‘You cannot touch me,’ repeated Sam, as though convincing himself of it, rolling the words around his mouth. ‘But I,’ he said, a gleam in his eyes, ‘I can touch you.’
‘Lucifer —’
Sam raised the knife made of white fire, turned and without a word plunged it into the heart of Time. His father clasped at his arms, face an oval of surprise as it changed – from Jehovah to Seth to Odin to Thor. And lastly to Sam’s own. ‘You… you would kill me?’ he gasped, dragging Sam down with him to the floor.
‘Kill you?’ Sam laughed. ‘Whatever gave you that impression? I’m merely taking out insurance.’ His face darkened. He leant forwards, clutching the useless, helpless copy of himself to his chest, and whispered in his father’s ear, ‘Tell Jehovah where to find me.’
He pulled the other Sam into himself, two Sams becoming one, darkness blending with darkness, a big, black place somewhere down below, a long way to fall, a rushing, roaring sea thundering against dark cliffs, teetering on the edge of the fall, diving over with arms wide, waters closing over his head, pulling him to where he wanted to go.
Eventually, silence.
He thought he saw Jehovah sitting on the edge of the bed. Pale Jehovah, looking almost as ill as Sam felt. Weak Jehovah, who’d borne the ruthless brunt of Sam’s mind. Sam tried to speak, and it must have been real because Jehovah reached forwards and gently poured a few drops of water into Sam’s mouth, wiping away the water that spilled with his sleeve.
‘Where is?’ Sam managed to mumble.
‘Back with the Ashen’ia.’
‘What?’
‘Seth has laid camp around Tartarus. It’s time to go.’
What did that mean? Time to go, Time to… oh. Right. That. ‘Please…’
‘I’m sorry, Lucifer.’
‘Thousands will die.’ He was surprised at how flat it sounded in his mouth, a last attempt from an empty tongue falling on empty ears.
‘You won’t see a thing.’
Another needle. Another poison.
‘Jehovah, please.’
Jehovah rolled Sam’s sleeve up, carefully placed the point of the needle against the hollow inside his elbow.
‘Brother, please!’ begged Sam, struggling feebly, a kitten in a golem’s hands.
Jehovah glanced at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, almost inaudibly.
Sam felt the needle. He felt the burning of the poison. He whispered, ‘Time asked me to sell my soul.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘No. I asked him to sell his. I need to know. What happened to Loki?’
‘Loki? Why, after he killed Balder he went on the run. To his own, to Valhalla. But even his closest brother turned him over – sent him to be imprisoned by Time.’
‘Which brother was that?’
‘Odin. Is it important?’
Sam smiled faintly up at the ceiling. ‘It begins to…’
Jehovah frowned, but his face was already beginning to swim. Black static flashed across Sam’s eyes. ‘When it comes… find me.’
‘Where could you be that I cannot find?’
Sam smiled faintly. ‘Everywhere. But specifically, I’ll be inside.’
‘Inside my mind?’
‘Inside your soul, brother. In the bit you sold.’
Jehovah’s confused face, fading into the all-too familiar darkness.
He woke. He was very, very careful about waking, because before he’d woken all too often only to be put back to sleep with a needle. His first sensation was of how uncomfortable he was. He seemed to have been dumped on the ground with no consideration of temperature or position. The ground itself was hard and cool and smelled of nothing, which in Hell was unusual.
He let these sensations sink in, and opened his eyes. The ground was black marble that ran into a black marble wall on which some mad child with too much time on its hands had drawn the crude outlines of dozens of men. Between Sam and the wall there was nothing more than a hand. After a little testing, he concluded that it was his own, and was reassured.
Next. Mind. Seemed intact and, when he risked probing around, he found nothing else. He didn’t feel drained, he didn’t feel… anything really. There was just the warm glow of a regenerative trance that had finally, finally been allowed to run its course without his system being pumped en route with several more ccs of poison.
He sat up. There was, he discovered, a slight hitch in this scheme, but then he hadn’t expected his good fortune to last for long. Someone seemed to have chained him to the wall, and warded the chains in the process. Thick, thick wards using every kind of magic the writer could find. Clearly someone knew his stuff. That someone, he suspected, was Jehovah.
With his hands locked together in front of him, he fumbled with the chains around his ankles. They failed to budge. There was nothing nearby that might serve to help against the locks, and unpicking the wards would take a lot of time.
He looked round the room again. It was a dome, he realised. A giant dome made out of the same black material throughout, and illuminated by torches that burned with a bright blue flame that didn’t eat at the torch itself. Coldfire, probably. At one end of the room was a giant pair of black iron doors and, at the other, a smaller, narrower entrance.
On the ceiling of the dome the same mad child had drawn a giant woman’s face, complete with red hair, closed eyes and a slightly sad expression. She appeared to be asleep, and dominated most of the room, her shut eyes seeming to stare down nonetheless at the black marble below. On every other wall were more of the same figures. Sam crawled along the length of his chains and, straining, rubbed against the nearest. The white line that defined it didn’t come off, but he felt a slight jolt, as of magic. Yet when he probed, he felt nothing.
He slumped down against the wall, feeling wretched. He was tempted to yell for help, but had the feeling that doing so would only invite more needles.
Sam heard a clank and looked towards the giant doors. A thin beam of white light had appeared. Instinctively he curled up again, head in his hands and eyes closed, trying to appear drugged. He heard footsteps, and the door clicked shut again. The footsteps drew close to him, and he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He didn’t move. The hand took his pulse and felt his forehead, testing temperature. Sam kept still, focusing entirely on regular breathing.
Eventually, the hand went away and the stranger, satisfied of whatever they’d wanted to know, began to walk away. Sam opened his eyes a crack, and saw an Ashen’ia carefully returning a needle to a small box. No need of it, clearly. Patient asleep. Alone again, Sam sat up and looked around once more.
The ground shook, knocking him to one side. Within a few seconds the tremors passed, but he had recognised the opening shots of a Waywalkers’ battle. Start off with big, impressive stuff that doesn’t really have much effect, see if you can shock the enemy. He pulled himself back up – and bit his own tongue in shock.
The eyes of the woman in the ceiling were now wide open, bright blue, and staring straight at him. Sam waved. The face didn’t move.
He heard a click at the door again and curled up hastily, lying still. Footsteps approached, pausing near him. Then a hand reached down and placed something by his side. He felt the same hands touch his wrists and heard the click of the locks coming undone, even though the weight of the chains still remained. The footsteps began to retreat.
He rolled over to look at his rescuer, and the chains clinked. The man froze, his back to Sam, but still Sam recognised him. He looked from Tinkerbell to his free hands and feet, to the silver sword and dagger at his side.
Finally he said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to ask this.’
‘Best not to ask, then.’
‘Perhaps if you could save me the bother? Begin with “because” and let your imagination do the rest.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t think you can win. It’s far too late for that,’ said Tinkerbell, not moving.
‘But?’ prompted Sam.
&n
bsp; ‘I think… you deserve a chance, even though I know it’s a false one.’
‘Hum.’ Sam considered. ‘I take it you don’t want Jehovah to know about this.’
‘No. It doesn’t matter, though. You’re still gonna lose your mind. Inevitably.’
‘If I know where to find my mind, how can it be lost?’
‘Where will you find it, when so many other minds are drowning you?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘That’s a lot to look through.’
‘I won’t be alone.’
‘Yes, you will. You’ll be together with other minds, but you’ll be more alone than you’ve been in your entire life. I thought you deserved a chance to avoid that.’
‘Even though you think I stand no chance anyway.’ Sam smiled and pulled himself up a bit further. ‘Thanks, Tinkerbell.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ the other man said, and hurried from the hall before Sam could say anything more. Tinkerbell, Sam concluded, was not comfortable with being at heart a good guy.
He waited a good few minutes before carefully pulling himself to his feet. Tinkerbell, he found, had even supplied his old sheaths and straps.
Feeling happier, he looked up at the face on the ceiling. It was still staring at him, but now something else had changed. It had acquired, he realised, a hand, where before there hadn’t been one. It seemed to be open, as if in a greeting.
The world shook again. Strike and counter-strike. Sam kept staring at the hand. He could taste on the air the bitter tang of magic. But it wasn’t magic with aim or intent, just a general background roar that rose from the floor like mist and filled the room. He waved a hand up and down, and sparks flashed from his fingertips. Something was building up a charge like nothing he’d ever seen before. He backed away from the centre of the room and bumped against the wall.
It was burning hot.
Holy Hells. Sam back-pedalled hastily as the figures across the wall began to move. Tiny degrees of motion at first, hardly noticeable as one outline twitched along the side of the wall. It was flowing like oil in water, as seen through very clean glass that kept everything two-dimensional. Sam kept on backing away, suddenly aware that he was surrounded on every side by moving figures. He felt more magic, of a different taste, and glanced towards the entrance. Through the crack between the two doors, what little light had shone was now dimming, passing into shadow and then through to darkness. With it came an unnatural cold that rolled across the floor in a tide and made his breath condense.
This wasn’t part of the general background charge, though. This was Seth and his power. Sam tried to call out.
He looked round the room again and felt his stomach do a little backflip as a figure reached out of the wall. A single, pure white hand clutching a pure white sword extended itself from the wall and flailed in the air for a few seconds before returning to the wall.
Please tell me this isn’t as bad as it looks…
More hands now were flailing, turning the walls into some strange animal with black skin and white spines that protruded and flapped about like fish out of water. After the hands came white arms, sickly white, followed by white shoulders and white chins and white faces capped with white hair. From every side they came, men and women of every age, all as white as ghosts, stepping from the walls.
Behind them they left nothing, not a dot to suggest they’d been there. Some carried white swords, some white axes. The majority, however, carried scythes. Endless tiny scythes, as white as the hands that held them. And when the last figure had stepped from the wall they all turned towards the centre of the room and stared with pupil-less eyes at nothing.
Sam waved a hand up and down. Still they stared at nothing. He stood on one leg and stuck his tongue out. Still they stared. He felt a mad surge of laughter well up inside him and he bit his lip to keep it in.
The white figures stood, and did nothing. Sam remembered Jehovah’s words. Time, for their crimes, bound the souls of the slaughtered citizens to their city for ever.
Tartarus. I’m in Tartarus. And these are the local residents.
He remembered something else. Anyone entering the city who doesn’t bear the mark of a Greater Power will be destroyed by the spirits that guard it.
As if reading his mind, every eye in the room suddenly seemed fixed on him. Heads turned in unison, a hundred empty eyes stared at him. There was a thud as a hundred feet took a step towards him, again in perfect unison. He looked up at the figure above, who had lost her pupils and irises yet still managed to stare at him as though reading him like a book.
He looked to the people advancing, chose one at random and spoke in a low, urgent voice in Elysian. ‘I am a Son of Time and the Bearer of Light. You cannot harm me.’ Another step, another. ‘I bear the marks of every Greater Power in the whole sodding universe! Their minds are inside mine, mine is inside theirs, we are One!’
Another step. A ring closing around him. He shut his eyes and cried in a tight, scared voice, ‘I am the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the individual and the whole! I am… becoming… all that lives! It is becoming me!’
Silence. No death, though, which was a pleasant reassurance. He opened his eyes just a bit. A hundred empty eyes stared back at him. A hundred blades hung poised for the kill, and remained exactly that – poised. Then, with an audible snap, the scythes went down and the eyes flashed past Sam as if he wasn’t there. The white people wheeled about and began to march to the doors, streaming by, parting and closing around Sam like a river round a boulder.
Sam waited until they were gone, and looked at the figure above. Still the empty eyes were open, but they seemed less intent on him now. The ground shook again and he turned, heading for the doors.
Outside, darkness had fallen. Thick, cloying darkness, cold in more sense than one. Night was the Incarnate of more than just an absence of the sun. She embodied everything that was fearful in the dark, all the childish nightmares, all the creatures that stalked under the moon, all the magic and the mystery. Seth was a Son of Night, and could call on this.
Even though the darkness was complete, deeper patches moved within it, and sounds rose and fell, half-heard and gone as soon as Sam turned to find what made them. Although no light was present, still it managed to play tricks. Sam thought he saw teeth flash. He thought he saw a hand with a knife dart out of a shadow and disappear again. He thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes. He thought he saw… and knew it was silly, prayed it was silly. He wasn’t seeing a corpse. To prove it he summoned a small sphere of light and marched boldly towards it. The corpse turned out to be nothing more than a white shutter in a black marble house, on which a pair of stone pillars had thrown peculiar shadows.
By the warmth of his little sphere of light, he managed to penetrate more of the darkness. He was in a street of houses. On some, white figures were pulling themselves free, stepping off the walls, at least one figure per house. Bound for ever to Tartarus, they had been called in its defence against Seth.
Which reminded him. He looked up and saw fires burning along a high black wall, eclipsed occasionally by figures passing across them. Ashen’ia, no doubt. They, having sold their souls to a Greater Power, would be safe within the city from the city’s guardian defenders. To some small degree they could use its walls to defend themselves.
Poor fools. If by a chance you look like winning, the Powers you sold your souls to will simply take control, and ensure that you die anyway.
Another thought crossed his mind. Cronus is a Greater Power. Thor…
Sam began to walk, quickly. He found the nearest fires and headed towards them, breaking into a run as the street shook again. It wouldn’t be long before they began the serious magics, the real world-breakers. He saw a phalanx of white people ahead and pushed through them. They offered no resistance.
The wall still seemed a very long way o
ff when the catapults let fire. They were clearly aimed to smash a way through the walls. But the first shots were misjudged, and the flaming missiles from the catapults flew straight over the walls and exploded on the houses inside, raining down fire on every side. Or perhaps that was the point – destroy the houses that the spirits are tied to in order to destroy the spirits themselves.
The Ashen’ia on the walls, seeing that the attack had really started, began to yell. It was, Sam suspected, supposed to be a war chant, but sounded more like a very bad close harmony chorus trying to do rap.
He heard drums beating in the distance, and recognised them as belonging to one of the Princes of Hell. Troops were attacking…
More balls of flaming death began to descend. There was a direct hit somewhere on the walls and the Ashen’ias’ war chant faltered. Missiles rained down on the city behind the wall, turning the artificial night orange as they passed. Yet when they hit there were no screams. There were no living creatures to suffer.
Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Page 23