God of Clocks (10 page)

Rachel and Mina exchanged a look, then followed him down into the mob of people. They helped carry anything that could not be left behind, dragging baskets of desiccated beef and skins of water back up the slope between them.

As they reached the level part of the earth island surrounding the Rusty Saw, Mina shot a worried glance back down the road. “It's gaining,” she warned.

“Can you do anything to slow it?”

“I don't know. Basilis has the real power. I just channel it. I'll need to confer with him.” She pushed her way into the crowd. “Assuming these woodsmen haven't already eaten him.”

“Be quick.”

Oran joined the last of his people outside the Rusty Saw. There was now barely room to move amidst the jostling crowds surrounding the old building. He shouted at those near the edge to get inside, but the inn was already stuffed full of people and goods. From the upper floor issued a barrage of curses and protests, a voice that Rachel recognized.

“Abner Hill,” she informed Oran.

Oran grunted. “I'll deal with that bastard later. I don't suppose he's happy you commandeered his building?”

“My concern for his feelings diminished considerably after he shot me in the face.”

The woodsman laughed.

Rachel couldn't see any stragglers down on the forest track so she called out, “Get us out of here, Dill.”

And the huge bone-and-metal automaton raised his hands and bore skywards the lone building upon its great clod of earth. A chorus of shrieks and startled cries went up from the frightened passengers. Several unsecured sacks slipped over the edge of the arconite's palm and fell to the ground below, but by the time the women ran to save them, the goods were already lost.

They were now moving, fast.

The Rusty Saw pitched like a raft caught in a sudden swell as it rose further up into the night sky. An ocean of dark forest rushed below the building's foundations. Cold mist broke around her wooden facade. Her joints all creaked, and her shutters slapped against their frames. A windowpane snapped in two with a sound like a musket shot. To Rachel it seemed that the heavens themselves lolled around them. The crescent moon loped through misty darkness like a swinging lantern.

Upon that cramped island it was too early yet for the conflict and arguments that must inevitably break out amongst such a crowd of people. Woodsmen positioned at the inn door herded those who would be herded inside, but the saloon floorboards were already protesting under the weight of hundreds: warriors in handcarved armour, honing blades or waxing bowstrings; greybeards singing of past glories and clinking glasses; gamblers already at their dice and bones; spinsters and shy young women with babes in swaddle, and whores slapping and nudging and laughing with the men; young boys crowd-weaving with beakers of whisky for their fathers and older brothers, or sitting listening under tables and peering up at the girls; children running up and down the stairs and shrieking loudly on the landing, and banging doors and then running from their grandmothers' curses. The stoves had been well fed and stoked, all the candles lit and lanterns burning till the windows blazed like openings in a furnace.

“I'm beginning to understand why Abner Hill hid his booze,” Mina muttered.

Rachel was trying to listen for their approaching foe, but she
couldn't hear anything above the din from within the saloon. Fog shrouded much of the night beyond this tiny island of noise and light, though she spied the sheer dark cliff of Dill's torso filling the sky behind them. His forearms hovered in the gloom like vast and hellish barges made from bone.

As Oran glanced where she was looking, she beckoned him to follow her around the crowd still huddled outside the inn. A group of younger men was passing sacks of meal and bales of hide through one of the downstairs windows, while others dragged cords of firewood around to the rear of the building. Rachel slipped past them, heading towards Dill's wrist. Four whores sat on the stoop, drinking from earthenware bottles, and watched her pass.

“We need to get the rest of the women and children safely inside,” Rachel said. “And we need all your men out here, sober and ready for a fight.”

Oran scratched the scar on his forehead. “Won't make any difference whether they're sober or drunk,” he said. “They can't fight an arconite and hope to survive. But if they have to fight, then let them have a moment of revelry first.”

They reached the end of the island, where Dill's bony thumbs loomed before them like strange white gateposts. In the darkness overhead, Rachel could just make out her friend's massive jaw. She cocked her head and listened…

Regular thuds and crashes marked Dill's progress through the forest. But now Rachel could hear other sounds—like an echo of Dill's footsteps—issuing from the misty night close behind them.

Mina came and joined them. She had Abner Hill's musket propped against her shoulder, the barrel pointing skywards, the stock gripped in one slender glassy hand. “It's gaining on us,” she remarked.

“What did Basilis have to say?”

The thaumaturge shook her head. “This particular foe is beyond him.”

“Does Hasp know what's going on?”

“He's asleep on the pantry floor. I locked the door to stop anyone else from barging in. For their safety as much as his own.”

Rachel eyed the other woman's musket. “What do you plan to do with that?”

Mina shrugged. “I wasn't leaving our only hand-cannon in a saloon full of drunken men.” She shifted the weapon from one shoulder to the other. “Our guests let Mr. Hill and his wife out of their room. After screaming about the loss of his whisky, someone told Abner about the promised gold. Now he's serving the drinks himself and keeping tabs.”

Rachel sighed. She had no intention of using Cospinol's gold to get their so-called army drunk, but she didn't have time to deal with Abner Hill right now. “Can Dill outrun Menoa's arconite?”

“No. He's no quicker or stronger than any of them.”

Oran scratched at his stubble. “Then we fight and die here tonight,” he said, yawning.

Cospinol's will determined the buoyancy of his great wooden skyship, while Anchor's will determined his own impossible strength. During the thousands of years of their unlikely partnership both master and servant had achieved a balance whereby they worked together in harmony. The heavier the
Rotsward
became, the greater the strength Anchor found in himself to tow it behind him.

In the confusion after the portal snapped and Anchor found himself falling towards Hell, the accustomed harmony with the skyship took some moments to reassert itself.

The rope jolted against Anchor's back in midair, bringing him to an abrupt halt before propelling him skywards again. Behind him the
Rotsward
shuddered and toppled forwards, a great mass of interconnected masts and spars. Suddenly both man and skyship were weightless. The rope snapped taut again and then slackened. Anchor heard it whining behind his ear like a living thing. The
Maze surged up to meet him at a sickening rate: the canals like bloody scrawls; the partially drowned temples, arches, and crooked steps; the mounds of rotting black masonry dumped into a crimson slough.

The vessel plummeted from the sky like some vast and ancient torture ship expelled from Heaven. Those warriors whom the Failed had not destroyed now glared feverishly about them and howled amidst the skyship's gallows. Thus exposed before Hell's fiery light they made a barbarous army indeed, blue-faced and ragged madmen plucked from so many forgotten wars.

John Anchor had slain every last one of them, and many of their souls now coursed through his veins. Corpses, bound to the
Rotsward
as thoroughly as he was. He could not gaze upon them for long before the cramps in his heart forced him to turn away.

The surface of Hell wheeled into Anchor's field of view: windows glittering in the curved side of a mound; open doorways creeping through obsidian walls; twisted iron pillars and redbrick facades; gurgling fissures; arches; stone; blood.

And then he hit.

Bloody stonework exploded under him. He plunged into a room and smashed through the floor below. Another room, another floor. Anchor gripped his knees against his chest and closed his eyes. He had the sensation of passing through pockets of air separated by parting membranes. Down and down he fell, like a cannonball dropped into a house of cards.

Deep underground he thumped heavily against a final solid surface and came to a stop.

Anchor groaned and opened his eyes.

He had fallen through twenty or more separate dwellings. Directly above him numerous layers of ragged holes formed a shaft of sorts, terminating in a distant circle of red sky overhead, where the end of the rope disappeared from sight. Each of the many levels of ruptured floorboards had already begun to bleed. Drips fell from the broken edges and cascaded down from room to room, spattering
the floor around him. From overhead came the sound of moaning.

He sat up.

He was in an elegant drawing room with tall sash windows and antique Pandemerian furniture. Two identical elderly women stood looking at him, their faces white with either powder or shock. Each looked like a mirror image of the other in their hummingbird-blue high-necked frocks. Knots of tightly bunched grey hair sat upon their heads like little skulls.

“Ladies,” Anchor said.

The twins looked at each other, then cupped their hands over their breasts and looked back at the intruder. “Are you the plumber?” said one of them.

“I don't think he's the plumber, Clarice,” the other woman replied. “Just look at him!”

Anchor stood, brushed dust and fragments of debris from his arms, and then stepped out from underneath the shaft to avoid the cascading droplets of blood. The two women took a step back from him.

The big man grinned. “No need to fear John Anchor, ladies. I've no quarrel with you.” He took a look around. “So this is Hell, eh?”

Cospinol had told him how the souls grew rooms around themselves like snails grew shells. This chamber must be one such place, a living, sensate extension of the spirits within. He nodded at the windows. Behind the glass lay a plain brick wall. “Your neighbours like their privacy, eh?”

One of the ladies said, “Neighbours? Don't be absurd. We don't have any
neighbours.
The Buntings isn't a tenement, sir. We have ninety acres.”

Her twin piped up, “No doubt he hit his head in the fall, Marjory.”

They shriveled their lips at him.

Anchor shrugged. He had no interest in undermining their delusion.

One twin glared disapprovingly at the hole in the ceiling. “Someone will have to repair that, you know.”

“My apologies, ladies,” Anchor said. “I'll go and fix it now.” With that he leapt up and grabbed the bloody edge of the hole and pulled himself up.

A large bed occupied most of this next room. Propped against pillows lay an enormous woman with masses of black and white hair extruding all about her head like the tendrils of some creeping fungus. Indeed the whole room evinced decay, for tongues of patterned wallpaper hung from the walls, and black mold spattered the skirting. A smell of vinegar lingered.

“I've been hurt,” she said. “Someone hit me on the head while I was sleeping.”

“Sorry, madam.” Anchor got to his feet. “That was me. I fell through your soul. The pain will go away after a while.”

“Have you seen Dory?” she said.

Anchor shook his head. “No, madam.” He jumped up and grabbed the floor joists of the room above.

“Dory said she'd come by, but I haven't seen her in ages,” the woman persisted. “I don't know what's become of her.”

Grunting, Anchor heaved himself up onto the next level. He looked down to see the twins still standing under the hole. He gave them a wave.

“Don't you go rummaging through the attic,” shrilled one of them. “Our costumes are up there, and they mustn't be unpacked. They're very fragile.”

“Who's that?” said the woman in the bed. “Dory? Is that you?”

So many potted plants filled the third room that it looked like a garden. Walls of naked brick supported trellises covered with green vines. Some old chests of drawers and wooden tables stood around the edges, but pots of yellow, pink, and red blooms adorned every flat surface and even the floor itself. At first Anchor thought the room was empty but then he spotted a young man curled up in
the corner. In one hand he held a pair of shears, and he appeared to be unconscious.

Anchor walked over and crouched to feel for a pulse. Then he shook his head. These people were all dead, of course; if they had a pulse, it would be because they remembered having one and not because blood still flowed through their veins. Nevertheless he propped the young man up and gave him a gentle shake. “You all right, lad?”

The young man opened his eyes and peered at Anchor. “I must have fallen,” he said. “Where am I?”

“You don't know where you are?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I've done you a service.”

Anchor left him alone and went back to the edge of the open shaft. He looked up to see that some of the holes above him had already begun to close as the consciousnesses within began to reassert their influences upon their environments. Down below, the twins' room was sliding away at a walking pace, underneath the bedridden woman's chambers. Those two spinsters had evidently decided to move.

“John!”

Alice Harper's head had appeared at the uppermost entrance to the shaft. Now she was looking down at him. “Are you all right?”

“This is a very strange place,” he called back.

“Stranger than you realize,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

He clambered up through the remaining chambers with barely a glance at the occupants within, then swung himself up out into open air. A fierce gale slammed into him. Harper waited on a nearby stone shelf, from where she could see far across the Maze. Her red hair whipped about her pale face.

From up here Anchor could see that they were standing upon the summit of a strange conglomerate of souls. It looked as if an
entire Pandemerian street had been compacted together into a rude lump. But this mass of dwellings altered shape continuously, as facades stretched and compressed against neighbouring stonework. It was crawling across the surface of Hell, devouring walls under its shifting foundations. In its wake it left a shallow trench of subterranean rooms now ripped open and exposed to the flooded labyrinth surface, as streams of blood rushed into these open wounds and gurgled down through any spaces revealed amidst those smashed quarters.