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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “But you would gain no mastery over me, Aydrian,” the woman pressed on, narrowing her eyes. “Because I would detach myself wholly from the experience. You would not hurt me nor subjugate me because I would be there in body only.”

  “Perhaps that is enough!”

  The woman chortled at him. “If you believe that, then you are a fool,” she said, and she turned away, moving around the table. She needed time, and distance, because he needed to learn. Once she had achieved that distance, Sadye began to laugh aloud, not derisively, but to show him clearly that she knew something that he did not. “You broke Symphony to your will, yes?” she asked.

  Aydrian wore a perplexed expression, and he just stared at her for a long time before slightly nodding.

  “And yet, you never mastered the horse,” she added.

  “So says Sadye,” came the dry reply.

  “Did Symphony not throw you at the joust upon the first opportunity? Did Symphony not run from you at the first opportunity in Palmaris?”

  “The beast desired to be wild …”

  “And yet every tale I have heard shows that Symphony went to Elbryan, and to Jilseponie, willingly. Has it occurred to you that those encounters were more than anything you ever knew of Symphony?”

  Aydrian’s face crinkled. “You speak of a horse?” he asked, shaking his head. “What has that got to do—”

  “You can take whatever you want, King Aydrian Boudabras,” Sadye said directly. “But some things cannot be taken, can only be given.”

  “It is De’Unnero, isn’t it?” Aydrian shouted at her.

  Sadye didn’t dignify that with an answer. She turned from him and walked from the room, not even looking back. She heard his footsteps as he started to follow, but only smiled when those steps broke off suddenly. His emotions had dropped a solid wall before him, she knew, and it would not be one that Aydrian had any experience against, nor any weapons against. She had stopped him.

  She had taught him the first lesson.

  She went back to the house that had been set aside for her and spent hours preparing herself and her room, before finding an attendant and sending him across the lane to fetch young Aydrian. She wished that she could have waited a day or two at least before moving on to this next most-important lesson, but the army would march in the morning, and this was no lesson to be learned in a tent in the wilderness.

  Aydrian locked a scowl on his face later that night as he walked across the small lane to the house Sadye was using. The young king could hardly believe that he was answering the call delivered by Sadye’s appointed door guard. His first instinct was to send a stinging retort back to the woman who had so completely rebuffed him. But for some reason he did not understand, the young king of Honce-the-Bear was out and walking, his cloak pulled tight about him against the cold night wind.

  He knocked on the door, but then just grunted and pushed through it, not waiting for any answer.

  Immediately Aydrian’s senses were touched, at every level. A fire blazed in the hearth to the left of the door, and many candles were set about the room, their lights sometimes crystal clear and other times dull glows behind the wafting layers of steam and scented smoke. Aydrian took a deep and intoxicating breath and a strange warmth washed over him.

  He closed the door and moved deeper into the room, to a central collection of pillows and blankets set between hanging shades of delicate fabric. Only as he neared the pillows did Aydrian notice the music. Sadye’s lute, he knew, the plucked notes hanging in the air until moving seamlessly into the next. The song was slow, but full of sharp and distinct sounds.

  Then came a hissing sound, and Aydrian turned to see Sadye drifting about the steam, pouring a pitcher of water on heated stones before going right back to her playing.

  She was dressed in light layers of the same teasing gossamer-like material as the shades, which hardly covered her lithe body. She danced aside as she played, drifting in and out of the opaque steam, and behind the hanging shades, turning as she went. Water glistened on her delicate shoulders and on her hair, and a single droplet hung teasingly on her lip for a few moments.

  “What is this?” Aydrian asked, his words lost in the continuing music of the lute. “What are you about?” As he spoke, he pulled the heavy cloak from his shoulders and tossed it aside, and Sadye flashed a mischievous grin and did likewise, pulling a veil from about her waist and leaving it in her wake.

  Aydrian’s eyes fixed on that beautiful bare belly, seeming soft and firm all at once, with a delicate curve at its bottom, where it disappeared behind the veil wrapped about the woman’s hips.

  Catching on, Aydrian grinned wickedly and threw off his shirt, stripping to the waist.

  In a twirl, Sadye did likewise, but then she moved sidelong to him, with her arms blocking his view, just barely.

  “Sadye, what are you about?” Aydrian asked.

  She didn’t answer, other than to fix him with one of the most intense gazes he had ever seen, her eyes alone nearly buckling the young man’s knees beneath him. Almost panting now, barely able to draw breath, Aydrian stripped off the rest of his clothes and moved toward her.

  But Sadye moved gracefully away from him, and when he rushed to catch up to her, she turned and froze him with another look, one suddenly cold and denying.

  “Sadye?” he asked, he begged.

  The woman brought a finger to her pursed lips, bidding him to silence. Only then did he realize that she had deftly removed the rest of her veils.

  “What game is this, woman?” Aydrian said, his voice taking on lower and more insistent tones. Sadye moved around the other side of the circular pillow pile then, slipping behind another of the hanging screens, and Aydrian moved suddenly, and as purposefully as a charge in a sword fight, cutting her off so that there was only that thin sliver of fabric between them. He reached out and took her by the shoulder.

  The music stopped and a frown crossed Sadye’s beautiful face as she pulled immediately away from the man. “I told you before,” she warned. “You will have me on my terms alone. Now retreat to the pillows.”

  Aydrian did let go, but he stood there staring at her for a long moment, shaking his head. “I am the king.”

  Sadye moved up to him, her body just brushing his, her lips moving delicately over his. A groan escaped him and he leaned forward, but Sadye was already retreating, moving in perfect synchronization with Aydrian so that his body was barely touching hers all the way back.

  He stopped, finally, gasping, and Sadye came back at him, first waving a burning brand of some lavender-scented branch before her, then tossing it on the fire and coming in behind the alluring scent, this time to press more urgently against Aydrian, kissing him hard and passionately.

  Aydrian crushed her in his arms, moving to align himself with her, wanting only to be one with her. Waves of passion flowed through him, dizzying him. He could hardly breathe; he needed release.

  But Sadye pulled away, giggling, and took up her lute again, twirling behind another of the hanging screens.

  Aydrian started to pursue, but stopped short, looking at her, his mouth moving as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words, his hands wringing at his sides, his entire body taut, as if he would simply explode.

  “What is wrong, King Aydrian?” Sadye teased.

  “What are you doing to me?” he asked. “What bewitching …”

  “I am teaching you,” the woman answered. “Be grateful for the lesson, else I’ll end it now.”

  “I will take you!” Aydrian said through his gritted teeth.

  “Then you will get so much less than I can truly offer,” the woman said with another giggle. “Poor Aydrian. Always needing to be in control.”

  He shook his head and moved a step toward her, but she laughed and spun away.

  “But do you not understand?” Sadye asked. “Everything you do, you do with complete command. Everyone around you, even Marcalo De’Unnero, has become your puppet. You, youn
g King, hold all the strings.”

  “Not all, it would seem.”

  “Then be grateful to Sadye,” the woman purred. “No, you do not control me, nor can you. With your great strength, you could ravish me, but that would bring you so much less of the sweetness I offer. With your mighty sword, you could execute me, and none would question, but even in dying, I would laugh at you, and you know it.”

  “Another once thought she controlled me,” Aydrian warned, his tone suddenly ominous. “I am on my way even now to kill her for that.”

  “Ah, but Dasslerond controlled you for her purposes and her benefit,” said Sadye, obviously not shaken at all. “I control you for the good of … you.” She motioned again to the pillows, and this time, despite his obvious desire to resist, Aydrian lay down upon them.

  Sadye continued her dance about him for some time, teasing him with different, almost complete views of her alluring body, and with the notes of her song and the scents wafting about the air, with the steam and the heat, and the moisture glistening upon her.

  Gradually, so slowly, she went to him, and even then, lying beside him or kneeling over him, she took her time, teasing more than touching, bringing the poor young man to near insanity with desire.

  Finally, she straddled him as he lay on his back and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, nibbling his lobe before she spoke. “You have earned me,” she whispered. She moved her face back, looking down at him with an expression that was part smile and part serious.

  And then she came down hard.

  The room began to spin for Aydrian. He felt as if he was lifting into the air. He couldn’t draw breath and he didn’t want to. His legs went so taut that somewhere in the corner of his mind he feared the muscles would simply tear themselves apart.

  Sometime later, Aydrian was still lying on his back, thoroughly spent, his mind whirling with the sweetest memories. Beside him, Sadye sat up against some piled pillows, her lute across her lap as she absently plucked at the strings.

  “I never imagined,” the young man said, his voice barely escaping his throat.

  “Because you spend your every day in complete control—you even control the weretiger within Marcalo,” Sadye explained.

  “I am the king. I will rule all the world.”

  “Almost all,” Sadye replied with a wicked grin, and she pointedly crossed her legs. “You will never rule me. You will never control me. Understand that.”

  Aydrian’s face went tight with anger.

  “And that is why you will always appreciate me, and love me,” Sadye finished. “You will always be a boy, Aydrian, if you are always in control of everything around you. I will teach you to be a man.”

  “What foolishness …”

  “Because only in letting go of that iron-fisted control, only by letting your emotions step through your willpower, will you understand the other half of what it is to be human,” Sadye explained in all seriousness. “Only when you embrace this other side of you, this passion, this freedom from control, this danger of the unknown, will you be complete, and only when you are a whole human being can you truly be a man.”

  Aydrian blinked repeatedly, but did not rebut.

  “Marcalo was much like you,” Sadye explained, and Aydrian winced through a shot of jealousy at the mention of her other lover. “So many powerful men … no, powerful boys, are.”

  “What of Sadye, then?” Aydrian asked.

  The woman looked at him as if she did not understand.

  “If you go back to him, I will—” Aydrian started deliberately.

  “Kill me?” she interrupted. “Kill him? Kill everyone?”

  “Do not play this game.”

  “You please me, Aydrian, in so many ways,” the woman coyly replied. “Continue to do so and you have nothing to fear.”

  Aydrian leaned back and closed his eyes; all of it was too confusing to him at that moment, still basking in the loss of his virginity.

  Sadye began to play again, then, and began to sing, softly, and her sweet voice was the perfect ending to a perfect night.

  Aydrian drifted off to sleep.

  Sadye sat there for a long while, looking at the beautiful young king, the beautiful young man. He was the most powerful man in all the world.

  Except when he was with her.

  Chapter 25

  Missionaries

  BRYNN STOOD ON THE EASTERN WALL OF DHARYAN-DHARIELLE, REPLAYING THE events of the last couple of weeks over and over in her mind. She couldn’t shake the image of Abbot Olin in Chom Deiru, nor the look upon his face—so smug, so self-assured.

  So dangerous.

  All of the reports that had followed Brynn home served to heighten that uneasy feeling. Bolstered by their great victory over their primary opponent, the Behrenese armies were on the march out of Jacintha. Several provinces and cities had already fallen back under the blanket of Yatol Mado Wadon and the principle city, which was what Brynn and her comrades had hoped from the beginning. But those armies were being accompanied by a large number of priests—not only Chezru, but Abellican! Many Honce-the-Bear soldiers were also filling the ranks of the “Jacintha” force, and at least one report from Dahdah Oasis claimed that it was the northmen, not the Behrenese, who were truly in command.

  “You look as if you expect an attack from Jacintha at any moment,” came a familiar voice, taking Brynn from her contemplations. She turned her head to regard Pagonel as he walked up beside her at the parapet.

  “Abbot Olin seems to be an ambitious man,” the woman remarked.

  Pagonel nodded and stared out to the dark east.

  “It is my fear that we fought not for Jacintha and Mado Wadon, but for Olin of Honce-the-Bear,” Brynn explained.

  “I have heard words to that effect,” the mystic agreed.

  Brynn turned on him. “What have we done?”

  “We stopped Tohen Bardoh, and that bodes well for To-gai,” Pagonel reasoned. “If your old nemesis had taken Jacintha, then we would have more than us two staring out to the east, and the expectation of attack would be a near certainty, I believe. And so do you.”

  “Bardoh would never have allowed the To-gai-ru to hold Dharyan-Dharielle,” Brynn agreed.

  “Then you have done well, yes?”

  The fact that Pagonel had turned the statement into a question alerted Brynn to the fact that he was asking her to look deeper within herself here, to examine her feelings honestly and openly. That was why she valued Pagonel’s company more than simple friendship. His calm demeanor went to the core of his rational being. His embracing of the Jhesta Tu code gave him a perfectly rational perspective on all issues, a clearheaded ability to weigh every situation in every context, large and small. When the Chezhou-Lei warriors had arrived at the Mountains of Fire, challenging the Jhesta Tu to battle, there had been little irrational emotion guiding the hand of the Jhesta Tu leaders, including Pagonel, just a simple estimate of the good and bad of it.

  The Jhesta Tu were complete human beings, Brynn thought as she regarded the always-serene mystic. In Pagonel, she saw true contentment and harmony, and it was a state that she surely envied and aspired to.

  “I fear that Abbot Olin has gained the upper hand over Yatol Mado Wadon,” Brynn said after a bit more reflection. “The blanket of Jacintha takes on a decidedly Abellican point of view, by all that I am hearing from those cities that have capitulated to the marching army. Behren will soon be reunited, no doubt, north to south, east to west, but she will not be the same as before the fall of Chezru Chieftain Yakim Douan.”

  “How could she be?” Pagonel asked. “Douan’s fall revealed a terrible betrayal, one that went to the heart of the Chezru religion and the leadership of Behren. The faith of the Yatols and of their flock was shaken, indeed, and perhaps shattered. Whatever form Chezru takes as it rises from the ashes of Yakim Douan’s wreckage will, by necessity, be very different from the church as it was.”

  “But will it come to resemble the Abellican religion of Honce
-the-Bear?” Brynn asked. “For that is what Abbot Olin seems to be about, and Yatol Wadon is apparently not disagreeing.”

  “Would that be a bad thing? The Abellicans have had their own trials in recent years—perhaps one day I will tell you of the fall of Father Abbot Markwart and the rise of the followers of Avelyn Desbris.”

  Brynn looked at him curiously. She had heard a bit of that tale, from the Touel’alfar and in her time as leader of To-gai, when she had learned that Aydrian, her old training companion, had assumed the throne of the northern kingdom.

  “Aydrian’s mantle as king would seem to speak of that very event, since his mother and father were among those who rode with Avelyn.”

  “And now Honce-the-Bear has come down to Behren to aid in their crisis,” Pagonel said. “Perhaps Abbot Olin understands well this type of trouble and is sharing his expertise with a devastated Chezru leadership.”

  Brynn stared at him for a long while, knowing well that he was taking a position more to make her consider all the alternatives than to convince her of anything. “Or perhaps Abbot Olin has come in view of an opportunity here in the shattered and confused people of Behren,” she answered.

  Pagonel’s expression showed her that he did not disagree.

  “Is Abbot Olin expanding your friend Aydrian’s domain?” he asked.

  Brynn looked back to the east and shrugged.

  “Would it not be a good thing for you and your people if that was the case?” Pagonel went on. “If Aydrian or his representatives come to hold sway over Behren, is not the threat to To-gai from the Behrenese reduced? He is your friend, is he not?”

  “Perhaps it would be reduced.”

  “Then why do you trouble yourself over the aid we gave to Yatol Wadon, and perhaps to Abbot Olin by extension, in the battle of Jacintha?” the mystic asked. “You have pushed war farther from your border, it would seem, and is that not the responsibility of any leader?”

  It made sense, of course, but the reasoning did not resonate within Brynn, because there was one other consideration. “And what of the Behrenese?” she asked.