The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Another six hours of the day, they were
given to the care of Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Violet paladins for a
different sort of education that taxed their minds almost as much as Morningham
taxed their bodies. Danner estimated they spent a couple hours each day taking
meals, and usually they had two or three hours of personal time set aside for
individual study and personalized training as needed. Their instructors were
oddly insistent that eight hours be reserved solely for sleep time, which the
trainees essentially ignored, using some of that time for extra study and quiet
conversation when the Nightman wasn’t present.
    The grueling schedule was made all the worse for Danner and
his friends when they went on late-night sorties on Morningham’s behalf, and
more than once he’d had problems staying awake in the relative calm of their
classroom instruction as paladins from the Orange Facet, which represented the
virtue of knowledge, drilled them on history and general knowledge. Danner
couldn’t help but see these lessons as a form of personal torture. He’d never
liked those sorts of classes in the school where his father had sent him, and
he found he still didn’t much care for them. The others struggled through with
somewhat better grace, but only Marc seemed to truly enjoy the classes or take
anything away from them. His incessant reading gave him a leg up on the others,
but he was always willing to help them study or to remind them of some obscure
tidbit of knowledge they needed.
    Their time with the Violet paladins, who represented the
Facet and virtue of piety, was somewhat more bearable for Danner, since he
hoped it would tell him more about the immortals and the workings of Heaven.
Given his unique nature, Danner had a special interest in the philosophies and
teachings that supposedly came straight from God and His immortal angels.
Michael, Flasch, and Trebor also enjoyed the classes in faith, but Garnet and
Marc had little use for them.
    Healing classes were perhaps Danner’s most frustrating. Not
because he didn’t enjoy them, but rather because he couldn’t seem to understand
why sometimes his healing prayers worked and sometimes they didn’t. Michael and
Trebor could always make their prayers work, and Flasch was almost as
successful, even though he rarely managed to heal more than a scratch. Marc and
Garnet both seemed indifferent to their limited abilities. Danner, however,
either met with astonishing success or absolute failure. Jon de’Serrika – Green
paladin, sometime instructor, and a friend of Danner’s uncle – encouraged
Danner, but sometimes couldn’t resist poking fun at him.
    “Well, Danner,” the red-headed paladin said one day, “I
think your best bet is to stick with the terminal cases. With your record,
you’ll either cure them entirely or kill them outright. Either way, at least
they can’t do any worse than you.”
    The Yellow and Blue Facets combined their classes, which
were largely a mystery to Danner. Instead of lecturing to them on temperance
and justice, the virtues which the two Facets represented, their instructors
gave them hypothetical situations and asked only that the trainees talk amongst
themselves about the problems and try to develop solutions. Some were criminal
cases, some involved diplomatic and military decisions, while others dealt with
domestic disputes. There was no way of judging one’s progress or training in
these classes, at least not that Danner could tell, but their instructors
wandered around the room posing questions and noting arguments. Danner and
Michael worked as a well-honed team in these classes making joint decisions,
which Michael then explained and presented to the rest of their assigned
groups. The others in their group of friends did moderately well, but as
Michael once whispered to Danner, “You can tell it’s not really their passion.”
    Nearly all of the trainees commented at some point on the
feeling of haste that slowly