bones whatever he did. Half-certain? He grew a full three-quarters-certain when a huge and angry monster started roaring in the distance.
Uckermark halted abruptly. Froissart and Trasilika did likewise.
‘What is it?’ said Froissart anxiously, meaning the roaring thing.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Uckermark truthfully.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Shabble gaily. ‘It’s only a dorgi.’
‘What’s that?’ said Froissart.
‘A killer of men,’ said Shabble.
‘And you tell us not to worry,’ said Trasilika.
‘I was telling myself not to worry,’ said Shabble. ‘It eats only men, not shabbies.’
Then Shabble sniggered.
In truth, Shabble feared dorgis greatly; but the bubble of light guessed the revenant from the Golden Gulag to be fully occupied by the delights of hunting refugees.
‘What’s it saying?’ said Uckermark.
‘It’s saying it’s angry, that’s all,’ said Shabble.
This was a guess, for the dorgi’s uproar was so distorted by echoes that its clamour was completely unintelligible.
‘Here,’ said Uckermark. ‘This way.’
And he led them up more stairs.
‘The pink palace,’ said Manthandros Trasilika. ‘That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?’
‘Guess again,’ said Uckermark.
‘We’re going up, at any rate,’ said Trasilika. ‘Up towards Pokra Ridge.’
‘And we’re near the surface,’ said Froissart.
‘You think,’ said Uckermark.
‘I’m sure,’ said Froissart. ‘I can smell sewage. It flows no depth at all into the underworld, or so say my guidebooks.’
‘Trust less to books,’ said Uckermark. Then: ‘Stop.’
They halted.
‘Shabble,’ said the corpse-master. ‘Take a look ahead.’
The imitator of suns emitted a low hum, spun thrice, then floated round the corner up ahead.
The humans waited.
For some considerable time.
Froissart took stock. The floor underfoot was a fine-meshed brown. He scuffed at it with his boots. It distorted, then reformed itself as before. Strange. Overhead, a dull grey ceiling of puddled roughwork plaster, or something which looked strangely like it. The walls were a sunset orange mottled with growths which looked like lichens and slit with jagged cracks like the crazed knifework of a manic murderer. From those wounds there slowly oozed gross globs of green and grey.
As Froissart speculated on the nature of that flux, he laid two fingers alongside his windpipe. Felt the skin hot, sweaty. Pushed in. Felt his pulse heavy-thumping. Slow, slow. Slow again. A pause. Lengthening. Had his heart stopped? No, for there it was again.
Slow-thump, slow-thump… pause… slow-thump.
He lived.
For the moment.
And that slow and steady rhythm spoke of strength and health, did it not? For he had paced long through the underworld, ascending stairs and up-tilted tunnels; yet his heart spoke more of sedentary peace. But then, that organ had been allowed plenty of recovery time by now, for the free-floating sun which was exploring ahead had been gone for an unconscionable time.
Froissart reached out and touched the slow outbirth of strangeness, finding the globs of green and grey to be gelid and slightly tacky. He brought his fingers to his nose. Smelt no odour. If the oozing stuff had a scent, it was not strong enough to defeat that of sewage.
At last, the floating bubble returned.
‘It’s all right,’ said Shabble. ‘The pergot’s elsewhere.’
‘Pergot?’ said Trasilika. ‘What’s a pergot?’
‘A thing which drinks blood,’ said Uckermark.
‘It would seem you risk much to bring us this way,’ said Froissart, wondering at Uckermark’s motives.
‘Much I may dare when Shabble is with me,’ said Uckermark. ‘Otherwise, there’s many tunnels down here that I’d not chance on my own.’
As for Uckermark’s motives, these were scarcely mysterious. The advent of a new wazir (or someone claiming to be a wazir) was sure to change the history of Untunchilamon. Given first access to such a dignitary, Justina Thrug and her minions could alter events in their own favour. And Uckermark, while his future was bound to that of the Cult of the Holy Cockroach, was nevertheless prepared to grant Justina her chance on account of certain residual loyalties and acknowledged debts.
Besides which, Uckermark both feared and disliked Master Ek. It was Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek who had granted the Cockroach Cult its present status as a Protected Religion. As legal counsel for the High Priest of a religion of such status, Uckermark was safe from the wrath of Aldarch Three. However, what Master Ek had given he could take away; and Uckermark grimly suspected that any absolute triumph for Master Ek might lead that dignitary to take freely and without hesitation.
Thus Uckermark sought to prolong the life and liberties of the Empress Justina for at least a little longer; for, in his present role as Shabble’s advocate, the corpse-master was doing very nicely for himself, a full three per cent of all Shabble’s monies finding their way into Uckermark’s pockets.
As Uckermark and his guests continued on their way, the bright-bobbing Shabble, confident that they were past those dangers which truly demanded vigilance, began to indulge Shabbleself in the preaching of holy doctrine.
‘Worship the cockroach,’ said Shabble, ‘and you will be reborn as cockroach. Such is the bliss! Never to know hunger, never to pay rent, never to endure the multitudinous pangs and pains of the human form. Holy is the cockroach and hallowed is His name. Happy is the cockroach and happy are we who will become cockroach.’
All this said Shabble, and more; but the newcomers had yet to be converted to the Cult by the time they reached the Moremo Maximum Security Prison, where guards intercepted them as they ascended from the lower dungeons. Uckermark knew these warders, and held them to silence with a gesture; seeing that Shabble was with him, they obeyed without question, falling in behind the corpse-master as an honour guard.
As Uckermark led the way onward and upward, Manthandros Trasilika asked no questions, thinking that what was left of his dignity would best be preserved by a decorous silence. But his priest was not so continent.
‘Where are we now?’ said Jean Froissart, catching a glimpse of a moody sky through a slit window.
‘In prison,’ said Uckermark. ‘Moremo Maximum Security Prison.’
‘I have to go now,’ said Shabble, who had spied that same window.
‘Go?’ said Uckermark. ‘Where?’
‘We’re sacrificing,’ said Shabble in great excitement. ‘Had you forgotten? We’re sacrificing a Sacred Moth to the Holy Cockroach. Today. Remember?’
‘Oh,’ said Uckermark. ‘I remember. Off you go then.’ Whereupon Sha bble, imitating a teenage cultist, drum- rumbled thrice then slipped ou t into the open air.
Uckermark was disappointed to see the imitator of suns flirt away through the window, for there were responsibilities (the carriage of messages and such) which he would liked to have placed upon that jaunting bubble. But the corpse-master knew he would lose Shabble’s services entirely if he tried to compel the eternal child with disciplines alien to its nature. Shabble would do much if persuaded that the doing was fun. But, as Ivan Pokrov had ultimately discovered, Shabble was not prepared to be a slave.
‘You mean to hold us here as prisoners?’ said Froissart, once Shabble had departed.
‘No,’ said Uckermark. ‘Merely to provide you with… with private conference facilities.’
And he refused to say more until he had introduced his guests to Bro Drumel. This most anxious of warriors, the semi-suicidal career soldier whom Nixorjapretzel Rat had earlier tried to blackmail, still had control of Moremo,
