Turnkeys

Overview

The Turnkeys are the jailers of the Soul Anchor, a Resonant Zone where the Whispering Trace has become a prison. When a being dies there, its Echo does not soften, disperse, or pass into Record; it is pinned within a few paces of where it fell and made to repeat its end. The Turnkeys, often constructs, sometimes remnant beings, maintain that prison: they keep the Echoes trapped and punish those who try to break it. They are hostile to anyone who threatens the Anchor.

Appearance

Turnkeys are of three kinds, and the zone's survivors name them by their work. Chain-Binders are heavy, stooped shapes of iron-grey stone and old metal, the height of a man bent double under a load, their arms ending in hooks and clamps; they move along the invisible tethers of the Anchored like smiths along a chain, and wherever they work the chains briefly show, black links in the shimmering haze. Loop-Weavers are thinner and taller, figures of drawn grey thread and dust with too many fingers, that pass among the trapped and set each one back to the start of its loop. Over the whole Anchor stands the Gaoler, a single great figure seen only at a distance, like a broken monument that has learned to turn its head.

Habitat and Range

Turnkeys are found only within a Soul Anchor, among its broken headstones, dead trees, and iron-hard ground. A small Anchor may have a few Chain-Binders and no Gaoler that anyone has seen; a great one is said to have all three kinds. The more Echoes an Anchor holds, the stronger it grows, and travellers report more Turnkeys in the strongest.

Behaviour and Temperament

Turnkeys tend the prison. Chain-Binders go from tether to tether, tightening; Loop-Weavers return the Anchored to their loops; the Gaoler watches. They ignore a traveller who only walks, listens, or harvests the Echoes' remnant energy. One who works a rite of release, settles the business that holds a prisoner, or opens a path for an Echo into Record is set upon at once, and the Turnkeys do not stop for pleading. Remnant Turnkeys show something like old anger; constructed ones show nothing.

Abilities

Turnkeys bind. A Chain-Binder's grip pins a living body as the Anchor pins an Echo, and its touch has the cold jolt of a trapped remnant. A Loop-Weaver's touch tangles thought, so that the traveller begins to live a moment over and over, the first step towards the Loop that takes those who stay too long. Turnkeys do not tire, and if broken they seem to return, though whether they are remade or merely replaced, nobody knows. Who made the first of them is not known either: the Anchor itself, the power that bound its first Echo, or those it holds.

Uses and Dangers

Turnkeys give nothing. They are the reason freeing a loved one from the Anchor is so dangerous, and the reason most who come to pry a secret from the dead keep to the edges. The worst danger they pose is the Anchor's own: a traveller who dies fighting them is caught where they fall.

Lore and Belief

Folk tales tell of a soul-prison guarded by gaolers of the dead, and many believe the Turnkeys are the damned set to watch the damned, or the god of the place in many bodies. People who live near an Anchor will not name the Gaoler and say it can hear its name spoken anywhere in the zone. Scholars of the zones are more careful, as they are with the zone's name itself: what the Anchor holds are Echoes, not souls, and what the Turnkeys are, constructs or remnants or both, is disputed among those who study death. Some say the Turnkeys are themselves the oldest prisoners, so long held that they have taken the prison's side.

Where It Appears

• The Soul Anchor