'She's gone all calm. I don't know why.' Anji brought over a fresh bandage. 'This really isn't bad,' she said, covering the wound. 'Almost like...'

'An afterthought,' said Fitz. 'Well, no, more like some sort of representation of what's happening to him... wherever he is.'

'Happening to both of them.'

In Sabbath's room, the Angel-Maker cut her palm and pressed it to his bloody chest. She kissed him and took his hand. 'You'll not be going from me,' she whispered. 'Not all the horses of hell can drag you from me.'

Chapter Twenty-two.

Sabbath liked the clocks. They were intricate and various and there were apparently an endless number. An infinity of these first time machines dividing time into finite bits. He toyed with the conceit as he walked among them.

The first part of the dream hadn't been this pleasant. He had been drowning again. It was getting to be a bore. What was the phrase he'd heard that excitable Anji woman use: Been there, done that. Exactly. Why his unconscious kept bringing it up he couldn't imagine. Surely the stock of terrors in his mental closet wasn't so limited that he had to keep experiencing this one. There was, for example, that incident in Cairo...

But why think of that now when he could examine these magnificent instruments, these miraculous devices that translated time into sound and so made it directly apprehensible to the human senses? Exquisitely calibrated longitudinal clocks, silly overcarved cuckoo clocks, clocks built for cathedral towers that were over twice as tall as he was, faceless clocks with bells to chime the hour, clocks with only an hour hand, mediaeval astronomical clocks that showed the planets' movements according to the Ptolemaic system and equation clocks which told both solar and mean time, anniversary clocks turning back and forth under their glass bells, clocks run by springs and powered by weights, works of brass and iron and wood and silver and everywhere the tick of the pendulums, those beats of that clockwork heart, the escapement. Out of sync with one another, the ticks together produced a light, continual pattering, for all the world like the rapid drip of water from the edge of a rain-smeared roof.

Sabbath walked down a hall formed by a double line of tall-case clocks. Some of their faces were painted with flowers, some with the moon and the sun, some with nautical scenes, while others were plain brass or enamel, or even wood. At the end of this passage, he came to an imposing timepiece nearly eight feet tall, its ebony case flanked by slender green marble pillars. Its four pinnacles were topped with malachite and its face casing leafed with engraved gold, while the face itself was illustrated with the phases of the moon. He pulled open the door, and where the pendulum and weights should have been was a set of steps carved out of solid rock. Not without difficulty, Sabbath climbed into the clock, and followed these down.

They led to a domed chamber, like a bowl laid upside down, with obsidian walls in whose smooth black surfaces the flames of the numerous torches reflected. The place was charged with a terrible silence. Atop an obsidian ziggurat stood a heavy, square-cut black throne, and on this sat a creature so horrifying that even Sabbath's eyes winced away.

Her skin was black and papery, like something burned. Her eyes were gelatinous as raw eggs. Large square teeth, the colour of old ivory, not only hung below her upper lip but cut through the skin to jut from her cheekbones. In the bottom of her mouth, her tongue lay curled like a red snake.

She said in a voice like razors, 'Not another one!'

Sabbath inclined his head. 'I do not come of my own will.'

'More excuses,' she spat. 'Look at me.' He did. 'Hm. Even more alive than the other one. You nauseate me.'

Had the moment been more appropriate, Sabbath would have allowed himself several ripe eighteenth-century obscenities. The Doctor! He might have known. He should should have known. What had the damned imp done now? But all he said was, 'I return the compliment.' have known. What had the damned imp done now? But all he said was, 'I return the compliment.'

She pulled her feet up and rested them on the seat of the throne, her knees apart. Her flat breasts fell to her belly, and the way into her was deep and black as the grave.

'Man of flesh,' she said, 'are you not afraid?'

'I may or may not be afraid when my time comes, but that time is not yet.'

'The other was more respectful.'

'I imagine the other wanted something from you. I do not.'

'Do you not even want him, your friend?'

'He is not my friend, and I do not want him. But if I live, he lives.'

'Ah.' She slipped off the throne and padded over to him, and he saw that she wore a girdle made of the skulls of little animals knotted to one another. The long nails of the hand that reached towards him had specks of blood and flesh beneath them. She wriggled her fingers, and an iridescent thread, elusive as a bit of spiderweb, glistened among them.

'Look,' she whispered. 'Here it is. You can sever it. I can give you the power. Then you will be free of him.' Sabbath shook his head. 'He tricked you here. He counted on you to help him and did not care that he put you in peril.'

'I am not in peril.'

'Do not be so confident, my learned friend. You do not know what you may suffer bearing him back.' She dangled the thread in front of him. 'Take it. Snap it. You will be rid of him at last.'

'No.'

'Hypocrite! You who boast of never flinching from sacrificing a life when necessary.'

'The Doctor is still of use to me. If you want him dead so badly, why not snap the thread yourself? Ah, I forgot you can't. His time is not yet.'

With a hiss she withdrew to her throne, liquidly swift as a shadow. For a few minutes she only stared at him. Sabbath held her yellow gaze.

She shrugged. 'It was worth trying.'

'He is yours in the end anyway. Why bother?'

'He annoys me,' she said sulkily. 'He has teased me before. He dies yet does not die. I would punish him for his arrogance and his trickery and the way he continues to live live. I suspect he is unnatural.'

Sabbath had been handling the conversation fine so far, but, considering its source, this last remark threw him. 'What do you mean?'

'You will find out,' she said carelessly. 'Do you want him? Then here, take him. I am glad to be rid of his stench and yours.'

She gestured to her left and, turning, Sabbath saw another tall clock, this one of ebony, its plain white face arrayed with eight long minute-hands. He opened the door to the works. The Doctor hung inside, impaled on a meathook.

'You took your time,' said the Doctor. His face was drawn and livid, but his voice was quite normal. The meathook, Sabbath saw, was somehow attached to the clock's weight chains, so that the Doctor had become part of the mechanism. Sabbath almost shivered. He looked around. The black throne and its occupant had vanished.

'I don't suppose,' Sabbath said, 'that I'm going to be fortunate enough to discover that this '

' is a dream? Er, sorry, no.'

Sabbath sighed. 'It's not, by any chance, a hallucination in which you are only an unpleasant element rather than an active participant?'

'Not that either, I'm afraid.'

'Give me one piece of good news. Tell me at least that you're actually hung on a meathook.'

'In so far as actuality has any meaning here, yes, I'm actually hung on a meathook.'

'Well, that's something.'

The Doctor smiled apologetically. Sabbath noticed that the tip of the meathook protruded from where his missing heart had once been.

'I don't suppose,' he said almost wistfully, 'that I could just go myself and leave you here?'

'You'd only come back.'

Sabbath sighed again. 'I suspected as much. Why don't you explain to me exactly what is happening?'

'As near as I can figure, your heart I mean the one that's really my heart is not only keeping me alive, it's also healing its twin. Presuming we make it back, I should be as functional as I was before I was stabbed.'

'That's how you got here?'

'That's how.'

'Who stabbed you?'

'Who do you think?'

Sabbath's lips tightened. 'I've explained to her '

' how harmless, indeed cuddly and inoffensive, I am. Yes. Well, don't be too hard on her. I lured her into it.'

'Yes,' said Sabbath. 'You would have.' He eyed the clock. 'How did you get in a clock?'

'Am I in a clock?'

'What do you see?'

'Not much of anything except you. I'd rather not be in a clock,' the Doctor went on doubtfully. 'They have grinding gears and things.'

'You're on a meathook.'

'Yes, but if I don't move, it doesn't move. Speaking of which, you might want to get me off.'

Sabbath gripped him under the arms. 'Why did she impale you?'

'I got on her nerves.' Sabbath raised an ironic eyebrow 'Anything alive gets on her nerves,' the Doctor said drily. 'So perhaps we'd both better hurry.'

Sabbath braced himself to lift. 'Put your hands on my shoulders.'

The Doctor did and, very slowly, Sabbath raised him off the hook. There was a wet, tearing sound. The Doctor's head fell back and he made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a groan. Then he righted himself, gasping, and looked down, and for one terrible moment, Sabbath saw his own face staring at him. He stumbled, biting back a cry.

'What is it?' The Doctor was in his own face again.

'Nothing,' said Sabbath between his teeth. He half-turned, moving the Doctor safely away from the clock, and set him on his feet. The Doctor's knees gave and Sabbath held him up. 'Can you even walk?'

'Let's see.' The Doctor tried to stand. 'No.' He squinted curiously at Sabbath's shirt front. 'You're bleeding.' Sabbath looked down at the slight red stain, inconsequential next to the Doctor's half-scarlet shirt but definitely there. The Doctor laughed. 'Blood brothers.'

'Spare me your comments.' Sabbath braced the Doctor against the clock. 'Clocks everywhere,' he muttered. 'Not my picture of the afterlife, I must admit.'

'Well, as neither of us is actually dead, I don't think it can be the afterlife, per se. More like the suburbs.'

'You came to speak to Chiltern, didn't you? Did he come to the edge to meet you?'

'Something like that.'

'And gave you the information we need.'

'Yes.'

'So another of your lunatic capers pays off.'

'You needn't take that tone,' said the Doctor, offended. 'I don't know what else you could have expected me to do, given the situation. If that machine isn't found and destroyed, more than the two of us will end up here. And in the city centre.'

'All right, point taken. We'd better get started. Climb on my back.'

The Doctor linked his arms around Sabbath's neck, and Sabbath slid his arms beneath his knees and hefted him up. Their heads turned, almost in unison but in opposite directions, to examine their surroundings. The Doctor sighed.

' " 'There must be some way out of here,' said the joker to the thief".'

'Miss Kapoor?'

Anji raised her eyes from the Doctor to the door. She was so tired that she almost wasn't startled. Almost.

'Dr Chiltern?' she said disbelievingly.

'Yes, I...' He crossed worriedly to the bed. 'Miss Jane has been explaining things to me. She says the Doctor is ill. What's happened to him?'

'It's complicated,' she muttered. 'He'll be all right.' At the moment, she was more inclined to be anxious about Chiltern. He seemed distraught, unfocused. 'What about you?'

'I...' He hesitated, and she realised that what she saw in his face was grief.

'I'm sorry,' she said quickly. 'This must all have come as an awful shock to you.'

'It's like a dream,' he said distractedly, sinking into the armchair. 'Or a nightmare. If I hadn't just recovered from a nervous collapse, I'd say I was having one. Complete with hallucinations.'

She smiled. 'We're all quite real.'

'Of course. I mean delusions. These fantastic, ridiculous ideas. A time machine!' He looked at her as if he hoped she'd correct him.

'I'm afraid it's true.'

'Dear God.' He passed a hand across his face.

'I'm sorry about your brother,' she said. He looked up sharply. 'The Doctor is going to try to help with... with the other difficulties.' His eyes moved doubtfully to the Doctor. 'He'll be fine soon,' she said firmly, as if that would make it true.

'What's wrong with him?'

'Just a minor stab wound.'

Chiltern apparently didn't believe there was any such thing. He insisted on examining the injury. Anji watched uneasily. Sure enough, he was puzzled.