Demon of the Black Gate

Cerra looked at the figure standing below her porch. That he returned was, in strange, welcome. That he needed her help was equally unsettling.

“Do you now?” she said, curious. “I can’t imagine what I could possibly be able to do that would help.”

The demon looked back at her, clearly not sure of the reason.

“When I’m unsure what to do, I find a good walk is just what I need.” Jessann’s pithy remedy sparked in Cerra’s mind. She got up, retrieved her walking stick, and stepped down the porch steps. Kamir stayed in the chair, staring with intensity at the demon.

“Will you walk with me? I want to check on the bees. I can tell how they hive if a little honey is ready. They are very polite, they won’t bother you. And the raspberries are down there too.”

The hives and berry patches were near the smaller lake which lay behind the cabin and copse of trees. Though she knew it well, it was still a bothersome trail.

“I don’t go down there as often as I should, and so you can help me.”

The demon regarded her with an uncertain look.

“Because you cannot see?”

“Oh no. I know the path well enough.” Cerra tapped her head. “I see it up here.” She laughed. “Though the first time I tried it, I got lost three times.” That was when she had first come to the cabin with Jessann nearly twenty years before.

“You can reach the highest berries.” She laughed again. “No, I am jesting with you. I merely want to walk. I sit too much I think.” She thought again of Jessann’s words. “And walking seems to sort things out very nicely.”

The demon felt the amusement in her voice, and felt the corners of his mouth rise. An emotion as strong as anger. It felt like it, except lighter. Instead of brimming fire, the waters of his being began to sparkle. He emitted a short cough, a stunted chuckle.

“Agreed.”

Cerra took the path that led back behind the cabin and through the copse of trees. She tried to keep her senses tuned, but the presence of the demon was most distracting, and a few times her stick tapped at things that weren’t where they were supposed to be. “Where I’M supposed to be” she corrected herself.

The demon noticed the few awkward moves.

“You do not see. Yet you …” the demon sought the word “ … move.”

“I admit it is a nuisance at times.” She said quietly. There was a degree of acceptance in her tone. She added a bright note. “But I have learned to make adjustments. I hear very well, and I can smell a bargain from a league away.”

The demon didn’t know the reference she made, but could sense the continued light-hearted mood.

“I hear the swallows overhead. They must be feeding for there are many of them right now, all in a tight area. The trees ahead are a presence. I can feel them. Their leaves whisper to me, and there is a lot of creatures living in them. I know there is a nice avenue that the path goes through. Even if I didn’t know it, I can feel it. The smell of the pond is stronger, and the air moves differently through it. I haven’t always been blind, so some of my memories are there in my head and I make a picture … paint it … in my mind. That helps push away the darkness. I have a very active imagination.” she laughed.

“I have known darkness.” the demon said. His thoughts reverted with intensity to the void, and the empty numbness of its depths.

Cerra felt the sudden change in the demon, and in the same moment, she caught the demon’s mental image, a blackness so complete it paralyzed her. Her blindness was but shades of grey compared to the insensate crush of nothing that assailed her. Her internal visions were blanketed, every sense destroyed. She reeled and fell, riven from the very earth, into a darkness that covered her completely.

There was nothing in the void. No sound. No time. Not a shred of light or vision.

Nothing.

Cerra lay still on the ground, crumpled and lifeless.

#

It was a raspy pulling at her cheek that cracked the emptiness, rough and insistent. It nagged at her. She finally brushed at her cheek, and pushed away a furriness. The implications of what she felt had to wrestle their way back into her mind, her lapse so complete. The abrasive application to her face returned. She was about to brush it away again when she thought of Kamir. She was lying on the ground. She didn’t know where she was, and for a moment she felt the panic she had experienced as a child when she first awoke to her blindness. She searched wildly for clues; for the moment, even the recollection of her life seemed out of range. It was the cat’s insistence, burrowing in yet again to start licking at her forehead, that enabled the slow return of her comprehension.

She reached for the cat, this time easing it away, with a feeble reassurance.

“Where am I?” A frail groan. She was lying down, and as yet, afraid to stand.

“I don’t know.”

She heard a voice. Who? She turned her head, not hearing … she saw! The instant of her faint came back to her. The demon. She was with … the demon. She lay back flat, eyelids shut as she collected her breath. The ground felt cool and solid beneath her back. She let it sooth her, even imagining the earth sharing its density, absorbing into her.

She finally felt the energy to move and propped herself to one elbow. She held her hair to her neck, feeling for leaves and debris.

“What was that?” her voice low and exhausted.

The demon knew that she had seen the void. He had seen her collapse. He did not know how to help. He could feel the pain of her recognition.

“My prison.” the demon replied. He paused. “My doom.”

Cerra eased herself up, hoping a wave of nausea didn’t overtake her. The memory of the nothing came at her again. She rolled to her hands and needs, head hanging, sobbing.

“NO!” she cried. “No more. Don’t think of it.”

The demon watched, as the notion that he could do nothing to ease her suffering came over him.

“Here I thought I was blind. By all the gods, I don’t know anything about blindness. That ... “she choked on her words. “ ... that is blindness. Don’t show me that again.” she pleaded

At length, she stilled herself, shutting away the anxiety, her senses fought for control. The numbness slowly left her.

“Help me stand. Please.” she held her hand up to the demon.

The demon looked at her. At her hand. He grasped her firmly at the wrist and felt her small hands reflect his grip. He lifted, though more than he should for she came up in a rush, falling against his chest. Cerra lay against him for only a moment. He felt strong, solid; but too warm, an intense and peppered heat. She reluctantly pushed herself away.

“And my stick. My walking stick.”

The demon saw the rod-like piece of wood that was hers and retrieved it.

“Thank you.”

The world was returning in full for Cerra. After the experience of the void, the flooding input to her senses seemed far more brilliant than before, intense and savored. The mountains not only loomed with their presence, they seemed to speak by way of the soft brush of winds passing along their flanks. The harsh ‘krees’ of two eagles circling high above threw back the raptor’s view of the world below. Every bird and blade of grass tried to find their voice in her mind. Everything was so alive. Not like the … no, no … don’t think of it. Her senses were reveling in a new, delicious wealth. “It is so beautiful” she thought.

The demon looked around, reading her thought. “I … know.”

The words of the demon shot through her mind. As her world returned, she realized that some of their communication had gone unspoken. By the lands, what was next? She watched as he looked around taking in the mountains, the jagged horns that stood above the narrow valleys, the eagles in the air. The demon returned his gaze to the woman. She was gazing at him. A watering brightened her deep brown eyes.

“It’s good that you’re back.” she said.

The demon looked at her steadily as she watched the glowing form of him assume a curious, spellbound mien. For a moment.

“Beautiful” said the demon, looking at her. For a moment.

He spun, as though looking over his shoulder and then turned back. The demon had felt an alien presence.

The woman attracted. The demon didn’t understand the bond, but knew that she had no fear of him. The realization also came to him that someone else had seen. Someone else had formed the word in his mind. There could be only one and his memory shot back to the confrontation on the mesa.

The fires of his wrath flamed out. So too the recoils, the pain. Cerra caught flashes of his thoughts in her mind. Her own mind shouted out for relief, and the images ceased.

’You are too strong.’ a message from her mind, a thought she meant to voice.

’Not strong enough.’ came as a reply.

“I don’t know how to say this.” she said aloud. “But I’m not saying anything. Yet we have spoken.”

“We are of one thought.” was all the demon said. His mind was on something else. “I want your … ” seeking the word again.

Cerra felt the need, the uncertainty.

“... help.” she finished for him. “You mentioned that. What can I possibly do? I’m a woman. A not very large one … well some parts are … and I’m blind as a cave mole. Blinder. You have … you have the powers of nature itself. Herself. Themselves. If you want to throw confusion at your enemies. Well then, I’m the one. Otherwise … I am lost to know.”

The demon thought of the butterflies that fluttered their way past the wizard’s enchanted shields.

“You are … innocent.” the demon. “I don’t know what I am. But you can go where I cannot. You will pass the shields of the … man.”

The image had already rendered in Cerra’s mind. The bolts of fire and pain of the battle.

“A sorcerer?” Cerra had little experience with such things. The stories of the great magics seemed more part of lore than what she encountered in her daily life.

The demon found the word, a parcel from another time. “Vizier.”

“Well, I think that’s the same.” she offered. “But what? I can’t kill him. I couldn’t. And I won’t. Don’t ask me that.”

The demon considered, a long pause. “That is not your way. You would not be the innocent.”

“Good. I’m glad we have that cleared up. And I’m not so innocent as you might think, by the way.” Cerra offered with a side-long smile.

The demon looked at her. It took a while for him to decide what she meant.

“Innocent enough.” the demon said in all seriousness, but it made Cerra laugh.

“I must … be rid of him.” The demon thought of the fires and destruction of the callings he could pull from his memory. “Not at his bidding.”

“If he is gone, or removed … I don’t know … but what happens to you then?” Cerra inquired.

“I care not. I will not be commanded to nothing.” The demon’s thought of the void again touched Cerra, and she winced, shutting her mind against it. “To die is better than to exist in nothing.” the demon finished. He added as the image occurred. “Not to live and never to die.”

“I will find him. The vizier. You must go with me.”

Cerra thought wildly for a moment. Her world was very ordered. An adventure was a ride to the village. She couldn’t imagine even stepping outside this world.

“I … I can’t.” Even as she said the words, the shade of the void intruded. She pushed it back. “I need time. Time to think. I don’t know.”

The demon spoke, as though not hearing her. The connection, the presence in his mind and the sense of it. “He knows you. He has seen. I know him. I cannot stay here. You cannot stay here.”

Cerra heard Kamir meow. The cry he makes when he wants your attention. A call. It came from near the demon.

“I’ll think on it.” Cerra said in a soft breath, spent of energy. She thought of where she was. The path to the pond. She couldn’t remember why she had taken it.

“I want to go home.”