He stopped suddenly as an arrow bored into his side. Then he got hit again, in the hip. He tried to leap away, tried to hold his focus, but he got hit again, the missile creasing his shoulder, and then he was falling, smashing through a bunch of chairs.
“Finish him!” he heard Yakim Douan yell, and it seemed to him suddenly as if the Chezru Chieftain was far, far away.
Blood ran from a dozen wounds and one of her eyes was closed from where a mace had slipped off her powrie shield and clipped her, but Brynn showed no signs of slowing as she ran along the wall, rousing her allies with cries for a free To-gai, and with her magnificent swordplay, with enemy after enemy falling to her flaming blade. So great was her reputation growing as she moved along the wall that the Behrenese shrank back from her wherever she appeared, with some even going back over the wall, outside of the city. That only made her furious charge even more effective, of course.
Down along the avenues, Agradeleous moved from gate to gate and wall to wall, bolstering the defenses with blasts of killing flame. At one point, the eastern wall was breached, with hundreds of Behrenese warriors swarming in, many heading to throw wide the gates so that their cavalry could overrun the courtyard.
Agradeleous alone stopped that attack, wading through lines of soldiers, taking and accepting punishing hits with the single-minded purpose of destroying those who meant to open the gates.
The gate held, and those Behrenese who had come over the wall were soon cut off, as Brynn solidified the defenses on the parapets and the dragon turned upon them along the streets.
All that day, the Behrenese came on and were pushed back, and when it ended, thousands more lay dead. But so did scores of To-gai-ru, and as the ring about Dharyan settled once more, Brynn was again hard-pressed to consider the event any kind of a victory.
Even worse, that same night, another garrison arrived from Jacintha, five thousand more warriors to replace the fallen.
Brynn could not look to the west for similar help, she knew.
The mystic lay on the floor, knowing that each passing second brought his enemies in closer. He reached into his life force, finding that line of power between his forehead and crotch, the center of his energy, his Chi. Then he blanked away the many pains, put them outside of his consciousness.
He heard the soldiers, two at least, standing over him, bending to finish him.
With a sudden burst of sheer power, the mystic swung over and sprang up, soaring into the air between his attackers, seeing three and not two.
He kicked out ahead, then left and right, landed lightly and sprang up again, lifting into the air before the one man who still stood there and the second, who was staggering but not down.
A kick left and right again had them both down, and Pagonel landed in perfect balance on the back of the nearest upright chair and began his run anew.
Another arrow clipped him, but he held his course stubbornly, working his way around the now-sheltered crowd of amazed Yatols.
“You must hear my words!” Pagonel shouted. “For your own sake and not my own! The Chezru Chieftain possesses a soul stone, an Abellican hematite! He lies of his course and of Transcendence, which is no more than—”
He stopped suddenly as a Chezhou-Lei warrior popped up before him and smashed him hard in the gut with the end of a thick staff.
“Transcendence is possession of an infant,” the mystic cried, falling away as he got smashed again, and then again as he lay helpless on the ground.
He felt hands grabbing him by the arms a few moments later, but could offer no more resistance as they stood him upright. He tried to talk again, and his efforts got him slugged hard in the stomach, and then across the face.
“Behold!” he heard the Chezru Chieftain yell. “We have before us the killer of Chezhou-Lei Dahmed Blie!”
“What of his words, God-Voice?” came a cry that sounded somewhat accusatory.
“The heathens have no other answer to the visions of Yatol!” Douan shouted immediately. “They seek to destroy us from the inside, since their feeble attempts to destroy us otherwise have miserably failed! And now this one is dead, and they have lost their ties to the Jhesta Tu. Yet another blow to the army of the pitiful Dragon of To-gai!”
Pagonel had no strength to argue as the cheers went up about Yakim Douan, so he fell within himself, trying again to gather his life energy, trying merely to keep some bit of consciousness.
He did hear the Chezhou-Lei warrior ask Yakim Douan if the prisoner should be hung publicly, or burned, and was not surprised when the Chezru Chieftain told his warrior to finish Pagonel then and there.
And the mystic couldn’t begin to stop the blow. He tried to open his eyes, wanting to look into the eyes of the man who would end his life.
“Wait!” came a cry from somewhere in the back. “Hold your weapons and your judgment!”
Pagonel did open his eyes then, to see Merwan Ma rushing down the long stairway behind Yakim Douan, a magnificently decorated chalice in his hand.
Yakim Douan worked very hard to keep his expression stoic as he watched the traitorous Shepherd rush down the stairs, bearing the damning chalice. It took him a moment to steady himself, to try to play through this potential disaster—and in that moment, Merwan Ma was not silent.
“He hides the stone—he has hidden the stone for centuries!” He reached into the bloody chalice and pulled forth the gemstone, then tossed the ceremonial cup aside. “In here!”
Gasps arose all around him, but Yakim Douan held his calm and motioned to the side, to a bank of archers.
“It is all a lie!” Merwan Ma cried. “Transcendence is a trick and no miracle.” He ended with the air blasted from his lungs, as arrow after arrow bored into him.
He was sitting then, though he knew not how, and knew not why, whispering, “A lie,” over and over again.
And then Yakim Douan was there before him, reaching down.
“God-Voice,” the confused and dying man gasped.
Douan pulled the hematite from him and walked away.
“How clever!” the Chezru Chieftain shouted. “Look at the conspiracy that our enemies have created about us! Give them credit, my friends.”
“Was that not Merwan Ma, your former attendant?” asked one of the visiting Yatols.
“It was,” answered Mado Wadon, who had served beside Merwan Ma for so many years.
“Obviously fallen traitor to us for the cause of our enemies,” said Douan.
“But he was murdered, in Dharyan!” cried another.
Yakim Douan held his smile and held his calm. This one wasn’t going to be easy to wriggle out of, he realized, but he knew that delay was on his side. Soon enough, reports of the fall of the Dragon of To-gai would flood in, and his people would be more receptive to whatever explanation he offered.
“It is a puzzling riddle,” he said. “But one that we will unravel, I assure you.”
“And what of the stone?” asked Mado Wadon.
Yakim Douan fixed the man, the Yatol who would obviously succeed him if not for Transcendence, with a hateful glower. “It is a gemstone, a hematite, I believe.”
“What the Abellicans call a soul stone,” another offered, suspicion evident in his voice.
“Why, of course,” said Douan. “Else their little ploy would have been for naught. I will summon Master Mackaront of Entel in the morning and present it to him.”
It pained Pagonel greatly to see Merwan Ma slump down on the stairs, so perfectly still that the mystic knew that his friend had died.
The warriors holding him had relaxed their grip as they, along with the Chezhou-Lei who was supposed to deliver the killing blow, stood and stared dumbfounded at the surprising events about them.
Pagonel weighed the reaction as much as he could. He heard the buzzing of the Yatols, recognized the doubt in their words and whispers, but he heard, too, the continuing assurances of Yakim Douan in a debate that was now one-sided.
He and Merwan Ma had done exactly
as they had intended, though, and for that, he was grateful. They had planted the seeds of doubt, and perhaps those would take root and grow, ending the reign of the tyrant Douan.
Pagonel had only one more thing to do.
He fell into himself again, gathering his energy, bringing every ounce of life force he could muster together in one collected ball, preparing for one burst.
He reached out tentatively, hoping that the Chezhou-Lei would continue to delay, would give him the moment he needed.
Then he felt the connection to the hematite held by Yakim Douan.
“I do give credit to our enemies for their clever ruse,” Douan was saying, laughing.
Pagonel grabbed his life energy together. He opened his eyes and with a sudden burst of movement, ran his arms in circles, then out, dislodging the two men holding him and shoving them aside.
The Chezhou-Lei warrior moved immediately, but so did the mystic, gathering his energy, then throwing his arms forward and sending that ball of power out across the way, reaching for the hematite, diving into its depths, flooding it with the pure power of Chi. Long Ago, the Jhesta Tu had learned the secrets of the gemstones, had come to know that the energy contained within the stones was the same basic energy as within their own Chi, the same energy that permeated all of the universe. The strength of any gemstone depended upon the amount of energy contained within, and the amount that any gemstone could hold was a finite thing.
Spent, Pagonel was already falling as the Chezhou-Lei’s staff whipped around, smashing him to the ground.
Across the way, the hematite blew apart, shards spraying back into surprised Yakim Douan, hurling him to the floor.
Cries erupted for the death of the mystic, but before the Chezhou-Lei could follow that course, Mado Wadon yelled at him to hold his strike and to drag the prisoner away to the dungeons.
Other guards were ordered to bear the wounded Douan away, as well, to a comfortable bed. The Chezru Chieftain, semiconscious, resisted them at first, scrambling desperately to find some piece of his precious soul stone, some chunk of the enchanted gem that would allow him access.
“God-Voice?” came a simple question, and he looked up to see Mado Wadon and several others, including Yatol De Hamman, staring down at him incredulously.
“It may explode again,” he said unconvincingly.
“Yes, God-Voice,” said Mado Wadon. “Go with the soldiers now. You are wounded, and we must ensure that Chom Deiru is now secure.”
Yakim Douan nodded repeatedly, trying to sort through it all, trying to find some line of deception that he might follow to minimize the risk. And, of course, he had to discern a way he could gather another soul stone. Olin would help him. Yes, and he could keep it secret through the next couple of years until things settled, until he had reestablished himself enough to chance Transcendence once more.
Of course, none of this would make any difference at all in forty or fifty years, when all the witnesses would be dead and buried, and Merwan Ma’s name would be long forgotten!
That fool Merwan Ma!
Soon after, the God-Voice of Behren was resting comfortably in a bed in Chom Deiru, guards securing his door. His wounds were not nearly as serious as feared, only minor cuts and bruises, and the first Yatols who had come in to see him had expressed great regret that such evil conspirators as Merwan Ma and the Jhesta Tu had ever gotten into the palace.
“Where is the Jhesta Tu?” Douan asked Mado Wadon.
“He is dead, God-Voice,” the Yatol replied. “As you commanded, though it would have given us all great pleasure to see him burned publicly before the palace.”
“Too dangerous,” Douan said.
“Of course, God-Voice,” Mado Wadon replied with a bow. “Rest now. The first reports of the battle at Dharyan are coming in.”
“The Dragon has fallen?” Douan asked, coming forward excitedly.
“Not yet, God-Voice,” the Yatol replied. “But soon. She has nowhere left to run.”
Yakim Douan rested back, comfortable in those thoughts.
For the third time, they attacked, and for the third time, they were repelled.
“You cannot continue to throw our warriors against the walls,” an angry Chezhou-Lei Shauntil dared to say to fuming Yatol Bardoh after that third retreat.
“Dharyan should have fallen long ago!” the Yatol declared.
“Agreed, but the city is fortified by the fires of a great dragon,” Shauntil reminded. “And we must never underestimate the strength of this woman. She is possessed of demons, my warriors say, and every breach is met with her fiery sword.”
Yatol Bardoh clenched his fist and slammed it down on the small table before him, knocking it to the floor. “I will have the city!” He looked up at Shauntil. “You deliver Dharyan to me, and soon!”
“If we continue to attack, and continue to be chased away, leaving hundreds dead behind us, you will find your ranks thinning by more than the dead, Yatol,” the Chezhou-Lei honestly reported.
“Are we to abandon Dharyan?” came the incredulous response.
“We can resupply. With her dragon downed—and it is downed, by all reports—she cannot.”
Yatol Bardoh’s expression went from anger to curiosity. “What are you saying?”
“Besiege her,” said Shauntil. “She cannot hope to break out. Without the walls and fortifications, her army would be crushed in short order. Besiege her. Let the Ru eat their horses!”
Yatol Bardoh gave a perfectly awful chuckle. “They would not like that.”
“Besiege her, that is my advice,” Shauntil said again. “Demand her unconditional surrender, then hang the witch and her commanders, destroy the dragon, and send the rest back to the steppes.”
Yatol Bardoh looked at the man doubtfully. “Or we say that is the condition of the acceptance of surrender,” the scheming man remarked. “And then, when she is dead and the dragon is destroyed, we put the remaining Ru on the road to the west. And there we kill them, every one.”
Shauntil, an honorable warrior, didn’t particularly like that plan, but neither did he question it. “I will see that the defenses are set to ward against any breakout,” he assured his master. “I will have the catapults rebuilt, that our bombardment may begin anew.”
“Every bit of their misery pleases me greatly,” was the Yatol’s response.
A lone rider approached Dharyan’s eastern gate soon after, declaring the city besieged, and calling for the unconditional surrender of the Dragon of To-gai.
Every To-gai-ru near to Brynn when she heard that call spat profanities back at the man, patting their brave leader on the shoulder and assuring her that they would die to the man and woman before they would ever allow her to surrender.
Brynn appreciated the support, truly, but she understood the reality of their grim situation. She looked around, wondering how long that support would hold, wondering how strong would be the determination when bellies began to growl with hunger.
Yatol Peridan, wearing a suspicious expression, met Yatol Mado Wadon coming out of the dungeon stairwell.
“You told the Chezru Chieftain that the Jhesta Tu was dead,” said Peridan.
“And so he is.”
“You just came from him. What deception …”
“You did not find his claims intriguing?”
Peridan stopped as if slapped, and nodded his concession. “The Chezru Chieftain explains it as a ruse, a clever one at that.”
“My uncle was a Yatol, here in Jacintha, many years ago,” said Mado Wadon. “Often did he tell me of the miracle of Transcendence, of the amazing blessed child who could recite so clearly the verses of Yatol’s teachings, who seemed to know, so instinctively, the present state of the kingdom.” He fixed Peridan with a telling stare. “As if with the wisdom of the ages.”
Peridan sank back.
“More Yatols have come in?” Mado Wadon asked.
“As you requested,” said Peridan.
The Yatol of Chom Deiru nod
ded.
Later the next day, Mado Wadon met with the visiting Yatols, laying bare his suspicions and reminding them that none of this made any sense along any other lines of reasoning, especially with the cries of Merwan Ma. The man had been appointed governor of Dharyan, after all, and had been subsequently reported murdered by a To-gai-ru slave. With so much glory and honor lauded upon him, how or why would he ever go over to an obviously losing side?
Mado Wadon had spoken with Pagonel that morning, had heard the story, one that made much more logical sense, in depth.
After the brief meeting, Mado Wadon led all of those visiting Yatols, twenty-three in number, into the bedchamber where Yakim Douan was fast recovering.
“The Dragon?” Douan asked immediately.
“Yatol Bardoh continues his battle,” Yatol De Hamman replied from the side.
“I have brought the chalice, God-Voice,” Mado Wadon explained. “The interruption of ceremony is unprecedented, but we believe that all can be put in order.”
“That is good,” said Douan. “Thoroughly cleanse the chalice, that the stains of the Abellican gemstone placed within by the treacherous Merwan Ma be washed away.”
“Of course, God-Voice. It has already been done.”
“Consult the scholars, then, and determine the proper rituals for renewing the once-tainted chalice.”
“Yes, God-Voice,” said Mado Wadon, perfectly calm and in control. “But that is why we have come to you.”
Yakim Douan looked at him curiously.
“Were you not the one who initiated the ceremony of the chalice in the Room of Forever?”
Yakim Douan returned a puzzled look, but one that fast turned grave. “What foolishness is this?” he asked, catching on. “The ceremony was determined centuries ago …” He stopped then, his eyes going wide as Mado Wadon produced the other part of the ritual gear, a sharp, ceremonial knife.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 174
