so light here away from my body and Lalande 2’s high G. This was good programming. I was revelling in the star- filled night sky after too long underground.
The circle was made up of poles. Each pole was tipped with a grisly skull. The weird thing was the skulls belonged to icons as diverse as dragons, bizarre aliens, even cartoon characters, down to relatively normal-looking human ones. Pagan assured me that all of them were trophies from other hackers he’d delivered a sound kicking to on the net for one reason or another. They almost sounded like his pride and joy. This was called a ghost fence and was the Pagan-flavoured voodoo he’d made with the reverse-engineered eel net that Tailgunner had given him. It was our optimistic containment program.
All the skulls looked into the centre of the circle at a huge bonfire. It was the only warmth out here, and the wood smoke smelled like the campfires I’d made as a child and during my recent foray into the Highlands. For a moment I thought about what it would be like to be in the Highlands now with a whisky in my hand and my real arm around a happy Morag. I glanced over at her. She was wearing her Black Annis icon. Unlike the room in virtual Jerusalem, both she and Pagan in his Druidic finery looked at home. Tailgunner, with his feathered cloak and bladed spear, looked less at home but he was holding his own.
Salem had asked not to take part in the ritual. It wasn’t really his thing. That was fine as we needed someone on the outside. Salem was watching this on a monitor hooked up to the solid-state memory cube. Pagan had copied Dinas Emrys onto the cube from his staff. I guessed he didn’t want these things in it.
Pagan lifted his hands to the night sky. Unusually for him, no lightning accompanied the gesture, but the wind picked up and rocked me back on my heels. It blew the flames of the bonfire around and whipped Pagan’s hair and beard about as he shouted into the wind. I hoped it was Pagan who was responsible for the wind and not Nuada.
‘I turn towards north, towards Findias, the shining silver fort, the fort of the mighty, the fort of the moon, the fort of spirits and bravery. Home to Nuada of the Silver Hand, first king of the Tuatha De Danaan, Lord of Victories, Lord of Conflicts, he who has power over force and strength.’
Go on, Pagan, I thought. See if you can get your nose all the way up there. He was really going for it now as the wind tore all around us.
‘Whose is the sword that none can run from, the sword that seeks flesh, the sword that cuts stone and metal,’ Pagan continued.
These old gods liked to hear how cool they were. I heard the cry of a bird of prey and looked into the night sky. I could just about make it out, a shadowed form against the dark blue of night. A night-hunting eagle was very unusual. The wind intensified and we were all being battered by it. I didn’t think this was Pagan’s special effects now.
‘Lord of Battles, Lord of Hosts, we beseech you attend us this night!’ Pagan screamed at the night sky.
We beseech you attend us this night? The arse-lickery was of course accompanied by some very complex code.
The wind seemed to blow out and then return to its earlier pre-ritual levels.
‘Well that was nice,’ I said.
All three of the hackers turned to glare at me.
‘The wind wasn’t mine,’ Pagan said as all three of them turned their back on the Luddite. ‘Neither was the eagle.’
‘Something definitely happened.’ Morag’s voice sounded like gravel being ground together. Tailgunner was nodding. I was trying to get closer to the fake heat of the fire.
‘It was a powerful ancestor to try and summon,’ Tailgunner said. I think he was trying to console Pagan.
‘Er, guys, is that supposed to be happening?’ I asked. In front of each of the severed-head-topped wooden poles, a ghostly figure was standing. They looked like the battered and bleeding owners of the original skulls. Some of them fitted with the surroundings, the cartoon cow less so.
‘The ghost fence,’ Pagan said.
‘There’s something in the fire,’ Tailgunner warned.
A figure seemed to gather the fire into itself. He looked like flame beneath taut-muscled black skin, the flame shining through complex spiral patterns, his mouth and his eyes. He reached into the moonlight and his hands came back full, holding the hilt of a moon-bladed sword. He wasn’t quite the same being I’d seen when Morag had taken me into Their mind. This time he looked angry, but the silver arm was there. Actually, ‘angry’ didn’t really cover what he looked like. Even ‘furious’ wasn’t adequate. Heat radiated from him, causing all of us to step back.
He swept his hand forward. The ghosts in the fence distorted and screamed like tortured souls but the fence did not break. Nuada seemed to be fighting to control himself. Taking long gasping breaths of smoke and fire.
‘You know I will break this and you are all forfeit,’ he finally said. Flames flickered over a mouth full of obsidian canines as he spoke. His voice was a bass rumble that sounded like it began somewhere south of hell.
‘Yeah, the question is, can you break it before I plug Rannu into the system? He has a fragment of Demiurge in him,’ I said.
Nuada reared up. Smoke and flame swirled and spiralled around him. To his credit he didn’t bother with the whole you-wouldn’t-dare speech. I could feel the power pouring off him even through the ghost fence. Whatever they were, they were not subtle in this electronic world. I had no doubts that given the chance my so-called patron would leave me a smoking corpse. He was communicating this with literally burning eyes. He didn’t need to bother with the threats. That said, the mention of Demiurge had a physiological effect on him: the name had seemed to ripple through flame, smoke and flesh. Was that what passed for fear with him?
‘What do you want?’ he finally rumbled.
‘I want you to free Rannu. Exorcise Demiurge or whatever you do; just bring my friend back.’
‘And if it’s not possible?’
‘Then whatever it was that’s in here -’ I tapped my head ‘- is lost when we plug Rannu into this system anyway.’
‘Your people have as much to lose as the Tuatha de Danaan if that happens,’ he told me. I glanced at Morag.
‘I’ve been told I’m a very selfish person, but you can do this, can’t you? It’s not a problem for you. You just don’t want to because it’s all one-sided with you guys. You want us to jump through hoops and then worship you for it, right?’
‘Do not speak to me like that. There is a threat… The Adversary is a corruption, a disease-’
‘Aren’t you the Lord of Hosts? The Lord of Battles? I’m smelling a lot of fear here.’
He narrowed his eyes at me. I held his stare. The worrying thing was, this guy struck me as the sort who held grudges. In the unlikely event that I lived, I suspected I needed to stay out of the net for the rest of my life. Perhaps it would be better to just avoid all electronics.
‘You are a fool, Jakob Douglas,’ he said, flames licking at his lips. ‘But you are not a coward. This is for nothing anyway. Your friend will likely die.’
‘Rannu’s tough,’ I said.
Nuada spared Pagan a look. Letting him know that he was as unhappy with the architect of his summoning and trapping as he was with me. Pagan looked away from him, refusing to meet his burning eyes.
‘Now, Salem,’ I said. On the quiet, Tailgunner and Morag set subtle and stealthy diagnostic and analytical programs running.
It was like a rent in the sky, a smoking black fissure, as Salem connected the solid-state memory cube with the copy of Dinas Emrys in it to one of Rannu’s plugs. Nuada held his huge sword up into the beam of light from the moon. The sword acted like a prism of silver fire. It was bright, so bright, like ground zero, like Balor lifting his patch. We all became silhouettes just before the dark of blindness. The last thing I saw was silver fire, then nothing. All I could hear was Rannu, not the beast inside him, but Rannu. He was screaming in agony.
Burning. Bright light but not as bright, almost a relief after where I’d come from. The plug in the back of my neck was cooking the flesh surrounding it. I saw smoke drifting up past me. The rock felt cool beneath me. I was lying on the stone floor looking up at the ceiling of the small cave Rannu was in. Even in the sulphurous atmosphere it stank of bodily fluids, stale sweat and a body turning rancid and rotten.
But Rannu wasn’t screaming. I could hear other people shouting. I sat up. Morag was gripping the back of her neck, smoke drifting through her fingers. Tailgunner and Pagan were sitting up as well. The solid-state memory
