Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  He looked at his own emotions with a feeling of detachment, and wondered. Should he discharge the Light? It would give him a break from his own morbid thoughts, at least.

  He looked at Seth, and saw that his brother’s face was pale and sweaty. But then, so was his. He was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, and so was Seth. He hadn’t even felt the pain. Seth had, at some stage in the affair, drawn his stiletto, and Sam realised with a start he had his own dagger out. He looked at Seth. Seth looked at him. Sam felt the urge to laugh, and didn’t know at what.

  ‘Hi, brother,’ he said, for want of something better.

  ‘Hi,’ said Seth.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, step and duck and thrust and turn and stab and lunge. Reverse the grip on your dagger, bring it down as you turn, finish spin, sword up, bat aside blow, smash lunge away, kick, breathe, one, two, three, four…

  There might have been sounds outside, but he wasn’t sure. All that mattered was the silence, the peace of listening to his thoughts and feeling his feelings and wielding his weapons. Who cared that Seth was lunging down like that, and like that? The arms that belonged to Sam Linnfer were also coming down like that, and like that, and like that, and soon the left hand that contained his dagger, his, would come up like this, and like this, and like this, and his mind would think his thoughts and his eyes would see things only he could see and his heart would pump his blood through his body faster, and faster, and faster.

  And Seth was staggering back, and opening his mouth and hissing, ‘Why don’t you die, bro —?’

  And Sam’s dagger was slicing through the air, guided by his calm mind, held in his trembling hand, and digging itself into Seth’s heart. And Seth was staring at him, with wide, astonished eyes. And the scimitar was falling from Seth’s hand, and Seth was grasping his arms, leaning on him for support and falling to the floor. Sam went with him, sword falling from his grip. Seth opened his mouth to say something, coughed, looked at Sam, looked past him, and smiled faintly. ‘Well done,’ he whispered softly. ‘You’ve learned.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was… necessary.’

  Seth grinned, a weak, pale grin. Sam hadn’t realised how much blood they’d both lost, or how tired they both were. ‘Tell them my last breath was something profound.’

  ‘Sure. It’s been a bad eternity, hasn’t it?’

  And Seth died. No fireworks, no magic. One second a spark of life, the next second nothing. Sam’s knife was lodged in his brother’s chest. He pulled it free, hands shaking and bloody, but didn’t feel strong enough to hold it. Sam felt as weak as a child, and revolted by the thought of handling weapons ever again. He washed his hands in the water around the key, hardly aware of what he was doing, and sat, staring at the door. Waiting for whatever must happen to happen.

  He knew it ought to be over, whatever ‘it’ would later be named by those who cared, but his guts still churned and his fingers tingled. His fingers. His memories. His emptiness, waiting for something to fill it. The Light stirred, eager to oblige.

  A voice that was definitely his sighed inside the head that definitely belonged to him, Oh, do shut up. He smiled. It was nice to know there was still something inside.

  The door opened. Jehovah stared down at him sadly. Tinkerbell stood behind him. ‘Hi,’ murmured Sam, just for something to say.

  Without a word Jehovah stepped to the edge of the pool, glanced at the key on the pedestal, and ignored it. Tinkerbell helped Sam stagger to his feet. Sam sheathed his sword and dagger, and leant against the nearest wall as if it was all that stood between him and a collapse. ‘We won, did we?’

  ‘Not yet,’ murmured Jehovah, and for the first time glanced down at Seth’s small, insignificant body. One more in the masses. ‘Pandora is fading, though.’

  ‘Is it? I hardly noticed. Though I do hope I’ve managed to bugger things up for you.’

  They said not a word as they helped him hobble through the corridors. The pain of the fight was starting to tell, but he ignored it. He felt too tired to do anything about it and, besides, what were regenerative trances for? They took him to the dome, and he looked up at the face on the ceiling. The woman’s eyes were closed, but someone had drawn in a few tears, and she definitely looked unhappy. ‘Hi. Miss me?’ he asked it.

  The face didn’t move.

  Jehovah gently guided Sam to the centre of the room and eased him on to his knees. He was wearing a kind, fatherly expression.

  ‘I won, right? We can stop now. It’s over.’

  ‘No. You were two inches short.’

  ‘Seth is dead, Odin is dying. What are two inches here or there?’

  ‘The catapults are going quiet. The order has been put out to cease fighting. You’ve saved thousands of lives without noticing what you did.’

  ‘I won.’

  ‘No. Two inches, Sam, two inches.’

  Sam looked round the dome at the empty walls, at Jehovah standing by his side, at Tinkerbell sitting quietly by Odin’s body, and back down to the floor. ‘I just want to sleep.’

  ‘Soon, brother, soon.’

  ‘Two inches, right? The two inches I needed to kill Thor, Cronus’s last disciple?’

  ‘Those are the ones.’

  He looked at the doorway ahead. ‘He’s in those corridors?’

  ‘Probably leaning over Seth’s body as we speak. He hid as we passed him. Didn’t you sense anything?’

  ‘No.’ Sam stared round the room once more, as though trying to familiarise himself with it again. ‘How long?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘I’d give him five minutes to fight through the minimal defence that stands between him and Cronus.’

  ‘What if it doesn’t work? What if I don’t destroy Cronus?’

  Jehovah shrugged. ‘We have to hope. Cronus, you see, isn’t exactly the end of the universe. Just of our universe. Really, if he does win it’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  Sam smiled faintly, but his voice caught in his throat. ‘Please don’t do this.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then don’t… then… stop…’ His voice faded away, but his smile, automatic, fixed, as if he’d been caught that way when the wind changed, remained. In a whisper that seemed to take all the strength out of him he murmured, ‘I didn’t even get a last meal.’

  ‘You will discharge, then?’

  ‘You know I will. You’ve known all along, even if I haven’t.’

  In this quiet, thought Sam, you could hear a mouse fart. ‘By the way, Seth said something profound when he died.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Not on such short notice. Ask me in a few minutes, when I’ve had time to think about it.’

  Silence. Then, ‘I’ve got a Mars bar, if you want it,’ said Jehovah.

  ‘You call that a last meal?’

  ‘Better than sausage, egg and chips.’

  Sam hesitated. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. All right, give it here.’ Jehovah fumbled in a pocket and Sam took the slightly spongy, melted chocolate bar. His hands trembled so much as he tried to get off the wrapper that Jehovah held out his hands to help him, but Sam waved him away and with his teeth managed to tear a way in.

  ‘Keep the wrapper,’ said Sam. ‘If I’m lucky some occultist somewhere might preserve it as a holy artefact and mass-produce postcards of it for the especially pious.’

  ‘Might be a little easy to forge.’

  ‘You mean, as compared to forging a lump of wood from a crucifix, feather from the angel Gabriel, bone from a saint or stick from a burning bush?’

  ‘At least I have holy relics in variety.’

  ‘Really? Oh well, I can’t be outdone by my own brother. Do you have a bottle of water I can drink from or possibly a flower I can torture in a particularly religious way? The holy Evian bottle, for which knights can go questing for in years to come, perhaps? Non-biodegradable. Could be a hit.’

  No answer. Sam star
ed at the floor, his taut, hysterical voice silenced as the thoughts that he refused to think intruded again. ‘How will we know?’

  ‘We’ll know.’

  ‘Please…’

  ‘No. What must happen will happen.’

  ‘No back-up plans?’

  ‘Not this time. You’re very good at ruining the best laid plans of mice, men and monsters.’

  ‘The plans of mice are too shallow, the plans of men are too obvious, the plans of monsters are too vulgar,’ he replied firmly, waving a finger in the air. ‘And the plans of deities suffer from arrogance.’ Silence. ‘Where’s Thor now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Congratulating himself on a job well done, I expect.’

  ‘Will he release Cronus? What if he smells a rat?’

  ‘He’ll release Cronus,’ said Jehovah wearily. ‘Deities are arrogant.’

  ‘And monsters are vulgar,’ agreed Sam.

  ‘And relics are easy to forge.’

  ‘Although carbon dating has its uses.’

  ‘No one can ever be bothered.’

  ‘True.’

  Silence. ‘Brother…’ said Jehovah suddenly.

  Sam raised a hand. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

  They listened. Nothing. ‘Brother, I’m sorry,’ said Jehovah. ‘For everything.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘There is a chance,’ breathed Jehovah, so quietly that even Sam had to strain. ‘A miracle.’

  ‘I can’t make miracles when I’m dead,’ replied Sam, without malice or bitterness.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  Sam glanced up at him. Then, ‘Call for Time, when it’s over. Call him into your soul, let him possess you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘All right.’

  Silence. Then, ‘Listen,’ whispered Sam. Jehovah rose to his feet, leaving Sam still kneeling, a tiny figure in a room too large for him. Sam turned his emotionless eyes up to him. ‘Tell them I said something not only profound, but corny too.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Freya…’ he began.

  ‘Listen,’ whispered Jehovah, raising a finger to his lips. And now they heard it. A sound like… children laughing. Like wings in an empty sky. Like thunder, heard far off. Like the clatter of a small bell falling to the floor.

  ‘As for my off-the-record statement,’ continued Sam, wide eyes staring towards the door. ‘I have one word.’

  A cold wind, rising from everywhere, tearing at hair and clothes, making pale skin paler. Sam rose from his knees, opening his arms out as though to embrace the world. His hands shook, he could hardly support himself, there were tears in his eyes and terror in his pale, pale face. ‘Bugger,’ he explained softly, as the world filled with the roar of an awakening god.

  Every torch in the dome winked out, leaving Sam in darkness. He smiled. Darkness, like a lot of things, was breakable.

  TWENTY

  Bearer of Light

  T

  here had only been one discharge like it ever before, when young Sam, in search of the truth about his parents, had put on a silver crown in the Room of Clocks, and become the Bearer of Light.

  This time, however, the Light had purpose.

  On Earth they called it atmospheric disturbance, and in a few months to come an X-Files episode was based on it, in which not only did the protagonists prove conclusively the existence of witches, but the cast and crew got to go to France for the filming. In Hell the demons bowed down and begged for mercy. In Heaven, Loki looked up from the corner of his dark cage, and laughed like a child as the Light poured over him.

  In Tartarus, Sam searched and found the mind of Cronus. It was small, he realised, made smaller by a few billion years with only itself for company, plotting and scheming and railing against Time, all to no avail. He searched, focused, and didn’t need to do any more. The Light was already reaching, digging, searching for the right way to destroy this enemy. All Sam had to do was let it run, run out of control, pulling more and more minds into a whirlpool of power that sucked him and Cronus down into it.

  No sensations, but that of thought. No smell, no taste, no touch. Just the ever-growing tide of minds, mounting like a mighty wave behind a floodgate, building up behind his mind, ready to smash the gates open and hit Cronus with all it had. Not his mind, any more. Their mind. He was just a memory left behind, one they all shared. It was the memory that held them back, not the man.

  I could have offered you everything. I can still, whispered Cronus. The voice was everywhere, filling nothingness with sound. It was as kind and as fatherly as he’d always imagined Time’s voice would sound, right up to the point where he’d heard it. It was the most musical and compassionate voice he’d ever heard. But he wasn’t in charge. Not any more. Somewhere the mind of Sam Linnfer drifted, a tiny blot. And somewhere nearby the mind of Time himself also moved, no more significant than Sam’s, no less. They spoke, and the world spoke as one with them. No individuals, just a huge personality formed of a huge number of personalities turning and fixing its full attention on the voice. On Cronus.

  What could you possibly offer Us?

  Freedom. Peace. Conclusion.

  There is no conclusion. We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the light and the dark, the individual and the whole. We are life. You are nothing.

  Lucifer, why do you hide?

  The spark that was a name hears you.

  He controls you.

  Nothing controls Us. We are life. We are the power that finds a way, we end Greater Powers. For they are part of us. And we are everything to them.

  If Lucifer can hear me, as I know he can, he should know that he owes no allegiance to his father. His father will see him die. His father will hurt him. His father has hurt him already. Expressions bound to Time, Time bound to him, eternity of imprisonment. Has, had, will. It is all he knows. He is afraid of change.

  We are afraid of nothing.

  You are afraid of me.

  You are afraid of Us. We are life. You are not-being.

  Time is death. He is your undoing.

  Death is freedom. We are being. It is better that being and freedom should work together than that not-being should overrule us.

  Where is Lucifer?

  No names. Not any more. A spark hides inside the whole, more afraid than Us all. The spark knows. The spark knows of Us and of you and of life and of death. We do not. The spark is frightened of what it knows. If knowledge scares the spark more than ignorance, then it is rational to desire that ignorance and innocence which it has lost.

  You are afraid.

  Always.

  You cannot destroy me. You are life. Life cannot destroy.

  Life finds a way. Life overrules. You are not-being. We are everything. You will become a part of Us. A spark. Nothing more.

  Life has not the power.

  Life ends and creates life. Life is everything.

  Where is Lucifer?

  The spark has forgotten its name. It is safe, while it forgets. It is free.

  You dare not.

  Always.