Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

As soon as the last of the Garstones shut the door behind him, all twenty of them adjusted their pocket watches. One Garstone wound the standing clock against the wall, while another opened the timelock door again.

“Onwards,” Sabor announced.

Mina nudged Rachel. “Three thousand years of this ?” she whispered. “Gods, Rachel, I don't know if I can take it. When do you think we stop for supper?”

“Where's Basilis?”

The thaumaturge drew back her robe. The little dog's head peered out of a deep pocket within. “Always near,” Mina said.

The dog growled.

“He'd better not piss himself,” Hasp grumbled. “He makes you smell bad enough as it is.”

Mina merely smiled, and drew her robe back around herself.

Rachel soon lost track of the number of suites they visited. The views outside the castle's many windows changed from dawn to night to dusk in no particular order, as Sabor consulted his map frequently. They stopped for supper in the dining room after six hours of such time travel, whereupon the god of clocks announced that they were now two years earlier than the day they had begun.

Hasp sat apart from the group at one end of the table, drinking heavily. When Garstone approached the god for the umpteenth time to refill his wine cup, Hasp snatched the carafe from the little man's hands, shoved him away, and roared, “Leave it here, you bloody imbecile! How many times do I have to tell you?”

Sabor stiffened in his chair and remarked, “Whatever Menoa did to you in Hell, brother, pales in comparison with what you've done to yourself.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You are no longer the god I remember.”

Hasp grunted. “Then kill me like you did the others, Sabor. At least my hands are clean.”

New Garstones had regularly joined the party, while others elected to stay and wait until future times when new suites would become available. By doing so they could return to the past again, thereby increasing their numbers. Already the castle was teeming with replicas of Sabor's assistant-the further back in Time the party traveled, the more Garstones appeared to occupy the castle.

After supper they resumed their progress into the past. This time Sabor ordered only one of his assistants to accompany the party, leaving a multitude of others to remain here and join them earlier in Time if possible. He hurried Rachel, Mina, and Dill on up to the highest level, whereupon he announced they would leap back a full four years by stepping into what he called the Tansy Suite.

Hasp trailed behind, cursing gruffly to himself.

No sooner had Rachel stepped out of the timelock than she knew something was wrong. This room looked much more unkempt than the others. Spiderwebs softened the plasterwork cornicing. The rotten, worm-riddled furniture evinced an aura of long neglect, and even the nail heads in the floorboards had rusted. But a richly pungent stench indicated something far more sinister than a lack of housekeeping.

Here, Rachel.

Dill was standing next to an old horsehair couch, his wings floating behind him like pale blue auroras, and pointing down at a body lying on the floor.

It was a version of Garstone dressed in the remains of a dark blue suit. It had been dead for a long time, Rachel realized, for the flesh remaining upon its bones had partially mummified; the hair was dry and brittle. Deep indentations in the skull spoke of terrible violence. This poor man had, she supposed, been beaten to death.

One of the Garstones took the pocket watch from the breast pocket of his own dead replica and examined it. Then he looked up and said, “This is most unusual.”

Sabor frowned. “When was he killed?”

Garstone compared the reclaimed timepiece with his own watch. “He stopped winding this six months from now, yet the state of his body indicates that he died long ago in the past. Either this corpse was carried here for us to find or…”

“He forgot to wind his watch?” Mina suggested.

Garstone shook his head. “No,” he said with complete conviction. “That is impossible. I never forget.” He thought for a moment. “I believe I did this deliberately-as a message.”

“Wouldn't a note have been easier?”

“A note might have been removed from my corpse, Miss Greene. But who would bother to adjust or even look at a watch?” He nodded. “If I ever found myself confronted by an enemy within this castle, I would undoubtedly wish to record the time of that encounter in some subtle way. Furthermore, if I thought that my life was in danger… yes, now that I think about it, I would do precisely this.”

Sabor stood grimly over the corpse. “Are you saying that this version of you found an intruder six months from now, and fled back in time to warn us?”

“I believe so. Unfortunately, whoever I encountered seems to have followed me.”

“And now he's further back in history than we are?”

The assistant nodded. “Which implies that he's taken a more direct, and dangerous, route. You see, in order to get ahead of us, both this version of myself and his pursuer must have traveled through the bastard universe.”

Hasp spat on the floor. “This is all bollocks,” he growled. “I don't understand a word of what you're both gibbering about. If there's a faster way into the past, then why aren't you taking it?”

Sabor stared at his brother for a long moment. Finally he said, “The bastard universe is dangerous because the version of Menoa who inhabits it is aware of our plans. In his world, Rys appeared from the future and tried to capture him. Since he knows the Obscura Redunda as a threat, he will have sent his arconites and other agents here directly.”

Hasp's eyes narrowed. “Then this whole castle could already be infested with Mesmerists?” he said.

“It's possible.”

The Lord of the First Citadel slumped down upon the couch and let out a deep sigh. He held his head in his hands as, quietly, he said, “Fetch me whisky.”

“That isn't going to help,” Mina said. “It never has.”

“What the hell do you know about it?” Hasp growled.

Rachel stepped forward. “This arguing is pointless. We don't know who killed this particular Garstone, and we don't know if we'll run into him, but we do know that the aggressor was most likely human. An arconite simply can't fit inside this castle, and other Mesmerists require bloodied ground to survive.”

“She has a point,” Mina said.

Hasp sighed wearily. “All right.” He nodded. “All right.”

Back in the main Obscura Hall, Sabor spent a few minutes bent over the viewing table in search of the safest route for them to follow. “We must avoid suites that have become junctions between the two universes,” he said, “for it is through such rooms that our enemy may find his way into this timeline.”

Garstone dimmed the lights while his master operated the machinery underneath the table. Sabor pulled levers, cranked wheels, and threw switches. His voice echoed through the towering galleries above:

“Lens nine-zero-four… The Foster Green Suite… Cycle through one to seven… Two days back, Garstone… We've lost that morning for good, so lock and bar the door.”

In the gloom overhead there seemed to be a million men at work. Garstones ran between suites, winding clocks, fetching maps, opening timelocks, slamming doors, reading from dials, and sliding lenses into fitments as their master adjusted the huge brass optical device.

The views upon that circular white table flicked from one scene to another. To Rachel's horror, she saw mostly destruction. Image after image of burning forest and arconites flashed across the viewing table.

Sabor wore a look of grim determination. “These are not from our world,” he explained, “but are visions of the bastard universe. The parallel version of Alteus Menoa has breached this fortress somewhere in the future. And now he is using the labyrinth of Time to return to his past. He's making changes, allowing his arconites to reach the Obscura Redunda sooner and sooner. He has traveled further back in Time than we are currently, so now he is ahead of us. We must hurry if we are to catch up.”