Then the obvious agony of that hit him, and he had to fall to his knees. He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, staring at it. Blood was gushing around the spikes now, surely from some major artery! He was panting. The meth both amplified the shock and deadened it, let him see past it. But … it was … only pain. He somehow knew he hadn’t been horribly wounded, that the Bridge had prevented that.

He managed to open his hand … the Bridge had vanished. He was sure, though, because it was telling him, that it had done its work.

The reverend was crouched beside him, he realized, looking desperately at him, wondering how she could help. ‘Do it!’ he bellowed.

‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘Can I get a dressing for—?’

‘Not until I know!’ Costain forced himself to look up from his own blood splattering onto the gravel of the church path. He looked into the darkness. He could see something moving there.

‘The Maori of New Zealand believe their dead leave a pohutukawa tree at Cape Reinga at the tip of the North Island for a journey back to Polynesia – actually back to where they came from, historically,’ said the vicar, staring into the void as Costain was, now fascinated. ‘There’s a river in Japan which is also, physically, the border between this world and the next, so they say…’

Costain watched as the vague shape resolved itself into a figure. He wasn’t sure now if the uncertainty about it was in the world or in his head. He’d lost a lot of blood to get him to the point of being able to see this. The figure wasn’t stumbling. It was walking quite purposefully, marching, even. It was familiar.

With a determined look on her face, Pierce went to the edge of the light and held out her hand.

*   *   *

Quill didn’t know if he could trust this. He had found, standing in the head of that statue, that he was being forced to close his eyes, and when he’d opened them he was elsewhere, looking at a strange figure. The ferryman was, depending on which side you saw him from, either a cloaked figure with skeletal hands or an Asian cabbie with tobacco stains on his fingers. He was pushing the boat forward across the river of silver which warped under and around them, his staff of many wrapped dimensions made out of the pink flatness of the Hammersmith and City line as seen on a tube map. Or he was driving across a bridge that didn’t exist, going north across the Thames, the road lined with a million spikes, the tarmac ahead red with blood that was flowing down to meet them. ‘I don’t normally go south of the river,’ he said.

*   *   *