Birch shook his head ruefully.
“To think I spent all that time avoiding him when I was actually trying to avoid what I couldn’t see in myself.”
“Congratulations, Birch,” James said softly. “You’re one of only two or three people who have ever realized Vander’s secret, and as I once mentioned, Vander is not one of those privileged few. You’re right that it’s rarely anything he says or does directly, it’s just a sense he exudes when he’s alone with someone, and it’s almost universally a reflection of their flaws or less desirable traits. He doesn’t know that he does it, and even if he did, I don’t think he’d know how he did it. But it’s a useful tool, both in self-evaluation and in evaluating others. I’ve taken Vander with me on numerous diplomatic occasions and, after introducing him to people, I’ll talk to them hours later and ask their impressions. It helps me see more clearly who they are as people, and I’ve come to rely on it.
“The Prismatic Council has often praised my abilities as a Yellow paladin, but truthfully, I wouldn’t have half my success were it not for Vander’s unsuspecting help.”
Birch nodded, understanding James’s capitalization on the Orange paladin’s strange abilities.
“And actually,” James said, looking at a dwarven clock on the wall, “I’m going to go try and find the good brother Wayland, to make sure he doesn’t miss the rest of the play. I’ve got enough time to get to the library and back, and anyway, I’ve already seen this play two or three times.”
“Alright,” Birch said. “I’ll keep an extra seat open.”
Suddenly curious, Birch left to go find Danner to ask him his impressions of Vander.
Chapter 26
Knowledge: The balance and combination of intelligence, wisdom, and experience.
- “An Examination of Prismatic Virtue” (801 AM)
- 1 -
When James returned, the play was finished. Birch had been worriedly looking over his shoulder every few minutes, wondering where James and Vander were.
The play continued as the Blue paladin recovered from his wounds and had to balance his desire for vengeance with the need for justice. An angel in disguise confronted him and made him realize that it wasn’t the townspeople’s fault, but rather the demons who were controlling them. So the Blue paladin returned to the town in disguise and exposed the demons, then helped the townsfolk destroy them.
“If there be a swordsman better than I, let me receive his blade in mine eye,” the most powerful demon shouted, challenging the onrushing villagers.
“Thy sin and vice stoke demonic pleasure, but now there is come one who will take thy measure,” the actor-paladin shouted as he rushed forward to destroy the leader of the demons.
The curtains dropped amidst thunderous applause, then the lights were unshielded to illuminate the audience. Birch looked back, and finally, there was James; alone and worried. He signaled Birch to follow him.
“I can’t find Vander anywhere,” James said in a low voice as they met in an alcove. “I tried the library, but the paladin on duty said Vander left hours ago to catch the play. I checked his rooms and anywhere else he might have gone, but nothing. He’s been known to disappear for a day or two at a time, but always in the library. I’m actually worried about him.”
“Let’s get the others and start searching,” Birch said, catching some of James’s concern himself. They quickly enlisted Garet, Danner, and their other friends and split up to search for Vander.
Danner rushed through the areas he was responsible for searching, knowing that he had to finish soon so he could get some rest for the coming day. He knew it would be much simpler if they had Trebor, who could just locate Vander by his thoughts, but Trebor was too far away to hear Danner’s thoughts, so he couldn’t even call his friend to come help.
The hallways were mostly dark, since it was late at night and anyone up and about was supposed to carry their own glow lamp or torch as Danner was doing. The flickering light illuminated a circle around him and tossed grotesque shadows behind and before him. Brackets on the walls cast shadows that leapt and danced like living creatures that retreated swiftly as Danner hurried closer, then past. Behind him, they came out from hiding again to dance in delight until his light faded away, and they vanished once more.
Danner walked down the hallway alone, searching rooms on either side and choosing directions at random when the hallway branched. He finally slowed down and started to walk more slowly, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He was uneasy and found himself walking silently, and the noiseless void closed in around him like a fist. The only sound was the pop of the flame on the torch in his hand.
Danner saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, a hand reaching out, and then his torch abruptly went dark. The unknown hand had smothered the light, and only a dark, smoldering heap remained on the end of his torch. Danner’s eyes were too accustomed to the flaring light from the torch to see anything, and he backed away to avoid an attack that never came.
“You?” a husky, sibilant voice said from the darkness, almost in Danner’s ear. The voice hissed in displeasure ─ and perhaps in fear ─ and Danner heard footsteps hurrying away from him. He ran after the fleeing sound, hoping to stay close enough, but the darkness made him cautious, and he soon lost the sound, no matter how quietly he tread. A haunting, maddened laughter drifted back and caused him to hurry a little further on, but then he stopped again.
Danner stood in a complete void of light and sound. He thought about ways to relight his torch, but realized he had nothing. As a last resort, Danner asolved his wings and used their blue luminescence to light the hallway. Everything around him glowed in gradients of blue and shadow, and now Danner drew a dagger and continued down the hallway in the direction the laughter and the footsteps had gone.
Danner’s wings brushed the edges of the stone hallway to either side, sending tingling sensations through his spine, which distracted him. But he dared not turn off his wings until he found an alternate source of light. Instead, he furled them closer to his body, fitting them like a second blue cloak. His main concern was that someone else might come along the corridor and see him. If they came from ahead, he might see their light. But if they approached from behind, Danner wouldn’t know they were there until it was too late.
With this in mind, Danner looked behind him every few steps, which only added to his feelings of anxiety. It left him with the sense that he was being followed ─ stalked by an unseen and unknown enemy. He shivered.
As Danner reached an intersection, he heard the same haunting laughter from a set of stairs that led down to a lower level. In the panic of the darkness, Danner had allowed himself to get disoriented, and he no longer remembered in what part of the building he had been searching. Surely he was still near the theater, but in what direction had he gone?
Danner tried to sort out his directions as he slowly descended the stairs, intent on following the mysterious voice and presence. If it was an enemy, as it seemed, it must not be allowed to reside in the paladin chapterhouse. Perhaps it was a spy, or a traitor. Or a demon that had somehow made it past the Barrier to infiltrate the Prism again. All these and more possibilities drifted through Danner’s mind, and soon he was imagining all sorts of terrible creatures that might be waiting below. It was almost enough to make him stop, but the sensation of his wings and the power they gave him lent Danner strength, and he continued with only a slight falter in his step to mark the decision.
When the stairs ended, Danner looked around in confusion. He was in a large room filled with a wide assortment of junk. Swords lay blade-down in a wide cylindrical tube, but some of them looked like painted wood. Masks of some sort were arranged on a rack on the nearest wall. Bizarre constructs of wood and plaster were standing everywhere in the room, and at last Danner realized where he was. One of the prop rooms for the stage. He must have spiraled down and back toward the way he’d come, and the stairs had led him down here.
Danner looked a
round and saw a pair of large doors that led out to the stage, and he breathed in relief as he at last knew his location. Over by the doors were the stage sets for the night’s play, including two of the false fronts of the town and the large Tricrus on which the paladin had been hung. The dummy was still on the man-sized symbol, crucified and hanging in synthetic torment. The props were all in shadows, but Danner recognized the outline from the light of his wings.
The haunting laughter returned, now directionless as it echoed in the stuffy confines of the room. Danner spun around, trying to at least get a general direction of where it might have come from, but the laughter faded too soon. He edged backward, closer to the door to the stage. Perhaps he could leave and return with help.
Then he noticed the smell. It was an odor he recognized from the battlefield, from hundreds of slain men lying dead or dying around him. It was the stench of stagnating blood; of feces and gases released from a body with no living control; of flesh torn and rent asunder. It was foul, and it reeked of death. Danner probed the blue-coated shadows with his eyes, but saw nothing. He backed closer to the door, and the stench grew stronger. Finally he backed up to something solid, and his head brushed up against a protrusion of some sort. Danner reached back, not wanting to look away from the room, and felt the boots of the dummy crucified on the giant Tricrus.
They were slick with blood.
Danner glanced down and saw a pool of liquid, turned black in the blue light, and a pile of soft, purple cord that was coated in the black stuff. Against his will, his eyes followed the thick purple coils as they climbed the wood of the holy symbol and receded into the bowels of the body hung there. The man’s chest had been torn open and all its vital organs hung out in a grotesque display of horror. Danner shifted his eyes up further, then he turned to the side as his stomach heaved violently. Bile burned his throat and spewed onto the floor.
The haunting laughter came again, more loudly than before, then it faded as the source slipped from the room. Danner forced himself to look at the body once more and to look at the face.
He had found Vander Wayland.
- 2 -
“It was the dybbuk, had to have been,” Garnet said. The others looked at him. “Something Marc mentioned that he and Vander had been talking about. A sort of proto-demon with limited mind-controlling abilities.”
“Vander told us, too,” James replied, staring vacantly down at the body of his friend. “He told us before the whole bloody Prismatic Council.”
Vander’s body had been removed from the wooden Tricrus and laid on a bier so he could be examined. The cause of his death was fairly obvious – his throat had been cut before he’d been disemboweled – but what they had yet to figure out was when he died.
“He could not have been hung on the stage prop until at least after the first act was over,” Nuse said. “The second act took its props from a room on the other side of the stage, and no one entered this room after the background pieces that were no longer needed were stored here. The stagehands thought the room was locked.”
“It was,” Danner said quietly. “I broke the lock getting out of there to find you all.”
“It’s inhuman,” Perky whispered, refusing to look at the body any longer. He had seen some gruesome sights as a healer, even some worse than this, but none so horrible on the body of someone he’d known and journeyed with. Seeing a companion’s face connected to such horror was more than he could bear.
“That’s exactly why this thing is so dangerous,” Garet said. “It’s inhuman. It’s semi-demonic. It’s evil, and we can’t tell who or what it is until it’s too late. This creature is living in the mind of one of our brothers, and there’s no way for us to detect it. Nor do we have the time, with the war about to return full-force.”
“Speaking of which, we have to go, Danner,” Gerard said somberly. “Garnet.”
“You’re going?” Nuse said incredulously. He motioned to Vander’s body. “With this just happening, you’re still going?”
“It’s our duty,” Gerard said. “Come.”
The three paladins left the room, leaving a stunned silence behind them.
“They’re either crazy, or they should all be wearing those red cloaks of courage,” Nuse said, shaking his head. “They’ll all be slaughtered for sure.”
“That’s my son, Nuse,” Garet said, his voice thick.
“Oh, sorry, Garet,” Nuse said, grimacing. “I forgot.”
“Don’t count him as dead until you have to,” Garet said. “I have every faith in Garnet’s ability to survive.”
“Normally I’d be the first to agree with you, after traveling with you and having heard what that boy can do,” Nuse said. “But against that horde out there?” Nuse shook his head, but fell silent.
“He’ll live,” Garet said. “I made him promise he’d give me grandchildren to bounce on my knee.”
Birch looked at Garet and saw pain in the giant man’s eyes. Whatever his words, Garet feared for his son’s life more than he would ever admit, even to himself. Birch shared his feelings and found himself hating the Prismatic Council for placing his nephew in harm’s way.
Is this what parents felt for their children? Birch wondered. If it’s any worse when your own child faces such danger, how do any of them stand it?
Birch thought for a moment with regret about his own lack of children, then brushed the strange pain aside to focus on the present crisis. His own longing could come later.
“We need to start asking questions,” Nuse said after they’d stood in silence a few minutes. “Maybe someone saw Vander with someone right before he disappeared. Someone had to see something,” he said firmly. “At least it will give us a place to start.”
“You and Perky will have to handle it,” James said, his voice firming. He finally looked up from Vander’s bloodless face. “Garnet, Birch, and I are all assigned to join the battle tomorrow.”
“I, too, will be there,” Perky said quietly. “I’m joining the other Greens in healing the wounded. My skills will be needed.”
“Wonderful then,” Nuse said. “I doubt the war will hinge on whether or not I’m there, but finding this thing could make a difference. I’ll let you know if I discover anything.”
“Please do,” James said, his voice emotionless. He grabbed Vander’s orange cloak from where it had fallen on the ground and spread the material over his friend’s body and face.
“Rest well, my friend,” James said. “Take your ease in Heaven and find all new texts to delight you, then you can bore me to tears when I finally join you there.”
They all turned and left. A pair of robed monks entered in their wake to remove the body and prepare it for cremation according to James’s directions. Vander’s ashes were to be buried beneath a tree in a courtyard near the library. The Orange paladin had often sat beneath the tree reading, and James remembered a conversation in which Vander had mentioned he wanted to be buried there when his time came.
James would carry out his wishes, and then find some way to avenge Vander’s death.
Chapter 27
Soldiers obey. Warriors follow.
- Garnet jo’Garet,
“The Warrior Mythos” (1030 AM)
- 1 -
Danner awoke the next morning when the slivered moons were still the only light in the sky, barely visible in their current phases. Caret entered his tent and touched his shoulder, and Danner opened his eyes and nodded that he was awake. After discovering Vander’s body, he and the others from Shadow Company had returned to see to the final preparations for their early-morning departure. All through the last hour he was awake, visions of Vander’s body haunted Danner’s memory.
When he slept, he dreamt he found the body again and again, but instead of Vander, it was Trebor. Then it was Garnet. Then Gerard. Then it was Danner himself hanging on the holy symbol with his chest open, screaming silently in pain. It was not a restful sleep.
Now, with the coming of the new day and th
e fate that would soon envelope their company, Danner’s chest ached as though he still felt the pain of his nightmares. He wondered what it would really feel like at the end. He stared in the mirror as he shaved, looking into his own eyes, wondering if he would even see it coming. Would he face death standing, as Gerard intended, or would Danner’s courage fail him? Would he die a coward?
Why am I even doing this? he asked himself, staring silently into his reflected eyes for an answer that wouldn’t come.
He dressed in plate armor newly delivered the evening before while they were at the chapterhouse – it was the first time he’d worn the full trappings of a paladin. The Tricrus stood in raised relief on the breastplate, gold against the shining steel. The steel tassets below his breastplate whispered as they brushed past each other, and he shrugged his shoulders to settle the back plate. He secured his greaves and the splinted vambraces[25] he’d commissioned so as not to overly restrict his movements.
Most of the rest of Danner’s armor was a thick, flexible leather for the same reason. Danner felt more comfortable relying on his speed and skill than fully encasing himself in steel. His sword hung loosely at his side, and Danner lifted his shield and slid his arm slowly through the straps. The metal spike on the bottom brushed against the ground, leaving a long line in a layer of dirt. Danner stared at the line, then shifted his grip and made two intersecting lines to cut the original into thirds, completing the holy symbol on the ground.
Then he lifted his burgonet helmet, settled it firmly on his head, and left his tent. A blast of winter air met him and dispelled any warmth left in his body.
In the street before him, Caret had already formed up the platoon, perfectly in line with the other five platoons from Shadow Company. Danner’s friends were dressed in their own new armor, each wearing slightly different combinations of plate, leather, and chain in keeping with their fighting style and personal taste. Even Trebor wore a new steel cuirass and greaves, but his armor lacked the decorative Tricrus emblazoned on the chests of the paladins.
The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Page 37