Allheart knights! Men loyal to the Crown, but not blindly so. Yet here they were, presenting Torrence to the new King!
Unlike his brother, the younger son of Constance and Danube did not seem so brash and brave, did not even attempt to draw out his sword or challenge Tai’maqwilloq. He was beaten already, his eyes begging for mercy, and it seemed as if he needed the support of the two flanking soldiers to even stand up.
Jilseponie could appreciate that. He had just seen his mother’s ghost, had just watched his father and his only sibling die. And now he stood before the man who could, and likely would, destroy him utterly.
“Choose wisely here,” Duke Kalas whispered to Aydrian, as the new king stood staring at Torrence. “Prince Midalis will not suffer this.”
“He will not suffer any of it,” Aydrian replied with a snicker. “But what might he do?”
“Merwick challenged you openly and was defeated,” Kalas reminded. “Torrence has offered no challenge.”
“And if you kill him, then you will be giving Midalis cause to rally even more about him,” Marcalo De’Unnero agreed.
“Be gone from Ursal,” Aydrian pronounced to Torrence, “this day—at once. A horse!” he cried. “A horse for Torrence Pemblebury.
“For that is your name now,” Aydrian explained to the boy—for indeed, Torrence seemed much more a boy than a man at that moment. “No longer do you claim the name of Ursal, nor any bearing that name would bestow upon you. Go and make your way, in good health and with our respect.”
For a second, it seemed as if Torrence would lash out at Aydrian, but the young King only smiled, obviously inviting it.
Duke Kalas moved past Aydrian to the young Pemblebury. “I promised your mother that I would look after you,” he explained, and he looked to dead Merwick as the irony of that statement hit him. “I could do nothing to protect Merwick from Merwick, but for you, I beg, take the horse and ride far from Ursal. Forsake this place and thoughts of the throne. It is Aydrian’s now, rightfully, by the words of your father the King.”
“King Danube never meant—” Torrence started to protest, but Kalas brought a finger to his lips, silencing the boy.
“What he meant cannot now be known,” the Duke explained. “Nor does it matter, given the reality before us. I pray you, Torrence, be gone. When the world has settled, we will talk again.”
Kalas motioned for the flanking knights, and they took Torrence away to the waiting horse.
And Kalas’ knights broke up the gathering then, leading the way for the new King to assume his throne.
Epilogue
“DUKE KALAS WAS MOST USEFUL IN CONTROLLING THE MOB,” DE’UNNERO REMARKED to Aydrian later that day, when the city was, at last, fully secured.
De’Unnero had not returned to the castle with Aydrian but had gone to St. Honce with Abbot Olin and the entourage from St. Bondabruce, and with Abbot Ohwan to reinstate him as head of St. Honce.
Abbot Ohwan was welcomed back by many, which made Olin and De’Unnero’s task of controlling the dangerous brothers of the abbey all the easier. They made no secret of their intentions to redirect the Abellican Church, to install Olin as father abbot even at the risk of splitting the Church asunder. And as they did not mince their words, they did not minimize the consequences to those who would not agree. By the end of the afternoon, a dozen brothers had been killed and a dozen more imprisoned beneath the great abbey.
But the abbey, like the castle, now wore the mantle of peace and security.
“He hates me,” Aydrian replied absently to De’Unnero’s statement. The young King threw a leg over one arm of the chair. “He hoped that Merwick would run me through—that is the only reason he allowed the fight to continue.”
“He did not seem to hate you so much,” Sadye remarked.
“Because he fears me more than he hates me.”
“And that I find most curious of all,” De’Unnero admitted. “Duke Kalas is not a timid man and has faced death a hundred times. Why would he shy from the prospect now?”
“Because I promised him more than death,” Aydrian was quick to answer. “When I brought him back from death at the tournament, I showed him that I could destroy his very soul, or hold it and use it to my advantage. Oh, yes, our good Duke understood the truth of the spectacle this morning. He knows that it was I who tore Constance from the grave—he even likely suspects that it was I, or Constance acting on my behalf, who killed King Danube.
“But Kalas also knows that I am the way,” Aydrian went on. “Or more important, he knows that there is no other way.”
De’Unnero shook his head.
“What of Torrence?” Sadye asked then. “You did well in showing mercy, but I fear that one and the support he might find—support to bolster Prince Midalis, no doubt.”
“He is on the road to the north, yes?” Aydrian asked.
“By all reports,” said Sadye.
“Then send men out to find him and catch him,” Aydrian instructed.
De’Unnero chuckled and looked at Aydrian in complete agreement.
“And when they catch him?” Sadye asked.
“Kill him,” replied the King, “quietly and without any witnesses. Kill him and bury him under the stairs that lead to the lowest dungeon.”
Sadye appeared shocked, but only for a moment, then she turned and started away, De’Unnero at her side.
“He is ruthless,” she remarked. “He will destroy any who stand against him.”
De’Unnero glanced back at Aydrian, still seated comfortably on his throne.
“I knew it from the moment I first encountered him, first battled him,” the monk replied.
“Knew what?”
“The beauty that is Aydrian,” said De’Unnero. “Simply magnificent.”
“The son of your most hated enemies,” Sadye reminded him.
“Which only makes it all the more beautiful,” the monk was quick to reply.
Sadye went off then, to set Aydrian’s latest orders into motion, while De’Unnero went to fetch the next order of business, returning to the throne room soon after with Jilseponie in tow.
The woman, obviously having regained much of her composure after the morning’s momentous events, pulled free of De’Unnero and strode boldly right up before the young King, even pushing aside the herald who had gone in to announce her.
“Are you so much the fool,” she asked, “to fall into the conspiracies of this man?” She swept an accusing hand out toward De’Unnero. “Do you not know his history, of the terrible tragedies he has brought about? Do you not understand the misery you have brought upon us all this day?”
“You dare to speak to me so?” Aydrian replied with a laugh. “You, who gave up on me, who abandoned me to the clutches of the heartless elves—yes, I will pay Lady Dasslerond back appropriately for her treatment! After your own behavior, you dare to accuse me or to judge him?”
“I did not know,” Jilseponie stammered, her bluster stolen by more than a fair amount of guilt. “I had no idea that you were alive.”
“Then you should have found out, should you not?” was Aydrian’s simple and devastating response.
“This man you name as an adviser served beside Markwart,” Jilseponie accused, pointing to De’Unnero with a finger that trembled from explosive rage. “Brother Justice, he was called, a ruthless killer—and ultimately, one of the murderers of your father!”
Aydrian’s bemused expression and the way he was following her angry movements with mocking gestures stopped her short, showed her that her words were falling on deaf ears.
“The throne is mine,” Aydrian remarked. “You can choose to accept that or to be a thorn that I must pluck from my side.”
“The throne was Danube’s,” Jilseponie countered in a low and even voice. “It now falls to Prince Midalis. Never did my husband intend—”
Aydrian stopped her by bringing his hand out to her, by dropping a single gemstone, a lodestone, into her hand. The young King sat bac
k, then, and pulled open his shirt, shifting a metallic pendant he had fixed on a chain about his neck so that it rested against the hollow of his breast. “You perceive that the kingdom is broken,” he said. “So fix it, Mother. One burst of magical energy and I am no more, and the way is cleared for Prince Midalis—even Duke Kalas would not deny that ascension.”
Jilseponie stared at him, her gaze narrowing. She lifted her hand, and Aydrian smiled all the wider.
“One burst of energy and it is done, the lodestone shot through my heart,” Aydrian said.
Jilseponie lifted her hand toward him. At the side, De’Unnero and Sadye bristled—but they did not intervene, and that told Aydrian that they had come to trust him.
Jilseponie held the pose for a long while; a couple of times, she clenched her hand and her teeth and seemed to be trying hard to inject magical energy into the deadly stone.
“You want to destroy me,” Aydrian said to her, egging her on.
In the end, Jilseponie’s arm slumped back down, and Aydrian reached out and grabbed back the gemstone.
“But you cannot,” the young King said a moment later. “You cannot destroy that which you have created.” He flipped the stone in the air, catching it. “Get out of Ursal, Mother. You do not belong here. You, with such compassion, never belonged here.” He motioned to the guards in the room and they moved to flank Jilseponie, pulling her away.
Duke Kalas entered the room as she was leaving. He looked at her and nodded, dipping a slight, mocking, bow, then moved to stand before Aydrian.
“She will serve out her days in the dungeons?” he asked.
“A coach is awaiting her, to take her out of Ursal,” Aydrian replied, and when Kalas started to sputter a retort, Aydrian glared at him uncompromisingly.
“She is no threat to us.”
“Do not underestimate that one,” Kalas said, looking from Aydrian to De’Unnero, seeking support from the dangerous monk, who knew and hated Jilseponie at least as much as did he.
Aydrian laughed and leaped out of his throne, striding across the room, out into the corridor, and all the way to the courtyard of the castle, where Jilseponie was just entering the covered coach, driver and team ready to spring away.
“Farewell, Mother,” Aydrian said to her, poking his head in.
Jilseponie looked at him plaintively, and he knew that she wanted to argue with him, to try to reason with him. But she said nothing, for what might she offer to change his course?
“Take care that you never return, and never bring any trouble to me,” Aydrian warned.
“You will hear from Prince Midalis soon enough,” Jilseponie replied. “If you wish to avoid—”
“I embrace a war, if one should come!” Aydrian interrupted, his eyes flashing with inner fires. “But you have no place in such a war. I warn you that I can begin again the proceedings King Danube cut short.”
“To what end?” she asked doubtfully.
“I can recall the spirit of Constance at any time, Mother dear,” Aydrian assured her. “And I can make her say whatever I wish her to say. Perhaps you should have killed me when you had the chance, because you will desire me dead many times in the months ahead, and you will never get another opportunity to do it.”
“Long live the King,” Jilseponie said with a snarl.
“King Aydrian Boudabras,” Aydrian replied, taking an elvish word as his surname, a word that Jilseponie surely understood.
Boudabras. Maelstrom.
The maelstrom had begun.
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Prelude
PART ONE
To the Edge of Darkness
1 First Blood
2 The Blood of Centuries
3 Walking with Purpose
4 Details, Details
5 Conflicting Responsibilities
6 The Iron Hand of Yatol
7 Tymwyvenne
8 Trial of Faith
9 Dark Solitude
PART TWO
Grasses in the Wind
10 Kin and Kind
11 The Sash of All Colors
12 Pragmatism and Patience
13 Never the Horse
14 As Graciously as Possible
15 Expanding His Horizons
16 Her New Family
17 The Grim Reality
18 Baiting the Hook
PART THREE
Enlightenment
19 The Play’s the Thing
20 Parallel Journeys
21 The Relief of Resignation
22 A Chill Breeze on Leathery Wings
23 What Agradeleous Wants …
24 Ancient Enemies
PART FOUR
The Dragon of To-gai
25 The Walkaway
26 Playing to Their Weakness
27 Ghost Town
28 With All the Weapons at Her Disposal
29 Exacting a Promise
30 One Angry Cat, One Clever Mouse
31 Her Winter of Discontent
32 Hit and Run?
33 The Dragon Ruse
34 Sacrilege Revealed
35 Head-On
36 Defensive Position
37 To the Bitter End
Epilogue
Prelude
BRYNN DHARIELLE LOOKED BACK OVER HER SHOULDER REPEATEDLY AS SHE SLOWLY paced her pinto mount, Diredusk, along the descending mountain trail. Though she had only been on the road for a half hour beyond the edge of Andur’Blough Inninness, the enchanted elven valley, the ridges that marked the place were already lost from sight. The mountainous landscape was a natural maze that had been enhanced by the magic of Lady Dasslerond of the Touel’alfar to be unsolvable. Brynn had marked the trail well along her route, but she understood that she would have a hard time finding her way back—even if she were to turn about right then.
This was the first time Brynn had been out of that misty valley in a decade, and she truly felt as if she was leaving her home. The Touel’alfar, the diminutive, translucent-winged elves of Corona, had come to her when she was a child of ten, orphaned and alone on the rugged and unforgiving steppes of To-gai, far to the south. They had taken her in and given her food and shelter. And even more importantly to Brynn, they had given her life purpose. They had trained her and made her a ranger.
And now they were sending her home to find her destiny.
The young brown-skinned woman crinkled her face at that thought, as she continued to stare back along the trail behind her, to the place that she knew to be her real home, the place she would likely never see again. Tears misted in her almond-shaped brown eyes, the sparkling eyes of a child, still, though so much had they seen. Already she missed Aydrian, the fourteen-year-old who had shared some of her training. Many times, Brynn had found the boy to be exasperating, often infuriating. But the truth was, he was the only other human she had seen in these last ten years, and she loved him like a brother.
A brother she would likely never see again.
Brynn shook her head forcefully, her raven hair flying wildly, and pointedly turned back to the trail heading south. Certainly leaving the valley was a sacrifice for Brynn, a dismissal of the trappings and the companionship that had made the place her home. But there was a reason for her departure, she reminded herself, and if the pain of this loss was the greatest sacrifice she would be expected to make, then her road would be easier by far than anyone, herself included, had ever imagined possible.
Her future was not her own to decide. No, that road had been laid out before her a decade before, when the Behrenese Yatol priests and their armies had tightened their grip on To-gai, had abolished almost completely the last remnants of a culture that had existed for thousands of years. Brynn’s road had been set from the moment Tohen Bardoh, an orange-robed Yatol priest, had lifted his heavy falchion and lopped off her father’s head; from the moment Tohen and his lackeys had dragged off her mother, eventually killing her, as well.
Brynn’s jaw tightened. She hoped t
hat Tohen Bardoh was still alive. That confrontation alone would be worth any sacrifice.
Of course, Brynn understood keenly that this journey, this duty, was about much more than personal gain. She had been trained for a specific reason, a destiny that was bigger than herself. She was to return to the cold and windy steppes of harsh To-gai, the land she loved so much, and find those flickers of what had once been. She, little Brynn Dharielle, just over five feet tall and barely weighing a hundred pounds, was to fan that flicker into a flame, then feed the flame with the passion that had burned within her since that fateful day a decade ago. She was to find the To-gai spirit, to remind her fierce and proud people of who they truly were, to unite the many divided tribes in the cause against a deserving enemy: the Yatol-led Behrenese, the Chezru.
If the plan went as Brynn and the elves hoped, then Brynn would be the harbinger of war and all the land south of the great Belt-and-Buckle Mountains would be profoundly changed.
That was the hope of Lady Dasslerond, who rarely involved herself in the affairs of humans, and that was the burning hope of Brynn Dharielle. Liberation, freedom, for the To-gai-ru would avenge her parents, would allow them to sleep more comfortably in their graves.
“We will move down to the east, along that open stone to the tree line,” came a melodic voice from the side and above. Brynn looked up to the top of a boulder lining the rocky trail to see a figure far more diminutive than she. Belli’mar Juraviel of the Touel’alfar, her mentor and companion, looked back at her with his golden eyes. His hair, too, was the color of sunlight, and his features, though angular, with the high cheekbones and pointy ears characteristic of all of the Touel’alfar, somehow exuded gentleness.
Brynn glanced back once again toward the land that had been her home.
“Keep your eyes ahead,” Juraviel remarked. “Andur’Blough Inninness is no more to you than a dream now.”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 116
