When Angels Fall (Demon Lord) (18 page)

“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 ris
e 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.”