Demon of the Black Gate

Rovinkar opened the door to his study, expecting to see the blind, red-haired witch and the kassar he had sent down to retrieve her. Instead, he saw only the guard, red-faced and breathing heavily.

“She’s gone. Disappeared.”

“Gone?!” Rovinkar hissed. “Where did …”

“The door was still barred.” the guard hurried on. “The cell was empty except for this.”

The guard handed Rovinkar a scrape of woven cloth. Charred sigils were loosely emblazoned on the surface, still smoldering.

“Oh, n’ there was a turd. A cat turd.” said the guard. “I think.” It felt like a lame and useless piece of information.

Rovinkar held out the cloth like a tattered scroll, then rumpled it and tossed it aside. The woman was more powerful a magician than he realized. She was not the innocent that she had duped him into believing. The runes were the archaic symbols employed by the caravaners. It was no spell that he knew of, but he reasoned there might be more to the spell, and the woman had certainly enough time.

A cat turd? He shuddered. The shape-shifters were fabled in the high abbeys of the Stands. They were spoken of, but no one had ever admitted to seeing one. He seethed with uncertainty. A cat could have escaped out of the portal in the cell door. But she may not be able to maintain the glamour for long.

“It may be useless, but get that man Sinjin. And if you see an orange cat, Kill it!” Rovinkar had much to consider, not the least of which was a demon that could soon break its cage.

“Now GO!”

The demon had lapsed into a deep state when he assumed the shape that the woman Cerra had given him. The cage that held him fed on his power. He had noticed that immediately.

Let it seek its power somewhere else the demon reasoned. He let himself sink to black, remembering the void he hated, and thought he craved. He was aware of the cage, how it twisted about him, how it slowly drained. There would be a time when it would no longer be strong enough to hold him. He would wait. Time meant nothing to him. He had been in the void. The blackness that he sat in was in his own mind, the center of his consciousness. The field that held him felt removed, lurking close, ready to strike. The demon let the blackness remain. Like an afternoon doze, the unconsciousness may have lasted minutes or even hours. In the middle of the darkness a naked figure emerged, floating into form, wild red hair drifting, brown eyes burning with desire.

“I am here.” resounded in the demon’s mind like tolls from a temple bell, the tones deep, warm and welcoming. His mind reverberated in chord. “I am here.”

The vision grew in his mind until it covered him. She lay on top, her face lowering to kiss him, red-gold raveling at the edge. The brown depths of her unseeing eyes evolved, wrapped in an umbrae of eclipse.

‘She is here.’ he knew with certainty.

He felt the essence of her nature. He felt the communion of her in his mind and the indescribable tug at his very core when he thought of her. A word caromed through the thoughts. Peace. A slow pulsing void in itself, but with life in it. He sank, sank into the pulse, the core of the woman who held him to this plane. He was summoned by his own desire into a ether of darkness and light. He let himself fall completely into the soft blanket of her peace. Her embrace. He slipped to the sublime caress of his dream.

Rovinkar looked at the etchings on the floor. The power was fading faster than expected. The demon had given up resistance, and the graven image of the beast stood inanimate, a finely chiseled statue, looking tall and god-like. The demon had only tested the bonds of his prison once. He had been a fool for counting on the demon’s rage to add power to the ensorcelment. Only the eyes glowed, red embers Rovinkar imagined fueled by the molten core of the earth. Even with the power remaining, the cage had nearly broken before catching the demon’s energy to restore itself. Rovinkar could not afford to wait for another sunrise to renew the cage. It would not last until sunrise. The red ember of the demons eyes reminded him of the malevolence waiting to break free.

Rovinkar had to prepare himself and the obsidian. The magic that summoned the demon still tied them together. He must lead the demon into the void. The writing of the pages of bone played out in his thoughts “The void would take the strength, the mightier beast.” Rovinkar knew he was the lesser power. The spell was risky, but the demon in the here and now was the greater danger.

The disappearance of the blind witch troubled him. Shape-shifters were the most powerful of the adepts, and if one such had managed to get the demon under control, the empire itself could be at great risk.

Sinjin had claimed she had magical prowess. An experienced assassin, yet he had failed to catch up with her in over a hundred leagues of chase, and a blind woman at that. She was far more than she was leading him to believe. He didn’t believe one word of the conversation in the cell. The demon even now was not acting like it should, and the witch was loose. She wanted the demon for some purpose. And with such a demon, those purposes couldn’t be good.

At least, he amended, they wouldn’t be good for his own purposes.

Cerra waited at the small alcove, ready to duck in again, though she knew that with any dedicated search in these lower chambers it would not take long to find her. Whatever exchange occurred high above, what she thought must be the top of the staircase, didn’t last long. The footsteps descended much faster this time. Cerra was both fearful of another search while thinking the guard probably wished his lord lived on the ground floor. Cerra clung to the corner of the alcove again, but the footfalls ended the landing above her, and she heard a door swing on its hinges. The incoherent drone of the city drifted down for a moment then the door shut, returning the tower to its tomb-like silence.

Cerra wanted to wait longer, as she had no clear idea of what to do. But there was nothing to be done waiting down here, and the moment seemed right. Sound would carry up the stairwell, and she resolved to move as quietly as possible.

“No tripping” she told herself.

She eased herself away from the alcove and felt her way back to the steps. There were forty two. She had counted when the man had come down. He had taken less going back. In ascending quickly, he had taken many two at a time, but she felt she had an accurate count. The fact that the wizard had not returned immediately to the dungeon was encouraging. It may be that her ruse worked. People saw what they wanted to see, she thought with a touch of irony.

She started up the stairs, taking them quickly. She paused at the landing, listening for any movement. The door lay across from her. Cerra stepped across the landing and pushed slightly. The smells and featureless din of the outside blew in like a stiff breeze. The aroma of cooking dominated.

“It must be dinner time” she thought, feeling a pull in her stomach. She drew the door shut. She had no idea what the compound outside was like, and she’d be caught within moments. There was only one way to go, and that was up. If the wizard was up there, the demon would be too.

She started the climb, now keeping to the outside wall. She had no accurate sense of the other side of the staircase, or even how wide, and didn’t want to take the time to find out. She caught glimpses of sound as Kamir kept pace a few steps ahead. The risers were even and measured well. She quickly rose to the second level, the stair case curving along the wall as she climbed. She felt carefully along a short landing before the stairs began another ascent.

She reached across to touch the inner wall. There was a door frame and she felt for the knob. It felt dented and old, unused and stiff. This was not the door. The man had been on the stairs longer than this door would account for. She must go higher. The next section was far narrower. It felt like the stairs rising from the dungeon. The walls had closed in. She sensed no one at all in the staircase, save herself. If she were spotted now, there would be nowhere to hide and no practical magic to save her. She paced herself to move as quietly as possible. Kamir’s movements were as silent. She could tell he kept his two or three step lead on her.

She took one step too many upon reaching the next landing but recovered quickly. She stopped. She could smell a thin reminder of the wizard, a cast of fine wool, though slightly wet. Maybe it was just her sense of him, but it had gathered strongly about him while he was in the cell with her, and it was here now. She could tell there were more stairs. She hazarded that the wizard’s manifestation would inhabit the air there too. But where would the demon be? She could not feel his presence.

Cerra’s attention drifted upward. There was yet more stairs to climb, but the signature of the air above was closer. It would not be much further. The final flight was narrow, and curved sharply as it rose. She moved as quickly as she dared. She was half-way up the steps when her head struck an unexpected obstacle, as though a beam had been cast through the walls to bar passage. “What dunderhead put this here?” she cursed silently, smarting from the blow.

If she’d been an inch shorter she would have missed it. She ducked under and continued up, wary for others. The narrow flight crowded her as she could touch either wall as she ascended. At precisely the correct number of steps, she reached the final landing.

The demons eyes had lost their red malevolent fire. They flickered in a dim blue. The stone surfaces of his form became more like marble, veined with rich lodes and pure crystal. The demon had lost its rage and released the consumming fire. The cage was beginning to unravel without the demons raw energy to maintain it in the suns absence. It would be free in less than the turn of the glass.

Rovinkar could wait no longer. He must take hold of the reins, the link between them, pull the demon into the void. The Nilizanthra lay open on the reader near the door, the pages of bones laid out for invocation. He had never discovered the secret name, the one that would crush the spell. Rovinkar held on to the idea that once contained, he could recall the demon again, and not lose control as he did before. He would not slip the next time. The stone was resting on a stand of its own on the far side of the room near the stairwell. The demon remained frozen like a statue in the center. When he was ready, he would have to meld with the blackness of the stone.

Rovinkar chanted the spells that would ward him and his chambers: nothing with harmful intent could pass. Not even a mosquito seeking his blood could pass the shield. He could see the helices surrounding the demon growing weaker; an ill-green cast had fallen over the coiling energies, and the eyes of the demon were a dim blue but it kept focus upon him. There was no more room for delay. There was no single element that would activate the gate. Rovinkar must do that himself. He stood over the stone, and took a deep breath before laying his hands upon the dark obsidian.

A darkness rose in front of Rovinkar, the door of the void framed in smoking vapors. The opening faced the demon, the stronger entity. In the smoky black, Rovinkar could see the line connecting them. All he had to do was pull.

The demon felt the weakening of his bonds and was raising his awareness slowly, slipping out of the calm embrace that he had let himself rest in. The wizard came into his sight and he watched as the mage lay his hands on something black. It felt familiar. His thoughts vanished as he saw a smoke of inky black form and rise, creating a gateway. He probed at the powerful weave that contained him. Weak, like a net on the verge of shredding. The ebony smoke of the air coagulated and he could see a connecting line, a caustic and erratic green cord, the void shifting and shimmering between them.

The wizard beckoned to him, pulling on the cord. It tightened, tugging him from the stone. The demon felt the sensual longing for nothing grow with each tug. His pain would be gone. His angers and confusions. The madness of a lost life. The demon could not avert his gaze nor close his eyes. The knot drew tighter, constricting around his chest, his heart. He felt his energies coalesce and start emerging from the elements that fashioned his body. He would not need them. Stone began falling away.

The body the blind woman had fashioned.

The blind woman.

His mind remembered the last taste of her, the peace in his mind, and struggled with a last cry as fire started dissipating and water began steaming away.

“I am here.”

Turning the corner of the stone lintel guarding the passage Cerra gazed upon what she had never hoped to ever see again.

The Void.

The vacant black penetrated even the sightlessness of her eyes. She wanted to turn away, and she struggled against collapse, but the bluish flame of the demon held her. A cord held him, drawing him into the emptiness framed in coiling light. She could not feel the presence of the wizard. A vague net obscured it all, but upon seeing the demon, she had forgotten completely about the mage and stumbled through the woven haze.

She struggled for her balance, hands in front of her, and pitched forward toward the demon. She staggered against a small podium that began to topple. Cerra grabbed at it as much to prevent its fall as hers. She ran her hands over the object to comprehend it, and as she did, turned the carved rods of the bone pages. A pattern of blue light bloomed in front of her a searing tracery of script. She heard a cry in her mind, a grim echo from the cell.

“I am here!”

The demon’s light looked as though it was being shredded. She looked back down at the pattern. Familiar. Her mind raced. She only had the tracings on her sensitive fingertips to recognize the patterns she read and now had to equate the feeling with the form. She wildly sorted through the signs she knew, before the answer arrived in a flash of comprehension. It was the sign of ginger. She used it often.

“Ginger!” she cried out, hazarding her wild guess.

The word died fruitless. The demon continued to get torn, fragments chasing along the sickly green cord that disappeared into the black.

The void licked out around the demon. He could not help but struggle against his bonds. The magician appeared as a reflection against the black … a fog penetrating the other side of the void. The demon heard a voice, a familiar one, but the note rang against him unrecognized, lost as everything else faced with the emptiness. The demon wanted to shut himself off, a grim desire for death before the bleak emptiness of the void recaptured him.

Cerra thought of the symbol and the age of it and her racing logic concluded the name was an ancient one. The first name, when the signs were formed. Even as the realization dawned, she cried out the name. It was her last hope.

“Yutan!”

The voice rang out again, this time shattering the demons consciousness. A name lost in the depths of time. The secret name of his birth. He felt his power collapse.

Rovinkar had nearly pulled the demon into the void. He was ready to release the bonds and let the void do the rest, sucking the demon away when he heard a voice. The word had no import. Nothing in the room existed except the demon and himself and the dead space between them. The empty maw of the void faced away from him. The demon was within its grasp, and he began uttering the phrase that would sever the bond and collapse the gate. The voice intruded again, ripping through the stifling silence. It came as the tolling of a bell.

“Yutan”

The demon started falling backward, shrinking. The power of the snare flared back at him and when it did, the void turned. Rovinkar faced the eternal blackness. The voice of the witch. It would be the last thing the wizard heard as the terror of the void swallowed him up.

The demon saw the collapse of the emptiness in front of him even as his awareness slammed back into his paralyzed form. There was a final argent pinprick of light, that flared in an orb of concussive brilliance. He felt heavier than the earth and heavens, solid and immutable. The demon collapsed onto the stone floor.

Cerra’s world had never been more vivid than at that moment. The rune sign, upon being named, sent tracings about the book under her hands, highlighting and extinguishing signs and glyphs faster than she could follow. She felt no heat. The demon spun and shrank, casting fiery trails as he collapsed back from the void. The greenish glow she had barely noticed before suddenly bloomed and she saw the alarmed face of the wizard seared into the blackness just as it blinked out with a vaporous flash.

The shimmering light of the demon was all that remained in her eyes except the white/blue argent was now a feeble bronze glow. Cerra struggled to repaint any scene in her mind, any scene at all, to replace the emptiness she’d just witnessed. She let go of the stand that held the book and lurched forward towards the demon that lay prone of the floor. She stumbled and knelt sliding into the body in her rush.

She turned it over … him over … a halo still wavered about it, though not as wild as before. The lines were more delicate weaves. She felt the face, the same chiseled contours she had shaped, but softer. The emanation like warm iron was gone. She felt the familiar texture of flesh.

The demon was not … was …

“Yutan” she said softly. She ran her hands over his torso, and felt the beating of a heart. She almost wept. She heard the curious purr of Kamir as he nosed up to the face of the prone body.

A heartbeat! Tears welled in her eyes.

“I am here.” she said. It fell out again, an even softer echo. “I am here.”

A heavy weight pressed upon him, the insistent pull of earth that held him came not just from the core, but a collapse from beyond that continued to push through him. Lungs and mind sought to be filled, but the drag of centuries weighed him down. Not the void, but the opposite, each weighted instant that pinned him in unconsciousness added recognition to his being. He heard the name again. His name. Yutan. The frames of recognition included a robust man, a young lusty life, emotions and joys, populated by the faces of the known. The father, the mother … the lover. For one last time she danced before him. He could taste her perfume. Remember her desire. The grevious night when he had been lost. The eternities between were a blend of nothing and chaos, blankness and raging anger. In the center of the confusion a calm presence remained, brown eyes, a laughing smile, framed in flames. It called to him.

“Yutan”

The vision gained coherency. He looked up, comprehension coming in waves. The woman. He fought for the name, fought for focus. Cerra … was kneeling over him. He thought back to the first time, in another age, when he had really seen the woman. The word had come unbidden then. It made sense to him now.

“Beautiful.”

Cerra had thought herself close to weeping before, but now she felt a wave of relief and joy that left tears running hotly down her cheeks. She wished she had something remarkable to say. She had no words. Cerra sniffed and a spasm of crying turned to a laugh. She used a hand to wipe her eyes and nose.

“Yes, you are.” she replied. “I think we did it.”

Yutan was still struggling to pull in this thoughts. His wild recollections of elemental power and what had transpired in this dimension. It had centered around this woman, the dark passage of the cave, the callings that had saved him, her notions of helplessness when she had undertaken this journey.

“What am I to do?” had been her question then.

“You’ve done it.” was his reply.