The Watcher of Dead Time Read online

  ‘Damn fine weapon, though,’ Glogelder said proudly. ‘I stole it for her.’

  Namji clicked a power stone into the weapon’s stock. It whined and glowed with violet light when she primed it. There was a whirr of mechanisms and then the bowstring snapped back into the firing position. Namji pulled the trigger. The bowstring sprang forward and then immediately returned to lock into the spring clip, as quick as a flash.

  Impressed, Samuel watched as the Aelfirian magic-user removed the last two items from the box – cartridges of bolts, he assumed. Namji clipped one of them to her belt; the other she slapped into the underside of the crossbow. It was longer than the weapon was thick. With another mechanical whirr, the flight groove opened to allow the cartridge to push up a bolt. The groove closed again and the projectile nestled in place, ready to be fired.

  It was a strange kind of bolt, thinner and shorter than a pencil, the shaft and flight made of metal, but the small pointed head was clear glass inside which fluid glowed with pale radiance.

  ‘A spell?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘Exactly the same as a magical bullet.’ Namji dropped her arm to her side, showing that even when the crossbow was held vertically, the bolt remained in the groove. ‘A magnetism spell,’ she explained. ‘It only lets go when I pull the trigger.’

  As Glogelder returned the box to the duffel bag, Namji rummaged around in the satchel hanging from her shoulder and produced a small spell sphere. Without much effort, she crushed the glass between her fingers and flicked the spell into the air. Samuel raised a hand against the white light of a tiny star that appeared before her.

  She said, ‘If there’s danger around, the light should turn orange.’

  ‘Should?’

  Namji smirked. ‘It’s been a long time since I last used one.’

  She walked forwards and the light preceded her. When Namji stopped at the edge of the hole in the floor, the star disappeared down into it, illuminating more of the spiralling stone steps.

  ‘Well then,’ Namji said, taking a breath and standing on the first stair. ‘Let’s go and see what the avatar wants us to find.’

  Hillem drew his pistols and thumbed their power stones. With the duffel bag once again on his back, Glogelder hefted his spell sphere launcher.

  Samuel nodded at Namji, and the three men followed her down into the bowels of Little Sibling.

  Chapter Two

  Awakenings

  Van Bam was dead.

  It was true; Clara had seen him die. As the wolf, she had watched, helpless and immobile, as the wild demons of the Retrospective ripped him apart and fed on his flesh. Van Bam was dead.

  So why could she hear his voice?

  I am blind …

  It came from the darkness inside Clara’s mind, its deep tone disturbing the nothingness that had beset her being, reawakening emotions and memories and scars.

  I cannot see where I am.

  There was a strained edge to the illusionist’s voice, as though he was speaking while his fingers desperately clung to a ledge above a great abyss. Yet somehow Clara knew he wasn’t talking to her.

  Help me …

  Don’t be afraid, said a different voice. A woman. They didn’t get me. I’m still here.

  Clara recognised the new voice. It belonged to Marney, the empath. She had always been inside the changeling’s head. Hadn’t she?

  I cannot hold on, Van Bam said. Weak. Distant.

  You’re not supposed to, Marney replied, soft yet stern. Trust me like you used to, Van Bam. I will find you.

  Clara heard a bestial screech from somewhere beyond the darkness in her mind. She began retching. And then pain rushed through her like white fire.

  The wolf’s eyes snapped open and golden light filled them. She gagged and choked, coughing out viscous fluid as a cold length was yanked from her throat. Vision blurry, the stench of death filling her nostrils, she whined as a second cold length was wrenched from her head. Another screech came from close by. The wolf lay on her side, her eyes focused on a spike of green glass protruding from her stomach. Agony roiled her gut and she vomited blood. Magic flowed through her veins like molten metal.

  And the metamorphosis began.

  She growled and yelped as her stomach wound healed with ruthless magical contractions which pushed the spike of green glass from her body. It fell free and hit stone with a discordant chime. Her head throbbed as the hole in her skull closed. Clara half-barked, half-sobbed, thrashing while her skeleton reorganised its structure with a series of harsh cracks and jerks. Her silver-grey pelt shrank, each hair drawn back into her skin to leave behind the dark grey material of magically charmed clothes.

  She was the human.

  Lying upon the hard surface of a huge stone table, not quite understanding why she was there, Clara stared up into the face of a hulking, obese brute. His head bald, expression cruel, he glared at Clara with one dark eye. Viktor Gadreel. The name came to her like a slap in the face, along with another word: Genii.

  Dressed in a priest’s cassock, Gadreel was holding a diamond-shaped box as black and polished as obsidian. Thaumaturgic symbols glowed upon its surface with purple light. Two glass tubes, smeared with Clara’s blood, sprouted from its sides. Known Things … The box was called Known Things. It contained a secret. It knew how to kill Spiral.

  ‘Still alive, little wolf?’ Gadreel said, his voice a rumble of thunder. His fat, slug-like lips were twisted, perhaps in amusement. Or maybe he was surprised, impressed, by Clara’s survival. ‘But not for much longer,’ the Genii added.

  As he backed away from the table, the glass tubes lost their solidity, becoming flaccid, gelatinous tendrils that whipped the air as they were sucked into the body of the black diamond box.

  Known Things was the Relic Guild’s last hope.

  Van Bam’s voice filled Clara’s mind again.

  What is happening to me?

  Isn’t it obvious? said Marney.

  The Genii strode towards a wide rent in the air. Like a wound in reality, it was alive with the swirling darkness of a portal. Without breaking his stride, Viktor Gadreel entered the portal and disappeared. The rent closed after him, sealing with a wet noise to become a thin crack which blew away like smoke.

  Clara managed to lift herself up on one elbow and saw the pack of wild demons Gadreel had left behind.

  Beneath the golden glow of a domed ceiling, the demons fought and jostled over Van Bam’s remains. Their grey carapaces were smeared with blood and their long, knife-like fingers were picking the last morsels of flesh from a mound of broken bones, stuffing them into their gaping mouths.

  Sobbing, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, Clara knew she was too weak to summon the wolf again. She looked around the chamber for a means of escape. There! A circular hole in the wall. She remembered that beyond it, a bridge spanned a yawning chasm in a mighty cavern that led directly to a portal out of this place. But the hole was barricaded by debris and broken rocks.

  The demons screeched.

  The Cathedral of Doubt and Wonder, Van Bam said. Was it a trap?

  No! Marney’s voice was impassioned. Events unfolded as they had to.

  Had to? Van Bam was angry, desperate, but his voice was fading. We gave the Genii the location of Oldest Place!

  You were supposed to, Van Bam.

  Clara noticed gaps between the rocks that filled the circular hole. She wondered if she had the strength to make a hole big enough to squeeze through, then outrun the demons to the safety of the portal. She tried to slip from the stone table quietly and gracefully, but only succeeded in falling to a heap on the floor. The green glass spike followed her down. It smashed into a thousand emerald shards, the impact resounding through the chamber like a small explosion. The remnants of an illusionist’s wand skittered and tinkled across the floor. And the pack of wild demons no
ticed her.

  Losing interest in what remained of Van Bam’s body, they crept towards Clara, their movements twitchy like insects’. Mouths filled with teeth and gore, rheumy, fishlike eyes rolling in their sockets, their hunger came for the changeling.

  Clara tried to scurry away from them, but unconsciousness called again and fatigue overwhelmed her panic.

  Tell me why. Van Bam’s voice was growing fainter and fainter. Why were Clara and I sacrificed?

  Clara is still alive, Marney told him. And she needs you.

  I-I don’t understand.

  Have faith in me. I won’t abandon you, Van Bam … Van Bam?

  But the illusionist’s voice had gone, and the demons were almost upon Clara. Seven of them. One screeched and the others took up the call, anticipating the rush, the tearing and feeding, the promise of hot, fresh blood. They stank of hopelessness and death.

  Clara gave up. Perhaps if she closed her eyes, her mind would return to that dark place and she would feel nothing of what was about to happen …

  The demons stopped, their eyes searching the chamber as a scuttling sound filled the air. Accompanied by the ticks of metal on stone, violet light shone through the gaps in the barricade. Forgetting Clara, the demons faced the light, clustering together, hissing.

  A single rock fell from the barricade and rolled across the floor. The violet glow intensified. The blades of the demons’ fingers clacked together. Clara yelped as the barricade collapsed and an army of insectoid automatons rushed into the chamber.

  The demons didn’t get the chance to mount a counter-attack. As Clara pushed herself away, the automatons – silver, hand-sized, at least a hundred of them – swarmed the monsters. Their lashing tails, tipped with the violet glow of thaumaturgic stings, pierced slimy grey carapaces, flashing as they administered deadly shocks of higher magic.

  You never meet the Toymaker, they said. Only his toys.

  The demons fell, shrieking in pain and rage, buried beneath a writhing mound of silver. When the shrieks ceased, the automatons moved towards the changeling, leaving the corpses of the demons to steam and melt behind them.

  Clara, said Marney, I need your help.

  A part of Clara wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the empath’s words. She wanted to say, I’m a little busy right now, being saved by the one thing that wants to kill me more than the wild demons do. But she had become transfixed by the Toymaker’s toys. They had stopped several feet from her and were coalescing, clambering on top of each other. With clinks and scrapes of interconnecting metal, the silver automatons grew into a humanoid figure six feet tall, broad across the shoulders. A framework man, formed from legs and tails and little silver bodies, a hundred violet lights glowing within it. The last toy scrambled over the face and clicked into place, leaving a smooth metal disc where a mouth might have been.

  The automaton approached the changeling.

  Clara’s eyelids fluttered. She struggled against the weight that was pushing her mind down but couldn’t stop her eyes from closing. Vaguely, she was aware that the Toymaker had reached her, but instead of feeling any pain there was only a curious sensation of rising, as though the automaton had gently lifted her into its arms.

  And in the darkness, Marney spoke again. Come with me, Clara. We have to find Van Bam.

  Hamir had never enjoyed physical exertion, but the only way he could get Lady Amilee out of her dream chamber was by unceremoniously manhandling her.

  Waking up had been relatively easy for the necromancer; his mind had spent only a short time in the Skywatcher’s dreamscape, whereas Amilee’s had spent four decades there while her body remained in stasis. And now, high in the domed observatory of the Tower of the Skywatcher, Lady Amilee could not be woken. She was barely breathing.

  The sarcophagus-like dream chamber was deep and Hamir was smaller, frailer than Amilee. He struggled to lift her into a sitting position before heaving her over the lip of the chamber. The limp weight of her body sent them both falling to a heap on the observatory’s dusty glass floor.

  Hamir worked quickly. He laid Amilee on her back, feeling for the beat of her heart. It was there, just, weak and slow. Through her diaphanous gown, Hamir could see the bones protruding from an undernourished body which had subsisted for too long on higher magic. Amilee’s chest rose and fell, but almost imperceptibly; her eyelids were open but her eyes had rolled to whites; the diamond tattoo on her forehead, deeply black, emphasised the colourlessness of her skin. Hamir had been around death long enough to sense its approach.

  He summoned his necromantic magic.

  Swirls of black invading the green of his eyes, he placed his hands upon the Skywatcher, infusing her with the warmth of life, holding back the cold that had beset her. Hamir felt the remnants of her thaumaturgy flowing through a sluggish bloodstream like cooling magma from a spent volcano. He pressed his hands to the sides of Amilee’s head and searched for her mind. It was confused, lost, struggling to make the journey from the dreamscape it had created back to the real world. Hamir whispered words of magic that came from the grey place where he existed between light and dark, and he blew them gently into Amilee’s mouth.

  Instantly, a little warmth returned to the cold body. The approaching death receded a little more. A flame of recognition bloomed in Amilee’s mind, but it was not enough to wake her. Not yet. It would take a while for the Skywatcher to gather whatever strength remained to her.

  Breathing heavily, Hamir sat down. Pushing grey hair back from his face, he cast a pitying gaze over Amilee. They had once called her Treasured Lady of the Thaumaturgists, patron of the Labyrinth, one-third of the Trinity of Skywatchers. She had been glorious. It was a long time since Hamir last saw a creature of higher magic reduced to such a wretched condition.

  He looked around the observatory. It was as dull and neglected as it had been before he entered the sleep chamber. High above, the domed ceiling that had at one time been filled with incalculable stars in a host of skies was now mostly empty space, except for the dot of a single sun struggling to shine. The sun blinked a few times and sputtered before its weak light died completely, and nothing but empty space filled the dome.

  Hamir noticed a table close by. It hadn’t been there before his journey into Amilee’s dreamscape. With a frown, he rose and walked to it. Upon the table lay a thick purple robe, neatly folded. The robe of a Thaumaturgist. Next to it was a stone jug of water with two glasses and a wax paper packet. He opened the packet to find slices of nutrition cake.

  Pouring himself a glass of water, Hamir smiled wryly before draining it in one go, then picked up a slice of the cake.

  ‘Hello, Alexander,’ he said before biting into it. ‘Are you here to gawp or will you present yourself?’

  Alexander, Lady Amilee’s dead Aelfirian aide – his ghost was somewhere close by, observing, haunting the tower, loyal to the Skywatcher even in death. He didn’t reply to Hamir, but he did materialise.

  Dressed in a three-piece suit similar to Hamir’s, the ghost appeared in drab monochrome. His small mouth and nose and large eyes gave his face the traditional Aelfirian shape. His thinning hair made his pointed ears look overly long. Unblinking, eyes brimming with silver tears, the ghost of Alexander stared at the immobile form of his mistress on the floor.

  ‘She has to live,’ he said, his voice whispery. ‘She must not die.’

  ‘What did you expect, Alexander? That your Lady would arise bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? You must understand that even for a Thaumaturgist, forty years confined to a sleep chamber takes its toll upon body and mind.’

  ‘And what you must understand is that you have no idea what I sacrificed to keep her safe. Now, necromancer, will she live?’

  Hamir scrutinised the dead aide, then looked at the table and its contents which had so mysteriously appeared. ‘How did you provide these refreshments?’

  Alexander
said nothing.

  Hamir was aware that ghosts could make physical contact with the corporeal world, throw things, hurt people – he once knew a person who had been scratched by a ghost. But he had never encountered a spirit so strongly connected to the place it haunted that it was able to interact with its environment with the same tactility as a living, breathing being. Unless it had access to magic.

  ‘Alexander, tell me how you died.’

  The ghost obviously heard the insinuation in Hamir’s tone. ‘What I did, I did willingly,’ he said with defiance.

  ‘I’m sure you believe that.’ Hamir looked down at the Skywatcher’s face. ‘So many of us do when Lady Amilee is manipulating us. It’s a gift of hers.’

  ‘Show respect.’

  ‘I’m only speaking the truth. I’ve known our good Lady here far longer than you.’

  ‘Yes. And she told me all about you, Lord Hamir, disgraced Thaumaturgist, murderer, creator of abominations.’

  ‘The Progenitor – that is the name the Nephilim gave me.’ Hamir was already bored with the direction of the conversation and cast suspicious eyes about the observatory. ‘Where was your body laid to rest, Alexander?’

  The ghost stared at him.

  ‘H-Hamir,’ Amilee whispered.

  Hamir was quickly at the Skywatcher’s side, helping her to sit up.

  Amilee coughed. Her teeth chattered and shuddery breath rose from her mouth in frosty clouds. She clutched at Hamir, groaning as she attempted to stand, but slipped down onto the floor again.

  The necromancer tried to settle her. ‘Your body and mind need to adjust. Take your time, my lady.’

  ‘No,’ Amilee said hoarsely. ‘There is no time. Tell me you have it, Hamir. The changeling blood. Clara’s blood.’