Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

Mina remained at the back of the chamber, her eyes closed. She was stroking her little dog and muttering something under her breath. Then she opened her eyes and allowed Basilis to jump down from her embrace.

The dog padded forward, growling.

“Stay out of my friends,” Mina warned the spectres. “Possess any one of us here, and my master will drag you back out again and send you somewhere you really don't want to go. Do you know what a Penny Devil can do to a soul?” She smiled grimly. “If you thought Hell was bad, just wait until you see Basilis's house.”

The spirit wind rose, shrieking, into a tighter spiral of twisting, gauzy figures that raced up towards a hole in the arconite's skull. In a heartbeat, they had departed, leaving one last ghost behind.

“You got your wings back,” Rachel said.

Sort of.

His translucent feathers seemed to glow faintly blue in the gloom. He looked much stronger and taller than the angel Rachel remembered from Deepgate all that time ago, but he was dressed in the same tattered old mail shirt and breeches and carrying the same old blunt sword his ancestors had used. A few lines now etched his brow, but his eyes radiated calm confidence. He lifted a hand up in front of his face and looked straight through it, smiling.

I'm thinner, too, he said.

Hasp threw open the huge copper doors of the Obscura Redunda, and bellowed, “Sabor! Where are you? I'm sore, hungry, and in need of a drink.”

The god of clocks eyed his younger brother with obvious disdain. “Welcome back from Hell, Hasp,” he said. “You've lost your wings, I see. And your skin.”

Hasp grunted. “That bastard Menoa got the better of me. He only sent a million demons, mind you, but it had been a tiring week.”

Sabor raised his chin, regarding his brother coolly from under half-closed eyelids. “I'm sure the battle was tremendously impressive.”

They continued to converse, but Rachel stopped listening. She was watching Dill carefully from the corner of her eye. The young angel stood between Mina and Iron Head, gazing up in awe at the array of tubes and lenses packed within the high chamber. Had his body become more translucent, or was she just imagining it? It seemed to her that he faded in bright light, only to solidify once more when he stepped into the shadows.

“I don't suppose ghosts eat,” Hasp said, “but the rest of us are starving, brother. We've had nothing since Dill abandoned the Rusty Saw.”

Sabor sighed. “I'll have Garstone prepare supper.”

Rachel turned to face him. “Do we have time for this?” she said. “There are still eleven arconites out there somewhere”-she pointed back towards the main doors-“and now we have no way of defending ourselves against them. We've no plan, no idea where Heaven is, and no way to provoke Ayen even if we could reach her.”

Sabor merely raised his eyebrows. “Time?” he said, incredulously. “You ask me if we have time?”

They sat down to dinner in a sombre wainscoted and darkly paneled hall that, mercifully, existed in the here and now. The adjoining kitchen, however, bounced backwards and forward in time by as much as half an hour, which meant that the main courses arrived before the starters and the pudding appeared three minutes before it had been ordered.

Dill stood a little way back from the table, glowing faintly and with a half-smile upon his lips, content to watch the others eat.

Not one of them could fault the fare, however. Garstone cooked and waited on all four of his guests simultaneously, edging past alternate versions of himself as he carried plates to and from the dining hall. He walked through Dill constantly, but apologized unfailingly.

“The doors to Heaven,” Sabor said between mouthfuls of roast lamb, “lie within a temple at the summit of this very mountain.”

Rachel started. “Here?”

Sabor nodded. “However, knowing their physical location does not help us. The doors cannot be opened.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Ayen removed us, her lawful sons, from Heaven after our up-rising against her failed, but she expelled this fortress for an altogether different reason.”

Iron Head drained his cup. Garstone hovered close by, trying to pour him more wine from a carafe, but Iron Head snatched the vessel from his brother's hands and filled his cup himself. “I won't have you serve me, Eli,” he declared. “It isn't right.” Then he turned to Sabor. “She couldn't allow the castle to exist in Heaven?” He paused. “With all these doors leading into the past, and who knew how many multiple versions of yourself living within, she would never feel safe.”

“Precisely,” Sabor said. “She moved the Obscura Redunda into this world, and by doing so moved the entire history and future of the castle out of her realm. It no longer exists in Heaven, nor has it ever existed there.”

Hasp hunched over the table, ripping meat from a bone with his teeth, then rubbed one of his greasy glass gauntlets against the tablecloth. “Took a lot of power,” he mumbled.

“The effort exhausted her,” Sabor explained. “In that one instant of fury, she created a door inside her earthly temple, and through it she expelled every hint of our presence from Heaven. Our armies, our archons, our weapons-all were expunged from her sight. We had no idea she could summon up so much… wrath.”

“But why?” Rachel asked. “What did you do to anger her?”

Hasp snorted into his wine cup.

The god of clocks smiled thinly. “We are her lawful sons,” he said. “Ulcis, Cospinol, Rys, Hafe, Mirith, Hasp, and myself, all born of Ayen and her husband, Iril. By rights we should have inherited Heaven.” He took a sip of wine. “But she never loved us. Never doted on us like she did her favourite child.”

“Ayen had another child?” Rachel said.

He nodded. “A bastard, a half-human boy conceived after Iril had already taken our mother as his bride. She betrayed our father in the most unconscionable manner. She bedded a mortal, and you can imagine how Iril reacted to that. ”

Hasp gave another snort of derision, and then held out his wine cup for one of the Garstones to fill.

“Not well, I take it?” Mina said. She sniffed at her cup. “Is this wine off?”

Two Garstones appeared beside her at once. “I am terribly sorry, Miss Greene. It is so hard to keep track of the vintages in our cellar. Please let me replace it.” One of him snatched the offending cup out of her hand and drifted away with it, while the other disappeared to find a fresh bottle.

“Not well,” Sabor agreed. “Iril slew our mother's mortal lover and ate him. He would have murdered the bastard son, too, if she hadn't hidden the child away. Our father demanded that she give the boy up, but Ayen refused. And so began the War in Heaven.”

“So the child lived?” Rachel said.

“For a short while,” Sabor said. “Ayen was vulnerable after the war, you see? She had used every scrap of her power to expel us. So her bastard son left Heaven, sacrificing his own life to seal the doors behind him. He damned himself to Hell just to protect her.”

Iron Head grunted. “Some folks might regard that as a noble gesture.”

Sabor and Hasp both shot him a dark look.

“Some folks,” Iron Head added. “Fools and traitors and such.”

“But Iril ruled Hell,” Rachel said. “What happened to the bastard there?”

“Our father had never seen Ayen's illegitimate son,” Sabor explained. “None of us even knew his name. By the time we discovered the youth's identity it was already too late. In Hell the bastard rose through the ranks of Iril's followers. He distinguished himself, becoming one of our father's elite. But all the time he was plotting Iril's downfall.” The god's lips thinned to a grim line. “Ayen's eighth, and favourite, son is Alteus Menoa, the creature who now calls himself Lord of the Maze.”