“Technically, anyone with a weapon could, since he’s mortal. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. He can move at unbelievable speed, and… Well, let’s just say, he’s a god.”
“Can’t a fiend also move fast?”
“Sure, but all Bane has to do is dismiss it.” Astrakan sat forward and laid his forearms on the table. “Look, to all intents and purposes, as far as we’re concerned, he’s invincible. If I was stupid enough to send a fiend after him, he’d know a magician of the dark arts sent it, and hunt us all down.”
Randoman looked intrigued. “How many of you are there?”
“Six. I’ve been keeping a low profile since Bane arrived, and I assume the others have, too. Masters of the dark arts are a threat to him. He’ll want to get rid of us.”
Drontar asked, “So why don’t you kill the bastard?”
“Because I don’t believe he means us harm.”
“He’s already harmed us! I think you’re just a bloody coward, and you don’t have the balls. Either that, or you’re bullshitting, and you don’t have a hope in hell of hurting him. If he’s a dark god, and you’re an entertainer, that makes perfect sense, hey?”
Astrakan glared at him with eyes so cold they made him shiver. “I don’t particularly care what you think. I won’t confront him or send a fiend, because, unlike you, I’m not a blithering idiot. So you’ll have to figure out a way to deal with him on your own, but I promise you this: anything you attempt will only piss him off, and more of you might end up with a nice shiny pair of horns, especially leaders.” He cast Randoman a meaningful look. “I’m surprised Predoran didn’t get a pair, and a tail, never mind a geas to prevent him from perpetrating any more acts of stupidity.”
“He had a fiend overseeing him,” Drontar muttered. “I heard he’s in a sanatorium now, being treated for shock and trauma.”
“He’s lucky to be alive, and he only is because he did as he was ordered. I’d advise you to leave Bane the hell alone and do whatever he tells you. It’ll be easier on you, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to him, anyway.”
Drontar jumped up, sending his chair screeching back. “I think he controls you! You’re just here to get us to toe the line!”
Astrakan shook his head. “You still don’t get it, do you? He doesn’t need us to toe the line. We’re powerless against him. We’re just pawns caught up in whatever it is they’re up to. I tell you what, though, why don’t I ask him to join us, then you can ask him yourselves?”
“No!” Randoman said, his brows knotting.
The magician smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not a fool, and I’m not in league with him, but I have better things to do than stay here and be insulted by this buffoon.”
Astrakan rose, strode to the door and let himself out. Drontar sagged with a mixture of relief and chagrin.
“Sit down, Drontar,” Randoman ordered. “We have a lot to discuss. Now, does anyone know why two fiends, or dra’voren, would want us to know how to get rid of fiends?”
Drontar pulled his chair back to the table and sat down. The others glanced at their comrades and shook their heads.
“Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” Rannymede said. “What if some of them are creators?”
“Bane is definitely a dra’voren,” Drontar stated, “so how could the others be creators?”
“Do we know that they don’t sometimes work together?”
“Dra’voren destroy worlds and kill creators.”
“You said yourself, we know next to nothing about them, so maybe that’s not always true. If this... Bane... killed four dra’voren, isn’t it possible that he’s something different?”
“The one fact we’re absolutely certain of, from centuries of experience, is that dra’voren are evil, sadistic killers, and now you want us to make an exception for one, just because he’s not toeing the party line? He’s up to something.”
“What?” Rannymede asked.
“I don’t bloody know!”
Randoman raised his hands. “Okay, let’s not debate this when we don’t have enough information. Maybe we should concentrate on finding out more before we do anything else.”
“How, sir?” Drontar asked. “Astrakan’s a charlatan entertainer, and the religious nutcases will just spout pious drivel from their old books.”
“I want to know why those two fiends, or whatever they were, told me about the white fire, and then started a fight with a bunch of fiends in a nightclub.”
“Maybe to prove that there are fiends living amongst us? After all, sir, you doubted them when they told you.”
“So, what, they’re good guys? Creators?”
“Only one way to find out,” Drontar said. “Send soldiers with scanners to the club where they hang out and see what they are. Then you’ll know whether or not to trust them. We know we can trust the scanners.”
Randoman nodded. “I’ll do that, but now I want to get back to the initial topic, which was how we’re going to get back into Cloud World and reclaim it and Sarlan City. Do you have any suggestions, Colonel Maynart?”
The chunky, square-faced colonel, who sat halfway down the table, said, “There’s nothing to discuss on that topic, sir. Since the Golden Gates closed, we’ve been unable to find Cloud World. It’s gone.”
Randoman’s jaw dropped, and everyone stared at Colonel Maynart for several seconds, during which time he fidgeted and lowered his eyes.
“When were you going to tell me this, Colonel?” Randoman asked.
“It’s in my last report, sir, probably on your report recorder right now. I sent it this morning.”
“How is possible for an entire realm to just… vanish?”
“We have no idea, sir.”
Randoman looked stunned. “It’s always been there. Gorton Evons discovered it a hundred and ninety-three years ago, on the maiden flight of Light Runner, the first craft designed to fly fifteen thousand leagues above ground… and now it’s gone?”
“Yes, sir. We think it’s because the gates are closed. Perhaps that triggered some sort of field… possibly making it invisible. It’s certainly undetectable. We’ve scanned the area intensively.”
“Well, that puts paid to our plans.”
Drontar stared into space, trying to take it all in. “We can’t reclaim something we can’t find.”
Randoman leant an elbow on the table and rubbed his forehead. “All those people… stuck here forever… The population growing… It’s a disaster.”
“And Rannymede thinks those bastards are creators,” Drontar muttered.
Bane trudged through the snow, his breath steaming in the still air, his exertions keeping him warm despite the bitter cold that chilled his nose and fingers. The frozen forest seemed interminable, and he wished he could Move. Majelin walked beside him with irritating disregard for the cold or fatigue. The snow prevented direct contact with the ground, so smoke no longer rose from Bane’s boots, but his footprints melted. Only the crunch of their footsteps broke the oppressive silence.
Bane glanced at Majelin. “If a light god can send me into the past, why did he not send me back to the time when he was captured, so I might have saved him?”
“It would not work. The past is unchangeable. If it was not, gods would save all those who fell to the darkness. Nothing bad would ever happen. Fate must run its course, else the universe would stand still whilst all the wrongs were constantly righted. There would be no progress.”
“But he did send me back.”
“You did not change fate,” Majelin said.
“I did. I killed that mage, which certainly changed his fate, and saved the city.”
“Then the mage always died, and the city always survived; all you did was change the manner in which it happened.”
“I still changed something,” Bane insisted.
“You did not change the course of history. That is impossible. What is done is done. You cannot go back and kill your own grandfather, or you would not have existed to go back and kill
him. All gods are capable of time travel, but none do it, because what happened in the past is immutable. If they try to go back to help themselves, they do not appear there as a new person; they return to themselves as they were, and they cannot change what happened. Not in a significant way. They can change how it happened, but not the outcome. History will always spring back to its predestined course. The same applies if they go back to a time before they were born, or a place they have never been. Some do go back to happy times, to relive them, but that is almost the same as remembering them.”
“And if they travel to the future?”
Majelin shrugged. “That is foreseeing. They can then change the course of their fate to avoid a possible future, but there are so many variables that all divining is hit and miss and fate will always steer them onto a similar course.”
“But if I foresaw my death on a certain path, and avoided that path, I would not die.”
“If you are destined to die, you will, just not the same way, or in the same place.”
“What if I kept looking ahead and avoided all possible paths that led to my death?”
Majelin snorted. “A prophetess tried that once. She looked ahead every day and avoided death. She did extend her life for a time, by staying in a cave, locked away from the world, but then the cave collapsed, killing her.”
“She did not foresee the collapse?”
“If she did, she did not have time to avoid it. Her futures became shorter and shorter, until she was looking ahead every hour, then every few minutes. Eventually it caught up with her.”
Bane grunted. “She must have seen a lot of things killing her.”
“Indeed. Perhaps she just surrendered to the inevitable.”
“How many things can kill you in a cave?”
Majelin chuckled. “Lots, apparently. Snakes, perhaps, or scorpions, spiders, poison, disease, accidents… There are many ways to die. If all else fails, your heart may simply stop. There is no avoiding that.”
“That must have been a horrible way to live.”
“Yes. But gods can step out of fate.”
“How?”
The archangel glanced at him. “By letting it take its course.”
“Standing on the side lines.”
“Yes.”
“But gods change fate all the time. Kayos did so when he woke Sherinias.”
Majelin shook his head. “No, he followed fate. It took him to Sherinias to wake her up. If he had not, he would have been changing fate. She was destined to awaken, and fate chose him to do the deed.”
“And it brought me here, so I am supposed to free this light god.”
“Perhaps, or perhaps you are meant to die here.”
Bane sighed. “Now I want to foresee what will happen.”
“A bad idea.”
“So how do we know if what we do is for or against fate?”
“Follow your heart. Listen to your intuition,” the archangel said.
“There was a time when I did not do that. When I knew what I did was wrong, deep down, but I did it anyway.”
“When the dark power ruled you.”
“Yes.” Bane shot him a startled glance. “How do you know that?”
“All tar’merin endure a time when they are ruled by the dark power, but fate keeps their spirit pure if they are destined to fight for the light.”
Bane opened his mouth to comment, then they crested a rise and he halted, staring ahead.
“And this is where the final battle took place,” Majelin said.
The frozen forest ended at the top of the rise, and beyond it the land stretched away to the horizon in a bizarre scene of utter devastation. The sorrow became so strong that a lump blocked Bane’s throat. Snowflakes melted on his cheeks, running down them like icy tears. The shadows within him strived to stamp out the sadness that swamped him, tearing his heart. Once, a vast city had filled the gently-sloping vale, but now all that remained were the jagged ruins of crystal towers and twisted, silvery spires. The people who had built it must have been advanced indeed, he pondered, yet they had lost this war and been annihilated.
The wrecks of giant metal machines so vast they stretched many leagues into the sky lay crushed and gutted amid the shattered spires and fallen towers. Mist wreathed the ground in a pale shroud, swirling to reveal whitened bones so thick no soil was visible between them. They told a bitter tale of centuries of war, extinction and suffering, of defeat and death on a scale he had not thought possible.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “What happened here?”
“I would say a god called his people to war, and lost.”
“He stepped into fate.”
“In a big way,” Majelin agreed.
“He was destined to lose.”
“But not to die.”
Bane surveyed the bleak landscape, amazed that so many had sacrificed their lives here, mortals and immortals alike. The massive wrecks in the foreground hid much of what lay beyond them, and he wandered along the top of the ridge, scanning the destruction.
“What would possess a light god to make war on the darkness?”
“The hope of victory?”
“He could not win.”
“Evidently he thought he could.”
“But to involve his people…” Bane gestured to the wrecks. “…Madness.”
“They were doomed anyway. He merely gave them the opportunity to fight.”
“This was the light realm, where the final battle was fought.”
“It was the best place.”
“Mirra told me his name is Carthius.”
The archangel looked startled. “Kayos told her this?”
“Yes.”
“I would not have thought it possible…”
“What?”
“Carthius is one of the first gods.”
“So?”
“He is powerful,” Majelin said. “Very powerful.”
“Perhaps not anymore. This is why light gods will not fight the darkness. They cannot win.”
Majelin inclined his head. “They know that now. Then, they did not.”
“This must have happened a hell of a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
Bane stopped as a distant, cathedral-like structure came into view. It towered into the sky, its crystal walls streaked with soot and ash. The streams of light converged from all directions above it, forming a shining pillar that touched the tallest spire, illuminating it from within. Black clouds swirled around it, shot with silent lightning and glimpses of the streaming sky. Bane surveyed the panorama, then brushed the snow aside with his boot and scooped up a handful of soil. The ground burnt where he touched it, melting the snow, and he let the fiery dirt sift between his fingers. The raw earth gave off a sulphurous smell. He scanned the vista again. The edge of the vale was circular, vanishing into the haze in the distance, but he knew how this vast, crater-like valley had been created.
“This is demon dust. Thousands of earth demons were defeated here; probably the entire population of this domain’s underworld. They must have risen again and again, but why would demons fight humans to the bitter end?”
Majelin suggested, “A dark god, summoning them?”
“A dark god would not need demons to win his battles.”
“A weak one? A demigod, perhaps?”
Bane grunted. “Possibly. I expect all the other demons also fought, but they leave no trace.” He brushed the dust from his hand and nodded at the crystalline structure. “What is that?”
“Carthius’ keep. In those days, light gods dwelt in such edifices. The light is being drawn to him, probably to keep him alive.”
“So his enemies dragged him here and entombed him. Eternal suffering is worse than death. Why did he not go into his shield sphere?”
Majelin shook his head. “I was not there.”
“And his people tried to save him.”
“You feel it too, do you not?”
“Probably,” Bane said.
“What?”
“Carthius’ sorrow.”
“Yes, for some time now. It is most annoying.”
“Because he shares it with you, and the darkness hates that,” Majelin said.
“Is he trying to turn it against me?”
“No.” The archangel gazed at the keep. “He would not want that. You might be his saviour.”
“Unless he has seen the future and knows that I am not.”
“Will you turn your back on him now? Why would he draw you here if he knows you will not help him?”
Bane shrugged. “How should I know? Perhaps he hopes to kill me.”
“He knows what you are, or he would not have revealed his presence.”
“Perhaps he hopes I will end his suffering.”
Majelin inclined his head. “That is a possibility.”
“Let us go and ask him.”
Bane walked down the slope, the ancient bones crumbling under his boots. He knew his ire came from the dark power, which the light god’s sorrow roused, and thrummed in Bane’s blood. He longed to cast it out, but the cursed ground made that impossible. Had Carthius’ enemies also foreseen his coming, and set traps for him? He sharpened his sight, searching for guardian runes, but any trap set for a god would be well hidden. The air grew colder as he approached the keep. Majelin’s bare feet kicked up little eddies of white dust that sparkled in the dim light.
Some of the bones were those of dark creatures, while others he did not recognise, perhaps creatures of the light. The vast majority were human, most clad in strange, jointed armour that had a bluish sheen to it. Tubular weapons mingled with the bones, reminding him of the light guns the humans had used in Drayshina’s world. This must have been the war to end all wars, he mused, and it had. Since then, no light god had gone to battle with the darkness. They fled and hid, abandoning their domains, or cowered in their shield spheres. He shook himself, cursing the dark power’s increasing influence. It crouched in the back of its mind, pouring its venom into his thoughts. For some reason, this place, with its memories and sorrow, enraged it.
The keep’s doorway loomed over him, at least twelve yards tall and five wide, formed from smooth crystal, with fluted pillars on either side. Bane wondered if it was crystal at all; its slight, iridescent sheen reminded him of a shield sphere. He approached the left-hand side of the doorway and ran his fingers along it, dislodging fine black dust that drifted in a little cloud. The crystal glowed blue where he touched it, reacting to his power as only the white fire did. So, the keep was made of light, and the runes that brightened at his touch told him that it contained powerful wards. The archangel met his gaze with unreadable eyes.
When Angels Fall (Demon Lord) Page 16
