Fire Angels

Chapter 26 A Ruler is Chosen

Shad had not come alone to rescue me. The moment they had heard of my capture, the army of Klementari who had been so cautiously digging in, burst out of their barricades and trenches and came storming across the Wasteland. Although they were harried by Fire Angels all the way, within two days they had arrived at the walls of Sanctuary. It was the fourth day of my captivity by then. They attacked the fortress of Sanctuary immediately with all power, magical and physical, at their command. It was their fireballs I had seen shooting though the sky over the cathedral that night.

Darmen Stalker's conviction that he was really some kind of demon had made him supremely and foolishly confident. A lesser man might have tapped me immediately, but Darmen Stalker merely watched the Klementari's attacks with a calm and disdainful eye and waited till the morning of the sixth day when I had regained my full power.

After many futile assaults on the walls of Sanctuary and after enduring the attacks of the Fire Angels, the Klementari were just gathering themselves for another attack, when they heard the yowling of the furious demons and saw the implacable fortress cathedral of Sanctuary come crashing to the ground.

The Klementari killed the escaping blood beasts and mercenaries, rescued the prisoners and searched the rubble for survivors, but these tasks were nothing compared with the struggle that had faced them before. The Destroyer was gone and so were his Fire Angels. Not bad work for someone who was only a burden though I did not manage to get Symon the Raven to admit as much.

By the time I woke in Shad's tent the following morning, they were hard at work again cleansing the ruins of the cathedral of its demon taint and destroying all the statues. The majority of them had already left the encampment however and had gone storming home to Ernundra.

When I awoke, the first thing I asked about was Dally. Had she got out of the ruins? Was she safe?

Tomas and Lucien, who had searched long and hard for us both, told me that they'd found no sign of her. To assume that she was dead, crushed in the collapse of the cathedral seemed the only logical conclusion. Yet I had a sinking feeling that Bedazzer, having gained a foothold in our world, would not allow that to happen and that she was somewhere out there, still with him at her side.

I remembered our argument about Smazor in the collapsing corridor and wondered what dark pathways Dally would be travelling if she had indeed survived. I had thought she was a rude and passionate little girl, but I could not bring myself to believe she was evil or capable of murder and torture. I hoped she would quickly be repelled by Bedazzer's ruthless greed and leave him and perhaps return to us. She had been lonely as I had once been lonely and desperate to avenge her mother and Bedazzer had taken advantage of that. She was even more ignorant of demons and their cunning ways than I had been. And as for wanting to know Smazor's real name, she was just the kind of young person who might have thought to use demon power to do good in this world, not realizing how such power could taint and corrupt its goals and in the end its user. When I thought of that I almost hoped that she had been crushed in the destruction of Sanctuary.

I did not tell Tomas and Lucien about Dally's relationship with Bedazzer, but I did tell Shad. I told Shad everything.

For a day or so I remained quietly in his tent. The stone that I had turned myself into seemed to have seeped into my bones and joints and for days afterwards they ached. At first I could barely hobble around. Beg merely snorted at my complaints and said she had to put up with such pains all the time. She was more sympathetic about my loss of power to Smazor, though she did not think I had taken too much damage. Mages usually recovered from being drained by demons much better than other people, she told me. Perhaps that was why Tasha had found the strength to escape from Sanctuary all that time ago.