by Edward Cox
Book Two of The Relic Guild
Edward Cox
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
For my daughter Marney, who is still too young to read about the adventures of her namesake. You were no help whatsoever while I was writing this book, but please don’t ever change . . .
An Interim
Time Mechanic
At times, he played the long game in the strangest of places.
Above, the primordial mists of the Nothing of Far and Deep roiled beneath an angry sky yet to warm its cold days with the fire of a sun; a monumental dome of liquid slate devoid of nights filled with the ruby and silver glares of its moons. Below, unused time congealed into slabs of pulsing colour to create a landscape of blues and reds hued so variedly as to fill the spectrum between dusk and dawn. Raw thaumaturgy dashed the air like static, whipping, dancing, as free and wild as windborne snow. A hum, low enough to be felt rather than heard, vibrated and churned the volatile atmosphere, coaxing shape from shapelessness.
Hovering between the angry sky and the landscape in flux, Fabian Moor was exhilarated by the flakes of higher magic swirling around him, stinging his face, singing to his blood. An age had passed since he had last been able to enjoy the moment.
Defeat at the hands of the Relic Guild was far in the future, yet a distant memory now. Those petty, interfering magickers might have proved much more intelligent, problematic – even more powerful – than Moor had been prepared for, but ultimately their meddling had achieved nothing that hindered Lord Spiral’s greater strategy. Yes, details had been compromised, planning required adjustment, new pathways needed to be found; but all the Relic Guild had really achieved was to buy themselves a little extra time. Just a few more years.
With a feeling of satisfaction, Moor looked to the northern horizon, and stared with wonder upon a column of energy that connected unstable land to swirling sky like an umbilical cord of liquid fire. Droning with a mournful song, blazing, spitting bolts of purple at the ground, the column snaked and twisted through the air like a whirlwind. The First and Greatest Spell, that energy was called, and it bore a legend. It had been cast by the only creature of higher magic worshipped by all lower races: the Timewatcher.
The First and Greatest Spell would one day be contained within a building named the Nightshade. But now, in its raw state, the spell was an immense and untamed formation of thaumaturgy that inflated an ever expanding bubble within the Nothing of Far and Deep. It held aloft the sky while solidifying time into the founding stones of an intrinsic House that would come to be known as Labrys Town, a human haven surrounded by the alleyways of an endless maze called the Great Labyrinth. The creation of this House would prove to be the Timewatcher’s grandest achievement, and her biggest mistake.
Among all the Thaumaturgists, only Spiral, the Lord of the Genii, had been able to match the Timewatcher’s power; only his command of higher magic had been able to smuggle Moor back to this time, a thousand years before the Genii War, to when the Timewatcher’s fabled First and Greatest Spell birthed the most significant epoch in the history of the Houses.
Moor’s sense of wonder grew. In this time frame, the Aelfir were warring against each other, out among the plethora of realms, fighting in perpetual, bloody battles that never heralded a victor – a cycle of pointlessness that was already centuries old. When the Great Labyrinth was completed, The Timewatcher would use it to break that cycle, and spell the end of what the Aelfir would come to call the Old Ways. Moor understood what a privilege it was to be chosen to bear witness to such an important beginning, to such … creation. Labrys Town might give the Aelfir a common ground, give them peace, but that peace would not last.
And to think, in only a millennium, the Great Labyrinth would become the catalyst that caused The Timewatcher to lose so many of her children. Lord Spiral and his Genii were coming, and nothing would be the same again.
An itch crawled across his skin.
Hollowness gnawed inside him.
Fabian Moor sighed.
From the satchel which hung from his shoulder, he took a phial of blood and popped the cork with his thumb. He paused before drinking, staring at the phial and its contents.
A part of Moor had hoped that being present at this primitive stage of the Labyrinth’s creation might ease his cravings; that the flakes of raw thaumaturgy, hissing in the air like a storm of static, might substitute the need for sustenance that ached in his core. He wondered: was this chronic need to feed on blood a weakness? Perhaps the virus that he carried meant he had become nothing more than vermin. Or did his condition make him greater even than the Thaumaturgists?
In the overall scheme of things, did it matter?
Lifting the phial to his lips, Moor drained the blood in one go. He was repulsed by how willingly he savoured the rusty tang as it slipped thickly down his throat, quenching his hunger, filling the void inside him. The phial fell from his grasp, and he watched it tumble down, end over end, until it disappeared into the fluxing landscape. There was no time left for musing and marvelling. Slowly, Moor descended. His eyes ever watchful, his instincts alert, almost fearful.
The purple fire of the First and Greatest Spell might have been providing the highest of thaumaturgy by which this House was achieving existence, but the Timewatcher’s spell would not sculpt the final design. For that, the Great Labyrinth and its town required labourers … of a kind.
Moor could see them as he neared the ground, hundreds, thousands of them, scurrying and lumbering and sliding over slabs and boulders that glowed blue and red. Radiating a vague violet sheen, the workers burrowed and dug, carved and built. Labouring tirelessly, in perfect unison, they hardened time to the black stone foundations of this House. Sculptors, creators, the builders of realms, these things were the Timewatcher’s loyal pets. They were the Time Engineers.
Some of them appeared humanoid, hefting stone and laying brickwork; others appeared as giant slugs that devoured everything in their path to then excrete lines of dull purple jelly like icing squeezed from tubes. The last of them were arachnids, and they scooped up the jelly upon flat backs and carried it to the humanoids to use as mortar in their work. The Time Engineers needed no sustenance, no rest, and were unconcerned by the hostile environment. They would not stop building until this House was finished.
Moor spied an area of completed ground beside a wide chasm, and headed towards it. Landing near the edge of the chasm, he froze, tense and ready, as an arachnid scuttled towards him, back laden with purple mortar.
For the most part, Time Engineers were apathetic creatures, harbouring no prejudices, incapable of distinguishing between friend and foe. They understood only order and purpose. However, whether Moor be Genii, vermin, or a new and brilliant form of life, he remained fundamentally a creature of higher magic. If the Engineers detected his thaumaturgy, they would regard him simply as raw material to be mashed and ground into the foundations of Labrys Town.
The single arachnid didn’t pose much of a threat. But if the one approaching detected Moor, it would summon its fellow Engineers, and one Genii could not stand against the thousands that would answer that call. Should he attempt to fight, they would alert the Timewatcher to the discrepancy, and Moor would have to flee before his lord and master’s orders could be carried out. There would be no second chance. Subtlety was his best friend in this place.
Thankfully, the lone Engineer was focused on its current task. It did not pursue the Genii who had broken into this timeframe, but scurried up to the chasm and disappeared down into it. Relieved, Moor peered over the edge.
The fissure was shallower tha
n he had expected, though it still sank into the ground a fair way. Its mouth might have been crude and ragged, but the further down the chasm reached, the neater and squarer its walls became. Moor could see Time Engineers working tirelessly, their violet glow lighting the depths. Some clung to the walls, smoothing and shaping; others worked at the very bottom, constructing what Moor supposed would be the partitions of interconnecting rooms.
Glancing nervously around at the forming landscape, ensuring no other Time Engineers were close by, Moor dipped a hand into his satchel again, this time producing a small terracotta jar. He ran a pale hand over the smooth and plain surface, feeling the charge of higher magic held inside.
The last of the Genii.
The other jars containing the essences of Moor’s fellow Genii were already in place. Viktor Gadreel, Hagi Tabet and Yves Harrow now lay waiting among the bones of Labrys Town. This final terracotta jar contained the essence of Mo Asajad.
In Moor’s natural time period, the war against the Timewatcher was over, and Lord Spiral had lost – or so his enemies believed. The rest of the Genii faced imminent execution, and the last of their allies among the Houses of the Aelfir had been vanquished. Every one of the secret strongholds Spiral had created within the Nothing of Far and Deep was being searched out and destroyed. There were no safe havens left for the only remaining Genii.
Moor could not take the other Genii to where he was headed; a tomb of his own awaited him, and his immediate future was too unpredictable to play minder to his comrades. The passage of time, while they lay hidden beneath the noses of their enemies, was the best weapon they had now. The higher magic that contained Asajad, Gadreel, Tabet and Harrow inside the terracotta jars was unstable; but with the energy of the First and Greatest Spell wrapped around them, they would be kept safe, kept strong, waiting for the day that Moor could return to reanimate them.
It was Lord Spiral himself who had taught Moor the forbidden thaumaturgy that had preserved the essences of his colleagues. Moor remembered the tortures it had inflicted upon them. He could not rid himself of the images and sounds of their suffering. Only Mo Asajad had refrained from screaming when Moor had reduced her physical form to ashes. She had glared at him throughout the process, gritting her teeth against the agony, and she had not stopped glaring until she no longer had eyes to glare with.
Moor studied the terracotta jar in his hands, struggling to understand why Lord Spiral had chosen Lady Asajad for the task. Her devotion to the Genii cause was pure, but Spiral was the only person Asajad would obey without question. When her essence was reanimated she would resent following Moor’s orders. She would not function well within a group not under Lord Spiral’s personal command. Mo Asajad lived to dominate, she craved control. She was an unhinged creature of higher magic, and Moor could foresee problems.
He circled a finger around the jar’s wax seal.
It was not beyond the realms of temptation that he might compromise Asajad’s containment device. He could hurl it down into the chasm, to the very bottom, where the terracotta would shatter and release the thaumaturgy it contained. And when Asajad’s essence began its ravenous search for meat and blood and reanimation, the Time Engineers could have their way with her. They could recycle her thaumaturgy and grind it into the fabric of the Labyrinth. Getting rid of her now might cause fewer problems in the long run, Moor reasoned. And who would know what he had done?
No. Spiral had chosen Asajad, and Moor could not defy his lord and master.
Holding the jar securely in both hands, Moor stepped off the edge of the chasm and floated down.
Careful to keep himself away from the arachnids clinging to the sheer faces surrounding him, he continued descending until he neared the bottom. His earlier suspicions had proved correct; the Engineers were indeed segmenting the wide and long floor into rooms. The walls they had built thus far were incomplete, appearing as ruins. Moor wondered what manner of building would eventually rise from this great pit.
He landed in a half-finished room where a single humanoid Time Engineer, its glowing skin fractured by black lines like a network of veins, laboured away. The Engineer did not react to the Genii’s arrival. It continued to build its wall higher.
Taking a steadying breath, Moor latched onto the thaumaturgy with which the First and Greatest Spell had saturated this land and flashed a quick command to the humanoid.
The Engineer ceased working and turned to face the source of the irregularity.
It had no features as such, just a swirl of black-veined violet where its face should have been. The glow of its body brightened and dimmed as though it was unsure how to proceed. Once again Moor touched the First and Greatest Spell. He didn’t dare delve too deeply lest its power absorb his own entirely. He barely skimmed the surface, scratched down just enough to send the Time Engineer a simple but firm command which it could not refuse.
Moor placed the terracotta jar on the newly formed floor and stepped back. The Engineer stepped forward to kneel beside the jar. And then, just as the other Engineers had done for Gadreel, Tabet and Harrow, it proceeded to bury the essence of Mo Asajad.
It punched the floor, its fist sinking effortlessly into hardened time with a sound oddly poised between breaking glass and splashing water. The Engineer plunged its arm down to the shoulder before withdrawing it, leaving behind a perfectly circular hole. Moor held his breath as the Timewatcher’s labourer picked up the terracotta jar and lowered it into the opening. The worker then began rubbing flat palms over the floor in circles as if washing it. Faster and faster it rubbed until, with subtle pulses of red and blue, the hole was filled and smoothed to black stone.
Moor relinquished his command of the creature. The Engineer turned away from him to continue working on the wall. Only then did the Genii sever his connection to the First and Greatest Spell; only then did he rise at speed, up past the arachnids clinging to the walls, out of the chasm and high into the blizzard of thaumaturgy.
Fast and silent, Moor continued to ascend, soaring towards the roiling slate-grey sky. To the north, the fire of the Timewatcher’s mighty spell continued to drone and spit; below, the violet glow of the Time Engineers dotted the landscape. He did not stop rising until he came within several yards of the thick and churning primordial mists of the Nothing of Far and Deep. For a final time, he pushed a hand into his satchel and removed the last item, a simple wooden scroll case.
Moor slid out the scroll and unrolled it carefully, letting the case fall from his grasp. Upon clean white parchment were glyphs and symbols, swirls and shapes, strange configurations, written in black ink by a hand that Moor knew all too well. It was a complicated formula that decorated the page, more complicated than any other Thaumaturgist could create. These were the words of Lord Spiral himself, the language of higher magic, and they were for Moor’s eyes only.
This scroll was one of two that Spiral had left Moor before his defeat at the hands of the Timewatcher. The first had allowed Moor to travel back to this early stage in the Labyrinth’s creation. But the second …
In this time period, Moor was as a single bee in a forest, a grain of sand in a desert, an unnoticed interloper, but he could only remain for a short while. He was not shielded from the raw elements as the essences of his comrades were in their terracotta jars. He was whole, alive, and if he lingered too long, the mighty thaumaturgy that had delivered him to this time would cease protecting him. The First and Greatest Spell would drain the higher magic from his body until only dust remained. Fortunately, Lord Spiral had given him a way out.
Moor began reading aloud from the scroll, the language of the Thaumaturgists hissing and sighing from his lips as quick and fleeting as the flakes of higher magic whipping around him. He intoned the words of his lord and master, his voice growing in intensity, barely able to contain his urgency.
As Moor recited, a grey churning disc appeared in the Nothing of Far and Deep directly
above him. Growing darker and smoother, it swirled faster and faster until Moor read the last word and the disc collapsed into a portal, a black hole punched into the sky.
The scroll burst into flame, burning in a flash to ashes that blew from Moor’s hand to be lost in the blizzard.
With his work done, the Genii gave a final glance below him to the landscape birthing a House. The Relic Guild would see Fabian Moor again, and at a time when they were not prepared to deal with him. Moor would return to wake his fellow Genii, and together they would search for Spiral. They would find the hidden prison that the Timewatcher would come to create for the Lord of the Genii.
All things were known in the end.
Moor rushed up towards the portal. Without hesitating, he flew into the black hole and disappeared from the Labyrinth. For now …
Chapter One
House of Dead Time
Samuel couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear.
As soon as he stepped into the portal, the cellar beneath the warehouse in the southern district of Labrys Town had swirled away, the police officers and their guns blinked out of sight, and it was as if the old bounty hunter had jumped into a huge, suffocating blanket. Blackness engulfed him, pressed against his eyelids like the thumbs of a murderer; filled his mouth and nostrils like thick poison searching for the passage of his throat. And it was cold.
In vain, Samuel tried to shout his defiance; to thrash and struggle against the darkness that refused him air and light and sound. His body was unresponsive, numb. With an unfeeling finger, he tried to squeeze the trigger of his revolver, to shoot blindly, madly, into the void. But his deadened nerves had relaxed his hand to a listless thing, and the revolver had already slipped from his grasp to be lost forever in nothingness.
The suffocating blanket seemed to stretch under his weight, until finally it ripped open and spilled him into freefall.