The Watcher of Dead Time

by Edward Cox

  Lord Buyaal, the usurper of House Mirage, dusted down his priest’s cassock and gave his hulking rescuer a surprised look.

  ‘Lord Gadreel,’ he said. ‘I thank you for your timely intervention.’

  ‘Do you?’ Gadreel’s voice was a rumble of brooding thunder. ‘It’s not as if I was given a choice.’

  Buyaal looked taken aback. ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘Who do you think, you imbecile?’ Gadreel jabbed a meaty finger at his fellow Genii. ‘You are not supposed to be here. You were supposed to send troops to the Great Labyrinth.’

  Buyaal didn’t reply. Marney and Denton shared a worried look.

  Gadreel added, ‘Lord Spiral would like an explanation.’

  Buyaal swore. ‘I lost Mirage’s doorway to the Great Labyrinth,’ he admitted, voice heavy. ‘Two human magickers got in the way.’

  ‘Human magickers?’ Gadreel said dangerously. ‘Of the Relic Guild?’

  ‘Yes. The man escaped and ruined our plans. The woman, I killed.’

  Marney’s empathic control almost crumbled to dust. She turned away from the hole in the wall, pressing her back flat to the brickwork, taking deep, steadying breaths. Angel. Dead.

  Denton had also turned from the scene. He tapped a finger to his temple then pressed it to his lips, shaking his head. Although the air still prickled with spent thaumaturgy, creatures of higher magic might easily detect a mental conversation between two empaths.

  Marney peered through the hole again.

  Gadreel was glaring at his companion. ‘You allowed a magicker to better you, Buyaal?’

  ‘He had help,’ Buyaal snapped.

  ‘I do not care!’ Gadreel bellowed, and his already impressive size seemed to grow, loom – so much more powerful than the Genii before him.

  ‘Wait,’ Buyaal said, raising his hands against the threat. ‘As you can see, I’ve delivered the Burrows of Underneath to our Lord.’

  ‘You truly believe your actions here can compensate for losing the Great Labyrinth?’ Gadreel rumbled. ‘Do you realise how large this House is – how many more cities it holds?’

  ‘I had to act quickly,’ Buyaal countered. ‘Our plan was revealed, and—’

  Gadreel cut him off. ‘Millions of enemy Aelfir have fled to the other cities and Lord Spiral no longer has the time and resources to flush them out. You have achieved nothing here, Buyaal. And you would be dead now if I hadn’t arrived.’ Gadreel drew a deep, angry breath. ‘Lord Spiral has ordered me to clean up your mess. The Burrows of Underneath and your troops are now under my control.’

  With a guarded tone, Buyaal asked, ‘Then what does Lord Spiral wish of me?’

  ‘You will return to House Mirage,’ said Gadreel. ‘And there you will wait until you receive further orders … or punishment for failure.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Viktor. You have to listen to me—’

  ‘Tell it to Lord Spiral! Leave. Now.’

  Without another word, Buyaal stormed over to the portal, activated it and disappeared into darkness, travelling back to Mirage. Gadreel looked down at the Thaumaturgist’s decapitated body. He spat on it and then summoned his higher magic.

  His deep voice rising and falling with the breathy sighs of the language of the Thaumaturgists, Gadreel cast a spell which he hurled into the sky to form a huge orb of slate grey. The orb shattered into thousands of shards, a screaming flock of Genii magic. The flock dispersed, racing away in all directions, radiating a sense of hate and loathing as it went. Marney had seen this kind of magic before; the Genii used it to subjugate their enemies. This was how they turned the Aelfir’s love for the Timewatcher into devotion to Spiral.

  Gadreel watched his spell disappear across the Burrows of Underneath, apparently pleased with his work. He then sliced his hand through the air, creating another dark rent. He widened the portal before stepping through and disappearing himself. The rent sealed to a black line, which finally blew away like smoke in a breeze.

  The prickle of higher magic in the air lessened. The silence was heavy. The empaths didn’t move for a moment, as though reluctant to believe that the Genii had truly vacated the area.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Denton finally said, and he led the way through the breach in the wall.

  As they carefully navigated the rubble-strewn ground towards the portal, Marney averted her gaze from the bloody ruin that had been a Thaumaturgist. When they reached the stone archway, Denton activated the portal. Its darkness churned with the drone of magic.

  The old empath wiped blood and sweat from his face. ‘If we’ve done this right, the portal will take us to the Library of Glass and Mirrors.’ He sounded uncertain. ‘If we haven’t …’

  ‘It’ll take us straight to Buyaal,’ Marney finished, her emotions numb. ‘He killed Angel, Denton.’

  ‘We have bigger, more immediate concerns,’ Denton said, not unkindly. ‘Like finding out if we’ve navigated the Way of the Blind Maze correctly.’ Denton held out his hand and Marney grasped it. ‘Let’s get this bloody mission over with.’

  Together, beaten and tired, emotions protected behind shields of apathy, the empaths headed into the portal.

  Chapter Five

  The Progenitor

  A fine, warm drizzle misted the humid air. Thick clouds smudged the light of Ruby Moon into a patch of dull red. The mossy, black-bricked walls and cobbled floor of an alleyway led to a T-junction.

  Clara felt afraid and confused.

  She didn’t know how she had returned to the Great Labyrinth, but she was more concerned with the golem facing her in the alleyway, no more than thirty feet away. Its misshapen form covered by a wide-brimmed hat and priest’s cassock, it aimed a silver pistol at Clara, the power stone primed and glowing.

  Clara lifted her hands before her face. ‘No!’

  But the golem didn’t shoot.

  A rustle of movement came from the shadows of a buttress halfway between Clara and the golem. A coat appeared, tossed into the alleyway. The golem’s pistol flashed and spat, sending a bullet fizzing into the garment. Bitter magic whipped and moaned, freezing the coat in mid-air. Even as it hit the cobbles and shattered into a hundred shards of ice, a woman left the cover of the buttress. She spun into the alley and threw a dagger at the golem. The pistol clattered to the ground. The golem stumbled. Its hat fell to the floor, revealing its grotesque face and the silver blade stuck in its eye socket.

  Clara recognised the woman. ‘Marney!’

  The empath ignored the changeling, throwing two more daggers into the golem with expert precision. Marney readied a fourth blade but didn’t release it. The golem twisted and jerked spasmodically, its body and limbs bending to hideous angles. Hissing filled the alleyway with the acrid stench of dispelling magic. Finally the golem broke apart, collapsing to the cobbles, now nothing more than chunks of stone within its cassock.

  ‘Marney?’ Clara said.

  Saying nothing, the empath approached the remains, dagger in hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Clara peered up through the drizzle at the red bruise of Ruby Moon. She looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching fists. She didn’t feel right. Somehow, she felt incomplete. ‘How did I get here?’

  Again Marney didn’t reply as she inspected the remains of the golem. Clara froze when a second golem rounded the corner into the alleyway, its pistol primed and aimed at the empath.

  Clara shouted a warning, leaping to the cover of a buttress, but Marney had already rolled to one side, a silver dagger flying from her hand. It hit the golem high on its sunken chest, sending its shot wild. Clara flinched as the bullet cracked the alley wall, releasing ice magic which spread over the brickwork like frost on a windowpane. Before the golem could fire again, Marney finished it off with two more daggers to the head. The empath’s adversary lost the spell that animated it and broke apart.

&n
bsp; Clara stared at the scene for a moment. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’

  Without giving the changeling the slightest acknowledgement, Marney collected her throwing daggers and took off. She turned right at the T-junction and disappeared into the Great Labyrinth.

  ‘Marney!’ Clara shouted after her. ‘Wait!’

  ‘I’m right here, Clara.’

  Clara wheeled around.

  Marney stood in the alley, looking exactly as she had a few moments before, dressed in a black jumper and trousers, wearing a baldric of throwing daggers like a waistcoat. Her brown hair, lined with grey, was pulled back and tied into a tail. Her face carried the lines of a woman somewhere around sixty.

  Clara looked down the alley to where the empath’s doppelgänger had disappeared, and then back at this new version of her.

  ‘What … ?’

  With a slight smile, Marney walked past Clara. She stopped, staring down at the remains of the golem at her feet.

  She said, ‘In about fifteen minutes, you and I will meet for the first time. I will hide secrets in your mind, and then Fabian Moor will abduct me.’ She looked back at the changeling. ‘This is the night you joined the Relic Guild, Clara.’

  Clara rubbed her forehead. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s truer to say that this is a memory of that night.’

  ‘Whose memory?’

  ‘Mine. Or the template of it.’ Marney looked amused. ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

  Clara thought for a moment. ‘The Toymaker. I think he rescued me.’ She shook her head in disbelief as she remembered a hundred small but lethal automatons connecting together to form a single construct. They said that you never saw the Toymaker, only his toys. And now Clara knew why: the Toymaker was his toys. ‘But why help me? He’s been trying to kill the Relic Guild ever since we escaped the Labyrinth.’

  ‘He had a change of heart,’ Marney said drily. ‘The Toymaker works for Lady Amilee now. As we all do.’

  Amilee – she had been behind everything. Clara felt tightness in her chest. ‘Amilee let Van Bam die?’

  ‘No, Clara.’ There was no emotion in the empath’s voice, as though she had disconnected her feelings. ‘What Amilee did was find a way – the only way – to give us a chance of defeating the Genii. Van Bam is dead but not gone.’

  ‘I heard his voice.’

  ‘You heard his ghost.’

  ‘He was talking to you.’ A tear fell from Clara’s eye and she wiped it away. ‘You said we have to find him.’ She looked around at her environment, still not feeling quite connected to it. Anger flared. ‘I don’t understand.’

  A rumble of thunder came from the sky. Protracted, rising in volume before fading, it reminded Clara of a growl. It was only then that she realised the incompleteness she was feeling was due to the fact that her magic was no longer inside her. The wolf was gone, and Clara began to panic.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ Marney said, looking at the sky nervously. Thunder growled again and the drizzle became rain. ‘Come on.’

  Taking Clara by the arm, Marney led her to the T-junction, where they turned right into a long alleyway which stretched into the gloom.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Clara said shakily.

  ‘We’ll know when we see it.’ Marney looked agitated. ‘There are memories within memories in this place, Clara. I’m a projection, a copy of myself. I am what I planted in your mind.’

  Absently, Clara touched her lips, recalling the moment that Marney had hidden information in her mind with an empathic kiss. ‘So all this is inside my head?’

  ‘And we’re not alone,’ Marney said warningly. At another rumble of thunder, she looked back nervously. ‘Right now, you have to stay calm and focus your thoughts. I need you to think about Van Bam.’

  Clara yanked her arm from Marney’s grip and rounded on her angrily. ‘What’s going on? Van Bam is dead!’

  The rain turned into a torrential downpour, almost instantly drenching the magickers. Marney had to raise her voice against its hiss.

  ‘Do as I say, so Known Things can pick up on the information we need.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Clara shouted. ‘Known Things is gone!’

  ‘No, Clara. Not quite.’

  ‘Listen to me, Marney – we’re already too late!’ The changeling’s words were underlined by rumbles from the sky. ‘Viktor Gadreel killed Van Bam and took Known Things away with him.’ Her anger became distress. ‘He stole the location of Oldest Place from my mind. The Genii know how to free Spiral.’

  ‘Trust me.’ Marney held Clara by the shoulders. ‘Known Things will still show us how to kill the Lord of the Genii. Where do you think you are right now?’

  Clara baulked, looking around. ‘This is Known Things?’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know but we have to keep moving.’

  Both of them soaked to the skin, Clara allowed Marney to lead her off again. Above, the clouds flashed, thunder came with a strange bestial roar and the rain fell harder.

  Marney said, ‘When you were disconnected from Known Things, you should have died. But you didn’t.’

  The metamorphosis, Clara recalled: changing into the human had healed her wounds.

  ‘Known Things searched your memories for information, Clara, but it’s a two-way process and your mind has retained a copy of its entire contents.’ Marney waited for a peal of thunder to pass before again shouting over the rain. ‘That was the trade-off. To gain access to Known Things, you had to give the Genii the location of Oldest Place.’ She looked back down the alley and then urged Clara to quicken her pace. ‘Spiral has to be free before he can be killed.’

  ‘And I freed him?’ Clara was mortified. She longed to feel the wolf’s courage inside her. ‘That was Amilee’s plan?’

  ‘You have to listen to me,’ Marney repeated. ‘Your connection won’t last for ever. I don’t know how much time we have, but we need to discover how to kill Spiral before Known Things fades from your memory.’ More thunder. ‘Van Bam’s ghost is trapped in here with us, Clara. We have to find Van Bam to find the Nephilim.’

  Clara almost stopped again. The clashes in the sky now sounded more like distorted howls that burrowed deep into her being. It disrupted Clara’s thoughts and she struggled to comprehend this bizarre situation.

  ‘What have the Nephilim got to do with this?’

  ‘Everything!’ Marney replied. ‘The Nephilim are our last hope, Clara.’

  The rain fell in great fat drops. Clara’s bare feet splashed through an inch of water already covering the cobbles. She couldn’t shake the disturbing notion that the howls of thunder were chasing her.

  ‘You don’t have to understand,’ Marney continued. ‘Just keep thinking about— Wait! Yes, there it is.’

  Up ahead, a patch of radiance had appeared in the alleyway, hovering in the air, glowing through the downpour; a glassy substance the same deep green as Van Bam’s illusionist’s cane.

  ‘Well done, Clara!’

  Not knowing what she had done, confused and still feeling somehow detached from her environment, Clara hurried with Marney towards the green light.

  They stopped in their tracks as the rain abruptly ceased, replaced by an ominous stillness.

  The clouds disappeared from the sky, boiling away in an instant. It was as though time had sped up, revealing stars and the bright, sterile glare of Silver Moon. The temperature dropped. Drenched and shivering, Clara’s breath frosted in the air.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Before Marney could answer, a great, stony crack came from behind her. The magickers wheeled around. The alleyway was long, stretching back as far as Clara could see. Although the sky was clear, the roar of thunder raced down the alleyway towards them, caught between a bestial howl and a human scream. A powerful stench came with it
: blood, death … the damp pelt of a wolf. The alley walls began collapsing. Black bricks fell, forming a lethal vortex that followed the roar of thunder towards the magickers.

  ‘Shit!’ Marney hissed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your magic, Clara. It’s no friend to us here. Run!’

  Taking Clara’s hand, the empath practically dragged her down the alleyway towards the radiance. The covering of rainwater had become thick and slushy, freezing, threatening to trap the magickers before the deadly storm.

  ‘Don’t stop thinking of Van Bam, Clara,’ Marney shouted. ‘Think of Van Bam and the Nephilim.’

  The Nephilim … the name inflamed memories in the changeling, memories of blood-magic, of giants and hidden doorways. She saw Van Bam, a pack of wild demons ripping the flesh from his bones; and as she did so, the environment became starkly, frighteningly real. The green light grew, stretching across the alleyway like gelatinous emerald.

  ‘You did it, Clara,’ Marney shouted. ‘That’s our way out.’

  And as the howls and screams of Clara’s magic brought a storm of ice and bricks rushing towards them, the magickers reached the emerald portal. It enveloped them in green light that whisked them away from the Great Labyrinth.

  The ghost of Alexander led Hamir through the Tower of the Skywatcher to a spacious chamber decorated with sheets of white satin. The walls, floor and ceiling were entirely covered, and it was hard to make out where one sheet ended and the next began. Hamir imagined he had entered a cavern within a cloud. At the centre of the chamber, the material had been twisted into a series of pillars that stretched from floor to ceiling, forming a wide circle.

  Hamir glanced at Alexander, who had remained just inside the door. The ghost seemed reluctant to move any further into the chamber, perhaps fearful of the grisly monument inside the circle of satin pillars. It sullied the pure, clean whiteness.

  Hamir raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your corpse, Alexander?’

  The door slammed shut behind the ghost with an angry gust of wind. ‘Why don’t you just get on with it, necromancer.’