The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (61 page)

Birch reached out one hand toward Danner, then he toppled
forward and fell unconscious to the ground.

- 6 -

On the other side of the battlefield, Malith felt the
stirring of something powerful happening, and a moment later even he recognized
the aura of power unique to the demon from which it came. He’d felt that aura
before, muted by the powerful restraints and barriers around it, placed there
by Mephistopheles himself. But now it was muted only by distance, which was as
nothing to the demons around him, who all howled in response to the surge of
power.

Malith looked toward the Barrier, stunned, as the demons
cried out in one monstrous voice of fury and hatred.

“Kaelus!”

I do not exist.

- Satan (character),

“Words of God” (first performed in 87 AL)

- 1 -

The Prismatic Council was in an uproar, their confusion and
fury centered around Birch and his miraculous
-
some said accursed
-
incident in the
courtyard. Word had quickly spread, and now it was whispered that a demon had
made it within the walls of the Barrier and subverted a paladin. In one telling
of the story, Birch, or rather the demon within him, had incinerated two dozen
humans instead of the damned souls, and another version had it on certain proof
that the demon had slaughtered the entire courtyard full of people.

No matter the telling, everyone was alarmed at the thought
of a demon within the walls and the possible corruption of a paladin. The holy
warriors were the only ones capable of defeating and destroying the demons, and
for centuries they had been viewed as a step above normal men. They had taken
on a sense of invincibility behind which the defenders had cowered for solace
and false comfort with the coming of Hell’s army. Now the illusion of
invulnerability had been badly shaken, and the rumors spread as fear took hold
in people’s hearts and burrowed ever deeper with each new embellishment.

For the paladin members of Shadow Company, the irony of this
was sickening – they were among the few who knew of the presence of a demon who
had been
on the Prismatic Council
, the secret of which had never been
let out to the public. Danner and a few others who had witnessed the
altercation realized it
was
a true miracle of some sort. The damned
souls had not been killed again as thousands of their fellows had been on the
swords of the mortal defenders. Instead, their souls had been freed from their
tortured existence. Danner didn’t know where the souls were bound, whether to
Heaven or back to Hell, or perhaps to neither one, but he was sure they were
better off for having escaped their imprisonment in their own twisted bodies.

Some members of the Prismatic Council seemed to agree with
this point of view, and they heralded Birch as a holy blessing from Heaven.
Others denounced it as something more sinister. Most notable and foremost among
these were Bart
Shivrey
and a Blue paladin who sat
next to him. Danner didn’t know the Blue’s name, and without Trebor there he
couldn’t find out immediately.

Trebor had been questioned and then dismissed so the Council
could deal with the matter. As Trebor was not a paladin, he was not allowed to
participate in the current fiasco, which the Council euphemistically called a
“debate.” Danner remained and Garnet had appeared, standing both as Danner’s
commanding officer and his friend.

Danner, Birch, and Garnet sat in three chairs placed before
the Prismatic Council, which was seated at a formal structure that resembled
one long podium stretched out to cover the whole group of men. It was nothing
but a curved table with a thick panel of wood on the front so the legs and
lower torsos of the Council members were hidden from sight, but the effect was
usually one of intimidation toward anyone who stood or sat on the floor below
them.

“Why did you attack the crowd of people?”
Shivrey
asked haughtily. “You took the side of captured
enemies over our own forces? You sided with Hell over men? This bodes ill.”

“I did not side with Hell’s forces,” Birch said with level
calm. “I sided with the principles of this Prism and the moral dictates of my
heart. Those damned souls were being forced to fight against their will, and
for that the men in the courtyard would have slain them. They were trying to
avoid the fight and find a way to escape, or at least avoid death.”

“So you say,”
Shivrey
said
dismissively.

“So they told me, and so the evidence supports,” Birch said
firmly. “The first two men who found them were rendered unconscious, but
otherwise unharmed by the creatures. They were found shortly after, and their
story corroborates what the damned souls told me.”

“Awfully convenient that you were the only one who could
hear them,” the Blue paladin next to
Shivrey
said
suggestively.

 “They tried to tell the men who found then,” Birch
said.

“It was impossible to hear anything in the courtyard,”
Danner pointed out. “I was closer than anyone else, and I could only make out a
few words. They might as well have been speaking the immortal tongue, for all
that anyone could have understood them.”

“Ah, but perhaps your uncle still might have understood that
language,”
Shivrey
said snidely. “Not only has he
freed prisoners and sided with the enemy, but he has been harboring a demon in
his very person for an unknown period of time. We performed an exorcism on your
uncle when he first returned from Hell with no results, so this being had to
have entered him since then.”

Birch glowered at the Prismatic Council.

“You performed an exorcism on me?” Birch growled. “I was
specifically told that one had been considered but was
not
performed.
Now you say that I was lied to by my own brothers?”

The paladins shuffled uncomfortably behind their table and
looked to each other for affirmation and reassurance. The men who had been
added to the Prismatic Council since the demon had been removed shook their
heads as though to disavow their involvement.

“You must understand,” an older Green paladin said, “we were
uncertain as to the state of your soul, whether it was corrupted or not. It was
deemed safer to perform the exorcism while you were still recovering.”

“When I was helpless to stop you, you mean,” Birch said
bitterly.

“Yes,” the Green responded, and he lifted his chin
defiantly. “It was deemed the safer course of action. Fortunately there was no
reaction, so we knew at least you had not been taken against your will. Then
during your debriefing and subsequent interviews, we determined you were not
concealing a willing coercion. Had you failed either process, you would never
have left these premises until we were convinced beyond all doubt you were free
of demonic taint.”

Birch stared at the other paladin for a long moment before
nodding reluctantly.

“Therefore,” a Blue paladin on the other end of the table
said, “since we previously determined you were free of demonic influence, it
must have come since your return.”

“I have made no deals with demons, nor have I been in a
position to have my will usurped,” Birch said, shaking his head. “I don’t know
how this presence came to be, but it was not through any deed or knowledge of
mine I can recall.”

Shivrey
scoffed loudly, drawing
all eyes to him.

“Come now,” he said, “I’ve never been satisfied with your
jintaal
’s
report about what happened to Wein
Drolgis, and there were no witnesses to your supposed victory over one of The
Three in Den-Furral. Those events have struck many of us as odd, and maybe it’s
because the answer is much simpler. We’ve been looking for the source of
treachery within our midst, and perhaps now we have found it.”

“Are you accusing me of betraying mankind?” Birch said, his
voice hushed but harsh. “Our entire world?”

“By knowingly holding a demon within you and allowing it to
roam within our world and within these hallowed halls, causing who knows what
sort of mischief and learning our deepest secrets, what other conclusion can we
reach than that you are a traitor to our world, to virtue, and to life itself?”
Shivrey
replied.

Birch’s hands tightened on the arm rests of his chair, and
there was a quiet crack as he split the wood beneath his fingertips. Danner
glanced down, then looked away quickly, lest his shock betray his uncle. Where
Birch’s fingers gripped the wood, the brown surface was singed black, and
small, almost imperceptible wafts of smoke rose from beneath Birch’s palms.
Danner was sure no one from the Council could see the smoke.

“With all due respect,” Garnet said in a tone that exuded
anything but, “we have long since found a major source of treachery within our
midst, lest you forget. Unfortunately, as it roamed these hallowed halls and
sat on this very council, we know
exactly
what sort of mischief it
caused.”

“You are out of line, paladin
jo’Garet
,”
a Yellow Council member rebuked him.

“I believe all lines were crossed when Shadow Company stood
completely unaided against the demonic horde for days on end,” Garnet bit back
harshly. “Might I remind this Council that they didn’t send a company of
denarae to die. They ordered a half dozen of their own brothers to what should
have been a meaningless death.
That
, gentlemen, is the line that was
crossed. That was the only betrayal I see.”

Several of the paladins on the Prismatic Council had the
grace to squirm uncomfortably in their seats, and none spoke a word in his own
defense. More than one shot dark glares at Bart
Shivrey
,
however, confirming Danner’s suspicions about who had been behind the orders
and treachery. Unfortunately, if no one on the Council would stand up to speak
against one of their own, he had no way of proving it or seeing justice done.
Not yet, anyway.

“No one on this Council betrayed you, paladin
jo’Garet
,” the Blue paladin sitting next to
Shivrey
said. “The lack of reinforcements was an
unfortunate miscommunication. These things happen in war, I’m afraid. As to
your other point, no one here had any knowledge of our brothers’ corruption, or
we would have acted to stop it immediately. The question at hand isn’t a
betrayal by any of
our
hands, but rather that of paladin de’Valderat.”

“I have endured worse torments than you could possibly
imagine, all for the sake of my devotion to God and this Prism,” Birch said
with forced calm. “By my faith as a paladin, I did not know the demon was
inside of me until that very moment. I am the only man to have escaped and
returned from Hell…”

“Escaped or were allowed to leave by your new masters?”
Shivrey
asked.

The words were still hanging in the air when Birch suddenly
launched himself to a standing position and was just as quickly holding a
blazing sword that appeared in his hand from thin air. The crimson blade
seethed as though someone had managed to forge pure fire into a weapon, and
even the hilt swirled with the look of sculpted flame. He hurled the sword
forward, where it cut into the front panel of the Council’s table, all in the
space of time it took Bart
Shivrey
to breathe in to
shriek in fear. The flaming sword hung quivering in the wood, the crimson
flames doing no harm to the wood paneling.

 “The next time you insult me so, I will not be so
cautious with my aim,” Birch said coldly, an otherworldly menace lingering
behind his words.

“I’d be careful if I were you,
Shivrey
,”
Garnet said, not bothering to hide his own hostility toward the man he held
largely responsible for Gerard’s death, as well as the loss of a third of
Shadow Company, “lest you anger Birch and face that premature talk with God
that you and Gerard discussed.”

“
P..Paladin
de’V..
Valderat
,”
Shivrey
stammered in
fright, “you will refrain from all such hostility toward this Council.”

“Very well,” Danner said.

“Not you, the other de’Valderat,” an Orange Council member
corrected almost absently.

 “Oh, my mistake,” Danner said in feigned ignorance. It
might have been a trick of the light, but he saw the Orange paladin’s lips
twitch in suppressed mirth. For the first time, Danner really began to believe
it wasn’t the entire Council that was set against them, just a powerful few.

No one spoke. No one dared break the silence, lest chaos
erupt.

Birch stared with cold fury at Bart
Shivrey
for a moment until the other man inadvertently met his eyes directly. The
Yellow paladin’s face drained of blood, and he threw one arm across his face to
hide his eyes. The Gray paladin looked down the line of Council members, none
of whom even made an attempt to meet his gaze. Birch snorted in contempt, then
stepped around his chair and left the room in silence before anyone could say
another word in protest. When he was gone, the flaming sword disappeared,
leaving a hole cut into the otherwise undamaged wooden panel.

Garnet and Danner quickly stood, saluted to show a respect
they did not feel, then followed Birch.

 “Good, you followed me,” Birch said as they walked
into the hallway. The Gray paladin was standing calmly in the middle of the
hallway. His arms were crossed, and despite the customary sternness etched into
his face, Birch looked for all the world like a man completely at his ease and
not someone who’d thrown a flaming sword across the room two minutes before.

“We need to talk immediately,” Birch said. “There are things
going on within me I obviously can’t explain to the Council, and some things
I’m beginning to suspect that I most certainly can’t tell the Council
outright.”