The Dame sotfk-3

by R. A. Salvatore

  Reandu swallowed hard and shook his head. “I do not… I don’t,” he stammered, shaking his head again more forcefully. “I must reflect on it, Father.”

  “Truly?” asked Artolivan with evident surprise.

  “I…”

  “Be at ease, Brother,” Artolivan mercifully said. “We are all caught by surprise. We must all reflect. I will write and seal my response for you to take on your return to Father Jerak and Chapel Pryd.”

  “Thank you, Father Artolivan,” Master Reandu said with a bow.

  After a long and uncomfortable silence, Father Artolivan, who thought their audience at an end, looked at the younger man curiously.

  “There is one more matter,” Reandu explained, “though I hesitate to even mention it in light of the gravity of the previous issue.”

  “Come out with it,” Artolivan bade him. “I am old, but my heart is strong enough for your surprises.”

  Reandu smiled and nodded, obviously appreciating the levity. “There is a man traveling the roads of Honce. His name is Bransen Garibond, a man of my home holding.”

  Behind Artolivan, Pinower shuffled nervously.

  “He is known as the Highwayman, a great warrior, but he also travels in the guise of an awkward and damaged man often called the Stork,” Reandu explained.

  “Yes,” Artolivan prompted.

  “He is charged with the murder of Laird Delaval,” Reandu explained. “It was his sword that slew the great man.”

  That news, of course, confused the two monks of Chapel Abelle. As far as they knew, the Stork was still in Vanguard, a long way from Delaval City. They both did well to hide that fact, however.

  “If you find him and capture him, King Yeslnik will be pleased, no doubt,” said Reandu, who couldn’t hide his grimace as he spoke.

  “You are pained by the prospect,” Artolivan observed. “You know this man?”

  “For many years.”

  “And you believe that he killed Laird Delaval?”

  “He is capable of great anger. It is not unexpected, given the tragedy of his life,” Reandu explained. “The evidence seems strong, though I am surprised that Bransen would go to the lengths of murder. I… I simply do not know.”

  “He was seen west of here, along the road to Palmaristown,” Father Artolivan said. “Though that was before the onset of winter. I have heard reports that he went to Vanguard.”

  “Those reports must have been in error,” Master Reandu said.

  “Or it wasn’t his sword.”

  Reandu paused at that. It seemed to the others as if a dark cloud left his face, however briefly. “I will report that back to King Yeslnik as well,” he assured them.

  Father Artolivan let that sit for a few moments before nodding. “Is there anything more?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” said Artolivan. “You have given me more than enough, I am sure. Allow me now to reflect on King Yeslnik’s demands so that I might properly fashion a response. But do tell me, how fares Father Jerak?”

  “No better, no worse,” Reandu replied.

  “Your service in his stead is not unnoticed, Brother,” Artolivan assured him.

  Reandu swallowed hard.

  “With the accidental death of Master Bathelais the chapel will likely fall to you in full.”

  Reandu shifted from foot to foot, too overwhelmed to reply.

  “Father Jerak is an old and dear friend of mine. I am glad that he trained such competent successors,” said Artolivan. “I am sure that your work would please him, as it pleases us. Go with grace, good young Master Reandu.”

  Reandu breathed a sigh of relief, bowed, and quickly took his leave.

  “You need to reflect?” Brother Pinower asked Artolivan, his tone full of doubt.

  “On whether or not it would be politic of me to publicly spank this young twit who thinks himself King of Honce,” Artolivan replied.

  “What are we to do?” Pinower asked.

  “We are not to free the prisoners sent to us in good faith by Laird Ethelbert and his commanders,” Father Artolivan insisted. He took a few deep breaths, but far from steadying him, he seemed to grow more agitated as he continued, his voice reflecting a deep-seated outrage. “To do so would be to betray our word to the people we serve. And of course the brothers are not going to act as executioners for a young king drunk with power! The Order of Abelle was founded as a gentle alternative to the vicious Samhaists. We have won over Honce’s people with the utility of our blessed gemstones, true, but also with our determination to reduce the suffering of men, not to play as the Samhaists in inflicting misery. This is who we are. We are not murderers and executioners!

  “This is madness!” he roared, though he quickly calmed and lowered his tone, suddenly fearful that Reandu was not far enough away and might hear. “Tell no one of this edict.”

  “Of course, Father,” Pinower replied.

  “Oh, what a week of ecstasy and agony,” Father Artolivan lamented. “To hear the grand news of Dame Gwydre’s victory and now to see the truth of King Yeslnik laid bare.”

  “Perhaps Dame Gwydre will aid us in our conflict with King Yeslnik,” Brother Pinower offered. “Surely she will not agree with his brutal tactics.”

  “How far out is Lady Dreamer?” Father Artolivan asked, for only a day earlier, the advance ship from Vanguard had slid into Chapel Abelle’s long wharf with news that Gwydre was on her way.

  “Three days. Perhaps two. The weather has held across the gulf, we believe. She departed only four days behind the advance ship. No one is faster across the dark waters than Dawson McKeege.”

  Father Artolivan reflexively turned to glance out the window of his room, overlooking the dark waters of the Gulf of Corona. “Write our response immediately,” he instructed. “Advise King Yeslnik-all proper respect in the use of his formal title!-that we will take his edict under advisement.”

  “Delay,” Brother Pinower reasoned.

  “Better that than to invite immediate war,” said Artolivan. “We will indeed enlist Dame Gwydre in this trouble, should she be willing.”

  “Then the longer we take in replying the better.”

  “No, write it immediately-not with our decision, but with a promise that our decision will be forthcoming in short order. I want Master Reandu as far from here as quickly as possible, before he is even made aware of the impending visit of the victorious Lady of Vanguard. Reandu is spoken of in the highest terms, and he seems a man of mature and moderate temperament despite the unfortunate incident that led to the loss of Master Bathelais. But I’ll not have our true feelings revealed beyond this room.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Let us hope that Dame Gwydre offers a solution,” Artolivan said.

  “Perhaps the solution will come from within,” Pinower replied. “From the heart of Father Artolivan, who is closest to the spirit of Blessed Abelle.”

  He and Father Artolivan exchanged a long reflective look as the gravity of that statement weighed upon them.

  Master Reandu left Chapel Abelle the next day, bound for his home of Pryd and bearing Father Artolivan’s rolled and sealed response, which, of course, wasn’t really a reply at all. Brother Pinower spent most of that day and the next two on Chapel Abelle’s high wall, staring out at the gulf. When at last the sails of Vanguard ships appeared in the distance, he rushed to Father Artolivan and then down through the winding tunnels and stairways descending through the hundreds of feet of rocky cliff upon which sat their home. Much of Chapel Abelle lay within that mountain now, as the monks continually fashioned the deep limestone caves into chambers grand and humble. From the lowest chambers the two entered a long tunnel, its sides sculpted like the ridges of a clamshell, its air thick with brine and torch smoke. The fortified back door of Chapel Abelle, hundreds of feet below the main structures, opened onto a small beach in a deep, secluded bay.

  With Lady Dreamer clearly in sight, Pinower rushed along the wharf past the brothers gathering up lines.
He spotted Dawson, who often docked here. Beside him, to his sincere relief, stood Gwydre herself.

  The young monk felt a sense of great elation at that, relief that she, this woman who might be the only hope against the insanity of Yeslnik, had indeed made the journey south from Vanguard.

  “Praise Abelle, for he must have guided her heart,” Pinower said with a hopeful smile. He looked back to the approaching ship and his smile became a look of concern, for moving up beside Gwydre came another distinctive figure dressed in black silk.

  “Aye, but there’s that Highwayman fellow,” one of the wharf hands remarked.

  “We should put him on a boat right back to Vanguard for his own sake,” another added. “Afore Yeslnik hangs him, I mean.”

  “We know now that he could not have participated in the murder of Laird Delaval,” said Pinower. “Unless he found some blessed spirits to fly him to Delaval City in the south and back again.”

  “Blessed?”

  “Cursed spirits, then.”

  “I am not so certain that our new young King Yeslnik will accept any evidence contrary to the notions that fill his mind, given Master Reandu’s description of him,” said Pinower.

  The ship moored alongside the long wharf then, monks and sailors fast tying her off, and soon the impressive procession moved down the plank to join Pinower and the other monks working the docks. Pinower was glad to see his old friend Father Premujon disembark beside Gwydre.

  “All news from the north is good,” Premujon said after the formal greetings, where Dawson did all the introductions.

  “And so we have brought an eclectic entourage,” Dame Gwydre remarked. “Brothers of the order and a priestess of Alpinador. A man of legend,” she said, looking at Jameston Sequin, whose name was known along the southern coast of the Gulf of Corona, “and one in the making,” she added, looking to Bransen.

  “And of course, the hero of Vanguard and all of Honce, the lady who has renewed hope in our order with her victory over Ancient Badden,” Brother Pinower said as they all began walking toward the doorway and the many staircases that would bring them back to the top of the great cliff. “It is a grand day in Chapel Abelle, indeed!”

  “A day of hope,” Gwydre agreed.

  Pinower’s expression flashed with both concern and tempered hope at that, but he said no more.

  THIRTEEN

  Cornering a Snake

  Every village along the Felidan Bay is ablaze,” General Kirren Howen reported to Laird Ethelbert. “We will find no allies from that direction. And the villages of the Mantis Arm have been cut off from the mainland.”

  “They have many boats,” the laird replied.

  Kirren Howen shook his head, his expression grim. “They have been battered, laird. I doubt they’ll come forth and leave their families to the mercy of merciless Milwellis of Palmaristown.”

  “But Yeslnik has broken off and moved back inland,” Ethelbert remarked.

  “Leaving Prince Milwellis of Palmaristown and his vile forces free run of the inner coast,” the general reported. “Now the both of them, Yeslnik from the northwest and Milwellis from the north, would seem to have entered into a race to see who might arrive at our gates first.”

  Laird Ethelbert poured two glasses of shinaba, a potent liquor distilled from tart roots from the steppes of To-gai, a brutal land of horsemen and vile beasts to the west of the deserts of Behr, south of the Belt-and-Buckle. “To a good try, then,” he said, handing one to Kirren Howen.

  “I am not yet ready to surrender Ethelbert dos Entel to that putrid Yeslnik,” the general said as he took the drink, then quaffed it in a single gulp. With Ethelbert’s nod of approval, the man moved across the room to pour another.

  “Surrender?” Ethelbert echoed incredulously. “Not Yeslnik or Milwellis will see the streets of my Entel, unless it is through the eyes of a disembodied head.”

  “A good try, you said. You speak as if we have lost.”

  “And we have, though we have stung our enemies profoundly,” Ethelbert replied. “I fear that we haven’t the resources to again march north and challenge for Honce, nor would I deign to put the people of the holdings through a continuation of this…”

  He stopped when he noticed his general staring at him hard and disapprovingly.

  “Your men fight because they love you,” Kirren Howen declared. “You fought, not out of self-gain, but because you were the only one who could slow the thievery of Laird Delaval. Most men of Honce understand this.”

  “You are too kind, my old friend,” Ethelbert replied. “And I do not doubt your loyalty or love, or that of many others like Myrick and the warriors of my holding. But for many of the others, the men and women of other holdings whose lairds decided that my gold was better than Delaval’s, there is only misery and blood and agony and death. They hold my name no higher than the name of Delaval, or Yeslnik now (though I dare to believe that he will be less loved than either I or Delaval could ever have been). They fight because they are told to fight. They die because they cannot escape. They hate us all, no doubt, and hate their own miserable lives almost enough to make death a welcome alternative.”

  Kirren Howen didn’t disagree, but the look on his face was one of utter dejection.

  “We are not surrendering,” Laird Ethelbert assured him. “And not Yeslnik or Milwellis will march into Ethelbert dos Entel. That much I promise. We are now the great biting turtles of the Belt-and-Buckle’s end stones.” He brought his hands together, fingers interlocked, and drew them tighter. “We close ranks and fight from positions where ten men might fend off a hundred. And whenever our enemies carelessly venture near our point, we bite at them and teach them pain.

  “And we are more than a huddled turtle,” he continued, a sinister smile coming over him. “We have vipers to send forth, a most venomous group.”

  Kirren Howen considered the words for a few heartbeats, then grimly nodded. “And when the vipers poison the attackers and send them reeling?” he asked. “Do we march forth and drive our enemies before us?”

  “Eager for another try at the Bear of Honce?” Ethelbert asked slyly.

  “A worthy opponent!” Kirren Howen replied. “So, yes.”

  “I do not like battling that one,” Ethelbert admitted. “I fought beside him and Laird Prydae those years ago.”

  “I remember it well. Would that Bannagran-Laird Bannagran, I am told-had decided to ally with Laird Ethelbert!”

  “Would that Laird Prydae had kept his loins, and then his life,” said Ethelbert with a great sigh as he considered the tragic events that had ultimately driven Prydae and Pryd Holding from his side. He noticed Kirren Howen looking at him curiously.

  “I thought to name Prydae to my line,” Ethelbert said, surprising the general.

  “He was a good man,” Ethelbert explained. “But he lost his ability to continue his line, his balls taken by a powrie. Still, I blame myself for not acting forcefully enough to enlist him and his important holding, a holding become all the more important by the rise of the Bear of Honce.” He ended with a profound sigh, one that had Kirren Howen nodding his head in agreement.

  “To the vipers, then,” Kirren Howen said and handed a second glass of shinaba to Ethelbert, who drained his first, then brought the other up to tap the general’s, a toast they were both glad to acknowledge.

  Are you ready, my prince?” asked Dimitri Raetu, holding back his obviously eager horse. The scouts ahead had reported confusion and terror in the ranks of their enemies, with most fleeing south. This next charge, back to the east and the Mirianic, would take the rocky hill anchoring the southern bank of a large bay just north of the city of Ethelbert dos Entel. That strong position would ensure that no ships could put in and off-load soldiers right behind their lines and would also serve as a fine vantage point for the short run to Ethelbert’s city.

  Milwellis, victorious all through the morning and all the day before, beamed with glee. Was he ready to win yet again? How could he not b
e? “King Yeslnik is still two days from Ethelbert City, and we’ll be at her gates by evening.”

  “Is this a bad thing, my prince?” asked Harcourt, another of the commanders. He was the oldest of the generals who had set out from Palmaristown with Milwellis those weeks before. He also had fought with Panlamaris, Milwellis’s father, in the powrie wars and in many sea battles when Panlamaris had seized control of the western reaches of the Gulf of Corona, thus ensuring Palmaristown’s place among the most highly prized and important ports in all of Honce.

  Milwellis looked at him curiously, not understanding how the prospects before them could possibly be considered as such. Still, his father had made it clear to him to heed well the advice of the veteran Harcourt. “You fear that I will outshine the king? Do you think me impolitic?”

  “No, of course not, and we… you have earned all honors,” the old general answered. “Your march south will be remembered throughout Honce for generations to come-already the bards are writing their songs of Milwellis’s great victories-and never will a Palmaristown ship be out of reach of a friendly port, since you control them all now, from the river through the southern coast of the gulf and down the length of the Mantis Arm. All glory to Milwellis. Young prince, you’ve done your father proud, and no easy task that!”

  Milwellis’s stare took on a harder edge. “But…?” he prompted.

  “King Yeslnik is new to the throne, and the throne itself is new,” Harcourt replied. “As such, he is no doubt unsure.”

  Several of the other Palmaristown knights, splendid in their shining suits of bronze, shuffled uncomfortably on their horses and looked to Milwellis, seeking to gauge his response to the possible affront.

  “Unsure and insecure,” Milwellis added, nodding his approval at the blunt-speaking Harcourt, which reassured the others. “So we are faced with a dilemma. I desire credit to Palmaristown’s brave warriors for the taking of Ethelbert dos Entel, but I fear to walk too tall above Honce’s new king, to whom my father has pledged fealty. What am I to do?”