Twixt Heaven And Hell (33 page)

At long last Lazarus spoke again. "We need to find out more about Balkan's recent research."

"He had acolytes helping him with the runes. They should know something," Arric said, and heaved a sigh. "Darius may know more, but I am not sure I would want to bring up anything concerning Balkan to the man."

"You may be right," Lazarus said. "It can wait, for a time, but eventually..."

"He will recover. He must," Arric said.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Darius looked about and realized that he had wandered far. The last time he had taken note of his surroundings he had been outside, near the walls of the Crown, where the grass yet grew green in defiance of the approaching winter. Now he was not only inside, but underground, amongst the foundations of the Tower.

It was dark here. A scant few torches were kept to illuminate the halls, lighting the way to a handful of storerooms the wizards still used. Darius moved further down the long-derelict halls. It was not curiosity that led him, but the dim awareness that down here he was certain to be alone.

The sun had risen twice since the attack – through both days and the night in between, Darius had drifted in delirium. For much of that time it was rage that clouded his mind, rage at the loss he had suffered and hatred of those who had inflicted it upon him. It had consumed his mind beyond the grip of reason.

That rage had cooled now, burning itself out and leaving Darius to smolder in its wake. Darius clung to the ashes of anger that remained – it was his only succor against the horror that lurked in every unguarded moment. Several times he had lapsed into waking nightmares, reliving the attack in lurid detail. Each time he ended up clutching his skull in both hands, shaking his head until the vision left him.

Darius knew that his peers feared for his sanity. In truth, he was beginning to fear for it as well.

Darius happened upon a long hallway – it must have stretched the entire width of the Tower. At the very end, almost out of reach of the torchlight, he found a peculiar room. Low stone tables ran down its length in two rows, each one wide enough for two men to kneel before it. At the front of the room, directly next to the entrance, was a single stone chair. It was not unlike the seat of the Council Leader, far above his head, save that it was more ornate. High-backed with a wide seat and armrests carved with symbols Darius had never seen, its imposing form was not made for comfort, that much was certain.

Even so, looking at it, Darius came to realize that he was tired.

He was so very tired. Not just in body, though his legs ached fiercely – but in mind, and heart. For a moment he wanted to forget his losses, forget the war, forget his duties and his men – everything. He wanted peace.

Darius practically collapsed into the chair, and his anger flagged. The exhaustion he had been oblivious to gripped him. Head drooping down onto his chest, Darius lapsed into a fitful sleep.

He dreamed then, but not of Balkan's abduction. He saw the vale above Threeforts. He spoke again with Kray and Robert, and felt the horror of the demon's coming. Every moment, every word, every sound and emotion was replayed. As the Demon's power smote him, Darius awoke. His heart beat rapidly and sweat covered him.

Sitting still and quiet in the darkness, Darius reflected on the dream. In some dim fashion, he had known of the return of those memories. Now, in this first moment of calm, he could recall every instant of that day perfectly – more vividly than any other moment in his life, it seemed. He even knew the exact moment that he had regained them – in that span of timelessness while his consciousness was pulled into Hell.

His eyes stared far away, beyond stone and dust and dirt, as Darius contemplated that other world. Terrible as it had been, it held no fear for him. In that place where willpower was the
only
power, his wrath had been so titanic that he had outmatched any Demon. In their own den he had faced them. He knew their rage now as a dull, instinctual thing unbacked by intellect. He knew, viscerally, that they could be made to feel fear – for they had feared
him
.

They could feel fear, they could be attacked and hurt – but here in
his
home, Darius was not their match. Whatever potency of spirit allowed them to travel between worlds gave them supremacy here.

There was no justice in it! It was the Demons that made the most audacious acts of the Enemy possible. Without them it would not matter how brilliant or clever the Enemy made their plans. The ruthless parity of reality would laugh in their faces, reminding them over and over again that men could only do so much.

The Demons, in turn, laughed at those restrictions.
Their
reality was altogether different. Because of them, the best defenses of man and nature alike were for naught. Without them, Robert and Kray, and Balkan and Maggie and Kaylie – and countless others – would still live.

For a moment his rage returned, now directed at nothing, and at everything – at a cosmos that would allow mankind to be so insignificant in the face of their tormentors. Were people made only to suffer?

With no small effort, Darius calmed himself. He did not want to return to the near-madness of the previous days. Rage was viscerally exhilarating, but he needed more than anger now. He needed thought. If he could overpower the Demons in their home, surely there was some way to defeat them in his own.

No wizard – or sorcerer – had ever successfully opposed the Aeonians, though. The gulf in power was not just vast. It was incomprehensible. Darius had personally seen sorcerers use life sacrifices against Angels in battle. The soldiers of Heaven had borne the assault without hesitation, and then slain the foolish mortals who dared oppose them. It would be the same with the Demons.

If the sacrifice of life itself could not avail against the Aeonians, what would? What loss could be more dear; what offering could be greater?

It was the sort of question to which the answer was so sublimely simple that it beguiles the mind into passing right over – and so Darius did, continuing to mull it over even as he lapsed once more into sleep.

He was troubled again by nightmares, the same ones that he had had, waking, for the past three days. They drove him from the rest he so badly needed and he woke with a cry. This time, there was no rage to waylay his tears. Darius wept quietly in the dark, shaking in his misery. He wept at the loss of his friend, and kind Maggie, and most of all the spirited Kaylie. He choked with grief at what their fates may be, finally turning his mind from it only when it threatened to send him fully into madness. He wept finally for Robert and Kray, whom he had not shed tears over in his stupor. He cried until his body could produce no more tears, and still he sobbed in the darkness.

Then he became aware of a growing light, steady and beautiful, slowly outshining the distant, flickering torches. Soft footsteps could be heard approaching. A moment later tendrils of light reached through the portal and seemed to pull an Angel in after.

It could only be Aethel. Here in the darkness, the light that shone from his wings and from under the concealing hood was hauntingly beautiful. The robes were the same shade of blue in the dimness as in the light of sun or moon. Shadow could find no purchase upon an Angel.

The light washed over him, and the burden on his heart eased. The seraph said nothing at first. His wings stretched wide through the room, and by their light it could be seen that the room was quite large, stretching back nearly thirty paces. Then the radiant filaments gathered in again, and embraced Darius in the soft glow so that he and Aethel were at the center of a glowing nimbus. Bit by bit, Darius breathed more normally, drinking in the peace that flowed from Aethel, but still the sorrow remained.

Finally Aethel stretched forth one gloved hand and placed it upon Darius's shoulder. He spoke then, and in his voice was a trace of the sorrow that Darius felt. "You have suffered a terrible loss, Darius. I am sorry."

"Thank you," Darius replied quietly, trying to bury himself still further in the otherworldly serenity. If he could just cast off the pain he felt. If he could just...

Forget?

A strange indignation flared in Darius. Were not the loved and lost worth the pain he now felt? Darius looked almost accusingly at Aethel, grasping at the grief that had been draining away and filling once again with anger – anger at this being who came to beguile him. His mind flashed back to the weeks before the attack, to the cursed emptiness that had pervaded his days. Had that not been worse? Darius had always been a man of powerful emotions, and he reveled in that. He laughed and loved and cried and raged with all his soul, and now that he had tasted that cold desolation, he was sure he would not want to return.

Darius stood abruptly. The Angel seemed startled, his hand removed from Darius's shoulder and hovering for a moment between them as if to ward off an attack. Soon it dropped, and Aethel tucked his hands into his wide, silver-cuffed sleeves.

"However you choose to handle your pain, Darius, I wish only to help you in it. Do not mistake my intentions for anything else, I beg you," Aethel said.

Indignation had not fled him. "Thank you again, Aethel,” he said. “But... I do not want your help in this.” Darius was startled by his own words, startled to realize he meant them.

With the suddenness of a lightning bolt, a thought flashed through Darius's mind, the answer to the riddle he had puzzled over. Even as he had it, he tried to bury the idea, to forget it, to hide it somehow from Aethel's clairvoyance.

The glowing wall around them exploded outward as Aethel's wings stretched wide again, filling the room. He took a step backward, and Darius saw with alarm that one gloved hand strayed towards the mighty sword that hung on the belt of corded silver.

Darius took a deep breath and forced himself into calm. He raised his head, standing straight, but there was no challenge in him now.

"Forgive me Aethel. It was just a foolish notion."

Aethel did not answer immediately, and Darius could feel the gaze from under the hood, scrutinizing him – peering into his soul.

"No, Darius," the Angel said at last. "This was more. It was... an intent. Almost a plan. What could have brought you to this?"

With a start, Darius realized what it was that made Aethel's voice so odd – pain. The Seraph felt betrayed.

"Forgive me," Darius pleaded again, tears returning to his eyes. "But the War is changing, and not for the better."

Darius glanced upward as if to see the city through the layers of stone. "They have attacked our home now. It is always terrible, when the Demons come. They claim many lives before an Angel comes to our rescue, and there is naught we can do. On the battlefield, we accept it. But always it is they who attack –
they
who come for
us
. And now they can take our families, our wives and children.

“They came into Bastion – into our own
heart –
and could not be stopped from taking who they wished.”

"Yes," Aethel said. "They attack, they destroy – that is their nature. Do not despair, for always their gain is short lived and by their aggression are they undone. In the end it counts for nothing."

"Nothing?" Darius asked in angry disbelief. "It is an
infinite
loss, Aethel. Are we so insignificant to you? Are we valuable only as fodder for your War?"

"You know that is not true."

With a curt nod, Darius answered through clenched teeth. "Yes," he admitted. "But fighting a war that will not end requires a warrior that does not die.

"
People. Die.
We cannot be the ones to fight your war. We make no difference. With or without us it continues, and the only change is the pain and loss we suffer. Do you think we can suffer it forever? Someday, after the loss of one more child, one more family, one more home burned by the Enemy, our spirits will fail, and our will to fight will die as well."

Again, beneath the cowl, Darius could feel the Angel searching his face – or perhaps deeper – for some glimmer of... Darius knew not what. Hope, perhaps. There was none in him. With prophetic clarity, Darius could see the future – and it was grim.

With a sudden sigh, Darius turned his eyes from that unseen gaze and collapsed heavily back into the great stone chair.

"But I speak in vain," he muttered. "To bring about such a thing as I dreamed would require a spell... beyond my ability to imagine. Much less create." Another sigh. "It would take us ages to devise it, even if I could convince every soul in Bastion of the need."

Darius sat stewing in the helplessness of the circumstances, hating and fearing a future he did not want but knew he was powerless to alter.

Then the Angelic light dimmed, plunging the room into near-total darkness. It rallied a heartbeat later, and Darius raised his head wondering what could have caused the odd reaction.

Aethel had turned his back on the wizard. His voice, though low, filled the room – an unearthly whisper.

"Such an invocation already exists."

"What?" Darius asked, barely believing. In another moment his brow knitted in confusion. "Why?" What need could there have been for such a thing, before now?

"There was a place," Aethel began, "As unique amongst the cosmos as this world is now. It was a passage to a still stranger realm – planes of pure nothingness, absolute void. Both sides sought to control this place, thinking it could be made a weapon. Long did the War ignore all else. Briefly, the Choirs held sway – but Gabriel, chief of the Cherubim, foretold that this doorway could be no weapon. Any attempt to harness it would result in all the cosmos slowly bleeding away into the devouring dark that was held at bay. He guided the Cherubim in a ritual to deny it to both sides, to lock it away. The War has not returned to that place – for the Aeonians cannot go there."