Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (47 page)

“Malith?” Uriel asked
disbelievingly. “No, not him. Mephistopheles?”

“Yes. He is
everything from the worst of my nightmares, which are but pleasant dreams
compared to the reality I endured, much of which at his hand,” Birch said. He
returned to the window and stared out across the empty plains once more. “Did
you know, when I first came to Heaven, I felt something strangely familiar
about this place? Like I’d been here before. It wasn’t Kaelus,” Birch said,
forestalling Uriel’s comment. “It was something from me, and it’s taken me
until recently to figure it out.”

“And?” Uriel
asked quietly.

“I died once,”
Birch said, “and for a brief moment, I felt I was in the afterlife. I was in a
place that felt peaceful and comfortable. I didn’t have a body, I didn’t see
anything or hear anything, but I
knew
I was in eternity and it was
nothing like this.”

Birch paused a
moment. Selti looked up forlornly as Birch’s hand ceased its caresses.

“
This
place reminds me of Hell,” Birch said, and he smiled without humor as he heard
Uriel recoil behind him. “It’s beautiful where Hell is grotesque, and it’s holy
where Hell is damned, but still, they feel the same to me. There is no life
here, Uriel. Heaven is just as impossibly large and utterly devoid of life as
Hell, no matter how much more breathtaking it might seem. Even the perfect
beauty of Heaven grows tiresome to one who is used to lush greenery and the
beautiful
variety
of life.” He turned slightly and looked over his
shoulder at the dumbstruck angel.

“Life requires
both good and evil, and Heaven is as pristinely good as Hell is purely evil.
Given a choice, I would give up both and live forever in the mortal realm or
else exist as nothing, taking part in neither. Man was made out of the stuff of
both good and evil, and doing completely without one destroys what he is and
the thing that makes him truly great.”

Uriel was silent
for a long time, and Birch finally turned away and resumed his silent vigil
looking out the window.

Finally, the
Seraph said, “There is life here, Birch, but so sparse and tiny amidst the
infinite vastness of Heaven that you’d never know unless pure chance brought
you upon it.” Birch whipped his head about and regarded the Seraph with
surprise. Uriel nodded. “There are places in Heaven where the taint of Hell
lingers. We call them the Groves of Corruption, and you will not find them in
any history book in the whole of the mortal realm. Few immortals even know of
their existence. In these places, evil lingers and despoils the perfect
goodness of Heaven, and they resist all attempts to overcome them. We can’t
enter the Groves, and few can even
see
them. I’ve seen just three in the
eons I’ve existed here, and from the outside at least, they look like a small
forest from any part of your mortal world. Blink wrong, though, and they vanish
from sight.”

“Where did they
come from?” Birch asked in wonder.

“During the
Great Schism, at the time when all was still Pleroma, large forces of demons
and angels were killed on both sides of what was already becoming the dividing
line between Heaven and Hell,” Uriel explained. “Occasionally when a large
force of demons was slain on Heavenly ground, a Grove resulted as their taint
seeped into the very essence of Heaven and defiled our half of the immortal
plane. Nearly all of these seem to have faded with time, but it’s my opinion
that the ones that have lingered came about from the destruction of a demon
lord or prince.”

“And angels who
died in Hell?” Birch prompted. Selti whined below him, but Birch was too
enthralled to notice.

“The same, I imagine,”
Uriel said. “We’ve never known for sure, but it makes sense.”

“Groves of
Holiness,” Birch whispered to himself. “I wandered more than a decade in Hell
and never even suspected such a thing.”

“There are few even
here in Heaven who would tell you,” Uriel said. “Most of the angels who know of
the Groves view them as strictly taboo, something to be ignored and forgotten.”

“Sort of like
hybrids?” Birch said with a challenge in his voice. “Danner told me Mikal’s version
of what happened, and I know much of the rest through my experience with
Kaelus. Immortals trying to create half-breeds with mortals, with the denarae
as the result.”

Uriel remained
silent, his face unreadable.

“Half-immortals,
that was your goal, wasn’t it?” Birch asked. “You wanted creatures like Danner
was born and like I have become, at least at first. Were there other successes
besides the denarae?”

“Yes,” Uriel
replied with dignity, “but not on our side. The demons created the dakkans from
dragon-stock, and millennia later we usurped them for our own ends. They
unwittingly created the perfect mounts for a new breed of warriors devoted to
God, the
teiranon
. The paladins.

“As for people?”
Uriel shook his head. “At the time, the hybrids you’re suggesting, ones like
you and your nephew, were impossible. It was tried, believe me. The angel
heading the tests, Samyaza, tried everything from intercourse to blood-letting
to find a viable method of hybridization. Mikal was adamantly against any
experimentation with mortals, and I quickly joined my voice with his. I don’t
deny that you and your nephew are powerful allies, and I don’t begrudge what
you’ve become honestly, but we fought with every means available to see
Samyaza’s experiments ended.”

Uriel’s shoulders
slumped. “There were those who argued that the original test subjects, those
whom you now call denarae, should be wiped out as well, and Mikal was foremost
in their ranks. Suddenly he and I found ourselves on opposite sides of the
sword, and ultimately I won the right to preserve their lives simply because I
was the more powerful. They had no choice in their creation, and could not be
held accountable for what they were.”

“The voice of
justice,” Birch remarked quietly.

“Samyaza and his
assistants even tried to restart his experiments during the time of the
Epiphany,” Uriel went on grimly. “He claimed to have made some progress, and it
took the threat of his destruction to force him to cease and return to Heaven.
His few remaining test subjects were hideously deformed and begged for death,
which was reluctantly granted. To my knowledge, none of his subjects survived
his experiments.

“Now, it is
forbidden to tamper so with mortals,” Uriel said firmly. “It is a sin.”

“And the
punishment of such a sin?” Birch asked. His face was grim, and he knew already
what the answer would be. Instead of answering, Uriel bowed his head and
refused to meet Birch’s eyes. The Gray paladin nodded in understanding.

Tired of being
ignored, Selti transformed himself into a small, gray squirrel and scampered up
Birch’s leg. When he reached his paladin’s shoulder, the dakkan shifted to a
long-haired cat and deposited himself firmly in Birch’s arms.

“He doesn’t
normally flaunt himself in front of others,” Birch remarked with some surprise.
“He must like you.”

Uriel frowned at
the dakkan-turned-feline.

“Is that normal
behavior for a dakkan?”

“It’s normal for
Selti,” Birch grumbled in exasperation as Selti writhed to make himself more
comfortable, but still he pet the cat in his arms. Selti purred in satisfaction
and even Uriel’s somber mood cracked at the clearly audible thrumming sound.

- 2 -

Michael listened
to the heavy thudding of demonic feet and quickly mumbled under his breath a
few phrases he remembered from his training days to fight back the anxiety and
fear building within him.

“Fear must be
accepted and left behind. Use your fear, let it become a weapon. Courage does
not
defeat
fear, it changes it to action.”

“Fear must be
accepted and left behind,” he repeated again, mouthing the words until he felt
himself once again master of his body and mind. Michael took a deep breath to
steady himself, and he was finally able to listen to the stamping footsteps
with equanimity.

“We take our
lead from you, Michael,”
Brican kythed seriously into the Yellow paladin’s
mind.
“I can feel everyone’s anxiety fading just from listening to your
thoughts and the calmness you’re exuding. I’m impressed.”

Michael replied
with a brief word of thanks, then closed his eyes so he wouldn’t be forced to stare
at the white mass that engulfed him.

Three platoons
of Shadow Company were embedded within the cloudy earth of Heaven, buried
beneath two feet of soft material that nevertheless supported the weight of
thousands of demons as they tramped by overhead. The sound was muffled by the
puffed-up walls and ceilings of their tiny enclosures, but it was nevertheless
unnerving to hear such an overwhelming number of demonic creatures moving by so
dangerously close.

It was Garnet’s
idea, of course, adapted from something Gerard had taught them what seemed like
years ago. During the brief skirmishes against Merishank, Shadow Company had
hidden within the trees of a nearby forest and lured the enemy soldiers inside.
Once there, the denarae platoons pounced from hiding and eliminated the human
soldiers to a man, leaving only their screams to tell of their fate. The woods
were quickly shunned by the Merishank soldiers, and only reluctantly would they
come anywhere near the forest that hungered for their deaths.

Now, a full two
hundred paladins – both living and dead – waited submerged beneath the earth of
Heaven with the three denarae platoons dispersed amongst them to coordinate the
attack. The paladins knew nothing of the denarae kything ability, but they
trusted the mystique of Shadow Company and the word of its paladin commander.
Garnet was fast becoming something of a legend within the paladin ranks.

Michael grimaced
at the thought. He knew Garnet loathed the praise being heaped upon him and
what Marc called “human idolatry”. The Red paladin allowed some of the awe and
wonder to continue because it helped protect the secrets of the denarae and
increased his influence and ability to operate as he saw fit, but Michael saw
the cost it took from his friend.

A reputation
is only as good as the present example, and Garnet knows it,
Michael
thought morosely.
As that reputation grows, so must the reality grow to
match it. Someday that reputation is going to stretch too far and reach too
high, and it will fail. We can all see it, but we’re trapped by necessity.

Around him,
Michael heard soft rustles as paladins and denarae shifted in their place of
concealment. He cracked an eye open and glared at the loudest man, who
immediately subsided. The others around him followed suit, and soon the only
sound was the steady chaos of tramping feet overhead.

“It’s time,”
Brican kythed, and Michael’s pulse immediately quickened.
“Relay to all
group commanders. Ready. Steady.”

“Get ready,” Michael
ordered in a low voice, then repeated Brican, “Ready. Steady.”

The sounds above
them changed to a sudden eruption of screams.
“Now!”

“Now!” Michael
shouted, and the twenty-four paladins and half-platoon of denarae with him
erupted from the ground as it flowed away from them like water. They leapt from
concealment and cut down surprised ranks of damned souls and demons that
confronted them. A hailstorm of angelic arrows had swept through the demonic
ranks the instant before Michael and the others emerged, and the demons were
left shocked and confused by the sudden assault from above and below.

Paladins cut a
quick swath through the thickest concentrations of demons while the denarae
concentrated on the damned souls. Michael stayed with his half-platoon to deal
with the odd demon they encountered.

“Michael,
relay from Garnet,”
came a kythe from Eshtin Seratol, Michael’s first squad
leader.
“Shift left and cover Marc’s right flank. I’ll be there in…”

Eshtin’s mental
voice was cut off suddenly and a burst of pure agony ripped through Michael’s
head and nearly brought him to his knees. Sparing only a thought for his slain
squad leader, Michael called orders both verbally and mentally to his men.
Within seconds, they had moved to Marc’s flank and arrived just as a wedge of
thick-muscled damned souls charged forward. The denarae cut them to shreds in
minutes, then Michael received word to disengage and back up the paladins
again.

Overhead, angels
flew in battle wedges and rained glowing blue arrows down into the melee. The
bolts of heavenly power struck with perfect accuracy, and Michael’s life was
saved more than once as a screaming creature was struck down from above before
it could attack him. Waves of leather-skinned, flying demons flew out of the
clouds to confront the angels, with hordes of the damned behind them.
Once-mortal souls had been twisted into grotesque shapes with bat-like wings,
and they crashed into the angelic ranks with little regard for strategy or
their own safety.

To Michael’s
eye, it almost looked like they were deliberately flying to their deaths.

Suicide
soldiers?
He wondered as he lopped the head off a land-based damned soul.
The beastly creature didn’t even attempt to dodge the blow, it just charged
headlong at Michael until felled by a swift stroke of his blade.

“Michael,
help left.”

He immediately
complied and saw a denarae hard-pressed by a drolkul and a damned soul who was
almost as large as the four-armed demon. Michael swiftly stepped in and sheared
off two of the demon’s arms in one stroke, then nearly sliced it in half across
the chest as the screaming monster turned to confront him. The demon vanished
in a cloud of black smoke, through which Michael lunged to impale the damned
soul.