God of Clocks

Anchor had underestimated Menoa. These foes lacked the wits to fight with any skill, yet that hardly mattered if Anchor could not destroy them. The waters all around him were already thick with fragments of them, and still more arrived with every passing moment. He could barely see through the gore. This battle was hopeless. Eventually the Failed would overwhelm him, suffocate him, drown him.

Despair filled his heart. With a powerful kick, Anchor propelled himself backwards away from the portal spine. Scores of clammy fingers fumbled over his skin, grabbed his harness, pulling him back. He closed his eyes and thrashed his arms, dragging himself backwards through the strangely airy water. He almost cried out. The desire to open his mouth and breathe became intolerable.

Cospinol's voice shuddered through the skyship rope. Control yourself!

And do what? Fight? Ripping this army to pieces was achieving nothing. Couldn't Cospinol see that?

The sea god must have realized his servant's plight, for he said, Get up here, John. Swim to the Rotsward. We need to think about this carefully.

Anchor bulled free from the mass of figures, propelling his huge body upwards. He swam through a detritus of broken mirror shards, fingers, and feathers. In the spinning silvered glass he glimpsed reflected a hundred calm eyes.

One of the Failed tried to pull down on the Rotsward's rope, but Anchor barely noticed this. He kicked a Mesmerist bone sphere out of his way and surged up through the debris field, leaving countless outstretched hands grasping for his heels.

The skyship was still sinking towards him and he didn't have to swim far before he reached the lowest gallows. Not all of his master's dead warriors had been cut loose, yet all stopped their silent howling to watch the tethered man rise amongst their ranks. Anchor's rope grated across the timbers behind him, dislodging some of the debris the vessel had accumulated. He moved faster, pulling upon the spars to quicken his ascent, weaving through that great crosshatched scaffold like a bobbin through a loom.

By now the Failed had reached Cospinol's gallowsmen and a fight was under way. Most of the gallowsmen fled, but some remained trapped in nooses and fought; these men were soon relieved of their souls.

Anchor reached the Rotsward's hull and kicked up from a horizontal joist and swooped over the drowned balustrade. The Failed were still busy with the gallowsmen and had not followed. Dragging his great rope over the midships deck, Anchor headed for a hatch in the weather deck at the stern of the vessel. He yanked it open and peered down into the dark bowels of the vessel. Which way to Cospinol's cabin? He tried to remember.

He had not been here for over three thousand years.

When he finally opened the correct door, he found Cospinol and Alice Harper waiting for him. The metaphysical engineer was drifting about a foot from the floor; her red hair floated behind her like an underwater fire. She smiled with full blue lips, then pointed up at the ceiling. The god of brine and fog floated up there, gently flexing his great grey wings to keep himself level.

Anchor and Harper swam up to join him.

The uppermost foot or so of the cabin held an air pocket. Anchor broke the surface of the water to see Cospinol's bedraggled face looking back at him. The tethered man's head knocked against a roof joist. There was a splash and then Harper emerged, too, her hair now lank and dripping.

God and slave regarded each other.

“You can breathe if you wish,” Cospinol said. “The air is rank and probably poisonous by now, but I don't suppose that matters much to any of us.” He gave Harper a nod. “More important, it carries sound.”

Anchor coughed and spat out water, then looked around him. “You have really let this place go, eh?” He took a deep breath, and then wished he hadn't. The old sea god was right about the air.

“The Rotsward still exists because we will it to. If it's old and rotten, then what does that say about us?”

Anchor snorted a laugh.

Cospinol smiled. “It's good to see you again after all these years, John, though I wish the circumstances were different. This battle is clearly not one you relish.”

“These cripples lack the brains to know when they're dead,” he grumbled. “This is no battle, Cospinol. It is butchery.”

“And with little purpose,” Cospinol agreed. “I'm not convinced that this enemy can be destroyed, not here at least. If all of them were present, then perhaps, but these few thousand…” He gazed down into the waters under his neck.

Anchor frowned. “What do you mean if all of them were present?” he said. “There are already thousands down there. That is the problem, yes? Too many foes?”

Harper shook her head. “You can't kill them,” she said, “because they are not individuals. They share a common will, perhaps even a common soul.”

Anchor didn't understand.

“It's like a colony of ants,” she explained. “The group purpose is greater than any of its parts. But in this case, the colony is sentient. The Failed are not an army-they are a single entity, a god if you like. These crippled warriors may not even be aware that they are part of an idea that is larger and more complex than their individual selves. Destroying a handful of ants doesn't much harm the operation of the colony, and it has no effect on the idea of a colony. While any of the Failed remain, the idea that gives them power is unassailable.”

The big man grunted. “So we must kill them all?” he said heavily.

“That's the problem,” Cospinol said. “They aren't all here. Menoa's Icarates tortured these people until their minds broke. Without minds they could no longer maintain their individual shapes in Hell. Their physical bodies dissipated and dripped down through the Maze, forming a vast subterranean river. But now the River of the Failed has become sentient. It is rising again-a new god with a single mind that is able to give shape to its legion components once more. To destroy the Failed, we must destroy the whole river. But how does one destroy a river?”

Anchor felt somewhat relieved. He had shed enough blood for one day. “So what do we do?”

“Reason with it,” Harper said.

Anchor grunted. “Before or after it finishes slaughtering Cospinol's gallowsmen? It hardly seems capable of listening.”

“This is only a tiny part of it,” she retorted. “A handful of ants separated from the colony. If we reach its source, its mind, we might be able to talk some sense into it. After all, Menoa convinced it to fight for him.”

The god of brine and fog suddenly looked old and weary. “That's what frightens me. What Menoa has done here would seem to be impossible. The Lord of the Maze shouldn't be able to influence the Failed. His own Icarates ruined those people to begin with. The priests damaged them until they simply could not be damaged anymore, and now their Mesmerist techniques are useless. If Menoa has made a bargain with this new god, then he must have tricked it in some way.”

“You think it is still afraid of him?” Anchor said.

“Perhaps,” Cospinol replied. “If it doesn't know Menoa is no longer a threat, then we have a chance. But I'm worried it's more complicated than that.” He shook his head.

A sudden burst of white light flashed under the surface of the waters. Harper lifted out a small silver and crystal device, smeared away water from its face, and then studied the readout. “They're on the decks now,” she said.

“Well?” Anchor turned to Cospinol and raised his eyebrows. “One way or another, this portal is soon going to look like meat broth.”

The god of brine and fog pinched his nose and then sniffed. “I will not continue to harm such a pitiful creation for no good reason,” he declared. “If King Menoa spoke with the source and survived, then so can we.” He looked hard at Anchor. “Break the spine of the portal. We're more than halfway down now. When it collapses the blast should scatter the Failed and throw us all into Hell.”

“You don't know that!” Harper protested. “We might end up back on earth, or…” She wrung her lifeless hands. “… somewhere, anywhere in Hell. A million leagues from Menoa's citadel! Nobody has ever broken a portal before.”