It was a view from somewhere high up in the castle. Yellow evening light slanted across the blasted mountainside, leaving shadows as black as the rocks themselves. A great expanse of green forest swept down towards the Flower Lake, from where the waters stretched on to a brooding, storm-racked horizon. Dill's huge, shattered corpse lay at the top of the trench he'd scraped through the trees. Someone had lit an enormous bonfire beside his skull, from which rose clouds of grey woodsmoke. Rachel could see men throwing more branches onto the flames.
“Oran,” Iron Head said grimly. “He's made a signal fire.”
To signal whom? Dill asked.
Rachel pointed at one edge of the image. “To signal them,” she said.
Nine arconites were emerging from the frothing waters of Flower Lake, reeds clinging to their dripping wings. They advanced towards the shoreline, crouching low, dragging their massive blades through the surface of the lake. Torrents of water rushed out of the spaces between their steaming armour and their bones.
A hundred yards further out, the lake suddenly bubbled as smoke rose from its depths, and two more enormous skulls broke the surface of the water.
“That makes all eleven,” Rachel said.
Hasp glowered at the image for a moment, and then said, “Tell me you have a plan, brother.”
Sabor stared at the obscura table for a long time, his hands gripping each side. He glanced over at Dill, who stood nearby, his ghostly wings shimmering in the gloom, and then he returned his attention to the image on the table before him. “Phantasms,” he muttered. “Phantasms…”
He suddenly straightened up. “We're going back,” he said. “Right now. Back to the moment when Ayen's bastard sealed Heaven.”
“Didn't you say that another attempt to stop Menoa could destroy the whole universe?” Rachel pointed out.
Mina yawned. “I remember him saying that.”
“We no longer have a choice,” Sabor said.
Hasp roared up into the darkness, “More wine!”
Sabor spread his map across the obscura table. The paper was old, and heavily inked with many lines and circles and miniature tables of dates and numbers. “This map details all the routes we've found that access the previous three months,” he said. “But many of those now lead into the bastard universe, and so must be avoided whenever possible. As we proceed further into history we'll have to fetch additional maps.”
“Where are they?” Mina asked.
“In the cellar,” Sabor replied. “But there are far too many to carry with us. We shall simply take them as and when we need them.”
Rachel stared at the complex patterns in awe. They were about to walk back three thousand years—to the very moment when Ayen expelled her sons from Heaven—in order to save the life of Alteus Menoa, the enemy who was even now trying to destroy them.
Sabor had crossed out many of the circles on the map before him. Those, he claimed, led to what he called the bastard universe— the second, parallel world Rys had created when he'd traveled back in Time to confront Menoa and thereby changed the course of history.
The air suddenly resounded with the chimes of countless clocks.
“That's the cycle change we need,” Sabor said. “We must go. Garstone, I'll need every self you can now spare. We might as well generate some extra manpower while we travel. Do the Burntwater militia know what to do?”
“Iron Head will bar the castle doors as long as he can,” the small man replied.
“Good,” Sabor replied. “Then follow me.” Holding his map, he led Rachel, Mina, Hasp, and Dill up into the castle galleries. They crossed balconies and climbed stairs, higher and higher. Each version of Garstone they passed joined the party, so by the time they reached the appropriate door on one of the higher levels, there was a crowd of twenty assistants in tow.
These made an unlikely following of quietly shuffling men dressed in an eclectic mixture of tatty suits. Rachel wondered where they found their clothes, and if they tailored them themselves. They were of various ages, from the middle years onwards, although each Garstone wore the same bland smile.
Hasp glowered at them.
Sabor led them all to the door of a suite, then checked his map again. “As expected,” he said, “the Grenadier Suite is now fifteen days ago. This is a decent start.” He opened the timelock door and beckoned everyone inside.
It was a squeeze, but the entire party made it into the chamber beyond in three shifts. The Grenadier Suite was a rather small chamber with walls draped in worn green velvet. A brass obscura tube extended out from the interior wall, terminating at a fat lens just inside the window. The view outside was of a dull grey afternoon.
As soon as the last of the Garstones shut the door behind him, all twenty of them adjusted their pocket watches. One Garstone wound the standing clock against the wall, while another opened the timelock door again.
“Onwards,” Sabor announced.
Mina nudged Rachel. “Three thousand years of this?” she whispered. “Gods, Rachel, I don't know if I can take it. When do you think we stop for supper?”
“Where's Basilis?”
The thaumaturge drew back her robe. The little dog's head peered out of a deep pocket within. “Always near,” Mina said.
The dog growled.
“He'd better not piss himself,” Hasp grumbled. “He makes you smell bad enough as it is.”
Mina merely smiled, and drew her robe back around herself.
Rachel soon lost track of the number of suites they visited. The views outside the castle's many windows changed from dawn to night to dusk in no particular order, as Sabor consulted his map frequently. They stopped for supper in the dining room after six hours of such time travel, whereupon the god of clocks announced that they were now two years earlier than the day they had begun.
Hasp sat apart from the group at one end of the table, drinking heavily. When Garstone approached the god for the umpteenth time to refill his wine cup, Hasp snatched the carafe from the little man's hands, shoved him away, and roared, “Leave it here, you bloody imbecile! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Sabor stiffened in his chair and remarked, “Whatever Menoa did to you in Hell, brother, pales in comparison with what you've done to yourself.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You are no longer the god I remember.”
Hasp grunted. “Then kill me like you did the others, Sabor. At least my hands are clean.”
New Garstones had regularly joined the party, while others elected to stay and wait until future times when new suites would become available. By doing so they could return to the past again, thereby increasing their numbers. Already the castle was teeming with replicas of Sabor's assistant—the further back in Time the party traveled, the more Garstones appeared to occupy the castle.
After supper they resumed their progress into the past. This time Sabor ordered only one of his assistants to accompany the party, leaving a multitude of others to remain here and join them earlier in Time if possible. He hurried Rachel, Mina, and Dill on up to the highest level, whereupon he announced they would leap back a full four years by stepping into what he called the Tansy Suite.
Hasp trailed behind, cursing gruffly to himself.
No sooner had Rachel stepped out of the timelock than she knew something was wrong. This room looked much more unkempt than the others. Spiderwebs softened the plasterwork cornicing. The rotten, worm-riddled furniture evinced an aura of long neglect, and even the nail heads in the floorboards had rusted. But a richly pungent stench indicated something far more sinister than a lack of housekeeping.
Here, Rachel.
Dill was standing next to an old horsehair couch, his wings floating behind him like pale blue auroras, and pointing down at a body lying on the floor.
It was a version of Garstone dressed in the remains of a dark blue suit. It had been dead for a long time, Rachel realized, for the flesh remaining upon its bones had partially mummified; the hair was dry and brit
tle. Deep indentations in the skull spoke of terrible violence. This poor man had, she supposed, been beaten to death.
One of the Garstones took the pocket watch from the breast pocket of his own dead replica and examined it. Then he looked up and said, “This is most unusual.”
Sabor frowned. “When was he killed?”
Garstone compared the reclaimed timepiece with his own watch. “He stopped winding this six months from now, yet the state of his body indicates that he died long ago in the past. Either this corpse was carried here for us to find or…”
“He forgot to wind his watch?” Mina suggested.
Garstone shook his head. “No,” he said with complete conviction. “That is impossible. I never forget.” He thought for a moment. “I believe I did this deliberately—as a message.”
“Wouldn't a note have been easier?”
“A note might have been removed from my corpse, Miss Greene. But who would bother to adjust or even look at a watch?” He nodded. “If I ever found myself confronted by an enemy within this castle, I would undoubtedly wish to record the time of that encounter in some subtle way. Furthermore, if I thought that my life was in danger… yes, now that I think about it, I would do precisely this.”
Sabor stood grimly over the corpse. “Are you saying that this version of you found an intruder six months from now, and fled back in time to warn us?”
“I believe so. Unfortunately, whoever I encountered seems to have followed me.”
“And now he's further back in history than we are?”
The assistant nodded. “Which implies that he's taken a more direct, and dangerous, route. You see, in order to get ahead of us, both this version of myself and his pursuer must have traveled through the bastard universe.”
Hasp spat on the floor. “This is all bollocks,” he growled. “I don't understand a word of what you're both gibbering about. If there's a faster way into the past, then why aren't you taking it?”
Sabor stared at his brother for a long moment. Finally he said, “The bastard universe is dangerous because the version of Menoa who inhabits it is aware of our plans. In his world, Rys appeared from the future and tried to capture him. Since he knows the Obscura Redunda as a threat, he will have sent his arconites and other agents here directly.”
Hasp's eyes narrowed. “Then this whole castle could already be infested with Mesmerists?” he said.
“It's possible.”
The Lord of the First Citadel slumped down upon the couch and let out a deep sigh. He held his head in his hands as, quietly, he said, “Fetch me whisky.”
“That isn't going to help,” Mina said. “It never has.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” Hasp growled.
Rachel stepped forward. “This arguing is pointless. We don't know who killed this particular Garstone, and we don't know if we'll run into him, but we do know that the aggressor was most likely human. An arconite simply can't fit inside this castle, and other Mesmerists require bloodied ground to survive.”
“She has a point,” Mina said.
Hasp sighed wearily. “All right.” He nodded. “All right.”
Back in the main Obscura Hall, Sabor spent a few minutes bent over the viewing table in search of the safest route for them to follow. “We must avoid suites that have become junctions between the two universes,” he said, “for it is through such rooms that our enemy may find his way into this timeline.”
Garstone dimmed the lights while his master operated the machinery underneath the table. Sabor pulled levers, cranked wheels, and threw switches. His voice echoed through the towering galleries above:
“Lens nine-zero-four… The Foster Green Suite… Cycle through one to seven… Two days back, Garstone… We've lost that morning for good, so lock and bar the door.”
In the gloom overhead there seemed to be a million men at work. Garstones ran between suites, winding clocks, fetching maps, opening timelocks, slamming doors, reading from dials, and sliding lenses into fitments as their master adjusted the huge brass optical device.
The views upon that circular white table flicked from one scene to another. To Rachel's horror, she saw mostly destruction. Image after image of burning forest and arconites flashed across the viewing table.
Sabor wore a look of grim determination. “These are not from our world,” he explained, “but are visions of the bastard universe. The parallel version of Alteus Menoa has breached this fortress somewhere in the future. And now he is using the labyrinth of Time to return to his past. He's making changes, allowing his arconites to reach the Obscura Redunda sooner and sooner. He has traveled further back in Time than we are currently, so now he is ahead of us. We must hurry if we are to catch up.”
A sudden rumble shook the building. The moving image projected from the obscura lens went out, plunging the castle into darkness. A moment later, small flames flickered and brightened overhead as dozens of Sabor's identical assistants lit candles on each of the galleries. Under these weak shifting lights, the optical mechanism in the center of the chamber loomed like a huge brass skeleton. The uppermost third of it was now wreathed in smoke.
“Something is here,” Sabor said.
“Mesmerists?” Hasp growled.
“I don't know, but whatever it is, it isn't from our world.”
“I like to think that in some other world all this would have been different.”
The echo of the man's voice faded to silence, and white linen sheets came into focus. As Carnival's eyes grew accustomed to the light, she found herself lying on a clean, soft bed. A shaft of red light slanted down through the single window to form a hot slab on the white tile floor, but otherwise the walls were starkly whitewashed, illuminated by an unseen source. She spied a dresser, a tall mirror, a table, and a chair, all white, too. She was alone.
The room had no door.
She rose from the bed. Her body felt strange, somehow lighter. And indeed her old leather armour had gone. Instead she had been dressed in a simple linen frock, its fabric as pale and smooth as the skin on her wrists.
Carnival stared at the back of her hands for a moment before she realized what was wrong. A terrible numbness crept into her heart.
She had no scars.
She yanked back the sleeve of her frock and stared at her slender, supple arm, at the unblemished white flesh. She noticed how the hair hanging down over her shoulders was black and silky smooth.
“Such an improvement, don't you think?”
Carnival spun around, but there was nobody there. “Where are you?” she snarled.
Silence.
She leapt off the bed, and her bare feet pressed against cold white tiles. She felt suddenly giddy, unbalanced, and tried to spread out her wings for support. Her efforts resulted in nothing but a sharp feeling of panic.
She had no wings.
Carnival stood there for a long moment, completely disoriented, her heart galloping. She looked back at the window, at the fiery oblong it cast on the floor. Her gaze moved to the tall mirror in one corner of the room. From here she could see nothing in the glass but a reflection of the opposite wall. Fear gripped her more intensely.
“You know it's only a matter of time.”
She recognized the soft, lyrical tones of Alteus Menoa. His voice had seemed to emerge from that far corner of the room, from…
She stared at the mirror again.
Cautiously, she approached it.
He was waiting for her behind the glass, in place of her own reflection. He had now discarded his glass armour for white breeches and a white padded doublet. His golden eyes and silver hair shone as he smiled. “Most souls adapt fairly quickly to new forms,” he said, “but your soul is much older than most. The shock of seeing the face I have given you would be… traumatic.”
“Show me.”
The son of Ayen raised his brows. “No threats or fury—just a simple request?” He laughed. “You keep surprising me, Carnival. So much of you still remains hidden,
buried under an ocean of anger and insanity. Even the souls trapped in your blood know little of you beyond your name. And even that, I suspect, is a lie. Who are you really?”
Carnival said nothing.
Menoa shrugged. “We'll reach the truth by degrees.” He raised one slender hand, and an image began to form in the glass before him. It was of a human girl with coal-black hair and vivid blue eyes, small and slender and dressed in a plain linen frock. She was the most beautiful creature Carnival had ever seen, but why had Menoa conjured this phantom if not to make the revelation of Carnival's own appearance all the more hurtful? This other young woman stood before Menoa's own reflection, her head at the height of his chest. The Lord of the Maze leaned forward, bringing his lips close to the phantom's ear.
Carnival felt his breath upon her neck. And this time, when he spoke, she knew exactly where he was. “Do you approve?” he whispered into her ear.
Three thousand years of instinct activated the angel's muscles before her heart or mind could respond. She spun fiercely, lashing a fist round at him…
There was nothing behind her but air.
She turned back to the mirror, certain that the beautiful reflection had soured, that she would find her own hideously scarred face glaring back from that polished surface. She expected to see madness and pain.
But the same fair visage met Carnival's gaze. The Lord of the Maze had vanished from the glass, leaving the slender blue-eyed girl alone. Now, flushed and panting, her reflection gazed out at Carnival with a look of frightened awe.
Menoa's soft voice filled the room like music. “There is nothing for you to kill here,” he said, “and no one to judge you. There is no longer any reason for you to carry scars.”
A sob burst from Carnival's throat. She kicked the mirror savagely, shattering it. Then she snatched up one of the shards and drew it frantically across her arm, again and again. Blood welled in thin lines. The pain shocked her, but she welcomed it with a sort of wild desperation. She fell to her knees, dropping the shard, and groped for it again with slick, bloody hands. She picked it up and drove it into her thigh, crying out in pain.