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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “God-Voice, please do not believe that I am a doubter,” Yatol Bohl said, holding his hands out wide, assuming a posture of perfect innocence.

  Yakim Douan just smiled at the pose. He knew exactly that, of course, that Bohl and all the others, except for those most pious, like the poor fool Merwan Ma, held grave doubts about the Transcendence, the mystical hand-off of power to the next Chezru Chieftain. Of course they did—how could they not? For someone to believe that a baby, an infant, would arise speaking fluently and knowing all the secrets of their culture’s wisest priests was a stretch, certainly, a test of faith against logic, of belief against experience.

  How well Yakim Douan could sympathize with those doubts! He remembered that time, so many hundreds of years before, when he had first learned of the Transcendence. Things were done very differently back then, for it was not the Chezru Chieftain delivering a speech such as this one. No, the Chezru Chieftain would die, often unexpectedly, and then the leaders of the Chezru religion would initiate the search.

  Yakim Douan, a young Yatol, had been just a bit older than Bohl was now when he had participated in that search those centuries ago. He remembered how full of eagerness, full of great joy he had been at the thought that he was about to witness a miracle, a confirmation of his faith that every man so desires, whether he admits it or not. They had discovered the blessed infant soon after, and full of anticipation and the expectation of extreme joy, Yakim Douan had gone in to witness the miracle child.

  And he had found a baby. Not a blessed baby, not a miracle child speaking the words of Yatol, but a normal baby.

  The leaders of Chezru, their names lost to him now, had told him and the other Yatols of the “miracles” they had witnessed the child perform, of the words they had heard this goo-gooing infant speaking. Many of the other Yatols had taken those proclamations as proof enough that this was indeed the miracle child, the new God-Voice of Yatol.

  But Yakim Douan had known better. He had understood instinctively that this baby was nothing more than a pawn, through which the leaders of the Yatol priests could spend the rest of their days in control of the religion, and thus, of all Behren.

  He knew.

  And so he understood the doubts and the fears that Yatols such as Bohl must now be feeling in this time of approaching crisis. If Yakim could only hand them enough teasing to hold them in check until after the birth, until they saw proof positive that their faith was not misplaced, that the selected child was indeed the God-Voice, then men like Bohl could become very valuable allies to the next incarnation.

  “When I was chosen, I knew as much about the truth of Yatol as I do now,” he told them all. “I could recite the Verses of Propriety as well as I can now …” He gave a little laugh. “No, better, for then my physical body had not begun to fail me, my memory did not lapse as it sometimes does now.”

  The gathering of ten Yatols all chuckled at the Chezru Chieftain’s uncharacteristic comedy—all except for Yatol Bohl, who sat staring hard at Douan, obviously taking a careful measure of the man.

  Yakim resisted the temptation to call him on that look, and merely smiled disarmingly in response.

  “You are human, reasoning beings, and so you hold your doubts,” he said, and there came a chorus of denials, to which Yakim merely looked away and held up his hands. “It is the expected response, my children, for you cannot make logical sense of faith. Who here has seen the paradise of the afterlife?” He paused and let the gathered Yatols all look to each other questioningly. “Nay, you cannot see the spirit or hear the spirit. For you in your current state of existence, only the empty and lifeless corpse remains, and logic would tell you, then, that death is the end of consciousness.

  “I know better, and I tell you that this Transcendence will show you, too, that there is more to this existence than what our physical senses can show us. When you look upon the reincarnated God-Voice, when you hear him speak the words of Truth, you will know and you will be content.

  “Fear not for those doubts you now harbor,” Yakim went on, trying to hold that fierce edge of passion in his voice, trying not to lapse into the simple recitation of this, a speech he had spoken many times over the centuries. “Fear not that you will be disappointed, and fear not that your doubts somehow mark you as less than true to Yatol. You are supposed to question and supposed to doubt! Else, how will you be certain that you have selected the correct child? Question and doubt everything! When you find the new God-Voice, your questions will catch in your throats and your doubts will vanish so completely that you will be befuddled as to how you ever held them. And then you will know true peace, my children, for then you will understand the truth of your faith. To witness a miracle is to ease the fear of dying itself. Look upon those few living Yatols who remember the last Transcendence! See the contentment in their old eyes, my children, and take heart that you, too, will know that supreme comfort.”

  It was true enough. Only three Yatols remained alive who remembered the last Transcendence, when Yakim Douan had been identified as the next God-Voice of Yatol, and those three were considered among the happiest of all the Yatol priests. Happy because they had seen a miracle and knew that heaven awaited them. Happy because they understood the value of their lives in service to Yatol.

  Happy because Yakim Douan had ultimately deceived them.

  When the gathering dispersed a short while later, most of the Yatols left the audience chamber grinning and speaking excitedly about the coming Transcendence. Two notable exceptions caught Yakim Douan’s eye and attention as he watched the departing flock. Merwan Ma sat at the side of the stage, in the shadows, staring at him with a long look upon his face. The man was deeply troubled by Yakim’s expected and hoped-for death, the Chezru Chieftain knew, and was deeply troubled by his own inability to accept that reality, to brush aside his logical fears of mortality and logical sadness at losing a man he considered as mentor and friend.

  His posture and his fears did not bother Yakim Douan, though, for he knew that Merwan Ma would rejoice when the God-Voice was discovered. The Chezru Chieftain decided then and there that when they found him, one of his first spoken revelations would be to tell poor Merwan Ma that Yakim Douan was still with him, looking over him and taking pride that his student was performing his ultimately important duties so very well.

  The second exception to the common joy troubled Yakim Douan much more, though, for Yatol Bohl left the chamber neither smiling nor chatting excitedly. His face was stern and locked into an expression of deepest reflection.

  That one could prove to be dangerous, Yakim Douan knew. He was young and strong and eager and impatient. And he was ambitious—too much so, perhaps, to sublimate himself to a mere child. The one true concern that had followed Yakim Douan through his centuries of power was the weakness of true spirituality in the face of human emotions. A Yatol priest, for all of his piousness, even heroics, in the eyes of the church, could only ascend so far, could never be greater than the second rank of the hierarchy. Certainly if Bohl witnessed the selected child, the God-Voice who could tell him of the Yatol tenets and codes as well as any scholar priest, then he would be convinced and would put aside his earthly ambitions and human weaknesses.

  But would Yatol Bohl show enough patience? Would he wait the nearly two years it would take after Yakim Douan’s death to even find the new Chezru? Or was he plotting a more direct route to install a new leader of Yatol?

  Yakim Douan smiled knowingly. The same magic that allowed the deception of Transcendence would soon provide him with practical information.

  “We are to wait years to be disappointed?” Yatol Bohl asked his guest, Yatol Thei’a’hu, incredulously. “Surely you cannot believe this chatter of a speaking infant!”

  “Chezru Chieftain Douan has asked us to trust in our faith, and what is faith without trust?” replied the other Yatol, older than Bohl by more than a decade and seeming worn and thin, with sleepy eyes and a badly balding head, and a jaw that constantly tremble
d from a disease he had contracted many years before. “Are we to believe in the miracle of Paradise if we cannot hold faith in this relatively minor miracle?”

  “Minor?” Bohl echoed with the same unyielding skepticism. “An infant is to recite the tenets of Yatol? An infant? Have you even known an infant to speak in a complete sentence, Yatol, let alone in any manner that makes sense?”

  “Minor,” Yatol Thei’a’hu insisted. “If Yatol can fashion Paradise, if Yatol can transcend death, then how can you doubt this?”

  Bohl settled back on his comfortable seat, a relatively shapeless stuffed bag, and took a deep draw on the hose extending from a watery tube beside him. “And yet, you doubt it, too, for all of your reasoning now. Else, friend, why are you here?”

  Yatol Thei’a’hu similarly sat back on his shapeless chair, staring at his counterpart. Bohl’s words were true enough, he had to admit to himself. His feelings toward this impending Transcendence were not positive at all, and his expression and posture showed that clearly. In truth, Thei’a’hu had never been overly fond of Yakim Douan, and had often privately disagreed with the man. While he accepted the Chezru Chieftain’s unchallenged leadership and obeyed Douan’s commands to the letter, Douan had made several very damaging decisions concerning Yatol Thei’a’hu’s province of Eh’thu, located two weeks to the south and west of Jacintha. Ten years before, Douan had clipped off the northernmost stretch of Thei’a’hu’s province and given it to Yatol Presh, who rode with the nomads of Tossionas Desert, in an effort to settle the often-troublesome nomadic warriors. That ploy had hardly worked, for the Tossionas nomads were causing as much grief as ever, and yet, that redrawing of province lines had cost Thei’a’hu an important oasis. For all of his faith, Yatol Thei’a’hu could hardly believe that Douan’s decision had been god-inspired—how could Yatol have made such an obvious mistake? That was the most grievous example, but there were others, always gnawing at the reasonable Thei’a’hu’s logic.

  “For centuries, we have followed the Transcendence of Yatol,” Thei’a’hu said. “When the Chezru dies, the search begins for the next God-Voice, and that God-Voice will be identified through the miracle of premature knowledge and voice. That is our way, and so Chezru Douan prepares us now for the next Transcendence. What would you have us do, Yatol Bohl? Are we to seize the title for ourselves? Do you believe that the other two hundred Yatols of Behren will accept a religious coup?”

  “I have suggested no such thing!” Bohl sputtered in reply.

  “Then what?”

  “We must be aware and alert,” the fiery young Yatol insisted. “We must insinuate ourselves into the process of the search, to find a child who will be sympathetic to our needs.”

  “You believe that you can know such a thing about an infant? You believe that you can find a child who will be acceptable to the other Yatols, if this child is not speaking as Chezru Douan has told us?”

  “Do you believe that there will be such a child, a clear-cut God-Voice speaking the tenets as fluently as our present Chezru Chieftain?”

  Thei’a’hu settled back even farther at the continuing blunt, bordering on heretical, declarations of Yatol Bohl. That was it, was it not? Either they believed that such a creature would be born into their midst, literally as Chezru Douan had said, or they did not. And if they did not, then perhaps they would do well to find a child whose mother would favor Bohl and Thei’a’hu.

  “My friend, if such a child is found, then perhaps we should abandon our selection and fall in line with the others,” Bohl went on. “And if not, then what have we lost?”

  “If we find a bright child to elevate, there remains the problem of Chezru Douan’s choice of Shepherd Merwan Ma as tutor and mentor for the child,” Yatol Thei’a’hu reminded. “Merwan Ma above all others will help to shape the next Chezru, and he is likely of similar mind and heart as Douan, else he would not have been chosen. That heart is not sympathetic for Eh’thu, I am sure.”

  “Merwan Ma is insignificant,” Yatol Bohl insisted. “He will be a minor player in the future of Yatol.”

  “Not according to Chezru Douan.”

  “Who will be dead and buried,” the other reminded.

  Yatol Thei’a’hu narrowed his sleepy eyes at the obvious threat, for Bohl’s tone made it quite clear that he believed he could have Merwan Ma eliminated, if the need arose, and that he would not hesitate to do so.

  Yakim Douan watched it all with a considerable amount of amusement—for he, too, was in that quiet room in the luxurious northern quarter of Jacintha. Not physically. Physically, Yakim Douan was in Chom Deiru, the Chezru palace in Jacintha, in his meditation room, where none would dare disturb his private communion with Yatol. Little did they know that his true communion on that day, as on many, was with a certain hematite, a magical soul stone. Using that magic, Yakim walked out of his body, his spirit silently making its way along the streets, following troublesome Yatol Bohl to his temporary quarters in the city.

  How convenient that Bohl had chosen that very day, the same day as the speech of Transcendence, to further his nefarious plotting with Yatol Thei’a’hu.

  It saddened Yakim Douan to learn that Thei’a’hu was in on Bohl’s growing conspiracy. He had always been rather fond of the man, and though he knew that Thei’a’hu harbored some resentment about the loss of his northern reaches, Yakim hadn’t imagined that his decision had put the man so far into Bohl’s dangerous court.

  Bohl’s last statement, though, hinting at eliminating Merwan Ma, had not surprised Yakim Douan in the least. He understood Bohl well, had over the centuries seen many men of similar impatience and weakened faith. Indeed, Yakim Douan was one of them!

  How could he not sympathize with Bohl? The man, who obviously wasn’t sold on the specific concept of Yatol Paradise, was merely being pragmatic, much as the disillusioned Yakim Douan had acted pragmatically those centuries before when he had discovered his own secret to immortality, one that made logical sense to him.

  If he had a body about him at that moment, Yakim Douan would have issued a revealing sigh. In looking at Bohl, so much a younger version of his own first incarnation, Yakim Douan considered, and not for the first time, not even for the hundredth time, that he had the power to offer true immortality to others, a select few, perhaps, friends and lovers who could coast through the centuries beside him. His was not necessarily a lonely existence, for in each incarnation as God-Voice, he was able to surround himself with friends, and certainly the Chezru Chieftain had little trouble in finding the carnal companionship of many, many women.

  But what might it be like to walk the centuries with another? With Bohl, perhaps, or Merwan Ma?

  It was a passing thought, as always. For taking such a course would surely invite great risk. A companion who knew the truth of the hematite and Transcendence might speak out to a friend, or might allow himself to fall in love and wish to take yet another on the century-walking journey. Or even worse, a companion might harbor ambitions to become the God-Voice, threatening a position that Yakim Douan did not wish to relinquish.

  For who but a pragmatic, not overly spiritual man might Yakim Douan convince to follow him on his eternal journey. Only a man like young Yakim, or like Bohl, a man who harbored innermost doubts about Yatol, would desire this journey, and a man such as that, Yakim Douan knew firsthand, could not truly be trusted. A man without the true belief in Paradise, and thus, without the true fear of Yatol, was a man who desired to make Paradise his own in this life.

  Whatever the cost.

  His body would have sighed again had it been there, as Yakim Douan realized what he now had to do to eliminate this latest threat, to eliminate Yatol Bohl.

  And yes, he realized, Yatol Thei’a’hu, as well.

  How might he do that without causing a major disruption in all the church, a ripple that would shake the groundwork he had struggled so hard to put in place? If it was but one man, one caravan, he could order his Chezhou-Lei warriors out, disguised as b
andits. Even if the great warriors were recognized by any survivors of that caravan for who they were, no one would believe mere escorts. But two Yatol priests and two caravans?

  It would have to be orchestrated carefully and over time.

  Over time. Yakim Douan was biting his lip in frustration even as he reentered his corporeal form back in the palace. He did not want to delay the resolution to this newest problem, did not want to spend the next weeks—even months, perhaps—in executing the deserving Yatols, then waiting for the results to shake out.

  “But how might …” he started to say, but he stopped short, his lips curling into a wicked grin.

  He went right back out in spiritual form, leaping through the hematite portal, then soaring across the city to the house occupied by Yatol Thei’a’hu. He found the man lying in a bath, surrounded by pretty, scantily clad young attendants, both male and female. Yakim considered the scene with both pity and amusement. It was common knowledge that Thei’a’hu had lost his ability to perform sexually, and so it had been rumored that the man took his pleasures vicariously.

  Pitiful wretch.

  Ignoring those standing about the Yatol, Yakim Douan’s spirit soared right to the reclining man, and right into the reclining man.

  Yatol Thei’a’hu’s eyes popped open wide and he let out a shriek that turned all heads in the room his way. Some of those onlookers started to approach him, but then they all backed off, eyes wide with shock, as Thei’a’hu thrashed about in his tub, splashing soapy water all about the room.

  His mouth opened and twisted as if he was trying to spout out some words, some cry for help, and indeed he was.

  But he had no control. For Yakim Douan was in there with him, two spirits, two wills, fighting for control over one body. Muscles knotted and twisted from contrasting signals. Eyes bulged and Thei’a’hu’s mouth continued to twist and snap, biting into his lip and tongue.