“What did you do to them?” Birch asked.
“We knocked them out and hid them,” the creature replied. “They’re still in the room where we hid.”
“Birch, what’s going on over there?” Trebor shouted suddenly, looking warily at the press of people around him, which was slowly growing thicker. The mutters were growing louder as more people heard about the captives, and soon the buzz of angry voices drowned out most of the sounds of battle from beyond the Barrier.
“Can’t you hear?”
“The two of could be swapping recipes for all I can tell,” he replied. “I can’t hear a damn thing over the noise.”
“Damn it to Hell,” Birch muttered. He doubted he’d be able to convince the mob on his own, and they’d never listen to what the damned souls had to say, even if they could hear them.
“Help us,” the creature said again. “We don’t want to go back. We’ll become beasts again, but they’ll kill us here.”
“Not if I can help it,” Birch said grimly.
“Uncle,” Danner said worriedly. The crowd was closing in, gaining courage in their press of numbers. “Trebor, can you get us some help here?”
“It’s on the way, but they can’t get through quickly enough,” Trebor replied. “The crowds are too thick back there.”
“Great.”
“Listen,” Birch said, standing up. “These creatures are…” he stopped, drowned out by an outbreak of shouting in the crowd. “Listen!” he shouted, but even those closest to him were ignoring him now. Birch’s eyes flared in anger and the nearest men cringed back, but few men saw him so it had little effect.
Five men rushed forward, and Birch laid about him with the flat of his blade. The men were trying to avoid him to get past to the damned souls behind him, and Birch stood with his back pressed against the helpless souls. Someone reached forward with a knife and cut one of the twisted creatures, and two others lashed out and clawed the attacking man.
“No!” Birch cried, but it was too late. Now that their own blood had been shed, even in self-defense, there was no stopping the crowd. They overwhelmed Birch and the others to attack the damned souls. Birch felt a sense of desperation wash over him as he watched first one and then another of the creatures fall to the men’s weapons.
Rage boiled up within him with a fiery heat, and Birch’s very skin felt like it was catching fire. His sword burned fiercely in his hand, and he nearly dropped it in a spasm of agony. He roared wordlessly, throwing his arms wide and bellowing up into the sky. The mob around him suddenly screamed in terror and fled as quickly as they could. A red haze formed above Birch’s head, but he couldn’t discern the shape.
From his vantage, Danner could see clearly what it was, and his eyes widened in horror. The red outline of what could only be a demon had spewed forth from his uncle’s mouth as a fiery mist. The demon was visible from the waist up, his lower half a wisp of smoke trailing down into Birch’s lips. His wrists were shackled with a few inches of blackened, broken chain dangling from each manacle. The demon’s body was powerfully built, and his face was almost human, except for pointed teeth and a pair of long, bull-like horns sprouting from the sides of his head and towering above him. He had a dense mass of black hair in a twisted patch atop his head, and thick, bushy eyebrows. It was his eyes that attracted Danner’s attention most, though, because they burned with a fire all their own - a red flame Danner recognized all too well.
There was something oddly familiar about the demon. Danner had seen him somewhere before, he was sure, but he couldn’t place it.
The demon mimicked Birch’s stance, his arms wide and his head thrown back to the sky, and a terrific bellow shook the very stones of the courtyard, nearly knocking Danner from his feet. Several men did fall, and they scrambled away on all fours, weeping in terror at the apparition that had appeared in their midst. There were words in the cry, but they passed too quickly for Danner to understand any of it.
From beyond the Barrier, a distant howl could be heard as though every demon on mortal soil suddenly cried out in one voice. It was a cry of hatred and loathing that was quickly drowned out by the ghostly demon’s voice, which built into a deafening crescendo.
The air pulsed with an unseen power, a steady, regular rhythm like the beating of a heart.
The damned souls also looked on the demon with fear, but then their grotesque expressions turned to ecstasy. One by one, they collapsed to the stones, and Danner saw a ghostly image of a man or woman slowly rise out of each body. The transparent figures stared with pitiful gratitude and mouthed unheard words of thanks, then they drifted up a foot or so and vanished in a gust of wind as if they’d never been. The crumpled bodies they left behind crumbled into black dust.
The spirits had lasted only a few seconds, but those left at the scene remained captive to the wonder unfolding before them. The pulsing power continued, and Danner thought he felt words in the nameless power.
I am. I am.
Every word beat something unimaginably eternal and utterly beyond comprehension.
Then the thunderous bellow stopped, and the demon shrank and sank back into Birch through his still-open mouth. When the demon was gone, Birch sank to his knees and had to put his fists on the ground to support himself. His whole body trembled, and when he looked up at Danner, there was no recognition in his fiery eyes. It was the gaze of a stranger looking out through the face of Danner’s uncle. The eyes were the same as they’d been since Danner had really known Birch, and they were the same he’d just seen in the demon.
Birch reached out one hand toward Danner, then he toppled forward and fell unconscious to the ground.
- 6 -
On the other side of the battlefield, Malith felt the stirring of something powerful happening, and a moment later even he recognized the aura of power unique to the demon from which it came. He’d felt that aura before, muted by the powerful restraints and barriers around it, placed there by Mephistopheles himself. But now it was muted only by distance, which was as nothing to the demons around him, who all howled in response to the surge of power.
Malith looked toward the Barrier, stunned, as the demons cried out in one monstrous voice of fury and hatred.
“Kaelus!”
Chapter 32
I do not exist.
- Satan (character),
“Words of God” (first performed in 87 AL)
- 1 -
The Prismatic Council was in an uproar, their confusion and fury centered around Birch and his miraculous - some said accursed - incident in the courtyard. Word had quickly spread, and now it was whispered that a demon had made it within the walls of the Barrier and subverted a paladin. In one telling of the story, Birch, or rather the demon within him, had incinerated two dozen humans instead of the damned souls, and another version had it on certain proof that the demon had slaughtered the entire courtyard full of people.
No matter the telling, everyone was alarmed at the thought of a demon within the walls and the possible corruption of a paladin. The holy warriors were the only ones capable of defeating and destroying the demons, and for centuries they had been viewed as a step above normal men. They had taken on a sense of invincibility behind which the defenders had cowered for solace and false comfort with the coming of Hell’s army. Now the illusion of invulnerability had been badly shaken, and the rumors spread as fear took hold in people’s hearts and burrowed ever deeper with each new embellishment.
For the paladin members of Shadow Company, the irony of this was sickening – they were among the few who knew of the presence of a demon who had been on the Prismatic Council, the secret of which had never been let out to the public. Danner and a few others who had witnessed the altercation realized it was a true miracle of some sort. The damned souls had not been killed again as thousands of their fellows had been on the swords of the mortal defenders. Instead, their souls had been freed from their tortured existence. Danner didn’t know where the souls were bound, whether t
o Heaven or back to Hell, or perhaps to neither one, but he was sure they were better off for having escaped their imprisonment in their own twisted bodies.
Some members of the Prismatic Council seemed to agree with this point of view, and they heralded Birch as a holy blessing from Heaven. Others denounced it as something more sinister. Most notable and foremost among these were Bart Shivrey and a Blue paladin who sat next to him. Danner didn’t know the Blue’s name, and without Trebor there he couldn’t find out immediately.
Trebor had been questioned and then dismissed so the Council could deal with the matter. As Trebor was not a paladin, he was not allowed to participate in the current fiasco, which the Council euphemistically called a “debate.” Danner remained and Garnet had appeared, standing both as Danner’s commanding officer and his friend.
Danner, Birch, and Garnet sat in three chairs placed before the Prismatic Council, which was seated at a formal structure that resembled one long podium stretched out to cover the whole group of men. It was nothing but a curved table with a thick panel of wood on the front so the legs and lower torsos of the Council members were hidden from sight, but the effect was usually one of intimidation toward anyone who stood or sat on the floor below them.
“Why did you attack the crowd of people?” Shivrey asked haughtily. “You took the side of captured enemies over our own forces? You sided with Hell over men? This bodes ill.”
“I did not side with Hell’s forces,” Birch said with level calm. “I sided with the principles of this Prism and the moral dictates of my heart. Those damned souls were being forced to fight against their will, and for that the men in the courtyard would have slain them. They were trying to avoid the fight and find a way to escape, or at least avoid death.”
“So you say,” Shivrey said dismissively.
“So they told me, and so the evidence supports,” Birch said firmly. “The first two men who found them were rendered unconscious, but otherwise unharmed by the creatures. They were found shortly after, and their story corroborates what the damned souls told me.”
“Awfully convenient that you were the only one who could hear them,” the Blue paladin next to Shivrey said suggestively.
“They tried to tell the men who found then,” Birch said.
“It was impossible to hear anything in the courtyard,” Danner pointed out. “I was closer than anyone else, and I could only make out a few words. They might as well have been speaking the immortal tongue, for all that anyone could have understood them.”
“Ah, but perhaps your uncle still might have understood that language,” Shivrey said snidely. “Not only has he freed prisoners and sided with the enemy, but he has been harboring a demon in his very person for an unknown period of time. We performed an exorcism on your uncle when he first returned from Hell with no results, so this being had to have entered him since then.”
Birch glowered at the Prismatic Council.
“You performed an exorcism on me?” Birch growled. “I was specifically told that one had been considered but was not performed. Now you say that I was lied to by my own brothers?”
The paladins shuffled uncomfortably behind their table and looked to each other for affirmation and reassurance. The men who had been added to the Prismatic Council since the demon had been removed shook their heads as though to disavow their involvement.
“You must understand,” an older Green paladin said, “we were uncertain as to the state of your soul, whether it was corrupted or not. It was deemed safer to perform the exorcism while you were still recovering.”
“When I was helpless to stop you, you mean,” Birch said bitterly.
“Yes,” the Green responded, and he lifted his chin defiantly. “It was deemed the safer course of action. Fortunately there was no reaction, so we knew at least you had not been taken against your will. Then during your debriefing and subsequent interviews, we determined you were not concealing a willing coercion. Had you failed either process, you would never have left these premises until we were convinced beyond all doubt you were free of demonic taint.”
Birch stared at the other paladin for a long moment before nodding reluctantly.
“Therefore,” a Blue paladin on the other end of the table said, “since we previously determined you were free of demonic influence, it must have come since your return.”
“I have made no deals with demons, nor have I been in a position to have my will usurped,” Birch said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how this presence came to be, but it was not through any deed or knowledge of mine I can recall.”
Shivrey scoffed loudly, drawing all eyes to him.
“Come now,” he said, “I’ve never been satisfied with your jintaal’s report about what happened to Wein Drolgis, and there were no witnesses to your supposed victory over one of The Three in Den-Furral. Those events have struck many of us as odd, and maybe it’s because the answer is much simpler. We’ve been looking for the source of treachery within our midst, and perhaps now we have found it.”
“Are you accusing me of betraying mankind?” Birch said, his voice hushed but harsh. “Our entire world?”
“By knowingly holding a demon within you and allowing it to roam within our world and within these hallowed halls, causing who knows what sort of mischief and learning our deepest secrets, what other conclusion can we reach than that you are a traitor to our world, to virtue, and to life itself?” Shivrey replied.
Birch’s hands tightened on the arm rests of his chair, and there was a quiet crack as he split the wood beneath his fingertips. Danner glanced down, then looked away quickly, lest his shock betray his uncle. Where Birch’s fingers gripped the wood, the brown surface was singed black, and small, almost imperceptible wafts of smoke rose from beneath Birch’s palms. Danner was sure no one from the Council could see the smoke.
“With all due respect,” Garnet said in a tone that exuded anything but, “we have long since found a major source of treachery within our midst, lest you forget. Unfortunately, as it roamed these hallowed halls and sat on this very council, we know exactly what sort of mischief it caused.”
“You are out of line, paladin jo’Garet,” a Yellow Council member rebuked him.
“I believe all lines were crossed when Shadow Company stood completely unaided against the demonic horde for days on end,” Garnet bit back harshly. “Might I remind this Council that they didn’t send a company of denarae to die. They ordered a half dozen of their own brothers to what should have been a meaningless death. That, gentlemen, is the line that was crossed. That was the only betrayal I see.”
Several of the paladins on the Prismatic Council had the grace to squirm uncomfortably in their seats, and none spoke a word in his own defense. More than one shot dark glares at Bart Shivrey, however, confirming Danner’s suspicions about who had been behind the orders and treachery. Unfortunately, if no one on the Council would stand up to speak against one of their own, he had no way of proving it or seeing justice done. Not yet, anyway.
“No one on this Council betrayed you, paladin jo’Garet,” the Blue paladin sitting next to Shivrey said. “The lack of reinforcements was an unfortunate miscommunication. These things happen in war, I’m afraid. As to your other point, no one here had any knowledge of our brothers’ corruption, or we would have acted to stop it immediately. The question at hand isn’t a betrayal by any of our hands, but rather that of paladin de’Valderat.”
“I have endured worse torments than you could possibly imagine, all for the sake of my devotion to God and this Prism,” Birch said with forced calm. “By my faith as a paladin, I did not know the demon was inside of me until that very moment. I am the only man to have escaped and returned from Hell…”
“Escaped or were allowed to leave by your new masters?” Shivrey asked.
The words were still hanging in the air when Birch suddenly launched himself to a standing position and was just as quickly holding a blazing sword that appeared in his hand from thin air. The cr
imson blade seethed as though someone had managed to forge pure fire into a weapon, and even the hilt swirled with the look of sculpted flame. He hurled the sword forward, where it cut into the front panel of the Council’s table, all in the space of time it took Bart Shivrey to breathe in to shriek in fear. The flaming sword hung quivering in the wood, the crimson flames doing no harm to the wood paneling.
“The next time you insult me so, I will not be so cautious with my aim,” Birch said coldly, an otherworldly menace lingering behind his words.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Shivrey,” Garnet said, not bothering to hide his own hostility toward the man he held largely responsible for Gerard’s death, as well as the loss of a third of Shadow Company, “lest you anger Birch and face that premature talk with God that you and Gerard discussed.”
“P..Paladin de’V..Valderat,” Shivrey stammered in fright, “you will refrain from all such hostility toward this Council.”
“Very well,” Danner said.
“Not you, the other de’Valderat,” an Orange Council member corrected almost absently.
“Oh, my mistake,” Danner said in feigned ignorance. It might have been a trick of the light, but he saw the Orange paladin’s lips twitch in suppressed mirth. For the first time, Danner really began to believe it wasn’t the entire Council that was set against them, just a powerful few.
No one spoke. No one dared break the silence, lest chaos erupt.
Birch stared with cold fury at Bart Shivrey for a moment until the other man inadvertently met his eyes directly. The Yellow paladin’s face drained of blood, and he threw one arm across his face to hide his eyes. The Gray paladin looked down the line of Council members, none of whom even made an attempt to meet his gaze. Birch snorted in contempt, then stepped around his chair and left the room in silence before anyone could say another word in protest. When he was gone, the flaming sword disappeared, leaving a hole cut into the otherwise undamaged wooden panel.
The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Page 45