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

by R. A. Salvatore

  But then had come the confrontation between Elbryan and Markwart in Chasewind Manor, a battle that the elf could not ignore, and Juraviel had run out of time. Thus had Dasslerond sent another to find the weapons, following a report that they had gone with Elbryan back to Dundalis, his final resting place.

  “Bradwarden confirmed their location,” she explained, “and took Tien-Bryselle to them.”

  “He is a fine friend,” Juraviel remarked.

  Lady Dasslerond nodded. “A fine friend who came through the trials of the demon dactyl, and who came through the responsibilities of calling himself elf-friend.”

  Juraviel narrowed his eyes, easily catching the not-so-flattering reference to both Elbryan and Jilseponie. Lady Dasslerond had not been pleased to learn that Elbryan had taught Jilseponie the elven sword dance, bi’nelle dasada, nor had she been happy with many of Jilseponie’s choices during the final days of conflict with Father Abbot Markwart.

  “But we are glad to know that the weapons are safe,” she quickly added—for his benefit, Juraviel knew, “guarded by the spirits of two rangers. Perhaps they will belong to yel’delen one day.”

  Yel’delen, Juraviel echoed in his mind, so poignantly reminded that Lady Dasslerond had not even yet named the baby; for in the elvish tongue, yel’delen meant simply “the child.”

  “Jilseponie did not fight the return of the weapons,” Juraviel dared to remark.

  “She is in Palmaris still, and likely knew nothing of their return to the north,” she answered, “nor that we went to find them.”

  Juraviel looked at her curiously, hardly agreeing with her first claim. If Tempest and Hawkwing left Palmaris with Elbryan’s caisson, then they did so on the instructions of Jilseponie. “But she would not have fought the interment of the elven weapons even if she had known,” Juraviel insisted, “nor would she argue if we decided to take them back.”

  Dasslerond shrugged, apparently not prepared to argue the point.

  “You underestimate her,” Juraviel went on boldly, “as you have from the very first.”

  “I judged her by her own actions,” the lady of Caer’alfar replied firmly. She shook her head and chuckled. “You cloud your memories with friendship, yet you know that your friend will be cold in the ground centuries before your time has passed.”

  “Am I not to befriend those of like heart?”

  “The humans have their place,” Dasslerond said somewhat coldly. “To elevate them beyond that is a dangerous mistake, Belli’mar Juraviel. You know that well.”

  Juraviel looked away, feeling the tears beginning to rim his golden eyes. “And is that why?” he asked, and then he blinked away the tears completely, replacing them with resolve, and looked at her squarely. “Is that why you deny me the child?”

  Dasslerond didn’t blink, nor did she shrink back an inch. “This child is different,” she said. “He will carry the weapons of Nightbird and Mather, the Touel’alfar weapons of a true ranger.”

  “And a glorious day it will be,” Juraviel put in.

  “Indeed,” she agreed, “even more so than you understand. The child will become the purest of rangers, trained from birth to our ways. He will hold no allegiance to the humans, will be human in appearance only.”

  Juraviel considered the words and her determined tone very carefully for a long moment. “But is not the true power of the ranger the joining of the best that is human and elven?” he asked, thinking that his beloved Lady Dasslerond might be missing a very important point here.

  “So it has been,” she replied, “but always I have understood that it is the joining of the elven way with the human physical form and the impatience that is human. This child will have physical strength beyond that of even its father, a strength fostered by the trials we shall place upon him and the health that is Andur’Blough Inninness. And we will foster, as well, the understanding of mortality, the short life which he can expect, and thus, the sense of immediacy and impatience so crucial for warriors of action.”

  Juraviel looked at her, not quite understanding her reasoning behind this talk—words he almost regarded as nonsense. Understanding the source, though, the lady of Caer’alfar, the leader of his people, Juraviel looked past the words to the hopes and the fears. She had taken the child and had flatly refused to return him to his mother, even now that the darkness of Markwart and Bestesbulzibar had passed. Indeed, it seemed to Juraviel that Lady Dasslerond had claimed the child for Andur’Blough Inninness.

  And then he understood those hopes of his lady even more clearly. This child, perhaps, so true of bloodline, so strong of limb and of thought, would have the power to heal Andur’Blough Inninness. This child of the ranger might aid Lady Dasslerond in her defense against the spreading rot, the stain the demon dactyl had placed upon the elven valley.

  “He will be strong and swift, as was Elbryan,” Juraviel remarked, as much to measure the response as to speak the truth.

  “More akin to his mother,” Lady Dasslerond replied.

  Juraviel cocked an eyebrow in surprise that she would offer such a compliment to Jilseponie.

  “Jilseponie is strong and swift with the sword, strong in bi’nelle dasada, as was her teacher,” Dasslerond explained. “And though she was not as strong in the dance as Nightbird, she was the more complete of the parents, powerfully versed in the gemstone magic, as well. The complete human warrior. This child will be all that his mother was and is and more—for he will have the guidance of the Touel’alfar throughout his journey.”

  Belli’mar Juraviel nodded, though he feared that Lady Dasslerond might be reaching a bit high here in her expectations. The child was but a few months old, after all, and though his bloodlines seemed as pure as those of any human—and Juraviel, who had loved both Elbryan and Pony, understood that more clearly than did Lady Dasslerond!—that was no guarantee of anything positive. Furthermore, Juraviel, apparently unlike Lady Dasslerond, appreciated that bringing up the infant in Andur’Blough Inninness was an experiment, an unknown.

  “Jilseponie made mistakes that we cannot tolerate,” Lady Dasslerond stated flatly, a sudden and stern reminder to Juraviel of her feelings toward the woman, “as Elbryan, our beloved Nightbird, erred in teaching her bi’nelle dasada. And do not doubt that we will continue to watch her from afar.”

  Juraviel nodded. On that point, at least, he and his lady were in agreement. If Pony started sharing the elven sword dance, became an instructor in the finer points of bi’nella dasada, then the Touel’alfar would have to stop her. To Juraviel, that would have meant taking her into their homeland and keeping her there; but he held no illusions that Lady Dasslerond, whose responsibility concerned the very existence of the Touel’alfar, would be so merciful.

  “Yet that was Nightbird’s error,” he replied, “and not Jilseponie’s.”

  “Not yet.”

  Again, Juraviel nodded, taking well her point. He wasn’t sure that he even agreed with his own last statement—that Elbryan’s tutoring of Pony was a mistake at all. Juraviel had watched them fighting together, each sword complementing the other to the level of perfection, a weaving of form and of weapons so beautiful that it had brought tears of joy to the elf’s eyes.

  How could such a work of art be a mistake?

  “You trust her,” Lady Dasslerond stated.

  Juraviel didn’t disagree.

  “You love her as you love Touel’alfar,” she went on.

  Juraviel looked at her but said nothing.

  “You would have us forgive her and return to her the child.”

  Juraviel swallowed hard. “She would have made a fine ranger, had she been trained in Andur’Blough Inninness,” he dared to remark.

  “Indeed,” she was quick to reply, “but she was not. Never forget that, my friend. She was not.

  “I’ll not deny, diminish, or refute your feelings for the woman,” Lady Dasslerond went on. “Indeed, your faith in her gives me hope that Nightbird’s error will not lead to disaster. However, Ji
lseponie’s role was in bearing the son of Elbryan. Understand that and accept it. He is ours now. Our tool, our weapon. He is our repayment for the sacrifice that we made to help the humans in their struggle with Bestesbulzibar, and our way to minimize the lasting effect of that sacrifice.”

  Juraviel wanted to argue that the war against the demon dactyl was for the sake of elves as well as the humans, but he held his words.

  “And thus, and because of your honest feelings, understand that you are to have no contact with the child,” she went on, and Juraviel’s heart sank. “He is not Nightbird—we will name him appropriately when he has shown to us the truth of his soul. But Belli’mar Juraviel will learn that truth in time, through the work of others more suited to the task.”

  Juraviel was not happy at all with the news, but neither was he surprised. Through all these months, he had been complaining, and often, about the lack of interaction with the child, by him or by any other Touel’alfar, and complaining that what interaction there was came more often in the form of testing, and hardly ever the simple act of sharing a touch or a smile. That had bothered Juraviel profoundly, and he had spoken rather sharply to Lady Dasslerond about his fears.

  And his words had not been met with sympathy.

  So he was not surprised now, not at all.

  “You know of the other?” Lady Dasslerond asked him.

  “Brynn Dharielle,” Juraviel replied, naming the other human currently under Touel’alfar tutelage, a young orphaned girl from To-gai, the western reach of the kingdom of Behren, the land of the greatest human horsemen in all the world.

  “You will enjoy her,” Lady Dasslerond assured him, “for she is possessed of more spirit than her little frame can contain, a creature of impulse and fire much akin to young Elbryan Wyndon.”

  Juraviel nodded. He had heard as much concerning Brynn Dharielle. He hadn’t yet met the novice ranger, for though Brynn had been in the care of the Touel’alfar for almost a year, and though Andur’Blough Inninness was not a large place, Juraviel’s business had been elsewhere—his eyes, his heart, in the paths of Elbryan and Pony, his concern in the fate of the demon dactyl and Markwart and the turn of the human world. Those in the valley who knew of Brynn Dharielle had spoken highly of her talents and her spirit. Dare the Touel’alfar believe they had another Nightbird in training?

  “I give you her charge,” Lady Dasslerond went on. “You will see to her as you saw to Nightbird.”

  “But do you not believe that I failed with Nightbird?” Juraviel dared to ask. “For did he not fail in his vow as ranger, in teaching bi’nelle dasada?”

  Lady Dasslerond laughed aloud—for all of her anger at Elbryan and his sharing of the elven sword dance with Pony, she knew, as all the elves knew, that he had not failed. Not at all. Nightbird had gone to Aida and battled Bestesbulzibar; and when the demon had found a new and more insidious and more dangerous host, Nightbird had given everything to win the day, for the humans and for all the goodly races, Touel’alfar included, of the world.

  “You will learn from your mistakes then,” Lady Dasslerond replied. “You will do even better with this one.”

  Now it was Juraviel’s turn to chuckle helplessly. Could his lady even begin to appreciate the standard to which she had just set Brynn Dharielle? Would his lady ever see past her immediate anger to the truth that was Elbryan the Nightbird, and the truth that remained in the heart of Jilseponie?

  Or was he wrong? he had to wonder and to fear. Was he too blinded by friendship and love to accept the failings of his human companions?

  Belli’mar Juraviel blew a long, long sigh.

  Chapter 5

  Diplomacy

  CONSTANCE PEMBLEBURY WATCHED THE DOCKS OF PALMARIS RECEDE INTO THE morning fog. She was glad to be away from the city, away from dead Markwart and his all-too-complicated Church, away from a populace so on the edge of hysteria and desperation, and, most of all, away from Jilseponie. Even thinking of the woman made her wince. Jilseponie. The heroic Pony, the savior of the north, who defeated the demon dactyl in Aida and in the corporeal vessel of Markwart. Jilseponie, who could become abbess of St. Precious with but a word and could cultivate that into something much greater, perhaps even become mother abbess of the entire Abellican Church. Jilseponie, the woman to whom King Danube had offered the city of Palmaris. Baroness, governess. What other title might she choose? What other title might King Danube bestow upon her?

  Jilseponie hadn’t been at the dock when the River Palace, the royal barge, and its fifteen escort warships had left the city. She hadn’t shown herself to the royal entourage at all since the final meeting in St. Precious.

  Constance was glad of that.

  In truth, Constance admired the woman—her fire, her efforts—and she could not deny the value of Jilseponie’s actions in the war and in the even more dangerous aftermath of the war. In truth, Constance recognized that, had the situation been different, she and Jilseponie might have become the best of friends. But that was a private truth Constance would not admit to anyone but herself.

  For the situation was different; Constance had not missed the looks King Danube had bestowed on Jilseponie.

  Beautiful and heroic Jilseponie. A woman who had, in the eyes of the majority of the kingdom, raised herself above her commoner birth to a position of nobility. Nobility of deed and not blood.

  And how King Danube had stared at her, fawned over her with a sparkle in his tired eyes that Constance had not seen in years. He would make no move toward Jilseponie yet—not with her husband, Elbryan, barely cold in the ground. But Constance didn’t doubt the length of Danube’s memory or the magnetism of his charms. Not at all.

  When she looked at Jilseponie, then, was she seeing the next Vivian? The next queen of Honce-the-Bear?

  The thought made her clench her jaw and chew her lower lip. Yes, she admired the woman, even liked the woman, and, yes, Constance had understood for some time now that while she might share Danube’s bed, he would not take her as his wife. But, still, to have the door—through which she understood she could never walk—so obviously closed before her, offended her. She was in her mid-thirties now, a decade older than Jilseponie, and she was starting to show her age, with wrinkles about her eyes—eyes losing the luster of youth—and a body that was just beginning to lose the war against gravity. Measured against Jilseponie’s smooth skin and sparkling blue eyes, her strong muscles and the spring in her youthful stride, Constance understood that she would lose.

  Thus she had taken Danube the previous night, and the night before that, seducing him shamelessly, even coaxing him with drink so that he would not ignore her obvious advances. Thus she would take him again this night on the ship, and every night all the way to Ursal, and every night after that.

  Until she became great with his child.

  Constance hated her actions, her deception, for Danube believed that she was taking the herbs—as per the arrangement with every courtesan—that would prevent pregnancy. She hated more the thought of serving Queen Jilseponie. How many years had she worked by Danube’s side, easing him through crises, serving as his best adviser? How many years had she stood by him against all his enemies, and quietly reinforced his better qualities to his allies? To Constance’s thinking, she had been serving as queen ever since Vivian had died, in every capacity except that of the King’s constant bed partner and the mother of his children.

  Now she meant to remedy that situation. He wouldn’t marry her, likely, but he would sire her children; and in the absence of another wife, he might grant one of them the status of heir to the throne. Yes, she could get that concession from him. His other bastard children—and there were two at least—were grown now and had never been trained for the crown, had never been as sons to Danube; and he held little love for his lone sibling, his brother, Midalis, a man he had not seen in years. Constance believed with all her heart that he would come to love their child and would train the child, boy or girl, as he had not trained the others and cou
ld not train Midalis, to serve as heir to the throne of Honce-the-Bear.

  Constance recognized the unlikelihood that she would ever be queen, but she realized that she would be more than pleased with the title of queen mother.

  Still, she wished it could be different, wished that she could inspire an honest love in Danube. She had hoped that the situation in Palmaris, the greatest crisis in Danube’s reign, would provide opportunity for her to raise her station through deed; and indeed, by Danube’s own accounting, she had performed admirably over the weeks of trial. But how her efforts paled against those of Jilseponie! As her fading beauty paled beside that woman’s luster!

  “It is, perhaps, time to relax,” came the voice of Abbot Je’howith behind her, startling her. When she glanced at him and followed his gaze to the taffrail, she understood the source of his comment, for she was unintentionally clutching the railing so tightly that all blood had gone from her knuckles.

  “The trials are behind us,” Constance agreed, letting go of the rail and selfconsciously hiding her hands within the folds of her thick woolen cloak.

  “Most, perhaps,” said old Je’howith, his expression pensive. “For the Crown and court, at least, though I fear that I’ve many trials ahead of me.” The old man walked up beside Constance, gripping the rail and staring out, as she had been, at the receding shapes of Palmaris’ dock.

  Constance eyed him curiously; never had she and Je’howith been on good terms, though neither had they been openly hostile toward each other, as was the case between the elderly abbot and Duke Kalas.

  “They are so young and idealistic,” the abbot continued, and he glanced over at Constance. “The young Abellican brothers, I mean, who take the downfall of Father Abbot Markwart as a signal that it is their time to step to the forefront of the Abellican Church. They believe they have seen the truth; though the truth, you and I both understand in our wisdom of experience, is never as simple as that. They will overreach, and pity the Church if we older abbots and masters cannot tame the fire of youth.”