Downs-Lord Dawn

by John Whitbourn

Genres: Religious & Inspirational; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alternative History sci-fi

Synopsis

Thomas Blades, a 17th century curate, discovers a magical door to another world - or rather to an alternative Earth. But here, humanity is not the top of the food chain, as Blades finds when the poor, burrow-dwelling humans he stumbles over are hunted and eaten by the Null - mighty, ravening beasts whose intelligence and killing ability makes them top predator. Returning to our own world for weapons, Blades vows to become humanity's saviour on his new earth and, over the years, builds an empire of which he becomes the first God-king. Power shifts between humanity and Null but as the humans grow in sophistication, so comes treachery, jealousy and murder - and God-king Blades will change much from the timid cleric who first happened upon his domain...

Release date: November 28, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 348

Sample

‘Pennies for a poor man, sir?’

‘Get a job, damn y’ eyes!’

And there Captain Theophilus Oglethorpe (jnr.) would have left it, their divergent life-paths intersecting never to cross again. But then he realised the beggar had spoken in English. In Capri, indeed, in all eighteenth-century Italy, that was rare enough to command attention. The sparkling blue sea, the crumbling headlong path down to the piazza and dinner still beckoned but they could wait. He backtracked.

‘Say again, sirrah.’

Joanna, his mistress of the moment, frowned unbecomingly. She did not understand her lover’s moderation towards street-scum. A true native of seething Naples, she no longer even saw them.

Conversely, Oglethorpe deplored that lack of charity, waving her on with his swordstick. In his English-naive opinion, seventeen-year-olds should retain some of the innocence of youth. Fine legs and skilful lips wouldn’t save her from displacement if she didn’t sweeten soon. Her sister was poised, waiting in the wings. Her tongue could tie a knot in a cherry stalk: he’d seen her do it.

‘Come, come, my man. I heard you plain. Speak English once more.’

The appalling figure considered the request. He was not as humble as a broken oldster by the wayside ought to be. His grime and rags and wrinkles should have engendered servility. Finally, the toothless mouth cracked.

‘Very well. How do you do, sir? Could you possibly spare a coin or two?’

Theophilus was so amazed that a hand was on its way to his pocketbook before he knew it. Just to hear the exquisite mother tongue spoken so far from home deserved reward alone – but to encounter its cultured version was veritable rain in the desert.

‘Here,’ he showered piastres and pennies mixed, down into the proffered hat. Thanks were nodded but not spoken.

Oglethorpe stirred the dust with his stick. Motes rose briefly, glorified to significance by the Caprisi sun.

‘And so, my man, how came you here – and why?’

It was the least of requests. He was willing to waste a minute or two – and tighten the pout on Joanna’s face. There might be a story therein to sprinkle zest on the waiting flagons of wine. It didn’t arrive.

‘I might ask you the same question,’ came the sole reply.

Back home, the Oglethorpes were renowned for their tempers, for duels and falls from grace. It was through just such, and Jacobite opinions spoken boldly without thought for cost, that Theophilus now trod the path of exile, from Surrey home to France and then China and Sicily – and finally sybarite Capri. The easy south had relaxed him somewhat. He’d acquired a patina of the Mediterranean life-cycle outlook, learnt the easy-going resigned shrug, and draped both over the sharp get-things-done angles of an Anglo-Saxon upbringing. People liked him better, even as they became wary of his new charm. To themselves the locals recalled a medieval proverb: ‘Inglese Italianato è un Diavolo incarnato’ – ‘An Italianised Englishman is a Devil incarnate’.

Now, his native nature reasserted itself, a unsuspected sea-monster rearing from the suave waters. Oglethorpe’s whole universe telescoped down until it was exclusively outrage.

Joanna came hurtling back, a silk centre to a dust storm. She didn’t want to lose this fountain of generosity just yet. Murder was still murder – even on Capri.

Her shapely boot connected with the beggar.

‘Speak, dog! Answer the Inglese Lord!’

That did the trick, proving her tough wisdom nicely. The old man was broken: abject. He’d learned her language right enough.

He looked up into Oglethorpe’s face, silently surrendering his story. He was read: he was understood. His eyes held all the sadness there ever was.

Theophilus had seen the like before. In Canton he’d observed a forger boiled alive. Before the cauldron even grew tepid the felon had peered out upon the world like that. The Englishman had hoped to reach life’s end without witnessing it again.

‘Actually, I’m not sure I want to h …’ Oglethorpe’s words were involuntary, instinct overridden and foreign to his nature. Accordingly, Joanna didn’t recognise or acknowledge his fear. She booted again – and the deed was done. Speech poured forth: there was no point in protest, no lid to fit the box.

The consoling fragrance of the wayside flowers was lost: overshadowed; the sun shone less bright. Theophilus steeled himself.

‘I have fallen far,’ said the beggar, humbly; fearful of another blow – from any direction. ‘I am the first of a long line of kings …’

Oglethorpe frowned – thinking he might as well get in that mode.

‘The last in the line, surely?’ he corrected.

For an instant there was backbone in the beggar, but it was fleeting, like a stillbirth’s soul. Whilst it still lived he spoke.

‘What I have said, I have said,’ he told them firmly.

‘The Null are a disgusting and oppressive race. I have decided to exterminate them all.’

The god-king set down the diary. At last: something to cheer the heart and agree with.

‘Yesterday they caught and ate my third-favourite concubine. A Mrs Speed look-a-like, no less. Her sucked bones were sent to me with the blinded survivor of her thousand man escort. I thought well on’ t.

‘I concluded that if it be jests they require they shall have them. People – and monsters – should be given what they want …’

Ah now, the god-king remembered this from history: the marvellous blood-eagle sacrifices of year 23. All the Null captives, awaiting transformation into nourishing pig-feed (once drained and diced) in the secure-corral, were set down, one by one, and cut open, their ribs being drawn back and out, in mockery of wings. A Null-queen, one of the first captured, was likewise treated. Now, that was a sizeable job. Even today no grass grew where her blood had flowed.

After that, when they found their dishonoured brood-mates strewn on the Man–Null frontier, they treated humanity with more respect. They paid their prisoners the honour of unbelievable torture before dining on them. Men were no longer mere food-beasts but opponents.

‘The Vikings treated their enemies thus and I think it a salutary policy. Compared to the torments my imagination frames for my foes I consider I have been full merciful …’

One of the problems with the diary were the frequent references to the first god-king’s previous life in Paradise. For popular consumption his successors claimed omnipotence and all-knowledge. In practice they obviously had to await the chrysalis transformation of earthly death. This god-king freely admitted to himself he’d no idea who or what a ‘Viking’ was.

His attention wavered from the echoing throne-room, where ninety-nine wide-spaced silken veils separated him from the nearest worshippers. Their prayers were conveyed by voice-tubes snaking all through the palace, a ceaseless whisper of supplication and praise. There were even mouthpieces in the castle walls so that the lower orders might approach their Lord and (alleged) creator.

The god-king paused upon that thought. He had no recollection of creating anybody. If he was responsible then what had he been thinking of? Why so many types of beetle? How many did you strictly need? And why that priest-cantor he saw yesterday, with unsightly, sticky-out, ears? Could he now alter that or create new and better life; less big beetles that crunched sickeningly when you accidentally trod on them? Universally attractive humans? No, he couldn’t. It was a puzzle.

Another was why he couldn’t have a cushion on his throne. Carved from one vast quartz crystal it was cool and hard – a penance to the backside during prolonged adoration. Why shouldn’t he opt for comfort when no one would see it and he was a god who could do as he willed?

Because, came the inner, divine, answer, a god-king – who should have all that he wilt etc. etc. – didn’t ought to need cushions or acquire a sore arse. One notion thus negated the other in an annoying circular argument. He chased his tail round that circuit till his head hurt. The god-king was minded to execute someone.

Resisting that temptation (too wearisome, too messy) there was the possibly of seeking other diversion. His ‘Companions of the Silken Passages’ were waiting, poised, in various secret side-chambers, raring to go and terrified, waiting for a sign. Relays of them were kept in readiness twenty-four hours a day, unsleeping candidates for the honour of his lustful attentions. Nowadays, they were less and less troubled, as the urge played will o’ the wisp with him. For some whole shifts passed without incident. Such a waste …

Well, waste it would have to be. He felt sorry for them, poised and cramped on their starting blocks, all oiled and painted up for nothing, but he hadn’t the wherewithal. Even the most mettlesome Maiden of the Back Passage or Lady of the Silken Lips didn’t strike a spark at present.

Nor did he feel like pot-shots at the Null-corral, though his musket-of-gold sat temptingly on its window rest, aimed directly at the hapless giant captives below. Likewise, the leathery reptiles the first god-king had christened ‘Parliaments’ wheeled and cawed round the tower in no danger today.

Should gods have moods he wondered?

He wished he’d never heard of the diary, never out of bored curiosity ordered it extracted from beneath the Holy of Holies. There was much within that was … subversive.

Whole pages were mere levity and lack of seriousness. The section on accumulating the first harem was disfigured by what the god-king strongly suspected to be drool. The book was no stranger to wine-glass rings and fingerprints and the ghosts of long ago suppers. It wasn’t what he expected from the original and model god-king, the revered source of a broad and mighty river.

Far along the succeeding centuries, this god-king felt vaguely … let down: disappointed.

He looked round, through one of the slit windows and out into the green land beyond. Such settlements, such peace, such beauty. Supposedly, it was all his, by maker’s rights – supposedly.

He sighed, and wished the sound could carry back down the voice-tubes. His worshippers ought to know that he doubted.

There are few things sadder than an atheist god-king.

The future ‘first god-king’ shut the Bible with a crash. Most of the congregation re-awoke.

‘In the name of Almighty God, Amen.’

Some replied in kind, others mumbled sullen affirmation. A few, the real black-clad malcontents, gave him equally black looks.

‘Canting dogs!’ he said – more or less – to himself, but the front row, they heard it.

‘And you – and your mother,’ countered one of them, a known Anabaptist dragged unwillingly to Anglican worship.

His poor sermon over, Curate Blades retreated from pulpit prominence to decent obscurity. In the sideline shadow by the high altar there should have been comfort but he found none. What he did find was the Reverend Speed writing furiously – as in fast and angry. The Curate hated that memorandum book; he dreamed of a pack of hounds savaging it with dribblesome grrrrs.

He met a dashed clerical stare asking: ‘Was that it?’

‘Fraid so,’ he shrugged back.

‘Stupid boy!’ came the response, not troubling who heard.

Speed, a proper priest, arose, magnificently oblivious to the waves of hatred coming from at least a quarter of the worshippers. He approached the altar and the waiting communion vessels. He was a moving statue called ‘Confidence’. There was no danger of adverse comment when Fighting Sam Speed was about his trade.

‘Beloved brethren …’ he began.

‘His chaplayne he plyed his wonted work.He prayed like a Christian and fought like a Turk.Crying now for the King and the Duke of Yorkwith a thump, a thump thump …’

regarding Reverend Samuel Speed, MA. From a ballad of the Dutch Wars by Sir John Birkenhead.

‘Not to mention overtones of Pelagianism, Solipsism and Unitarianism.’

The Reverend Speed ticked off the notes in his notes, anointing his pencil between each accusation with a coating of bile.

‘A rich harvest of heresy indeed, Mr Blades, for so short and thin a sermon.’

The Curate knew better than to protest: least said the sooner the bombardment ended. In dealing with the Reverend it was vital to recall he had never really ceased to be a soldier. In fighting the Dutch or fighting ‘the Good Fight’ he brought the same principles to bear: no prisoners and no wasting sword-strokes on fallen foes. Curate Blades bowed his head, feigning shame.

‘I should hope so, sirrah. Sort your ideas out!’ He was poked in the coat buttons, hard enough to evict breath. ‘And sort ’em short-ish: before next Sabbath, for then you shall ride again!’

In the purple thunderstorm that was his intellect, the Reverend Speed saw purpose in thrusting his curate forward under fire. He entertained wild hopes of reform for both minister and unwilling audience in their fumbling intercourse. That neither wanted the other he held to be ‘a notion of straw’.

‘More rage, man!’ he told him, the jabbing finger like the officer’s half-pike he used to use. ‘Less milk and water! Tell ’em about the wailing and gnashing of teeth! Recount the torments to come!’

Curate Blades was miles and centuries away. There was countryside visible through the bubbled glass of the vestry window. Out there, he didn’t doubt, were people, peace, knowledge, experience – fun, even. At the moment it seemed a long way away … but so, so, desirable.

Coincidentally, desire saved him, arriving in the form of Mrs Speed. That ‘soft palmed and full-bottomed’ (Blades’s summary) form, those hinted-at hills and valleys, invited appraisal. Likewise her sweet-to-everyone smile. Curate Blades appreciated God’s Creation even as he doubted the Creator’s love for it. He saw no bar to gorging his eyes on the feast of nubility. As always, Rector Speed was part flattered, part enraged. Before the Curate’s gaze had even tracked up to her ankles he was dismissed.

Speed had no real grounds for complaint but knew very well what had shimmied through Blades’s mind. Damned cheek.

‘The trouble with him,’ he told his wife, ‘is that he lives in another world.’

The so-what? glance from Mrs Speed was fielded and fired back.

‘And I don’t mean the next one,’ he explained.

Blades didn’t catch Speed’s diagnosis but wouldn’t have demurred. If enough people say a thing there must be something to it.

A Godalming schoolroom: somewhen whilst ‘the English Monster’, Cromwell, was smashing the Monarchy and Scotland.

The junior Blades could not command his eyes to attend to Caesar’s words. If Gaul was indeed once ‘divided into three parts’ he did not care.

Way beyond the dust-mote bearing air within, the window showed a better view. The green North Downs beckoned him to days of delight. Caesar was dead, young Blades was not. Why should the long-gone hamstring the living?

The master noticed – for the umpteenth time. He had the persistence of the gentle – and wisdom enough to know when to despair.

‘The trouble with you, boy,’ he roared (for form’s sake),’ is that you live in a world of your own!’

Blades jumped – as was proper and required and polite – and readdressed his text. Three parts … three parts … Gaul is divided … He tried to recall that his mother paid good money for this nonsense. Childhood tedium and terror were the required price for avoiding hard work and poverty in adulthood. Logically, it made sense.

Gaul is … divided …

The wider world – the verdant and interesting bit of it – was no longer visible but its siren call continued. Fragrant fingers tapped his brain and said ‘come and play …’

‘A world of my own,’ he thought on. ‘If only …’

Years later it all came back to him – in another place that was also the same place. The first real victory.

They had recaptured the Long Barrow of Those Before. It was black-coated with dead Null, their golden eyes turned lifeless to the sky. Some remaining bones of the ancestors were discovered, unsullied, unsucked by Null lips, in its deepest, darkest, recesses. They were brought forth and shown the sun for the first time in generations.

The People forgot their drill and sergeants for one mad moment and returned to a state of Nature once more. Muskets were fired in the air and the regimental musicians greeted the day with throbbing music from their weirdly carved air tubes. He’d tried to wean them off those in favour of the more martial fife and drum, but then they were not happy and Curate Blades wanted his children to be happy. The relevant Princely (he’d promoted himself) Proclamation was quietly dropped. Today was a day for joy and he would let them play.

The redcoats swarmed over the battlefield and bit the Null corpses to show their hatred. The sun winked on shiny new knives as they were drawn to slice off trophies. That was both vengeance and good policy: dried Null tokens or necklets of Null fangs brought honour and marriage offers to the homestead they adorned.

Restraint was not totally abandoned. His huscarl regiments, drawn from the sturdiest and best and first-met, stood firm. He was well pleased: they had earned the gold braid and lace on their scarlet. Bred up fierce, they continued to scan the distance with burning eyes. A few Null lancers, circling restlessly, well out of gunshot, still observed them. It was as well to keep a stone in your sling, just in case. He felt sure that the monsters were now broken in Sussex, but there remained the chance of a fresh purple tide from beyond the Thames.

He was not a god-king yet. Even the Imperium was still a gleam in his eye, left unspoken. Those good ideas were quite a few triumphs and disasters away. Still, in keeping with his new position, he’d promoted himself to Bishop a while back. The Apostolic Succession question had been set aside along with propriety and what-the-neighbours-might-think. Those hurdles were cleared and well behind him now.

In that guise he passed hands over the knights and cavaliers, the cream and prime spirits of his army who’d galloped to him for his blessing. He signalled they might rise from their knees.

‘May God be between you and harm,’ he told them, his words instantly repeated and spread right along the line by schools of scop-bards, ‘in all the empty places you tread.’

It was something he’d read in the before time, in the previous place. The pagan Egyptians had prayed thus but the sentiments were still fitting.

Even the huscarls were caught up in the mood now, looking upon him with love. He had brought them out of slavery and beastdom, he had woken their hearts with the gift of hope and now he had led them to the promised land. It was all prophesied in the black book he carried. Great Blades freely admitted that it was not of his authorship – but fewer and fewer listened when he said so. When they thought of the Almighty, when he spoke of a ‘Saviour’, the People’s mind’s-eye saw him.

Curate – or Bishop – Blades looked over the nation he had forged and wondered what the Reverend Speed would have thought. He had a shrewd idea – but it no longer mattered.

There could be an even better notion of Mrs Speed’s opinion. He’s scoured the People for look-a-likes of her and found half a dozen quite passable. With voice coaching and gowns brought from the other place the similarity grew astounding. ‘Her’ satisfied smile now lit up many a morning or bedtime. She was – would be – supportive and … delicious.

Everything was delicious in this, his own, world.

‘No, Thomas, it must be no.’

‘Why no?’ He didn’t want to ask and didn’t wish an answer: the grovelling phrase was drawn out of him by some stranger.

She too was a stranger now: no longer smiling eyes and pleased-to-see-you. He’d misjudged: she was merciless.

‘You’d not suit I. Let it be.’

He couldn’t: the wound must be held open to receive salt. Thomas barred her path.

‘I must know. Tell me.’

The maid was angry and quick starting about it, willing to lash out. There would be comfort in that later: relief at being rejected.

‘Leave off the boy, Tom Blades. Play the man – if y’ can!’

‘Boy? I’m twenty!’

‘Boy I said and boy I meant. I want a husband who’s lusty – and providing. That you’ll never be. So let me go!’

He stood aside, temporarily a featherweight creature, and she was gone, a rustle of gown and contempt.

‘Go forever,’ he blessed her retreating back – and an entire pathway of life, and all those future beings dwelling in it – shrivelled and died and became nothing.

Hands like cold lead grasped his shoulders and guided him. The Angel of Failure, his lifelong companion, would see him safely home.

‘“Go forth, Christian soul, from this world”,’ said the Reverend Speed,

‘“in the name of God the Almighty Father who created you,

in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who suffered for you,

in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you.

Go forth, faithful Christian.

May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion,

with Mary, the virgin Mother of God,

with Joseph, and all the angels and saints.

May you return to your Creator who formed you from the dust of the earth.

May Holy Mary, the angels and all the saints come to meet you as you go forth from this life.

May Christ, the Good Shepherd, give you a place within his flock.

May He forgive your sins and keep you among his People.

May you see your Redeemer face to face and enjoy the sight of God for ever.

Go forth!”’

‘No,’ answered Mr Blades senior. ‘Not till I’ve got me clock sorted.’

A dying man should have better things to think of than timepieces. The precise monitoring of time was no longer his concern. Or so thought the Reverend Speed as he urged him on to God. However, in deference to the man’s family there gathered, he restricted his words to those of the prayer book.

‘Master Blades?’ Speed transferred his puzzlement to the man’s son, his Curate, standing, red-eyed, nearby.

‘His clock,’ came the reply: clipped and poised for blows – though not the usual sort. ‘His Grandfather. Very special to him: only he touches it – winds it himself religiously. He wants me to have it.’

‘And so?’

‘I’ve been terrible busy lately. There’s not been time to shift the …’

Reverend Speed leaned confidingly close. Curate Blades flinched and then recovered. Surely there’d be no violence beside a death-bed?

‘Lie, Mr Blades,’ the Rector whispered to him. ‘Matthew 10: 16. “Be ye therefore cunning as serpents and harmless as doves.” Lie!’

Blades was suddenly reminded of another phrase from scripture – or somewhere: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you …’ There was one last gift he could give his beloved Dad. His peace was worth spitting in Truth’s eye.

‘I moved ’er yesterday, Da.’ In his distress the country accent swung far and wide. ‘She’s there now, wound and working.’

Blades senior wanted to believe. His whole frame visibly relaxed.

‘I’ll go forth, then,’ he said, ‘and now so can you …’

For a fleeting second there was one more presence in the room – and then one less.

Peaceful as you like, the patriarch of the Blades had left the world behind.

‘What did ’ee mean by that? Weren’t nice.’

‘Was if he said so,’ Thomas Blades told his brother. ‘When did he ever do us ill?’

Silas Blades pondered on it and could come up with no example. If he could have he would have.

‘Still, weren’t nice. Gave I a fair turn.’

This was getting out of hand. Not only were they conversing in the slow, long-a’ ed southern-speak supposedly bred out of them by school and church, but there was implicit criticism of the dead within. It wasn’t on. Their father was no less their father for no longer being beside them. He’d been a good man and was now in a better place, his just reward, listening to every word. And even if he wasn’t, it still weren’t right.

‘Spit it out straight,’ he told his brother, ‘or not at all!’

Silas thought on – and then thought better of it.

‘Mebbe so,’ he conceded – he was a carpenter, doing very well thank you and had no need for learned better-talk – ‘Mebbe not. I’ll say no more. Spit on y’ hands and let’s shift this thing or we’ll be ’ere all day.’

Tom Blades would do no such thing. For one, spittle might mark the Grandfather’s polished wood and secondly it was a coarse habit to get out of for fear of repetition somewhere inappropriate. Nowadays, even some of the gentry offered to shake hands with him and imagine it if he’d just … ‘He’s the man who put a pavement oyster in General Oglethorpe’s hand …’ that sort of story could haunt a family for generations.

Silas shifted the weight to him and Thomas put his shoulder beneath it. Despite Mrs Silas’s earlier efforts a blizzard of ancient dust came down to adorn and age them. No one could recollect when the clock was last moved: probably somewhen back during the Great Rebellion, when Grandfather Blades, a martial sort of man, had put the house into defensive shape. Father had often recalled to them how each substantial bit of furniture had been designated a place in a barricade for ‘when the cavaliers come’.

They’d disengaged the pendulum and rope and such innards as could be shifted separate, but even so it was still a prodigious weight. The brothers had hoped to show some respect in the carrying but that idea went home as soon as they took the strain.

‘Bugger I!’ heaved Silas as they struggled, splayed-legged, to six doors down the High Street, ‘what’s it got in here? The whole world?’ Ever after, in all that followed, Curate Blades remembered that.

If it had been night there he would never have noticed. He’d have gone on being a trodden-on curate and died the same way: not a bad life as such – but nothing special.

In walking the thing down Godalming High Street there’d been no occasion to look. Staying upright with a little dignity had been the summit of ambition then. Silas in particular had been punished with splinters in tender parts and was in a hurry to be out of company to tend them. Thomas likewise didn’t relish his burden for a moment more than necessary. Blundering past the family reception committee at his door they manhandled the weight according to their shouted, contradictory, instructions. Some wall plaster went, a plate was dislodged to its death, but otherwise they made it without undue harm.

A spot beside the stairs had been prepared for the monster and they slid it into place, vowing residence until doomsday. The clock’s back was reversed into the already shady corner, sealing it into eternal dark.

‘Down ye go and fare ye well!’ said Silas, all dust and sweat slicked, expressing his true opinions with a look. Then he limped away. Everyone went away now the fun was over. Only the Curate remained, as always the slave of duty. There was the matter of the rope and pendulum and the winding to complete. He had to launch the clock at this, the start of its new life, and set it running true, just as his father had wanted.

A brass catch held fast the door. He flicked it and peered within expecting only more dark and dust. The second he found aplenty, but of the first not much: nowhere near as much as there should be.

Minutes passed. Curate Blades looked – and looked again – and then gently closed the door.

He collected his thoughts over ale and brandy in the Red Lion. That alone was testament to his confusion, for the Reverend Speed lived hard by there and he would not have rejoiced to find his Curate tippling in broad daylight.

Daylight … daylight: that was the crux of the quandary, the stubborn stain on the sheet of his contentment. Like Cromwell’s Ironsides at Naseby, it just wouldn’t desist. Daylight …

When he last enquired within the clock there had only been what there should be: he was sure of that. In extracting the pendulum and winding-rope he’d seen mere darkness and machinery and wood-scented confined space. Had there been aught else he would surely have recalled. Then, calling to mind all other occasions he’d seen inside he found no other, contrary, memory: not even a hint of one.

There again, his father had been such a jealous guardian of the clock that there were few such occasions to recall. Maybe there was guidance in that.

If so, it was guidance of the will o’ the wisp variety: no damn help at all. Curate Blades downed his drinks under the wondering, suspicious eye of the landlord, none the wiser than when he entered – but marvellously more resolved.

More times than he cared to recall he’d exhorted his flock to ‘find the light’. He’d instructed them and they’d looked back at him, neither of them sure what precisely to seek. Now, after a fashion, he knew.

A new day had dawned within his Grandfather clock, a sunrise independent of that which mankind enjoyed. Tom Blades recalled it was said that ‘every dog must have its day’. Stiffened with a little Dutch courage he proposed to see if this one was his.

The point of first entry was the Empire’s holiest shrine: that spot where heaven had condescended to kiss the mundane world. This was where the Divine fire had bestowed a spark of itself, concealed in human form. It was left alone in awe throughout the year, save onl