Enoch's Device

by Joseph Finley

  “I need to learn how to read them,” Ciarán said, tapping on the blank page.

  “Nonsense,” Dónall snapped.

  “And what if something happens to you? The secrets of this book will be lost. Everything could be lost!”

  “I never wanted this for you,” Dónall said solemnly.

  “Did my father?”

  “Do you realize how dangerous the power can be?”

  “How dangerous will it be if what Remi believed is actually true?”

  Dónall grimaced. “Blast it to hell! It’s against my better judgment, but so be it. In the morning,” he said curtly.

  Ciarán breathed a deep breath. His astonishment at Dónall’s acquiescence was followed by a sudden wave of apprehension. For by tomorrow, his life as a dutiful, ordinary Christian monk would end.

  *

  The next morning, storm clouds gathered in the east, slowly advancing on Poitiers like a dark, threatening army.

  Ciarán glanced up from one of the stone benches that bordered the floor of the ruined Roman amphitheater. Rows of steps encircled the bowl-shaped theater, which was littered with fragments of stone columns and broken benches. Tufts of yellow grass sprouted from the jagged fissures, and splotches of gray-green moss speckled the ancient stone steps that climbed to the amphitheater’s crumbling back wall. The ruins stood by the road between the abbey and the city’s southwestern gate—a vestige from a long-gone era when the city bore its Roman name, Lemonum. Ciarán and Dónall had entered through a half-collapsed arched gateway, squeezing past the remains of an iron portcullis and through a tunnel into the theater, although judging from the gaping breaches in the outer walls, this was not the only way inside. Snow dusted the rows of steps and formed a patchy white veil over the floor where Roman actors once performed. But for the two monks, the amphitheater was deserted.

  “Perfect,” Dónall said.

  He crouched next to the bench, using a stick to trace a diagram in the snow. Drawing a line, he crossed it with another and then described a circle around the cross. Ciarán recognized the symbol at once.

  “A wheel cross, like the one in your cell.”

  “Very good, lad,” Dónall replied. At the bottom of the cross, he made a small circle. At the end of the left arm, he drew another symbol: a straight vertical line. Moving to the top of the cross, he sketched a shape that looked like a sage leaf with a cross at its base, and at the end of the right arm, he drew a downward-pointing triangle.

  “The circle represents our world,” Dónall said, “comprised of the four elements.” Starting at the base of the cross and working clockwise, he named them: “Earth, fire, air, and water. The Fae words allow us to manipulate these elements—at times, to bend them to our will. Each element has an associated object that one must use, while speaking the words, to focus the power. Thomas thought the objects might be a sort of crutch to help us focus our minds, but without them we were never able to make the power work. Perhaps the Fae don’t need them, but who knows?”

  “What are they?” Ciarán asked, still trying to decipher the symbols Dónall had placed around the circle.

  Dónall pointed to the small circle at the bottom of the cross. “For earth, the object is a crystal or a gemstone. You’ve seen the one I use.” He took the crystal from in his habit pocket and rolled it between his fingers and thumb. “Thomas used a ruby that he mounted on a ring.”

  “You used the crystal to neutralize the basilisk’s venom.”

  “True,” Dónall said. “We are but creatures of earth, so the power can accelerate the body’s natural healing.” Next, he pointed to the vertical line beside the left arm. “The object for fire is a staff baptized by flame. You saw mine before I lost it at Saint-Bastian’s.”

  “Can you make a new one?”

  “Yes, but it would take some time. First, we would have to find a suitable piece of wood—an alder tree struck by lightning, for instance. And then it must be enchanted by the recitation of Fae words and an infusion of light.”

  “That’s the purpose of the pictures in the book, isn’t it?” Ciarán asked him. “Maugis told you how to create these.”

  “Good deduction.” Dónall pointed to the oval with a crosslike handle. “For air, the object is a sword—the one you’re now familiar with.” Finally, he moved to the upside-down triangle.

  “A cauldron,” Ciarán interjected. “The object for water.”

  Dónall gave a wry smile. “We call it the cup, or the chalice, but it’s the same thing. How did you know?”

  “The Four Hallows of Ireland—the treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann: the cauldron of Dagda, the sword of Núada, the spear or staff of Lugh, and the stone of Fál. It’s another pattern.”

  “Clever, lad. Thomas and I saw the connection, too. It affirmed for us that this magic—if that’s what you want to call it—was indeed the art of the Fae.”

  In the distance, the sky growled. The angry black clouds had begun to encroach on the pale gray sky overhead. Ciarán wondered how much time they had before the storm hit. Dónall glanced quickly at the clouds and continued the lesson. “In the center of the cross, where the lines intersect, is the fifth and most critical element: the spirit—the light I revealed to you, empowered by our everlasting souls. Maugis had an apothegm for it: ‘Stone cuts earth, staff kindles fire. Sword parts air, cup binds water. Spirit incites the power.’ Only by tapping into the spirit—the light, which exists within each of us—can you give effect to the Fae words and channel the power.”

  Ciarán had no idea how to tap into his inner spirit. Indeed, the more Dónall spoke of it, the more he doubted he would ever be able to do it. “I assume it’s a little harder than just saying a magic word and blowing on a crystal.”

  Dónall shrugged as he sat down on the ancient stone bench. “Just a bit. But it won’t be nearly as hard for you as it was for us. You see, the conscious mind erects a barrier around the spirit, such that normal people never know what power lies within them. We don’t know why this barrier exists—perhaps to protect us, for this power can be quite dangerous. Or maybe, over time, mankind forgot how to use the spirit, and it gradually became sealed off from the generations that followed. But the spirit exists in us all, beyond our conscious mind. To tap into it, we must shatter the barrier that surrounds it.”

  “But how?” Ciarán asked.

  “Maugis called it self-initiation. Thomas and I, along with many of our brothers, did it this way, inducing a state of delirium, fasting for days, locked in the darkness of our cells, deep in meditation, to break through the barrier of the conscious mind. The hunger tears at your insides until it seems you’re going mad, wishing that the horrors conjured by your delirious mind would go ahead and devour you and free you from the torment. But then, in the darkest moment, you break through and finally see it: the light in all its brilliance.”

  Ciarán looked hesitantly at Dónall. “And that’s what we’re going to do today?”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No,” Ciarán said, drawing a deep breath. “Well . . .”

  “Using this power is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind. Remi, for one, felt that self-initiation was a necessary test to prove whether one was worthy to learn the secrets of the Fae. Fortunately, though, Thomas and I discovered a more expeditious and humane way to help others shatter the barrier. My one reservation is that this method avoids the suffering—when the power is earned in that fashion, it creates a profound respect. But I suppose we can’t lock you in a cell in Saint-Hilaire’s, raving like a madman, without attracting the attention of Prior Bernard and his pack of sour-faced Cluniacs.”

  Dónall held the crystal to his lips, then hesitated. “I warned you many times how dangerous this is. It is not too late to change your mind, but soon it will be.”

  Ciarán glanced at the wheel cross. He thought of his parents, hiding in some dimly lit stable of a village inn to practice the Fae arts in secret, all for the cause they believed in. Two fugitives ch
asing the prophecy—a quest that Ciarán now continued. He knew what had to be done.

  He looked up and met Dónall’s gaze.

  “I’m ready.”

  *

  Dónall put the crystal to his lips and whispered the now familiar Fae word. Within the crystal, a faint spark erupted into a bright flash before settling into a soft white glow. Dónall held the crystal before Ciarán’s eyes. “I’m told this won’t hurt too much,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

  Ciarán closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt the crystal’s warmth bathe his forehead just above his nose. Silently he asked Saint Columcille for strength, an instant before he felt the crystal’s heat pressing against his head, lancing into his skull. A sudden rush of energy followed, and Ciarán felt himself falling. In a panic, he opened his eyes but saw only blackness. He was plummeting into a dark abyss. He cried out for Dónall but could not hear the words that left his tongue—if he even still had a tongue, for he could no longer feel his body or his limbs, as if he were nothing more than a consciousness suspended in darkness. The rushing slowed, and Ciarán felt himself floating in a starless sky, drifting toward the source of the darkness: a black obsidian wall, shimmering and impenetrable. Another sudden rush bore down on him like a violent wave, forcing him into the wall. What remained of his consciousness threatened to be pulverized between wall and wave. A scream roared up through the blackness. In the obsidian, a glowing crack formed and spread like a spider’s web—jagged lines of light crawling across the wall.

  Then the blackness exploded into a billion sparkling shards.

  Searing heat followed blinding light, and he stood in the core of a blazing white sun. It felt powerful, energizing. He breathed it in through his lungs, stretched the muscles of his chest, felt every bone and sinew of his arms and legs, and the heat on the tips of his fingers and toes. Around him, all was a glorious incandescent white.

  Slowly, it faded to gray—the gray of a gathering thunderstorm.

  *

  Ciarán awoke spread-eagled on the amphitheater floor, with Dónall standing over him. “Did you see it?”

  “I stood inside the sun,” Ciarán answered, still struggling for breath.

  “You’ve looked into the light of your soul. If you’re to use the power, you’ll need to recall that light and harness it.” He helped Ciarán to his feet. “Do you feel like going on?”

  Ciarán tried to shake the wooziness from his limbs. “Yes.”

  “Very well.” Dónall held out the little opaque crystal. The light within it was gone. “Use this for now. The first thing you must learn is to summon your soul light. The Fae word for this is ‘eoh.’”

  Ciarán took the crystal and held it between his thumb and forefinger, as he had seen Dónall do many times. He tried to speak the word, but it came out wrong.

  “Let the sound come from inside, through your breath, not your tongue.”

  He tried again but to no avail. The crystal seemed to have darkened with the sky above them. Wind whipped through the amphitheater, and bright flakes of snow, blown off the steps, glittered in the air. With a growing sense of despair, Ciarán doubted whether he could ever do this.

  “You have to imagine what you want to happen,” Dónall said quietly as his apprentice grew more and more frustrated in his efforts to utter what seemed a simple word. “Recall the light you saw in your mind, and envision it within the crystal.”

  Ciarán nodded, but no matter how many times he tried, the tone was never right. He growled in frustration.

  “You have to relax, lad. At this rate, you’ll soon have us sitting in the eye of a storm.”

  Ciarán tried to calm down. The sky was nearly as dark as night. Storm clouds rumbled overhead and around them, and the wind whistled and howled.

  “The light is within you,” Dónall explained. “You just have to draw it into the crystal.”

  Holding the stone once more to his lips, Ciarán closed his eyes and tried to picture the blazing light as if it burned within his chest. He filled his lungs, imagining the heat, and then exhaled. The word formed with his breath, pure and perfect.

  “Eoh.”

  White light flashed. The crystal glowed, and in its light, everything around him looked strangely different: clearer and more real. He saw Dónall, almost shimmering with a faint blue aura. Behind him, snowflakes wafted through the air like glowing motes of light, carried aloft in graceful arcs by the wind. All around them, misty tendrils from the storm clouds crept into the amphitheater, floating and twisting, as if nature herself had come alive. The smoky clouds billowed closer, drawn toward the light.

  Then ice filled Ciarán’s veins. For within the encroaching black tendrils, burning red eyes stared back at him—three pairs in all.

  “Holy Mother,” Ciarán cried, though his voice was deathly faint. “We’re not alone!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  DEMON STORM

  For an instant, Ciarán feared that the attempt to break through his psychic barrier had cost him his sanity. It felt as if shattering that obsidian wall had severed the cord anchoring his rational mind, loosing a torrent of madness that manifested in the hellish apparitions he now beheld. For what he witnessed seemed conjured from a madman’s nightmare: three horrible phantasms, female in form, born of the smoky clouds snaking their way into the amphitheater.

  Their bodies, if they could even be called that, were twice the size of mortal women—grasping, with elongated fingers and clawlike nails. Withered breasts hung over gaunt ribs, and hips and legs were lost in the wispy folds of tattered robes that disappeared into the billowing clouds. More horrifying yet were their faces, with fanged mouths agape in ghastly screams. Their hateful eyes dripped tears of blood, and their wild hair writhed like hissing vipers, and Ciarán recalled the three Gorgons of myth, whose very gaze would turn one to stone.

  He struggled for breath, trying to muster sound from a suddenly mute voice. His feet felt nailed to the earth, every muscle frozen. From the phantasms’ mouths came a horrid, keening wail that felt like daggers scraping over his bones.

  Dónall wrenched the crystal from Ciarán’s hand. The light died, and the ghoulish images vanished. Dónall summoned his own light and held the crystal to his eye, and his face went ashen. “Merciful God,” he murmured.

  Ciarán knew. They were still here.

  Within the bowl-shaped amphitheater, the wind whipped violently, stirring snow up into the air and howling in a ghostly echo of the creatures’ wails.

  “Ciarán!” Dónall cried. “Flee for the abbey, and pray it’s hallowed ground!”

  Jolted by Dónall’s words, Ciarán willed himself to move. He ran toward the entrance gate, thirty yards away, and a sudden pain stung his shoulder. Glancing at the torn black robes, he saw blood seep through the wool. Another stinging pain strafed his cheek, something hit him hard in the ribs. He looked up in horror. Stones, torn from the ruins by the howling winds, hurtled toward them like a swarm of hornets.

  Dónall cried out. His forehead was bleeding. Shielding his face with the book satchel, he pressed toward the gateway.

  A fist-size rock streaked past Ciarán’s nose. His heart pounded as more debris pelted his back and limbs, and he realized that his only chance was to charge ahead, ignoring the pain of each new blow. Around them, the wind shrieked like a banshee.

  Ciarán tasted blood on his lips as the tunnel to the gateway loomed ahead, offering shelter from the storm. With debris exploding just above him against the ancient archway, he bounded through the tunnel’s entrance.

  The rusted portcullis lay ahead, but as he approached, it slammed shut with a deafening crash.

  “Ciarán, get out of there!” Dónall yelled.

  At the tunnel’s entrance, a vaguely human shape stood silhouetted against the streaking snow. It was in here with them.

  Ciarán backed into the portcullis. He could feel the entity’s foul breath against his neck and hear the hissing of its writhing mane. The air in
the tunnel froze. Ciarán tried to scream, but something was forcing its way into his mouth, gagging him, as a presence bored into his mind.

  The invader was calling to him, commanding him.

  As Dónall stumbled toward him, images of unspeakable perversion and cruelty flooded Ciarán’s thoughts. The thoughts, once so alien, filled him with wanting, with an insatiable lust for pain and suffering. And murder.

  *

  Dónall peered through the light of the crystal, gripping it tightly against the battering wind-borne debris. His body ached from a dozen blows and wounds. Beneath a night-dark sky, one of the demons had entered the tunnel.

  “Ciarán!” Dónall cried.

  A choked scream answered back, and a few moments later, a single figure emerged from the crumbling archway. By outward appearances, it was Ciarán, but in the crystal’s light, a shadowy form surrounded him. The silhouette of the Gorgon’s mane wreathed his head.

  A sickening fear washed over Dónall. He had read of such things, and his clerically trained mind told him they were possible, but he had never expected to witness them with his own eyes.

  For Ciarán was no longer a being of free will.

  The other two demons streaked about the amphitheater, stirring the wind and ripping small stones from their brittle foundations. They squealed perversely as their sister emerged in Ciarán’s form. Dónall watched in terror mixed with a rising anger. Then Ciarán charged toward him.

  Dónall leaped back through a stinging rain of sleet and debris. He struggled to think. There was no time to consult the book. His sandals slid on loose gravel as Ciarán’s full weight drove him to the ground. The crystal flew from his fingers and skittered across the amphitheater floor.

  Ciarán’s fists hammered Dónall’s head, and pain spread through him like ripples through a pond. The lad’s eyes bulged, and spittle flew from his lips. Raising the book satchel to parry Ciarán’s fists, Dónall knew he could not withstand another blow.