Thief (39 page)

Winter had been difficult for the small creature. Instead of the three babies she had given birth to she now had only one. One had been lost to predators, while the other had succumbed to illness and the cold. Despite the fact that it was merely an animal, Mikel knew that the possum missed her children. She understood nothing of death, had no knowledge of right and wrong. She didn’t blame the bird that had stolen and killed her baby. All she knew was that she was without two and that was hard to bear.

As she sat in Sherial’s lap, Sherial’s love surrounded her and her remaining baby, and the simple creature knew the easing of the sense of loss. Somehow she understood that her other babies were well and happy, and that she had done well by them. As easily as that her pain departed.

Mikel was stunned. Shocked on so many levels that he couldn’t make sense of it. On the one hand he now knew what Sherial’s duties were and they amazed him. But then there was the knowledge that animals could truly know love and sorrow, something he would not have believed before. But hardest of all to accept was that they too had souls and that the lord cared for them as well. For he knew that Sherial spoke the truth when she told the mother her babies were well. They were. He had no idea where they were, or what they did, but he knew they were well.

For the rest of that day as he lived in her soul and watched her work he knew again that sense of wonder that only the new born must surely know. He learned again the wonder of what an angel was, and why he could not help but love Sherial. How he wondered, could anyone not?

Above all else he learned one thing. He was a vegetarian from this day forward.

The second time Mikel entered the lair openly, knowing as surely as he knew his name that he could never hide from these creatures. They saw the goodness of his and Sherial’s souls like a blinding beacon, and they hated it. But being open, didn’t mean he showed them everything. Sometimes the very boldness of an approach can hide remarkable subtlety. They wouldn’t understand that though. Not until long after.

The choice of his approach was the least of what had changed however. With Sherial’s understanding, he finally saw the dark demesnes as it truly was, and the reality was far different from what he had seen before. No longer was it a black castle, brimming with locked doors and dark stone passage ways. It was a cave, a tunnel leading deep within the heart of a hill side. It still frightened him, but no longer so much so that he wanted to fall to his knees a gibbering wreck. Instead he felt an overwhelming sense of pity as he thought of its occupants, a concept he found difficult to reconcile with his knowledge of what they had done. But that was Sherial’s understanding of them.

As he approached the forbidding mound he realized something else. He had seen this cave before. It was surely the same one that Sherial had shown him in her vision, the one where he had seen the sacrifice of those poor souls trapped deep within its bowels. The very memory threatened to bring back the gorge to his throat, but he quickly mastered it.

The door he quickly found was nothing more than a curtain of some dark sack like cloth, stretched across a wooden frame, and yet he had remembered so clearly picking its lock the previous time. What he had seen and done then he realized, had had almost no relation to reality. He ached at the thought of how badly he had been deluded. The master manipulator had been totally duped.

Mikel ripped the door off its cloth hinges, partly angry at the thought of how badly they’d tricked him, but also knowing in his very bones he didn’t want this door to shut behind him. Even with Sherial’s comfort and wisdom, he was still frightened of what lay within. It was just that he could finally control his fear.

Mikel wanted as much light in there as he could find. Bending low he switched on the fluorescent panels he wore around his neck, instantly glad for their comforting light. Developed on some world where the biological had been harnessed as technology, he suspected they were really some sort of fungus. But whatever they were they glowed brighter than a torch for many hours on end, needing only a little sugar water to power them.

On hands and knees he crawled through the first part of the tunnels, hoping that none were close enough to him that they might attack him while he was so vulnerable. Sherial told him he was safe, that the fallen would run from him as though he were their worst nightmare, which he was. But still, crawling in a dark, putrid, cave, surrounded by nameless though real horrors; it was hard to accept. The crawling became a test of faith and will power, but one he passed. The hundreds, perhaps thousands of pendants he wore, jangled as he crawled, an almost pleasing noise against the silence of the tomb he was entering.

Up ahead he felt the approach of the first of the demons. It was like a skittering sound where there was only silence, a smell instantly revolting, and a stain somewhere in his vision. Yet his eyes hadn’t even seen a thing. It was Sherial’s senses, working without the limitations of mortal flesh, working through him, and granting him their wisdom.

It was a two way deal. As Sherial could see, could understand what he couldn’t, he too could know and see things she couldn’t. He knew, though Sherial wouldn’t have noticed, that this time the demons were dealing differently with him. This time they had sent their scouts out ahead, worried by the reek of goodness that shone through him. This time they were cautious. That suited him perfectly.

He reached the end of the narrow tunnel and stood quickly, not wanting to be caught on his hands and knees before the might of hell, and hastily scanned the passage way ahead. It was black, it stank, and somewhere ahead, beyond his vision, was one of the fallen, hopefully staring at him with as much fear as he had of it. Looking at it through Sherial’s mind, he suddenly understood the creature was in some way the focal point of the entire legion of the damned. All their eyes, through it, were on him. Through Sherial’s understanding he knew the time had come. He had them.

“Go.” The word never passed his lips, barely even touched his thoughts, but the angels heard him and set the others to their tasks. Mikel was certain now that he held the demons’ attention. From here on he hoped they wouldn’t notice a nuclear bomb blast, let alone the nearly silent mining operation. The touch of Sherial that shone through him was far more dangerous to them.

“You lose, Shithead.” He felt no obligation to be polite to the monster that stood ahead just out of his sight, and he wanted to scare it. Yet warning bells sounded deep within his soul. It was important to the mission that he strike fear into the demons, anything to distract them from the truth, but there was more than that need in his words. From somewhere deep inside he wanted to terrify them. He ached to make them fear and suffer. He needed to make them hurt. To punish them for what they had done. It was only with difficulty that he squelched down on the primitive in him, and kept his mind on the job. Fear is not the only mind killer.

“You will take me to the prisoners, now.” He still couldn’t see or hear the little monster, but somehow he knew it heard him. Heard and feared. Mikel knew it wasn’t alone. Though there was only this one near him, all were listening, and all were afraid, bluster though they might. This human had shrugged off their strongest possession, walked boldly into their demesnes and shone with that horrid goodness that threatened them. He was dangerous, he was terrifying, and they were not brave. How could they be? They were not good.

Yet there was still danger in being too hostile, though not from them. The true danger was that he might drive Sherial away with his violence. She could understand his pain and suffering, she felt his anger and his need to hurt them, but she could never go along with that terrible rage. Deep down Sherial felt nothing but sorrow for these pitiful wretches. Desperately he squeezed down on the primitive hatred and rage that moved through him, knowing that no victory here could be worth driving her away even for a second.

The little darkness scuttled somewhere ahead of him, not knowing his inner turmoil as he battled for control, but knowing fear. He heard it move as fast as its legs could carry it, and knew it cried out to others as it neared. Mikel followed at a distance, unhurried. For his purpose in being here was not to rescue the prisoners. It was to distract the fallen so the others could tunnel undisturbed.

Even now he knew, the gigantic lasers Hermen had brought were turning rock and soil into red hot gases, while Mya and the hundreds of protective devices they’d obtained from so many other worlds were making sure that none of that gas exploded back in their faces or rolled through the prison. Grould was holding a psychic shield around all of them and the rapidly growing tunnel designed to make even those things that they couldn’t control, seem invisible. People and demons alike, in fact anything with a mind, would not notice anything even if every alarm system went berserk in front of them.

Not to be forgotten Sabrina and the other angels guided the tunnelling equipment for them, more accurate than any radar. Lea and Abrax waited elsewhere, preparing for their own diversion, if and when the demons got wise. Lea’s animals roamed freely around the perimeter, another diversion for any demons watching the outside. And when the time came, they would act as guides for the escapees. Their courage gave him strength. Young and stupid like him they might be, but the villagers had greater courage than any army in history.

Then there was Atal the titan, their greatest ally and protector. True he wouldn’t fight, he didn’t even seem to understand the concept, but he kept the party safe against any attack the demons could launch. He also served as a focal point for everyone else, holding them safe, guiding them, reassuring them. Mikel’s plan, which had seemed a terrible gamble at first, with Atal’s support had become almost a sure thing. Almost.

Mikel once would have done this alone, improvising and preparing against everything he could imagine. He would have failed. He had failed. Now here in the middle of hell, following a demon to a meeting with who knew what, he had more hope and chance to win than ever before, and all he had had to do was share his plan. Go figure!

Ahead the passage became a cavern and in it Mikel could sense the presence of others of the dark. Many others. He swallowed nervously, but never slackened his pace or showed any sense of fear. He didn’t want to give them any hope.

The cavern was dark as he’d expected. The fallen lived in the dark for more than just the simple reason that it inspired fear in others. It also hid the reality of who and what they were from themselves. Even now, not having truly seen them, he had an understanding of that.

Mikel walked easily to the centre of the space, drawing on Sherial’s comfort like oxygen, for a drowning man. He was still scared but through Sherial knew that they were too. And if they were scared now he thought with a smile, they’d be terrified soon. He released the first of his beacons, a light source that somehow glowed right throughout his entire body. From what world it had come, or what knowledge it was based on, he hadn’t a clue, but it did everything he asked of it.

It was as if the sun had come out in the middle of hell. His entire body glowed like a fluorescent light, even clothes becoming translucent against the light that simply blasted from his skin. Screams came at him from all sides and he heard the sound of running feet. Thousands of them scuttling for all they were worth.

Yet he didn’t celebrate too soon as he was granted once again the gift of sight. For the first time he could see the fallen around him. There were hundreds of them there, hundreds and perhaps even thousands, crammed into a not overly large cavern. Many were no larger than a cat. They looked terrible to his eyes, both repulsive and pitiful, frightening and sad. For a while he saw with the double vision of both his own understanding and Sherial’s. But slowly the two became one.

Where once he had seen insect like horrors, complete with stingers and pincers, now he saw them as horribly deformed and withered people. Wingless angels, shrunken and rotted with age and decay. For looking at them he realized, he had seen insects once because he had always had a fear or repulsion of them. They had used his fear against him. His fear, his weakness was always their strongest weapon.

Now looking at them he understood Sherial’s pity. Racked with sickness and decay, deformed and pitiful, surely they must be in terrible pain to live like this. Yet it was not him they truly hid from; it was from themselves. He had been shown what they had done, he knew their terrible deeds, the loathsomeness of their minds, the rot of their souls, and he finally understood that all their evil had backfired eternally. They had hurt themselves far worse.