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

by R. A. Salvatore

  The young ranger, declaring that he had come in pursuit of the beast, had no trouble in finding folk willing to talk of their loss. Theirs was a story that should have torn at Aydrian’s heart, a tale of three men lost, one dragged off with no more left of him than his ragged and bloody clothing. But in truth the young ranger, as he listened to the story, was considering only his own potential gain or ultimate loss along this road he had chosen to walk.

  “Oh, and the poor girl Sadye,” one old woman crooned. “She was first to find the clothing of her dead man. Broke her, I say.”

  “First to find?” Aydrian noted. “Where might I find this Sadye, to hear her tale?”

  “Palmaris, I’m thinking,” one of the men remarked. “Said she’d be goin’ home, and so she did. And I’m missin’ her singing, I am.”

  “More than singing,” insisted the superstitious old woman, and she made the sign of the evergreen, the Abellican symbol of life, as she spoke. “A prophet she was, by me own eyes and ears!”

  “How so?” Aydrian asked.

  “Singin’ o’ just such a beast,” the old woman remarked.

  “Sadye is a bard,” one of the men explained. “And she came to town recounting the tales of Micklin’s Village, a new song and one of her own making. Alas that the same unlikely fate should befall her own husband!”

  “She had come from Micklin’s Village?” Aydrian asked, more than a little intrigued. And the beast followed her here, he privately reasoned.

  “Aye, she said she’d gone through that doomed place,” the man answered. “And now she’s out for Palmaris, and God be with her that she make it home.”

  A few of the others murmured their prayers for poor Sadye, but Aydrian’s thinking was drifting along different lines than sympathy. “Pray tell me,” he bade them all, “of the other songs of Sadye the bard.”

  A few curious stares came back at him, but he held his expression calm, not letting on about any of his growing suspicions—not really suspicions but, rather, a growing hunch.

  The townsfolk sang to him, then, many of Sadye’s songs. Old songs and new ones, lyrics that had been around for hundreds of years and her original pieces. One of the latter, in particular, caught Aydrian’s attention.

  The Lyrical of Marcalo De’Unnero.

  It was all fitting together just a bit too neatly.

  The folk offered him a house for as long as he wanted it, the same house where Sadye and her man, Callo, had lived during their short stay in Tuber’s Creek. As anxious as he was to be out on the hunt, Aydrian wisely accepted their offer, and he remained in the village for more than a month. By day, he helped out wherever he could, hunting and with the chores, but he made certain that he was back in his house, alone, each night, and there, in a curtained-off area, the young ranger went to Oracle.

  And learned—of Palmaris and Marcalo De’Unnero. Nothing specific came to him, just general feelings, but the greatest lesson for Aydrian those nights at Oracle was the certainty at last that the shadowy figures he could bring into the cloudy background of the mirror realm were really two distinct entities. Or one with battling emotions, he believed, for the feelings he got concerning the man he now suspected to be the weretiger were very different indeed on different days. From one figure, he felt nothing but hatred for the man, from the other, something more akin to respect.

  Still, he could glean little more than that, so after a few days at his Oracle-induced contemplation, Aydrian turned his thoughts more to the present, trying to piece together clearly all that he had heard of the beast, all that he had heard of Micklin’s Village and of the tragedy at Tuber’s Creek. Had the two tragedies been the work of the same creature?

  Aydrian believed the answer to be a resounding yes, for how many such beasts could exist? If Mickael was to be believed, Bertram Dale—or whoever this Bertram Dale might be—was the monster.

  But if that Bertram Dale was the same man as Callo Crump, as Aydrian believed, then where had the grieving Sadye come from?

  The question did not prevent Aydrian from thinking that Bertram and Callo were one and the same. He heard about the torn and bloody clothing of Callo Crump. But if the creature had ripped Callo’s clothing so viciously, Aydrian would have expected there to have been pieces of Callo found also. Still, the villagers were convinced of Sadye’s sincerity and were fretfully worried about her having headed out on the dangerous road alone.

  Every night, Aydrian finished Oracle by rubbing his hands over his face. He had a nagging feeling about all this. He believed that the beast that had torn up Micklin’s Village—a weretiger, surely, and no natural cat—and the one that had slaughtered the hunters from Tuber’s Creek were one and the same; and, furthermore, that the beast could be traced back: to Palmaris and this strange monk named Marcalo De’Unnero.

  Or perhaps it was Aydrian’s hope more than his belief. For if his suspicions proved correct, how fast his legend would grow when he brought the head of the weretiger in as a trophy! Furthermore, if his suspicions concerning the origins of the beast were correct, if it was indeed the monk from Palmaris all those years ago, then it was common belief that the weretiger was somehow gemstone inspired or created.

  Whenever he thought that, Aydrian dropped a hand into his pouch of gemstones and ran his fingers across their smooth surfaces. With the training Dasslerond had given him, his own inner powers, and the training he was receiving from the ghost in the mirror at Oracle, Aydrian was confident that he could win any battle involving the use of gemstone magic.

  Any battle.

  “It is the life of the Pryani Gypsy!” Sadye proclaimed one cold winter morning, her exuberance mocking Marcalo’s typically dour mood. “We travel the world, seeing what we may.”

  “Until the tiger comes forth,” Marcalo reminded.

  “As with the gypsies,” Sadye said with a laugh. “When their thefts become known, they pack their wagons and flee.” As she finished, she waved her arm out toward the wagon at the side of their small encampment, box shaped and covered, a portable house. The pair had acquired it a month before, finding it abandoned in one of the many towns through which they had ventured since they’d left Tuber’s Creek. It was as much their home now as any of those towns, for they did not dare remain in any one place for any length of time. They had changed their appearance again—Sadye had cut her brown hair shorter and Marcalo had shaved his head and was now sporting a thin mustache—but they knew that Marcalo might be recognized by any of the survivors of Micklin’s Village, who were rumored to be wandering the lands, and that either of them would be known to any of the folk of Tuber’s Creek. If they encountered any of their former neighbors, they would have a hard time explaining away the existence of Marcalo, supposedly slain by the beast.

  And so they wandered, through the weeks and through the towns, whenever the paths were clear enough for the wagon. If the snows trapped them, the weretiger went hunting at night, easily bringing home some food. That beast was out regularly now, at least once or twice a week; and often it was Sadye, playing the discordant notes on her lute, who brought it forth. On several occasions, when Marcalo had assumed the tiger form, Sadye had not driven him off but had sat there with him hour after hour, all through the night, her small lute the only barrier between her very life and this menacing beast.

  Now she feared the weretiger not at all, and neither did Marcalo believe that he would ever kill or even harm her.

  It wasn’t a happy situation for the former monk, though he loved Sadye and their time together. But Marcalo De’Unnero found release for his inner passions, both in making love to Sadye and in allowing the weretiger to come forth. Still, his frustrations about the last ten years could not be dismissed, and while Sadye might be showing him a more exciting journey, it was still a journey without a destination.

  Perhaps most exciting of all to De’Unnero were the times he ran in the forest as the weretiger, issuing his great rumbling growl with full knowledge that it would carry across the miles to nea
rby villages. He could imagine the trembling of the townsfolk at hearing that mighty call. Perhaps some would come out to hunt him—those kills Marcalo De’Unnero could justify.

  On one such night, a warm evening in the late spring of God’s Year 841, the weretiger’s growl carried on gentle winds to the folk of a small village, including one young visitor to the town.

  Aydrian sat bolt upright at the sound, his heart pounding, his eyes wide. It took him some time to muster the nerve to collect his clothing, his gemstones, and his sword and to walk out of the barn the townsfolk had generously offered him for his temporary home.

  Many of the folk were outside, gathered around the central courtyard within the cluster of houses.

  “That yer cat?” one man asked as Aydrian approached.

  Another roar split the night, and Aydrian watched children clutching their parents tightly in fear. That image stunned and, in a strange and profound manner, wounded him, but he told himself that such displays prevented the true growth of the warrior. Had he spent his childhood clutching his mother, or even Lady Dasslerond, he would never have been able to find the courage now to go out into that dark and forbidding forest.

  “Ye’ll find the tracks in the morning,” another man remarked.

  “I will be skinning the cat before morning,” Aydrian the Nighthawk replied, and he drew out his sword, his other hand comfortably, and comfortingly, resting in his pouch of powerful gemstones. He walked off into the darkness, using every skill the elves had taught him to orient himself to his surroundings and to keep his head clear, his fighting muscles on the edge of readiness.

  He found the weretiger, or the weretiger found him, on the road far outside the tiny village. The great cat came out onto the path swiftly, in a sudden charge, but as soon as Aydrian fell into a proper defensive posture and faced it head-on, it veered aside, circling him.

  Aydrian knew then that, as he had suspected, this was no ordinary animal. There was an intelligence behind the cat’s eyes, malevolent and certainly human. How clearly the young ranger saw that! And only after a few minutes, turning slowly to keep facing the circling tiger, did Aydrian realize that he was holding the hematite, and that, likely, he had unknowingly projected his thoughts through the gemstone to heighten his understanding of the nature of this beast.

  But before he could think that notion—and any possibilities it presented—through, the tiger leaped at him.

  He dove sidelong and slashed back with his sword, scoring a hit, though just a minor slap against the orange-and-black-striped flank. In return, he got raked across his forearm by a kicking rear claw.

  The young ranger rolled back to his feet, quickly inspecting his wound and taking comfort that it was superficial. The mere fact that he had even been hit after so perfectly executing the dive concerned him.

  Aydrian set himself more determinedly, recognizing that this foe was not to be taken lightly.

  The tiger landed and trotted off a few strides, then swung back and stalked straight toward Aydrian. Aydrian took a deep breath and slid one foot out to the side, but the tiger saw the movement and altered its course slightly. Still it came on confidently.

  Aydrian pulled out a different gemstone, keeping it concealed within his clenched fist. He started falling into the magic just as the tiger sprang, coming forward with such brutal suddenness that it nearly got through Aydrian’s defenses without getting hit. But Aydrian did score a solid stab, though the tiger hardly slowed, forepaws batting hard at the young ranger, slashing his shoulders. He tried to skitter straight back, but the powerful beast was too fast, overpowering him, bearing him to the ground.

  A sharp crackle of lightning even as the claws started to find a hold at the sides of his head, even as the fanged maw managed to slip past the batting sword arm, saved Aydrian’s life. The force of the jolt lifted the tiger into the air and sent it skidding down in the dirt at the side of the trail.

  Aydrian rolled back to his feet, running the other way, trying to put some ground between him and the terrible beast. He realized as he glanced back that his lightning stroke hadn’t really hurt the creature. He knew then that he was in serious trouble, that this monster was simply too fast and too strong for him. He launched a second lightning bolt, but the tiger leaped away, landing fully twenty feet to the side and issuing such a roar that Aydrian’s ears ached.

  He fell away from that sound, away from all distraction, and went back to his first stone, the hematite, diving into the swirling magic, sending forth waves of mental energy.

  The tiger, starting its stalk, stopped dead in its tracks as the mental assault rolled in.

  Aydrian sensed the magic of the weretiger, gemstone magic, not unlike his own! He felt the tremendous willpower of the beast, and his respect for it increased; but he trusted in his own inner strength and did not believe himself at any disadvantage.

  He felt the wall of resistance, and he pushed with all his magical strength against that wall, trying to drive through the primal instincts of the beast and into the more rational side of this creature. For many minutes the two squared off in that spiritual realm, like a pair of elk, antlers locked, hooves dug in; and while the two were nowhere near each other physically, their combat was no less intense.

  Aydrian did not tire, could not tire. With resolve born of a lifetime of disciplined training, born of a bloodline of strength of both parents, and born of something stronger still, the young ranger drove at the beast, hit it with bursts of confusing, scrambling mental energy, tried to will it back into the consciousness of its human host.

  He might as well have been trying to put smoke back into a bottle; for that defiant wall altered, offering him holes through which his willpower could pass, but with nothing tangible in the emptiness behind those holes, with no gains to be found.

  The young ranger grew afraid, and that took some of his concentration. He opened his eyes to see the tiger stalking back in, and his first instinct had him lifting his sword to a defensive posture once more.

  Aydrian resisted that losing strategy. He went back into the hematite with all his strength, hit the weretiger hard with a burst of mental energy, forcing a second standoff. This time, Aydrian sought to receive, trying to gain some insight, some hint. He sensed something plausible, something that offered hope: remorse?

  Now the ranger changed his tack. Instead of trying to push through the beast, he went around it, sending a wave of compassion and sympathy, not for the tiger, but for the man behind it. He coaxed and he prodded; he bade that tiny spark of humanity to join him against their common enemy, this wild primal beast.

  Marcalo De’Unnero did not understand what call had awakened his human consciousness. He only knew that he was aware—was fully aware—of all that was happening around him, though he was surely physically engulfed by the weretiger, in the throes of its primal, feral urges.

  But he felt this call within him, this assurance that if he joined the voice he—they—could control the weretiger. Despite De’Unnero’s understanding that he was then engaged in mortal combat, it was a temptation that he could not resist, and so he listened to the soothing voice, embraced it.

  He felt the first shudders of pain as the bones began to crack and change, his senses shifting from those of a cat to those of a man.

  He kept his wits about him enough to leap back, to stay clear of his opponent’s dangerous blade during this most vulnerable time.

  And then it was finished, and Marcalo De’Unnero stood beside a tree, staring back across the way at this strange, and strangely familiar-looking young man. From the cocky smile the young man wore, De’Unnero had no doubt that this one had been the escort through his transformation, that this surprising youngster, who did not look like any Abellican monk—and indeed, seemed too young even to have entered the Order!—held some great power with the sacred gemstones.

  “Who are you?” De’Unnero asked, truly intrigued.

  Aydrian’s smile was genuine. He had understood and accepted that he
was overmatched by the weretiger, that the great cat held too many weapons, and too much sheer bulk and strength for him, particularly as he wielded this unbalanced and hardly adequate sword. And so he had done it, had forced the creature away; and now nothing more than a naked older man stood before him, leaning on a tree as if he needed it for support.

  “I had hoped to return to the villagers with the head of a great cat,” Aydrian said coldly, “but your own head will do.” He brandished his sword and advanced.

  “Who are you?” De’Unnero asked again, retreating around the tree to buy himself some time.

  “I am Tai’maqwilloq,” the young ranger replied, “a name you will remember and mark well for the rest of your miserable life, though that hardly guarantees me longevity of reputation!” He stalked in as he finished, moving around the tree, then cutting back out in front of it, thinking to catch the man in fast retreat.

  To his surprise, though, the naked man had merely walked out from the protection and into the open, and stood there staring at him. “Tai’maqwilloq?” De’Unnero echoed, intrigued, obviously, by the foreign ring of the words, the elvish ring of the name. Tai’maqwilloq reminding him keenly of another name, one held by his greatest rival.

  Aydrian walked close and extended his sword De’Unnero’s way. “Yield,” he demanded. “If you choose to seek the mercy of the villagers, I will allow it. Else I will kill you, here and now.”

  “I do not think that I would seek anything from the pitiful townsfolk,” De’Unnero calmly answered. “Nor, I fear, do I hold any desire to die here.”

  “Then you are out of choices,” Aydrian said.

  “So kill me, boy,” De’Unnero replied with a bit of a smirk.

  Aydrian didn’t pause long enough to consider that smirk, and any possible reasons for the obvious confidence behind it. All of the tales that he had heard, even those indicating some link between this weretiger and a former bishop named De’Unnero, a man other tales named as the killer of Aydrian’s father, spoke highly of the fighting prowess of the human form of this creature.