The shadows closed around Azazel like a blanket of Hellish fire, wrapping him in glorious power and infernal comfort. He felt almost like he was back in his palace in Dis, so familiar did the sensation feel as he practically swam in the sense of Hell.
“Welcome, brother Azazel,” a deep voice intoned.
Azazel spun, looking for the source of the voice. There was something hauntingly familiar about it – a voice he hadn’t heard since the days of the Great Schism. It rang hollowly, like the remnant of a mortal’s scream echoing through steel halls, but he recognized it just the same.
Impossible! He thought.
“You know who I am?” the voice asked. “You recognize me, fellow prince of Hell?”
“Gramuel?” he asked in wonder.
“I am he, or what remains of his āyus,” the former demon prince replied. Azazel withheld a grimace at the formal tone of the deceased demon’s voice. Gramuel had always been stiff and overly decorous for a demon. “Listen now and obey the one whom I serve, the one who has saved you from oblivion. Behold a vision of Him.”
A dark-robed figure stepped out of the shadows and approached Azazel. The apparition was vaguely transparent, and the demon prince could see trees through the hazy form. Was this a manifestation of Mephistopheles come somehow to commune with him? Had the demon king rescued Azazel from certain death at the point of Uriel’s sword? There was no sense of presence, this truly was nothing more than a projection, a perception imposed on his senses. Nothing real.
“Who are you?” Azazel asked brazenly even as he stepped back uncertainly.
In answer, the robed figure reached up and lifted the cowl from its face, and Azazel fell to his knees in terror as awareness flooded his entire being.
“My God,” he whispered in rapturous fear.
Gramuel laughed hollowly. “Yes…..”
- 3 -
Uriel lunged with his sword, but it was too late. Azazel had vanished in an instant, a translocation so clean and immediate it should not have been possible with an angelic arrow stuck in his flesh. Still, the demon prince was gone and had escaped the executioner’s sword by a hairsbreadth.
Gerard swore, but Uriel expected that. Birch stared in a composed silence, but that too Uriel expected. He was coming to know these mortals and their reactions quite well, a fact of which he was rather proud. Until the beginning of the war, Uriel had had little-to-no contact with mortals since the early days following the Epiphany. Too many of the mortals treated the angels with gross subservience, and after a few centuries, the angels came to expect it from the “lesser” beings. This was, he now knew, the beginnings of the subtle influence being exerted by Maya.
Uriel had given up in disgust and avoided mortals altogether unless they proved worthy of his time. The Orange paladin, Vander Wayland, for example, had proven very useful to him in the days and weeks immediately prior to the war. Uriel had vowed that at his first opportunity, he would make an attempt to locate the paladin inside Medina, and he would keep trying until he found where Maya had secreted the dead scholar. His time since then, however, had been accursedly lacking in such opportunity.
Briefly, Birch told them the fate of Perklet Perkal, whom Uriel regarded as one of the most benign and loving mortals he’d ever had the privilege to meet.
“I’m sorry to see him die, but at least he is not lost to us altogether,” Uriel said. “He’ll be back among the blessed dead.”
“No,” Birch said, shaking his head, “he won’t be. I promise you.”
Birch explained how Perklet had somehow transcended the death they all expected and had moved on to the same fate Kaelus had bequeathed on the damned souls before his capture. He even told them of Perklet’s miraculous healing of the demon Meresin, who’d escaped only moments before their rescue. The Gray paladin had very few answers for them, and all were left in a state of wonder at Perklet’s death.
“Martyrdom,” Birch whispered softly, but only Uriel heard him.
“We’ll take his body back to the Iridescent Gates to be buried in the mortal realm with the others,” Uriel promised. “I’ll carry him myself.”
“Carry him easy when you go,” Gerard said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Heal his flesh, Uriel, if you would, please. It seems a disgrace to bury him as he is.”
“I will.”
Uriel paused.
“You sound as if you’re not coming back with me,” the Seraph said tentatively.
Gerard shook his head.
“We’re not,” he said emphatically. “I talked it out with Mikal beforehand, and we’re taking this group of paladins and denarae into the enemy’s heart to make a stab at the demon king himself.”
“We’ll go with you,” Doriel offered immediately, but Uriel shook his head.
“You’re just taking the mortals, yes?” he asked. “Angels would be too easily located in Hell, and you’d get swarmed immediately by every demon left on the infernal plane.”
“Exactly,” Gerard said.
“I know you’re just a mortal, but are you insane, too?” Doriel asked incredulously. Uriel frowned a moment, then realized the Dominion had a rapport of sorts with Gerard, and it was intended as a joke. Doriel was like that.
“So I’ve been told many times,” Gerard replied, “but insane or not, we’re going in. The entire army of Hell is behind us now, and there’s nothing to stop us from crossing over.”
“Crossing over to an infinite plane full of demons and damned souls who didn’t get to go play with the rest of their buddies,” Garnet said wryly. “Oh, no danger there, Gerard.”
“Birch,” the scar-faced Red paladin said, ignoring Garnet, “I’m counting on you to lead us in. I don’t give a damn whatever personal demons you might still have about going back into Hell. Kaelus needs you, and we need you to guide us.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Birch replied grimly. Whatever fears he’d once had about the fate he was fast approaching had been washed away in the wake of Perklet’s noble sacrifice. “The demons I have left are all the kind that need to be faced, and I intend to kill one of them before I’m through. There’s a reckoning to be had between Mephistopheles and me, and I intend to collect my due.”
- 4 -
Mikal walked slowly through the angelstone hallway, his wings furled closely about his body and his thoughts churning beneath an impassive face. The finest strategists who had ever lived and died in the mortal world (those who had come to Heaven, anyway) had been working for months on plans that would have some lasting impact on the hordes of demons that continued to destroy his home, and to a man they had failed to come up with anything significant enough to turn the tide of the war. Many tactics had been tried, but few proved to have any noticeable effect and none was worth repeating more than once or twice.
The grander plans Kaelus and Gerard Morningham had crafted had been long shots at best, and the loss of Kaelus left a particular taste of ash in their ultimate failure. It seemed at every turn, they were destined to lose, and Mikal was forced to watch more and more of Heaven turn a sickly gray under the taint of demonic influence.
Despair gathered around him and pressed close, threatening to crush him.
A low murmur from somewhere ahead drew his attention, and Mikal latched onto the noise like a drowning mortal would a protruding tree root. He continued down the hallway until it opened into balcony overlooking a large hall. Standing at the edge of the balcony was a welcome sight.
“Foriel,” Mikal said with relief. “I had hoped you were still alive and well.”
The Seraph at the railing turned and smiled faintly at Mikal. Six wings of pale yellow were wrapped tightly about the angel’s body, clinging like a second set of armor.
“Mikal,” the other angel said by way of greeting. “Surely you don’t think I’d pass without asking your permission.”
“Which I will never grant,” Mikal said. “There are too few Seraphim to lose even you.”
“Then I suppo
se we’ll have to win this war,” Foriel said with a shrug. “I was getting tired of losing anyway.”
The Seraph turned away from Mikal and looked down into the hall toward the source of the continuing murmur of sound. Mikal stepped forward and stood next to Foriel, then looked down to see what so engrossed him.
The room below was filled with paladins going about their daily tasks of cleaning their armor, sharpening their swords, and generally preparing for the next battle. Green paladins wandered the room offering healing prayers for those incapable of healing themselves, while a number of Violet paladins made the rounds praying with their brothers for more mundane things. Victory. Life. Safety of loved ones.
“Why do they do that?” Foriel asked, gesturing with one hand toward a circle of paladins kneeling with joined hands and bowed heads.
“Join together?”
“Pray.”
Mikal was silent.
“Most mortals who die and come here pray when they first arrive,” Foriel said. “I see them, but I’ve never asked them about it. After a few years or even months, they eventually stop, so it never seemed worth it. But now, with living people here, I’m curious.”
“I’ve wondered myself,” Mikal admitted, “but the concept is strange. At first I thought prayer must be something like our sense of the Almighty, but from what I know, they rarely achieve any sort of surety, no true sense of God’s will. It seems so limited.”
“But it seems they all do it,” Foriel noted. “Surely, if it were useless, it would have died out centuries ago.”
“You haven’t died out, and I have it on the best authority you consider yourself to be useless,” Mikal noted wryly.
“That was before the war,” Foriel said with a shrug. “I’m a fighter, Mikal, thanks to you, and for eons I’ve had nothing to look forward to besides endless days of staring at clouds and the souls of dead men. As long as there are demons to fight, I have a purpose, but when this is over, things go back to normal and we all become fantastically boring again.”
Mikal had no ready response for that. He’d been trying to break Foriel out of his apathy practically since they day the other angel had been created, an ongoing failure stretching back almost to the dawn of the Great Schism. Mikal felt some responsibility for Foriel’s dim outlook – he’d genesed the angel shortly after Raphael’s death, and he’d always felt his gloomy perspective at the time had imprinted on the newly created angel. Foriel had gained strength quickly during the war and had ascended through the angelic Choirs faster than any other angel Mikal’s memory. Since then however…
“Does it help, do you think?” Foriel asked suddenly, still focused on the circle of paladins.
“Praying?”
“Joining together like that,” Foriel said, and Mikal felt a very real temptation to push the Seraph over the balcony.
“Some of them pray alone, others seem to like having just one man holding their hands, but a lot seem to prefer these larger circles,” Foriel pointed out. “I can’t decide if it’s for comfort or out of a feeling that having more of them pray the same thing will have a bigger effect.”
“I don’t know,” Mikal admitted.
“Maybe we should try it,” Foriel said.
“Why?” Mikal asked, genuinely confused.
Foriel shrugged.
“Why not? Gabriel prayed.”
Mikal’s jaw snapped shut to prevent him from gaping at the other Seraph.
“How do you know?” he asked finally, his voice tight. “He was destroyed before you came into being.”
“I don’t know,” Foriel said, frowning. “It’s just something I know, something I remember. It’s true, isn’t it?”
Mikal nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment. Shock and confusion at Foriel’s comment warred with memories of his oldest friend, whose destruction predated the Creation of the mortal world. First Gabriel, then Abdiel, and finally Raphael, all lost.
“I think I’ll go talk to them,” Foriel said, surprising Mikal yet again. Beyond offering to fight in any given battle against the demons, Foriel rarely did anything without being ordered. Before Mikal could formulate a response, the Seraph leapt over the balcony, spreading only one pair of wings as he settled gently to the ground near the circle of men who had so captured his attention.
Mikal stared after him for a long moment, then turned and walked away. His former gloom had receded, and he was inexplicably buoyed by a sense of hope.
Chapter 34
In Hell, one direction is often the same as another. The path makes little difference compared to the destination.
- Birch de’Valderat,
“Memoirs” (1013 AM)
- 1 -
Uriel accelerated their journey through Heaven as quickly as he could; even so, it took them more than a day to reach the Iridescent Gates. They returned to the upper levels of the clouds to avoid detection by the demons, but word must have gotten out from their strike, because twice they were forced to stop and engage small scouting parties of demons. The Archangels made swift work of the scouts, then pressed on with all possible speed. Uriel directed the angels but did not take part in the fighting; he had a special burden in his arms.
As they drew near the Iridescent Gates, Uriel dismissed Doriel and his escort to rejoin their Host. The Archangels continued on alone – Uriel led them in silence, absorbed in his own thoughts.
Paladins who could heal demons? Dead mortals who bypassed the immortal plane and moved on to some other, unknown level of existence? They were as improbable as a demon who had a heart of goodness… or an angel who betrayed his own people.
The Seraph’s thoughts were troubled as he drew near the massive entryway, and at first he did not notice the long column that was drawing near the Iridescent Gates.
“Lord Uriel, were we expecting these mortals below?” Farael, a Cherub, asked him discreetly.
Uriel snapped out of his gloomy thoughts and glanced down. “No, but they are most certainly welcome.”
The Archangels descended quickly and landed a short distance away from the column, which appeared to be comprised solely of paladins. Six of the holy warriors – one from each Facet – rode forward on their dakkans to meet Uriel, who stepped in front of the Archangels to make himself known. He had healed Perklet’s charred body in flight, but as the mortals drew near, he was of two minds about speaking to them while holding one of their own in his arms.
“My lord angel, we have…” a Violet paladin began, but the Blue next to him cried out in dismay.
“Perky,” he said and immediately slid off his dakkan and ran to Uriel’s side. The balding paladin was skinny and wore only studded-leather armor. His face was tender and filled with grief as he reached forward to touch Perklet’s dead face. The Yellow paladin among the six likewise approached with an expression of profound sadness on his face.
“Easy, Nuse,” he said softly to the Blue paladin. He looked up at Uriel.
“What happened to him, my lord?” he asked.
“I am Uriel, and your friend died bravely with a spirit few could match,” the Seraph said softly. “Do not look for his soul here, my friends, for he has passed to another level of existence beyond us. Grieve not for his own death, but only that someone so blessed and pure is no longer among us to brighten the world.”
The Blue paladin brushed back Perklet’s hair, then hesitated in surprise.
“He’s smiling,” the Blue said softly, “and his cloak is white.”
Uriel nodded.
“I will tell you what I can of his death, but for now, time is short,” he told them. “I have brought him back here so he can be carried back to your world for a proper burial, but we should be off immediately to rejoin the Heavenly Hosts. The war is not going well here.”
He craned his head slightly to look down the length of the column.
“How many strong are you?”
“Lord Uriel,” the Red paladin answered, “we are approximately two thousand strong,
all paladins ready to fight for the Almighty. Command us.”
“If your strength and caliber are anything like the five hundred who crossed months ago,” Uriel said appreciatively, “I expect you will do much to influence the course of this war. You are welcome, indeed.”
He walked away slowly and led them through the Iridescent Gates. The paladins stopped and stared as he laid Perklet’s body down next to hundreds of mortal bodies, all of which were waiting to return to their home for burial. Humans, elves, and denarae were laid out as though resting – all of those whose bodies could be recovered.
“Their souls fight on,” Uriel said as he stood and drew the Tricrus in the air above Perklet. The holy symbol blazed in white fire for a moment, then gently faded away. “Even in death, they fight for God, man, and life.”
“Fighting for life itself,” the Yellow paladin behind him murmured. “It gives a new meaning to our oath.”
- 2 -
Danner finished pouring the fuel solution into his buggy and quickly capped off the tank before he inhaled too many of the potent vapors. Faldergash’s special additive packed a bit of a kick and was necessary to drive the high-performance engine at full efficiency, but it also had a tendency to burn Danner’s nostrils.
“You might consider putting your cloak over your mouth and nose when you do that,” Marc said from the front passenger seat. “Might help block some of the fumes.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that?” Danner mused silently. Unfortunately, Trebor heard him.
“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” the denarae asked with a barely contained laugh.
“Not particularly, no,” Danner replied curtly, then he grinned. “How’s the gauge reading, Marc?”
Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Page 49