Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (62 page)

Uriel remained
silent.

“I was consumed
by unquestioning belief in the rightness – no, the righteousness – of my
actions. I heard that Kaelus himself was besieged, and I left you and the
Archangels, little caring about the outcome of the battle, and flew with all
possible haste toward the demon general. I arrived just as the demons attacked,
and I waited for the moment I
knew
would come.” Camael’s voice was flat
and marked only by a heavy weight that pressed down on his every word.

“I saw the
miracle of the damned as they were delivered from their torment, but I couldn’t
hear his words,” the Power continued. “They were for mortal ears alone. Tens,
perhaps hundreds of thousands of damned souls were freed in an instant, and
still I was deaf and blind to the truth. My ears were stopped by poisonous
words, and my eyes were blinded by my own light.

“When you
arrived, I feared I had already lost my chance, and I hid in the clouds
overhead, watching and waiting. Finally, I saw my opening, and I took it.”

Camael’s voice
was a horrified whisper as he went on.

“As the arrow
left my bow, as it sped irrevocably out of my fingers and out of my control,
the veil was lifted from my mind and I realized what I had done,” he said. “I
curse the unfailing aim that carried my arrow to its target and made him fall.
I saw the only possible outcome, and I knew I had betrayed God and Heaven as no
other angel in the history of our kind ever has, and for this I knew I would be
condemned and damned.

“I fled to this
cave and have been waiting for you ever since. I knew it would be you and only
you who would come for me. If there is to be divine judgment, I will face it
willingly and pray only that my actions have not doomed us all.”

Uriel stared at
Camael’s back. The Power hadn’t so much as twitched, and he still knelt with
his head bowed as though in prayer.

Finally, Camael
raised his head, but still he didn’t turn around.

“Have you come
to kill me?”

For a long
moment, Uriel considered the question. Different possibilities had warred
inside his head since he first realized Camael’s betrayal, and still he had no
answer for the angel who had once been his most trusted lieutenant. Uriel
wrestled with his own conscience for a long moment before he spoke.

“No, Camael,” he
said finally, “I will not kill you. I already have the death of one angel on my
hands, sacrificed to the same madness that consumed you. I, too, have felt that
moment of realization and horrified awakening.”

Camael continued
to stare blankly at the curved, stone wall in front of him.

“God forgives,
and even I forgive you, Camael, but what you have done can only be considered a
sin, and sin…”

“Must be
punished,” Camael finished for him. “I yield myself to your judgment, Uriel.”

“There is no way
to fully expunge this sin,” Uriel said. “Even a traitor redeemed must always
still be remembered a traitor.”

Camael shuddered
then, and his wings rasped against the stone floor.

“I leave it to
you to choose your own punishment, Camael,” Uriel told him in a voice leaden
with grief-stricken determination.

“You may remain
in Heaven, and the whole of the Host will remain ignorant of your sin, at least
for a while. I will tell no one, and your guilt shall be dealt with solely
between you and the Almighty. I owe you that much. But eventually others will
discover the truth, and you will deal with them on your own conscience. They
may not be as forgiving as I, nor as silent.

“You may go to
the mortal world. Transubstantiate to a wholly mortal body, and I will lock your
power away from you forever. You will effectively cease to be an immortal
angel, but you will remember everything you have ever been and everything you
have lost. When your frail mortal shell gives in to time, your
āyus
may yet find its way back to Heaven, but you will no longer be Camael. He will
be dead, and you will be but a shadow of him, little different than the
countless souls of the blessed dead who reside here now. You will live as
mortals live, and die as they die.”

Uriel hesitated.
Camael waited.

“Or,” he said
after a moment, “you may choose oblivion. Destruction at your own hand. What a
mortal would call suicide.”

The word
lingered in the ether of Heaven like a miasmic taint, and Uriel found himself
wishing for Camael to say something, if only to override the quivering sense of
disease that permeated the small cave.

“Immortal guilt,
mortal death, or eternal oblivion,” Camael said. Uriel’s tension eased with the
sound of the Power’s voice.

“Which, do you
suppose, is the most difficult road to take?” Camael asked rhetorically. “The
first asks if I can abide in a state of secret shame for eternity. The second
asks if I can
live
with myself. The third, if I should exist at all.

“If I choose to
remain, I wallow in a lie and perpetuate a poison in the very home I thought I
was defending. If I choose to become mortal, I give up everything and must face
the prospect of my own death, something no immortal has ever seriously
considered since we were first brought into being. How does one deal with mortality
after eons of life?

“If I choose the
third option and murder myself…” he trailed off slowly, a momentary tremor in
his voice. “What happens in a world where an angel of God can knowingly and
willingly commit a mortal sin? When an immortal, who has no immediate prospect
of death or oblivion, chooses to voluntarily end his existence? It will not be
just me who faces death. Until now, immortals have always been a species apart
from the mortals in our care. Have we become so like unto each other that we must
now face the same fears as they? Must we now look into the future and truly ask
ourselves when – not
if
– we will cease to exist?”

Uriel felt the
emotions in the other angel’s voice as he pondered the end of his existence. Of
all the options given to Camael, Uriel feared most that his one-time lieutenant
would choose the option of self-murder, and for the very reasons the Power had
just quoted. Uriel did not think the “immortals” were at all prepared to
consider if they, too, were truly mortal as well.

His own thinking
on the matter had evolved considerably since his recent exposure to living
mortals. Uriel was beginning to wonder what the difference was between the two
now, especially since mortal and immortal could now be blended into half-breeds
like Birch and his nephew. Did that not suggest a certain relationship, that
they were, in a way, kin?

After another
long moment of silence, Camael stood slowly and turned to face Uriel. His wings
still drooped listlessly from his back and trailed on the ground, but after a
moment he fanned his wings wide behind him until the pinions brushed opposite
walls of the cave. Then his wings folded across his chest and settled like a
mantle that robed his smoky body in blue, feathery light.

“I have
decided,” Camael said. His eyes locked with Uriel’s, and the Seraph knew his
decision.

“Promise me one
thing, Uriel.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me Maya
will pay for what she’s done,” Camael said without emotion. “Promise me she
will face the divine justice.”

Uriel nodded.

“Maya will not
be given a choice in her punishment, Camael,” he replied. “Her sentence has
already been decided, and beside it yours will seem as mercy.”

“Then I am
content.”

- 4 -

Uriel left the
cave and, with a moment of effort, willed the entrance to seal over in smooth
angelstone. The room would always exist. Until time and creation alike burned
out and were swallowed by the maw of eternity, the room would be there waiting
for him. He would return someday, he knew, to seek peace and atonement for his
own misbegotten sin – when he, too, had followed the madness of Maya.

His sword hung
at his side, but now Uriel carried a broad-bladed war spear in his left hand.

Camael would no
longer need it.

In war, lives are always taken. Some are given freely.

- Violet Paladin Gadjin
Tealor,

“The Rising Star” (5 AM)

- 1 -

“Do you know
why I like you so much, mortal?” the Voice asked.

“No friends
of your own to speak with?” he answered with black humor. “Bad judge of
character?”

The Voice’s
laugh was a caress of velvet across his mind. He still was not convinced he
hadn’t invented this companion, who came only when his eyes were blinded. Does
a man
know
when he’s going insane?

“You’re not
going insane, mortal,” the Voice told him. “If I wanted someone that fragile,
there have been plenty over the centuries to choose from.”

His lips
twisted at the implied compliment.

“I don’t like
you for your strength – while it does make you ideal for my purposes, I’ve had
plenty of strong-willed men before me. I don’t like you for your weaknesses
either, of which you have accursedly few, thank Hell. No, mortal, there is one
specific quality you possess that has singled you out above all others as most
suitable.

“You have an
open mind. You have faith and belief, yes, but you are not afraid to question
your own beliefs, and that makes you rare. A man of faith believes in the truth
he has discovered to the exclusion of all else and blinds himself to the
possibility that he might be mistaken. He believes that if he were to question
his so-called truth, it would indicate a lack of faith and shatter the very
foundations of everything he holds dear.

“I have
broken such men before. They are, I think, the easiest ones to break, because
they work so hard to prevent a sinful thought or doubt from penetrating their
armor, they close out the voice of truth and become easy prey for the demons of
the mind. A man who says he has no doubts is a liar, and when confronted with
the secret wonderings and fears of his heart, he will go mad trying to deny their
existence.”

“They let
their belief get in the way of their faith,” he murmured.

“Indeed. I
find that a man who lives his faith is far more complete and pious than a man
who holds his faith in his mind. When faith is just ideas, it’s easy to dispute
and frustrate. But a faith that’s been lived in and experienced, proven
firsthand? That is far more…worthy.

“I ask you
this, mortal, what good is a mind free of doubt? It assumes that everything is
known, and then what use is there for life? For the world? What happens when
you encounter a truth contrary to what you already
know
? I have
questioned you extensively in the past – oh, you won’t remember our little
sessions, but they were most enlightening for me. I have questioned you, and
what I found even more remarkable than your answers is your ability to say, ‘I
don’t know.’

“When I posed
questions that made you doubt your own ideas and unresolved beliefs, you
answered me honestly and openly and did not rely on dogma to operate your mind
for you. So rare to find a mortal who has such faith and believes so strongly
that he knows true faith can only come from a reasoning, questioning mind.
Blind, thoughtless faith means nothing. It is a sightless child who clings to a
flower given to him by his mother and does not realize the flower died long
ago.

 “When I
confronted you with questions of faith, questions I’ve used to crack and
destroy men much stronger than you, rare was the question which you had not
already asked yourself and struggled against. If you had reasoned an answer,
you gave it. If not, you simply accepted that there were some things for which
you had no answer and trusted that your faith, your beliefs, even your God
would not lead you astray. Always, though, the willingness to admit your own
failings of belief and limited perception of infinite truth – for true faith
does not deny doubt, it accepts it. Faith was never your
answer
, it was
part of your questioning and a path of understanding.

“As you said,
you didn’t let your beliefs get in the way of your faith.

“Too many
think that because they see
some
truth, they must see all of it, little
knowing that the mortal mind is too limited by its nature to encompass
infinity. They see a glimpse of light through a tiny window, and the vast
brilliance of eternal Truth beyond frightens them. They stand in their narrow
patch of light in a cold, dark room. An arm’s reach away, another man stands in
his own square of light – the light of revealed truth – but they will not reach
out to each other for comfort. The darkness that stands between them is too
terrifying, too filled with unvoiced fear. To reach into the darkness is to
admit that there exists a world beyond his tiny square of light, the one warmth
and comfort in his existence. A man will disbelieve centuries of history,
condemn billions to a heretical Hell, and convert or kill his neighbor rather
than admit his tiny glimpse of truth does not encompass the whole of eternal
Truth.

“For if it is
not true for all men, it may not be true, and then what guiding light is he to
follow? What truth does he see? What truth can he trust, if that truth be not
universal?

“Blind
adherence to doctrine is the breeding ground of intolerance, and is there any
sin more seductive and camouflaging than the belief that you are right?
Righteousness is not a sign of divine favor, it is a tool of Hell, and a
powerful one at that.”

He laughed as
the Voice fell silent.

“I find it
odd to hear a denizen of Hell so admiring of virtue and condemning of sins.”