‘I will cast you to the wind,’ said the magos, ‘and I will save the Loom. The Great Work will continue.’

‘Go to hell,’ grunted Eisenhorn.

Sark blasted him again. Insects billowed up, moving as one, and covered Eisenhorn from head to foot, writhing and ticking. Eisenhorn bent his head and raised his cuffed fists in front of him, like a man at penance.

‘Fall,’ said the magos, and unleashed his power again. Eisenhorn slid back along the marble floor.

‘The King seeks to tame us,’ said Sark. ‘Chain us. Harness us with incantation. What little he knows. How small he thinks. Freed from his bounds, loosed in your world, we will do such wonders.’

Drusher hauled Macks to her feet, trying to shield them both from the surging wind and boiling clouds of insects. Nayl dragged Voriet upright.

They all staggered backwards as the magos blasted again with invisible power.

Eisenhorn looked up at Sark. Even moving his head took great effort. He raised his cuffed hands in front of his face. He was quaking, like a great oak in a gale, about to splinter.

He spoke an un-word.

The force of it struck Sark full in the face. It also struck the cuff-chain binding Eisenhorn’s wrists and exploded it, driving metal fragments into the magos like buckshot.

Sark staggered backwards, blood streaming from a dozen wounds in his face. They bled like stigmata, dripping onto the white cloth of his gown. His left eye was gone.

He screamed at Eisenhorn in rage. The un-word knocked Eisenhorn backwards. His hands now free, he clutched at the hallway wall to stay upright. He answered with an un-word that struck the magos like a sledgehammer.

The insect swarm became frenzied. Their mass clung to the high, white walls, scoring marks in the stone. In long, threading lines, they were inscribing the words of Enuncia that Eisenhorn and Sark were hurling at each other. Drusher realised where the odd script lining the walls of the tower had come from. The ancient, chirring cackle of prehuman times, recorded syllable by syllable in the fabric of the world, marks in stone left by things before man, the swarming plagues of truth and destruction, the litany of the Torment.

Face-to-face, enveloped in a whirlwind of light and hammering air, Eisenhorn and Sark yelled un-words at each other, trying to un-make each other’s flesh and souls. Eisenhorn’s eyes shone violet, as bright as Sark’s remaining pupil.

With fury, Eisenhorn screamed and drove Sark backwards.

‘Go! Go!’ he yelled to the others. ‘Get out! He’s not human!’

‘And you are?’ asked Drusher, shielding his eyes.

+Get out!+

They tried to struggle past the two figures, but the wind was too strong, the concussion of the un-words too great. Eisenhorn focused and began to drive the un-words out of him with his mind instead of his mouth. He drove them with the will that impressed Magos Sark so much.