The sun was already setting by the time Hex trudged through the town gates into Passach. At the station he learned that the sleeper north would not be arriving until the fourth bell. He bought a ticket and, from a nearby stall, a pasty and retired to an unheeded corner to eat it.

The pasty and his exhaustion must have combined to send him to sleep, for a train whistle woke him with a start from a dream in which he was in the clearing again, the Terrori was lungeing at him and he felt the way the man’s flesh gave on the knife and saw the scarlet blood leap out in implausible quantities. The relief at finding himself miles away from that sinister glade, surrounded by the noise and bustle of the station, was overwhelmed by the realisation that he was on the verge of missing his train. He sprinted along the concourse to the platform and came to a halt beside a family who were boarding the same carriage. A porter had just finished stowing the family’s luggage in their sleeper and accepted the proffered tip with a grateful, ‘Thank you, Professor. Have a good journey, you and Mrs Franchestre. And you be a good girl now,’ he added to the golden-haired toddler who was yawning, her chubby cheek resting on her mother’s shoulder, staring at Hex, who was right behind them.

Hex wiggled his eyebrows at the child. She giggled and, reaching out her tiny hand, jabbed him in the nose. Hex jumped back: just as the little fingers had brushed his nose, he had felt something like – he wasn’t sure what. It was a bit like a mild electric shock and yet not. The mother turned, saying, ‘I’m so sorry. Ines, stop that. Don’t tease the poor boy, you naughty monkey.’

Ines, who was looking startled herself, buried her face in her mother’s jacket, leaving only her navy-blue eyes peeping out at Hex. She did not look contrite.

‘It’s fine,’ Hex assured the professor’s wife.

He could not help noticing that she was a handsome woman. He could see where the baby got her angelic good looks from. The pair of them did not match the professor at all, who, with their travel papers in one hand and a portmanteau in the other, looked like a harassed and balding stork. The three of them boarded the train and Hex at last gained the shelter of the carriage. That buzzing shock had reminded him of the danger he was in. Perhaps he had been followed and had missed another magical dart aimed in his direction? And there was something else, what was it, something the porter had said that tugged in his mind like a thread?

As the train drew out of the station he pretended to be engrossed in the newspaper left on his seat by an earlier passenger. Gradually all bustle ceased. One by one his fellow passengers fell asleep and soon the train’s lights went off, apart from a dim lamp at the end of each carriage.

Hex slept too and woke, he knew not how long after. He was instantly alert, but did not move a muscle. The train had stopped, but outside all was darkness – they were not at a station. Before he could make any sense of this however, the train came to life again and began to pick up speed. Some instinct made him leave his seat and go out into the corridor. As he reached the end of the carriage, the adjoining door from the next carriage opened. He had just time to slip into the toilet and pull the door shut before he heard the voices of the passing men.

‘He’s in this carriage, Inspector Galen,’ came the voice of the guard. ‘I made sure to take a note of it, directly the professor’s wife made mention of him. You’ll have the scoundrel now for sure.’

‘Be silent, man,’ came a low harsh familiar voice.

Hex, listening from behind the toilet door, felt his heart racing. The two men had passed on into the carriage proper. He had just moments before they discovered he was gone. What could he do? Where could he run? He tore open the door between the carriages and looked out. In the dim rushing darkness, he could just make out the faint outline of the steel ladder that gave access to the carriage roof. Looking down he could see the pale glimmer of the tracks speeding away below him. He did not wait for fear to overtake him. Seizing the ladder and taking courage from its cold solidity, he swung himself over onto it and started to climb, letting the carriage door slam shut behind him. The sound of the train on the track changed. They were going over a mighty bridge that spanned a seemingly bottomless abyss. The hammering of the wind threatened to tear loose his grip. He thought he heard sounds coming from the carriage below him and looked down. Had he been discovered?

The door flew open on the side of the train and the figure of a man appeared, leaning out into the blackness. Hex strained his eyes, trying to make out the man’s features – was it Galen? But then the man peered up and to his astonishment, Hex recognised the face of the professor. What in all the worlds was the man doing? He didn’t see Hex. Instead he checked his wristwatch. He looked up again at the moon, which was sailing in a clear sky full of stars. From inside the train there came a shout. The professor threw a hasty glance over his shoulder, then without further hesitation, gathered himself up and took a mighty leap into the void.

Hex, clinging on to the ladder horrified, caught a glimpse of the man’s flapping coat, the white patches of his hands and face as he fell, but before he could do anything, a massive blow seemed to strike the train. There was a dazzling white flash, like an immense lightning strike, which lit up the whole landscape for a split second, in a surreal green that burned on the eye, then blinked off. And in that flash, Hex remembered the thing that had been tugging at him – it was a name, Franchestre, that the Magus had spoken – Franchestre, John Franchestre, Professor Franchestre. What about him? In the blow, Hex had lost his grip and was thrown free of the train. He glanced off the side as he came back down and half-slid, half-fell down onto the service bridge that ran along the side of the track. The whole train shook from front to rear in a gigantic ripple and the brakes screeched as the driver, somewhere away in the front of the train, attempted to stop the shuddering machine. Cries and screams filled the air.

Hex lay half-stunned with his face pressed against cold metal, as the train drew to a halt on the track above him. But as the sounds of panic and disorder from within the carriages started to filter through to him, he realised that this was his chance to get away. He pulled himself up by the guard rail, aching and shaken, and began a halting stumbling run along the gantry to the safety of the great pine forest that lay at the far end of the bridge. The ring of his feet on the metal seemed to fill the air. The bridge felt as if it were miles up in the air. Looking down through the metal grille, he could see nothing but darkness. The world was reduced to the night, the bulk of the train above, the abyss below and the rapid patter of his feet on the metal.

But as he ran, the image of the professor falling away into the darkness kept coming back to him. Was it a coincidence that he had flung himself from the train a split second before the blast? Had he known it was coming? Was he trying to escape from it? Had he had some hand in it himself? What point had he come to in his life, that there was no other solution than to make that despairing leap into nothingness? The greater the leap, the higher the bridge…
Then he pictured himself, clambering up those steel rungs in the dark, desperate, hunted, cornered. Harried across the length and breadth of the Inner Bounds, scuttling through that noisome sewer like a rat, and the whole terrible sequence of events that had led to his bloodied hands in that accursed glade outside Passach.

His steps on the metal petered to a halt. No. It was enough. He would run no more, flying from one disaster to the next, like a leaf blown in an evil wind. He had had enough of running. Now it was time to act. With deliberation, he turned and set his feet on the long echoing track back to the wrecked train.