Herbie Brennan - Ruler of the Realm

‘He says we’re safe here,’ Nymph explained.

Pyrgus’s nose wrinkled. ‘I can see why.’ To Woodfordi he said, ‘Can you talk to my sister – Queen Blue? Can you talk to her directly?’

Woodfordi shook his head. ‘Doubt it, sir. Her Majesty doesn’t usually have a CC handy. Word is she doesn’t hold with us for some reason, sir.’

‘OK, put me through to Madame Cardui again. She can relay the message.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Woodfordi sank down into his impossible squat and crossed his eyes. After a while he uncrossed them again. ‘Can’t seem to make the connection, sir.’

‘Why not?’ Pyrgus demanded. ‘Doesn’t the Painted Lady have her CC handy?’

‘It’s not that, sir. It’s Orion. He’s not responding.’

‘Who in Hael is Orion?’

Woodfordi said soberly, ‘Hardly in Hael, sir. He’s the Communications Angel. So it’s more like “Who in Heaven is Orion”, sir, if you get my meaning. Calls himself Military Guide and Spiritual Gatekeeper, but that’s only because he likes wearing uniform. Most of them go nude up there, on account of the balmy weather.’

Despite the urgency of his situation, Pyrgus frowned and said, ‘I didn’t know we were in touch with Heaven?’

‘Military secret, sir.’ Woodfordi tapped his nose. ‘ Need to know sort of thing. Shouldn’t really have told you, but I expect it’s all right, you being royal and all that.’

‘Why can’t you get through?’ Pyrgus asked, getting back reluctantly to the matter in hand.

‘Think it might be this place, sir,’ said Woodfordi earnestly. ‘Reception wasn’t great earlier, to tell you the truth. Lot of volcanic activity round here. Ground stresses always influence the energy flow, throw up trapped lightning fields. Affects the network. Sort of like transportation portals in reverse. I’ll keep trying if you like, sir, but my guess is it won’t improve until we get out of the deep desert.’

But suddenly Pyrgus wasn’t listening. He had the look of somebody struck by a sudden idea.

‘What?’ Nymph asked.

‘Portals!’ Pyrgus said. He looked around urgently. ‘Nagel, you called the demons Fluid Dark. Does that mean you’ve seen them in the desert before?’ That’s what it had to mean. Nobody had names for things they’d never seen before.

Nagel nodded. ‘Yar,’ he said.

‘Where do they come from?’ Pyrgus asked. He had the air of somebody pushing down a rising excitement.

Nagel pointed. ‘Ohr ere way yorboat hores alk sides tha ate if.’

Pyrgus’s ears must have been starting to attune because it almost made sense to him. But he turned to Nymph all the same.

‘Over there, the direction he’s pointing, about an hour’s walk away. Apparently it’s beside something they call the Great Cliff.’ She stared intently at Pyrgus. ‘What is it?’

‘Look,’ said Pyrgus excitedly. ‘There’s an army of demons in the desert: we saw that. But we never thought to ask how they got here. Well, did we?’

‘No…’ Nymph said uncertainly.

He gripped her shoulder. ‘It has to be portals. There’s no other way you could transport so many troops in so short a time. Well, you could ship them in, but not without being noticed. So it’s portals. But it can’t be the regular portals – we’d have known if they got them open again – right?’

‘Right…’ Nymph confirmed, even more uncertainly.

‘So Beleth must have set up new ones!’ Pyrgus exclaimed. ‘I know what Nagel means by the Great Cliff. It’s a geological feature in the deep desert, about as inaccessible and far away from anywhere as you’re likely to get. Perfect for Beleth’s portals and perfect for his demon troops – they like volcanic conditions. But don’t you see, Nymph …?’

‘See what, Pyrgus?’ Nymph asked him patiently.

Pyrgus was actually grinning. ‘We can’t do anything about the troops Beleth already has here. But if we sabotage the portals, we can stop him sending any more! No reinforcements. No fresh supplies. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat.’

Nymph looked interested at once. ‘Do you know how to get to this Great Cliff?’

Pyrgus shook his head. ‘No, but Nagel does – he knows this desert inside out. And his people might be able to help. Violet Trinians are warriors. They could support us if the portals are guarded. And Green Trinians are great with technical stuff – Innatus made that little clack, remember – they could help with the sabotage. This is an incredible opportunity, Nymph. All of us together could make such a difference. And if we move fast, we could do the job before nightfall.’ He turned to Nagel. ‘Will you do that, Nagel?’ he asked urgently. ‘Will you help us?’

‘Oh yar,’ Nagel said.

Pyrgus was getting a bit tired of approaching places crawling on his face, but he had to admit it was better than being spotted by demons. He raised his head cautiously.

The Great Cliff towered above him like the central spine of the wasteland, a sheer sandstone massif that climbed so high it created its own mini-climate, whipping up dust and sand from the desert floor in confined swirls that looked like whirling djinn.

He turned his head slightly and his jaw dropped. Set at intervals no more than a yard or two apart were the portals he was expecting. But there were more of them than he could have imagined in a nightmare. There were portals by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand and more. They stretched like sentries along the base of the cliff as far as the eye could see. There was no way so many portals could have been constructed in the time since the standard portals had closed down. Beleth must have been secretly building these gateways for years.

There were no visible guards. But perhaps Beleth felt none were needed. Destroying so many portals would need an army of men and even then would certainly take days, maybe weeks. Besides, his secret had been safe for so long he probably thought the work would never be discovered. No one ventured this far into the deep desert: even the Trinian nomads avoided it as much as possible. It was the perfect base for a demon invasion.

Pyrgus allowed his eyes to travel desolately along the line of portals. ‘So much for sabotage!’ he muttered between clenched teeth. Even if they managed to close down one or two, thousands would remain. The effect on Beleth’s war effort would be a gnat’s bite.

‘Wouldn’t be so sure,’ remarked Nymphalis, stretched out on the ground beside him. She turned to Woodfordi, who was lying beside her. ‘What do you think?’

‘Distance apart you mean, Miss?’ Woodfordi asked.

Nymph nodded silently.

‘Tricky to say from here,’ Woodfordi frowned. ‘But they could have been set too close together…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Pyrgus asked.

‘Chain reaction,’ Nymph told him. ‘Portal technology is inherently unstable. Basically you’re creating a hole in reality, so it has to be. Inside any given portal the instability is under control, but it’s still there. You see what that means?’

‘No,’ Pyrgus admitted. He hated it when Nymph lectured him.

‘If we were to sabotage one portal – blow it up, that is – we would trigger the portal’s own instability,’ Nymph said. ‘So our sabotage explosion causes the portal itself to explode; and that’s a much larger explosion. But if there’s another portal nearby, another portal that’s close enough, the explosion in the first portal will cause that one to explode as well.’ She glanced towards the row of portals underneath the cliff. ‘If those are close enough together, we only have to blow one up for the whole lot to go off like firecrackers, one after the other.’