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Her Master’s Voice
Ship of the Living Dead
Going Down
The Only Way
All at Sea
PART ONE
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
snapshots of beranabus i
Brigitta was sixteen years old and about to get married. She had been promised to a prince since birth. He was handsome and kind, and she was looking forward to the wedding. She had dreams of bearing many fine warrior sons, becoming queen of a mighty empire and living a long and happy life.
But the prince angered a powerful priestess. For revenge, she summoned a demon on the day of the wedding. The beast killed many of the guests and kidnapped Brigitta. She suffered terribly, but the demon didn’t kill her. Instead, several months later he sent her back to the prince — pregnant.
Brigitta was in shock, but the prince cared only about the shame this would bring upon his family. He called in a favour of King Minos and sent Brigitta to Crete on his fleet’s fastest ship. Her mouth was bound and her face covered, so nobody could identify her.
At the island she was led into the infamous Labyrinth, where her face and mouth were freed under cover of darkness. She was left to roam the twisting pathways of the maze until the Minotaur found and killed her.
Like hundreds of other doomed victims, Brigitta tried to find a way out of the Labyrinth, but her quest was hopeless. She could hear the harsh breathing of the Minotaur echoing through the tunnels, and the scraping of his hooves along the dusty floor. She knew he was following her, watching, waiting, savouring her anguish and fear.
Brigitta was in the final stage of her pregnancy. She hoped the Minotaur would kill her before the baby was born, to spare the child a ghastly death. But she could not delay the birth forever. Eventually she had to lie down and, in the blood-stained dirt of the maze, delivered a squealing boy. There was no light, so she could not check if he was deformed. He felt like a normal baby, but she would never know for sure.
As she cradled her son to her breast, the Minotaur moved in for the kill. He did not mask his footsteps. The beast hoped she would run. He liked it when his prey ran. But Brigitta only sat there, hugging her baby and crying. Just before the monster reached her, she leant over the infant and whispered, “Your name is Beranabus.”
Then the Minotaur was upon her, and the corridors echoed with human screams and bullish howls of vicious delight.
When he had sated his inhuman appetite, the Minotaur turned his attention to the baby. The child had been silent since the beast had separated him from his mother. The monster sat on Brigitta’s severed head and picked up the baby, studying him with a vicious smile.
The Minotaur shook Beranabus wildly, to make him cry. But instead the baby did something entirely unexpected — he giggled. Although he looked like a human child, he was a creature of two universes. He had the mind and curiosity of one much older.
The Minotaur growled and held the boy up by his foot. He clamped his jaws around Beranabus’s head and squeezed softly. Again the baby laughed, then reached out with a trembling hand. The Minotaur thought the baby meant to slap him away. But Beranabus was only fascinated. He explored the beast’s fangs and nose, patting and stroking them as if playing with a doll.
The Minotaur released the child’s head and hoisted him up for a better look. The baby scratched the beast’s scalp and horns. The Minotaur chuckled throatily, then winced as Beranabus tugged his hair. He reached sharply for the baby’s hands. But although he wrapped his large, hairy fingers around the boy’s pudgy wrist, the Minotaur didn’t rip the fingers off or even bite them. There was something unusual about this baby which the Minotaur had never experienced before.
Beranabus wasn’t afraid.
Everybody else had been terrified of the beast. His mother, the midwife, the people of his village. Even the godly Heracles shook with fright when he came to capture the Minotaur. Nobody saw the great hero’s fear, but the Minotaur smelt it and as always it drove him mad with hunger and lust. During his long years of captivity in the Labyrinth, King Minos had sent many prisoners his way. Some were resigned and went to their deaths with a smile on their lips, praying for redemption. But they’d all trembled when the Minotaur breathed on the back of their neck and ran his claws along the soft skin of their stomach.
But this baby was calm and confident. The Minotaur was a bloodthirsty, savage beast, but even at that young age Beranabus had a special way with animals.
Beranabus gurgled hungrily and tugged the Minotaur’s mane again. Slowly the beast rose and smiled — it was the first tender, unhating smile of his life. He considered the problem of feeding the baby. He clawed through Brigitta’s remains, but she was no use for milk as he had ripped her body apart. There was plenty of water in the Labyrinth, but the baby needed something more nourishing.
With another warm smile, the Minotaur stooped, held the boy in one hand, cupped the other and collected a fistful of blood from one of the pools around his feet. With a gurgle of his own, he held his hand to the baby’s mouth. Beranabus resisted for a moment, but despite his human form, he was of demonic stock. And so, with only the slightest reluctance, he opened his lips and let the Minotaur feed him, growing strong on the cooling blood of his butchered mother.
The next few years were the happiest of the Minotaur’s miserable, slaughter-filled life. The baby was his sole companion, the only person he ever loved or who loved him back. He carried Beranabus high on his shoulders as he stalked the young men and women sent to him by King Minos. Some heard Beranabus laugh or coo as they fled and wondered where the sound came from. But they never wondered for long.
Beranabus didn’t see anything wrong in what they did. He knew nothing but this world of darkness and butchery. The people they killed meant nothing to him. They were creatures to chase, animals to feed on.
When Theseus finally came to the Labyrinth and, through trickery, felled the mighty Minotaur, Beranabus wept. Vain, proud Theseus was severing the Minotaur’s head, to take as a trophy, when he heard the child’s sobs. Startled, he followed the sounds to their source and examined Beranabus by the light of a torch he had smuggled into the maze.
Beranabus didn’t look unnatural. Theseus thought the boy was six or seven years old and assumed he was one of Minos’s unfortunate victims. He tried to lead the child out of the Labyrinth. “Don’t cry,” he muttered awkwardly. “The beast is dead. You’re free now.”
Beranabus glared at Theseus and his eyes blazed with a yellow, fiery light. Theseus quickly backed away. He hadn’t been afraid of the Minotaur, arrogantly sure of his success. But this child unnerved him. The boy was an unexpected find and Theseus wasn’t sure what to make of him.
“Come with me now or I’ll leave you,” he snapped.
Beranabus only snarled in reply and crawled across to the dead Minotaur. Theseus watched with disbelief as the boy spread himself over the monster’s lifeless body and wept into the thick hairs of his bloodied, ruptured chest. He stood uncertainly by the pair for a while and thought about hacking at the Minotaur’s neck again, to claim his prize. But then he caught another glimpse of the boy’s yellow eyes. It was ridiculous, but he had a notion the child might prove more of a threat than the Minotaur.
“Stay here then,” Theseus pouted, turning his back on the boy, deciding to leave the Minotaur’s head intact. If people questioned him afterwards, he would say the beast fought valiantly, so he’d decided to leave him whole as a mark of respect.
Following a trail of thread to safety, Theseus wound his way out of the Labyrinth to take his place among the legendary heroes of that time, alongside the likes of Heracles, Jason and Achilles. He left the orphaned boy alone in the darkness, weeping over the corpse of the slain, demonic beast. He assumed the child would die in the shadows of the maze, unnoticed by the world. Life was cheap and Theseus didn’t think the boy would be any great loss.
The slayer of the Minotaur was a shallow, shortsighted man who cared only about his own reputation. He could never have guessed that Beranabus would outlive and outfight every legendary warrior of that golden age, and eventually prove himself to be the greatest hero of them all.
DEAD GIRLS TELL TALES
→ It’s strange being alive again. This world is huge, complicated, terrifying. So many people and machines. You can travel anywhere and communicate in ways I never even dreamt of when I first lived. How are you supposed to find a place for yourself in a world this convoluted and uncaring?
Life was much simpler sixteen hundred years ago. Most people never travelled more than a few kilometres from the spot where they were born. Men sometimes went off to fight in distant countries, and came back with tales of strangely dressed folk who spoke different languages and believed in frightful gods. But girls and women rarely saw such sights, unless they were kidnapped by rival warriors and carted off.
It was a peaceful time when I was born. No great wars. Food was plentiful. Laws were respected by most clans. We built huts, made our own clothes, farmed the land, herded tame animals, hunted the wild. We married young, bore lots of children, worshipped our gods and died happily if we lived to be forty.
Then demons invaded. They attacked without mercy and dug up the remains of our dead, creating new beasts out of the rotting flesh and bones, turning our own ancestors against us. We fought as best we could, but for each one we killed, five more appeared. They terrorised villages across the land. It was only a matter of time before we would all suffer horrible, painful deaths.
In our darkest hour, an unlikely saviour appeared. A gruff druid led a small band of our warriors on a mission to send the demons back to their foul universe. I went with them, and so did a simple boy known only as Bran.
We drove back the demons, but one of them – Lord Loss, a red-skinned demon master with eight arms and no heart – imprisoned me in a cave beneath the earth. I was shut off from the world of light. In the darkness, he sent his familiars to torture and kill me. The pain was unbearable and death, when it came, was a relief.
At least it should have been. But for some unknown reason, when my body perished, my soul remained trapped in the cave. There was to be no escape for me, even in death.
I was held captive for many long, depressing centuries. Mine was a world of darkness and absolute desolation. Lacking a body, I couldn’t even sleep. I was conscious for every minute of every long day and night.
I couldn’t see or learn anything of the human world, but I was at the focal point of what had once been a tunnel between the Demonata’s universe and ours. By focusing hard, I could trace the shattered strands of the tunnel back to their source, and from there magically peer into the demons’ den.
Not a lot happened in that part of the universe, but demons occasionally drifted by or stopped to test the tunnel in the hope that they might be able to rekindle it. I worried that one of them might succeed, so I kept a close watch.
After sixteen hundred years my worries proved well-founded. For the first time I sensed movement in the human world. A boy of great power had come to live in the area close to the cave. I could feel him being manipulated. He was led to the cave and tricked into trying to reopen the tunnel. I tried to warn the boy, to stop him. But he couldn’t understand me. The tunnel was reactivated and demons flooded through in their thousands.
That should have been the end, but the boy returned when all seemed lost. He came with another teenager and an elderly magician — Bran! My old friend had survived and grown more powerful than any of us could have imagined.
As strong as Bran and the boys were, it wasn’t enough. Hundreds of demons stood between them and the cave. They tried to break through, but failed. It looked like everything was finished.
Then something remarkable happened. A magical force connected me with the boys. It united the three of us and we became the Kah-Gash, an ancient weapon of incredible power. Without knowing what we were doing, we took the universes back through time, to the night when the tunnel was opened. Bran and the boys seized this fresh opportunity and put a stop to the onslaught, denying the demon hordes access to our world.
During the battle an innocent bystander – a boy called Bill-E Spleen – was killed. I felt myself drawn to the dead boy. As my spirit seeped into his corpse, I found myself capable of restoring the body’s functions. I set the heart beating and it pumped blood through the veins and arteries. The brain sparked at my urging. Lungs rose and fell. Bill-E drew breath… and so did I. My first free breath after sixteen hundred years of imprisonment. No words can describe the deliciousness of that.
As Bran and the others stared at me, amazed and afraid, I set about altering the body I’d taken over, reshaping it, giving it my face, my build, my sex. Within hours it was a boy’s body no longer, but a girl’s, with breath, a heartbeat, bones, guts, flesh, blood, a face. I was alive!
That’s when my problems really began.
LONELY NEW WORLD
→ What amazes me most about this modern world is that people aren’t more amazed. I first lived in a time of magic, with priestesses and druids who could perform wondrous feats. But we had nothing like aeroplanes, computers, televisions, cars. We were servants of the natural world, ignorant of the ways of the universe and the origins of our planet. We didn’t even know the Earth was round!
Today’s people have mastered the land and seas, and even made inroads into the heavens — they can fly! There are things they can’t control, like earthquakes and floods, but for the most part they’ve torn down trees, carved the planet up with roads and made it theirs. They’ve hurt the Earth, and they don’t seem as happy as people in my time were, but they’ve achieved the incredible.
I’ve been here more than six months, yet I still find a dozen things each day that make my jaw drop. Like a pencil. How do they put lead inside wood? And paper — nobody thinks twice about it, but in my previous life, if you wanted to record a message, you had to hammer notches out of a chunk of rock.
It’s a terrifying world and I shouldn’t be able to cope with it. I came back to life as a small, scared, lonely girl. If I’d stepped out of the cave knowing nothing of what lay beyond, I’d have fainted with shock and gone on fainting every time I recovered and looked around.
But when I took over Bill-E Spleen’s body, his memories became mine. It took me a few weeks to process everything, but I soon knew all that he did. That helped me make sense of this new world and deal with it. Without access to Bill-E’s memories I wouldn’t have known how to use a knife and fork, knot a pair of laces, open a door or do any of the simple, everyday tasks that everyone else takes for granted.
But as helpful as that’s been, it’s also proved to be one of my biggest problems. Because I live with Bill-E’s uncle, Dervish Grady, and I made the mistake of telling him about Bill-E’s memories. As a result, he sees me as some kind of a medium, offering him unlimited access to his dead nephew’s feelings and thoughts.
→ “Tell me about Billy’s first day at school.”
We’re in Dervish’s study on the top floor of the house. The mansion is a three-storey monster, full of round, stained-glass windows, wooden floorboards and bare stone walls. (Except in this study, which is lined with leather panels.) All of the people from my village could have lived in comfort here. When I first saw it, I thought it was a communal building.
“His first day at school?” I chew my lower lip, as though I have to think hard to retrieve the memories. Dervish watches me intently, hands crossed on the desk in front of him, eyes hard. I don’t enjoy these sessions. He brings me up here three or four times a day and asks me about Bill-E, the things he experienced, the thoughts he had, the way he saw the world.
“He wasn’t nervous,” I begin. “He thought it was a big adventure. He loved putting on his uniform and packing his books and lunch. He kept checking the kitchen clock, even though he couldn’t tell the time.”
Dervish smiles. He always grins when I tell him an amusing little detail about his dead nephew. But he’s not smiling at me — he’s smiling to himself, as if sharing a joke with the absent Bill-E Spleen.
I tell Dervish more, talking him through the young boy’s impressions of his teacher and classmates. I find this boring as well as uncomfortable. It’s like having to read chapters from the same story, over and over. My attention wanders and my eyes dart round Dervish’s study, the books of magic on the shelves, the weapons on the walls. I want to flick through the pages of those books and test some of the axes and swords. But there’s never time for that.
Maybe Dervish doesn’t see me. Perhaps to him I’m not a real person, just a mouthpiece for Bill-E. I doubt that he can imagine me doing anything other than talk about the boy I replaced. There’s nothing malicious in it. I just don’t think it’s crossed his mind to regard me as an independent human being.
Eventually, two hours later, Dervish dismisses me. He’s had enough for now. He waves me away, not bothering to even say goodnight. I leave him staring at his crossed hands, thoughts distant, a sad wreck of a man, more lost in the past than I ever was when captive in the cave.
→ I love walking, exploring the countryside between the house and Carcery Vale. I like it in the forest. The land was covered in trees when I first lived. I almost feel like I’m in my original time when I leave the roads and paths of the modern world and stroll through woodland. Sometimes I’ll pluck a leaf and set it on my tongue, to taste nature. I try to trick myself into believing the new world doesn’t exist, that the natural balance has been restored.
Of course that’s fantasy and the sensation never lasts long. These trees have been carefully planted and the undergrowth is nowhere near as dense as it was back then. There are still rabbits and foxes, but they’re scarce. No wolves or bears. The smell of the modern world is thick in the air, a nasty, acidic stench. But if I use my imagination, I can believe for a second or two that I’m in the forest near my rath.
Sometimes, in the night, I truly forget about the present. In my dreams I’m still Bec MacConn, learning the ways of magic from my teacher, Banba. I wake up in a cold sweat, heart racing, crouched close to the wall, wondering where I am, why there’s a hole in the wall and what the clear, hard material stretched across it is. I feel trapped, as if I’m back in the cave. I swipe my fists at imagined phantoms of this new, scary world.
The confusion always passes swiftly. After a minute or two I remember where and when I am. My fists unclench and my heart settles down. I find it hard to sleep again on such nights, and lie awake in the dark, often curled up on the floor in a corner, remembering those I knew, all long dead and decayed. I feel lost and alone on such nights, and tears often fall and soak my cheeks as I tremble and miserably hug myself.
But it’s day now and I feel more relaxed. I move through the forest, humming a tune the world hasn’t heard in more than a millennium, pretending that I’m back in my own time. I come to a bush of red berries. I’m reaching for a berry to examine it when I spot a car and realise I’m close to a road. I still feel uneasy around cars, even after six months. I haven’t been in one yet, although I’ve been on Dervish’s motorbike a couple of times, when he took me to a nearby town to get clothes.
Cars frighten me. They look vicious. Growling, screeching, fast-moving assassins. I know they’re not living, thinking creatures, but I can’t help myself. Whenever I see a car, I expect it to race after me, chase me through the trees and mow me down.
I wait for the noise of the engine to fade, then edge over to the road. I’ve explored all the area around Dervish’s home and can pinpoint my position within half a minute, no matter where I am. One look at the road, the trees by its side and the bend to my left, and I know I’m a five-minute walk from Carcery Vale, the nearest village.
I haven’t been to the Vale often. The people there make me nervous. I keep quiet and don’t interact with them. I feel out of place, afraid I’ll say something to give myself away. I’m not truly part of this world and I can’t shake the feeling that our neighbours will eventually unearth my secret.
My first week here was mad. We’d just saved the world from a demon invasion, but there was no time to take pride in our achievement. Beranabus – as Bran now calls himself – left the day after our showdown with Lord Loss. We’d glimpsed the demon master’s superior in the cave — a huge, mysterious, shadowy, powerful beast. Lord Loss said our hours were numbered, that we’d only delayed the day of reckoning.
Beranabus was overwhelmed by my reappearance. I was the only person he’d ever cared about, and my return brought happiness back into his life. But the ancient magician is practical above all else. He wanted to stay and spend his last few years by my side. But there were demons to fight and a world to save. There was no time for selfish pleasure.
He took his assistant, Kernel Fleck, and Grubbs Grady – another of Dervish’s nephews – with him. Grubbs is very powerful, but he hates fighting demons. He’d spent his life hiding from his responsibilities, but Bill-E’s death seemed to settle him on his path. As reluctant as he was to leave Dervish, as scared as he was to face the Demonata, he went anyway.
Beranabus should have taken me too. When Grubbs, Kernel and I unite, we become the Kah-Gash. We have the power to destroy a whole universe. Beranabus should have kept us together, to experiment and use us.
He left me behind for two reasons. The first was personal. I’d suffered sixteen hundred years of imprisonment and he didn’t want to thrust me into the demon’s universe to fight immediately. He felt I deserved a few years of peace and wished to spare me the awfulness of my destiny as long as he could.
But he was scared as well, and that was the main reason. Beranabus had been searching for the Kah-Gash most of his life, hoping to destroy the Demonata with it. But he’d never been sure if he was chasing a mythical Holy Grail or an actual weapon. When he saw it in action, doubt crept in.
Was he right to put the pieces together? What if we fell into the hands of the Demonata and they used us to annihilate the human world? Or maybe the Kah-Gash would work against us by itself. We hadn’t intentionally taken the universes back in time. The Kah-Gash did that, having manipulated Grubbs into helping the demons open the tunnel in the first place. It had a mind and unknowable will of its own. Perhaps it had saved us by accident.
Wary of the weapon, Beranabus split us up. He should have left Grubbs behind to comfort Dervish, and he would have if not for his love of me. Dervish went into a rage when he woke to be told Grubbs had slipped away in the middle of the night. Grubbs and Bill-E were his nephews, but they’d been like sons. Now he’d lost them both. He cursed Beranabus, the demons… and me. He blamed me for Bill-E’s death, accused me of conspiring against the boy, tricking him so that I could take over his body.
It was the first day of my new life. Everything was confusion and uncertainty. I was awestruck, afraid, not sure what to say or how to act, delighted to be alive, but terrified. Unsure of myself, I let Dervish curse and scream. I didn’t flinch when he jabbed a finger at me or lifted me off the ground and shook me hard, only prayed to the gods that he wouldn’t kill me.
In the end he stormed off. He ignored me for days, and would have ignored me for longer – maybe forever – if not for Meera Flame, one of his oldest friends. In the middle of his depression, he rang her to tell her about his loss. Meera came to him immediately. After doing what she could to console Dervish, she asked if I needed anything, if I wanted to talk about what I’d been through.
Meera was wary of me. Like Dervish, she wondered if I’d led Bill-E to his death, so that I could take control of his body. Through floods of tears I convinced her of my innocence. When she realised I was just a lonely girl, as scared of this new world as I was of demons, her heart warmed to me and we were able to talk openly. I told her about my life, my centuries in the cave, the force which compelled me to take Bill-E’s body.
“I didn’t want to bring the corpse back to life and change it,” I sobbed. “It just happened. It was lying there, good for nothing else, and I had the power to make it mine. In those first few minutes, I wasn’t thinking about living again. I could see that Lord Loss was going to kill the others. I just wanted to help them.”
Meera believed me and managed to convince Dervish of the truth. She also dealt with the difficulties of Bill-E’s disappearance and my sudden existence. She got Dervish to pretend Bill-E had gone to live with relatives. Through her contacts, Meera faked the necessary paperwork and arranged for officials in high positions to throw their weight behind the lie if anyone (such as Bill-E’s teachers) made enquiries.
Those same contacts forged a birth certificate and passport for me. I became an illegitimate niece of Dervish’s, whose mother had recently passed away. In the absence of any other living relative, I’d been sent to Carcery Vale.
It was too coincidental to pass close scrutiny. A boy’s grandparents are brutally slaughtered… the boy takes off without saying a word to anyone… his best friend also disappears… and a girl nobody has ever heard of moves in with the man who was like a father to both boys. The people of Carcery Vale aren’t stupid. I’m sure they knew something was wrong.
But Meera and her allies covered their tracks artfully. Police were assured by their colleagues in other districts that Bill-E was safe and the girl’s story was on the level. In the face of such carefully contrived evidence, our neighbours could do nothing except watch suspiciously and wait for the next bizarre Grady family twist.
FIRST CONTACT
→ From the spot on the road in the forest, I make the five minute walk to Carcery Vale, but keep to the edge of the village, circling the houses and shops. I look on enviously at the ordinary people leading their ordinary lives.
Dervish is supposed to be tutoring me at home while I recover from the loss of my mother. Meera has supplied us with school books and equipment. Of course, Dervish hasn’t once sat down to help me with schoolwork, but I’ve been doing it by myself. I complete the necessary exercises so that Meera can show them to the relevant authorities and keep them happy.
I enjoy the homework. I never did anything like this before. I learnt how to do practical things in my rath, like cook, wash and sharpen weapons. I memorised lots of stories and Banba taught me magic. But I never studied books — they didn’t exist then. I knew nothing about global history, geography, science, mathematics.
It’s fascinating. I know a lot already, courtesy of Bill-E’s memories, but I’m discovering much more. Like most people, Bill-E didn’t retain all that he learnt, so I only have access to the bits he remembered. But my own memory is perfect. I have total recall of anything I see, hear or read. By devouring the books Meera gives me, and watching scores of television documentaries and the news, I’ve pieced together many of the facts of this brave new world. Ironically I probably know more about it than most of the children who are natives of this time.
I’d love to go to school and learn from real teachers. I study as best I can at home, do my homework, watch educational programmes and surf the Internet. But that’s no substitute for being taught by another person. There’s so much more I could do with my brain, so many things I could uncover about the world, if I only had someone to instruct me.
But I’m not ready to mix with other people yet. What would I say? How would I mingle and pass as one of their own? I’d have to guard my tongue, always afraid I’d say something that gave away my past. I have nothing in common with these folk. I know much about their ways, from Bill-E and what I’ve read about them and seen on television. But in my time girls married when they were fourteen. Warriors fought naked. Slavery was a fact of life. There was nothing odd about eating the heart of a defeated enemy. We worshipped many gods and believed they directly influenced our day-to-day lives.
As I brood about the gulf between me and these people, someone coughs behind me. I’m instantly on my guard — in my experience, if somebody sneaks up on you, they’re almost certainly an enemy. Whirling, my lips move fast, working on a spell. There’s virtually no magic in the air, so my powers are limited, but I can still work the odd spell or two. I won’t be taken easily.
