Time's Demon

by D. B. Jackson

  He held his tongue. She stood before him for two breaths, then strode to the door.

  “Lenna,” he said, stopping her.

  She sighed, regarded him over her shoulder.

  “Where might he get another chronofor?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Any major city. Hayncalde, Sheraigh, Belsan, Rooktown.” She shrugged again. “They’re rare – more so by far than apertures and sextants – and they’re dear as well. He would need a good deal of gold. Still, if he seeks one, and I’m sure he does, he’ll find it before long.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Please tell the healer I’m ready for her.” She left him.

  He stood, limped to his bed, and drank the healer’s tonic. Before sleep could take him, he realized what day it was – what day it would be when he woke. Kheraya’s Emergence. The Turn of the Year. On every isle between the oceans, this was a day of celebration, of drink and feasting and passion. On this, the day of the Goddess, lovemaking was initiated by the woman. He and Lenna – the younger Lenna; his Lenna – had always laughed about this. As if she needed the excuse of the equinox. In Fanquir, in the flat they shared, she would be thinking of him, missing him, desiring him.

  Guilt knifed through him. Maybe the older Lenna was right, and he was being cruel to all of them. He just didn’t know how to stop.

  Over the next several days, Lenna avoided him, and he refrained from visiting her chamber. The healer checked on him each morning, and on the fifth day of the new year pronounced him fit to resume some activities.

  “You’re still healing,” she told him. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  He wanted to ignore her warnings and go after Tobias straight away, but he couldn’t. He had no idea where the Walker had gone, and no tri-sextants with which to pursue the lad. For now, wherever he Spanned he would arrive naked, alone, and unarmed.

  And he knew his first Span would have to be to Qaifin, and the court of Pemin, autarch of Oaqamar. He couldn’t imagine a worse place to go without a weapon or the protection of his men.

  After the healer left him, he did go to Lenna, out of necessity.

  At her response to his knock, he entered her chamber, his gait stiff and awkward.

  She glanced up from the volume she was reading, and then set it aside. “You’re on your feet,” she said, her tone brittle.

  “Finally, yes. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m going to Qaifin and I thought you should know. In case… Well, Pemin isn’t going to be happy with me.”

  “He needs you. He won’t kill his finest assassin out of pique.”

  He found this oddly reassuring. They endured a strained silence.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I wanted to let you know.”

  “Thank you. Come here when you’re back. I’ll want to know… how it went.” That you’re alive.

  So much for reassurance.

  From her chamber, he climbed to the castle ramparts and ordered the soldiers there away from him. Once he was alone, he stripped off his clothes and piled them neatly in a crenellation. He calibrated his sextant and aimed it.

  It had been some time since he last Spanned any distance in this way. He had escaped the strand a few nights before, but that demanded only a quick jump to the castle, and his mind had been on his wounds rather than the Span itself. Over the previous turns, he had grown accustomed to the ease of Travel by tri-sextant, to remaining dressed, to carrying his weapons and arriving in the company of soldiers or his trained men. Before fleeing the strand that night, he had forgotten how jarring and isolating this primitive form of Spanning could be.

  He thumbed the release and was jerked into the gap, his head snapping back, the sextant nearly torn from his grip. Wind abused his skin, seeming to carry shards of glass. Light and sound and smell assaulted him. His leg and back ached, the wounds chafed by that savage gale. He feared his scars would open again. Within moments he was desperate for the Span to end, though he knew he had hundreds of leagues to go.

  The gap pounded at him, his senses under siege from every direction. He had Spanned great distances using a simple sextant, but rarely this far, and never so soon after sustaining such wounds. The ordeal stretched on. He could no longer say if he was upright, or even fully conscious. He felt he had slipped into a sort of trance, somewhere between wakefulness and oblivion.

  When the gap dropped him onto an expanse of cobblestone, he toppled, rolled, and came to rest leaning against the wheel of a cart. Blinking against the blazing sun, he realized he was on the edge of a marketplace. Surrounded by people. Naked, scraped, and bruised. He clutched his sextant in one hand.

  A young woman stepped out from the back of the cart, eyed him, and disappeared again. She spoke in low tones, and a fivecount later a man emerged from the same location. He was older, burly and tall. He dropped a blanket next to Orzili.

  “Cover yourself up,” the man said, the accent of Oaqamar sharpening his words.

  At least he had reached the right isle.

  The blanket was rough and moth-eaten, and it stank of horse, but Orzili wrapped it around his middle and stood, his legs unsteady.

  He turned a slow circle and spotted the autarch’s castle. Not as close as he had hoped, but not so far that he couldn’t cover the distance.

  “Thank you,” he said. He nodded to the young woman behind the man. She barely glanced at him; the man frowned, but said nothing.

  Oaqamarans, he remembered from past visits, didn’t care for Northislers, particularly Travelers. Pemin himself had plenty working for him – Spanners and Crossers. No Walkers that Orzili knew of. Other than Lenna.

  Pemin’s subjects were a different matter. During previous visits to the autarchy, Orzili had heard others with his coloring called “gaaz demons,” “shit-skins,” and worse.

  “If you’ll be here for a time, I can return the blanket,” he told the man.

  The peddler wrinkled his nose. “Keep it.”

  Orzili didn’t know if the man was disgusted by the blanket itself, or by the thought of reclaiming cloth that had touched a Northisler’s skin. He didn’t care to find out.

  “Good day, then,” he said, and walked away, carrying himself with as much dignity as circumstances allowed.

  He followed a winding, ascending lane to the castle, drawing stares and more than a few gibes, none of them too barbed, and several that made him laugh.

  “Hey! I once rolled dice with the same fella that fleeced you!”

  “Did you used to be a horse?”

  “A man with a pillow came by before. He went that way.”

  Guards stopped him at the gate, of course.

  “You lost?” one asked, grinning at his companions.

  “Before you say more,” Orzili said, keeping his voice low, “you should know that my name is Quinnel Orzili. I’m a Spanner–” He held up his sextant, “–and a trusted agent of the autarch. His Excellency will want to know I’m here, and he’ll expect to see me forthwith, clothed and shod.”

  Instantly, their bearing changed.

  “Of course, my lord,” another said. “We’ll inform him of your arrival and find you clothes immediately.” He nodded to the others, who scurried away.

  Within a quarter bell, they’d found him a chamber and ministerial robes: black satin, trimmed in shades of brown and gold. From there they led him down a short corridor to the autarch’s antechamber.

  Floors of pink marble, curved walls adorned with works by Oaqamar’s greatest artists, and grand wooden doors inlaid with exotic woods to create an image of a barred lion: the isle’s sigil.

  One of the guards knocked, and at a word from within opened the door and indicated that Orzili should enter.

  He was weaponless, as always when in Pemin’s presence. On this day, he felt especially vulnerable.

  Pemin stood in the center of the chamber wearing plain garb: black breeches, a white satin shirt, and a sash embroidered in gold and brown. Most royals and nobles strove to outdo one another with ostentation: jewel
s, busts of themselves and their ancestors, crass art and weapons notable for their gaudiness rather than their practicality. Not Pemin. His chamber was simple, sparse, understated. This was a man who did not require finery to accentuate his authority. Indeed, his subtlety, and the confidence it conveyed, had impressed Orzili the first time they met, and remained the quality he most admired in the man. He was to those other leaders what a battle blade was to a gem-encrusted ornamental sword.

  He was tall, lean, as elegant and graceful as a falcon. Pale gray eyes stared out from beneath a shock of straight brown hair, untouched by the smile on his lips.

  Orzili bowed. “Your Excellency.”

  “Be welcome, Orzili,” he said, extending a hand.

  Orzili took it, pressed his brow to the back of it.

  Pemin moved to one of several dun chairs near the hearth. He waved at another. “Join me, please.”

  Orzili followed him, waited to sit until the autarch had settled into his seat.

  “I didn’t expect you.”

  “No, Your Excellency. Please forgive the intrusion.”

  Pemin considered the robe Orzili wore. “One of mine, I see. You Spanned here?”

  “Yes.”

  “By yourself. No tri-sextants.”

  It was offered as a statement. No doubt, guards had described for him the exact nature of Orzili’s arrival.

  This was the dark counterpoint to Pemin’s royal bearing. He toyed with those who served him – ministers, Travelers, assassins – no doubt intent on reminding all, at every opportunity, that his was the keenest mind at any gathering.

  “That is correct, Your Excellency.”

  “Out with it, then. Obviously you’ve failed me. What’s happened?”

  More direct than usual, that. Orzili tried to keep his pulse steady.

  “The Walker has escaped.”

  The autarch waited, gaze unwavering.

  “I fear he has Mearlan’s child with him.”

  “A baby, and a boy cloaked in the body of a man – these two proved too much for you?”

  “They had help.”

  “An excuse?” Pemin demanded, voice rising.

  “No, Your Excellency. This was my fault, and mine alone. I miscalculated.”

  “What of the tri-sextants?”

  Orzili resisted the urge to look away. “One was destroyed, the other two were taken.”

  “Time and gold, wasted.”

  Orzili bit back his first response. “I apologize, Your Excellency. I fully intend to find the Walker and the princess.”

  “Is the woman still with you? The one from the Walker’s true time?”

  He wanted to lie, to tell Pemin that she had already Walked back to her future. He knew where the question might lead. He didn’t dare, though, not even about this. There was no better measure of how much he feared the autarch.

  “She is,” he said.

  “Why haven’t you sent her back?”

  “To what end, Your Excellency?”

  Pemin glared. “To alter an unsatisfactory outcome!”

  “She wasn’t there, Your Excellency. She had nothing to do with the events of that night. Sending her back would not change the outcome.”

  It seemed he was willing to lie to the man after all. Because there were things Lenna could do. She could warn him, and thus compel him to bring more men to the strand. Had he Spanned with ten Sheraigh soldiers in addition to the men he had lost, he would likely have prevailed.

  He had resisted doing this, unwilling to spend still more of her days. Eventually she would return to her own time – additional years together lost to both of them. She accused him of being cruel to his future self, and to the Lenna he loved in this time.

  The truth was, he sought ways to protect all of them. The damage done already was almost incalculable. He wouldn’t compound it by sending her farther into the past.

  He had reconciled himself to tracking down the Walker and Mearlan’s child, knowing it might take him turns, or a year, or more. As long as it took, that was how long he might keep the older Lenna here in this time. She would spend those turns with him, away from his older self. But every day she spent with him was one day fewer she had to Walk back to her own time.

  It was a ledger he never would have shared with Lenna, but one that allowed him to justify keeping her with him for another day, another turn.

  His one advantage in speaking to Pemin of such things lay in his own knowledge of Traveling, and the autarch’s ignorance of the finer points of being a Walker or a Spanner. With a bit of luck, and his superior understanding of Lenna’s talent, he might survive this exchange.

  “Why didn’t you have her with you?” Pemin asked. He sounded less sure of himself than he had.

  “This Lenna is aged, Your Excellency – from her own years and the Walk back. She isn’t as young and capable as the Lenna I left in Kantaad. Her mind is nimble, her experience vast, but she wouldn’t have been an asset in combat.”

  Another lie, though not one Pemin was likely to discover. Of course, Lenna would have been furious with him. Both Lennas.

  “Couldn’t she bring you word of what happened? Wouldn’t that allow you to take precautions you ignored this first time?”

  Maybe his advantage wasn’t as great as he thought.

  “Possibly, Your Excellency. If you insist, I will return to Daerjen and have her Walk back so that I can try again. It is a risk, of course. I barely escaped with my life this time. If I’m killed in a second attempt, you’ll lose more than tri-sextants. You’ll lose all that I know of the matter and any chance we might have to track them down quickly.”

  Pemin’s frown narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t argue the point. Orzili forged on.

  “If instead, you allow me to dedicate all my resources to pursuit of the boy and the babe, I believe I can track them down before long.”

  Still looking displeased, Pemin said, “You’ll need to have that Binder make you more tri-sextants.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. That would be my first priority.”

  “Very well,” Pemin said. “Before you return to Daerjen, though, I want you to dispatch the winged demons.”

  Orzili tried to conceal his distaste. And failed.

  “This is not a negotiation, Orzili. For now at least, I will let you have your way with regard to the woman. I believe sending her back might yield more than you suggest, but there are other considerations, particularly when we’re spending her years at such a rate. I might yet need to send her back to her time, and I want her to arrive there with strength enough to be of use to me.” He paused, allowing what he’d said to sink in.

  Orzili had been playing a more dangerous game than he knew.

  “The Belvora are mine to command. As are you, lest you forget. I want them patrolling every sea and isle between the oceans. Do I make myself clear?”

  He hated working with any demons, but the Belvora most of all. They were vicious and stupid, an unfortunate combination. Still, given the choice between employing the Belvora and sending Lenna farther back in time, he would always choose the demons.

  “Of course, Your Excellency.”

  “Good. You will Span to the Sana and give them their orders. If you must, remind them of the protections I’ve offered their kind, and the cost to them of defying me.” The autarch gave a small grimace. “You should stop here again before Spanning to Hayncalde. Report to my guards and let them know you’ve succeeded in contacting the demons.” And haven’t been killed. The words hung between them, unspoken but palpable. First Lenna and now Pemin. Everyone was so concerned for his safety. It might have been funny, had he not shared their fears. Treating with any Ancients carried risks, but the Belvora could be particularly difficult, especially for Travelers, whose magick the winged ones craved most.

  “Yes, Your Excellency. I’ll do that as well.”

  Pemin stood, forcing Orzili to do the same. Their conversation was over.

  “I’m sure you understand the perils
of failing me again.”

  “I do, Your Excellency. And so I won’t.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Pemin held out his hand. Orzili made obeisance and turned to go. Before he reached the autarch’s door, Pemin spoke his name.

  “You say you almost died?”

  He should have known that revelation would capture the man’s interest. “I did.”

  “The boy did this?”

  “He’s Windhome-trained, Your Excellency. He’s also a fullgrown man, despite his years.”

  Pemin’s smile shaded toward a smirk. “I meant no offense. I was merely curious.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency. He managed to stab me, and then to shoot me. The bullet struck nothing vital, or else I might not have survived.”

  “How fortunate for us all that you did.”

  He said it with mischief in his eyes, but sincerity in his voice. Orzili wasn’t sure how to respond and so chose the safest path.

  “You’re too kind, Your Excellency.”

  He let himself out of the chamber and climbed the nearest tower to the castle ramparts. Though he longed for his chamber in Daerjen, Pemin had made his desires clear. First he would Span to the Sana Mountains in central Oaqamar. The distance wasn’t great, but he would have to confront the Belvora naked, weaponless. He didn’t expect them to offer him a blanket.

  CHAPTER 5

  5th day of Kheraya’s Stirring, year 634

  This venture into the gap was nothing compared to the last. A few moment’s discomfort and it was over.

  He emerged from the wind, light, and din onto a sloped field covered with fragments of sharp, gray rock. The shards bit at his bare feet. His skin pebbled in a cold wind. Jagged, snow-crusted peaks loomed above him, bathed in golden sunlight. Below where he stood, shadows from the summits had already reached expanses of spruce and fir. Here, he saw only grass, low shrubs, and scattered wildflowers. A pair of ravens scudded past, their calls echoing off the surrounding cliffs. Overhead, a lone hawk circled on splayed wings.

  The air smelled of snow and lupine, but the faintest hint of rotting meat rode the chill wind. Belvora lurked nearby. If he smelled them, they had already scented his magick. Best then to engage them and leave, before they began to stalk him.