Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (87 page)

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- 2 -

In the black
rubble, a pile of demonstone shifted ever so slightly. The destruction was lit
by stray pools of water from the Dena-Fol, and liquid flame trickled down from
an overturned cistern and coursed slowly past a single, human hand that
protruded from the collapsed pile of stone. The fingers twitched once, then a
second time.

A memory
stirred.

“You are an
interesting one. Worthless for my ultimate needs, but perhaps you shall fill
another important role. It takes more than one card to win a hand, after all.”

An hour later,
the hand stirred and began shifting whatever small rocks could be moved, which
uncovered more of the limb and eventually yielded an arm. The arm shifted at
painful angles and moved rocks too heavy for many mortal men to lift,
uncovering more of the pile until, at last, a body was revealed trapped below.

The man was clad
in platemail armor that had once been carefully polished to a mirror shine.
Now, melon-sized dents marred the once-smooth surface and black dust caked the
armor, revealing little of the pristine surface that lay beneath. The man’s
white hair was plastered with dried blood and black demonstone dust, and his
once chiseled features now resembled the pocked surface of a heavily worked
quarry. When he finally opened his eyes, he found himself staring sideways
across a room of mayhem and destruction.

Another memory.

“A man of
courage, I see. So you understand the struggle of facing death and overcoming
your fear. Death is a failure, and only the living can strive for victory.”

The unknown
voice faded from his mind.

The anteroom to
what had once been the demon king’s throne room was nothing more than a pile of
rubble. What passed for a ceiling was actually the vaulted roof two stories
above the ground floor – the two levels in between had collapsed and dumped
small mountains of rubble into the room below.

The man was
weak. He felt a burning sensation in his chest, and he looked down to see a
gaping hole in his armor, through which he could see the split bone of his
sternum. He remembered all too well the source of that wound, and had he the
strength, he would have shivered uncontrollably in suppressed fear.

Death incarnate.

“You’ve given
your life to what? A God who allowed you to be taken and tortured, torn apart
and your body twisted for the amusement of your enemies. You know there is no
escape, that holding firm can only lead to more suffering, and perhaps if you
are fortunate, your death. That is inevitable.”

Slowly,
painfully, the man extricated himself from the pile of stone, then immediately
collapsed to his hands and knees. He panted, his labored breathing nothing more
than an instinct leftover from a life left behind months before. Some habits
were hard to break, even those that conveyed weakness.

“It is not
weakness to accept your fate. You have the makings of a great man, one whose
talents I may find quite useful. If you feel adequate to the challenge, you may
be chosen for power such as few men experience.”

He remembered
now, some bits of conversation with an invisible entity, a presence that only
came at his weakest moments to whisper in his mind and ensorcel his thoughts
with promises of power. Perhaps… had it truly been… Satan?

“I
was
chosen,” he rasped through bloodless lips.

A sharp crack
behind him caught his ear, and he would forever regret not having the energy to
turn and look at who or whatever had come up behind him.

A strong, clawed
hand seized him by the back of his throat and hauled him into the air, dangling
a foot or more off the ground. He struggled and twisted as a malicious snarling
filled his dead heart with terror. Clawed hands turned him around, and he found
himself staring into the smoldering eyes of a massive bull-headed creature with
one horn sheared off.

“You survived,
General Malith,” Molekh sneered, and the Black paladin could see flames in the
demon’s throat as he spoke. “You have no idea how that pleases me. There will,
at least, be some enjoyment to be had in my existence. After this debacle,” the
demon lord said, gesturing to the ruins around them, “I believe I will require
centuries of entertainment to lift my dark spirits.”

He chuckled
malevolently.

“How fortunate
you were strong enough to survive.”

“No!” Malith
screamed. “Oh, God! My God, help me!”

As the demon
stalked from the palace, still clutching Malith by his throat, the Black paladin
was bitterly forced to wonder to what divine source he pleaded for deliverance.

- 3 -

Maya huddled in
the darkest corner of her cave and wept openly in fear as she contemplated her
fate.

“It’s
impossible,” she whispered. “This can’t be true. It can’t be possible. I don’t
want it to be true. I am Metatron,” she said pleadingly, as though trying to
convince herself. “I cannot have done wrong. I am an angel. I am Metatron, the
voice of God. How could He have allowed this to happen to me?”

The question was
asked to the silence of the cave around her. Maya nearly shrieked in terror as
her question was answered.

“God does not
care about you,”
a silky voice said.
“No more or less than He cares
about anyone else, that is. Such is the fault with His utter altruism and
equality. It’s impossible for Him to recognize true talent and special worth
where it exists, and He squanders it without ever appreciating it.”

“Who’s there?”
Maya asked fearfully, peering into the shadows. Even in Hell, her powers as an
angel gave her the ability to see perfectly in any environment if she so chose.
Still, she could see nothing – no signs of the person who had spoken to her.

“No, for I am
not here,”
came the response to her unspoken thought.
“My presence would
violate certain rules from which I am not ready to diverge. Instead, I have
chosen to make my will known through another, who speaks for me. In fact, for
now, you may call me the Voice. I believe I have enjoyed that moniker more than
most others applied to me.”

Maya could hear
amusement in the Voice, and it only made her more afraid. Something was
terribly wrong about its presence, something tantalizing and maddening, yet so
obvious her brain burned she couldn’t discern it.

“What do you
want, Voice?” she demanded, summoning the shreds of her dignity and
superiority. She was Metatron after all, wasn’t she? She should show fear to no
one.

“Ah,
excellent,”
the Voice said.
“I have chosen well, it seems. You are
eminently perfect for my needs. Such a simple test to pass, and yet you did so
without even being aware of the inquisition. Better and better, indeed,
Metatron – the Voice of God, you were correct before you ever knew it
yourself.”

“Speak plainly
or speak not at all,” Maya said.

The Voice
laughed silkily. The sound wrapped around Maya’s mind, tantalizing her with its
simultaneous soft, seductiveness and a corresponding power beyond anything she
recalled ever encountering. She had the sudden urge to fall to her knees and
bow.

“No, I need
no genuflections yet,”
the Voice said, responding to her unvoiced thoughts.
“That time may yet come, if all goes as planned. You know me now, Maya?”

The Seraph’s
lips trembled as she nodded.

“Speak my
name.”

“Shaitan,” she
gasped in a whisper.

The Voice sighed
in satisfaction.
“Ah, as I said, perfect. Tell me, Maya, you know your
actions to be righteous, and yet you find yourself banished here, Anathematized
to Hell. The God you have devoted yourself to has turned His back on you,
letting you be cast amongst the pits of your immortal enemies for only doing as
you thought was correct.

“Is that the
God you wish to continue serving?”
the Voice asked.
“Is that the God you
ever
truly
served?”

Maya felt the
Voice’s words as they touched her, carrying meanings hidden within meanings,
challenges and promises buried deep and yet hinted at so subtly she could not
deny their existence. The trembling in her lips ceased, but she stared woodenly
ahead into the blackness.

“No,” she
whispered.

“No, what?”

“No, that is not
the God I served,” Maya said, her mind numb from the implications of the
realization she had just undergone. “My God would never have ignored me and
left me to the whims of my enemies.”

“Your God did
not, He merely waited for you to come to Him,”
the Voice said.

She whispered,
“And I have come.”

Silence. She
could tell the Voice was pleased.

The Voice
sighed.

Maya sighed.

Slowly the truth
dawned on her. The voice she heard – the Voice – was her own, but in tones of
silken seduction and subtle power that had never before passed her lips.

“As I will,
so you speak,”
the Voice confirmed.
“Metatron indeed.”

Maya shivered in
delight.

“You still
wish to serve what you believe is good, yes?”
the Voice asked finally.

“Yes.”

“You know
that the means by which you accomplish goodness are inconsequential, it is only
the virtue of the resulting ends that truly matters.”

“Yes.”

“Evil and
good. Are you ready to embrace one to accomplish the other?”

Maya knelt on
the ground and stared with quivering devotion at the blackest shadow in the
cave, imaging His presence. With a new purpose to guide her and clearer
thoughts than she’d ever before experienced, she committed herself to a new
path, one that would – she was certain – ultimately lead to the realization of
her dreams of paradise for all.

With unwavering
resolve, she spoke.

“Evil, be thou
my good.”

- 4 -

In the next
room, Danner could hear his wife groaning in pain. Alicia screamed out the
occasional mild obscenity as she struggled to give birth to her first child.
Danner had been banished from his apartments when it became clear he was
nothing more than a hindrance to the women looking after Alicia’s welfare. Now
he waited eagerly for word from within.

“Danner, you’re
going to wear a hole in the floor if you don’t stop pacing and sit down,”
Flasch said, lounging on a nearby bench.

“He’s right,
Danner,” Marc said, glancing up from a game of stones against Brican. “I can
already see a color change in the stone.”

Danner stopped
pacing and glared at his friends.

“I thought you
at least would show some sympathy, Marc,” Danner told him. “That’s your nephew
being born in there, after all.”

Marc shrugged

“As I understand
it, what Alicia is undergoing is normal for birthing, or else someone would
have come out to tell us,” the Orange paladin said. “I’ll start worrying when
they do, or else when they bring out my nephew and he doesn’t have the right
number of fingers and toes.”

“Just ignore
him, Danner,” Brican said. “Just wait until he finally gets Janice pregnant and
has his first child.
Then
we’ll see how calm and analytical booker here
is.”

Marc scowled at
the denarae and almost missed a move that could have cost him the game.
Oblivious to Marc’s irritation, Brican added, “I was an absolute wreck when we
got back and Caeesha was already in labor, remember?”

“How could we
forget?” Flasch asked. “We had to replace the front door on the inn after you
knocked it off the hinges racing to get here.”

Danner chuckled
at the memory, then nearly choked as a baby’s cry overrode all the other noise
coming from the room. A foolish grin spread across his face as he turned back
toward the door and practically danced in anticipation.

After what felt
like an eternity, Janice walked out of Danner and Alicia’s room carrying a
small bundle in her arms.

“Danner,” she
said gently, “your son is ready to meet you.”

Danner stepped
forward hesitantly and his hands were shaking as he took his son from her and
peeled back the swaddling clothes to reveal a tiny human face within.

“Hello, Thomas,”
he said. “I’m your daddy.”

Thomas de’Valderat
looked up at him with eyes too big for his head and blinked sleepily at his
father. He’d already managed to slip one hand free from the blankets enveloping
him, against which he rested his head as though exhausted. He yawned and threw
a tiny fist forward, nearly punching Danner in the nose as he writhed. Danner
stood there, drinking in the beautiful sight of his son’s tiny features.

“He has his
mother’s nose.”

Danner turned
and saw a wide-eyed Marc peering over his shoulder at his nephew.

“Danner, can I…”
Marc held out his hands suggestively, and the Blue paladin withheld a smile as
he nodded. Flasch stood nearby, watching with a sly smile on his face.

Danner carefully
handed his son over to Marc.

At the last
second, when Danner thought Marc had control, the Orange paladin fumbled
nervously and caught only the outermost cloth, and Danner’s entire world froze
as he saw his son tumbling and falling to the ground. In slow motion, he saw
Flasch dive toward the ground beneath Thomas, still too slow to catch him.

At the same
time, he stared in shock as a tiny pair of glowing, azure wings asolved from
his son’s back through layers of swaddled cloth, and Thomas de’Valderat drifted
slowly to the ground, howling in protest at such rude treatment. Flasch caught
Thomas and held him still a moment. The baby’s wings twitched irritably then
disappeared as he continued to cry, and Danner quickly retrieved his son and
held him close, too stunned to glare at Marc.