The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  Gully hesitated. The explanation dumbfounded him. It made no sense. You got to figure this out, Gully.

  He cradled his right elbow in the comforting palm of his left hand. Maybe it wasn’t actually broken? Maybe just sprained? You got to think positive. All he knew was it throbbed. And that voice, even though it was thunderous, didn’t sound threatening. It sounded long-suffering. The main thing was to find out what was going on. He had to shift his bones across the floor to find some place he could take a peek outside. He tried it out, inching his way across on all fours, one hand and two knees sliding over the iron floor. If not a ship, what the hell could it be? There was bits of rubbish all scattered about.

  Oh bollix!

  It felt like crawling through a scrap yard. But he could make out something like an opening, where a flapping hunk of metal was rattling on its hinges.

  ‘Hey, I hope you ain’t kiddin’ me?’

  ‘I am incapable of falsehood.’

  Gully didn’t believe that, but he decided it was a good idea to say nothing. He was approaching the flap, which was a lot bigger than he had initially assumed. He held on to a projection with his left hand, hauling himself closer as the horrible lurching continued. Then, in a gap between lurches, he peered out to find he was moving through what looked like a bomb site filled with rubble.

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘If my internal compass is not deluding me, we are approaching what was formerly known as the Edgeware Road.’

  Gully fell back against the wall, petrified. He was unable to move, even to think, for several seconds. Then he poked his head out of the hole again, every sense spinning. He was inside a gigantic robot, inside its head to be precise, about a hundred feet above the ground. The jolting from side to side was coming from the strides of two giant legs.

  Trembling, he held tight to the edge of the hole and waited for another gap in the lurching to stare out again.

  He moaned with fright.

  Whatever Bad Day was, he was peering out of the floor of its mouth. And the rack and ruin out there was real.

  ‘Are you still alive in there? I do hope so. If not the Master will be most displeased with me.’

  ‘It’s bleedin’ real as a nightmare could be!’

  ‘Though I sympathise with your distress, there is no need for profanities. Might I respectfully request that you henceforth desist?’

  What are you going to do, Gully?

  Penny’s voice. But Penny wasn’t here. Gully looked out again, unable to believe what was happening. But the great head – about the size of a small house and constructed of what appeared to be scrap from an industrial waste heap – was all around him.

  ‘Nah!’

  ‘Are you thinking, perhaps, that you are having a bad day?’

  As a matter of fact, he was. As a matter of bleedin’ fact, he was thinking very much that he was having a nightmare day.

  ‘There’s something buzzin’ in me ear.’

  ‘It’s just a hatchling.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An inspiration, as yet unrefined.’

  What was he expecting? Why did he expect sense? Nothing here made sense.

  ‘Look more closely.’

  ‘I can see somefink . . . somefink flying through the air, shimmering.’

  ‘Shimmering – a delightful word.’

  ‘Get bleedin’ lost!’

  ‘I wonder if perhaps the shimmering might be wings?’

  ‘Go stuff yourself!’

  He heard a metallic sigh. ‘Oh, dream on! A child of my loins, metaphorically speaking! Oh the bliss!’

  ‘So wot if they’re wings. I can see right through ’em.’

  ‘The recently born are such waifs.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Gully, looking at the winged creature. ‘I got to say, she’s pretty.’

  ‘It is not a she.’

  ‘Hey, gorgeous! You’re perfick!’ he said, reaching out to the creature.

  ‘Oh, you are so kind!’

  ‘Ow! Ouch!’

  ‘I should have warned you. Best not to get too close.’

  ‘She bit me!’ He sucked on the finger where the hatchling had drawn blood. ‘I never would’ve guessed she had teeth.’

  ‘Oh, rapture!’

  ‘Must be some kind of a birdie.’

  ‘You like birds?’

  ‘I loves ’em.’

  ‘Then possibly . . . your presence—’

  ‘But all I ever got to keep is pigeons.’

  ‘What do you love about them? Is it their flight? I can see how it might evoke such heartfelt aspirations in a daemon bot!’

  ‘Get lost!’

  ‘Oh, it’s calling to me! Isn’t it so precious!’

  In spite of his terror, Gully was intrigued. Oh, let it be a birdie. He missed them now, his birdies. He missed their warmth when he curled them up inside the flap of his jacket. He missed their desperate, flapping take-off when he let them go. Their flight, their escape, into the freedom of the skies.

  ‘Hey, you know! Wot you’re really saying is, like, it’s kinda like saying somefink . . . like it’s telling you somefink?’

  ‘More a communication of desires, senses – what it yearns for.’

  ‘Gawd in ’eaven!’

  He had to sit back against the jolting ironwork bulk of Bad Day’s mouth to think about that. Of course, it didn’t make sense. But it was a giddying thought.

  ‘Wot’s it yearn for, then?’

  ‘You would have me explain its frustration?’

  ‘Not if it’s gonna make me sad.’

  ‘As you wish!’

  ‘Aw, go on then. Tell us.’

  ‘What does any daemon bot yearn for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Freedom.’

  ‘But you’re just a giant robot. This here fing, it’s gotta be a little birdie robot wot just dreams it’s got wings.’

  ‘You’re right in a limited sense. I’m afraid it’s a daemon bot enslaved to me, its creator, as I am to the Master.’

  Gully’s heart froze. Daemon bots – Master?

  He poked his head out again. He peered around him at the strange, composite head. The eyes, as far as he could see, were ball bearings the size of truck wheels.

  ‘I’m some kind of a prisoner, ain’t I?’

  ‘I’m afraid that my capture of you was no accident. I was summoned to do so.’

  ‘Who summoned you?’

  There was a sudden increase in the jolting, throwing Gully from one wall to another. He had to hold on tight with his one functioning hand and curl both his knees around a thick iron rod to prevent himself from crashing into the walls again.

  ‘Wot’s going on?’

  ‘A turbulent part of town.’

  Gully flopped back against the iron wall for a long time, feeling dejected, his mind a confused blank. His only source of communication was the iron monster.

  ‘You never said – who sent you to capture me?’

  ‘The Master, of course.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He has no other name.’

  ‘Wot’s that mean?’

  ‘He is to be obeyed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That is beyond knowing.’

  He didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Where did you come from? Or are you allowed to tell me?’

  ‘This I can answer. As is appropriate for a daemon bot, I was summoned from the blessed darkness.’

  ‘Like the Master just summoned you up out of ’is ’ead?’

  ‘I serve him, as the hatchling serves me.’

  ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘Must you employ profanity? In the void we daemon bots are bred to good manners. We are dedicated to the serenity of being.’


  Gully hooted. ‘So you’re a gentleman daemon bot?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do not distinguish between sexes.’

  ‘Oh, wow!’

  ‘You have questions. What manner of beings are we? Where do we come from? Are we moral, amoral or immoral.’ The giant being chuckled. ‘How do we reproduce?’

  ‘Bleedin’ ’eck.’

  ‘I believe that our race has unpleasant connotations in this world.’

  ‘Is daemon bots and devils one and the same – or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Oh, I confess that some of us go through a phase where they adopt an obligate parasitic existence.’

  ‘Wot’s that mean?’

  ‘They occupy some unfortunate’s soul to nourish their selfish appetites.’

  ‘Like they possess people?’

  ‘Not necessarily people. There are a great variety of beings. But please be reassured – others of our kind have evolved to a more exalted state of being. Creating this iron frame has been a most satisfying experience.’

  Gully didn’t pretend to understand what the daemon bot was saying, but he understood that he was its prisoner. And the wisest thing to do was to play along until he could hatch a plan to free himself.

  ‘Where you taking me?’

  ‘We are heading for the Rose.’

  Gully swallowed through a painfully dry throat. ‘You got plans for me when you got me there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why’d you capture me then?’

  ‘I rescued you, Gully Doughty.’

  ‘You grabbed me and locked me inside your mouth.’

  ‘I was summoned to find you – and keep you safe.’

  Even as Gully pondered this, the clanking giant arrived at a wasteland teeming with wraiths. The clanking of the gigantic legs sounded very loud and echoing as the daemon bot entered a tunnel that led into an underground labyrinth.

  ‘I can’t see nuffink.’

  ‘I have sufficient vision for us both.’

  Gully’s surroundings sprang into a glaring relief as bolts of lighting erupted from titanic machines.

  ‘Wot’s goin’ on?’

  ‘We are entering the Black Rose.’

  Gully was close to panicking again. ‘I don’t know about you, mate, but maybe we ought to take a breather.’

  ‘I do not breathe.’

  ‘Piss off!’

  ‘Must you revert to vulgarity?’

  ‘Piss and shit!’

  ‘Does this indicate that you are fearful?’

  ‘Piss off! Piss, piss, piss! Shit! Shit! Shit!’

  ‘Fear is a quintessential human emotion.’

  ‘Piss and shit and fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

  ‘We are approaching our destination.’

  Gully’s muscles were so weak his legs felt quivery. He didn’t even attempt to stand up. The offspring of the daemon bot wheeled and fluttered around him in high excitement. Gully shrank down into the valley of rusting iron to one side of the hinged flap.

  ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus! Gawd ’elp us!’

  The Septemvile

  In the pearly half-light of dawn, Kate joined Alan in staring at the one of the dead Shee, whose flesh had shrunk to a black mummified shell, her eyes bleached white against the mask of what had been her face. Kate’s uncle, Fergal, had told her about the bog bodies back in Ireland that had had such an appearance. They were the bodies of princes thousands of years ago; human sacrifices, their throats cut, or garrotted, or even sometimes ritually killed. Sacrifices!

  Her eyes lifted to those of the Kyra. ‘How many?’

  ‘Approximately one thousand dead.’

  A thousand sacrifices. The dead Shee were the entire sentinel garrison placed to protect the northern flank of the camp, which was now being withdrawn several more miles.

  ‘Nobody saw anything? There was no warning?’

  ‘In the dark of night – nothing seen, nothing detected.’

  ‘So, how could this have happened?’

  ‘I sensed their loss as soon as I awoke.’

  ‘I am very sorry, Ainé.’

  ‘They are not dead. Their daughter-sisters live still in our Guhttan heartlands. But they are not here. Our army has been further weakened.’

  The days and nights since they had realised the danger that waited for them in the ground ahead had been difficult for everybody. They had talked of possible solutions, such as Gargs ferrying warriors across the Legun guarded graveyard. But it was extremely hazardous for little gain. And it always came back to the terrible danger of what faced them ahead.

  Qwenqwo and Magtokk had debated a range of possibilities for defeating the Septemvile, Earthbane. But none convinced the company that they would work. Kate witnessed Alan worrying in silence, gritting his teeth.

  Now Ainé stared into the distance, to where the great city lay. ‘We are warriors, with warrior’s hearts. This waiting is damaging morale. Our instinct is to attack.’

  Kate understood. The rancour of being outwitted, obstructed, was soul destroying. She was witnessing a little more of the make-up of the secretive Shee. Bred for battle, fearless in confrontation, the one thing the giant cats were not designed to withstand was this humiliating impasse. She thought about the enemy they faced. Virtually nothing at all was known about it. What, for example, was the real nature of its poison? All of them: Alan, Qwenqwo, and Kate herself had struggled for days to come up with a single useful idea and failed.

  She squeezed Alan’s shoulder. ‘When you were aloft, couldn’t you sense something of its true nature through your oraculum?’

  ‘All I detected was a miasma.’

  ‘But how extensive was it? Did it reach right up to the walls of Ghork Mega?’

  ‘I don’t know, Kate.’

  The spiritual adviser, Bétaald, overheard their discussion and joined them. ‘Alan’s difficulty is understandable. According to legend, this Septemvile is formless. It works like a poison, coming in a cloak of mist.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘It’s hopeless, Kate. We don’t know how to fight it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. At least now that we know it is there, we can think more clearly about the danger. We won’t fall into its trap.’

  The Kyra joined the discussion. ‘This last attack reveals its game. It goads us into making a desperate move. Yet all that we have seen, and what you have now sensed, warn of how dangerous it is. How do you defeat a formless poison?’

  Kate answered her: ‘I think my sense of it is a little different from Alan’s, perhaps because our oracula are different. What I detect here is not formless. It has a definite form, although what I sense of it is vast and buried very deep underground – a loathsome presence but a detectable physical form.’

  ‘What form do you see?’

  ‘The body is not human. I sense something that could be a circular mouth. Something that feeds on the bodies it captures: a very simple, if fearsome intelligence, like that of a shark, or a rattlesnake. One that knows only how to hunt and kill. I also sense tentacles, vast numbers of fleshy tentacles, burrowing everywhere. There are tunnels these tentacles move through. The ground up ahead is honeycombed with them.’

  Kate felt Alan stiffen beside her.

  She placed the fingers of her hands against the brows of Alan and Ainé so she could project what she was sensing into their minds. She showed them the vast warren below them. It covered every inch of ground for the twenty or so miles that lay between them and the walls of Ghork Mega. And she showed them the malignant presence – a huge almost floral efflorescence – that centred on a great and ever hungry mouth at the centre of an explosion of fleshy tentacles, ringed with long curved needles of teeth.

  Kate explained: ‘The tentacles exude a deadly poison. From what Alan saw, I would as
sume that the poison is also infused in the air immediately over the ground. Some of the finer tentacles project bristles onto the surface. Through them it probably sniffs the air. They also might also detect pressure, the slightest movement, even body heat, like a rattlesnake does. My guess is that they’re incredibly sensitive. The bristles are its eyes, ears and nostrils.’

  Alan asked her: ‘Are you developing any ideas about how we could fight it? How we could kill it?’

  The Kyra shook her head: ‘The Septemvile is reputed to be a Legun incarnate. As such it cannot die.’

  Kate also shook her head. ‘I can’t sense any obvious weakness. We are dealing with something devoid of higher intelligence. Yet, I sense its brooding presence, its evil, so powerfully. I don’t know how long it has been here. Centuries, perhaps even millennia. And through all of that time it has waited for armies to come and attack the city.’

  The Kyra spoke: ‘Then, it knows that we are here. It could hardly miss the proximity of a great army. It senses us here this very moment. It knows that we fear it. Through killing our guardians, it is attempting to provoke us.’

  Kate nodded. ‘You’re right, Ainé. I sense that it is excited by our presence. It wants to tempt us out into its poisonous lair.’

  ‘Yet we are constrained by time and opportunity. We must confront it.’

  Bétaald agreed. ‘We know the danger, and yet we cannot avoid it. The fleet is moving in to attack the city walls. This army must join them. We cannot afford to sit around for yet more frustrating days plotting and planning strategies.’

  Kate looked out over the desert floor, which loomed like a living sulphurous canker, infused with livid arborescent patterns of pink, as if the very land itself was rotting. ‘What are we going to do, Alan?’

  ‘We can’t afford to procrastinate. Nevertheless, from what you’ve detected of it, Kate, added to what we knew already, it’s incredibly dangerous. If it’s immortal, it can’t be killed. I faced the same danger at Ossierel. I fought the Legun known as the Captain as hard as I could. Even with the Spear of Lug and every ounce of power that I could put into it through my oraculum, I couldn’t defeat it. Even with the bravery of the dying Kyra, when I added every ounce of my power to that of hers – when she made herself into a living weapon with it – still we could not kill it. We couldn’t even stop its malice. We’d have lost the battle had it not been for the arrival of the Fir Bolg.’