by Peter Oxley
“Because the Almadites hate me even more than they will you, so we’ve got something to base our blossoming friendship on. Now, could you please put the sword down? It’s making me nervous.”
I glared at the creature for a long while, trying to decide whether or not I should trust him. Then again, if he had planned to attack me or had a horde outside waiting to overwhelm me, then I would in all probability already be dead. In any case, I had nothing left to lose. I lowered the sword, returning it to the scabbard on my back.
“That’s quite a fine weapon you have there,” said Byron. “Where did you get it?”
“A friend forged it for me.”
“From what I can tell, there are some pretty powerful symbols etched into it. And etched into you too, for that matter. I’m guessing they’re the source of your power?”
“Maybe.”
He sighed. “Look, if we’re going to be friends then I’m going to need a bit more out of you, as I get bored very easily.”
“I told you, we are not friends.”
“All right.” He walked towards me. “Let me be clear. I’m proposing an arrangement that will work for both of us. You clearly need help, if only guidance on how to get around without making half a city eager to kill you. Also, if you really are—or were—human, then I can help you come to terms with your powers. In return, you can do something for me.”
“Which is?”
He grinned. “It’s a tough world, with lots of people wanting to kill the likes of me on sight. More and more of them each day, it seems. Over the past few weeks many of my people have disappeared, and I don’t intend to be one of them. I need someone who can fight with me if things ever get rough. Four fists are better than two, as they say. Swords also.”
“You need a bodyguard,” I said, then remembering something I had once said to Kate, I added: “A blunt instrument.”
“Exactly,” he grinned. “Like I said, the perfect team!”
I grudgingly agreed that Byron could stay in the barn with me overnight, although this meant that I spent most of the time jumping at every sound and movement, fearful that the demon would attack me when my back was turned. As the sunlight broke through the cracks in the wooden boards that made up the walls I gingerly touched my head and face, heart sinking as I realised that I still had not changed back. Was this the way I was doomed to remain? Had the sword finally caused irreversible damage to me? I slumped to the floor and stared up at the rafters, trying to force myself to work through my options calmly.
It was no use. Every time I tried to concentrate my mind swam back to the faces of my friends, those faces that would never look at me in the same way again. My life as I had once known it was over; I was destined to be hunted and reviled for the rest of my days.
“You know,” said Byron, “if you wanted to make a run for it somewhere, you really should have done so before the sun came up. It’s a bit busy out there now.”
I levered myself upright and looked through a crack in the wall. The road passing by the building seemed to have a constant stream of traffic, while the fields beyond were being tended by a gang of labourers. “No matter,” I said, slumping back down to continue my examination of the barn’s vaulted ceiling.
“You never gave me an answer last night,” continued Byron, “as to whether or not you’d be agreeable to working with me.”
“No. You’re right, I didn’t.”
“So…?”
I sighed. “I am having trouble deciding whether or not to trust you.”
“Aha! So you’re not as stupid as you look!” He held up his hands when I turned to give him a baleful stare. “All I’m saying is that you’re right to do so. Those who trust strangers blindly these days tend to find themselves minus a major organ. Especially when it comes to demonkind.”
The silence stretched out between us until I felt compelled to fill it. “Every demon that I have ever met has tried to kill me. Why should you be any different?”
“Why indeed? Well, I told you the main reason last night: I’m a Pooka.” He sat back as though that answered everything.
I shrugged. “That means nothing to me.”
“Nothing? You’re a demon. Where have you been hiding not to have heard of the Pooka?”
“I told you last night. I am not a demon. I am—”
“—human, yes, you said. And I’m beginning to half-believe you, apart from the big horns on your head, the pointy teeth and the severe sunburn. Care to explain them?”
I frowned. There was every chance that this creature would sell me to the highest bidder if he knew who I really was. I had managed to avoid giving my name to him and it would serve me better to preserve my anonymity until I understood his motivations a little better. If it were possible to understand a demon’s motivations, that is.
“Very well,” Byron continued. “Let’s leave that for the moment and assume that you in fact have absolutely no knowledge about demons apart from the fact that we’ve got bumpy heads and come from far, far away. That a fair starting point?”
I nodded my head slowly.
“I come from a realm that your people sometimes call Tir nAill, sometimes Tir na nÓg. It was a peaceful place, where rivers ran gold and green under mountains that touched the stars. The sky was always crowded, with five suns and three moons and herds of Beithsc’athanach carving through the clouds.”
“What?” I asked.
“Big things with wings: taste delicious. Anyway, we were and always have been a peaceful people, never a threat to anyone.”
“Apart from the Beith-things.”
“Well, yes. And other food besides. Look, do you want to hear this or not?” I held up a hand in apology and he continued: “As I said, we have always been a peaceful race. But then one day the portal opened to Almadel.” He looked at me.
I shrugged. “You say that like it should mean something to me.”
He stared at me for a moment. “Almadel is home to most of the creatures you now see invading this realm. It is a terrible place, home to beasts whose only desire is to conquer and destroy. They have some utterly ruthless leaders—”
“Like the Four Kings?” I asked.
“Aha, so you’re not as ill-informed as you appear. Yes, like the Four Kings. Although they were minor leaders when my realm was invaded. The leader at that time was a creature named Andras.” He noted the sudden intent look in my eyes and nodded. “I see you have heard of him. The God of Lies, the Soulstealer.” He shuddered. “They swept into my world without mercy, killing anyone who might be a threat and enslaving the rest. Within a generation we were reduced to slaves, along with all the others whom the Almadites have invaded over the millennia.”
“And so you managed to escape slavery?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Oh no, not me. I’ve never been a slave. I was one of the lucky ones. When the Almadites invaded I was posted in the Eternal Mines, deep down, protecting the miners there. You see, I was a soldier and we had received intelligence that it was the mines that were the Almadites’ target. We never thought they would risk an all-out assault on our home, or that they even knew how to reach it. How very wrong we were. When we heard about the invasion it was already too late: we were outnumbered and our home was overrun.” He shuddered for a moment, then looked up and grinned. “The great thing about the Eternal Mines is that they lead everywhere and nowhere, which means that those who know their way around them can lead those who don’t on a merry dance. The Almadites sent warriors down after us… for all I know, they’re still down there, wandering round.”
“How long did you remain in the mines?” I asked.
“Time ceased to have any meaning. There’s light down there, from plants and creatures and rocks, but it doesn’t correspond to any particular time of day or night. Luckily there’s plenty of food and water too, but it was still hard. Occasionally we would launch attacks on the surface to try to rescue our people…” He shuddered again.
“What?” I aske
d.
“To know how truly terrible the Almadites are, you need to see what they do to your home. I remember going to the surface what must have been a few years after the invasion. All that I had known was gone; the once beautiful sky was a bitter miasma—a cloying, pungent mist. The rivers were black and steaming with foul effluent. The mountains were being broken down by slaves, the once perfect peaks now little more than jagged shards, as though they had been beaten insensible by a million hammers wielded by a million spiteful children. And as for the slave camps…” His eyes welled up with tears and he took a deep breath before continuing.
“Everyone they had not killed had been forced into camps, where they were stripped of everything: not just their freedom but their free will and even the knowledge that they had once been free. They were little more than shells, empty vessels for their new Almadite masters to do with as they willed.”
There was a long pause while he tried to recover his composure, staring at the floor as he relived those horrors, the torment flickering across his face like storm clouds on a sunny day.
“I had a family. A wife, children, parents, friends. I saw them there. I wanted to help them but they just looked straight through me. They did not recognise me: the Almadites had taken even that away from them.
“I wished… I wanted so desperately to help them, to rescue them, but there was nothing I could do. One of the slaves realised I was not one of them and before I knew it everyone was shouting, including my wife and children. I ran and escaped back into the mines, but only just. It was then that I realised I no longer had a home. I ran and ran and eventually found myself here.” He looked up at me and managed a weak smile. “As I said: the Eternal Mines lead everywhere and nowhere.”
“I am sorry,” I said softly.
“Why? It was not you who did it.”
“It’s just, that’s the sort of thing we say…”
Shock dawned slowly on his face. “You really are human, aren’t you? Underneath all of… that.”
“Yes, but how…?”
“In my experience, only humans would display such pointless empathy.” He wiped his eyes. “So, you’ve heard my life story. What about yours?”
“I have not heard your whole life story. When did you come to our realm? What happened then? How were you received?”
He grinned. “Nice try, but that’s a tale for another time, not that I’d have any qualms about telling it. But it’s your turn now.”
I stared at him. While my instincts were still to not trust him, and there was every chance that the story he had just told had been engineered to gain my confidence, there was something about what he had said and the way he had said it that elicited genuine sympathy in me. Besides, if what he said was true, he could be a very useful ally.
“Very well,” I said. “I was—I am—a human. But a friend and my brother created this sword for me, which has some fantastic properties. Unfortunately it also seems to have somehow infected me, turning me into the creature you see before you.”
Byron was watching me closely. “May I see the weapon?”
After a moment’s hesitation, I drew the sword and laid it on the floor. “Do not touch it,” I said to him.
“Believe me, I do not wish to.” He bent over it to read the inscriptions and then looked back up at me. “What is your name?”
I hesitated and then said it, the words feeling like a blessed release: “Augustus Potts.”
“Andras gave you this sword,” Byron said slowly, backing away from me and the blade.
“No. N’yotsu did.”
He laughed hysterically. “You know what the word ‘N’yotsu’ means in the old tongue, yes? Destroyer of Worlds! I was going to trust you and all along you’ve been working for that monster. Well, you will get what you deserve!”
“No, that’s not true,” I protested. “N’yotsu has expelled everything that made him Andras; all of those elements are safely locked away. He is a good man, he has done so much to help us.”
“Like give you the sword that turned you into this?”
“That was different. Back then he was being manipulated by Andras. But no longer; he is his own man now.”
“He is a demon, and don’t you forget it,” Byron spat. “Once an Almadite, always an Almadite.”
“No. You do not know him, he’s different now. All the time he has spent on Earth has changed him, made him realise how terrible the things he did were. Trust me, he suffers each day for everything he has done.”
“And you know this?”
“Actually, I do. The torment is literally tearing him apart, but he will not accept the one thing that would save him, as that would mean him reverting to Andras: something he cannot countenance.”
Byron shook his head. “He’s still manipulating you even now. There’s a reason they call him the God of Lies, you know. There will be some grand scheme behind all of this, and his supposed sacrifice will be at the heart of it. He cannot change his nature. He cannot.”
My mind ran through all of my interactions with N’yotsu and Andras, the many times that my friend had saved our lives. But I could not help but also remember the long, drawn out plan that Andras had once concocted just so that he could achieve his goal of getting a portal to the Aether: manipulating our lives, killing our parents to push Maxwell into his secluded studies, sending N’yotsu to nudge my brother’s experiments in the right direction, manipulating so many people across the country so that they followed him without question, tricking me into selling my soul so that Maxwell had one final incentive to do the demon’s bidding…
Could we still be dancing to Andras’ tune? The demon had proven himself more than capable of planning and scheming into the very long term. It was not inconceivable that he could have foreseen a defeat by N’yotsu, and may have even have intended it.
I shook my head. “Andras may have a grander plan, but N’yotsu is definitely not a party to it. Of that I am certain.”
“Whatever the path you take, the outcome will be the same,” said Byron. “And I cannot be a part of whatever Andras intends. Come nightfall, you are on your own. I wish you well, but I fear you will need more than that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Byron looked around, clearly torn as to what he should do or say next. However, there was still plenty of daylight left and we were effectively trapped together in that barn. “The inscriptions on your sword are incredibly powerful. There is no way that a human should be able to wield it in anger beyond a very short period of time.”
“That is correct,” I said. “When I first used it, I could only swing it for a few minutes before it became too hot for me to hold. But over time my tolerance to the heat built up.”
“The sword’s inscriptions started working on you as soon as you first grasped it. Think of it as a parasite; it needs a host to survive, and if one is not quite right then it will either alter the host so it suits its purpose, or kill it and move on. Clearly you—and it—were lucky.”
I looked down at my red hands, the inscriptions marked out on them like deep angry scars. “I am not quite sure I would call this lucky.”
“You would rather be dead? Actually, you are partly right, as you are approaching a tipping point between the demonic influence of the inscriptions and your latent humanity. What you do over these next few weeks will be crucial to how you end up, and if the inscriptions should prove to be in ascendance, well…”
“Well what?”
“You may not wish you were dead, but the rest of us surely will: you will be an Almadite, just like the rest of them. Cold and heartless, without a care for your friends, family or indeed anyone. But on the bright side,” he sneered, “you’ll be all-powerful, if that’s what you want.”
“But if I could control the inscriptions? Could I be human once more?”
Byron shook his head. “You are too far gone to ever be able to call yourself truly human. Nor will you be a pure-born demon either, even if the inscriptio
ns do their work and take your body and soul completely. You will always be a half-breed, neither one nor the other.”
“But could I stop myself becoming an evil demon? Could I stay… good? Or at least of good intention?”
He laughed. “Ah, you humans with your ‘good’ and ‘evil’! Everything has to be one or the other with you, doesn’t it? You could retain your human sense of morality, and even choose to be governed by it if that’s what you mean. You could even control your physical form so that you appear to be human, so as not to scare your friends.”
“How?” I asked.
“There are techniques and methods,” he said. “Ways that we learn how to control our powers, to keep them in check.”
“And this works for all demons? Even…?”
“Almadites are different in that they do not see the need to control their powers. But if they did…”
“Like N’yotsu?” I asked, remembering how he had helped me a few times in the past to try to control the changes, to help me revert back to appearing human.
“Maybe in theory, although I refuse to believe that any part of Andras is capable of self-restraint,” Byron said dismissively.
I sat back and considered this. Could N’yotsu help me to learn how to bring the changes back under control? If so, then why had he not done it already? Did he not remember how?
Then I remembered N’yotsu’s own struggles and in particular his ailing health. Could it be that the way his body was fading away was in some way connected to his own innate inability to exercise self-restraint? Even if not, there was no guarantee that N’yotsu would be fit and strong for long enough to be able to help me, but at that moment I had a creature with me who could.
“Help me,” I said.
Byron looked at me through slitted eyes. “Why should I?”
“Because I can also help you. Like you said: I am strong, I can protect you. And in any case, if you are successful then there would be one less Almadite in the world. If you don’t help me…” I spread my hands wide and shrugged.
“That sounds suspiciously like blackmail,” he said slowly.
“Call it a mutually satisfactory arrangement,” I grinned.
