The Watcher of Dead Time

by Edward Cox

  Hamir stepped inside the satin pillars.

  Alexander’s corpse stood like some perverse presentation in an anatomy lesson. Held upright by a framework of metal encompassing his legs and supporting his back and neck, both his arms were missing at the elbows, the stumps healed around glass tubes through which dark fluid travelled. Alexander had been sliced open from throat to groin, the skin pinned back, all traces of blood cleaned away. His ribcage had been removed, along with his stomach and intestines and bowels – most of his other organs, too. In fact, as far as Hamir could see, Alexander’s body only retained its heart and lungs. More glass tubes sprouted from these organs and ran into a line of small metallic hemispheres fixed to the floor. The dark fluid flowed like blood through veins.

  ‘And you say you made this sacrifice willingly?’ Hamir said.

  Alexander’s ghost now stood alongside Hamir. Unable to gaze upon his flesh, he focused on an oval frame standing next to his body. Resting upon another metallic hemisphere, it was as tall as a man and made from a pearlescent substance that Hamir recognised as thaumaturgic metal.

  ‘How long have you been this way, Alexander?’

  ‘That is none of your business.’

  Above the corpse’s ashen face, with its slack, tongueless mouth and hollow eye sockets, Alexander’s scalp and the top of his skull were missing. A hundred needles stuck into the pallid walnut of his brain were connected to a network of thin copper wires that converged into the base of a metal box hanging from its stand just off Alexander’s shoulder.

  ‘Fuel,’ Hamir said.

  Alexander’s body was acting as an organic power stone, kept in a radically slowed state of decomposition, maintaining the slightest current of energy flowing through the Tower of the Skywatcher.

  ‘This is necromancy of the lowest and foulest kind,’ he said to the ghost. ‘The Timewatcher forbade the Thaumaturgists from ever using this kind of magic. Lady Amilee must have been desperate indeed to resort to this.’

  ‘She was strong when others were weak,’ Alexander retorted. ‘And you should be grateful for that.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘You know what to do, necromancer. And you don’t need my help to do it.’

  With silver tears shining in his eyes and anger on his face, the Aelfirian ghost faded and was gone.

  ‘Charming,’ Hamir muttered, and removed the phial of Clara’s blood from his inside pocket. He’d been carrying the phial since this whole damned scenario began, and now he was glad of the chance to be rid of it.

  Approaching Alexander’s corpse, Hamir was at first perturbed by its complete lack of aroma, but then impressed by Lady Amilee’s surgical skills. He could feel heat coming off the copper wires connecting the brain to the box hanging beside the body. Like the oval frame, the box carried the pearlescent quality of thaumaturgic metal.

  Hamir looked at the phial in his hand.

  Changeling blood was priceless to the art of spellcraft, a magical catalyst which could empower the most mundane spells almost with the potency of thaumaturgy, if only for a short time. Yet Lady Amilee could not possibly expect this single phial to return her tower to its former glory. So what did she expect? What could the gruesome engine that Alexander had become achieve with this blood?

  Hamir reached out and touched the box. The thaumaturgic metal reacted by rippling and then swirling into a miniature whirlpool that created a dark hole in the structure. Hamir popped the cork from the phial and fed the open end into the hole. The metal hardened around the glass and the box drank Clara’s blood, leaving behind not one drop or smear inside the phial.

  The copper wires began to glow, the heat increasing, flowing through the thin strands into Alexander’s exposed brain. Organ tissue sizzled. A little smoke rose. Alexander’s mouth closed and fell slack again. His body jerked and entered a series of rhythmic spasms, as though the corpse was pumping the energy of the changeling blood into the veins of Lady Amilee’s tower. The dark fluid in the glass tubes became as clear as water, shimmering with magic. The oval frame beside the corpse began singing with a high, clean peal.

  Hamir backed away.

  The frame’s pearlescent metal started to brighten; the light thickened into lines that stretched across the space within the oval like slowly spreading cracks in glass. The lines connected, merged, filling the frame with a sheet of multicoloured light. With a nerve-shredding din, the sheet shattered and was sucked away, leaving behind a churning whiteness.

  ‘The Nothing of Far and Deep,’ Hamir whispered.

  The distant sound of a lonely wind moaned around the chamber of white satin. Alexander’s corpse continued to spasm. Hamir retreated further as a portal opened in the primordial mists and a strange vision emerged.

  It was an automaton, but not a design Hamir had ever seen before. Made from a framework of a hundred moving pieces, a host of tiny violet lights shone from within its body. A smooth metal disc of silver appeared to serve as a mouth on an otherwise featureless face. And in its framework arms, the strange automaton carried a small, unconscious woman.

  Clara.

  With crackles of energy and a puff of smoke, Alexander’s body ceased pumping heightened magic through the tower. The power of the changeling blood exhausted, the portal deactivated and the Nothing of Far and Deep disappeared.

  Hamir was speechless. The automaton stood motionless before him and the necromancer got the impression that it was waiting for orders. He considered approaching to check that Clara was alive but decided against it. The changeling looked very still in the automaton’s arms. She wore simple dark grey clothes that he could see were imbued with magic.

  ‘Let me introduce you to the Toymaker,’ Amilee said.

  Hunched over, dressed in purple robes, the Skywatcher entered the circle of satin pillars, moving with the gait of an elderly human. Her face was ashen and she struggled for breath.

  Hamir looked back at the automaton. ‘The Toymaker?’

  ‘His story is a little complicated,’ Amilee said. ‘But don’t worry, Hamir – Clara is alive, if not entirely well.’

  Hamir attempted to process the last few minutes. ‘Would you care to tell me what in the Timewatcher’s name is going on, my lady?’

  Amilee approached the Toymaker and stroked Clara’s hair. ‘Such a young and naïve creature,’ she whispered. ‘I am truly sorry for the weight of the burden I have hung around your neck. And for what is to come.’

  Hamir frowned. ‘My lady?’

  ‘Later, Hamir,’ she said, turning from the Toymaker. ‘Clara needs our care.’

  ‘Why did my magic attack us?’ Clara said into the darkness.

  ‘Actually, it was protecting you,’ Marney’s disembodied voice replied.

  ‘Strange way of showing it.’

  ‘Not if you consider all the facts, Clara. Known Things was created by Spiral, and his presence is in here with us. Your magic doesn’t like that, and rightly so. It sees Known Things as an invader.’

  ‘So what happens if my magic reaches us?’

  ‘It’s not a case of if but when,’ Marney replied. ‘Eventually, your magic will destroy your connection to Known Things, wipe it from your mind. So you have to learn what we need to know before it catches us.’

  The dark was complete. Clara couldn’t see Marney or anything else, though she felt more stable than before. Her legs were solid beneath her and her thoughts were clearer, despite the absence of her now rogue magic. It brought courage and acceptance, and a curious realisation that, even though she had been carrying Marney’s presence in her mind since this whole dilemma had begun, she didn’t really know the empath at all.

  ‘Where are we?’ Clara asked.

  ‘You tell me,’ Marney replied from the dark. ‘You brought us here.’

  It felt to Clara as though a cool breeze was blowing through her mind, bringing with it
more and more clarity. She wondered if it was Marney’s doing; empathic magic calming her emotions and anchoring her to the situation.

  Above, the darkness blushed with a vague pinkish hue, like the first signal of a rising sun in an otherwise starless sky.

  ‘Why are the Nephilim so important?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Because they are the closest thing to Thaumaturgists that we have left,’ Marney answered. ‘But the Nephilim disappeared, Clara. And only Spiral knows where they are.’

  Clara considered this. ‘Van Bam said he met a Nephilim, years ago.’

  ‘He did, but I really don’t know much about it.’ The sky was slowly growing brighter, and Clara began to make out an etching of Marney’s face in the gloom. The empath stood close by, her expression concerned. ‘It’s hard to remember things sometimes.’

  ‘His name was … Bellow,’ Clara said. ‘Gulduur Bellow. Is that why Van Bam’s ghost is connected to the Nephilim? Because they met?’

  ‘I … maybe.’ Marney sounded contemplative. ‘All I know for sure is that Spiral imprisoned the Nephilim herd shortly before the Genii War. For some reason, he’s keeping them alive, hidden. Van Bam met the only one to escape Spiral’s clutches. But there are hundreds more of them, Clara, and if we release them – if we’re very lucky and they agree to help us – they might just be strong enough to destroy Spiral and the Genii.’

  The pieces were clicking together for Clara. ‘Known Things is a records device,’ she realised. ‘Every secret Spiral needed to keep from the Timewatcher is stored in here. Including what he did with the Nephilim.’

  ‘You’re catching on,’ Marney said, amused; and then, less so, added, ‘Concealing the location of Oldest Place was never our most important agenda. Finding out where Spiral hid the Nephilim’s prison is.’ She looked disturbed. ‘You’re holding Spiral’s deepest and darkest secrets in your mind, Clara, and we’re right in the thick of them. All we have to do now is figure out where to look—’

  Marney broke off. Clara’s breath caught.

  The darkness erupted with hues and colours like a thousand rainbows unfurling. A vast nebula dotted with the clean light of a million silver stars danced in the sky with kaleidoscopic storm clouds, clashing and mixing before cascading to surround the magickers with a scintillating wall of energy.

  Clara gave a Marney a look both confused and astounded, but the empath only had eyes for something else.

  A small man had appeared. He sat cross-legged on the floor, head bowed, dressed in ripped and stained robes of purple. A configuration of symbols formed a circle beneath him. The pattern – strange interconnecting shapes – was not something Clara had seen before, yet somehow she recognised it.

  ‘The language of the Thaumaturgists,’ Marney said.

  The small, dishevelled man was so still that he might have been dead. His raven hair hung limp.

  ‘Who is he?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Someone you know,’ Marney replied.

  A star fell from the nebulous sky, a bright point of silver blue that raced down and stopped abruptly before the man. It hovered three feet from the ground, bobbing gently. With a sharp intake of breath, the man looked up and stared at it. The hair fell away from his face revealing a tattoo of a black diamond on his forehead. He was young, eerily beautiful, and a tuft of dark beard sprouted from the point of his chin. Clara didn’t recognise him until she stared into the soft green of his eyes.

  ‘Hamir?’ she said.

  ‘But not as you know him, Clara.’ Marney sighed, the sound full of disappointment. ‘Hamir has served as the Resident’s aide for longer than any human alive can remember. The agents of the Relic Guild used to joke that he was as old as the Nightshade itself, but the truth is he is far older.’

  Hamir, bedraggled and broken, stared at the star before him. His shoulders shook as he wept.

  ‘This isn’t the necromancer you know,’ Marney continued. ‘This is Lord Simowyn Hamir.’

  ‘Simowyn?’

  ‘His true name, Clara. The name of a disgraced Thaumaturgist.’

  Clara didn’t know Hamir very well; she’d not had the chance to before the Relic Guild went on the run from the Genii. Looking at him now, so young and broken, the diamond tattoo of the Thaumaturgists on his forehead, she reasoned that none of her colleagues would have guessed he was a creature of higher magic.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Again, Marney gave a disappointed sigh. ‘The Progenitor,’ she said. ‘Have you ever heard that name before, Clara?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There aren’t many people left who remember the story, but the Progenitor is the name the Nephilim adopted for the rogue Thaumaturgist who created them.’

  A tendril of light reached out from the star, stretching towards Hamir and rising above him. He watched it as though hypnotised by a snake preparing to strike.

  ‘Hamir created the Nephilim?’ Clara said.

  ‘With dark methods that Thaumaturgists are forbidden to use.’ There was disgust in Marney’s voice. ‘The Nephilim are hybrids, Clara – half-Thaumaturgist, half-human. Hamir abused a hundred denizens in his experiments. One hundred women. Using foul magic, he impregnated them with the souls of dead Thaumaturgists and forced them to give birth to the Nephilim. Not one of those women survived.’

  Clara flinched as the tendril of light struck, stabbing into the black diamond on Hamir’s forehead. His eyes squeezed shut, his mouth opened in a silent scream as the silver-blue light darkened to red. Clara felt no remorse for him, nor was she surprised by Marney’s revelations. She couldn’t exactly explain it but the information felt familiar, as if, here in this strange place, all things were indeed known to her.

  Marney said, ‘This must be the day Hamir was punished for his atrocities. What we’re seeing happened centuries ago – a thousand years, more or less.’

  A thousand years, Clara wondered. Back when the Labyrinth was new. She felt confused and said, ‘Known Things was designed to hold Spiral’s plans for the Genii War. How does Hamir’s punishment fit in?’

  ‘Memories within memories, Clara.’ Marney didn’t take her eyes off Hamir. ‘They should have killed him for what he did,’ she added bitterly. ‘But instead, they drained the higher magic from his body and took away his thaumaturgic mark. There’s no greater punishment for a Thaumaturgist, they say.’ She scoffed. ‘Hamir was stripped of power and sent to the Labyrinth, where he became the servant of the Residents.’

  Clara looked at the cloudy rainbow walls and sparkling lights that surrounded her, then back at Hamir and the star of torturing light. ‘Who punished him?’

  Marney, her eyes steely, didn’t seem to hear, and all the while the black diamond tattoo smouldered and burned away from Hamir’s forehead. Blood ran down his face into his open mouth. As it drained Hamir’s thaumaturgy, the star’s colour changed from red to purple.

  ‘You got off lightly, you bastard,’ Marney growled.

  ‘Lucky for you that he did.’

  It was a man who had spoken, though he was nowhere to be seen. Clara shot a worried look at Marney but the empath appeared unfazed by the voice.

  ‘It’s all right, Clara.’

  On the other side of Hamir, a man emerged from the nebulous sparkling wall. Dressed in a simple russet habit, his unruly hair and thick beard long and grey, he approached the prisoner. His face was kindly but his eyes were shrewd as he looked from one magicker to the other.

  Marney said, ‘I was wondering when you’d make an appearance.’ Her tone was even.

  The man smiled. ‘I thought it best to introduce myself.’ A soft voice, tone bordering on amusement. ‘There are one or two things about this place of which you need to be careful.’

  Marney snorted.

  ‘I know you,’ Clara said, unable to hide her incredulity as Known Things whispered to her.

 
There had once been a Skywatcher known to the creatures of higher magic as Honoured Lord of the Thaumaturgists, though the Aelfir called him the Wanderer. His true name was Baran Wolfe, and he had been a member of the Trinity of Skywatchers, a select and favoured band among the Timewatcher’s Thaumaturgists, a band which had also included Yansas Amilee and Iblisha Spiral.

  History said that the Genii War began when Spiral murdered Wolfe; but history failed to acknowledge that Wolfe was not killed outright. Spiral drained him of power, ripped the silver wings from his back and forced him to become the caretaker of secrets, the perverted and tortured wretch Voice of Known Things. Of course he would be present here.

  ‘Hello, Clara,’ Wolfe said softly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. You also, Marney.’

  Marney glared at him. Clara was intrigued, fascinated by a sudden and overwhelming sense that she knew this Thaumaturgist.

  ‘I was present at Hamir’s trial.’ Wolfe watched the star of light. His face became serious. ‘And I wasn’t alone.’

  Marney explained for Clara. ‘Whenever a Thaumaturgist defied the Timewatcher, the Trinity of Skywatchers convened a court called the Council of Three.’

  ‘Amilee and Spiral,’ said Clara. ‘They were there, too.’

  ‘Their voices always carried more weight than mine,’ Wolfe said distantly. ‘Especially here on Mother Earth.’

  ‘Mother Earth?’ Clara said, surprised.

  ‘The Council of Three tried all offending Thaumaturgists at the Timewatcher’s House.’

  Clara took in her surroundings again, a sense of awe rising within her. ‘This is Mother Earth?’

  ‘A representation of it,’ Wolfe replied. ‘Creatures of lower magic aren’t capable of seeing Mother Earth. Not while they’re alive.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Marney demanded.

  Wolfe raised an eyebrow. Clara tried to fathom why the empath sounded so bitter towards the Skywatcher.

  ‘The two of you have no time to waste,’ Wolfe said, ‘yet you are about to go running in circles, blind and desperate.’