More than willing to mete out death, Aydrian skittered forward and thrust hard—or started to. But even as his sword started moving forward, a bare foot flew up and slapped against the side of the blade, driving it away.
Aydrian retreated in perfect balance and with tremendous speed, but on came De’Unnero, arms working in smooth circular motions before him. His foot came up fast to kick at Aydrian’s face. When that fell short, he drove out again and again, clipping the young man’s arm and nearly taking his sword from his grasp. Still De’Unnero came on, hands like striking snakes, feet swishing dangerously.
Aydrian brought his blade sweeping in hard, but De’Unnero arched back out of range and leaped up, his left foot going around Aydrian’s right arm, tucking toes against the young man’s elbow, even as his right foot came in like the second blade of a pair of scissors. De’Unnero’s left foot shoved, and his right kicked hard against Aydrian’s forearm, a maneuver that would have shattered the elbow of a lesser opponent. But the young ranger, very well trained, turned his blade and bent his arm. He rolled his shoulder and flipped his sword to his left hand, leading with a vicious backhand as he came around, a deft strike that would have disemboweled any other opponent.
But De’Unnero saw it coming. As he missed with his crunching double-kick, he landed on his left foot and kicked even higher with his right, boosting his up-and-backward momentum as he leaped away. After a somersault, he came up square to the now-charging Aydrian and launched a flurry of sidelong hand slashes that parried and slapped against the flat of Aydrian’s blade and forced him to fast retract his thrust or else risk having his opponent hand-walk right up the blade and right up his arm, getting in too close.
De’Unnero was gone from his sight, then, so fast that the movement hardly registered. Only instinct had Aydrian skipping high as the dropping monk executed a beautiful leg sweep. Aydrian got clipped on one foot but landed securely on the other, turning and bending forward.
There before him sprawled his opponent, vulnerable, helpless even—Aydrian knew that the man was helpless, not from any warrior insight or understanding of the nearly prone man’s position as much as from the sudden burst of music that he heard, a rousing, cheering song that told him without doubt that the time of victory was at hand. He let himself fall into his turn then, using his forward momentum to loose the killing thrust.
To any wayward observer, Marcalo De’Unnero surely looked defeated and helpless, with his left leg bent under him and his right, having executed the less-than-successful trip, straight out wide.
But De’Unnero had spent a lifetime training his body to move in ways that seemed impossible, had earned his reputation as the greatest warrior ever to march through the gates of glorious St.-Mere-Abelle long before the weretiger had inhabited his body and soul. That left leg, seemingly so trapped, used the resistance to heighten the speed of its upward kick, catching Aydrian, who was practically diving at the prone monk, in his extended sword arm, pushing him up and away. Every muscle working in harmony and to the limit of its strength, De’Unnero went right up to his shoulder blades, fully extending to lift Aydrian higher.
In came the warrior monk’s right leg, snapping under Aydrian, then flashing back to crash against the side of the surprised young man’s knee. Pushing back with that right leg, kicking out even harder with the left, De’Unnero had Aydrian flying to the side and flipping over backward.
To his credit, the amazing young ranger landed with enough of a roll to absorb some of the breath-stealing crash. He kept rolling right over his head, pushing as he went around to regain his footing.
But there was Marcalo De’Unnero, in close, clasping Aydrian’s sword wrist with his left hand, cupping the right over the back of Aydrian’s hand and bending it hard over the wrist, easily taking away the blade.
Aydrian punched him hard with his free left hand, and the former monk staggered back a step.
But he smiled and threw the sword into the brush at the side.
In he came, and Aydrian charged with a roar, thinking to tackle the man.
He was flying again suddenly, as De’Unnero ducked low to clip him across the thighs. He landed harder this time, but fought back to his feet and turned just in time to see the sole of the leaping De’Unnero’s flying foot, the instant before it crashed into his face, laying him low.
“A pity to kill one so handsome,” came Sadye’s voice from the side. “He fought well.”
“Too well.” De’Unnero was bent over and breathing hard, with more than one bruise and cut for his efforts. “And with a fighting style I have seen before, a style unfamiliar to the King’s soldiers and the Abellican monks.”
He looked up at Sadye and saw that he had piqued her curiosity.
“You aided me in the battle,” De’Unnero remarked. “You sent your music to him to bolster his confidence, to make him err with thoughts of victory.”
“I did not—” the woman started to answer apologetically, but De’Unnero cut her short with an upraised hand.
“I would have expected that I would need no help to easily defeat any man in all the world, whether in tiger form or not,” the former monk continued. “Nor would I have ever expected to need any help against one so young. But his fighting style … the same style that Nightbird used, the same style that Jilseponie used …” He shook his head and gave a little laugh. “He called himself Tai’maqwilloq,” he remarked. “Elvish words, by the sound. I know of only one other who took such a title. Tai’marawee, Nightbird. Coincidence?”
“Ask him,” Sadye replied, slinging her lute over her shoulder and motioning toward Aydrian, as a groan told De’Unnero that his young opponent was waking up.
De’Unnero took Sadye’s belt and rushed to Aydrian, propping and securing him in place against a tree.
“He frightens me,” Sadye admitted to De’Unnero, who seemed surprised to hear those words coming from the mouth of the woman who had so many times toyed with the weretiger.
“He is just a boy,” De’Unnero replied.
“A boy who is alive now because he was powerful enough with the gemstones to control the weretiger,” Sadye reminded him.
“Not so,” the former monk was quick to respond. “He only aided me in my own concentration to control the beast.”
“During the fight?” Sadye asked doubtfully.
“I knew that I could beat him as a man,” De’Unnero growled back at her.
“However he does it, he does it,” said Sadye. “And you may call him a boy or call him Tai’maqwilloq—either title does not change the fact that he is strong with the gemstones and skilled with the blade.”
“Elven-trained with the blade,” De’Unnero explained. “The same sword style favored by Elbryan Wyndon. And strong in the gemstones as is Jilseponie.” He shook his head. “It cannot be coincidence.”
“I know nothing about that,” she replied. She looked over at Aydrian, who was now fully awake and sitting stoically against the tree, his arms lashed behind him around the thick trunk.
“And this cache of gemstones,” De’Unnero went on, holding up the pouch he had taken from the fallen young ranger. “Only one outside the Abellican Church possessed such a cache, and those disappeared, mysteriously so, after the great battle in Chasewind Manor.”
“So the elves stole the gemstones and gave them to this young warrior,” Sadye answered, a doubtfulness evident in her tone, for she had made it clear to De’Unnero, despite his claims, that she didn’t believe in elves. “A warrior they set on the road to avenge the death of Nightbird, perhaps?”
De’Unnero nodded, though he wasn’t sure. His answers lay there, across the way, he knew. Pouch in hand, he went over and knelt before Aydrian.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
Aydrian looked away—and De’Unnero promptly smacked him across the face.
“Give me a reason to let you live,” De’Unnero said to him, grabbing him roughly by the face and pulling him so that he could look into his
blue eyes—eyes that seemed strangely familiar. Aydrian continued to look as far away from the former monk as possible. “I do not wish to kill you.”
Suddenly Aydrian did lock gazes with the man. “You could not have beaten me without her help,” he said with a snarl.
De’Unnero chuckled at the youthful cockiness. He had, in truth, been impressed by the young warrior’s skills, but he knew that he had underestimated the youngster at the beginning of the fight and had just begun to gain some insights into his true depth when Sadye had intervened. Still, it didn’t matter to De’Unnero if the young fool believed his own boasts or not. A younger Marcalo De’Unnero would have untied him then and there, handed him a sword, and promptly defeated him. By the estimation of the man now holding the young warrior’s face, that younger Marcalo De’Unnero was somewhat the fool.
“Where did you get these?” he asked, holding up the pouch.
Again there came no answer.
“Why do you insist on resisting?” De’Unnero asked. “Perhaps I am no enemy, young fool, and perhaps you do not have to die.”
“Did my father have to die?” Aydrian asked bluntly, his eyes boring into his captor’s.
De’Unnero stammered over that one, thinking that the young warrior’s father must have been one of the weretiger’s victims, perhaps one of the men from Micklin’s Village, or one of the bandits who had ridden with Sadye that fateful morning.
“I do not know,” the former monk answered honestly. “Did he deserve to die?”
“I cannot know, since I never met him,” Aydrian replied evenly and grimly.
De’Unnero chuckled again. “Your cryptic answers do amuse me,” he replied, “but if you will not divulge more—”
“Nightbird,” Aydrian growled at him, stopping him as surely as if he had reached over and torn the tongue from De’Unnero’s mouth. “My father was Tai’marawee, the Nightbird. And you killed him.”
De’Unnero spent a long while catching his breath. He had suspected as much, but to actually hear the confirmation spoken rattled him profoundly. “And you are Tai’maqwilloq,” he remarked.
“Nighthawk,” Aydrian confirmed.
“Who is your mother?” De’Unnero quickly asked, but Aydrian merely looked away.
Too eager to be denied, De’Unnero smacked him again and roughly pulled him about. “I did battle with your father,” he admitted, “a great and mighty battle. Several times, and for reasons that are too complex to explain here and now. But I did not kill him—that claim falls to the province of another. Now tell me, who is your mother?”
“Lady Dasslerond of Caer’alfar,” Aydrian answered quickly, and without much thought. “The only mother I have ever known, and not one worth knowing.”
The pain was so very evident on his face as he spoke those words that De’Unnero caught it clearly, though his mind was spinning down a very different avenue. He put the boy in his midteens, and knew, too, that fifteen years before, Jilseponie had indeed been pregnant. That child had been destroyed by Markwart on the field outside Palmaris, by all reasoning, since Jilseponie had no longer been with child when she had resurfaced soon after.
But hadn’t Jilseponie been rescued from Father Abbot Markwart by Lady Dasslerond on the field that day?
De’Unnero’s mind was spinning. If this Nighthawk was indeed the son of Nightbird, and he sensed that he was, then surely Jilseponie was the boy’s mother—and the boy, apparently, didn’t even know it. And those eyes! Yes, those eyes! De’Unnero had seen them before, in close combat. They were the eyes of Jilseponie.
It was all too beautiful a victory for Marcalo De’Unnero.
Chapter 19
Francis’ Mark
JILSEPONIE STOOD ON THE BROWN FIELD UNDER THE GRAY SKY, STARING AT THE towering walls, the gray stones chipped and weathered, speaking of the ages this bastion had stood, a tradition as deep and solemn as that of the kingdom itself. Not a man or woman of Honce-the-Bear, or even of the neighboring kingdoms, could look upon this great place, St.-Mere-Abelle, without some stirring deep within. Its walls stretched for nearly a mile along the rocky cliff face overlooking the dark and cold waters of All Saints Bay. Decorated and sometimes capped with statues of the saints and of all the father abbots, and with many other carvings, the great walls served as a testament to the Abellican Order, a symbol of lasting strength, for some comforting, for others …
Jilseponie could not dismiss the feelings of dread and anger that welled within her as she looked upon the abbey. Its dungeons had held Graevis and Pettibwa Chillichunk. Likewise had Bradwarden been imprisoned here, surely to be murdered or to die neglected in the cellars as had Graevis and Pettibwa, had not Jilseponie and Elbryan rescued him. Here started the macabre parade that had ended with good Master Jojonah burned at the stake in the village a couple of miles to the west. This place, these walls, had spawned the power that was Markwart, the man who had torn the child from Jilseponie’s womb.
How she had once wanted to tear down this abbey!
She could suppress those emotions now, though, could put that which was past behind her. For St.-Mere-Abelle meant more than those deeds that had so enraged her, Jilseponie knew. The ideals that built these walls, the sense that there was something greater than self, greater than this meager life, had spawned the goodness that was Avelyn, that was Braumin Herde, and offered hope to all those shaded in gray between Markwart and Avelyn.
That point was made crystalline clear to Queen Jilseponie as she approached the gate and came to a familiar place, to see a marker set into the ground, proclaiming:
Here on the eve of God’s Year 830
Brother Francis found his soul.
And here in the summer of 831
Died Brother Francis Dellacourt
Who shamed us and showed us the
Evil that is
PRIDE.
When we refused to admit that perhaps we were
Wrong.
Bishop Braumin had told her of the plaque and had smiled knowingly when he had explained that Master Fio Bou-raiy had eagerly endorsed the inscription.
“What men will do for the hope of gain,” Jilseponie whispered, considering the plaque and the fiery one-armed master. She knew well that Fio Bou-raiy had denounced Francis when he had gone out to help the poor plague victims outside St.-Mere-Abelle. She knew well that Fio Bou-raiy—who refused to be shamed into going anywhere near the plague ridden—had been relieved, even glad, when Francis had fallen ill, seeing it as proof that his more cowardly course of hiding within St.-Mere-Abelle was the correct one for the Abellican brothers.
Jilseponie had witnessed Brother Francis’ death, and she knew that he had died satisfied, fulfilled, and in the true hope that he had found redemption.
A wistful smile found its way onto her fair face as she stood there staring at the plaque. Yes, Fio-Bou-raiy had battled Francis when Francis had turned against Markwart’s ways.
And now here stood Jilseponie, preparing to enter the great abbey and cast her vote for Fio Bou-raiy as the next father abbot of the Abellican Church.
The irony of that was not lost on her. Word of Father Abbot Agronguerre’s death had come to her at the beginning of Bafway, the third month, along with the invitation to the College of Abbots. She had set out soon after, and many times during her journey from Ursal, she had considered casting her vote and all of her influential weight behind Bishop Braumin instead. But Braumin was too young and too inexperienced, and would not get the support from the voting masters of St.-Mere-Abelle or, likely, from any of the other masters and abbots east of the Masur Delaval. And if she took with her stubbornness the votes of Braumin’s friends and allies with her, she would be taking them away from Fio Bou-raiy.
That would leave one abbot in position to grab the coveted prize: Abbot Olin.
King Danube had begged his wife to ensure that Olin was not elected, and Jilseponie, whatever her feelings for Fio Bou-raiy, understood that electing the abbot of Entel, with his close ties to Be
hren, to lead the Abellican Church could prove disastrous for her husband and for all Honce-the-Bear.
And so Fio Bou-raiy had eagerly endorsed this plaque for Brother Francis. Likewise he had urged Jilseponie to become bishop of Palmaris and then sovereign sister of St. Honce, using that not only to gain a stronger hold for the Church in Palmaris but also to bring Jilseponie into the voting fold of the Abellican Church, knowing full well that as queen of Honce-the-Bear, she would prefer anyone, even him, above Abbot Olin of St. Bondabruce in Entel.
She knew all this, and, in truth, it merely brought a smile to her face. The demon she knew, Master Bou-raiy, was not so difficult. As he wanted her support and the support of Braumin and his friends, so he wanted, desperately, to hold a great legacy among the people of Honce-the-Bear. Whatever his personal feelings or faults, Fio Bou-raiy would act in the best interest of that legacy, and thus in the best interest of the people of Honce-the-Bear. He saw the support for Avelyn—how could he not in these years so soon after the devastation of the plague!—and would try to spearhead that support.
Thus, Jilseponie could readily cast her vote with a clear conscience. She could hate the messenger while loving the message, and Father Abbot Bou-raiy’s message at this time would be benign, perhaps even beneficent.
With a profound sigh, Jilseponie walked through the great gates of St.-Mere-Abelle.
“The beast returns,” Sadye said to Aydrian, pulling aside the curtain that sectioned his room from hers and De’Unnero’s in the small cottage.
Aydrian stared at her curiously. He had heard their passionate lovemaking and had heard, too, the discordant chords Sadye plucked on her lute—and he, with his instinctual understanding of magic, suspected that the sour notes and the emergence of the weretiger might be more than coincidence.
“If the beast comes forth, then we will again be without a home,” Sadye said.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 92
