Black mud.

Through it, flames.

Something moved in front of a hearth, something barely a man, with a thin white gown clinging to his bones as if soaked through. Withered he looked. A cool air seeped from him, somehow. In his hands, more like the scaled feet of a chicken, he held an object. And when he spoke the voice was weak: ‘Come, little spark.’ The scaly hands opened up, but that black mud closed in around them. Mud that blotted out all sight.

Pressure was growing. Something was stuck. No air, no breath. Breath wouldn’t come. Mud was a taste.

Light broke and, with it, icy cold. Teeth of rock enclosed a narrow cave. Outside, through a fissure, the snow was falling. Within were men who moaned from pain; men gaunt and streaked with the black mud . . . or something like it. A dripping hand hung in the fissure as the moans grew loud, and then began to fade, becoming bubbles in the mud. Moans washing in, then ebbing out.

The mud wave surged. It came to life—spun, swooped, plucked, pulled at human skin. And still that pressure, squeezing, choking.

Again, light!

This light lanced out of an open hand—five bright white knives, each to a finger. It sliced the mud. Behind it, eyes shone wild and gold. A shadow flew. A bird beat wings, whipping a storm. It was a raven. Though not as dark as that black mud, the storm-wings blasted mud away.

What was left of it went dry, and cracked, and crumbled.

And there was stillness. The desert. Dull browns and yellows stretched away to each horizon, while above them grey skies loomed. Here there was peace.

I was dreaming . . . now I knew I was dreaming, but still held onto the peace. If I was still, I might stay here. Behind me, gypsum crunched. I turned.

White skin, black eyes, jaws parting—I grabbed my quilt, clutched at my throat and pawed my skin.

Slick with cold sweat.

Throwing the quilt away from my body, I wheeled my feet onto the floor and sat there, catching my breath. I rubbed my face and raked my hair. Then touched my throat and kneaded it, still aware of the sensation of choking.

Red bird, red bird, red bird . . . I nailed my focus to one of those red birds in my quilt, as I calmed down.

I’d never dreamed like that before—actually felt the cold air on my skin or tasted blood. Yes blood, not mud! Where had I ever seen a cave like that? Not in the Deep, not even down on digging level. And falling snow? I’d been a baby the last time I’d been anywhere near a snowfall, crossing the mountains with my family. I could barely remember it!

But then, that man. He’d used the same words as the ghost I’d seen appear in the workshop hours ago. That same voice, too! And much as I wished there was a way he could have simply been a dream I could forget, I knew he wasn’t. I’d seen him pass straight through a door to stand before me and say words. He was as real as all the rest; all of the unexplained things that had happened since the Disc. As real as my impossible survival.

I fumbled my shirt on, took the lantern and went up; the workshop dark. When I cleared away the day’s papers from the clepsydra’s face, the sun symbol had not even begun its arc across the rising dial: only a single curly ray could be seen chasing the tail of the gryphon that flew before it. It would be hours still before any movement came to this level.

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My eye slipped to the vertical cabinet, key sitting in its keyhole as I’d left it. Last night, once Rusper had got me to sit down in a chair and take some breaths, I’d evaded his questions; said I was tired and not thinking clearly. He’d wholeheartedly agreed.

Now I went back to the cabinet and reopened the door, finding the two coloured cloths with my light. I took my own to the workbench and rolled the Disc out on the wood, lantern light dipping as dregs of heat left the triglycerate crystal. I didn’t sit, though, piercing the Disc with a glare that dared it to defy me one more time.

Up at the forges last night, I’d almost thrown it in the fire. But I hadn’t. Had I? I’d . . . passed out, or something. Then woken up back in the workshop. And that was where that face, that man, that . . . ghost . . . had appeared. Was this a magic? Or had the answer I’d been looking for all these weeks, the Disc’s true nature, woken up? I held my breath and touched its mirror.

The blue light bloomed, outshone the lantern. No white blaze. No voice. No ghost. Just the blue glow and tiny tingle in my fingertips and knuckles.

I drew back—the glow faded and the dizziness I remembered from the wall rocked my whole body.

It was answering!

So I swept it off the workbench, held it chest-high in the cup of my hand so that my skin pressed from all sides except the top. Immediately my face’s reflection disappeared, blue glow rising. I heard my pulse. The tingle came, coursed over my wrist and up my forearm, and I swayed: now it was stronger. My body’s instincts said to drop it.

No, don’t! This wasn’t really pain. It was something else, so I refused to ease my grip as the feeling moved. Up it climbed, curved at my elbow, reached my shoulder. Now it came sliding up my neck. I tottered on my heels and, squeezing tighter, slammed my eyes shut.

Or thought I did. Closed was how they felt because close was what I’d made them do. And yet, if closed was what they were . . . The force filled me up, flowing like a stream from the tips of my fingers right down to the pads of my toes. It tensed every muscle and I wasn’t sure if I was remembering to breathe. Not because of pain—there wasn’t pain—but because I knew my eyes were closed. My eyes were closed.

But I could see.

I saw the workshop all around me, all in halos of that blue, except it wasn’t made of shapes or things or structures anymore. Furniture, machines, objects I knew stopped mattering, as if the presence of a thing were just the absence of nothing. Floors, walls and ceiling became boundaries as fragile as thin mist, all threatening to retreat at my touch.

My will dissolved them. Above, below and all around me, my awareness expanded as if my mind were its own torch, impossibly bright. I saw my bedchamber behind me and straight through its wall to the room beyond. The weapon-works. Through that wall a sparts-tip followed, the disposals above, fresh units of sandstone a floor beneath them. Awareness expanded every time I put a touch to what I thought was its limit, and the Deep unfurled on that command as though its stone and brick were even frailer than so much water-logged parchment. Tunnels and rooms, holes and cracks. Ladders, trapdoors, scaffolds, winch-lifts, pipes. Wider it ranged, unveiling secrets, laying claim to more and more, and then more still. While high above me, the citadel shimmered full of life like a massive painted ceiling.

Gasping, I let go. Opened my eyes. The current left me with a suction on my guts that made me almost double-over, and the Disc, going dim again, dropped onto the workbench. It wobbled there in a sliver of light from the lantern.

My throat was dry, the walls too close. I stood there, trembling a little.

How much more could I have seen if I’d dared to look even further? The whole of the Deep right down to digging level? Could I have followed the pipelines to the aquifer itself or delved into pockets even deeper underground? Could I have peeped into the chambers of the citadel estates; watched the High Commander and the Captain asleep in their beds; or stepped into the tower of the Satrap himself?

And was this the secret I’d been chasing—the answer to the power of the Disc, at last? Would its twin do the same? Or was this all still a dream?

As I pinched my left ear between my nails, just to be sure, the triglycerate died.

Yes, it was real.

It changed everything.