“So much of my past is lost to me,” Jacob said softly. “My life is so long ago, now. After I died I spent centuries here, just sitting and waiting…waiting for the important thing I had to do … waiting for so long I finally forgot what it was I was waiting for. I knew you were important, from the first day I set eyes on you, as a child. I remembered, eventually, that I had to help you seize control of the family away from the Matriarch, but I still didn’t know why. There’s more to me being here, Eddie, than just the destruction of the Heart. There’s something I have to
do
, something
important…
but I don’t know what!” He looked up and fixed me with a steely glare. “But I do remember one thing now, Eddie. You brought me here, to this time, to die. You made me, or will make me, what I am.”
“How?” I said. My throat was dry, my voice just a whisper.
“I don’t know. Let’s just hope it’s a good death. For the family.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t prevent it. In fact, you mustn’t.”
“I could send you back. The living you. Just open the gateway and…”
“But you won’t. Because you need me.”
“Jacob…” I said.
He nodded gruffly. “I know, boy. I know.”
“You were my first real friend,” I said. “And apart from Uncle James, the only real family I ever had. You and James were the only ones I ever cared for. And now you tell me I’m going to be responsible for your death too? No. No, I can’t let that happen. Not again. I killed one father; I can’t kill another!”
“Time isn’t fixed,” Jacob said kindly. “But… if I don’t die, like I’m supposed to, I won’t be here to be your… friend, when you need it. Won’t be here to help you take down the Heart. The family always comes first, Eddie. I’m glad I got to meet you, boy. You were worth waiting for. You… are the son I never had. Now dry your eyes, and do what you have to. There is a purpose in this, a destiny we have to fulfill. I remember that much.”
“Why have you been hiding from me?” I said when I could trust my voice again.
“Because I had the feeling something bad was about to happen. And because … I need time alone, undisturbed, to make myself remember just what it is I’m supposed to do. Before it’s too late. Don’t come looking for me, Eddie. And don’t tell the living me about… me. Just in case you think of a way out.”
He grinned, winked a glowing eye, and then vanished from his chair, leaving me alone in the chapel.
Considering how my first attempt at meddling with time had gone, I wasn’t sure I wanted to try again. But need and duty and Jacob’s encouragement drove me on. I still needed help, perhaps now more than ever, and the only place left to look was among the future descendants of my family. And besides, I always was stubborn. So I fired up Merlin’s Glass again, and instructed it to show me the future.
“Show me how the Hall will look, a hundred years from now,” I said. That seemed safe enough.
The doorway opened, showing me a view of the Hall, standing tall and proud in its extensive grounds. The old house looked a hell of a lot bigger. Whole new wings had been added, and a tall stone tower on each corner. Airships of an unfamiliar design buzzed like sleek black wasps around the landing field at the back, and there were children, hundreds of children, running free and happy across the sloping lawns. And then the image changed abruptly, showing me another Hall. It was a ruin, broken stone and crumbling brick, and all the windows dark. The grounds were a rioting jungle of strange and alien plants, lapping right up against the sides of the Hall like a solid green tide. Creepers hung out of windows, trees burst out through broken walls. And no sign of the family anywhere.
The image changed again. This time the Hall I knew was gone, replaced by a magnificent high-tech structure, all gleaming steel and silver and huge flashing windows. Swirling energies coalesced around tall shimmering towers, and strange machines hopped across the neatly manicured lawns. And the whole place was surrounded by flying angels, full of a terrible beauty, singing songs of war, shining brighter than the sun …
The images before me kept changing, flashing by faster and faster. All of them potential, possible futures. All equally real, equally likely or unlikely. I commanded the Glass to stop, thought for a while, and then told it to show me an image of the Hall, in a future where the family failed to stop the Invaders.
This time, the Hall stood alone and abandoned on an endless blasted plain. No signs of life anywhere, from horizon to horizon, and the cloud-covered sky was empty. Dust fell slowly, endlessly, undisturbed by even the slightest breath of a breeze. No sign of any living thing. Nothing moved. The sky was a dark and sullen purple, like a bruise.
A dead world.
I felt cold. Chilled right down to the bone; to the soul. This was what would happen if the family failed. If I failed.
I told the Glass to show me how this had happened. What the Invaders would do, when they came. Images came and went before me, but I couldn’t understand any of them. It was just too strange, too different, too
other
. There were great shapes, living things big as mountains, radiating through more than three physical dimensions. Just looking at them made my head hurt, made me feel sick. Time seemed to slow down and speed up, landscapes rose and fell like tides, cities burned and the moon fell out of the sky. People and other living things ran screaming through distorted streets, transforming and mutating into things that shouldn’t have been able to survive, in a rational world. But still they persisted, still horribly alive and aware and suffering. A black sun, huge and awful, dominated a sky set on fire, until suddenly it shattered, blown apart, spitting out the dreadful things that had been gestating inside it.
The strangeness accelerated, until I couldn’t look anymore. I turned away, and suddenly fell sick and shaking to the cold stone floor. Behind me, there were terrible sounds. I yelled for the Glass to stop, my eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking past screwed-up lids. And immediately a blessed silence filled the chapel. When I finally dared to look again, there was nothing in the mirror hovering before me but my own reflection, looking back at me. I looked like hell. I looked like I’d already been through a war, and lost.
I rose slowly to my feet, a cold determination forcing the weakness out of me. I wasn’t going to lose. I couldn’t afford to. I was going to get my help from the future, whatever the cost. Because the alternative was so much worse.
I instructed the Merlin Glass to go as far into the potential futures as necessary, to find me the one descendant best suited to helping me win the war against the Invaders. A warrior, to lead the family into battle. A leader of men, to inspire them. A man who would be everything…I was not.
The Glass showed me a new scene, strange enough to take my breath away. A battlefield on an alien planet. Three suns blazed in a garish pink sky, looking down on a great snowy waste, littered with hundreds of broken bodies and splashed with blood. Huge broken war machines lay half buried in the snow, so alien in design I couldn’t even guess what they were supposed to do. But the bodies in the snow were quite definitely men and women, though their strange jade green armour was unfamiliar. It boasted crusted accumulations of jagged technology, punctuated with jewels that glowed like radioactive eyes. All the bodies bore the marks of sudden and brutal death, some actually torn apart and dismembered. War had come and gone here, and these people had lost.
And then one man came running across the snowscape, his booted feet sinking deep into the snow with every step, forcing himself on through brute strength. He plunged through the snow with desperate speed, not bothering to look back at what he knew was coming after him. He wore the same kind of armour, though most of his jewels were no longer glowing, and he carried some kind of gun in one hand and a long sword in the other. As he drew nearer, I could see he was about the same age as me, though his brutal, blood-spattered face made him seem older. He wore his jet-black hair in a long mane, held out of his eyes with a golden circlet round his forehead. And yet for all his desperate situation, he was still grinning, as though he were playing a game. The only game worth playing. He was tall and lithely muscular, and I just knew that none of the blood dripping from his armour was his.
More armed men came spilling over the snowy horizon. They ploughed through the snow after the running man, whooping and howling, sounding more like beasts than men. They fired their guns, but somehow he was never where the energy beams hit. Snow exploded behind him, superheated water flying in steaming droplets through the cold air. But finally he seemed to decide that there was no more point in running, and he turned abruptly to face his pursuers, holding one arm up before him. The energy beams immediately targeted him, only to be soaked up by an invisible force shield apparently radiating from his raised arm.
The pursuing men closed in on the warrior, and he stood patiently, waiting for them to come to him. To my surprise, they put away their guns and went for him with swords the moment they were in reach. The fight that followed was swift and savage, like nothing I’d ever seen before; every move cold and clinical and utterly without mercy. The warrior fought well and fiercely, handling the long steel blade as though it were weightless. Blood and guts and hacked-off limbs decorated the bloody snow around him, and none of his enemies even came close to touching him. He stamped back and forth in the crimson snow, slicing and cutting and avoiding the blows coming at him from every direction with almost feline grace.
There must have been twenty men and more against one lone warrior, and he killed them all in just a few minutes.
As the last man fell into the snow in a flurry of spurting arterial blood, the warrior looked calmly about him, not even breathing hard. He nodded once, as though satisfied with his performance, and then lowered his sword. He was just starting to relax when another man rose up from under the snow behind him. He’d been hiding under another body, completely hidden, waiting for his chance. He raised his unfamiliar gun to shoot the warrior in the back, and I drew my Colt Repeater and shot the man in the head, through the doorway. A bullet from the past, to kill a man in the future.
The sound of the Colt was loud and coarse, after the brief hum of the energy weapons, and the warrior spun around incredibly fast, his sword at the ready. Just in time to see the man who would have killed him collapsing into the snow with half his head blown away. The warrior saw me, watching him through a hole in the air, and his gaze was dark and cold and thoughtful. He strode unhurriedly through the blood-spattered snow to stand before the gateway, and then considered me thoughtfully for a long moment. He still hadn’t put away his sword. Blood dripping from the blade steamed in the chill air I could feel blowing through the opening. He said something, his breath clouding on the air, but I couldn’t understand him. It didn’t sound like any human language I’d ever heard. I quickly ordered my torc to translate, and just like that his words began to make sense.
“Thanks for the help,” said the warrior. “Didn’t expect to find a friend in this God-deserted place. I owe you a debt of honour, stranger.”
“Where are the rest of your people?” I said.
He shrugged. “Dead. Every last one of them. We knew it was a suicide mission when the emperor sent us here; but it wasn’t like we had a choice. Man proposes, and the emperor disposes. Especially when you’re…no longer in favour at court.” He stopped and looked sharply around him, listening for something I couldn’t hear. “My enemies are coming again. Can you get me out of this mess, stranger? I am the only survivor of my command, and the size of the opposing force is … far greater than I was given to understand.”
“You’re taking my appearance very calmly,” I said. “Or are such things as this common in your time?”
He shrugged again. “I’ve seen stranger shit than this, out on the Rim. Get me out of here, stranger, and I vow to serve you as I would my emperor. Not forever; my vow to the imperial throne must take preference. But a time away from court might help the blood to cool a little…on both sides. Shall we say, service to you in return for my rescue, for a year and a day?”
“Sounds fair to me,” I said. But when I tried to reach through the opening, the Glass wouldn’t let me. I’d been afraid of that. “Look, I’m not really a stranger. I’m speaking to you from far in your past. I don’t know exactly how far. Centuries, certainly; maybe more. You are a descendant of my family. And my family needs a warrior’s guidance. But I can’t just…bring you through. You’re too far off from me. But I have another way of reaching you.”
“Better be quick,” he said dispassionately. “My enemies will be here soon. What’s your name?”
“Edwin Drood,” I said. “And yours?”
The warrior smiled. “Deathstalker. Giles Deathstalker.”
S
ometimes it seems to me that the whole of my time at the Hall consists of people marching up to me, determined to tell me things they already know I’m not going to like. There’s a certain look I’ve learned to recognise; equal parts determination and it’s-for-your-own-good glee. This time it was Callan Drood, emerging from a side room as I wandered back into the Hall. He looked not so much sunburned from his trip to South America, as sun-roasted. He headed straight for me, already scowling furiously. Didn’t mean it had to be bad news; Callan always looked that way. Even at the best of times, he gave the impression of someone perfectly prepared to walk through anything that got in his way, including walls, regulations, and, quite possibly, people. I just knew I didn’t want to hear what he was so determined to tell me, but short of clubbing him down with the nearest blunt instrument and walking right over him, there was no way of avoiding the man. So I stopped, heaved a heavy sigh just to show I wasn’t at all happy, and let him get on with it. “The Inner Circle wants to talk with you,” Callan said bluntly. “It’s nice to want things,” I said. “I want several large drinks and a meat pie, followed by a nice lie down, and I think I’ll go get them right now.”