Ruler of the Realm fw-3

by Herbie Brennan

  After a moment, something inside told her she was safe. Without hesitation she inserted the key in the lock. There was no howling, no spell-driven outrage, no attack. But the lock itself was stiff with age so that it took all her strength to turn it.

  The little door swung slowly open. Blue bent her head and stepped across the threshold. She licked her lips. She was standing at the top of a narrow, spiral, stonework staircase that wound its way downwards into darkness.

  Ninety-five

  Pyrgus struck the cliff-face with such force that he dropped his weapon, winded. Then Nymph careered into him, followed immediately by Woodfordi. All three went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Nymph recovered at once and was on her feet again in an eye-blink, spinning a defensive sword. Pyrgus jumped up gasping, blood steaming from scratches on his face and hands.

  The Goblin Guards were gone. Not just the demons who’d been close to them, but all the others. The rocks were just rocks.

  ‘Where did they go?’ Pyrgus asked.

  ‘They have gone into hiding,’ Nymph told him confidently, her eyes wary.

  ‘Why?’ Woodfordi asked. He climbed carefully to his feet, feeling his arms and legs for broken bones.

  ‘Yes, why?’ Pyrgus echoed. ‘They had us. They were right there, just behind.’ But it wasn’t the goblins that concerned him. ‘That portal didn’t work,’ he said.

  They were still in the desert, caught in the long rays of the dying sun. No blue fire, no gut-wrenching translation. The portal was inert. Cautiously he reached out to where the force field should have been. It was a dangerous move that might have cost him a fingertip, but there was nothing.

  Nymph said sharply, ‘Pick up your weapon, Pyrgus. The demons will be back!’

  ‘I haven’t got a decent weapon,’ Pyrgus told her crossly. He was getting fed up with losing expensive Halek knives. Woodfordi’s dagger was just no substitute.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Woodfordi asked. He was looking at the portal.

  Something was totally weird. ‘Guard me,’ Pyrgus said to Nymph. He wiped blood from his eyes and trotted to the next portal in line.

  ‘Careful,’ Nymph called. She was moving nervously, her head jerking around as she searched for the attacking demons.

  The second portal was inert as well. Close up he could see something clearly he hadn’t seen before. The portal looked genuine enough from a distance, but now it was obvious the thing could never work. There was no control technology at all.

  ‘The demons don’t exist,’ he whispered. He spun round. ‘This is an illusion!’ he shouted to Nymph.

  She glanced in his direction, but did not drop her guard. Woodfordi was still at the first portal, examining it closely.

  ‘That wasn’t a real Goblin Guard,’ Pyrgus said, his eyes wide. He shook his head.

  ‘I cut its arm off,’ Nymph snapped.

  ‘We should have known when they survived the explosion. Nothing could have survived that explosion.’

  Woodfordi stepped back and looked along the line of demon portals. ‘Reflective spells,’ he said.

  ‘Blue told me about it. She was attacked by a Goblin Guard when she broke into Brimstone’s lodgings, but it was an illusion.’

  ‘Who’s Brimstone?’ Nymph asked annoyingly.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Pyrgus said. ‘An illusion can kill you. It’s real enough as long as it lasts. But it’s still an illusion. You set them up as securities.’

  He must have started to get through to her because she relaxed a little. ‘What were they guarding?’

  ‘The portals,’ Woodfordi suggested. ‘Except they’re some sort of an illusion too.’

  ‘There has to be a real one somewhere,’ Pyrgus said, staring at the portal in front of him. ‘Should we look for it?’

  Woodfordi shook his head. ‘It’ll just be a framework. This doesn’t even have works.’

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Nymph asked, irritated.

  ‘This is all a set-up,’ Pyrgus said excitedly. ‘The portals are a fake. Somebody built one, then set up a reflective spell so it looks like thousands. It’s like standing between two mirrors, except there aren’t any mirrors.’

  ‘Then set up a Goblin Guard illusion to stop anybody finding out,’ Woodfordi put in. He looked around. ‘It’s all you’d need. The most you get out here are a few wandering Trinians.’

  It hung together nicely, but it made no sense. Why go to the trouble of setting up elaborate – and costly – illusions in an area of desert where, as Woodfordi said, the only people around were a few wandering Trinians?

  ‘This doesn’t make any sen-’ Pyrgus stopped as a new thought struck him like a thunderbolt. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘If these portals are all fakes, how did Beleth bring in his army?’

  The three of them stood looking at each other blankly.

  ‘Perhaps -’ Nymph said; and stopped.

  ‘Maybe he used -’ Woodfordi said; and stopped.

  They continued to look at one another in silence.

  Pyrgus said thoughtfully, ‘Unless Beleth’s army is an illusion too.’

  Ninety-six

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Henry said. ‘You just told me Beleth’s implant actually turned me into a demon. Like I became a demon, then shape-shifted back so I looked like Henry – something like that?’ He was staring intently at Mr Fogarty.

  Fogarty said, ‘ Exactly like that. At least that’s what you told Blue and she thought you should know.’

  Henry took a nervous sip from his mug of tea and found it cold. He licked his lips. ‘The idea was I should… you know… with Blue.’

  ‘Yes, breed with her,’ said Fogarty harshly. He seemed to be losing patience with Henry’s sensibilities.

  ‘And that was so the demons could get a demon child – or a half demon child anyway – into the Purple Palace?’

  ‘That was the plan, yes.’

  ‘And the demon had my – Henry’s – appearance so Blue wouldn’t suspect she was going to be kidnapped?’

  ‘You’re just repeating everything I told you,’ Fogarty said impatiently. ‘Is this going anywhere?’

  ‘But when they put us in the room to…’ he swallowed, ‘… breed, they deactivated the implant and I turned back into the real Henry. That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Fogarty said. ‘Blue’s very sensitive. They were worried she might figure out she was mating with a demon, even if it had your shape.’

  Henry said, ‘If I was really me again, how would that produce a demon child?’

  Fogarty blinked.

  After a moment he said, ‘Well, you – I suppose if you -’ He stopped, staring at Henry. ‘You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense.’

  They stared at one another.

  Eventually Henry asked, ‘Are you sure you got it right: what Blue told you?’

  ‘I’m not that senile.’

  ‘Then are you sure Blue got it right?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Fogarty snapped. ‘I’m only telling you what she told me and Cynthia. She said that’s what you told her. When you were a demon. Or rather when you weren’t: when the implant was deactivated. She’s not likely to get that wrong.’

  ‘Unless I was lying to her,’ Henry said.

  Mr Fogarty got it right away. ‘You mean the implant wasn’t deactivated?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Henry. ‘But it’s possible. Suppose -’

  ‘I’m ahead of you,’ Fogarty cut in thoughtfully. ‘Suppose the demons wanted to fool Blue by pretending the implant was deactivated when it wasn’t. Suppose they were trying to sell her on some bill of goods that wasn’t what was really happening at all.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe the whole story about the child was just a cover-up for something else.’ He felt simultaneously relieved and just a fragment disappointed.

  ‘What?’ Fogarty asked. ‘A cover-up for what?’

  Henry said, ‘I don’t kno
w.’

  ‘This could be important, Henry.’

  ‘I know it could be important, Mr Fogarty! But I can’t remember. You know I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything since you took the transplant out. I can’t even remember how I got to the Realm.’

  ‘Maybe I could make you.’ Fogarty frowned.

  There was something in his tone that made Henry think of rubber hoses and lights in your eyes. ‘How… how would you do that?’ he asked warily.

  ‘You’re not the first,’ Fogarty said.

  ‘I’m not the first what?’

  Fogarty got up and began to pace around the room. ‘You got your implant in a flying saucer abduction,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first. The demons have been abducting people from Earth since 1961. They lose their memory as well, but we know how to get it back again. Been done hundreds of times.’

  Henry wondered who we were. But all he asked was, ‘How… how do we do that, Mr Fogarty?’

  Mr Fogarty rounded on him and grinned triumphantly. ‘We hypnotise you!’ he said.

  Ninety-seven

  Torches flared in wall sconces as Blue set a hesitant foot on the top step. She stopped for the barest second. This wasn’t any technology she knew. The torches didn’t seem to be spell-driven. They were lit by some sort of mechanical device that produced a spark. Yet this area of the castle had been locked up for centuries. How could any mechanical device still work after so much time? How could any torch still burn in this dampness?

  She pushed the questions from her mind and concentrated on keeping her footing. The stone steps were worn and slippery. How things happened didn’t matter. The important thing was that they did. She was here now and she was happy.

  The spiral staircase was so narrow she twice smelt her hair singe in the torch flames, but she reached the bottom at last. She was in a tiny vestibule, facing a single door flanked by painted statues of fanged guardians, their colours faded with age. The door itself was crudely made from planks of some black wood, but beaded here and there with slivers of obsidian. There was no handle and she could not see a lock.

  She reached out to push the door and metal claws sprang out at once to grip her hand. Blue froze, her heart pounding suddenly, and forced herself not to panic. If she had jerked back her hand, the claws would have ripped the flesh from her bones. As it was, one of them had pierced the skin so there was a welling of a single drop of blood. She looked at it, fascinated.

  Something else emerged from the door, not a mechanical device this time, but a sinuous ribbon that had a strangely organic look to it. It slid across the surface of her hand and licked the blood like a tongue. Blue waited, suddenly aware of what was happening. Apparently the sample proved satisfactory, for the claws suddenly withdrew and the entire doorway shattered, collapsing in dusty shards at her feet. She stepped across them daintily.

  She was standing in an immense black lacquer box, its polished surfaces reflecting a small flame that erupted from a stone dish in the centre of the floor. The effect was oppressive, but this was obviously no more than an antechamber to some other room. Blue hurried across it towards an open archway, then hesitated at some inner prompting. There was an unlit lantern of archaic design on the floor beside the stone dish. The archway was dark – it seemed to absorb what little light there was – and she would need some illumination if she was to go through. It was ridiculous to imagine the lantern could be fuelled and functional after all these years, but she picked it up anyway.

  It took her several minutes to discover how the lantern worked, but she finally managed to light it from the open flame. She walked towards the archway, holding it aloft.

  The room was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was like stepping out beneath the night sky, but a night sky peppered with alien stars. A lazy inlaid river, sparkling in the lamplight, crawled across the mosaic floor. There were living creatures on its banks, insectile and carapaced, but something told her they were harmless so long as she left them undisturbed.

  Blue stepped on to the river itself, convinced it represented a safe pathway. Three paces further on, her lantern flared and she saw the godform.

  The figure was so foreign to anything she’d known that her every instinct was to throw herself cringing on the floor. Its blood-red lacquer representation arched across the star-ways above her, sickeningly naked and deformed. Its outstretched arms defined the archway through which she’d entered. Its sturdy legs outlined an open doorway ahead. But it was the face that appalled her. It leered down obscenely from the gloom above her head, an open maw that seemed designed to swallow her alive.

  Blue tore her eyes away and concentrated on her breathing. She had to remember why she was here. If this was a test, then she must pass it. What she had to do was far more important than some stupid relief carving of an archaic god, however much ancient power it radiated.

  After a while she grew calm enough to walk through the doorway between the godform’s straddled legs.

  The third and final chamber was the strangest of them all. Its proportions were colossal, as if it had been constructed to accommodate a giant. Walls and ceiling were completely lined with plates of brass, green with age now, but still reflecting the light from her lamp. Inlaid in the polished granite floor was a brazen circle, inscribed with an enormous pentagram of brass. In the exact centre of the figure rose a double cube altar carved from porphyry. On the altar lay an open, ancient book.

  Blue’s eyes glazed as she walked forward.

  She crossed into the circle and at once the entire chamber emitted a high-pitched whine which rose to a brief crescendo, then dropped to a background hum. She set her lantern on the ground and began to move towards the altar. She had the look of a sleepwalker, but she was smiling.

  The altar dwarfed her. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the book, but that, while large, was at least of manageable proportions. She pulled it down, taking care not to lose the place where it had opened. The pages were crafted from the skin of some unfamiliar animal and smelled of grave dust and dank earth. The binding was of heavily tooled leather.

  For the barest moment she experienced a pang of panic. The book was handwritten in an ornate and unfamiliar script, delicately illuminated around the edges with scenes and creatures so alien they almost twisted the mind. How could she read from this? There was nothing about it that she understood.

  But then, as if the book had a life of its own, the words began to rearrange themselves subtly. Nothing really changed character, but now, with an effort, she found a degree of comprehension:

  Micma Goho Mad Zir Comselha Zien Biah Os Londoh Norz Chis Othil Gigipah Vnd-L Chis ta Pu-Im Q Mospleh Teloch…

  The words were in a language so archaic she could not even guess its roots. It bore no resemblance to anything she had ever known, yet somehow the meaning resonated in her mind:

  Behold, saith your God, I am a circle on Whose Hands stand Twelve Kingdoms. Six are the Seats of Living Breath. The rest are as Sharp Sickles or the Horns of Death…

  Carrying the open book carefully in both hands, Blue took a step backwards, then another. In a moment she was standing just outside the brazen circle with its inlaid pentagram and altar. Her chest felt tight, but she ignored it. She took a deep breath. Although she had never heard the words spoken before, Blue commenced to intone the evocation on the page before her:

  ‘ Micma Goho Mad Zir Comselha Zien Biah Os Londoh Norz…’

  The flame of her lantern flickered wildly and the background hum rose noticeably in pitch and volume.

  ‘ Chis Othil Gigipah Vnd-L Chis ta Pu-Im…’

  In a moment the brazen pentagram began to glow.

  Ninety-eight

  It was fully dark by the time Pyrgus and his two companions managed to retrace their steps to the rise from which they’d spied on Beleth’s army, but the moons rose early at this time of year so they had light enough to see.

  The demon encampment stretched below them.

  Pyrgus lay pro
pped on his elbows with Nymph to his right and Woodfordi on his left. He could see the flickering campfires and the rigid, robotic movements of the sentries.

  ‘Looks real enough to me,’ Woodfordi murmured, echoing Pyrgus’s very thought.

  ‘As I understand it,’ Nymph whispered formally, ‘such illusions are meant to look real.’

  ‘Well, all illusions are meant to look real,’ Pyrgus said. ‘But there are illusions and illusions.’ When Nymph gave him a long-suffering look, he added, ‘I mean, the Goblin Guard is an illusion that can kill you. When it’s triggered, the goblins might as well be real for as long as the illusion lasts. They can attack you and cut you up and react in every way as if they were really there except you can’t kill them. But you couldn’t do that with a whole army.’

  ‘Why not?’ Nymph asked.

  ‘Costs too much,’ said Pyrgus simply.

  ‘Beleth’s hardly short of money.’

  Pyrgus shook his head. ‘It’s not just money – it’s the energy cost. All spells need energy. You can’t just keep making them bigger and bigger. After a while the spell needs more energy than your technology can handle. An illusionary army that could actually fight is way beyond anybody, no matter how much money they have.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir, this is all very interesting,’ Woodfordi said, ‘but it doesn’t help us figure whether that army down there is real or not.’

  ‘No,’ Pyrgus agreed. He began to climb to his feet. ‘Only one way to find out…’

  The arguments started at once. ‘You can’t go down there,’ Nymph said. ‘It’s too dangerous.’ She glanced towards the demon encampment and added, ‘I’ll go.’