And Jilseponie was backing, backing, trying to sort out the blur, trying to find some opening. She called to Elbryan then, to guide her.
But he was not there or could not answer. It was only herself against this man, this monster, and she understood clearly at that moment that she was badly overmatched. How she wished she hadn’t so depleted her magical energies! How she wished she could activate serpentine and ruby and burn the skin from De’Unnero’s bones!
Out came a jab, and she had to slash Defender to turn the punch away, and only then did Jilseponie realize that she had been duped.
Down went De’Unnero, throwing his leg out wide, sweeping it forward, catching the retreating woman on the ankle and tripping her.
She fell with enough balance to prevent any real injury, but again, the monk leaped ahead too quickly and stood towering over her.
She couldn’t get Defender in line this time. She noted then that the man’s arm had become that of a great tiger.
For Marcalo De’Unnero, this was the moment of complete triumph, of full circle. Jilseponie would die, there and then, and all threat that the followers of Avelyn would somehow push back his brethren would die with her.
For he was the victor, he was the one who would stand among the masses, sending them with renewed fury against the diminishing defenses of St. Precious Abbey.
He had sensed that, had sensed the kill, even as his foot connected with her ankle, sending her tumbling to the cobblestones. He had smelled her blood, had felt the tiger awakening within him. The woman was good—very good—and he knew that he would get only one strike in before she managed to come back on the defensive. But he had the great beast within him; his paw carried lethal claws.
He would need only one strike.
He started his swipe, her neck open to him. She could not possibly bring her sword in line, could not begin to roll out of death’s way.
But she opened her other hand and a missile fired out, a small gemstone homing in on the metal in the one piece of jewelry Brother Truth wore: an earring dangling the evergreen symbol of the Abellican Church.
The magic stone drove up against the side of De’Unnero’s head, tearing away his ear. His attack became a shriek as he brought his arm in reflexively to grab at the wound.
Jilseponie rolled back, setting her feet under her and coming up; and De’Unnero, too, retreated, howling with pain and outrage.
“Deceiver!” he cried.
“Tell me when I claimed to fight you fairly,” she spat back.
“Deceiver!” he cried again.
“I did not use magic until you did!” Jilseponie yelled back. She came forward with a thrust, and De’Unnero leaped aside.
It churned in him, boiling, boiling, the primal rage, the primal beast. His head burned with pain; his brain swirled with red rage. He had won! He had victory right in his grasp, his clawed, tiger’s grasp!
He hardly felt the transformation, the crackling and reshaping of bone, the beast overwhelming his control. He knew that he should not, must not, allow this! Not out here, in front of all the folk, not so soon after Jilseponie had just declared him the murderer of Baron Bildeborough!
But he couldn’t stop it, not with the blur of pain, the red wall of outrage.
His senses heightened; he saw Jilseponie, her horse behind her, rearing and neighing.
He heard them, all of them, gasping, and then crying out against him.
Desperation had given her the strength to launch the lodestone, but only luck had brought it into such a sensitive area as his ear. She produced another stone now, a graphite, but Jilseponie knew that the thunderbolt she brought forth from it would be of little real effect. Her magical energies were now depleted to the point where she doubted that her bolt would even slow the charge of this terrifying, tremendous cat.
She would have to use Defender alone to stop him; and when she considered the sword, magnificent as it was, Jilseponie realized that she was in dire trouble.
But De’Unnero didn’t charge; and suddenly, she realized that their personal battle had come to an abrupt end. Tetrafel’s archers had their bows low and level but not aiming at her; the cries from the peasants all about her did not call for her death.
No, De’Unnero had revealed the truth of himself to the folk of Palmaris, had shown them that he had been the murderer of their beloved Baron Bildeborough.
They knew now the truth of Brother Truth.
The great cat sprang—not at Jilseponie, but by her, breaking into a sprint. A volley of arrows followed, some hitting the mark; but on De’Unnero ran, away he leaped, clearing the dodging and ducking peasants, breaking for the city’s outer wall with a host of arrows, of crossbow bolts from St. Precious, of charging horsemen, right behind.
Jilseponie stood calm through the storm, held her ground, and turned her attention away from the fleeing tiger toward the more important adversary.
Duke Tetrafel was there, staring back at her from the window of his decorated coach.
Pain and rage, primal hunger and blind hatred all swirled in his mind, along with abject despair at the deep-buried but deep-seated realization that he had failed. He had gone from victory to complete defeat in the blink of an eye, and now he was revealed and banished forevermore.
He charged for the wall, hearing the pursuit, feeling the pain of a dozen stinging arrows that had burrowed under his black-striped orange coat. Fear and rage alone kept him moving, running, running, for the northern gate.
He saw a woman on a familiar horse, but he couldn’t stop to tear out her throat, to feast upon her warm blood. He had to get to the gate—and through the gate.
No, the great cat realized, and he quickly turned down a side alley. Not to the gate. The horsemen could follow him through the gate, and he was fast tiring. He was a predator, built for short bursts of speed, and he was sorely wounded, but those horses could run and run.
He headed for the wall again, but not near any gate. The pursuit closed, closed, but De’Unnero used his last remaining strength to get to the base of the wall and to leap high and far.
Another arrow caught him in midflight.
He landed heavily on the field outside, slumping to the ground, but then pulling himself back up and dragging his punctured body away into hiding.
He felt the darkness closing all about him, could hear the rasp of death and feel the cold and merciless hand closing in.
Chapter 40
Cynicism Laid Bare
THEY STOOD IN THE SQUARE, WATCHING THE SOLDIERS GALLOPING IN PURSUIT OF the fleeing monster.
Jilseponie didn’t follow. She just stood there, beside Symphony, open and exposed and vulnerable, out of magic and exhausted. She looked across the way to the remaining Brothers Repentant and the hordes they held back, to the line of soldiers still sitting ominously on their chargers, to Duke Tetrafel, staring at her from the window of his coach, his expression indecipherable.
Slowly, she dared to glance back at St. Precious, to see the monks holding stoic vigil, some with gemstones, some with crossbows, some flanking a great black kettle steaming with hot oil. There stood her friend Braumin Herde staring back at her with a mixture of respect and love, gratitude and fear.
For she was out there, in the calm valley between two great waves; and those waves, despite what she had just done, despite that she had shown the folk of Palmaris the truth of Marcalo De’Unnero, seemed destined to crash together one more time.
By the time Jilseponie looked back across the way, Duke Tetrafel had stepped out of his carriage. She could see the slump of his shoulders, the dark blue under his eyes. Yes, he had the plague; she could smell it thick about him even this far away.
“The brothers of St. Precious did not cause this,” Jilseponie said loudly, sweeping her gaze quickly about all the crowd, but then quickly refocusing it on Tetrafel. “The plague is not the work of men, nor is it the scourge of an angry God.”
“So you claim!” shouted one of the Brothers Repentant from the sid
e. “So you must, for you have led the way against God!” He came forward as he spoke, prodding his finger at Jilseponie. Her responding look was one of perfect calm and confidence, and perfectly cold; and the man, who had just seen his adored leader beaten away by this dangerous woman, gradually calmed and slowed.
“They are innocent,” Jilseponie said to Tetrafel when the threat of the irate brother had passed.
“They hide while the people suffer and die!” the Duke came back.
“As did you, until you learned that the plague was within your own body,” she replied. “I do not judge you, Duke,” she quickly added, seeing the soldiers all about him bristle at the accusation. “Nor can I, can any of us, judge all the folk who so hide from the plague—monk or soldier, brother or even father—who out of fear for the rest of his family must put a victim out of his house.”
“But you never hid from it!” came one cry from the crowd; and Jilseponie recognized the speaker as one of the attendants at the house where Colleen had died.
“But that was my choice to make,” Jilseponie quickly answered, before any negative comparisons could be drawn concerning the brothers of St. Precious. “As it was yours, Duke Tetrafel.”
The clump of hooves to the side alerted Pony that Dainsey Aucomb and Greystone had at last arrived at the square.
“But take heart!” Jilseponie cried. “For our salvation is upon us, and there is the proof!” She pointed at Dainsey as she finished, then looked back to the crowd to see a great mixture of expressions, and many of them verging on uncontrollable excitement.
“Duke Tetrafel, will you come with me inside the abbey, to meet with Abbot Braumin, that I might explain my revelations to you?”
The sick man stared at her hard.
“A trick!” cried another of the troublesome Brothers Repentant. “A deception to take the heart from our fight!”
Jilseponie didn’t even glance the man’s way. “You have the plague and will die,” she said bluntly to the Duke. “I cannot help you, nor can the brothers within the abbey. But there is an answer, a cure for your sickness, and I know how to reach it.”
“Then tell us!” came a cry from the crowd, a plea echoed many times over.
Jilseponie held up her hand. “It will take all of us to do this thing,” she shouted back. “It will only work if Duke Tetrafel agrees.” And she settled her gaze upon him again as she finished, putting the weight of a thousand desperate prayers squarely on his sickly shoulders. “Will you come in with me?” she asked again. “On my word, you’ll not be harmed nor detained.”
“Your word?” Duke Tetrafel echoed skeptically, glancing past her to the brothers of the abbey.
“Mine as well,” said Abbot Braumin.
The monks about him shifted nervously, staring at him with disbelief. Jilseponie could not enter the abbey, by his own words, unless she submitted to thorough inspection to ensure that she was not afflicted, and Duke Tetrafel, of course, could not be admitted at all, for he was obviously ill with plague.
“We will meet at the gate,” the abbot clarified, “on opposite sides of a tussie-mussie bed we will lay out within the tower antechamber.”
“A hero to the end,” Duke Tetrafel muttered, loudly enough for Jilseponie to hear, but in truth, that arrangement seemed perfectly suited to her needs.
“All of you stay back,” Tetrafel said to his soldiers and to the common people. He sucked in his breath and strode forward, then walked with Jilseponie and Dainsey to St. Precious’ front gates. It was some time before the monks had the flowers in place within the gatehouse, but soon after, the doors swung open.
Abbot Braumin and his advisers, Viscenti, Talumus, and Castinagis, stood across the flower bed from the trio.
Now it was Jilseponie’s turn to take a deep breath. This was her moment, a critical one for the fate of all the world.
She told them the story, all of it, of Dainsey and Roger, of her trip to the Barbacan with Bradwarden and Dainsey, of the ghost of Romeo Mullahy—which made Master Viscenti gasp fearfully—and of the second miracle of Aida.
“I, too, have kissed the hand of Avelyn,” Jilseponie finished. “Thus, the rosy plague cannot touch me.”
The expressions coming back at her from across the tussie-mussie bed ranged from joyful Master Viscenti, hopeful Brother Talumus, skeptical Brother Castinagis, and, even worse than that, something beyond skeptical, sympathetic Abbot Braumin. Beside Jilseponie, Tetrafel was more animated, was grabbing at the hope she had just offered to him.
“Then you are my angel,” he said, taking Jilseponie’s hand in his own. “You will take this wretched disease from my body!”
Jilseponie turned to him, trying to find the words to explain to him that, while there was indeed an answer, a true hope, she was not the source of his, or anyone else’s, cure.
“The plague is not always fatal,” Abbot Braumin interrupted. Jilseponie and Tetrafel both turned to regard him, for the manner in which he had spoken those words showed that he believed Jilseponie’s “revelation” to be nothing so spectacular. “People have been cured, though it is rare,” the abbot went on.
“Then why do you hide behind your walls?” Duke Tetrafel demanded.
“One in twenty, so say the old songs,” the abbot calmly replied. “One in twenty might be helped, but one in seven will afflict the helping brother. We hide because those numbers, learned through bitter experience, demand that we hide.”
Tetrafel trembled and seemed on the verge of an explosion.
“This is different,” Jilseponie put in. “Dainsey was not helped by me—indeed, I tried and was repulsed, again and again.”
“Perhaps you had more success than you believed,” suggested Braumin.
Jilseponie was shaking her head before he ever finished the words. “I had no effect, and was, in fact, afflicted by my efforts. Yet the plague is not within me any longer and cannot enter this, my body purified by the blood of Avelyn. It is real, Ab—Braumin. It is real and it is up there, at the Barbacan, the cure for the plague for those who can make the journey, the armor that can turn it aside without fail.”
Now it was Braumin’s turn to shake his head, but that only made Jilseponie press on more forcefully.
“You doubt, as many doubted your own tale of a miracle at Mount Aida,” she reminded him. “I speak of ghosts and of blood on a hand long petrified. I speak of a miraculous recovery by a woman who had already begun her journey into Death’s dark realm. And so it is difficult for you to dare to hope.” She paused and stared at the abbot intently, even came forward onto the tussie-mussie bed. “You know me, Braumin Herde. You know who I am and what I have done. You know of my attributes and of my failings. False hope has never been among those failings.”
“The bell! The bell!” came a cry, echoing along the corridors and the ramparts. “The bell!” the excited young brother cried again, scrambling down beside the abbot and the other leaders of the abbey. “My abbot, the bell!” he stammered, pointing back toward the abbey’s central bell tower. The man hardly seemed able to stand, so overwhelmed was he.
“What is it, Brother Dissin?” Braumin demanded, putting his hands on the man’s shoulders, trying to hold him steady.
“The bell!” he cried again, tears flowing down his cheeks. “You must see it!”
Even as he finished, more cries came from the back of the abbey, shouts of “A sign!” and “A miracle!”
Castinagis, Talumus, and Viscenti started off that way. Braumin turned to regard Jilseponie and saw that she and her two companions were boldly crossing the flower bed. He started to motion for them to stop but found that he could not—found, to his surprise, that he had come to believe that something extraordinary was indeed happening here, something that he could not and should not deny.
Together they ran into the abbey, up the stone stairs, along a corridor, down another and up another set of stairs, and into the bell tower. They had to push past many brothers—monks who were so overwhelmed that they hard
ly seemed to notice that Duke Tetrafel, a man infected with the rosy plague, was crowding among them.
Up the winding stairs, they climbed and climbed, coming at last to the highest landing, in plain view of the great bell of St. Precious, the bell Jilseponie had struck with a lightning bolt to herald her arrival in Palmaris.
And there, scorched into the side of the old metal, was an unmistakable image: an upraised arm clenching a sword at midblade.
Braumin’s jaw fell open. He turned back to the woman. “How did you …” he started to ask, but the question fell away, for it was quite obvious that Jilseponie was every bit as stunned and confused as he.
He was tired and he was dirty, and he knew that if he wasn’t already afflicted with plague, then he soon would be. But Brother Holan Dellman would not surrender his work, not with so many people dying about the grounds of St. Belfour Abbey.
Nor would Abbot Haney, nor any of the other brothers who had chosen to remain within the structure after the decision had been made to open wide the gates. Three of those brothers had died, and horribly, of plague contracted through their futile healing efforts, and not a single person had been healed, though many lives had been extended somewhat by the heroic efforts.
Even that grim reality had not deterred Haney, Dellman, and the others from the course they knew they must pursue. Nor was Prince Midalis, ever a friend of the common folk, hiding away in his small palace in the complex at Pireth Vanguard. For he, like the monks, could not suffer the cries of the dying.
Midalis had not taken ill yet, but Liam was showing the beginnings of the plague.
Holan Dellman headed for his darkened room, wanting nothing more than to fall down into unconsciousness. He had heard the news of Liam’s illness that same morning, soon after he had begun his work with the sick at St. Belfour, and that news, more than his efforts with the sick, had taken the strength from him. How he wanted to go to the man and comfort him! How he wanted to focus all his healing energies on that one man, now, early on, before the plague had taken solid hold of him!
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 60
