Danner and Alicia appeared to one side of Moreen, and the Blue paladin stared at his uncle.
“Thomas?” Danner asked quizzically.
Birch stared at Moreen with a soft glare. Then he sighed.
“That’s my name, Danner, or at least that’s the name I was born with,” Birch said resignedly.
A loud, boisterous laugh broke the moment of silence, and Moreen turned to look as Hoil joyfully pushed his way past Gerard and Garet. He clapped a hand on Birch’s shoulder and laughed at the expression on his brother’s face.
“It was bound to get out sometime, Thomas,” Hoil said.
“Birch,” his brother corrected him irritably.
“Your name is Thomas?” Danner asked him, his brow wrinkled. “Then why…”
“He always hated that name,” Hoil explained, grinning broadly. “Can’t say as I know why, but he started looking for alternatives right about the time I learned how to walk and talk, I think. You wouldn’t believe some of the names he came up with, boy.”
“Let it lie, Hoil,” Birch growled.
“Tiberius, Aeolus, Martok the Magnificent, you name it, he probably thought about it,” Hoil went on, deliberately oblivious to his brother’s irritation. “Finally, one day I was getting the beating of my life from some disreputable thugs…”
“They were merchant guards who had just caught you stealing from them,” Birch corrected him with a glare.
“The thugs were beating me rather unjustly,” Hoil moved on quickly, “and your uncle walks by carrying the birch-wood bowkur I’d just bought him. He walloped the thugs and drove them off, then decided then and there his name would be Birch. I wasn’t in much of a position to argue, and it sort of stuck.”
“If we’re done with that particular line of thought,” Birch said irritably, “I think we should get back to the topic of Moreen wanting to come with me.”
“Why would we keep talking about something that’s already been decided?” Moreen asked him pointedly. The conversation had lasted long enough for Birch’s instinctive rejection to have passed, and now she was able to push past his lingering objections. As a final argument, she said firmly, “I believe you promised to marry me once the war was over, and I will call you before the rulers of Heaven itself to ensure you make good that vow, Birch.”
At that point, Birch’s token opposition melted away and he gladly pulled her to him in another lasting embrace. Minutes later, they were standing before none other than Mikal himself, the reigning angel of Heaven, who presided over a simple exchange of vows. Kaelus disappeared and came back a moment later with two rings forged from adamant at the hands – all of them – of Heaven’s master smith, Dem.
“I’d say you’ve earned them,” Mikal said when Birch tried to protest the use of such metal.
Whether by design or happenstance, Birch was standing over the curtain of the Merging when the abrupt ceremony took place, and when they embraced to seal their devotion, they were standing in two places at once at the moment of their union.
As they kissed, Danner leaned down to Alicia and whispered in her ear. Her tear-filled eyes lit up and she nodded enthusiastically as she wiped at her eyes.
“But not now, not here,” she told him. “I wouldn’t want to spoil their moment.”
After the moment of union came the time for partings.
Danner stood before his uncle and grinned at the jumbled expression on Birch’s face. It was part euphoria, part utter confusion.
“I wish I could tell you to remember to write to me,” Danner told him with a smile. “I don’t know that we’ll ever get a reliable courier service set up between us, though.”
Birch laughed and hugged his nephew.
Hoil embraced Moreen with a quiet admonition to keep an eye on the Gray paladin.
“Always getting into trouble, that one,” Hoil murmured. “You keep him from doing anything stupid. I want to see some nieces and nephews someday.”
“You’ll have them,” Birch said, overhearing the comment. “Time passes differently in Hell, remember? We’ve got plenty of time to build and raise a family.”
“But we’ll start trying to build it tonight,” Moreen said firmly, and Birch actually blushed.
“Ahem, well, we’ll see about sending them this way once they’re old enough,” Birch managed to say. Danner nearly choked trying not to laugh at the expression on his uncle’s face.
The time came for their final goodbyes, and Hoil stood beside his son and soon to be daughter-in-law as they watched everyone else recede into the shadows on the far side of the Barrier. Kaelus and Mikal disappeared to return to Heaven. The demon was now unique in that he could traverse either of the immortal planes, and he had promised to lend whatever aid he could in Birch’s battles for emancipation.
The Merging shimmered brilliantly for a moment as the Barrier was reestablished, and the devoted souls on the other side disappeared from sight. A swirl of wind stirred the ground, obscuring and finally erasing the footsteps left in the dusty earth. As the buggy accelerated back toward the city, there was no longer anything to mark the place where two worlds combined.
The wind whistled across the empty plain, then swept away into oblivion.
Postlude
In a polarized existence of Good and Evil, nothing can exist without the presence of its opposite. The only self-existent is balance – the Absolute. That which is everything and nothing at exactly eternity.
- Kaelus,
“The End of Eternity” (1048 AM)
- 1 -
In the years that followed what historians call the Barrier War, the mortal world underwent profound changes unequalled by any since the dawn of civilization.[41] The cataclysmic events of the Barrier War – specifically the temporary juxtaposition of the two immortal planes – wreaked havoc on Lokka as many forms of life were too weak to survive the ensuing months. Thousands of infants across every race died in their first moments of life. Moreover, famine swept the lands as crops withered in the fields and seeds lay barren in rich soil.
Meanwhile, what first was considered no more than an abnormal pocket of demons in the east was soon revealed as an army led by the demon prince Azazel and a devout cadre of demon lords and princes. As of this writing, credible scholars in both Heaven and Lokka are unsure how they escaped the mass exodus of demons that marked the end of the war.
Within a few months, the demons took control of the whole northeastern coast of the continent, dominated the island of Iska Furrit (site of the former dwarven capital of Den-Furral), and conquered half of the elven homeland. Within a year, the elven island was wholly occupied by the demons, as were all lands north of the Alear and Tali rivers. Weakened by back-to-back wars, the paladins of the Prismatic Order were unable to mount sufficient resistance to oppose the demonic army.
Approximately two decades later, an inexplicable phenomena swept through the demonized nations, toppling some immortal rulers while strengthening others. Little is known at this time about those events, but they seem to center around the actions of one Lucius Cipher. These events coincided with, but were not directly related to, the latest actions of Samyaza on Lokka. The complete historical account is currently being compiled under the volumes titled, “The Demonic Jihad.”
See these volumes (forthcoming) for further details.
- 2 -
In the black rubble, a pile of demonstone shifted ever so slightly. The destruction was lit by stray pools of water from the Dena-Fol, and liquid flame trickled down from an overturned cistern and coursed slowly past a single, human hand that protruded from the collapsed pile of stone. The fingers twitched once, then a second time.
A memory stirred.
“You are an interesting one. Worthless for my ultimate needs, but perhaps you shall fill another important role. It takes more than one card to win a hand, after all.”
An hour later, the hand stirred and began shifting whatever small rocks could be moved, which uncovered more of the limb and event
ually yielded an arm. The arm shifted at painful angles and moved rocks too heavy for many mortal men to lift, uncovering more of the pile until, at last, a body was revealed trapped below.
The man was clad in platemail armor that had once been carefully polished to a mirror shine. Now, melon-sized dents marred the once-smooth surface and black dust caked the armor, revealing little of the pristine surface that lay beneath. The man’s white hair was plastered with dried blood and black demonstone dust, and his once chiseled features now resembled the pocked surface of a heavily worked quarry. When he finally opened his eyes, he found himself staring sideways across a room of mayhem and destruction.
Another memory.
“A man of courage, I see. So you understand the struggle of facing death and overcoming your fear. Death is a failure, and only the living can strive for victory.”
The unknown voice faded from his mind.
The anteroom to what had once been the demon king’s throne room was nothing more than a pile of rubble. What passed for a ceiling was actually the vaulted roof two stories above the ground floor – the two levels in between had collapsed and dumped small mountains of rubble into the room below.
The man was weak. He felt a burning sensation in his chest, and he looked down to see a gaping hole in his armor, through which he could see the split bone of his sternum. He remembered all too well the source of that wound, and had he the strength, he would have shivered uncontrollably in suppressed fear.
Death incarnate.
“You’ve given your life to what? A God who allowed you to be taken and tortured, torn apart and your body twisted for the amusement of your enemies. You know there is no escape, that holding firm can only lead to more suffering, and perhaps if you are fortunate, your death. That is inevitable.”
Slowly, painfully, the man extricated himself from the pile of stone, then immediately collapsed to his hands and knees. He panted, his labored breathing nothing more than an instinct leftover from a life left behind months before. Some habits were hard to break, even those that conveyed weakness.
“It is not weakness to accept your fate. You have the makings of a great man, one whose talents I may find quite useful. If you feel adequate to the challenge, you may be chosen for power such as few men experience.”
He remembered now, some bits of conversation with an invisible entity, a presence that only came at his weakest moments to whisper in his mind and ensorcel his thoughts with promises of power. Perhaps… had it truly been… Satan?
“I was chosen,” he rasped through bloodless lips.
A sharp crack behind him caught his ear, and he would forever regret not having the energy to turn and look at who or whatever had come up behind him.
A strong, clawed hand seized him by the back of his throat and hauled him into the air, dangling a foot or more off the ground. He struggled and twisted as a malicious snarling filled his dead heart with terror. Clawed hands turned him around, and he found himself staring into the smoldering eyes of a massive bull-headed creature with one horn sheared off.
“You survived, General Malith,” Molekh sneered, and the Black paladin could see flames in the demon’s throat as he spoke. “You have no idea how that pleases me. There will, at least, be some enjoyment to be had in my existence. After this debacle,” the demon lord said, gesturing to the ruins around them, “I believe I will require centuries of entertainment to lift my dark spirits.”
He chuckled malevolently.
“How fortunate you were strong enough to survive.”
“No!” Malith screamed. “Oh, God! My God, help me!”
As the demon stalked from the palace, still clutching Malith by his throat, the Black paladin was bitterly forced to wonder to what divine source he pleaded for deliverance.
- 3 -
Maya huddled in the darkest corner of her cave and wept openly in fear as she contemplated her fate.
“It’s impossible,” she whispered. “This can’t be true. It can’t be possible. I don’t want it to be true. I am Metatron,” she said pleadingly, as though trying to convince herself. “I cannot have done wrong. I am an angel. I am Metatron, the voice of God. How could He have allowed this to happen to me?”
The question was asked to the silence of the cave around her. Maya nearly shrieked in terror as her question was answered.
“God does not care about you,” a silky voice said. “No more or less than He cares about anyone else, that is. Such is the fault with His utter altruism and equality. It’s impossible for Him to recognize true talent and special worth where it exists, and He squanders it without ever appreciating it.”
“Who’s there?” Maya asked fearfully, peering into the shadows. Even in Hell, her powers as an angel gave her the ability to see perfectly in any environment if she so chose. Still, she could see nothing – no signs of the person who had spoken to her.
“No, for I am not here,” came the response to her unspoken thought. “My presence would violate certain rules from which I am not ready to diverge. Instead, I have chosen to make my will known through another, who speaks for me. In fact, for now, you may call me the Voice. I believe I have enjoyed that moniker more than most others applied to me.”
Maya could hear amusement in the Voice, and it only made her more afraid. Something was terribly wrong about its presence, something tantalizing and maddening, yet so obvious her brain burned she couldn’t discern it.
“What do you want, Voice?” she demanded, summoning the shreds of her dignity and superiority. She was Metatron after all, wasn’t she? She should show fear to no one.
“Ah, excellent,” the Voice said. “I have chosen well, it seems. You are eminently perfect for my needs. Such a simple test to pass, and yet you did so without even being aware of the inquisition. Better and better, indeed, Metatron – the Voice of God, you were correct before you ever knew it yourself.”
“Speak plainly or speak not at all,” Maya said.
The Voice laughed silkily. The sound wrapped around Maya’s mind, tantalizing her with its simultaneous soft, seductiveness and a corresponding power beyond anything she recalled ever encountering. She had the sudden urge to fall to her knees and bow.
“No, I need no genuflections yet,” the Voice said, responding to her unvoiced thoughts. “That time may yet come, if all goes as planned. You know me now, Maya?”
The Seraph’s lips trembled as she nodded.
“Speak my name.”
“Shaitan,” she gasped in a whisper.
The Voice sighed in satisfaction. “Ah, as I said, perfect. Tell me, Maya, you know your actions to be righteous, and yet you find yourself banished here, Anathematized to Hell. The God you have devoted yourself to has turned His back on you, letting you be cast amongst the pits of your immortal enemies for only doing as you thought was correct.
“Is that the God you wish to continue serving?” the Voice asked. “Is that the God you ever truly served?”
Maya felt the Voice’s words as they touched her, carrying meanings hidden within meanings, challenges and promises buried deep and yet hinted at so subtly she could not deny their existence. The trembling in her lips ceased, but she stared woodenly ahead into the blackness.
“No,” she whispered.
“No, what?”
“No, that is not the God I served,” Maya said, her mind numb from the implications of the realization she had just undergone. “My God would never have ignored me and left me to the whims of my enemies.”
“Your God did not, He merely waited for you to come to Him,” the Voice said.
She whispered, “And I have come.”
Silence. She could tell the Voice was pleased.
The Voice sighed.
Maya sighed.
Slowly the truth dawned on her. The voice she heard – the Voice – was her own, but in tones of silken seduction and subtle power that had never before passed her lips.
“As I will, so you speak,” the Voice confirmed. “Metatron indeed.”<
br />
Maya shivered in delight.
“You still wish to serve what you believe is good, yes?” the Voice asked finally.
“Yes.”
“You know that the means by which you accomplish goodness are inconsequential, it is only the virtue of the resulting ends that truly matters.”
“Yes.”
“Evil and good. Are you ready to embrace one to accomplish the other?”
Maya knelt on the ground and stared with quivering devotion at the blackest shadow in the cave, imaging His presence. With a new purpose to guide her and clearer thoughts than she’d ever before experienced, she committed herself to a new path, one that would – she was certain – ultimately lead to the realization of her dreams of paradise for all.
With unwavering resolve, she spoke.
“Evil, be thou my good.”
- 4 -
In the next room, Danner could hear his wife groaning in pain. Alicia screamed out the occasional mild obscenity as she struggled to give birth to her first child. Danner had been banished from his apartments when it became clear he was nothing more than a hindrance to the women looking after Alicia’s welfare. Now he waited eagerly for word from within.
“Danner, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you don’t stop pacing and sit down,” Flasch said, lounging on a nearby bench.
“He’s right, Danner,” Marc said, glancing up from a game of stones against Brican. “I can already see a color change in the stone.”
Danner stopped pacing and glared at his friends.
“I thought you at least would show some sympathy, Marc,” Danner told him. “That’s your nephew being born in there, after all.”
Marc shrugged
“As I understand it, what Alicia is undergoing is normal for birthing, or else someone would have come out to tell us,” the Orange paladin said. “I’ll start worrying when they do, or else when they bring out my nephew and he doesn’t have the right number of fingers and toes.”
“Just ignore him, Danner,” Brican said. “Just wait until he finally gets Janice pregnant and has his first child. Then we’ll see how calm and analytical booker here is.”
Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Page 64
