Where are you, God? Where are you, Jesus? Where are you, Lord? She’d never needed her faith so much, and now it chose to tremble. Why should that be a surprise? Of course the times that threatened to prove your faith to be madness or a lie would be the ones you needed it most.

The agony that was to come. Seconds or minutes of Hell. Easy to say things of this life were temporary and soon gone, that what came after it was what mattered, but faced with those claws ripping the skin off your back – and then whatever other tortures followed, which Milly’s imagination busily supplied – it was harder to be so calm.

Would God understand if she took her own life, or begged Noel to? He had his shotgun and rifle: one bullet and she’d be beyond the Tatterskins’ reach. Would that make her a suicide or him a murderer, or both? Which of them would pay the price, or would God forgive them both?

If she was going to ask, it had to be now.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.” And that made things simpler. Those should be your last words to your beloved, shouldn’t they? Not now kill me?

But even so, the pain that was about to come –

Milly tried to decide, but before she could ask or not ask, the screams began.

There was a whining in Ellie’s ears, and she was covered in dust.

She opened her eyes. Dust stung her throat. There was fire – but real fire, normal fire – on the altar. The silver flame was gone.

The Dancers lay in heaps, burning, weakly thrashing. Two Priests had fallen; the two still standing were also aflame. One collapsed, like an exhausted wooden tower; the other took shambling, swaying steps towards Ellie, then crashed down into the dust, which billowed up around it.

Fiat lux. Fiat fucking lux. It had ended the Dance, at least. Whether it had done so in time was another matter, because the Eye still remained – huge and golden, occupying the entire cavern wall.

Ellie tried and failed to imagine the scale of the creature it belonged to, and of the other things that slept in the chasm. Down in the Yawning I see them stir. They could shift size, as well as shape: how many multitudes, under the hill?

Elie stood. Her legs trembled. The Eye glowed, but the great, heavy, leathery lid seemed to be drooping. She was afraid to believe it, but little by little it sank; Ellie, still choking on the dust of long-ground bones, began to laugh.

This time, the Eye seemed to register her presence. It shifted position only slightly, but enough that Ellie, for an instant, felt its full scrutiny: a tiny fraction of time in which she knew it, and it her. And then the lid sank down, the terrible gold faded, and the Eye was gone.