Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  Thor yelled, dropping the blade, backing away. As he did, the door opened again, and Sam saw Tinkerbell, a crossbow held in either hand. Thor swung on Tinkerbell, and raised his hands with a roar, sending ripples through the air that threw the other man off his feet. He called his axe across the room to his hand, and turned towards Sam, a huddled figure in the corner.

  But instead of delivering the expected blow, he smiled – a weak smile, which faded into a look of pain as the eyes cleared. Thor staggered a few paces to the doorway and paused; and Sam saw on the old Waywalker’s face a look of such longing and torment that he almost, but not quite, felt guilt. Thor’s mouth moved, with a dry sound that might have been Thor’s ordinary voice coming from Thor’s ordinary mind as he whispered, ‘For Freya’, before he turned and limped away.

  Sam sat there, dazed and in pain. His gun was still in his pocket, his bloody dagger lay on the floor. He called the dagger back to his hand, wiped it clean on his already filthy shirt, re-sheathed it and staggered to his feet. Dragging himself to the kitchen sink, he turned on the cold tap and stuck his head under the flow. The chilly water was shocking, but welcome. Behind him he heard a sound. He spun, gun coming out of his pocket, fearing that Thor had returned.

  Tinkerbell was leaning against the wall, both crossbows now pointed at Sam. More people were coming through the door, men in dark clothes who Sam half recognised from the flat in Southwark. Gabriel was climbing to her feet. All eyes were on Sam and the gun he held two-handed, steady, in front of him.

  Sam thought. He looked from Gabriel to Tinkerbell to the men in the doorway, and a tiny voice inside whispered, No choice. Gail was right about that at least.

  He smiled a feeble, unfelt smile, and let the gun hang at his side. Tinkerbell edged towards him. Submissiveness, Sam guessed, wasn’t on Tinkerbell’s file.

  ‘Hiya, Sebastian.’

  ‘Hello there. Give me a reason why I shouldn’t go ballistic as only a Son of Magic can. Apart from the crossbows, I mean.’

  Tinkerbell considered. ‘Perhaps… because we’ve only ever been trying to look out for you.’

  ‘This is protection, huh?’

  ‘You’re one man, Sebastian. A powerful guy, but still very much alone. You must know that we – the Ashen’ia – are the only ones who can keep you safe.’

  ‘Where’s the catch? The part where you use me as Bearer of Light to hold the universe hostage?’

  Tinkerbell smiled an easy smile too good to be true. ‘Consider it the lesser of two evils. You can wander around alone and get killed by Thor, Odin, Seth or Jehovah. Or you become part of the Ashen’ia and end up as one of the most powerful men in the universe.’

  Sam sighed, rubbing one hand across his eyes. ‘I hope you have a long spoon,’ he muttered. ‘And don’t think this means I agree with you. But… like you said, I appear to have run out of options. I assume these gentlemen are here for the “taking” instead of the “offering” part of the deal?’

  Tinkerbell’s smile turned strained. ‘You help us, we help you. You want to stop Cronus – so do we. So join us. Dare I say, sell your soul to the Devil?’

  Sam raised his hand and spoke in a slow, deliberate voice. ‘You want a truce, right? Not a treaty.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘This,’ he declared with a sigh, ‘is very unoriginal. But sometimes you’ve just gotta say these things. Take me to your leaders.’

  EIGHT

  Trusts and Truths

  T

  hey had a white van. Sam had always imagined that demons would drive white vans, vehicles that implied a certain attitude towards the road. They took the gun, his dagger and sword. He let them. There didn’t seem any alternative. No choices.

  Once, he remembered, he’d been shown a computer game by a friend. And no matter what you did, whether you talked or fought or stole your way through the narrative on the screen, the story adjusted itself around what you did. So if you were a good enough bluffer you could discover where to find the socks of power or whatever the game was about. If you were a thief you could steal a letter describing what you needed to know. If you were a murderer you could kill the guy and then conveniently discover in some drawer a spell that would bring him back to life, under your command, whereupon he’d tell you everything. Thus, no matter how hard you tried, it was impossible to cock up the story.

  If only he could try out variants of his own life, reloading situations again and again to see whether thieving, murdering or lying was the best way out. Meanwhile he was in the back of a darkened van, with demons sitting on either side of him and Ashen’ia of the suspicious I’m-watching-you variety in front. Sam felt cold. He felt tired. The ambulance driver’s coat was too large. He just wanted to sleep.

  Against expectation, lulled by the motion of the van, he did.

  A long time ago, when Sam was still young, in Heaven, and thus with access to the Eden Portals, he’d studied the wards on the Way of Eden. He’d heard rumours of Eden, the beauty of it, the majesty that made Heaven look drab by comparison. Some of the oldest Waywalkers could even remember it from when they’d journeyed into Eden in the good times. It was these older ones who hungered for the Way of Eden to be reopened after Light sealed it, fleeing from the reality of her son, Balder’s, murder and closing the Way behind her.

  When Sam had been approached to try and unseal the wards, at first he’d been optimistic. He’d gone down to the nearest Eden Portal and sat for hours on end before the shimmering white doorway suspended on nothing, eyes closed, probing with his magically attuned senses at the wards that covered the Way. The wards were strong, far beyond the capacity of even combined Waywalkers to dislodge, but that was to be expected. They’d been written by a Greater Power, after all. Their weakness was that they were so obviously written by a Greater Power, they were all Light and nothing but. If you could summon Darkness, that elusive Greater Power, never acknowledged in Heaven or indeed in any other world, a Power shunned by all the others, then the wards could be breached.

  It was summoning Darkness that had got Sam worried. As he had sat, cross-legged, face serene and mind far away, he had wondered. Darkness was shunned for a reason. She existed to sow discord, she hated everything, but at the same time she possessed a seduction and a power that alarmed her sisters in the pantheon of Greater Powers. If she were given the excuse that she’d been summoned by the Children of Time, she’d come to Heaven to wreak as much havoc as possible on these same Children, in revenge against her sisters.

  Sam had said as much to Odin. Though to Sam’s mind Odin seemed far too serious about everything, he was an elder Son of Time, and Sam admired his dedication to the House of Valhalla. He appeared the kind who could do no wrong and who would listen to Sam’s worries with a fatherly ear.

  Yet Odin had responded like the others, with an arrogance only a Son of Time could show. We can contain her, he’d said. Darkness is an old Greater Power, she can be commanded, controlled. It’s nothing for you to worry about.

  It was that last, almost patronising sentiment that had resolved Sam not only to worry, but to get downright angry. Especially when he’d fared no better with Jehovah.

  ‘I would be happy to see the Way of Eden reopened,’ Sam had told his brother, ‘since I think Light would not stop us passing through it. What I object to is your method of opening it.

  ‘But what you propose is calling up the Power of Darkness. To breach the wards written by a Greater Power. The effects will be disastrous if you attempt to channel that much of Dark’s essence against Light. By forcing so much power against opposite-aligned wards, you might disrupt the Ways themselves. We might lose the Eden Portals for ever. What then? What will you do, when the Portals collapse in on themselves and the darkness pours across the land and eats your souls?’

  Jehovah had managed to make his stony features look sad. ‘So you won’t help us.’

  ‘You guessed, huh?’

  ‘You can’t stop us. The Way of Eden will be opened, no mat
ter what.’

  ‘Light put those wards there; you cannot displace them.’

  ‘You can. You’re the Bearer of Light. If you target wards with their opposite power, they’ll fracture, they’ll die, no backlash, no overspill, no —’

  ‘You know as well as I that if I used my power against Light, it would almost certainly get out of hand and I’d have destroyed a Greater Power!’

  Jehovah had shrugged. ‘It’s a pity that you won’t. But the Way of Eden will be opened; nothing you can do will prevent it.’

  And Sam had left, not just angry but humiliated. The worst thing was knowing what his brothers planned – that and being almost certain there was nothing he could do…

  Somewhere in a small white van, surrounded by demons, memories blurring into fears, Sam dreamed on.

  The Room of Clocks, Time’s throne room. It was hard to not recognise it, even when dreaming. Clocks of every kind covered the walls, floor and ceiling, and they all beat exactly in time, a huge roar of a click sounding every second. And at the far end of the room, past the simple stone throne, another clock, hands moving so fast that you couldn’t see them. This clock measured the heartbeat of the universe not in seconds, but in the wavelengths of visible light.

  Sam walked towards the throne, curious, peering at the clock, trying to distinguish numbers. He heard a sound behind him and turned. For a second he thought he saw a shadow move. A dark figure in black, with black eyes and black hair, flickered and was gone. He frowned and peered closer. Flicker, vanish, in a different part of the room. The room itself was darkening also. Sam thought he heard a voice, speaking indignantly, but it quickly faded. He heard another sound and turned, to stare himself in the face.

  Not quite himself, he realised, but a younger version, animated, saying something.

  He could hear snatches of words drifting out of the empty air, just on the edge of hearing. Eden… Darkness… arrogance… The figure faded, then reappeared seconds later a few metres away, pacing, hands moving up and down in anger, face contorted in a scowl of dismay. More words, clearer this time. Help me, Father. They’ll summon Darkness, and she’ll lay waste the Way of Eden, destroy as much as she can, destroy them, possibly contaminate the Ways just for something to do. You must be able to stop this. Silence. Figure winking in and out, reappearing, words. Why don’t you care any more? You cannot let this happen! In, out, coming, going.

  Sam turned through an increasingly dark room, peering, trying to find himself again, recognising his own words coming at him from the past. Several of him now, in the shadows, speaking with one voice. You’ll let them destroy themselves with Darkness? They are your children, they are my brothers and my sisters!

  More of him appearing, filling the hall, dark shapes in the darkness, thickening, drawing all light to them, black eyes looking at him everywhere, flashing with the same anger, filling up everywhere, driving Sam back pace by pace, words becoming audible, a gentle murmur rising to a flood. ‘Do you care about anything, Father? Stop them. Stop them or I will. Stop them, Father. Stop them, stop them, stop, stop, stop —’

  Sam stumbled back against something. Figures from the past, his past, pressing down on him from every side, voices roaring in his ears, dark eyes glaring accusingly. He felt what he’d stumbled against – the stone throne – and fell into it, covering his ears to keep out the deafening roar. ‘What are you planning, Father, why do you let it happen, why don’t you stop it, why don’t you care…?’

  Sam heard Freya’s voice in the throng, louder than all the others. She was speaking of Loki, Balder’s murderer, amid voices growing so loud… He wanted to know why Time didn’t put a stop to it, why he let all the bad things happen. ‘Why don’t you care any more, Father, why don’t you stop them, stop, stop, stop, stop —?’

  ‘Go away!’ he screamed. Silence, abrupt and louder than the noise that had gone before. He opened his eyes. A thousand Sams stared back at him. They didn’t say a word, just kept on staring. He cowered against the back of the throne, cold and afraid. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What do you want?’

  And they spoke as one, not shouting, but still a deafening sound. ‘We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the light and the dark, the individual and the whole. We are you. You are we. The One is the Many.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you, leave me alone,’ he gasped, shaking all over.

  The crowd parted. A woman stepped towards him, smiled coyly. ‘Remember me?’

  ‘Of course, you’re…’ His voice trailed off. The other Sams stared stonily at him. ‘I never met you,’ he murmured, looking round the hall again.

  ‘Remember me?’ asked another voice.

  ‘And me?’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘And me?’

  He turned to look at each face in turn as they pushed their way out of the crowd, Sams parting all around to let them through. ‘I… I never met any of you.’

  ‘But you know me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘Just like we know you.’

  ‘We are the intention and the act,’ said one.

  ‘The strength and the weakness.’

  ‘The light and the dark.’

  ‘The individual and the whole.’

  ‘Keep away,’ hissed Sam. ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘You can’t be alone. You’re the Bearer of Light,’ said someone, as if it were obvious. The Sams around the hall were thinning out, more and more faces replacing them, leaving just one of him in a sea of strangers. Strangers that he knew so well…

  ‘We are One.’

  ‘The One is part of the Many.’

  ‘The Many are united.’

  ‘Is this a trick?’

  ‘This is a nightmare,’ explained a voice in his ear. He turned. Freya smiled at him. ‘You’re slipping, Sebastian. You’re drowning in the voices.’

  ‘Who sent me this nightmare?’

  ‘You’re doing it to yourself.’

  ‘No. This is too real, I have too much control.’ He reached up and tweaked her nose. She recoiled, surprised. ‘See?’ he asked. ‘Control. Someone’s filling my head…’

  ‘Me,’ whispered someone.

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘And —’

  ‘Shut up!’ he yelled. ‘Get out of my head! Leave me alone!’

  Darkness. Kneeling before the empty throne, the clocks roaring around him. Thor staring sadly down at him, fish-eyes and all. ‘You’d die for this, little light, little fire?’ he asked.

  Sam raised his head, opened his mouth to say something rude, and the floor opened up beneath him.

  Falling. Drowning, water in his lungs, burning in his chest, voices in his ears, always the voices, so many voices, and him speaking with them but he couldn’t hear his own voice, all he knew was that to not say the words was to explode, and that somewhere, someone that might once have been a tiny spark in a sea of sparks was whispering with a billion others. We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the magic and… and —

  Leave me alone, get out of my head.

  You’re slipping, Sebastian. Drowning in the voices.

  The light and the dark, the magic… the magic and… and —

  For Freya.

  One is Many, Many is One, Thor loved Freya too…

  No more loneliness! Maybe not together, but not alone either!

  But then everyone loved Freya.

  Leave me alone! Go away, leave me alone, go away, go away, go away!

  He started awake, cold, afraid. Gabriel moved her hand from his arm, as though embarrassed to have touched him. The van had stopped. Sam had no idea where.

  ‘Come on,’ she said quietly. The doors at the back of the van had been opened, and Sam squinted at the light shining through. They had been driving for hours. Tink
erbell smiled as Sam got out of the van, but whether it was a smile of triumph or of reassurance Sam couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, he didn’t feel inclined to return it.

  There was a house. It was small, painted white and sat in the middle of nowhere as if thrown there by a careless passing tourist. A cat lounged on the front porch looking bored, and gave the party only a sceptical glance, as if there were things far more interesting to look at than mere two-leggers. The kitchen contained a large iron stove in one corner, blackened by age and not enough cleaning, the cupboards held little more than a few tins, mostly of cat food, and underneath the sink someone had found a dead rat, brought in by the cat as a rare gift for its keepers. The floors were splintery old boards pocked with holes, and the creaky wooden stairs looked as though they were about to collapse. At the stove an old lady with an ugly gap in her front teeth that seemed to draw all eyes to it stirred what might have been anything from an elixir of immortality to tinned tomato soup.