Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (15 page)

“On some level,
you’ve been aware of what’s going on,” Garnet continued, “and as much as I hate
to say it, and as strange as it sounds, we have to examine the possibility that
Marc is right. You may be acting out under some sort of influence without your
even being aware of it. Unless you can think of an alternative, that is.”

“Alternatives?
Sure, plenty,” Danner said, grunting bitterly, “but they’re all even less
likely than Marc’s theory. I don’t like it, and I don’t think he’s right, but I
honestly can’t prove that he’s wrong.”

Danner sighed
and slumped down on the table. Garnet began to relax. The worst of it was over.

“So where do we
go from here?” Danner asked finally. “What do we do now?”

“Well, for
starters, we’re not leaving this building for at least the next day or so,”
Garnet said, “and I want one of us with you at all times. I hope you don’t mind
company while you sleep, because you’re going to have it.”

“I don’t know
what Alicia’ll say to that,” Danner said, his lips twitching slightly in the
beginnings of a tentative smile. “Just be warned. She steals all the covers.”

Mortals have an ability I find fascinating – they can
refuse to believe in God.

- Kaelus,

“Collected Accounts from the
Pandemonium War”

- 1 -

To all outward
appearances, Danner bore his confinement in good grace. As he encountered his
friends, he made a point of telling them he understood the tough position they
were in and that he didn’t hold it against them at all. Privately, Danner
wasn’t convinced that was true, no matter how many times he said it to others
or to himself. Some part of him was still very hurt that his friends could
possibly believe he was capable of outright murder – and of paladins, no less!
Of course, they thought he was under some sort of external influence, but
still, the thought rankled.

He did his best
to think through the situation, and really, he
knew
it wasn’t something
he should hold against them. Rationalization only went so far, though, and
didn’t help the leaden feeling in his body. Neither did it help the
gut-twisting fear he experienced when he considered the possibility they might
actually be right.

Who really
knows what they do in their sleep?
Sure, he had Alicia there beside him,
but Danner had been raised as the son of a successful thief and trained under a
true master of stealth. It was no stretch of the imagination to think that if
Danner
was
hunting men down in his sleep, slipping out of bed unnoticed
would be among the least of his problems.

Alicia came and
stayed with him in his room for a while, holding him and talking to him in turn
until he fell asleep. Her presence made his isolation more bearable and she
stayed awake as long as they were alone together, but in the morning she left
to see to her daily duties. She was immediately replaced by Michael, who
brought breakfast and a board to play stones to keep them occupied. Danner’s
attention wasn’t on the game, however, and Michael beat him soundly two games
out of three.

Game board in
hand, he left with an embarrassed sort of smile.

Garnet came and
stayed with him for a while, but the silence between them was uncomfortable,
and he was quickly replaced by Brican and then Marc. Even Guilian took a turn
at staying with Danner as night approached, but after their initial greeting
they only said a few dozen words to each other. After an hour of relative
silence, Danner walked Guilian to the door and stared out across the balcony
down into the common room. Already, he saw Flasch moving briskly up the stairs
toward him, a pleased smile on his face.

“You look like a
cat in the cream,” Danner said, amused in spite of himself. “What’s up?”

“We just got
word your uncle’s on his way to visit,” Flasch said. “I thought maybe you’d
like us to send him up when he gets here.”

Danner’s smile
was considerably more genuine now.

“Yeah, I’d like
that, actually,” he said. The thought of seeing his uncle raised his spirits
significantly, and he motioned for Flasch to go past him into his apartments.
Danner took another look down into the common room. The rest of his friends
were spread out at several tables. Michael and Marc had already started a game
of stones, and surprisingly enough, Brican was sitting at a nearby table
playing against Janice while Garnet watched. Danner smiled, hoping it boded
well for the denarae’s ability to get along with humans.

Guilian was
again sitting apart from the rest, and only a young-looking blonde, human woman
was nearby. She was wiping Guilian’s table with a rag, and it was only after a
moment’s attention that Danner noticed she’d been wiping the same spot for
several minutes. Her lips were moving, and she even smiled rather prettily at
one point, but quickly she masked the expression and returned to wiping the
same spot on the table.

Something
strange flickered on the edge of Danner’s awareness, and he looked at a heavily
cloaked figure that was standing near a support beam away from the others.
Danner’s eyes slid away from the person like he wasn’t even there, and it was
only through conscious effort that he refocused on the solitary figure.
Strangely, Danner couldn’t seem to actively think of a description: no details
of height or weight sprang to mind, nothing about his standing posture.
Nothing.

The only
descriptive word Danner could settle on in his mind was
gray
.

Danner turned to
Flasch, then stopped, his mouth hanging open.

“What’s up,
Danner?” Flasch asked.

“I don’t know,”
Danner said, his mind reeling. “I was going to ask you about something, but damned
if I can think of what it was.”

Flasch shrugged.
“If it’s important, you’ll remember. Right?”

“I guess so,”
Danner said.

“Don’t sweat it,
Danner,” the Violet paladin said, clapping a hand on Danner’s shoulder. “It
happens to everyone. It’s only a sign of getting old if you’re already over
forty.”

“Thanks,” Danner
said with good-natured sarcasm.

They pulled up
chairs at the table in Danner’s outer apartment and reminisced about their
training days. Gerard Morningham and his hard-assed but effective instruction;
their training in the mountains; Ashfen Diermark’s embarrassing dismissal from
the Prism’s training.

“Whatever
happened to him anyway?” Danner asked. “Does anybody know?”

“I heard he went
off and joined the city guard before the war broke out,” Flasch said. “Managed
to enter at a sergeant’s rank on account of his training in the Prism, then
quickly promoted to lieutenant. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. I don’t even
know if he survived.”

Danner grunted,
then asked, “So who all is left from our training class?”

“Danny Heff is
still around,” Flasch said. “I saw him at the Prism just before we went hunting
last time. Marc saw Jerome Falkirk the other day, and I heard somewhere that
Billy jo’Rashak is getting married soon.”

“Billy, really?”
Danner asked with some surprise. “I always sort of figured he was a little…”
Danner trailed off, wavering one hand back and forth.

“Well, I do know
he got Arren Yarest’s eldest daughter pregnant, so I’d put money on straight.”

“Yarest? From
the Prismatic Council?” Danner laughed.

“The same,”
Flasch said with a grin. “Apparently, after he made paladin during the war,
Billy figured he was good enough to finally ask her out and start taking her
around. Guess they went around one too many times.”

They both
laughed heartily.

“Who else?”
Danner asked. “I’ve totally lost track of everything and everyone lately.”

“Let’s see,”
Flasch said. “Kaleb and Harry both made paladin same time we did, and I think
they both made it through okay. And Mak…” Flasch cut off abruptly, shaking his
head.

“Damn,” he
murmured.

“It’s all
right,” Danner said. “We lost a lot of friends during the war. Maki’s still
just a little too close and fresh.”

Danner
hesitated.

“Flasch, I’ve
been meaning to ask you something,” he said, “about when we found Maki.” The
other paladin waved for him to continue. “Garnet said you overheard me saying
something in my sleep, something that Marc had to translate.”

“It was in the
immortal tongue, yeah,” Flasch said. “Damn near scared me out of my skin.”

“What exactly
did I say?” Danner said. “Garnet gave me the translation, but something just
doesn’t feel right, and it’s making me edgy.”

Flasch frowned
in thought. “I know that language can be tricky, so I can’t promise this the
correct pronunciation. It’s close, though.

“It was,
‘Thanatos eilient. Thanatos ventriis eilist. Thanatos sasilius mortitus,’”
Flasch said, only slightly bungling the pronunciation of the words. “Marc said
it was death coming, among us, and slaying the virtuous.”

Danner ran the
words through his mind, trying to sort out what was wrong. It had something to
do with what he’d forgotten to ask Flasch earlier, he was sure of it. Something
about one of the words.

Thanatos.

Death.

Not a word. A
name.

DEATH
.

Danner’s eyes
flew open.

“Dear God, no,”
Danner whispered in horror.

- 2 -

Birch and
Perklet rode up to the Iron Axe on their dakkans and dismounted unhurriedly.
Birch slapped Selti’s scaled hide and asked his mount to stay outside.

“I shouldn’t be
but a few minutes, Selti, so behave yourself,” Birch said sternly. “If I decide
to sleep here tonight, I’ll let you know so you can come in.”

“Ask him if he
would please keep an eye on Gessup here,” Perklet said, rubbing a hand over his
dakkan’s violet-scaled head. “He’s still young and I’ve only had him a few
weeks, so I don’t want him wandering off.”

“Asking Selti to
watch over a young dakkan is sort of like inviting a cat to look after your
fish,” Birch said, and he received a baleful glare from the gray dakkan, “but
we’ll hope for the best.”

Perklet held the
door for Birch to enter the inn, then followed him in.

Birch glanced
around until he caught Moreen’s eye, and he experienced a brief moment of sheer
joy as her face lit up in surprise and happiness. They each managed about one
step toward each other before a door upstairs was flung open with a resounding
crash, and Danner strode out onto the balcony, his wings blazing as he gazed
down into the common room.

Everyone stared
up at the vision of angelic fury and several jaws dropped open in surprise.
Danner’s eyes burned with blue fire as he quickly scanned the common room.

“Where’s
Garnet?” he asked urgently, his voice booming with the power surging through
his body.

“Danner, what do
you think you’re doing?” Michael called. “This is just what Garnet…”

“Where
is
he?” Danner thundered, his voice shaking the walls of the common room.
“Brican?”

“Garnet went to
use the indoor privy,” the denarae replied in a stunned voice.

Before anyone
could react, the door to the toilet burst into so much kindling and Garnet flew
head-first into the common room. He crashed into a table amidst a cloud of
splinters and crumpled to the floor, where he lay still. Through the cloud of
dust, Birch could barely make out an indistinct shape striding confidently out
of the privy.

With a roar of
fury, Danner leapt from the balcony and landed between the shadowy figure and
Garnet’s unmoving body. He drew a sword that lit up with blue flames, and
finally the stranger stopped his advance. Still, everyone was staring at
Danner, completely ignoring the intruder.

“You will
not
take him!” Danner challenged the shadowy intruder.

“Danner, what
the Hell do you think you’re doing?” Flasch called from the balcony.

“Get away from
Garnet!” Marc and Brican yelled.

“Danner!” Alicia
screamed.

“It’s him!” Danner
growled. “It’s Death.”

The shadowy
figure stepped to the side, and Danner followed him with his sword and eyes
warily. At last, the stranger stepped into the open and Birch got a clear look
at him, and he felt a shock surge through his system with the force of a
thunderclap. The other man threw back his robes, which disappeared as they fell
away from his body, and an eerie gray light shone out from behind him as six
glowing, gray-feathered wings unfurled from beneath the suddenly vanished cloth
and spread wide. He was garbed in form-fitting, black cloth, and he was
inhumanly beautiful to behold.

“A Seraph,”
Birch whispered. His voice carried across the room in the sudden silence.
Recognition tingled in Birch’s mind as he stared at the angel’s face, but the
name refused to surface.

 “The Angel
of Death,” Danner said without ever taking his eyes from the six-winged angel.
“He’s the one who’s been slaying paladins.”

“What are the
two of you talking about?” Michael asked.

“They can’t see
him, Danner,” Birch called, realizing the problem. He had not yet drawn his own
sword, not wanting to provoke the death angel.

“What are you
doing here?” Danner asked the angel.

“It is
necessary,” the Angel of Death replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “and my work
is finished. He will die.”

With a glance at
his surroundings, he suddenly leapt into the air in a long arc that carried him
over Danner and to the main door… right past an unprepared Birch. The Angel of
Death bounded through the doorway and leapt into the sky. Danner was only a few
seconds behind him as he followed suit. Birch stayed long enough grab Perklet’s
shoulder and propel him toward Garnet’s fallen body.