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

by R. A. Salvatore

  Pony’s eyes stayed very wide.

  “Did you not understand the words of the rhyme?” Braumin asked, turning away from her with a withering glare. “One in twenty we may help, but one in seven will afflict the tending monk. The words are true. We of the Order, even with the gifts of God’s gemstones, cannot wage battle against the rosy plague.”

  “One in twenty, you say,” Pony replied, a distinct edge to her voice. “Will you not, then, try? For Colleen? For me?”

  “I cannot. Nor can any of my brethren. Nor should you.”

  “Is she not your friend?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Did she not stand strong with us against the darkness of Markwart?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Did she not escape De’Unnero, to spread news of my capture and of the march to the north?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Did she not suffer imprisonment without denouncing us, or Avelyn, or any of the principles that we held dear?” Pony continued to press, coming closer with each statement, so that she was, by this time, leaning heavily over the desk, staring Braumin in the eye from a distance of less than a foot.

  “I cannot!” Braumin answered with even more emphasis. “It is our law, without exception.”

  “It is a bad law,” Pony accused.

  “Perhaps,” said Braumin, “but one without exception. If the King of Honce-the-Bear became ill with plague, the Abellican Church would offer only prayers. If the Father Abbot became ill with plague, he would be forced out of St.-Mere-Abelle, beyond the tussie-mussie bed.” Braumin settled back, his voice going low and somber. “There is but one exception I would make. If you, Jilseponie, became ill with plague, I would abdicate my post and my calling, take one soul stone in hand, and would go to you with all my heart and soul.”

  Pony just stared at him, too stunned by this unbelievable information even to find the words to respond.

  “But even if I was successful, even if you proved the one in twenty, then I would be banished for my actions and not allowed back within my abbey until after the plague had abated,” Braumin explained, “a decade, perhaps. By that time, I would likely have met with my own death. And if not, it is even possible that I would be branded a heretic for offering such false hopes to the general population. This is much larger than you or me, my friend. It is a matter of the very survival of the Church.”

  “I am going to Colleen,” Pony remarked.

  “Do not,” said Braumin.

  “What stones might I combine with hematite to help shield my work?”

  “There is nothing,” Braumin said bluntly, his tone rising. “Hematite will bring you to the disease, and there you will succeed if you are fortunate and its hold is not great, fail if moderate, and fail utterly, and sicken yourself, if it is thick within the victim.”

  Pony considered those words carefully in the context of what she had found awaiting her previous delving into the tortured body of Colleen Kilronney. Could the plague be any thicker within a living person? she had to honestly wonder, shivering at the mere memory of her encounter with the disease.

  “I cannot bring her here,” Pony said calmly.

  Abbot Braumin, though his expression was pained, shook his head.

  “And you cannot go with me to her.”

  Braumin winced even more, but again he shook his head.

  “And what will you do through all the years of plague, then?” Pony asked sharply. “Will you remain in your abbey behind locked gates, discussing the origins of the various human races?”

  “That and other matters philosophical,” the abbot explained. “It is long tradition within the Church that times of plague are times of retreat for the brothers, to discuss and debate the greater questions of existence.”

  “While the world suffers.”

  Abbot Braumin seemed wounded. He sighed deeply. “What would you have me do?”

  “I know the path before me,” Pony answered.

  “And it is one that I again bid you not to walk,” Braumin replied. “You are more likely to die trying to help her than to give her any aid.”

  “I have already tried with my soul stone,” Pony replied honestly, “and failed utterly.”

  “Then why go?”

  Pony stared at him, disappointed in Braumin for the first time since she had met him. Then why go? she echoed incredulously in her mind. To hold her, of course, and talk to her, to comfort her and to say farewell! How could generous Braumin not see so obvious a duty? How could he place tradition over compassion?

  “I will have my clothes, and be gone,” Pony answered.

  Braumin nodded, then paused for a brief moment and moved behind his desk, pulling open a drawer. He produced a small sack. “One of every gemstone available at St. Precious, including the very same cat’s-eye circlet you once wore,” he explained, handing it over to Pony. “In times of plague, the folk may be driven mad. You might need these for protection.”

  Pony took the sack, but stared at Braumin skeptically.

  “Also, since I know your heart, and doubt not your talent, I hold a hope that you will again prove our savior, that you will find a gemstone combination that will prove effective against the rosy plague. God be with you, Jilseponie.” He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, then he led her out to retrieve her possessions.

  They said good-bye at St. Precious’ front gate.

  Pony found Colleen in bed, feverish and delirious, calling out for her cousin Shamus. The woman tending her, another plague sufferer, just shook her head when Pony entered the building, even telling Pony that she should not be there.

  “Ye’re just to kill yerself for mercy,” she said.

  Pony sighed and pushed past her, going to her friend. She wiped Colleen’s brow and whispered calming words into her ear.

  Not words about letting go, about going to the other side, though. Pony wasn’t ready to quit fighting just yet. She had little privacy, for there were three other plague victims in the same room, all near death, and in the other rooms of the house languished more people in various stages of illness.

  Pony pulled open the sack and gently dumped the gemstones on the floor before her, rolling them, sorting them. She took up the serpentine first, considering the shield the gem allowed her to bring up against fire. Might that shield also defeat the intrusions of the plague? For Pony honestly believed that if she could do that, if she could keep the little plague demons away from her own body and spirit, and could thus concentrate wholly on attacking the disease within the victim, she would have much better results.

  She held the serpentine and the soul stone. It didn’t seem like the answer to her, for she understood the nature of the fire shield and didn’t believe that it would stop anything other than fire, just as sunstone could block magic but nothing else. Still, she looked at Colleen, at the shine of sweat on her forehead, the redness in her half-open eyes, her swollen tongue, and knew she had to try.

  In she went, serpentine first and then hematite. And then out of her—hopefully—protected body, her spirit went into the green muck of the plague within poor Colleen.

  Five minutes later, Pony was on the floor, exhausted and frantically slapping her arms, hoping that none of the plague demons had managed to get into her.

  The serpentine shield had done nothing at all.

  Pony prayed for guidance. She used the hematite, not to go back to Colleen, but to find a deeper level of concentration, to find the spirit of Avelyn, seeking near-divine guidance.

  An image flashed in her mind of that upraised hand at Mount Aida, and for a moment she thought the spirit of Avelyn had come to her and would guide her, would show her the gemstone combination to defeat the rosy plague.

  Her spirits sagged a moment later, though, for there was nothing—no answers, no hope.

  She fiddled with the stones again, arranging them in various groups and trying to figure out a combination of magical properties that would defeat the plague. She tried serpentine again wi
th hematite and ruby, the stone of fire, wondering if there was some way she could bring up some type of spiritual fire that would burn at the green morass.

  Again, she wound up on the floor, desperate and even more exhausted.

  And on the bed, Colleen continued to deteriorate.

  She went at Colleen a third time an hour later, this time using hematite and a warm and bright diamond.

  Nothing.

  Colleen Kilronney died later that night, in Pony’s arms, though she didn’t know that Pony was holding her. Watching that final agony, followed at last by peace, Pony knew in her heart that there was no magical combination of gemstones.

  She knew, too, however, that she would not allow herself to run behind tussie-mussie beds and locked gates, as had Braumin Herde and all the Abellican Church.

  She stayed with Colleen all through the morning, until the cart man passed by the house, ringing his bell and calling for the dead.

  She found that the doors at St. Precious would not open for her. Abbot Braumin came down to the gates, and in truth, he could not bear to keep her out and offered to let her enter.

  But Pony refused, understanding the complications for her friend, not wanting to trade on her friendship with the man to force him against Church edict, no matter how mistaken she believed that edict to be.

  “Fare you well, my friend,” she said sincerely to Braumin. “Perhaps we will meet again in this life, in happier times, that I might argue your present course.”

  Braumin managed a smile at her generous words, for her disappointment was not hard to see on her fair face. “We will meet again, if not here, then in heaven, with Avelyn and Jojonah and Elbryan. Go with my blessings and my love, Jilseponie.”

  Pony nodded and walked away, having no idea where she might next turn. She wanted to go back to Dundalis, but worried that such a journey might prove too difficult at that time even for mighty Symphony.

  She found herself wandering near familiar places, avenues she had known through her teenage years, and then again after her return to Palmaris. It all seemed strangely quiet to her, as if the people were hiding in their homes, afraid of the rosy plague. One place in particular caught her attention: the Giant’s Bones, a tavern built on the location of her longtime home. Fearing her own emotions but unable to resist, she entered the place, to find it, like the streets, nearly empty, with the notable exceptions of two very familiar and very welcome faces.

  Roger and Dainsey nearly knocked her over in their joy at seeing her, Dainsey crying out her name repeatedly and hugging her so tightly that she could hardly draw breath.

  “You decided to follow me here,” Roger remarked, a smug smile on his face. “And now, with winter settling in, you’re stuck here for months!”

  That made Dainsey grin excitedly, as well, but Pony’s reply erased their smiles.

  “I brought Colleen into the city because I could not help her,” Pony explained. “She died this morning.”

  “The rosy plague,” Dainsey reasoned.

  “The city has the smell of death,” Roger added, shaking his head. He moved over to Pony then, offering her another hug, but she held him back and took a deep and steadying breath.

  “Come with me to the north,” she bade Roger, “back home, where we belong. Both Symphony and Greystone came south with me.” She paused as she noted Roger’s look over at Dainsey, and then it hit her. It became quite clear to Pony that these two—Roger and Dainsey!—were more than just friends.

  “How long?” she started to ask. “How …” But she stopped and moved closer to Roger, granting him that hug then, truly glad to find that her friend had found such a worthwhile companion as wonderful Dainsey Aucomb.

  But her happiness for Roger lasted only the few seconds it took for her to remember the circumstances that had left her walking the empty streets of Palmaris.

  Chapter 28

  What Miserable Wretches We Mortals Be

  IT WAS SPRING IN HONCE-THE-BEAR, BUT HARDLY DID IT SEEM LIKE A TIME OF life renewing.

  Francis leaned heavily on the stone wall of St.-Mere-Abelle, needing the support. Beyond his shadow, beyond the window—which was no more than a rectangular opening in the stone—he saw them.

  Dozens of them, scores of them, hundreds of them. Ghostly figures walking slowly through the morning mist that blanketed the field west of the abbey, huddled under blankets and rags against the chill that still bit hard in the springtime night. So beaten and battered were they, so emaciated, that they seemed like skeletons, this collection of pitiful souls outside the abbey seemed like a gathering of the walking dead.

  And the brothers of St.-Mere-Abelle could do nothing for them. Oh, the monks threw some coins, clothing, blankets, and food, mostly as payment for work performed by the plague-ridden sufferers. On Master Bou-raiy’s suggestion, Master Machuso had hired the gathered plague victims to plant this year’s huge tussie-mussie, a massive flower bed that would continue on and on as far as the victims could plant, that might span the mile of ground fronting St.-Mere-Abelle’s western wall.

  Francis watched some of them, those with the strength remaining, laboring along the base of the wall, digging in the ground with rotting fingers. The monk bumped his head against the unyielding stone, not hard, but repeatedly, as if trying to thump the frustrations out of his skull.

  “What miserable wretches we mortals be,” he recited gravely, the opening line to an old verse written by a poet deemed a heretic in the fifth century.

  “Calvin of Bri’Onnaire,” came the voice of Fio Bou-raiy behind him, and Francis turned, startled. “Strong words, brother.”

  Francis noted the one-armed master, flanked by Father Abbot Agronguerre. “Fitting words,” he replied to Bou-raiy, “for who in this time is not considering his own mortality?”

  “Calm, brother,” Father Abbot Agronguerre bade Francis.

  “He who believes in God does not fear death,” Bou-raiy promptly and sternly replied. “Calvin of Bri’Onnaire’s words were wrought of fear, not contemplation. He knew that he was a sinner, who faced excommunication by the Church for the lies he spread, and thus grew his fear of death and his bitterness toward all things Abellican. It is well documented.”

  Master Francis chuckled and shook his head, then closed his eyes and in a voice thick with gravity and sincere emotion recited Calvin’s “Mortalis,” the verse that had sealed the poet’s fate at the stake.

  What miserable wretches we mortals be

  To build our homes in sheltered lea,

  To build our hopes in sheltered womb

  Weaving fancies of the tomb.

  What wretched souls we mortals be

  To bask in false epiphany,

  To see a light so clear, so true,

  To save us from the fate we rue.

  Deny the truth before our sight

  That worms invade eternal night,

  That maggots feed within the skin

  Of faithful pure, devoid of sin.

  Oh what hopeful children mortals be!

  Castles in air, grand barges at sea,

  Bed of clouds and angels’ song,

  Heavenly feasting eternity long.

  What mockery made of endless night!

  That prayer transcends truth and hope denies sight!

  That all that we know and all that we see

  Is washed away by what we pray must be.

  So tell me not of eternal soul

  That flees my coil through worm-bit hole.

  For when I die what is left of me?

  A whisper lost to eternity.

  “I know the tale, brother,” Francis finished, opening his eyes to stare solemnly at Bou-raiy, “and I know, too, that ‘Mortalis’ was considered a work of great introspection when Calvin presented it to the brothers of St. Honce in the time of plague.”

  “The time of contemplation,” Master Bou-raiy corrected.

  “It was only when Calvin went out among the people, reciting his dark works, that the Church took e
xception,” Francis remarked.

  “Because some things should not be spoken openly,” said Bou-raiy.

  Francis gave another helpless chuckle.

  “Brother, you must admit that we are the caretakers of the souls of Corona,” Father Abbot Agronguerre put in.

  “While the bodies rot,” Francis said sarcastically.

  Master Bou-raiy started to jump in, but the Father Abbot held him back with an upraised hand. “We do what we can,” Agronguerre admitted. It was obvious to Francis that the man was agonizing over the dark happenings in the world about him. “Calvin of Bri’Onnaire was condemned not for his words but for rousing the common folk against the Church, for preying upon their fears of mortality. That is the challenge before us: to hold the faith of the populace.”

  A smile grew upon Master Francis’ face as he considered those words—and the irony behind them. “There is a woman out there among them,” he said, “one-eyed and horribly scarred on her face and neck, with the rings of plague scars all over her arms. They say she tends the sick tirelessly; I have heard that many of the victims have called out for her beatification on their deathbeds.”

  “I have heard of the woman, and expect that she will be investigated when the time for such tasks arrives,” Father Abbot Agronguerre replied.

  “Even your canonization of Brother Avelyn has been put off.” Bou-raiy had to add.

  Francis didn’t even bother to spout the retort that came immediately to his lips: that he would hardly consider himself a supporter of Avelyn Desbris, let alone a sponsor for the wayward brother’s canonization!

  “It is also whispered that this peasant woman is no friend of the Abellican Church,” Francis went on. “According to her, we have deserted her and all the other victims of the rosy plague. And there is the other rumor that says it was an Abellican brother who wounded her face outside St. Gwendolyn, a brother with a hand that resembled a cat’s paw. Would you wager a guess about his identity?”

  He ended with heavy sarcasm, but it was lost on the other two, neither of whom were overfond of Marcalo De’Unnero. De’Unnero and his Brothers Repentant, by all reports, were laying waste to southern Honce-the-Bear, inciting riots, even murdering some unfortunates who did not fit their particular description of a proper Abellican. Even more disconcerting to all the leaders at St.-Mere-Abelle was that when Father Abbot Agronguerre had sent a messenger by ship to Entel to warn Abbot Olin about the Brothers Repentant and to offer Olin the full backing of the Church if he chose to confront them openly, Agronguerre had received a reply that seemed to condone Brother Truth more than condemn him. The other abbey in Entel, the much smaller St. Rontlemore, had been faithful to the spirit of Agronguerre’s warning, but Olin of Bondabruce had seemed ambivalent at best.