Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (69 page)

“They will crash
into our flank in a moment’s time,” Molekh said.

“Then have your
demons get out of the way when they get here,” Malith said irritably. “Those
icy boulders are too unwieldy to pose a serious threat. What could they
possibly hope to accomplish?” he said scornfully.

Molekh passed
the order for the demons to avoid the balls of ice. None of the oncoming
spheres was anywhere near Malith, so he was free to observe the results with
strategic detachment. He watched with his enhanced vision and, as the ice
spheres drew near the demons, he finally realized just how big the frozen
chunks were. Each was easily twice as tall as a man, and they thundered forward
with unstoppable force.

A very few
demons were crushed by the spheres – most were able to clear enough space so
they rolled by unhindered.

“A strange
tactic,” Molekh rumbled.

A barrage of
angelic arrows streaked out from the fortress, but their targets were not
demons this time. The bolts of heavenly power struck the spheres of ice and
shattered them with a tremendous explosion. Shards of ice were scattered in
every direction and tore into the surrounding demons with lethal force. The icy
shrapnel pierced demonic flesh with ease, then quickly melted inside the demons
and assaulted the very essence of their existence.

All told, only
fifty spheres of ice had rolled from the fortress, but the resulting explosions
had destroyed hundreds of demons and damned souls caught by the frozen shrapnel
and damaged thousands more.

“
That
is
what they hope to accomplish,
General
Malith,” Molekh said with a fiery
sneer. “Contempt for our enemies will only lead to such destruction. What if
one of them had been near us? What then for our mortal general?”

“A drop in the
sea of our forces,” Malith said with deceptive calm. “You whine like a baby
Cherub, Molekh.”

A few minutes
later, a blue-fleshed balrog came forward and reported to Molekh the extent of
the damage. Nearly a thousand demons and souls destroyed, another three
thousand seriously injured by the blasts.

Malith
recognized the balrog as Goriel, Molekh’s second in command and one of the
demon lord’s favored subordinates. Goriel was powerful… but then, so was
Malith. He drifted slowly toward the demon officer.

“A loyal and
worthy demon,” Malith remarked as soon as Goriel finished his report. The
balrog remained kneeling. He was several yards away from Molekh, but only two
strides away from Malith.

Molekh looked
away, then jerked his head back at the tone in Malith’s voice. Too late, Malith
reached out and grasped Goriel by the throat and, with a quick jerk, snapped
the demon’s neck. Goriel gurgled in pain and flailed against Malith for a
moment, but the Black paladin unleashed a surge of the power granted him by
Mephistopheles. Black flames ran down the length of his arm and engulfed the
balrog. As a final touch, Malith ripped the demon’s throat out and left him
screaming to burn into ashes.

 “Malith!” Molekh
roared. Crimson flames leapt from the bull-headed demon’s mouth, and he lowered
his head and crouched as though preparing to spear Malith on his horns.

“Contempt only
leads to destruction, Lord Molekh,” Malith said with icy calm. “Were you not so
valuable, that would have been you feeling the fires of Mephistopheles’s wrath.
Count it a mercy. I am the demon king’s arm here, and I will brook no insolence
nor tolerate questions of my command. Am I understood, demon?”

“Aye, mortal,”
Molekh growled, straightening so he could glare down his bovine nose at Malith.
“You enjoy the demon king’s favor for now, but know the instant that lapses, I
will be but a step behind you, and then you shall feel
my
mercy. It will
give me great pleasure to drag your screaming soul back to my pits in Dis and
torture you for eternity. Daella told me you were among her favorite victims –
a pity you broke so quickly, else I might already know firsthand.” He growled
deep in his throat, the sound of a raging wildfire, and his eyes bored into
Malith’s. “When you are mine, mortal, you will scream for release and beg me to
give you to one of the other lords, and when I am sated I shall do just that –
perhaps to Daella. Then I shall sit in her parlor and drink in your screams
like blood and dine on strips of your flesh.”

Malith paled
slightly, but he maintained a disinterested sneer as he allowed the demon lord
to finish his rant. Flames spat from Molekh’s nostrils as his chest heaved –
Malith was reminded of a pair of bellows blowing over a roaring forge fire.

“Until that day,
however, Molekh, you will follow my orders, or I will dine on
your
flesh, demon,” Malith replied mockingly. He spun on his heel and strode
casually away, deliberately showing his back to the bull-headed monstrosity
behind him.

Malith returned
to his tent, shut the flaps, and knelt. Safe from observation, the Black
paladin’s shoulders trembled as memories of Daella’s attentions flooded his
mind.

I did not
break,
he told himself.
I was chosen to lead this army. I did not break.
I followed my destiny.

He shivered
uncontrollably for nearly an hour before he regained his composure.

I must have
victory,
he told himself over and over.

I must have
victory, or else my soul is doomed to an eternity of demonic “mercy.”

- 2 -

The city was
truly beautiful to behold. Several times as they traversed the streets, James
and Nuse stopped to stare at a particular park or building that took their
breath away. In one courtyard, four fountains of perfectly clear crystal
sprayed water from the Alethion, which flowed in waves of pure, golden light
from the mouths of stone angels and overflowed a bowl to cascade down the sides
of a small obelisk inscribed on six sides with the names of the six primary virtues.

The pair of
paladins rode their dakkans through the deserted city, unsure of where to begin
their search.

“Tell me again
why the two of us are doing this search,” Nuse said as they passed beneath an
archway with carvings of angels in flight covering the side.

“Because Vander
is our friend, and Uriel asked us to find him,” James replied.

“No, I mean, why
is it
just
the two of us searching?” Nuse corrected himself. “It took us
a week to get here alone, when an angel or two might have sped things along and
stayed to help us search. Why not?”

James glanced at
him out the corner of his eye.

“Because they
can’t spare a flight of angels to do a building-by-building search for one dead
Orange paladin, no matter how much we want to find him,” James said. “It may
take us until the end of this war, but the two of us will find him.”

They moved on in
silence for a while before Nuse spoke again.

“And where
exactly are we going to start searching?” the Blue paladin asked. “I hate to
point it out, but this
is
a bloody large city, and we don’t know where
anything is.”

“Uriel suggested
we start where he last heard from Vander, which was the library,” James said.
Where
else would Vander be?
he mused. “We might find some clues, or at least it
will give us a base of operations to start our search.”

They passed by
an alley, and James stopped as something strange caught his eye. First of all,
the alley was too narrow for an angel to fly through, which was curious in
itself. But even more strange, there was a gate of polished silver that barred
the far side of the narrow corridor, and on the far side James could just see a
courtyard with several toppled pieces of stone in it.

“Nuse,” he said
and motioned toward the alley. They steered their dakkans that way, but had to
dismount so they could fit in the alley. Nuse’s dakkan had scales the color of
deep amethyst, and it transformed into a hawk with violet bands on its wings.
The hawk landed on his shoulder and clung to a leather pad incorporated into
the paladin’s studded armor. James’s burnt-orange dakkan shifted to a drann of
the same dull color.

“Arrete,” James
said, and the drann immediately scampered into the alley ahead of them. A
moment later, he returned and crooned an unconcerned tone back to his paladin.

“It’s clear,”
James said to Nuse. Nevertheless, both paladins drew their swords as they
approached the gate.

The lock was
slightly skewed, and the gate opened easily on silent hinges. They walked into
the courtyard and found yet another six-sided obelisk, but it was the only thing
left standing in the entire courtyard. Rubble from shattered stone columns
littered ground, statues were smashed, and what had once been beautiful
fountains now dribbled water that disappeared into an unknown drainage.

Their eyes were
drawn back to the obelisk, which like the others had been inscribed with the
six virtues. Instead of just the words, however, this stone also depicted six
faces on it, one carved on each facet below the inscribed virtue. Around the
top, where the six facets met, were carved the words, “The first journey” in
the human tongue, along with what looked like translations in elven, dwarven,
what looked like ancient gnomish,
[35]
and even the immortal tongue – James recognized the word
jintaal
, the
immortal word for “journey”.

The two paladins
slowly circled the stone, staring in awe at the remarkable faces drawn into the
stone.

“Do those faces
look familiar to you?” Nuse asked.

“Two of them
do,” James replied. “That one is Uriel, beneath
Justice
, and that one is
Mikal beneath
Temperance
.”

“What about that
one?” Nuse asked, pointing to another face.

James stared in
disbelief. “It can’t be. What is Kaelus’s face doing drawn on a stone in a
courtyard in Heaven? He’s a demon.”

“He may be a
demon,” a deep, tired voice said, “but apparently that doesn’t stop him from
being a representation of
Courage
.”

The two paladins
whirled and saw a broad-shouldered man slumped in the shadows of a fallen
stone. James peered closely at the man, but it took him several long seconds to
recognize him.

“Hoil?” the
Yellow paladin said in amazement.

“Aye,” the
former thief replied.

“What are you
doing here, and looking like that?” Nuse asked. Hoil’s clothing was rumpled and
damp in places where he’d been sitting in a trickle of water escaped from a
shattered fountain.

“I’m reveling in
the joys and beauty of Heaven, can’t you tell?” Hoil asked harshly. “Isn’t this
place just wonderful?”

“Did you do
this?” James asked, frowning as he gestured to the courtyard.

Hoil barked a laugh.
“I’m flattered you think I’m that strong,” he said. “No, James, my only
contribution to this scene is the lock I accidentally broke getting in here. I
don’t think anyone will really mind; it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in
a few thousand years. Probably longer.”

James offered a
hand to Hoil and helped him up, then steadied him as the former thief wavered
on his feet.

“I’d say I’m
just hungry, but food doesn’t seem to be a problem here,” Hoil said. He
stumbled to the obelisk and leaned against it for support.

“You’re right,
though,” he said. “This is Mikal and Uriel, and believe it or not this is
Kaelus. This one here under
Piety
is Gabriel, and under
Love
is
Raphael,” he said, pointing to the one female face on the stone. “This last
one, here under
Knowledge
, I believe is Abdiel. He’s technically a demon
also, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at this picture.”

“How do you know
who it is?” Nuse asked. “I heard Abdiel died during the Great Schism. So did
Gabriel and Raphael, for that matter.”

“I know because
I pieced a few things together, old man,” Hoil said. Nuse flushed slightly, but
otherwise ignored the comment. “Kaelus said he and five others were companions
during the days before Pleroma was sundered into Heaven and Hell, so it’s no
great stretch to assume a stone with three of those faces might have all six.
Even I know enough about the history given to us by the angels to know Raphael
was the most gifted healer of all angels, so it stands to reason she’d be
aligned with the virtue of
Love
, and Gabriel was foremost of the angels
in his devotion to God, which leaves him under
Piety
. Process of
elimination.”

James smiled
slightly. Hoil was clearly not quite as ignorant or common-minded as he
pretended.

“Can’t fault
your logic, Hoil,” he said.

Birch’s brother
stared at the image of Uriel with an unreadable expression.

“These three
dead since the first war,” Hoil said to himself. “Heaven has been without its
icons of love, piety, and knowledge since then, and courage has been held
captive. Temperance and justice were corrupted. No wonder things got all
shnieked
up here.”

“Excuse me,
Hoil,” James broke into the other man’s thoughts, “but I don’t believe you’ve
answered Nuse’s original question. What are you doing here?”

“I have nowhere
else to be just now,” Hoil said. “I tried going home, but the Binding is still
a one-way gate. My only reason for coming here no longer exists.”

He told them
about his wife, the angel Alanna, who had been executed for the “sin” of giving
birth to Danner.

“I also looked
for my parents, but apparently neither was good enough to make the cut here,”
Hoil said. “Even my sister, who died when she was still just a little girl,
isn’t here. There’s nothing here for me, but since I can’t leave, I’m stuck
wandering these lonely streets until either someone tells me we’ve won and I
can go home, or else the demons take over and I cease to exist. Neither choice
really appeals to me just now.”