Her head was full of images, or fragments thereof:

she and Hobart in the forest of their story, exchanging skins and fictions; she and Cal in the Auction Room, their glance the engine that turned the knife above the Weave.

And finally, the sentinels sitting in the Loom chamber. Eight eyes that had, even in death, the power to unmake the Weave. And ... make it again?

Suddenly, she wasn't walking any longer. She was running, not for fear that the roof would come down on her head but because the final pieces of the puzzle were coming clear, and she had so little time.

Redeeming the Fugue could not be done alone. Of course not. No rapture could be performed alone. Their essence was in exchange. That was why the Families sang and danced and wove: their magic blossomed between people: between performer and spectator, maker and admirer.

And wasn't there rapture at work between her mind and the mind in the book she held?; her eyes scanning the page and soaking up another soul's dreams? It was like love. Or rather love was its highest form: mind shaping mind, visions pirouetting on the threads between lovers.

'Cal'-She was at the last door, and flinging herself into the turmoil beyond.

The light in the earth had turned to the colour of bruises, blue-black and purple. The sky above writhed, ripe to discharge its innards. From the music and the exquisite geometry of light inside the Temple, she was suddenly in bedlam.

Cal was propped against the wall of the Temple. His face was white, but he was alive.

She went to him and knelt by his side.

'What's happening?' he said, his voice lazy with exhaustion.

'I've no time to explain,' she said, her hand stroking his face. The menstruum played against his cheek. 'You have to trust me.'

'Yes,' he said.

'Good. You have to think for me, Cal. Think of everything you remember.'

'Remember ... ?'

As he puzzled at her a crack, fully a foot wide, opened in the earth, running from the threshold of the Temple like a messenger. The news it carried was all grim. Seeing it, doubts filled Suzanna. How could anything be claimed from this chaos? The sky shed thunder; dust and dirt were flung up from the crevasses that gaped on every side.

She endeavoured to hold onto the comprehension she'd found in the corridors behind her. Tried to keep the images of the Loom in her head. The beams intersecting. Thought over and under thought. Minds filling the void with shared memories and shared dreams.

Think of everything you remember about the Fugue,' she said.

'Everything?'

'Everything. All the places you've seen.'

'Why?'

Trust me!' she said. 'Please God, Cal, trust me. What do you remember?'

'Just bits and pieces.'

'Whatever you can find. Every little piece.'

She pressed her palm to his face. He was feverish, but the book in her other hand was hotter.

In recent times she'd shared intimacies with her greatest enemy, Hobart. Surely she could share knowledge with this man, whose sweetness she'd come to love.

'Please ...' she said.

'For you ...' he replied, seeming to know at last all she felt for him, '... anything.'

And the thoughts came. She felt them flow into her, and through her; she was a conduit, the menstruum the stream on which his memories were carried. Her mind's eye saw glimpses only of what he'd seen and felt here in the Fugue, but they were things fine and beautiful.

An orchard; firelight; fruit; people dancing; singing. A road; a field; de Bono and the rope-dancers. The Firmament (rooms full of miracles); a rickshaw; a house, with a man standing on the step. A mountain, and planets. Most of it came too fast for her to focus upon, but her comprehension of what he'd seen wasn't the point. She was just part of a cycle - as she'd been in the Auction Room.

Behind her, she felt the beams breaking through the last wall, as though the Loom was coming to meet her, its genius for transfiguration momentarily at her disposal. They hadn't got long. If she missed this wave there'd be no other.

'Go on,' she said to Cal.

He had his eyes closed now, and the images were still pouring out of him. He'd remembered more than she'd dared hope. And she in her turn was adding sights and sounds to the flow- The lake; Capra's House; the forest; the streets of Nonesuch - they came back, razor sharp, and she felt the beams pick them up and speed them on their way.

She'd feared the Loom would reject her interference, but not at all; it married its power to that of the menstruum, transforming all that she and Cal were remembering.

She had no control over these processes. They were beyond her grasp. All she could do was be a part of the exchange between meaning and magic, and trust that the forces at work here comprehended her intentions better than she did.

But the power behind her was growing too strong for her; she could not channel its energies much longer. The book was getting too hot to hold, and Cal was shuddering beneath her hand.

'Enough!' she said.

Cal's eyes flew open.

'I haven't finished.'

'Enough I said.'

As she spoke, the structure of the Temple began to shudder.

Cal said: 'Oh God.'

'Time to go,' said Suzanna. 'Can you walk?'

'Of course I can walk.'

She helped him to his feet. There were roars from within, as one after another the walls capitulated to the rage of the Loom.

They didn't wait to watch the final cataclysm, but started away from the Temple, brick-shards whining past their heads.

Cal was as good as his word: he could indeed walk, albeit slowly. But running would have been impossible in the wasteland they were now obliged to cross. As Creation had been the touchstone of the outward journey, wholesale Destruction marked their return. The flora and fauna that had sprung into being in the footsteps of the trespassers were now suffering a swift dissolution. Flowers and trees were withering, the stench

of their rot carried on the hooligan winds that scoured the Gyre.

With the earth-light dimmed, the scene was murky, the gloom further thickened by dust and airborne matter. From the darkness animal cries rose as the earth opened and consumed the very creatures it had produced mere minutes before. Those not devoured by the bed from which they'd sprung were subject to a fate still more terrible, as the powers that had made them unknitted their children. Pale, skeletal things that had once been bright and alive now littered the landscape, breathing their last. Some turned their eyes up to Cal and Suzanna, looking for hope or help, but they had none to offer.

It was as much as they could do to keep the cracks in the earth from claiming them too. They stumbled on, arms about each other, heads bowed beneath a barrage of hailstones which the Mantle, as though to perfect their misery, had unleashed.

'How far?' Cal said.