Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  “She let herself be killed so humanity could stand united against you, Gurath,” Tess said. “Maybe she suspected more than you think.”

  The Hellguard’s eyebrows went up. “Maybe she did. She was a clever girl. I’m still not pleased.”

  “So you invited me here to kill me?” I asked. Maybe it wasn’t bright to push that point, but I was already tired of the demon’s games. He had his malevolent sense of humor in common with his daughter, as well as his appearance. It hadn’t been one of her more appealing traits.

  “That’s one possibility, yes,” he said easily. “Who did you leave in charge back at Our Lady?”

  I hesitated, wondering if there might be some advantage to be gained by silence.

  Gurath chuckled again. “Wraith. Come here.”

  Legion hadn’t gone far. It was back at its master’s side in seconds. The demon stretched out his massive hand and Darkness streamed out from the ambassador. The empty shell slumped to the ground. The black cloud that had inhabited the body swirled around Gurath for a dozen heartbeats, then returned, and Legion regained its feet.

  Gurath stroked his chin. “So, Roshel. She doesn’t like my kind. And she’s probably the most competent commander you’ve got. If you don’t come back, she’ll launch a war against me for certain. A reasonably clever insurance policy, Select. Well then, killing you isn’t my preferred option. And with that being the case, I brought you here to talk.”

  “We’ve been talking. So far you’ve mostly insulted and threatened me. Couldn’t you have just sent a nasty letter?”

  The demon laughed again, with something like real humor this time. “No. I want to talk, but you need to see something to understand what I have to say.”

  “I just spent close to a month with your ambassador. I think I understand you well enough.”

  “You really don’t, Minos. You really don’t. But come with me and you will.”

  “Where are we going?”

  The cruel smile was back. “That would spoil the surprise.”

  “I’ve found I don’t generally like surprises.”

  “No. You probably won’t like this one either.”

  There were more Hellguards, and more soulless. I had seen none of them as we’d approached the throne, and I hadn’t heard them enter. They were just abruptly there. Given what I knew about the Darkness and the demons’ mastery of it, they could either have been there all along cloaked in virtual invisibility, or entered in total silence.

  Seven hadn’t liked being called a demon. I’d stopped applying the word to him. For these beings it seemed only appropriate.

  Every one of them was larger than my friend had been. Gurath was one of the biggest, nearly seven feet tall, inhumanly broad across the shoulders, layered in muscle. When he moved it was with the grace of a cat. I’d never seen a lion or tiger in person, but I imagined those huge predators must have been something like the demons… if lions or tigers had superhuman intelligence and could rip you apart at the cellular level without laying a hand on you.

  They were all some shade of reddish brown, some as light as Gurath, others as nearly black as Seven. Their hair was universally dark. I remembered Seven had told me the Hellguard had been created as military special forces. I supposed their dark complexions were intended to make them stealthier at night. With the Darkness blurring their outlines, they would be virtually invisible in shadow. Walking nightmares brought into the world, a curse of our ancestors’ arrogance to torment generations to come.

  There was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black there. My gray skin, black eyes, and white hair were the physical marks of that same arrogance, when my forefathers had tried to perfect their children. In Seven’s telling, the Hellguard were no different than the Select - only a more advanced version.

  The soulless followed orders with the mindless precision of automatons. At Gurath’s command they brought out massive tables, which they installed where the pews would have been. Chairs followed, and then food - a steaming array of hot meat and bread, fruit, vegetables. As uncomfortable - no, terrifying - as the setting was, my stomach rumbled.

  “You desecrate the house of God,” Tess protested.

  The Hellguard chieftain barked out a laugh. “It’s not like I brought my horse in. You people used to eat the flesh of your crucified God in here, at least according to your superstition. This is just the meat of animals. And it hasn’t been the house of your dead God for a long time. Like I said, it’s mine now. I’ve been eating here for hundreds of years. So you may as well join me.”

  He cocked his head and stared at her. “Unless you think this is like Hades, and if you eat or drink here you’ll be damned. But that’s a pagan belief, isn’t it? Didn’t your crucified God say it’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of it?”

  Tess blinked, taken aback, briefly at a loss for words. We shouldn’t have been surprised. Yoshana had freely quoted scripture. It only stood to reason that her father would be familiar with it as well.

  The other demons talked among themselves as they waited for the meal. They were openly and rudely curious about us, staring and even poking. One lifted Tess’ long hair. She stood very still. My jaw clenched.

  “I told you they wouldn’t have bred out the diversity of appearance yet in the wild,” the Hellguard said. “They’ve still got blondes.”

  “Okay, sure, if you call that blonde,” one of his companions rumbled. “But for how many more generations? I’ll admit I’m surprised there are still Select, though. That appearance should breed out immediately.”

  The first shrugged. “Probably not much opportunity for it. Who’d want to mate with one of those things?”

  He continued to play with Tess’ hair. I thought of Roshel, and what the Hellguard did with human women. My hand tightened on the hilt of my katana. It was still doing duty as a walking stick, but these days I was steady enough on my feet to use it for its true purpose.

  Cat was clearly having similar thoughts. She glared at the demon with naked hatred, and I could hear a low growl from deep in her throat.

  Another Hellguard came up behind the paleo and lifted her in a single massive hand.

  “Look at this, though. Speaking of things you’d think would go extinct. I mean, paleos, for Christ’s sake. They’re actually getting smaller.” He tossed her lightly and caught her in the other hand. “Bunch of malnourished, inbred idiots.”

  All three Hellguards laughed, and the demon who’d caught the girl dropped her back to the ground. Cat’s eyes were wide with terror, her lips thin with fury. I couldn’t tell which emotion predominated, but she’d controlled both well enough not to scream or lash out.

  Which was fortunate, since I had no doubt that if she’d drawn her knife, they would have killed her with no more concern than swatting a fly.

  It was a measure of how upset Cat was that when Tess rushed over to her, the paleo girl allowed herself to be enfolded in a hug.

  I summoned up my nerve and glared at our host. “Not my idea of hospitality.”

  I got a contemptuous smile in return. “If you bring your dogs into my house, my brothers might want to play with them. Or kick them. Hopefully they don’t bite or pee on the floor. Come on, let’s eat. I’ll even let you and your pets sit at the table.”

  Dee was already seated, eyeing the food. He looked up at me. “It would after all be rude to refuse Lord Gurath’s hospitality, Minos.”

  The occultist’s adaptability was matched only by his spinelessness. Actually, his lack of a spine almost certainly helped him adapt, like some kind of invertebrate that could squirm through the smallest of openings. Erev, Yoshana’s bodyguard, had said something similar about me. With my pulse pounding angrily in my temples, I found I wasn’t in the mood today.

  “Like I said, this isn’t my idea of hospitality. Stand up, Dee. I said it before, Gurath. I can’t stop you from killing us, but we won’t be humiliated.”

  The demon lord smiled lazi
ly. “I’m pretty sure you’re wrong there, but I did ask you here to talk, and not to amuse my companions. Gentlemen,” he went on, addressing the other Hellguard, “Let’s be respectful, please.”

  Although his tone had become entirely serious, I was pretty sure we were still being mocked. But I wasn’t going to stand on my honor to the point of suicide. “Thank you,” I said. And sat.

  The demons helped themselves to the food. They weren’t dainty eaters, but their table manners were no worse than most of the soldiers I’d traveled with. Dee joined them enthusiastically, as did Cat. I noticed Tess eyeing the meat suspiciously. I hadn’t tried it myself.

  “Like I said, it’s just the flesh of animals. Beef, specifically,” Gurath said. “Trust me, it’s not human. You don’t taste that good.”

  Cat grinned. “Depends. Who.”

  Gurath laughed. “I like your pet, Minos. I might keep her.”

  The paleo’s smile vanished.

  I tried the meat. It was excellent. The demon continued, “I do have to admit, I’m impressed you had the guts to come. Stupid, but gutsy.”

  I met his piercing blue eyes. “I dare to stand every day as a sinner before the Lord God. Why should I be afraid to stand in front of you?”

  The demon’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, then he laughed again. “How long did it take you to come up with that one?”

  “I’ve been working on it since I got here,” I admitted.

  He chuckled, then the huge, reddish face grew serious. “Do you actually believe that garbage the Universal Church says? Like what came out of your mouth just now?”

  When I didn’t answer immediately, he continued, “Because that’s a big part of what we need to talk about.”

  8. Thus Spake Gurath

  Demons began to get up and leave, without ceremony. Some of them seemed to fade away, passing just beyond my line of sight and then vanishing. It was disconcerting, to say the least, which must have been the intention. They had no reason to use the Darkness to mask their coming and going in their own citadel, except to intimidate us. It worked. I found that, while the food was the best I’d had in as long as I could remember, I’d lost my appetite.

  One of the soulless appeared and approached Gurath. Before it could speak, the demon said to me, “The horses and gear are ready. It’s time to go. Unless you and your friends want to stay a while longer? Maybe spend the night?”

  Of course none of us did. There was no need to ask the others. I hadn’t slept much, and none of us had slept comfortably. The meal we’d just eaten was a reminder of how terrible food on the road would be. But I could tell by the way my companions’ eyes darted from side to side that no one, not even Doctor John Dee, wanted to spend a minute more in the beautiful, terrible cathedral that Gurath called home.

  I wasn’t thrilled about the horses. “Can’t we take that truck wherever we’re going?”

  “No. The roads get bad up north. And by bad, I mean sometimes nonexistent. We’ll be lucky if we don’t have to walk half the way.”

  North. The Hellguard’s capital was near the Ice Fields. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I thought we were well south of that. For one thing, it was warm.

  “We’re going to Imperium?”

  “No. Farther than that. You don’t think we maintain the roads to our own capital?”

  If Select could blush, I would have. “I thought maybe from a defensive standpoint…”

  “You think I want to conquer the world, but I’m so afraid of it that I’d hide my capital behind impassable terrain. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of general. You should stop talking before you say something else stupid.” He paused for a moment. “Or is this another part of your insurance policy? Convince me you’re so dumb that I’d be doing Our Lady a favor by knocking you off and leaving Roshel in charge? Because that would be kind of clever. I’m going to choose to believe that.”

  The ancients had a saying, better to be silent and let people assume you’re a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it. Applying that wisdom, I shut up.

  Gurath and I rode up front. I wasn’t comfortable riding alongside him, and not just because my knee hurt. I wasn’t even comfortable around his horse, a massive beast able to carry the demon’s immense weight. It had a look in its eye like it would enjoy stomping me to bloody fragments and then disproving the notion that horses were herbivores by eating the remains. But I could hardly have the discussion the Hellguard wanted from the other end of the column.

  At that other end rode Legion and its three surviving guards.

  “Thought you might want a friendly face along,” Gurath had said, and laughed. He could have been under no illusion that we enjoyed the wraith’s company. From his earlier comments, he didn’t enjoy it either. The demon wouldn’t be relying on the ambassador and the soulless for protection from us, or even to keep watch on us. He was more than capable of that himself, even in his sleep. So I had no idea why he had brought the wraith. Whatever the reason, I was sure it would prove to be one I didn’t like.

  Outside the iron fence surrounding the cathedral were only devastated ruins, long since stripped of anything valuable. In the distance I could see the gigantic, crumbling towers poking up from the sea. The horses’ hooves echoed on the abandoned streets. This would have been one of the ancients’ seats of power. Nothing was left but one huge, old church, converted to a demon’s palace. I was seized with a vast melancholy. Our forefathers’ grand dream was dead, and there seemed to be no one who could breathe life into it again.

  “Son of man, can these bones live?” I muttered.

  I’d said it softly, under my breath, but Gurath’s head spun and his eyes locked onto me. “That depends. Do you understand reality, Minos?”

  I didn’t know what to make of the question. I had no better answer than, “What do you mean?”

  “In reality, there is only nature and the will. What is, and what you want. If you can’t impose your will on nature, impose what you want on what is, then you tell yourself lies about what is, or about what you want. Those lies are religion and civilization. They’re the construct and comfort of weaklings. Failure to understand that is the reason the bones of the ancients are drying in the sun. And the reason your Universal Church’s cause is lost.”

  We continued for a while in silence broken only by the echoing hoofbeats. After a time I said, “That’s a pretty dark philosophy.”

  “That’s the truth. The question is, do you understand it?”

  I retorted, more snappishly than was safe, “I understand that’s what you say is the truth. I’ll even give you credit for really believing it, instead of just finding it a convenient excuse for tyranny.”

  The pain in my knee was making me cranky, and crankiness looked a little bit like bravery. The demon chuckled tolerantly.

  “And what do you believe in, Minos, a white-bearded sky god that grants wishes to good little children who say their prayers?”

  “That’s a pretty gross distortion of Universalist beliefs and I’m sure you know it. God isn’t an old man with a beard, or even a corporeal being of any kind. God is the first principle, the origin. And beyond my comprehension, or even yours.”

  “Been reading Aquinas?”

  “I can’t sit around planning war against you all day. The more interesting question is, have you been reading Aquinas?”

  Gurath laughed again. “I can’t sit around planning war against you all day. I’ve had three hundred years longer than you to get bored enough to read dusty old philosophers. And I find it’s helpful to understand what my enemies believe. Even if it’s stupid.”

  The sapphire eyes drilled into me, just as his daughter’s had. “So I’ll ask you again, do you really believe all that garbage you’re spouting?”

  “If not God as a first principle, then what?”

  The Hellguard waved his hand, encompassing the ruins around us. Crumbled piles of bricks and concrete that had once been buildings were making their slow r
eturn to the dust from which they’d risen.

  “Chaos. Random chance. Accident and entropy. Life growing out of a soup of chemicals that happened to combine the right way after billions of years. Hundreds of millions of years more of evolution that eventually spat out beings intelligent enough to wonder why they existed, and too fearful of death to admit that it was for no reason at all - it was just because they did. Nothing special, just apes with bigger brains and existential angst. Over time they developed rules to live by. What worked to preserve their society they called good, what didn’t they called evil. They made up stories of gods and devils to teach the difference. Boring stories, mostly.”

  I rode on a while in silence, ignoring the demon’s eyes on me. “God is dead, huh?” I said after a time. “I’ve read Nietzsche too.”

  “Did you understand him? He didn’t mean the old man in the sky had stopped breathing. He meant the myth had stopped being useful. It carried no awe anymore, couldn’t shape behavior or culture. There had to be new myths, created by those with the will to reach into the abyss beneath civilization and pull out a new essence, a new soul to animate the world’s rotting corpse.”

  “Created by an Ubermensch. A superhuman.”

  The demon smiled. “Just so. The ancients followed Nietzsche without understanding him or considering the implications. They made things like you to be the most a human could be. Then they made things like me to be more. What didn’t occur to them is that to the superhuman, our creators look subhuman.”

  The mocking expression that was so often on Legion’s face was only a pale shadow of its master’s. I shuddered.