He watched in amazement, but worked hard not to lose his concentration, as the gruesome figure began to transform, gray rotting skin taking on the healthy hues of life, a hollowed eye socket refilling as the collapsed eyeball lifted back into place. And in that eye, a flicker of inner spirit, a flash of life!
The creature before him was suddenly more Elbryan than Elbryan’s ghost!
But the second ghost was approaching. Aydrian thought to go to it, but sensed that this second battle would be even more difficult, for Mather had been dead much longer, his spirit even more settled into the grasping embrace of death.
Unsure, he hesitated as Elbryan retreated, to be replaced by the grotesque Mather. He feared that his hesitance would cost him his life as the ghost rushed in and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him from the ground with amazing strength and pinning him against the tree. He had to counterattack, to fall back into the hematite and likewise assault this inhumanly strong creature! He had to find some way to break the hold, for he could not draw breath.
He could not.
Aydrian squirmed physically and tried to detach his mind enough to find the hematite’s power again. But it was no use, he realized, as he started to slip into blackness. Each passing second removed him further and further from the desperate situation, put him deeper and deeper into the inviting blackness.
He heard a swish and a sickening crackle, and then he was free suddenly, dropping to his feet and stumbling to the side. He glanced back as he fell to all fours, to see Mather’s ghost waving the stubs that used to be its arms, trying to club the half-ghost half-alive creature that was Elbryan, who was now brandishing a shining elven blade.
Aydrian crawled further away, to the first open grave, and pulled forth the mighty bow, Hawkwing. Amazed to see that it had survived apparently intact, string and all, including a quiver of arrows, he quickly stood and set the bow between his legs, then bent and strung it.
He fell back, turning to watch the continuing battle, Elbryan slashing apart Mather’s ghost, as he had done those years before to earn Tempest, the sword he now swung again.
When Mather at last fell, the strange creature that was neither living nor dead—the thing that was part Aydrian’s father’s mind and part his father’s flesh and yet the two not truly joined as they had been in life—slowly approached, Tempest low at its side.
Aydrian stared at his hematite then, wondering how much farther he could go, wondering if he could somehow rip asunder the bonds of death, bringing his father back to life completely! It seemed incredible to him, impossible, and ultimately, horrible.
The creature approached slowly, staring at Aydrian with a look that was part apprehension, part horror, part curiosity, and ultimately confusion. The spiritual connection was still there somewhat, allowing Aydrian to clearly sense the creature’s every thought, its pondering of who it was and of who Aydrian might be.
“Yes, you know me,” he said to the ghost, and he stood straight and tall and proud. “I am your son.”
The creature stared at him, eyes going even wider, and a hint of a smile began to appear, the stiffened edges of the mouth curling up.
Aydrian recognized two choices here, for this abomination could not stand, its very presence assaulting the young warrior’s every sense. He clasped the hematite, thinking to dive back into the dark realm and fight more fiercely to bring forth the complete resurrection, but the mere thought of it again horrified him.
He brought up Hawkwing instead, drawing back so that the three capping feathers widened like the fingers at the end of a flying hawk’s extended wing. The half ghost, half ranger gave him a puzzled and sad glance.
Aydrian let fly. The arrow thudded in, and the creature staggered back.
And Elbryan looked at Aydrian with all the more confusion.
A second arrow slammed in, and then a third, and the creature seemed less human then, and more cadaver. The fourth shot laid it low.
Aydrian awoke in the morning, shivering but strangely unhurt, right beside the intact, seemingly undisturbed cairns. Even the traces of snow were upon the graves again, exactly as Aydrian remembered them from the previous night, before his snow-globe enchantment had summoned the ghosts.
There was one significant difference, though, one that had Aydrian confused, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy: Hawkwing and Tempest rested atop their respective cairns, waiting for him.
He took up the bow and quiver and slung them over his back, then reverently lifted the mighty sword, the elven blade, Tempest, its pommel a round hybrid gemstone, white and sky blue, like drifting clouds on a summer’s day.
His new possessions in hand, and taking with him a new understanding and a greater confusion about what might follow this life, a haunted Aydrian walked out of the grove.
Chapter 22
Confronting Her Demons
SHE HAD TO WINCE EVERY TIME SHE STOOD UP STRAIGHT, FOR THE PAIN IN HER belly would not relent. It had gotten better during the summer and had diminished to almost nothing for several months, but now, with the end of God’s Year 842 only a couple of months away and with preparations being made for the great end-of-year festival—a social gathering that Jilseponie as queen was expected to arrange—the pains had returned tenfold.
She kept a stoic face and attended to her duties as best she could. Every once in a while, though, usually when one of the noblemen or noblewomen was giving her a particularly difficult time, the pain would outweigh her good sense and Jilseponie would let her anger show. On one occasion, she had caught a rather unremarkable courtesan giggling at her as she had walked past, and had overheard the woman whispering to a friend that the Queen had found a lover. A nasty cramp had struck Jilseponie at just that moment, and, her thoughts blurred by sudden pain, she had promptly strode over to the noblewoman and slapped her across the face.
As she now sat in her private bedroom, not the one she shared with King Danube, thinking about that incident, Jilseponie could not keep a smile off her face. Though she had undoubtedly acted improperly—she could have had the woman arrested, but to strike a subject was highly frowned upon—she still had to admit to herself that she had enjoyed it! The courtesan had looked her straight in the eye and had threatened her. “If only you were not the Queen.”
“Be glad that I am,” Jilseponie had answered, not backing down, her pain lost in the wall of her anger. “Else I would beat you unconscious and your ugly friend as well.” As she had finished, she had stared hard at the other courtesan, the only witness to the incident.
Of course there had been repercussions from her actions, with rumors running rampant and even talk of the courtesan’s demanding that King Danube exact a public apology from Queen Jilseponie for her uncouth behavior. If the injured woman insisted on that, it would put Danube in an awkward spot indeed.
Still, Jilseponie believed the slap had been worth it. She could not count the number of times she had held back her urge to leap into a fight with many of the hypocritical, altogether wretched noblewomen—the small circle about Constance Pemblebury most of all—and even with some of the more arrogant and foolish noblemen.
Alas, the responsibilities of her station would not allow such a thing.
So she tried to turn the other way, to focus her attention and her energies on more positive and productive endeavors. Most of the nobles spent their idle time at play—hunting and gaming, feasting and courting—but to Jilseponie, enjoyment was found in following the course of Avelyn and Elbryan. She tried hard to remain the fighter, the warrior for the cause of those most in need, though the tactics had surely changed, from battling powries and goblins with the sword to debating minor lords and battling unfair traditions and inefficient bureaucracy. Jilseponie wielded words now instead of a sword, and used the power of her station against injustice.
It was a tedious and frustrating process. The traditions and the people who maintained them were deeply entrenched; and Jilseponie, despite Danube’s support and obvious love, was s
till considered too much an outsider for her to easily enact any positive change.
And now this, the renewed cramps, following her every step, radiating out from her burning abdomen to cause aches in every part of her body, and blurring the focus of her mind. Before, she had resisted going after the pain with her soul stone, partly because it had never been this intense but also because she simply did not want to focus on that particular aspect of her body. Markwart’s attack on her that day outside of Palmaris had taken more from her than her unborn child. The demon spirit within Markwart had assaulted the very core of Jilseponie’s womanhood, had invaded her, had, in the very essence of the word, raped her. For her to examine her womb now, even on a mission of healing, would force her to face those feelings of violation all over again.
But now she had no choice. The pain was too intense. And even aside from her fear that Markwart’s attack might have caused a life-threatening problem, the pain was interfering with her station, with her duties and joys in life, as a queen and as a wife.
She took up her soul stone and, thinking of Elbryan, she started her dark journey. Rather than fleeing from the painful memories, she embraced them in a positive light, remembering her unborn child, enjoying again the feelings of life growing within her.
She passed into her empty womb and recognized the scarring; but she saw something more frightening, more alive and malicious. It appeared to her as thousands of tiny demons, hungry and chewing at her—little brown biting creatures.
Rattled, Jilseponie fought hard to regain her mental balance, then went at the creatures as she had once battled the rosy plague. For a long time she slapped at them with her healing powers, destroying them with her touch.
And then she felt relief, both physical and emotional. For unlike the plague, these demons did not seem to multiply faster than she could destroy them. It took her a long, long time, but when she came out of her trance, she was exhausted but feeling better than she had in more than a year.
She lay back on her bed and put her hands up over her head, stretching to her limit—and feeling no pain, no cramping in her belly. No physical turmoil at all, though a million questions rushed through her head. Had she won, truly and forever? Had she defeated this disease or infection or whatever it was? And what did that mean for her and Danube? Could she now bear the King an heir?
And more importantly, did she want to?
No, Jilseponie refused to think about that so soon. The implications of her healing her womb—though she didn’t believe that was what she had truly done—staggered her. She knew that no child of hers would be warmly welcomed by Danube’s snobbish court.
But, no, Jilseponie told herself. She hadn’t fixed the wounds Markwart had imposed upon her; they were too old and too deep to be repaired by the gemstone magic. No, she had cured herself of this newest infection that was probably caused, she supposed, by those previous wounds.
Whatever the result, whatever the implications, the Queen of Honce-the-Bear was certainly feeling physically better now, and so she was enthusiastic when one of her handmaidens appeared, bearing a tray of food. Jilseponie sat at a small table at the side of her bed as the handmaiden uncovered the various plates, and for the first time in months, she looked at the food eagerly, intending to thoroughly enjoy this fine meal.
The handmaiden left her and she took up her fork and knife and started to cut …
And stopped, stunned, blinking repeatedly, sure that her eyes must be tricking her. Perhaps it was the recent intimate interaction that brought recognition, perhaps some trace connection remaining between her and the hematite … But whatever the reason, she saw them.
The little demons scowled at her from her food. She could feel their hunger.
Shaking, Jilseponie pushed back her chair and retrieved her soul stone. She hesitated—what if she found out that the food itself was poison to her? What if the wounds the demon had inflicted upon her had somehow morphed into a physical aversion to nutrition? How would she live? How …
Jilseponie threw aside those fears and dove into the soul stone, using it to examine her food on a different and deeper level. What she found both relieved her and heightened her fear. No, it was not the food itself that was poison to her, but rather, something that was in her food, something that had been sprinkled upon her food!
She shoved the plate away, sending it crashing to the floor, then staggered to her bed and sat down hard, trying to sort through the information and digest the astounding implications. Was someone poisoning her?
“A seasoning, perhaps, that simply does not mix with my humours,” the Queen said aloud, but she knew better, knew that those hungry little demons were no seasoning but were a deliberately placed poison.
She dressed quickly and started searching for the source. The handmaiden, obviously not the perpetrator, willingly led her to the great castle kitchens and the chef, who was assigned to personally prepare the meals for both King and Queen.
The chef’s smile melted away when Jilseponie dismissed the rest of the kitchen staff, thus warning him that something was amiss—something, his expression revealed, that he understood all too well. Under her wilting gaze and blunt questions, the man cracked easily, delivering to the Queen a source that truly surprised and terrified Jilseponie.
“I cannot dismiss your complicity as I have Angeline’s,” Jilseponie stated definitively, referring to the handmaiden.
“I—I did not know, my Queen,” the chef stammered.
“You knew,” Jilseponie countered. “It was in your eyes from the moment I asked the rest of the staff to leave. You knew.”
“Mercy, my Queen!” the man wailed, thinking himself doomed. He fell to the floor and prostrated himself pitifully. “I could not refuse him! I am but a poor cook, a man of no influence, a man—”
“Get up,” Jilseponie commanded, and she waited for him to stand before continuing, using those moments to sort through her anger. A part of her wanted to lash out at him, and she wondered if it was her duty to turn him over to the King’s Guard for trial and punishment. But another part of Jilseponie could truly sympathize with the awkward position this man had found himself in, obviously caught between two opposing powers that could easily obliterate him. And his choice, against Jilseponie and toward the unknown perpetrator, was also understandable, given Jilseponie’s standing among the courtiers and, by association, among the staff.
“You would kill me?” she asked the chef; and the way he blanched, the look of true horror that came over him, revealed to her his honest shock.
“You put poison in my food,” Jilseponie said plainly, almost mocking that expression.
“Poison?” the man gasped. “But all the ladies … I mean …”
Now it was Jilseponie wearing the surprised expression. She took him aside, asked him to sit, and helped him to calm down. Then she bade him to explain everything to her.
He went on to tell her the truth of her poison, that it was a herb commonly used by the courtesans to prevent pregnancy. Then he told her where the courtesans got the herb—from the man who had come to him some time ago, explaining that he should put the herb in the Queen’s food, as he did in the food delivered to the courtesans who lived in the castle.
Courtesans that numbered only a couple, including Constance Pemblebury.
Jilseponie found herself in quite a quandary, then. “How will I ever trust you?” she asked him. “And you, above all, must be in my trust.”
“Please do not kill me,” the man said quietly, trembling and fighting to hold back his sobs, his gaze lowered. “I will run away, far away. You will never see—”
“No,” Jilseponie interrupted; and the man looked up at her, deathly afraid. “No, you will not resign nor will anyone learn of this error.” She stared at him hard but with compassion. “This error in judgment that you will not repeat.”
The chef’s expression shifted to one of surprise and skepticism, as if he did not understand or believe what he was hearing.
“You are, in many ways, the protector of the King and Queen of Honce-the-Bear,” she said, her tone regal and commanding. “As great a guardian of the health of Danube and Jilseponie as is Duke Kalas, who leads the Allheart Brigade. You must view your position in this light. You must understand and accept the responsibilities of our trust. Our food passes through your hands. You prepare, you sample, you defend the Crown.”
“And I failed.”
“You did, as has every man and every woman in all the world at one time or another,” Jilseponie replied, and she took the man’s chin in her hand and forced him to look her in the eye. “You have heard of my heroics in the northland,” she said with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“Against the demon and against the plague, yes, m’lady,” the chef replied.
“One day I must tell you of my many failures,” Jilseponie said, and she chuckled again.
The man could not have appeared more stunned, and it took him a long time to muster the courage to ask, “What are you to do with me?”
“I will watch over you carefully in the days ahead,” she replied without hesitation. “I will, for the sake of the safety of my husband, confirm that which I believe to be the truth of your heart. I trust you’ll not fail again.”
The chef’s jaw drooped open and he sat there, staring at her for many minutes. “No, m’lady,” he at last answered. “I’ll not fail you, and not forget what you have offered to me this day.”
Jilseponie smiled at him warmly, then took her leave. She wasn’t sure if she had done the right thing; she had played a hunch, a feeling, though she would follow through with her claim that she would carefully watch over the food, both hers and her husband’s.
What she knew for certain, though, was that she felt good about the way she had handled the chef. She felt as if she had acted in the best spirit of Avelyn. How many criminals, after all—thieves and murderers even—had gone to the plateau at the Barbacan and entered the covenant that had saved them from the rosy plague?
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 96
