He turned. More people. People ahead, another mini-mob. People behind, closing in, chanting the same thing over and over again. Thief, thief, thief, thief.
Wildly he raised his hands, ready to summon magic. Women, men, grannies, grandfathers, grandchildren, everyone in the village seemed to have turned out. Hands grabbed him, hit him, spun him round and round.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ he yelled as hands scratched at his arms and face. He tried to push his way through the throng; immediately more arms grabbed him, and held him in place no matter how hard he struggled. The voices roared in his ears, the song of Suspicion filled his head. All those minds… you’re too much of a coward, that’s your weakness…
Even more potent.
Little light, little fire.
All those minds.
You’re slipping, Sebastian.
Thor loved Freya too.
‘Please, I didn’t do it!’ Hands all around, pulling, pushing, tearing, clutching, voices yelling, screaming, chanting, singing. ‘Believe me!’ he screamed.
A bright white light around his fingertips. He stared at it in horror and trembled. Oh, Time, no…
Growing, cascading through his mind, fire lighting more fires, burning, brighter, brighter, expanding outwards. Silence falling as the people saw the burning white light, brighter than the moon, fill Sam’s cupped hands. Sam’s black eyes themselves gradually turned white, and as the crowd around him began to back away he rose uncertainly to his feet, hands clutched in front of him as though trying physically to hold back the Light. He staggered a few paces like a blind man, and opened his hands.
In total silence the Light rushed out from him in every direction, a white blanket spreading across the land, growing thin as it stretched to cover the fields and forests around.
He tried to hold it back, even as it roared through his head. Finally he caught it and held on, teetering close to total collapse as the Light strained at the edge of his control, begging to be let out to touch all those waiting minds, each mind representing power, more power, more and more, so many minds to drown in, so much power…
He clutched it desperately, and for a moment the Light hung across the land within a mile radius of Sam, hovering there, not moving. He heard the song of Suspicion, and turned the Light on it.
Please, believe me. Trust me.
Every mind within the radius of the Light was touchable. He felt the Light riffling through them, under no control of his, bringing out trust. Some minds trusted instinctively, like the woman in the bakery; some had little trust to give, such as the old lady on the road. But still the Light worked on, isolating this one feeling and enhancing it. Trust in the tattered, weary man in black, trust in your husband, wife, neighbour, child, aunt, uncle, postman, dog, cat…
He turned to Suspicion. It was scared, he realised. Even though, from just these few minds, he hadn’t nearly enough power to destroy it, Suspicion was frightened of him. As the voices rose up through his head, he raised his hands at the sky and opened them. The Light snapped back towards him across the land, thickening and growing brighter as it retreated from the countryside. Struck him. He seemed to rock physically with the impact of the Light coming back into him, but otherwise didn’t move. For a long moment, nothing happened.
You’re slipping, Sebastian.
Even more potent.
I am Many. You cannot touch me.
Go away, leave me alone…
He felt it move inside him. The Light found its target, focused, fired. From his open fingertips a beam of white light, too bright to look at, shot skywards. It struck something that hung over the village and for a second inside the white beam something vaguely human shaped, but twisted out of all proportion, a huge head on a tiny body, clawed finger- and toenails, writhed in agony.
It was locked there for a second, then the Light winked out and the grisly image vanished too. Far below, on a street full of people, a tiny black figure staggered and shrank in on himself. He stood there for a long moment, then raised his agonised face again. Putting his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut against the flame of every living thing in the vicinity, so bright with life that they threatened to blind him, he tried to shut out the roar of all those minds…
What happened?
Why am I here?
Why am I up?
Does he know?
Did she see?
Is it here?
Are we there?
What are we doing here?
Is this me?
Who is that?
Why does he cover his ears?
What was the light?
Why does he close his eyes?
Which voice is mine?
Go away, leave me alone, go away, leave me alone…
A hand touched his arm. He opened his eyes. A man stood there, dark, faceless, dark as ebony, and the mind —
Sam put his hand to his mouth to avoid crying out, and bit hard on the place between thumb and wrist. Dark as ebony, not burning with life like everyone else. And when he listened to the mind he heard the endless tick of the universe, a roar of clocks, ticking away the time to doomsday, which could be any time now. A mind whose occupant had moved over to let another take command, another who hadn’t been touched by the discharge of the Light…
Sam staggered and almost fell. A hand caught his elbow, steadied him. ‘Careful, my son,’ whispered the distorted, crackled voice of Time, speaking through Jehovah. ‘Don’t want to hurt yourself.’
‘Father, please…’
Jehovah helped him walk to a nearby car. It was full of equally empty people, lives and minds taken over by Greater Powers. Jehovah had sold his soul to Time.
They laid him on the back seat of the car and drove. The voices grew fainter as they grew more distant, but still the world burned in Sam’s eyes. He curled up, buried his head in his hands and trembled, with Jehovah’s hands, or possibly Time’s hands, depending on how you looked at it, on his shoulders. He felt movement near him and looked up through burning white eyes to see Jehovah flick a hypodermic needle. ‘What is it?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘It’ll help.’
‘Please…’
‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right. There’s a plan, you know.’ He saw the needle, but didn’t have the stomach to watch it enter his arm, and shortly after felt nothing.
TEN
Tinkerbell
H
e woke on a warm bed in a warm room, in a pool of orange light. For a long time he didn’t move but listened to his own head. No voices roared in his ears, but when he strained there were the faint, faint whispers of a thousand minds gradually fading down to nothing.
And me.
And me.
And me.
Which voice is mine?
And me…
He couldn’t sense anyone in the room, so sat up slowly and looked around. It was more of a shallow cave, carved in the rock. The rock itself was yellow, unevenly hacked and chipped at so that the bed only touched the wall at a few points and balanced uneasily on a cratered floor. It was a strange sort of bed: the blankets harsh and itchy, the mattress smelling of… he wasn’t sure what. Some kind of animal, and not a hygienic one at that.
At the end of the bed someone had laid out fresh clothes. They were black silk, and looked like they’d been designed to make him appear devilish. On the other hand they were better than the near-rags he was wearing, so he picked them up. At one side of the cave was a small archway that he had to duck to get through. Beyond it someone had draped a curtain. He pushed the curtain aside and looked round at the gloom of a small stone bathroom, complete with a standing pool of tepid water.
It looked clear enough so he stuck his head in it, washed, changed and, by the time he emerged from the miniature bathroom, felt much better. There was even, he noticed with faint smile, a pair of trainers by the bed, his size. They didn’t really match the black silk that hung limply around his slim frame, but they were comfortable, whic
h was what mattered. He headed to the plain wooden door, little more than large planks of wood nailed together, and tugged at the handle. It was locked.
Change of tactic. He walked to the other end of the room, where the wide cave mouth opened up on to a small ledge overlooking a drop of more than a hundred feet. It had no rail or wall to prevent you falling off, but Sam could smell the magic in the air. He flicked his fingers at the empty air and wasn’t even slightly surprised when a fat green spark flashed off the wards that encompassed the ledge. He looked beyond the ledge, and the sheer drop of yellow stone below, to exhibit B. It was big, it was bright, it was yellow-orange, and it seemed to go on an awfully long way.
There wasn’t evidence of a living thing in that desert, and the cliff wall in which his cave was set had been smoothed by the hammering from thousands of years of sandstorms. He didn’t like to guess how anything, snake, beetle or bug, could survive out there. The rarely setting sun of Hell hung on the horizon looking big, mean and bright. It didn’t care if you were thirsty and wanted a place to rest in the shade. It was more than its job was worth, gov’nor, to slip below the horizon for more than a few days each year.
Sam turned away from the ledge. It would take time to pick through those heavy wards and probably cause more attention than it was worth. Besides, where would he go?
He knocked on the door, and yelled, ‘Hey!’ No response. He paced up and down, waiting for an answer. Still nothing. This was discouraging, because ‘hey’ was one of those multilingual words that seemed to mean the same in every language, even to people who’d never heard it before. After a while he went back to the door, knocked on it again and yelled, in Elysian, at the top of his voice, ‘It’s coming through the walls, it’s coming through the walls, oh, gods, we’re gonna die!’, and gave a little gurgling sound.
The door opened. A demon stood there, sword drawn. Sam beamed. ‘Thank you for coming so promptly. I’ve just got a few questions –’
The guard, having ascertained that nothing really was coming through the walls, slammed the door. Sam sighed and fell back to pacing. After a few minutes the door opened again and a female demon entered the room, carrying a tray. She deposited it on the floor next to Sam’s bed and turned to go. ‘Wait!’ he said, darting towards her. She turned and, saying nothing, produced from somewhere inside her dress a small but sharp-looking knife.
She had a no-nonsense face, so Sam stopped. ‘I only want to talk,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Where is this?’
Without a word she turned and left, closing the door behind her. Sam headed over to the tray and sat cross-legged beside it. He lifted a pottery cover and peered underneath. It was, alas, gourmet Hell cuisine, but food was food. It tasted a bit like his mattress smelled – but then everything in Hell was made out of the same three animals, be it bedding or breakfast. He didn’t dare speculate about where the strange red sauce came from that seemed to suck all moisture out of his already dry mouth. It was vaguely like a tomato would taste were it soaked in chlorine for a month, and the black bits looked worryingly fleshy. He ate anyway, and lay on his bed wondering what had happened to the sun cream he liked to carry around for these kind of excursions. Had he used it all up? Probably not. Most likely at some point on his journey it had been incinerated, soaked, squashed or blasted into a thousand fragments.
The door opened again. He turned his head with a carefully disinterested look on his face. Tinkerbell grinned at him, closing the door as he stepped into the room.
‘If you’ve come to be mysteriously silent, then bugger off and do it somewhere else,’ said Sam.
‘That’s hardly a nice way to greet your guardian angel.’
Sam sat up slowly on his elbow. ‘You know, you’re absolutely right. Have some of my lunch. Traditional Hell cookery.’
‘No, thanks. I’ve got a pizza waiting.’
‘I knew it,’ Sam said sourly. ‘Pizza Hut has extended the franchise to the Hellish desert. Now I know the universe is doomed.’
‘Actually, I Waywalked for it,’ said Tinkerbell. He sat down on the side of the bed with his back to Sam, and began to pick at a loose thread in the mattress.
Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re not a Waywalker,’ he said finally, looking the giant man up and down, scanning him with every sense.
‘Third generation. My grandfather was Eshu.’
Sam searched his memory. ‘Son of Chaos, only ever went to Earth for sex, drugs and the Glastonbury Festival. I met him once.’
‘I never did. What was he like?’
‘In all honesty, I didn’t take to him. Sons of Chaos can be temperamental. He tried to teach me to dance, and when he discovered that I wasn’t the dancing type he got mad and tried to show me how people’s innards could be blown out with the pure force of chaos. So I demonstrated how to shield against chaos with magic, and he showed me how to lacerate an order-based shield by sheer perseverance, and I showed him how to punch someone hard enough to break their nose, and he did a very good impression of an unconscious git on the ground, and I went away.’
‘Sounds like a whirlwind romance.’
‘It was. I hope we can still be friends, though. If you’re a Son of Chaos, why “night-spawn”?’
Tinkerbell sighed. Rose to his feet. Paced. He seemed agitated. ‘Do you know where you are?’ he asked abruptly, not answering Sam’s question.
‘Tell me.’
‘You’re in the Ashen’ias’ stronghold, sixty miles east of Pandemonium.’
‘Delighted to hear it.’
‘Of course, I use the term “stronghold” loosely. James Bond would spit at it.’
‘Is the master here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the mistress?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where is Seth?’
‘Out there,’ he said, waving a hand at the desert. ‘Somewhere.’
‘Tinkerbell,’ said Sam severely, ‘Seth is my enemy, not the Ashen’ia.’
‘You ran from the master,’ said Tinkerbell. ‘Were you afraid of him? Or was it something else? I know he’s a Waywalker, a first-generation Son of Time. Which Waywalker could make you run, make you fight?’
‘We could be allies,’ said Sam cautiously, sitting up further. ‘Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you what I want.’
‘I know what you want,’ said Tinkerbell. ‘Your aims are simple. You want to survive, to be free, to live happy ever after. Ideally you want a pair of slippers and peace.’
Sam gave a shrug. ‘For the moment, yes. And you? What do you want?’
Tinkerbell smiled, a long, slow smile that took time enough to read Sam’s face and calculate its square and cube root too. ‘Me? I’m a third-generation Son of Time. I stumble through the Ways, half deaf, half blind. I’m not accepted in any world, Heaven, Earth or Hell. In such a situation, what wouldn’t you want?’
‘Perhaps I should have refined the question. What do you want that could possibly involve the Ashen’ia? Or me,’ added Sam, a dark undertone to his voice.
For a moment, he thought Tinkerbell was genuinely going to answer. Then the man grinned, shook his head and said, ‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’
‘So save yourself the annoyance and answer the question.’
‘I… want revenge.’
‘For what, against whom, and how? In that order, for preference, with diagrams if necessary.’
Only the flicker of a smile passed across Tinkerbell’s face, which before had been wide open. It made Sam wonder how judicious Tinkerbell was with his smiles. ‘For betrayal of my family, I won’t say, and… with a sharp blade.’
‘This betrayer – angel, human, faerie, demon, Waywalker or other?’
‘Waywalker.’
‘Anyone I should know about concerning this coming conflict?’
‘No.’
‘So not Jehovah, Seth, Odin —’
‘No,’ he said, cutting in sharply.
‘“No” not one of them or “no” you won
’t say?’
‘Once Cronus is defeated, then I can think of revenge. It has no part in these current battles.’
‘Is this like the Ashen’ias’ plans? Once the end of the world has been prevented, you want to use me too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And… I’d guess you’re wanting to use the Ashen’ia too.’
‘What gives you that idea?’
‘You don’t strike me as the kind of man to sell his soul for anything small and simple.’
Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Page 14
