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of the world.
    Ages later, but still long before the time of the Romans or even the Druids that came before them, the people of the island needed a sacred stone. And the place where they went to hack that stone from the living rock was the place where the darkness had been defeated. They went there because they knew it was a sacred place, but they had forgotten why, or they would have chosen a different spot and a better stone. But because the struggle between light and the darkness had happened so long before their distant ancestors had even been born, the memories of precisely why the place was sacred had been lost. And so the Stone was carved from the earth, and when it was moved to its new place, the darkness went with it.
    And the darkness stayed imprisoned in the Stone.
    And waited.
    It waited close to a crossing place, where a broad slope of wooded land latticed with streams met the broad river to its south. It waited through the long fall of centuries and watched those virgin woods retreat as the men built a hamlet, then a village, then a bridge and a town. It waited while the town spread all around it, stealing more and more of the woods and the hidden green spaces within them. It waited and watched as the town rose and fell, was burned and rebuilt, and grew more bridges on either side of that first crossing. It waited while the town grew to a city as wood and thatch gave way to stone and brick. And it watched brick and stone in their turn give way to steel and glass as the quiet river crossing that had become a great growling beast of a city ran out of land and rose up to steal the sky in its stead.
    It waited because it knew that one day it would again walk free, and it also knew that while stone itself does not last forever, it lasts much, much longer than people or their memories do, and it knew that one day something would happen to release it.
    And then, in the moment when the Ice Devil came to the city, stopping time so violently that all the people disappeared and permanent winter came on its tail, the darkness knew the long wait had ended.
    It knew it even before the Ice Devil passed over its stony prison and frost-shattered it open.
    But still it waited. It didn’t wait because waiting had become its habit over the aeons it had been pent in the Stone. It had simply forgotten the shape in which it had once moved in the world, just as someone confined to a hospital bed for a long time forgets how to move their legs.
    It waited because now that the long imprisonment was over, it needed just a fragment, the tiniest mote of extra time to start remembering.
    Snow and silence filled the anonymous stretch of Cannon Street. The only place the flakes did not stay was on the ornate grille in front of the Stone. When the flakes landed on the hot metal they melted instantly in a tiny hiss.
    And then the Stone caught the scuff of hooves and the cautious tread of hobnailed boots. And the darkness coiled within it, a great fiend ready to spring.
    “I’m only saying,” grumbled the Young Soldier, “that my boots is hurting.”
    “Your boots is always hurting,” replied his older companion. “Give it a rest and keep your eyes peeled. If old Hooky up there hears you whining, there’ll be merry hell to pay.”
    They were following the hook-nosed Duke as he slowly moved his horse forward, cautiously snaking his way past the snow-covered cars frozen in the middle of the street. His sword was drawn and held at his side. He looked calm but ready for anything that might surprise him.
    He stopped alongside a double-decker bus, raising himself a little higher in the saddle, as if sniffing something on the wind.
    “’Old up,” said the Old Soldier.
    “If he’s the general,” said the Young Soldier, scratching himself, “what’s he doing out front, up the sharp end?”
    The Old Soldier sighed and took advantage of the pause in their forward progress to pull a battered pipe from the chest pocket in his battle dress. He