‘I should have noticed she was not… herself. She was playing a tune, over and over again on the keyboard. Obsessively,’ He could not suppress a shudder as the notes of the bizarre melody wound their way back into his brain.

‘Over and over again?’ repeated Jolaine Tradescar. She seemed excited. ‘I don’t suppose you recall the melody?’

‘I find it hard to forget.’

‘Could you sing it?’

‘Of course. But I fail to see –’

‘The melody may be of some significance to her. It may act as a stimulus to restore her to herself. Or it may lead us to others who can help save her.’

There was something in the way she pronounced the word ‘others’ that made the hair at the back of Khassian’s neck rise.

‘D’you know, I owe you a debt of gratitude, Illustre?’

‘Me? How?’ he said, surprised.

‘It was you, wasn’t it, who discovered the hidden hieroglyphs in the Hall of Whispering Reeds? And those hieroglyphs may hold the key to solving Orial’s predicament.’

‘You’re the Antiquarian!’ At last Khassian realised who his visitor was.

‘Was the Antiquarian,’ said Jolaine Tradescar. ‘I have just been replaced without so much as a by-your-leave – but that’s a story for another day. I’d like to propose that you come with me into the Undercity. Your keen eyes may yet discover some hidden hieroglyphs that we scholars have missed.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I could possibly be of any use to you –’ began Khassian. A polite but firm refusal, his customary response in such circumstances. And then he was seized by a curious impulse and heard himself saying, ‘But, seeing as I have no other pressing engagements, I think I might accompany you, Dame Tradescar.’

Jerame replaced the sedative tincture in the drugs cabinet and turned the key in the lock; each movement slow, automatic, as his thoughts chased each other in a frenetic fugue whose subject was Orial, Orial, Orial.

Wild eyes staring at him through a cage of slender fingers, eyes whose iridescent colours were muddied with tears.

‘Iridial?’ Time somersaulted, spinning him back to a chaotic vortex where all was madness and despair.

The revenant raised one trembling hand to him: the finger-tips were stained with blood.

‘Papa… make it stop. Please make it stop.’

Not Iridial but Orial, their daughter, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, her face torn by her own nails, her body hunched, drawn in on itself, shaking…

The Accidie.

Why had he not kept better watch over her? Why had he not recognised the signs of imminent collapse? Should he consult the experts from the Medical School? They had been of no use at all when Iridial had shown the first symptoms of the Accidie. Which left one alternative: should he call in Ophil Tartarus?