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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Can we not just reveal him?” Brother Viscenti asked nervously. “De’Unnero, I mean. They hate him. Surely they’ll not follow him if they know …”

  “They fear the plague more than they hate De’Unnero,” Abbot Braumin reasoned, shaking his head. “We can reveal him, and likely that will weaken his hold over some. But it will do little to help us in the end, for this riot was incited not by the Brothers Repentant but by Duke Tetrafel.”

  The blunt inference, though it made perfect sense, unnerved them all.

  “I told you before that we had lost the city,” Braumin went on. “Now, before us, we have the proof.”

  “They’ll not get through our walls,” Brother Castinagis said determinedly. “Not if all the Duke’s soldiers charge our gates.”

  “We will beat them back,” Viscenti started to agree.

  “No,” said Braumin Herde. “No, I will not have the walls of St. Precious stained with the blood of terrified peasants.”

  “Then how?” Brother Castinagis asked above the tumult that ensued from the abbot’s surprising statement. Had not Braumin, after all, already determined that St. Precious would defend itself against all attacks?

  Abbot Braumin nodded, his expression showing the other monks that he knew something they did not—that he, perhaps, had found an answer. “Restraint, brothers,” he finished and he left them, walking briskly down the corridor leading toward his private chambers. After a confused look at the others, Marlboro Viscenti quickly followed his old friend.

  He caught up to the abbot inside the private antechamber, finding Braumin fumbling with the keys to his desk drawer—the one containing most of St. Precious’ gemstone stash.

  “So you will arm the brothers,” Viscenti reasoned as his abbot slid open the all-important drawer. “But you just said—”

  “No,” Braumin corrected. “I will not have the blood of innocents staining our walls.”

  “But then …” Viscenti started to ask, but he stopped short as he saw the abbot take only a single stone from the desk, a gray stone.

  “I will go out to them,” Abbot Braumin explained, “to Duke Tetrafel, bearing the stone of healing.”

  “To what end?” a horrified Viscenti asked.

  “To try,” Braumin replied. “If I go to him and try to help, perhaps they will relent their attacks upon our walls.”

  He started to leave, but Viscenti jumped in front of him.

  “They will not!” the nervous little man insisted. “And when you go out and try to heal Tetrafel—only to fail, likely—you will be adding more fire to De’Unnero’s dragon breath. He will claim that if God were really on your side, your attempt to heal the Duke would have been successful.”

  “But he claims the wisdom of the true God, yet does not heal,” Braumin reasoned.

  “But he does not claim that he can heal,” Viscenti replied without hesitation. “He says only that the plague will continue as long as the Church remains astray.”

  Abbot Braumin shook his head. “I will go to Tetrafel,” he announced to Viscenti, and to Talumus and Castinagis, who had just arrived outside of his open door. “Perhaps I will fail, but I will try, at least.”

  “Because you are a coward,” Viscenti said forcefully behind him. Braumin stopped short, stunned by the uncharacteristic outburst from the normally timid man. The abbot slowly and deliberately turned, but the expression he found staring at him was unyielding.

  “You are,” Viscenti growled.

  Braumin shook his head, his expression incredulous. He was about to go out of the abbey, after all, and confront the rosy plague. How could this man construe that to be an act of cowardice?

  “You go to Duke Tetrafel, though you know it to be wrong, because you are afraid that he will send his soldiers against us, or at least that he will not stop the peasants from a full riot against us.”

  “They will not get through!” Brother Castinagis declared. “Not if all the city converges at our front gates!”

  “But that is the fear, do you not see?” Viscenti went on, hopping excitedly right up to Braumin. “You are afraid of the very measures you determined that we must take to defend the abbey. You would not preside over such a slaughter! No, not that!”

  His sarcastic tone set Braumin even farther back on his heels.

  “But when you go out and fail, they will come anyway,” Viscenti went on, “led by De’Unnero, if not the dying Tetrafel, and then we will have to fight on without your leadership. You are a coward,” Viscenti repeated, and he was trembling with every word. “You know what we must do, but you’ll not have the blood on your hands.”

  Braumin glanced back curiously at Castinagis and Talumus, to find them staring at him coldly.

  “And it will only be worse for us, then,” reasoned Viscenti. “For how shall we justify our refusal to come out and help them, all of them, if you have broken ranks to go to the Duke? What words shall we use against the peasant curses when you have, by your actions, told them that we who remained within the abbey are merely cowards?”

  That struck Braumin to his very core, as poignant a reminder of the reasons behind Church doctrine as he had ever heard. He surprised the three onlookers then, because he started to chuckle—not a mocking laugh, but one of the purest helplessness.

  “So you have shown me the error of my ways, my friend Viscenti,” Braumin remarked. “I cannot go out to them, to him.” He shook his head helplessly as Viscenti sprang forward, wrapping him in a great hug.

  “But we’ll not aggressively deter our attackers,” Braumin instructed. “We shall hold them back as we must, but with limited magic only. A stunning stroke, perhaps, but not a killing one, if that can be avoided.”

  Castinagis didn’t seem pleased with that, but he nodded his agreement.

  Shamus Kilronney came into Caer Tinella to find the place infested with plague, but also to find, to his surprise, an aura of hope and determination about the common folk. These were not people preparing to die, Shamus Kilronney realized, but ones preparing to fight. To his continued surprise, Shamus saw that those afflicted with the plague were not being ostracized and told to leave but rather were being embraced by those seemingly unafflicted. While this generous compassion touched him, he honestly wondered if the folk of Caer Tinella had all gone crazy.

  He met with Janine of the Lake, the appointed mayor of the town, soon after.

  “Got it meself,” Janine explained, and she rolled up her blouse sleeve to show the telltale rosy spots, all over her arm. “Thought me time o’ living was growing short.”

  “Thought?” Shamus echoed skeptically, and he instinctively recoiled from the diseased woman.

  “Thought,” Janine said firmly, fixing the man with as determined a stare as he had ever seen. “Now I’m knowing better, knowing a way to fight back and to live.”

  Shamus continued to match her stare, his skeptical expression hardly relenting.

  Janine gave a great belly laugh. “Thought!” she said again. “But then Pony—no, she’s wanting to be called Jilseponie now—came to us and showed us the truth.”

  Shamus winced, thinking, perhaps, that his old friend Jilseponie might have seen too much of the dying and the suffering, that she, like the Brothers Repentant, might have discovered some false insight into the causes of the rosy plague.

  “She cured Dainsey Aucomb, she did,” Janine insisted against his unrelenting stare. “Took the plague right out o’ her.”

  Shamus didn’t blink. He knew that a person could be cured of the plague with the gemstones, but he knew, too, that such cures were rare indeed. While he was glad to hear that his friend Jilseponie was still alive, he did not dare to believe that she had become all-powerful with those gemstones. No, Shamus knew of the fate of his cousin Colleen, who had died in Jilseponie’s arms.

  He knew better.

  “And she has cured you, as well?” he asked.

  Janine gave another laugh. “She chased the plague back a bit,” she explained, “
but not cured, no.”

  “Then you are still sick.”

  Janine nodded.

  “But you just spoke of a cure,” the increasingly frustrated man blurted.

  “So I did, and so Jilseponie found one,” Janine quietly and calmly explained, “but not here. No, here she can give ye a bit o’ rest from the fighting, but to get yerself truly cured ye must be walking, me friend, all the way to the Barbacan and Mount Aida, to the hand o’ the angel and the healing blood. We’re readying for just such a journey—the whole town’s going north—and the three Timberland towns’re already on the road to Aida.”

  “What?” Shamus asked helplessly, shaking his head and screwing his expression up into one of pure incredulity, as if the whole thing sounded perfectly preposterous. “Where is Jilseponie?”

  “Went to Landsdown to help ’em out over there and to get them ready for the road,” Janine replied.

  Shamus was on the road in a few minutes, riding hard for Landsdown, the sister village of Caer Tinella, a cluster of houses but an hour away.

  When he entered the town, he saw a great gathering in the central square, where a tent had been hastily erected. A line of plague victims had formed in front of it, while other people, apparently healthy, rushed about, loading wagons with supplies.

  Though he certainly had no desire to go anywhere near the plague-ridden victims, Shamus suppressed his revulsion and his fear and walked along the line until he could see the front of it, where a woman, a familiar face indeed, worked on them, one by one, with a magical gemstone.

  Shamus moved up beside Jilseponie, who was deep into the magic, working on a young boy, and patiently waited. A few minutes later, Jilseponie opened her eyes, and the boy smiled widely and ran off. The next sickly plague victim shuffled forward.

  Jilseponie glanced to the side, and her expression brightened considerably when she saw her old friend. She held up her hand to motion the next victim to wait a moment, then stood up—with great effort, Shamus noted—and came forward to offer a friend a hug.

  Shamus stiffened at the touch, and Jilseponie pulled him back to arm’s length, laughing knowingly. “You have nothing to fear from me,” she explained. “The rosy plague cannot touch me now.”

  “You have become the great healer of the world?” Shamus asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  Jilseponie shook her head. “Not I,” she explained.

  Shamus looked to the line of the sick, to the boy Jilseponie had just apparently helped, who was working hard with some others loading a wagon.

  “I do nothing that any brother trained with the gemstones could not do,” Jilseponie said.

  “I have seen their work against the rosy plague,” Shamus corrected. “They can do little or nothing, and are so terrified that they hide themselves behind their abbey walls.”

  “They have not kissed the hand,” she answered, and she took her seat, motioning for the next sufferer to come forward. She glanced up at Shamus once more, to find him wearing a perfectly incredulous expression.

  “Why do you doubt?” she asked him. “Did not you yourself witness a miracle at the arm of Avelyn?”

  “But not against the plague.”

  “Well, I have so witnessed such a miracle against the plague,” Jilseponie answered firmly. “I brought Dainsey to Avelyn, and she was as near to death as anyone I have ever seen. There is blood on his hand—perpetually, I believe—and the taste of that blood brought life back into her body. I saw it myself, and knew that when I, too, kissed the hand, I needed no longer fear the rosy plague.”

  “And so they are going, all of them?” Shamus asked.

  “All of them and all the world,” Jilseponie answered.

  “But how do you know?” the man pressed. “The blood? Will it continue? Will it truly heal?”

  Jilseponie fixed him with a perfectly contented and confident smile. “I know,” was all that she answered, and she went back to her work, brushing her hand over the feverish forehead of the woman patiently waiting, then lifting the soul stone to her lips.

  “We must talk later,” Shamus said. Jilseponie gave a slight nod, then fell into the magic of the stone.

  A very shaken Shamus Kilronney walked out of the tent, straight to the tavern across the way. The place was empty, but Shamus went to the bar and poured himself a very potent drink.

  Jilseponie joined him there later, looking quite exhausted but quite relaxed.

  “They should all survive the journey,” she explained, “or at least, the plague will not take any of them on the road to Aida.” She turned down her eyes. “Except for one,” she admitted. “He is too thick with the plague, and even if I were to work with him all the way to Aida, which I cannot do, he could not possibly survive.”

  Shamus stared at her, shaking his head. “You seem to have figured it all out,” he remarked.

  “I was told,” Jilseponie corrected. “The spirit of Avelyn, through the ghost of Romeo Mullahy, showed me the truth.”

  Shamus hardly seemed convinced, but Jilseponie only shrugged, too tired to argue.

  “So, you can now help to heal the people?” Shamus asked. “Because you tasted the blood and are now impervious to the plague?”

  Jilseponie nodded. “I can help them,” she said, accepting the glass Shamus handed her. “Some of them, at least. But so could any other brother who has kissed Avelyn’s hand. I need not fear the plague anymore, and that freedom allows me to fight it back in most people.”

  “But not in those terribly afflicted,” Shamus reasoned.

  Jilseponie shook her head and swallowed the drink. “For many it is too late, I fear,” she explained, “and every day I tarry, more will die.”

  Shamus’ expression turned to one of horror. “You accept that responsibility?” he asked.

  “If not me, then who?”

  He still just stared at her.

  “I will not go north with them—they leave in the morning,” she went on. “But you should go. Indeed, you must—both to help protect them and to kiss the hand yourself.” She looked deeply into Shamus’ eyes, her pleading expression reminding him of who she was and of all that they had gone through together. “Bradwarden leads the Timberland folk. Shamus should help lead the folk of these two towns.

  “And Shamus should remain in the northland,” Jilseponie continued. It was clear to him that she was making up plans as she went. “To stand guard with whatever force he can muster. To keep the road to the Barbacan clear for those who must make the pilgrimage.”

  Shamus Kilronney, who had traveled the long, long road to the Barbacan, scoffed at the notion. “You will need the King’s army for that!” he insisted.

  “I intend to enlist the King’s army,” Jilseponie answered, her tone so strong and grim that Shamus rocked back in his chair and found, to his absolute surprise, that he did not doubt her for a second. But that only reminded him of another pressing problem.

  “Palmaris,” he said gravely. “The people are rioting, and Duke Tetrafel encourages it. For he, too, has contracted the plague, and Abbot Braumin can do nothing to help him.”

  Jilseponie nodded, seeming hardly surprised, and not overconcerned.

  “The folk are being prodded, too, by the Brothers Repentant,” Shamus explained, “a group of wayward monks claiming that the plague is a result of the Church going astray, away from Markwart and toward Avelyn.”

  Jilseponie did wince a bit at that information.

  “They are led by Marcalo De’Unnero, so I have been told,” Shamus went on. He poured another strong drink, for he could see, without doubt, from her stunned expression and from the way the blood drained from her face, that she surely needed one.

  Stone after stone slammed against the wall or soared over it, making those few monks on the outside parapet duck for cover.

  Down in the square below, De’Unnero and his black-and-red-robed brethren ran all about, urging the rabble on.

  And on they came, shouting curses, throwing stones, a
nd hoisting makeshift ladders up against the abbey walls. Another group charged the front gates, a huge battering ram rolling along between their two lines.

  “Abbot Braumin!” Castinagis cried from up front, for the abbot had bidden the monks to use all restraint. With that battering ram rolling at them, though, they had to act fast.

  “Defend the abbey,” Braumin agreed, his voice a harsh whisper, and he turned and walked away.

  He heard the sharp retort of a lightning stroke behind him, heard the cries of pain and of outrage, heard the continuing rain of stones, and heard, above all else, the voice of Marcalo De’Unnero, rousing the crowd to new heights of frenzy.

  For hours they assaulted the abbey; for hours, the monks drove them away. Wherever a ladder went up, a brother was on the spot, pushing it away; while others launched magic crossbow bolts, even hot oil, at the would-be invaders. Dozens died at the base of St. Precious’ ancient stone wall, while scores more were wounded.

  The next day, they were back again, even more of them, it seemed; and this time another force accompanied the Brothers Repentant and the angry peasants. The sound of great horns heralded the arrival of Duke Tetrafel and his soldiers, all of them outfitted for battle.

  Abbot Braumin was on his way to the front wall even before the messenger came running for him. “It is the Duke,” the younger brother tried to explain as they hurried along. “He has brought an army and claims that we must surrender our abbey!”

  Braumin didn’t answer, just hurried on his way, arriving at the parapet above the front gate tower beside his three closest advisers.

  “Abbot Braumin!” came the cry from the herald standing at Tetrafel’s side.

  “I am here,” Braumin replied, stepping forward into plain view—and well aware that many of Tetrafel’s archers had likely just trained their arrows on him.

  The herald cleared his throat and unrolled a parchment. “By order of Duke Timian Tetrafel, Baron of Palmaris, you and your brethren now secluded within the abbey are declared outlaws in the city of Palmaris and are ordered to vacate St. Precious posthaste. Because Duke Tetrafel is a generous and noble man, you will not be prosecuted, as long as you depart the city this very day and promise not to return!”