with fear, while the creature continued uncar-ingly on its way. A pack of child-sized bipedal rats rushed out of the alley mouth opposite us and swarmed all over the dead driver. They devoured the bloody mush with glee, stuffing it into their squeaking mouths with disturbingly human hands. In a matter of moments, there was nothing left of the driver but his bones, which the rats tidily gathered up and took with them as they hurried back into their alley mouth.
No-one paid any attention. The traffic kept moving, perhaps a little more urgently than it had before. On either side of the filthy road, men and women and others kept their heads down and pressed on, concerned only with their own business. Coming up the street from the other direction was a huge, flaming presence, taller than the surrounding buildings, burning so brightly it was hard to see what if anything was at the heart of the flames. It drifted through the crowds, crackling and smoking, but keeping its heat to itself. A giant millipede with a headful of snapping mouths scurried past, clinging to the sides of buildings. And a great ball of compacted maggots rolled sluggishly down the middle of the road, sucking up useful leavings from the churned-up mud. I looked at Tommy.
"Peaceful. Right. Come on, Tommy, you should know the Nightside is never peaceful for long."
"I take it we are still in the Nightside?" Suzie said suddenly. "I mean, for all we know this kind of shit is normal in the sixth century."
I pointed up at the night sky. Even through the drifting smoke, the crowded constellations of brilliant stars still burned like diamonds in the dark, and the oversized full moon looked down like a huge unblinking eye.
"All right," said Suzie. "Let's be logical about this. Who is there, powerful enough to intercept a journey through Time? Powerful enough to override Old Father Time himself and send us here? That's got to be a pretty short list."
"Just the one," I said, feeling the anger pulse briefly again. "Lilith. Dear Mother. I should have known she'd be watching me. I think perhaps ... she's always watching me now."
"Okay," said Tommy. "That is seriously creepy. And I thought my family was weird ... Why would Lilith want us here, in the sixth century?"
"To keep us away from the creation of the Nightside," said Suzie. "Must be something there she doesn't want us to see. Something we could use against her."
"Then why not block our trip completely?" I said. "No, I think she wanted us here. Now. She wanted me to see the Nightside as it was, before restrictions and controls and the Authorities moved it away from what she intended it to be. The only place on Earth completely free from the pressures of Heaven and Hell."
"Does Lilith exist here, now?" said Suzie.
"No. She would have been banished to Limbo by this time. I think."
"You think?" said Tommy. "I really think this is something you need to be bloody certain about, old boy, before we take another step! I demand to know exactly what the situation is before I'll even leave this alley!"
I raised an eyebrow. "Shame on you, Tommy Oblivion. I thought you existentialists didn't believe in certainties?"
"There is a time and a place for everything," said Tommy, with great dignity. "I vote for going home. Who else votes for going home?"
"Keep the noise down," said Suzie, and Tommy hushed immediately.
"We can't learn anything useful hiding in this alley," I said. "We need to get out and around, talk to people. Find out exactly when this is. I have a sneaking suspicion I know why Lilith chose the sixth century. This is, after all,
the time of King Arthur and Merlin, when old gods and stranger powers still walked openly in the Nightside."
"Of course!" said Tommy, brightening up immediately. "Arthur and Camelot! The knights of the Round Table! The most heroic and romantic time in history!"
"Only if you're into poverty, bad food, and body lice," said Suzie. "You're thinking of the mediaeval fantasies about Arthur, mostly written long after the fact by French aristos, who added all the knights in armour and damsels in distress. The real Arthur was only a barbarian warlord whose main innovation was using massed cavalry against the Saxons. This is a hard, dark, and brutal age, when most people lived short, squalid, and very hard-working lives, and the only people with a guaranteed future were the slaves." She stopped, as she realised