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'Rakshassa?'

'Yes, rakshassa. Plural, rakshassi. A type of Hindu demon.'

'Well, whatever it is, it'll have to get through me to get to you.'

I shuffled forward. It shuffled back. Emboldened, I shuffled forward a bit more.

It leaped for my throat, using its tail as a spring.

I dived for the floor, and felt the acrid wind of its passage as the rakshassa passed over my head and hit the doorframe. Plaster showered me. I rolled to one side. The rakshassa whirled and smashed the floor where I had been lying with its spiked tail. I scrambled to my feet. The thorny protrusions that were its face were all pointed at me and trembling. I backed slowly towards the cool breeze from the window, planning to dive out. It anticipated me, and manoeuvred me sideways, towards a corner.

I quickly scanned the room. The Doctor had vanished, sensible man. There was nothing large enough to use as a weapon save the wardrobe, and try as I might, I couldn't think of a realistic attack strategy with it. The rakshassa raised itself up on the tips of its wings and lashed its tail, preparing to strike.

I took a deep breath.

The wardrobe door slammed open and the Doctor leaped out, yelling at the top of his voice and whirling his umbrella around his head. He fetched the rakshassa an almighty crack across one of the spikes of its snout. It snapped off in a spray of pink, watery fluid. The rakshassa screamed - an undulating, unearthly noise like a nail in the eardrum - and shuffled backwards to the window.

'Thanks,' I breathed.

'I got you into this,' he admitted with a rare display of honesty, 'so I feel duty-bound to get you out.'

The rakshassa sprang across the room toward us. I tried to push the Doctor out of the way, but he took hold of my arm and shoved me into the wardrobe. The last thing I saw before the door clicked shut was the Doctor lunging towards one of the creature's wings with his umbrella, trying to puncture the membrane, then I was engulfed by darkness.

It took me less than a minute to smash the door down from the inside, and for most of that time I could hear nothing apart from my own laboured breathing. When I finally emerged, wreathed in splinters, the room was empty. I staggered to the window. The cool breeze and the scent of flowers were like something from a fairy-tale. All outside was darkness, apart from the occasional flicker of a fire. The stars glowed like the sun on waves.

And a shadow passed across the face of the moon, like a bird with a broken wing. It was carrying something limp.

Chapter 10

In which a train once again figures in the narrative and our heroes encounter a few familiar faces.

A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.

Water trickled like perspiration down the ice block in the centre of the carriage. I watched the drops as they hesitantly felt their way across the shining surface to join the water sloshing in the tray beneath. They had eroded the base of the block to such an extent that the ice was balanced unsteadily upon a thin stem. I had been waiting for it to topple for three hours now, hypnotized by its slow disintegration, my head hanging heavily and rocking back and forth with the motion of the carriage.

Professor Summerfield shifted slightly on the leather sofa opposite and murmured something in her sleep. Her eyes flicked restlessly behind closed lids. Her face was flushed and glossy. Holmes, sitting in a cane chair in the corner, was also dozing. What else was there to do in this relentless heat?

Something moved past the window. I peered intently, if somewhat blearily, through the gauze and the glass at one of the many banyans that dotted the plains. Its branches swelled straight out into a root system without feeling in need of a trunk. The sight cheered me momentarily: anything that interrupted the landscape and provided a moment of interest was worth cherishing. I gazed around for some other distraction but, apart from the scarlet blaze of a mohar tree in the distance, nothing