City of Time (30 page)

wishes. He can sleep in peace knowing that he died the way he lived his life."

"I'm sorry, Cati."

"There is nothing to be sorry for. He was the Watcher. He did his duty."

A murmur of approval went around the crowd, then a shout went up as the Resisters saluted their fallen hero. "Watcher! Watcher!"

Cati walked to the dais where Owen stood. She took him by the hands and embraced him. The hug was warm, but as her cheek touched his, he could feel tears.

They feasted long into the night. There were smoked hams and cured meats and bacon and sausages, and fish that the Raggies had brought from the harbor. Rutgar had gone out with his men and dug potatoes and vegetables from abandoned fields.

Wesley and the others listened openmouthed to Owen as he told them about the
Wayfarer
. Wesley asked shrewd questions about how she sailed. Silkie listened enthralled to Cati's tales about the Dogs, and was fascinated to hear about Rosie and how she dressed. Martha sat with Contessa, and they talked long into the night about Owen's father.

It was late when Martha went over to Owen. The Raggies were singing sea shanties, and Dr. Diamond was dancing an old-fashioned waltz with Pieta.

"We should slip off," she whispered to him, "before

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the party is over. There will be sadness later, when it is time for them to sleep."

Owen nodded. He couldn't bear to say goodbye to his friends. Hearts heavy, Martha and Owen slipped out of the Convoke. But they didn't get far. At the tree trunk that bridged the river, Cati and Wesley awaited them, and they heard footsteps behind them as Dr. Diamond ran up.

"Off slip you'd thought," he gasped breathlessly, agitation causing him to speak backward. They all laughed, but still the parting was hard. Wesley gave Owen a firm handshake and then turned away, blowing his nose on his ragged sleeve. Dr. Diamond also shook hands.

"There is one more thing." The doctor's face was serious. "You went against the will of the Convoke. The path to Hadima was sealed and you opened it."

"If he hadn't, the world would have fallen!" Martha protested.

"Nevertheless, there must be punishment. I have met with Contessa, Pieta, Rutgar, Samual, and Wesley. We have decided."

Owen waited. What would the punishment be? Would he be sundered from his friends forever?

"We have decided that you should replace Mary White as our Watcher in the visible world, with all the duties that entails."

His voice was solemn, but Cati laughed in delight.

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"That means I can contact you from the shadows of time!"

"It is no longer against our law to call on Owen," Dr. Diamond said, "but only in times of concern or danger. Your father only contacted Mary in time of great need. Remember that, Cati."

"I do," Cati said, "for I never contacted her once. I had no need until it was too late."

"I suppose, with Johnston gone, things will be quieter," Owen said, sighing in relief.

"I don't know," the doctor said. "We saw him fall, but has he gone forever? We'll see. In any case, we know the Harsh are not gone. We won a battle, Owen, not the war. Stay vigilant!"

Cati started to speak, then threw her arms around Owen. He could feel tears on his shoulder.

"See you soon, Watcher," he said, feeling a dampness in his own eyes.

"From the shadows, Navigator," she said, smiling.

There was another surprise when they got to the top of the hill. Instead of turning toward their house, his mother went up the road toward Mary's shop. "Where are we going?"

"Mary left the house to us, and we're going to live there now. We have to guard the clock, and the
Wayfarer
, of course."

The little shop was quiet and dark. Owen hesitated at the door. "I'll come in a minute," he said. His mother nodded.

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He slipped around the back into the garden. The
Wayfarer
lay on her side, looking as if she had been shipwrecked. But when he ran his hand along her rail, he felt a shiver run through her timbers. Owen climbed on board. He put his grandfather's charts under his jacket. They would be safe in the Den. Then he went to the tiller.

He reached down for the Mortmain, expecting that it would be stuck fast, but it came away easily, the brightness of the map rings now faded. He put it under his jacket to keep it safe. Then, with an affectionate pat for the ship, he jumped back into the garden.

He walked down the road until he stood at the field gate looking at the river and the Workhouse. He could feel the weight of the Mortmain against his skin. The moon was still large, but almost in its proper place. A faint light in the east signaled that dawn was close. At the Workhouse all was quiet and very still. He wondered if they were all asleep, if Cati watched.

"See you soon, Watcher," he whispered.

END OF BOOK TWO

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T he procession moved in silence. At its head, the body of the great Harsh king was borne along on a black wagon. The wagon was drawn by six horses, if they could be said to be living horses. Their coats gleamed in a way that suggested health, but the gleam came in fact from a coating of frost, and their hooves appeared to be of ice. The horses' heads were the same shape and size as that of a normal horse, but their eyes were dark and lifeless, and icicles hung from their mouths
.

Behind the wagon came the Harsh in procession. Ice kings and queens, princes and dukes of frost, their gorgeous icy raiment shimmering as they moved. And behind them, carried aloft, the small solitary figure of a Harsh child, the only one of his kind
.

The procession was silent, because the Harsh did not need to speak among themselves. But for those with ears to hear, conversation moved among them like leaves whistling in the wind,
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and the subject of the conversation was always the same. Revenge. Swift and merciless retribution against the boy who had caused the death of their great king. The boy who had thwarted their plans. The Harsh were haters of warmth and life, and twice already they had attacked the very fabric of time in an attempt to destroy all living things. They had wreaked great destruction on the earth, but each time Owen the Navigator had stood in their way. After the king was buried the boy and his world would be crushed for once and for all
.

And so it was that when the great frozen doors of the kings' tomb had clanged shut forever and the terrible funeral rites of the Harsh had been observed, the frozen kings and queens gathered in conference, standing in their hundreds before the tomb. They fell silent as the dead king's wife raised her hand. The Harsh could change their appearance, and she appeared to them as a young girl, cold and beautiful, the better to persuade them
.

"We have waited too long," she said, "and have given our enemies the chance to escape. I say no more!"

"What is your proposal?" A tall prince spoke
.

"We still control most of time. We should unleash a flood of time, and upon that flood we can launch our ships."

"The fleet," the prince murmured, "you are talking about the fleet."

"We should set sail on time itself," the queen said, "hunt down this boy, slayer of my husband."

"The fleet is ready," he replied. "It is time to take our revenge on this boy."

"Revenge!" the queen shrieked. The young girl faded and her real face appeared, that of an ancient and terrible crone
.

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"
Revenge!" The word ran through the crowd
.

"Launch the fleet!" The queen's voice rose in command
.

"The fleet! The fleet!" The crowd chanted the words, although they made no sound that could be heard by human ear. The queen smiled grimly and bowed. The Harsh were going to war. Only one small child standing to the side of the throng did not raise his voice in acclaim
.

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Chapter 37

Perhaps they should have been watching the grand father clock. Owen and his mother had taken over a little house that had belonged to a woman called Mary White. To the rest of the town Mary had been just a simple shopkeeper. But Owen and his mother knew her as one of the links between a secret world and the world they lived in. More than that, she was the keeper of a secret. The grandfather clock was more than just a timepiece. When you opened it you found a gateway into time itself, known as an ingress. Owen and Martha, his mother, knew the clock was important, but even if they had been watching it, they might have missed the sign, or not have recognized it for what it was. And besides, it was growing dark.

Owen lit the oil lamp and placed it on the table. The electricity supply was better than it had been but was still unreliable, and they were grateful for the wood-burning

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stove in the sitting room. It had been ten months since the moon had almost crashed into the earth, and the rebuilding was still going on. All over the world power stations had been damaged, roads and bridges destroyed.

Owen was one of three adventurers who had traveled across time to the great City of Hadima in order to save the world. They had brought back a tempod from the City. The tempod was a rare hollow rock containing a quantity of time, enough to repair the fabric of space and time and send the moon back to its proper orbit. The Harsh had drained time from the world, disrupting gravity, and sending the moon plunging towards the earth. The adventurers had succeeded in stopping the Harsh, but the damage wrought on the earth had been terrible.

Even now the school in the nearby town was only open for three hours a day, and half the people had not returned, giving the streets a strange deserted feel. But still, the little house they had moved into after Mary had died was cozy, and Owen's mother was stronger than she had been for years. They both knew that there were battles to come, and that Owen's friends, the Resisters, would wake once more to defend the fabric of time, but for now they were happy with simple things, such as the pie his mother now set on the table, steam rising from the crust. Martha cut into it and put a slice on Owen's plate, the oil lamp casting shadows on his pale face that made him look serious and grown-up, until he reached for his knife and fork and dove greedily in.

"Take it easy," she said, laughing. "Leave some for me."

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Perhaps that was the moment they should have looked at the clock, but they were content in each other's company, and in any event, it was nothing. Just the hands of the clock hesitating for a brief moment, trembling as if they bore a huge weight, and then moving on as normal. The only sign that something had changed.

A mile away Cati leaned on the parapet of the Work-house, eating a supper of cheese and hard biscuit. She could see the light in Owen's window and wondered what her friend was doing. She shifted restlessly. She was one of the Resisters, fighters dedicated to protecting time. All of the other Resisters were asleep in a place beneath the Workhouse called the Starry, bound to remain there until there was a threat and they were called. Cati's job as Watcher was to guard them and wake them when needed. She lived in the shadows of time where no one could see her, and was only allowed to contact Owen in an emergency. Someday, she thought, she would get used to the loneliness of it.

She sighed and stretched. Every evening before she went to bed she patrolled the Workhouse, the ancient building above the riverbank that was the headquarters of the Resisters. To the outside world the building was a ruin, but Cati knew that it stood on an island in time, and had on many occasions served as a bulwark against chaos when the normal smooth flowing of the hours and years had been interrupted.

She knew every stone and every passageway and longed for the days when, instead of being empty and

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cold, the rooms were thronged with men and women. She walked through the great silent kitchens, then went to look at the Skyward, their friend Dr. Diamond's laboratory, which was hidden deep underground for the moment. Inside its glass walls the Skyward was dark and still, but she could imagine the doctor at work in it, inventing and studying. She half smiled at the thought--you were as likely to get a permafrozen rose as a cake from the battered old oven by the door, or find yourself seeing backward in time through a contraption made from what looked like old vacuum cleaner parts.

Her final task was to check on the sleeping Resisters. She went round the side of the building and carefully unlocked the hidden door to the Starry, the chamber under the earth where the adults and children waited for the call to rise. Beneath the domed and star-flecked ceiling, the Resisters lay sleeping, row after row of them on beds with their hands folded on their breasts, breathing gently. Her heart warmed as she saw familiar faces. Dr. Diamond, a smile on his face. Pieta, the brave and proud warrior, her strange mocking eyes closed for now. Cati shook her head, feeling the sleep of the Starry wash over her. If she stayed there long enough, the sleep would overcome her. With a wistful grin, she stepped back out into the fresh air and locked the door behind her.

If she had stayed another minute, she would have seen what happened. But perhaps she would not have known