The seated, hooded man sighed. ‘I imagine so. All that you offer, while in that dread stream… will it simply fill the house, do you think? Your manner of speaking here, flowing past me and through this absurd wooden door – your words: do you fear their immortality as they seep into mortar and stone?’

‘K’rul. Why here?’

‘No reason,’ K’rul replied. ‘Rather, no reason of mine. You saw the tracks? A Builder found me. I was… exploring.’ He paused for a moment, and when he resumed his tone changed, seeking something more conversational. ‘Mostly, I am ignored. But not this time, and not with this one.’ K’rul waved at himself. ‘It dragged me here. Well, at first it dragged me about the yard, as if wanting to leave me there, or there, or perhaps there. No place seemed to satisfy it. In the end, it left me on the doorstep, as it were, and then? Why, it vanished.’ K’rul rose and brushed more dust from his robes. ‘Skillen, you might find an easier converse if you stood not on the path. This Sidleways is particularly potent, is it not?’

Skillen glanced about the yard, noting those smudged places where the Builder had deposited K’rul. There was no discernible pattern in that map. After a moment, he edged off the stone pathway. ‘What waits inside?’

K’rul shook his head, the motion making the hood fall back, revealing a drawn, bloodless face. ‘Like the others, I would imagine. The rooms… upside down. One walks upon an uneven ceiling, a confusion of buttresses and steep ramps leading down… or is it up? To wander within is to know inverted thoughts. The displacement of perspective may well hold a message, but it is lost on me.’

But Skillen barely heard the words, so appalled was he by K’rul’s condition. ‘What afflicts you?’

‘Ah, you have travelled far, then. Is isolation such a comfort? Forgive me that question, Droe. Of course, there is peace to be found in not knowing, in not being, in not hearing, and not finding. Peace, in the way of becoming forgetful, while to others, mostly forgotten.’ K’rul managed a wan smile. ‘But still, I would know: if you have been, then where? And if not, then, why?’

‘I found a world in argument with itself. The delusion of intelligence, K’rul, is a sordid thing.’

‘And this towering form you now present to me? Do you wear the guise of these… creatures?’