Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

“You've used that shiftblade badly,” Menoa continued kindly. “By the way it's trembling, I'd say it is unaccustomed to the demands you've put upon it. Allow me to forge you a better one, a sword with purer memories of war.”

“It cuts,” Carnival said, and felt immediately ashamed of her own voice. What was wrong with her? Her own self-disgust fueled a fresh surge of anger. She lashed her wings and snarled, “Come down here and I'll show you just how well it cuts.”

The sword let loose a terrible wail.

Alteus Menoa stood up. From greaves to helm his armour warped and rippled before settling around his body once more. Had he grown in size? He seemed at once more imposing than a moment ago.

He removed his mask and helm.

The face beneath was extraordinarily beautiful. Arched cheeks and eyebrows framed almond-shaped eyes that shone like gold. His skin was pale, faultless. He tossed his head, and hair like polished silver cascaded upon his glass gorget and shoulder guards. He smiled at her.

“All souls arrive here naked,” he said, “freed of the natural constraints that so limited them in life. In your world they existed merely to survive, but such order is crude and animalistic. Nature has no other purpose than the continuation of itself.” He swept a gauntlet across the disparate demons that still surrounded Carnival. “Observe these constructs. They have been given a higher purpose, one only possible because of Hell's nondeterministic nature. Your own sword is more beautiful than you in every way. Its purpose is granted by divine will, whereas yours is not.”

He made a gesture with his hand.

Carnival's heart stopped beating. She felt the muscles in her arms and legs twitch. Her fist opened and she dropped the sword. Her scars tightened and seemed to crawl across her flesh. She fell to her knees and exhaled sharply. But her lungs would not draw in another breath.

“All those souls in your blood may empower you,” Menoa said, “but they have never been in harmony with you. They are trapped in the hell that is you, but what can you offer them except rage and murder?” He shook his head. “Yet now that they are here, I can offer them so much more.”

Carnival tried to breathe, tried to scream, tried to move. But her own body refused to obey her demands. Her hand made a claw in front of her eyes. She couldn't open her fingers. The ancient scars writhed upon her wrist and palm like thin red worms. Her flesh seemed to turn pale and crystallize.

She was changing into something else.

Another vibration. Sabor whipped the map from the obscura table and called up to the many Garstones on the balconies overhead, “Lens zero, please, and snuff the lights. Show us what's happening outside now.”

The lights dimmed. In the darkness Dill's vapourous form cast its own blue light. A series of whirrs issued from somewhere overhead, followed by a clunk. Rachel, Mina, and Iron Head gathered around the table, on which a blurred image was forming. Hasp stood back from the group and downed another cup of wine, while his brother Sabor reached under the table and cranked a handle around. The image on the table became suddenly sharper.

It was a view from somewhere high up in the castle. Yellow evening light slanted across the blasted mountainside, leaving shadows as black as the rocks themselves. A great expanse of green forest swept down towards the Flower Lake, from where the waters stretched on to a brooding, storm-racked horizon. Dill's huge, shattered corpse lay at the top of the trench he'd scraped through the trees. Someone had lit an enormous bonfire beside his skull, from which rose clouds of grey woodsmoke. Rachel could see men throwing more branches onto the flames.

“Oran,” Iron Head said grimly. “He's made a signal fire.”

To signal whom? Dill asked.

Rachel pointed at one edge of the image. “To signal them,” she said.

Nine arconites were emerging from the frothing waters of Flower Lake, reeds clinging to their dripping wings. They advanced towards the shoreline, crouching low, dragging their massive blades through the surface of the lake. Torrents of water rushed out of the spaces between their steaming armour and their bones.

A hundred yards further out, the lake suddenly bubbled as smoke rose from its depths, and two more enormous skulls broke the surface of the water.

“That makes all eleven,” Rachel said.

Hasp glowered at the image for a moment, and then said, “Tell me you have a plan, brother.”

Sabor stared at the obscura table for a long time, his hands gripping each side. He glanced over at Dill, who stood nearby, his ghostly wings shimmering in the gloom, and then he returned his attention to the image on the table before him. “Phantasms,” he muttered. “Phantasms…”

He suddenly straightened up. “We're going back,” he said. “Right now. Back to the moment when Ayen's bastard sealed Heaven.”

“Didn't you say that another attempt to stop Menoa could destroy the whole universe?” Rachel pointed out.

Mina yawned. “I remember him saying that.”

“We no longer have a choice,” Sabor said.

Hasp roared up into the darkness, “More wine!”

Sabor spread his map across the obscura table. The paper was old, and heavily inked with many lines and circles and miniature tables of dates and numbers. “This map details all the routes we've found that access the previous three months,” he said. “But many of those now lead into the bastard universe, and so must be avoided whenever possible. As we proceed further into history we'll have to fetch additional maps.”

“Where are they?” Mina asked.

“In the cellar,” Sabor replied. “But there are far too many to carry with us. We shall simply take them as and when we need them.”

Rachel stared at the complex patterns in awe. They were about to walk back three thousand years-to the very moment when Ayen expelled her sons from Heaven-in order to save the life of Alteus Menoa, the enemy who was even now trying to destroy them.

Sabor had crossed out many of the circles on the map before him. Those, he claimed, led to what he called the bastard universe- the second, parallel world Rys had created when he'd traveled back in Time to confront Menoa and thereby changed the course of history.

The air suddenly resounded with the chimes of countless clocks.

“That's the cycle change we need,” Sabor said. “We must go. Garstone, I'll need every self you can now spare. We might as well generate some extra manpower while we travel. Do the Burntwater militia know what to do?”

“Iron Head will bar the castle doors as long as he can,” the small man replied.

“Good,” Sabor replied. “Then follow me.” Holding his map, he led Rachel, Mina, Hasp, and Dill up into the castle galleries. They crossed balconies and climbed stairs, higher and higher. Each version of Garstone they passed joined the party, so by the time they reached the appropriate door on one of the higher levels, there was a crowd of twenty assistants in tow.

These made an unlikely following of quietly shuffling men dressed in an eclectic mixture of tatty suits. Rachel wondered where they found their clothes, and if they tailored them themselves. They were of various ages, from the middle years onwards, although each Garstone wore the same bland smile.

Hasp glowered at them.

Sabor led them all to the door of a suite, then checked his map again. “As expected,” he said, “the Grenadier Suite is now fifteen days ago. This is a decent start.” He opened the timelock door and beckoned everyone inside.

It was a squeeze, but the entire party made it into the chamber beyond in three shifts. The Grenadier Suite was a rather small chamber with walls draped in worn green velvet. A brass obscura tube extended out from the interior wall, terminating at a fat lens just inside the window. The view outside was of a dull grey afternoon.