It hung together nicely, but it made no sense. Why go to the trouble of setting up elaborate – and costly – illusions in an area of desert where, as Woodfordi said, the only people around were a few wandering Trinians?
‘This doesn’t make any sen-’ Pyrgus stopped as a new thought struck him like a thunderbolt. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘If these portals are all fakes, how did Beleth bring in his army?’
The three of them stood looking at each other blankly.
‘Perhaps -’ Nymph said; and stopped.
‘Maybe he used -’ Woodfordi said; and stopped.
They continued to look at one another in silence.
Pyrgus said thoughtfully, ‘Unless Beleth’s army is an illusion too.’
Ninety-six
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Henry said. ‘You just told me Beleth’s implant actually turned me into a demon. Like I became a demon, then shape-shifted back so I looked like Henry – something like that?’ He was staring intently at Mr Fogarty.
Fogarty said, ‘ Exactly like that. At least that’s what you told Blue and she thought you should know.’
Henry took a nervous sip from his mug of tea and found it cold. He licked his lips. ‘The idea was I should… you know… with Blue.’
‘Yes, breed with her,’ said Fogarty harshly. He seemed to be losing patience with Henry’s sensibilities.
‘And that was so the demons could get a demon child – or a half demon child anyway – into the Purple Palace?’
‘That was the plan, yes.’
‘And the demon had my – Henry’s – appearance so Blue wouldn’t suspect she was going to be kidnapped?’
‘You’re just repeating everything I told you,’ Fogarty said impatiently. ‘Is this going anywhere?’
‘But when they put us in the room to…’ he swallowed, ‘… breed, they deactivated the implant and I turned back into the real Henry. That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Fogarty said. ‘Blue’s very sensitive. They were worried she might figure out she was mating with a demon, even if it had your shape.’
Henry said, ‘If I was really me again, how would that produce a demon child?’
Fogarty blinked.
After a moment he said, ‘Well, you – I suppose if you -’ He stopped, staring at Henry. ‘You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense.’
They stared at one another.
Eventually Henry asked, ‘Are you sure you got it right: what Blue told you?’
‘I’m not that senile.’
‘Then are you sure Blue got it right?’
‘How should I know?’ Fogarty snapped. ‘I’m only telling you what she told me and Cynthia. She said that’s what you told her. When you were a demon. Or rather when you weren’t: when the implant was deactivated. She’s not likely to get that wrong.’
‘Unless I was lying to her,’ Henry said.
Mr Fogarty got it right away. ‘You mean the implant wasn’t deactivated?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Henry. ‘But it’s possible. Suppose -’
‘I’m ahead of you,’ Fogarty cut in thoughtfully. ‘Suppose the demons wanted to fool Blue by pretending the implant was deactivated when it wasn’t. Suppose they were trying to sell her on some bill of goods that wasn’t what was really happening at all.’
‘That’s what I think,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe the whole story about the child was just a cover-up for something else.’ He felt simultaneously relieved and just a fragment disappointed.
‘What?’ Fogarty asked. ‘A cover-up for what?’
Henry said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘This could be important, Henry.’
‘I know it could be important, Mr Fogarty! But I can’t remember. You know I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything since you took the transplant out. I can’t even remember how I got to the Realm.’
‘Maybe I could make you.’ Fogarty frowned.
There was something in his tone that made Henry think of rubber hoses and lights in your eyes. ‘How… how would you do that?’ he asked warily.
‘You’re not the first,’ Fogarty said.
‘I’m not the first what?’
Fogarty got up and began to pace around the room. ‘You got your implant in a flying saucer abduction,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first. The demons have been abducting people from Earth since 1961. They lose their memory as well, but we know how to get it back again. Been done hundreds of times.’
Henry wondered who we were. But all he asked was, ‘How… how do we do that, Mr Fogarty?’
Mr Fogarty rounded on him and grinned triumphantly. ‘We hypnotise you!’ he said.
Ninety-seven
Torches flared in wall sconces as Blue set a hesitant foot on the top step. She stopped for the barest second. This wasn’t any technology she knew. The torches didn’t seem to be spell-driven. They were lit by some sort of mechanical device that produced a spark. Yet this area of the castle had been locked up for centuries. How could any mechanical device still work after so much time? How could any torch still burn in this dampness?
She pushed the questions from her mind and concentrated on keeping her footing. The stone steps were worn and slippery. How things happened didn’t matter. The important thing was that they did. She was here now and she was happy.
The spiral staircase was so narrow she twice smelt her hair singe in the torch flames, but she reached the bottom at last. She was in a tiny vestibule, facing a single door flanked by painted statues of fanged guardians, their colours faded with age. The door itself was crudely made from planks of some black wood, but beaded here and there with slivers of obsidian. There was no handle and she could not see a lock.
She reached out to push the door and metal claws sprang out at once to grip her hand. Blue froze, her heart pounding suddenly, and forced herself not to panic. If she had jerked back her hand, the claws would have ripped the flesh from her bones. As it was, one of them had pierced the skin so there was a welling of a single drop of blood. She looked at it, fascinated.
Something else emerged from the door, not a mechanical device this time, but a sinuous ribbon that had a strangely organic look to it. It slid across the surface of her hand and licked the blood like a tongue. Blue waited, suddenly aware of what was happening. Apparently the sample proved satisfactory, for the claws suddenly withdrew and the entire doorway shattered, collapsing in dusty shards at her feet. She stepped across them daintily.
She was standing in an immense black lacquer box, its polished surfaces reflecting a small flame that erupted from a stone dish in the centre of the floor. The effect was oppressive, but this was obviously no more than an antechamber to some other room. Blue hurried across it towards an open archway, then hesitated at some inner prompting. There was an unlit lantern of archaic design on the floor beside the stone dish. The archway was dark – it seemed to absorb what little light there was – and she would need some illumination if she was to go through. It was ridiculous to imagine the lantern could be fuelled and functional after all these years, but she picked it up anyway.
It took her several minutes to discover how the lantern worked, but she finally managed to light it from the open flame. She walked towards the archway, holding it aloft.
The room was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was like stepping out beneath the night sky, but a night sky peppered with alien stars. A lazy inlaid river, sparkling in the lamplight, crawled across the mosaic floor. There were living creatures on its banks, insectile and carapaced, but something told her they were harmless so long as she left them undisturbed.
Blue stepped on to the river itself, convinced it represented a safe pathway. Three paces further on, her lantern flared and she saw the godform.
The figure was so foreign to anything she’d known that her every instinct was to throw herself cringing on the floor. Its blood-red lacquer representation arched across the star-ways above her, sickeningly naked and deformed. Its outstretched arms defined the archway through which she’d entered. Its sturdy legs outlined an open doorway ahead. But it was the face that appalled her. It leered down obscenely from the gloom above her head, an open maw that seemed designed to swallow her alive.