God of Clocks

him.

Far below him a witchsphere was rolling through the Maze on its way to the citadel. Barges lolled in deeper channels, their decks crammed with cages full of souls for the Processor. The great inverted pyramid continued to whisper and issue gouts of steam, but its forming ovens and arconite pens were empty now.

All of the king's children had now left Hell, yet the instrument of their passage still dominated the skyline. Menoa's portal writhed above the Maze like a vast ribbon of flies. From a fixed base of scorched and blasted stone the portal rose to impossible heights, becoming narrower and narrower until the last thread of it vanished somewhere inside that dark sun that lay at the very heart of the Maze. Both ends remained fixed in place, but the length between them undulated like a whip. It had lost most of its substance since the arconites had passed through, Menoa noted. He could almost see through it in places.

A fly settled on one of the claws of Menoa's black gauntlet. He glanced down and changed the tiny creature from living flesh to glass, then crushed it.

His reverie was broken by an unspoken query from the citadel. The witchsphere had reached the base of the fortress and it wished to speak to him.

Admit it. Allow it to pass through the citadel unmolested.

A short while later the witchsphere rolled onto his balcony. Menoa had no name for this construct, but he recognized it nevertheless. Its scraped and dented metal panels were evidence of the many years it had spent in the living world.

“We bring word from the Prime,” it said in the voices of numerous hags. “They have confirmed your expectations. The thaumaturge has conjured a mist to hide the traitorous arconite. It engulfs Cospinol's own fog and reaches far across the lands beyond.”

“And the portal, too?”

“Yes.”

Menoa sensed his glass mask contort as it mimicked his own expression of grim contemplation. “I did not expect this fog,” he admitted, “but certainly treachery. Cospinol cannot kill my warriors, so his agents must attempt to kill their controllers.” Menoa's Prime Icarates were ensconced within the Bastion of Voices deep inside the Processor, their minds watching the living world through the eyes of his arconites, their thoughts steering those vast iron limbs that had crushed Coreollis. He had already taken steps to protect them. The thaumaturge's fog was an unnecessary precaution, amateurish. Did they truly expect that he had not anticipated and planned for an attack on the Maze? “Perhaps his smokescreen has been engineered to allow an assassin to enter the portal?”

“They will send the arconite Dill?”

The king shook his head. “That young angel alone possesses enough strength to resist my own warriors. Cospinol needs him to remain on earth.” He turned back to the portal. The vast ribbon writhed and spun, but the twelve angels had all but drained it of power, and it was growing weaker with every passing moment. “Cospinol owns another assassin, the Riot Coast barbarian who drags his skyship. That is who he will send.”

The balcony had not yet grown itself a parapet, but the witchsphere rolled closer to the edge of the precipice. “Without Anchor, Cospinol will be grounded and helpless,” it declared.

“He cannot allow himself to be stranded,” the king agreed. “And so the god of brine and fog must accompany his slave. After all, he has an entire army of men hanging from the gallows of his ship. No doubt he plans to set them upon us as some form of distraction.”

“Shall I instruct the Icarates to stoke the furnaces within the flensing machines?”

“Yes,” Menoa said. “All of the furnaces.”

John Anchor took a deep breath. He relished the smell of this old woodland, the wet leaves, the cool rain- laden air. If he was ever required to walk across the bed of an ocean again, then this was the sort of air he'd prefer to fill his lungs with. It was a fine place in which to take a stroll. The soft brown mulch compressed under his feet and bounced back up in his wake. As he walked he scooped up a handful of soulpearls from the pouch at his hip and tipped them into his mouth. Then he began to hum a tune.

The rope thrummed.

He laughed. “You worry too much, Cospinol. My voice is no louder than the sound of these snapping branches. And we can't silence the woodland, eh?”

His master's voice came through the rope. The arconites are bigger than you, John.

“But not stronger.”

Now is not the time to test that theory. Save your strength for Menoa's Icarates, I beg you.

“But I am quicker than the golems, Cospinol. Like a rat around their ankles, eh? I jump in the portal and pull you down after me while the giants stumble after us. Easy as swinging a boar.” You are tethered to me, John. Do not forget that.

Anchor grinned. In truth he hoped to confront at least one of these arconites. He felt strong today: A million souls howled in his blood, their voices like a war cry at the back of his mind… so long as he didn't listen too closely. If he concentrated too hard on it, he would recognize their moans and pleas, and that would take the edge off his good humour. He ducked under a low-hanging branch and then heard it catch on the Rotsward's rope behind him and snap loudly.

A hunting horn again bellowed in the west.

Anchor altered his direction subtly, moving more in that direction.

I'm warning you, John, Cospinol said. Mina Greene conjured this fog to disguise our own camouflage. Don't ruin it by trying to confront these things. I want to reach the portal without incident. Turn back to the southwest, away from that horn.

“You are reading my mind now?”

No, John, I just know what you're like.

The big man sighed and did as Cospinol instructed. Fog shrouded the view ahead, but he could see that the woodland here sloped down towards the south. In places he spied low walls amongst the oaks-the remains of some long-abandoned settlement now soft with moss and wrapped in snarls of black bramble. Fungi clumped in earthen hollows, like bones protruding from graves. He could not recall if he had visited this place before, and he wondered what tragedy had befallen the owners of these dwellings. As if in response, a lone soul cried out in the back of his mind. Anchor frowned and ignored it, not wanting to know. He began to hum again, half singing under his breath.

“One summer's day on Heralds Beach,

I met a girl who had no teeth.

I kissed the collar of her pretty frock

and she-”

The rope shuddered. Please try not to enjoy this, John. That's all I ask.

Anchor snatched up a stick and swung it before him like one of the swords he so despised. “Since you deny me the arconites, Cospinol, I can only hope that all Hell awaits, and that Menoa has had the good sense to arm them.”

That, Cospinol said, is something I can promise you. The Lord of the Maze will not have wasted the souls of all those he slaughtered.

The tethered man left the wood not far from the place where he had first entered it. The rope snagged on the last of the branches and then tore free. Anchor's eyes were long used to this grey gloom, and he saw a series of low humps in the ground and the remains of a palisade wall to the southeast. Earthworks dug by Rys's Northmen. He was near the edge of the Larnaig Field.

He scanned the mists all around, but saw no sign of Menoa's Twelve. He frowned. “Why would Menoa leave the portal unguarded?” he said. “A smarter man than me might suppose the king wanted us to enter Hell.”

There was a pause before Cospinol answered. I suppose it's possible-perhaps even likely. If I were to die here on earth, my soul would become lost somewhere within the Maze. His spies might search for it for years. But killing me at the door of his Processor would spare him all that trouble. The Ninth Citadel is the seat of his power. It will not be undefended.

“Good. Then we needn't waste any more time being stealthy.”