The Watcher of Dead Time

by Edward Cox

  ‘You were just a boy when I first met you,’ Amilee said, a small smile on her lips. ‘A wild little thing, you were, full of wonder and such spirit! How is it that you grew into such an angry and embittered man, Samuel?’

  ‘It happened easily enough,’ Samuel replied, though not unkindly. ‘The Timewatcher took everything from us.’

  ‘The Timewatcher was wrong to abandon you. She and the Thaumaturgists should have stayed, and we should have grown strong again together.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘But answer me this – would you hesitate to make the same sacrifice as Van Bam if you knew it could save every person you once promised me you would protect?’

  Samuel clenched his teeth, battling his anguish. ‘You know the answer to that.’

  ‘I do, and I know it well, agent of the Relic Guild.’

  Samuel stared at Amilee and, much to his own surprise, found himself saying, ‘It’s so hard to believe in my duties sometimes. Spiral and the Genii aren’t the only ones who want to harm the denizens. Whether we stop Spiral or not, the Aelfir are planning to cut the Labyrinth off, let its people die.’ He felt hopelessness rising. ‘It makes me wonder what the point of all this is. There’s only one man trying to stop the Aelfir – Councillor Tal – and he—’

  ‘Samuel,’ Amilee said gently. ‘The fate of Labrys Town and the Houses of the Aelfir is in your hands. Free the Nephilim and perhaps the future will not appear so bleak.’

  ‘I think I agree with you,’ said Gulduur Bellow, stooping to pass through the doorway into the hall and join the rest of the group.

  ‘How’s Marney?’ Samuel asked quickly. ‘How’s Clara?’

  ‘I have done all I can,’ Bellow said. ‘Which is to say, I believe I have been successful. Clara and Marney will wake imminently, I think, and they should be themselves.’

  The weight of relief almost crushed Samuel.

  The blue orbs of Bellow’s eyes stared at Amilee. ‘Where is the necromancer?’

  ‘Hiding, if he knows what’s good for him,’ Glogelder said.

  A look from Hillem stopped him saying more.

  ‘Hamir is an ally,’ Amilee stressed. ‘And we cannot do this without him.’

  ‘I do not want to harm him, if that is what you think.’ There was a flat, stoic edge to Bellow’s usually genial voice. ‘Surely after all I have been through, you would not begrudge me a conversation with the Progenitor.’

  There was a distinct challenge in the words that only served to emphasise how weak Amilee appeared and how large and strong the Nephilim was.

  ‘No,’ said Amilee. ‘I think you’re owed that, at least. But you need to understand – all of you – that Simowyn Hamir is the only one who can free the Nephilim, and you, Gulduur, are the key that opens their prison—’

  Before Amilee could say more, a long, piercing howl came from the room behind Bellow. The giant ducked back in, closely followed by Samuel. The others came soon after.

  Clara was awake and in wolf form. She stood on the table, sleek and muscular beneath her silver-grey pelt, and her size shocked Samuel. He had forgotten how big she was.

  ‘Clara, calm down,’ he said softly.

  The wolf bared her teeth and growled at the hundred automatons clinging to the walls and ceiling around her.

  Samuel’s prescient awareness stirred. ‘You’re safe,’ he promised her. ‘It’s all right.’

  The light of magic illuminated the wolf’s pelt for a moment, and then she shrank and morphed sinuously into a young woman wearing dark grey clothes and a hood.

  On her knees, breathing heavily, Clara looked straight at Samuel. ‘I know where the Nephilim are,’ she said, then, ‘Shit!’ She clutched her head and fell back on the table, writhing in pain.

  Namji rushed to her, opening her satchel to administer some healing spell. Bellow approached Marney when the empath groaned, curling into the foetal position as she began to sob.

  Glogelder shouted a curse and Samuel wheeled around. The ghost of Alexander had appeared beside the big Aelf.

  ‘There is a problem, my lady,’ he told Amilee, his spiritual face pained. ‘Your House is under attack.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sisterhood

  Uproar. A hammer banging a gavel. A demand for order.

  Councillor Tal closed his eyes and fought for inner calm.

  After the Timewatcher and Her Thaumaturgists abandoned the Houses, there had been genuine concern among the Aelfir that they would return to the Old Ways: a time when realm fought realm in perpetual wars that raged for so many generations no one could remember why they had started. To prevent this, the Aelfir came together and maintained a peaceful equilibrium by creating the Panopticon of Houses.

  ‘Order!’

  Based in the Sisterhood of Bells, the Panopticon became the governing infrastructure where all Houses had a voice. But as with any establishment purporting to be a democratic union, an imbalance arose over the years: a state of inequality revealing that some Houses were more important than others. Rumours surfaced of a secret band of hierarchs who controlled the Panopticon from deep within its heart. Powerful, hidden, these hierarchs were known as the Sisterhood. And the Sisterhood spared no love for the place where humans dwelt.

  ‘There will be order in the House!’

  Power; the kind that steered people’s lives, controlled their beliefs, manipulated governments to their own ends – that was what the Sisterhood craved. It had a pernicious agenda to stamp out the Aelfir’s lingering faith in the Timewatcher, their fear of Her, and to finally burn Her fading stigma to ashes. The Sisterhood’s first strike towards achieving their goal was to openly disobey the Timewatcher’s final prerogative with impunity: to disregard the edict commanding the Aelfir to ensure that the denizens of Labrys Town received everything they needed to survive. And the only person standing in the Sisterhood’s way was the disgraced politician and veteran of the Genii War, Councillor Tal.

  ‘The House will remember the reason for this session!’

  In the mighty clock tower of Little Sibling, the parliament building for the Panopticon of Houses, Tal stood on a podium at the centre of the huge auditorium of the Commons Hall, surrounded by hundreds of Aelfirian leaders sitting in stepped rows of bench seats. It looked as though a representative of every major House was in attendance, just as the Sisterhood had planned. From the podium, Tal faced the raised bench where the three Speakers of Justice sat.

  Speakers Cam and Tillane sat on either of Speaker Olivior, not one of them old enough to remember the Genii War. Olivior banged her gavel and continued to call for order, but the Panopticon remained in uproar.

  Tal had already been forced to listen while the Speakers read out the long list of charges brought against him. Nothing more than a formality. The Sisterhood had already bent half the Houses to its way of thinking and was using fear and misdirection to manipulate the rest. The reason for this session was to sway dissenting opinions and engineer a vote that would lead the Panopticon to authorise the destruction of the last remaining portal to the Labyrinth. That decision would ensure the deaths of one million humans and kill once and for all any lingering reason to have faith in the Timewatcher.

  It was up to Tal to turn the Panopticon against this foolhardy course of action, to convince hundreds of rulers and ambassadors – many of whom already saw a guilty Aelf on the stand – that the Genii had returned.

  But the focus of this session had taken a strange deviation and disquiet ruled the Commons Hall.

  ‘Order!’

  Earlier, Speaker Olivior had said to Tal, ‘You were in charge of the Aelfheim Archipelago when the humans appeared from the portal in Sunflower.’

  To which Cam added, ‘And not only did you allow them through the portal, but also to escape your custody.’

  ‘Thus causing the deaths of many Aelfir,’ Tillane pointed out.


  With voices magically amplified to reach every ear, they were speaking lines Tal knew had been pre-scripted for them. The Sisterhood had long ago decided that Tal would be the scapegoat who opened the way for their plans, and the Sisterhood had charmed the tongues of the Speakers.

  ‘What you say is true,’ Tal had stated in a tired sort of way. He was too old and had seen too much during the Genii War to feel intimidated by his accusers, or by the judgemental murmurs that filtered through the gathering; or to fear whatever punishment they had planned for him at end of this charade. ‘However, I would ask why the Speakers of Justice appear to have no interest in discovering why the humans used that portal?’

  His question had been ignored. The three Speakers discussed further accusations aimed at Tal, loudly debating his incompetence and obvious sympathy for humans. Tal had scoured the gathering – so many faces, old and young – and tried to locate the members of the Sisterhood. He couldn’t see them but he knew they were there, hiding among supposed peers, already certain of the outcome, poised to celebrate their coming success.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Olivior had said, after Tillane had rifled through his notes and handed her his findings. ‘Am I to understand that the Toymaker did not appear to protect the portal?’

  ‘He did appear,’ Tal replied. ‘And he was responsible for the deaths in Sunflower.’

  Cam sneered, ‘Was he also responsible for the deaths that occurred when the Retrospective followed the humans here? The truth is, no one has claimed to have seen the Toymaker other than you, Councillor. Do you know anything else that we do not?’

  Tal had felt the old fire burn in him then, the blazing pieces of a soul shattered and broken by the Genii War. ‘I know lots of things that you don’t,’ he replied with an icy growl.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Tillane announced primly, officiously, addressing the hall, ‘that even the Toymaker, who was created by the Thaumaturgists themselves to serve the Timewatcher’s final prerogative, has given up on the humans. What does that tell the esteemed Houses of the Panopticon?’

  At that, loud exclamations – mostly of agreement – had broken out in the Panopticon as though the answer to Tillane’s question was obvious: if the Timewatcher and the Thaumaturgists no longer watched over the Labyrinth, why should the Aelfir be responsible for the humans?

  But that was not the cause of the uproar now; that had come a little later.

  Tillane had continued, ‘The Retrospective has already attacked the Aelfir once, and I believe it is only a matter of time before it will do so again.’

  Cam agreed, adding gravely, ‘The greatest of our magic-users have confirmed that the Retrospective followed the humans here. It is leaking out through the portal in Sunflower, and we have only one option left if we are to protect our Houses.’

  ‘Yes. Most regrettably.’ Olivior aimed a baleful glare at Tal. ‘Councillor, I really can’t decide if you are guilty of gross negligence or if you deliberately set out to help the humans.’

  Tal had heard enough of the lies by that point. ‘My friends!’ His bellow had startled the Speakers and shocked the Panopticon into a hush. ‘You accuse me of helping the humans, and I tell you that I did! And I would do so again with all the passion left in my old heart – because I know what you do not.’ As Olivior called to order the disgruntled voices that arose with the statement, Tal pointed an angry finger at the Speakers’ bench. ‘The humans fled the Labyrinth in desperation, seeking our help. They are the magickers of the Relic Guild, and they bring a dire warning—’

  And that was as far as Tal got before the cause of the uproar presented itself.

  A messenger burst into the Commons Hall, bringing urgent news to the Speakers that had quickly spread among the gathering. Something was wrong in the Aelfheim Archipelago. Disease had beset the inhabitants, a potent virus that had spread among them like wildfire, reducing any it infected to savage animals. And the disease was spreading to neighbouring Houses.

  Now, as Tal witnessed the discontent rumbling through the Panopticon, listening to Olivior’s hammer failing to bring order, he recognised that a time of reckoning had come to the Aelfir; and this proved to be true when the grand doors burst open and four strangers entered the Commons Hall. They looked human. Almost.

  ‘Silence!’ the lead man roared.

  His voice descended with such weight that no one dared deny its power. It achieved what Olivior could not.

  Each of the strangers bore scarring upon their foreheads. Three of them were dressed in the black cassocks of human priests: a hulking brute with a bald head and one eye; a fragile-looking woman with long black hair; and another man as pale as an albino, his hair straight and white, his face somehow dispassionate yet cruel.

  The lead man stood proudly ahead of the three. Bald-headed and thickly bearded, he wore a long dark skirt. His naked torso was covered in black tattoos – symbols Tal recognised as the language of the Thaumaturgists. His eyes burned with violet fire.

  ‘Who speaks for your petty council?’ he demanded.

  Olivior rose from her chair. Cam and Tillane stood beside her.

  ‘We are the Speakers of Justice for the Panopticon of Houses—’ Olivior began, but she got no further.

  The man swept a hand before him, stroking the air almost gently. This simple action ripped the throats from Olivior, Cam and Tillane. Spraying blood, they fell dead to the floor.

  The Panopticon panicked. Several armed guards rushed in. But before they could fire a single shot from their rifles, the other three strangers had turned and used magic to suck the life from them. Each guard collapsed without a sound.

  With another spell, the lead man controlled the rising panic in the hall, panic that threatened to turn the august representatives into a stampede of fleeing Aelfir. He forced every member of the Panopticon down into their seats. With faces expressing terror and confusion, the gathering had been locked into position by magic that also squeezed the voices from their throats.

  The abrupt silence was unnerving.

  ‘Tell me!’ the man shouted. ‘Who will speak for you now?’

  Tal was surprised to find that the effects of the restraining spell had not touched him. He looked at the fear-riddled faces of his peers, speechless, immobile in their seats – those who had been so ready to condemn him, rulers and ambassadors from just about every major Aelfirian House congregated under one roof – and a strange calm descended on him as the pieces of his broken soul knitted together.

  The end had come.

  ‘I will speak for us,’ Tal said, his voice clear as he calmly stepped down from the podium.

  The man looked amused by the elderly Aelf walking across the hall towards him – and surprised, perhaps. ‘Are you afraid?’

  Tal shook his head, surprised by the truth in the gesture.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘Yes, I know you.’ Tal stopped a few paces short of the tattooed man. ‘You are the former First Lord of the Thaumaturgists, the Skywatcher Iblisha Spiral.’

  ‘Oh, I am much more than that now.’ The Genii Lord pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  Behind him, his Genii eyed the Aelf suspiciously. Tal recalled intelligence he had received during the Genii War, descriptions of Spiral’s most trusted generals. The pale Genii with the white hair – it had to be Fabian Moor.

  ‘I thought you might be stupid,’ Spiral said, ‘but you know my true name. This must mean that you are important, at least among your own kind.’

  ‘I am Tal.’ He couldn’t stop his voice shaking, but not from fear. The aura of power that radiated from Spiral squeezed him from all angles and crackled over his skin. ‘But perhaps you know me by a different name.’ He did his best to draw himself up. ‘During the war, your armies called me the Ghoul.’

  Spiral considered him for a moment before chuckling. ‘I do know that name. How perfect.’ Fabian Moor glare
d at Tal with unashamed loathing. ‘You terrified the Aelfir. They said you were the slayer of Genii. But to me, you were no more bothersome than a flea.’

  ‘That’s good enough,’ Tal replied, still desperately trying to keep his voice from shaking.

  ‘Oh, I understand – you think of yourself as the flea that bit the giant. Fair enough. I say bravo to you.’ Spiral’s aura pressed in, hot and fluid. ‘Tell me, do you think your endeavour to stop me was worth it now?’

  If Spiral was free from Oldest Place, did that mean the Relic Guild had failed? Or was it yet another part of Lady Amilee’s plots and plans against the Lord of the Genii?

  ‘It was worth every minute,’ Tal said hoarsely.

  ‘I’m sure you believe that.’ Spiral looked around at the gathered House rulers, sitting still and silent under his thaumaturgy. ‘I’m going to indulge you, Tal the Ghoul, just this once. Is there something you wish me to know?’

  Tal sensed his death coming, and the part of him that had already died during the Genii War embraced it.

  ‘There will always be those who will stand against you,’ he stated. He struggled to meet Spiral’s fiery eyes and bared his teeth in an angry sneer at the Genii behind him. ‘We will continue to fight you and your kind, and never kneel to you.’

  ‘No?’ Spiral’s beautiful face became terrible. ‘Your mistake is believing that I covet the fealty of the Aelfir. I do not. What I want, Ghoul, is sacrifice. Raw matter. Land masses. You people and your Houses are the fodder that will feed the Retrospective. Together we will grow and expand until the only state of existence is a House of blood and dead time.’