Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (86 page)

Moreen’s chest
vibrated as a deep rumbling shook their bodies. She looked up and saw a massive
demon politely clearing his throat. Beside him stood an angel with emerald
wings – the face looked hauntingly familiar, and it was only after a moment
that she recognized Mikal. Gone was the gray garb of death, replaced by a glowing
beauty that made Moreen’s heart ache.

Of course, that
could have just been the result of having Birch in her arms again.

“I told you this
would happen,” Kaelus rumbled to Mikal.

“How would you
know?” Mikal replied good-naturedly.

“Spend a few
years living in a mortal’s body,” Kaelus told him. “You learn a little bit
about how they think and act in ways that you’ll never consider just by
observing from the outside.”

Kaelus turned
back toward Birch and Moreen.

“I don’t mean to
rush your reunion, but time is limited,” the demon said apologetically.
“There’s no telling what might happen if someone manages to organize the
remnants of that army while the Barrier is still down.”

Moreen and Birch
parted reluctantly. She stared at the immortal pair.

“What do you
mean? What’s going on?”

“They have to
reconstruct the Barrier,” Birch told her, “and they’ve waited this long just so
they could bring us here first.”

She heard a
strange note in his voice. Regret? Longing? Sorrow? It sent a chill sensation
to the pit of Moreen’s stomach.

“The first
Barrier was a mistake,” Mikal said to no one in particular, “not in substance,
but in implementation. We bound the protection of the mortal world to a few
fragile pieces of angelstone and thought that would be enough. But mountains
topple, oceans disappear, and stones break.”

Mikal gestured
to the distant Barrier.

“Put up any
physical wall, and it is only a matter of time before it fails,” the Seraph
said, “but bind the Barrier in a sacred Covenant to something much stronger, something
well-nigh indestructible, and the world may be protected forever from the
scourge of Hell’s demons. From now on, the Barrier will be bound to the
Prismatic Order itself. So long as a single paladin survives in faith to carry
on the duty and devotion of the
teiranon
, the Barrier will hold back the
demons of Hell and prevent their crossing as it once did.

“This Covenant
binds our two worlds, immortal Heaven and mortal Lokka, in mutual protection,
combining our strength with your will and devotion,” Mikal said. He looked at
Birch and smiled faintly. “Let God alone try to discern which of the two is
greater.”

Birch nodded
silently.

Kaelus looked at
Birch and Moreen and shook his head just barely enough that Moreen caught the
motion. Something was wrong.

“It’s time,
Birch,” the demon told him. Moreen stared at him. Kaelus sounded sad.

“Birch,” Moreen
said, half questioning, half in alarm.

The Gray paladin
turned to her and held both of her hands tenderly in his own. He looked deeply
into her eyes, and for the first time, Moreen did not flinch away from the
Hellish fires burning within. Oddly, the only visions she saw were indistinct
imaginings of herself sitting before a fire, wine in hand and waiting. Alone.

“I wasn’t born
to be a man, Moreen,” Birch said. “I was born to be a paladin. I was born to be
this.” He gestured with one hand to his body, and with the other toward the
ranks of paladins waiting silently behind him on the far side of the Merging.
“I cannot give what I am not.”

“Just give me
what you can,” Moreen told him, real fear in her voice. She began to understand
what was happening, even if she didn’t know why.

Birch looked at
her and sighed. His fiery eyes softened in longing as he studied every feature
of her face.

“I should have
given you all I could years ago, my love,” he told her. To Moreen, it sounded
like ‘good bye.’

“It’s not too
late now, Birch,” she said, pleading against a fate she couldn’t express, not
until he told her.

Birch shook his
head.

“It’s been too late
ever since I first went to Hell,” he said. “Since then, my path was set by
divine hands. In theory, I had a choice at every step, but really I didn’t, not
if I was to remain true to myself. There is nothing in this world or the next
that I want more than to be with you, Moreen, but there doesn’t seem to be time
for us this side of Heaven.”

Moreen stared at
him.

“You’re going
back,” she whispered. “You’re going back into Hell.”

Birch nodded
slowly.

“Why?”

“There are
untold millions of souls damned to an eternal afterlife of pain and torture,”
Birch explained with a grim sadness. “We may have a way to free them from that
fate, but Kaelus and I are the only ones who truly understand it enough to even
attempt to emancipate them. Moreover, there are still White paladins trapped in
the bowels of Hell – still alive, and still suffering at the hands of their
demonic captors. Gerard, Garet, and all of the remaining paladins who gave
their lives in service to the Prism are going to join me in trying to free our captive
brothers.

“There are a few
other living people coming with us, but for the most part our ranks are made up
of the blessed dead,” he told her. “Paladins will still don the white cloak of
beauty, and they will still feel compelled to cross the Merging, I’m sure of
it. Only now when they cross, we’ll be waiting to welcome them into the arms of
our protection and add their strength to our own.

“All of us feel
the call of duty, Moreen,” he said sadly, “and it’s not something any of us can
ignore. God Himself calls on our devotion, and I could no more ignore His will
than I could ever stop loving you.”

Moreen was
strangely calm as she looked at him and absorbed this wonderful, horrible news.

“I understand,
Birch,” she said gently. They looked at each other tenderly, and she was
certain Birch saw her eyes tighten as her resolve firmed. Enough was enough.

“I understand,
and that’s why I’m going with you.”

Behind her,
Moreen heard Alicia gasp.

“Mo,” Birch
murmured.

“No,” Moreen
said heatedly, “there will be no discussion, no arguments, no claims of
devotion and duty this time, Thomas de’Valderat. I am going with you.” She very
deliberately used that name, knowing the reaction it would bring. She was
counting on it, in fact, to distract the conversation long enough.

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.

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.”