Song of the Risen God

by R. A. Salvatore

  “That quickly?” Braumin asked, as much to himself as to the others, it seemed.

  “I told you,” said Aydrian. “The magic is not just Abellican magic.”

  Father Abbot Braumin sucked in his breath at that, for Aydrian had just denied perhaps the most important tenet of the Abellican Church: that the magical Ring Stones were the gift of God to the Abellicans, sent from the heavens for those who followed the word of St. Abelle. There were other types of magic in the world, of course. The earth magic of the Samhaists was well documented, and that more ancient religion seemed to be making a bit of a comeback in recent years, since the plague and the civil war had so ravaged Honce-the-Bear. Powries could resurrect through their buried hearts, and they carried a dark magic in their bright berets that toughened them and healed them more quickly.

  The demons had their own magic, dark and dastardly, as did the races of alfar, both in the natural wonders of the Touel’alfar and in their hidden forest, and there was the necromancy of the Doc’alfar hiding in the shadows and peat bogs to the south.

  But none of those involved Ring Stones—not directly, at least—other than the possessions of the Touel’alfar, given to them by St. Abelle himself, so said the ancient texts.

  Now here was this woman, this witch, from a land thousands of miles to the west, thousands of miles away from the sea and thus from the isle of Pimaninicuit, where the monks went to gather the sacred stones every seventh generation. How could she have such gems? How could these caverns exist?

  “The world is upside down,” he said to Aydrian, shaking his head. “And I am overwhelmed.”

  “Let us hope that all of Honce is not soon overwhelmed,” Aydrian reminded.

  Father Abbot Braumin looked at Aoleyn directly. “I believe you. And I apologize for taking your jewels. Truly, they are treasures.”

  “My treasures,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Father Abbot!” Master Viscenti said.

  “Are you going to keep saying that?” Braumin asked him. “Do you not see what is going on around us?”

  “I hear a story, and that is all it is, until we can confirm.”

  Father Abbot Braumin held his hand out to Aoleyn.

  “Yes, yes,” an annoyed Viscenti replied. “She is a trickster with the gemstones. But have we not seen this before? Aydrian is no brother of Abelle, surely, yet he can use the stones, as could both of his parents before him.”

  “Jilseponie was a bishop of our church,” Braumin reminded.

  “She was skilled with the stones long before that,” Viscenti replied.

  “But how might we explain?” He motioned to Aoleyn.

  “If her story is true, if she is from some distant place where crystals grow from the walls of a cave and give her these treasures, then I cannot explain it,” Viscenti admitted. “But if is a large word, Father Abbot, and a larger possibility.”

  “And still, I believe them,” Braumin replied.

  Master Viscenti cast a glance at Aydrian, then at Aoleyn. To his credit, there was no animosity evident in his expression. He folded his hands before him and lowered his gaze, submitting to the judgment of the father abbot.

  “Then the question remains of where we go from here,” said Braumin. “We have to go out, and swiftly, to see if this invasion you fear is coming to pass.”

  “Spiritually?” Aoleyn asked. “Take great care.”

  “I know of your journey. Brother Thaddius told me.” He slipped open the top left-hand drawer of his desk, poked about for a moment, then produced a pale green stone. “Are you familiar with this?” he asked Aoleyn, and he handed it to her.

  The witch shook her head.

  “It is chrysoberyl,” Braumin explained. “A stone to defend the mind and soul.”

  Aoleyn closed her fingers about it and heard the magic within, though she couldn’t quite decipher it.

  “It is a shield against possession,” said Braumin.

  Aoleyn focused on the stone again and heard the song once more, now in the context of the father abbot’s revelation. She opened her eyes, understanding, and nodded.

  “You can use it, I suppose?” Braumin asked. “The magic is available to you?”

  “Yes,” Aoleyn answered, and no one was surprised.

  * * *

  “You wish you were with them,” Elysant said to Aydrian. The two of them were sitting in the gallery of the large room, along with dozens of St.-Mere-Abelle’s monks. At the front of the chamber, Aoleyn, the father abbot, a few of the masters, and Brother Thaddius worked with the gemstones, half of them spirit-walking out of the great monastery, the other half working with chrysoberyl to protect those going forth. Normally, a monk could utilize both the stones himself, but given the strange compulsion and power involved here, Father Abbot Braumin was taking no chances.

  It was no small thing to either Aydrian or Elysant that Brother Thaddius had been selected to protect Aoleyn. The father abbot had gone out of his way to make sure that the woman felt comfortable in this most intimate of magical joinings.

  “Don’t you?” Aydrian replied.

  “I have little affinity with the Ring Stones,” Elysant admitted. “But the whispers claim that you are powerful in magic.”

  The king turned ranger nodded. “I am honored to be allowed in here to witness this. You were young then.”

  “I remember,” Elysant assured him. “I was young, and very new to the order out at Saint Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea, when the De’Unnerans came. I remember.”

  “Yet you travel with me and sit beside me and show me such trust.”

  Elysant rose out of her seat and moved around to put her face very close to Aydrian’s, staring him in the eye. “You were possessed and overwhelmed by the demon dactyl. We all know this. Father Abbot Braumin, friend and companion of Saint Avelyn, knows this, and if he did not believe it, you would not be here. Perhaps it is time for Aydrian to realize that many others forgive him. And perhaps it is time for Aydrian to forgive himself.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed, and he managed a smile. But Elysant saw his eyes and the clouds gathered there and she knew the truth of the tortured man.

  She moved back around and took her seat. A group came up to her to ask about the robe she wore and the staff of stone she now carried, begging her to tell them of the experience in the crypt of St. Belfour.

  There was no motion for silence in the chamber, and nothing to really watch up front—just four sitting side by side in chairs and four others hovering behind them, their hands on the shoulders of the spirit-walkers—so Elysant obliged them, weaving a tale with great inflection and drama, drawing more than a few gasps.

  She was out of her seat, waving her arms as she prepared to act out the end of St. Belfour’s wraith, but then she stopped short, staring across the room.

  “The father abbot,” she said, and all eyes swung about. Aydrian leaped out of his seat for a better view.

  Up front, Braumin Herde looked to his fellow spirit-walkers. One after another, they were opening their eyes, coming back to their corporeal forms.

  “Ursal has fallen,” Father Abbot Braumin announced to a responding chorus of gasps and cries of “No!”

  He waited, letting the protests and cries of disbelief diminish, and the prayer to King Midalis finish, before raising his arms for silence.

  He added grimly, “And Palmaris is burning.”

  16

  HE HAD TO TRY

  The macana hit Midalis’s shield with such weight that the king’s knees almost buckled beneath him. He couldn’t believe the aggression of the attackers—and that, he knew, was their advantage. They fought without fear, often leaving dangerous defensive openings, leaping high to bring their strange and strangely strong weapons down, with all of their weight behind them.

  Midalis came out of the block in a stumble and threw his shield up high again, while cutting his sword out beneath the lower edge.

  He had guessed right, his fine sword slamming the breastplate
of the sidhe attacker. It found enough of a crease between the cylindrical wooden flaps to gouge hard into the attacker’s ribs, and the warrior fell back, unable to complete her own swing, but far from finished.

  That armor! It bounced when the xoconai ran, seemingly light and wholly unencumbering. It was wood-like, mostly at least, that strange stalk known as darkfern, like Aydrian’s bow. A thin cylinder of wood and it could turn a clean strike from a steel sword!

  The warrior seemed more angry than wounded, and she came back in with renewed ferocity, starting low and leaping high once more, trying to overwhelm her opponent.

  A veteran of many battles, a middle-aged man who had never let his training lapse, King Midalis saw it coming. Instead of shying, he went at his attacker, bending low, throwing his shield above him to take the blow and turning his own sword upward. For he had seen a weakness: when the sidhe leaned forward, the light and malleable breastplate moved out from her belly.

  Down she came, landing a tremendous blow once more upon his shield, stronger than the first. Down she came again, impaling herself as Midalis’s perfectly angled sword slid under the lip of her breastplate, up through her diaphragm, and into her lungs.

  The king rose fast and powerfully, catching her in a clench, his shield moving out to push her weapon arm back.

  Their faces were no more than a finger’s length apart. He looked into her bright face, into her blue-gray eyes, and saw the pain and shock, the realization of death.

  He felt her fall limp in his arms and let her fall away. He wanted to let her down to the ground easily, but he had no time as another sidhe warrior quickly replaced her in the madness of battle in this Palmaris neighborhood.

  In the madness sweeping all across the great city.

  Palmaris was not like Ursal. It was walled, mostly, but with many parts in disrepair and many more sections of wall missing altogether, having never been replaced after the civil war a decade before. Ursal was tight and tall, with thick stone structures. Even the smaller tenements rose three stories, nearly the height of the massive wall enclosing the city proper. Palmaris was more like a hundred smaller villages all stitched together, with single-story houses of wood and thatch and stone, and even tents. It had a riverfront that extended for miles up and down the western bank of the Masur Delaval, supported by several massive sections of docks, wharves, and storehouses.

  While Ursal was the seat of political and military power in Honce-the-Bear, the throne city, Palmaris served as the kingdom’s largest inland port, handling the bulk of the trade from Vanguard and even from the Mantis Arm far in the east, so that the ships did not have to sail and row upriver to Ursal. The city dominated the northwestern edge of the Masur Delaval and was the largest city of Honce-the-Bear west of the river, by far, so caravans of goods come down from the Timberlands in a nearly constant stream throughout the spring and summer and into late autumn.

  King Midalis was acutely aware of the importance of holding Palmaris. He had lost Ursal only a week before. To lose Palmaris, too, so soon … Could Honce itself survive?

  Thinking of the poor souls left behind in Ursal, Midalis met the charge with renewed fury. He took a tremendous blow on his breastplate but walked through it and put his sword into the neck of the sidhe man, sending him back and to the ground, gurgling blood.

  Midalis turned quickly, thinking another attacker upon him, but then realized that Julian of the Evergreen had come to his side.

  “Smoke rises across the river,” Julian told him. “Amvoy is under siege!”

  The king’s shoulders sagged with the news. The river was wide here, very wide. To even see smoke from Amvoy meant terrific fires burning.

  Who was this enemy? How great their numbers?

  Aydrian and his friends had not exaggerated the threat.

  Midalis put it out of mind, called for his Allheart Knights to rally around him, and led them in a charge through the streets, moving through sidhe stragglers until they joined with an Allheart cavalry group.

  One rider dropped immediately to offer his horse to Midalis. The king took his seat and bade a second knight to put Julian of the Evergreen up beside him.

  “What is our move?” Midalis asked Julian, as the now greater force made its way along the main boulevard.

  The young knight seemed uncertain.

  Midalis nodded sympathetically. Most of the battles in Palmaris’s history had come from within Honce-the-Bear, from across the great river, and thus the city’s strongest defenses were built mostly on the docks and the warships themselves. In the case of an invasion from the west, something that had always seemed highly unlikely, since the west, the Wilderlands, was lightly populated, flight to the ships and across the river to Amvoy would be regarded as the last line of defense. Therefore, the sections of the city holding the noble houses and the monastery, St. Precious, had direct avenues to the docks, with ships always awaiting the important people and with specific assignments for passengers.

  Midalis had been warned several times already, during the chaos of the day, that it might indeed come to that. But now Amvoy was obviously under siege.

  Were they to flee to the ships and sail away, as he had sent his wife and children? Such a retreat meant surrendering this critical position and surrendering tens of thousands of innocents to the invaders.

  “Saint Precious,” the king decided, directing his forces.

  Along the wide streets they went, finding less and less resistance as they neared the imposing abbey. The streets here had seen battle that morning, though, obviously so, with many sidhe bodies strewn about, burned wholly or in small areas from lightning.

  The monks were proving formidable indeed.

  The Allhearts gained the abbey’s steps without much resistance, and the wide doors were opened, with even the horses being hustled inside.

  King Midalis was led to the offices of the abbot, near the center of the large structure. There he found Abbot Ohwan of St. Honce and young Abbot Havre of St. Precious, along with Duke Anders Bire, who ruled the city, and a collection of masters and military commanders.

  Their expressions confirmed to Midalis that the situation was as desperate as he had believed.

  “We must flee, and must do so quickly,” Duke Anders said, before a formal introduction of King Midalis could be initiated. “The fiends are swimming out of the river astride their terrible lizards and the docks are sorely pressed.”

  “If we do not go now, we are unlikely to escape,” Abbot Ohwan added.

  Midalis let the warning hang in the air, a heavy silence during which no one seemed to breathe or even blink.

  Then he answered simply.

  “No.”

  * * *

  “We’ll turn north to the Timberlands,” Talmadge said, as he and his three companions ran for their lives along a Palmaris street. They had come into the city less than a day ahead of the xoconai army and yet they had had no idea that their enemies were so close on their heels. They had seen the invaders a couple of days previous, but far, far to the south—just a collection of distant campfires in the night.

  Ever were the xoconai full of surprises.

  “How are we even to get out of this place?” Catriona asked.

  Bahdlahn turned to her, agreeing, just as she passed a side alley. Down at the far end Bahdlahn saw a pair of soldiers suddenly overrun by a trio of lizard-riding enemies. Enemies were all about, flanking them, before them, in every quarter of the sprawling city, it seemed.

  “Bahdlahn!” Khotai yelled, alerting the man to a javelin flying down at him from a nearby rooftop.

  He dove to the cobblestones, the javelin clipping the ground right beside him and painfully nicking him as it bounced away. Bahdlahn rolled about, scrambling to regain his footing, but then he paused for just a moment, seeing Khotai gliding up high into the air beside him, bow in hand, a line of arrows flying for the rooftop and the spear thrower.

  On the four ran, but now the walls seemed to be closing in around them. D
own a street and around a corner—then they skidded to a stop as one and reversed direction as a wall of running xoconai loomed before them, spears and macana flashing. Glancing back, Bahdlahn saw a group of people—a man, three women, and a handful of children—get plowed to the ground by the enemy rush, spears stabbing, bats swinging.

  One very young boy broke free for a moment, fleeing in terror. He was looking out the side street, looking in Bahdlahn’s direction as if begging the man to help him. But they caught him. A macana descended on the back of the boy’s head, splitting his skull, throwing him down to the cobblestones.

  Bahdlahn stumbled, his mind screaming in protest. Children! The bright-faced demons had just murdered children!

  Why?

  He could not comprehend it, any of it. The image lingered and chased him down the next street, stealing his strength, as if he were running in mud.

  His friends moved ahead of him. Another family was out in the street, children crying, desperate parents trying to herd them and get them out of the way.

  Talmadge and Catriona got to them first, ushering them around the side of a building. By the time Bahdlahn arrived, Talmadge was trying to tear a plank off the base of the structure.

  Bahdlahn shouldered in and grasped the board with all of his great strength. He planted his feet against the wall and pulled with everything he could manage, finally opening a way into the space beneath the structure. In went the children, then the parents, with Talmadge and Catriona fast to follow. Bahdlahn looked all about and finally spotted Khotai up above, on a high balcony.

  “Come on,” Catriona implored Bahdlahn.

  In reply, he reset the board—it had to be done from the outside to properly cover the hidey-hole. He glanced around, ignoring the protests from Talmadge and Catriona, and ran off for a pair of fallen men.