The Watcher of Dead Time

by Edward Cox

  In this confined space, Glogelder swapped his spell sphere launcher for his pistol. ‘So what now?’ he said, his thick voice echoing.

  Samuel pulled the key from his pocket, holding it as though clutching a protective talisman.

  ‘We find something to unlock,’ said Namji.

  Leading with her pistol crossbow, she followed the light down the corridor, into the dungeons.

  The cobbles on the floor were slick. Beneath the low ceiling, the bricks of the walls were thick with dirt. Moss grew in patches. The group passed darkened cells along the way. Decades ago, the dungeons beneath Little Sibling had been used to hold enemy officers captured during the Genii War. Prisoners had been interrogated, tortured, executed in the cells; but now the cells were empty and their doors were open.

  After a short distance, Namji’s magical light hovered before a heavy door of thick metal bars stretching from wall to wall, blocking the corridor. Samuel went ahead of the group with the key in his hand. After a quick inspection which revealed no lock that the key might be used for, or hinges upon which a door might swing open, Samuel realised it wasn’t a door at all.

  ‘It’s a barricade,’ he said.

  The metal bars were three inches thick, no more than six inches apart. The frame had been welded to metal plates fixed to the walls, floor and ceiling, and then reinforced with a host of heavy-duty bolts. But had it been constructed to keep people out, or to keep something in? Either way, there was no going back now; the Toymaker would be hunting them again soon. If he wasn’t already.

  Samuel clanged the key against the bars. The metal was coated with rust, but solid. ‘I don’t have enough acid to create an opening,’ he told the group. ‘We could try ice-bullets – might make the metal brittle enough to break.’

  ‘No,’ Namji said. With a hand gesture, she summoned the star of light, and it zipped back to hang above her head. ‘Get behind me,’ she told Samuel.

  Samuel stood alongside Hillem and Glogelder, watching as Namji aimed her crossbow. She pulled the trigger and the steel string snapped forward. The bolt sliced the air and its glass head smashed upon the floor at the base of the barricade, releasing a spell with the sound of a gale.

  Magic created a ball of wispy energy like a storm. The ball wasn’t particularly big, reaching only halfway up the barricade and barely touching the walls, but the spell it contained was fierce. The bars began shuddering, and then the magic cut through them. The lower half started bending, folding, melting, as though collapsing under a pressure so heavy, so immensely dense, that it melted metal. The spell took a while to die. And when it had gone, so had the bottom half of the barricade.

  ‘Vacuum magic,’ Hillem told Samuel. ‘It’s one of Namji’s own spells. Very effective. Very brutal.’

  Beneath the barricade, the spell had also cut a smooth bowl out of the cobbled floor, and in it molten metal steamed as it cooled.

  ‘You don’t want to see what it does to a person,’ Glogelder commented with a shudder.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Namji.

  With the star of light once again leading the way, Namji ducked under what remained of the barricade and into the passageway beyond. Samuel went next, Hillem behind him, and Glogelder brought up the rear. More cells lined the walls, each one open and empty.

  They continued until the star stopped and its colour turned from white to a deep, ominous orange. The group halted and raised their weapons.

  ‘Wait,’ Samuel said. He could see a vague colour touching the edges of the star’s warning light. ‘Put it out,’ he said.

  Namji clicked her fingers and the little star fizzed and fell to the floor as a dying ember.

  Purple luminescence tinted the air in the corridor, weak, barely lifting the gloom. It came from the last cell on the left, through a viewing hatch set into the one door that was closed.

  ‘This must be it,’ Namji said.

  Samuel took the black iron key to the cell. The door was made from thick, sturdy wood and he was surprised to find it unlocked already. In fact, the lock was missing altogether. Where it should have been, a large, neat section had been cut out of the door, just below the viewing hatch, roughly a foot square.

  Confused, with the key still in his hand, Samuel pushed the door open with the barrel of his revolver. The Aelfir gathered behind him.

  Samuel swallowed. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said, voice tight.

  The cell held a prisoner: a woman, naked, with her back to the door, sitting on the floor upon a circular platform of metal. Her body was emaciated, limbs withered, dirty skin stretched tightly over fragile bones. She was unnaturally still. She couldn’t be alive. She looked more like a preserved corpse.

  Samuel found his courage and entered the cell.

  The purple light was radiating from symbols engraved into the metal platform, which formed a strange design of interconnecting shapes and patterns. Samuel had seen this kind of configuration before and a pang from the past formed ice in his gut.

  ‘What is it, Samuel?’ Namji said from the doorway. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Samuel pointed at the source of the purple light. ‘But those symbols – it’s the language of the Thaumaturgists.’

  Namji walked into the room for a better look. Samuel raised an arm to prevent her from going past him.

  ‘This is a prison designed to hold a creature of higher magic.’ Samuel stared at the back of the emaciated prisoner. ‘The light is a thaumaturgic spell. Whatever you do, don’t touch the platform.’

  Samuel skirted around the big metal disc to the other side of the cell. The Aelfir joined him, and they all gained their first look at the prisoner’s face.

  She looked as though she hadn’t moved or spoken or seen the sun for decades. Hands nestling in her lap, she stared up at the ceiling, the dead and dry milky orbs of her eyes coated in dust. A toothless mouth hung slack. The leathery skin of her stomach lay in folds. Breasts and ribcage had been removed and her skin had sealed around the missing square of the cell door, cruelly embedded into her chest, complete with an old, black iron lock.

  Samuel clutched the key in a fist, staring at the patch of scarring upon the woman’s forehead.

  ‘Genii,’ he whispered, mouth dry.

  ‘Bugger me.’ Glogelder aimed his pistol at the prisoner. ‘Tell me what to do.’

  ‘Put your gun down and keep your distance,’ Samuel snapped.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Namji. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Is she dead?’ asked Glogelder.

  ‘She doesn’t look particularly alive,’ Hillem answered.

  ‘How can we be sure?’ Glogelder sounded disturbed. ‘Maybe we should go back for a while, wait for Samuel’s magic to return.’

  Namji shook her head. ‘There’s no time.’

  ‘I’m not sure it would make a difference, anyway,’ Samuel growled. ‘The last time I faced a Genii, my magic didn’t acknowledge the threat he posed.’

  There was a moment of silence, and then Hillem said, ‘How long do you think she’s been here?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Samuel looked from the lock in the prisoner’s chest to the key in his hand. ‘This has to be—’

  The Genii drew a ragged breath. The group jumped back as one, aiming their weapons.

  The Genii blinked rapidly and her withered eyes spilled tears down her hollow cheeks; her limbs and body shuddered into movement, bones cracking, skin rubbing on skin like ancient parchment. The Genii drew several more short, harsh breaths as though preparing to sneeze, but then she released a scream with the fury of a thousand wild demons.

  ‘Timewatcher save us!’ Glogelder shouted. ‘What is this?’

  The Genii’s scream died. She pinched her eyes shut, sobbing in pain. Her wasted form shook so violently that Samuel wondered if she would break apart. The shaking stopped abruptly and her eyes s
napped open, black as night and deadly, glaring at the group.

  ‘You took your time,’ she croaked from her toothless mouth.

  ‘What about now?’ Glogelder said. ‘Can I shoot her now?’

  The Genii huffed a laugh. She tried and failed to moisten cracked, colourless lips with a tongue as dry and rough as sandpaper.

  Samuel pushed down the aim of Glogelder’s pistol and motioned for Hillem to do the same.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded with confidence he didn’t feel.

  ‘What does it matter, human?’ She tilted her head and one of her hands moved to the lock in her chest. ‘Just give me the key.’

  Samuel glanced back at the others. Namji shook her head.

  ‘This is why you’re here?’ Samuel said, gesturing at the Genii with the key.

  ‘And I’ve been waiting for it since the end of the war.’ She looked confused. ‘How long has it been?’

  No one answered her.

  ‘Give me the key,’ the Genii pleaded. ‘It’s the only way to release me.’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ Glogelder growled.

  ‘I tend to agree,’ Hillem added.

  ‘Why would I release you?’ said Samuel.

  ‘Because your journey ends here if you don’t.’ The Genii smacked her lips a few times and raised bony hands to her face, working jaw muscles that hadn’t been used for years. ‘There’s no going back. Only forward now.’

  Feeling more uncertain than ever, Samuel was glad when Namji moved alongside him.

  ‘Who imprisoned you?’ she said.

  ‘Who do you think?’ The skeletal face tried to pull an expression of disgust. ‘That self-righteous Skywatcher. Amilee.’

  ‘Amilee?’ Samuel resisted the urge to back away. He shared a look with Namji.

  ‘She trapped me here and spared me from execution at the end of the war. Nice of her, don’t you think? Wish she’d just let me die with the others.’

  ‘Why did she do this to you?’ Namji asked.

  Beetle-shell eyes blinked at the Aelf. ‘If you can be this dim-witted in a simple conversation, I very much doubt you’ll survive what comes next.’

  Bewildered, angry, frightened, Samuel willed confidence to fill the void of his dampened magic. He summoned his experiences, drew strength from his long years of service to the Relic Guild; the stolen relics and artefacts he had tracked, the countless criminals he had interrogated, the host of unlikely situations he had escaped to complete a plethora of missions on the Nightshade’s behalf. And a calm settled on the old bounty hunter. Cold as winter.

  ‘If you want this key,’ Samuel told the Genii in an even tone, ‘you’d better answer my questions. Why did Amilee put you here? What happens next?’

  The prisoner closed her eyes. Dust-filled tears struggled to run down her cheeks, silver in the purple glow of thaumaturgy.

  ‘To forget who I was, but to know what I am, that’s why the Skywatcher keeps me here.’ She tried to cackle but resorted to huffing sobs instead. ‘I remember things sometimes … many things.’ She leaned forward, staring up at the magicker with an imploring expression, though her eyes remained emotionless black holes in her face. ‘At one time they called me Lady … but now I am the Icicle Forest.’

  Samuel recoiled as though the Genii’s words had slapped his face with bad memories. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I am the doorway.’

  Samuel stared, his mouth working but his words missing.

  ‘The Icicle Forest,’ Namji wondered. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Nor have I,’ Hillem admitted.

  ‘Shut up, both of you.’ Samuel’s teeth were gritted at the Genii. ‘What do you know about the Icicle Forest?’

  ‘I know it will give me death.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘The doorway is hiding inside me. Amilee put it there. Give me the key and I’ll let you in.’

  Samuel looked at the square of wood and the black iron lock that had been so cruelly set into the Genii’s chest; then he looked at the key in his hand. Doorway? Did she mean there was a portal inside her? Was that possible, even with higher magic?

  ‘Why?’ Samuel said. ‘Why would we want to go there?’

  ‘Because everyone dies if you don’t.’ The Genii twisted her gummy maw into a hideous rictus. ‘Only by going to the Icicle Forest can you help your missing friends to kill Spiral.’

  Samuel’s thoughts raced to Van Bam and Clara. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The Skywatcher said that some truths are hidden from the skies. There is a rogue element, a missing piece to your puzzle. Unless you find it, you can never hope to use the secrets of Known Things.’

  Another blade of winter stabbed at Samuel. ‘What do you know about Known Things?’

  ‘I … I don’t remember.’

  ‘Then what is the missing piece? What rogue element?’

  ‘It is trapped in the Icicle Forest.’

  Samuel flushed with anger. ‘Speak plainly!’

  ‘I can tell you no more, human, and your time is running out. Give me the key and I will open the door for you.’

  The key’s teeth bit into Samuel’s palm.

  ‘Giving her that thing doesn’t sound like a good idea to me,’ Glogelder said.

  Namji shushed him. ‘What do you think, Samuel?’

  ‘Please,’ the Genii sobbed. ‘The Skywatcher’s message is all I have to give you.’ A line of drool dripped into her lap. ‘I no longer care about Spiral or the Timewatcher or anyone else … I just want release. Give me the key or you all die.’

  Samuel felt a nudge from his magic.

  It wasn’t much, still only an ember of its usual fire, but enough to steer his gut instincts, to convince him that bad things would happen if the group didn’t move forwards. And there was only one way to achieve that.

  ‘No choice,’ he told the Aelfir, and he threw the key into the glowing prison.

  ‘Samuel,’ Namji hissed.

  Too late.

  The black metal sparked as it entered the thaumaturgic light and clanged onto the metal disc a few inches from the prisoner. Clawed fingers tipped with dirty, cracked nails grabbed for the key. A desperate sort of triumph came to the Genii’s face as withered arms lifted her prize and a trembling hand slid the head into the lock in her chest. She turned the key with a clunk that shook her frail body.

  The Genii closed black eyes.

  A long breath gurgled from her slack mouth as she slumped. The light radiating from the thaumaturgic symbols shrank into the centre of the disc, intensifying, surrounding the prisoner in a column of purple that stretched from floor to ceiling.

  ‘Get back,’ Samuel warned.

  The others didn’t need telling twice. They followed the old bounty hunter’s example until each of them stood with backs flat to the wall, weapons aimed at the prisoner.

  Within the column of purple light, the Genii’s body collapsed in on itself, as though what little moisture remained to her had instantly evaporated. She crumbled like a dying golem, bones and flesh and muscle becoming a pile of dried organic matter in a few short seconds. The lock disappeared beneath her remains. The Genii’s face was the last part of her to collapse; and as it did so, her toothless mouth warped into what looked like a perverse smile of relief.

  The Genii’s remains began to swirl within the column, slowly at first, then with increased ferocity as though caught by a violent wind. The storm moaned and howled then began to coalesce. The purple glow of thaumaturgy flared with violet light so dazzling that Samuel and the Aelfir had to cover their eyes.

  When the light died, the symbols of thaumaturgy carved into the metal had ceased glowing altogether. But within the circle now stood a monument made from compacted organic matter resembling an archway of bone. Within the archway, thick white mist roiled with the sound of
a lonely wind.

  Samuel stared into the Nothing of Far and Deep, the weight of his revolver in his hand giving him little comfort.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, his fear returning, wishing more than ever that Van Bam was with him. ‘What is going on!’

  Although Samuel shouted the last word, his colleagues remained silent, tense, until Glogelder said, ‘Someone’s going to have to explain this to me.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Hillem added.

  Samuel said nothing and glared at the portal.

  ‘This is good news,’ Namji announced, gesturing to the Nothing of Far and Deep almost excitedly. ‘This is what the avatar wanted us to find. Lady Amilee left it here. The avatar’s master must be the Skywatcher. A Thaumaturgist stayed after the war. She’s been helping us.’

  ‘Yeah … Lady Amilee,’ Samuel said, his voice hollow. ‘And she wants us to go to the Icicle Forest. I wouldn’t be so happy about that, if I were you.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Hillem. ‘What is the Icicle Forest?’

  Samuel rubbed at the indent of the key still engraved on his palm. ‘Namji, do you remember how Fabian Moor got into the Labyrinth during the Genii War?’

  She was quiet for a moment. ‘Ursa,’ she replied.

  ‘Moor did terrible things to himself to gain access to the Labyrinth,’ Samuel said for the benefit of Hillem and Glogelder. ‘His physical form was reduced to ashes, to his essence, and stored in a terracotta jar, where he was safely hidden from detection. A group of treasure hunters found that jar and brought it into Labrys Town, and an Aelf from Mirage called Ursa was stupid enough to open it.

  ‘Moor’s essence was reanimated by blood. By the same process he brought the last of the Genii back, and continuing to drink blood is the only way Moor and his cronies can stay alive now.’ Samuel looked at Namji. ‘But did you ever hear where those treasure hunters found the terracotta jar containing Moor’s essence?’

  Namji began to shake her head, but then she looked at the portal. ‘The Icicle Forest?’

  Samuel confirmed the answer with silence.

  ‘So what is it?’ Glogelder asked. ‘A House?’

  Samuel shrugged. ‘I think only the Genii know for sure. There were rumours that Spiral created secret strongholds in the Nothing of Far and Deep, but they were supposed to have been destroyed during the war.’