Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3)

by Brian J Moses

  But now, since the end of the Barrier War, Selti had exhibited the ability to change shapes into any creature he’d encountered, it seemed. Where the new ability came from was beyond him, but Birch was sure about the timing. Two days after Hell had passed over the mortal plane, Selti had copied the shape of a passing dog.

  A week after Selti first started changing to multiple shapes, Birch tested his companion’s abilities by showing him a caged faerer, and only minutes later Selti had copied the creature’s shape exactly. Only the color was different – no matter what shape Selti assumed, he was always a dark shade of gray.

  Birch supposed that was fitting, since he was the one and only Gray paladin. The gray cloak and Birch’s fire-filled eyes had marked him as a man apart ever since he’d returned from Hell.

  “And it’s all because of you, Kaelus, isn’t it?” Birch mused aloud. Having a demon living within was bound to have strange effects on a man’s physical body, to say nothing of his soul. Birch took some comfort in the knowledge that Kaelus was, at heart, a servant of good rather than evil, despite his demonic nature.

  That goodness was more than an academic concern to Birch, who now had a sliver of the demon’s āyus bonded to his own body and soul. Immortals reproduced much like taking a cutting from a plant, which would grow into a new, separate entity of its own. Kaelus had given Birch that “cutting” from himself to save Birch’s life after he lost a duel with the general of Hell’s armies. No one was sure yet how the demonic āyus would develop within Birch, nor what effect it would have on his identity.

  Selti, apparently bored by the lack of further response from his paladin, ran up Birch’s arm and settled himself across his shoulders. The drann rubbed his reptilian head up against Birch’s hair, chirping contentedly as he relieved an irritating itch behind his ears.

  “Ready to go to bed?” Birch asked. Selti trilled in response. “Me, too.”

  Birch pushed himself wearily to his feet, covered the gnomish lamp and left the small study he’d appropriated for his use. He locked the door and pocketed the key, then turned and nearly ran over a small, green-cloaked man who was standing behind him.

  “Perky?” Birch asked tiredly as he regained his balance.

  “Oh, sorry to startle you, Birch,” the Green paladin said in a bright voice, despite the obvious weariness on his face. Birch had never figured out how Perklet could be so upbeat all the time. He was quiet as a mouse and rarely said more than a few words at a time, but there was an almost youthful innocence and eager helpfulness about the middle-aged man that perplexed Birch. Even when he was tired, as he certainly looked now, it was there. If nothing else, he certainly fit his nickname.

  “Not at all, I’m just tired from a long night writing,” Birch replied, waving off the man’s apology.

  “Night? It’s well into morning now,” Perklet said. “You really should rest.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Birch said with a patient smile. “Were you looking for me, or were you just entranced by the rather plain-looking knocker on this door?”

  “Oh, I was hoping you’d come with me to look at something,” Perklet said. He suddenly lost most of the vibrant energy he’d had. “Some of our brothers died during a recent expedition, and one of the other paladins asked me to take a look at the bodies. Supposed to be something strange about their injuries, and I’m one of the most experienced Greens around these days. Anyway, since we’re talking about demon-inflicted wounds, I thought maybe you could take a look as well.”

  Exhaustion warred against the desire to help a friend, and in the end Birch’s own curiosity tipped the scales in the Green’s favor.

  “Alright, I guess I can take a quick look before I go find my bed,” Birch said. “Where are they being kept?”

  “Just a couple hallways down,” Perklet said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  Birch motioned for Perklet to lead the way and reached up to placate Selti, who warbled discontentedly.

  “Speaking of exhaustion, you don’t look all that fresh yourself, Perky, if you don’t mind my saying,” Birch said.

  “Oh,” Perklet said with a sigh, “I was summoned in the middle of the night to help with a difficult birth. Seven hours in labor, and we lost the child.”

  “I’m sorry,” Birch said soberly. “Stillborn?”

  “Might as well have been,” Perklet said disconsolately. “Poor little girl cried out once then just collapsed dead in the midwife’s hands.”

  - 4 -

  The two paladins entered the room slowly, mindful of the presence of three of their slain brothers laid out on wooden tables. The room smelled strongly of death and the cloying fragrance of some flower petals someone had laid out in a futile attempt to mask the odor emanating from the three corpses. Fortunately, someone had apparently opened a window recently, so fresh air was circulating in the room.

  The only other living person present was a Yellow paladin Birch immediately recognized as Michael Semnriak, another friend of Danner’s. The three men exchanged friendly handclasps and a few murmured greetings, then Michael stepped back and let them each examine a body.

  Birch immediately noted the distinctive claw marks left by demon-kind. The flesh around the wounds was sickly and usually became infected almost immediately, but none of these wounds seemed to be serious enough to have killed the paladin. Birch shifted his attention then to the man’s head, half of which was apparently missing and had never been recovered. Birch’s stomach tightened at the gruesome sight, but he’d seen as bad and worse during his lifetime, and this was sadly nothing new to him.

  “It looks almost like as sword wound, doesn’t it?” he heard Perklet murmur from behind him as the Green paladin examined one of the other bodies. Birch silently agreed.

  Or at least, it resembled a wound from a sword with such an unimaginably sharp blade that it left a perfectly – perfectly – smooth path cut in its wake. The angle of the cut was such that Birch would also have expected to see a similar wound in the man’s shoulder, but there was nothing. If this had been the result of a sword, whoever had held it had a more exact control of his blade than any man Birch had ever met, and he’d crossed blades with the best swordsmen the Prism had to offer.

  His exhaustion momentarily forgotten, Birch reached forward with one hand to run a finger down the sheered-off portion of the dead man’s skull. When he touched the bone, however, Birch jerked his finger back as an intense pain seared through his hand, as though someone had focused the heat of Hellfire and poured it all into one spot on his flesh. The jolt of… something surged through his body in the time it took to blink his eye, then as Birch was still recoiling in pain, Selti jerked awake from his perch across Birch’s shoulders and launched himself into the air. He flew agitated circles around their heads, scolding the Gray paladin furiously. Absorbed in the growing agony in his finger, Birch ignored the drann entirely.

  “Are you all right, Birch?” Michael asked, having noticed his reaction. Perklet turned in concern and sucked in his breath at the sight of Birch’s finger.

  The flesh all around his forefinger was blackened as though intensely burned, and Birch could only stare in shock at the sudden injury. Perklet immediately wrapped one hand around Birch’s outthrust finger and murmured a healing prayer. About the same time the full sensation of pain finally reached Birch’s brain, it was swallowed by soothing relief and a few seconds later, the finger was whole again. Even after the blackened flesh was gone, however, the three paladins continued to stare at Birch’s finger.

  “What was that?” Michael asked. “What did you do?”

  “I just touched the wound,” Birch said in a stunned voice. “I barely brushed against the cut in the skull, and it felt like I was touching the sun.”

  “But nothing happened when I touched it,” Perklet said, staring back at the corpse he’d been examining. “It felt unnaturally smooth to me, but that’s all.”

  “No one else who looked at or touched these bodies reacted like t
hat either,” Michael said. “We even had Danner take a look. He said there was something abnormal about them, but he couldn’t place it.”

  Birch frowned and took a deep breath as he finally looked away from his now-healed hand.

  “No, I wouldn’t guess he would at that,” Birch said heavily. “You were right to have him check, though. Danner’s lack of a reaction would tend to rule out a demon having caused these wounds, and when you combine it with my own… negative reaction, I think it indicates rather clearly the nature of these injuries.”

  Perklet’s eyes widened. “You can’t be suggesting an angel caused these wounds. That’s unthinkable.”

  Birch noted the troubled expression on Michael’s face. Selti finally calmed down enough to resume his perch on one of Birch’s shoulders, but he refused to let the Gray paladin scratch his eye ridge.

  “Unfortunately, that’s the only conclusion we can reach,” Birch said. “What’s more, it was apparently an extremely powerful angel for me to have such an intense reaction. We know that the stronger the demon, the more powerful the taint left behind in a wound it causes, so we can assume the same would be true of their angelic counterparts. I would hazard a guess it has to be someone with at least the strength of a Dominion,[12] possibly even a Seraph.”

  Perklet stared at Birch in shock.

  Michael looked as though he were fighting against a difficult decision. Birch was on the verge of telling him to just speak his piece when Michael squared his shoulders and looked Birch right in the eyes. He flinched after a moment, unable to look into the flaming depths of Birch’s eyes for more than a few seconds. When he looked at Birch again, he was obviously focusing on some other part of his face.

  “Birch,” he said, then cleared his throat and tried again. Birch wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard such a somber and potentially dire tone from this young man.

  “Birch, I think you should know about some things that have happened to Danner recently.”

  Chapter 5

  When you enter a game of stones, you have agreed to a certain reality the game represents, which is defined by the rules. Look closely, and you will see that cheaters simply can’t deal with reality.

  - Orange Paladin Jason Anterix,

  “Defining Reality” (856 AM)

  - 1 -

  Marc watched calmly as Garnet walked wearily into the common room of the Iron Axe and all but collapsed into a chair. The thick wooden legs groaned alarmingly, but the chair held.

  “One of these days you’re going to end up with your ass on the floor,” Flasch said without looking up, “and I just want to warn you now that we will, in fact, all laugh at you.”

  “Duly noted,” Garnet said, then he casually reached a hand out and gave Flasch a light rap upside the head.

  Without so much as breaking his concentration, Flasch looked up at Marc and winked before calmly moving a stone on the board situated between them, destroying Marc’s carefully planned strategy. A quick glance at the game board showed that Flasch would win yet again, though the final tally would not be as embarrassing as the last two games they had played. Marc threw up his hands in defeat and pushed himself back from the table. He had been having a fairly successful day, at least until he came back and agreed to play against Flasch while they waited for the others to return.

  Marc glanced back over at Garnet’s limp body.

  “Hard day at work?” he asked facetiously.

  “I hate dealing with the Council,” Garnet groaned. “They left me a message before I even woke up this morning. I left right after breakfast and arrived before they’d even gone into session for the day. Then I sat for over three hours waiting for them to let me into the damn room,” Garnet said in frustration. “Of course, even then I just sat to the side and listened to various reports, not knowing whether any of it was supposed to be relevant to why I was even there.

  “Finally, after I’d been there for another hour and a half, Geris addressed me and told me why I’d been summoned.”

  Marc and Flasch glanced at each other in a moment of silence. Finally, Flasch said, “Which was?”

  “What? Oh, wait for the others to show up first,” Garnet said, and Marc could hear Flasch grinding his teeth in annoyance. “Brican’s calling in Guilian from the camp, and Danner and Michael should be along any second.”

  Flasch shook his head and turned back to Marc.

  “Another game while we wait?”

  “Not a chance,” Marc replied flatly.

  “Oh, come on. I’ll play with one hand tied behind my back.”

  Marc stared at him.

  “What difference would that make?”

  Flasch shrugged, then grinned. Marc and Garnet both groaned.

  A few seconds later, Danner and Michael entered the inn, threw the three paladins a quick wave, then headed toward the door to the basement. Garnet slowly got to his feet and followed them.

  “Come on, you two,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re meeting them all in the war room.”

  “It’s good that he tells us these things ahead of time,” Flasch said, rolling his eyes.

  “He leads, we follow,” Marc said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  The two paladins followed their friend and commander down into the basement and a small room accessible only through a secret passageway. Here, the commanding officers of Shadow Company kept all their maps, plans, and training manuals they didn’t want others to see, including documented rosters of various training regimens applicable only to denarae because they dealt specifically with their kything abilities. Very few non-denarae knew of the room’s existence, even amongst those who regularly associated with Shadow Company.

  Garnet had specifically requested the secret construction of the war room, as he called it, because they needed a place close-at-hand where they could meet in seclusion to discuss important issues, both about the world at large and those dealing specifically with their company. Since it was impossible to keep anything hidden for long around several hundred mind-readers, the secret of the room was primarily kept against non-denarae. Shadow Company personnel and all those associated with the company were warned away from approaching the room under any circumstances, and anyone who had to communicate with the officers while they were enclosed within had to first pass the message through the denarae on duty at the inn, who would then pass it on if he deemed it sufficiently important.

  Marc and Flasch were the last two to enter the war room, so Marc turned and threw the bolt on the door. Somewhere within the wall, a sophisticated locking mechanism could just barely be heard sliding into place, but the whole thing operated on a simple sliding bolt accessible only from the inside. Opening the door from the outside was considerably more involved, especially if fully locked from within.

  “So now will you tell us what the Council had to say?” Michael asked, and Marc was surprised to hear frustration in his friend’s tone. Michael was usually the most level-headed in their group, a trait that suited him well as a member of the Yellow Facet. Marc realized Michael had obviously been kept in suspense far longer than he had, which made him feel slightly better about being put off by Garnet a few minutes ago. Or perhaps something else was bothering him.

  “Now that we’re all here, yes,” Garnet said. “Sorry, but I really didn’t feel like going through this twice.”

  Garnet unrolled a rough map of the city of Nocka that was large enough to include everything from the Barrier to the eastern gates. He slid a heavy sheet of clear glass over the map to hold it flat, then used two marking sticks to draw a thirteen red Xs and seven black ones on the glass.

  “The red marks indicate the approximate places where a paladin has died in the city sometime in the last day or so. Murdered,” Garnet announced in a grim tone. “The black marks indicate where another citizen of the city has died under apparently similar circumstances. All of these men have been identified as soldiers of some sort, most of them members of the city guard. No one’s quite sure exactly
when any of them died, but the outside range is estimated at a little over a day ago.”

  Michael whistled in amazement.

  Marc quickly analyzed the layout of the marks, looking for any recognizable pattern. He drew invisible lines in his mind, arranging various connections that might indicate a symbol. He also looked at street layouts, in case there was a pattern there.

  “Nothing,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?” Garnet asked.

  “I don’t see any sort of pattern in the locations,” Marc said. “I know the city pretty well, and there’s nothing obviously similar in the locations themselves, no patterns in the streets, nothing even vaguely familiar in the overall layout. And while I could show you a dozen or so possible symbols being made, none of them would really mean anything apart from sheer coincidence and imagination.”

  Garnet shook his head ruefully.

  “I really wish you’d been in with me today,” he said. “I spent over an hour listening to scholars and Orange paladins arguing over this same basic layout, and eventually they came to the same conclusion.”

  “What sort of details do we have about the deaths?” Danner asked.

  “Why is this coming to the attention of Shadow Company?” Guilian asked quietly on the heels of Danner’s query.

  Garnet pointed to Danner.

  “First, we really don’t know anything yet, other than that a large number of our brothers have mysteriously been cut down in the heart of our own city,” Garnet said. “That’s alarming enough by itself, but look at the larger scheme and see that we’ve also been suffering an unusually high number of casualties out in the field, and it raises the possibility of something more sinister.

  “Several Orange and Green paladins are looking into examining the bodies even as we speak, including our good friend Perky,” Garnet said with a significant glance at Michael. “They’re looking for any… unusual similarities in the causes of death, shall we say. There’s a couple theories in the works, but I’m not at liberty to discuss them right now, I’m sorry.”