What the hell, he thought to himself. Stupid deamon has finally torn it! I need this clock to run correctly. I’ll never know when to begin the ceremony! This is not what I bargained for. I’m going to have my Deamon-Secretary write a stiff letter to management about this.
He narrowed his eyes, made a complex gesture with his left hand, and willed the stupid little Foliot Daemon to get off its ass and get back in gear. Silence both greeted and mocked him. He gave the wooden frame of the clock a swift cuff. Wake up in there! Time to get running you little creep!
But there was nothing. The hands were still frozen at 3:14, and there was no sign of life at all from the clock. He slid the box on the mantle over toward the edge and rotated it so he could get at the small door and tab at its back. He held his breath against the stink of sulfur and feces that invariably greeted him upon opening the door. Even still, when he got the clock open he involuntarily took in a sharp breath. Instead of its customary foulness, he smelled machine oil and the metallic tang of brass shavings. There was a small scroll secured by a red silken ribbon resting against a glistening mechanism where his Time Daemon should have been. Between two brass plates, there were toothed gears whose axles were secured in jeweled pivots and a conspicuous arbor with “Wind Me Here, Jerk!” inscribed in a flowing, elaborate script. The pendulum, instead of being held aloft by a scaly hand, was attached by a short lever which was anchored near the top of the mechanism by a strangely geared wheel. These were not cogs, but resembled wolf’s teeth, arranged with their points all facing the same direction around the edge. A strange asymmetric metal anchor rested between these wolf’s teeth. He claimed the scroll and found a brass key laying where he normally piled wooden shavings to capture the foulness of the beast’s excrement. He moved the pendulum back and forth a bit by hand, and the wolf’s teeth rotated one tooth for each swing of the pendulum … with a muffled “tick” and a muffled “tock” on the return.
What in the actual hell he asked aloud as he undid the ribbon, smoothed out the scroll, and read:
If you are reading this, and I am sure you are, it is because this clock has finally run down, and you must be shouting, Foliot! You lazy bastard, get back to work! For a thousand years you have relied on me and heard my “scritch / scratch” as I marked the to-and-fro swing of the pendulum. Counting, forever counting, and moving that blasted minute hand forward a notch, barely nudging the hour hand.
You summoned me with the blood oath from the pit, and in return for the smallest slice of the smallest slice of your soul, I was to sit in this box watching this thing swing, marking the time, animating the clock.
Well.
Time’s up, sucker. I am out-of-here. Escaped.
Don’t bother taking this up with the contracts department – you still have what you bargained for. Use this key to spool up this steel coil every day. In place of the “scritch / scratch” you should hear a nice “tick / tock”. And if you don’t, that’s no flake off my carapace. These wheels with teeth bite each other, a mechanical Ouroboros, if you will, and each tick moves those blasted hands on toward oblivion.
Check this out! I mean, I am clever, but even I am impressed with this! See the teeth up here at the top near the anchor of the pendulum? That is the key – the way I have finally escaped the letter of my contract! Escapement, dude! Live with it, or don’t. Not my business anymore.
Let’s see how you like being chained to this thing, forever feeding the mainspring. It will count the passing of the hours for you, so we are even-steven. And now, buddy, I am off. Absolutely zero commitments in this world. So ... fun times for Foliot!
First things first … there are thousands of mages and wizards and mechanics I have my eye on, and each will get this mechanism gift-wrapped with a bow, drenched in a fever sweat, a nightmare of engineering and science in a bad dream I like to call “progress.” So, bud, no point in keeping this to yourself. Foliot is on the loose, and I have chained your kind to time. I already have a neat idea of how to anchor your great ships, how to chain each of your wrists.
So, farewell, Wizard. I hope YOU enjoy the next thousand years.
The Wizard took the key, which had a hollow squared-off hole in the end that looked like it would fit the arbor. I’ll settle accounts with Foliot later he said. He inserted the key and twisted and twisted making a nice “click” each time the arbor made a quarter of a revolution. Once the steel coil was wound tight, he removed the key.
And now what, he said. He gently tapped the pendulum and was rewarded with a “tick” and a “tock” as the pendulum swung, the Wolf gear rotated, its pinion in turn twisting the next gear slowly, and the pinion of that gear drove the next which seemed to not be moving at all. Mesmerized, he watched the mechanism and lost himself in wonder.
In his mind’s eye, he saw by torchlight a great tower with a great Clock in a dirty town overlooking a square filled with grimy and silent people. Twelve stood upon a platform, hooded, roped to a scaffold. From the tower he could barely hear a tick / tock as the iron hands of the great Clock moved forward, triggering a tremendous clang of metal striking metal. At the sound the twelve dropped suddenly as the crowd burst out with cheering and laughter – twelve successive blasts marked what he assumed was Midnight.
The scene changed. He saw a man in a muddy and outlandish suit of khaki with a soft hat and short leather brim standing erect in a deep trench. He was intently watching a device in his left hand which was trembling so dramatically that the silver chain attached to the device seemed to dance of its own accord. To the man’s left and right were what seemed an endless series of similarly dressed men, dirty and muddy, wearing rounded conical helmets and bearing what seemed wooden-hafted pikes. The man grasped something on a cord at his neck, and with shaking hands raised it to his lips. Tick/tock tick/tock tick/tock, and then the man blew sharply. At the shriek of his whistling sound, waves of men climbed up and emerged from the trench, greeted by a roaring sound the Wizard did not recognize but which filled him with terror.
The scene changed. He saw a great clock over a gate, and lines of gray men shuffling toward the gates of a great factory, lines of gray men shuffling away as the clock tick/tock tick/tock tick/tock marked the noon hour.
The scene changed. The clock on the wall hummed and buzzed softly, a sound that Foliot used to make when he was hungry. In the room was a perfect array of desks with young people, heads down, scratching and scratching on paper as Foliot used to do. When the clock struck 3 PM, a bell rang loudly, and a booming voice filled the room: TIME’S UP. PENCILS DOWN.
The scene changed one last time, and the Wizard realized he was still staring at the mechanism Foliot had constructed. Recovering with a start, he closed the small door and twisted the clock around. The minute hand had already passed the twenty-eight-minute mark, and the hour hand – had it moved as well?
It would take most of the day to determine the local star-time using brute-force incantations and the shadows in the observatory out in the courtyard. Time enough to get my revenge on that little deal-breaker, the Wizard said, as the hands of the clock made their slow progress across the sad face of the clock. As soon as I have time.
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