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“Great,” I grin, turning away to let the elderly magician go to bed. Then I remember the noises and turn to tell him. “I forgot, somebody’s been…”
I come to a halt. Beranabus is leaning over, stroking the leaves of one of the flowers, smiling fondly at it. I can see the drawing he was looking at earlier. It’s a pencil sketch of a girl’s face. And though the paper is yellow and wrinkled with age, the face is shockingly familiar.
“Who’s that?” I croak. Beranabus looks up questioningly. I point a trembling finger at the drawing. “The girl — who is she?”
“Someone who died a very long time ago,” Beranabus says, touching the paper. “She sacrificed her life fighting the Demonata, to keep the world safe. An example to us all. Not that I’m trying to make you feel small. I didn’t mean–”
“There was a voice,” I interrupt, eyes fixed on the drawing. “At the cave in Carcery Vale. I didn’t mention it before — it didn’t seem to matter and there was so much else to tell you. But when I went to the cave, I heard a voice and saw a face in the rocks. It was alive. Even though it was in the rock, it could open its eyes and move its lips. It spoke to me.”
I pick up the drawing and study the girl’s face, the curve of her jaw, the eyes and mouth. “This is the girl from the cave. She called to me… warned me, I think, but I don’t know what of. She spoke in a different lan–”
“It can’t be!” Beranabus snaps, snatching the drawing back. “This girl has been dead for almost sixteen hundred years. You’re mistaken.”
“No,” I say certainly. “It was her. I’m sure of it. Who the hell was she and why did she try so hard to contact me?”
In answer to that, Beranabus only sits and stares at me, shocked — and afraid.
THE WARNING
→ Impossible!” Beranabus keeps croaking. “Impossible!” He’s striding around the cave, hair and eyes even wilder than normal, clutching the drawing of the girl to his chest, muttering away to himself, occasionally bursting out with another round of, “Impossible! Impossible!”
Kernel and I have drawn together by the fire, temporarily united by our uncertainty. “Has he ever gone off like this before?” I whisper.
“No,” Kernel replies quietly. “He often talks to himself, but I’ve never seen him so agitated.”
“Do you know who the girl is?”
Kernel shakes his head. “Just some old drawing that he gets out every now and then and moons over.”
“Beranabus said she died sixteen hundred years ago.”
“I heard.”
“Do you think he knew her? Was he alive then?”
“No.” Kernel frowns. “He can’t have been. We can live a long time, battling the Demonata in their universe, even a few hundred years. But no human can live that long. At least that’s what Beranabus taught me…”
Beranabus stops pacing, whirls and fixes his stare on me. “You!” he shouts. “Come here!” I glance at Kernel for support. “Don’t dither! Get over here now!”
Since I don’t want to enrage him any further, I edge across but keep out of immediate reach. Beranabus holds the drawing up. His hands are shaking. “How sure are you?” he growls.
“It’s her,” I tell him. “The girl in the cave. I’m certain.”
“Would you stake your life on it?” he snarls.
“No,” I say hesitantly. “But it is her. You don’t forget a face like that. It’s not every day a person speaks to you from within the heart of a rock.”
Beranabus lowers the drawing. Turns it round so he can study the face again. “You say she’s alive?” he asks, voice low.
I shrug. “She spoke to me. But it wasn’t a real face. It was a cross between flesh and stone. She could have been some sort of ghost, I guess…”
“Of course,” Beranabus says. “But a ghost imprisoned there… trapped all this time…” His eyes shoot up. “Tell me what she said.”
“I can’t. I didn’t understand her. She spoke a different language.”
“Don’t be stupid! You can…” He stops and gets his breathing under control. “First things first. Tell me the whole story. Everything this time. About the cave, what you saw and heard. Leave nothing out.”
I don’t want to go through it again, but he’s not going to tell me anything until I do, so I quickly trot out the story, filling in all the details I skipped the first time. Seeing the face in the rock. The eyes opening. Later, when the girl spoke to me. In the cave, the night of my turning, when she screamed at me and seemed to be trying to warn me.
“Warn you of what?” Beranabus asks.
“Maybe that Juni was a traitor. Or of the danger Bill-E was in.”
“Perhaps,” Beranabus mutters. “There are blood ties between you, which might account for her interest in your predicament, but to break out of the rock and make herself heard must have required a huge amount of energy and effort. Why would she do that just to save your lives?”
He’s not expecting an answer, so I don’t try to provide one. Instead I pick up on something else he said and ask stiffly, “What blood ties?”
He waves a hand as though it’s nothing. “The girl was called Bec. A distant ancestor of yours.”
“Ancestor?”
“A distant one,” he repeats. “She was a priestess… a magician. A brave, true, selfless girl.”
“Did you know her?” Kernel asks. He’s slightly behind us, listening closely. “Were you alive then?”
“I’d be a real Methuselah if so,” Beranabus says. He looks at the drawing again and frowns. “I need to know what she said. She might have simply been trying to help you, but I think there’s more to it. We need to study her words.”
“But I told you I couldn’t understand her. I don’t speak her language.”
“I do,” Beranabus says, then gestures to the chair behind the desk. “I’m going to teach you another remembering spell, like the one we used to prove you didn’t kill your brother’s grandparents. But with this one you’ll repeat everything the girl said. I’ll be able to translate.”
I sit. Beranabus clears an area of the table, then lays the drawing down gently, so it’s facing me. “Look into her eyes,” he says softly. “Forget everything that’s happened recently. Let your mind drift back.” He gives me a minute, then says, “Repeat after me.”
I mimic Beranabus’s words carefully. As the spell develops, the lines on the paper shimmer. I’m startled, but I’ve seen a lot more incredible stuff in my time, so I don’t lose concentration. The lines begin to move. The face doesn’t bulge out of the page the way it projected from the rocks, but it comes alive. The eyes flicker and the lips part. The girl talks. No sounds come, just the motions. But as the spell concludes and Beranabus stops talking, I find my own lips moving in time with the drawing’s. Only it’s not my voice — it’s the girl’s.
I speak swiftly, anxiously, the muscles of my throat hurting from having to form such unusual words. I spot Kernel listening with a frown, unable to interpret. But Beranabus understands perfectly. And the more I say, the more his face pales and he trembles.
Before I finish, the elderly magician sinks to the floor and stares at me, appalled. I want to ask him what the girl said, but I can’t. My lips continue to move and the dead girl’s words spill out. I’m repeating myself from the beginning.
Beranabus groans and covers his ears with his hands. “No,” he wheezes. “Gods be damned. No!”
“Beranabus?” Kernel says, approaching his master cautiously. “What’s wrong?”
“His fault!” Beranabus shrieks, pointing an accusing finger at me. “If he’d told me when he first came here…” He shakes his head and curses. I carry on talking, unable to stop. I’m afraid he’s going to leave me this way, that I’ll warble on like this forever.
Finally, rising slowly, Beranabus growls something and the words cease. My mouth closes. I rub my aching jaws and throat, staring at the magician, wondering what I’ve done to incense him.
“Damn you, Grubitsch Grady,” he says bitterly, shooing me out of his chair and lowering himself into it, picking up the drawing and cradling it to his chest. There are angry, hopeless tears in his eyes. “Damn the day you came into this world. If I’d known the trouble you’d cause, I’d have killed you at birth, you meddling, cowardly, destructive brat.”
“Beranabus!” Kernel gasps as my insides clench tight.
“It’s true!” Beranabus shouts. “I stood up for the wretched fool, but I shouldn’t have. I should have just… just…” He stops, closes his eyes and moans. “No. You didn’t know what you were doing. I can’t blame you.”
“I don’t care what you think of me,” I snap, angry and ashamed. “Just tell me what she said, you horrible old buzzard.”
Beranabus opens his eyes and smiles faintly. “That’s more like it, boy. Spirit.” His smile disappears. “Bec was trying to warn you, but she wasn’t interested in saving your life. The stakes were much higher. She…”
He clears his throat, then continues lifelessly. “I don’t know how she wound up where she is, or how she managed to communicate with you, but her soul has been trapped in that cave since she died, torn between life and death, between our universe and the Demonata’s. I’ve never seen that before. Ghosts, aye, but only pale shades of those who died. This is different. She somehow defied the laws of death and her soul remains intact. It shouldn’t…” He coughs and shakes his head, then continues.
“Bec is able to peer into the demon universe from where she’s trapped. She’s been observing the Demonata for centuries. She became aware long ago of a powerful demon master trying to open a tunnel to this world. When she sensed you clearing the entrance to the cave, she was afraid the creature would learn of it and restore the ancient tunnel. That’s why she tried to warn you off. Later she learnt of a more direct threat, which is why she appeared so desperate the last time she established contact.
“I made a fatal error. I thought Lord Loss wasn’t interested in opening a tunnel between the two universes. But he’s changed his views. When Dervish told Juni about the cave, her master decided to kill two birds with one stone. His plan was to slaughter you, Dervish and your brother – or take you back to his own realm to torture – then open the tunnel, clearing the way for the ranks of demons to cross.”
Beranabus pauses. Kernel and I are staring at him, struck dumb.
“Juni must have made a sacrifice after Dervish revealed the cave to her,” he goes on. “It takes a few weeks for the blood of a sacrificed victim to prime the tunnel walls. The spells of opening can’t be cast until then. I was guarding the cave closely, but somehow she got in and killed someone without my knowledge.
“Lord Loss could have opened the tunnel at any time, but he decided to do it on a full moon, when there was more magic in the air. Tapping into the power of the moon, he could complete the spells within a few hours. That way, if I discovered him while he was at work, he’d only have to hold me at bay for that short time.
“Being a lover of neatness, he planned to kill or abduct you three and open the tunnel on the same night. Unfortunately for him, your magic burst to the surface and derailed things. He missed his chance to get even with the Grady clan at the cave. Since settling his score with you before he opened the floodgates was important to him, he pushed his plans back by a month.”
“Then we still have time!” I gasp. “It’s not too late. We know what he’s going to do. We’ll return to the cave and fight.”
“We?” Kernel says sarcastically.
“Yes! I’ll fight to save Dervish and Bill-E. I don’t care what those monsters throw at us. When it’s family, it’s different.”
“You really think you can choose not to be a coward if and when it suits you?” Kernel jeers.
Beranabus interrupts wearily before I can retort. “It doesn’t matter. You’re arguing about nothing. The time for heroics has passed.”
“What are you talking about?” I say edgily.
“It’s difficult to track time here,” Beranabus says softly, “but not impossible. I can reach out and make a quick check on the heavens when I wish. I did that while Bec was speaking. You miscalculated, Grubbs. It’s been seven weeks since I rescued you from the aeroplane.”
I start to shiver. “But… no… maybe Lord Loss delayed again. He wanted to kill me before he opened the tunnel, but I’m still alive. Maybe–”
“No,” Beranabus stops me. “Once I’d established the date, I cast my senses further afield. When there’s a rip of great magnitude between universes a magician can detect it. If the spells I’d cast at the cave worked, I’d have known earlier. I should have renewed them, but it seemed like there was no rush. I wouldn’t have made that mistake a hundred years ago. I’m getting so old…”
Beranabus sighs and his head drops. “The demons crossed as planned. They’ve had three weeks to stabilise, multiply and spread. Your town is theirs. Probably your country too. Dervish… your brother… everybody else you know in Carcery Vale…” He finishes in an awful whisper which fills me with a dread beyond any I’ve ever experienced. “The Demonata have had their way with them. They’re all dead now — and probably millions more besides.”
PART TWO
THE MESSENGER
→ Everybody in the Vale — dead. Unable to believe it. I want to scream my head off, call Beranabus a liar, demand he tell the truth. Except… I can see the truth in the old magician’s eyes. In his stooped shoulders. In his weariness as he sets his papers in order and prepares to leave for Carcery Vale to find out how far the Demonata have spread. He wasn’t lying. They really did break through. Dervish and Bill-E are…
I don’t complete the thought. Filled with sickness and fear. The last time I felt this empty inside was when I lost my parents and sister. It took me months to recover, and that was only with Dervish’s help. Now I’m alone, wracked with guilt and shame as well as grief. I don’t know if there’s any way back. Madness looms, waiting to consume me. I doubt if I can fight it.
Kernel is sitting by the fire, staring glumly into the flames. Every so often he trembles as he thinks about the battle to come. He’s been fighting demons for years, but in their universe, where his powers are far greater than they are here. On Earth his magical talents are vastly diminished. The Demonata are weaker here too, of course, and if it was just a few of them, he and Beranabus would fancy their chances. But if thousands have crossed and are running riot…
A sudden pounding noise. Three blows, a pause, then three more. Beranabus and Kernel jump nervously at the first sound, then relax.
“I forgot,” I say quietly, madness receding temporarily, confident of taking me whenever it chooses. “Those noises have been coming for the last week. I went up the ladder to find out what was making them, but I couldn’t get out.”
“The entrance is protected by spells,” Beranabus says. “Only Kernel and I can open it.” He nods at Kernel, who heads for the ladder. “Be careful,” Beranabus calls after him. “It might not be one of ours.”
A short while later, Kernel returns. An elderly Indian woman in a light blue sari comes after him, limping but making good speed. She has a kind face, but it’s twisted with worry. At first I don’t know where I recognise her from. Then I remember — she was in a dream I had in Slawter last year.
“Sharmila,” Beranabus greets her, smiling wanly.
“Master, there has been a tragic–” the woman begins in a rush.
“I know,” Beranabus sighs. “The Demonata have crossed. I just found out. I’m going to Carcery Vale shortly, but perhaps you can flesh out the details before I leave.”
The woman stares at Beranabus blankly. “You are going there?”
“I think I should,” Beranabus says. “A stand must be made, aye?”
“But there are so many of them,” the woman wheezes.
Beranabus frowns, then tilts his head at me. “This is Sharmila Mukherji, one of my Disciples. Sharmila, this is Grubitsch Grady — though I believe he prefers the name of Grubbs. He’s Dervish’s nephew.”
Sharmila looks at me with surprising anger. “Dervish! He was on watch. He was supposed to make sure the tunnel was never reopened. He failed. He–”
“I don’t believe in finger-pointing,” Beranabus interrupts curtly, conveniently forgetting that he himself was pointing a finger at me not so long ago. “I trusted Dervish as much as I trust any of you. I’m sure he did all that anyone could. Now tell me how the situation stands. Quickly.”
“There is no point,” Sharmila snaps. “We have lost. They…” She stops and looks around the cave. Smiles briefly when she spots Kernel. Frowns when she faces Beranabus again. “I have been waiting in the upper cave for many days, incapable of contacting you. I told you years ago that you should share the access spells with us, so we could reach you swiftly in case of an emergency. It was probably too late even then, but if I had been able to find you directly…”
“It’s easy to be wise in retrospect,” Beranabus sniffs. “I made that call a long time ago and I stick by it, even now. It was essential that I remain protected from…” He trails off into silence, then growls to himself. “This is getting us nowhere. Tell me what’s happening. Please.”
“I am not up to date with the latest developments,” Sharmila replies sourly. “I was in contact with Shark until four days ago, but he broke the lines of communication. I suspect he lost patience and went into battle without you. He was never the most…”
She shrugs, then straightens her shoulders and speaks quickly. “The Demonata crossed three weeks ago in great numbers. They worked like soldiers, coordinated, attacking set targets, establishing control of the area around the cave. They have fractured since then, individuals branching off by themselves, spreading in chaotic directions. But they were organised to begin with. We did not expect that. They have never banded together in that way before. Who could have commanded them? Who has the power to unite so many monsters for even a short period of time?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Beranabus says. “The investigation can come later. Tell me more about the invasion. They were able to operate by day as well as night?”
“Most of them,” Sharmila says. “There were some weaker demons, but most in the first wave were beasts of great strength. The sun meant nothing to them.”
“Strange,” Beranabus frowns. “They can’t have massed in advance — I would have received word of such a build-up long ago. They must have been summoned when the cave was reactivated. But for so many to gather so quickly… You’re right. This was no ordinary attack. There was a leader working behind the scenes, establishing contacts, making allies, forging secret links, priming them to await a call, so they could respond immediately.”
He shudders. “It’s our worst fear come true. The disorderly division between the Demonata has always been our strongest card. But if they’ve finally found a figurehead to unite and lead them…” He puts the thought aside and nods sharply at Sharmila to continue.
“They established control of Carcery Vale and the nearby regions within a day,” Sharmila says. “They expanded steadily over the next few days and nights, conquering neighbouring towns and villages, establishing bases. Most people had fled their homes by then, but the demons did not care. They were more interested in boundaries than victims — again, very undemonlike behaviour.”
“Did anyone survive?” I ask, not wanting to interrupt but having to. “In Carcery Vale, were any spared?”
Sharmila laughs brutally. “Do not be ridiculous! It was a bloodbath. They kept a few alive to torture, but most were slaughtered that first day.”
