by N. D. Wilson
“If Alex can move like the Vulture could—like you can—then two minutes is more than enough.”
With a twitch of her wrist, Glory collapsed the glass cylinder into sand. A cool wind swirled in around them, carrying the sounds of a city on the verge of one age, preparing to violently birth another. Horse hooves on cobbles. Engines in trucks. Butchers and bakers and candlestick makers hawking their wares in French.
Sam sat down beside the watch as it wriggled and twitched. Pinching the end of the broken chain between his finger and thumb, he lifted it up. The watch swayed and fought gravity, pulling across the square toward a long wide road lined with hulking stone buildings.
Glory sat down beside him.
“Well, our son is here somewhere,” Sam said. “And those watches are in him.”
“I’m trying to do this without thinking about that part,” Glory said quietly. “It doesn’t feel real. To be honest, if it did feel real, I’d probably just curl up right here and die crying.”
The watch went limp, swaying like a dying pendulum under Sam’s hand.
“And Alex is gone,” Sam said. “Back into the darkness between times, probably.” He looked up at the sky, scratched his unshaven jaw, and inhaled, like he might pick up his son’s scent from beyond time.
“Sam.” Glory leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder. He felt his rattle twist free beneath the weight. “What did we do wrong? How did we lose him? That’s where we should go. We should find wherever it is that we messed up. And then we should slap ourselves silly.”
“We can’t do that,” Sam said.
“There has to be a way.”
“Your soul can’t be in two bodies in the same space and time.” Sam said it, knowing Glory knew that already, better even than he did. “We’d be killing ourselves.”
Glory didn’t answer. Sighing, she reached into her jacket and pulled out the piece of paper Peter had given her. Sam felt her tense, and then she jerked upright.
“He wrote!” Glory said. “He has what we need!” She handed the card to Sam and jumped to her feet.
Sam took the paper and waves of memory poured over him as he read the handwriting. When he had first met Glory, when he had finally set his feet on the path that would lead him to rattlesnake arms and Millie and victory over the Vulture, he had received notes from the older Father Tiempo just like this one. Terse to a fault. Generally warnings.
M SAYS BOY AND GIRL TO MEXICO CITY. ROYAL PALACE VIOLENT MIDNIGHT JULY 1 1520. POSSIBLE DERVISH AMBUSH.
FT
“Mexico City in 1520?” Sam asked. “They’re gonna mess with the Aztecs? Who is M?”
“Manuelito,” Glory said. “And they could be messing with the piratical Spanish. Either way, let’s go!” She pulled Sam to his feet.
“Violent midnight,” Sam said. “Is that in addition to the ambush or is it the same thing? Peter really needs to learn to fill a page.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Glory said. “Ambush, violence, whatever. Our son is there, we’re going to get him, and that Dervish woman is finished.”
THE WORLDS HAVE SEEN MANY TOWERS. MEN LOVE TO BUILD them, striving to reach the stars, or, more often, striving to escape those who dwell on the ground. In the distant future, when the sun burns brighter and the dance of planets has been healed and death has died, towers will rise beyond the imagination of mortals now living. But not beyond the imagination of any mortal now dead.
There was once a tower built to marry mortals to the stars, a temple to purchase the divine with flesh, a place to govern time and space and barter with gods thirsty for blood or beauty. In that tower, gods once met with mortals. And from that tower, those gods were scattered and banished, demons demeaned, cursed to crawl in the dust with those who dwelt on the ground.
In that tower, the first Tzitzimime were birthed, and many others like them. But the ground itself rebelled against it, and the seas were sent to swallow it, and it was consumed. Even so, its crown remained, a mighty pyramid, and its tip was a floating seers’ chamber, where time unfolded its secrets, and men eagerly returned to mingle with gods. But a new curse came, and they were scattered, gibbering, made even lower than before, a step closer to the beasts.
And storms of sand were sent and swallowed the pyramid that had once bridged the dying and the deathless. The histories have forgotten it. Seers no longer climb to its pointed summit and bear witness to mysteries. It is a buried maze of dust and death, full of useless gold and deathless sleepers, sinking, always sinking, floor by floor, into the earth’s heart of liquid fire.
Now, in its buried tip where seeing window walls are still open to the world, there is a black pool with four chains linked to a single hourglass spilling history’s sands into the water, and beside it sits the one woman who has learned its secrets, the daughter of women who were daughters of demons who were daughters of gods who once fell from the stars.
With a tall brown glass in her hand, Mrs. Dervish reclined in a teak chair that she had long ago stolen from a hotel in a place called Bath. She had made the necessary adjustments to the four sundials around her pool, and the sloped triangular window wall she faced was now overlooking a city many thousands of miles away, lit with thousands of torches. A sacred city with canals reflecting the torchlight and stepped pyramid temples where many thousands had been sacrificed to the sun, where Tzitzimime and Quetzalcoatl had rejoiced in the smell of fresh blood shed by feathered priests and the worshipful roar of the crowd. A rich city, a city of much gold, a city that should have been hers, and that still would be.
Tenochtitlán. Mexico City.
In her tower far away, Mrs. Dervish had watched the rituals often, though as the last surviving heiress of the tower, she ruled only the undead who dwelt in the many floors below her. She had flushed with excitement and felt her own heart race while the still-beating human hearts of others were lifted up by priests and kings and offered to the sun. And she liked to imagine that every life taken on those stone altars on top of those great pyramids had been taken for her. Just as she liked to watch and imagine that the tsars had been destroyed in Russia at her command, or that she had demanded the heads of French aristocrats in their revolution. With the Vulture killed and even the undying Tzitzimime defeated by Glory and her snake-armed Sam, she had long refrained from meddling. She had retreated to her tower to watch. And plan the destruction of Miracles. And often, she had watched the same awful sequence play out in the Americas.
Mrs. Dervish had watched the Spanish come, over and over; she had borne witness to the disease that would devour the Aztec empire and subject it to three centuries of colonial slavery.
Not this time. This time she had added fresh ingredients to the situation.
A killer called Kit. He would be her high priest and governor. Soon she would not need to pretend to receive the bloody sacrifices. Her priest would introduce her as a new god. And she would be a very thirsty god, indeed.
El Terremoto. Her hammer. Her tool. If he survived. Once-useful bait if he did not.
A girl called Rhonda.
And assorted Miraculous guests, doomed to die as soon as they rushed in to play the heroes once more.
She was even ready to salt the entire situation with thousands of undead warrior sleepers and creatures from her own timeless Middle Eastern tower. Just for fun.
What was the point of ruling a mummified transmortal horde older than civilization if you didn’t wake them all up on occasion? They were ready and waiting in hundreds of hallways and on thousands of stairs below her. This Miracle trap would require their use. A little extra insurance. An army of aces up her sleeve.
Mrs. Dervish set her glass down on a small table beside her chair and picked up a bronze, bone-handled bell, ringing it only once.
A woman, tall and thin, wearing tightly wrapped bandages over her body and eyes, rose up into the garden from a hidden stair, and moved slowly toward Mrs. Dervish’s chair.
“Laila Navarre,” Mrs. Dervish said. “It’s tim
e we opened those eyes of yours, don’t you think? I’d like you to see your grandson before he dies. Take off the bandages.”
The woman unwound the cloth from around her head, revealing two empty eye sockets. Not bloody, not wounded, just . . . empty.
“Into the pool,” Mrs. Dervish said.
The woman walked forward until her bare feet were at the pool’s edge. Cautiously, but mechanically, like a puppet or a soft-tissue robot, she stepped into the black water. Hidden stairs carried her down and down and down. The surface rose to her waist, her ribs, her chest, and then her chin. She stood near the center, no more than a floating head, black liquid just beneath her thin lips, black sand from the hourglass above, softly raining into the pool in front of her.
One more step, and she was under. Moments later, she resurfaced and began to ascend from the other side of the pool, rising no faster than she had descended, not breathing hard, not splashing or shaking the water from her short obsidian hair. But where her empty sockets had been, she now had liquid eyes.
Blinking, she turned and looked at Mrs. Dervish.
“Better?” Mrs. Dervish asked.
Laila nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see my daughter.”
“Glory? To be honest,” Mrs. Dervish said, “no one likes your daughter. But I’ve made your grandson something worth seeing, although he won’t be around much longer.” Straightening her skirt over her knees and down her shins, Mrs. Dervish shifted her focus back to the ancient view of Mexico City. There were crowds moving through the streets now. Torches were multiplying.
Still dripping, Laila Navarre turned and looked, as well.
“Summon the others,” Mrs. Dervish said. “Bring up all the dry and shriveled sleepers. The undead. The broken beasts. Through the pool. I’m sending them all. Tonight, for the first time in six eras, this tower will stand empty.”
11
The Night of Sorrows
FACEDOWN, ALEX BLINKED SLOWLY. HE COULD FEEL A bump on the top of his head, courtesy of the somersaults he had done down the stone stairs. His buffalo coat was twisted around him. Rhonda was where?
He fought the coat and managed to roll over. Rhonda was already sitting up. Where the room should have had a ceiling, it was instead lidded with the belly of the fire they had set in the darkness—distant somehow, muted, warm rather than blistering. Alex couldn’t see the stairs anywhere, but thanks to the inferno above, he could see many far more interesting things.
The room was large and perfectly square. Nine square pillars in rows of three divided it. Every surface was covered with gold and every inch of gold bore carvings—snarling gods devouring women and feathered warriors with gaping eagle faces. Suns and moons and stars and serpents, winged women like bats, with rib cages full of corpses, beasts and bodies everywhere. And skulls. Rows and rows of skulls, wrapping around the top of the walls, and at the base, resting on the green stone floor.
“This is what I’m talking about,” Rhonda said. “Gold. Do you know how much all this is worth in 1982? This would totally set us up for good. Beach house in Malibu.”
Alex sat up and brushed his floating watches behind him.
“Are you gonna carry it?” he asked.
“Have you forgotten that we’re pretty much weightless out there in the dark?” Rhonda answered.
“Have you forgotten that you played with fire up there and the whole place exploded?” Alex scratched his bearded jaw. “Do you want to fry?”
“It’ll pass,” Rhonda said. She hopped up. “Check that out! In the middle?”
Alex rose to his knees and then his booted feet. His back hurt. His right knee. Growing pains, maybe. His joints and limbs weren’t used to themselves yet.
“Where do you think we are?” she asked. “If this is a time garden, it definitely feels more ancient than that place in France.”
“Of course it’s a time garden,” Alex said. “A watch dragged us here, didn’t it?”
Rhonda ran toward the central pillar. Alex followed more slowly, straightening his holsters and his heavy coat as he went. The firelight from above threw moving shadows beneath the strange carvings, but there were other things moving, as well—seven gold disks were orbiting the central pillar, gently kissing one another as they passed in the air, each intricately carved, dotted with geometric holes.
One of Alex’s watches drifted toward them, but he pulled it back and tucked it into his vest. Reeling in the others, he pocketed them all.
“These gold disk things will be easy to take,” Rhonda said. “And you can’t whine about carrying them. We can always come back with tools to deal with the walls.”
She reached for the biggest one, a sixteen-inch disk, like a giant coin covered with carving of a single snarling feathered face.
“I wouldn’t touch it,” Alex said.
But she did. Gripping the edges, Rhonda tugged it loose, staggered backward, yelped in pain, and then dropped it on the floor.
Alex winced at the first clattering sound and turned away as the disk rattled to a stop.
“It cut me!” Rhonda yelled.
A golden panel in the far wall rumbled open, and three enormous men leapt into the room.
On the right and on the left, the men were shirtless and tattooed, but they were wearing jeweled skirts and neckpieces and golden feathered helmets. They held torches and enormous carved wooden swords with glistening edges made of stone.
But the man in the middle was something different. His neckpiece was jade, and at first Alex thought he was wearing a jaguar skin like a hoodie, using the forelegs as sleeves. But then he saw the claws emerge from the man’s paws, and a long tail lashed behind him. He wasn’t just wearing it. He was a man with jaguar grown in. Like Sam Miracle with his snakes . . . but so much more extreme.
“Gosh,” Rhonda said.
The men with swords looked up at the fiery ceiling and their eyes widened. The werejaguar crouched lower, snarling from an inhuman mouth.
“Hey there,” Alex said, trying to smile. “Don’t worry about us. We were just leaving.”
The warrior on the left focused on him. He had sun skulls tattooed on each shoulder, and they rippled as he reached up and tugged at his own bare chin. Then he pointed at Alex’s beard.
“España,” he said. “España.”
“Nope,” said Alex. “Not Spain. American. And itchy.”
Both warriors pointed their stone-edged swords at him.
“España,” Skull Shoulders said again.
Alex shook his head and raised his hands palms out.
“I think this is when we’re supposed to pretend to be gods and predict an eclipse or something to make it convincing,” Rhonda said. “At least that’s how it always worked out for those goofy white explorers in the old stories.”
“Do you mind?” Alex hissed at her. “I’m trying to think here.”
“Think?” Rhonda laughed, and both of the warriors looked surprised. The werejaguar’s upper lip twitched above fangs. “What is there to think about? Kill these guys or knock them out or fly away.” She glanced up. “Still flaming up there, so that leaves doors one and two. Which I prefer, obviously, because that gives us enough time to take some loot.”
“Shut up,” Alex snarled. “This is serious.” The warriors were fanning out around them, tense, their stone-edged swords raised and ready. The werejaguar’s tail twitched, rump high, head and shoulders now low. It could leap anytime. With his right hand, Alex swept up all his watch chains and tugged the watches free.
“¿Cómo entró?” A new man had entered. Older. Shorter. Not nearly as tall as the others, with pale freckled skin and a scruffy brown-and-gray mustache. His hands were empty but bloody. He wore a western shirt and vest, both unbuttoned and flapping open. His bare chest and saggy belly were a maze of right-angled serpent tattoos, and like Alex he wore a two-gun holster and tall boots. Straw-colored hair straggled out from underneath a battered blue U.S. cavalry hat. The band of the hat had been lined on both sides with feat
hers that were vivid red and perfectly upright.
“You took long enough,” the man said. “You just get here?”
“Sorry?” Alex kept his eyes on the werejaguar and the warriors, ready to loft his watches and slow time down for a fight.
Rhonda pointed up at the ceiling. “We entered through there,” she said.
The man leaned forward, surprised. “I thought Terremoto was a Spanish name. You English?” he asked.
“American,” Alex answered.
The man laughed and waved the warriors back. Then he tapped on the jaguar tail with his toe. When he spoke, his voice reminded Alex of some old hunter spitting on the ground and talking to his father outside the gas station back home. “Down, kitty. We got ourselves an American cowpoke here, and a pretty little Chinese.”
“Korean American,” Rhonda said. “And what on earth? You’re American, too?”
The man grinned. One of his front teeth was missing. “That I was and that I am. But I like this America just a little bit better than my first one. I was a Union soldier once, an’ an Injun fighter. I was made for blood and war, not teacups and manners, and for blood and war and wealth and women, there’s no time like this one.”
“What’s your name?” Alex asked.
“In another age, people handled me Kit Carson. But I’ve been Cacamatzin for a year now,” the man answered. “Mercenary general. Man of fortune. Land pirate. Fashion me how you like. I go where I’m sent and do what I’m told by the one who pays me. Right now, that Dervish lady is my queen.”
“Shoot him, Alex,” Rhonda said. She crossed her arms. “Kit Carson was a total bastard. One of the worst.”
The man rocked with laughter. “Oh, I’m an even worse devil now,” he said. “One of the heathenest of heathens.” He held up his bloody hands. “Another day and I might guide you about and prod you for news and memories of the territories. But not tonight. Tonight, I’ve got warriors to rile, a new goddess to introduce, an emperor to kill, and Spaniards to slaughter. And I’m s’posed to contain the two of you.”
