Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series (17 page)

There was an uncomfortable silence. He felt somehow too large for his own body, was aware of his arms hanging loose, of the way his left foot stuck out to one side in the sand while his right pointed straight forwards, of how his eyebrows tried to compete for space on his face, of how his mouth was dry and his fingers limp at the ends of his heavy hands. Finally he couldn’t help himself. ‘Miss me?’ he asked.

She made a show of considering, sucking in her cheeks and pursing her lips. ‘Not the cooking,’ she admitted. ‘You were always a dire cook.’

‘What’s the point of having the world at your feet if you can’t go to restaurants?’

‘That’s a decadent attitude and you know it.’

‘There are thousands of restaurants in New York alone. We could have gone to a new restaurant every night in any city and any country we pleased. And what did we do?’

‘I offered to cook.’

‘Freya, now that the end of the world is coming I can safely say that your duck in orange sauce was possibly the most repulsive meal I’ve eaten in all my life. We have both spent too much time learning the languages of the three worlds and studying the art of survival to learn how to cook anything more challenging than baked beans on toast or bacon and egg sandwiches.’

She laughed, but not very much, eyes never leaving his. When the silence returned again, it poured across the desert like a sandstorm.

He wasn’t entirely sure whether he kissed her or she kissed him, or whether it was something mutual. It was nothing spectacular: no choruses of sobbing violins or choir of angels marked the event. Just the silent wind and the trickling of sand.

‘Am I interrupting something?’ asked a voice.

Freya immediately pulled away from Sam, raising illusion to cover herself. He watched the air around her distort, hiding her features from him.

Tinkerbell clambered over the dune and peered at Freya like a blind mouse trying to spot the cat. ‘Uh… do I know you, love?’

‘I’m no one special.’

‘You two were kissing.’

‘We’re old friends,’ snapped Sam, brushing himself down. ‘Was there something I can do for you, Tinkerbell?’ he asked, and felt Freya’s amusement at the name.

‘Just wondering if we should be off.’

‘Yes, of course. Pressures of time, and all that.’ He smiled and shrugged at the blurred features of Freya. ‘Perhaps…’

‘Some other time,’ she agreed, and without another word turned and began to walk across the dunes.

Tinkerbell watched her go. ‘Who the hell?’

‘A bishop on the board.’ Sam saw the look on Tinkerbell’s face and grinned, albeit half-heartedly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot to do before the game is won.’

T
hey Waywalked to Earth, Sam leading the way. When he offered Tinkerbell his hand, Tinkerbell looked down at it as if Sam were mad. But when he saw the gaping Portal, white mist pouring out from it, he changed his mind. In the Portal Sam felt Tinkerbell’s hand turn hot and clammy as they passed through towards Earth, and against the whispering of the Wayspirits his breath sounded loud and fast. Sam had never seen Tinkerbell afraid, but was willing to swear it was fear that drove Tinkerbell in such haste through the Way of Earth.

They emerged in darkness, and cold.

‘Where are we?’ asked Tinkerbell, blinking up at unfamiliar stars through his sunglasses.

‘Siberia. There’s no one here to see us,’ Sam explained.

‘You could have found somewhere more pleasant, if you tried.’

‘You’d be surprised. There’s always some kid somewhere playing hide and seek who spots you. Or some fanatical mortal with a taste for the occult who hangs around Portals and gets down on his knees to the first person who comes through it. Or tries to disembowel them for chicken feed. One or the other. Come on.’

He led the way back again. Not focusing on a particular destination, because he didn’t have one. But seeking… the night. The edge of night, though. In Hell it was either night or day, with twilight usually somewhere over the Whirlpool Ocean. What he wanted was night within the desert, where the sun hardly ever set. Not proper dark night, because that would mean going deep into Seth’s power. Just the fringe of night, the very outskirts.

They stepped from the Way in a place where the sky was running from blue to pink to purple to black as far as the eye could see. The Portal opened on to a cliff, where a few half-hearted shrubs were attempting, and failing, to grow. Below, and to the north, night was spreading across the land like a newly breaking flood. To the south the desert was as bright as it had always been, the sun sitting high in the sky with no intention of budging.

Tinkerbell looked thoughtfully in the direction of
the moving sea of darkness. ‘Seth’s doing that?’

‘Uhuh. He’s a Son of Night, to him that kinda thing is simple. On a good day he can also manage eclipses of the sun, but not in the proper astronomical sense.’

‘And somewhere in there,’ Tinkerbell nodded towards the moving shadow, ‘is an army?’

‘Yup. Hidden away so we can’t see.’

‘Why do you want to see? We’ve got a rough idea. Thousands of Hellish troops under the command of Seth, Odin and Jehovah.’

‘I want to see. It’s important to me.’

Tinkerbell looked Sam up and down with a frown. ‘The master said you were one of us now. I think he lied.’

‘You don’t trust anyone, do you?’

‘Especially not the master.’

‘And you call me the optimist.’ Sam indicated the darkness. As if to himself he said, ‘Even if there are thousands of people in there, they’ll all be dead in three days’ time. They’ll reach their destination, they’ll fight the Ashen’ia and most likely destroy them. Then they’ll storm this city, and the city will destroy them. But not before they’ve managed to raze it to the ground.

‘And then Seth will saunter into the city and pick up the key to Cronus’s prison and all that death will have been for
nothing.
Thousands dead, for nothing.’

‘Then stop it.’

‘I don’t have the power.’

‘That’s a lie, and you know it. You’re the Bearer of Light. Call on the Light now! Send it out into the world, send it into the night and dispel Seth’s power! If you genuinely are Ashen’ia, you’re sworn to destroy him!’

‘The Ashen’ia wish to use me; why should I even try to help them?’

‘The Ashen’ia are your only ally against Seth.’

Sam looked at Tinkerbell, and laughed. ‘You still believe that? The Ashen’ia are pawns. Sacrifices to Seth, to make him —’ He stopped, staggered a few paces, put his hands to his ears. Voices roared in his head, screaming.
You’re slipping, Sam
…

He managed to gasp, ‘The Ashen’ia will die. The armies of Seth will die. The city will fall, the key will be found, Cronus will be freed. And there is nothing I can do about it!’

‘Then why did you want to come here?’

The voices were fading again.
I almost told him. And then I couldn’t. The Light is life, and life wants to live. Even if thousands die.

‘I… wanted to convince myself of something. You must believe me. If I could do something to save the lives of these men, I would.’

‘What’s your deal with the Ashen’ia, Sebastian? What did they offer you?’

Sam turned back, looking at the darkness. ‘A life. They’ll kill someone very dear to me, unless I do what they want.’

‘You were negotiating with the master himself, weren’t you? Who is the master?’

Sam said nothing.

‘The master doesn’t want you to weaken Seth at all, does he? And while they hold this one life hostage, you just won’t do it. Even though there’ll be a battle in which thousands die? Thousands of lives for one? Is that moral? Or are you like every other Prince of Heaven – who cares how many mortals die, so long as the immortals’ petty feuds survive? Is that it?’

‘Give me an alternative. Tell me how I can save these people’s lives without changing anything.’

‘So you’re going to mope around for three days and hope something happens instead? That’s your brilliant solution to all the universe’s problems?’ Tinkerbell folded his arms and spat on the sand in disgust. ‘How pathetic.’

‘Thank you for that, Tinkerbell.’ Sam looked once more towards the darkness, then turned away. ‘Come on. I need to think.’

They went to Earth. Tinkerbell sulked, and wasn’t much of a companion. They walked down from the Soho Square Portal in the direction of Piccadilly Circus, and then further east, towards Covent Garden.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Tinkerbell as they passed through Leicester Square.

Sam looked around. He wasn’t sure. At the Odeon workmen were toiling to dress the cinema up in preparation for yet another première. Outside the huge cinema complex, next to what was possibly the worst take-away pizza shop in the world, dozens of people were queueing to get in.

Sam wondered how they had the time. On the other hand…

‘Let’s go to the pics,’ he said.

In the darkness, he sat, knees up to his chin, and thought. The film was something mass-market, with a famous star falling for a sexy and if possible even more famous star, in their ‘charming whirlwind romance set against the background of Paris in the early twentieth century, essential viewing for all the family’.

He wasn’t really following the story. Tinkerbell sat next to him, munching on popcorn and looking as if he’d like to hit either one of the leads. Not, Sam realised, because they were particularly bad, but because going to the cinema wasn’t how Tinkerbell saw his assignment to protect the Bearer of Light in a time of crisis.

If only he knew. In the darkness of the auditorium, surrounded by rapt humans, their minds all focused on the same thing, he could concentrate without the irritating buzz of numberless wild and whirling sounds, feelings and sights around him. Just one soundtrack, just one spectacle, and he could ignore that. For once he didn’t have to worry about being surrounded by others, because this crowd was responding, essentially, as One.

He remembered.

Before Seth, before Freya, before the Pandora spirits and before the lonely reaches of exile on Earth, there’d been Heaven. In Heaven, he’d fought against the Eden Initiative. And to everyone’s surprise, including his father’s, he’d won.

Eden Portals were hard to sense, especially after they’d been so thoroughly warded by a Greater Power. Three times he’d thought he’d sensed one, and three times they’d turned out to be Earth Portals. He’d been half prepared to give up, until he saw, hidden at the base of a rolling green hill, something unnatural sticking up through the trees. Sam walked towards it, pushing his way through overgrown bracken and thorns towards the sound of running water, following his instincts. When he stepped from the trees into bright sunlight he saw what it was that was so unnatural.

It was like a totem pole, except it was carved out of pure white marble. It stood on the bank of a shallow, bouncing little stream, and was aligned to catch the sunlight and reflect it in a thousand directions at once. At the bottom of the pole was a sculpture of a sleeping lion, above that a dog’s head, then a snake, an eagle, a hawk and, capping it all, a rough, chipped carving that might have been a man, if men were square. His body and limbs were lumpy and disproportionate; but the face was perfectly carved, with melancholy eyes and a faint, sad smile, that seemed to say, ‘I see you too’.

One arm of the figure was pointing towards the river. Sam turned to follow it, and in that moment, when he’d been least expecting it, felt a Portal tug at his senses. He probed again, eagerly, trying to recover the signal. Above the stream, yet sitting directly between the two banks, a silver doorway opened, grudging and slow.

Sam probed it, and felt the warm signature that all Earth Portals were lacking. Earth Portals were cold compared to this, just like Hell Portals felt downright icy. He pulled off his shoes and waded out over the stony bed of the stream, the cold water pushing at his ankles with surprising force.

He stopped in front of the Eden Portal and examined it. It looked like any other Portal, but just inside the boundary he could sense… what? Very tenderly, he pushed his mind into it. He felt power pull at him almost immediately. He tried to steady himself as his world filled with white mist, rushing past him at high speed – yet he hadn’t moved; he was still standing outside the Portal. Ahead a light grew brighter, and brighter still, filled his sight, grew unbearable and suddenly hit him hard between the eyes.

He fell back, landing in the stream, his hands slipping on the loose stones underwater and sending up enough of a splash to soak whatever part of him had still been dry. The Portal snapped shut, with a promptness that seemed almost righteous.

Sam sat in the water, feeling cold and foolish, hoping no one had seen. Eventually he pulled himself up, dripping all over, and, full of heightened determination, called the Portal back. It opened quickly, as if nothing had happened.

He glowered at it, and once more extended his mind, but this time far more slowly, fearing danger. His mind brushed the edges of the wards as he skirted along them, noting how thick they were, and marvelling at the strength of the Greater Power that had written them.

The wards were not, as he’d previously thought, unique to any one Portal. They’d simply been thrown up through the Way of Eden at the mid-point between Heaven and Eden, so that no matter which Portal you entered, nor where you were going, you would hit them, and be repulsed.

A pity, then, that they were flawed. All it would take to puncture the wards was a punch from Darkness, and Sam didn’t doubt that his brothers were eager to deal the fatal blow.

He withdrew his mind, but kept the Portal open. He wondered why he was doing what he did. Because he genuinely feared Darkness? Perhaps. Or because he wanted to prove a point to his brothers, prove that the bastard Son of Time was no less a fighter than they were and might just be something more? Perhaps that too.

Fear and pride. Never a great combination
,
thought a part of his mind that always said the wrong things at the wrong times.

Oh, shut up.
 

He took a deep breath, trying to feel strong and confident despite his soaking, dishevelled appearance.

He sent his mind into the Way one last time, and broadcast towards the wards.

Silence.

The voice was there: no explanation, no sudden revelation, no warmth, no fire, no light, just the word. It was the first time he’d spoken directly with a Greater Power, except for Magic, his mother, and his father, Time. To seek an audience with any other Greater Power was supposed to be a complicated procedure, full of ceremony and magic. But with his mind brushing the wards of the Greater Power in preparation of what might well be a breach, as Sam reasoned it the Incarnate of Light and former Queen of Heaven had no choice but to respond.

He was right. The voice wasn’t anything particularly special either, which was another surprise. He’d expected something musical, soft, motherly. It was just a flat question, demanding answers for nothing.

he sent, suddenly uncomfortable with the reality of his situation.
Time above, I’m really going to do it, just to prove a point. And to keep Darkness out, always to keep Darkness out, because I’m afraid of what will happen if she’s summoned
…