“He had to. I’ll explain later. If we survive.”
The beast that was Beranabus shrugs free of the Shadow’s tentacles and staggers away. For an awful moment I think that he’s about to attack us. But then he bellows at the Shadow and darts past it, making for the lodestone.
“Ah!” Sharmila exclaims with sudden hope. “If he breaks the stone…”
“…the Shadow will be sucked back to its own universe,” I finish.
“We hope,” Dervish adds gloomily.
Finding its path to me unexpectedly clear, the Shadow lunges forward, eager to finish me off. Then it pauses. It doesn’t glance back—as I noted earlier, it doesn’t have a face—but it’s somehow analysing Beranabus. There’s a brief moment of consideration—can it kill me and steal the power of the Kah-Gash before Beranabus breaks the stone?
The Shadow decides the odds are against it and reverses direction, launching itself at the transformed magician. It catches him just before he reaches the lodestone. The pair spin past. Beranabus roars with frustration as he shoots beyond his target. The Shadow whips him with its tentacles. Deep cuts open across his arms and legs, and many of the protective scales on his chest and back shatter under the force of the blows.
Just before they fly out of striking distance of the lodestone, Beranabus’s tail twitches. The tip catches a notch in the stone and Beranabus jerks to a halt. The Shadow loses its grip and ends up in a heap. It’s back on its tentacles within seconds but Beranabus has already jerked himself within reach of the lodestone.
He grabs the stone with his massive hands and exerts great pressure, trying to snap it in half. There’s a cracking sound and a split forms in the uppermost tip of the rock. But then it holds and although Beranabus strains harder, it doesn’t divide any further.
The Shadow hurls itself at Beranabus and lands on his back. Tendrils jab at him from all directions, destroying his scaly armour, penetrating the flesh beneath. One of his grey eyes pops. Several of his fangs are ripped from his jaw. Blood flies from him in jets and fountains.
Beranabus howls with agony, but otherwise ignores the assault and focuses on the lodestone. He’s still trying to tear it in two. The stone is pulsing. The split at the top increases a few centimetres. The gap’s just wide enough for Beranabus to jam his unnaturally large fingers into it. Snapping at the Shadow with the remains of his fangs, he transfers his grip to the crack, gets the tips of all his fingers inside and tugs.
There’s a creaking sound, then a snapping noise, and the stone splits down the middle to about a third of the way from the top. Beranabus yells with triumph, wraps both arms around the severed chunk of rock and rips it free of the lodestone, tossing it to the floor as an oversized ball of waste.
The Shadow screeches and scuttles after the rock, perhaps hoping to reattach it. I quickly unleash my power and send the piece of stone shooting across the hold. It smashes into the side of the ship and explodes in a cascade of pebbly splinters.
Beranabus roars with ghastly, demonic laughter and bites into one of the
Shadow’s tentacles. As he rips it off, another tendril strikes the side of his head and slices through to his brain. The triumph that had blossomed within me vanishes instantly.
“Bran!” I scream and dart towards him. Dervish holds me back.
The Shadow strikes repeatedly at Beranabus in a tempestuous rage. It gouges great chunks of flesh from his chest and stomach. Scraps of lung, slivers of a heart and other internal organs splatter the broken lodestone. Then, in a childish sulk, the Shadow tosses him aside like an old doll it’s finished playing with.
The demonic beast that Beranabus has become rolls over several times before coming to a rest near the side of the hull. Again I try to race to his aid, but Dervish has a firm hold and doesn’t let go even when I bite him.
Beranabus raises his huge, transformed, scaly head. He glances at the Shadow and the lodestone with his one bulbous grey eye and grins. Then his head swivels and he looks for me. When he finds me struggling with Dervish, his grin softens and I see a trace of the Beranabus I knew in the expression. I also see the boy he once was—scatterbrained Bran. He smiles at me foolishly, the way Bran used to, and gurgles something. I think he’s trying to say, “Flower.”
Then the grey light in his eye dims and extinguishes. The smile turns into a tired sneer. He coughs up yellow blood and tries to drag himself forward. But the strength drains from his arms. His body sags. A jagged breath dances from his lips and his head drops. By the time his forehead connects with the cold steel floor of the hold, the three thousand year old legend is part of this world no more.
GOING DOWN
In desperation the Shadow clambers after me, but a funnel has formed in the water beneath the broken lodestone. It stretches far down and whirls violently, creating a magical vacuum which drags at the mass of shadows. The beast’s rear tentacles are stiff behind it, drawn towards the vortex, and its body begins to lengthen and narrow. The creature strains against it, but the vacuum is too strong. There are laws which even the Shadow has to obey, at least for the time being.
In a rush, and with a hateful shriek, the Shadow’s ripped away. It smashes through the lodestone, shattering the remains of the rock, and disappears down the funnel, howling all the way. Moments later the funnel collapses in on itself as swiftly as it formed.
I want to rush to Beranabus’s corpse and bid him farewell. I’m weeping and all I want is to be by my dead friend’s side. But that’s not possible. Because now that the lodestone’s magic has evaporated, the shield keeping the sea at bay has started to give way.
The fragments of the lodestone fall first, trickling through cracks in the invisible barrier. Water seeps up through the cracks, spreading neatly across the surface of the shield. Then one of the living dead stumbles and drops out of sight as if crashing through a thin layer of ice.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Dervish shouts, hauling me through the door.
“Beranabus!” I cry.
“We can’t help him now,” Dervish pants. As he says it, the shield flickers out of existence and water floods the hold.
The ship lurches. A wave of foaming water surges towards us, washing away the helpless bodies of the zombies. We should be washed away too, but Sharmila acts swiftly to avert catastrophe, establishing a barrier around us and the doorway. The wave breaks and seethes away, the sea temporarily cheated of its victims.
“Quick,” Sharmila gasps, hopping up the stairs. “The magic is fading. The barrier will not hold.”