The man was shaking his head before she even finished. “Abbot Je’howith was very old and very skilled with the gemstones,” he explained. For, indeed, Je’howith, who had been abbot of St. Honce for many, many years until his death at the beginning of the rosy plague, was considered by many in the Order at St. Honce to have been the greatest leader and user of the sacred stones ever to come out of that abbey.
“You fear her,” Constance accused.
Abbot Ohwan didn’t deny the truth of that. “Her powers with the gemstones are legendary, m’lady Pemblebury,” he said. “If I went to her in such an intrusive manner, then she would likely overwhelm me and chase my spirit back to my body. And what repercussions she might then exact—”
Constance’s snort stopped him short.
“Can you not go to her feigning friendship, then?” the woman asked. “Offer your help in examining her, that you two might learn if she can bear Danube’s children?”
“I could do nothing that Jilseponie could not do for herself,” Abbot Ohwan protested. “My offer, I fear, would beget little more than scorn.”
“But you do not know!” Constance yelled at him.
The man stood very quiet, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his voluminous brown robe and lowering his gaze.
“You said that she was barren,” Constance remarked, grasping at any hope.
“So the rumors say,” Ohwan responded.
Constance snorted again and waved the man away. He was more than happy to oblige, leaving her alone in her room with many dark and confusing thoughts. The rumors did say that Jilseponie had been gravely injured in her battle with Markwart on the field outside Palmaris, had lost her baby and her ability to conceive.
But was Constance to wager the future of her own children on a rumor?
She moved across the room to a small cabinet and pulled open the door. Dozens of jars lined the shelves, spices and perfumes. Constance fumbled among them, knocking many to the floor, finally finding the ones containing certain herbs she had used so many times in the distant past. She held the two jars up before her eyes, rubbing the dust from them. Parsentac and holer grubbs, the herbs courtesans took to prevent conception. Could she, perhaps, find some way to slip these into Queen Jilseponie’s food?
The woman frowned. Discerning the appropriate dosage of the herbs could be a trying and painful process, for too much could cause the most excruciating cramps, could even cause death.
That possibility did not seem so unpleasant to Constance Pemblebury at that moment, and her mind began to whirl, scheming and plotting, thinking of favors she could call in to get these herbs into the appropriate places. Yes, it would take some doing, but it could be done.
Strangely, though, Constance felt little relief as she came to believe that she could indeed help ensure Jilseponie’s barrenness.
Other more devastating emotions tugged at her mind and at her heart. She thought again of the wedding, of the look on Danube’s face at the moment he became joined with that woman. She thought again of the look on Danube’s face when he had retrieved Jilseponie from the garden celebration, taking her off to his—to their!—bedroom.
And even now, as she sat here miserably, he was with her, in her arms. Images of passion flashed through Constance’s mind, of Danube and Jilseponie entwined in lovemaking.
She tried futilely to focus on Merwick and Torrence, on the threat to their inheritance, but no matter how many times Constance tried to tell herself that their fate was the most important matter here, she could not dismiss her imagination, could not rid herself of those horrible scenes.
She heard the cracking of the glass jar before she felt the stinging, burning sensation in her right hand.
Constance looked down at that gash in her palm, all the more painful because some of the herbs were inside it. She hardly moved to grasp it, though, or to stop the bleeding, thinking the pain a very minor thing at that time compared to the deeper wound King Danube had given her this day.
Chapter 16
The Thrilling Shivers of Fear
MARCALO DE’UNNERO WENT THROUGH HIS TYPICAL DAILY DUTIES, CLEANING A deer he had killed as the weretiger the night before, with his usual boredom. He and Sadye had settled in well at Tuber’s Creek, had been welcomed by the community with open arms. And why not? De’Unnero realized, for he and Sadye had brought something with them—different stories of different places—that the folk of this isolated little town were sorely in need of.
Life here was pleasant enough and easy enough, with fertile fields and plentiful game, and no threat from goblins or other monsters.
Well, De’Unnero realized, almost no threat from monsters. For he had brought one with him, inside him; and the beast was there, every day, part of his waking and sleeping hours. He did not try to deny that part of him now, as he had in his days in Micklin’s Village. Rather, Sadye helped him channel the energy of the weretiger, keeping it at bay with soothing words and melodies during any times of tension in the town and luring it out into the forest when it came forth at night, sending the beast out in a productive manner, hunting deer. Because of that Callo Crump had the reputation as the finest huntsman in Tuber’s Creek, though none of the others understood his methods or even how a human might go out in the dark forest night and survive, let alone take down a wary deer.
Yes, Sadye was his savior now, his channel for energies that he could not suppress. The passion, the fire between them amazed De’Unnero, taking him to places that he never imagined even existed in the life he had previously carved out for himself as a member of the Abellican Church. It amused him to think that he had earned the reputation as the most fiery of brothers, the great warrior, the crusader. Next to Sadye, he thought himself boring indeed, for she was full of life and energy, boundless energy and the desire to live on the very edge of complete destruction. Marcalo De’Unnero had never been afraid to take a chance—had thrown himself willingly, eagerly, into battle against the greatest foes, the greatest challenges, that he could find. But Sadye, by comparison, lived with the most dangerous person in all the world. It wasn’t out of any desire to prove herself, as had motivated the younger De’Unnero. Rather, it was merely for the excitement of the situation.
Sadye had come to love him, he believed with confidence. She was, in every way, the wife of Marcalo De’Unnero. But she was more than that. By her own choice, Sadye was the willing and eager companion of the darker creature, of the weretiger. She not only accepted that part of De’Unnero, she found it perfectly thrilling.
De’Unnero paused in his work and glanced back across the yard, to see Sadye sitting quietly in the shade of an oak, plucking the strings of her lute, apparently composing some new song for the town’s weekly celebration, scheduled for that very evening. With her light brown eyes sparkling with innocent joy, she looked so delicate and so calm and so … pretty was the only word De’Unnero could think of to describe Sadye in that scene before him.
And yet, this pretty young woman scared him at least as much as the beast within him. For she was so much like him, a person wearing two faces. The folk of Tuber’s Creek thought her a pleasant and entertaining young lady, a person of respectability.
They had never seen her at lovemaking, had never seen the not-so-innocent fire that lay behind her brown eyes or that wicked little smile that crossed her face whenever she thought of something particularly delicious. They didn’t know how callously she had dismissed her former traveling companions, the men De’Unnero had ripped to shreds at Micklin’s Village. This innocent young lady hadn’t given those murdered men a second thought.
De’Unnero chuckled helplessly as he regarded her. How he loved her, and feared her! She was his warmest thoughts and his deepest fears all rolled together, and she kept him constantly on the very edge of disaster, the very edge of excitement.
He went back to skinning the dead deer, remembering the sweet, warm taste of its blood in his tiger mouth the previous night. Strangely, without even consciously notic
ing it, that sensation shifted to his memories of tasting Sadye’s delicious lips.
Sadye was in top form for that week’s celebration, bringing the gathering of fifty villagers and another score of folks from outlying reaches to a rousing mood with her songs of the Demon War. She sang of one warrior monk in particular, a master from St.-Mere-Abelle named Marcalo De’Unnero, and her escort scowled at her fiercely when he caught on to her little teasing game.
It was a scowl that De’Unnero could not hold, though. Sadye was playing her challenge with disaster and relishing every moment of it. De’Unnero could feel the heat rising within her as she hinted, ever more convincingly, that the warrior De’Unnero was still about, and might be close by.
“When the folks’ hearts turned to the softer side
And weary of battle, lust sated,
They wanted burned this warrior fine,
For they saw in him all that they hated.
So they tried with all their strength
And all their numbers to see him dead.
But quicker was the master, and to this day,
They’ve no body of De’Unnero to put abed.
So beware, little children, by the fire’s light,
And beware, brave huntsmen, for in the night,
And in the wilds and in your towns,
In fields afar and rolling downs,
There comes a growl, the marking that
Announces the master, the warrior, the lover, the cat.”
She sang it in a lively manner, sometimes with a voice strong and other times in a raspy, threatening whisper. Her eyes darted at every syllable, falling over men and women and the few children in attendance, particularly the children, for Sadye seemed to revel in their wide-eyed stares. Every once in a while she glanced back at her lover, who stood there, staring at her, dumbfounded.
The partying went on long into the night, and Sadye repeated her song several times at the requests of the villagers. She found little time alone with De’Unnero, mostly to whisper lewdly into his ear of plans she had for him for later. And then she’d quickly run away, giggling. Finally, as the last of the villagers filtered out of the common room, De’Unnero was able to confront her about her new song.
“Every day, you increase the danger,” he said, and he hooked his arm around Sadye’s waist and jerked her against him.
“The excitement, you mean,” she countered, her eyes sparkling. Indeed, De’Unnero could feel the heat emanating from her lithe body.
De’Unnero stared hard into those eyes, those intense, scary orbs.
“Take me out into the forest,” Sadye said to him, “now.”
It was an offer he could not refuse.
Much later he sat beside a fire in a small clearing some few hundred yards from the village. All was quiet down there, the people of Tuber’s Creek worn out from their revelry. Not Sadye, though. The partying only seemed to wind up the already intense woman even more. She sat across the way from her lover, unabashedly naked and plucking her lute absently.
And discordantly, De’Unnero realized, as one note twanged. And then another. He was about to ask Sadye what she was doing when she plucked a series of discordant notes in a row.
How they shivered his backbone! De’Unnero realized then that the grating sound was surely magically enhanced, that Sadye was using the gemstones set in her magnificent instrument in the opposite way from harmony.
“What are you doing?” he tried to ask, but a growl erupted from his throat in place of the words.
De’Unnero looked at her curiously. More twanging sounds came rolling out at him, and her smile was genuine, with a twinkle in her eye.
“The beast,” he managed to rasp, and he jerked spasmodically as one of his arm bones broke apart and reshaped. “What?”
Sadye played more insistently, sitting forward now and seeming to enjoy the spectacle. Perhaps she could not put the weretiger away, but, it seemed, she could bring it forth!
And she was enjoying this dark power!
She played more quickly, her hands banging against the strings, sending forth shocking, magically enhanced discord.
And De’Unnero could no longer even try to protest, for he found the tiger rising quickly within him, boiling up and over the rim of his control.
“Go hunt, my lover,” he heard Sadye say, her voice full of excitement.
The weretiger regarded the tender woman for just a moment, then bounded off into the forest, seeking the sweet scent of blood.
The effect on his day-to-day life proved immediate and irreversible. With the defeat and capture of the bandit band, Aydrian was viewed no longer as some wayward child. Now the folk of Festertool and Roadapple spoke of him in hushed tones whenever he ventured near, and called him Nighthawk instead of Aydrian.
He was quite amused.
And even more amused by the reaction of grumpy Rumpar, who walked around town with his thumbs hooked in his vest, telling everyone that it was his sword that had felled the giant. His sword, put to heroic use once again.
Aydrian allowed the man his fantasies, for Rumpar’s pride was serving his purposes. He had wanted to make a name for himself—Nighthawk, the ranger of Festertool—and, it seemed, he had gone a long way already toward making that happen.
Soon there came requests from other towns for the ranger to come and aid with a problem: a rabid wolf or bear, perhaps; or more fears of bandits. On one occasion late in the summer, Aydrian helped a more western community track down and kill a goblin, a pitiful, spindly-limbed thing that seemed afraid of them. That reality did little to diminish the growing legend of Nighthawk.
Aydrian soaked it all in, glad that he was at last on course toward his lifelong goal. He knew that his tenure here was a temporary thing, though, for in the absence of another all-out war—and that seemed unlikely—there was only so much he could accomplish, only so far the legend could spread. Still, the fates had dealt him a fine beginning hand, he knew, a better starting point than he ever could have hoped for. The arrival of that first bandit band, especially considering that it was led by a giant, had elevated him quickly to a status above any of the others in the region. Now all that he had to be wary of was that level’s becoming an endless plateau.
He kept his ears and his eyes wide open, seeking opportunities to push things further. He went to Oracle every night, and found the darker voice waiting for him there, prodding him, pushing him, telling him that it was his destiny to rule.
Another important advancement had occurred during that first bandit encounter, Aydrian knew, and he pondered it often. His sword had found its first blood. Human blood. He had killed, and that was no small thing. Even though he would have been hard-pressed to find a group more deserving of such brutal justice, that act of killing weighed heavily on the young man for a long time. At one point, Aydrian even considered returning the sword to Rumpar’s mantelpiece and living out his life as a farmer or huntsman.
The internal struggle, conscience against pragmatism, endured for weeks, tearing at Aydrian. Again, Oracle helped him sort through it, helped him to understand that this was the way of the hero in an often brutal and violent world. When his emotions finally settled, when he came to accept that he had done well, when he came to understand that battle was an inevitable part of his life’s course and that mortality, for every man and woman, was an inevitable part of being human, he came to look back on that fight with a sincere smile.
That acceptance of his role as the cause, the source, of death would prove to be the most important result of the bandit battle, though neither Aydrian nor any of the folk who now viewed him as a hero had any idea of its significance.
He could see the first signs of winter gathering in the northern sky, and to Marcalo De’Unnero, it was not a welcome sight. Not at all. For winter would mean more hours spent inside, more hours sharing time with the inane folk of this miserable little village. They went about their chores every day wearing stupid smiles, acting as if they were actually accomplishi
ng something.
Chop the wood, burn the wood, chop some more.
Cook the meal, eat the meal, cook some more.
To De’Unnero’s thinking, they should have just built a circular stretch of road and run around it hour after hour, day after day. No, he decided, this existence was even worse than that, because at least running the road would increase stamina, at least there would then be some gain, some movement forward on the path of personal growth and enlightenment.
How many years had he been living this wretched peasant life—no, it couldn’t rightly be called a life but rather this wretched existence?
He was out in the cold, damp rain one morning, repairing a roof with a trio of others. A simple structure, a simple repair, and certainly this roof and all the others would have to be done again and again, until he and the other townsfolk were all dead of old age. And then, of course, their children and other, younger settlers could repair the roofs, and so on and so on, and all wearing the same stupid smile—a grin wrought of inanity, of thinking that there was something grand and wonderful in mere survival and existence.
“I am cursed to be born intelligent,” he muttered, loudly enough for the man working near to him to take note. That villager turned a curious eye De’Unnero’s way, but didn’t respond other than to wear a perfectly oblivious expression.
“Which, of course,” De’Unnero said in the face of that face, “is the perfect answer coming from you.”
With a frustrated growl, De’Unnero threw his hammer across the courtyard, to skid down into the piles of fallen brown leaves with a snakelike hiss.
“Ye’r to lose the hammer!” one of the others, who fancied himself the overseer of the job, cried.
“And if so, then we will make another,” De’Unnero snarled at him. “And when that breaks, we will make another, and feel even more pleased with ourselves.”
“What nonsense are ye talking?” the gruff man asked.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 88
