Silvas did not try to analyze the urge that drove him to consult with Bay. He merely accepted it and made his departure from the small sitting room as quickly as possible. He took the route to the mews through the curtain wall so that he could get there without going out into the storm. Bay was alone in his stall. If he had been sleeping, which was unlikely with the storm, he woke in time for Silvas's arrival.
"I sent Bosc off to sleep," Bay said before Silvas could remark on his absence. "What brings you out this late in such a state? Did your interview with Mikel go badly?"
"Badly enough," Silvas said. "But that isn't what brings me here. I merely had a sudden urge to consult with you."
"About what?"
Silvas told Bay all that had passed, a detailed review of the conversation with Mikel, the thoughts that he and Maria had shared, and the appearance of the globe of light with Brother Paul clearly visible within.
"I brought him through easily. Maria is with him now."
"I mistrust coincidences at the best of times, and this is not the best of times," Bay said. "This day and night have been filled with coincidences. The first time you attempt to contact Mikel, his sister Gioia appears. The second time, the conclusion of your talk is marked by the onset of this storm. Then Brother Paul appears to you in a globe of light, and you bring him physically to the Seven Towers. Where is the cause? What is the 'why' of it?"
Silvas smiled. Listening to Bay carry on actually eased his own tensions. "While we seek motives, why did I have such a compulsion to race down here so quickly that Satin and Velvet had no time to decide if they should accompany me?"
Bay snorted. "Obviously because you feel you need my counsel. But of all these coincidences, the one I mistrust most is the one that brought the vicar of Mecq within our walls, inside our defenses. Had you sought my advice first, I would surely have advised against it."
"I trust Brother Paul implicitly," Silvas said. "His knowledge and power may be limited, but I know his heart."
"Why did he appear to you?"
"I don't know," Silvas admitted. "He said that I had been in his thoughts, that he had a feeling that I needed his help yet. Once we had talked, I had no hesitation at all in bringing him here. Whatever is to come, it seems that we need him."
"Or he needs to be among us for some reason of his own?" Bay suggested.
"Why do you mistrust him so?"
"I wouldn't say that I have any specific mistrust of him. I am merely suspicious of the circumstances. That is my nature. But there is one point on which you should perhaps dwell. Remember, his allegiance is to the White Brotherhood, to Bishop Egbert and the Pope, and-ultimately-to his Unseen Lord, who may well be our enemy now."
Silvas did not immediately try to refute anything that Bay said. He repeated the questions and warnings in his mind. He cast his thoughts toward Maria, encompassing both her and the monk. With greater subtlety than the Greater Mysteries of the Trimagister had permitted, he probed gently into the monk's thoughts, and beyond, into the deepest recesses of his mind and soul. He saw confusion and faith, and dedication-but not the slightest hint of duplicity or evil.
"His soul is as completely good as that of any man I've ever met," Silvas said slowly. "There is turmoil within him, yes. The circumstances under which I called him to the Seven Towers are far beyond his experience. He has but begun his study of the Greater Mysteries, and the knowledge that was hidden from him before will need time to find its place within his being, but I am certain that we have nothing to fear from Brother Paul."
"But is he master of his own soul?" Bay asked. "Though he be purely good, he might be the unwitting pawn of your enemies, as the knife you use to carve meat at table could be turned by an enemy's hand into a weapon to pierce your heart."
"I'm certain that he would resist with all his strength, and that strength is growing, even as we speak. There is always danger. An enemy might manage to make you throw me as we ride, hard enough to smash my head against a rock, or to toss me from a mountain path, someone might take that knife you spoke of and use it against me. But the answer to this danger is to help Brother Paul grow in strength and knowledge, to bring him along as rapidly as his mind and soul can bear."
For a moment, Silvas gave himself over to pacing. Bay waited in silence, keeping his eyes on Silvas.
"We'll be watchful, but there is nothing new in that," Silvas said when his pacing brought him back face-to-face with Bay. "I may be grasping at straws in a cyclone, but those straws may be all we can hold with surety at present."
"Straws may blow away in less than a cyclone," Bay said.
"I must make choices based on what Maria and I know, and on what our counselors can learn for us. All of these centuries, I've done the bidding of my master. Now I have no master. Maria and I must make the proper choices for ourselves or perish. We have such knowledge within us that it will take an age and more to master it all. And even if we do make proper choices at each turning, we still have no guarantee of survival. Before, my greatest fear was of failing my Unseen Lord. Now, there is so much more to fear."
"Yet, it is too soon to abandon hope," Bay said. "The Seven Towers still stand. There is no storm of dread upon the air, merely rain and wind, lightning and thunder. If there are answers to be found, we may find them yet."
Bay's mention of the storm turned Silvas's attention to it again. He walked over to the large doorway that led from Bay's stall to the courtyard. The top half of the door was open, as it was in all but the worst winter weather. The rain was so heavy that it could not drain away as quickly as it fell. An inch of water covered the stone pavement of the courtyard, and the craters of new rain hitting the standing water overlapped each other. The water looked almost black, even when the sky was most illuminated by lightning.
"If it keeps up this hard much longer, those crops still in the fields will suffer," Bay said.
"You think I should attempt to stop the storm?" Silvas asked.
"I was merely making an observation," Bay replied. "You seem so intent on watching the rain. As for stopping it, I would not counsel that, not so soon at least. It might give you some gauge of your new power, but it might reveal much to anyone watching."
"A gauge of power," Silvas said under his breath. I don't know how to measure my new power, he thought. His mind flicked briefly back to where Maria was still lecturing Brother Paul. Then his mind was roaming among the storm clouds, feeling the raw magnitude of their power. He saw himself looking down, forcing some view of the veil over the valley, seeing how it let the rain through without hindrance. The lightning also passed through unobstructed.
"I feel no dire call to gauge that power yet," Silvas said, wondering if Bay had any idea how far his mind had ranged in the space of a single breath.
Then the silence came. The rain and lightning stopped. The sky immediately started to clear as the storm clouds thinned out and started to break up.
Silvas scarcely had time to note that the storm had ended before he was caught up in something new. The silence was a tube that surrounded him and held him as tightly as the noose holds a hanging man. It was a drain that seemed to suck him through the floor of the stable. The cylinder held Silvas too tightly for him to move. Utter darkness folded in around him. He tried to spread his arms out to the sides, both to learn the extent of his prison and to try to slow the pace of his fall, but he could not move his arms away from his sides. Nor could he move his legs. The tube seemed to do more than restrict his movements. His mind seemed almost paralyzed by it as well. He could think, but he could not reach for power. In the eternity of his descent, he was no more than any mortal-helpless, hopeless, able to do nothing more than mark the fact of his rapid fall.
He did not breathe. His heart did not beat. Yet his mind lived, and Silvas knew that as long as he could hold on to that awareness, he would be able to reclaim his body, wherever this fall might take him. As long as both body and mind survived, Silvas would survive. In some fashion.
When it ends, I had best be in command of my faculties, Silvas decided.
He willed himself to blink, though he could see no visual confirmation of that fact. The darkness surrounding him was more complete than any he had ever experienced. The keenness of his wizard's eyesight was no help. Not even his new divinity gave form to this darkness. But he felt his eyes blinking, knew that his body was still under his command.
Next he turned his attention to his heart, setting a beat in his mind and imposing it on the other organ, caressing it until he could see his own heart beating as clearly as he had seen that other human heart beat as it lay on the forest road, before Mikel stomped it to nothingness. Breathing was even simpler, once Silvas focused his mind on it.
And still he fell.
How far have I fallen? quickly gave way to Where am I falling to? He could imagine only one destination for a fall that continued so long.
Silvas started to gather himself for whatever he might face when the fall finally ended-if it ended. He prepared the considerable weapons of his mind and will, ready to call for whatever might be needed. Then he willed his fall to slow, and-very gradually-he was finally able to impose his will on the descent.
Or so it seemed.
Once more he tried to extend his arms, but the dark pipe still held them motionless. He could scarcely wiggle his fingers at his sides. He could tilt his feet up and down, but could not move his legs, to the sides or back and forth. His head did move freely. He could turn it. He could tilt it to either side. He could even, within close limits, move it backward and forward before he reached the limits of his confinement.
Since I can see nothing, I suppose it matters very little, he told himself.
Maria, can you hear me? Do you know what is happening to me? He could not feel her presence tightly linked to his own, as he had already grown accustomed to. He strained to catch her response, to feel her mind united with his, but there was only a ghostly echo of a reply, one he feared he was imagining.
Silvas was unprepared for the end of the fall. Without warning, his feet struck a hard surface. He buckled at the knees and waist and fell forward, heavily, with an instant of sharp pain. There were no longer walls holding him in position. The ground he fell against was extremely hot to the touch, hot enough that he picked himself up quickly. He did not remain down to check for injuries.
At first, the darkness appeared to remain total. Silvas extended a foot out in front of him, sliding it along the ground, feeling for a return pressure. Then he brought the foot back and extended it in a different direction. Slowly, he discovered that the patch of ground, or whatever it was, that he stood on was at least two full paces in diameter.
He kept returning to his original position, unwilling to stray far from that spot until he had some better idea of what he might find. Only gradually did the blackness of his surroundings moderate, whether in response to his powerful commands for light or not, he could not say. Some traces of vision returned. He could see the merest hints of shape in the dark, but always as if at the end of long tunnels, strangely compressed on all sides, as a man who was nearly blind might see them.
Silvas sniffed at the air and caught a vague whiff of an odor not unlike that given off by the lava flow he had stopped at Mecq.
"If this is Hell," he whispered, relieved to hear his own voice, "then I must be only in its outermost precincts."
He strained the senses of his body, and the greater senses of his spirit, seeking any additional clues to his location, and the reason for his being there. But in those first moments, there seemed to be no sound not of his own making, and the sights were still only of vague form to the blackness, even when he exerted his augmented gift of telesight. When he looked down, he could not see his own body. The pains he had felt on landing evaporated, as if they had been no more than a response remembered from his mortal past.
The senses of his wizard's mind, and the senses of the divine power he had inherited, proved to be no more effective in discovering new information about his surroundings than his purely physical senses. For a time that seemed as eternal as his fall, he could see and hear nothing more than vague shapes in the blackness and echoes of emptiness.
When that blackness started to abate, it was so gradual that Silvas was slow to notice. Slowly, the place in which he stood took on form and apparent substance-a vast chamber of some deep cavern. The walls and ceiling were distant, the floor stretched away until it blended into the walls. The boundaries were as indistinct as those that bordered the ethereal chamber of his Wizard's Council.
Silvas turned slowly through a circle, careful to remain standing in the same place. His eyes searched out the limits of this place. When he looked upward, he could see no trace of the tube through which he had fallen. There was no hole visible to indicate where he had come from.
"I stand here almost naked," he said, looking down at himself again. He wore only what he customarily wore, a long, loose shirt over baggy trousers-the style of the eastern nomads. The belt around his waist held only his dagger with its ornately decorated hilt. He wore soft boots on his feet, and the heat of the ground was already penetrating them. The heat was not painful, but it was apparent and might soon grow to be a nuisance.
"I might find myself opposed by all the legions of Hell," he said. A memory came to him. Before the final battle of Mecq, Mikel had armed and armored his warriors.
Silvas saw the armor and the weapons in his mind, as if on display. He called the armor to him and felt its weight. When he looked down again, his body was clad in plate armor, down to his feet. There was a sturdy helmet on his head, a shield on his left arm. In his right hand he carried a sword.
The shining armor seemed to add light to Silvas's surroundings. There were deep, dull shades of red among the black now, like embers that had nearly died. They reflected off of the polished steel plate and seemed to grow in strength. Silvas turned through a circle again, looking to see if the added light would show him more.
As he looked, one lane seemed to grow a trifle brighter than its surroundings. It led from Silvas's feet off to one side of the cavern, in a straight line. With a shrug, Silvas started to walk along the lane. "As if I have a choice," he mumbled.
For twenty paces, the lane seemed to be the only change to his surroundings. Then the nature of the ground at either side of the lane seemed to alter. Silvas looked to be walking along a causeway across a black lake. The black and dark red became mottled and seemed almost to churn within solid form. There were small points of brighter reds and dull oranges, as if of fires that burned hotter. A dull hum started to grow around Silvas, without discernible form at first, but gradually resolving into the labored pleas of many weak throats.
"Help me, O Lord." "Save me, for I am a sinner." "I repent my sins." "The burning; the burning. Will it never end?"
The calls became more numerous. Silvas looked down at his right side and saw visions of dead sinners reaching out to him with both hands raised in entreaty, looks of ultimate horror on faces that seemed strangely elongated, as if stretched on a rack. For a moment, Silvas's footsteps faltered. He felt the pain and terror of damned souls. He even knew their sins: this man killed his brother to take his wife; that one stole from the church and then bore witness against another whose mind was too feeble to defend himself. As each pair of eyes met Silvas's, he knew their crimes. Some were minor. Others seemed to be almost beyond belief in their vileness: this one ordered the slaying of hundreds of innocent children under the guise of Crusade. Scores, hundreds, thousands of pleas-and crimes. Silvas soon felt swamped by the overwhelming weight of their sins.
I would stop and help, but I don't know how to help, or even if it is within my power.
"This is not why I was brought here," he said aloud. "These are but distractions." He strode forward with new purpose. I am not here for the redemption of sinners, he told himself. That is the job of another.
"Will you, too, abandon us?" the voices in the ground demanded. Their earlier cries were abandoned as the burning souls screamed at him in unison. It became a chant, repeated endlessly, louder with each verse.
"I do not hold the keys to Hell!" Silvas finally shouted. "You held your own keys in life and chose not to use them."
Slowly, the chanting faded, but the faces of the condemned grew clearer. They still seemed to be impossibly distant, beneath the black and red and orange that was solid and opaque-yet impossibly transparent, and as turbulent as water beneath a high dam.
Silvas stopped again and looked around as carefully as he had before. There was no trace of the dull glow of a lane behind him. The path still seemed to begin where he stood and continued on in the same direction as before. The walls seemed to remain equally distant from him, as if he truly had not moved a single step in all of the endless time of his walk.
He raised his sword and looked at his reflection in the brightly polished steel. The face was the face he remembered, what little of it he could see beneath the half visor of his helmet. He took several slow, deep breaths.
"Is this only a fancy of my mind, or have I truly fallen into Hell?" he asked his reflection. "Is this a ghastly nightmare, or some attack whose nature is not yet clear?"
"You've heard the prayers of the living and the pleas of the dead."
That came as a clear voice in his mind, but it came not from within his mind, nor from Maria's. There was nothing familiar to the voice, yet Silvas thought that he should know it.
"Who are you?" he asked. "Why am I here?"
There was no answer, though Silvas waited through many heartbeats. He searched through his mind without finding any clear indication.
Eventually, Silvas resumed his walk along the marked path, more slowly than before. He continued to watch the faces in the ground, but he managed to shut off their insistent petitions for help. He gave more of his attention to the lane ahead of him, looking toward the wall of the cavern, trying to see some measure of progress to match the steps he was taking. But no matter how closely he focused, he could detect no progress. The wall seemed to remain as distant as it had been when he could first see it.
"Is this to be my eternity?" he asked the emptiness.
As if in answer, the reds and oranges of the hidden fires grew brighter, and finally licked the air above the ground at either side of the path, and behind Silvas, where the path continued to disappear after each step he took. Demons appeared and glided on the surface of the fires, laughing and taunting. These were not the minimal spectral creatures that Silvas had encountered as a wizard. The anatomy of these demons was complete, and gross, exaggerated wildly from human norms. They had large, hulking forms, with deeply sloping shoulders that accentuated immense, misshapen heads. The ears were large and pointed, sticking well out to the sides. The bodies were widest at the shoulders and narrowed down through the middle, which made broad hips seem even bulkier than they were. Their legs were short and bowed, as if unable to bear the weight. Their tails divided near the end to show triple points. In color, the demons had the same ember red hues of the cavern floor, only less reflective.
Though the demons bore a wide assortment of weapons, the favorite appeared to be the trident, a three-pointed spear with barbed points. The demons danced around the cavern, taunting Silvas while they stayed well out of his reach.
"Bastard get of a nameless whore" became a chant, echoed by dozens of demons. The refrain seemed to reverberate, growing with each repetition until it seemed that thousands of voices were screaming the words.
Silvas kept a tight grip on his sword, and a tighter grip on his growing anger. He could not shut away the voices of the demons as he had the voices of the dead. He dared not stop walking for a second now, but he occasionally glanced down. There was no path back in the direction from which he had come. He had to keep moving forward, following what remained of the path, though he still seemed no closer to the wall of the chamber than he had been when the path first appeared.
Without warning, the path became a treadmill under his feet, almost a living creature, a flat snake that moved against his steps. Silvas had to walk faster, and faster, to keep from losing ground and falling backward off of the moving belt. With the ground racing under his feet, the wall of the cavern suddenly started to approach at speed. Silvas's steps appeared to be dragging the path, and the wall, toward him. The demons increased the volume and tempo of their catcalls and curses, but at the same time they seemed to fade farther into the distance.
Silvas tried to slow his progress, but could not. When he walked slower, he tottered backward, as if he were about to fall, and he dared not risk that, though he could not fathom why he dared not.
The wall ahead seemed unbroken, and the pace of Silvas's rush became almost a run. His breath came faster, though shallower, as he fought for air to power his legs. It seemed certain to him that he would collide with the wall. But at the last possible instant, a black tunnel, just barely large enough to accommodate Silvas's striding form, opened up, and he passed into a tunnel as dark and featureless as the tube that had hemmed in his fall from the world above.
This time, he still had room to move. Once beyond the large chamber, the path stopped its own motion. Silvas was able to slow his pace, even halt for a moment. The path was once more inert, nothing more than a way from where he stood to he knew not what. Silvas looked back, but could see no trace of the cavern he had left. There were no glowing reds and oranges, no flames licking the air, no dancing demons. He continued to move forward, very slowly now, holding his sword in front of him to feel for obstructions, sliding his feet along the unseen path-carefully, to avoid the possibility of stepping off into an abyss.
The darkness persisted only briefly this time before Silvas emerged into another large cavern. This, too, was filled with the look of glowing embers and tongues of fire, but it was different from the first chamber. There were many levels to this room, large slabs of rock stacked to different heights. With effort, a man might reach a platform along the far wall that was a hundred feet above the point where Silvas entered the chamber. The colors were brighter as well, as if the glow came from hotter fires. The reds and oranges were clearer, and there were even bright yellow flames, making the chamber much easier to observe.
The room was also hotter. Silvas felt certain that he could not be so hot were he to embrace a burning log. The temperature oppressed but did not consume. The shining armor he wore seemed to reflect the greatest portion of the heat, though he could feel himself sweating profusely within that armor.
Silvas blinked away beads of sweat that were dripping from his eyelashes, and when the blink had ended, Satan was standing in front of him, no more than thirty feet away.
Silvas entertained not the slightest doubt that it was the Devil himself he faced. Satan appeared to be no more than a man, though larger and more grossly formed than most, with an unusually ruddy cast to his complexion. There were no horns on his head. No tail dragged behind. His hair was a particularly dark red, a wine red. In size, Satan might have passed without notice among Mikel and his brothers. He was dressed in red armor, without a helmet, and carried a two-handed sword. The six-foot blade did not leave a hand free for a shield.
"You've heard the prayers of the living and the recriminations of the damned," Satan said. His voice was a rumbling basso that recalled Bay's voice to Silvas's mind. "Do you see that there is no difference? You've been to the land of the gods, and now you are come to my land. You see the differences, no doubt with great clarity."
"To what point?" Silvas asked. The scene before his eyes met a scene in memory, of the black knight he had fought and destroyed-in thought, at least. But Satan was in red armor and wore no helmet. The sword was also different. Was it indeed an omen of this encounter? Silvas asked himself. But he was unsure of the answer.
"Point? Who needs a point? Perhaps this is for nothing more than my own amusement." The Devil laughed. "Or perhaps it is to show that you fear those puling children in the Shining City too much. Their power is nothing compared to mine, and your power is even less. I am the one you need to fear."
"I need fear you only if I lose faith in what I believe," Silvas said. "That is true no matter what happens in other lands."
"Deceive yourself while you may. I tire of this game. When mortals worry about what passes among such minor powers, they lose sight of my greatness. I will deal with the others at my convenience. I will deal with you now."
With that, Satan raised his claymore and quickly advanced at Silvas. Silvas firmed his grip on his shield and brought his sword up as he silently recited chants of power. Then he, too, advanced, unwilling to concede all of the momentum of attack to any opponent, even the Devil.
From the first clash of blades, Silvas knew that he could not hope to prevail. Satan's strength was greater than anything he could hope to attain, even as a god. The two-handed sword came down, and Silvas could scarcely deflect its course enough to keep it from crashing through his armor and body. At least his own blade did not shatter at the impact.
There was more than merely the difference in brute power between them. Satan moved with incredible agility and deceptive grace. It was all that Silvas could manage to meet each attack as it came. At every passage, Silvas came within a whisker of total defeat. Death. The two of them danced around each other's blades as Silvas retreated and turned, trying to stave off destruction for as long as possible. In vain, he tried to find a spell that would carry him out of the Devil's reach.
A blow from the claymore cut Silvas's shield in half, just above his forearm. The leather straps that had held the shield to his arm were severed, and both halves fell. Silvas adjusted his stance to fight without the shield and continued to retreat.
Satan's next blow dented the armor covering Silvas's left arm, and from the new stickiness the wizard god felt, he knew that the arm was cut as well. It seemed a miracle that the bone had not been broken-shattered-but Silvas could still move the fingers of his left hand, though it brought excruciating pain.
Silvas scarcely managed to jump aside, away from the next blow. The tip of Satan's sword scored his cheek in the opening below his half visor. Silvas used his blade to beat at the side of Satan's claymore, able to do no more than deflect it a few inches from its course. Satan laughed repeatedly.
"See, I but toy with you, to remind you of your mortality, immortal though you may think yourself. Whenever I choose, this exercise will end, and so will you. Mayhap I'll let you join the legions who pray for a deliverance that can never come. Or I may dispatch you straightaway, and take even the solace of that tormented existence from you."
Then a cold white light appeared in the chamber, off to the side, completely alien to the locale and shatteringly brilliant against the duller colors to which Silvas had become accustomed. He had to squint against the sudden brightness. Even Satan appeared to be disconcerted by the apparition.
Silvas could spare no more than the briefest glance. He needed to concentrate on his defenses. Satan's hesitation might be quite brief. Silvas saw Maria and Brother Paul standing in the patch of white light, on an elevation ten feet above his head and perhaps a hundred feet away. They were several feet from each other. Maria had her arms up, fingers pointed directly at the Devil. The monk also had his hands raised, but they held his crucifix-as weapon and shield.
Silvas moved forward, taking what advantage he could from the temporary lapse in Satan's assault. He beat the longer sword off to the side and struck toward the Devil's uncovered head. For the moment, Satan seemed completely nonplussed. He warded off Silvas's blow with unaccustomed awkwardness, trying to divide his attention between Silvas and the unexpected newcomers. He gave way for the first time in the duel, backing up one step and then another, trying to turn Silvas so he could more directly look at the two figures who had appeared to complicate his game.
While he could, Silvas pressed his advantage, belaboring Satan with as many strokes as he could manage while his mind reestablished its intimate link to Maria.
Maria felt the contact, but she let Silvas worry about maintaining it. She had more than enough to do to advance his own plans. Only desperation-the fear of losing half of herself, or more-gave her the strength and determination to even attempt it.
"There is the enemy," she told Brother Paul. "You know who he is."
Brother Paul was terrified almost to the death, his mind driven to a madness he dared not accept. He felt a pain that was physical as well as spiritual. He had recognized the Devil in his soul. At this pass, the monk could do nothing more than retreat into the basics of his faith, the open teachings of the Church and such minor magics as he had possessed as a minor adept of the White Brotherhood, magics that had never been designed for a pass such as this. But he put every ounce of his being into that little power, focusing himself as he had never before been able to.
Maria took the active lead once she felt Silvas firmly within her mind. She linked Brother Paul to the two of them, as directly as she dared, pouring a certain amount of knowledge-power-into him. At first, Paul's knees seemed ready to fail under the new burden, but then he firmed his stance and squared his shoulders. His voice found new power, and moved from familiar rituals to chant in unison with Silvas and Maria.
The white light spread slowly toward the duelists, a growing globe at the end of a tether that was anchored around Maria and Paul. Silvas felt himself strengthened by the bleak white illumination which so clearly oppressed the Devil. Silvas pressed forward. Satan gave up one step after another while he tried to reach out to counteract this new power.
But the three did not give him time. The ground, the air itself, seemed to freeze as the white light encompassed more and more of the cavern, and when that light finally touched Satan, he slowed down even more-until he stood motionless, except for his eyes.
"I don't know how long this will hold," Maria shouted to Silvas. "We need to be far away before he frees himself."
For a moment, Silvas stood with his sword raised, hilt held in both hands, prepared for a death stroke at Satan's neck, a blow such as he had struck at the black knight that had disrupted his earlier excursion with Maria. But a voice within him stayed the blow. You cannot harm him thus, and the stroke might only serve to free him to resume the fight. You dare not take that chance.
Bringing the sword down without striking at Satan was incredibly difficult. Silvas's arms, and the sword itself, seemed possessed of a contrary will, and power of their own. Maria and Paul ran to Silvas, hopping down from one level of the cavern to the next.
"Come, hurry," Maria urged. "I have our passage out."
"We will meet again," Satan promised as they ran from him. "I can never be defeated for long."