chasm towards a shrouded figure white as snow. In a dark wood, a lion crossed his path. On a grey plain, a tornado whirled, gathering force. He flashed through these scenes, like the projectionist in that silent movie who walked into the film he was showing and had his world edited out from under him.

Now he was walking. There seemed to be a hard path under his feet, leading gradually downwards. His surroundings were vague. Nothing so definite as mist or as stark as darkness. He was simply in a place of unseeing. After a time, this too changed, shifting and forming into a kind of mist, but with none of the softness of mist or the mystery of fog, nothing but a bland, obstructive greyness: dullness visible.

He kept walking. Finally, he felt what he had been waiting for a tug at his back, between his shoulder blades. He looked back and saw the silvery thread stretching into the non-mist. Good. Nothing to do now but continue. He expected it would become more difficult, and it did. He began to feel as if he were pulling a great weight with that slender thread. He kept on. More time passed. He had begun to lean forward as he pulled, like a man in a harness. If he had been breathing, he would have been panting, even though the way led downhill.

It was as if he were trying, against all odds, to drag something infinitely large into a tiny space.

Structures began to appear to either side: hallways. They flashed in and out of existence. At the end of some of them were open doors, flashes of brilliant green. The Doctor ignored these. The place he wanted wouldn't have an open door.

What would it have? A locked door? A bridge? A gate? Or would it be a chasm, or a river la trista riviera d'Acheronte la trista riviera d'Acheronte with a ferryman who refused to carry the living man who came here so unnaturally? with a ferryman who refused to carry the living man who came here so unnaturally?

Just when he thought he could haul his immense burden no farther, the gate appeared. Age-darkened oak studded with iron roundels, it rose higher than he could see and extended without end from side to side. Undeterred, the Doctor walked up and knocked.

'Let me in!' he called. 'Unless you want a live being polluting your threshold!'

The doors opened. The Doctor entered.

More colourlessness. More emptiness. More silence. Only the sense of the hard track beneath him. He walked on.

A hand plucked at his sleeve.

'Give me your coat.'

'What good is it to you?'

'You must give me your coat if you want to go down.'

'Take it,' said the Doctor, and walked on. He was cold now.

A hand grabbed at his heel.

'Give me your shoes.'

'What good are they to you?'

'You must give me your shoes if you want to go down.'

'Take them,' said the Doctor, and walked on. Now the pathway bruised his feet.

'Give me your scarf.'

'It's a cravat,' said the Doctor, 'and I can't imagine what you'd do with it.'

'You must give it to me if you want to go down.'

'Take it,' said the Doctor and walked on. His throat felt frail and exposed.

Since he had come through the gate, he no longer felt the weight behind him. Was the thread unbroken? He knew better than to look back.

A hand brushed his face.

'Give me your eyes.'

For the first time, there was a catch in the Doctor's step.

'What good are they to you?'

'You must give me your eyes if you want to go down.'

'Take them,' said the Doctor, and walked on. Tears and blood ran down his face.

A hand seized his elbow.

'You must give me your hands.'

'What good are they to you?'

'You must give me your hands if you want to go down.'

'Take them,' said the Doctor, and walked on, stumbling and weaving.

A hand touched the small of his back.

'Give me your strength.'

'What good is it to you?'

'You must give me your strength if you want to go down.'

'Then take it.'

The Doctor lay on the stony path. He knew he wasn't mutilated. He knew he wasn't bleeding. He knew he wasn't getting colder. Except in the sense that he was.

A hand pressed against his chest.

'Give me your heart.'

'But I'll have nothing left,' he cried, small and cold and terrified.

'You must give me your heart if you want to go down.'

So the Doctor said, 'Take it,' and went down.

'Living animal, you profane this place!'

The Doctor was no more than a wisp, a breath, an echo. Yet everything hadn't been taken from him after all. He could hear, and he could feel on the back of his neck the dank breath of the being that had spoken.

'I apologise. I'll go when I have what I came for.'

'Why should I grant you a favour who have nothing left to give?'

'Of your great generosity, Majesty.'

She laughed. Had the Doctor been in his mortal body, the sound would have shattered his bones.

'I only take. But I am not yet ready to take you. Go away.'

'No.'

'Go away, stinking meat, or I will tear you to shreds, and each shred will live. You will writhe like a tangle of worms.'

'You can't really harm me. I'm still outside your power.'

'How have you done this trick? Ssh!' He felt a palm against his chest. Had it been his mortal body she touched, his skin would have peeled and melted. 'Ah, you have hidden your heart in another.'

'Not willingly, Majesty.'

'What is that to me? You have come here willingly enough. Now go.'

'At least hear my request.'

'Your stench is disgusting. Your presence is an obscenity. I will hear nothing from you.'

'But your own words prove that I do have something left to give.'

'Indeed? And what would that be?'

'My absence.'

The damp whisper caressed his ear. 'You are a clever creature. But I have known cleverer. You are brave, but I have known braver. You are fair, but I have known fairer. You are good, but I have known better. They all come to me, as you will.'

'But in the meantime, here I sit. It is not my wish to disturb you, Majesty. I will leave if you grant my request.'

'All the living want only one thing from me: to take back with them one they loved.'

'That is not what I want.'

'No? Why not? Have you never loved anyone who died?' Again the corrosive touch. 'I see. There are too many. Who would have thought you had undone so many?'

'Hear my request.'

'You are interesting. I see now that you have cheated me many times. Yet you claim you have not come to cheat me again.'

'I have not.'

'You intrigue me. Tell me what you have come for.'

'I wish to talk to someone.'

'Pah! Is that all? Usually the living call the dead to them.'

'That is difficult.'

'More difficult than coming here? You are stranger and stranger.'

'Others have come.'