Fire Angels

The Quest Chapter 1 part 2

Authors note. Welcome back! Thank you for reading again. If you like this chapter please give me a vote. It will help me build up my audience.  

I had so much to ask them and yet I could think of nothing to say. I had not seen them for seventeen years. I had given up on ever seeing them again a long time before the Revolution of Souls had exiled me from Moria. When I was four years old, my mother had sold me to a mage to be his apprentice and that was the last I ever saw of my disreputable family and the Inn where I had been born. A long hard time ago now, I had come to the conclusion that my family had forgotten about me and I had set out to do the same to them. Now here was the past returned, clothed in flesh.

The minutia of hospitality covered my initial confusion. There was a hut to invite them into, chairs to offer, food and drink to bring. Tomas sat down gratefully and pulled off a shoe.

"This foot is blistered to hell," he said rubbing it and I ran to fetch him a poultice.

Of all my siblings Tomas was the one I remembered best. He was the oldest and had always been the one to pick me out of puddles and, with a story and a kiss, tuck me into bed in the small dark room at the top of the stairs where we children slept in two big beds. My adored elder brother who had always seemed so big and strong. Now I was almost as tall as he was.

The other brother, Hamel did not sit.

Instead he took my hand and squeezed it tight. His hands were huge and covered in calluses.

"We are very glad to find you, Dion, and to see you so well," he said smiling with such sincerity, that despite the fact that I wasn't sure which of the others he was, I warmed to him instantly.

"Aye," said Tomas. "We've been on the road for almost three weeks now. We've been to Gallia and back. I spoke with your friend Kitten Avignon. In fact she gave me this letter for you. Here!"

He reached into his coat and passed the small white packet to me. I stood there uncertain about opening it. A letter from Kitten Avignon was normally a great event for me, but brothers ... That was even more so.

Tomas smiled at me for the first time. "We heard stories of your power to make a brother's heart proud. They still speak of your fight with that demon with awe. You're almost a legend in Gallia." He grinned. "As you were in Annac. Do you remember that time when you were three and you threw Arvy Ironmonger into the horse trough because he threw horse dung at you?"

"Yes!" I cried, my shyness chased away by delight. My memories of that time were the fuddled memories of a very small child, but one of them fitted what Tomas had said. "Was he a mean boy with black hair that stood up in the front? Who used to always call us whore's spawn? Oh yes! Did that really happen? That was great. He ran off bawling, didn't he?"

"Aye! And Aunt Minnette begged Marnie to put you in a witch manacle before anything worse happened. Sweet Tansa, Dion! Even when you were small, you were so powerful. Magic used to just flow out of you. Do you remember how the others used to get you to pull the sugar tin down from the mantle? Marnie had to put an iron chain round it in the end."

"Marnie?"

"Our mother," said Hamel quietly. "Dion looks like her, doesn't she Tomas?"

Tomas shrugged.

"How is ... our mother?" I was not sure I really wanted to know. When I had asked my foster father about that half dreamed mother at that half remembered inn, he had told me that being careless, foolish and of loose morals, she had had more children than she could feed and had happily sold me for a minimal sum to a passing mage. In the end I had come to believe him. That didn't mean I wanted the story confirmed.