Demon of the Black Gate
Chapter 9

The demon was lost in coma. A lot of energy had been consumed since it was brought forth and driven away from the Black Gate. The demon had raged inland, the void shattered in its mind and in its place the visions of another world, another place. It flew like a storm, a malevolence in the sky, churning up the earth when a funnel trod down like a giant foot. It created fears in its passing, and it fed on the angst and agonies of the creatures below him. The demon spun with the visions, churning in its own terror. Power and anger surged through the demons thoughts. The lands were strange and familiar from a space before darkness. No memory claimed them. There was nothing except the nothing of the void, yet here creatures and life existed. It sought to blot out and destroy the unknown familiar, push it back, destroy it. It had ravaged the lower lands as both light and dark passed the sky. A day passed, then another, as the relentless tableaus marched across its vision. It tore at the lights and creatures, trying to tear the fabrics of the scenes to reveal the void that must be beyond the veil of hallucinations.

A company of men and beast descended a line down the steeps like a worm. The demon cast its attention to the trail of living things, stepping with a funnel to contact the earth, gathering fires from the vibrations of sky and hurtling the anger forth. A bolt might displace the brightness, increase the terror it fed on, drive it back to the numbness of the black.

The caravaners ascending the Falling Rocks Trail leading to the plateau had nowhere to hide in the narrow passage and watched in terror as the demon tore an erratic path toward them. Fires and nimbi wavered around the tempest, rock and wind coursing in tight spiral, the boiling clouds ill colors of yellow and grey. And in them, fired maelstroms burned like eyes. Most were frozen with fear and the unearthly conflagration appeared to reach out an arm of dirt and rock and sweep the lot from the byway leading up the cliff. Not all were lost. A handful of men and horse escaped the terrible ravage of the storm as it clawed at the heavens and jumped to the higher grounds of the plateau. They all had seen the snarling face that was shaped in the fearsome attack. A djinn. A helion. A demon.

The scenes had no end, a continuance of motion. Time. The void had no such measure and now the demon was placed on its scales. Energy, even demonic madness, can be exhausted and must be replenished. The demon felt spent at last, consumed and embraced the darkness nudging against it. The demon fell from the skies as much as settled, and clutched at the solidity of earth.

It slept, for there is no other word for it, like a pile of rock tossed haphazardly across the steep rising slope. It was earth. Depleted. As it slept, fires from deep in the earth warmed it and saturated its being. Waters from the nearby creek misted across its granite surfaces. The air surrounded it, working down into the cracks of its shattered form. There was no dream. There was blackness, but a darkness incomplete. No spell lay over it. No captive bonds. Yet it remained lost in the ink, visions just beyond its reach. It was comforting. A familiar eternity. No light. No knowledge. Nothing.

#

Cerra woke early. The weather had been troubled last night. It had woken her with its thunderous cacaphony. Even the mountains had cried out. And though she slept again, her rest was fitful and she didn’t need the singing of the barn swallows to bring her awake at the dawn.

She padded into her small kitchen and stoked the fires to boil water for her kafi. Her cabin was the most familiar place in her world, and she knew every inch and corner. No stick was necessary to tap her way safely. The steps had been measured long ago and each wall had its presence. She dutifully ground a handful of beans and carefully poured the hot water over the grains. She listened for the gurgle that heightened in sound as it approached the top of the pot. The brew was ready in minutes and she sat to savor the invigorating potion.

She heard Kamir pad inside through a window with a missing pane. A board extended from the pear tree that nestled in close to the cabin and a leather flap guarded the empty square. His descent to shelf to floor was accompanied by small sounds, neither purr or mew but both. She found it easy to trace his exertions. Kamir had been with her for five years now, and with the uncanny perceptions of animals, intuited her lack of vision she was sure, for he did many things to accommodate her. He had a wide range of calls, mews and sounds. She had deciphered most of them. Some were just ‘cat’ however.

This one said ‘I want petting.’

“You’ll have to get your own kafi.” she said. She was ready when she heard the mewl that came from Kamir like a swishing of a tail and the cat made the small spring to her lap. He rarely caught her unawares and she had set the mug down in time.

He settled comfortably in one turn, melding perfectly with her surfaces as cats do. She stroked his fur. Even if she hadn’t had Kamir’s black color described, ‘nary a white hair anywhere’, she couldn’t imagine another color for his sleek coat. He came to her mind as the king of panthers in the old jungle story. A prince, brave and black as night. A darkness in her vision that lived.

She resumed the grip on her mug and the thoughtful sipping of her kafi as she stroked Kamir with an absent-minded caress. After the unseasonal storm last night, the rain lilies would be sprouting. Their flowers would mark the elusive roots that were delicious to eat. Their powders were also good for stomach issues and child birth, and she had used up most of what she had.

Later that morning, Cerra saddled the horse and rode around the small lake in front of the cabin that nested against the pillars of granite that held back the steep slopes of the nearby mountains. She noted the horses gait carefully, and when she felt the trail starting to climb and they were past a clump of cedar, reined left so as to take a side trail up the slopes overlooking her small glen. The air was expansive and if the wind was calm she could hear the tumult of the faraway town. Kamir rode with her, nestled between her lap and the saddle pome. She kept a knotted cloth rope tied to the saddle horn for him to climb up with, though the climb was more of a grazing motion as he leapt and found her lap. She was sure that Sugar appreciated not getting the brief taste of claw. When she judged the correct place on the trail, she stopped the horse and alit. Kamir trotted off a little ways and contented himself with sussing out the trail of a mole.

She could smell the scent of the lilies clustered nearby and grabbing a small trowel, tapped herself carefully to the spot. She knelt with her basket and began digging for the roots. As she often did, a song came to her and she began humming and singing softly as she found her prizes.

#

It was the tingle of song that first broke through, like a vibration of crystal that resonated throughout the void. Somewhere behind came a fracture of light, a vibration of a rainbow that glittered and broke. The light came flooding in. Consciousness.

The demon slowly roused, stones across the hillside gathering, ripping from mosses, gathered steaming from creeks, and the fires that lay dormant began to consume him again. He gathered himself and rose, a smoldering figure patched by rock and flowing with igneous blood.

The earth around Cerra shook. The horse reared and took off down the path in a gallop. The air screamed for a moment, like a sudden and violent wind screeching through the masts of ships. Then stilled as though waiting for another blast. She had fallen during the tremor to her backside, her basket tossed and gathered roots strewn. Her hair was disheveled, but that was normal for her anyway. She brushed it in control, spinning her head around, searching her senses for what happened. She felt the mountains all around her where the sense of valley should be. To stave her confusion, she reached for what she knew immediately. Her horse was gone, but she didn’t worry overmuch about that, for Sugar would replace its way back to the stable. She felt Kamir’s presence low behind her, still and alarmed. She kept turning. She smelled fire-hardened clay, as though the earth itself had scorched.

Then she blinked. And blinked again. There, not far away, was a man. She could see him. In spite of her blindness, she closed her eyelids as though that would clear her vision, for it was unlike any image she had ever conjured. She opened her eyes again and the burning figure still burst through the black sight of her eyes. A young man who shimmered like he was on fire … low blue and white flames that are hard to see, but very hot. He was looking at her.

“Say there.” she called out. “Who are you?”

There was no answer. Just the same stare. A look that threatened to dissolve to gaseous flame in a heartbeat. A vision. A sight in her eyes.

“Are you all right?” she called. She stood slowly, eyes intent. Incredulous. “Can I help?”

The demon looked back at her. He was ready to consume, and rage at the intrusion; yet, there was no fear. None at all. The creature looked at him. The glow that surrounded it was blue and peaceful. The light and soft unthreatening voice stayed him. Below her, another light shone, yellow and fierce. He saw the small ferocity of a black creature. ’Cat’ came to its mind and looking back, the creature with the head in red flames … no, hair … was female. “Woman”.

The demon had rested and the world it woke to was still the same that had rent the blackness when it was called forth. The world had familiarity. It had names. The demon felt confused and rage was the only emotion that had been left to him. He had to tear himself away. The distance of time. Space. He gathered himself and absorbed the air, kicking himself into fiery flight.

Cerra wasn’t sure what she ‘saw’ after that. The vision of the young man started to flare, and she heard a rumble like a landslide. She fell again as the unexpected shift of earth rocked her feet. The vision just seemed to rise, like the man became embers exploded by a fire soaring up on smoke into the night. Her eyes slowly returned to their accustomed blackness. The sounds around her returned to the familiar nestling sounds of the grounds and trees buzzing with life. Slowly they repainted the world around her in her mind.

She groped around for a moment, replaceing most of her roots. They were hard enough to replace in the first place. She didn’t want to start over. She flashed back to what she voiced aloud last night. ‘Nothing odd happens here.’

‘Well, I’ve called this on myself … Jessann would have had words about that,’ she laughed to herself.’

She gathered her belongings and she began to pick her way down the path carefully. It was much farther than she would have dared walk by herself. She was unsure of every step though her sense of direction was well honed. She let her mind open up as she sought the sense of rock and tree and path that presented itself. She tapped carefully. Kamir meowed from in front of her, and though her progress was steady, it was very slow.

She thought to herself. “I guess it won’t matter that I’m out past dark.”

Kamir led the way, trotting his way down the path, and making noise and meows that Cerra was sure to follow. She had just felt her way around a corner and into a stretch that she knew to be relatively straight when she heard the jangle of harness in the distance.

“Kamir, it seems as though our ride has returned.”