Going away it all became so real, and as the snowbound fields went by outside Tryanny remembered everything. Remembered spiraling through the Kithokkan Cluster with three Lokkkh Vipers loacked onto her engines. Remembered the wombship bucking and shuddering as slidewinders slammed into her starboard foils. Remembered lights flashing and alarms sounding as time and space folded her up like a conjuror's handkerchief..

It had started out as a simple swipe-and-wipe operation - a political abduction on Hebron prime - but somehow, along the way, it had all gone wrong. The Lokkkh had appeared from nowhere, closing in with unearthly accuracy, as if they'd known all along exactly where Tyranny would be. What really galled her, though, what cut her up most of all was the way they'd taken her out. Like an amateur. Like some rookie pilot on his first real space misson.
If the auto-drone had been damaged she'd already be dead, her crippled wombship screwed up like paper. Luckily it was still intact, and the computer had brought the ship safely out of the time stream and initiated a crash-landing on the nearest life-world.
Her original plan had been to repair the wombship, find her way back to Hebron Prime, and take care of the assignment. But somehow the Lokkkh had found her. It had taken almost a month, they'd found her, pouring out of a hundred dreaming heads like rusty barbed wire. She'd arrived back at the wombship to find the control deck, and she'd left there and then.
She'd spent a week in Sheffield, hiding in a cheap boarding house, watching TV and reading old newspaper. After that, Coventry, Plymouth, moving round the country in the hope they wouldn't find her. Finally she'd ended up in London, the big city, and for a month she'd managed to lose herself. Until she woke up one night to the smell of lemons, and knew then they'd found her. That was how it always started. The smell of lemons and faint scratchy voices that sounded like singing on an old value wireless.
Now she was on her way to Edinburgh, on the first train she could catch, praying that this time she was ahead of them. Winter shrugged past above the embankments, trees like jackstraws against a scraped white sky. Inside the carrige it was swelteringly hot, the air blue with smoke and the buzz of a dozen conversations. There was a schoolboy in a blazer sat across from her, putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Tyranny watched him for a while, feeling tired and drawn out, a sketch of her real self. It seemed to be getting hotter and she unbuttoned her collar. Resting her head against the window, she listened to the sounds in the carriage. The wheels on the track; the conversation; the shrill trapped buzzing of Walkmans. After a while they merged, blended together like white noise, and the sound of sea on shingle lulled her to sleep.
She dreamed then, saw herselfstanding in front of a fire taking her skin off like a suit. Then something moved through the dream and she was suddenly awake, suddenly scared, her mouth bitter with the taste of iron. The boy had finished the jigsaw, and Tyranny glanced at it. It was a photograph of the carriage they were in. The seats; the boy sat in the seat the; jigsaw in front of him. And suddenly the smell of lemons was everywhere, thick and sharp and sweet, filling Tyranny's mouth with saliva. The boy stared at her as she struggled to her feet. He had different coloured eyes. His gums were bleeding.
'Why don't you sit down?' the boy said. The words buzzed and rattled in his chest, a choir of polyphonic voices. 'Really. There's nowhere else to go, is there?'
But Tyranny was already in the aisle, already running. As she reached the door she heard a rushing sound, the distant sound of hail, and glanced behind her. The boy was kneeling up, peering at her over the back of the seat. Worse, the floor of the carriage was covered with mice, thousands of laboratory mice skittering across the carpet in a flash-flood of white fur. She made it out of the carriage and into the toilet with seconds to spare, bolting the door closed, locking the mice outside.
The smell of lemons was even stronger in here, masking the stench of disinfectant. It reminded her of the time she'd locked herself in the fruit cellar when she was a cellar. She'd had to hammer on the door for what seemed like hours before her clan-father had come to let her out.
Tyranny sat on the edge of the toilet seat, trying to hold down the panic that was twisting in her gut. The Lokkkh were trying to climb into the real world. She could feel them, pulling at her clothes, plucking at her hair, gathering around her like gravity. If she didn't do something soon, she realised, she might never get another chance.
She glanced out through the gaps in the frosted window, watching the snow-struck embankments speed past. Her mind was racing, thoughts bouncing round like pinballs, desperately assessing her options. The train had just stopped at York. The next stop was Newcastle and that wasn't for another hour yet. She could use the emergency stop cord but how far would she get in the middle of nowhere, running through the winter fields at night? And if they set the lash-hounds on her, shaking them out like dust from their charmed gilt-edged sheets, she'd be caught within minutes.
She stood at the sink, swaying, and splashed water on her face. Glancing up she caught her reflection in the mirror, and froze. The Face was floating behind her, the Face of the High Lokkkh Courtesan Lorelei, her blue lips parted in the white eggshell porcelain. She was whispering haiku, her japanese love song, and the words wound around Tyranny like a breeze, like a trickle of warm breath. Something soft brushed her face, and she almost expected It to be her mouth. It was a butterfly, a tortoise-shell, steel-blue. Tyranny looked up and saw that it had come out of the mirror. There were others In there, fluttering under the glass in slow motion. She watched, hypnotised, as they struggled towards her, a shifting gun-metal blizzard, filling the cubicle wfth wings. Panic welled up inside her, lodged in her chest, and before she knew what she was doing Tyranny was pounding at the door, thumping her fists against it, hearing the wood tear and splinter as butterflies eddied around her.
A hand closed on her shoulder. Tyranny turned, saw the figure leaning out of the mirror - a woman in mourning, black lace, a veil over her face - and starting kicking at the door. But the hand was strong, drawing her back, and though she fought and kicked she was pulled slowly into the mirror. She expected it to be wet, but all she felt was a soft static pressure, like the charge that builds up on a TV screen. Then she was in, one half of her face above the line of the mirror, the other below it. She caught a glimpse of woodland, dark meadows, bruised purple clouds. The smell of lemons vanished suddenly...and she was somewhere else.
As the wind came in over the fields she expected to start shivering, but it wasn't winter in this place and the breeze was warm and smelled of turned earth and aniseed. A muscle ticked at the corner of her eye as she looked around her.
She was on the edge of an orchard, the boughs bent under the weight of fruit. A campfire burned under the trees, two people silhouetted by flames. Grass swayed all round, whispering in the breeze, as if filled with voices. Looking again Tyranny saw that there were shapes in the grass, tiny fluttering lights so small they might have been fireflies.
'Pay them no heed. The Feys are such gossips.'
The voice had come from one of the figures by the campfire. The other one laughed gently. The woman in the veil stood beside them, and Tyranny saw now that she was wearing a wedding dress, a long billowing wedding dress cut from black lace. it drifted around her, flickering like the shadow of a flame.
'Won't you come nearer, friend? You must have many questions to ask.' Tyranny moved forwards. Lights tremored up from her feet, constellations spinning around her in complex carnival patterns. As she got nearer she could see the men more clearly. They wore coarse quilted jackets, kingfisher-coloured, like harlequins or jesters. They might have stepped out of the Middle Ages, except that one of them had a Seiko watch threaded on a length of cord round his neck.
The tallest one got to his feet and bowed elaborately. His hair had been dyed red, combed up to look like flames, and he wore a white enamel patch over one eye, a pair of teeth carved into it.
'I am Barbarrosa, journeyman and performer. Before my exile I was the Mongol King, but that is another tale.'
The other man smiled a brillant smile, his teeth painted bright blue. 'Alas, I am of more common stock. My name is Colouris.'
He magicked a deck of cards into his hands and tossed them up in the air. They hung there for a moment, suspended, then started pouring down as if shuffled by invisible hands dealing themselves into suits, separating out into colours, unfolding in sprays and fountains and bouquets.
'I'm a performer, also,' he said, and applauded as the cards stacked themselves up into a house.
Barbarrosa grinned, then turned towards the woman in the bridal gown. 'And this is the beautiful Aolienne, the Mother of Us All.'
Tyranny strained through the firelight,caught a glimpse her face behind the veil. Shiny, china white, expressionless.
'Hi,' Tyranny said. She reached out a hand but the woman turned disdainfully away from her.
'Don't be put off by her manner,' Colouris whipersed. 'She's in mourning for her lover. He died the day they were to be married, slain by the Dauphin's soldiers.'
Barbarrosa patted the ground beside beside him. 'You must be wondering where you are. Sit down and drink with us. We'll tell you something of ourselves.'
'Something of yourself,' Colouris added mischievously.
Although you would be wise not to believe everything we say.' Barbarrosa grinned at Tyranny's puzzled expression. 'We'd dancing liars,' he said. 'In this realm, only liars can dance without fear of reprisals. Dancing opens doors. An honest man can fall through and never be seen again.'
Colouris nodded. 'It's happened before.'
'Fall through where?'
'To the other side,' he said simply. The house of cards collapsed above his head, raining down in a shower of court cards.
Barbarrosa poured Tyranny a glass of wine and handed it to her. 'Have you ever heard of the Fauna of Mirrors?' he asked.
Tyranny shook her head.
'It was first mentioned in the letters of father Fontecchio, an eighteenth century Jesuit priest. Herbert Allen Giles took up the story a hundred and fifty years later.'
'I met him once,' said Colouris. 'Giles. He'd fallen through a mirror in the Provinces. Of course, he was a terrible show-off. Forever breaking into Greek, like that old fraud De Quincey.'
Barbarrosa continued. 'The letters tell of how, centuries ago, the worlds of men and mirrors were not separated, and of how the mirror people invaded the world. They were eventually vanquished by the Yellow Emperor, who stripped them of power and trapped them in mirrors as reflections of the living.'
Tyranny shifted uncomfortably. The story had touched something inside her, and she remembered an outline she'd seen in a mirror as a child, a fish chasing its tail, no colour she'd ever seen before.
'And that was how I got here?'
Colouris nodded. 'What are mirrors to you are windows to us.'
'You're lucky you're here at all. If you hadn't been within reach of a mirror the Dauphin's dream-spawn would surely have killed you.'
Tyranny felt as if she'd stepped into another life, as if she'd died in her sleep and woken up in another body. She couldn't seem to think straight. Things had been crazy enough before, but now nothing seemed to make sense.
'Do you know anything of the dream-spawn?' Barbarrosa asked.
Tyranny looked at him blankly.
'They are heralds. Ushers of change. They usually announce themselves with some strange happening. A shower of Bibles, photographs coming to life...'
You probably smelled them first,' Colouris laughed 'Rotten meat. Old Bandages. Creosate or sour milk.'
'Lemons...' Tyranny murmured.
'Lemons. Why not lemons?' Colouris leaned closer and whispered confidentially. 'My own olfactory portent was singed hair. Not the endearing of scents, you must admit.'
Tyranny was getting lost agian. parts of what said were familiar, at least on some oblique level, but she was in danger of being swallowed up by the stream of anecdotes. She was starting to feel like she'd wandered into a fairytale.

'This thing, this... Dauphin?'
The two harlequins nodded.

'What do you say?'

An hour later, and Tyranny knew everything. She felt sick to her stomach, light-headed, like the time she'd eaten too much saakfish down at Fat Larry's. She swallowed hard and told herself not to be so stupid. So her head was a hive of viral life. So what? Why on Earth should she let something like that bother her?
She was walking with Barbarrosa and Colouris, Aolienne trailing behind them, heavy black skirts sweeping the grass aside like a broom. They'd left summer far behind now and were crossing the autumn lands. passing banks of fallen leaves and gorgeous glowing fungi; past cypress trees with puppets strung from their branches, tiny wooden heels clik-clakking in the breeze. Walking and talking, Tyranny listening, letting the pieces fall into place.
The Lokkkh were a group organism, Barbarrosa told her. A self-replicating viral dream with a shared consciousness. They'd swept the known worlds like a plague, infecting minds on every habitable planet from here to Genn-Bejjarit Tau. But the Lokkkh, like all hive minds, were ruthlessly ambitious. They had a foothold on every planet in every quadrant. Now, it seemed, they had turned their attention to the world behind the mirror.
'It's part of their great migration,' said Barbarrosa. 'They won't rest until they've contaminated every mind in every sphere of existence.'
Colouris nodded gravely. 'They've grown fanatical in their old age. Not to mention hungry.'
Tyranny gave Colouris a hard stare. 'But what's all this got to do with me?'
It was Barbarrosa who answered, not even facing Tyranny, turning to pluck a fat yellow pear from an overhead branch. 'You are the Lokkkh host, Tyranny. The viral carrier. You brought the Lokkkh here with you. Here,' He tapped a finger against his temple. 'in your head.'
Tyranny stared at him, watching him work a slice of fruit round his mouth. She didn't say a thing. Didn't even move. She was overcome with a sudden irrational fear, a terrible certainty that if she heard any more she'd shatter Into a thousand different pieces.
'It's true,' Barbarrosa grunted. 'Believe me. The Lokkkh Infect your dreams.'
'Now they have crossed the mirror they will clothe themselves in flesh, to join forces with the Dauphin's soldiers.' Colouris gave her a dazzling smile, blue teeth flashing like sapphires. 'Unless, of course, we can do something about it.'
'Like what?'
There was a brief silence as Barbarrosa cut himself another slice of pear. When he spoke again it was almost in a whisper. 'We want to force the Lokkkh to turn on the Dauphin. We want them to infect their own reflection.'
'Kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes,' added Colouris.
Tyranny gave him a sceptical look. 'Is that possible?'
'We don't know,' said Barbarrosa. 'How could we? It's never been attempted before. But we have very few options left. The Dauphin is already gnawing at the roots of our world.'
'Look around you,' said Colouris, gesturing with one pale thin hand. 'Can you not see the Dauphin's blight? Already the land has grown sick in his shadow.'
The words seemed to stir something in Tyranny. For the first time since she'd arrived here she saw the dark currents that moved beneath the world-skin. Nets and meshes, sine waves and vectors. They pulsed with a sour erratic light, showing her skulls in the shadows, masses of wrestling insect life that weighed down every tree and rock. The beauty she'd first seen here seemed far away now, illusory, a corpse in a carnival mask.
It was Barbarrosa's voice that pulled her back. 'So, then. Will you help us, little sister? To vanquish the Dauphin and restore the land to health?'
Tyranny looked. at him but didn't speak.
'Do this thing for us and we will have the power to return you to your own world,' said Colouris. 'If the Dauphin's rule is not ended, you will be trapped behind the mirror for all time.'
Tyranny gave him a weak smile. 'Doesn't look like I've got much choice, does it?' she said. 'So what now? Where do we go from here?'
'We go to the World Tree. We go to turn its fruit into men.' Barbarrosa's eye-patch threw back a roguish glimmer of light. 'What happens after that is anyone's guess.'

Tyranny felt it long before she saw it, the presence, the sullen weight of the World Tree tugging and pulling at her bones like gravity. It was an unsettling feeling, as if her body was trying to unravel itself from within. As if she was coming slowly apart at the seams.
Tyranny bit down hard and concentrated, trying to steer her thoughts in another direction. Then she saw the tree, and all her self-control trickled away like water.
It bulked up out of the mist like something from prehistory, like some giant standing stone that had been wrenched out of shape over thousands of years. A vast black trunk that twisted in on itself, that shuddered from inside, its canopy lost among the clouds. The tree looked as if it had been struck by lightning. Its bark scorched and furrowed; its branches flung skywards like church scaffolding, like a shrapnel-burst frozen in time. Giant dusky fruit weighted down its boughs, some of them so ripe they'd spilt, drawing wasps and hornets, fat black flies that looked like bruised fingers.

As they drew nearer Tyranny could hear sounds coming from the tree. A raucous jangling hubbub that seemed to echo in her head. The tree was wracked by noise, Its branches shivering with screams and sighs, sobs and muffled voices, as if people were trapped inside, clamouring to get out.
'This is Yggdrasil,' said Colouris with pride in his voice. 'A tree of pure potential, of transcendence. The souls of the unborn lie heavy on every bough.'
'The World Tree is barren now,' said Barbarrosa. 'Struck low by the Dauphin centuries ago. But the virus in your head is ripely fertile. Before the Lokkkh can manifest themselves, we intend to remove the virus and transfer it to the tree...'
'In the blind hope,' added Barbarrosa, 'that we might fertilise its fruit once more. That we might breathe new life into the unborn.'
Up ahead Tyranny could see lights now. shapes looming through the mist, a rag-tag collection of tents and caravans set out at base of the tree. Horses stamped nervously through banks of fallen leaves. Figures flitted past the camp-fires like shoals of fish, calling and pointing, shouting excitedly. A breeze sidled in, rich with smells - mead and honey, exotic cheeses, cooked meat - and Tyranny realised for the first time lust how hungry she was.
'Looks like we were expected,' she said quietly.
Barbarrosa nodded. 'The Feys sent word ahead. This is a great moment for our kind. My people have gathered at this place to watch the legends come to pass.'
'Any chance of getting something to eat before we hit the history books?'
Colouris gave her his sly blue grin. 'How remiss of me. Of course, of course. It's the very least we can do, after bringing you here like this.'
So they ate then, at a table big enough to seat two hundred men. Eating in the shade of the World Tree in the company of the most unlikely army Tyranny had ever seen. Barbarrosa and Colouris were restrained at first, but soon set at the food like hungry dogs, following the example of the other soldiers and cavalrymen. A skirmish of plates and dishes; pitchers of ale passed hand-over-hand. Mercenaries cracking Jokes around mouthfuls of venison; swordsmen exchanging lewd tales over wild duck and fat sweet tomatoes. Tyranny ate without saying a word, overcome by the smell of milk and wood smoke. The hum of conversation made her dizzy, and the laughter made her drunk, and soon she'd forgotten her own troubles and wanted to do what she could to help these simple cheerful folk.
'Now that we've eaten,' said Barbarrosa, working a toothpick adventurously round his mouth,'perhaps we should get down to more serious matters.'
Colouris straggered to his feet. 'That's right,' he said, drunk already, slurred his words. 'We're got a world to save.'
Tyranny shrugged. 'Don't mind me. I'm ready when you guys are. I hope this thing isn't painful,'
'Oh no. Oh, certainly not. It won't hurt in the least,' Said Barbarrosa. 'We simply drain the Lokkkh out of your head. A kind of dream extraction, if you like. It's a relatively simple operation.'
'So who do we get to do it?' Tyranny asked.
'The lady in question is already here.'
Tyranny followed Barbarrosa's gaze to a stand of populars tangled with underground. There was movement in the shadows, and Aolienne stepped into view, black lace rustling softly.
'Her?'
Colouris nodded. 'Our Lady Aolienne. She is an enchantress, high pythoness of the Delphic Lodge. There are none so skilled in all the bodiless arts.'
'That's right?' Tyranny gave Colouris a long hard stare, searching his face for any sign of intrigue. Then she stugged. 'I guess we'd better get started then, huh?'

Aolienne lead the way, taking Tyranny to small dimly-lit tent at the foot of the World Tree. Smells and flowers hung from the roof like giant rosaries, and the air was thick with smell of insence. Standing in the middle of the bare dirt floor was a chair, a black high-backed chair left-over from an earlier century. Tyranny shuddered at the sight of it. It reminded her of a shrine; of some scrotched pagan altar hungry for its next offering. The wood was hard and black as obsidian, and straps and buckles dangled from its arms, glinting in the watery ochre light of the oil-lamps.
'Be seated,' said Aolienne, incidating the chair chair. Her voice was low and husky and sweet, like water running over rocks.
Tyranny sat down, not taking her off the enchantess. She held a small wooden chest in her hands, about the size of a music box, its lid inlaid with jade and mother-of-pearl. Tyranny watched her open it and shake out a square of folded white cloth. It was a hood, the kind of thing she'd seen hanged men wear.
'My galmour,' Aolienne said proudly, 'This is my Mother Hood. It will draw the Lokkkh from your dreams like pus from a sore.'

The material seemed to shimmer in Aolienne's hands, flickers and ripples of milkly light running through it. As she stared harder Tyranny realised the hood was made from snake-skin. Fine albino-skin so delicate it looked as if it might tear in Aolienne's hands.
'Okay,' Tyranny grunted. 'Let's get this over with. The sooner I'm out of this place, the better.'
Aolienne muttered a few words to herself then lowered the hood over Tyranny's head. It felt soft and cold, like damp silk, and clung to her face. Aolienne's hand moved over the hood, smoothing in place, her touch making spots of warmth blossom on Tyranny's cheek. Her bones seemed to suck up the heat, making her drowsy, light-headed; making her thoughts whirl and strobe like the windows on a passing train.
'The Mother Hood is in place,' Aolienne muttered somewhere above her. 'The bait has been set. Now, sister, you must let your mind go. Free the dreams from your waking head.
As she talked the hood pulsed brighter, throwing cold sour light across the walls of the tent. Stains flared in the material, poppy-shaped splashes of colour that swelled into blisters. They fat in seconds, the Lokkkh climbing into the world as they suckled on Tyranny's thoughts, throwing out soft waxy growths that colud have been tongues or tails or tadpoles.
'Here,' Aolienne breathed. 'They come. The Lokkkh aree rising...'
Tyranny's haed was aching, brittle with pain. She heard the clank of metal as Aolienne moved towards her with a pair of heavy iron pincers, and felt panic scrabbling inside her.
Aolienne closed the pincers around one of the wriggling lard-coloured tails, tightened her grip, then pulled hard. The Lokkkh left Tyranny's haed with a wet sucking noise, like a tooth being pulled from a rotten gum. Aolienne bent to examine it, flicking and twisting between the pincers. Then she dropped it into a basin at her feet, a deep stone bowl filled with oil and fennel.
'Come.. on... ' Tyranny struggled to get the words out. 'This is.. no.. picnic... '
'I know, I know. But it must be done.' Aolienne laid a palm against the back of Tyranny's neck, trying to reassure her. 'Rest. Do not wear yourself out. An hour and you will be free from the scourge.'
The operation seemed to take all night. Time passed, but slowly, lazily, bringing strange things with it. Sights and sounds; flashes of memory; childhood smells. Pain and joy and boredom. Fear, too, once, though Tyranny hated herself for admitting it. Sat in that solid black chair with a white hood on her head, and a woman throwing her thoughts into a bowl of herbal oil.
By the time Aolienne had finished, almost two hours later, Tyranny felt as if she had the biggest migraine in the world. Outside she could hear soliders shouting, cheering, screaming words of encouragement, but she didn't care about them, didn't care about anything. All she wanted do was to go home. To go home and sleep and forget about all this place, with its windows and its mirrors; with its nightmare armies and fairy tale castles.
Aolienne removed the hood from Tyranny's head, and once her sight had returned showed her the creatures that had been living in her head. The bowl was filled with Lokkkh, dozens of them, pulpy nicotine-coloured grubs that shuddered and trashed like eels. They reeked of rotten meat and eucalyptus. Tyranny watched them as if in a trance, feeling sick to the pit of her stomach.
'A bucketful of dreams,' she said eventually.
The enchantress nodded. 'Bad dreams. Spoiled dreams.' She let out a long wavering sigh. 'With which, hopefully, we can fertilise the World Tree and restore the land to splendour.'

'You think you have a chance?'
Aolienne looked straight at her, dark eyes gleaming behind her veil. 'Who knows?' She said 'We can only believe.'
Tyranny glanced back at the Lokkkh and shuddered.
Aolienne smiled sadly. 'Perhaps all we need do is believe for things to come true.' Tyranny didn't believe that, never had, but she did't say anything. The tent seemed to glow faintly, its pale walls flushed with early morning light. As she stepped outside that was the first thing she saw, the sky, red as a sunburned throat, the branches of the World Tree holding it in place.
Then the crowd moved in, there were children and mothers and brothers all around, playing lutes and piccolos and drums, singing songs, threading flowers in her hair, and for a little while Tyranny forgot home and let herself go. Let the day and the wolrd and the people have their with her.

She was alive. Sometimes, that was enough.