There are more important things to worry about, he told himself sternly. Like how in San’s name I’m going to break this to Mo.
Birch sighed as he drew his sword and stared down the razor-sharp edge.
“The Gray paladin and his blade,” Birch murmured bitterly to himself. “The blessed sword that broke before its wielder did in the pits of Hell.” His palm itched uncomfortably against the leather-wrapped handle, and when Birch moved the re-forged sword to his left hand he saw a rash on the bottom edge of his hand where he’d touched the pommel.
“Am I now allergic to my own weapon?” he muttered. His face impassive, Birch tugged on a pair of leather gloves and sheathed his sword. Taking up his bowkur, he went in search of Garet for a sparring partner. Birch needed something that would take his mind off of their journey and the choices he had made.
- 3 -
“We are in Berilana, my lord.”
“Excellent,” Min replied. “And the Gray one?”
“He is caring for his horse.”
“How has he been behaving?”
“It’s hard to say, exactly. He seems to have a lot on his mind, and he doesn’t talk about it to anyone. But he wears the mark of his shame at all times.”
“Yes, whoever heard of a Gray paladin?” Min said in agreement. “What does he talk about?”
“Nothing on his own. I mean, he doesn’t bring up any subject, he just talks about whatever the rest of us are discussing.”
There was a pause, as he mulled over his own thoughts.
“Try to get him to speak of his experiences on the other side of the Merging,” Min said at last, “especially in the deepest part of his journey.”
“Yes, my lord.” He paused. “My lord, why this interest in his journey? I thought I was merely to report on his speech and behavior.”
“As I told you before, there is something about this one that bears watching,” Min replied evenly. “Something in his tale strikes me at odds, and I would know the whole truth. I do not trust one who wears a mark of impurity so easily.”
“Yes, whoever heard of a Gray paladin?” the listener said, unaware that he echoed the exact words said before. “A mark of impurity to be sure.”
“And perhaps not only impurity, but of an unholy treachery,” Min said smoothly. The other heard them not as words, but as part of his own thoughts. He voiced his suspicion.
“Perhaps the color serves as a warning to the pure that this one is not to be trusted,” the other said.
“Ah, you show perception, excellent,” Min said approvingly. “I think I chose my assistant well, but take care, lest he or the others see your suspicion in your eyes. No doubt he is corrupting those around you so they will not suspect him.”
“Then should I not warn them and protect their souls, my lord?”
“No! You must curb your most holy of instincts to protect your brothers. Instead, for the greater good, you must work ever diligently to mask your true feelings and righteousness so they will not mark you apart. None must suspect your freedom from his influence.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“In the meantime, draw from him the truth of his journey, and keep me appraised of your progress,” he ordered. “Well do you serve me, and through me the Prism and God.”
With that, Min broke the mental contact. Manipulating that one gave him only a small sense of accomplishment; his mind was so weak that it was almost too easy. With a minimal effort, Min had convinced the mortal fool that hearing his voice in his head was a secret blessing bestowed on the heads of the Prismatic Council. Min had needed some explanation for the long-distance communication he would need to retain a strong hold on the mortal’s mind. Despite his weakness, he was a paladin, and it would not do to underestimate him.
Each of the six paladins in the original jintaal had given Min a report before leaving for Berilana, and Min had singled this one out to act as his spy. There was still much to learn about the paladin who escaped. Birch de’Valderat, the one who they now called the Gray paladin. Something about that unique coloration bothered Min, but neither he nor his brothers could decide what it portended. One of the tasks assigned by Mephistopheles, the King of Hell, was to learn how the paladin had escaped, by whatever means necessary. Min and his brothers already knew torture would not work on him; the paladin had already survived the worst Hell could offer. If that couldn’t break him, nothing they could do this side of the Merging would have any hope of breaking him.
Or is there something? Min paused at the thought. He read the details in Sal’s mind and nodded approvingly. She would have to survive the fiery holocaust, but The Three could use that to force her to play right into their hands. Sal was disappointed that he wouldn’t exact immediate revenge, but a greater prize waited on the end of the properly-baited hook.
Let the human bitch live for now. When the time is right, we will take her and break her, then use her to coerce him. Go now, my brother.
Min looked up from his kneeling place at the altar and smiled. Around him, a handful of paladins knelt at their own daily devotions in the small chapel. Min had learned that Rathamik had frequented this chapel for his daily prayers and had adopted that practice for himself to help maintain the illusion of his assumed identity as the head of the Prismatic Council. He couldn’t think about the chapel without smiling. For a holy place, someone in the past had apparently neglected to sanctify the building, making it safe for Min to enter. The presence of the Tricrus above the altar still caused him some discomfort, but it was tolerable.
The chapel was an ideal place from which to direct his spies. If Min slipped and voiced his inner thoughts, he would sound no different than the paladins around him who softly murmured their prayers aloud. Should any of them overhear him, they would understand nothing of his quiet murmuring. Min spoke, even in his mind, the language of the immortals, and it was only through the effort of concentration that Min managed to speak the human tongue without choking on its… mortality.
Mortal languages were so horribly limited.
Min chuckled softly to himself as he leaned forward to stand, but he had no sooner gained his feet than a mental blast knocked him to his knees again. Min sank to the cushions, shaken to the core by the contact.
“Report.”
In that simple word, the King of Hell nearly scared Min into reverting to his true shape. With a force of will, he steadied himself and linked his mind with Mephistopheles. In a moment, Hell’s most powerful denizen had read the thoughts of Min and his brothers. Satisfaction pulsed briefly, but was quickly overcome by a torrent of fury.
“Kaelus has escaped!” Mephistopheles thundered inside Min’s head. He trembled from the force of the demon king’s fury. In unison, The Three asked, “How? When?”
“Daella reported him missing, and I confirmed his flight only moments ago,” Mephistopheles said. “No one has spoken to him in centuries, and it seems he was still captive mere days ago, as mortals measure time. When Daella performed her customary inspection of his cell, she found the infernal traitor missing and no signs of how he escaped. His chains were snapped off cleanly, not torn, but as though severed by a blade. His cell was still sealed securely from without.”
Frustration cut a thick streak through the unbridled fury in Mephistopheles’s voice, and Min shuddered to imagine how it would feel to be in the presence of such anger. The contact was muffled by the Merging, and Min did not envy Daella or any other near the King of Hell when he was in such a rage.
This was the second escape from Hell’s dungeons in the history of the immortal plane; the first had been the paladin only a short time before.
“Master, there were also no signs of how the paladin escaped, correct?” Min ventured the thought. He took the following silence for agreement. “Perhaps some unknown force seeks to subvert your will and…”
“NONE CAN THWART MY WILL IN MY OWN DEMESNES!” Mephistopheles thundered. The force of his cry nearly unraveled Min’s existence, and he struggled t
o keep his āyus in one piece.
“Of course not, master,” Ran said consolingly, his mental voice shaking. “We only suggest there may be a traitor in your ranks. Certainly one practiced in subterfuge could find ways around all but the strongest of barriers, especially those as long-standing as the barriers binding Kaelus.”
There was silence as Mephistopheles pondered this thought. Voicing it was a risk, they all knew, for it implied that the King of Hell hadn’t the strength to maintain the prison around a single demon. But ever since the Great Schism, Mephistopheles had been willing to see beyond personal affront and examine the harsh truth beneath. Such pride had been the downfall of Hell’s armies then, and their master had vowed never to let the same mistakes mar his plans.
“In all Hell, Kaelus’s power is second only to mine, or it was before he was imprisoned,” Mephistopheles mused. “His bonds fed off of his own power, yet it is possible that with a traitor working from without and he from within, Kaelus could have escaped. Those barriers have been untended for eons, and perhaps Daella hasn’t the power to properly examine them.”
The Three breathed a silent sigh of relief as their master’s thoughts calmed. Mephistopheles turned his mind away from them, breaking the contact. None of them had the brazenness to interrupt him with another thought to consider.
The King of Hell was surely the unopposed master of the unholy plane of existence, and when he turned his mind to it, nothing there could escape his notice for long. If he couldn’t find Kaelus, it was almost certain the demon had taken advantage of the weakened Merging and had crossed into the mortal realm.
Min would question the paladins around him about any other problems at the Merging. Several paladins had felt the disturbance of The Three making their crossing, and these same would now serve as Min’s guide to tracking Kaelus. In the meantime, Min would watch the Gray paladin through his spy. Perhaps there was some link between the two.
Min opened his eyes and found he was lying on his face on the carpeted step where he’d been “praying.” A pair of Green paladins was hovering over him, concern etched on their frail mortal faces. Min waved them back before any could lay healing hands on him. Their prayers of healing would only cause the demon agony and most likely reveal his identity.
“I’m fine, brothers,” Min said consolingly, getting to his feet. “A bit of lightheadedness, I’m sure. Nothing to worry about.”
The paladins let him alone, and Min smiled wryly as they all left the chapel. Alone for the moment, Min turned toward the altar and dipped a mocking bow to the Tricrus and the statue of an angel hovering behind it.
“It’s only a matter of time now, O Holy Ones,” Min said quietly. “Then our armies will be unleashed and our power unstoppable.”
Min straightened and threw his imitation yellow cloak about him with a flourish. His mocking laughter echoed behind him in the empty chapel.
- 4 -
Danner slid down the corner of the wall, bracing his feet on the drain pipes on either side to control his descent. He grimaced as his boots rode roughshod over rivets and strips of metal, but he was in too much of a hurry to bother with a slow descent. When he reached the stones below, Danner crouched in the shadows of the courtyard. No matter his hurry, he had to time his return between the pacing of the guards so he wouldn’t get caught. As he waited, Danner considered the things he’d seen and heard in Faldergash’s house.
The gnome was staying with an old friend of his, another gnome named Gabruilla. For friends, Danner thought they bickered quite a bit and there was a strange tension in the house that Danner couldn’t explain. Apart from that, it was quite unlike any other gnomish home Danner had ever seen or heard of.
For one thing, the house was intact. There were no holes or blackened burn marks on the ceiling ─ or walls for that matter ─ except in the living room just inside the front door. The rest of the house was cluttered with the usual hodgepodge of machinery and half-assembled contraptions, but the few Danner had actually seen in action had seemed to perform as expected. There were no unwarranted explosions, no furniture hacked to pieces by a machine run amuck, and nothing Danner could find to indicate the usual destructive presence with which people normally associated a gnome.
Then there was Faldergash himself. Danner had finally discerned the change in his friend. Almost gone was the bumbling, absent-minded gnome Danner had befriended years before. Oh, his humor and little quirks hadn’t changed, but Faldergash no longer dumped half his meals into his lap, and his eyebrows had remained whole and unsinged since Danner had arrived in the city. Normally that would mean the gnome wasn’t working on a project ─ at least not one that involved flame ─ but Faldergash kept Danner appraised on his modifications to his superfire cooker and other incendiary devices. Not one of them seemed to have malfunctioned in the two weeks Danner had been coming to see his friend.
A week before Birch had left, he’d sponsored Danner’s enrollment as a trainee to become a paladin. Hoil might not be pleased when he heard, but Danner was certain it was the right decision. Something deep inside him stirred in satisfaction when he took his oath to obey his instructors and vowed to follow the path of God. The current training session was already well underway, but the trainers made an exception for Danner at Birch’s request. Fortunately Danner had already received considerable combat training from Maran, so he was at least on the level with the other students in that area.
Danner frowned, then shrank back further into the shadows as a paladin came striding into view. The guard’s eyes scanned all about, but Danner was too well hidden to be noticed. The paladin passed without pause, and Danner breathed a sigh of relief. It was too easy to get complacent after a week of sneaking out at night and not being discovered, and tonight was the result. If he hurried, Danner would get back to his room just in time to escape notice by the Nightman, the paladin who periodically checked on the trainees every night. He also handled all the nighttime punishments and duties of Danner and the others, and Danner would be dealt with severely if he was caught out after hours.
Not to mention that Maran would likely have a few stern words for him, if the one-eared elf ever found out Danner had been caught. Maran had left after seeing Danner safely enrolled in his training, saying he had to report to Danner’s father that he was safe. Maran set out on foot, leaving the promise that either he or Hoil would return to check on him.
Shaking thoughts of his father and his mentor from his head, Danner raced across the courtyard and practically leapt onto the stone wall beneath the trainee barracks. He scrambled up the wall as quickly as he could, fumbling only occasionally for a foot- or handhold. In a moment he reached the balcony and slipped silently into the room.
Meandering through the bunked beds of his fellow trainees, Danner found his bed and slid silently beneath his sheets. Barely a heartbeat later, the door opened and Danner snapped his eyes shut and feigned sleep. Soft boots padded down the row between beds, and Danner frowned inwardly. Either his internal clock was off, or else the Nightman had decided to walk his rounds early. Neither made sense.
The nearly inaudible footsteps stopped near Danner’s bed, then he heard them shuffling closer. Danner cursed himself silently. The Nightman must have noticed something amiss and was now coming to expose Danner’s false sleep and punish him.
“Now I’m shnieked,” he mouthed, cursing his carelessness.
Something struck Danner as odd, though, and it took him a second to realize what was wrong. The Nightman didn’t wear soft-soled shoes, but rather a pair of boots that had a muffled, thudding step. Danner stirred slightly, moving himself to sneak a peek at whomever was approaching his bed. Before he could open his eyes, he heard the whisper of a blade leaving the sheath.
Danner rolled out the opposite side of his bed as a knife plunged into his sheets.
“Nightman!” he yelled, throwing his bedding at his unknown assailant. “Nightman! Awake!”
Danner darted to his storage trunk and slipped a
dagger from behind it. Around him, trainees were startled from their sleep and were reacting to Danner’s cry. Some fled the room ─ Danner hoped they were going to find the Nightman and not just running in fear ─ while a few closed on Danner’s bed. Most were still fumbling about half asleep.
Danner’s assailant freed himself from the sheet and lunged toward him, another knife appearing in his hand. Danner saw the man’s eyes through a black mask, then he dropped onto his back and slashed upward with his own blade, cutting only air.
“Watch out, Danner,” someone said behind him, and Danner rolled just in time to avoid another slash. He rolled onto his back again and looked up for the next attack.
Instead, he saw the largest of the trainees grappling with the would-be assassin. Danner didn’t know his name, but the young man was at least a full head taller than the man with the knife and nearly half again as wide. The masked man slashed at him, but the trainee blocked the attack on his forearm and grabbed the man’s wrist. Danner blinked and suddenly the attacker was on his knees, his arm wrenched painfully behind him as his knife clattered to the floor.
“Got him,” the trainee grunted. “Someone tie up his legs.”
A wiry trainee grabbed the sheet from a nearby bed and improvised a rope. He worked swiftly around the captive man’s kicking feet and had his legs bound within seconds. A moment later saw the captive’s wrists bound and all four limbs tied behind him in what looked to be an extremely painful position.
“Hogtied,” someone said.
“You all right, Danner?” the large trainee asked, extending a hand to help Danner to his feet.
“Yeah. How do you know my name?” Danner asked. To his knowledge, they’d never been introduced.
“My father is one of the paladin’s traveling with your uncle,” he replied, shrugging. “He pointed you out to me before he left.”
Now that he was upright, Danner took in the trainee’s immense size.
“Garet jo’Meerkit?” he asked. The young man nodded.
“I’m Garnet,” he said, holding out his hand. “Garnet jo’Garet.” Danner shook his hand enthusiastically.
Hunting The Three (The Barrier War) Page 24
