‘Up! Up!’ Nayl urged them, guiding them to the side and up a link staircase to a higher catwalk. He waited as the flayed thing drew closer, then dropped it with a single shot.

He hurried after the other three, up the steps and onto the higher catwalk.

‘Be wary,’ he advised. ‘These devils are much faster than the thing that came for us in Helter.’

‘Because they’re more intact,’ said Drusher.

‘What?’ asked Macks.

‘The thing in Helter was just old bones. This force animates them, but it can only use the structure it’s got to work with. Simple mechanics, really. It can make disarticulated bones rise and shuffle along. But these poor creatures are intact–’

‘More or bloody less,’ said Macks.

‘They’re articulated,’ said Drusher. ‘They have tendons, sinews, muscle mass. The force can use that framework to move them faster.’

‘I think he’s right,’ said Nayl.

‘I think he’s writing a frigging paper on them,’ growled Macks.

‘Keep moving,’ said Nayl.

They followed the catwalk over a massive, spinning drum of brass, then ascended another staircase to the next gantry. Voriet was struggling to keep pace. Twice, he slipped and cried out as his broken arm struck the handrail.

Another figure was waiting for them on the gantry. It was just dry, white bones. Green swirls of light imaged the organs missing from its torso. It shuffled towards them, feet dragging.

Drusher raised his sidearm.

‘Don’t waste a round,’ said Nayl, grabbing his arm. ‘We can outrun this one.’

They left it behind, hustling Voriet along, and took another flight of stairs up to a wide catwalk that circled the base of a huge, burnished gyroscope.

‘Oh Terra!’ Macks exclaimed.

Another figure was pacing inexorably towards them. Its face had been blown away by point-blank shots.

But it was Hadeed Garofar.

Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

A Very Suitable Candidate

In his cage, on his knees, his head tipped back, Magos Sark crooned un-words into the gulfs of the empyrean, and the words echoed back like the chirring of a trillion insects. The light flooding the tower was coming from inside him, so bright his skin was translucent, and Gobleka was sure he could see the shadow of the magos’ skeleton.

Gobleka stood at the edge of the platform for a while, watching. The un-words stirred something primordial in him, as if some deep and vestigial part of his lizard brain was responding. It was the language of infinity, the prehuman, inhuman instructions for creation and negation. He tried to mouth the un-words he heard, to copy and repeat them, to learn them, but they were coming too fast.