The Narrows

by James Brogden

  Beneath his feet, he felt the great slow song of the Omphalos, as of mills and factories labouring far underground, or the tumbling chambers of a lock the size of continents. He saw how the leys fed into it, and how the great rolling beat of its vast heart spread out in ripples which were the circles of the world. He saw them narrowing as they approached the centre, how very few of them were inhabited by anything even remotely human, and the countless worlds lying in between, which were barren of everything except nightmare. He saw how their energy was tapped, distorted and stolen by the needles of stone and concrete which humanity had been planting in the earth’s flesh for tens of thousands of years, and how each individual was also a pinprick in this Pattern.

  He could not see the centre. He suspected that to comprehend the Omphalos directly would be the same as possessing it, but what he could see was how very far away it was and the magnitude of the journey required to reach it. It could be done, there was no doubt about that, but it would be a journey measured in lifetimes. Barber was about to bludgeon his way through in a matter of hours.

  He led them through the circle and out the other side.

  Bex was surprised to find that the atmosphere lightened immediately and that they were following the line of a hedgerow which hadn’t existed on the open moor. Looking back, she saw that the stones now seemed to be in a perfectly ordinary field bordered by trees, and there was even a small shed with brightly-lit windows where the roundhouses had been. It was her first glimpse of anything like normal civilisation for days, and she excitedly tried to draw their attention to it, but Andy pressed on urgently.

  The hedgerow broadened and deepened, and he led them down, into the heart of it, with great, glossy holly-brakes overarching on either side so that the darkness enfolded them once more, despite the fact that outside it was almost full daylight. The vegetation became more tangled so that they had to fight their way through, and when they saw the first signs of rubbish and heard the blank white noise of city traffic, her heart leapt with the joy of homecoming.

  Andy stumbled suddenly with a grunt, as if he’d tripped or crashed into some unseen obstacle.

  ‘This is as far as we go,’ he said, slightly dazed. ‘No more Narrows into the city centre except the ones Barber has made – and they’re guarded.’ He shuddered, remembering the feeling of Penrose’s death.

  They had emerged from the undergrowth onto wasteland overlooking acres of sprawling construction site. Edris surveyed the scene with grim distaste. ‘What is this place? Why do they tear at the earth so?’

  ‘They’re building a new hospital,’ Bex explained.

  The Dobunni warrior sniffed sceptically. ‘How do your healers expect the sick to recover, living in such an open wound as this?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, mate,’ she replied, ‘I just work here.’

  Their attention was soon drawn by the ambulance. It was parked several hundred yards away with its emergency lights dark and its back doors open, with a litter of medical equipment strewn across the ground. There was no sign of any paramedics, casualties, or even bystanders – but through a ragged hole torn in a chainlink fence, there was a telltale glimpse of paramedic green. And a lot of red.

  ‘This is where Penrose died,’ said Andy.

  ‘I don’t think he was the only one,’ Bex whispered, trying not to look too closely and failing.

  ‘We deal with the gates first. Just this one, just enough to screw up his network so he can’t kill anybody. Whether that weakens him at all, I don’t know. Whatever’s guarding it is still there.’

  The sound of police sirens rose in the distance.

  ‘Whatever we’re going to do,’ said Bex, ‘we’d better do it fast.’

  Keeping as low as possible, they ran across the open ground and crouched alongside the ambulance. They could hear the CB radio crackling with the dispatcher’s increasingly urgent pleas for a response – but from their new vantage point, they could see all too clearly that none of the crew would ever return that call.

  Ted paled. Bex clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming, or puking, or both. Even the normally stoic Edris paled at the wanton carnage before him. Andy, whose senses were wide open to the subtle energies in the vicinity, felt the backwash of terror and slaughter rebounding around him in waves. When the ambulance had disturbed the urdrog, its millennia-old hunger had been momentarily sated with Penrose, and so it had simply played with them instead. There was nothing recognisably human in the abattoir it had left.

  It was sitting in the middle of it all, watching them. It wore a human shape, but Andy could see instantly from its aura that…

  ‘Jesus, DODD!’ Bex shrieked and ran towards it.

  4 Holly King, Oak King

  ‘Bex, NO!’ Andy grabbed for her, but the urdrog was appallingly quick, tearing at him with ice-black whiplashes of sha, forcing him to retreat instinctively into a protective shell even as it began to unfold itself. It’s wearing him like armour, he thought, incredulous. It’s a creature of the deep; it can’t survive at this level. It’s wearing him like a fucking spacesuit. Barber, you bastard.

  Bex was yelling ‘Dodd!’ at the top of her lungs and running, unable to see yet what he was. ‘Get out! Get the fuck out of there!’

  ‘Bex,’ it smiled, shaking its head. ‘You finally came to rescue me. Just a little too late, don’t you think?’

  She faltered, unsure. ‘Uh…’

  ‘You left me to die, bitch.’ The sirens were a lot louder now, and Andy became aware of a radiant yellow glow intensifying just behind him. ‘After everything I did for you. Everything I gave you. You ran away, and you let them put this inside of me.’ The urdrog shrugged itself free from Dodd’s shell and reared up over her tiny, stupefied figure. Jaws the size of rubbish skips drooled black vitriol, and a claw-tipped tentacle lashed down.

  It was met by Edris’ blade. With his other hand, he grabbed her by the scruff of her collar and flung her to one side, out of harm’s way.

  The Dobunni warrior was ablaze with light. The goldwork which adorned his body – the torc about his throat and the curvilinear bands on every part of every limb – was not just for decoration, Andy saw now, but each was an augur just like the chirurgeon’s devices. They amplified his soul’s energy, which was already substantially greater than anybody in this world, in burning lines of force which made it seem like there was a sun inside him leaking fire through fissures in his skin. Yet that was as nothing compared to the savage glee which burned in his face. This was what he was born for.

  The urdrog was heavy and splay-limbed, with elbow-spurs curving up wickedly over its back, and the hackles which bristled from its steeply bunched shoulders were like a thicket of spears. Its eyes were set in multiple rows like a spider’s but without the same alien blankness; these were roving, intent, and burned with intelligence. Behind the cage of its teeth writhed a host of tongues, each lined with more teeth in turn.

  More crippling than the creature’s physical attributes, however, was the overpowering terror which it generated. Daylight itself tried to shudder away from it, and from the howling void of its entry into the world, glacial blasts of wind ten-thousand years old tore at their clothes and minds. It stank of bodies piled high on the tundra under skies without hope of sunrise. It shrieked of running without hope of escape, of sobbing death under jaws whose hunger could never be satiated.

  Andy, being unfixed, was able to evade the worst of this; the urdrog’s malice slithered off him and was grounded, leaving frozen black scars on the concrete. Ted, brave though he was, lay curled in a foetal ball on the ground, the javelin that he had been given to care for discarded on the ground. Only Edris met it full on, burning it aside with the solar intensity of his own life energy as he ducked and parried and slashed.

  ‘Go!’ he roared. ‘Destroy the gate! I will see to this abomination!’
Despite his strength, he was being driven steadily back towards them, and for every wound he dealt he received half a dozen more. The creature gathered itself and bore down on him in a writhing tumult of darkness.

  Andy dragged Bex to her feet. Defenceless, she’d caught the full force of the urdrog’s psychic assault and now staggered, slack-jawed. Her hand was ice cold. Still, he hauled her past, towards the Narrow which the beast guarded, the gate that led directly to the centre of Barber’s web. It hovered like heat-shimmer in a triangular gap between two crossed girders, and through it Andy could see the construction site on the other side superimposed with the gate’s destination in the city centre.

  Rebecca! the Urdrog raged in her head, and this time its voice was Shithead Dave’s. What do you think you’re doing? You don’t actually think you can stop this, do you? Get your arse back home right now and do not take another step nearer that gate, do you hear me, you silly little cunt! Do you hear me?!

  She heard.

  A week ago she might have had the strength to tell that voice to go fuck itself, but she’d fought as hard as she could and run as far as it was possible to run, and it still hadn’t been enough. She hadn’t been able to save anybody, not really, and everything she’d done to avenge or atone for Dodd’s death now turned out to be a sick joke. The notion that Andy might need her strength in some way was patently ridiculous. She heard what it said and knew it all to be true.

  Andy felt the sag of her weight as she collapsed and turned to see that her aura had gone completely black – where he clutched her wrist, it crawled over his skin like worms.

  ‘Bex, NO!’

  For a moment he forgot everything. He forgot about Barber, about the Narrows, about gates and lacunae and Oak Kings and Holly Kings and the beating heart of the universe and every little piece of the insane weirdness that had overtaken his life since he’d met her; more than that, he forgot even the details of the mundane life that he had been fighting so desperately to regain: his flat, his job, his girlfriend. His entire world was the young woman lying at his feet, with her stricken eyes and her soul twisting like a pit of snakes trying to eat themselves. He wanted to reach into her, to take possession of her and burn out the darkness completely. And he could – she’d never forgive him, but he could fix that too. It would be so easy, given the luxury of just a little time.

  But Edris was fighting with increased desperation to keep the urdrog at bay, and he was losing. Each wound that the creature inflicted was black with frostbite, and the augurs that empowered his flesh were damaged, some smashed completely, the brightness guttering from one part of his body to another, and the geometries of his aura were tattered like windswept constellations. The urdrog’s jaws lashed down and enclosed his shield arm, crushing it, and he was driven to his knees with a broken cry, even as he stabbed at the head which was worrying at his mangled arm.

  The creature suddenly reared back with howl of pain, a javelin buried deeply in one eye socket. Ted was on his feet, tottering but defiant.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted at Andy. ‘Go! GO!!’

  Andy paused only an instant longer to draw a burst of fresh strength from the earth before slinging Bex over his shoulders and leaping through the gate.

  ***

  Barber stood on the roof of the Rotunda, a wide, circular platform nearly three hundred feet above Birmingham City centre. It comprised two levels: a lower, outer walkway, protected from the drop by a meter-high railing, surrounding the higher, topmost level which housed the building’s lift machinery, air conditioning and other such service hardware. A little like a very wide, very flat top hat. From the centre of the top emerged the axle housing for a great metal boom which extended out to the building’s circumference like a single clock hand, and from this was suspended its window cleaning and maintenance cradle. It was on top of this housing, barely a yard across, and unperturbed by the freezing easterly wind which had had touched nothing higher since the Ural Mountains in Russia, that Barber stood and looked down on the city whose death would furnish his passage to godhood.

  He felt something like affection for it at the idea.

  It might have been his imagination, but he fancied that he could also feel the building alive with energy even before he’d started. Like any form of power, it was generated from a conflict of opposites, and Brummies had a unique love-hate relationship with the Rotunda. It was both icon and eyesore, a property investor’s folly whilst simultaneously the epitome of chic urban living, a visionary landmark and a concrete toilet roll. Ten people had died in it in 1974 when the IRA bombed the Mulberry Bush on the ground floor. It had been scheduled for demolition and then, when reprieved and refurbished, people had queued overnight for apartments which sold out in twenty minutes. He was standing where at one stage the designers had envisaged a large, flame-shaped sign which would have changed colour with the seasons and turned the building into a huge beacon. He was glad that it hadn’t; sometimes you could push a metaphor too far.

  Not that any of it would have made any difference. The necessary design elements had been well in hand even before the foundations had been laid in 1963 – it was amazing what could be done with a few well-placed bribes and the promise of government money to a city council desperate to reinvent itself in the bleak post-war decades.

  The concrete core which served as the building’s spine extended a good eighty feet further than anyone believed, deep into the sandstone ridge upon which the oldest parts of the city were built, and which in turn was the product of a geological fault line bisecting the whole city from south-west to north-east. Brummies. Their home was cut in two under their feet, and they didn’t even know it. As fault lines went, it was a tiny thing – responsible for only three minor earthquakes in over a hundred years – but in geomantic terms, it represented a source of power which dwarfed anything that mankind had attempted to manipulate. Stonehenge, Nazca, the Pyramids – all were little more than scratches in the topsoil, pinpricks in the earth’s skin. The Rotunda was plugged into its very bones, and Barber was plugged into the building. It was the only thing big enough to anchor him against the energies he would soon be commanding.

  In the air below him, around the edge of the lower roof level, there shimmered twelve incandescent lacunae through which the ch’i of half a million souls would soon come streaming to him, powering his descent to the uttermost core of all reality: the Omphalos. And then – why, then the real work could begin.

  Yes, an anchor was definitely needed when dealing with such absolutes. One slip – a moment’s hesitation or the most minute miscalculation – could prove catastrophic.

  There would be no miscalculation. It was unthinkable. This was the culmination of more than half a century’s work – he’d long since lost track of exactly how long, having moved between different realms so often, and he couldn’t even remember how old he was with any real accuracy. The reappearance of the Sumner boy at almost the last minute had shaken him a bit, he’d admit that, but he’d never been a real threat and was now either dead or hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of concentric worlds.

  The policeman’s death had been amusingly inevitable, given his stubborn insistence on making himself more significant than he had any right to be. His part had been played years ago, and he should have been content with that. Barber could feel that the urdrog which had dealt with Penrose remained agitated, but he wasn’t unduly worried; it was to be expected that such guardians might draw attention to themselves. The local police would be dust and memories, along with the rest of the world, long before anybody had the faintest idea of what was happening.

  Still. It was almost as if…

  Then Andy and Bex fell through one of the lacunae and onto the Rotunda’s lower roof.

  5 The Omphalos

  ‘You surprise me, boy, and that’s no mean feat.’ Barber took in their travel-weary appearance and mud-s
plattered Dobunni cloaks. ‘Although you appear to have had the more interesting time of it.’

  ‘Save it,’ Andy replied curtly, climbing to his feet. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Barber scrutinised him narrowly. ‘You’ve certainly – how can I say it – deepened since we last met. Why it seems like it was only yesterday.’ He gave an ironic little laugh that made Andy want to burn the face off his skull.

  ‘I haven’t come to play games, you smug shit.’

  ‘And why exactly is it that you have come, I wonder?’ Barber’s tone was still playful, but venom twitched underneath it like a cat’s tail. ‘For more answers to your pointless existence? Or to die properly like you failed to do last time? I warn you, I won’t be so indulgent. Yesterday, you were a curiosity to me, a puzzle worth expending the energy on breaking apart to solve. Today, you’re just not that interesting. If it’s death you’ve come for, then you’ll have to wait your turn, along with the rest of creation. Calling me names won’t hasten the process.’

  ‘Andy,’ Bex whispered. She lay where she’d fallen, not bothering to get up. Her eyes were haunted. ‘He’s right. There’s nothing we can do.’

  Barber grinned viciously. ‘Your little street slut seems to be all out of spunk. I rather fear the urdrog have that effect. It’s a shame, though no doubt you’ll be blaming me for the fact that you led her into its teeth.’

  ‘Nope. Not at all. That one’s on me. So is this.’ And Andy struck at him with everything he had.

  Barber might have closed and rechannelled the Narrows for his own purposes, but he could do nothing about the white-noise background roar of ch’i which emanated from all around: it was generated by the souls of the people living in the apartments below his feet, on the streets outside, and further into the city, the country, the entire world. It vibrated in the spaces between the atoms of the concrete around him and in the wood of Holda’s caral, a thousand thousand worlds away. Her people called it wyrd; Laura’s mother would have prayed to it as the Holy Spirit, and Barber had called it earth-ionosphere cavity resonances. Andy wasn’t educated enough to give it a name, but he was unfixed, and he felt out as widely as possible to draw in as much as he could, as hard and as fast as he was able. He flung it in a raving blue-white blast of energy directly at the dark figure who laughed mockingly at him from above.