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

by R. A. Salvatore

  Merwan Ma lowered his eyes. “I am afraid, God-Voice,” he said.

  “You will not fail.”

  “But how will I know?” asked the young attendant, looking up suddenly at the Chezru Chieftain. “How can I be sure that I will select the correct replacement? It is a terrible burden, God-Voice. I fear that I am not worthy to bear it.”

  “You are,” Yakim Douan said, laughing. “The child will be obvious to you, I assure you. When I was selected, I was reciting the entire Fourth Book of Prophecy.”

  “But could not a mother so teach her young child, if she wished him to ascend?”

  “I had not yet seen my second birthday!” said a laughing Yakim. “And I could answer any question put to me by the Yatol Council. Do you doubt that they chose correctly?”

  Merwan Ma blanched.

  “It is not an accusation, my young friend,” said Yakim. “It is merely a reassurance to you that you will know. Your predecessor voiced similar concerns … so I have heard,” the Chezru Chieftain quickly added, for how could he have firsthand knowledge of what Merwan Ma’s predecessor might or might not have said?

  “Even so, God-Voice,” the obviously nervous Merwan Ma continued. “Once the child is found—”

  “Then your duties are clear and with many recorded precedents,” Yakim Douan interrupted. “And those duties are minimal, do not doubt. You will watch over the child and see that he is well cared for through the early years of his life. Not so difficult a job, I would say.”

  “But what of his training? Who will tutor the new God-Voice in the ways of Yatol?”

  Yakim Douan was laughing before Merwan ever finished. “He will tutor you, if you so desire! Do you not understand? The child will be born with full consciousness, and full understanding of all that is Yatol.

  “Do you doubt?” the Chezru Chieftain asked into Merwan Ma’s scrunched-up face. “Of course you do!” Yakim added to alleviate the tension before it could ever really begin. “Because you have not witnessed the miracle of Transcendence. I have, firsthand! I remember those early days well, and I needed no tutoring. I needed nothing, just the climb to Consciousness, and by that time, I understood everything about our beloved Chezru, both good and bad, better than any of those around me. Fear not, my young friend. Your time of indenture in the house of the Chezru Chieftain is to end in scarcely more than a decade, it would seem.”

  If those words were of any comfort at all to Merwan Ma, he didn’t show it; in fact, his expression revealed just the opposite.

  “You know this to be true,” Yakim prompted.

  “As with your anticipated death, it is not a subject I am comfortable discussing, God-Voice.”

  “Ah,” Yakim answered with a great laugh, and again he patted the young attendant’s arm. “You are to serve me, and then to see the next God-Voice to Consciousness, and then you are freed of all responsibility to the Chezru. That is the way it has always been, and the way it must continue to be.”

  “All that I love—”

  “That does not preclude you from joining Chezru more formally,” Yakim went on. “In truth, I would be sorely disappointed if you do not pursue your calling to piety. You will make a fine Yatol, my friend, and as such, will prove a valuable asset to the next Chezru Chieftain. Why, I have already penned a long letter to my successor and to the Yatol Council expressing my beliefs in your potential.”

  That seemed to calm Merwan Ma considerably, and he blushed with embarrassment and lowered his eyes.

  Just the effect Yakim Douan had hoped for. He truly liked the young man, and would indeed miss him when he came to Consciousness in the next incarnation. But on this point of ritual, Yakim had to hold fast. He couldn’t take the chance of keeping one as bright as Merwan Ma around for too long.

  Familiarity might bring danger.

  Merwan Ma made his way through the great columned hallways of the airy palace. The whole of the place was made of stone, mostly marble, pink and white and the subtle pale yellow of Cosinnida marble from the south. The many columns, ridged and decorated, were of the type that came from the northwest, from the foothills of the Belt-and-Buckle near the borderland of Behren and To-gai. This stone was the brightest white of all, but streaked with red veins throughout, so much so that it appeared to Merwan Ma as if red vines grew all along the columns. He could almost envision large grapes hanging from the vine, ready to be plucked and savored.

  Merwan Ma’s sandals were leather, and not hard-soled, but his footfalls echoed along the vast chambers of the palace, where every ceiling was delicately arched to catch the sound and roll it about. The young attendant often lost himself on walks such as this, wandering the great ways past the inspiring tapestries and the amazing mosaics tiled on the great floors. On such jaunts, he felt alone in the vast universe, and yet at one with it, as well.

  He needed that now, that comfort that he was part of something larger than himself, larger than human flesh. His master had done it again, another conversation about the God-Voice’s impending death. How could the Chezru Chieftain be so calm about that? How could he speak in such commonsensical terms about the end of his life?

  Merwan Ma gave a great exhale, thoroughly jealous of his master, of any man who could be so at ease with mortality. Merwan Ma was a dedicated and pious Shepherd, a rank above the common Chezru folk but a rank below the Yatols. He prayed every day, and followed every ritual and precept of the religion. He believed in an afterlife, in a reward for his good behavior. Truly he did. And yet, how pale his convictions seemed next to the supreme calm held by Yakim Douan!

  Perhaps he would come to such a place of tranquillity as he aged, Merwan Ma hoped. Perhaps he would find a day when he could so easily accept the inevitability of his own death, when he could be so confident that one journey was ending only so that another journey could begin.

  “No,” he said aloud, and he fell to his knees briefly and pressed his palms against his eyes, prostrating himself on the floor, an expression of submission, obedience, and repentance for his last thought. He could never find a place as content as that of the God-Voice! He could never come to understand the mysteries of life and death as the Chezru Chieftain, and he alone, obviously understood! Not in this life, at least. Perhaps enlightenment awaited him on the other side of that darkest of doors.

  With another deep breath, Merwan Ma pulled himself up from the floor and resumed his journey. He was late, he knew, and the others were likely already gathered about the sacred chalice, the Chezru Goblet, in the Room of Forever. Mado Wadon, the overseeing Yatol, had probably already prepared the sacrificial knife, filling its hollowed hilt with the oils of preservation. But certainly, without Merwan Ma there, the others had not begun the bleeding.

  Yakim Douan continued to enjoy his meal at the northern window, staring out at the towering majestic peaks. He knew what was going on in the Room of Forever, and he knew well the ultimate danger to him and to his secrets whenever the seven gathered for the ritual. But the centuries had taken the edge from the Chezru Chieftain concerning this anxiety. He had watched the bleeding closely all those early years, centuries before when he had instituted the ritual.

  No, not instituted it, but merely altered it to cover his secret. Since the beginning of Yatol, the selected group had kept the sacred Chezru Goblet filled with their blood, standing in a circle about it and taking turns slicing their wrists until the deep and wide chalice was full to the appointed line. That ritual of blood-brotherhood and the resultant pool of blood had proven to be a wonderful binding force for Yakim Douan, for embedded in the base of that sacred chalice was a single gemstone, a powerful hematite. When Yakim added his own blood to the pool, every week immediately following the bleeding ritual, he somehow created a bond to that embedded hematite that he had learned to exploit from a great distance, from the other side of the palace, even. That was important to Yakim, not because he often utilized the hematite, but because he understood that if a sudden tragedy should befall him—the dagger of a rival,
perhaps—he would be able to establish enough of a connection to the hematite to free his spirit from his dying corporeal form.

  The only real danger to Yakim, then, came during the process of changing the blood pool, for though all of the attending bleeders would be blindfolded and instructed, strictly so, never to glance into the chalice, one look with the blood level low might be enough to arouse great suspicions. For the Yatols were not fond of gemstones, magical or not, and to see one embedded in their most-prized religious symbol, the Chezru Goblet itself, would strike a sour note in the heart of any true Yatol. Gemstones were the province of the hated Abellicans to the north, the source of Abellican magical powers, and for centuries, since before Yakim Douan’s first ascension even, the Yatol priests had denounced the enchanted stones as instruments for channeling demon magic.

  Seeing a gemstone—and a hematite, a soul stone, at that!—embedded in the base of that deep chalice would bring about questions that Yakim Douan did not want to answer.

  But the Chezru Chieftain held all confidence that it would not come to that. In all the nearly eight hundred years he had been secretly using the magical hematite, the blood level in the chalice had only dropped to a revealing level once, when a young Yatol priest had inadvertently tripped and spilled the contents.

  That unfortunate Yatol, so flustered, so horrified by what he had done, hadn’t even paused long enough to consider the ramifications of what he had seen. He had only stammered apology after apology when Yakim Douan had come upon him, to find him kneeling on the bloody floor and crying, his head in his hands. He had begged forgiveness from the God-Voice, even as Yakim’s knife had reached for his unprotected, undefended throat.

  That one had died confused.

  Yakim Douan shuddered at the memory of that awful day. He had never wanted to kill the man, but so much had been at stake. How could he jeopardize his own theoretical immortality, centuries of life, against the few decades the poor fool might have remaining?

  To Yakim all these years later, it had been pragmatism, and not hatred and not any evil lust for power, that had guided his dagger hand that fateful day.

  Yakim Douan couldn’t even remember the clumsy Yatol’s name. Nor could anyone else.

  Merwan Ma stood perfectly still, chanting softly the intonation of sacrifice, his voice blending beautifully with the others standing in a circle about the small table that held the Chezru Goblet. The young attendant held his left hand out across his chest and to the right side, ready to take the knife, while his right arm was out before him, his forearm resting on a padded shelf, his wrist dangling above the sacred vessel.

  He was blindfolded, as were the others. In fact, Merwan Ma, as principal attendant to the Chezru Chieftain, had been the only one to enter this holy room with his eyes open, guiding the others to their respective positions. Then, with a prayer, Merwan Ma had taken his place and reached below the table and turned the lever. He had watched the red fluid level slowly dropping as he had applied his own blindfold.

  That lever and release under the table was counterweighted, designed to slow the flow and then close altogether as the blood in the bowl drained. This group would not replace all of the liquid, but only about three-quarters. A bell sounded as the lever closed, the signal for the sacrifice to begin. And so it had, with the chanting. The man immediately to Merwan Ma’s left took up the treated knife, reached forward, and cut his right wrist, then counted out the appropriate time, in cadence with the verse of the common chant, as his lifeblood dribbled down into the chalice. When the verse ended, the man passed the blade to the man on his left and the process was repeated.

  And so on, until the knife came full circle, back to Merwan Ma. The attendant, his right wrist crisscrossed with lines and lines of scarring, finished his duty stoically and efficiently, then reverently placed the blade back on the table.

  As the song finished, Merwan Ma lifted the blindfold off of his head and looked down at their work. Some blood had spattered outside of the great goblet, as usual, and the level wasn’t as high as it should have been, though it was well within the marks of tolerance inside the chalice. Had it not been, then the sacrifice would have been declared void and one of the men gathered about the table would have been killed and replaced, with only the attending Yatol and Merwan Ma exempt from that fate.

  But the sacrifice was acceptable, the level of red fluid more than sufficient to hold the sacred goblet until the month had passed and the next sacrifice ensued.

  Merwan Ma nodded at the handiwork—he’d have to come back in later and clean up the sacred vessel, of course, but other than that, the duty was done. With perfect precision wrought of months and months of practice, he took up the hand of the man on his left and led the group, joined as one line, out of the room.

  In the anteroom, as soon as the door was closed, the others pulled off their blindfolds and tightened the bandages on their wrists, congratulating each other on a job well-done.

  The exception, as usual, was the one Yatol in attendance. The older man looked to his wrist first, securing the bandage, but then, as he did after every sacrifice, he glanced at Merwan Ma.

  The attendant saw little fondness in that look. Many of the Yatols were not fond of him, allowing their own jealousies to overcome their dedication to their religion and their god. He was not a Yatol, after all, not a priest, and yet, when the Chezru Chieftain went to his reward, Merwan Ma would, in all practicality, become the most powerful man in all of the Chezru domain. He would be the initial selector of the new God-Voice, and would have full voice at the ensuing council of confirmation. He would then oversee the early years of the chosen child’s life, and while he would then have no voice in Yatol formal policy, it would be his voice most often heard in the next chosen God-Voice’s ear.

  Some of the Yatols were not pleased at this arrangement. Merwan Ma had even overheard a pair of particularly obnoxious priests mumbling that in times long past, a Yatol, the highest ranking of the order below the Chezru Chieftain, had served as attendant, and not a mere Shepherd.

  Merwan Ma took it all in stride. He had been selected, for whatever reason, and his duty was clear and straightforward. He could not allow petty human frailties and emotions to deter him from his duty. His calling was to God, through the words and edicts of the God-Voice, his beloved Chezru Chieftain. It was not his place to question, nor—he reminded himself then and there—was it his place to accept or internalize the expression the attending Yatol was now sending his way. That look reflected that man’s weakness, and it was not a weakness that Merwan Ma meant to share.

  He ushered the group out of the anteroom, then went back into the sacred room, consecrated cloth in hand, and reverently wiped clean the sides of the Chezru Goblet, satisfied that the sacrifice of blood that day would secure the goblet and the health of the church for the next month.

  Chapter 3

  Walking with Purpose

  BRYNN AND JURAVIEL RODE IN VIRTUAL SILENCE FOR MANY DAYS AFTER THEIR fight with the goblin band. Despite Juraviel’s cutting words and sound reasoning, Brynn could not let go of her anger toward the elf for what he had done to her, for what he had forced from her. For he had made her kill, had taken her out of their way so that she could feel her blade sinking deep into the heart of an enemy, so that she could smell spilled blood and see the stains, so that she could witness death at her own hands, horrible in a way that she had never known. Brynn Dharielle had witnessed much death in her early years in To-gai, after the coming of the Behrenese. She had witnessed the murder of her parents—from afar, but close enough to hear the screams. Nothing could be more terrible than that!

  But this last experience was troubling and horrible in a different way. This time she had been forced into the role of assassin, and the smell of blood and the screams had come to her of her own doing, and with a sizable amount of guilt attached.

  Belli’mar Juraviel had done that to her, and his justifications rang hollow in Brynn’s ears as the pair made their way alo
ng the southern trails. For more than a week, they went about their duties with hardly a word exchanged. They each knew what was expected of them, in setting the camp and preparing the meals, and in keeping watch throughout the night. Every now and then, Juraviel would offer a friendly comment, but Brynn usually just deflected it with a grunt or a halfhearted chuckle.

  Things began to warm again between them the second week. When Juraviel offered a sarcastic or teasing comment Brynn started to give him back one of her own, and by the end of the second week, the pair had even traded exchanges longer than single sentences.

  “The Belt-and-Buckle,” Juraviel said to her near the end of the third week after the goblin fight, when Brynn walked Diredusk up beside him. They stood atop a ridge that had sloped up gradually from the forest, but dropped off dramatically before them. Below, the forest spread wide and thick, and, far to the south, they could see the jagged outline of distant mountains.

  Far distant, and Juraviel was quick to dampen the brightened look that came over the woman. “Do not be deceived. The mountains of that range are more huge than anything you can imagine.”

  “I came through them once,” Brynn reminded. “And I walked their southern slopes.”

  “When you were a child, so many years ago that you hardly remember the truth of their scope.”

  “I saw them every day when I was a child, and from much closer than this vantage point!”

  “Indeed,” Juraviel replied. “Much, much closer. We can see them, and each day they will seem a little taller. But just a little, and by the time we actually reach them, they will tower so high above us that they will block out the sun itself. Our road is far from finished.”