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time, but immediately set to  lifting the lower  half of the  casket lid. It defeated his single arm however and Harry went  to his assistance, eager to get the job done and be away.
    Touching  the solid wood of the casket brought his nightmare  back with  breath-snatching force: the Pit opening  beneath him,  the illusionist rising from his bed like a sleeper unwillingly woken. There was no such spectacle now,  however. Indeed  a little life in the corpse might have made  the job easier. Swann was a big man, and his limp body was uncooperative to a fault. The  simple act of lifting him from  his casket took all their breath and attention. He came at last, though reluctantly, his long limbs flopping about.
    'Now  . . .' said Valentin '. . . downstairs.'
    As they moved  to the door something in the street ignited, or so it seemed, for the  interior suddenly brightened. The light was not kind to their burden. It revealed the crudity of the cosmetics applied to Swann's face, and the burgeoning putrescence beneath. Harry had  an instant only to appreciate these felicities, and then the light brightened again, and he realised that it wasn't outside, but in.
    He looked up at Valentin, and almost despaired. The luminescence was even  less charitable to servant than to master; it seemed to strip the flesh from Valentin's face. Harry caught only a glimpse of what it revealed beneath - events stole his attention an instant later - but he saw enough to know that had Valentin not been his  accomplice in this venture he might well have run from him.
    'Get him out of here!' Valentin yelled.
    He let go of Swann's legs, leaving Harry to steer Swann single-handed. The corpse proved recalcitrant however.
    Harry had only made two cursing steps towards the exit when things took a turn for the cataclysmic.
    He heard Valentin unloose an oath, and looked up to see that the mirror had  given up  all pretence to reflection, and that something was moving up from its liquid depths, bringing the light with it.
    'What is it?' Harry breathed.
    'The Castrate,' came the reply. 'Will you go?'
    There was  no  time to obey  Valentin's panicked instruction however, before the hidden thing broke the plane of the mirror and invaded the room. Harry had been wrong. It did not carry the light with it as it came:
    it was the light. Or rather, some holocaust blazed in its bowels, the glare of which escaped through the creature's body by whatever  route it could. It had once been human; a mountain of a man with the belly and the breasts of a neolithic Venus. But the fire in its body had twisted it out of true, breaking out through its palms and its navel, burning its mouth and nostrils into one ragged hole. It had, as its name implied, been unsexed; from  that hole too, light spilled. By it, the decay of the flowers speeded into seconds. The blossoms withered and died. The room was filled in moments with the stench of rotting vegetable matter.
    Harry heard Valentin call his name, once, and again.
    Only then did he remember the body in his arms. He dragged his eyes from the hovering Castrato, and carried Swann another yard. The door was at his back, and open. He dragged his burden out into the landing as the Castrato kicked over the casket. He heard the din,
                       39 and then shouts from Valentin. There followed another terrible commotion, and the high-pitched voice of the Castrate, talking through that hole in its face.
    'Die and be happy,' it said, and a hail of furniture was flung against the wall with such force chairs embedded themselves in the  plaster. Valentin had escaped the assault however, or so it seemed, for an instant later Harry  heard the Castrato shriek. It was an appalling sound: pitiful and revolting. He would have stopped his ears, but he had his hands full.
    He had almost reached the top of the stairs. Dragging Swann  a few steps further he laid the body down. The Castrate's light was not