“But history—”
“To hell with history,” he growled. “I don't need or want a couple of frightened girls with me. You'll just get in my way and slow me down.” He stormed away, roaring, “Garstone! One of you show me which godforsaken door I need to take.”
Mina hurried after him. Rachel exchanged a glance with Dill, and they both followed. They caught up with the Lord of the First Citadel just as he was about to step into the timelock.
“We were there,” Mina protested. “So you know we're coming back with you now.”
“You are not.”
“What's the matter with you, Hasp?”
He opened the timelock door. “Just get the hell away from me. If you try to step in here beside me, I'll murder all three of you myself.” With that he disappeared into the timelock and slammed the door behind him.
Rachel peered through the porthole. She saw Hasp reach forward to open the outer door beyond, and then he faded from sight. “He's gone,” she said. “Maybe we should just wait for him downstairs.”
“He might not make it back to the castle without us,” Mina said. “We were there, Rachel. If we don't follow him back now, we'll change the past. Anything could happen to him.”
“All right.” Rachel exhaled slowly. “How far back are we going?”
A passing Garstone said, “Six hours, miss.”
Together the three of them stepped into the timelock.
The suite beyond was no different from the others in the castle, a musty storage space for old furniture and clocks. Hasp had already left. Rachel briefly glimpsed the back of his head as he closed the outer door.
In a moment they had followed him out of the timelock and caught up with him again.
He wheeled on them savagely. “I ordered you to stay.”
“And we ignored you,” Mina said. “Get over it.”
Blood flooded the glass scales covering the god's face, giving him a frightening appearance. “You'll all die here today.”
“But the Riot Coaster said—”
“The Riot Coaster said no such thing. I understand the man's language!” He sucked air in and out of his nose, then continued in a harsh whisper. “Sabor did not translate that warrior's speech truthfully. The god of clocks lied to you. The Sombrecur will slaughter us. Only Dill survives, and that's because he's already dead.”
A sinking feeling invaded Rachel's stomach. Her mind groped for solutions. “If we remain in the castle…”
“We can't,” Mina said wearily. “Our presence at the battle might well have kept the Sombrecur from taking over this castle, and if we lose the Obscura to the enemy, then there's no way back for us.” She glanced at a nearby clock. “We need to think of a way to keep events consistent with what the Riot Coasters saw.”
But Hasp stormed off, calling back over his shoulder, “It's simpler if we just die in battle.”
Carnival woke lying on the floor of the same white room. This time there was no mirror, no bed or other furniture, and no window, either—nothing but a featureless box with a tiled floor.
Alteus Menoa stood in one corner, gazing at her. He was wearing a toga of white cloth slung over his shoulder and wrapped around his midriff, revealing the bronzed muscles on his chest and arms. His golden eyes were unreadable, but his expression was not unkind. “Why do you continue to destroy yourself?” he said.
She eased herself into a sitting position, glancing at his throat as she judged the distance she would have to traverse to seize it. She averted her eyes again.
The Lord of the Maze waited for her to reply and when she didn't he said, “My priests are eager to torture you.”
Her eyes flicked up.
“But I fear you would only relish their primitive methods.” He studied her for a moment longer. “So how do I make you appreciate what you've been given? By showing you the alternatives?” He lifted a finger.
Carnival's whole body froze solid. She glanced down to see her skin and clothes harden and quickly adopt a porcelainlike lustre. She could not breathe or move as much as an eyelid. Her dry eyes remained fixed on her glassy white knee, so smooth and brittle. Menoa's footsteps sounded as he approached across the tile floor.
“What is destruction to you without pain?” He kicked her.
Carnival felt nothing, but she heard a noise like shattering pottery, and the world spun dizzily around her.
When the room settled again, she found herself gazing at pieces of a broken face: lips, a nose, a shard of her jaw, all cast from glazed white ceramic. Her face. The fragments of her body lay scattered across the floor in front of her. Unable to blink or move, she could do nothing but stare.
She heard his footsteps behind her, and crunching sounds.
“Should I now return the use of your nerves to you,” he said, “and let you experience what this damage feels like?” He continued to pace. “Or would that simply be giving you exactly what you desire?”
Her nerves began to throb as the broken pieces of her body lost their smooth sheen and reddened. The throbbing intensified and sharpened until countless needlelike sensations crawled over her flesh. She felt him standing on her, his heels pressing down into her muscles…
The surroundings blurred.
Carnival was on her hands and knees upon the floor, her body once more restored to Menoa's flesh-and-blood ideal. She blinked and sucked in a shuddering breath, then spun round to face her tormentor.
“It's more complex than that,” he declared. “Pain is only part of the answer, not the full objective of your desires.” He walked around her slowly. “Nor is it simply a rejection of beauty. If I turned you into a hag, would you accept yourself better then?” He shook his head. “So how can I make you appreciate this gift?”
“Give me a knife.”
He smiled. “You'd use it on yourself.”
“Not right away.”
The Lord of the Maze ignored that. “You embrace suffering, but not just any suffering,” he said. “Your agonies need to be self-inflicted because you wish to punish yourself.” He cupped his chin in one hand thoughtfully. “But why? I admit that at first I presumed your behaviour to be merely a rejection of the natural laws. You are by nature a predator, thus driven by your hunger, and could never hope to attain any higher purpose. Your penchant for self-harm and suicide seemed to me to be the inevitable rejection of determinism.” He stopped pacing. “But now I no longer believe that that's true. You are a complete enigma, Rebecca.”
Carnival tensed.
“You speak aloud when you dream,” Menoa said, “and thus I know that you are Ulcis's bastard, which of course makes you the granddaughter of Ayen herself.” He smiled again. “We share the same divine blood, Rebecca.”
“Carnival.”
“As you wish.” He shrugged. “But we have more in common than our divine heritage, Carnival. Like you, I am part human, a bastard to immortals.” His golden eyes turned away from her. “We are alone in the circumstances of our births, so different from the origins of any other creatures under the heavens, and yet we are so unlike each other. I do not understand you.”
Carnival chose this precise moment to attack. Her body had changed, but she retained the instincts and will that now compelled it to move with such brutal force and speed. She leapt at him, seizing his throat in both hands, and slammed him hard against the wall.
He gave a startled gasp as her teeth closed around the veins in his neck. She tasted blood.
He vanished into the wall.
Carnival's teeth closed further on nothing but empty air. Her empty fists struck hard white stone. Snarling, she clawed at the surface into which he had passed, but to no avail. The Lord of the Maze had eluded her again.
She cried out in rage and frustration and beat her bloody hands against the wall. But then she stopped abruptly.
Her fingers, hands, wrists, and arms, she now noticed, bore that familiar tracery of scars.
12
THE SOMBRECUR
Sabor
was intently studying a view in the Obscura, but looked up from the table as they reached the ground floor of the great galleried hall.
“You conniving bastard,” Rachel began.
The god of clocks frowned. “Who are you people? And what are you doing in my castle?”
“Don't pretend you don't know. You tricked us into coming back here to help the Riot Coasters.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
Mina gave her a nudge. “He's right, you know. He hasn't… yet.”
Rachel's face reddened. Paradoxes! Now they were preventing her from berating someone who thoroughly deserved it. “Well, you will!”
Sabor tilted his head to one side. “It is an intriguing idea, I suppose. How exactly did I accomplish that particular miracle?”
Don't say a word, Dill said, his voice a murmur in Rachel's head.
Rachel let loose a cry of frustration. She raced after Hasp, who had now stormed off towards the main doors without showing any sign of waiting for them. Dill followed her, his ghostly boots silent on the flagstones, while Mina remained alone with Sabor.
Outside it was a late summer morning. Rachel sat down with Dill on the castle steps and took in the view. This landscape had changed again since she had seen it last. The tract of wildwood between here and the waterside had not yet become established—it was more a thicket than a proper forest. In places, clumps of mimosa towered over the younger trees, their grey-blue leaves interspersed with fronds of yellow flowers. Reefs of cloud divided the blue sky like coral headlands.
Mina came and sat down beside them.
“Where were you?” Rachel asked.
“I was overcome by Sabor's wit,” Mina replied. “Do you know he has thirteen thousand, one hundred and three clocks in there? He has some of the earliest examples of both verge and anchor escapement mechanisms.”
“I wonder if John Anchor is still alive. The man we know, I mean.” Rachel shrugged. “I suppose his earlier self is alive somewhere out there?”
“Alive and blissfully unaware of us,” Mina said. “And of them, too.” She pointed to the south. “We could use him here right now.”
Upon the still waters of the lake floated thousands of tiny craft. At this distance they appeared no larger than fallen leaves. The surviving men of Hulfer's Hundred were marching down towards the forest and the Flower Lake to face the enemy for the thirteenth time.
Hasp's glass armour blazed in the sunlight. “Sombrecur,” he muttered. “Rys drove them out of Pandemeria after the Logarth thing. Tenacious little bastards, fight with wood spears and arrows smeared in frog sweat. They had a different prophecy then, as I remember, but it's hard to keep track. What with all their heathen gods, white crows, and other omens.”
“Sabor called them holy men,” Rachel said.
The god grunted. “Well, they certainly liked to punch holes in men. Unarmed as they are, Hulfer's warriors will be hard-pressed to meet those spears. Still, the forest should work to our advantage. That tangle's no place for bow-or spearmen.”
“In Anchor's song the Hundred defeated the Sombrecur in battle. Do we really need to worry?”
Mina lifted her dog from her inside pocket and set him upon the grass. “There's no guarantee,” she said. “If we win here today, then we remain in the timeline in which Anchor's story is true. Otherwise, Time will split again and we'll find ourselves in a subtly different universe, one in which Anchor's song of victory becomes a lament.” She ruffled Basilis's mangy ears. “The hardest part will be winning this fight without bloodshed. Menoa expects carnage here. He intends for us to prepare this ground for his Mesmerists.”
Rachel felt the dead weight of her sword pressing against her thigh. Without bloodshed? She wondered if she was yet strong enough to focus. Not that her skill had any place against such numbers. It left her too vulnerable.
Dill remained silent, his body thin in the sunlight, and gazed down at the lake far below.
Hasp rolled his shoulders so the glass scales glittered. “A fair battle at last,” he said. “No demons, shades, or shifters. And there's not one man down there who can turn me against my fellows.” He grinned and then set off down the slope to catch up with the Riot Coasters.
“He's outnumbered and unarmed,” Rachel observed, “and has a worryingly breakable exterior, and yet he thinks this is a fair fight?”
Compared with the sort of battles he's used to fighting, Dill said, it is a fair fight. The Sombrecur are in trouble.
The three of them followed Hasp across the mountain plateau, now a lush expanse of green grass, pink furilis blooms, and sprays of grievemont, tansy, and rattling-abacus. A hundred other varieties of herb and wildflower unknown to Rachel also blossomed here. Their heady perfume floated on the breeze along with wisps of dandelion and the gossamer lines of sailing spiders.
Hulfer's men nodded grimly to the new arrivals, but they did not slacken their march. They entered the forest via a well-worn, tunnel-like track through thick undergrowth and, in little more than an hour, had drawn near to the shore.
Kevin's Jetty would not be dreamed of for another two thousand years, and there was little sign that ordinary man had ever been here. The edge of the forest overhung the waterfront. Through the trees Rachel could see the Sombrecur craft less than a hundred yards out from the shore, scores of single outrigger canoes each with an oarsman to the front and back of the yoke, spears lashed to the gunwales. The Riot Coast warriors dropped to a crouch and edged forward silently between the boles.
Dill shimmered in the gloom beside Rachel, his ghostly sword in his hand. Yet he was as insubstantial as light itself. Rachel had already seen his incorporeal body pass straight through Mina, and she now wondered what effect, if any, he would have upon the enemy. If nothing else, perhaps he can scare them.
She heard the gentle splash of oars out on the lake.
The Sombrecur were decked in bead necklaces and feathers. They were lightly tanned, with tattoos forming concentric arcs across their naked chests. Bareheaded and bare-chested, they wore little more than the ochre paint daubed under their eyes.
Rachel felt something touch her leg and looked down to see Basilis brush past her sword. The little dog stopped and sniffed the air, growling softly.
Hand signals passed between the Riot Coasters. They spread out into the forest on either side of Rachel. Hasp crouched some distance behind them, applying handfuls of dirt to his glass scales in an effort to dull their sheen. Dill had no similar means to hide his luminous form, so he ducked down low behind the mounded roots of a tree. Mina leaned closer to Rachel and whispered in her ear. “What if we faked our own deaths? Wouldn't that keep the timeline consistent with what we know?”
“I don't think we'll have to fake them,” Rachel replied in equally hushed tones. “There really are five thousand Sombrecur on that lake, possibly more.”
“Can I ask you a favour?”
“What?”
“I need you to get me some blood. Their blood, preferably.”
So the thaumaturge was going to attempt more magic? Another blanket of mist perhaps? After the colossal exertion of creating the fog, Rachel hadn't believed that Mina was capable of more. “I thought we weren't allowed to shed blood,” she said.
“Oh, not much,” Mina replied. “Just five or six hearts should do the trick. Menoa can't feed much of an army on that.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
But what could they really hope to accomplish? The Riot Coasters numbered no more than forty, and none of them was John Anchor. Hasp had seemed proficient enough against a group of unskilled woodsmen, but she couldn't count on him making much of a dent against this force. The flotilla of canoes now stretched along the lakeshore as far as she could see. The oarsmen unleashed spears, grabbed bows.
They leapt lithely from their canoes and dragged them ashore, the hulls rasping over silver shingles. A bird twittered nearby and then took off amongst the trees.
Hulfer's warriors crept closer. Dil
l remained hidden behind the bank of roots.
Rachel drew her sword. Just five or six hearts.
A wicker of scrub formed a natural barrier between the forest and the beach, so the Sombrecur were forced to duck and weave through it. Their Riot Coast opponents had been waiting for this; they'd fought this same battle twelve times before.
Four of the Pandemerian holy men fell, their necks broken by dark and powerful arms, before the first warning sounded. A shrill ululation went up from one of the Sombrecur, followed immediately by a war cry from those men on the beach.
The battle had begun.
Hasp loped forward, so smeared in mud that only his red eyes glowed. The nearest enemy's eyes widened. He cried out in terror and thrust a spear out at the god, but Hasp seized the shaft and yanked its wielder out of the undergrowth. He grabbed the unbalanced man behind the skull and slammed him into the nearest tree. Without turning to see the body collapse, Hasp snapped his newly won spear in two and tossed one half to Mina. The other half he broke in two again. Thus armed with twin batons, the Lord of the First Citadel set about his enemies as they pushed through the thicket. Within ten heartbeats he had killed three more men.
Hulfer's men fought bare-fisted. They adopted the same technique as Hasp, dodging spear thrusts and seizing the shafts before the Sombrecur could withdraw. Safe now within the reach of the spear, they hammered fists into their enemies' faces or kicked downwards to shatter knees and shins. Arrows hissed through the thicket, striking no one, though a few embedded themselves in the trees.
A warrior broke through and ran straight at Rachel.
She turned his spear with her sword and drew the edge of the blade along the shaft towards his fingers. He released his hold on the weapon, turning his body rapidly to lift a hidden knife towards her unguarded side. She thrust the point of her sword into his naked armpit, severing the deltoid and the axillary nerve. His knife arm fell limp, and he opened his mouth to scream. She twisted her hand on her sword's grip and drove the tip of the weapon up into his throat, feeling the metal lodge in his lower jaw. Another twist and a sharp downward cut, and she had opened him from neck to belly.