God of Clocks

by Alan Campbell

  She was going to find the god of clocks. It was bad enough that they'd forced her back here without even waiting for her consent, but now they expected her to adhere to their ridiculous plan. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that her bitchy twin had forced her into the timelock simply to get her out of the way. It was the sort of thing Rachel herself might have done.

  I ought to have punched that woman!

  Rachel halted, and touched the bruise under her eye. A bitter smile came to her lips. I'll bet you're laughing now, sis.

  She didn't halt again until she reached Sabor's camera obscura table. The god of clocks was nowhere to be seen.

  Garstone hurried to catch up with her. “The master is indis-posed, miss.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Not so much where, but when, miss.”

  “When?”

  “This appears to be one of those pockets of Time that Sabor has not yet experienced. He prefers to keep himself moving between critical or interesting moments in Time. The Obscura Redunda allows him to skip the more… mundane stretches of Time entirely.”

  “So he's avoiding me?”

  Garstone looked at the floor. “My master will arrive before you return to the castle this afternoon. He must do so; otherwise you'd never have met him.”

  The assassin grunted and stormed towards the door. She wasn't about to wait around for Sabor to appear, and she certainly wasn't about to spend the next ten hours chopping wood to build rafts. She had time to reach Burntwater before Dill, Mina, and her other self arrived there. Now all she had to do was think of a way to stop the forthcoming battle and save them all.

  John Anchor and Harper picked through the wreckage of the Rotsward, searching for soulpearls. Little now remained of the huge wooden skyship. The mental link between Cospinol and his slave had been the real source of the vessel's strength, but Cospinol's death had severed that link. The ship had become nothing more than timber.

  Harper swept her Locator over a tangle of ropes and broken planks. The silver device in her hand made a keening sound.

  Anchor looked up.

  “Nothing,” she said. “The environment is confusing my Locator—all these dislocated souls. It's hard to find something as small as a soulpearl amongst all this… gore.”

  “But there is less blood than before, yes?” Anchor replied cheerfully. “And less with every passing moment. So we still have hope.”

  The River of the Failed had moved on. Its myriad waterways were still draining away, even now, in the direction Carnival had taken. The river was following her.

  In its wake it left a red wetland of low banks, ankle-deep arroyos, and refuse. The sinking waters uncovered more wreckage with each passing heartbeat. Anchor found scraps of armour and weapons left by the gallowsmen. Sodden beams lay piled everywhere like the beginnings of bonfires. He found bent lumps of iron, hinges and nails, and even pieces of furniture. But there were no bodies. The departing currents had consumed all of those.

  The rope that had once tethered him to the Rotsward stretched far across the landscape, like the corpse of some vast serpent. He stooped and picked up a section of it, and then let it drop. Strange that it seemed so heavy now.

  Instinctively he reached for the leather pouch at his belt, but of course he had swallowed the last of his soulpearls. An odd feeling of irritation came over him, but he shrugged it away. He would just have to make do until he found some more.

  “John, look up.”

  Anchor followed Harper's gaze. Overhead loomed the Maze in all its hideous glory. Shafts of lamplight fell from countless windows in the uneven brickwork. A huge gouge existed where the Rotsward's upper scaffold had been dragged through the underside of Hell. The buckled iron and shattered facades around the edges exposed whole apartments, now ripped open and bleeding profusely. A few figures lingered on the brink of the chasm, peering down into the queer realm below.

  “Aye, I would be curious too,” he admitted. “They have not seen such a thing in Hell before. I suppose.”

  Harper pointed more urgently. “No, look there.”

  Anchor lifted his eyes again. This time he noticed a blunt, cone-shaped object jutting from the shattered rooms at one side of the rent. This odd protrusion was dull grey in color and looked out of place amongst all the red brick and black iron. On a ledge below the object stood a little girl. She was waving at them.

  “Isla?” he said.

  “That vessel of hers might be able to take us out of here,” Harper replied.

  Anchor frowned. “I need to find Cospinol's stash of soulpearls,” he said.

  “Forget that.” Harper made a dismissive gesture. “The river consumed them all.” She waved back up at the tiny distant figure, then held up both her hands to tell the girl to stay where she was.

  “No,” Anchor insisted, “my strength will fail without them. We must keep searching.” He picked up a huge cross-section of gallows wood and flung it to one side. There was nothing underneath but more of the fleshy red terrain.

  “You don't need your strength any longer,” Harper argued. “We can't stay here, John. We must get back to Hell.”

  He wheeled to face her, suddenly angry. “Did you not hear what I said? I need more souls! Now use your damn Locator to find me some, before I…” He growled, and kicked at a pile of planking, sending the fragments spinning in all directions.

  The engineer just stared at him. “John, what's wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” he muttered. He strode away from her to search through another likely mound of debris. In truth he could not remember feeling this way before. It took him a moment to understand what the pangs in his stomach indicated.

  Hunger.

  When he reached the debris he set to work shifting aside pieces of wood and knots of rope. Curved fragments of a large iron pot lay half buried underneath. Then another warrior's helmet, a length of lead pipe, and a bow. Anchor examined each in turn and tossed them away. Useless, worthless rubbish. He instinctively reached down to his belt again, before he remembered that the pouch was empty. He gave a snort and bent to his task more quickly. Sheets of tin, splintered decking, a pot, planks, planks, and more bloody planks. He heaved it all over and stood gasping.

  Something huge fell from the sky and smashed into the ground a hundred yards away. It had been a section of brick wall. Blood rain spattered down after it.

  Anchor lifted his gaze once more.

  The base of the Maze was cracking and breaking apart as a huge, tapering metal object pushed downwards through it at a shallow angle. Huge lumps of iron and masonry shuddered free from that weighty sky and fell all around him. Glass cascaded down in sparkling showers. Loose bricks fell amongst clouds of dust. The hull of Isla's ship trembled, but ultimately broke free from the stonework. Clear vapours streamed from vents at the rear of its hull, blurring the atmosphere around it.

  Turning slowly, the submarine began to descend towards them.

  Anchor took one deep breath and then another. The muscles in his jaw felt unbearably tense. His teeth hurt. He stood rock-still and watched the vessel drift down from the sky, wondering what—if anything—there was to eat aboard.

  10

  CHANGE OF PLAN

  Garstone harried her heels. “Sabor has given us clear instructions. Miss Hael? The rafts must be built to assist your own escape across the Flower Lake. Failure to adhere to the plan will have unknowable consequences.”

  Rachel wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. She kept her gaze firmly on the path ahead to avoid looking back at Sabor's strange ethereal castle. “The rafts weren't necessary,” she said. “It was Dill who kept Menoa's arconites off our backs, not your pathetic diversion.”

  “Are you quite certain of that, Miss Hael? In the fog, I mean—”

  “Enough, Garstone. We're doing this my way.”

  She was still furious with the others for forcing her into this position, but she had resolved not to act on that anger. Another vers
ion of her was currently inside Dill's mouth with Mina, heading for Burntwater even now. What good would it do to allow the events to unfold as they had done? Sabor expected her to enlist the Hericans at Kevin's Jetty, construct this foolish diversion, and then row out into the lake, where she would meet herself and give herself the bruise that now throbbed under her eye. But even if she did all that, the arconites would still destroy Dill. There had to be a better way.

  After an hour's descent along the misty trail she and Garstone reached Kevin's Jetty. Greasy smoke billowed from every chimney pipe, and thickened the air around the shacks and the old jetty itself. The heady smell of boiling fish permeated everything. A mud track ran between the buildings, deserted but for a scraggy white cat.

  Rachel had no trouble stealing a boat.

  She selected a small but sturdy-looking craft from those beached upon the shingle strand behind the settlement. She bent against the vessel's prow and pushed. The hull scraped a few feet closer to the water. Garstone checked his pocket watch and then glanced back towards the houses, seemingly unsure what to do. “Please, Miss Hael…” he said. “Sabor devoted several hours of study to developing the original plan. He believes that it was the best solution to keep the timeline stable.”

  “Help me with this thing.”

  “Consider the consequences of what you are doing, Miss Hael. This rash decision will cause Time to split once again—you are creating an entirely new universe whose future we cannot predict.”

  “It can't be any worse than the last one.”

  “You don't know that, Miss Hael. At the time of my departure, Menoa's arconites had not yet reached the Obscura Redunda. Your friend Dill was wounded, but alive. There yet remained hope of finding a way to reach Heaven.”

  Rachel panted as she heaved at the boat again. It grated another foot closer to the mirror-still lake. “What hope?” she gasped. “Did you see what Menoa's arconites did to Dill? How could he have possibly stormed the gates of Heaven in that condition?”

  Garstone shrugged. “I don't believe Sabor intended to use your friend in an assault,” he said. “He has been working on his own solution to the Mesmerist problem. At least…” He closed his mouth.

  “At least what?”

  “Nothing, miss.” He consulted his pocket watch. “We still have nineteen minutes to begin negotiations with the Hericans. It isn't too late to change your mind.”

  With another shove the stern of the boat sloshed into the water. Rachel pushed the vessel further out and then climbed in, over the prow. “Are you coming, Garstone?”

  “Miss?”

  The boat began to drift. Rachel dug an oar into the lake bed to halt it. “If I'm going to change history,” she said, “I could use you with me to help ensure that I change it the right way.”

  Sabor's assistant gave his pocket watch yet another fretful glance. “I fear you have already changed history,” he said. And then he slipped off his shoes and socks, rolled up his breeches, and waded into the lake after her.

  Rachel didn't know exactly how to reach Burntwater amidst this fog, but she recalled that the lake had not been particularly wide, and she had about eight hours remaining before Dill arrived in the settlement. If she struck out directly away from shore, she ought to reach the other side before long. From there she could follow the water's edge.

  She rowed, while Garstone leaned against the stern and frowned at his timepiece. “ Twenty-three minutes have passed since you were supposed to have contacted the Hericans,” he said. “Actually, it's closer to twenty-four.”

  “You're not going to keep this up all the way to Burntwater, are you?” Rachel muttered.

  He gave her a look of reproach. “We are no longer in our former universe, Miss Hael. You have created this particular branch of the multiverse yourself. Even now it is careening wildly down an uncharted path. If we returned to the Obscura now, we might be able to predict some of the future events you have just set in motion.” His eyes flicked down. “ Twenty-four minutes and ten seconds.”

  “You want to return?”

  “It is the most sensible thing to do now.”

  “We're not going back.”

  Garstone's gaze returned to the pocket watch. He opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel cut him off.

  “I don't care what time it is!” she cried, heaving at the oars. Other than those gentle splashes at either side of the hull and the steady creak of the oars in their locks, the Flower Lake remained utterly still and silent. Fog smothered the boat in a soft grey veil that seemed to stifle all other sounds. No birds called. No breeze stirred the lake surface. The air smelled of pine and the cold metallic tang of water.

  They traveled onwards in silence for a long time.

  Eventually Rachel discerned trees in the mist ahead, and before long a rocky shoreline materialized. The forest encroached upon the water's edge, a barrier of dense shadow stretching in both directions. She brought the boat to a halt and sniffed the air. The merest scent of woodsmoke might have told her where the settlement lay, but she couldn't detect any such odour. She listened hard, but heard nothing at all.

  “Right or left?” she said to Garstone.

  “I do not know, Miss Hael.” Another glance at his watch. “We have spent forty minutes and ten seconds aboard this boat. It might be too late to change the course of events in this universe, but we can still abandon it and flee back to the Obscura. Once there, we might find a pathway back through the castle to an altogether earlier time. It might only take a few decades of travel within the labyrinth of time to find a route back to this morning. To speed things up, you could create more versions of yourself—”

  “No,” she said. “There are too many of me already.”

  “Another Rachel Hael might be more amenable to working with the Hericans. Sabor's plan could still be implemented.”

  “Forget it. I'm going left.”

  No sooner had she made the decision than a voice called out from the shore: “The current dragged you east of Burntwater. You need to turn right, little sis.”

  Rachel's head snapped round.

  On a boulder by the shore sat a woman wearing a white shirt and tan cotton pants. She was much older than Rachel, a decade or more, but Rachel nevertheless recognized that pale face and those bright green eyes. Once more Rachel found herself looking at a temporal version of herself.

  “Gods damn you!” Rachel cried. “You followed me here!”

  “No,” the other Rachel said. “Well, yes, but not in the way you think I did. I'm not the woman you've just left behind.”

  Garstone raised his eyes to the heavens and sighed. “The complexities of the Obscura Redunda…” he muttered. “This is not a good omen. Am I also with you, Miss Hael?”

  The older Rachel smiled sadly. “Not this time, Eli. I came here on my own.”

  “To avert disaster, I presume?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Rachel sat in the boat and stared at the newcomer. She had aged reasonably well, she supposed. Her bruises and wounds were gone, but she noticed wrinkles across the other Rachel's brow and around her eyes. Her hair had suffered, too; her skin looked tired, her breasts…

  Rachel sighed.

  “Don't be angry with me, sis,” the older Rachel said quietly. “I've walked a long, long way to be here. You really need me to be with you now.”

  “Why?”

  The older woman shook her head. “The less you know, the more chance we have of success. I need events to run as closely as possible to the way they did in my universe. There might be a moment when I can affect a change, but I don't know exactly when that moment might be. Much depends on it, though. That's all I can tell you.”

  “But something must have gone wrong… something terrible. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.” Rachel's anger left her suddenly. She sensed an aura of sadness, even despair, coming from this older woman. As if she's harbouring painful secrets. “I fucked up, didn't I? By changing history I've only made things worse. The Heri
cans' rafts must have actually made a difference.”

  The other woman said nothing.

  Rachel swallowed and said, “Okay. What do we do to fix it?”

  “You can start by giving me a lift.”

  The three rowed west in gloomy silence. Rachel kept glancing up to find her older twin staring at her. Their gazes met often, but always parted.

  “Isn't there anything you can tell me?” Rachel said.

  Her other self smoothed the front of her white blouse. “I'd love to tell you a thousand things,” she said, “but I just can't risk it. Let's not corrupt this timeline any further. Let me just watch what happens. I'll know what to do when the time comes.”

  “You can't even tell me if we manage to find Heaven and stop Menoa's arconites?”

  The other woman thought for a long moment. “There are lots of universes,” she said, “and many possibilities are played out. But right now I'm only concerned with this one, sis.”

  “Sis?” Rachel grunted. “Somehow that word doesn't seem as insulting coming from you. But why do you care what happens to this world if there are better outcomes elsewhere?”

  “You know why.”

  And Rachel did. If the decisions she made today led to immense suffering in this world, then wouldn't she try to come back here and prevent it? “Look at me,” she said, “the Spine's only philanthropic murderer.”

  This world?

  She had already begun to think of this place as a mere corridor in a much larger Maze: The labyrinth of Time, Garstone and Sabor had called it. She hoped this particular passageway wasn't a dead end.

  “At least tell me how Sabor escaped Coreollis,” Rachel said. “I didn't get a chance to ask him.”

  The older Rachel looked uncertain.

  Garstone said, “He didn't escape, Miss Hael. Rys, Mirith, Hafe, and Sabor all died that day.”

  Rachel frowned, but then she understood. “They must first have made temporal replicas of themselves?”

  “Only Rys and Sabor have ever existed as multiple versions in one place,” Garstone replied. “Hafe and Mirith simply believed that they were replicas of their real selves. Sabor convinced them of that over supper one night. In fact those two gods were unique, the only two of their kind in the whole universe. They are quite as dead as their brother Rys, and will remain so unless Sabor returns to pluck them from history.”