God of Clocks

Three hundred fewer years had elapsed by the time they stopped to rest and eat. The god of clocks even ordered his castle doors thrown open, so that they might take in the sunset while they supped.

The sunlight turned green where it bled through Dill, so that the young angel seemed to glow like an emerald against the amber sky.

From the castle steps they could see all the way down to the Flower Lake. Kevin's Jetty was no longer there. It would not exist for another two hundred and ninety-two years, Sabor explained. The forest had changed, too. Gone were the mass of evergreens they would later walk through to reach the Obscura. Instead, these trees were ancient and deciduous.

“The last pockets of wildwood,” Sabor commented. “This is an arm of the Stoopblack Forest, or what's left of it. It extended all the way to Brownslough, where Hafe and I used to hunt together. These trees died out when the world cooled.”

“Cooled?” Rachel asked.

“Our expulsion from Heaven affected this whole planet,” Sabor explained. “Aethers poured out from Ayen's domain, forces malignant to this world, so whole lands were poisoned, skies burned, seas rose, and the earth cracked to its core. The clash of incompatible matter damaged the very fabric of this universe. We armoured ourselves in sheer will, and fell as stars do.” He gazed into the long golden rays of sunset. “We arrived weak and naked, so vulnerable. There was a time when this alien light would have killed us all.”

They didn't belong here, Rachel realized. None of them. This world was so alien to them that the land itself had rejected their presence. “But you acclimatized,” she said.

“We became more human.”

By consuming human souls. And now we're going back into the middle of your baptism …

Rachel craned her neck round to look up at the great building, blurring like a fevered dream as it clung to this one point in Space while joining countless other moments in Time. This castle did not belong on this earth, either. It was as much of an abomination as the gods themselves.

And now it was their only hope.

Carnival woke again in the same bed in the same pristine room. Even before she opened her eyes she knew that the Lord of the Maze had removed her scars again. She felt a complete absence of physical pain, but a whole world of anguish inside her heart.

There was no mirror this time.

The white room was bare but for the bed and the single red window. She got up and walked over to it.

There was no glass.

Beyond lay a scrawl of red swamps and canals divided by endless low walls. Barges slipped in and out of locks on seemingly pointless journeys, while batlike winged figures cut across the sky. Carnival leaned out and looked down.

She was near the summit of an impossibly high tower, surrounded by oddly shaped buildings made from the same obsidian stone that dropped sheer below her window: inverted pyramids and vast windowless blocks with rows of leaning funnels. Giants lurched like cripples along the thoroughfares between these structures, weaving through crowds of smaller figures and clouds of green specks that darted to and fro like flies.

Carnival had no wings to hinder her as she climbed out on the window ledge. She sensed the touch of an unnatural sun on her skin, cold and vaguely unpleasant. A light fuel-scented updraft stirred her hair, perhaps fumes from the strange industry so many thousands of feet below.

She jumped.

“The year 442, by the Herican calendar,” Sabor announced, opening the outer door of the timelock. “Or 1603 in Deepgacian terms. We are now almost fifteen hundred years before the time we set off. Here Rys has freed himself from our mother's earthly yoke, and his great Pandemerian civilization is now flourishing. Ulcis gazes up in hunger from the pit under his chained temple. Hasp here commands Hell's garrisons, while Hafe still broods in his world of Brownslough tunnels. Mirith and Cospinol at this time are traveling: Cospinol in his ghastly ship, and Mirith in a bathtub upon the Strakebreaker seas. And I…”

A stern voice answered from the Obscura Hall below the balcony. “I welcome myself and my new companions to a castle crushed by war.”

Rachel peered down over the gallery balcony to find a replica of Sabor looking back up at her from the center of a group of half-naked savages. These men were as dark-skinned as John Anchor, equally powerful in stature, but painted with whorls of ochre. They wore knee-length skirts of a green and blue crosshatched pattern, adorned with bone fetishes at their broad waists. They appeared to have been in conference with the god in their midst who, from boots to hauberk to cape, wore entirely black raiment. He seemed no younger or older than his other self, and yet his hair appeared greyer. “Crushed by war?” Sabor called down.

“There are now hundreds of new universes around us,” his other self replied, “and almost all of them are burning. Even this one has come under attack. We've been forced to mount recursive sallies in order to keep the enemy from our own doors. Tell me, brother, what have you dragged through Time behind you?”

Sabor slapped his open palm upon the banister. “We are pursuing them” he said. “We chase the forces of Alteus Menoa.”

“Our foes are human men,” the other Sabor said.

The god of clocks frowned at this, and said nothing more until they had reached the lowest level. Rachel and Mina negotiated a path through the dark-skinned giants, gaining the attention of more than twoscore curious stares. Many of the warriors made quick gestures against their chests when they saw Dill. Hasp regarded them with approval. “Riot Coasters,” he announced to the resident Sabor. “If I were besieged, I'd want men like this by my side.”

Sabor now faced his other self. The pair almost made a mirror image, but for the color of their hauberks. “You are certain these attackers are men?” he said.

“The Sombrecur,” the other said. “The same Pandemerian sect who razed Rys's temples at Lorn and Logarth in 411. They do not know for whom they now fight, only that this battle fulfils what they believe is an ancient prophecy.”

“Then the lands here are not bloody enough for Mesmerists? Menoa simply planted a lie in the Sombrecur's past and then allowed events to unfold.”

The other god nodded. “The land has not yet been drenched with enough dead blood to allow the king's hordes through. My Riot Coasters will not use blades against the Sombrecur, but we are outnumbered and Hulfer's warriors must fight time and again without respite. I have tried to quench this false prophecy, but to no-”

Just then the double doors creaked open. A gruff hail issued from the antechamber beyond, and a second, smaller band of Riot Coasters entered. These new arrivals showed their exhaustion in every movement of their limbs. Sweating and huffing, they limped into the hall on tired legs, greeting their waiting fellows with handclasps and back slaps. Bloody wounds on their flesh told of recent battle. A great number of them eyed Hasp with evident awe.

Hulfer's warriors? Rachel recalled the story from one of John Anchor's songs. A hundred men against five thousand Sombrecur … There were far fewer than a hundred here.

Sabor's resident warriors searched eagerly amongst the newcomers, as though looking for friends.

But then Rachel realized the awful truth of it. Those who had waited and those newly arrived were both versions of the same men. The battle-weary fighters were greeting themselves. Returned from the past? Rachel now understood what Sabor had meant by recursive sallies. The warriors who have been in the god's company sinceI first looked down … Were they now about to travel back in Time to fight the same battle their other selves had just returned from?

It made sense in a twisted sort of way. And yet not all of the warriors had returned.

Ten of the Riot Coasters did not find themselves amongst the returning survivors. The grim knowledge of this shadowed their expressions.