“I should go with you,” De’Unnero said, and Aydrian was shaking his head before the predictable words ever came forth.
“Our hold on St. Precious is not so strong, and converting the brothers will prove far more valuable than merely eliminating them.”
“Then wait until the spring, or until the next season, when the kingdom is secured.”
“You believe that Dasslerond will not involve herself in our conquest? You do not understand her hatred of me, and her fear. She knows that I will come for her, as the monks of St.-Mere-Abelle know that the wrongs they perpetrated upon Marcalo De’Unnero will lead you back to them, at the head of an army mighty enough to topple them. If we wait for Dasslerond, she will become many times more dangerous to us.”
“The winter in the Wilderlands will be difficult for so large a force.”
“That is why I choose not to take twenty thousand,” said Aydrian. “I have the full measure of Andur’Blough Inninness and Lady Dasslerond. Four hundred will suffice.
“I will return to you within three months’ time,” Aydrian went on when it seemed as if De’Unnero had run out of doubts to express. “And the threat to the west will be no more. If Duke Kalas is successful in his march across the southland, we will be well on our way. Then we might focus more fully on the march of Midalis, and when that inconvenience is eliminated, we will turn our attention to the greatest prize of all.”
“While Abbot Olin continues his conquest of Behren,” De’Unnero replied. “While our new commanders in Vanguard—the eager DePaunch, perhaps—draw up battle plans for the conquest of Alpinador. What then, my former student? Do we sail to the Weathered Isles and conquer the powries, as well?”
It was meant sarcastically, but Aydrian gave a look to show that the possibility did intrigue him.
“But let us not forget about Brynn Dharielle, this ‘Dragon of To-gai’ who sent Behren into such turmoil,” De’Unnero went on undaunted.
“What is your point?” Aydrian asked, all signs of his previous amusement flown.
“Take care that we do not stretch too far, else more than you believe will slip through your widespread fingers,” De’Unnero warned. “You have made many enemies out there, more formidable than you apparently believe.”
“Or perhaps you merely underestimate Aydrian,” the young king said.
“It always comes back to that.”
Aydrian smiled.
“And if you are killed in the Wilderlands?” the monk asked. “What then for all of us?”
“There is no return for the noblemen and the Allhearts,” Aydrian was quick to answer. “They have taken an open stand against Midalis, and so if they are to hold their coveted power, the prince cannot rise as king. There is no stepping back from this war. I will not be killed, but if that were to come to pass, then the gain to Marcalo De’Unnero would be even greater. You would win the war without me, of course, and then how much stronger would your Church become when the kingdom is truly leaderless? Duke Kalas will be appointed as Steward of the State, no doubt, but a steward is not a king.”
De’Unnero was tapping his fingers before his face by then, his every movement showing that he was not about to disagree.
“So take heart, my friend, and hold faith in your”—he paused to flash a smile—“former student.”
Chapter 20
The Heart to Fight
THE NIGHT WAS SO DARK THAT WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES, SHE WAS NOT CERTAIN that she had. Or perhaps, if her eyes were indeed open once more, she had passed from the world she had known to a place of darkness, a place of shadows—to a place that did not know the light of life.
She closed her eyes once more and consciously tuned herself in to the sensations about her: the cold, wet clay beneath her face and bare arms; the numbness in her legs; the dull ache that permeated her side; the hot fire of pain burning brightly in her belly. She knew at once that she was very near to death, for a coldness crept up her legs, one so profound that it seemed as if her flesh was disappearing beneath its deathly touch.
She tried to lift her head, but could not. She wanted to turn to the side, to get the cold, gritty clay away from her mouth, but she could not.
She wondered then why she had stirred, why death had not simply taken her in her unconscious state.
She got jostled—again, she realized—by something hard pushing against her shoulder.
With tremendous effort, Pony slid her head along the clay enough to change her angle of view. At first she saw nothing except the darkness, but gradually, she made out a darker silhouette.
She got pushed again.
A horse’s hoof.
“Symphony?” the woman mouthed, but silently, for she had not the strength to draw enough breath for audible words. She saw the silhouette rear up and kick its forelegs, and she felt the connection, intimate through the powers of the turquoise gemstone that Brother Avelyn had set into Symphony’s breast.
“Symphony,” she said again, this time whispering through the clay.
The horse nickered and pawed the ground anxiously, prompting her to movement.
But Pony had not the strength.
More insistent, Symphony pushed at her again, shifting her to the side. Waves of pain rolled up and down her side, but with them came the sensation of feeling, at least, a temporary reprieve from death. Pony wasn’t sure that she wanted that reprieve, though. Wouldn’t it be easier just to close her eyes and let the nether realm take her? To go to Elbryan? To escape the pain of goblin spears and the more profound agony that was Aydrian?
For there before her, hovering like a black wall against her willpower, against her very instinct to survive, was the specter of Aydrian, the mark of true despair. She had seen his power and the blackness within his heart. In looking into his blue eyes—so much akin to her own—Pony had understood the waste of what might have been and the terror of what he had become. She could not defeat him, nor could she bear to watch his rise.
And in the end, for her, there would be only death.
Symphony whinnied and stomped at the ground. The stallion pranced about Pony, snorted with every stride, kicking and bucking insistently. The sheer power of the old horse brought Pony forth from the dark contemplations, made her instead regard the resilience and determination that was Symphony.
In light of that, the broken woman was surely shamed.
In light of that, Pony suddenly felt foolish, lying there in the muddy clay awaiting death with a healing stone somewhere nearby!
She brought her hands up by the sides of her chest and tried to lift herself up. But it was too late, she was too far gone, and she fell back to the mud.
“Symphony,” she whispered.
The horse moved very near to her and bent his head down, his lips nibbling at her ear and hair.
“Gemstone,” Pony tried to say, but more important than the word that would hardly come, the woman projected her thoughts at the stallion, calling for the hematite, trying to make him understand.
But such communication was not possible without the soul stone, she knew.
Stubbornly, Pony considered Oracle, the gift Andacanavar had given to her so that she could reach out for Elbryan’s spirit. She had not used the meditative process nearly enough over the last few years. Instead of finding a connection to Elbryan at those times when she sat in front of the darkened mirror, Pony had found only despair at the stinging pain of her loss. But now she went there, fell into that meditative state as surely as if she were sitting in a dimly lit room, staring into a mirror. She felt a presence about her, the shadow in the mirror.
Symphony sensed it, too, she knew, from the way in which the horse began snorting and pawing again, obviously agitated.
Pony sent her thoughts forth again, to the shadow that she knew was Elbryan. She replayed the goblin battle, from the time she had begun splashing across the lake, but she was watching it from a different perspective, as if she was looking on at her own actions from the side. She had been holding
the soul stone at the pause in the middle of the pond, obviously, for there she had gone south and north, possessing the goblins and turning them against each other. And then she had come out on the bank, to face the charge from the south, and she had thrown her blanket at the goblin and had dived to the sand at the feet of a charging goblin …
A moment later, Symphony leaped about and rushed away. Exhausted, the shadow fast dissipating, Pony slumped back into the mud and closed her eyes. She heard some splashing, and then some more a bit later, and followed Symphony’s snorts along the bank to the south.
But the cold and empty darkness invited her …
A rough push against her shoulder roused Pony once more a few moments later. She resisted the call, and got pushed again and then a third time by the insistent and indomitable stallion. Finally, she opened her eyes, to see a small piece of deeper blackness upon the ground right before her face. With a grunt and a sudden burst, Pony brought her hand up over that spot, over the soul stone.
She ran away from the inviting cold, and into the warm gray swirl of the hematite, freeing her spirit from the weariness and the pain. She felt something full of strength move up against her hand and hardly recognized it as Symphony’s leg. But she pressed against it instinctively, the soul stone set firmly between her cold and half-numb hand and the great stallion’s hoof.
Her spirit found the fugue area between those two corporeal forms, connecting with Symphony. She understood then what the stallion was offering, but her generous spirit instinctively recoiled.
Symphony pressed in closer and gave a great and insistent cry into the dark night.
Pony joined with his spirit, and pulled back strength from his spirit, infusing herself with the power of the horse. She instinctively recoiled, knowing that this was among the most profane types of possession, which in itself struck her as horrible. But Symphony wouldn’t let her go. She recognized that the horse understood what she was doing and willingly lent her part of his own life force.
Energized, the woman reached down to her wound and put the healing powers of the gemstone to work.
Like warm water, the waves of healing magic cascaded down across the prone woman, filling her with warmth and relief from the pain. Soon after, those areas that had long ago gone numb from the wounds began to tingle with renewed life.
As all of this went along, another sort of healing found its way, quite unexpectedly, into a different part of Pony, into the most profoundly wounded element of the woman: her heart. She lay there in the muddy clay, keeping her energies rolling through the gemstone, transforming into magical healing, but focusing her thoughts on the unexpected events that had led her to this point. She remembered again the fight against the demon-possessed Markwart on the field outside of Palmaris. She had been beaten, and surely would have died without rescue by Dasslerond’s elves.
That was when she had lost Aydrian to the Touel’alfar.
The woman managed to roll over then, to get her face out of the mud. She lay on her back, staring up at the stars, and then she saw …
The Halo.
Pony’s heart leaped at the multicolored rings, as if her spirit were reaching for them. She remembered a day long ago, when she and Elbryan were but children, rushing out of Dundalis up the northern slope. They had glanced back to see this same magical sight. This was the source of the gemstones, and seemed to her so perfect a gift from God. She felt such a connection here, between memory and present thought, between her spirit and those of ones who had passed from this life before her. That ring told Pony that Elbryan was with her still, that the song of Nightbird lived on in more than just her own memories. It resonated in the trees and the birds, and in all that Elbryan had touched. It floated on the evening breeze as surely as Bradwarden’s haunting melody.
A great sense of calm came over her, as profound a relief to her soul as the waves of healing magic had been to her body. She did not try to halt the tears spilling out of her eyes as she lay there viewing the corona, as she felt her spirit touching that of Elbryan.
He was there with her—she could feel it so keenly! He stood beside her; he had helped to guide Symphony to her!
And he was telling her something.
Pony thought back to the day of King Danube’s death. She looked past the shock of the moment, past the horror of seeing the ghost of Constance Pemblebury, past the terror of watching her husband get pulled down to his death, past the sudden and brutal shock of the recognition of the son she did not know she had. In that moment in the mud, looking up at the corona, feeling the love of Elbryan all about her, Pony sought a different perspective. She forced away her rage at Lady Dasslerond and instead whispered a thanks to Dasslerond and the elves for saving her life and for saving Aydrian. She forced away the pain and resentment, pushed past her fear of the monster Dasslerond had created, and looked at Aydrian in a new context. He was her son. He was in great pain.
Great pain had brought him to this pinnacle of disaster. Great pain had fostered his resentment toward his mother. Great pain and Marcalo De’Unnero.
Pony let go of that name, as well, as soon as it had occurred to her. She had no room for rage at that moment.
And perhaps it was more than De’Unnero, the woman pondered, and a shiver ran up her spine. She considered again the circumstance under which she had lost Aydrian, in the midst of a spiritual battle with Father Abbot Markwart and with a creature quite beyond the scope of the frail old monk.
For the first time in so long, Pony felt that old spirit rising within her, the same fires that had carried her to Mount Aida to battle the dactyl demon, the same fires that had sustained her through her ordeal at the hands of Markwart and the loss of so many she had loved, the same fires that had bolstered her courage throughout the rosy plague and shown her the truth of community and the way to the shrine of Avelyn.
She considered Aydrian again, and the errant monster he had become, and she admitted to herself that she did not have the heart to fight against her own son.
But Pony pushed past that, and confirmed within her heart that she did indeed have the heart to battle Marcalo De’Unnero.
Without further ado, with the name of the false and discredited monk filling her body with determination, the woman pulled herself from the ground and moved beside the patient Symphony. She stroked the horse’s face lovingly, communicating her gratitude, then brought her face up against the side of the great stallion’s neck, feeling his warmth. With a whisper in his ear for him to take her home, Pony climbed up on Symphony’s back and took hold of the thick black mane.
Off leaped the horse, running as no other animal in all the world could run.
He carried her tirelessly across the Moorlands and into the forests where the leaves had fallen thick upon the paths. He charged up every hillside and gracefully and carefully descended the back slopes, moving ever eastward.
In short days, Symphony galloped through fields of caribou moss, like white powder rising up the stallion’s hooves and muffling the sound of Symphony’s thunderous passage, and when she recognized the rolling moss-strewn fields about her, Pony knew that she was almost home.
She leaned forward over the horse and whispered a new instruction, and Symphony knew her desire and certainly knew the way. One day about twilight, the horse pulled up near a diamond-shaped grove.
Pony slid down, only then realizing that the song of Bradwarden was thick in the air about her, blending, as always, with the harmonies of nature. Bolstered by the music, and by the presence she felt in this special place, the woman moved into the copse of trees, to a place before two stone cairns.
“I’ll bring back your sword, Mather Wyndon,” she promised. “And Hawkwing for you, my love. All that we worked to achieve will not be lost in the wayward designs of our son.”
“Yer words’re music sweeter’n anything me pipes have ever blowed,” came the voice of Bradwarden behind her. Pony smiled and turned about. “Ye seen the elf lady?” the centaur asked.
; “Dasslerond and I did not part as friends,” Pony admitted. “But we are allies in this, of circumstance and not choice.”
“Ye put yerself out to fix the errors o’ the Touel’alfar?”
Pony gave a resigned little shrug. “Someone has to.”
The centaur broke into a great bellylaugh then. “And once again, it falls to yerself. Ah, but what a life ye’ve known, Pony o’ Dundalis! Pony who fought the demon in its hole, and fought it again in the body o’ Markwart.”
“And who might yet do battle with Bestesbulzibar,” the woman said solemnly, and Bradwarden stopped his laughing and stared at her curiously.
“Prince Midalis will need me,” the woman went on, not wanting to elaborate upon her fears at that time. “And now that Symphony has returned to me, I will find him.”
“Ye can be thanking meself and Roger for springing that one from the stables o’ yer greedy little son,” the centaur remarked.
“There are no stables suitable for Symphony beyond the wide, unfenced fields of the world.”
“True enough.” Bradwarden let the conversation die for a moment, as Pony turned back to stare at the cairn of her beloved Elbryan. A profound sense of relief splayed across her beautiful face, as if her recent ordeal had shown her the truth of her life now, and of her duty.
And it seemed to the centaur, that it was a duty she was ready to meet.
“Ye’re to ride out in the spring for Vanguard then?”
Pony turned back, shaking her head. “There can be no delay. I will ride into Dundalis this night and be on the road to Prince Midalis by mid-morning.”
“Ye’ll be running against the winter,” the centaur warned.
“As Symphony does every winter.”
“True enough,” the centaur admitted. “And it’s not like I’m needing any warm bed, for I ain’t found one yet that’ll hold me!”
Pony’s quizzical expression fast shifted to one of gratitude as she realized that Bradwarden meant to go with her every step of the way, and that nothing she could possibly say would dissuade her loyal friend from walking the road to war beside her.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 203
