God of Clocks

“I can't say. Who knows what else I might change if I told you? You'll find him, sis.”

So Rachel walked up to the first house in the street and banged on the door. After a moment the door opened and an old woman peered out.

“Where do I find Captain Iron Head?” Rachel asked.

“Captain who?”

“Garstone,” Rachel said. “Reed Garstone, the captain of the Burntwater militia.”

The old woman scrunched up her eyes. “On the wall, of course. Where else would he be at a time like this? Ask them at Headquarters. They'll know exactly where he is.”

After a short march up the main thoroughfare they found Headquarters located beside Burntwater's southern gate. A squat, rectangular log building, it was barely large enough to contain forty men standing shoulder to shoulder. Lean-to sheds set against two of the walls held pigs and chickens. The entrance had been left unguarded, so Rachel simply barged in. Her older self chose to remain outside. To preserve the integrity of the timeline, she explained.

Nevertheless, when Rachel opened the door she was relieved to find Iron Head himself seated at the room's only table. The captain had removed his cap, revealing a lank mop of dark hair, and hung his sword and hammer on hooks on the wall behind him. He looked up from the map he was reading and frowned at her. “Can I help you?”

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but then realized that she hadn't exactly thought through what she intended to say. However she put it, the news she was about to divulge would sound like the ravings of a madwoman.

And then Garstone walked in.

Iron Head's brows rose. His gaze flicked to Rachel, and then back to his brother. “Eli!” he said. “Long time, no see.”

Garstone consulted his pocket watch. “Technically, Reed, it's less than a day since-”

The captain raised a hand. “Don't bother, Eli. It's the same old thing every time we meet. It's always disconcerting when you recall conversations with me that haven't happened yet.” He grinned at Rachel. “He never remembers my birthday, though.”

Rachel felt a surge of relief. “I have something… odd to tell you,” she said.

Iron Head leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “It wouldn't be the first time,” he replied.

King Menoa was seated in his newly formed library at the top of the Ninth Citadel when the whole fortress began to howl. He set down the book he had been reading and said, “Enlighten me.”

The walls and floors within his fortress, like the very books in this library, had each been adapted from Hell's dead to serve whatever purposes Menoa required of them. But, unlike his Icarate priests, these simple constructs had limited intelligence. Unable to define the exact cause or nature of its distress, the floor simply gibbered nonsense.

“Word from the foundations!” it yelled from a single grey mouth in the very center of its tiled expanse. “Subsidence and fire! A presence. The citadel is flooded. There has been an earthquake, my lord. Lightning struck the clock tower. Your precious library is burning to ashes.”

“The library is not burning,” King Menoa replied. “Such a thing is impossible here.”

But the books moaned and trembled nervously upon their shelves all the same. Menoa wondered briefly how many of their stories might have changed in that instant of panic. Fear was too often the source of misrepresentation, and the dead lied no less than the living. He approved of change-chaos suited his nature-but did not condone the unknown event that had caused this particular change. Surprises irritated him.

“A star has plunged through the guts of the fortress,” the floor wailed, “and left us vulnerable to intruders.”

The king rose from his chair. “What intruders?”

“A great army is within, my lord.”

“There is no such army in Hell! Has the Ninth Citadel lost its mind? Send a witchsphere to me. Order my Icarates to attend.”

Perhaps he had allowed this building to grow too quickly too soon. It now contained three thousand and three levels, and so afforded him a striking view across Hell. But, by forcing such growth, had he also stretched the building's capacity for rational thought?

“Slaughtered, all slaughtered,” the floor howled, “their minds sucked out by the red water.”

The red water? A sudden chill gripped Menoa's heart. Had the River of the Failed breached his fortress? From where had it acquired the courage and the wits to do such a thing? He growled at the floor, “Stairs, down.”

The surface of the floor rippled suddenly and then melted away, forming a square spiral of steps that descended to the lower levels of the Ninth Citadel. The king snapped his fingers and torches flared all the way down in that well, suddenly bathing the library ceiling in their shifting light. He moved to throw his book away, and then stopped and glanced at the final page.

… formed a staircase down to the lower levels of the king's magnificent fortress. His Glorious Majesty, the Lord and Ruler of all the Maze, swung his arm to cast the poor, frightened-although loyal-book aside, but in his wisdom he stopped and stole a glance at the final page.

Useless thing. It was now trying, in its own fawning manner, to describe the events around it. He tossed the offending tome hard against the library wall, and then stormed down the stairwell he had just made, wondering how the book would interpret that response.

All the rooms below were equally agitated. The king strode purposefully down the shaft leading through the heart of the citadel, past writhing walls of eyeless constructs that held the very slabs of stone he now used as steps. Others raised yellow lanterns to light his way, or simply reached out towards him like beggars. Menoa bent the shapes of those who dared come too close. He created doors wherever he felt like it and portals so that he might gaze into the rooms beyond the walls. The steps quivered under his boots, while the blind figures in the walls moaned and cowered. These constructs were terrified, but not of him.

Not of him!

Anger was not something the Lord of the Maze had much experience with. He found that it clouded his vision. He preferred to detach himself from his emotions, for only then could he analyze them and alter them to suit his purposes. But now his glass mask changed to form new and feral expressions, almost against his will. He endeavoured to calm himself.

Could the River of the Failed actually have entered the most powerful fortress in Hell? It certainly had the strength to do so, but he doubted it possessed the desire. Despite its power, the river was merely a child. Since it had learned who its father was, Menoa had taken swift steps to discipline it. He could not harm it, but he could make it respect him.

The king paused on the stairs, as a splinter of doubt entered his mind. What if Cospinol had somehow managed to turn the river against him? After all, there had been no sign of the sea god's vessel since the portal broke. Had the Rotsward gone underground?

Menoa willed the walls to cease their moaning. Hundreds of voices fell silent, though the lanterns still trembled in their grips.

For the first time since his rise to power, the Lord of the Maze felt fear. He gazed up at the vast spiral he had made through the building's heart, the myriad doors he had unconsciously created around the shaft's perimeter. Why had he done that? He looked down into the hazy depths, where a hundred levels stood between him and the citadel's dark foundations.

Where were all his Icarates? They ought to have responded to the building's cries of distress.

He faced the wall and made a gesture with his hand. The constructs parted with a soft rending sound, allowing the king to step through.

This led him to an unattended suite in which items of old furniture, left for aeons without a guiding will, had crowded together into one corner as though trying to escape. The king waved a hand and returned them to their rightful places. He opened another portal in the wall beyond.