Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (63 page)

“You think
the pits of Hell devoid of virtue, mortal? You are correct, of course. Demons,
by their very nature, are incapable of true virtue, and what is more despised
than something for which you yearn but will be denied for eternity? No demon
would be aware of this yearning – if in truth it exists – and it is but one
explanation for their hatred. Perhaps they hate the angels simply because they
must. It is their purpose in the world.”

The Voice
fell silent, leaving him to ponder his thoughts. After a timeless moment, the
Voice went on, this time from a different angle.

“Have you
never wondered why God wants the adoration and worship of mortals?”

“While
assuredly deserving of it, I don’t believe God
wants
the adoration of
anyone,” he replied. “A perfect being needs nothing, least of all worship, and
the actual desire for such indicates pride, self-aggrandizement, and a host of
other sins. That is not the God I know and love.”

The Voice
laughed again.

“Oh, you are too
rare, mortal, too perfect. You are the first to survive this long who has ever
reached that conclusion. Sometime soon, we must discuss how this idea reflects
on God’s opposite. For now, let me ask you then, holy warrior, what is it that
separates a mortal from an immortal? What
thing
does he possess that is
not a part of any demon or angel?”

“A soul,” he
replied promptly. Some inner memory, perhaps sparked from a previous
conversation with the Voice, told him immediately the answer that was sought.
It also stirred his memories, and he began to suspect who the Voice might be –
that perhaps he had known before but had forgotten.

“And do you
know what a soul is?” the Voice asked.

He stayed
silent, which was answer enough.

“It is the
ultimate fulfillment of a single spark of life. A by-product of the separation
of Good and Evil that embodies the heart of each. The potential for ultimate
Good mingled with the capability for ultimate Evil; polar opposites living in
harmony – of a sort – inside a living creature given the ability to choose
between the two. What other piece of existence has that power?”

In that
instant, he remembered the identity of the Voice, and rather than be afraid, he
was oddly comforted. As though aware of his realization, the Voice dropped its
ongoing pretense.

“Your God and
I are bound by our natures to do only what we view as Good or Evil. Oh, I can
perform a good act as you would see it. I can even reward a man for doing a
good deed – it is a tool toward pride and a step on the path of indulgence and
waste. Vanity was ever one of my favorite sins. But no matter what I do, always
I will have a heart of Evil intent and a goal suiting my own purposes. Our
angels and demons are bound by our will and the purpose of their creation. Even
an angel could potentially do Evil if he truly believes the act to be Good.

“But a
mortal? A free-willed, living, sentient being? That ability to choose is the
greatest power a mortal or immortal creature can ever have. It gives you power
over your self. It can give you power over others. That is the power I crave.
That is the purpose of what you call life, the reason I allowed it to happen
when God and I first realized the potential: to allow me to study the mortal
soul and its inherent power in order to make that power my own.”

He was silent
for a long moment as he absorbed the thought-wrenching monologue. One question
above all others burned in his mind.

“You say,
Satan,” he said, giving a name to the Voice, “that was
your
reason for
allowing the creation of life. I wonder then, what was God’s reason?”

“For that,
mortal, you must ask yourself this: why does a father have a son? I don’t mean
‘why does a male create an offspring’ – that is procreation and survival of the
species, and my use of the male gender is entirely arbitrary. When you can
answer this, you’ll know the secret of life in your God’s eyes, and His reason
for your existence.

“Why does a
father
have a son?”

- 2 -

Birch snapped
awake as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on his face, and for a
moment he lay gasping. His dreams had gone from benign to terrifying, as one
moment he was remembering a conversation with the one he knew as the Voice, and
the next he was reliving tortures at the hands of none other than
Mephistopheles, the King of Hell himself. The demon king sliced away his
eyelids then blindfolded him before burning and cutting Birch’s flesh with a
surgeon’s – or a torturer’s – precision, and took great delight in describing
exactly
what he was doing to the sightless paladin.

That was what
Birch had to look forward to unless they found a way out of their captivity: an
eternity in the iron tower that haunted his dreams.

He looked around
and saw Perklet sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin, his torn green
cloak wrapped around him for comfort. The middle-aged paladin looked thoroughly
miserable, but at least he’d healed the cuts and bruises that had covered his
flesh the day before. Birch was covered in dried blood from numerous small
injuries that neither he nor the Green paladin could heal. The demon in Birch
had grown so strong that Birch’s healing no longer worked, and it seemed even
Perklet’s abilities were no match for the demonic power inside the Gray
paladin. Selti lay curled in a ball at Birch’s feet, still in a healing sleep
from the previous day.

Siran and the
fifty elves who remained were scattered about their small, fenced-in pen, and
most of them were either sleeping or sitting perfectly still. Siran was pacing
an oblong circle that took him from one corner of the pen to the other, as he’d
been doing on and off for hours at a time since they’d first arrived. Several
times Birch had been on the verge of asking the elf to settle, but he realized
everyone dealt with captivity in their own way.

They were held
in by an eight-foot-high fence made of black-steel mesh. They were unfettered,
but their weapons had been taken away, as had the paladins’ plate armor. Birch
and Perklet wore only their padded tunics and leggings, and they still had
their cloaks. The demons enjoyed mocking the paladins’ garb, and had even
suggested the mortals use them to hang themselves when the torture became
unbearable – the demons might even have allowed such a release, just for the
vile novelty.

The ground and
sky were both a sickly gray color, and touching the cloud-like earth left an
invisible, greasy taint on their flesh. Since they had no bedding, however,
they lay on the ground and endured the disgusting residue it left behind.

“I really
thought we were going to make it,” Perklet said, his voice filled with despair.
Seeing the normally upbeat and tireless Green so dreary and dispirited made
Birch’s heart wrench in anger.

“I did, too,”
Birch replied. He’d decided not to say anything about the angelic arrow he’d
seen in Kaelus’s leg. He didn’t have any answers, and Perklet didn’t need to
shoulder that burdensome knowledge, or the questions it raised.

“Just when I
thought I was understanding something important,” Perklet said. “Just when I
thought…. I just keep turning things over in my head. What was it Kaelus said
about this Absolute thing? The entity beyond God and Satan both?”

“The source of
original creation,” Birch replied. “It’s where God and Satan both came from,
the entirety of existence, the beginning and the end of everything. According to
Kaelus, it’s where our souls were
supposed
to go, until the immortals
stepped in and taught us about Heaven and Hell, at which point we became
convinced of eternal judgment and the proper destination of our soul.”

Birch shook his
head. “Millions of the dead, trapped in Hell for no better reason than they
believe
that’s where they’re destined to be. If we could convince them of the truth,
they’d be free, as Kaelus freed those before.”

Perklet sat
quietly in thought.

“And you saw
this Absolute? When you died, you saw it?”

“I…” Birch
hesitated. “I don’t know what I saw, Perky,” he answered. “I saw what I thought
was Heaven, only when I finally got
here
,” he gestured around them, “I
discovered it’s nothing like what I experienced. I think now that I touched it
once again in the Hall of the Throne, but at the time I thought it to be God –
and then it was gone.”

“You say it’s
the determinant of morality and encompasses both Good and Evil, just as we all
do,” Perklet whispered. “It’s within us. Virtue expresses morality, which
predates the divine.”

“What’s that?”
Birch asked.

“Healing,” the
Green went on, oblivious to Birch, “the manifestation of love. If there’s
enough love, then, shouldn’t healing work? Virtue comes not from Heaven, but
from the heart.”

Before Birch
could question him, Perklet abruptly stood and walked to where Birch was still
lying on the ground. He raised himself onto his elbows, but Perklet knelt and
pushed him firmly back down.

“Hold still,
Birch,” Perklet said insistently.

“Perk, if you’re
trying to heal me, it won’t work,” Birch said quietly. “We tried yesterday,
remember? The demon inside me…”

“Doesn’t make
any difference,” the Green cut him off. “Now hold still.”

Birch collapsed
back to the sickly gray ground as Perklet put his hand on his chest and closed
his eyes.

“The demon isn’t
in
you, Birch. The demon
is
you,” Perklet whispered. “Even this I
can love.”

The Gray paladin
sighed in resignation. In a few moments Perklet would give up his futile
gesture and…

He stopped as a
feeling of peace and healing calm began to emanate from his chest where
Perklet’s hand rested. Like an icy chill, it spread through Birch’s body until
every inch of his flesh tingled. He looked up at Perklet in shock and saw an
expression of unmitigated joy and peace on the Green paladin’s face. It was
only after a moment’s study that he realized something was wrong with Perklet’s
face.

His lips weren’t
moving.

He wasn’t
praying.

Everything Birch
had ever learned about healing made it clear that prayer was required, and that
it must be an audible prayer for God’s intercession and healing. Silent healing
prayers had been tried but had met with universal failure by even the most
gifted of paladins. For centuries, Orange and Green paladins had collaborated
in search of a reason why this should be so, but none had proven anything. But
now, somehow, Perklet was healing him without praying for divine power.
Impossible!

When Perklet was
finished, he stood slowly and looked down at Birch with calm eyes.

“How…”

Birch only
managed that one word before a bloodcurdling demonic scream pierced his ears
and set his mind spinning. Perklet fell to one knee and clutched his head,
while beyond him the elves – with their keener sense of hearing – writhed in
pain on the ground. Even Siran fell to one knee in sudden agony, but the
instant the scream choked off, the elven captain was back on his feet and
looking for a threat to face.

“You thought to
challenge me, Meresin?” a familiar voice boomed out. Azazel, the demon prince.

“No, my lord
Azazel, never…” a throaty voice replied. Birch could hear the agony contained
in that voice, and it wasn’t hard to deduce who’d been screaming.

“Witness the
price of treachery,” Azazel said, cutting the other demon off. “You think
yourself powerful enough to rise to the status of demon lord? You, a mere
balrog? Do you seek to take
Chernobog’s
[31]
place? You are barely fit to serve as
overseer to the pathetic damned.”

Meresin screamed
again. The confrontation was happening somewhere off to Birch’s left, but a
large crowd of demons had gathered, and he could see nothing of the encounter.

Siran’s eyes
passed over the gathering of demons, then he quickly scanned the area around
their enclosure. A heartbeat later, he casually moved to one side of the pen
and began examining the fence in earnest, prying at the black-steel mesh and
widening a hole where two sections must not have been joined properly. Birch
realized the elf’s incessant pacing hadn’t been a sign of nervousness or a
coping mechanism, he had been studying the camp and their enclosure while no
doubt marking the placement of the demons around them.

Another tortured
scream brought Birch’s attention back to the infernal drama playing out beyond
his sight.

“It hurts, yes?”
Azazel taunted. “You fool. An imp could defeat you now, weak as you are.”

“Or a mortal,”
someone called raucously.

“Hmmm, yes,”
Azazel said thoughtfully. He laughed out loud. “Perhaps that would prove more
entertaining at that.”

A large,
black-fleshed demon was hurled from the infernal crowd and crashed into the
center of the pen where Birch and the others were held captive. The demon’s
wings were ripped and broken and hung limply behind him, and his flesh was
viciously torn across most of his body. Molten silver blood poured freely from
his wounds as he struggled into a defensive crouch. The demon was manlike in
figure – he looked a little taller than Birch, but was inhumanly muscular – and
his skin was the color of polished obsidian, his eyes the same silver as his
blood. He was completely hairless, and two black ram’s horns curled out on
either side of his head. He snarled at the mortals around him with silver
teeth.

“Don’t kill him
at once, mortals,” Azazel said, striding forward so he could see into the pen.
“I want him to suffer a slow, ignominious death at your hands.”