'Indeed, my lord,' said Defrabax, fidgeting slightly.

'On the other hand,' continued Himesor, 'if you come to the conclusion that the Knights of Kuabris might have a use for the homunculus, then you will always be guaranteed a sympathetic ear.'

'There is no homunculus,' said Defrabax, almost through gritted teeth.

Himesor laughed. 'Oh yes, I forgot. I was only imagining what might happen, were you to have brought forth such a creature from the ground. Please forgive my rudeness.' His smile animated his face for a moment longer, and then he was cold and hard again. The discussion was over. 'Take him away,' said Himesor brusquely.

This time, as Zaitabor led Defrabax from the room, his metal-gloved fist rested firmly on the old man's shoulder.

Cosmae and the young woman slept in each other's arms, her face resting in the crook of his elbow. The girl's hair flowed in glorious disarray over Cosmae's outstretched arm, catching the light from a single candle that flickered by the bed. Their legs were entwined under a rough woollen sheet.

The young man snored gently.

Cosmae's room was small and bare, but had all the intimacy that the main room, with its electric lighting, lacked. Even the young girl, who had trained herself to always look for the potential worst in people, felt content here. Sleep had come to them both easily, adult games giving way to the tiredness of young genderless children.

The girl's eyelids fluttered slightly, her hand half-consciously reaching behind her to rub a purple bruise on her lower back. That had been her reward for the last time she had been taken in: abused, yes, but with not even a penny to show for it. The coins Cosmae had given her were clenched in her other hand.

The dull nagging from the bruise eventually woke her.

She turned her head slowly, staring at the ceiling for a few moments, thinking, and then slipped from the bed.

Cosmae muttered something, rolling onto his side. The girl reached across to pull the sheet over his exposed back and b.u.t.tocks, and then stood up. Time to go.

Seeking her clothes she gingerly made her way towards the stairs. The house was silent, and dark but for the scant illumination from Cosmae's room. Her hands outstretched, she followed a damp wall until she found the first wooden stair. It creaked as she stood on it, and in the silence it was like a crack of thunder.

Better get out before the mage returns.

She walked down the stairs as quickly as she could, her knuckles almost visibly pale as they gripped the rough wooden poles of the makeshift bannister.

She found a candle in the hallway, and lit it carefully. The main room was just before her, but she didn't want to risk the electric light. Her clothes were a puddle of material near the table. She stepped over to them, and pulled a white blouse across her shoulders.

Her attention was distracted by the charts on the walls. In this light it was almost impossible to read the writing, but the pictures were clear enough: a tree with a man's face, armoured creatures with bulky hands that belched fire, a complex annotated pentangle, a box containing various levers, a troop of huge ape-like animals. She recognized nothing as her eyes scanned the walls: these ill.u.s.trations might be of the inhabitants and magics of fabulous lands, or were perhaps from only a city or two away, but they were still as distant to the girl as the stars.

As her shadow pa.s.sed across the table she noticed a cube of what looked like gla.s.s, threaded through with a string of tight leather, glinting in the wavering candlelight. She reached for it, and was surprised by its lightness and its warmth. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't gla.s.s. Within it were small gems of varying colours, linked by lines of burnished gold, that blinked on and off with a light of their own. She could not imagine how it had been constructed, and what invocations must have been chanted over it to imbue power, but she liked the way that it warmed her cold fingertips. It must be a talisman, and perhaps she should ...

It was stealing, but it might bring a change in her fortunes. And the room, like most of the house that she had seen, was so untidy that it wouldn't be missed for days, until long after she had gone. And Cosmae's master could surely make another.

She pulled the loop of leather around her neck, and let the gla.s.sy box hang between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As she moved the talisman glittered like a jewel, and she felt its power spreading through her body.

She pulled on her rough brown skirt, and was just tightening her belt when she heard a noise from towards the back of the house. Instinctively, her hands went to the knot behind her neck, but it had already become too tight. Still only half-dressed she ran towards the door, fear pounding through her body like the great pistons in the Furnace. She tried pulling the talisman over her head, but the string caught in her hair.

There was another noise, and she stopped struggling against the gla.s.s charm. She walked towards the corridor, tightening her belt. It sounded as though someone had come into the house through a back entrance. Her ears strained to hear the footsteps, but she was only aware of a shuffling sound, like the wind through autumn leaves. It was much too dark in here: far better to confront the returning mystic in the light. She pulled a thin dagger from its place on the belt, and held the finger-long silver spike tightly.

Still attempting to b.u.t.ton her blouse over the talisman, she stepped into the corridor.

Facing her was a creature taller and broader than any man. Its dull grey robes seemed to merge straight into its green face and hands. Bright points of orange light stared down at her from either side of a squashed nose. The rest of the face was featureless, lacking ears and hair, a terrible approximation of humanity.

The creature stank of corpses and clay.

The girl screamed.

Two.

The Doctor fussed at the console, searching for the switch which raised the shutter from the TARDIS scanner. He wasn't looking at what he was doing, but instead fixed Zoe and Jamie with his most affable, charming gaze. 'After all that to-ing and fro-ing in s.p.a.ce,' he said, 'it's time for a little stability.'

'Aye,' said Jamie, 'I'm glad to see the back of the LIZ. I swear I'll never criticize the TARDIS again.'

'I'll remind you of that,' said Zoe.

'I know you can't stand the TARDIS food machine, Jamie, so I thought we'd have a little bite to eat here.' The Doctor scratched his head distantly. 'Wherever here is . . .'

The scanner opened to reveal a drizzling grey landscape of flattened brick buildings. Jamie's face fell, but he said nothing.

Zoe couldn't hide her disappointment. 'What a terrible place,' she announced.

'Oh, I don't know,' said the Doctor. 'There's always something to engage the brain, stimulate the imagination, fan the fires of artistic yearning.'

'It's a bit primitive,' continued Zoe, sniffily.

'That may be true,' said the Doctor, 'but I've always felt that great learning should make us feel privileged rather than smug. Don't you agree?'

'But what can I possibly learn from that?' asked Zoe, indicating the windswept scene.

'Tell me, Zoe, what do you know of . . . What was the fellow's name . . .? Hoddrigg . . . Heddreiger . . . '

'Heddeige?' suggested Zoe helpfully. 'Best known for his anthropological approach to the discrete development of non-contiguous equivalent cultures?'

The Doctor's eyes sparkled. 'Quite right. Oh, Zoe, you would make any tutor proud.'

'I appreciate what you're trying to do, Doctor,' Zoe said, as graciously as she could. 'I'm sure I could learn a lot from that culture. But does it all have to be so wet? wet? ' '

Jamie snorted. 'Looks fine to me. You've never seen the Highlands, have you, Zoe?'

'I must say, I think it looks rather . . .' The Doctor struggled for words.

'Grim? Foreboding? Spectral?' Zoe showed no such hesitation.

'Bracing,' said Jamie firmly.

'Bracing,' agreed the Doctor. 'With a hint of the resilience of the human spirit.'

'So what did this man say?' asked Jamie.

'Refresh my memory, please, Zoe,' said the Doctor.

Zoe smiled confidently. 'Heddeige postulated that two identical societies would evolve along completely different lines.' She smiled sweetly, and Jamie quickly nodded.

'Specifically, the elements will appear from the same set of possibilities - the deep resource bank - but in different orders, at different times, and the interreaction between these deep possibilities will prompt a whole new continuum of subsets. His theories were a radical expansion of Grotski's second law of cultural retrenchment and . . .'

Jamie sighed with a deep, confident honesty. 'Stop,' he said. 'I think I understood the first bit. All you're saying is that one . . . . clan . . . will be different from a clan on another planet.'

'Or even during a different age or in another region,' said the Doctor. 'Yes, you're quite right.'

'And this wee man became a professor or something for that?' Jamie looked to the Doctor for encouragement. 'That's nonsense.'

'I agree his basic conclusions are common sense,'

expanded the Doctor. 'But a great mind will amplify, clarify, investigate . . .'

'I'm happy with common sense,' stated Jamie firmly.

'Well,' said the Doctor, refusing to let go of the point he was pushing. 'Just think of how it affects common-sense individuals like yourself. Imagine that you had never seen a wheel, but that your father was an engineer specializing in long-distance communication.'

'So?'

'Well, think, Jamie. How would you look at the world?'

Jamie rubbed his chin. 'Well, wheels help you to move around easily. Without them - and maybe without horses - you'd never see beyond your village.'

The Doctor nodded. 'And?'

'I've seen machines that allow you to talk to people hundreds and hundreds of miles away. So . . . You'd see or hear things from the other side of the world, but maybe you'd never go to the town further down the valley.'

'Well done, Jamie! You - a common-sense individual - would have a whole host of att.i.tudes based on a knowledge of far-off places, but no practical practical experience of the way of life mere miles away.' experience of the way of life mere miles away.'

'But could that happen?' asked Jamie. 'To have such talking-devices without something as simple as a wheel?'

'Well,' said Zoe, 'the Aztecs were a tremendously advanced culture, but they never perfected the wheel.'

'A good example,' said the Doctor. 'But that's just head-knowledge.' He smiled again. 'I feel a certain affinity towards common-sense people like Jamie. So . . .'

He operated the door control. 'Let's go and see for ourselves.'

Grand Knight Himesor ma.s.saged his greying temples.

'Do you believe that wizard?' he asked in a quiet voice.

'Grand Knight,' said Zaitabor, standing to attention at his side, 'the man is lying. I could see it in his eyes, in the nervousness of his fingers. He does have a homunculus.'

'I agree,' said Himesor, reaching for a bundle of doc.u.ments from the table in front of him. His fingers toyed with the thick ribbon before finally releasing the knot.

Folded sheets of parchment spilled down onto the table in disarray. Commander Zaitabor noticed a number of seals of blue wax, the personal stamp of the Grand Knights. 'The obvious course of action is to observe Defrabax's house.'

'I'll a.s.sign Araboam to it straight away.'

'Araboam?'

'One of my youngest knights. A subtle character. He is outstripping many of his peers in terms of learning, spirituality, temperament.'

'I leave the details to you,' nodded Himesor, crushing a seal between his gauntlet-clad hands. 'I believe that the foolish Captain Oiquaquil has sought an audience with me?'

'More civilian complaints no doubt. A tedious man. I sometimes doubt his commitment to the Knights of Kuabris.'

'Deal with him as before.'

'My Lord.' Zaitabor bowed, and then marched from the room. Himesor read the letter once he was alone, a dark frown drawn across his features. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then crushed the sheet of paper into a tight ball. He hurled it into the fire, where the dry parchment burnt fiercely.

His fingers, made clumsy by the gauntlets, reached for another letter.

'Cosmae? Cosmae?' Defrabax closed the front door of his home, and peered up the dark stairs. He shrugged off his cloak and hat, and shuffled into the main room, flicking on the electric light. The bulb flashed and then glowed brightly.

The grey creature stood motionless in the room, its orange eyes ranging towards the old man.

'You shouldn't wait for me here,' snapped Defrabax. 'Go to the back room.' The homunculus turned, and walked into the corridor, its arms hanging at its sides. 'You can report then.'

'Understood,' intoned the creature in a flat voice, its slit-like lips barely moving.

'Cosmae!' shouted Defrabax, rooting around with the doc.u.ments on the main table. 'Where in Ukkazaal's name is that boy?' One of the young apprentice's roles was to keep the old man's home in some semblance of order, but it had soon dawned on Defrabax that Cosmae was even untidier than he was. Still, Cosmae really ought to have made the effort: what else was there to occupy his attention on such a grim evening?

Defrabax's eyes caught sight of an extra element amongst the clutter, lying in the centre of the floor. He walked over to it, and bent down. A cloak, of pa.s.sable quality, smelling slightly of cheap perfume. Defrabax straightened, tutting under his breath.