Again and again and again.
Menoa's voice returned, now hardened by anger. “This is not your creation to destroy,” he said. “Do you understand me? It is not yours to destroy.”
But Carnival was lost in her own pain and terror, driven by a compulsion that she couldn't fully understand. She needed her scars; her own soul required them. And so she used the glass knife until her frock hung in tatters and the white walls of Menoa's room were painted scarlet with her blood.
Smoke billowed from one of the uppermost suites of the Obscura. A sudden flare illuminated the high ceiling with ripples of red and yellow light. One of the Garstones called down for the others to fetch water, and then mildly added, “There appears to have been an explosion in the Camomile Suite.”
Scores of Sabor's assistants rushed down to the kitchen to fetch pails, pans, and carafes of water, carrying them back to the upper galleries. Hasp looked fearfully up at the growing fire, until Sabor announced, “Explosions are the work of men, not Mesmerists. Is it possible this attack has come from our future? That this is merely cannon powder from Burntwater?”
“There wasn't any powder left in Burntwater,” Rachel observed. “Iron Head's militia used it all.”
“Then our enemies simply took it before you used it,” Sabor replied harshly. “Stop thinking that every cause must precede its effect. Who knows how many universes now branch from this present moment? Menoa's forces are now in our future and our past, and they know where we are. We must leave this part of Time immediately.” He whipped open his map and frowned at it.
The massive double doors to the Obscura Hall boomed suddenly, almost leaping from their hinges.
The nearest Garstone to Rachel jumped. “I believe that was a battering ram,” he said, glancing at his pocket watch. “Our enemies must be outside.”
Rachel stared at the door. What manner of enemies? Without the camera obscura, they had no way of safely observing.
A second concussion hit the doors, and the cross balk cracked. Dill drew his phantom sword and positioned himself before the door.
Could such a ghostly weapon even harm the living?
Sabor scrunched up his map and set off, beckoning the others after him. Dill turned his back on the main doors and joined the group as they hurried up three floors and stopped outside the fourth timelock along the gallery. Garstones ran past them, heading in one direction with various water-filled containers, passing other versions of themselves who were returning with empty vessels towards the kitchen.
Another boom sounded below, and wood splintered.
The god of clocks peered into the suite beyond the timelock. “An eleven-year jump,” he said. “Unfortunately this suite appears to have been recently occupied.”
Rachel cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face against the glass. In the gloom beyond the two opposing windows she could just make out a stuffy lounge, the usual antique furniture faintly lit by starlight falling through a tall window. But then she noticed the blackened wainscoting and wall panels, the scorched shelves of a bookcase. A fire had been lit here, but had failed to take hold.
“Is there a better route?” she suggested.
From below came the sound of smashing wood.
“None with such a long reach through Time,” Sabor replied. “Nor any that is safer. The bastard universe has claimed most of the suites here, but this… this one should be untainted.”
“Get in there,” Hasp growled. “The castle's main doors are kindling. They'll be through them in a heartbeat.”
Rachel pressed up against Mina and Hasp as Sabor closed the inner door behind them. Dill hovered in the air in front of her, his translucent form partly absorbed by Mina's body. Sabor opened the outer door, and the sour smell of smoke assaulted Rachel's nostrils.
Mina covered her mouth with her hand as she hurried forward to look out of the window. “It looks peaceful. There's no sign of… anything.”
And indeed the whole castle was now silent. Rachel could no longer hear the commotion that had been so audible outside. They were in a cold, empty room smelling of fire damage.
Hasp glared at the singed furniture. “We could burn this place properly,” he said, “and stop those bastards from following us back here.”
It was quickly agreed.
They left the suite and moved back into the castle's Obscura Hall. Now all appeared normal here, with no sign of the damage that would come later. Looking over the balcony, Rachel reassured herself that the main doors were intact. Sabor called over the six Garstones working on that particular level and gave them instructions, and within minutes the rumple-suited assistants were dousing the suite with lamp oil.
Standing outside, Mina looked thoughtful. “Could this fire we're about to light be the source of the damage we saw in that suite?” she asked.
Sabor was now studying a different map that one of the Garstones had handed him. “No,” he said. “Not unless we did so further back in Time. The damage is apparent now.” He looked up suddenly from the map. “Garstone!”
Two of them appeared at once.
“Yes, sir?”
“Find a suite to take you back a few hours, and light the fire then rather than now. Let's preserve the integrity of this timeline if we can.”
“Right away, sir.” The pair disappeared again.
Rachel still found it difficult to wrap her head around these constant paradoxes. Those two assistants would return to an earlier Time to light a fire that would be out before they arrived here, all to keep things as they should be and prevent this doomed universe from deteriorating any faster than it already was. And yet Hasp had only had the idea after they'd seen the aftermath of that fire.
Time, as Sabor had said, need not be linear.
Soon smoke wafted out of the Camomile Suite, but as a result of which fire Rachel did not know. Had these flames been lit moments ago, or much earlier?
Either way, the results were as expected. No pursuers came through the timelock and, for the moment at least, the castle appeared to be secure.
The views from the camera obscura, however, were grim. Nineteen of the rooms now looked out upon the bastard universe. They watched giants striding across blasted, war-ravaged lands: the Flower Lake was polluted, its waters copper blue and streaked with ochre, its shores rimmed by glistening black trees. Soul Collectors' caravans and gangs of human road agents traversed crimson trails that looked like wounds cut into the ash-grey plains. Cages of bone squatted amongst the dust of Burntwater, each silhouetted against a pale yellow sky. In every silent image Rachel imagined she could hear screams.
“The universe outside these walls is no more spoiled than before,” Sabor announced. “Yet even greater numbers of the Obscura's windows now look out onto parallel worlds, as the Lord of the Maze continues to meddle in the past. Each time he makes a change, he creates yet another universe for his agents to infiltrate.” He tapped his fingers against the viewing table, and then he made some adjustments to the mechanism underneath. A cool blue dawn appeared before them, the forest lushly green and holding pockets of mist. “Our own timeline appears to be safe for now,” he added with a nod. “The previous attack must have come from one of our local futures.”
He ordered his assistants to bring him as many of the local Time maps as he'd be able to carry and, thus armed, the party hurried further back into the past again.
Three hundred fewer years had elapsed by the time they stopped to rest and eat. The god of clocks even ordered his castle doors thrown open, so that they might take in the sunset while they supped.
The sunlight turned green where it bled through Dill, so that the young angel seemed to glow like an emerald against the amber sky.
From the castle steps they could see all the way down to the Flower Lake. Kevin's Jetty was no longer there. It would not exist for another two hundred and ninety-two years, Sabor explained. The forest had changed, too. Gone were the mass of evergreens they would later walk through to reach th
e Obscura. Instead, these trees were ancient and deciduous.
“The last pockets of wildwood,” Sabor commented. “This is an arm of the Stoopblack Forest, or what's left of it. It extended all the way to Brownslough, where Hafe and I used to hunt together. These trees died out when the world cooled.”
“Cooled?” Rachel asked.
“Our expulsion from Heaven affected this whole planet,” Sabor explained. “Aethers poured out from Ayen's domain, forces malignant to this world, so whole lands were poisoned, skies burned, seas rose, and the earth cracked to its core. The clash of incompatible matter damaged the very fabric of this universe. We armoured ourselves in sheer will, and fell as stars do.” He gazed into the long golden rays of sunset. “We arrived weak and naked, so vulnerable. There was a time when this alien light would have killed us all.”
They didn't belong here, Rachel realized. None of them. This world was so alien to them that the land itself had rejected their presence. “But you acclimatized,” she said.
“We became more human.”
By consuming human souls. And now we're going back into the middle of your baptism …
Rachel craned her neck round to look up at the great building, blurring like a fevered dream as it clung to this one point in Space while joining countless other moments in Time. This castle did not belong on this earth, either. It was as much of an abomination as the gods themselves.
And now it was their only hope.
Carnival woke again in the same bed in the same pristine room. Even before she opened her eyes she knew that the Lord of the Maze had removed her scars again. She felt a complete absence of physical pain, but a whole world of anguish inside her heart.
There was no mirror this time.
The white room was bare but for the bed and the single red window. She got up and walked over to it.
There was no glass.
Beyond lay a scrawl of red swamps and canals divided by endless low walls. Barges slipped in and out of locks on seemingly pointless journeys, while batlike winged figures cut across the sky. Carnival leaned out and looked down.
She was near the summit of an impossibly high tower, surrounded by oddly shaped buildings made from the same obsidian stone that dropped sheer below her window: inverted pyramids and vast windowless blocks with rows of leaning funnels. Giants lurched like cripples along the thoroughfares between these structures, weaving through crowds of smaller figures and clouds of green specks that darted to and fro like flies.
Carnival had no wings to hinder her as she climbed out on the window ledge. She sensed the touch of an unnatural sun on her skin, cold and vaguely unpleasant. A light fuel-scented updraft stirred her hair, perhaps fumes from the strange industry so many thousands of feet below.
She jumped.
“The year 442, by the Herican calendar,” Sabor announced, opening the outer door of the timelock. “Or 1603 in Deepgacian terms. We are now almost fifteen hundred years before the time we set off. Here Rys has freed himself from our mother's earthly yoke, and his great Pandemerian civilization is now flourishing. Ulcis gazes up in hunger from the pit under his chained temple. Hasp here commands Hell's garrisons, while Hafe still broods in his world of Brownslough tunnels. Mirith and Cospinol at this time are traveling: Cospinol in his ghastly ship, and Mirith in a bathtub upon the Strakebreaker seas. And I…”
A stern voice answered from the Obscura Hall below the balcony. “I welcome myself and my new companions to a castle crushed by war.”
Rachel peered down over the gallery balcony to find a replica of Sabor looking back up at her from the center of a group of half-naked savages. These men were as dark-skinned as John Anchor, equally powerful in stature, but painted with whorls of ochre. They wore knee-length skirts of a green and blue crosshatched pattern, adorned with bone fetishes at their broad waists. They appeared to have been in conference with the god in their midst who, from boots to hauberk to cape, wore entirely black raiment. He seemed no younger or older than his other self, and yet his hair appeared greyer. “Crushed by war?” Sabor called down.
“There are now hundreds of new universes around us,” his other self replied, “and almost all of them are burning. Even this one has come under attack. We've been forced to mount recursive sallies in order to keep the enemy from our own doors. Tell me, brother, what have you dragged through Time behind you?”
Sabor slapped his open palm upon the banister. “We are pursuing them” he said. “We chase the forces of Alteus Menoa.”
“Our foes are human men,” the other Sabor said.
The god of clocks frowned at this, and said nothing more until they had reached the lowest level. Rachel and Mina negotiated a path through the dark-skinned giants, gaining the attention of more than twoscore curious stares. Many of the warriors made quick gestures against their chests when they saw Dill. Hasp regarded them with approval. “Riot Coasters,” he announced to the resident Sabor. “If I were besieged, I'd want men like this by my side.”
Sabor now faced his other self. The pair almost made a mirror image, but for the color of their hauberks. “You are certain these attackers are men?” he said.
“The Sombrecur,” the other said. “The same Pandemerian sect who razed Rys's temples at Lorn and Logarth in 411. They do not know for whom they now fight, only that this battle fulfils what they believe is an ancient prophecy.”
“Then the lands here are not bloody enough for Mesmerists? Menoa simply planted a lie in the Sombrecur's past and then allowed events to unfold.”
The other god nodded. “The land has not yet been drenched with enough dead blood to allow the king's hordes through. My Riot Coasters will not use blades against the Sombrecur, but we are outnumbered and Hulfer's warriors must fight time and again without respite. I have tried to quench this false prophecy, but to no—”
Just then the double doors creaked open. A gruff hail issued from the antechamber beyond, and a second, smaller band of Riot Coasters entered. These new arrivals showed their exhaustion in every movement of their limbs. Sweating and huffing, they limped into the hall on tired legs, greeting their waiting fellows with handclasps and back slaps. Bloody wounds on their flesh told of recent battle. A great number of them eyed Hasp with evident awe.
Hulfer's warriors? Rachel recalled the story from one of John Anchor's songs. A hundred men against five thousand Sombrecur … There were far fewer than a hundred here.
Sabor's resident warriors searched eagerly amongst the newcomers, as though looking for friends.
But then Rachel realized the awful truth of it. Those who had waited and those newly arrived were both versions of the same men. The battle-weary fighters were greeting themselves. Returned from the past? Rachel now understood what Sabor had meant by recursive sallies. The warriors who have been in the god's company since I first looked down … Were they now about to travel back in Time to fight the same battle their other selves had just returned from?
It made sense in a twisted sort of way. And yet not all of the warriors had returned.
Ten of the Riot Coasters did not find themselves amongst the returning survivors. The grim knowledge of this shadowed their expressions.
Oh gods, those men know they're not coming back.
“Garstone,” cried the dark-caped Sabor. “Let's do this quickly.”
An older version of the multiplicious assistant appeared, wearing round-rimmed spectacles and a faded green suit. He bowed to his master and then ushered the original Riot Coasters further up into the castle, towards whatever door would lead them to the battle.
Amongst the warriors who remained below, one raised his head to those who now marched away, and shouted three words in a language Rachel did not recognize.
The warriors on the gallery laughed. One replied in a single harsh word that Rachel took to be repartee, for his battle-weary colleagues now joined in the laughter of their departing selves.
Once the warriors had gone, a bleak silence fell upon the hall. For several moment
s the resident Sabor conferred quietly with another of his Riot Coasters, then he turned to his temporal brother. “Hulfer died bravely,” he said. “His men have sworn to avenge him as soon as they are rested.”
“How many times have these men gone back to fight?” Rachel enquired.
“Twelve times.”
“Against men?” Hasp growled. “I'll join the fight and even the odds. Menoa's parasite can't take orders from these foes.”
“You can't,” Mina warned. “If you fight along with the Riot Coasters, you won't come back. Look around you! You haven't come back.”
Hasp made a dismissive gesture. “That hardly matters.”
Mina stared at him for a moment longer. “If you go, then I'm coming, too.”
Rachel turned to her. “Mina!”
“I won't allow it,” Hasp said. “Use your own logic, thaumaturge. Do you see yourself here amongst these survivors?”
One of the Riot Coasters spoke in his own language to the resident Sabor.
“He says Hasp fought like a god of old,” the dark-suited Sabor said. “He killed many Sombrecur. The women and the phantasm, too, proved their bravery on the battlefield. Without their help, the Obscura would surely have fallen.”
Rachel felt a chill in her heart. She hadn't actually planned on returning to fight, and certainly had no intention of sacrificing herself during the next few hours. Their path lay elsewhere. She was determined to reach Heaven at all costs.
The Riot Coaster had continued to speak.
The resident Sabor translated. “He says you were delayed at the lakeshore, because one of the Pandemerian holy men had intelligence relevant to your mission. He then says the first boats were successfully repelled, and the Sombrecur are regrouping across the lake. You are no longer in danger, and you have promised to return before nightfall.”
“You see?” Hasp said. “It's evening now. I'll be back with you in less than an hour from now.”
“We'll all be back,” Mina confirmed. “Rachel? What do you say?”
But Hasp became suddenly angry. “You two are staying here,” he insisted. “I'm going on my own.”
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