Except, in this last hour, for Sara and me.

  Cascade of crinkly black hair, delicate dark-eyed features.

  We had reached Ulitsa Avenue by way of the back wynds-and who was Sara really, inside herself?

  She was someone such as I had guessed her to be long ago-known her to be, when we were lovers-or she would not have saved me, as I had saved her.

  She was a person whose life had been shaped by a daemon of destiny, but who then rebelled. Alas, no rebellion could ever overthrow the system-that was where our revolutionaries were in error-since the fabric of reality itself depended on the system. The physical world was only a projection of the magical war, which had always powered it.

  We halted to take stock. Housewives, errand-boys, workmen in cloth caps hurried by. I gazed at Sara’s face in the gaslight of the thoroughfare.

  “Who are you, Sara? And who am I? Maybe now we can start to find the answer to both those questions!”

  She wrinkled her nose in what I took for a panicked moment to be a sneer of disgust. Then she moaned, and touched the side of her head.

  “I ache.” Her head, where I had clubbed her unconscious. She was driven by her daemon; she would have killed me otherwise.

  She sighed. “Pain’ll pass.”

  My own flesh stung where I had been pricked.

  “Pain’ll pass forever, soon, Sara.”

  “One way or another.”

  “There’s a cafe in Prakhoda Arcade,” I began.

  She laughed. “It would be really stupid to get drunk, and miss the end of the world.”

  “Hmm, I didn’t do too well the last time I drank there.”

  “We should wait in the open. That way we can watch the sky, the roofs, the stars. We can be warned.”

  We walked along to Perehod Square, crossroads of the city, and sat on a marble bench. Sara’s migraine had faded away. We watched carts, carriages, and fiacres pass. We watched nameless Chornyfolk who all thought of themselves as individuals, even though each possessed only a tiny fraction of soul. A militiaman stared at us, so we held hands. We looked at the Mahgeela Tomb, dominating the north side of the square. Sara hummed a patriotic anthem from one of the composer’s oratorios; I responded by whistling something frivolous of Spomenik’s. An hour passed. Elderly folk sat on other benches; one ancient man fed crusts to pigeons. Two middle-aged lovers kissed. Mothers rested with toddlers.

  Women in dark serge swept the pavements with brooms.

  A pair of militiamen approached. Sara’s black chemise was open half way to her breasts. One of the obsidian buttons was missing from her black uniform jacket. I was dressed in my off-duty Bellogard duds-jerkin, trousers, and shirt-which were dirtied and rumpled by a night in the cell and a spell on the rack.

  The militiamen halted before ue.

  “You’ve both been here a long time.”

  “On royal duty, Officers,” said Sara. “Ahstav’meenya! Go away.”

  This particular phrase in the magical language of Chorny must have been familiar to the militia; an agreed palace code. The men nodded, moved on.

  “Poor buggers,” she muttered.

  “Them?”

  “Yes, them. All of them.”

  The sky was clear that night, and the civic gas-lighting only dimmed, but did not eclipse the stars. Thunder grumbled far away. The air trembled.

  Glavny Boulevard was a valley between buildings, dammed by Vauxhall Station. Lightning flickered far beyond that dam, high in the heavens. Black cloud boiled into view from the north, eating the constellations. The ominous cloud-front rolled swiftly towards us.

  “It’s starting, Pedino!” We both stood up.

  She produced the painting of the serpent. Together we held the painted pane towards the tomb so that reflected floodlighting shone through the glass, through that red and green serpent coiling about a ladder, jaws agape. We clung tightly to each other as though a storm wind was about to sweep us from the pavement.

  Half the sky was hidden; or had ceased to exist. A curtain as wide as the world was rushing ever closer. “Now, Sara?”

  “No; watch Vauxhall Station. When something happens to that, we’ll jump.”

  We were both trembling. The city was trembling. Of a sudden Chorny was built not of stone and marble and ebony, but of sculpted black jelly.

  One moment the floodlit fa9ade of the station a couple of kilometres away was as monumental as ever. The next moment the station became. a ghost of itself. An image, not substance. A construction of dust; which vanished. Darkness gobbled Glavny.

  “Now!”

  We spoke magic, we leapt.

  We didn’t let ourselves return from the space-beyond-space. We knew there was nowhere to return to, only oblivion. I tried to put from my mind as nonsense everything I had ever known about our kingdoms, about kings, queens, knights, and bishops. About forward magic, crosswise magic, magic of the diagonal kind. These had no more meaning, no more relevance. I sought-without knowing what I sought-for othermagic. For strangemagic. I didn’t try to image what strangemagic might be-how could I? I tried to submit to it.

  Even whilst leaping we leapt again. We held the symbol of the serpent out before us.

  From ultimate distance the serpent’s huge head rushed towards us!

  Its body stretched back to forever, long and strong. The skin was a flexible mosaic, blotched green and red. Jaws yawned open, fangs wide apart. Tiny beads of eyes stared fixedly. Its gullet was red, black- dark deeper down. The mouth was a cave; we were only little birds or pipistrelles.

  Down into itself the serpent sucked us. we were rushing, falling, sliding downhill through darkness absolute. towards a spark of light which suddenly swelled, dilated.

  We lay sprawled in the filthy gutter of a sandy street. Fishheads and maize husks rotted in a trickling stream that stank of urine. A scrawny cat spat, fur erect, and fled. Flies swarmed. Blinding sun beat down on endless rude shacks made from board and rusty metal sheets. Smoke drifted from eccentric chimney pipes. Grey scavenger birds spiralled overhead on wide, serrated wings.

  As we scrambled up, skinny brown children shrieked and pitched pebbles at us. A fat woman in ballooning skirts and tatty blouse yelled resoundingly from a doorway. Perched on her head was a bowler hat.

  Voices took up the cry: “Snake-drop! Snake-drop!” Within moments a whole crowd of ill-clad men, women, and kids had boiled out of shanty doors, spilled from side-alleys.

  They scowled, jostled, argued, grabbed one another, broke loose. Some ran up the sandy street; a few ran down past us. Others scaled the sides of shacks to scan the vicinity. Half a dozen people rushed directly at us.

  Sara drew her dagger-I had none. Her blade held them at bay.

  Or did it? Their actions made no sense. Did they want to rob us, strip us?

  Or what? I heard a loud “twanging” noise. As one person, all the beggar-people swung their heads towards the source. The tin roof of a sturdier dwelling built of mud-bricks was shining brilliantly. Sunlight rebounded upwards in a column of light. Within the light stood a tall ladder. It rose almost vertically without any support. The topmost rungs were foggy, vague, like a drawing half-erased.

  First arrivals were already scaling the side of that adobe house, kicking toe-holds, clawing for finger- grips. Screaming, elbowing, shouldering, tripping, a mob thrust past us. Very soon a scrimmage milled against the wall. The strongest, the nimblest made progress upwards.

  A tall burly man, atop the tin roof, hurled himself towards the ladder and climbed furiously. A lithe raggy woman was second. Next, an urchin of a boy. More people reached the roof and scrambled towards the ladder.

  The first climber reached those top rungs. He too grew vague. he disappeared.

  Followed by the young woman.

  The urchin, too.

  By now three more people were climbing furiously. One surged up the backside of the ladder, heedless of feet upon his fingers. The roof was starting to sag under the weight of bodies.

  T-wang! The ladder vanished. Also the column of light. Three climbers fell out of mid-air on to their fellows below. Abruptly the roof gave way; the front wall collapsed as well. From amidst a cloud of dust came wailing and cries of pain.

  Another ragged boy raced up to us and stuck his tongue out.

  “You mista! You mista! Tha’ wa’ yer ladder, if you’d had a’ sense. Now you’se a’ neighbour, hey?” He grinned; a few teeth were missing. I could understand his slovenly talk after a fashion.

  As the disappointed contenders extricated themselves from the wreckage, cursing and nursing minor injuries, some stumbled away disconsolately with no further interest in anything. Others eyed us, and headed in our direction.

  The boy danced a circle round us, singing:

  Miss yer ladder Makes yer madder Than any adder!

  I placed my hand over Sara’s, upon the dagger hilt. I spoke magic: “Opasnostpo Zhivot!”

  No blue fire flickered round the blade.

  “Let’s leap. Sara. I don’t like the look of this.”

  “Yes.”

  We spoke our journey-magic. Nothing happened.

  Nothing at all.

  “We seem to have succeeded,” I said to her. “We’re in another world with other laws. What sort of laws? What sort of world?”

  The disgruntled slum dwellers idled towards us, cut and bruised, their rags more tattered than ever by the tussle.

  Sara spoke quickly. “I can guess a couple of the rules! Kids play a game in Chorny-with dice on a board. It’s called snakes and ladders. Snakes swallow you and dump you in the shit, far from your goal. Ladders let you climb a long way to somewhere better. This is a world of snakes and ladders. I’ll bet you we’ve just slid into the worst of slums, furthest from anywhere we ever want to be. And I’ll bet you that normal travel won’t get us anywhere with any certainty!”

  “Shall we ask our new hosts?” (Who continued to advance, with no great haste.) “Or shall wc run for it?”

  Many other spectators were arriving, attracted by all the commotion, or by the recent sighting in the distance of the magic ladder.

  It was rather too late to run anywhere.

  Part Three

  Strangemagic, Kingmagic

  The boy’s name was Albertini. He seemed to have adopted us as his good luck, which was good luck for us since Albertini knew slum life inside out.

  “Never short’n me name!” he warned us. Albertini (not “Teeny”) looked seven years old, but was actually twice that age. Some disease of the glands had retarded his growth, making him a likely loser in the scramble for magic ladders. The few times when he found himself close to a ladder and tried to scamper over other people’s backs he had been plucked loose and hurled aside hurtfully, not least to his pride.

  “A’m gonna ’scape someday,” he vowed.

  “Us too,” said Sara. “Not just some day. Next week! Tomorrow! I hate it here.”

  We were sharing Albertini’s new billet: a large hole scooped in the side of a chalky pimple of a hill ten minutes’ trot from where we’d been dumped by the snake. Sections of rusty corrugated iron propped on struts reinforced the crumbly ceiling. Sacking hung over the entrance.

  This den used to belong to the agile urchin who had succeeded in scaling the ladder. Albertini had promptly occupied this choice dwelling, with some assistance from us.

  “No use tryin’ fer the big fella’s place-or the wench’s. Too many other grabbers,” Albertini explained. We had arrived neck and neck with another savage orphan, who also witnessed the departure of the previous owner to some happier part of the world. We’d established squatters’ rights by virtue of muscle, a few flourishes of Sara’s knife, and belligerent screams from Albertini. Slum etiquette dictated that we now owned this shelter. This hole in the hill was a big improvement on the boy’s previous circumstances, namely dossing in the open.

  A slum wasn’t necessarily full of vicious people who were always perpetually at odds; merely of men, women, and children who were numbly desperate, whose daily life was one of degradation salted with wild, selfish, unlikely hope. An etiquette did exist. If need be, rules of behaviour were enforced by a “people’s court” and brutal beatings. Area by area there was even civic organization in such matters as maintaining the water supply, carting excrement away, and guarding communal goats that grazed the weeds. As citizens of this new realm we must soon take our turn at labour or else be beaten up and expelled into another sector.

  These slum dwellers grew maize and vegetables, kept chickens, pigs, and goats, and farmed fish in dirty ponds. Other foods appeared by magic every now and then in the form of little hills of scraps and stale left-overs. Second-hand goods, too: used building materials, worn-out clothes, whatever. Snakes regurgitated these tawdry supplies by night, presumably having extracted them from more prosperous, salubrious parts of the world. Thus the slum subsisted, always hungry, always dreary, ragged, and dirty.

  At first Sara and I were cautious how much we told Albertini of our previous magic lives. When he realized that we were holding back he flew into a bitter rage. I decided that offending our diminutive ally wasn’t the wisest policy.

  Amazing what a compact presence Albertini had. He wasn’t a little boy; he was a wild gnome, a skinny bundle of passions, dreams, ambitions. He was cunning, bitter, honourable, intelligent, ignorant.

  Had he knowledge of sex? Even with himself? Was he potent? He showed scant interest in Sara’s body when we lay together in the chalk cave at night, with a candle stub for our lamp and sacks for bedding. Admittedly Sara didn’t expose too much of herself. Maybe sex hadn’t yet crossed Albertini’s mind. It certainly crossed mine (which is why I mention the matter). Sara and I hadn’t made love for four years. The present surroundings hardly seemed propitious, but when I lay in the sack I ached.

  To backtrack, our confessions quickly sweetened the boy. Albertini’s immediate assumption was that Bellogard and Chorny must be remote cities somewhere else in his own world, desirable residences which might be reached by magic ladder. It took a while to convince him that a place could exist which wasn’t ruled by magic snakes and ladders-especially when I admitted that it no longer did exist. Was this a subterfuge of ours? He huffed and puffed. Weight of detail persuaded him.

  He accepted our account of the crackling blue void as what you would experience when mounting the topmost rungs of a ladder; should you be so lucky.

  From tales-some hearsay, some first-hand-of people snatched by snakes and dumped in this slum to live as paupers, Albertini had a foggy idea of the better parts of the world. Did he embroider romantically, luxuriantly, upon this sketch in his mind? I guessed this might be Albertini’s fatal flaw (in addition to his glandular stature). He made the “outside” seem too wonderful, too distant. A dream. Which meant that in his heart of hearts he didn’t genuinely believe in eventual success. Thus he would fail.

  The boy’s scepticism at aspects of my description of Bellogard modified my opinion. How easy it would have been to incorporate Bellogard fantastically into personal mythology. Albertini refused this option. Instead he pierced through to what he claimed was the most salient item of all: Sara’s picture of the serpent which had summoned an actual snake to swallow us. She still had the glass with her; it hadn’t broken in transit.

  Albertini grew excited. “Yer scrape the magic paint off. Colour by colour. Yer wet it again. Yer paint a ladder!”

  She explained, “You can’t do that with paint.”

  Myself, I spotted a more fundamental obstacle. “Why should that magic still work? Our other magic won’t work here.”

  “Ha! Yer other magic b’longed to yer Chorny an’ Bellogard. Snakes b’long ’ere.”

  “Even if we could summon a snake,” said Sara, “what’s the point?”

  “A’ll tell yer. Ladders of’n ’appen near snakedrops, soon after. Saw that yerself. Gives the dumped sods a chance; not as they’re of’n in much of a state to take ’vantage.”

  So far as Albertini could tell, only one person in a thousand ever climbed a ladder or was swallowed by a snake. However, once this had happened to a person they were likely to encounter more snakes and ladders.

  “Most folks live ord’nary, see? Sweet lives, shit lives. Stuck in ’em.”

  I was puzzled. “Why don’t people walk away from shitty lives to somewhere better?”

  “Can’t cross squares, stupid.”

  “Squares?” asked Sara. “Same as on a chequerboard?”

  “Dunno nuthin’ ’bout boards. In’t boards as stop us. It’s cracks. Great plungin’ cracks as wide as from ’ere to the reservoir divin’ down f’rever. Only way to ’nother square’s by snake or ladder.”

  “So this world’s divided up into huge separate squares of land? Square countries?”

  “Hasta be, Sara! Seen the nearest crack, meself. Wouldn’t much fancy fallin’ in. Listen a me: yer call a snake...” “And it dumps us somewhere else in this neighbourhood where we don’t even own a hole in the ground.”

  “Naw, Puddino. Yer hold yer magic glass backwards or upside down. Mebbe snake has to b’have like a ladder? Whisk us away? If not, yer’ll see a ladder next.”

  We decided to give this a try the very next night. Sara was no more anxious than I was to commence our civic duties of scavenging, shit-shifting, and goat-herding. The slum was vast, but-as I say-petty bosses ran each zone and we could expect a visit before long.

  Sara and I perched on top of our chalk hill watching a splendid crimson sunset, the only gorgeous thing hereabouts. Smoke rose from cooking fires. The air was hot and foetid. Buzzards and vultures circled. Albertini was elsewhere, on the scrounge. She and I held hands. And she told me about herself; many things which I’d never known.

  The Squire’s Tale “I was an orphan, though I wasn’t raised in quite the same way as Albertini! In Chorny the state looked after orphans, and it often took kids of cruel or indifferent parents into custody. I was told that my own parents-a metallurgist at the Royal Mint and his wife-both died in a flu epidemic when I was three months old; I had no memories of them. I was brought up amidst five hundred brothers and sisters in the state orphanage operated by the Khram, supervised by Bishop Lovats.” “Five hundred brothers and sisters!” I thought how I had screwed up the life of my one and only sister.