and still the insane shout swelled and bellowed. Did they feel such hate? Was such immensity of hate ready in their breasts for the divinity of anything? Many were merely in a state of hysteria, all drunk, but the hate must have been there. I felt that the hate-heavy air was choking me. I fought my way, I began to beat at the backs and faces of those who would not let me through. I too, was becoming infected by the infesting hysteria. Suddenly I was near the long-table. I was just in sight of the exit, but I saw the long-table. Both soaked and unrecognizable in gravy, one of the men in the corpse was stabbing a knife again and again into the neck of his quivering brown opponent. A spurt of blood fountained up: the victor was quick enough to get his mouth in it before it ebbed, it was a red drinking-fountain. He shook his wet head and laughed. “The Divine Downfall!” The hall was swiftly breeding a miasma not only of insane passion but of something worse which struck with insane terror. The hall will have to be burnt later, I thought wildly, it has held all this. Then I realized that all this had been in the breasts of the calmly feasting pleasant guests, the hall had held all this, just the same, before it had dreamed of being shown. Zerd lolled half-across the gravy and blood-pooled table. Two ladies lay on him, grasped in his anus, hanging on him as they tongued him. Nearly dead, I dashed to the door. As I passed the table, I met the gaze of what seemed the only other pair of sane eyes in the hell.

The big black priest Kaselm sat smiling a dry wry smile, but not with his eyes, and picked at his meat with his silver skewers.

It is a month since I wrote my last entry a week after “The Night of the Dinosaur”. My hand travels across the page but feels no kinship with it or with anything.

Everything has become quite strangely hollow, there is a flat taste in everyone’s mouths.

The cook killed himself with one of his carving-knives, no one knows why. It may have been because he had prepared and cooked (so lovingly) the dish which some simple people have taken as the symbol of that night.

Lara has had a miscarriage.

Several people aren’t seen about at headquarters any more, they were crushed or fatally injured in the press.

There has been from the very first bitter enmity between the Northern troops and the troops the Hammerfist brought into the Capital—that night. The streets seem more battle-grounds for the Northern and Southern ranks, than anything else, market-places, thoroughfares, parade grounds for allies.

I have seen Smahil once or twice, never alone.

Sometimes the Hammerfist with members of his train comes to visit here with the General.