Dark Serpent

  Sang Shen jumped as he remembered, then fell to one knee and bowed his head. ‘Dai Yeh Yeh,’ he said, calling John ‘Grandfather’.

  ‘Sang Shen,’ John said, ‘call me by my full title. You are no longer any child of mine.’

  ‘Xuan Tian,’ Sang Shen said.

  John waited.

  ‘Shang Di,’ Sang Shen finished, his face dark with humiliation.

  John paced around Sang Shen, not yet giving him permission to rise. ‘Four hundred stone Shen are dead. These demons have control over fire and metal elementals. How much do you value your life and that of the other trees?’

  Sang Shen’s face went expressionless. He obviously hadn’t known this.

  ‘Repeat these words,’ John said. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘What words?’

  ‘Say the words I do not know.’

  ‘I do not know,’ Sang Shen said, obviously confused.

  ‘What is the way to Britain?’ John said.

  Sang Shen didn’t reply, his expression still full of humiliation.

  John stopped in front of him. ‘Your life and the lives of every other resident of the Celestial are at stake. The demons are readying for war; they will try to take our Heavens. Will you risk all of that to save your stupid pride and refuse to admit your ignorance when you don’t know something? Save us all the time and effort, and if you don’t know, say so. Your pride is not worth your life.’

  ‘I do not know the way to Britain,’ Sang Shen said, now understanding.

  ‘Good!’ John said. ‘Up you get, lad. You trees can’t handle immersion in salt water, can you?’

  ‘Not for long periods,’ Sang Shen said.

  ‘Very well, we’ll have to fly. Can you summon a cloud? How do you travel long distances?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Sang Shen said.

  John pointed at his own face. ‘Listen to me when I say this. No, I don’t know. Trees have always graced the Heavens, but they have been silent beauties that kept to themselves. I admit I took you for granted. Now the Heavens are in danger and we need your skills. So let’s share information.’

  ‘I can burrow under the earth to travel long distances, but the furthest I’ve been is Delhi.’

  ‘Right,’ John said. He waved Sang Shen closer and put his finger on his forehead. ‘This is where we’re going. Can you meet me there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sang Shen said, eyes unfocused as he processed the information.

  ‘How long will it take you to get there?’

  ‘Eight hours, but when I reach that body of water before the large island, I will need a lift. I can’t travel through the ocean without a tunnel or something.’

  ‘There’s a tunnel, you’ll be able to cross the Channel. This is where the entrance is; meet me there,’ John said.

  He was well aware that Sang Shen could break his oath and take off. He had to trust him.

  Sang Shen bowed once sharply. ‘I will meet you there.’

  He jumped off the roof and changed into a ball of roots as he fell. John leaned over the edge and watched as Sang Shen quickly burrowed into the earth and disappeared.

  John flew to the ocean, changed to Turtle form, and swam. He met Sang Shen at the Channel and showed him the way across, briefing him in more detail on the situation on the way.

  When John arrived at the location Golden Dragon had given him, he found all three Number Ones standing at the edge of the copse looking uncomfortable, and Michael’s white Horseman uniform was splashed with blood. Sang Shen erupted out of the ground nearby as a ball of jutting roots, changed to wood shaped vaguely like a human, then reverted to full human and joined them.

  ‘What happened to you?’ John asked Michael.

  Michael glanced down at himself. ‘Nothing. This is part of the ruse. We splashed me with blood and I pretend to lie injured under one of the gateways, hoping a demon will come out and grab me.’ He grimaced. ‘Hasn’t worked yet.’

  ‘Where are these trees?’ Sang Shen said.

  ‘In there,’ Golden Dragon said, indicating the thicket. ‘Michael thinks it might be a druid grove, but druid groves weren’t supposed to be this …’ He searched for the right word.

  ‘Wrong,’ the Phoenix’s Number One, Flute, said. She nodded to Sang Shen. ‘I hope you can help us.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ Sang Shen said, and gestured for Golden Dragon to lead the way.

  Michael fell into step next to John. ‘How long has Emma been by herself?’

  ‘Nearly three days now.’

  ‘That’s not good. I hope we find her. I heard you two are going to be parents?’

  ‘The stone said she’s pregnant, so it’s very urgent we find a way up there,’ John said, distracted by the nature of the trees they were passing. ‘What the hell?’

  Sang Shen spun around, rushed back up the trail, and stopped to vomit. He retched for a long time, gasping.

  The Number Ones all shared a look and hesitated at the edge of the clearing. The trees were stained with what appeared to be dried blood for a good three metres up their trunks from the ground. Their branches were bare and they were obviously dead. The small clearing had originally held a stone circle, but all that was left of it was dents in the ground, also stained with what appeared to be blood. The area was completely lifeless.

  John went to one of the dents, picked up a clod of the earth and smelled it.

  ‘Is this what we think it is?’ Michael said.

  ‘Both. Blood and demon essence,’ John said. ‘Humans and demons were sacrificed here.’ He opened his vision. ‘Nobody’s died here for a very long time, but the stain remains. The area is even more contaminated by the fact that the serpent people really enjoyed what they were doing. The power they gained from the deaths here was a massive high.’

  He closed his vision. ‘Sang Shen.’

  ‘They bound humans to these trees and tortured and killed them,’ Sang Shen said. ‘They thought they were worshipping the trees and giving them power; instead, they drove them mad and killed them.’ He came to the edge of the clearing, leaned on one of the tree trunks, then jerked away as if it had bitten him. ‘So. Much. Death. No tree could take this many years of torture and survive with its mind intact.’

  ‘Is there a gateway?’ John said.

  ‘Let me see.’ Sang Shen glanced down at the ground, then up at John. ‘I need to take tree form. I will feel everything that has happened here.’ His face screwed up with distaste. ‘Everything.’

  ‘Can you endure that?’ John said.

  ‘If we’re to find a way to stop these demons, I need to,’ Sang Shen said. He moved closer to the rest of the group. ‘It may prove too much. Destroy me if I make any move to attack you.’

  ‘It won’t come to that, man,’ Michael said.

  Sang Shen coughed and moved away to retch again, bending forward. John went to him and held his shoulder while Sang Shen worked it through. Eventually, Sang Shen straightened and moved to the centre of what had once been the circle of stones.

  ‘If my leaves start to change, kill me,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t be killed,’ John said.

  ‘I can here,’ Sang Shen said. He nodded to Michael. ‘If my trunk or leaves change into something … different, you can’t let me contaminate the rest of the forest. You must destroy me. Yang me to ash and make sure nothing’s left.’

  ‘Stop him, my Lord,’ Golden Dragon said. ‘This is suicide.’

  John didn’t reply.

  Sang Shen glared at John. ‘I hope I survive this, because if I do you will owe me more than you owe any other Celestial.’

  John didn’t have a chance to answer. Sang Shen changed into a mulberry tree, his canopy completely covering the sky above the clearing. His branches thrashed above them although there was no wind.

  ‘Touch the sky, do not let this affect you,’ John said. ‘You can do it, Ah Sang.’

  A gateway opened next to Sang Shen’s trunk and John leaped through. All sound ceased; he was
deaf. Then he arrived on the Celestial Plane and sound returned.

  ‘Do it!’ someone shouted, then a scream. ‘Do it!’

  There was a brilliant flash of yang, making the air sizzle around him, and the portal closed.

  The grove on this side was green and full of life, not contaminated at all. The trees were a warm welcoming presence around him, clearly unaware that one of their own had died to get him there. He sent out his awareness, touching the land around, feeling it resonate with a beauty that was possible only on the Celestial Plane.

  The demons were five kilometres away to the east. He would have to be stealthy to avoid patrols.

  There was a dirt road just outside the grove, showing the recent tracks of a car. He opened his awareness: Emma had been in it. He followed the tracks for two kilometres, and saw that the car had stopped, turned around and headed back again. He sent his awareness out and felt another of the tortured tree groups a hundred metres away to his right, together with something glowing that definitely wasn’t Emma.

  He moved as silently as he could along the path until he reached the dark stand of trees. The glowing energy seemed benign, it wasn’t demon energy. He crept cautiously through the trees and came to a small dark clearing, where he stopped and stared in wonder. Emma was there, curled up next to, of all things, a goddamn qilin lying in the middle of the trees as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

  The qilin looked up and saw him, and he quickly fell to one knee and bowed his head.

  ‘Hi,’ the qilin said. ‘Emma’s great fun — did you know that? When she gets high, she’s hilarious.’

  John pulled himself to his feet and eased around the qilin to Emma.

  ‘It’s okay,’ the qilin said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  John knelt next to Emma. She was in pyjamas that were soaked with dried blood. He touched her face. ‘Emma? Emma?’

  ‘She’s out,’ the qilin said. ‘You’ll need to find her medical attention before you can take her back down.’ It nuzzled her hair. ‘Take her to Caer Wydr, the Glass Citadel. The demons evacuated the place; only Semias is there, still locked up. Free him and he can help you.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ John said, feeling her pulse. Her skin was ice-cold.

  ‘Demons dumped her here to die.’

  ‘Why?’ John said, but when he looked up the qilin was gone.

  He picked Emma up like a child, summoned a cloud and headed west. The phone guided him for a while, but Caer Wydr soon appeared on the horizon and he didn’t need to use it any more. The tower floated above the land, encased in a crystal dome. Its many windows were round and all different sizes, cascading around the tower in an organic pattern like seeds on a sunflower. Water flowed down the outside of the dome, creating a waterfall at its base, which was filled with rainbows from the light of the morning sun. The land around the tower was green and healthy, with fields of short grass and copses of trees. The tower floated above it all without touching it.

  John landed, passed through the curtain of water and peered up at the base of the tower fifty metres above him. Water from a stream rushed into the air and entered the tower through an opening in its base. Close enough.

  He laid Emma on the grass on her back and felt a flash of concern at her paleness. She’d obviously lost a lot of blood and needed help quickly.

  He became one with the water flowing into the tower, and arrived in an entry hall that encompassed the entire bottom floor. The water streamed into a marble pool, and overflowed into white stone grooves that ran to the edges of the room and then up inside the walls. The walls and floor were white stone carved with fish and birds; and the ceiling was a stained-glass dome showing an illusory sky. Large containers around the area held healthy-looking plants, but there was no animal life.

  John opened his Inner Eye and located Semias immediately: he was two floors above in a jail cell. Not a single other living thing was present, human, Shen or demon, so that had to be him, as the qilin had said.

  John checked around for an exit from the tower, and found a set of double doors on the far wall next to a staircase leading up. He approached the doors and they opened. He summoned Seven Stars, changed it to spear form and jammed it between the doors to prevent them closing. He walked through and was on the grass next to Emma again. He gathered her up and turned to find the doors hanging in midair behind him. He carried her through, dismissed the spear and hurried to the stairs.

  The dungeon was bright from the round window, and there were only four cells. Semias was curled up in a corner of his cell, looking haggard, but he jumped up with delight when he saw them. John carefully rested Emma against the wall, then went to the cell and tried to freeze the bars, without success.

  ‘Just use brute force, you look strong enough,’ Semias said.

  John grasped a bar with his left hand to steady himself, then pulled at the bar next to it with his right. It took all of his strength, but he managed to bend it. He did the same to the bar next to it and Semias could slip through. He ran straight to Emma and checked her pulse, then lifted her eyelids.

  ‘We need to move her to the infirmary straight away,’ he said.

  ‘Give me a cup and a knife,’ John said. ‘My blood is a potent healing agent.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Semias said.

  He led John out of the cells and up twenty-four flights of stairs, moving inhumanly fast, then raced out of the stairwell into a long wide corridor. He turned left, ran to the end, then left again and into what was obviously the tower’s infirmary. Four desiccated corpses lay in hospital beds with tubes hanging out of them.

  Semias stopped dead. He dropped his head and shook it. ‘I couldn’t do anything for them.’

  ‘Deal with them later,’ John said. Emma was barely breathing. ‘Knife. Cup. Quickly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Semias said. He went to one of the hospital trolleys and stared at the contents. ‘I don’t recognise any of this.’

  John laid Emma on the floor and went to a cabinet. He pulled out a sterilised scalpel in its bag and a kidney dish. Close enough. He tore the scalpel open, stabbed himself in the vein in his left elbow and let the blood run into the kidney dish. Semias went behind Emma’s head to lift it, watching John with close attention. When the dish had enough in it, John went to Emma and poured some into her mouth. It dribbled out the sides, but Semias helped her to swallow it by massaging her throat.

  Some must have gone down, but she wasn’t reacting. John squeezed more blood into the dish and poured it into her. She remained unmoving.

  ‘Whatever this is supposed to do, it’s not working,’ Semias said.

  ‘I’m too far from my Centre,’ John said.

  Emma’s breathing had slowed to nearly nothing; she was lost. John gathered her into his arms and crushed her face into his shoulder, feeling her last breaths against him and treasuring her scent and touch before he lost her forever.

  ‘I will travel to your Hell and I will find you,’ he whispered into her shoulder, hoping she would hear his reassurance without the lie in his voice. Once she was in Hell finding her would be close on impossible.

  Her breathing was almost undetectable, and John strained to impress on his memory the sweet feeling of holding her before he would never feel it again. The noise whirled around him and he ignored it, concentrating on his last moments with her.

  Semias smacked him sharply on the side of the head and he glared up.

  ‘Bring her into the next room,’ Semias said. ‘We’re not done yet.’

  John lifted her, ignoring the trickle of blood coming from his elbow, and followed Semias through the double doors at the end of the room.

  The circular room on the other side was five metres across, its floor, walls and ceiling faced with white stone tiles. A black rectangular stone altar stood in the middle, with a pentagram inscribed into its surface and another on the floor around it.

  ‘Put her on the table,’ Semias said, gesturing towards the altar. He went to the far end
of the room and tapped the wall, which slid open. ‘This will take a minute, so go back and find something to wrap that arm while I set it up.’

  John went back into the infirmary and quickly found some gauze and a bandage. When he returned to the altar room, Semias was placing coloured candles at the points of the pentagram on the floor, and smooth coloured stones where the lines intersected.

  ‘Flower of Life would be more effective, but that’s another hundred floors up and takes too long to etch,’ he said, almost to himself as he placed the stones. He glanced up at John. ‘Does she have any particular elemental alignment? Is she water, like you?’

  ‘She’s one of the Welsh serpent people,’ John said, watching Emma’s chest rise and fall and expecting each breath to be her last. ‘Apart from that, no elemental alignment.’

  ‘None of your elements,’ Semias said, lighting the candles with his fingertip. When they were all lit, he pushed the end of a stick of incense into one of the flames and waved the incense above Emma. ‘The spirits forgive our haste, our need is dire.’

  He put the incense into a holder between Emma’s feet and pulled a black-handled dagger out of his robes. He stood at the head of the altar and raised the dagger, reciting silently. Then he moved to the northernmost point of the pentagram, pointed the dagger outwards at waist-height, and walked clockwise around the edge of the pentagram, creating a visible circle of blood-red energy around himself, the table and Emma.

  ‘Choose now: in or out,’ he said without slowing his stride.

  ‘I’m in,’ John said. ‘I lived here myself for a few years and I’ve done this. Anything you need, let me know.’

  ‘Great Rite?’ Semias said, and winked at him, grinning.

  ‘I don’t think that’s really appropriate for this situation, but I appreciate the offer,’ John said. ‘If we could hurry this …’

  ‘We can save her,’ Semias said, and closed the circle with an audible snap. A dome of red-tinged energy surrounded them. He quickly ran the tip of the dagger along the lines of the pentagram on the floor and they lit up with a similar red fire.

  ‘This isn’t in any of the rituals I’ve studied,’ John said.