Deus Le Volt

by Jon de Burgh Miller

  ‘I can’t do it!’ she cried. ‘I can’t stop him!’

  ‘Feel the power of the Fendahl,’ Reynald hissed. ‘Give in to what you feel inside. You know it to be true. Feel the sweet taste of death, the beauty of destruction.’

  Emily felt a torrent of memories pouring into her head. She saw death and destruction choreographed into a beautiful opera, whole towns laid waste in a perfect creation of chaos. She felt hungry, ravenous for human souls, for the joy that death would bring her. She saw reality through the Fendahl’s eyes, felt what it was like to feed off death, and she liked it.

  She smiled at Reynald. ‘Yes, the Fendahl... Show me more. Let me taste it!’

  ‘Save her!’ Lechasseur cried again at Simon. ‘You must be able to do something! She shouldn’t have to die for your cowardice!’

  ‘Emily, please. He’s trying to trick you.’ Emily heard Simon’s voice in her mind, telepathically willing her on. She had to resist Reynald’s games – all he was doing was planting thoughts in her head, trying to fool her into accepting that the Fendahl was the rightful owner of this planet.

  ‘It’s okay, Simon,’ she cried, as she felt the destructive energy of the Fendahl wash over her, ‘I can see my destiny now!’

  ‘No Emily, he’s using you!’

  Emily saw a vision of the battlefield, of the hundreds of crusader knights and their families lying dead. No, this was all wrong. She found the sight intoxicating, addictive, but she wasn’t going to let Honoré end up like that. In her heart, she knew it wasn’t time to aid the Fendahl quite yet.

  ‘Get out of my mind!’ she screamed. She turned to look back to Honoré, and called out to him. ‘He’s a time sensitive. I’m going to jump.’

  The warring couple fell several feet closer to the ground, their power over each other weakening. Reynald reached for Emily’s throat and began to squeeze, choking the life out of her.

  ‘She can’t!’ Simon cried. ‘They’ll spread the Fendahl’s influence across time!’

  ‘Goodbye Honoré,’ Emily shouted, tears in her eyes.

  ‘No!’ Lechasseur yelled at her, but he was powerless to stop her.

  The angel, however, wasn’t.

  ‘What have I become?’ he heard the angel mutter under its breath. The creature had a terrified yet determined expression on its glowing features. It turned and steeled itself before moving directly toward Emily. The bright light surrounding Simon enveloped Emily and Reynald, who both screamed in agony as it did so, their heads jerking skyward, mouths open as they gasped for breath. Simon seemed to fly straight through them, merging his own body with theirs. ‘It’s the only way!’ Simon cried, though the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  The maelstrom of energy continued to surround Reynald, suffocating him and keeping him and Emily in the air.

  A long white tendril extended from within Simon’s back and wrapped itself around Emily. Holding her secure, it then spiralled out toward the ledge where Lechasseur stood, placing the girl out of harm’s way beside him.

  Lechasseur and Emily hugged once she knew her footing was sure, and turned to watch the spectacle unfolding before them.

  ‘Come with me!’ Simon cried as Reynald struggled to break free. ‘Come with me through time!’

  Blue electricity sparked around Simon, and the tornado surrounding them appeared to dissipate.

  ‘They’re going to time jump!’ Emily muttered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lechasseur said. ‘Look at Reynald.’

  The knight’s face was contorting in agony, but he was resisting Simon’s urges. ‘I’m going nowhere,’ he growled.

  ‘Forward through time!’ Simon cried. ‘Forward!’

  Reynald’s face was changing, lines deepening on it. His hair was greying, whitening. ‘I’m not going with you, I belong here!’

  Simon’s anger was palpable. ‘You have never belonged here!’

  Emily realised what Simon was doing – by trying to force Reynald with him into the future, he was provoking Reynald to resist, and that was causing the knight’s body to age, taken forward in its personal timeline while physically staying in the 11th Century. The process was accelerating now, and Reynald’s body would surely die soon from the shock of the experience.

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t kill him?’ Lechasseur shouted over to Simon.

  ‘I can’t!’ the angel cried. ‘But I can suppress the Fendahl influence within him, at least for a while.’ Simon’s energy continued to merge with Reynald’s, but as the knight grew older, the angel grew smaller, until there was little of him left. It was as if their bodies were becoming one.

  Then there was a loud bang and a burst of light, and the gestalt Reynald-Simon entity careered toward the church rooftop, crashing onto the walkway next to Lechasseur and Emily. From the sky where the two had been fighting, the remains of Simon’s human body, reduced now to chunks of flesh and bone, fell to the ground below. The light dimmed, and almost at once the storm started to abate.

  Reynald crouched on the walkway, a withered husk of his former self, struggling to breathe, shivering violently. Lechasseur moved over to him with trepidation. He cautiously reached down toward the man. Reynald looked up at Lechasseur, a bewildered expression on his face. The only trace left of Simon was the burning light in Reynald’s eyes.

  ‘Easy,’ Lechasseur said, trying to reassure him. ‘Everything will be okay now.’

  Reynald bared his teeth and stood up. ‘What have you done?’ he growled. ‘The Fendahl was supposed to rule the Earth!’

  He threw a punch in Lechasseur’s direction, but Lechasseur blocked it, the impact knocking Reynald, who had underestimated his weakened physical state, off balance. As the two men connected, Lechasseur glimpsed Reynald’s time snake once more. He felt cold, like someone was walking over his grave, and realised that his time snake was likewise being read by Reynald. ‘Help me,’ Reynald cried, his eyes whitening. Then he lost his balance and toppled backward, away from the ledge. He started to fall, but as he did so, blue electricity crackled all around him, and in a flash of power, he disappeared completely.

  14

  Once Reynald had disappeared, the ground stopped shaking immediately. Lechasseur and Emily peered over the edge of the church rooftop, looking for any sign of the prematurely aged knight, but there was none.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Emily asked, after a while.

  Lechasseur shook his head. ‘It’s Simon. He’s taken Reynald to the future to save his life. Separated from the Fendahleen, the Fendahl will hopefully be powerless, will return to whatever part of Hell that it and its creatures came from.

  ‘So at least we know now how Reynald came to appear in 1950. I think Simon’s set the whole thing up so that I’ll meet Reynald on that street in London and we’ll be drawn back here to the 11th Century. He’s created a loop in time, so that we’re sort of destined to go through what just happened.’

  ‘But is already has happened, hasn’t it?’ said Emily, struggling to grasp her friend’s theory.

  Honoré shrugged. ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’

  They stood in silence for several minutes, staring out over the city, reflecting on what they had endured.

  A ghostly Fendahleen flew by trailing fire and screeching in defiance, but powerless now to cause any more death. Without Reynald, without a core element to control them, the creatures were nothing more than phantasms born from crusader nightmares. The Fendahleen spun towards Lechasseur and Emily, as if seeing them as its next meal, but before it could near the church, it broke up into small black particles of ash that fluttered away on the wind.

  Lechasseur bent and picked up the shard of bone that had been left resting on the ledge. It was cool and seemed innocuous now. He followed Emily back down the stairs.

  ‘Lechasseur! Lechasseur!’ a voice called as Lechasseur and Emil
y emerged into the nave. It was Peter, the preacher who had accompanied Lechasseur on his raid into the city and hidden in the recesses of the church as Reynald’s plan had been enacted.

  ‘Peter. What is it?’

  The preacher ran up to Lechasseur. ‘Is it over? Have we won?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Lechasseur looked at Peter and handed him the shard. ‘Marseille left this, and you may be able to use it to inspire your people on to victory.’

  Peter smiled and clutched the fragment to his chest. ‘I must tell the others of this find. Whether it is the Lance of Christ or not, it is clearly an object of power. With this on our side, Kerbogha’s men will surely soon be defeated!’

  Peter raced from the church as fast as he could, a broad grin on his face. Lechasseur and Emily smiled at each other. ‘Do you think it’s safe to give him that?’ Emily asked. ‘The Fendahl influence... it’s irresistible. It’s scary. For a moment there, I think you lost me.’

  Lechasseur was less concerned. ‘I knew you’d come through. Reynald took the Fendahl with him, wherever he went. The Lance is harmless now that he’s gone, nothing but an old piece of bone.’

  As Lechasseur and Emily ventured out into the city, normality, or at least what passed for it, seemed to be returning to the place. With the monsters gone, the crusaders had left to assist their armies fighting Kerbogha outside the city walls, and the extra manpower, combined with the inspiration from Peter’s so-called Lance, would soon turn the tide of battle in their favour.

  The aftermath of the city’s troubles – the attack from the crusaders and the battles with the Fendahleen – made Lechasseur and Emily nauseous. All around the streets were corpses, pools of blood and dead animals, but few of the knights left in the city seemed to be bothered by what had gone on. They all seemed more concerned with getting back to the battlefront and securing the victory that God had promised them.

  Emily and Lechasseur found Simon’s steed outside the church and made their way through the city on horseback, returning through the gates to Godfrey’s camp. The camp was far enough away from the fighting to be safe. They pulled up outside Godfrey’s tent and dismounted. As they did so, a booming voice called out to them.

  ‘Saracen!’ Lechasseur turned. It was Godfrey. ‘I thought you were dead along with the rest of your kind.’

  ‘It’s over, Godfrey,’ Lechasseur said.

  Godfrey nodded. ‘Yes, or it soon will be. We took the city, now we’ll defend it. I have renewed faith that the Lord is on our side. Did you see how we slaughtered the devils? How the angels themselves and all the menagerie of Heaven came down to aid us, just as we always knew they would?’

  ‘Many people died, Godfrey. How can you celebrate that?’

  Godfrey shrugged. ‘The heathen were punished, the holy were martyred. It has been a glorious few days.’

  Lechasseur’s face was grim. ‘Godfrey, we found your murderer. He won’t be troubling you any longer.’

  Godfrey smiled. ‘Yes, I can feel it in the air. As if an evil presence has been lifted from our midst. You are free to go, Saracen.’

  Lechasseur put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. ‘Come on.’

  After recovering their clothes from the ditch where they had hidden them, they headed off to find a way home.

  ‘Did we do the right thing?’ Emily asked as they walked. ‘Has history been altered?’

  Lechasseur shrugged. ‘Perhaps we were always meant to intervene.’

  ‘But you told me what Simon said. The Fendahl wasn’t supposed to reappear for another millennium.’

  ‘If he’s right, the Fendahl was supposed to awaken a few years after our time. If I’m right, then we’ve stopped that happening.’ Lechasseur looked out over the battered crusader camp. ‘The damage here has been terrible, but can you imagine what would happen if the Fendahl was brought back in the 20th Century, in a city like London, a place with atomic weapons?’

  Emily shuddered.

  Lechasseur’s face looked cold. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’ve still got to find a way of getting back home.’

  Emily smiled. ‘I think I know a good place to start.’

  Emily led Lechasseur to a nearby tent where one of Godfrey’s servant girls was holding a baby, one of the children born on the crusade.

  ‘Hello Edith,’ Emily said. ‘Hello baby William.’

  The woman looked up at Emily in surprise. ‘Emily? We thought you had been killed.’ The girl noticed Lechasseur and was clearly disturbed by his presence.

  ‘I’m fine, Edith. This is Honoré. He’s a friend.’

  ‘Hello Edith,’ Lechasseur said with a smile. He looked down at the infant. ‘Hello William.’ He reached out a finger, which the baby clasped, while with his other hand, he reached out to grasp Emily’s. He saw the baby’s time snake clearly, and smiled, pleased to see that it extended for many decades. The Fendahl’s influence had been stopped. He looked at Emily and smiled again. They held hands, and blue electric sparks began to bounce around their bodies as the winds of time propelled them forward into the future.

  Reality coalesced, and the greeney-yellow smog of London was revealed. After several jumps through the centuries, finding baby time-snakes to read in order to travel the maximum possible distance each time, Lechasseur and Emily had finally arrived back in London, 1950. It was early morning. Although the street lights still shone, so did daylight. They had overshot their exact point of departure by some time, and when they located the spot where they had left the fallen Reynald, there was no sign of the knight. All they found was Lechasseur’s discarded backpack, which he picked up and threw over his shoulder. ‘We have to find Reynald,’ insisted Lechasseur. ‘Just in case he kills anyone else...’

  Emily placed a comforting hand on his arm. ‘You weren’t to blame, you know. Anyone would have made the same decisions.’

  Lechasseur ran his hand through his tightly-curled hair. ‘All those deaths... I’ve been a fixer for years now, but what for? What really matters is, I couldn’t fix it for those people to live.’

  ‘History is cruel,’ Emily said. ‘And time is crueller.’

  ‘We flit around, getting by, doing deals and living a good life, but to what end? We travel through time, see things most people could never imagine, yet sometimes I just feel like we’re going round in circles.’

  He looked at Emily. ‘Sometimes I think I’m cursed. For years I’ve felt different, seen time in a different way from others. It’s something that’s been in my family for centuries. But now I’ve seen what I came from...’

  ‘You don’t know –’

  ‘I do. I think I knew the moment I first touched Reynald’s mind. I’m the same, and I don’t want to end up like that. When our minds touched, when he read my time snake, then for a brief moment our memories merged. I saw his future, I saw him looking up at me after he fell from the roof. And I saw my future, what will happen soon, but...’

  ‘What is it? What did you see.’

  Lechasseur sighed. ‘I saw nothing, Emily. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Like there’s nothing in my past?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  Emily shook her head. ‘No it isn’t. You’re a good man, Honoré. We choose our own destiny, we choose what we become. It doesn’t matter where we came from. It’s what we do now that matters.’

  Over the next couple of days, Lechasseur and Emily purchased every newspaper they could find and took them back to Lechasseur’s flat, where they scoured them for references to the knight. Lechasseur had called in favours at the local hospitals, but no patients fitting the older Reynald’s description had been admitted. On the third day, Emily found one snippet in the Mail, an article on the troubles workers for the new National Health Service were facing, and how many of them were complaining that their pay wasn’t as good as it had been when the hospitals ran as private operations. To illustra
te the problem, the article mentioned one ambulance crew who had admitted a frail old man in the middle of the night after an anonymous tip off. Upon opening the ambulance doors once they reached the hospital, they had found the man gone. Emily wondered if, despite his injuries, Reynald had been the absconding patient, and had managed to jump through time yet again.

  ‘But where would he go?’ Lechasseur asked, when Emily mentioned her theory.

  ‘Simon was strong,’ she suggested. ‘Whatever he was, whoever sent him, he didn’t belong in 1098. Once the Fendahl had been defeated, he – the part of him that remains, bound up with Reynald – would have been called somewhere else. Perhaps back to his people.’

  ‘To the future?’ Lechasseur took a sip from a cup of tea, pondering this. ‘Perhaps Simon is strong enough to drive the Fendahl out completely.’

  Emily shook her head. ‘I hope so. But... I felt it, Honoré. It’s powerful. Reynald wouldn’t give up without a fight. I don’t know whether Simon or Reynald has the upper hand, but if the Fendahl survived... I think solving the crusaders’ problem might have done little but send the Fendahl somewhere else in time, create a new problem for someone else to deal with.’

  ‘But like you said,’ mused Lechasseur, ‘Simon’s strong. He wouldn’t give up without a fight. As long as he lives, the Fendahl can never return. I think the only thing we can do is just try to forget about it now. We’ll learn the truth one day, I’m sure.’