Prince of Time

by Tara Janzen

  Regardless, the past wouldn’t let him go. He was tied to it with every breath he took. It crept up on him in the no-man’s-land between sleep and dreams. It came upon him with the scents and sounds of the marketplace. Some nights he awoke in a cold sweat, once more falling through the weir, freezing to death with terror clenching his gut. Worm nights, he called them. ’Twas then he would drink, looking for oblivion and a remnant of home in the illusions of Carillion wine. Aja could have gotten anything out of him, if he’d asked on a worm night.

  “Robbi over there on the wall with the ropes,” the boy said, pointing to a crenellation south of the dragons. “Wils by the temple door. Jiang standing guard with Wils. York stays here to cover us.”

  “Agreed,” Morgan said, having reconnoitered the positions as soon as he’d discovered that the hypocaust emptied out under the kitchen.

  “What have they got inside the shrine?”

  “Some ancient Lectron trip wires, field security on a board—”

  “Good,” the boy interrupted, a quick smile curving his mouth. “And the alarm?”

  “A series of color-synchronized lights on the column holding the statue.”

  A moment’s silence met that particular answer, then Aja asked, “Like what we saw on Mercury Island?”

  “Aye, much the same,” Morgan said, his tone of voice noncommittal. He thought he heard a soft curse, or mayhaps it was only the wind.

  They’d pulled off the Mercury Island job four months earlier, and despite Aja’s nimble fingers and quick mind, the alarm had gone off and damn near gotten them caught. It was the closest call they’d ever had, with he and Aja both sustaining minor injuries. With all else that could go wrong on a heist, the softwork specialist was supposed to keep the obvious disasters from happening.

  “The seals in the hypocaust were Carillion knockoffs. The alarm might be too,” the boy suggested, his tone equally noncommittal.

  “Maybe,” Morgan said.

  “Well, I don’t want another friggin’ Mercury Island catastrophe,” York said, shoving himself forward from the rear and giving them each a tech-jaw to bite down on. Morgan put the marble-size piece of soft plastic on his back teeth and closed his mouth for a count of four.

  “Friggin’ catastrophes are your stock-in-trade, York,” Aja countered before biting down on his own tech-jaw. With his teeth closed, he flashed York one of his trademark grins, unperturbed by the older man’s complaint. York always expected the worst, and Aja never did. Morgan figured the two made a good pair.

  “Are we going to do this thing or not?” Jiang asked, and Morgan heard him half through the storm and half through the tech-jaw.

  He looked again at the deserted courtyard. They were going to do it, aright. Two weeks of living shrouded in a monk’s habit was pretty much his limit, and two weeks of listening to himself think was about seven days past it. The monastery was getting to him. Too much praying was part of the problem. He’d long since given up prayer. As to what else about the place discomfited him, he wasn’t sure, but something did, niggling at him, stirring up things best left forgotten, and he would as soon be away. With hand signals and a succinct set of commands, he deployed his men, directing York to stay behind.

  One by one, the bandits disappeared down the ladder, melting into the night and the storm. As the five split up, the tech-jaws kept them in communication. Like so much of the hardware they used, the tech-jaws didn’t come cheap, but Morgan had gotten past the point where he and Aja had to spend their downtime trying to cobble together bulkier and less reliable alternatives.

  The snowstorm was working in their favor, keeping any stray monks inside. The temperature had finally sunk below zero, and the windchill was well into negative double digits.

  The future, Morgan had discovered, afforded a few luxuries, especially in footwear. His boots were supple and warm, with two-inch soles that cushioned his every step while giving him better traction than he’d ever gotten in a leather shoe. But it was a long way to have come for a good pair of boots. A friggin’ long way.

  He and Aja made one last check of the other men’s positions before lifting the curtain on the temple door and slipping inside. They both came to an immediate stop. The room was cast in pitch darkness, except for the blue sheen of the power field around the statue and the low bar of lights illuminating the alarm.

  Aja slipped a night visor on over his eyes—and froze into perfect stillness.

  “Crikey...” he breathed through the tech-jaw, his hand absently touching the small yellow wallet on his belt. Morgan put on his own night visor.

  Large gilded statues of demon guardians loomed up on either side of the temple, revealed in the gloom by the visor’s green light. Great beasts of all types lined the walls, reaching fifteen feet from ceiling to floor: tiger-devils and lions silently roaring, bull-headed men and leopard-ghouls. He’d first seen the sentinels in daylight, their long fangs glinting with the rays of the sun, their chatoyant gilt eyes shining, looking alive. The cover of darkness did naught to mitigate either the demons’ frightful countenances or their eerie watchfulness. The altar was between two great dragons, one cast in green stone, the other in red, the whole of it fronted with a metal latticework grille.

  He looked to Aja, signaling him to begin, and after the briefest of hesitations his captain bent to his task.

  “Don’t move left,” the boy said, crouching to disable the first trip wire. “Okay, go.”

  Aja disabled two more trip wires before they reached the field security board. It was set into the floor, part of the circle incised around the column holding the dragon statue. The field itself projected from the numerous ports drilled into the circle, creating a translucent blue cylinder of protection. Even from a distance, Morgan could feel the power pulsing through the blue light. The boy stood close to the board and pulled a pliant metallic glove from his belt. When he was ready, he reached out with his gloved hand and touched the field. Light streaked up his arm, limning half his body. Sparks skittered from his fingertips. Wind gusted through the door, lifting and fluttering the boy’s hair, and for a moment he was held there, captain of the elements.

  ’Twas as close to magic as Morgan ever hoped to get again, what Aja could do with binary code and a wavelength-sensitized glove. The boy knelt to the board, being careful not to break his charged contact with the power field, his fingers trailing lines of blue fire down the length of the cylinder. Digits flashed on the board, lines of zeros and ones reflecting red on the green lens of the boy’s night visor. He worked the keys with his left hand, while reading the code through the gloved fingertips of his right.

  Any hack could read code, make code, and even break code given enough time, but no hack could do it through an active field. More than a few had been fried trying. Aja’s touch was immeasurably light, nearly psychic. That he could skim the surface of a field while reading a board made him rare even among those with similar talents.

  Aye, Morgan thought, the boy was a rare one, gifted mayhaps with a bit of sight. More than his captain’s softwork skills made Morgan think so; the boy showed other signs. Morgan had oft thought about Aja’s parents—one of whom must have bequeathed the boy his blazing red hair—and what had happened to them.

  A cracking bolt of energy streaked the length of the cylinder, signaling Aja’s breaking of his connection. The boy stepped back, his glove smoking. A smile spread across his face as the power field faltered, the blue light flickering and then failing altogether, leaving nothing between them and the twenty-four-karat dragon except the alarm system. Aja moved in close and knelt in front of the color-synchronized lights on the column.

  Morgan watched him run his hands along the alarm’s frame, searching for the telltale signs of Carillion manufacturing. They were always there: joints that didn’t meld, burrs that hadn’t been filed off, keys that stuck, fluids that leaked.

  A snick of sound broke the silence, and Aja turned, holding up a small lever that had all but fallen off the alarm
.

  “Carillion,” he said.

  Morgan nodded, pleased. He would as soon avoid another fight, even though he doubted the monks could put up much of one.

  Aja took a few extra minutes with the alarm, double-checking himself twice before cutting it off. When nothing happened, Morgan sounded the okay to the other men, letting them know he and Aja would be coming out. Stepping forward, he pulled a padded leather bag from his belt and reached for the dragon, only to stop suddenly, immobilized by a strange scent drifting out of the darkness.

  His nose knew what it was before his mind could acknowledge the truth, and his blood instantly ran cold. Aja was sniffing the air himself, his brow furrowed.

  “What in the h—” The boy got no further. A soft keening followed the scent, echoing around the temple, sounding as if from a great distance. The smell intensified, warm and rich, redolent of the deep earth.

  Morgan stared into the dark, washed through with dread and disbelief, unable to move. Demons, dragons... and worms. The memory of them coiled around his heart and lungs, sinuous and winding, reclaiming their place—the very breath and pulse of him.

  “Milord?” Aja questioned when he didn’t pick up the dragon, but only stood there, sweat breaking out on his brow, his fingers outstretched, his whole arm trembling. “Morgan?” the boy repeated uncertainly.

  Morgan cursed under his breath. He should have known. They were time worms. No passing of years would ever see their demise. Now they had a cult of monks worshiping them. He wondered if the buggers knew what they were messing with, and in the next second knew that of course they did.

  Friggin’ worms. They’d not get him a second time.

  Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the gold statue and turned to run, wanting nothing more than to be anyplace else in the world other than Sonnpur-Dzon Monastery.

  Another curse lodged in his throat. He and Aja were no longer alone. A dozen monks had emerged from the gaping belly of a tiger-devil, arisen from God knew what wormish rites, and were staring at him and his captain in horror. Behind them were more monks, some carrying torches.

  “Rush them,” Morgan commanded, pushing his hood off his head and dragging his longsword up out of its scabbard.

  “Rush who?” Jiang asked through the tech-jaw from outside by the door.

  “Move!” Wils roared, making Morgan’s ears ring. In the next instant, the one-armed bandit ran into the temple, his lasgun drawn. A monk stepped out of the shadows and caught him from behind, knocking him out cold with an iron key he swung from a strap. Wils splayed on the floor, his lasgun sliding over the stone into darkness.

  Jiang got off a shot, and the monks went wild. More of them poured out of the tiger-devil’s belly, filling the temple and creating chaos.

  “On my way,” Morgan heard York say, the older man’s voice crackling through the tech-jaw.

  Two monks pulled metal staffs off the latticework grille of the altar and rushed Morgan, looking like they planned to knock his head off.

  “Damn,” he whispered. So much for his idea of placid monks.

  “Zips fixed, ropes over. On my way,” Robbi reported.

  Aja was holding off four monks with his lasgun, but Morgan could see it was still trigger-locked and knew it was likely to remain that way. Aja had never shot a man in his life. Skraelings, yes, for the boy had a morbid fear of the beasts, but never a man. Monks swinging keys at him were unlikely to push him into murder. The boy had too many other options.

  “Away, Aja,” he ordered.

  “Milord,” the boy protested, backing toward the column.

  “Away, Captain,” he repeated, emphasizing the boy’s rank and responsibilities. He threw the leather bag, and nearly quicker than the eye could see, Aja caught it and was gone. The four monks searched around one another, dumbfounded, trying to find him.

  Morgan knew they wouldn’t, then he had no more time to think. The staff-wielders were upon him. The clash of metal striking metal rang out in the temple. The taller monk was also the faster, getting in two attacks to the other monk’s one. Morgan parried all of them, swinging Scyld with a two-handed grip. The tall monk switched tactics, bringing his staff around in a swipe meant to break ribs. Morgan jumped back, and instead of hitting him, the tip of the staff grazed his chest and sliced his shirt open. A second swipe left a trail of blood on his skin and reduced the front of his shirt to nothing but a rag hanging from his shoulders.

  “Son of a bitch,” he swore. The staffs were razor sharp on the ends.

  Wils was down, maybe dead. Jiang was surrounded. They were outnumbered five to one, and the monks were loaded with deadly weapons. Shooting their way out might be their only chance. He started to give the order to unlock triggers, knowing York would come in with carbines blazing, but was stopped short when his attackers suddenly backed away.

  “Bo si wong gi,” the tall monk whispered, staring at his chest.

  Morgan knew it was a mess. He had scars from wounds that should have killed him. In the beginning, he’d wondered if they had and he’d woken up in hell. Sometimes he still wasn’t sure.

  The monk’s gaze shifted from his chest to his hair, and his eyes widened. From what Morgan had seen of the strange and varied beings that inhabited the future, he didn’t know how a white stripe in his hair could cause such a shocked expression. Half the inhabitants of the Old Dominion had something weirder than a stripe going on with their hair. After a second of stunned staring, the monk lowered his gaze and fell to his knees, leaving himself to Morgan’s mercy—or the lack thereof.

  “Bo si wong gi,” he repeated in a voice full of wonder. The words were quickly taken up by the other monks, the sound rushing around the temple and leaving a hush in its wake. By twos and threes, monks knelt on the floor, all of them facing him.

  Morgan didn’t like their reaction. He didn’t like it at all, but neither was he going to second-guess it.

  “Morgan check,” he muttered into the tech-jaw, still holding his sword in a defensive position. “Aja away. Wils down. Jiang check. Bail. Bail.”

  Warily, he began making his way toward Wils. York and Robbi burst through the curtained doorway at the same time, their guns at the ready, expecting the order he hadn’t yet given.

  “Bo si wong gi. Bo si wong gi.” The words were becoming a chant, rising up from a floor littered with the saffron-colored robes of supplicating monks.

  York took one look and gestured for Robbi and Jiang to get out, while he went for Wils.

  Morgan reached the one-armed bandit at the same time as York and helped heft him onto the older man’s shoulders. With Robbi covering them, they backed their way to the door.

  Once outside, they raced for the wall, with Morgan taking Robbi’s place as rear guard. By the time they reached the ramparts, Wils was coming around. Aja was waiting for them, a breach of orders, but one Morgan would deal with later. With a quick, underhanded throw, the boy tossed him the leather bag. Morgan caught it and looped it onto his belt.

  Unbelievably, no monks were following them. The courtyard was deserted, filled with nothing but falling snow and the muffled sound of the chant coming out of the temple.

  Bo si wong gi. Morgan didn’t even want to know what it meant.

  York went over the wall first, taking Wils with him in a harness down the zip line. Robbi and Aja went down a parallel line. Morgan clipped onto a rope, and he and Jiang went over the wall with descenders, dropping in near free falls to the valley floor.

  The snowstorm had heightened into a blizzard while they’d been in the temple. No moon had risen, and the wind and the cold cut through Morgan as he slid down the rope, freezing his gloved fingers around the descender. Somewhere below them in the night, their camp awaited with hot food, warm tents, and a GS rover to take them into the canyons of the Middle Kingdom. From the canyons, they would make their way into the lower valleys and head toward the eastern shore of the Sand Sea.

  Falling through the darkness, his life hanging by the thin line of
rope, Morgan felt the weight of the gold dragon pulling him down. It was a bitter victory. The smell of the worms was in his nose, churning in his gut, lapping at his mind.

  Dragons, snakes, and worms... his nightmares resurrected. Christ have mercy.

  ~ ~ ~

  Inside the monastery, in the assembly hall, the tall monk knelt before the High Lama of Sonnpur-Dzon. The old man’s white hair streamed down his robes. Blue tattoos swirled up the left side of his face, the archaic symbols nearly lost in the wrinkles of his dark skin. Incense rose from the burning censers flanking the yellow pillow on which he sat.

  “You are sure it was him?” The old man’s voice wavered in the thin, cold air.

  “There is no doubt, Most Holy One. I saw the signs for myself. The white stripe in his hair and the mark of the rowan tree gracing the skin over his heart.”

  “Others have had the stripe of the time weir in their hair,” the old man said, lifting a hand to the pale blond streak running through his own.

  “Yes, master, but none other has ever had the sacred leaf emblazoned on his chest. It is he, Bo si wong gi, the Prince of Time we have so long awaited. He is come, master.”

  The old man’s eyes drifted closed, and in the long moments that followed, the younger monk feared his master had fallen asleep.

  But such was not so. Without opening his eyes, the High Lama lifted a silken cord from around his neck and draped it over the younger man’s shaved head. A silver disk hung from the cord, incised with a square rimmed in gold and inset with a triangle of carnelian.

  “Take this to Deseillign, to the White Palace on the edge of the Waste. Take it to the desert daughters and tell them their talisman has arrived. Tell the Lady Avallyn her traveler has finally come.”

  The Talisman