Fire Angels

Chapter 20 Part 3 Demon Attack

The high narrow courtyard of the Hierarch's fortress was lined with huge white statues of the saints. Memories from fevered dark dreams of a long avenue of statues prickled through my skull. Tasha's memories, I reminded myself. They were unlikely to be memories of Beenac.

Those remaining in the fortress had assembled in the centre of the courtyard. There were about forty ordinary guards and serving men and over twenty priests, none of whom wore the garb of priest mages. As we entered, the young boy priest came running towards the party, his face anxious and strained.

He hesitated a few moments over which of us to approach, for the choice between mage and Klementari can hardly have been enticing for a priest of his calling, before he ran to my side.

"Enna! The Hierarch will not come out of his room! I have been up there all morning trying to get him to come out. We tried to break down the door, but there is some magic involved."

"Can you hear him on the other side?" said Symon, swinging down from his horse.

"I have heard his voice. He sounded weak. I could not hear what he was saying."

Ren Devoirs made an exasperated noise. "Can't we just leave him there till we get this fortress sorted out?"

"Should we leave a sick man behind a locked door?" I said. "Especially when it is Hierarch Jarraz?"

"She's right," said Symon. "The Hierarch is the hub of this fortress. We must see what can be done."

Leaving some of the mages and men at arms in the courtyard to search and guard the prisoners, the rest of us followed the boy up the steep white marble stairs. He led us down a series of wide corridors until we were on the other side of the fortress. Through tiny slit windows I could see our army camped on the plain below.

"Stay with us," hissed Shad, gripping my arm. With a brief prickle of shame, I realized that I had slowed to look out of the windows.

The corridors were lined with statues and in between many of them were great gold framed mirrors.

"A good bit of money's been spent on this nest," muttered one of the men at arms, but money was not what I thought of when I saw mirrors and statues. Demons and dreams of demons. These corridors felt full of vague echoes of magic.

The boy stopped before a pair of huge brass doors. They were most definitely locked and bolted from the inside. He called out to Hierarch Jarraz, but there was no answer. We looked at each other uncertainly and then Beg held up a flat stone that glowed with sullen red light.

"There is magic here," she said. She did not name it as necromancy, though that was obviously what it was. "Tell me lad, is this the room were the Holy Statue of Karana is kept?"

The boy-priest nodded.

It looked like the Patriarch was right and this room was the source of the necromancy in the fortress. We had to go in.

"Let me open the door," I said.

The boy protested that Hierarch Jarraz would be alarmed by magic, but he was over-ruled. Beg and I checked the door for magical traps and wardings, while the mages grouped around us and the men at arms drew their swords and fidgeted nervously with their magically enhanced armor.

The door was not warded by spells. I slid my power into its lock, clicked it open and then heaved the bar off its supports.

We heard it clatter to the ground in the silence beyond. The door swung open. Shad slid forward to stand beside me.

For a moment we were blinded by the sunlight coming in through the big windows at the back of the room. Then through the glare, I saw a large hunched shape in the centre of the room. I stepped forward, power at my finger tips, but as my eyes became accustomed to the glare, I saw it was just another huge statue. Mother Karana with her dying son Tansa lying across her lap, her hand resting delicately and lovingly upon his cheek. The same tableau could be seen in thousands of chapels all over the country. Yet as my eyes searched the room for the source of the necromancy which even now I could sense in air, the boy-priest behind us grasped and cried out.