“Why was he even released?” Nuse asked. “What makes Kaelus so important? I would think Satan would prefer having a traitorous demon imprisoned rather than letting him go to possibly return to Heaven.”
“Are we sure Kaelus’s motives are pure?” Flasch asked. “I mean, it was more or less him talking just then, and can we really trust the word of a demon?”
“I think so,” Birch said, then shook his head. “I can’t explain it, but I know he was telling the truth. He really is on the side of God, and he seemed to believe there was a good reason Satan was releasing him. I suppose the question to ask is instead whether Satan’s motives are beneficial to us, and I’m much more likely to doubt that. Satan could easily have lied to Kaelus about why he was being released, whatever that reason is, and Kaelus was so desperate for escape that he believed Satan.”
They sat in silence a moment, mulling over the question of what they should believe and trying to decipher the true source of everything they’d just heard. Not surprisingly, it was Marc who raised the next question.
“Birch, maybe I missed something, but how is it that Mephistopheles reigns in Hell, yet Satan acts covertly to undermine him?” the Orange paladin asked. “I mean, one of the books Danner translated for me indicates a mostly hands-off approach of both God and Satan, but surely if the supreme being of evil in the world wanted Kaelus free, he’d be free. Why the subterfuge?”
The answer came to Birch unbidden, either as a direct response from Kaelus or as part of some hidden memory, he couldn’t be sure. Whatever the source, it felt true.
“During the Great Schism, Mephistopheles utterly dominated his forces and controlled the actions of nearly every demon to some degree,” Birch replied. “Only the demon princes and lords maintained some degree of autonomy, but they still felt his influence. Following their defeat, the demon king released his will – he realized it was a liability and part of the reason for his failure.
“But one thing he maintained, a conditioning so subtle that few if any are aware he still exerts his influence. Mephistopheles has suppressed all knowledge of Satan from the demons. To their mind, he is the king and complete ruler in Hell, and for all we know, he’s made himself synonymous with their ultimate master. They don’t interact with the angels or even we mortals, save those already in Hell and under his influence, so there’s no check to reveal his grand lie.”
“To what purpose?” Garet asked.
“Power,” James supplied. “If they’re not even aware a higher authority exists, no one can look beyond him. He stands at the peak of the mountain, and when they look up, all they see is him, ruling from on high. Ancient history shows the same thinking behind a series of so-called god-kings who reigned during the Dark Ages.”
“Precisely,” Birch said.
“Are we sure that’s the way it is?” Garnet asked. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t trust you or the demon within you, Birch, but how can we know for sure? Perhaps Mephistopheles really does rule Hell in actuality, or supplanted Satan and this is payback. For the most part, our knowledge of divine society comes from texts centuries old and only from one side of the immortal family, as it were.”
Flasch snapped his fingers.
“Of course,” he said enthusiastically and jumped to his feet. “It’s been in front of us all along, so commonplace and everyday, I bet no one’s ever bothered to think much of it.”
They looked at him quizzically.
“The cards,” Flasch said, as if that should explain everything.
“What in San’s name are you talking about?” Garet asked.
“Ignore him, dad,” Garnet replied, “his mind’s probably overworked from actually being used for once.”
Flasch glared at Garnet.
“Damn it, I’m serious,” he said. “Think about it. In the Hell suit, Mephistopheles is the King of Hell. Not only as a political position, as we’ve surmised from the texts in the library, but also by his place as the highest-ranking card in the suit. But what is Satan? He’s a wild card, completely independent of the rest of the suit. They’re two different cards, with Satan the more powerful and useful. I mean, we’ve already noticed some abnormalities with regards to the Kaelus and Satan cards. Maybe there’s more to it.”
Flasch didn’t mention a more disturbing realization he’d just had, namely that the Satan card was equal in power and game strength to the other wild card: God. The Almighty. As a paladin of piety – the virtue of proper devotion to God – the thought went too far for him to willingly follow without extensive prayer and introspection. If there was anything to his first thought…
“That actually makes sense,” Danner murmured to Michael.
“I know,” the Yellow paladin replied.
“But it came from Flasch,” Danner pointed out in disbelief.
“I know,” Michael said, equally bewildered.
“Overworked mind or not, I think he’s right,” James said. “I wish Vander was here right now. He’d have a field day examining the implications of what this means to the way we’ve always viewed Hell and the relationships of the demons. How this was all overlooked, maybe conditioned out of us somehow.”
“What about Heaven and the angels?” Perky asked quietly. They all turned to stare at him in puzzlement.
“I mean,” he said, uncomfortable with all their attention suddenly focused on him, “it seems that Mephistopheles is the acting ruler in Hell, hence his position as King, which we know for certain from the texts the immortals left us. If so, then Satan must be removed from the whole thing, like the wild card in Dividha, which seems kind of fitting, now that I think about it.”
“And so is God,” Birch said, and he nodded as he saw where Perky had gone with his thoughts.
“There’s that text Danner helped us translate,” Marc reminded them absently, absorbed in his own thoughts. “Vander and I talked about it once, and he even wrote a piece about it. He was dead-on about the hands-off approach God and Satan seem to have taken. I wish he was here,” Marc added, echoing James’s earlier statement.
Birch stared at Marc speculatively, then went on. “That fits with what we’re proposing. Mephistopheles may rule in Hell, but following a parallel structure, it is Satan who truly holds the power, were He to act on it. After all, Maya holds the place in Dividha as the King of Heaven, not God.”
“That’s always made me wonder,” Nuse said. “I mean, she’s a woman, but she’s the ‘King.’ I guess gender doesn’t mean much up there. Who are the Queens of each suit, I forget.”
“Daella is the Queen of Hell, but that’s a convention of the game more than an actual title,” Birch said. “I remember that much at least. It’s not as though she and Mephistopheles were married rulers, she’s just the second-most powerful demon in Hell, not counting Kaelus, and holds only Mephistopheles himself above her. As for Heaven, it’s Uriel, another one of the Seraphim.”
James shuffled through the deck and held up the two cards in question. Daella was a stunningly beautiful woman with a malicious cast to her features that made her appearance as terrible as it was striking. She looked human, except for a pair of inch-high horns protruding from just above the hairline on her forehead and two small, apparently useless bat wings just visible behind her shoulders. She was clad in skin-tight, black hide armor with an array of weapons visibly arranged about her body.
Uriel stood as a six-winged angel clad in gleaming armor, a sword wreathed in blue flame held in both hands as though ready to attack an unseen foe. His violet wings had the same glowing appearance Danner’s had when asolved, and the vivid image seemed to almost pulsate with the power of the Seraph. The face was beautiful and stern, and it put Danner in mind of a judge he’d once seen years ago rendering a harsh verdict on a fellow thief.
“Aren’t we reading a bit too much into this?” Hoil asked. “As spectacular a deck as that is, it’s still just a deck of cards, and it’s just a game. I don’t know that we need to go revising centuries of doctrine just
because we noticed something new about the cards in Dividha.”
Birch shook his head.
“You’re not seeing it, brother,” Birch said. “I can feel the truth of this, but even without that, I’d believe we’re on the right track. The fact that the Kaelus card, the Devil’s Deuce, is a more powerful card when used in the Heaven suit, and that it’s the only Hell card that can be used with a Heaven card is too striking a coincidence to be ignored. Even his name, the Devil’s Deuce, aligns with his mysterious but special role in the eyes of Satan, who is named in some older texts under the moniker of The Devil. There’s simply too much there to ignore or take too lightly.”
“Alright, I’m just saying we shouldn’t just chuck the honest wares overboard with the contraband just because of a new theory that still hasn’t been proven,” Hoil said. “You say Mephistopheles has repressed knowledge in every demon in existence, and it just seems a bit much to me without real proof. Just keep it in mind.”
“Wise words,” James said. “While I, too, believe we’re on the correct track, Hoil’s right that we shouldn’t lightly take Birch’s recollection as complete truth, especially if it turns centuries of doctrine on its ear. There is still value in what we’ve always believed, even if at times it may only lie in answering the question ‘Why’ have we always believed it? Everything we’ve thought to be true had a source, and I’m anticipating a collective apoplexy in the whole of the Orange Facet when we eventually place this before them as they suddenly have to reexamine every document we have trying to prove it one way or another.”
James chuckled slightly.
“Maybe Vander’s better off where he is,” he said lightly. James still felt pain over his friend’s death, but it had lessened considerably over the last week. He imagined Vander running amok in whatever library Heaven held, driving the immortals to distraction with his questions and thirst for knowledge. That image alone did wonders to ameliorate his grief.
Danner was working on a question to ask his uncle about Kaelus when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a burst of denarae kything that made him start in surprise.
“Danner,” Trebor kythed, “you’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“Brican’s on his way here, and something’s happened to Alicia,” Trebor told him briskly. “She’s been kidnapped.”
Danner stiffened and nearly bolted upright with a wordless cry, causing everyone to stare at him in concern.
“Shut up, Danner!” Trebor’s mental voice hissed. “Just shut up a moment and trust me.”
“Sorry, cramp,” Danner said lamely, then settled down again, making a show of massaging his leg. Mentally, he was listening to Trebor and trying to think straight at the same time, which was difficult in the sudden wave of concern that had engulfed his thoughts.
“We don’t know how or when it happened,” Trebor was saying in Danner’s mind. “Someone just appeared on our sentry lines, and Brican picked up the maliciousness of his thoughts. When the sentries challenged him, he told them to deliver a message. You have to go to an abandoned warehouse, but you’re allowed to bring any two people from Shadow Company you wish. No one else is allowed to know. If they see anyone but you and the two others, they’ll kill her. If they learn you’ve told anyone else, she’s gone.”
“How the Hell would they know if I told anyone?” Danner asked angrily.
“I don’t know,” Trebor replied. “Brican is much better at deep kything than most here, but even he couldn’t read a damn thing from the man’s thoughts. They didn’t even get a look at his face. I think we may have found that dybbuk creature that Marc told us about; the thing that killed Vander.”
Danner ground his teeth in frustration, trying to maintain an outward calm.
“Much as I’d love to, I can’t take Garnet with me,” Danner thought to Trebor. “This has got to be a trap for me, and he’d be the best person to have with me, but I can’t take him away from Shadow Company in case there’s a battle while I’m gone. Anyway, she’s Marc’s sister. I’ll take him.”
“And your second?”
“Will you come with me?”
“You have to ask?”
“Then why’d you bring it up in the first place?”
Trebor relayed the information to Marc, adding extra emphasis that he needed to remain calm. Danner watched the Orange paladin closely, and he saw his friend abruptly stiffen and look at Danner in alarm. Danner nodded slowly.
“Trebor, go ahead and tell Garnet,” Danner said after a moment’s thought. “There’s no way they can know if you tell him with kything. As long as he keeps it to himself, there’s no danger, and he needs to know where we’re going in case there’s an emergency.”
“We don’t get a rescue team, Danner,” Trebor replied.
“If we need one, then we’re already shneiked,” Danner thought. “I’m just wondering why they’re trying to split us up right now. He needs to be prepared in case something big happens.”
“Good thinking.”
“I just wish we had time to get our full armor back on,” Danner thought in frustration. Of the three, only Marc still wore his plate armor, and there was no plausible explanation for Trebor and Danner to go suit up at the moment. They couldn’t risk the delay or the questions it would raise. The leathers they wore now would have to suffice.
Danner chaffed for the few seconds it took Trebor to explain the situation to Garnet. The large Red paladin showed no outward sign he was receiving the troubling information from Trebor, but after a moment he looked at Danner and nodded. When Brican arrived and made a show of whispering to Danner, Trebor and Marc surreptitiously adjusted their armor and sat poised to move out.
“We’re ready.”
“Danner,” Garnet said, casually stretching his arms until his joints popped, “why don’t you take Trebor and Marc and get the buggy from the chapterhouse?” Garnet said, giving them an excuse to leave as well as a suggested course of action. “We’ve got a nice little camp running here, so we’ve got a place to store it close at hand. You never know when it might come in handy.”
“Yes, sir,” Danner replied, unable to hide the gratitude in his voice.
Trebor, Danner, and Marc grabbed their weapons nonchalantly and started to walk away from the group.
“Hey, come on,” Marc said suddenly with feigned cheerfulness. “It’s not too far. I’ll race you.” With that, Marc bolted forward, Trebor and Danner only a half-step behind him.
- 2 -
Hoil watched Danner race off into the night and frowned. The implications of his son fighting in a war had come slowly to Hoil and, while he knew Danner was a good swordsman and more capable than most, the fact remained that Hoil’s only child was facing down hordes of demons and could very well end up spitted on their ravening claws.
It suddenly seemed important that Hoil spend time with his son, which he found ironic in light of his having kicked Danner out of his house when he was only eleven to learn his own way through life. Hoil had made it clear Danner would always have a place to come for solace when necessary, but he also made it just as clear that he expected Danner to provide for himself and not trust his father to make the world a nice place for him. It was a harsh lesson, and for the first time in his life, Hoil was seriously regretting all the lost time he’d missed from his son’s life.
Danner had changed drastically in the last few months alone, and Hoil barely knew the man he’d become almost overnight. Apparently he had a woman in his life now, and Hoil had belatedly realized Danner was of an age where he might be thinking about getting married. Oh, he was still on the young end of the marital spectrum, to be sure, but men had done sillier things in the name of love. Hoil had already been married for almost two years when he was his son’s age, in fact. If Danner got married soon, he might even have children within a few years, which would catapult Hoil into the realm of grand-fatherhood. Hoil decided he’d like to know who his son was before he had to start worrying about meeti
ng Danner’s own sons.
Death and new life, both possibilities disturbed Hoil as he realized how little he knew of his son just then.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two paladins, a Yellow and a Red who identified themselves as part of the Prismatic Council.
“Paladin de’Valderat,” the Yellow said.
“I’m here,” Birch replied neutrally. He didn’t anticipate any word they could possibly want to bring him here in the middle of the denarae camp, and at such a late hour, but the sentries had let the men through, so obviously they bore no malicious intent, or else someone would have warned him, he was sure. The denarae ability to communicate telepathically was a handy tool, he had to admit, and it was obvious why they’d kept it hidden for so long.
“The Council is faced with a difficult position which apparently only you can alleviate,” the Yellow said.
Birch raised an eyebrow. The Yellow paladin shied away from the burning gaze that was more fully revealed by the facial gesture, and he stared at his palms a moment with something like fear before he collected himself and continued.
“A demon walked forward an hour ago under a white flag, asking for parlay,” he said, “but it seems they will only speak with you, the Gray paladin. Naturally, with the concerns many of the Council feel about your, uh… recent, um… display, there is some hesitation about allowing you to go alone and speak with them.”
“They want me to come alone?” Birch asked.
“The demon said the general of their army, Malith, will speak with you one-on-one within sight of the Barrier,” the Red Council member said. “We don’t know whether he is going to present terms of surrender, which we will naturally reject, or if he has some other purpose in mind, but we are reluctant to let any opportunity to communicate with them pass us by.”
The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Page 47