Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (16 page)

Abruptly they were through, the Portal closing behind them and the archangels gasping down huge breaths as Jehovah briskly counted them to see that they were all there.

‘Horrible,’ moaned Gabriel. ‘Never so dark, never so quiet.’

‘I think you’d find that what I see is worse,’ replied Jehovah mildly.

Michael was staring at the gasping Lucifer where he’d fallen on the sand and was now heaving in great gulps of air, more shaken than the rest. ‘I… thought I felt your hand slip from mine,’ he said.

For a long while Sam was quiet. Mistakenly, Michael took this merely for the shock of the Waywalk.

‘Must have imagined it,’ said Sam.

He was on the last lap now, the train due in at Kaluga at six fifty-two. As he travelled he prayed to whatever gods he knew didn’t exist that even if his illusions had been seen through, they would not realise Kaluga was the final destination. Then another prayer, this time more fervent than ever before, that Whisperer had made it too. Praying, although he knew there was nothing to pray to, was all he could do.

She was always there when he called – in this place at least, this hidden place in the clouds.

She was silent before answering. she said finally.

On the train, Sam lovingly fingered his sword. Even through the cover and the layers of leather he could hear it singing its deadly song. It was his father’s gift to him, just as the others, the legitimate ones, had all received gifts. It was the final proof.

He’d known that only Sons of Time were allowed in the Room of Clocks. He’d known also that only one son was allowed there at any time. Finally he’d known that it was guarded always, by angels loyal to Time and his Queens alone.

But his long hours spent learning spells and tricks hadn’t been wasted. As the sun set over the clouds of Heaven and the stars came out in all their brilliance, Sam had pulled on his white archangel’s robes, beneath which he’d concealed a roll of rope tied around his waist, and slipped from his home in the sky towards the gold and white marble palace that stood on a cliff of diamond.

During the day a staircase of sunlight wound up to it, during the night one of starlight. There was no other way up, and it was guarded. Lucifer dealt with this as only he could have. If it had been Thor trying to sneak into the palace like a thief, there would have been bloodshed and murders. Had it been Jehovah, the angels on guard would have found themselves believing that by letting him past they did the right thing. But Sam was neither of these. Moreover the angels were not expecting a Son of Magic to be in Heaven, let alone trying to enter the palace.

Sam knew Jehovah was on Earth, and would be for a few more days. He knew also that only those highly gifted in magic could see through an illusion. He knew finally, as his mother had told him, that he was her only son not to possess mortal blood, and certainly her only child in Heaven. So at the base of the silvery staircase of starlight, he buried his head in his hands, and when he looked up again, it was not Sam who stood there, but Jehovah.

Confident now, he began to climb. An angel questioned him as he went, and he spoke in the same mild, serene tones that Jehovah always used. At the top of the staircase he wasn’t even out of breath and his very gait was that of Jehovah – a kind of drifting along the ground, floating almost – so complete was the illusion.

‘I am going to the Room of Clocks,’ he told another angel.

There was a hectic moment when, outside the Room and waiting to enter, he saw a different door open, and Athena appeared. She gave Sam a nasty look, old school to young school, and swept by him. Yet just as she passed, she seemed to think better of doing so, and turned. ‘You are visiting the Room?’

He nodded, remembering quickly how little Jehovah spoke.

‘Why?’

‘Because I desire it, sister.’

She frowned slightly, and for a moment he thought she’d seen through his illusion. But then she shook her head and went on, leaving him soaked with sweat and his hands shaking. He clasped them tightly together until the knuckles turned white, in an effort to subdue his trembling, and almost jumped when a soft-voiced angel announced that he could enter.

Bowing his thanks, respectful Saviour to the last, he pushed open the large golden door which at another time he would have denounced as vulgar, and entered a room that roared with ticking. Or, more to the point, one large tick. The walls, the ceiling, the huge floor were covered with clocks, sundials, hourglasses, candles of every kind. At each second the smallest hand moved on every clock, each with a precise click that, heard together, filled the room. Sure of being alone, Sam lowered his illusion and turned slowly, watching as every clock ticked its way towards infinity.

When these clocks stopped, he knew, Time was dead. When they began to run anticlockwise, Cronus was king.

Turning slowly, a tiny, tiny figure in the vast room, he suddenly wondered what he was doing there. Had he expected a sign? Time never gave any. You never saw Time, just as he’d never actually seen his mother, merely a shadowy projection of her. Greater Powers were beyond physical form, which made it hard to keep up eye contact of any kind. But you could ask boons of Time. How did He show He was listening?

Because he’s always listening, because we’re part of him, an extension of his will
.

‘Father,’ he called softly, and immediately felt silly. What reaction did he expect? ‘You know, better than I do, why I’m here. If there is a reason, that is.’

No answer. Slowly he knelt, staring everywhere at once.

‘What am I?’ he asked. ‘Your bastard son? Another bastard son out of so many? But you send your bastard sons away, and they’re rarely by a great Incarnate. Children by the Elements, yes. Even children by mortals, where you think that child will serve your purpose. But what is my purpose, in your scheme of things? I have watched your children, and every one has a purpose whether they see it or not. Every one is acting out some scheme of your devising. Time conquers all, but I cannot see what there is for you to conquer.

‘What are you so afraid of that you should keep a compromising child such as me close to you? For the children of Magic are hunted down and reviled. Their power is chaotic, unreliable. It is one of the few things that deny common sense – the miracle makers are all children of Magic, and miracles are not part of your great scheme.

‘So why do you keep me here, yet ignorant of what I am? What future will you use me for, like Jehovah uses humans?’

No answer. But his ears detected a different kind of reply.

Somewhere, a clock was striking out of tune. There was the huge clamour of a thousand clocks hitting the second together – and then, between that second and the next, there fell another click.

So faint; just one clock out of place among them all.

Sam rose, scouring the room for it, searching it out. Refusing to hear any other sound but that dysfunctional tick, he wandered through the room. Halfway round he stopped, pressing his ear to a clock. Then to another. Then another, now staying within a small area and listening hard.

He found it. One clock, about the same size as his face, plain, the numbers in some flowing script he couldn’t recognise, was beating half a second out from all the rest. Sam ran his hands around it, noting the strange shape – distorted, as though a mad smith had started to melt it down and then thought better of it. His fingers, questing round the edge, found a little inlay – and at his touch the whole thing sprang open. He leapt back with a startled cry.

But nothing emerged. Heart pounding in his ears, knowing as he’d never known anything in his life that this was the closest he’d get to talking with Time, he advanced on the dark space behind the clock and reached in. His hand closed round something hard and cool. He felt a jolt on touching it, like electricity.

Withdrawing the object, he found a long, light, silver sword, sheathed in a plain leather case. Nervous, he drew it, and felt it sing in his ears and blood as it sliced the air. He made a few practice passes and knew he’d never felt anything like it. Sheathing it, embarrassed by the huge space around him and the loneliness of his sword games, he laid it carefully at his feet and reached in again.

His fingers closed round a small silver key, dangling by its chain and swinging tantalisingly before his face. As he touched it, images flooded his mind. Images of a silver door, beyond which lay a Portal to another place. A door which only his key, held in his hand, would open. Each Child of Time had one.

But there was more. A silver dagger that looked tailor-made to his stealthy nature. And at the back, unadorned, plain, a silver band. He didn’t dare put it on, not knowing to whom these goods belonged – even though some part of him cried out that this crown sang to him only. Common sense decreed he should not risk the wrath of its owner, in case that owner was not him after all.

And at the very back, a slip of parchment, so old he feared it might crumble to dust in his hands. He unrolled it, and read the strange script slowly and carefully, wondering what language it was in and why he could translate it with no training.

I, Chancellor of the Room of Clocks –
he’d never heard of this rank before –
do decree that the items enclosed herein be granted only under such situations as follow:

Sam rolled the parchment up, wondering what it meant. He had a disagreeable feeling that the word ‘necessary’ was a reference to him. He returned the parchment to its dark cranny, reasoning that any items that went with such a firm warning were not for him. Reaching out for the other goods, he heard the faint footfall behind him.

Before knowing what he did, he turned, finding the silver dagger in his hand as if flown there in response to his alarm, and was ready to pounce.

Jehovah stared down at him. Immediately he thought how impossible this was: Jehovah was on Earth and not due back yet. Besides, the guards would never have let more than one person into the Room.

Which left two alternatives. Either he’d been found out and Jehovah had come to evict him, or this being was not who it seemed. Yet as he probed he could find no illusion around the figure. Nor could he sense the power of Belief in Jehovah that distinguished him from a Son of War or a Son of Love. His probes came up against a blank.

‘Put on the crown, Lucifer,’ said Jehovah.

Sam said nothing. He bent down and drew the sword slowly, giving Jehovah time to run or call for help. Inwardly Sam prayed this was what he’d do, thus giving him some certainty of what was going on.

But Jehovah didn’t move as Sam rose to his feet, dagger and sword both drawn and ready.

‘Who are you?’ Sam asked.

‘I am you.’

He spun, to stare at himself, standing off to one side and leaning casually against the wall, wearing his own boyish smile.

whispered a voice in his mind.

‘I am everything that lives.’

He turned again, seeing Michael, this time, moving next to Jehovah’s side.

‘I am everything that dies.’ Jehovah again.

‘You could have told me straight out. I wouldn’t think any the less of you,’ he muttered. ‘Father.’

‘Put the crown on,’ whispered Jehovah.

‘Why?’

‘Put it on, it is yours!’ said Michael.

Kneeling down and placing his weapons on the ground again, Sam reached out nervously. He took the band in both hands, holding it as though it were a fragile thing.

‘If I put this on,’ he said finally, ‘it will weigh down not only on me, but on those who look at me. If I put this on, I cease to be friendly, smiling Lucifer.

‘But I don’t become something different. People who called me friend will see this and they will see a king. Yet I will see them and see a friend.’

‘Put it on.’

‘No. I am happy as I am.’

‘To find out what I am.’

‘Put it on!’ roared Jehovah.

Sam raised the crown, not above his head, but towards Jehovah. ‘You put it on! You who can control men’s lives and decree when they live and when they die – you wear it! You have no need of me!’

Jehovah was gone. Sam was kneeling before the vacant air, crown held up imploringly to nothing. As empty and significant as a dream.

‘Would you deny your father?’

He didn’t turn his head, dreading what vision he would see this time. The voice had been kindly, compassionate. The voice he’d always imagined his father would have. He’d wanted his father to be some kindly old scholar, who’d play games together with him when he was young, and when he was older would listen to his woes with a wise smile on his face and laughter in his eyes. And he knew that if he turned his head now, he would see that father, the one he’d wanted, formed from his own imagination the better to manipulate him.

‘Tell me what it is you want, what you’re planning. Tell me why you kept me so close, and at the same time so far.’