God of Clocks

“An arconite?”

The room gave a sudden lurch forward.

Broken shapes littered the dark battlefield like strange volcanic outcrops. John Anchor stood at the lip of the portal, his fists on his hips, and gave a huge sigh of disappointment. “If Menoa intends to lead us into a trap, he might at least have left one of his twelve giants here as a ruse.”

A ruse? Cospinol sounded weary.

“To make us believe he feared intruders. A ruse would have been most sensible!” He gazed around him but could see little in the darkness except Cospinol's fog. “It would have tired us before the assault to come. A last battle on the Larnaig Field!”

Perhaps he decided we'd see through such a ruse too easily?

Anchor grunted. “I am beginning to dislike this king. An honourable warrior is never unpredictable. He obeys the time-tested rules of combat.”

The Rotsward's great rope seemed to hum a melancholy note.

Anchor stared down into the depths of the portal. He had been in grimmer places, but not many. The gate to Hell looked like a lake of tar, but the stench of death that arose from it burned in his throat. How many souls now swam in those foul waters? Mist hung over the entirety of the lake and moved in layers like drab curtains dragged to and fro across an empty stage. A crust had formed around the banks, as hard and brittle as black glass. Pale unappealing lumps floated on the viscid surface.

It felt cold.

He judged the portal to be some three hundred yards across, and Cospinol's skyship was considerably wider than that. But the Rotsward was much stronger than she appeared. Whereas Ayen's sun made her vulnerable, there was no sun here, and in the darkness her ancient timbers took their strength from Cospinol's own will. The portal would expand to accommodate the Rotsward. If the god of brine and fog did not falter, then neither would his ship.

Are you waiting for one of the arconites to show up?

Anchor grunted again. He rolled his massive shoulders and slapped his hands together. Then he took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes, and jumped into that hideous lake.

An icy chill enveloped him. He heard the gurgle and rush of the surface waters closing over his head, until the pressure of fluid against his eardrums stifled those noises to near silence. A dull hum reverberated in the air within his own sinuses, and then Cospinol spoke:

Our best chance of success relies upon your finding the portal spine before the Rotsward reaches the ground above you. Seek the place where Menoa's thaumaturgy is strongest. The spine should appear much denser than the surrounding liquid, like a cord or rope. Use it to pull us down through the portal opening.

Anchor opened his eyes but he dared not open his mouth for fear of swallowing any dislocated souls. He could see little in this darkness but a faint crimson glow emanating from the depths. He curled his body and dived down, pulling at the thick waters with his massive hands. The rope trailed after him, dragging Cospinol's ship down from the skies above. His lungs cramped once in sympathy with those instincts that remained from the days when Anchor had been merely human, but he ignored the discomfort. Down and down he swam until he began to relax into the rhythm of his labours.

He descended in an inwards-turning spiral until he felt the fluid becoming thicker in certain areas. Motes of white light darted past his head. He reached for them but they shot away into the distance. He adjusted his course to take him into the denser, more central part of the portal.

After a while he spotted a black thread hanging vertically in the distance. It drifted sluggishly back and forth like a strand of kelp in an unseen current.

That's it. The portal spine. Be careful not to damage it. It's already weak and it's the only link to Hell we have.

It was twice as wide as the tree trunks in the forest he had just left, yet slippery and pliant like an umbilical cord. Menoa had woven it from souls and blood magic to form the core of his birthing channel between Hell and earth. Anchor's skin burned where he touched it-a reaction to its deeply unnatural composition. Gripping the cord firmly, he used it to drag himself downwards more rapidly.

After some time the Rotsward's rope suddenly jerked him to a halt.

Cospinol's great skyship had reached solid ground around the portal opening. In Anchor's mind he saw the Rotsward's gallows, for the lowest edges of that great matrix of greasy spars would now be lodged into the earth of Larnaig Field far above.

Anchor floated in a red gloom while he gathered his strength for the job to come. He flexed his hands, opening and closing his fingers. They felt as if he'd been using them to squeeze wasps inside their nest. Now he must drag the whole skyship deep enough down through the earth and rock to allow the portal to expand around it. The blood magic should then draw power from the dead suspended from the Rotsward's gallows. It would actually feed on those damned men. Anchor smiled at the thought of his master's old army hanging up there amidst those gallows, gazing down at the fate that awaited them. Those miserable whiners would not be happy about this.

Cospinol's voice came to him through the rope. Harper is picking up a surge of what she calls “soul traffic” on her Pandemerian device.

Anchor paused. He had last seen Menoa's former metaphysical engineer walking the battlefield after Rys's Northmen had slaughtered their Mesmerist foes, drawing power from the bloody ground. The woman might be a corpse, but he didn't doubt her wits. Alice Harper had been the one who had first realized that the king would use his own dead to open this very portal, but it had been too late by then to do anything about it.

She thinks that something is rising from the portal, Cospinol went on. Something huge.

Another arconite? How could that be possible? The giant dived down sharply and gave the Rotsward a sharp tug. In all of history he had never heard of a battle fought inside a portal between two worlds. The trial to come might offer him a treasure chest of memories to savour until his dying days.

The tethered man cracked the knuckles of both his hands and then tensed the muscles in his neck and shoulders. Set, he grabbed the spine of the portal and dragged himself further down, straining against the massive rope attached to his back. The rope seemed to stretch, but here in this darkness it could not snap. Far above him, on the Larnaig Field, the Rotsward's gallows would be groaning and bending as they pushed down into the earth, but they too would not break. Between the divine will of Cospinol and the unlimited strength of his slave, the only thing to bend would be nature herself.

Anchor heaved against his harness until he felt the land around the portal mouth crumble under the insurmountable pressure. Slowly and inexorably, he dragged Cospinol's great skyship down into the depths of Hell.

3

THE PORTAL

Rachel spent the night in Dill's mouth. She had curled up under a blanket with her back pressed against his molars, but she couldn't get comfortable. Air seeped in through gaps in his front teeth and turned the space into a cold, dank cave. Mina had suggested building a fire, but Rachel had snuffed that idea. It just hadn't seemed right. From far below she heard the constant judder of machinery and the crash of broken trees each time Dill took another step through the forest.

Living forest. Dill's vision of petrified trees could only have been a flash of memory or a dream. Since leaving Deepgate, the young angel had been thrust from one horrific reality to another, from the