And yet, by all manner of reason, should he not be the one to have found time compacted, condensed to a thing of ephemeral ease? Why then the torture in his soul? The exhaustion? This fevered sense of crawling along every increment inside each of these bodies, one after another, round and round and round? When he first awoke among them, he had felt himself blessed. Now he felt trapped.

The edifice reared into the scoured blue sky. Grey and black, carved scales possibly rent by fractures and mottled with rusty stains, it was a tower of immense, alien artistry. At first, it had seemed little more than wreckage, a looming, rotted fang rendered almost shapeless by centuries of abandonment. But the closing of distance had, perversely, altered that perception. Even so . . . on the flat land spreading out from its base, there was no sign of settlement, no ancient, blunted furrows betraying once-planted fields, no tracks, no roads.

They could discern the nature of the monument now. Perhaps a thousand reaches tall, it stood alone, empty-eyed, a dragon of stone balanced on its hind limbs and curling tail. One of its forelimbs reached down to sink talons into the ground; the other was drawn up and angled slightly outward, as if poised to swipe some enemy from its path. Even its hind limbs were asymmetrically positioned, tensed, coiled.

No real dragon could match its size, and yet as they edged closer—mute now, diminished—they could see the astonishing detail of the creation. The iridescence of the whorls in each scale, lightly coated in dust; the folded-back skin encircling the talons—talons which were at least half again as tall as a man, their polished, laminated surfaces scarred and chipped. They could see creases in the hide that they had first taken to be fractures; the weight of muscles hanging slack; the seams and blood vessels in the folded, arching wings. A grainy haze obscured the edifice above its chest height, as if it was enwreathed in a ring of suspended dust.

‘No,’ whispered Taxilian, ‘not suspended. That ring is moving . . . round and round it swirls, do you see?’

‘Sorcery,’ said Breath, her tone oddly flat.

‘As might a million moons orbit a dead sun,’ Rautos observed. ‘Countless lifeless worlds, each one no bigger than a grain of sand—you say magic holds it in place, Breath—are you certain?’

‘What else?’ she snapped, dismissive. ‘All we ever get from you. Theories. About this and that. As if explanations meant anything. What difference does knowing make, you fat oaf?’

‘It eases the fire in my soul, witch,’ Rautos replied.

‘The fire is the reason for living.’

‘Until it burns you up.’

‘Oh, stop it, you two,’ moaned Asane.

Breath wheeled on her. ‘I’m going to drown you,’ she pronounced. ‘I don’t even need water to do it. I’ll use sand. I’ll hold you under and feel your every struggle, your every twitch—’