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

by R. A. Salvatore

  The stirring words seemed to bolster Fio Bou-raiy and all the others in the room.

  “You say that De’Unnero and Duke Kalas are marching north from Ursal toward Palmaris,” the Father Abbot prompted.

  “The last report I heard, before Captain Al’u’met sailed me out of the Masur Delaval, was that they had advanced halfway up the river to Palmaris,” Viscenti explained. “They are absorbing all the countryside as they proclaim the new King Aydrian. There have been some skirmishes, but nothing of any note, for the people have no rallying call denouncing this treacherous usurper. It is likely that Prince Midalis in Vanguard has not even learned yet of the death of his brother and his nephew Merwick, nor that his other nephew, the only other person in the royal line, is missing. Captain Al’u’met sails even now for Vanguard, but it will be weeks, months perhaps, before Midalis can muster any reasonable response. Until then, King Aydrian, with the legions of Ursal and Entel behind him, stands unopposed among the unwitting populace.”

  Fio Bou-raiy folded his fingers before him in a pensive pose and spent a long time digesting the words. “Then we must inform the people,” he decided. “Then we must hold out against this treachery and rally the resistance against phony King Aydrian until Prince Midalis arrives.”

  “Thousands will die,” Master Donegal remarked.

  It wasn’t really Viscenti’s place to speak, for the remark had been directed to Fio Bou-raiy, but he among all the others held the weight of his previous actions and not just his convictions to answer, “Some things are worth dying for, brother.”

  Father Abbot Fio Bou-raiy sat up straighter and gave an appreciative nod to Viscenti. “You must return with all speed to St. Precious,” he instructed the nervous master. “Tell Bishop Braumin that he must lock down Palmaris against this army. If Aydrian declares himself as king, then the army he commands is not the army of Honce-the-Bear, is not the army of the Ursal line, and must not be given admittance to a city loyal to that line.”

  Strong words, Master Viscenti knew, especially coming from the man who had the most to lose, and who was secure in what was arguably the most fortified bastion in all the world. But Viscenti didn’t disagree with the reasoning. Some things were indeed worth dying for, and worth asking others to die for.

  “Dispatch official emissaries to every abbey outside of Ursal, even to St. Rontlemore,” Fio Bou-raiy instructed Master Donegal, referring to the second abbey of Olin’s hometown of Entel, a place that had long been under the shadow of the more prestigious St. Bondabruce and powerful Abbot Olin. “Let none forget the truth of Marcalo De’Unnero, and let none misinterpret the actions of Abbot Olin here as anything other than treachery and blasphemy.”

  “Do we know for certain that Abbot Olin will not approach us civilly and with explanation?” Abbot Glendenhook dared to ask.

  “He has overstepped his boundaries here, and there is little he could say to convince me not to excommunicate him,” Fio Bou-raiy declared flatly, and that brought more astonished and nervous gasps, and more than a few concurring grunts.

  Master Viscenti was among those concurring, and he dipped a low bow and begged his leave.

  “Our wagons are at your disposal to return you to the Masur Delaval,” Fio Bou-raiy told him, and Viscenti left at once, determined to stand beside Bishop Braumin when the darkness fell, a darkness that he couldn’t help but believe would be the end of the world as he knew it.

  Duke Bretherford sat on the edge of his cot in his private room on River Palace, leaning forward and rubbing his hands repeatedly over his grizzled face. He heard the stirring on the deck outside of his room and saw the light around the edges of his dark curtains and supposed that it must be morning.

  Another night had passed him by with only fitful short periods of sleep. It had been that way since he had returned to Ursal, rushing in upon hearing the news of Danube’s untimely death.

  His whole world had changed, so quickly, and Bretherford couldn’t sort through it. He spent hours tossing and turning, trying to find a place of acceptance, as had Kalas and so many of the other Ursal noblemen, but he had found no answers. He wished that he had been there on that fateful day, to witness the events. Perhaps then he might be more willing to embrace this young king and the promises the other nobles were whispering. Perhaps then he might be able to place Prince Midalis in a different light. Perhaps then …

  Bretherford looked over at the small table set beside his bed, at the nearly empty bottle and the glass beside it.

  He brought that glass in close, swirling it around, getting lost in the golden tan liquid.

  Then he swallowed the whiskey in one gulp and moved to pour another, but a knock on his door stopped him short.

  “What’d’ye want?” the tired man called.

  How he changed his tone and his demeanor when the door pushed open and King Aydrian walked in!

  “My King,” Bretherford blurted before he could even consider the words. He scrambled about and ran a hand through his thin hair. “I am not ready to receive—”

  “Be at ease, my good duke,” said Aydrian, and he stepped in and closed the door behind him. “I desire no protocol here. I have come to ask a favor.”

  Bretherford stared at him dumbfounded. The king of Honce-the-Bear asking a favor?

  “This has all come so quickly,” Aydrian remarked, and he saw himself to a chair across from Bretherford’s bed, and waved for Bretherford to remain seated when the man finally composed himself enough to try to stand and salute.

  “You know that Abbot Olin has departed for Entel?” Aydrian asked.

  “I suspect that he is well on his way, yes.”

  “Do you know where he will go from there?”

  “Jacintha,” said Bretherford, and Aydrian nodded.

  “This is a dangerous mission,” said the young king. “The Behrenese are not to be taken lightly. They present potentially formidable opposition, though I know that Honce-the-Bear will never again see as clear an opportunity as we have right now to strengthen our ties to our southern neighbor.”

  To conquer her, you mean, Bretherford thought, but he kept his face expressionless.

  “Abbot Olin has a great fleet at his command, but he must coordinate its movements with the movements of a land army, as well,” Aydrian explained. “It will be a daunting task, I fear, and with my attention now so obviously needed along the Masur Delaval, Abbot Olin will find little support from Ursal.”

  Duke Bretherford couldn’t help but narrow his eyes with suspicion.

  “Of course, the fleet at Abbot Olin’s command is not—how shall I say this delicately?—conventional.”

  “Pirates and vagabonds,” Bretherford dared to say. “The same dogs I have chased along the southern stretches of our coastline for years.”

  “Better to harness the dogs, eh?” Aydrian asked.

  Bretherford was hardly convinced of that, and so he didn’t reply.

  “Better if I could spare the Ursal fleet, I agree,” Aydrian remarked. “But Palmaris may not be so welcoming, and then there is the not-so-little matter of St.-Mere-Abelle, and Pireth Tulme, Pireth Dancard, and Pireth Vanguard after that.”

  “It is ambitious,” Bretherford remarked, hoping that the sarcasm in his voice would not be so evident as to have Aydrian execute him.

  “It is necessary,” Aydrian corrected. “As is our pursuit of the heart of Behren, at this time. And it is attainable—all of it! But I fear that I may have distributed the able leaders at my command errantly here—of course, I had little knowledge of the dukes and commanders before decisions had to be made.”

  “You wish me to sail to Entel?” Bretherford asked skeptically.

  “I cannot spare the ships it would require for you to safely make such a journey,” Aydrian explained. “I wish you to ride to Entel.”

  “To what end?” Bretherford asked, and he rose from the bed, holding his arms out wide. “If the fleet remains on the Masur Delaval, then what am I to do …”

&nbs
p; “Abbot Olin has warships of his own,” Aydrian explained. “I need you there, my good duke. I need you to go and join with Abbot Olin, to take command of his seagoing operations. The delicacy of this situation cannot be overstated, and as such, I need the most experienced commanders I can find supporting Abbot Olin.”

  Duke Bretherford could hardly spit out a response. King Aydrian was saying it so cleverly, but what he was really doing here was placing Bretherford out of the main picture and off to the side.

  “My King,” the duke finally replied, “you speak of Abbot Olin’s fleet, but in truth they are but a ragtag group of opportunists.”

  “And so your work in controlling them to Abbot Olin’s needs will be no easy task,” Aydrian was quick to reply. “But I have all faith in you, Duke Bretherford. Duke Kalas assures me that there is no more able man in all the kingdom at handling the movements of a fleet. The lives of ten thousand of Honce-the-Bear’s soldiers will rest squarely on your shoulders, to say nothing of the overall designs concerning Behren. If Abbot Olin’s mission proves unsuccessful, then we can expect those Behrenese pirates to use the turmoil within Honce-the-Bear to strike the coast from Entel all the way up the Mantis Arm.”

  It made perfect sense, of course, and that was the beauty of the plan, Bretherford knew. Bretherford realized that this was not about Olin, for if Aydrian was truly afraid of the potential consequences concerning Jacintha and Behren, he would have merely held the greedy abbot in check and waited until Honce-the-Bear was fully secured before turning his sights to the south. No, this was about getting Bretherford out of the way and far from Prince Midalis, the duke knew. Aydrian had Kalas securely in his court, and that meant the Allhearts, and they meant the Ursal garrison and the majority of the Kingsmen, and perhaps even the Coastpoint Guards of the southern mainland. But the fleet, like the waters they sailed, were more fluid in all of this, and Aydrian understood that the duke of the Mirianic could bring a powerful allying force to Prince Midalis as easily as Duke Kalas had brought the ground forces to Aydrian!

  And so however Aydrian might parse his reasoning, the truth of it was that Bretherford was being shuffled out of the way, and away from the main body of Honce-the-Bear’s great navy.

  The duke was somewhat surprised as the truth unfolded in his thoughts. Why hadn’t Aydrian just dismissed him, perhaps even had him murdered? Why this pretense of more important duties?

  As he came to understand, Bretherford’s estimate of young Aydrian as a tactician heightened considerably. The duke was on the fence concerning the disposition of the kingdom, and Aydrian saw that clearly. And so the young king was putting him into a position where his skills would serve Aydrian well. Aydrian feared him, Bretherford knew—feared that he would take the fleet and hand it over to Midalis. But no such fears would accompany the duke of the Mirianic to Entel, especially when the great bulk of his command would be left behind.

  “Your estimate of my understanding of the Behrenese might be exaggerated,” Bretherford started to say, trying to wriggle out of this.

  “You are the man who will escort Abbot Olin by sea to Jacintha,” Aydrian said firmly. “You will coordinate the movements of his naval assets along the Behrenese coast and provide him with the plans for transporting soldiers from Entel to Jacintha, or to whatever other coastal city Abbot Olin chooses.”

  “You propose to place a duke under the command of an abbot?”

  “I have just done so,” Aydrian corrected, his tone firm. He had come in pretending to ask a favor, but now he was obviously issuing an order. “You serve the throne, do you not?”

  His pause and expression told Bretherford that Aydrian was not going to let that seemingly rhetorical question pass by without a direct answer.

  “I have served Honce-the-Bear for all of my life.”

  Aydrian grinned. “And you continue to serve the throne of Honce-the-Bear?”

  Bretherford didn’t blink as he stared at the young king.

  “The throne now claimed by Aydrian Boudabras?” Aydrian clarified, so that there could be no irony, no double meaning, in the demanded answer.

  “I serve the throne of Ursal,” said Bretherford.

  “The voice of that throne in Jacintha will soon be Abbot Olin,” Aydrian told him. “Abbot Olin travels to Behren at my request and as my emissary. The fact that he is an Abellican abbot is of no consequence. He serves me at this time, and you will answer to him.”

  Bretherford wanted to respond to that, wanted to remark something along the lines that Duke Kalas might not be so thrilled to hear of these unexpected developments, but Aydrian’s expression told him clearly that there was no room for debate here. The young king hadn’t come in to ask anything. He had come in to push Bretherford out of the way.

  The duke supposed that he should be grateful that Aydrian had seen this way out, and had not merely ordered him thrown into a dungeon, or quietly beheaded.

  But still …

  Chapter 5

  Adrift

  IT WASN’T OFTEN THAT A JHESTA TU MYSTIC WOULD BE WELL RECEIVED IN CHOM Deiru, for the Yatols of Behren had spent centuries condemning the Jhesta Tu as heretics and demon worshipers. The mystics were particularly disliked by the Chezhou-lei, the Behrenese corps of elite warriors, who considered them as rivals.

  When Pagonel arrived at the gates of the Chezru palace, dressed in his telltale robes, the initial reaction to him was consistent with those notions. The two warriors standing guard outside the great doors of the building stared at him wide-eyed and mouths agape, and after recovering from the initial shock, both dropped their spear tips level with the mystic’s chest.

  “Peace,” Pagonel said to them, holding his empty palms up in a nonthreatening manner. “I am Pagonel, who is well-known to Yatol Mado Wadon. I am he who traveled to Dharyan on behalf of your Yatols upon the death of Yakim Douan. I am he who represented the wishes of the Yatols to the Dragon of To-gai, thus ending the war.”

  As he spoke, the spears gradually eased to the side and down, and when he finished, one of the guards nodded to the other, who fast disappeared into the palace.

  A few moments later, Pagonel was ushered through the doors, and though more guards surrounded him and a few shot threatening glances his way, the mystic understood that he had done well in coming here, that he would indeed get his desired audience with Yatol Mado Wadon.

  They escorted him into a small waiting room and left him there, and he heard the door lock behind them as they departed.

  Pagonel put his back up against the wall opposite the door, sank down into a low and comfortable crouch, and waited. The minutes turned to an hour, and still he waited, digesting all that he had seen on his journey from the west, replaying all of the events and conversations in an attempt to understand better the depth of the situation in this tumultuous land.

  Finally, the door opened, and Pagonel was surprised to see that it was Mado Wadon himself who entered. The man was quite old, with hair thinning to wisps of nothingness and heavy drooping lids half-hiding his dull eyes. He moved his withered little frame into the room just a step, then turned and motioned for Pagonel to follow. The Yatol said nothing as he walked with Pagonel in tow through the arching corridors of Chom Deiru, past the great artworks of the Chezru religion, the tile mosaics along the wall depicting the great struggles within the Behrenese church and culture.

  How meaningless many of those murals now appeared to Pagonel, given the revelations of the previous Chezru Chieftain! The actions of Yakim Douan, using the soul stone to steal the bodies from unborn babies so that he could live on in a new corporal mantle, mocked the murals depicting the Abellicans of the north as heretics for using those same stones. The great deception of Yakim Douan laid waste to the many Chezru images of glorious Transcendence, the process that the Chezru had considered as a passage of knowledge, the incarnation of a new God-Voice to be found among the children of Behren. Only in walking these halls now, in looking at the murals that formed the core of Chezru beliefs, did P
agonel truly appreciate how profound an effect the deceptions of Yakim Douan had had on this land. The very core of Chezru had been shattered.

  What emptiness must now follow?

  They went into a small private room, with two chairs set before a glowing hearth and food and drink already put out on a table between them.

  “You have come with word from Brynn Dharielle,” Yatol Mado Wadon remarked before Pagonel had even sat down. His voice sounded as old as the wrinkled man looked, and as weary, cracking slightly on nearly every syllable.

  “I have come hoping to receive word from you that I might relay to her,” the mystic replied. “My road to the south showed me growing problems within your kingdom, Yatol.”

  “Yatol Bardoh has not been among those sending their well-wishes,” Yatol Wadon said dryly. “He left the field of Dharyan—”

  “Dharyan-Dharielle,” Pagonel corrected.

  “Dharyan-Dharielle,” Yatol Wadon agreed. “He left the field with a great host of soldiers at his disposal, and with all of them knowing only that great tumult had come to Jacintha. They are uncertain, and in such a state, they are likely open to the suggestions of Yatol Tohen Bardoh.”

  “Suggestions that you suspect will not be in favor of the present situation in Jacintha, nor the present leadership,” the mystic reasoned.

  “Tohen Bardoh has ever been an ambitious man.”

  “As we have discussed before, to a degree,” Pagonel remarked. “Your agreement of a joint, open city under the command of Brynn Dharielle was based primarily on these very fears, was it not?”

  “And now I pray that your friend the Dragon does not disappoint me. It is in the interest of Brynn Dharielle and of To-gai that the present leadership in Jacintha overcome any threat by Tohen Bardoh. If Behren is united under him, he will not tolerate the addition of Dharielle to the name of the city Dharyan. He opposed the end of the siege of the city, vehemently so. You know this as well as I.”