The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (50 page)

The curtains dropped amidst thunderous applause, then the
lights were unshielded to illuminate the audience. Birch looked back, and
finally, there was James; alone and worried. He signaled Birch to follow him.

“I can’t find Vander anywhere,” James said in a low voice as
they met in an alcove. “I tried the library, but the paladin on duty said
Vander left hours ago to catch the play. I checked his rooms and anywhere else
he might have gone, but nothing. He’s been known to disappear for a day or two
at a time, but always
in the library
. I’m actually worried about him.”

“Let’s get the others and start searching,” Birch said,
catching some of James’s concern himself. They quickly enlisted Garet, Danner,
and their other friends and split up to search for Vander.

Danner rushed through the areas he was responsible for
searching, knowing that he had to finish soon so he could get some rest for the
coming day. He knew it would be much simpler if they had Trebor, who could just
locate Vander by his thoughts, but Trebor was too far away to hear Danner’s
thoughts, so he couldn’t even call his friend to come help.

The hallways were mostly dark, since it was late at night
and anyone up and about was supposed to carry their own glow lamp or torch as
Danner was doing. The flickering light illuminated a circle around him and
tossed grotesque shadows behind and before him. Brackets on the walls cast
shadows that leapt and danced like living creatures that retreated swiftly as
Danner hurried closer, then past. Behind him, they came out from hiding again
to dance in delight until his light faded away, and they vanished once more.

Danner walked down the hallway alone, searching rooms on
either side and choosing directions at random when the hallway branched. He
finally slowed down and started to walk more slowly, a sinking feeling in his
stomach. He was uneasy and found himself walking silently, and the noiseless
void closed in around him like a fist. The only sound was the pop of the flame
on the torch in his hand.

Danner saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye,
a hand reaching out, and then his torch abruptly went dark. The unknown hand
had smothered the light, and only a dark, smoldering heap remained on the end
of his torch. Danner’s eyes were too accustomed to the flaring light from the
torch to see anything, and he backed away to avoid an attack that never came.

“You?” a husky, sibilant voice said from the darkness,
almost in Danner’s ear. The voice hissed in displeasure ─ and perhaps in
fear ─ and Danner heard footsteps hurrying away from him. He ran after
the fleeing sound, hoping to stay close enough, but the darkness made him
cautious, and he soon lost the sound, no matter how quietly he tread. A
haunting, maddened laughter drifted back and caused him to hurry a little
further on, but then he stopped again.

Danner stood in a complete void of light and sound. He
thought about ways to relight his torch, but realized he had nothing. As a last
resort, Danner asolved his wings and used their blue luminescence to light the
hallway. Everything around him glowed in gradients of blue and shadow, and now
Danner drew a dagger and continued down the hallway in the direction the
laughter and the footsteps had gone.

Danner’s wings brushed the edges of the stone hallway to
either side, sending tingling sensations through his spine, which distracted
him. But he dared not turn off his wings until he found an alternate source of
light. Instead, he furled them closer to his body, fitting them like a second
blue cloak. His main concern was that someone else might come along the
corridor and see him. If they came from ahead, he might see their light. But if
they approached from behind, Danner wouldn’t know they were there until it was
too late.

With this in mind, Danner looked behind him every few steps,
which only added to his feelings of anxiety. It left him with the sense that he
was being followed ─ stalked by an unseen and unknown enemy. He shivered.

As Danner reached an intersection, he heard the same
haunting laughter from a set of stairs that led down to a lower level. In the
panic of the darkness, Danner had allowed himself to get disoriented, and he no
longer remembered in what part of the building he had been searching. Surely he
was still near the theater, but in what direction had he gone?

Danner tried to sort out his directions as he slowly
descended the stairs, intent on following the mysterious voice and presence. If
it was an enemy, as it seemed, it must not be allowed to reside in the paladin
chapterhouse. Perhaps it was a spy, or a traitor. Or a demon that had somehow
made it past the Barrier to infiltrate the Prism again. All these and more
possibilities drifted through Danner’s mind, and soon he was imagining all
sorts of terrible creatures that might be waiting below. It was almost enough
to make him stop, but the sensation of his wings and the power they gave him lent
Danner strength, and he continued with only a slight falter in his step to mark
the decision.

When the stairs ended, Danner looked around in confusion. He
was in a large room filled with a wide assortment of junk. Swords lay
blade-down in a wide cylindrical tube, but some of them looked like painted
wood. Masks of some sort were arranged on a rack on the nearest wall. Bizarre
constructs of wood and plaster were standing everywhere in the room, and at
last Danner realized where he was. One of the prop rooms for the stage. He must
have spiraled down and back toward the way he’d come, and the stairs had led
him down here.

Danner looked around and saw a pair of large doors that led
out to the stage, and he breathed in relief as he at last knew his location. Over
by the doors were the stage sets for the night’s play, including two of the
false fronts of the town and the large
Tricrus
on which the paladin had
been hung. The dummy was still on the man-sized symbol, crucified and hanging
in synthetic torment. The props were all in shadows, but Danner recognized the
outline from the light of his wings.

The haunting laughter returned, now directionless as it
echoed in the stuffy confines of the room. Danner spun around, trying to at
least get a general direction of where it might have come from, but the
laughter faded too soon. He edged backward, closer to the door to the stage.
Perhaps he could leave and return with help.

Then he noticed the smell. It was an odor he recognized from
the battlefield, from hundreds of slain men lying dead or dying around him. It
was the stench of stagnating blood; of feces and gases released from a body
with no living control; of flesh torn and rent asunder. It was foul, and it
reeked of death. Danner probed the blue-coated shadows with his eyes, but saw
nothing. He backed closer to the door, and the stench grew stronger. Finally he
backed up to something solid, and his head brushed up against a protrusion of
some sort. Danner reached back, not wanting to look away from the room, and felt
the boots of the dummy crucified on the giant
Tricrus
.

They were slick with blood.

Danner glanced down and saw a pool of liquid, turned black
in the blue light, and a pile of soft, purple cord that was coated in the black
stuff. Against his will, his eyes followed the thick purple coils as they
climbed the wood of the holy symbol and receded into the bowels of the body
hung there. The man’s chest had been torn open and all its vital organs hung
out in a grotesque display of horror. Danner shifted his eyes up further, then
he turned to the side as his stomach heaved violently. Bile burned his throat
and spewed onto the floor.

The haunting laughter came again, more loudly than before,
then it faded as the source slipped from the room. Danner forced himself to
look at the body once more and to look at the face.

He had found Vander Wayland.

- 2 -

“It was the dybbuk, had to have been,” Garnet said. The
others looked at him. “Something Marc mentioned that he and Vander had been
talking about. A sort of proto-demon with limited mind-controlling abilities.”

“Vander told us, too,” James replied, staring vacantly down
at the body of his friend. “He told us before the whole bloody Prismatic
Council.”

Vander’s body had been removed from the wooden
Tricrus
and laid on a bier so he could be examined. The cause of his death was fairly
obvious – his throat had been cut before he’d been disemboweled – but what they
had yet to figure out was
when
he died.

“He could not have been hung on the stage prop until at least
after the first act was over,” Nuse said. “The second act took its props from a
room on the other side of the stage, and no one entered this room after the
background pieces that were no longer needed were stored here. The stagehands
thought the room was locked.”

“It was,” Danner said quietly. “I broke the lock getting out
of there to find you all.”

“It’s inhuman,” Perky whispered, refusing to look at the
body any longer. He had seen some gruesome sights as a healer, even some worse
than this, but none so horrible on the body of someone he’d known and journeyed
with. Seeing a companion’s face connected to such horror was more than he could
bear.

“That’s exactly why this thing is so dangerous,” Garet said.
“It’s inhuman. It’s semi-demonic. It’s evil, and we can’t tell who or what it
is until it’s too late. This creature is living in the mind of one of our
brothers, and there’s no way for us to detect it. Nor do we have the time, with
the war about to return full-force.”

“Speaking of which, we have to go, Danner,” Gerard said
somberly. “Garnet.”

“You’re going?” Nuse said incredulously. He motioned to
Vander’s body. “With this just happening, you’re still going?”

“It’s our duty,” Gerard said. “Come.”

The three paladins left the room, leaving a stunned silence
behind them.

“They’re either crazy, or they should
all
be wearing
those red cloaks of courage,” Nuse said, shaking his head. “They’ll all be
slaughtered for sure.”

“That’s my son, Nuse,” Garet said, his voice thick.

“Oh, sorry, Garet,” Nuse said, grimacing. “I forgot.”

“Don’t count him as dead until you have to,” Garet said. “I
have every faith in Garnet’s ability to survive.”

“Normally I’d be the first to agree with you, after
traveling with you and having heard what that boy can do,” Nuse said. “But against
that horde out there?” Nuse shook his head, but fell silent.

“He’ll live,” Garet said. “I made him promise he’d give me
grandchildren to bounce on my knee.”

Birch looked at Garet and saw pain in the giant man’s eyes.
Whatever his words, Garet feared for his son’s life more than he would ever
admit, even to himself. Birch shared his feelings and found himself hating the
Prismatic Council for placing his nephew in harm’s way.

Is this what parents
felt for their children?
Birch wondered.
If it’s any worse when your own child faces such danger, how do any of
them stand it?

Birch thought for a moment with regret about his own lack of
children, then brushed the strange pain aside to focus on the present crisis.
His own longing could come later.

“We need to start asking questions,” Nuse said after they’d
stood in silence a few minutes. “Maybe someone saw Vander with someone right
before he disappeared. Someone had to see
something
,” he said firmly.
“At least it will give us a place to start.”

“You and Perky will have to handle it,” James said, his
voice firming. He finally looked up from Vander’s bloodless face. “Garnet,
Birch, and I are all assigned to join the battle tomorrow.”

“I, too, will be there,” Perky said quietly. “I’m joining
the other Greens in healing the wounded. My skills will be needed.”

“Wonderful then,” Nuse said. “I doubt the war will hinge on
whether or not I’m there, but finding this thing could make a difference. I’ll
let you know if I discover anything.”

“Please do,” James said, his voice emotionless. He grabbed
Vander’s orange cloak from where it had fallen on the ground and spread the
material over his friend’s body and face.

“Rest well, my friend,” James said. “Take your ease in
Heaven and find all new texts to delight you, then you can bore me to tears
when I finally join you there.”

They all turned and left. A pair of robed monks entered in
their wake to remove the body and prepare it for cremation according to James’s
directions. Vander’s ashes were to be buried beneath a tree in a courtyard near
the library. The Orange paladin had often sat beneath the tree reading, and
James remembered a conversation in which Vander had mentioned he wanted to be
buried there when his time came.

James would carry out his wishes, and then find some way to
avenge Vander’s death.

Soldiers obey. Warriors follow.

- Garnet
jo’Garet
,

“The Warrior Mythos” (1030 AM)

- 1 -

Danner awoke the next morning when the slivered moons were still
the only light in the sky, barely visible in their current phases. Caret
entered his tent and touched his shoulder, and Danner opened his eyes and
nodded that he was awake. After discovering Vander’s body, he and the others
from Shadow Company had returned to see to the final preparations for their
early-morning departure. All through the last hour he was awake, visions of
Vander’s body haunted Danner’s memory.

When he slept, he dreamt he found the body again and again,
but instead of Vander, it was Trebor. Then it was Garnet. Then Gerard. Then it
was Danner himself hanging on the holy symbol with his chest open, screaming
silently in pain. It was not a restful sleep.

Now, with the coming of the new day and the fate that would
soon envelope their company, Danner’s chest ached as though he still felt the
pain of his nightmares. He wondered what it would really feel like at the end.
He stared in the mirror as he shaved, looking into his own eyes, wondering if
he would even see it coming. Would he face death standing, as Gerard intended,
or would Danner’s courage fail him? Would he die a coward?