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blood and rage and violence, and worse; it was grief, despair and desolation; and overlaying all, the grey of escapeless eternity.
    Men will come to the Earth and because the Guardians have taken my eye I cannot see into their hearts and they will not worship me. But I have other powers. With my two remaining eyes I shall keep watch over the hideously dry, warm lands where they will live. I can hold sway over the elements.
    I have boundless power. I can make for myself helpers who will instill chaos into their existence. And – grim triumph shook the Worm’s body like an earthquake as the idea came to it.
    I can take for myself a human in which to hide my mind, so that I can move unseen among men, learning their words and ways and weaknesses. In the second body I can hide when they try to slay me. And then I can still – even without my eye – see into their hearts!
    My enmity is as boundless as my power.
    Men will evolve upon the Earth – my Earth, the invaders! – seeking life and joy and hope. I will give them confusion and pain and death.
    And at the end of all, desolation.
    In the whirling vertigo of its thought-images, the Worm did not notice, or took for an ache in its empty eye-socket, a small subconscious stone of doubt. If it had looked, it would have seen a chilling vista of eternity: Earth, stripped of all life and beauty, and itself, lying alone and motiveless upon the dead husk for ever. But it did not look. It had already found too much diabolic joy to care.
    Desolation.
    ‘It wasn’t the first time I had the nightmare,’ Medrian told the Lady. ‘Nor the last. But I remember that time because it was the turning point. I struggled awake, trying to scream. My lungs were burning with the stench of smoke, and my side was knotted with cramp; I couldn’t think where I was, what had happened. But then the dream faded and I remembered… I was sitting in the bottom of a rank, weed-choked ditch, concealed by black trees. There was smoke drifting through the branches, and I could still hear the occasional faint shout in the distance. There was a man lying with his head on my lap, my commanding officer… and he was near death.
    ‘Alaak had lived under Gorethria’s rule for centuries, but we never accepted it. The rebellion was inevitable – and well-planned, so we thought. Our army had drilled in secret for years. I was seventeen and had already been a soldier since fourteen. We could not have trained harder or been more devoted… and yet, in one fell afternoon, it was over. Gorethria crushed us; just one division, led by Ashurek. Half the population dead, the rest waiting for the Gorethrian army to sweep across them – and me, a survivor crouched in a ditch, wishing I had died with the others.
    ‘By rights, I should have done. I had taken a deep sword thrust in my side, yet it had not killed me. There was no blood. And my officer, even as he lay dying beside me, could not forget how he had always disliked and distrusted me.’
    Even now, eight or more years later, the memory was still unpleasant. ‘Why did it have to be you with me at my death? Why you, Medrian?’ the officer had gasped. ‘Like a bloody basilisk, you are, always have been. I don’t think you’ve ever given a damn about Alaak, or anything else. You fight like an automaton. You take a deathblow and do not die. Are you human?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘You must be as sick with hatred as Meshurek and Ashurek and the rest.’
    Hate! Images of desolation reeled across her vision. She longed to cry out, No! I don’t hate. All this has happened because something… something loathes us all: the Serpent M’gulfn. But the words turned to clogging dust in her throat. In bitter silence, she gave him water and tried to make him comfortable.
    ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered at length, his breath failing. ‘It is not you I hate; it is Gorethria. Damn them to hell! Do we not even deserve to live? I am not afraid to die – I’m proud to die in