'Some kind of warp ellipse, I think. Side effect of profound extradimensional stress. A clue.

And I think I've found another one.' Without taking his eyes from Mali's own, the Doctor disarmed the staser and pressed it back into her clammy hand. 'Here. It won't work, but holding the thing might still make you feel more brave.'

'I'm not afraid,' Mali said instantly.

The Doctor smiled faintly and took her free hand in his own. 'Then you can hold this too.' He tugged her, away from the direction of her phantom image. 'This way.'

'No, Doctor,' Mali said. 'We're going back to the others. You can open those doors again and let the others out.'

'Shan't.' The Doctor squeezed her hand a little more tightly. Their eyes met.

'Why did you let me find you?' she asked, quietly.

'I wanted company.'

She glanced behind her again. Her image was still turned away as if in disgust. The Doctor's grip on her hand was just beginning to hurt, though his face was still soft when she turned back to him.

'Let me show you something,' he whispered.

He let go of her hand only when satisfied she was following without protest. Mali had the sense that the tunnel was winding round, going deeper and deeper into who knew what.

'There,' said the Doctor.

He was gesturing at a small hole in the wall. Mali could see that the bonelike fabric of this place had worn so thin in this spot it had started to crumble away.

'Come on, then,' he encouraged her.

Mali squared up cautiously to the blackness. She waited as unfocused shapes slipped into solidity, then felt the hairs on her neck tingle once again.

Away from her, faintly glowing parallel lines bisected the gloom horizontally again and again, growing thinner as they stretched away into the distance. Each one had to be a tunnel like the one she was standing in. Two great tubes of bone stretched vertically away like spokes, jointing the tunnels, a support network of some kind.

'Quite a sight, isn't it?' the Doctor said. 'You'll notice the radii are equally spaced, and that the angles formed by each consecutive part are of perceptibly equal value.'

'A logarithmic spiral,' Mali muttered.

'Good; breathed the Doctor, like a teacher proud of his pupil. 'A polygonal line that intersects obliquely, at angles of unvarying value, all the straight lines radiating from a centre.'

Mali turned to him and crossed her arms. 'Such geometric precision only confirms that this place is an artificial construct built for a specific purpose. A purpose responding to the diseased tissues inside you, Doctor. A Faction trap.'

'Are you certain?' The Doctor shook his head and she felt her smugness slipping. 'If the number of spokes was infinite, the length of the rectilinear elements would reduce indefinitely and change the polygonal line into a curve.'

'Infinite? The technology doesn't exist.'

'Are you certain?'

'And even if it did, why bother?'

The Doctor pressed his eye to the gap in her place. 'Perhaps this place had no choice in the matter.'

'You're talking in riddles, Doctor.'

'Sorry.' He paused for a moment. 'I suppose I'm just trying to distract myself from thinking about where the logarithmic spiral most commonly embodies itself in nature.'

Mali remembered the Doctor's distress at the phantom he'd seen back in the chamber, and felt her blood run cold. 'In a spider's web.'

'Consider our view.' The Doctor stepped aside to allow her another look at the endless, fibrous tunnels glinting in the halflight. 'I think we're two flies caught in the web of the largest, cleverest spider in history.'

'Wait.'

Mali obediently stopped at the Doctor's command. She kept telling herself that was exactly what she was doing already, just biding her time until the Doctor was sufficiently off guard so she could overpower him.Well, in theory, maybe. But Mali knew she was matching the Doctor's long stride along these damned corridors because she didn't know what else she could do. She was afraid, and fear was making her a sheep. She wondered if the Doctor acquired all his companions in this way.

At least she was keeping tabs on him. Perhaps Vozarti would find a way out and come looking; he'd find her with the Doctor, and in the distraction perhaps she could act. Show them both she was experienced enough to think clearly and function effectively, whatever the situation. As the Doctor had been doing for centuries.

Except, in this place, it was clear he was just as frightened as she was. He was just better at concealing it, and she envied him that more than anything.

'What are we waiting for?' she asked.

'Headache got worse a moment ago.' His face was clammy in the pale luminescence of the tunnels. 'It's just a feeling, but ...'

Abruptly he began walking backwards, waving his head about as he sniffed the air. Then he turned to face the wall and stopped.

Mali saw what he was staring at. 'I'm sure that doorway wasn't there before,' she said slowly.

The Doctor looked as if he were trying to stare the sturdy wooden door down. 'Agreed.

Which suggests that some-' He faltered over the word, rubbed a hand over his eyes. 'It suggests we're meant to go through.'

'Predestination?' Mali scoffed with exaggerated contempt.

'I used to think Me was made up on the spot,' the Doctor said. "That's the way it should be.

Nothing in the future should be written down. But for a long time now ...'

Apparently tiring of pursuing his line of thought, the Doctor pressed a palm flat to the door.

Before he even touched it, it was swinging open and he was walking through.

She acted without thinking and followed him through. Then she swore in disbelief.

The magic door had led from the sinister tunnel to a wideopen heath. A desolate tract of wasteland stretched out before them, patchy grass and scrubland rippling in a chill wind. The ground was damp, as if it had just been raining. The sky itself was bone grey, lost in smudges that might have been clouds.

'Maybe "written down" was the wrong analogy,' the Doctor murmured, eyes screwed up from the downpour. "This is more like a watercolour.'

Mali looked at him. 'A what?'

'A kind of painting.' He paused, seemed to become more thoughtful. 'What's worrying me is whose signature it will carry. And whether or not it's a fake.'

He set off at a brisker pace. Mali felt the wet mud suck at her grey shoes as she followed him, shoes that had never been exposed to the elements. The Doctor's own were battered brown.

They seemed to glory in the mud caking them, just as he did, striding on against the blustery wind.

Mali kept up with the Doctor for some time before deciding she should be ahead of him. She was about to start jogging, when she realised the Doctor had come to a sudden halt. Peering into the grey naze, she saw what it was that had taken his attention.

Half buried, incongruous in the scrubland, was a large mahogany cupboard. And there, just by his feet, was a collection of silver knives, forks and spoons, all bent and distorted.

'How did these things get here?' Mali asked.

But the Doctor was looking over her shoulder at something. She turned and saw a white pillar, partially sunken in the mud, some way away.

'Doctor?'

He pushed past her, splashing leadenly towards it, slipping, stumbling, always keeping on.

She herself was skidding in the wet mud as she tried to keep up with him.

As they got closer to the object, Mali could see it wasn't a pillar: it was a statue of some kind.

Buried up to its shins in the mud, it looked like a chess queen, carved from ivory or bone.

'Happy?'

Mali slithered to a halt a few feet behind the Doctor. His tone chilled her more than the wind.

'What are you talking about?' she asked.

He skidded round to face her, clearly distraught. 'This is what you've been searching for.

This is why you've done so much, and why you're chasing so many terrible things. All in her name ...' He turned back to the bone statue. 'Compassion.'

The ashen figure was slick with rain, its face twisted in a silent scream.

Chapter Seventeen.

Shadowplay

'It's all right. You can let go of me now.'

It was something Fitz would never have imagined himself saying while caught in a clinch with a gorgeous doll, but Tana's grip on his wrist had cut off sensation to his fingers. He pulled off her mask with his free hand. Tarra's brown eyes were large and unblinking as she stared at the Visualiser, or at the empty space around it where Ressadriand and Eton had stood.

He gently tugged her round to face him. She looked at him as if she'd been unaware he was even there before letting him take his wrist back. He could see the marks her nails had made in the skin. The poor cow must be in shock. He didn't blame her.

This was a game that had got well out of hand.

Kaufima appeared in front of him, tears running down her face. "They just vanished.'

'That's what it looked like,' Fitz agreed cautiously.

'Rubbish,' Kellen snapped. 'The pressure was too much for Ressadriand to handle, that's all.

He couldn't take it, so he and his wet nurse rigged all this up to scare us.'

Fitz narrowed his eyes. 'What colour's the sky in your world, Kellen?'

'Burnt orange,' Kaufima whispered, staring into space, the sarcasm lost on her.

'Good idea, Fitz,' Kellen said, smiling widely. 'Keep her distracted, thinking about what's familiar.' He laughed, pulled off his halfmask. 'I have to hand it to Ressadriand: that was quite a show. I'll have a lot to live up to.'

Fitz felt a familiar sinking feeling. 'What are you talking about, Kellen?'

Kellen turned and looked at Fitz like he was dirt. 'We've still got things to do and we'll get them done a lot faster now I'm in charge.'

Fitz looked nervously round at the cowled brethren. 'Didn't notice anyone casting votes.'

'No need.' Kellen smiled smugly round at his audience. Rattled themselves, they were clearly responding to his confidence. 'Proposed by: me. Seconded by ... Hey, Tarra, want to second me?'

Tarra's face was still pale, and she was back to staring at the Visualiser. Clouds of static whirled and bled into each other hypnotically over its monitor.

Fitz tore his gaze away and shook his head to clear it. To think he was the one normally accused of living in a dream world. 'Don't you think all that can wait? We need to find out what really happened to Eton and Ressadriand.'

Kellen persisted. 'Come on, Tarra, everyone else seems amenable to my taking over as head of the coven.'

Fitz ignored both Kellen and the murmurs of assent that greeted his question and jumped in before Tarra could say a word. 'They didn't leg it anywhere the lights weren't out for long enough.'

'My first act will be to restore the great Sage of Paradox to life,' Kellen proclaimed. "This very night. Hey, why so cagey, Tarra? It was your idea to resurrect Greyjan in the first place.'

Fitz had opened his mouth to start shouting when Kellen's words sank in, and he fell silent.

Tarra's idea? He suddenly had the oddest feeling that if this had been an Armchair Theatre play on TV, menacing incidental music would've started up right about now.

Kellen clapped his hands, pacing round, trying to dispel the edgy atmosphere building in the cave. 'All right, everybody, maybe the monkey's right. Look outside, check that Ressadriand and Eton aren't hiding there waiting to play any more tricks on us.'

'Do you think they will be?' Kaufima said, still rattled.

'I promise you, they'll be far away from here by now.' Kellen kissed her extravagantly on her forehead, and nuzzled his nose against her wet eyes. She giggled and pushed him away.

'Come on, then,' he said softly. 'Get going.'

She nodded, squeezed his arm, and hurried after the others towards the comfort of daylight.