Child of Time Read online

  ‘Then what are you waiting for! Do as you are instructed!’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  The acolyte opened the door and went out. The High Executioner waited until his footsteps had receded down the corridor, then followed him out.

  When the High Executioner entered Dr Smith’s suite, after rapping perfunctorily on the door, she saw him give a slight smile of satisfaction, as if he had fully expected her to come. He was still over by the trifle bowl, and licked his finger again before turning to address her.

  ‘High Executioner. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

  The High Executioner knew she ought to feel contempt for this man, but actually she had a sneaking admiration of him, and even, she realised to her surprise, a little fear. How long had it been since she had last felt fear?

  ‘Dr Smith. I...’

  Dr Smith looked at her levelly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You asked me, two days ago, when the summoning ceremony was to be. There is no reason why you should not know. It is to take place tomorrow.’

  ‘That soon... And you still hope to deceive this creature... this Dæmon?’

  ‘I have told you before, Dr Smith, we do not speak that name!’

  ‘Oh, come now, isn’t it time we stopped playing these games? You know as well as I do that Mastho – and yes, I know I’m not supposed to speak that name either – is no deity. It is, however, an extremely powerful being, and perfectly capable of destroying this planet.’

  ‘But that will not happen. The creature – all right, the Dæmon – has one other choice: it can bequeath its powers and then leave this world. It will be satisfied with the progress we have made, and we will prevail, of that I am certain.’

  ‘And what happened when you performed the trial summoning?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  Dr Smith smiled and put his forefinger to his lips.

  The High Executioner shrugged. ‘So you know. What of it? We chose the time nexus carefully, a point to test the powers we had, to try to learn more about how to control the process.’[1]

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘It failed. We lost contact with our agent in that time.’

  ‘But you did succeed in summoning the Dæmon.’

  ‘Yes. For us, it was the second time, but for the creat... for Mastho, only the first. We finally realised what it meant when it told us in Venice that it had been summoned once before. The web of time can be very complex and confusing.’

  Dr Smith gave a wry smile. ‘I am well aware of that, young lady.’

  The High Executioner looked levelly at the man before her. She had squashed so many underfoot, meticulously planned the deaths of so many more, created her own monstrous troops to do her bidding, even harnessed the powers of unfathomable creatures from outside time to try to ferret out those who would hide from her. And, rather to her surprise at first, she had found that she relished all that death and destruction: the screams of a time sensitive being torn to pieces by one of her hybrid man-machines were music to her ears; the sight of a time channeller being sucked dry by one of the entities she commanded made her feel warm inside. The power was intoxicating. She and the Grand Master had stepped forward through time, stopping off every few years for a week or so to make appearances, check the progress of the plan, and to mete out suitable punishment and discipline to the rank and file. So why did this insignificant man make her feel so uneasy? Like some naughty young girl who had been caught cheating in a school test? And why, despite that, did she feel that he was someone she could be completely open with, someone she could really talk to, in a way that she never had to anyone else.

  The man stubbed out his cigarette on the table and stepped towards her. ‘You may feel that you can handle the Dæmon, but you’re wrong. Your bluff will fail. The Earth will be destroyed. Humanity will be wiped out.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘But we’ve been through all this before. Why have you really come here, my lady? Hmmm? And without your guards?’

  She walked to the window and looked down the Mall and out over the blasted landscape of London. In the forecourt of the Palace she could see two of the stone gargoyles ranging back and forth, implacable guards against any unauthorised visitors.

  ‘I was intrigued,’ she said eventually, ‘by what you said about my past: about how I came to join the Sodality, and what I was like when I was younger.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I still don’t believe you, of course, but I am puzzled as to why you should concoct such a story.’

  ‘Are you now?’ Dr Smith smiled, not unkindly. ‘I promise you, it was no story. I was telling the truth. About that, anyway. Your Ruling Council, on the other hand, were right to be suspicious of me.’ He sniffed dismissively. ‘I never really had any intention of helping them to commit even more murders. That was just something I said to pique their curiosity, to get me in here without them setting those gargoyle creatures on me or simply shooting me on sight.’

  ‘But why? Why did you want to get in here?’

  ‘To talk to you, of course.’ Dr Smith settled himself into a comfortable chair and steepled his fingers under his chin, fixing her with a steely gaze. ‘I have a question to put to you: if you had an opportunity to undo all the wrongs that the Sodality have done, to set history back on a course where they never came to power in the first place, and the Dæmon was never summoned, would you do it?’

  The High Executioner laughed. ‘Why on Earth would I want to do that? The Sodality have granted me a position of great responsibility and power.’ The idea was absurd, preposterous. And yet, there was something curiously intriguing and seductive about it too... ‘I relish that responsibility, revel in that power,’ she continued, no longer entirely sure who she was trying to convince. ‘I have no regrets over anything I’ve done. The killings have all been necessary; a sacred duty. I wouldn’t change a thing.’ She gave another laugh, although it sounded rather hollow, even to her. ‘Anyway, your question is totally hypothetical. You have no freedom to grant such an opportunity. In fact, you have no freedom at all: you are a prisoner here. Like so many others before you, subject to my whim.’

  Dr Smith nodded. ‘You may believe that... but you are mistaken. I can leave here any time I please. But... I wanted to have this conversation with you first.’

  What was he talking about now? ‘Oh, you silly man, you do amuse me.’

  ‘Do I, indeed?’ Dr Smith looked at her kindly. ‘So, what is your answer?’ he asked softly. ‘Would you do it? Would you change the past to protect the future rather than to destroy it?’

  Thoughts raged through the High Executioner’s mind. For the first time in a long while, she was confused. She felt deeply-buried memories trying to surface, pushing against dimly-perceived barriers in her mind. Instinct told her that this stranger was telling the truth. She gazed into his eyes and could see peace, and hope. And yet...

  ‘If I believed you could do it...Yes.’ she whispered. Her voice sounded strange in her head, and she wasn’t sure she’d even spoken.

  He raised one hand, cocked his head to the left, and said, ‘It would not be I who would do it... but you. If you use your abilities wisely, you will make a new history for the Earth, and the Sodality will become mere ghosts of a forgotten timeline. What if I could show you? Something that would convince you.’

  Dr Smith moved swiftly across the room to the door leading to the suite’s bedroom. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ he said brightly, before opening the door and stepping through.

  The High Executioner watched him go, wondering what he was up to now. This man was strange, an enigma; he said seemingly foolish things, and yet was clearly intelligent and thoughtful. He was a mystery she was determined to crack.

  At that moment, an immense noise came from the other room: the sound of engines heaving in rising cadences of power.

  ‘D
r Smith?’ she called. ‘Dr Smith! What’s happening?’

  She strode across the room and flung open the door. She was just in time to glimpse, in one corner of the bedroom, a pulsing blue light that rapidly dissipated. The sound faded away at the same time.

  She looked around the room. A window. A fireplace set in the wall. A large four poster bed against another wall. No other exit. And no Dr Smith.

  She hurried to the bed and looked underneath. Nothing. She moved to the fireplace and peered inside. Far too small for anyone to have got up there; and no mess of soot beneath, either. The window was closed and shuttered. No-one could have got out that way.

  Dr Smith had vanished into thin air.

  2

  St Paul’s Cathedral was the site of hectic activity. Groups of technicians were wandering the vast spaces of the floor, laying cables, organising the clearance of the piles of junk and setting up a large dais in front of the main altar. All this was taking place under the watchful eye of a number of Sodality guards.

  The rotting corpses had been cut down from outside the main entrance and were now piled outside, burning merrily. The pyre was being constantly fed with old bits of wood, cloth and anything else inflammable that the clearance team could pull from the building.

  It was being prepared for something... and Honoré, Maria and Emily, hiding in the darkness on one of the deserted galleries overlooking the main body of the Cathedral, had quickly guessed what that something must be.

  They had avoided capture so far, mainly because of the control that Maria had rapidly developed over her power. After the initial realisation that she could control it at all, she had become adept very quickly indeed. The trip from Venice had been smooth and fast, and Maria had navigated the way effortlessly, shifting them all sideways from the main chamber into the upper gallery, where the blue electric blaze of their arrival had gone unnoticed by anyone.

  They peered out over the activity below. All traces of Maria’s camp had gone now. She wondered what they had made of it. What, too, had become of the city’s other occupants, such as the soldiers and civvies who inhabited the ruined Houses of Parliament? Were they watching from a distance, not understanding what was about to happen?

  ‘When do you think it’s all going to begin?’ asked Emily. She had been more subdued since their arrival, and particularly since Honoré and Maria had told her about the summoning ceremony they had witnessed. Maria hoped she was all right and not becoming too wrapped up in her preoccupation with her amnesia. Honoré had said how important it was to her, and yet the conclusions she had leaped to could surely not be correct.

  Maria nudged Honoré in the side. ‘Look there,’ she gestured to the stage area. ‘It’s almost complete. The clearance must have been going on for days. I’d say that it’s tonight, or at the latest tomorrow. Look at how they’re all rushing to try and get it ready.’

  One of the workers below stumbled and dropped a boxful of nails all over the floor. They scattered out everywhere and the man uttered a silent curse. He started to pick them up, but one of the Sodality guards spotted the mishap and came over. The trio could see him arguing with the man, and then, abruptly, he lifted his hand and brought a baton crashing down over the crouching man’s back. The man spilled the nails again and hurriedly started to pick them up.

  ‘They’re obviously not going to stand for any inefficiency,’ muttered Maria. This was her home they were invading! She’d never quite understood herself what had drawn her to this place, when she could have picked a thousand smaller, less conspicuous ruins to camp in, but it had always seemed that the Cathedral’s religious significance and imposing architecture had been enough to keep people away – plus, of course, the swinging corpses outside – and no-one had ever come to bother her. Until now.

  Emily pushed back from the balustrade and stretched her legs out. She raised a hand to the tapestry on the wall to steady herself, and found that it gave under her touch. She pushed it to one side and discovered that behind it was a small side-chamber .

  ‘Honoré!’ she hissed. ‘Come and look.’

  The three of them slipped into the alcove. Inside were a number of ornate robes hanging from a rail. Maria remembered them – how they’d once looked in Venice. Back then, the outfits had been deep, jewel colours – rich purple, ruby red and midnight black, but now they had faded to greys, lilac and pink through a thousand years of history.

  On a small wooden table nearby, Maria found some other familiar objects: the ceremonial chalice, the bowls and the candles. Paraphernalia for the summoning ceremony that they had witnessed either mere hours ago or a full millennium ago, depending on one’s perspective.

  ‘Where’s the book?’ Maria picked up the chalice, cradling it gently, before replacing it. It didn’t feel right.

  Honoré shook his head. ‘I guess they keep things like that securely locked away.’

  ‘Hadn’t we better move from here?’ asked Emily nervously. ‘Someone’s bound to come to collect this stuff at some point.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Maria. ‘There are other rooms we can hide in further around the balcony.’

  Keeping close to the walls, out of sight from the workers below, they made their way around the balcony until they found a similar recess opposite. This was musty and unused and seemed as good a place as any to hide out while they waited for the inevitable.

  There was a sudden commotion from down in the body of the Cathedral. Guards were being sent off to different points in the ruins, ushering the technicians out of sight, and a couple of robed acolytes, clearly more senior, were barking orders at them. Five of the stone gargoyle-creatures had arrived and were now ranging about the floor, their feet crunching against the tiles as they moved. One of the guards directed them away from the main area of the Cathedral, and two of them took up positions either side of the main entrance, while the others lurked half-hidden in the shadows around the edge. Then silence descended as the guards moved off.

  ‘What’s happening?’ whispered Emily, scanning the Cathedral for any signs of movement or clues as to what was going on. ‘They seem to be waiting for something.’

  There was a sound by the main door. The large portal grated against the floor as it was pushed open and a man dressed in black combat gear stepped cautiously through. It was Honoré who recognised him.

  ‘Its Gray!’

  The man moved furtively a little way into the body of the Cathedral, looking all around him. When he was satisfied that everything appeared safe, he stepped back to the door and gestured to someone beyond it. The door was pushed open a little further and a group of around half-a-dozen soldiers, all wearing similar black combat outfits, entered behind him.

  Emily spotted the blonde hair of Hannah, and wondered if Micah was also there among them.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she whispered.

  Honoré looked carefully out over the expanse of the Cathedral. ‘I think,’ he began, ‘they must have come to see what’s been happening here over the last few days. They’re curious...’

  Suddenly Maria understood what was happening.

  ‘They’re walking into a trap!’ she said. ‘The Sodality must have seen them coming.’

  ‘We’ve got to warn them!’ Emily moved as if to step forwards, but Honoré grabbed her arm.

  Maria was still watching the small group of soldiers as they stealthily crept further into the church. ‘It’s too late.’

  One of the stone gargoyles moved, its large misshapen head slowly turning with an echoing grating sound to look at the soldiers. There was a moment’s silence, then all hell broke loose.

  With a rasp of stony wings, one of the creatures swept down out of nowhere and snatched one of the soldiers from where he was standing. There was a hideous shriek, which echoed and re-echoed around the cavernous interior. The cry ended abruptly and there was silence again as the others stood below, n
ot quite sure what had happened to their fellow.

  Then it started to rain. The pattering of liquid sounded softly, and red droplets fell around the small group of soldiers, who had now moved into a more defensive position.

  Gray shouted something, and the group made to move back towards the door, but another gargoyle was there, blocking their way. They raised their guns, and shots echoed and ricocheted around. They all ducked as their own bullets whizzed back past them. The statue was unaffected.

  Maria watched horrified as a third gargoyle approached the group from the other side, stony talons reaching out for Hannah, who was trying to edge around the back, her heel skidding on the blood that had fallen from above. In a moment the creature was on her, gripping her shoulder and hoisting her bodily off the ground. The rest of the group spun around and saw their comrade held aloft by the monstrosity. She screamed as she was thrown hard and high through the dusty air, her limbs flailing and body arcing until finally she came crashing down onto the altar.

  Emily raised her hands to her mouth and stifled a cry. There was no further movement from where poor Hannah had landed. The rest of the soldiers were now milling in confusion. Every way they turned there were gargoyles before them, circling them, moving in.

  The end was quick. Emily pressed her face into Honoré’s shoulder, but Maria watched grimly, her mouth twisted in anger and horror. For all three of them, it strengthened their resolve that, whatever else happened that night, they would do everything they possibly could to try to prevent the Sodality from achieving their aims.

  When it was over, silence fell once more. The grating of stone on stone stopped and the gargoyles fell motionless. The Sodality guards emerged from where they had been waiting and calmly checked what was left of the soldiers – not much more than a large red puddle on the floor, littered with indefinable chunks of meat, bone and sinew. Satisfied, the lead guard gestured to the gargoyles, and they moved back to their positions around the building. Other men emerged with cloths and pails of water and started washing the floor, sweeping the mess away, presumably so that it would not be there as an eyesore during the coming ceremony.