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By Root 588 0

relaxed. His voice was quiet. 'You'd think losing your memory would be like shedding a skin and being born anew. But it isn't. The things you can't remember, they still formed you. You're still a certain a shape, you're still who you always were.'

'Or what you always were,' Rust said flatly. 'You're eaten up with darkness, do you know that? That's how I found you. Not by your light, through your shadow.'

'What was that you set on my track?'

"There isn't really a good phrase for it in English. "Z« miasma nada"'.

'"Nothingness itself".'

'More or less. One of my more reliable tools.'

'You're not as corrupt as you claim. That was your father you tried to use me to kill, wasn't it? And you couldn't do it.'

'I couldn't do it,' said Rust in a dead voice. His back was to the fire. His eyes seemed to have no light in them at all.'But you've got it backwards.

That only proves how corrupt I am. All the lives I've taken, I could have restored them by taking his. He was going to die soon anyway. Having caused his death once and brought on so much evil in myself and suffering in others, why couldn't I kill him again, only earlier, so that none of it happened? But I didn't have the strength. And if I don't have the strength to kill him, then my only choice is to make sure he lives.'

'You're wrong.'

'What do you know about it?'

'I know that you can't make your father's life turn out right by reliving it.'

'Oh, do you?' Rust snarled 'You, who never ages, who has no past. Who time has set free. You presume to lecture me? You know nothing?

'You're buried alive, Rust!' The Doctor was shouting now. 'Your father is your grave!'

He started up from the chair, but as soon as he moved one of the lion heads whipped around and caught his upper arm. The other seized his wrist, and, as he hissed in pain, the face on the chair back leaned forward and sank its teeth into his shoulder. Rust watched impassively.

'All right!' the Doctor spat, after struggling uselessly for a few seconds.

'Call off your pets. I promise I won't bounce up and startle you again.' The heads tightened their grip. The Doctor gritted his teeth. 'Nice trick.'

'I have more.'

'I'm sure you do - your powers are exceptional. Have you taken any joy from them?'

'Joy isn't the point.'

"Then what is?'Wincing, the Doctor shifted to ease the pressure of the wooden jaws. 'All the suffering you've caused, don't you think you have a moral responsibility at least not to suffer yourself? Did you sacrifice those people on the altar of your misery? That really is obscene.'

'Maybe,' said Rust, unmoved. 'Compared to some of the behaviour I've witnessed, I'm a saint.'

'Which one? Jude? Why do you even attend mass, if you don't mind my asking? You don't strike me as a hypocrite.'

Rust shrugged. 'You don't stop believing in something just because you act against it. Every time I go, I think that maybe ' He hesitated.

'Maybe there'll be a sign. Telling you to stop.'

'Something of the sort.'

'You damned fool,' said the Doctor. 'What do you think I am?'

For an instant something like shock flickered across Rust's eyes. But only for an instant.

'You,' he said slowly, 'are my means to the end of a journey that has gone on way too long.'

Then he was behind the chair, gripping the Doctor's neck, shoving him forward. The carved heads shifted to seize his arms, holding him down as Rust ripped open the back of his shirt. The Doctor twisted futilely - 'Rust!' –

then froze, nauseated, terrified, disbelieving, as, smoothly and without hurry, Rust's hands slipped through his skin as though it were jelly and closed around his spine.

Chapter Twenty

It Has light When I Come to Kq Journey's End M. Pierre Bal always ate at the same restaurant in Lyon every Saturday night and he always ate the same thing: the sole or, if that wasn't available, the duck. With the sole he drank an unfashionable dry Riesling and with the duck Merlot. He always sat at the same corner table, and he always dined alone. And M. Oulette, the chef and owner, always