Authors: R.A. Salvatore
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (155 page)
“You want to destroy me,” Aydrian said to her, egging her on.
In the end, Jilseponie’s arm slumped back down, and Aydrian reached out and grabbed back the gemstone.
“But you cannot,” the young King said a moment later. “You cannot destroy that which you have created.” He flipped the stone in the air, catching it. “Get out of Ursal, Mother. You do not belong here. You, with such compassion, never belonged here.” He motioned to the guards in the room and they moved to flank Jilseponie, pulling her away.
Duke Kalas entered the room as she was leaving. He looked at her and nodded, dipping a slight, mocking, bow, then moved to stand before Aydrian.
“She will serve out her days in the dungeons?” he asked.
“A coach is awaiting her, to take her out of Ursal,” Aydrian replied, and when Kalas started to sputter a retort, Aydrian glared at him uncompromisingly.
“She is no threat to us.”
“Do not underestimate that one,” Kalas said, looking from Aydrian to De’Unnero, seeking support from the dangerous monk, who knew and hated Jilseponie at least as much as did he.
Aydrian laughed and leaped out of his throne, striding across the room, out into the corridor, and all the way to the courtyard of the castle, where Jilseponie was just entering the covered coach, driver and team ready to spring away.
“Farewell, Mother,” Aydrian said to her, poking his head in.
Jilseponie looked at him plaintively, and he knew that she wanted to argue with him, to try to reason with him. But she said nothing, for what might she offer to change his course?
“Take care that you never return, and never bring any trouble to me,” Aydrian warned.
“You will hear from Prince Midalis soon enough,” Jilseponie replied. “If you wish to avoid—”
“I embrace a war, if one should come!” Aydrian interrupted, his eyes flashing with inner fires. “But you have no place in such a war. I warn you that I can begin again the proceedings King Danube cut short.”
“To what end?” she asked doubtfully.
“I can recall the spirit of Constance at any time, Mother dear,” Aydrian assured her. “And I can make her say whatever I wish her to say. Perhaps you should have killed me when you had the chance, because you will desire me dead many times in the months ahead, and you will never get another opportunity to do it.”
“Long live the King,” Jilseponie said with a snarl.
“King Aydrian Boudabras,” Aydrian replied, taking an elvish word as his surname, a word that Jilseponie surely understood.
Boudabras. Maelstrom.
The maelstrom had begun.
ContentsPrelude
To the Edge of DarknessB
RYNN
D
HARIELLE LOOKED BACK OVER HER SHOULDER REPEATEDLY AS SHE SLOWLY
paced her pinto mount, Diredusk, along the descending mountain trail. Though she had only been on the road for a half hour beyond the edge of Andur’Blough Inninness, the enchanted elven valley, the ridges that marked the place were already lost from sight. The mountainous landscape was a natural maze that had been enhanced by the magic of Lady Dasslerond of the Touel’alfar to be unsolvable. Brynn had marked the trail well along her route, but she understood that she would have a hard time finding her way back—even if she were to turn about right then.
This was the first time Brynn had been out of that misty valley in a decade, and she truly felt as if she was leaving her home. The Touel’alfar, the diminutive, translucent-winged elves of Corona, had come to her when she was a child of ten, orphaned and alone on the rugged and unforgiving steppes of To-gai, far to the south. They had taken her in and given her food and shelter. And even more importantly to Brynn, they had given her life purpose. They had trained her and made her a ranger.
And now they were sending her home to find her destiny.
The young brown-skinned woman crinkled her face at that thought, as she continued to stare back along the trail behind her, to the place that she knew to be her real home, the place she would likely never see again. Tears misted in her almond-shaped brown eyes, the sparkling eyes of a child, still, though so much had they seen. Already she missed Aydrian, the fourteen-year-old who had shared some of her training. Many times, Brynn had found the boy to be exasperating, often infuriating. But the truth was, he was the only other human she had seen in these last ten years, and she loved him like a brother.
A brother she would likely never see again.
Brynn shook her head forcefully, her raven hair flying wildly, and pointedly turned back to the trail heading south. Certainly leaving the valley was a sacrifice for Brynn, a dismissal of the trappings and the companionship that had made the place her home. But there was a reason for her departure, she reminded herself, and if the pain of this loss was the greatest sacrifice she would be expected to make, then her road would be easier by far than anyone, herself included, had ever imagined possible.
Her future was not her own to decide. No, that road had been laid out before her a decade before, when the Behrenese Yatol priests and their armies had tightened their grip on To-gai, had abolished almost completely the last remnants of a culture that had existed for thousands of years. Brynn’s road had been set from the moment Tohen Bardoh, an orange-robed Yatol priest, had lifted his heavy falchion and lopped off her father’s head; from the moment Tohen and his lackeys had
dragged off her mother, eventually killing her, as well.
Brynn’s jaw tightened. She hoped that Tohen Bardoh was still alive. That confrontation alone would be worth any sacrifice.
Of course, Brynn understood keenly that this journey, this duty, was about much more than personal gain. She had been trained for a specific reason, a destiny that was bigger than herself. She was to return to the cold and windy steppes of harsh To-gai, the land she loved so much, and find those flickers of what had once been. She, little Brynn Dharielle, just over five feet tall and barely weighing a hundred pounds, was to fan that flicker into a flame, then feed the flame with the passion that had burned within her since that fateful day a decade ago. She was to find the To-gai spirit, to remind her fierce and proud people of who they truly were, to unite the many divided tribes in the cause against a deserving enemy: the Yatol-led Behrenese, the Chezru.
If the plan went as Brynn and the elves hoped, then Brynn would be the harbinger of war and all the land south of the great Belt-and-Buckle Mountains would be profoundly changed.
That was the hope of Lady Dasslerond, who rarely involved herself in the affairs of humans, and that was the burning hope of Brynn Dharielle. Liberation, freedom, for the To-gai-ru would avenge her parents, would allow them to sleep more comfortably in their graves.
“We will move down to the east, along that open stone to the tree line,” came a melodic voice from the side and above. Brynn looked up to the top of a boulder lining the rocky trail to see a figure far more diminutive than she. Belli’mar Juraviel of the Touel’alfar, her mentor and companion, looked back at her with his golden eyes. His hair, too, was the color of sunlight, and his features, though angular, with the high cheekbones and pointy ears characteristic of all of the Touel’alfar, somehow exuded gentleness.
Brynn glanced back once again toward the land that had been her home.
