Eschaton Read online

  She took her seat behind the desk and made a point of re-arranging the reports.

  ‘I do, and for better reasons than you could possibly imagine. While the Order still believes it’s a real threat we have their obedience; don’t give them any reason to believe otherwise. I will try and persuade Eddington to continue his research for the good of the Order. You will do your best not to disrupt the status quo any further. Are we clear?’

  ‘Yes, mother.’

  He turned to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ she snapped.

  Swearing silently under his breath Dalton span around on his heel.

  ‘Since you’ve already read the report, tell me what the situation is with the Draconians?’

  ‘They have retreated into the eighth. My agents tell me that they have set up blockades around all of the standard routes, and we’re working on alternatives.’

  ‘I was told they’re entrenched around the Great Breach.’

  ‘That’s one of their strongholds. Apparently, they’re concerned that the maelstrom is gathering its forces for another attack, but you know the Draconians — always looking for a fight.’

  His mother’s expression hardened. ‘I know who I’d rather have at my side in a battle against the Djinn — at least Grandmaster Derado is taking the Eschaton seriously.’

  Dalton glowered. ‘Is that all?’

  She waved a hand as if swatting a fly. ‘You may go.’

  Dalton ground his teeth as he took the elevator down to the main entrance.

  His mother knew nothing of his plans. She was just like the other members of the council, too wrapped up in the old ways to see the real possibilities. For him, the Eschaton Cascade was nothing more than a myth, invented by a paranoid group of Copernicans to validate their existence.

  But it had its uses, like any religion; if enough people believed, it gave it credibility and power — and with power came control — the entire Order was now under Protectorate supervision, and the founder was under house arrest. Dalton had access to all the resources he needed, resources that could help him realise his dream — to find the Book of Deadly Names and the future that Jones had foreseen.

  5

  Mughal Empire

  [Lucknow, India. Date: 11.764]

  Eddington had told him to take the most obscure path from the Copernican Hall. Sim had taken a series of diversions from the Great Library before he found himself in Lucknow, during the Battle of Buxar, where he found himself walking alongside the army of the East India Company under the command of Major Hector Munro.

  The road was lined with hundreds of wounded. Sim had adapted his travel robes to look like a priest and walked up the valley towards the fortified town.

  The British forces had been outnumbered four to one by the combined army of the Mughals, Awadh and Mir Qasim — but the Indian allies had been uncoordinated; the boat bridge was still burning in the river below where Grand Vizier Shuja-ud-Daulah had destroyed it while retreating — abandoning the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and his men to their fate. Sim knew that Munro had lost less than forty of his European regiment and two hundred and fifty of the Indian Sepoys in the battle.

  It was a devastating defeat for the Mughal empire as the British forces took control of the entire Ganges valley, but Eddington had told him it was also one of the only ways to access the history of Shuja-ud-Daulah, the Grand Vizier of Shah Alam II and holder of the golden key to the Fortress of Ajmer.

  It took Sim nearly two days to get close to the grand vizier, who was busy negotiating the surrender of his emperor’s army. Getting to the key was another challenge altogether.

  He’d stolen a uniform from a dead British officer and joined the guards that waited idly outside the grand tent of Shah Alam, while the leaders of both sides held lengthy talks within. The soldiers were a mercenary group of men who talked of nothing but the alleged millions of rupees that the fleeing allies had left behind. Through the gaps in the silken tent walls, Sim watched the grand vizier counsel his emperor, who insisted on sitting on the imperial throne throughout the proceedings and who relied on his advisor for every decision. Major Munro and his lieutenants were making heavy demands, and the Shah was doing his best to save some small part of his dignity.

  The key was on a chain around the vizier’s neck; all Sim needed to do was touch it and make the jump, but the vizier remained close to the emperor, who still retained his own retinue of guards even though he was under British protection.

  At four o’clock, tea was served, and the tension appeared to dissolve. Servants entered with ornate glasses of mint tea on silver trays, and while both parties helped themselves from the bowls of delicacies like Pinaca, a group of Urdubegis, his female bodyguards, entered the tent carrying a large wooden chest. Munro and his colleagues made space for the formidable warriors as they opened the case and took out a series of golden idols, gathering around as the emperor proudly exhibited his collection.

  The distraction was all that he needed, and Sim stepped into the tent.

  ‘These are the lightning stones of Indra, passed down from the Vedic kings,’ Sim heard the Shah explain to the Major. ‘Once said to have belonged to Vishvamitra himself.’

  The grand vizier had stepped away while his emperor held court and was drinking tea when Sim approached him. There was a hint of suspicion in his eye as if he knew Sim wasn’t really a British officer.

  ‘Master,’ Sim addressed him in Persian. ‘I humbly beg a moment of your time.’

  Sim could tell the grand vizier was genuinely impressed by his linguistic skills. Beneath the long moustache was the merest hint of a smile.

  ‘Do you seek an audience with the Shah?’ he replied.

  Sim shook his head. ‘No, my lord, I seek knowledge. About the Taragarh Fort.’

  ‘You’ll find little treasure left there my friend, the tunnels are many, and the maps are few.’

  ‘I seek a book. One that once belonged to Dara Shukoh, eldest son of Shah Jahan.’

  Shuja looked puzzled. ‘Aurangzeb sent Shukoh’s head to his father in a box, what could be so interesting about his books?’

  ‘His translations of the ancient Sanskrit texts are said to be still held in the library at Rani Mahal.’

  ‘As is the Majma-ul-Bahrain – the confluence of two seas, but it puzzles me as to why a young soldier would be so interested in the literary work of the heir-apparent of the fifth Mughal emperor.’

  Sim was running out of time. The grand vizier was asking too many questions, and the emperor’s demonstration was coming to an end.

  ‘Because a year from now you’re going to sign a treaty with the British that will cost you the districts of Kora and Allahabad. Your emperor will realise that he must remain allied with the East India Company if he’s going to keep his throne. The major over there is a collector of rare books, I was hoping to present him one as a gift before the fort is ransacked.’

  The grand vizier mulled over Sim’s answer, his tea forgotten, cold in his hand.

  ‘And how exactly do you think I can help you?’

  ‘I was hoping you would allow me to examine the golden key of the fortress.’ Sim pointed to the key dangling from the chain around his neck.

  ‘This,’ Shuja replied, holding the key up in front if Sim, ‘is nothing more than a symbol of a better time.’

  ‘May I?’ asked Sim, holding out his hand.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Sim touched the key and opened the timeline.

  Eddington had told him that the fort at Ajmer was the historical seat of the Chauhan rulers and was one of the oldest hill forts in India, if not the world. Sim knew that there had once been a garrison of Draconians stationed here, but they were long gone by the time he arrived.

  He’d instructed Sim to use the key to jump back to the seventeenth century, where an impressive canon called ‘Garbh Gunjam’, or ‘thunder from the womb’, was still mounted on the battlements, a fearsome deterrent against the British forces. But Sim wasn
’t there for the gun.

  Dara Shukoh was an enlightened mystic who’d devoted his life to finding a common language between Islam and Hinduism and was an avid collector of arcane artefacts which he kept in his library in Rani Mahal, the small palace that lay inside the walls of the fort.

  When Eddington had first heard the news of the founder’s arrest, he abandoned their lesson and sent everyone but Sim out of the lecture theatre.

  ‘Simeon, do you know what a talisman is?’

  Sim shook his head.

  ‘As it should be,’ he said with a sigh. ‘There are more than a few secrets that may have to be revealed before this is over. A talisman is an ancient artefact — a type of vestige that can bestow certain powers on the user.’

  ‘Powers, sir?’

  The professor looked uncomfortable as he tried to explain. ‘Access to preternatural abilities, from primaeval times. Anyway, what they do is irrelevant — they are something that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of Master Eckhart and his friends. Fortunately, most have been lost, scattered throughout antiquity or buried in tombs of long forgotten kings. The founder knows the whereabouts of some, but I know of only one, and I may need you to find it.’

  ‘Why me sir?’

  Eddington’s eyes glistened. ‘Because there is a high probability that they will come for me, do you understand? He will be looking for information about that damned lost book, but once he reads my timeline he will know about the talisman, and I cannot let him have it. You are by far my best student, my most trusted amanuensis. If I am arrested, I leave it to you to remove it from his reach.’

  He went on to describe the particular route he’d planned to reach Shukoh’s collection and how to locate the talisman before Dalton and his newly acquired army got anywhere near it.

  Running down towards the small, dilapidated palace, Sim hoped that Eddington hadn’t sent him on a wild goose chase.

  Stopping to catch his breath in the cool shade of the crumbling entrance hall, Sim found himself wondering what the fading murals and broken stained-glass windows would’ve looked like in their heyday. He was tempted to step back a few years and see for himself, but he knew his pale skin would cause too much of a stir; the East India Company had only just been established, and the sight of a European was still something of a novelty.

  The palace seemed unusually quiet, beyond the occasional squawk of a peacock, there was no other sound as if the occupants had all stepped out for a moment.

  Turning a corner, he found a servant standing in the inner courtyard holding a tray of food, staring at something on the other side of the quadrangle.

  In the shade, below the canopied walkway, was a man, his face obscured by a dark mask — it was a Protectorate officer.

  Sim moved quietly back into the shadows, his hand instinctively going to the rewind button on his tachyon. The Protectorate were here, which meant Eddington had already been interrogated.

  6

  Eddington

  [Protectorate HQ. Date: 11.890]

  It was the job of the seer to look into the lives of others, to read their potential futures and advise on ways in which they could improve their outcomes. Dalton had always been more interested in learning about their dirty little desires and deceits — it appealed to the darker parts of his psyche. He could hardly contain his excitement as he delved into Eddington’s past; there were so many secrets, things that the professor had kept hidden for years in the dusty corners of his timeline.

  It was like a museum of forbidden knowledge. Dalton tried hard to focus on the thing he desired the most, the location of the second book of the Djinn, and he found many conversations with the other members of the council on the subject of the book; heated debates on the validity of the Daedalus manuscripts. But try as he might he found nothing that indicated the professor knew any more about its whereabouts than he did.

  Focussing on those meetings he discovered other, more subtle moments, ones that Eddington had revisited multiple times — a particular word that cropped up in discussions with the founder and the head of the Antiquarians about a special kind of artefact; they kept referring to a ‘talisman’.

  ‘They must remain lost,’ said the Antiquarian grandmaster.

  ‘I agree,’ said Eddington. ‘They introduce an unpredictable element to our equations.’

  Dalton watched through Eddington’s eyes as the founder struggled to reach a decision.

  ‘They are too valuable to leave in the hands of the linears.’

  ‘At least they won’t try and use them!’ argued the Antiquarian. ‘They can melt them down for base metal as far as I’m concerned.’

  The founder shook his head. ‘That’s what worries me. They’re a link to ancient times, ones that we may be in need of one day.’

  ‘They’re dangerous,’ Eddington replied. ‘Whatever connection they have to the lost civilisations of pre-history should remain exactly that — lost!’

  ‘I disagree,’ said the founder, shaking his head.

  When Dalton extracted himself from Eddington’s timeline the professor sighed, his head slumping forward onto his chest, and he would have fallen out of the chair had his arms and legs not been tied to it.

  ‘So what exactly are talismans?’ asked Dalton, pulling out the homunculus blade from the back of Eddington’s neck and watching the agony revive him. He was using the same set of talons he’d interrogated Jones with, but this time they proved more effective. The Copernican professor was not as resilient as the Nemesis; pain wasn’t something he seemed able to bear for more than a few minutes.

  ‘Ancient objects. Antediluvian — from an older civilisation,’ the professor said through sharp breaths.

  ‘And they have power?’

  Eddington nodded. ‘The Antiquarians believe so.’

  ‘Power over the Djinn?’

  The professor grimaced and whimpered. ‘So the founder says.’

  ‘And where might I find one of these?’ Dalton asked, picking up another talon and holding it above Eddington’s knee.

  ‘They are so rare, only the founder knows exactly.’

  Dalton pushed the blade slowly into the old man’s upper thigh, and he screamed.

  ‘There’s a ninety-four-percent probability of one within the Mughal dynasty.’

  Dalton held up the Homunculus pin for Eddington to see. ‘All you need to do is tell me where to find it and all the pain will vanish.’

  ‘What an earth do you want with a talisman? It’s nothing but cabalistic nonsense — witchcraft!’

  He leaned in close and whispered in the professor’s ear. ‘I have a destiny. The Nemesis recounted it to me while sitting in this very chair, but to achieve it I must change the past, and for that I need the power of the Djinn. Now, tell me which part of the Mughal dynasty?’

  ‘The collection of the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.’

  Dalton turned to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ Eddington groaned. ‘You can’t, the Eschaton Cascade predicts that —’

  ‘That the barrier between the maelstrom and the continuum will be destroyed by awakening the Elder Gods? And you have the gall to accuse me of deluding myself with cabalistic nonsense!’ Dalton laughed. ‘You Copernicans are all so convinced that your calculations can’t be wrong. What if the continuum is a lie? Have you ever stopped to consider that everything you’ve spent your life trying to predict is nothing more than a mathematical impossibility — that you’ve made no difference to the future whatsoever?’

  He took the last blade and drove it deep into the professor’s chest. ‘Didn’t see that coming, did we?’

  7

  Arrival

  [Kverkfjöll volcano, Iceland. Date: 12.418]

  The hangar was a vast metal dome with circular tunnels arranged at various points around its circumference. The floor was nothing more than a network of metal gangways spanning across the deep shaft that fell away below them. There was a heavy metallic smell in the air, as if it were charged w
ith electricity, and by the dull throbbing of machines Josh thought it safe to assume they were in some kind of power station. Thick cables snaked out from the central chasm and into each one of the individually numbered tunnels.

  ‘When are we?’ asked Caitlin, checking her tachyon and finding that the dials had frozen.

  ‘No idea,’ whispered Josh.

  He was still holding Lenin’s gun. It felt good to have a weapon, even if he had no idea how to use it.

  There was no sign of Lenin, or anyone else for that matter. They’d simply appeared in the middle of this giant machine and he’d no idea what to do next — something he knew better than to admit to Caitlin.

  ‘I thought the future would be different somehow,’ Caitlin mused, looking around the structure. ‘You know, all white and clean.’

  ‘You’ve watched too many movies,’ Josh replied, thinking back to the desolation he’d seen in the alternate reality of the Ascendancy; the future he’d witnessed there was far from idyllic.

  ‘I guess you just assume everything is going to get better,’ she said, taking off her fancy shoes and tying her hair back. This was always a sure sign she meant business. Her party dress and his tuxedo were completely impractical for a mission, and Josh wished he’d thought it through a little more before jumping.

  ‘Yeah. It’s called hope. No one wants to imagine things are going to get worse.’

  He put down the gun and took off his jacket, hiding it with her shoes behind a metal duct. The temperature in the hangar was already beginning to make him sweat.

  Josh picked up the gun and inspected it more closely, tapping a few buttons, but the thing was dead. He dropped it in with the clothes — it wasn’t his style anyway.