DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (3 page)

She glanced over to see a disappointed Brother Braumin. She honestly liked the man and his eager cohorts, idealists all, who believed they would repair the Abellican Church, put it back on a righteous course by following the teachings of Avelyn. That last thought made Pony smile again: laughing inside but holding her mirth there because she did not want to seem to mock this man. Braumin and his friends hadn’t even known Avelyn—not the real Avelyn, not the man known as the mad friar. Braumin had joined the Abellican Order the year before Avelyn, God’s Year 815. Both Master Francis and Brother Marlboro Viscenti, Braumin’s closest friend, had come in with Avelyn’s class in the fall of God’s Year 816. But Avelyn and three others had been separated from the rest of their class as they had begun their all-important preparations for the journey to the Isle of Pimaninicuit. The only recollection Braumin, Viscenti, or Francis even had of Avelyn was on the day when the four chosen monks had sailed out of All Saints Bay, bound for the island where they would collect the sacred gemstones. Braumin had never seen Avelyn after he had run off from St.-Mere-Abelle, after he had become the mad friar, with his barroom brawling and his too-frequent drinking—and wouldn’t the canonization process of rowdy Avelyn Desbris be colorful indeed!

“Too cold up here,” Brother Braumin said again, tightening his grip on Pony’s shoulders, pulling her closer that she might share his warmth. “Pray come inside and sit by a fire. There is too much sickness spreading in the aftermath of war, and darker would the world be if Jilseponie took ill.”

Pony didn’t resist as he led her toward the tower door. Yes, she did like Brother Braumin and his cohorts, the group of monks who had risked everything to try to find the truth of the world after the turmoil stirred up by the defection of Avelyn Desbris and his theft of so many magical gemstones. It went deeper than liking, she recognized, watching the true concern on his gentle and youthful face, feeling the strong and eager spring in his energetic step. She envied him, because he was full of youth, much more so than she, though he was the older.

But Brother Braumin, Pony realized within her darkened perception, was possessed of something she could no longer claim.

Hope.

“B
rennilee! Ye’ve not fed the chickens, ye silly lass!” Merry Cowsenfed called out
the front door of her small house. “Oh, Brennilee, where’ve ye got yerself to, girl?” She shook her head and grumbled. Truly Brennilee, her youngest child, was the most troublesome seven-year-old Merry had ever heard of, always running across the rocky cliffs and the dunes below, sometimes daring the brutal tidewaters of Falidean Bay—which could bring twenty feet of water rushing across the muddy ground in a matter of a few running strides—in her endless quest for adventure and enjoyment.

And always, always, did Brennilee forget her chores before she went on her wild runs. Every morning, Merry Cowsenfed heard those chickens complaining, and every morning, the woman had to go to her door and call out.

“I’m here, Mum,” came a quiet voice behind her, a voice Merry hardly recognized as that of her spirited daughter.

“Ye missed yer breakfast,” Merry replied, turning, “and so’ve the chickens.”

“I’ll feed ’em,” Brennilee said quietly, too quietly. Merry Cowsenfed quickly closed the distance to her unexpectedly fragile-looking daughter and brought her palm up against Brennilee’s forehead, feeling for fever.

“Are ye all right, girl?” she asked, and then her eyes widened, for Brennilee was warm to the touch.

“I’m not feelin’ good, Mum,” the girl admitted.

“Come on, then. I’ll get ye to bed and get ye some soup to warm ye,” the woman said, taking Brennilee by the wrist.

“But the chickens …”

“The chickens’ll get theirs after ye’re warm in yer bed,” Merry Cowsenfed started to say, turning back with a wide, warm smile for her daughter.

Her smile evaporated when she saw on the little girl’s arm a rosy spot encircled by a white ring.

Merry Cowsenfed composed herself quickly for her daughter’s sake, and brought the arm up for closer inspection. “Did ye hurt yerself, then?” she asked the girl, and there was no mistaking the hopeful tone of her question.

“No,” Brennilee replied, and she moved her face closer, too, to see what was so interesting to her mother.

Merry studied the rosy spot for just a moment. “Ye go to bed now,” she instructed. “Ye pull only the one sheet over ye, so that ye’re not overheatin’ with the little fever ye got.”

“Am I going to get sicker?” Brennilee asked innocently.

Merry painted a smile on her face. “No, ye’ll be fine, me girl,” she lied, and she knew indeed how great a lie it was! “Now get ye to bed and I’ll be bringing ye yer soup.”

Brennilee smiled. As soon as she was out of the room, Merry Cowsenfed collapsed into a great sobbing ball of fear.

She’d have to get the Falidean town healer to come quickly and see the girl. She reminded herself repeatedly that she’d need a wiser person than she to confirm her suspicion, that it might be something altogether different: a spider bite or a bruise
from one of the sharp rocks that Brennilee was forever scrambling across. It was too soon for such terror, Merry Cowsenfed told herself repeatedly.

Ring around the rosy
.

It was an old song in Falidean town, as in most of the towns of Honce-the-Bear.

It was a song about the plague.

Was the victory worth the cost?

It pains me even to speak those words aloud, and, in truth, the question seems to reflect a selfishness, an attitude disrespectful to the memory of all those who gave their lives battling the darkness that had come to Corona. If I wish Elbryan back alive—and Avelyn and so many others—am I diminishing their sacrifice? I was there with Elbryan, joined in spirit, bonded to stand united against the demon dactyl that had come to reside in the corporeal form of Father Abbot Markwart. I watched and felt Elbryan’s spirit diminish and dissipate into nothingness even as I witnessed the breaking of the blackness, the destruction of Bestesbulzibar
.

And I felt, too, Elbryan’s willingness to make the sacrifice, his desire to see the battle through to the only acceptable conclusion, even though that victory, he knew, would take his life. He was a ranger, trained by the Touel’alfar, a servant and protector of mankind, and those tenets demanded of him responsibility and the greatest altruism
.

And so he died contented, in the knowledge that he had lifted the blackness from the Church and the land
.

All our lives together, since I had returned to Dundalis and found Elbryan, had been lives of willing sacrifice, of risk taking. How many battles did we fight, even though we might have avoided them? We walked to the heart of the dactyl, to Mount Aida in the Barbacan, though we truly believed that to be a hopeless road, though we fully expected that all of us would die, and likely in vain, in our attempt to battle an evil that seemed so very far beyond us. And yet we went. Willingly. With hope, and with the understanding that we had to do this thing, whatever the cost, for the betterment of the world
.

It came full circle that day in Chasewind Manor, when finally, finally, we caught, not the physical manifestation of Bestesbulzibar, but rather the demon’s spirit, the very essence of evil. We won the day, shattering that evil
.

But was the victory worth the cost?

I look back on the last few years of my life, and I cannot discount that question. I remember all the good people, all the great people, who passed from this world in the course of the journey that led me to this point, and, at times, it seems to me to be a great and worthless waste
.

I know that I dishonor Elbryan and likely anger his ghost with these emotions, but they are very real
.

We battled, we fought, we gave of ourselves all that we could and more. Most of all, though, it seems to me as if we’ve spent the bulk of time burying our dead. Even that cost, I had hoped, would prove worthwhile in those few shining moments after I awakened from my battle with the demon spirit, in the proclamations of Brother Francis, of Brother Braumin, and of the King himself that Elbryan had not died in vain, that the world, because of our actions, would be a better place. I dared to hope that my love’s sacrifice, that our sacrifice, would be enough, would turn the tide of humankind and better the world for all
.

Is Honce-the-Bear better off for the fall of Markwart?

With sudden response, the answer seems obvious; in that shining moment of clarity and hope, the answer seemed obvious
.

That moment, I fear, has passed. In the fog of confusion, in the shifting and shoving for personal gain, in the politics of court and Church, that moment of glory, of sadness, and of hope has diminished into bickering
.

Like Elbryan’s spirit, it becomes something less than substantial and drifts away on unseen winds
.

And I am left alone in Palmaris, watching the world descend into chaos. Demon inspired? Perhaps, or perhaps—and this is my greatest fear—this confusion is merely the nature of humankind, as eternal as the human spirit, an unending cycle of pain and sacrifice, a series of brilliant, twinkling hopes that fade as surely as do the stars at dawn. Did I, and Elbryan, bring the world through its darkness, or did we merely guide it safely through one long night, with another sure to follow?

That is my fear and my belief. When I sit and remember all those who gave their lives so that we could walk this road to its end, I fear that we have merely returned to the beginning of that same path
.

In light of that understanding, I say with conviction that the victory was not worth the cost
.

—J
ILSEPONIE
W
YNDON

Chapter 1
 

T
HE MUD SUCKED AT HIS BOOTS AS HE WALKED ALONG THE NARROW
,
SMOKY CORRIDOR
, a procession of armored soldiers in step behind him. The conditions were not to his liking—he didn’t want his “prisoners” growing obstinate, after all.

Around a bend in the tunnel the light increased and the air cleared, and before Duke Targon Bree Kalas loomed a wider and higher chamber, its one entrance securely barred. Kalas motioned to a soldier behind him, and the man hustled forward, fumbling with keys and hastily unlocking the cell door. Other soldiers tried to slip by, to enter the cell protectively before their leader, but Kalas slapped them back and strode in.

A score of dwarvish faces turned his way, the normally ruddy-complexioned powries seeming a bit paler after months imprisoned underground.

Kalas studied those faces carefully, noting the narrowing of eyes, a reflection, he knew, of seething hatred. It wasn’t that the powries hated him particularly, but rather that they merely hated any human.

Again, almost as one, the dwarves turned away from him, back to their conversations and myriad games they had invented to pass the tedious hours.

One of the soldiers began calling them to attention, but Duke Kalas cut him short and waved him and the others back. Then he stood by the door, calmly, patiently letting them come to him.

“Yach, it’s to wait all the damned day if we isn’t to spake with it,” one powrie said at last. The creature removed its red beret—a cap shining bright with the blood of its victims—and scratched its itchy, lice-filled hair, then replaced the cap and hopped up, striding to stand before the Duke.

“Ye comin’ down to see our partyin’?” the dwarf asked.

Kalas didn’t blink, staring at the powrie sternly. This dwarf, the leader, was always the sarcastic one, and he always seemed to need a reminder that he had been captured while waging war on the kingdom, that he and his wretched little fellows were alive only by the grace of Duke Kalas.

“Well?” the dwarf, Dalump Keedump by name, went on obstinately.

“I told you that I would require your services at the turn of the season,” Duke Kalas stated quietly.

“And we’re to be knowin’ that the season’s turned?” Keedump asked sarcastically. He turned to his fellows. “Are ye thinkin’ the sun to be ridin’ lower in the sky these days?” he asked with a wicked little laugh.