Someone knocks on the door leading to the yard. Meera and I were both half-dozing. We jolt awake at the sound and I strengthen the magical fields around the doors and walls. Then a man shouts, “Little pigs, little pigs, let us come in!”
“Idiot,” Meera grunts, but she’s smiling. “It’s Shark.”
“I know. I remember his voice from Bill-E’s dream.”
I remove the spells and the battered door swings open. A tall, burly man in an army uniform enters, followed by an elderly Indian woman who walks with a limp.
“Sorry we’re late,” Shark says, hugging Meera and lifting her off the floor.
“How is he?” Sharmila asks, hobbling directly to Dervish.
“He’s been like that since the attack,” I tell her. “No change.”
She stares at me suspiciously. “You must be Bec. I have heard about you.”
“The dead girl who came back to life,” Shark says. He’s looking at me oddly. “I thought you’d be more like a boy, considering . . .”
“. . . I stole Bill-E’s body?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing of Bill-E left,” I tell them. “Except his memories. That’s how I know you and Sharmila.”
Shark frowns. “I never met him.”
“I did,” Sharmila says, “but many years ago, when he was very young.”
“I know. But he met both of you.” I grin weakly at their confusion.
“Bec can tell you about that later,” Meera snaps. “What’s happening outside?”
“Nothing,” Shark says. “All quiet. Your birds have flown the coop.”
“You’re positive? It isn’t a trap, to lure us out of hiding?” Shark shakes his head. “Then let’s get Dervish straight to a hospital. We can talk about the attack on the way. But I’ll tell you this much — they weren’t birds. They were Lambs.”
Shark and Meera carry Dervish up the steps out of the cellar as gently as they can. Shark grumbles about what he’s going to do to the Lambs when he catches up with them. He drove here in a van. There’s a hospital trolley in the rear. We strap Dervish down and Sharmila produces a drip and heart monitor. She hooks Dervish up. I watch with interest — it’s the first time I’ve seen such apparatus.
When Dervish is as secure as we can make him, I ask Shark if he’s absolutely certain we’re not going to be attacked.
“Nothing in life’s an absolute,” he replies, squinting at the trees, the mansion, the sky. “But if this was a trap, the time to attack would have been when we were moving Dervish up from the cellar. That’s when we were most vulnerable. I’m confident we’ve nothing to fear for the time being.”
“Then I’ve a favor to ask.” I feel strange being so forward, but this is no time to be shy. “I can open a window to the Demonata’s universe from the cellar. I’d like you to go through and find Beranabus.”
Shark blinks slowly. Sharmila is frowning.
“Have you ever been to that universe?” Sharmila asks.
“No.”
“Then you do not know what you are asking. It is a place of chaos and peril. We have never been there without Beranabus to guide us.”
“I know how dangerous it is,” I mutter, flashing on some of Beranabus’s many memories of the hellish universe. “But I’ll try to open the window to one of the less savage zones. Did Beranabus teach you a spell to find him once you’re there?”
“No,” Shark grunts. “But Dervish did.”
“We have never tested it,” Sharmila notes. “What if the window closes and we cannot find him? We will be stranded.”
“Dervish might be dying,” Meera hisses.
“I have sympathy for Dervish,” Sharmila says coolly. “That is why I came when you summoned me. But can Beranabus heal him? And even if he can, why should we risk our lives for his?”
“It’s not about helping Dervish,” I say quickly before an argument develops. “We don’t know who the Lambs were after. Their target might have been Dervish or Meera, but it was probably me.”
“What if it was?” Shark asks.
“I’m important,” I mutter, feeling embarrassed. “I can’t explain — there isn’t time — but I’m part of a powerful force that might mean the difference between winning and losing the war with the Demonata.”
Sharmila’s eyes narrow. “The Kah-Gash?”
“You know about it?” I sigh with relief.
“We helped Beranabus search for a piece once,” Shark says. “It wasn’t our most successful mission.”
“I am not convinced of that,” Sharmila says. “I always suspected . . . Kernel?” She raises an eyebrow.
My smile broadens. “Yes. He was a piece. Grubbs is another. So am I.”
“What are you talking about?” Shark frowns.
Sharmila waves his question away. “Does Beranabus know?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you not with him?”
“He didn’t want to keep us together until he found out more about how the weapon works. He thought I’d be safe here. Nobody else knew. At least we didn’t think so. But if the attack was directed at me, maybe my secret’s out. If that’s the case . . .”
“. . . Beranabus must be informed.” Sharmila nods. “I understand now.”
“Care to explain it to the rest of us?” Shark asks, bemused.
“Later.” She thinks about it for a few seconds. “I would go but I am old and slow, even when pumped full of magic. Besides, I know a lot about healing, so I might be of more help here. Meera?”
“I’m not as strong as you,” Meera says.
“But you are younger and faster. In this instance that is important.”
“I don’t like that other universe,” Meera mutters.
“Neither do I. Believe me, I would not send you there lightly.”
“You really think this is necessary?”
Sharmila nods slowly. Meera sighs and agrees reluctantly.
“Shark?” Sharmila asks.
“You want me to place my life on the line without knowing the reason why?” he scowls.
“Yes.”
His scowl disappears and he shrugs. “Fair enough.”
“You understand how time works in that other universe?” Sharmila asks me. “It can pass quicker or slower than it does here. They might find him in a matter of minutes as we experience time or it could be several months.”
“I know. But we don’t have a choice. I’d go myself, except if it’s a trap . . .”
“. . . demons might be lying in ambush for you. Very well. Let us not waste any more time. I will stay with Dervish. Shark and Meera will accompany you to the cellar.” She smiles tightly at Shark. “You have been to hell in a bucket before, my old friend. Now it is time to go there without the bucket.”
In the cellar. I’m working on a spell to create a window to the demon universe. It’s an area Beranabus goes to frequently — his father took his mother there when he abducted her. Because Beranabus has opened a window to that realm many times, it’s a relatively quick and easy procedure, though it still takes me an hour.
As I complete it, a thin lilac window forms in the cellar. I get a shiver down my spine. I never saw a window like this in my own time, but Beranabus has been through thousands of them. He acts like it’s no big thing, but he loathes these demonic passageways. He always expects to die when he steps through, having no real way of knowing what’s lurking on the other side.
“Will you be all right staying here with Sharmila?” Meera asks.
“Yes.”
“We should come with you and enter the demon universe later,” Shark says. “If the Lambs attack you on the way to hospital . . .”
“I might not be able to open a window there,” I explain. “It’s easier if I’m in an area of magic.”
“Even if Beranabus doesn’t come with us, we’ll return,” Meera says.
“He’ll come.” I smile confidently.
“Because you’re part of the Kah-Gash?”
r /> “Yes. But also because we’re old friends.”
“I didn’t think Beranabus had any friends,” Shark grunts.
“Maybe not now. But he was a boy called Bran once and I was his friend then. He’d do anything for me.”
“You’re sure of that?” Meera asks.
I think about the night I sat with Beranabus and absorbed his memories. He always wears a flower in a buttonhole, in memory of me. “I’m certain.”
“Right,” Shark says, rubbing his hands together. “Keep a light burning — we’ll be back in time for supper.”
Shark steps through the window. Meera smiles wryly, then moves to hug me. I take a step backwards.
“I’d rather not touch. I don’t want to steal any more memories from you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Meera says, wrapping her arms around me. “If things go badly over there, you can remember my life for me.”
We grin shakily at each other, then Meera slips through the window after Shark. I wait a couple of minutes in case they run into trouble and need to make a quick retreat. Then, as the window breaks apart, I douse the lights and climb the steps to help Sharmila escort Dervish to the hospital.
PART TWO
Ward Duty
SNAPSHOTS OF BERANABUS II
AFTER the death of the Minotaur, the years of wandering began. Beranabus had no difficulty finding his way out of the Labyrinth. He had explored every last alley of the maze. It had been home to him and he knew it intimately.
Sunlight disturbed the boy. Having grown up in darkness, the world of light seemed unbearably bright. He tried to brave the glare, but the pain was too great. Weeping, he retreated. Not knowing about the outside world, he assumed it would always be this bright, the way the Labyrinth had always been dark.
When the sun dropped and the sky darkened, Beranabus cautiously crept out again. It was still a lot lighter than he liked, but he was able to adjust to the shades of the night world. He looked back once at the Labyrinth, feeling sad and alone, remembering the good times, riding high on the Minotaur’s shoulders, feeding on the fresh blood and meat of the beast’s kills. Then, reluctantly, he turned his back on his childhood home and set off to explore this new, peculiar world.
Beranabus was a simple child. He couldn’t speak. He could understand some of what other people said, but not everything. Most of the world was a mystery to him, filled with beings who made a huge amount of noise and fought lots of battles for no reason that he could see.
He shouldn’t have lasted long in such a hostile environment. But Beranabus had a remarkable gift, which saved him when he first entered the world — he could tame the wildest of creatures and find friendship in the most unlikely places. Wherever he went, he was accepted. People took him in to their homes, gave him passage on carriages and boats, fed and clothed him, treated him with kindness and love.
Many took pity on the boy and sought to keep him and raise him as their own. But Beranabus liked to wander. After the confines of the Labyrinth, the open space of the world intrigued him and he wanted to see more of it. So, without any real design or purpose, he always moved on, slipping away from those who yearned to root him, feeling nothing more for them than he did for the dirt beneath his feet or the air whispering through his hair.
One day, when the boy was on the brink of his teenage years (although he’d been alive for more than two centuries), he witnessed a demon on the rampage. The monster had crossed near a small village and was busy killing as many humans as it could before it had to return through the window of light to its own universe.
The demon reminded Beranabus of the Minotaur. He had come a long way from Crete and seen much of the world and its people, but this was the first demon he’d encountered. The savage beast amused him. It was shaped like an octopus, but with several heads of various animals and birds. He liked the sounds the humans made when the demon killed them, and the patterns their blood created as it arced through the air in streaks and spurts.
He watched the massacre for a few minutes, as if enjoying a show. The demon saw him but didn’t attack, mesmerized by the boy’s strange aura, as all other dangerous creatures had been.
Murder meant nothing to Beranabus. He didn’t understand concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. His mind was a muddled grey zone. Many had tried to teach him, but all had failed. The only difference in his head between a living person and a corpse was that the former was more entertaining.
When the demon retreated, Beranabus was curious to see what the beast would do next, whom it would kill, what sort of mischief it would get up to. So he stepped through the window after the demon, out of his mother’s universe, into the much darker and spectacularly violent playpen of the Demonata.
Beranabus had a whale of a time in the universe of his father. The demons were far more bloodthirsty than humans. They could kill each other in ways men had never dreamed of. Death didn’t have to be swift either. A demon master could torment a lesser demon for decades . . . hundreds of years . . . millennia if it wished.
Beranabus drifted with delight from one crazy realm to another. He didn’t need to sleep much or eat and drink. And he aged at an even slower rate there than on Earth. He was part of a universe of marvels, and it seemed he could go on enjoying it for as long as he liked.
He had to be careful, of course. He could tame most demons, but some resisted his charms and tried to capture him. Beranabus was uneducated, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what pain and suffering were, and while he loved to observe the torment of others, he had no wish to become one of the tortured.
That was when he discovered his gift of speed. He could run faster than any demon that chased him. So, on the occasions where he could not tame a demonic beast, he fled, laughing gleefully as he ran, safe in the knowledge that the demon would soon lose interest in him and abandon the chase for easier pickings. In the Demonata’s universe there was always something else to kill.
Windows were plentiful. Although demons could only cross to the human world with the aid of a malevolent magician or mage, many could travel from one zone to another in their own foul realm. Their universe was an endless parade of blood-drenched worlds and galaxies. Some of the stronger demons could even create infinite self-contained zones of their own, which somehow nestled within the larger unified demon universe.
Whenever Beranabus tired of a realm, he searched for a window and usually found one quickly. He never worried about what he would encounter on the other side. Uncertainty and potential peril all were part of the delight of his life.
Eventually, inevitably, he stepped through a window to the human world. He knew he’d crossed universes as soon as he sniffed the air — it was less charged with magic. Instinct urged him to retreat, but curiosity tempted him on. A long time had passed — he could tell from the buildings around him — and he wanted to see what the people were like, how they varied from those he’d known, whether they died any differently.
In the demon universe, windows could remain open indefinitely. He assumed that was the case here as well, but he was wrong. He spent only a handful of minutes in the town — just enough to realize that demons were far more interesting than humans — but when he returned to the spot where the window had stood, it was gone. He was stranded, a captive of the world where he had first begun.
When Beranabus discovered to his dismay that windows of magic were incredibly rare on this world, he traveled with fiery intent, hitching lifts with armies and traders, riding and sailing to the farthest reaches of civilization. He was desperate to return to the universe of the fantastical demons.
This was the first time Beranabus’s brain stirred actively. Until then he had wandered neutrally, observing whatever he chanced across. But now he went in search of something specific and moved with a purpose, carefully choosing those he traveled with, deliberately setting out to explore fresh locations full of promise.
As his brain took its first developmental staggers forward, he unconsciously learned a
few words and mimicked the speech of those he hitched rides with, although most of the time he only uttered gibberish. His mind was still a confused, chaotic country, full of storms and whirlpools. But he had taken the first steps towards understanding and intent, and the world — the universes — would never be the same for him again.
Some years later the boy found himself on an island, set at the westernmost limit of the known world. Demons had broken through and established a permanent tunnel. Thousands of monsters had flooded the land. They were terrorizing the locals, laying siege to the villages and towns, slaughtering all in their path.
Beranabus eagerly trudged around the country in search of the tunnel, admiring the torments perpetuated by the Demonata. But as he moved from one village to another, a dim sense of unease grew within him. He felt nothing substantial for the dead humans he saw every day, nor the terrified living who would soon be butchered by the demons. But something about their plight troubled him. He had changed inside, and although the change was slight, it had altered his view of slaughter.
Human suffering was different from what he’d seen in the demon universe. On this world, those who survived mourned for the dead. Demons laughed at death, but people here cared about their families and friends. Beranabus found it hard to wring pleasure from their pain. It was too . . . human.
His unease made him more determined than ever to find the tunnel and