Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

As Oran glanced where she was looking, she beckoned him to follow her around the crowd still huddled outside the inn. A group of younger men was passing sacks of meal and bales of hide through one of the downstairs windows, while others dragged cords of firewood around to the rear of the building. Rachel slipped past them, heading towards Dill's wrist. Four whores sat on the stoop, drinking from earthenware bottles, and watched her pass.

“We need to get the rest of the women and children safely inside,” Rachel said. “And we need all your men out here, sober and ready for a fight.”

Oran scratched the scar on his forehead. “Won't make any difference whether they're sober or drunk,” he said. “They can't fight an arconite and hope to survive. But if they have to fight, then let them have a moment of revelry first.”

They reached the end of the island, where Dill's bony thumbs loomed before them like strange white gateposts. In the darkness overhead, Rachel could just make out her friend's massive jaw. She cocked her head and listened…

Regular thuds and crashes marked Dill's progress through the forest. But now Rachel could hear other sounds-like an echo of Dill's footsteps-issuing from the misty night close behind them.

Mina came and joined them. She had Abner Hill's musket propped against her shoulder, the barrel pointing skywards, the stock gripped in one slender glassy hand. “It's gaining on us,” she remarked.

“What did Basilis have to say?”

The thaumaturge shook her head. “This particular foe is beyond him.”

“Does Hasp know what's going on?”

“He's asleep on the pantry floor. I locked the door to stop anyone else from barging in. For their safety as much as his own.”

Rachel eyed the other woman's musket. “What do you plan to do with that?”

Mina shrugged. “I wasn't leaving our only hand-cannon in a saloon full of drunken men.” She shifted the weapon from one shoulder to the other. “Our guests let Mr. Hill and his wife out of their room. After screaming about the loss of his whisky, someone told Abner about the promised gold. Now he's serving the drinks himself and keeping tabs.”

Rachel sighed. She had no intention of using Cospinol's gold to get their so-called army drunk, but she didn't have time to deal with Abner Hill right now. “Can Dill outrun Menoa's arconite?”

“No. He's no quicker or stronger than any of them.”

Oran scratched at his stubble. “Then we fight and die here tonight,” he said, yawning.

Cospinol's will determined the buoyancy of his great wooden skyship, while Anchor's will determined his own impossible strength. During the thousands of years of their unlikely partnership both master and servant had achieved a balance whereby they worked together in harmony. The heavier the Rotsward became, the greater the strength Anchor found in himself to tow it behind him.

In the confusion after the portal snapped and Anchor found himself falling towards Hell, the accustomed harmony with the skyship took some moments to reassert itself.

The rope jolted against Anchor's back in midair, bringing him to an abrupt halt before propelling him skywards again. Behind him the Rotsward shuddered and toppled forwards, a great mass of interconnected masts and spars. Suddenly both man and skyship were weightless. The rope snapped taut again and then slackened. Anchor heard it whining behind his ear like a living thing. The Maze surged up to meet him at a sickening rate: the canals like bloody scrawls; the partially drowned temples, arches, and crooked steps; the mounds of rotting black masonry dumped into a crimson slough.

The vessel plummeted from the sky like some vast and ancient torture ship expelled from Heaven. Those warriors whom the Failed had not destroyed now glared feverishly about them and howled amidst the skyship's gallows. Thus exposed before Hell's fiery light they made a barbarous army indeed, blue-faced and ragged madmen plucked from so many forgotten wars.

John Anchor had slain every last one of them, and many of their souls now coursed through his veins. Corpses, bound to the Rotsward as thoroughly as he was. He could not gaze upon them for long before the cramps in his heart forced him to turn away.

The surface of Hell wheeled into Anchor's field of view: windows glittering in the curved side of a mound; open doorways creeping through obsidian walls; twisted iron pillars and redbrick facades; gurgling fissures; arches; stone; blood.

And then he hit.

Bloody stonework exploded under him. He plunged into a room and smashed through the floor below. Another room, another floor. Anchor gripped his knees against his chest and closed his eyes. He had the sensation of passing through pockets of air separated by parting membranes. Down and down he fell, like a cannonball dropped into a house of cards.

Deep underground he thumped heavily against a final solid surface and came to a stop.

Anchor groaned and opened his eyes.

He had fallen through twenty or more separate dwellings. Directly above him numerous layers of ragged holes formed a shaft of sorts, terminating in a distant circle of red sky overhead, where the end of the rope disappeared from sight. Each of the many levels of ruptured floorboards had already begun to bleed. Drips fell from the broken edges and cascaded down from room to room, spattering the floor around him. From overhead came the sound of moaning.

He sat up.

He was in an elegant drawing room with tall sash windows and antique Pandemerian furniture. Two identical elderly women stood looking at him, their faces white with either powder or shock. Each looked like a mirror image of the other in their hummingbird-blue high-necked frocks. Knots of tightly bunched grey hair sat upon their heads like little skulls.

“Ladies,” Anchor said.

The twins looked at each other, then cupped their hands over their breasts and looked back at the intruder. “Are you the plumber?” said one of them.

“I don't think he's the plumber, Clarice,” the other woman replied. “Just look at him!”

Anchor stood, brushed dust and fragments of debris from his arms, and then stepped out from underneath the shaft to avoid the cascading droplets of blood. The two women took a step back from him.

The big man grinned. “No need to fear John Anchor, ladies. I've no quarrel with you.” He took a look around. “So this is Hell, eh?”

Cospinol had told him how the souls grew rooms around themselves like snails grew shells. This chamber must be one such place, a living, sensate extension of the spirits within. He nodded at the windows. Behind the glass lay a plain brick wall. “Your neighbours like their privacy, eh?”

One of the ladies said, “Neighbours? Don't be absurd. We don't have any neighbours. The Buntings isn't a tenement, sir. We have ninety acres.”

Her twin piped up, “No doubt he hit his head in the fall, Marjory.”

They shriveled their lips at him.

Anchor shrugged. He had no interest in undermining their delusion.

One twin glared disapprovingly at the hole in the ceiling. “Someone will have to repair that, you know.”

“My apologies, ladies,” Anchor said. “I'll go and fix it now.” With that he leapt up and grabbed the bloody edge of the hole and pulled himself up.

A large bed occupied most of this next room. Propped against pillows lay an enormous woman with masses of black and white hair extruding all about her head like the tendrils of some creeping fungus. Indeed the whole room evinced decay, for tongues of patterned wallpaper hung from the walls, and black mold spattered the skirting. A smell of vinegar lingered.

“I've been hurt,” she said. “Someone hit me on the head while I was sleeping.”