In the Grip of Time Read online

  In the Grip of Time

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  Book One of The Actum Tempus Saga

  Adam Jacob Burgess

  Nunmill Press

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  A Short Note

  While reading this novel, you may notice that one of the characters, Ruby Schap, has shifting gender pronouns. Sometimes the pronouns shift between chapters, but sometimes they change mid-scene. This is to reflect that Ruby is multiply gendered. As a shape-shifting druid-cum-apothecary, I find Ruby’s gender designation the least remarkable thing about him/her. I only mention it here for clarification.

  for Karen

  CONTENTS

  Reader’s Club Download Offer

  A Short Note

  Prologue: Cognita

  Chapter 1: The Blue Forest

  Chapter 2: Sorrow-Wraith

  Chapter 3: Terra Incognita

  Chapter 4: Upsetting an Ogre

  Chapter 5: Through the Through-Village of Pettibeck

  Chapter 6: Mirrah

  Chapter 7: Arriving in Rhyddinas

  Chapter 8: The Musical Conservatoire

  Chapter 9: Guild Meet

  Chapter 10: A Hero’s Sword

  Chapter 11: Tombs and Temples

  Chapter 12: Terror Seeks the Infirm

  Chapter 13: Imbuement

  Chapter 14: Rhinoholm

  Chapter 15: Touch Gydi, Get Dizzy

  Chapter 16: Tempus Incognita

  Chapter 17: Zell

  Chapter 18: Fortitude

  Chapter 19: A Warm Welcome

  Chapter 20: Spearca

  Chapter 21: The Third Idol

  Chapter 22: Slǣpan Wiga

  Chapter 23: The Ancient Device

  Chapter 24: Ego Incognita

  Chapter 25: Battle for Time

  Chapter 26: The Two

  Chapter 27: Resolution

  Author’s Note

  Stay in Touch

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Prologue: Cognita

  ‘I should have known this would be a trap,’ she whispered, as her mind began to dull.

  Within the chamber, torches lined the walls. The flickering lights danced upon Mirrah’s anxious face. The machine’s curse, tangled within an ancient magic unseen for generations, had hit her at full force, immediately bruising her mind. A lesser mage than she would have been destroyed in an instant. But even for someone so powerful, the knotted spell was too complex to unpick.

  ‘Sabotage.’

  Mirrah had set out to find the Ancient Device, a machine supposedly capable of controlling time. She’d wanted to study it, and ultimately destroy it. But the curse had taken her by surprise. These ancient relics were often trapped with curses and spells, but the force with which this one had struck marked it as modern. Someone had set her up.

  Wispy tendrils reached out from the Ancient Device, clawing at Mirrah’s thoughts. They sought her regret and her despair, and once located, they would burrow a barbed hook and take hold of her mind. Mirrah’s senses had already begun to slow, but she was quick enough to evade the tendrils. Dashing away from the Device and over to the chamber’s entrance, she sealed herself inside.

  Who had done this to her? The only people capable of such complex magic belonged, as she did, to The Twelve. But The Twelve’s purpose was to maintain balance across the world. If a fallen mage was in their midst, it would prove incredibly dangerous. She quickly conjured images of the other eleven. Ten of the images were crisp and clear, but an eleventh figure was shrouded in shadow. Distressingly, she recognised none of them in her forcibly altered state. Mirrah lingered on the shrouded image.

  ‘You.’

  This was the shadow’s trap, it had to be, and it had confounded her memory. Mirrah seethed. She lashed out, punching through the rockwall of the chamber.

  Mirrah took a deep breath. It was crucial to warn the others as quickly as possible, but that was impossible if she didn’t know who they were, or who among them had fallen. She concentrated, willing her most trustworthy ally to come to mind.

  ‘M.G.’

  A sigh of relief. Someone to inform. First, however, she needed to remove knowledge of the machine. The curse had transposed from the Device onto her, but the machine’s own magic was still unknown and all the more dangerous for it. As a secretive organisation, The Twelve were particularly suited to hiding knowledge from the rest of the world. As long as there weren’t too many people already aware of the object, location, person, The Twelve could erase consciousness of anything, leaving the object, location, or person rendered unknowable. Devised to be used to protect people from danger, it had occasionally been used as punishment.

  ‘Damnit.’

  Mirrah scolded herself. With her blunted mind, she couldn’t perform the magic required. She’d have to settle for wiping out the Device’s location. Mirrah focused as best she could, and held her hands tightly together. As she slowly spread them apart, a glowing orb floated between them. She moved her hands around it, moulding it. After a few moments, a small statue appeared fully formed in her hand. She repeated the process twice more and put the three statues in her bag. Mirrah had taken knowledge of the Device’s location away from the world, and locked it into three idols.

  She fell to one knee and clasped her head. It was becoming more difficult to keep control of her swiftly deteriorating mind, but she made a decision to do three things. Firstly, she would tell M.G., the most trustworthy member of The Twelve, what had happened, in the hope that they could root out the saboteur. Secondly, she would hide the three idols she had just created, and with them, make sure knowledge of the Device didn’t fall into the wrong hands. If she hid them on Esh’areth, the most peaceful of continents, they would surely never be found. Finally, she would take herself far away. A barren island. Meditation would slow the curse, and when she was ready, she would do what was necessary before she could cause anybody harm.

  Mirrah took a deep breath in through her nose, and a long breath out through her mouth. Enveloped in a strong gust of wind, she disappeared from the chamber.

  The Ancient Device whirred and cranked. Waiting for her return.

  Chapter 1: The Blue Forest

  Six months after Mirrah left the hidden chamber, a community of gnomes went about their business as usual in a small forgotten corner of Esh’areth. Business in the Blue Forest mainly revolved around finding new and ingenious ways to prank one another: an electric shock here, knock-a-door run there. Despite such minor annoyances, life in the Blue Forest was always peaceful and familiar. Woven between the treetops, a blanket of old magic kept the gnomes’ dwelling a secret. Travelling outside of the Blue Forest was restricted, and for the most part, no one minded. However, within all of this, there was a wispy-haired, musical, restless anomaly. Ambivalent about pranks, and with an unceasing thirst for knowledge, Sawwse Bohge, dreamed of seeing the world. Right now, however, all she was going to be seeing was the inside of the town hall.

  ‘I should have known this would be a trap,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sawwse, it is hardly a trap to suggest you should attend the town meeting tomorrow,’ said Dannse Gan. Dannse was an elderly gnome whom Sawwse had befriended. The wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth revealed a long life full of mirth, lines shared by almost all the oldest gnomes.

  ‘But you said I could play my music for you then.’

  Sawwse sat in her usual spot, cross-legged in front of Dannse Gan’s rocking chair. She had never
known her own parents, so Dannse had become a grandmotherly figure to her over the years.

  ‘Well, you can visit me after the meeting.’

  ‘But the meetings are so boring,’ said Sawwse, blowing out an excessively long sigh. ‘Okay, fine,’ she relented, pulling a face. ‘But before I go home, tell me again about your visit to the tiny kingdom of Meus.’

  ‘I think that’s quite enough story-spinning for today, child.’

  At one hundred and thirty-eight Sawwse was hardly a child, but compared to the four hundred and fifty year old she was as fresh as a gnomeling.

  ‘Just a quick story then. How about the one with the molluscs?’ suggested Sawwse.

  Dannse had to chuckle as she remembered her time spent with the Snegell, an achingly unhurried tribe. They were so slow that, as she moved through their camp, she could easily carry out ten different conversations at once. For instance, she could leave her tent, ask a question of her nearest neighbour, and set out to walk in a loop around the Snegell’s circular campsite, starting other conversations as she went. By the time the first Snegell had heard what she had said, digested it, formulated a response and spoken it aloud, Dannse would have returned to the beginning of her loop, ready to carry on the first exchange she had started. Still, they were very friendly underneath their large shells.

  ‘I’m sorry little one, I’m very tired. I’ll share more stories with you tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s not fair. You got to explore the world, while I’m shut away,’ Sawwse said, grumpily.

  ‘As I’ve told you before, it isn’t all fun out there. For every Meus and Snegell, there were dangerous beasts and evil-doers. And that was a long time ago, don’t forget, before the restrictions. Things could be very different out there now.’

  Sawwse looked around Dannse’s small wooden room. The souvenirs from the older gnome’s past adventures beckoned to her from their shelves, painting Sawwse’s imagination with vivid colours.

  ‘Look, Sawwse, do you need me to remind you again about the Magnarrian plot to-’

  Dannse stopped, abruptly. Aware now that this had been Sawwse’s plan to keep her talking all along.

  ‘Promise me you’ll go to the meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay, but you owe me double stories afterwards,’ said Sawwse, decisively.

  ‘Of course.’

  Sawwse broke into a wide grin, and Dannse followed suit. With her infectious smile and twinkling green eyes, it was impossible not to be charmed by Sawwse Bohge. She bowed to Dannse in the customary way, her right arm at her breast with one leg outstretched below the other, and left the old gnome’s treehouse. She grabbed onto the nearest silk vine and swung her way over to the library.

  Both Sawwse and her friend lived on the outskirts of the Blue Forest, leaving Sawwse a fair bit of tree-branch terrain to cover to get back to the castle-like estate at the centre of town. Not that it looked very much like a town in a human sense. Gnomes had lived for many millennia within the Blue Forest, and had never really needed large buildings or shops, tending to live in small wooden shacks within the trees. Three centuries ago, however, a travelling elf decided to build a grandiose home for himself, right in the middle of the forest. When he’d nearly finished construction, the gnomes had teased and pranked him so much about his receding hairline that he abandoned his project and fled. The central point of the Blue Forest shifted as more and more gnomes moved into the unfinished castle’s hundreds of rooms.

  Sawwse wasn’t keen on the estate. It was beautiful, and full of interesting flora set into sloping grounds, but it was also full of arrogant and lazy gnomes. The Blue Forest Council had relocated to the castle’s upper chambers, and it had changed them and the town. For one thing, they’d relocated the library into a damp and dank cellar.

  The diminutive gnome gently lowered herself to the ground by the estate and paused outside the modest library. A plaque loosely fastened to the stone wall read: ‘For hearts, heads and lungs full of knowledge’. Sawwse turned to a squirrel that had joined her, the red and white streaks on its charcoal coloured fur making it distinctively indistinct to the gnome.

  ‘There used to be a sculpture here, you know. And the plaque was changed.’

  The squirrel sat upright and tilted its head, a generous listener.

  ‘It depicted Alia Yuhne, the first of the Gnehsehgs. The knowledge-seekers,’ she clarified for the squirrel. ‘The Gnehsehgs, the elite branch of the Blue Forest Council, had been the only ones allowed to venture outside the forest, and that stopped almost two hundred years ago.’

  Sawwse suddenly stopped, realising that she might be condescending to her new friend.

  ‘And of course you’ll already know that the plaque used to say: “For hearts, heads and lungs to fill with knowledge”.’

  She wanted to discuss the change in the Blue Forest Council, the isolationist move away from the world outside of the forest, and the lack of desire for new information. However, she could see the squirrel yawning, so she scratched the crest of its little head and walked into the library.

  Three rows of books extended on either side of the room, leading to a large, battered book kept inside a bamboo cage. Parchment of different sizes and shades were haphazardly arranged within the book, bound by vines and glued with maple sap. This was the Gnomeopedia: the gnomes’ compendium of knowledge. This book had been at the heart of the Blue Forest for centuries, added to over time by the Gnehsehgs. It had been placed under lock and key around the same time that the knowledge-seekers had been forbidden to leave the forest. Sawwse had known about the Gnomeopedia ever since she was a gnomeling. The young gnomes learnt about it in school, but only in the vaguest possible terms. It was Dannse that had filled her in and set aflame her desire to read it.

  Sawwse paused at the thick book, before taking up her usual perch by the middle of the bottom shelf, on the right-hand side: the music section. The Council put little effort into maintaining the library, so lots of the books had mould growing on them. Sawwse had attempted to perform surgery on the music books: taking dry leaves from the forest and laying them in between the books, hoping to draw out the moisture. Unfortunately, the library was so moist that she now had leaf mulch to deal with as well as damp books. Even the books she’d kept in the driest spot weren’t without peril, as she found nibble marks on them from over-hungry squirrels.

  The music-loving gnome took a deep, calming breath and picked up Walken Musike by Emmeline Flowerdew. She flicked to the pretty maple leaf bookmark placed thirty pages from the end. Sawwse had spent a great deal of time poring over Flowerdew’s other works, and had learnt a great deal from them, but now she was reading a memoir of sorts about the talented musician’s bardic travels around the world. Of course, this kind of world tour was only ever possible without a misguided travel ban. She began picturing herself in the lands that Flowerdew had written about.

  Sawwse finished the book and let out a blissful sigh. Regardless of her feelings about the estate, she was grateful to the travelling elf for bringing all these musical books back to the Blue Forest. All gnomes of the Blue Forest were musical, but none loved music more than Sawwse Bohge. It gave her such a wonderful, spirit-lifting feeling when she played her beloved lute.

  From outside came the hum of the evening reverie. Each day in the Blue Forest ended in a kind of haze. The gnomes hummed, sang and fiddled until they entered a trance-like, night-time state. In this way, the division between one day ending and the next day beginning was blurred.

  The ritual of the reveries rankled with Sawwse. Even though she’d spent year after year learning music, she had never been asked to lead. Leading the reverie was a great honour, and involved a solo of indeterminate length (the longest lasted the equivalent of nineteen human days). She suspected there were any number of reasons for the snub, but the main one was that the music she most liked to play was considered ‘un-gnome-like’ as it came from outside the forest.

  ‘They’ll all be laug
hing out the other side of their faces one day. I’m going to perform on the biggest stage in the whole wide world with thousands of creatures chanting my name, and then they’ll see,’ she announced, to the empty room.

  As the thrum of reverie loudened, her thoughts became more and more frustrated.

  ‘I just don’t understand why we can’t play other kinds of music. I mean, Gnomish fiddling is great, but surely some variety would be nice.’

  A drop of cellar water trickled down the back of her neck.

  ‘Gack! This place. The older gnomes have it sewn up. They had it so good, but we’ll be living with their decisions while they’re gallivanting round Groma-tundhi,’ she said, referencing the afterlife that most Blue Forest gnomes believed in.

  An elderly gnome with sparkly grey eyes appeared at the door to the library.

  ‘Good day to you, Sawwse. What an un-surprise to see you here,’ he smiled warmly, and held out his hand.

  ‘Good day, Beghs,’ Sawwse replied.

  She shook his hand and let out a yelp as a tiny shock ran through her body.

  ‘And pranks,’ she spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Ceaseless pranks.’

  Beghs laughed and slapped his side, revealing the electric buzzer strapped to his palm.

  ‘I’m sorry, couldn’t resist a final joke before reverie.’

  In all fairness to Beghs, there was no way for him to know how vexed Sawwse felt, or that his good-natured prank would set in motion life-altering events for the young gnome.

  Sawwse patted down some of her wispy hairs, which had stood on end. Putting on her best smile, she spoke with convincing sincerity.

  ‘You know what Beghs, you do such a good job attending to this library.’

  She waved her hand vaguely about, taking in the mildew-infested ‘Politics’ section and the piles of squirrel droppings lining the ‘Art History’ shelves.