Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Read online

  Praise for Catherine Webb

  ‘Waywalkers is an exciting fast-paced tale… Highly entertaining fantasy’

  THE BOOKSELLER

  ‘Assured, well-sustained and engages directly with the reader… If I were a teenage fan of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman I would love Mirror Dreams’

  SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

  ‘A brilliant book!’

  WHS ONLINE

  ‘Mirror Dreams is a splendid book . . .

  I want to read the sequel. Now!’

  THE ALIEN ONLINE

  About the Author

  Catherine Webb wrote her acclaimed debut fantasy Mirror Dreams at the age of just fourteen, prompting extensive coverage in the national media and rights sales in France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Japan. Its sequel, Mirror Wakes, was published six months later, shortly after Catherine was named Young Trailblazer of the Year by Cosmo Girl magazine.

  Catherine lives in North London and is currently studying for her A-Levels. As well as writing, she enjoys reading, badminton and chess. She likes cats, space (the stuff with stars in) and Fridays. She is less keen on drizzle, Hammersmith and the number 73 bus. You can find out more about her by visiting www.atombooks.net.

  BY CATHERINE WEBB

  Mirror Dreams

  Mirror Wakes

  Waywalkers

  Timekeepers

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Atom

  978-0-3490-0202-6

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Catherine Webb

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ATOM

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Timekeepers

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Catherine Webb

  About the Author

  By Catherine Webb

  COPYRIGHT

  INTRODUCTION: Sam Linnfer

  ONE: Son of Magic

  TWO: Soho Square

  THREE: Picture Perfect

  FOUR: Franz the Forger

  FIVE: Hospital

  SIX: Phone Call

  SEVEN: Coming Together

  EIGHT: Trusts and Truths

  NINE: Jehovah

  TEN: Tinkerbell

  ELEVEN: Ashen’ia

  TWELVE: A Question of Loyalty

  THIRTEEN: Remission

  FOURTEEN: Position of the Enemy

  FIFTEEN: Asgard

  SIXTEEN: Unpaid Debt

  SEVENTEEN: Conquering Time

  EIGHTEEN: Darkness

  NINETEEN: Seth

  TWENTY: Bearer of Light

  TWENTY-ONE: Lucifer

  INTRODUCTION

  Sam Linnfer

  W

  here to begin? So many minds, drowning out my voice, filling my soul, no escape. So many places blending into one, all these memories, no more individual, no more alone. The Light has brought this on me, always the Light. So many voices filllng my ears, yet they speak as one, and they say the same. We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the light and the dark, the individual and the whole, the magic… the magic and the what? What is the opposite of magic, why doesn’t it know? Surely the Light, that compasses so many minds, feels so many thoughts, is so much in so little, so much in me, knows all answers. Where to begin?

  Even here the Light knows, although it is hard to tune down all the voices to one single sound. A thousand minds that are not my own, a thousand souls imprinted on my soul, just as mine is imprinted on theirs, whisper the answer, and even as I understand, I feel myself slipping from the One into the Many, and not even the magic can hold me up. Not any more.

  To begin…

  In the beginning there had been Cronus, and under his iron rule there was no change. All was suspended at one point, endless existence with no death, but no life either. Then came Time, who fought with Cronus and imprisoned him beyond the veil of physical worlds, locking him away for all eternity and hiding the key to his jail that no man might find him. And under Time came life, and with life came the other Greater Powers, his Queens of Heaven. Night, Day, War, Wisdom, Light, Love, Chaos, Order and Belief brought forth children to Time, and these children grew many and powerful. Immortal and magical, they used their gifts to walk between worlds, through the Ways of Hell, Heaven and Earth.

  But all was not well in Heaven, and the Children of Time warred among themselves, each house fighting for rule of that magical land. And Time feared that his children might free his enemy, Cronus, so he created a weapon of such power that even the Greater Powers themselves trembled at its passage. And he took this weapon, called it the Light, and placed it in the heart of his favourite child, his golden son, Balder, the only Son of Light, Time’s most honoured Queen. And Heaven rejoiced to see this great man hold this great power, for none feared that he might use it for evil, and he was most loved in all the worlds. So much so, it was rumoured that Balder was the only child truly beloved by Time himself, who ever used men only as tools.

  Yet there was one, Loki, a Son of Night, who did fear. He struck a bargain with the sleeping god Cronus, and slew the Bearer of Light, Balder, striking dread into the heart of Time once more, for, without the Light, Time feared the return of Cronus. Loki himself was imprisoned like his master, Cronus, who remained locked away, plotting and scheming in the darkness. All feared that without the Light, Cronus should escape and destroy Time for ever. So all of Heaven wept for the death of Balder, the shining child of Time. None more so than his father, who feared that with the death of his son he had lost the greatest weapon he possessed; for Time did not wish to meddle directly in the affairs of men.

  Then one day, out of the shadow stepped a new Bearer of Light. A Son of Time and Magic, illegitimate Prince of Heaven, this child had been created for the sole purpose of serving Time against his enemies, and in his heart was locked the power of the Light for ever. He was made suspicious, cunning, clever, so that should another Child of Time decide to act against him, he would survive, where Balder had died. But he was also defiant in the face of his father’s purpose, and he turned away from Heaven and was banished to Earth. There for thousands of years he schemed and watched and waited, aware constantly of the Light inside him, and wishing it were not his burden to bear.

  He walked Earth and Hell under many names. Sam Linnfer, Luke Satise, Sebastian Teufel, Satan, Lucifer, the Devil. And few dared challenge him, for fear of Magic, his mother, and the power of the Light that he guarded inside him, so he and his power endured.

  The time for action came unexpectedly, from three of Lucifer’s brothers – Seth, Son of Night, Jehovah, Son of Belief and Odin, Son of War. These, their houses weakened by war, drew together and swore to find and free the Pandora spirits, banished and imprisoned by Time for the danger they posed to his realm: Hate, Greed, and Suspicion. However, their sister, fair Freya, Daughter of Love, discovered what they planned. But she was betrayed to her death and the spirits were freed, their powers answering only the commands of Jehovah, Odin and Seth.

  Lucifer, seeing what had been done, drew the Light to himself and attacked the spirits, though us
ing the Light at all brought him great danger. The Light tapped the minds of men, and from their thoughts drew its power. But in the process his mind, channelling all those other minds, could become lost in a sea of thought, and to recall it to its rightful place was hard. With the spirits weakened, if not destroyed, he fought his brother, Seth, leader of the three who had conspired to unleash this evil. But neither won and both, wounded, had to flee the field.

  Yet through this battle Lucifer had learned one thing that made what had gone before seem trivial. His brother Seth was mustering an army in Hell to seek the thing no one had dreamed he would look for. The key that locked Cronus in his prison was buried somewhere in the sands of Hell and Seth, driven almost to madness by his lust for power and by hatred of his kin, was determined to find it.

  Protected by the Light from the spirits’ power, by injuring Seth Lucifer had averted disaster. But not for long, as well he knew. He looked to Heaven, and felt the eye of his father fixed on him. All the while Time had waited. As King of Heaven he had created the Bearer of Light with just one possible purpose. To destroy Cronus would mean channelling with the Light, through Lucifer’s mind, everything that lived. And Lucifer knew, as well as Time, that such a use of the Light would not only bring down Cronus, but take the Bearer with him too.

  It was, as Lucifer himself concluded, a piss-poor situation.

  ONE

  Son of Magic

  T

  his, thought Sam Linnfer, is a piss-poor situation.

  Amid the squalor of his Clerkenwell flat, Adam, shapeshifter spirit and part-time spy for Sam, passed a mug of coffee and said, ‘I’ve checked up. All our Heaven sources are utterly silent; not a creature stirring up there. Most of Hell has gone hush-a-bye too, although rumour has it that Seth has obliterated Hades. The capital, though, Pandemonium, seems intact.’

  Sam sipped the coffee, scowling at his own thoughts. As ever, Adam’s sitting room was a tip: empty Coke cans everywhere, unread newspapers stained with food, stacks of books more than slightly foxed, a carpet looking like an outsize pride of lions had used it as substitute cat litter. Adam himself, a small man with ginger hair and freckles, looked dwarfed by the piles of rubbish.

  None of this was important to Sam Linnfer. What counted right now was the knowledge sitting inside his head, where it looked thoroughly unhappy. Indeed, the more he considered his situation, the less hopeful he felt.

  Yeah, wake from a week’s regenerative trance after getting pounded to a pulp by Seth, and, as a last resort, releasing the Light – it was always bound to be a bad day.

  ‘What will you do?’ Adam’s gaze was mild but attentive.

  ‘What can I do?’ sighed Sam. ‘I can’t even stay and talk to you for more than a few hours. As soon as Jehovah remembers my existence, he’ll dispatch the Pandora spirits to destroy me, but when they find themselves unable to get through my head they’ll target yours. And you know well enough that, depending on which spirit is sent, you’ll either hate, suspect or be jealous of me, and it’ll get messy.’

  Adam blushed at the memory of his own recent dominance by one of the Pandora spirits. Jealousy, who’d made him try to kill Sam.

  A week. A whole week in a trance of regeneration. The thought of that much time gone by disquieted Sam. Even injured, Seth might have got closer to releasing Cronus. Anti-Time, the end of life. Sometimes Sam wondered whether he shouldn’t just fulfil his apparent destiny – to die discharging the Light against Cronus. Yet always that single word ‘destiny’ hardened his resolve. If that was the purpose of his father in creating him, then he would do everything in his power to defy Time, and live.

  But not at the cost of letting Cronus go free.

  The one nagging question that remained was simple: how?

  And to that he had no answer. At least no satisfactory one.

  ‘One man, a mortal working for Freya, found out where Cronus was imprisoned,’ he said. ‘He was killed by Seth, but not before revealing to Seth that same location. Therefore Seth is now the only person who knows where Cronus’s key is hidden. Correct?’

  Adam looked uncomfortable. ‘Correct,’ he admitted with reluctance, as if such disaster could somehow be falsified by its sheer scale.

  ‘I can’t confront Seth, because with an army, the Pandora spirits and Odin, probably Thor too, on his side, I’d be flattened before I could say “Sorry, wrong door”. I can’t forge new alliances because, let’s face it, the Pandora spirits would break them in a second, and I can’t draw on old ones for exactly the same reason. I’m stumped.’

  ‘But,’ ventured Adam, ‘I don’t think you’re about to give up, are you?’

  Sam gave a weary smile. It was unlike his usual boyish grin, on a young face made old by the knowledge in those black eyes, but it was still a smile. ‘Whoever said anything about that?’

  He was packing his bags, when it came. He froze where he stood and frowned, trying to concentrate on the itch in the back of his mind.

  Lucifer…

 

  A laugh, suddenly loud in his head.

  He sighed. The suave Son of Night, with his nearly always perfect manners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  For a second behind Seth’s voice, Sam felt something else. His mind struck something cold and hard as he lashed out at it, and he heard Seth laugh.

  Seth’s counter-stroke came, flaring across Sam’s senses like fire. Sam closed his eyes against it, crawling along the afterburn of Seth’s magic to find his brother’s mind, and hammered back with mental darts of ice that tore at it for all it was worth.

  he screamed.

  He felt Seth fall back.

 

  Light flared against Sam’s eyes and he instinctively shielded, repulsing the spell and lashing out again at Seth.

  At where Seth’s mind had been.

  The scry was broken. Seth was gone.

  Sam sat down slowly on the flat’s ruinous sofa and groaned.

  Problems…

  Had he managed to push Seth back in time? Scrying was a spell designed to locate physical objects and obtain information – had he managed to push Seth back before his brother had found his location? And even if he had, Seth had other ways of finding him, hadn’t he?

  Seth had the Pandora spirits…

  There was a knock at the door. Sam stood up, wobbling slightly as bl
ood rushed from his head. ‘Adam?’

  The door opened, and Adam stuck his head round. ‘Hi. I wondered if everything was okay.’