The Demonata 6-10

Lord Loss senses danger. “Get them!” he bellows. “Destroy that barrier! Kill them all!”

The demons scurry to obey, but their efforts are wasted. The barrier repels them casually. The harder they throw themselves against it, the harder they rebound. Bolts of magic are returned with interest, tearing apart those who fired them. They try to claw it to pieces, rip it apart with their teeth, burrow underneath to attack from within the earth, all to no avail.

The energy is unbearable. It goes beyond all my notions of normal heat. I think this is what it would be like to hover within the heart of the sun. The rock is melting around the girl’s face, but she remains, more of her form becoming visible as the stone recedes.

Screams of panic. With an effort I raise my head. The demons are staring at the sky, horrified and bewildered. Looking up, I see something incomprehensible. The sky is pulsing. It’s like looking at the underside of a trampoline while somebody leaps up and down on top. In the centre, a funnel has formed, as if the universe is being pulled towards one point. As I watch, it throbs low, then pulls up high… low/high… low/high. And it might be my imagination, but it seems as if the tip of the funnel hangs directly over me, Kernel, Beranabus and the ghost girl, Bec.

Lights flicker across the distorted sky. Clouds burst into flame. The tip of the funnel pushes lower and lower, ever closer to us. The demons scatter, screeching and keening. Stuff like this happens every day in their own universe. They aren’t bothered by magical madness there. But they didn’t expect it in this universe of order and sanity. They don’t know what it means or how to respond.

“This will not save you!” Lord Loss shouts none too convincingly. “Stay, you scum!” he roars at the fleeing demons. “Fight! We can break through this barrier and kill them. You must not…”

I tune him out. My lips are my own again during a brief pause in the spell. “What’s happening?” I wheeze, directing the question at Beranabus. But he can only shake his head and stare at Bec and me. Then the spell starts again and I can’t ask any more questions. My lips are Bec’s. My magic and her magic — one. Our minds join. I get flashes of her life — a simple farming society, demons, a quest, warriors, a magician, closing the tunnel between worlds, sacrificing herself, trapped in a cave, her spirit somehow separating from her body, dying but not moving on, imprisoned, no way out, haunting the centuries, unable to escape the rocky confines of the cave.

Then I’m inside somebody else’s head. I see a small, modern village, thousands of patches of light in the sky around me, a baby that looks oddly familiar, a young punk who… no, surely that’s not Dervish! Yes, it is, a young and spiky-haired Dervish Grady, fighting alongside Shark, Sharmila, Beranabus, a dark-skinned man and…

Kernel sits up and groans. He shakes his head groggily. His empty sockets turn left and right as if he’s looking for something. They fix sightlessly on Bec and me. Trembling, moaning with pain, he reaches over and lays his hands on top of mine. My magic shoots out to him, then blasts back stronger than ever, drawing power from the blind teenager. His lips move along with mine and Bec’s, his magic mingling with ours.

Our voices rise. The sky turns black, red, white. Rocks are ripping out of the ground, shooting upwards, burning, turning into birds, cows, cars, people, then back into rocks. Now everything’s rising, the ruins of trees and buildings, corpses, the demons. Gravity loses its grip. Lord Loss tries clinging to the invisible barrier around us, but is ripped away and up. He hurls vile curses at us as he shoots off.

The world is coming apart. Everything’s being destroyed. I’m afraid now, even more than when I thought the demons had us. Bec must be insane. Sixteen hundred years of captivity have driven her mad. She only wants to ruin, make everybody else suffer as she has suffered, tear the world apart. And she can do it. With my magic and Kernel’s, she has the power to wreak a terrible, misdirected revenge.

I try stopping it. I focus on breaking contact, making my lips stop, getting out of here before all is lost. But the magic holds me tight. There’s no escaping. Everything in sight shoots skyward, while the sky itself drops ever further, the tip of the funnel pulsing down… down… down.

Beranabus is frightened too. He was exhilarated when he saw the demons get swept away, but this has exploded out of control. He sees what I see — the literal end of the world. He sits on the ground – the only patch left is the bit contained by our bubble of energy – and gawps at the three of us, eyes wide, twin pools of confusion and fear. Maybe he thinks about killing one of us to stop it. But I don’t think he could. He doesn’t have the power.

The tip of the funnel is almost upon us. I gear myself up for one last effort, one final push to break the unnatural, destructive bond between me, Kernel and Bec. But before I can attempt anything, the tip of the funnel – blue, like the sky used to be – touches the wall of the invisible boundary.

A flash of light which is every colour. My body explodes, or seems to. I have the feeling of being everywhere and nowhere at once, both an entire universe and an insignificant speck. The funnel sucks me into it. Millions of panels of pulsing lights. Flying from one to another, bouncing around, moving so fast I’m creating a vacuum, sucking the tip of the funnel in after me, pulling it along in my wake. Dimly aware of Kernel and Bec’s magic working in tandem with mine.

We stop bouncing, but move quicker than ever. A cluster of purple lights flash, then bolt together and become a small window. We shoot through it. Yellow lights flash and join — we fly through. A series of flashing lights and windows, one after the other, faster and faster. Curious, I focus on the magic and realise Kernel’s the one creating the windows and directing us through them. I’ve no idea how or why. I don’t think Kernel knows either.

No sense of time or space. Just one window after another, the colours whirring and blurring, a fearsome noise building in the background. Then the lights fade. Unable to see anything now. Total blackness. As blind as Kernel.

The noise continues to build, so loud it could crush a continent. My ears burst. My skull cracks. My brain bubbles away to nothing. But that makes no difference. I still exist. I still hear, think and feel. The noise squeezes my soul. Pain that’s indescribable. No way to scream or release the pressure. A universe of agony.

Then, suddenly, the noise stops. I come to rest. The pain disappears. Delicious, soothing silence. Broken abruptly by a girl’s delighted laugh.

A SECOND CHANCE

→ At first I think the world and universe have been utterly destroyed and I’m just imagining the laughter. But then the blackness clears slightly. I realise I have eyes again. Blinking, I look around, but can’t make out much. It’s night and I’m in the middle of a cluster of trees. It’s not especially dark – the gleam of a full moon seeps through the branches of the trees – but it’s hard to adjust or focus. My mind’s spinning crazily in a bewildered whir.

“What happened?” Beranabus croaks, rising from a spot nearby. Kernel lies at the magician’s feet, groaning, cradling his head in his hands. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. My ears are searching for something. I’m not sure what it is, until after a few seconds it sinks in — the girl’s voice has gone.

Kernel mutters something, then bolts upright, screaming. “My eyes!” he howls. “The maggots! My eyes! I can’t–”

Beranabus covers his assistant’s mouth and whispers words of magic, a spell to ease the pain. Kernel thrashes wildly, then regains control and stops struggling, though his chest continues to rise and fall rapidly.

Beranabus removes his hand. “Are you going to be all right?”

“My eyes…?” Kernel moans.

“Gone,” Beranabus says bluntly.

“But… we must… there has to be some way…”

“No. They’re ruined. But don’t worry — magic will compensate. You won’t be entirely helpless.” Beranabus squeezes the back of Kernel’s neck. “We might even be able to knock together a pair of replacements when we return to the demon universe. If the gods are truly with us, you’ll still be able to see the patches of light and create windows.”

“Like I give a damn about that!” Kernel snaps sourly, but Beranabus ignores the hostility.

“Peace for a few minutes,” the magician says. “I need to determine where we are.”

He turns in a slow circle, eyes closed, breathing softly, trying to pinpoint our position. I know I should keep silent and wait for him to finish, but I can’t. “What did she do to us? The ground breaking apart and rising… the sky and funnel… the lights and windows… the noise and pain. What was all that about?”

“How should I know?” Beranabus growls. “Maybe she was trying to destroy the demons and the spell got out of hand.”

“But the sky! Did you see it? How did she do that? What–”

“Quiet!” Beranabus barks, opening an eye to glare at me. “How can I concentrate with you throwing stupid questions at me?”

“But she tore up the ground!” I shout. “She reversed gravity and brought the sky crashing down. And then she sent us… where? Is this Earth? A demon world? Are we dead?”

“I don’t know,” Beranabus sighs. “I don’t know where this is or how she sent us here — teleportation, I suppose, but I’ve never seen it done that way before. But I know why she did it.” He hesitates, then opens the other eye and looks at me with a shamed grimace. “I made another mistake. There have been far too many lately. I missed the sacrifice being made in the cave. I was wrong about Lord Loss not wanting to reopen the tunnel. And now I know my plan to close it was flawed.

“I told the Disciples that if we collapsed the walls of the tunnel, victory would be ours. The demons would be sucked back to their own universe. That’s how it happened in the past. I assumed the rules would apply the same way in the present.

“Bec told me they wouldn’t.”

“You mean, even if we’d succeeded, we wouldn’t have got rid of the demons?” I ask quietly.

“We’d have stopped others from crossing,” he says. “And those here would have lost much of their power. But the world has changed. There’s less magic in the air. My spells wouldn’t have dislodged the demons. The masters would have remained and even weakened they’d have had enough strength to crush humanity. I don’t think all of the Demonata were aware of that – they certainly didn’t act like they were – but Bec knew we were doomed. To spare us, she worked a spell with you and Kernel to get us out, so we could regroup and try again.”

“What’s there to try?” I sob. “If we couldn’t send them back this time, with all the Disciples to back us up… if destroying the tunnel won’t work…”

“There must be a way,” Beranabus mutters. “That’s why I have to focus. Time’s precious. Bec gave the demons a taste of their own hellish magic, but there’s no guarantee that those sucked up into the sky are dead. Even if they are, the tunnel’s still open. More can cross. We need to return and block their way. So be quiet and let me get my bearings. You can ask all the questions you want after that.”

He closes his eyes and turns again, reaching out with all his senses. Kernel has dragged himself away to sit against a tree. He’s exploring the empty sockets of his eyes with trembling fingers, picking out some dead maggots caught in the corners. I hobble over to check on him, to help if I can, to comfort him if he’ll let me.

Then I see the rocks.

My eyes have adjusted and the light from the moon is strong, even under the cover of the trees. I can’t miss the rocks. They lie scattered everywhere, but a lot are piled up on my left in a large mound. They can’t be real. It isn’t possible. I must be imagining them. Except I’m not. The magic inside me says they’re genuine. It’s smug. Confident. Triumphant.

“Beranabus.”

“Grubbs!” he yells angrily. “I told you not to–”

“I know where we are.”

He opens his eyes a fraction, suspiciously. “Where?”

“You don’t need magic. Just look.” I point to the rocks.

Beranabus frowns. Then he realises he’s seen the mound before and his jaw drops. “No,” he croaks. “It can’t be. This is a trick. Or somewhere that looks like…”

“No.” I walk across, pick up one of the smaller rocks, then lob it down the hole on the other side of the mound — the mouth of an all too familiar cave. “We haven’t gone anywhere. We’re still in Carcery Vale.”

→ Beranabus is striding around the hole, squinting at it, studying it from every possible angle. Every so often he stops, mumbles to himself, shuffles towards the hole, then starts marching again.

I’m with Kernel. I’ve wiped away the worst of the muck from around his eyes, using leaves and forest water. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

“There’s not much pain,” he says, “but there will be. You can delay it in circumstances like these, but not indefinitely. I’ll need hospital treatment when the spell wears off. Assuming any hospitals are left…” His head turns left, then right. “Is it day or night?”

“Night.”

“I thought so. But it was day when we attacked. I didn’t think I’d been unconscious that long.”

“You weren’t.”

“Then…?” He leaves the question hanging.

“We don’t know,” I tell him. “Beranabus is trying to figure it out.”

Kernel nods slowly. “How do I look?” he asks.

I stare into the vacant pits where his eyes once were. They’re peppered with dead maggots. A few are only half visible, their heads and upper bodies buried in the dark flesh and bone of his sockets. “Fine,” I lie.

Beranabus begins to laugh. I think he’s laughing at my lie and I turn on him angrily. But then I see that he didn’t even hear what I said.

“Of course,” he chortles. “It’s the only answer. There’s just one way she could have channelled that much power, to such an effect. You and Bec are the other two pieces. That’s the only thing that makes…”

He mumbles his way back into silence. I say nothing, waiting for him to get it clear in his head, so he can explain it to me in simple terms. I study him while I’m waiting. He looks weird minus his beard and hair, naked as the day he was born. I guess I look pretty strange too, as bare and hairless as an egg. I’d feel awkward any other time, but things have gone so crazy within the last hour, I’m not bothered by my ultra-smooth nudity.

Beranabus glances up and waves a hand at the trees. Their branches part, granting him an unobstructed view of the moon and surrounding sky. His eyes dart from the moon to the stars. I can practically hear his brain whirring as he performs silent calculations. Then the branches rustle back together and he laughs again. “I knew it!”

Beranabus bounds over to where Kernel and I are waiting. He crouches beside us, beaming like a proud father whose wife has just given birth. “The prime rule of magic — anything is possible. It’s the first thing I teach my assistants, but when you’ve been doing it as long as I have, it’s easy to forget your own advice. Just because something hasn’t been done before, and just because the power involved is way beyond that of even the greatest demon master, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Bec must have realised what she really was. She spent centuries preparing herself, waiting patiently…

“Or maybe she only saw how to do it during the battle. Maybe you were the catalyst, Grubbs. Or Kernel. Though I don’t think so — he came last to the union, didn’t he? I don’t suppose it really matters. Maybe Bec can tell us, assuming she’s…” He stops. “Yes, she must be alive — I mean, her ghost must still be here. It has to be. At least, I suppose…” He trails off into silence again.

“In your own time, Beranabus,” I mutter impatiently. “Whenever you’re ready.”

He flashes me a crazy smile. “This is so extraordinary. Every time I think about it, I discover something new. We’ve taken an immense leap forwards — well, a leap backwards if you want to be pedantic. It’s like going from the first stone wheel to the first manned flight in the space of one incredible day, one amazing spell. This requires years of study and analysis. We have to figure out how the three of you did it, how to control the power, what else we can do. That will–”

“I’m going to hit you if you don’t stop babbling,” I warn him. “Tell us what you know — or what you guess,” I add quickly as he opens his mouth to start telling me he doesn’t know anything really.

“I know you’re in the dark, I know you want answers, just as much as I do. But…” He stops, focuses, takes a deep breath. “You asked me a question once, Kernel. It’s a question most Disciples have asked, normally not long after I’ve told them that with magic anything is possible. Can you remember what it was?”

“I’m in no mood to solve riddles,” Kernel sighs. “I just want my eyes back. Can you do that for me?”

“Not now,” Beranabus huffs, waving the question away. “Think, boy. You were telling me about your early life, the night you created your first window and stepped into the universe of the Demonata. You said all your troubles started then, that if you could go back and stop yourself, everything would be fine. You asked me if–”

“No!” Kernel grunts. “It can’t be.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Beranabus chuckles.

“But you said we couldn’t!” Kernel protests.

“And I was right. Nobody ever had, and I didn’t think anyone could. But now we have. You, Bec and Grubbs did it. You broke the final barrier. I never thought it could happen. I gave up on the notion long, long ago. When you’ve seen as much of–”

“What is it?” I cut in sharply, furious with ignorance. “What’s the big secret? What question did Kernel ask?”

“The one they all ask eventually,” Beranabus smiles. “The one you would have put to me if you’d been with me a little longer, when you looked back on all the times you went wrong, wondered how things would have turned out if you’d done this or that differently, gone down one path instead of another.”

Beranabus stops, glances up at the trees and the moon beyond, as if to reconfirm it before saying it out loud. When he looks at me again, the smile’s still there, but shaky, as if he’s not sure whether he should be smiling or not. And he says, very softly, “Kernel asked me if it was possible to travel back in time.”

→ A shocked moment of incredulous silence. Then I laugh. “Good one. You almost had me going. Now quit with the jokes and–”

“This isn’t a joke,” Beranabus says.

“You’re trying to tell me we’ve returned to the past, like in some bad science-fiction film?”

“No,” Kernel giggles, then hits me with the punchline. “Like in some very good science-fiction film.”

“Don’t,” I mutter. “Things are mad enough without you two veering off at some ludicrous angle. We need to think about this logically, go through what happened step by step, so we can understand. Wild speculation won’t get us anywhere.”

“It’s not wild,” Beranabus says. “And it’s not speculation. It’s fact.”

“I don’t accept that. You’re wrong.”

“How else can you explain this?” He points to the hole, the rocks, the trees.

“It’s an illusion. Our minds have conjured it up or Bec fed the image to us to spare us the real, grisly truth. It happened to me before, in Slawter. Maybe we’re lying by the cave entrance, unconscious, demons ravaging our bodies, and this is our only way out of the pain. Or we’ve gone into the universe of the Demonata and created this scene ourselves. Hell, maybe we’re dead and this is what we’ve chosen for the afterlife.”

“We’re not dead,” Kernel says. “And we’re not imagining this. I’d have given myself eyes if we were.”

“Time travel’s impossible,” I say slowly, as if explaining something obvious to a young child.

“So is flying,” Beranabus says, “but you’ve soared like a bird.”

“That’s different,” I snap. “What you’re talking about…” I shake my head.

“How did it happen?” Kernel asks. “I believe you, Beranabus – at least I think I do – but how? You always said the past was the one thing we could never change.”

“It is. I mean, it was. Demons can’t do it. Magicians certainly can’t. But the Kah-Gash…”

Kernel draws his breath in sharply. “Are you sure?”

“It has to be,” Beranabus insists. “The ultimate power… the ability to destroy an entire universe… Why not the potential to reverse time too?”

“But if you’re right, that means…”

“Grubbs and Bec were the missing pieces. And there must have only been three. It couldn’t have worked unless all the pieces were assembled. At least I don’t think it could…” He frowns.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I hiss. “What’s a Car Gash?”

“Kah-Gash,” Kernel corrects me. He’s trembling, but not from the pain or cold. “It’s a mythical weapon. You’re meant to be able to destroy a universe with it, ours or the Demonata’s. It was split into an unknown number of pieces millions or billions of years ago. Various demons and magicians have searched for it since then, without success. Thirty years ago we discovered one of the pieces. In me.”

“You’d been implanted with something?”

“No. I am a piece of the Kah-Gash.”

“I don’t understand. How can you be part of a weapon? You’re human.”

“I’m magical,” he disagrees. “The Kah-Gash is a weapon of magic, not physics. It can take the form of anything it chooses.”

I think that through, putting it together with what they were saying a few minutes ago. “You believe Bec and I are part of this weapon too?”

“You have to be,” Beranabus says. “The stars don’t lie — we’ve gone back in time, to the night the tunnel was reopened. You three did it. We saw it happening. No force in either universe could have accomplished that, except the Kah-Gash.”

“How?” Kernel whispers. “And why? If this is the work of the Kah-Gash, where did it find the energy to alter the flow of time? And why bring us back to this specific moment? Why stop here, not a hundred years ago or a million? Why not shatter the laws of time entirely?”

Beranabus scratches the back of his neck. “What did you feel when it was happening?” he asks.

Kernel shrugs. “Great power flowing into me.”

“From where?”

“All around.”

“Grubbs? Can you be any more specific?”

“The ground,” I mutter. “The power came from the rocks, from beneath.”

“And did it flow into you or through you?”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’d have exploded if you drew in that much energy and didn’t let it out,” Beranabus says. “You had to channel the magic. But where to? The demons? The sky? Where?”

“The cave,” Kernel answers after several seconds of thoughtful silence. “The power came from the ground, then went through us, back down into the rock, to the cave… the tunnel.”

“Yes,” I agree, thinking back.

Beranabus smiles. “The Kah-Gash – you, Kernel and Bec – acted as a kind of magnifying lens. You drew energy from the tunnel, then focused it back.” He goes to stroke his beard, realises he doesn’t have one and taps his chin instead. “I can’t be sure – maybe I never will be – but this is how I think it worked.

“Opening a window between the Demonata’s universe and ours is like making a hole in a dam — matter flows from their universe to ours, generating energy. Space, time, gravity, the forces which hold our universes together… they seep across every time a demon or one of us makes a rip.

“Windows are small, temporary. The energy generated is minimal. But in this case a tunnel was created, open twenty-four hours a day. A huge river of magic flowed through. You three tapped into that. No… you must have done more than tap into it. You…” He clicks his fingers. “You rode it! It was like a wave of energy. You caught the wave and rode it back to its source, converting and channelling it at the same time.”

“Rode it back to its source?” Kernel echoes. “You mean back to the universe of the Demonata?”