Sorcha's Revolt
EPILOGUE

Crumbled towers rose out of the fog and Sorcha found herself looking up at the ruins of the western gatehouse. The Darian battering rams had broken through and lay abandoned on the threshold. Silvan and Kellion bodies lay littered within the gate, a few Darian bodies too, but the fighting had moved on deeper into the city.

The great obelisk that stood beside the gatehouse, the gravestone of Noth Dansac, DeSilva's ancestor, had cracked and toppled, revealing a tunnel into the tomb beyond. The superstitious fear of the dead that was instinctive to all Silvans momentarily overwhelmed her, and she ran through the shattered gates without another thought until she stood at the edge of the fog just outside the city.

Outside, Darian bodies littered the open ground before the city walls. In places, the wall had been flung down and amid the rubble lay the dead of all sides. Through the thinning fog, Sorcha looked west and saw the last reserves of the Darian army, still waiting. She knew then that Silveneir was doomed; a huge contingent of Darian soldiers still remained to bolster their attack, and the Warmaster himself was there to lead them.

He stood in the centre of the field, a towering Darian with his army behind him, and at his feet a patch of blackened earth on which lay a smouldering body.

Sorcha's legs gave way beneath her as she recognised the feebly moving form of DeSilva. Around him lay the smouldering remains of the demonic suit of armour that had embodied Stantine Fenn, the charred fragments that had burned so bright now dull and black.

The Warmaster stood over DeSilva for a moment longer, studying him, then stepped over his body and advanced through the broken gates of the city. The Darian reserves marched in behind him, stepping over DeSilva and barging Sorcha from their path. She scrambled to him in the press and held him until the Darians had marched by and the dust of their footsteps was all that remained.

Only then did she dare to check DeSilva pulse and discover that he was still alive. He was barely breathing, battered and burned from head to foot, but he lived.

On his finger gleamed the ring that he had said was the source of his arcane powers. Sorcha scrabbled it off his hand and put it on, clasped it in front of her and pleaded silently to see some spark of sorcery. Then a memory sparked, and she went at once to the nearest fragment of Fenn's shattered armour. Touching it, she found the twisted metal still warm.

She pressed the ring to the sundered mail and was rewarded with a tiny gleam of hellfire deep within the ruby ring.

"Fenn?"

"I hear you." The demon's voice was a creaking whisper, a faint rending of the air all around her.

"I thought you were dead..."

"I am not life." The demon's voice grew stronger, and the ring throbbed a deeper red.

"Monte's hurt, I can't move him, I think... I think he's dying," she choked off a sob and forced herself to address the demon again. "Please, Fenn, you have to do something."

"He will not die." The demon's voice echoed above her now, hot iron plates clashing together. "I will not permit it."

Sorcha looked up and saw a dark figure in full plate armour charred utterly black. There was no man inside it, only a dull red glow that emanated from the chinks and the open visor.

For the first time, Sorcha did not feel the nauseating drain of her vitality that usually accompanied the demon's appearance.

"The ring protects you," Stantine Fenn explained.

"Did you say you could save him?"

"He cannot be saved; his soul he mortgaged twice to me, first for vengeance upon your family, and again for your deliverance from the house of Iaran. But life with you was the price of his damnation, and so it shall be yours. Choose, Sorcha Kavnor; go hence now and know that this man will live forever in hell for love of you or buy your life with him from me."

"He'll be alright? Whatever your deal with him, you'll put it off so we can be together if I sell you my soul too, is that it?" The demon nodded.

Sorcha looked again at DeSilva's unconscious face, then lowered his head gently to the earth and stood up to face the demon. "Alright."

"Give me the ring."

Sorcha hesitated in the act of taking off the ring to hand it over.

"You said it protects me..."

"Exactly. Give me the ring."

She surrendered it, and Stantine Fenn put it on the smallest finger of his gauntleted hand. The ruby flared into life and Fenn extended his hand towards Sorcha.

"Take my hand." "Will this hurt?" "Forever."

"But you'll keep your promise? You won't let Monte die, and we can get away from here and finally be together somewhere safe and be happy without any battles, gunfights, duels, revolutions, any of it, ever again or at least for a very, very long time?"

"In life I was a mortal knight," the demon replied, "None shall harm you or your hero while your souls belong to me." "Deal," Sorcha said, and shook the demon's hand.

Instantly fire flared through her blood and set her tattoos ablaze. The green fire of Naril sorcery flared once and was gone, transformed into the blazing white of Stantine Fenn's presence. When the demon released her, Sorcha staggered back changed. Her many bright tattoos were interweaved with a new, complex design of red and gold, too extensive and detailed for her to take in at a glance.

The demon stepped past her and stooped down to haul DeSilva upright by his charred shirt. There was a moment of translocation, DeSilva and Fenn seeming to occupy the same space and yet remain themselves, and then DeSilva stood before Sorcha, dressed in Stantine Fenn's ancient armour.

He blinked and stared at her, then looked about at the battlefield before the walls and the burning city beyond them.

"Where's my father?"

"He said he was going to blow up the city," Sorcha said, numbly.

DeSilva absorbed this. "Right. Um... let's run for it now before the rush starts."

Sorcha nodded. "That was his advice too."

She was too emotionally and physically exhausted to run; taking DeSilva's hand, Sorcha put the city to her back and started walking.

"And we still forgot the backpack full of treasure," Sorcha said, ten yards along the road.

DeSilva swore, glancing back at the city behind them. "Well we're not going back for the rest of it. Have you seen those storm clouds?"

Sorcha glanced back too and saw the thunderheads, which had depended above the city since the battle's dawn, beginning to gather and descend, crowding down upon the tallest spies of the city.

A wind rolled in off the sea, suddenly cold and strong, and in the east, they saw dark waves rising against the sky. Lightning growled in the clouds overhead, echoed moments later by rolling thunder. Sorcha and DeSilva walked on hand in hand, stoically not looking back until they had cleared the slopes of the first hill beyond Silveneir.

"What do you mean, 'the rest of it'?" Sorcha asked, while they watched the storm gather.

"I have a bag of gold-dust in my pocket,” Desilva said, blithely. "And a handful of gems."

Sorcha punched him hard on the arm.

"What?" DeSilva asked. "A good campaigner stays prepared."

As they looked back, a green light shone out from the Warmistress' palace atop the northern of the two pyramids that dominated the city skyline. Then a scream arose, a wordless howl born on the winds of hell. As if in answer, lightning stabbed down from the heavens and smote the palace in a crackling blast.

The storm imploded, the clouds suddenly unleashing a downpour that turned the horizon black and blotted out half the city for several minutes. As swiftly as it began, it passed, leaving the skies clearer but still ominous with remnant clouds. From their vantagepoint, Sorcha saw the clouds in the east gathering above the sea, roiling black towards the city. The wind that bore the storm reached them moments later, tearing at their clothes with icy fingers so that Sorcha and DeSilva clung to each other against the gale.

With the wind, the great waves that they had seen gathering before crashed against the central harbour of Silveneir.

The whole city shook and went on shaking as the wind redoubled and lightning began to flash down like the arrows of an enraged god, blasting the city and tearing it to the foundations. In one cataclysmic blast of elemental fury, as if the wrath of earth, sea and sky had fallen in one instant, the cliffs of Silveneir crumbled.

The southern pyramid, seat of Iaran's temple, cried out like a living thing and collapsed into the sea, raising a great wave that flooded half the city, dousing fires and rinsing out the shattered sewers.

"You know your father survived that, right?" Sorcha asked, when the echoes of the multitudinous blast faded.

"Oh, yes," DeSilva said.

"Monte," Sorcha leant close and gazed up at him, pouting. "Would you mind if we never lay eyes on another living member of your family? Your father, your uncles, any more aunts and sisters who might be out there, none of them at all. Please?"

"Only if we never have to see any of your family ever again either."

"Oh, Monte, you say the sweetest things," Sorcha said, and kissed him.