Daemons Are Forever

CHAPTER NINE Out of Time

Penny came marching towards us with a determined look in her eyes. “Keep going,” I said to Molly.

“We could run,” she said.

“Lacks dignity.”

By which time Penny had caught us up anyway. She planted herself right in front of us, hands on hips, glaring at me. I smiled pleasantly back, like I hadn’t a care in the world, knowing that would annoy her the most.

“We have a problem,” Penny said flatly.

“Really?” I said. “You do surprise me. And let me guess: It’s all my fault, right?”

“Maybe,” said Penny. “Janissary Jane has gone missing. Disappeared without trace. There isn’t even any record of her leaving the grounds, which is supposed to be impossible with all the new security systems we’ve had put in place since your return.”

“Jane’s a professional,” I said calmly. “She comes and goes as she pleases. Still, it’s odd she should just disappear, without saying anything. Any clues?”

“Just the one. A note, pinned to her door with a knife. It said, Gone to get really big guns.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like Jane, all right.”

“She must have taken the losses at Nazca personally,” said Molly.

“Jane’s a soldier,” I said. “She’s fought in demons wars, seen whole civilisations die around her…If Janissary Jane thinks we need bigger guns, we must be in even more trouble than we thought. Still, she’ll be back.”

“Hopefully with really big guns,” said Molly.

“Anything else?” I said to Penny.

“While I’m here, I would like to remind you about the decisions the Inner Circle made in your absence.”

“I hadn’t forgotten,” I said.

Penny sighed. “I told them you’d take it personally. Look, Eddie, this really isn’t about you. It’s about what’s best for the family. No one’s talking about deposing you; we just want you to consult with us more.”

“Trust me, Penny,” I said. “I understand.”

Penny sighed again. “If you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So, in the interests of peace and good will and not smacking you around the head in public, I will change the subject. Nice speech you just made. You said all the right things. And unlike Harry, what you said clearly came from the heart. Keep that up, and you might just take the family with you after all.”

“Only might?” I said.

“There’s more to being a leader than being right,” said Penny. “You have to inspire, to motivate…and to know when to play politics with the right people.”

“And there I thought you were changing the subject,” I said. “Let me try. How’s Mr. Stab?”

She looked at me sharply, immediately on guard. “He’s doing well. Settling in. His lectures are always standing room only, though as yet no one’s worked up the nerve to attend a personal tutorial. He’s a fascinating man. Very…deep. Why are you asking me, Eddie?”

“Because you’ve been spending a lot of time with him,” I said.

“I won’t even ask how you know that,” Penny said coldly.

“Best not to,” I agreed.

“What I do in my private time is my business, Eddie. Don’t go poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted or needed. Or Mr. Stab might cut it off.”

She stalked away, her stiff back radiating anger. Molly looked after her. “What was that all about?”

“It seems that Penny and Mr. Stab are something of an item, these days.”

“You’re joking! Really? Doesn’t she know who he is? How can she not know who and what he is?”

“She knows,” I said. “She just doesn’t want to believe it. She thinks she can change him. And maybe she can. You always said he was a good friend to you…”

“Well yes, but only because he knows I can kick his arse in a dozen different ways…Oh hell, I’d better get after her. Time for some serious girl talk, and perhaps even an intervention. See you later, sweetie.”

A quick peck on the cheek, a waggle of the fingers, and she was off after Penny, moving at speed. I hoped the intervention worked out. I could use one less thing to worry about.

I wandered through the Hall, not going anywhere in particular, just thinking. If I couldn’t trust the advisors in my own Inner Circle anymore, then I’d just have to get some new advisors. Preferably ones who understood more about the realities of fighting a war. And I had a really great idea on where to find them, made even more fun by the certain knowledge that this was one idea the Inner Circle definitely wouldn’t approve of. I was still grinning at the thought when my left jacket pocket started jumping around like a wild thing. I grabbed at it with both hands, wrestled it still, and finally pulled out Merlin’s Glass, shaking and shuddering like a vibrator in heat. It jerked itself out of my hands, grew rapidly in size, and then hung there on the air before me, a gateway though which I could see the old library. Shelves and shelves of books, in a warm golden glow, accompanied by the definite sound of someone muttering to himself. William Drood appeared suddenly in the frame and nodded brusquely to me.

“Don’t panic, it’s only me. I needed to talk to you privately, so I activated the Glass from a distance.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.

He snorted loudly. “Lot of things you don’t know about the Merlin Glass, boy, and I haven’t enough time to warn you about all of them. Suffice to say that this is a device constructed by the infamous Merlin Satanspawn. The clue is in the name.”

“Next time, ring a little bell or something,” I said. “Scared the hell out of me.”

“You’re lucky I was able to improvise a vibrate mode,” said William. “The original version called for a really loud gong sound. Now pay attention, Edwin. I need to talk to you. Here, in the old library, where we won’t be overheard. Come on, just step through the doorway. I haven’t got all day.”

I sighed inwardly. It didn’t seem all that long ago when I was the one giving orders around here. I stepped through the opening, into the old library, and the Glass immediately shrank down to normal size again and tucked itself back into my pocket. I didn’t know it could do that, either. I resolved to spend more time reading the instruction manual, first chance I got.

William heaved an oversized leather-bound book onto a brass reading lectern and leafed through the pages rather more quickly than was probably safe for such ancient paper. He soon found the right page and began reading it to himself in a fast murmur, following the line of words with a fingertip. I waited for him to fill me in on whatever was so important that he’d had to summon me so urgently, but he seemed to have forgotten I was even there. I found a chair and sat down to wait.

Every time I thought William was getting better, he fell back into Oddly John mode.

The younger librarian Rafe appeared from between the towering stacks with a cup of steaming tea, which I accepted gratefully. Rafe looked fondly at William and leaned forward to murmur in my ear.

“You have to make allowances for the old codger. We’ve both been up all night, searching for the information you wanted. The old library has copies of books I never dreamed still existed, some of them so dangerous we had to perform low-level exorcisms before we could even get near them. William is a marvel, he really is. Jumping from one clue to the next, following the trail from volume to volume, from parchment scrolls to palimpsests to one ancient treatise actually inscribed on thin plates of beaten gold. I’ve been trying to get him to take a rest, but he’s been a driven man ever since you showed him that Kandarian artefact.”

“Damn,” I said. “It wasn’t that urgent. Has he really been up all night and this morning?”

“Yes he has,” said William, not looking up from his reading. “And actually, it is that urgent. I’m not deaf, you know. I can hear everything you’re saying. Now then, Eddie, I’ve turned up a great many references to Kandar, and the Invaders. Most of them distinctly worrying, and all of them things you need to know right now. Which is why I brought you here. Rafe, where’s that cup of tea I asked for?”

Rafe looked at me, but I’d already drunk most of it.

“I’ll go get another cup,” said Rafe.

“Never mind, never mind; stick around, Rafe. I want you to hear this as well as Edwin. Make sure I don’t miss anything out. I’m not as sharp as I once was…Pay attention, Edwin! This is important! The whole family needs to know this.”

His voice was getting querulous. Rafe brought forward a chair and William sank gratefully into it. He rubbed tiredly at his forehead. He looked suddenly older, distracted, and worryingly vague about the eyes. When he lowered his hand it was shaking visibly.

“I meant to go to the funeral,” he said suddenly. “Rafe?”

“We missed it,” said Rafe. “I did tell you…but you said the work was more important.”

“And so it is! I did mean to go, but…What was I saying?”

“Perhaps you should go to your room and have a little lie down,” I said. “Get your strength back.”

“No!” William said immediately. “Nothing wrong with me! And there’s no time, no time! Besides … I like it here. I’m not really…ready, to meet people yet.”

“But you’re home now,” I said. “Among family.”

“Especially not family,” William said firmly. “I don’t want any of them to see me like this. I’m not… all the way back, yet. I wore Oddly John as my cover for a long time, and he’s very hard to put down. Sometimes I wonder if he’s the real me now, and William is just a memory of someone I used to be, long ago … I don’t want to go to my room. I like it here. I find the books…comforting. And Rafe. You’re a good boy, Rafe. Make a fine librarian, one day.”

“You’ll be fine, William,” I said reassuringly. “You just need a little time, to adjust.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, looking around him in a vague, troubled way. “I hear things. See things. Always off to one side, where I can’t pin them down. I thought that would stop once I left Happy Daze. Maybe they followed me here.” He put his hands together in his lap, to stop them trembling, and then he looked at me. “I think the Heart did something, to my mind. To keep me from telling what I knew. And I think…whatever it did…it’s still happening.”

“The Heart is gone,” I said firmly. “Gone and destroyed. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

He just shook his head slowly, wringing his hands together and muttering under his breath. I started to get up. Whatever information William had found, or thought he’d found, clearly couldn’t be relied on. Maybe Rafe could dig some sense out of it later. And then I stopped short as William rose abruptly to his feet and glared right into my face.

“And where do you think you’re going, boy? Just because I have a bad moment? You wanted to know about the Kandarians, and the Invaders, and I know everything you need to know. Everything the family needs to know. So you just sit back down, and listen.”

His eyes were clear and sharp again, and his presence was almost overwhelming. As though some inner switch had been thrown, and the old William had woken up again and resurfaced. I sat back down, and William took up a lecturer’s stance.

“The Kandarians made themselves powerful by voluntarily giving themselves over to temporary possession by forces from Outside,” he said crisply. “As a result their warriors were inhumanly strong, and fast, and incredibly resistant to pain or injury. Remind you of anything? Yes, just like our family, the Kandarians made a deal with a greater power, but they were never satisfied. Always wanting more, always making new deals with new hosts… As they conquered all the lands and civilisations around them, and spread their vicious empire of slaughter and torture and terror over wider and wider territories, the stronger they needed to be, to hang on to what they’d taken. In the end, their enemies banded together to put a stop to Kandarian expansion. The Kandarians found that unacceptable. They were having far too much fun. And so they determined to become even stronger and more powerful. Whatever the cost. They wanted to be gods on earth. So they made one more deal, with what we now know as the Loathly Ones, who in turn introduced the Kandarians to the Invaders. Very powerful Beings, from outside space and time. And that was the Kandarians’ first mistake. Contact with the Invaders drove the Kandarians insane. All of them. They turned on each other, and wiped out their entire race and civilisation in one terrible night of death and destruction. Doing to themselves what they had spent so many years doing to everyone else.

“Not one of them survived.

“They didn’t know what we know now. That there aren’t really any Loathly Ones, as such. Not as separate entities. They’re just the protrusions into our reality of much bigger entities. The fingertips, as it were, of the Invaders. Think of the Loathly Ones as Trojan horses, through which the Invaders can gain a foothold in other realities. The Invaders have many names, in many cultures, and are feared by everyone with two brain cells to rub together. The Many-Angled Ones, the Horror From Beyond, the Hungry Gods. Beings from a higher reality than our own, who descend into lesser realities like ours in order to feed, to consume us. They feed on life, on every living thing, from the biggest to the tiniest. They eat worlds, wipe out whole realities, always moving on to the next, like cosmic locusts.

“When our family first made a deal with the Loathly Ones, bringing them through into our world as a weapon to use against the Nazis, we unknowingly brought our world, our reality, to the attention of the Invaders. And though we were careful to bring through only a small number of Loathly Ones, small enough to control, we thought… still, we opened a door that was never properly closed. And of course the Loathly Ones did break free from our control, and down the years have grown in numbers and power, until finally they’re ready to summon the Invaders through. So they can feed on us. On everything. All life, all creation. We have to stop this, Edwin, because we started it.”

William finally stopped, standing straight and tall, looking at me expectantly. I looked at Rafe.

“He’s not exaggerating,” said Rafe. His voice was steady, though his face was pale and sweating. “I’ve checked all the references. It’s all there, in the books. It’s just that no one ever put it all together, before William.”

“All right,” I said, just a bit unsteadily. “This is much bigger than we thought. How do we fight these… Invaders?”

“You don’t,” William said flatly. “If they ever break through, it’s all over. You have to prevent the Loathly Ones from building their towers. Wipe them out, down to the last one. Or we’ll never be safe.”

“And…there are some books missing,” said Rafe. “Important books. I’m assuming the Zero Tolerance fanatics removed them, maybe to hand them over to Truman and Manifest Destiny. Or maybe they destroyed them, so no one would know the truth. You see, these books described the original deal the family made with the Loathly Ones. What we promised them, and they promised us. And just maybe, some knowledge on how to undo the deal.”

“How many books are missing?” I said.

“We’re still compiling a list,” said Rafe. “One whole section of family history is missing. Including, not all that surprisingly, all those volumes that might have told us who originally suggested we contact the Loathly Ones, and why.”

“I always assumed that was down to the previous Matriarch,” I said slowly. “Great-grandmother Sarah.”

“I think it was more complicated than that,” said Rafe. “I’ve been ploughing through some of the associational texts, unofficial family history, personal diaries, and the like, and it does seem that other, more sensible, alternate choices were put aside in favour of the Loathly Ones.”

“Like who?” I said.

“The Kindly Ones,” said William. “The Infinity Brigade, the Time Masters. All the usual suspects, all far more friendly to humanity than a bunch of degenerate soul-eaters. But someone high up in the family insisted on the Loathly Ones, against all reason. I have to wonder…if perhaps there was a traitor in the family. Perhaps someone already infected by the Loathly Ones.”

My skin crawled. “An infected Drood, at the very heart of the family? Could there be others, still moving among us?”

“It’s possible,” said Rafe. “We’ve grown complacent down the years. Maybe the Armourer could come up with something we could use as a test…”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “A traitor in the family…maybe that’s why there were so many unexpected drones waiting for us at Nazca. They knew we were coming. Someone tipped them off.”

“Has anyone gone missing, since you returned?” said Rafe.

“Just Janissary Jane, but… No. Wait a minute.” I scowled, not liking where my thoughts were leading me. “She’d just got back from a demon war when I found her. She said she was the only survivor… and now I have to wonder why.”

All our heads snapped around sharply as we heard a faint, furtive noise among the stacks, not far away. I was up on my feet in a moment, plunging through the towering shelves, with Rafe and William not far behind me. And there, not even trying to hide or run away, was the Blue Fairy, caught with a pile of books in his arms. He smiled quickly at the three of us, while being careful to stand very still.

“Hello!” he said. “Don’t mind me. Just here to pick up a little light reading.”

“This is the old library,” I said. “Off limits to everyone, but especially you.”

“How very unkind,” said the Blue Fairy. “Anyone would think you don’t trust me.”

“Those are forbidden texts,” growled William. “Rare and important, very valuable. Put them down. Carefully.”

“Of course, of course!” said the Blue Fairy, still smiling his bright and easy smile. He lowered the pile of books slowly and cautiously to the floor, and then held up both hands to show they were empty, before stepping back from the pile. “Can we all just calm down a little, please? I mean, we’re all friends here, aren’t we? All on the same side?”

I gave him my best withering glare. I’d always assumed the Blue Fairy mostly came back to the Hall because he felt in need of protection from his many enemies. Like the Vodyanoi Brothers. And only secondly to do good works for the redemption of his chequered soul. After all, when all was said and done, the Blue Fairy was still half elf, and you can never trust an elf.

“What…precisely, where you looking for?” I said.

“I was interested in your family’s past dealings with the elves,” the Blue Fairy said immediately. “I don’t really know much about Daddy’s side of the family. Full blood elves don’t talk to half-breeds. Our very existence is taboo to them. But seeing you here, Eddie, among your own kind, made me sort of curious about mine. You know your roots, who and what you came from. I never have.”

I would have believed anyone else, but this was the Blue Fairy, so …

“Next time, ask permission first,” I said. “How did you get in here, anyway? The shields I had put in place around the portrait should have eaten you alive.”

“Oh please,” said the Blue Fairy, with an airy wave of one slender hand. “I am a professional, after all. I’ve been getting in and out of better-guarded places than this since before you were born.” And then he hesitated, and looked at me oddly. “I couldn’t help overhearing the librarian’s fascinating discourse on the Kandarians… It seems to me that I read something about them, and their connection with the elves. The Fae Court was already ancient when the Kandarians began building their very unpleasant empire, and it is said…that the elves introduced the Kandarians to the Loathly Ones, as a way of destroying them. Beware of elves, Eddie, they always have a hidden agenda.”

He turned and walked away. I watched him go, and wondered whether he’d been trying to tell me, in his own indirect way, something very important about himself.

I left the old library with a lot on my mind. I’d learned a lot of important things, most of which horrified me, all of which made me just that much more determined to go ahead with my secret plan. If I was going to have to fight a war against Hungry Gods, with all of reality at stake, I wanted some seriously heavy backup. First, I needed a place where no one would bother me, where I could use Merlin’s Glass in a way I was sure absolutely no one in the family would approve of. So I left the Hall and went to the old chapel, tucked away around the side of the house. Jacob’s old haunt, before I brought him back into the family. The chapel had been officially off limits to the whole family for centuries, because Jacob was there, and while he might have left the chapel, no one had got around to reversing the ban.

I approached the chapel cautiously, but the thick mat of ivy half covering the heavy wooden door didn’t even twitch. While Jacob was in residence, the ivy had acted as his early warning system, to ensure he remained undisturbed…but now he was gone, and the ivy was just ivy. The door was stuck half open, as always, and I had to put my shoulder to the heavy wood to shift it. The door scraped loudly across the bare stone floor, raising acrid clouds of dust. I coughed a few times, and called out Jacob’s name. I still half hoped…but there was no reply.

Jacob was gone.

The pews were still stacked up against the far wall, shrouded in dusty cobwebs. The huge black leather reclining chair still stood in front of the old-fashioned television set. It was only too easy to remember Jacob, slouched at his ease in the chair, watching the memories of old television programmes on a set with no working bits in it. The old refrigerator still stood beside the chair, but when I opened it, it was empty. I closed the door and sat down on the chair. The old leather creaked mournfully under my weight.

I wished Jacob were still around. I could always talk to him. And, just maybe, he would have been the only one I trusted enough to talk me out of what I intended to do. I wasn’t up to running a war. I didn’t have the experience. The Nazca Plain nest had proved that. I was damned if I’d see any more of my family killed because of me. I needed expert help and support, from real warriors and tacticians, to help me plan the battles in the war that was coming. And since it didn’t seem likely that I’d find such experts here in the present, I’d just have to look for them in the past, and the future.

The Armourer had forbidden me to do that. But I never was any good at listening to what my family told me.

I took out Merlin’s Glass and just looked at it for a while, turning it over and over in my hands. I wasn’t blind to the risks of what I was planning. But the family had to be protected. I shook the mirror out to full size, and it hung before me on the air, its surface a shimmering blank.

“Open yourself to the past,” I said firmly. “And find me the best warrior, the best planner, to help me in the war that’s coming. Find me a man good and true; someone I can trust. Find me the one perfect individual, to do what’s needed.”

The mirror snapped into sharp focus, showing me a clear image of… Jacob Drood. At first I thought the mirror had misunderstood me, and just located the ghost of Jacob because he was most on my mind. But the more I looked at the image, the clearer it became that this wasn’t any ghost. This was the real Jacob, the living man… from long, long ago. He looked so much younger, and… less complicated. As I watched, the image burst into movement, and I was looking through a window into the past, as the living Jacob chased a giggling young woman around the chapel. Grinning cheerfully, he pursued her in and out of the properly positioned pews, the girl staying just enough ahead to encourage him. Their clothing suggested late eighteenth century, though I was never very good on dates and history.

I must have made some kind of noise, because they both stopped what they were doing and looked sharply in my direction. They didn’t cry out, or seem particularly scared or startled; they were Droods, after all. I could see the gold collars around their throats.

Still, Jacob moved quickly to put himself between the young woman and the man staring at them through a hole in midair. I held up my hands to show they were empty, and gave them my most reassuring smile.

“It’s all right, Jacob,” I said quickly. “It’s all right; I’m family. I’m Edwin Drood, speaking to you from the future. The twenty-first century, to be exact. The family has need of you, Jacob.”

“If thou be family, show me thy torc,” said Jacob.

I pulled open my shirt to show him the collar around my neck. Jacob raised an eyebrow.

“A silver torc, and not gold. Has the family’s mettle become so debased, in your future time?”

“There have been some changes,” I said. “But the family goes on. You’d still recognise who we are, and what we do. The world still needs protecting, from many dangers.”

Jacob nodded slowly, then turned the young woman around, smacked her firmly on the bottom, and urged her towards the chapel door. “Get thee gone, girl. This is man’s business.”

She giggled, gave him one last saucy wink, and trotted quite happily out of the chapel. I made a mental note to tell this Jacob not to try that in my time.

“Best bit of bum in the Hall,” Jacob said cheerfully.

“That may be,” I said, “But…why the chapel?”

“Because the family’s chased me out of everywhere else,” said Jacob. “It seems the morals of this age are changing, and fun is out of fashion.” Jacob looked at me shrewdly. “From the future, you say… Might I inquire how it is that thou art here, speaking with me?”

“Merlin’s Glass,” I said, and Jacob nodded immediately.

“I had thought that devious and dangerous device long lost, and rightly so. Thy need must be desperate indeed, to put faith in such a thing.” Jacob regarded me thoughtfully. “How is it that a man of such future times recognises my face, and hails me by name? Am I to become famous, and a legend in the family?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I need you to come to me, Jacob, into the future, to help the family. Will you come?”

“Time travel is forbidden, without the express order of the Matriarch,” Jacob said slowly. “But tell me, young sir, how goes the world in your time? What new wonders and marvels?”

“Come and find out,” I said.

“Tempter!” said Jacob, smiling. “And yet it must be said, the family is not entirely happy with me, just now. I am out of sorts with my own times … so perhaps some time apart might enable the family to look on me more happily, through the kinder eyes of absence… So! Anything for the family, young Edwin!”

I reached out my hand, through the gateway, across the years, and Jacob took it. It was actually a shock, to be able to feel his flesh-and-blood hand in mine. I brought him through Merlin’s Glass, out of his time and into mine, and the gateway immediately snapped shut. Jacob let go my hand and looked around him, clearly shocked at the state of the chapel, gone (for him) in a moment from the tidy sanctuary he knew to the grubby, abandoned derelict of now. He started to say something…and the ghost of Jacob appeared out of nowhere, a fiercely glowing presence with wild eyes, hovering above us. He pointed a shaking, shrivelled hand at me, his voice howling inside my head like a damned soul.

What have you done? What have you done!

He vanished. Jacob grabbed me firmly by the arm. “What in sweet Jesu’s name was that?”

“I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” I said after a moment. “I think…I’m going to have to work up to that.”

I pried his fingers off my arm, and then used the Merlin Glass to open a gateway between the chapel and the old library. I called for Rafe, and he came trotting up immediately.

“This is Jacob Drood,” I said briskly. “Yes, that Jacob. I brought him forward, out of the past, to help us. I need you to look after him, bring him up to speed, tell him anything he needs to know, and no, I’m not going to answer any questions at this time. Just… do it, all right?”

“You just love making trouble for yourself, don’t you?” said Rafe. “Why don’t you just shoot an albatross and get it over with? Come with me…Jacob, and I’ll do my best to explain the unholy mess you’ve just been dropped into.”

“Ah, brave new world, that has such secrets in it,” Jacob said dryly. “It would appear the family of this time is not so different from the family I know, after all.”

I pushed him through the gateway and shut down the Glass before either of them could ask any awkward questions. I’d asked the Glass for the most suitable candidate, and it chose Jacob. So he had to be the right man for the job. He just had to be. I sighed heavily, looked round the empty chapel, and raised my voice in the dusty silence.

“All right, Jacob, you can come out now.”

And just like that, there he was, sitting slouched in his reclining chair, a skinny spectral presence in a grubby T-shirt and baggy shorts. His flyaway hair floated around his bony head as though he were underwater, and his eyes were dark and brooding. He glowered at me, but his heart wasn’t in it. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked old and tired and defeated.

“Why did you do it, Edwin? What did you think you were doing? Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to snatch my living self out of the past?”

“The Merlin Glass said you were what the family needed to fight this war,” I said. “But…you must have known I was going to do it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t remember!” The ghost of old Jacob looked sadly at his empty television set, and brief images flickered across the dusty screen of the living Jacob in his own time, doing all the simple everyday things the living do … all of it just a jumble of memories, gone in a moment.

“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.”