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last red light of the sun. The Ragwitch set off purposefully, pausing only to thrust back some of the yellow stuffing that leaked from her side. Once again, She did not look back.
    Crossing this flat, monotonous terrain seemed totake hours, and Julia dozed—asleep without closing her eyes, which were the Ragwitch’s, and so, never shut. A dream-like pattern of images filled her mind: loping through this dull land, then hurrying towards a rocky spire, a tower of twisted, volcanic rock which sparkled even in the starlight. The Ragwitch went to the spire, and began to climb…tirelessly, hand over hand, up to the very pinnacle, up to the blackest part of the night sky.
    Julia woke up in slow stages, as though she were swimming up from the bottom of a deep pool. The Ragwitch was now sitting on some sort of throne carved out of the glassy rock. Runes of red gold ran along the arms, disappearing down the front of the throne.
    Then, the Ragwitch looked down—and Julia felt her mind twitch, trying to tell nonexistent hands to grab hold of something before she fell…for the throne was on the very peak of the spire she had thought was a waking dream. The throne rested hundreds of meters up, on the thin needle-point of the spire’s peak, with nothing else about it, no flat place nor protective railing.
    The Ragwitch looked up again, tilting Her head back, and Julia felt Her lips creaking back across the snail-flesh gums, the mouth opening to scream again. The Calling Scream, the Voice of Summoning, welled up from the recesses of the Ragwitch’s dark power, high on Her ancient throne that men had called the Spire.
    This time, Julia screamed as well, a thin, mental shriek that was swallowed up by the Ragwitch’s own great roar. But it was there—a sign of Julia’s resistance to her captor.
    As the Calling Scream died away, the moon’s first light crept across the ground. It slowly inched forward, crossing the sparkling rock of the Spire, to light up the ground before it: a sunken bowl of that same glassy, lifeless rock. But long ago the rock had been shaped into tiers of seats, which wound erratically around and around in a giant spiral, as though shaped by a drunken architect.
    Then the Ragwitch’s Calling Scream was answered from the Terrace-Hole below by bellows and screams, mad hyena-like laughter and shrill whistlings.
    “Now you see them,” whispered the Ragwitch, Her thoughts battering at the silent Julia. “Do you like them?”
    Julia didn’t answer, horrified at the sight of the creatures that thronged in the moonlight below. The Ragwitch smiled again, and looked down at a particular group of followers.
    Tall, sallow, humanoid in shape, they had patches of scale underlying their jaws and throats, and out-thrust upper jaws, with dog-like fangs made for rending flesh. Their arms were long and gibbon-like, ending in yellow-taloned hands. Their piggy, deep-set eyes looked up at the Ragwitch in adoration.
    “The Gwarulch,” muttered the Ragwitch. “Sneaking beasts—hungry for meat, but not too eager to fight for it. Except in My service.”
    Julia shuddered, feeling the Ragwitch’s thoughts of blood and killing. And not just thoughts, but memories too. Stark, frightening images of past slaughters, the Ragwitch triumphant, feasting…
    Julia screamed again, forcing the Ragwitch’s memories away. But still, she could not close her eyes, and the Ragwitch looked down upon more of Her creatures, awaiting orders in the Terrace-Hole below.
    “Angarling,” She told Julia, mentally pointing out a group of huge, pale white stones, roughly cut columns. Julia had taken them for statues, or part of the rock terraces. Through the Ragwitch’s eyes and memory, she now saw that on each of the huge stones was the weathered carving of an ancient face—full of sorrow and torment, anger and evil, all etched into the white stone.
    “Angarling!” shouted the Ragwitch, and the stones moved. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, they