“Common ground,” he whispered, reminding himself.
“I trust that your day was enjoyable,” Abbot Je’howith remarked to Constance Pemblebury when he found the woman again standing alone at the taffrail, gazing wistfully at the waters of the great Masur Delaval.
Constance turned a sour look upon him, not appreciating his off-color attempt at humor.
“So do tell me,” the abbot pressed, “did King Danube remember your name?”
Constance stared at him hard.
“In his moments of passion, I mean,” the surprising old abbot continued. “Did he call out ‘Constance’?”
“Or ‘Jilseponie’?” the woman finished sarcastically and bluntly, wanting Je’howith to understand in no uncertain terms that he was not catching her by surprise.
“Ah, yes, Jilseponie,” Je’howith said, rolling his eyes and sighing in a mock gesture of swooning. “Heroine of the north. Would any title do justice to her actions? Baroness? Duchess? Abbess?”
Constance gave him a skeptical look and stared back out at the waters.
“Mother abbess?” the old man continued. “Or queen, perhaps? Yes, there would be a title befitting that one!”
Je’howith’s wrinkled face erupted in a wide grin when Constance snapped a glare over him. “Have I hit a nerve?” he asked.
Constance didn’t blink.
“You saw the way King Danube looked at her,” Je’howith continued. “You know as well as I that Jilseponie could find her way to his bed, and to the throne beside his own in Ursal, if she pursued such a course.”
“She would not even accept the barony of Palmaris,” Constance reminded him, but her words sounded feeble even in her own ears.
Now it was Je’howith’s turn to stare skeptically.
“She grieves for the loss of Nightbird, a wound that may never heal,” Constance said.
“Not completely, perhaps,” Je’howith agreed, “but enough so that she will move on with her life. Where will she choose to go? I wonder. There is no road she cannot walk. To the Wilderlands, to St.-Mere-Abelle, to Ursal. Who in all the world would refuse Jilseponie?”
Constance looked back at the water, and she felt Je’howith’s gaze studying her, measuring her.
“I know what you desire,” the old abbot said.
“Do you speak your words to wound me?” Constance asked.
“Am I your enemy or perhaps your ally?”
Constance started to laugh. She knew the truth, all of it, and understood that old Je’howith was taking great amusement from this posturing because he figured that he could win in any event. If Danube married Constance, or at least sired her children and put them in line for the throne, then Je’howith would be there, ever attentive. That did not make him an ally, though, Constance realized, for Je’howith’s greatest concern was to keep Jilseponie out of his Church, away from the coveted position of mother abbess; and what better manner for doing that than to have her marry the King?
“Jilseponie intrigued Danube,” she admitted, “as her beauty and strength have intrigued every man who has gazed upon her, I would guess.” She turned and fixed the old abbot with a cold and determined stare.
“Beautiful indeed,” Je’howith remarked.
“But she is a long way from Ursal, do not doubt,” Constance went on, “a long way, down a road more perilous than you can imagine.”
Old Je’howith returned her stare for a long moment, then nodded and bowed slightly, and walked away.
Constance watched him go, replaying his words, trying to find his intent. Obviously, the wretch did not want her to fall under Jilseponie’s charm and ally with the woman. Je’howith was trying to sow the seeds of enmity against Jilseponie, and she had readily fallen into his plan.
That bothered Constance Pemblebury profoundly as she stood there at the taffrail, staring at the dark water. She had liked Jilseponie when first she had learned of the woman’s adventures, had admired her and had cheered her in her efforts against Markwart’s foul Church. In Constance’s eyes, Jilseponie had been an ally—unwitting, perhaps, but an ally nonetheless—of the Crown, of her beloved King Danube. But now things had changed. Nightbird was dead, and Danube was smitten. Jilseponie had gone from ally to rival. Constance didn’t like that fact, but neither could she deny it. Whatever her feelings for Jilseponie Wyndon, the woman had become a danger to her plans for herself and, more important, for her children.
Constance didn’t like herself very much at that moment, wasn’t proud of the thoughts she was harboring.
But neither could she dismiss them.
Chapter 6
Season’s Turn
ABBOT BRAUMIN WALKED THROUGH THE GREAT GATES OF CHASEWIND MANOR humbly, his brown hood pulled low to protect him from the light rain, his arms crossed over his chest, hands buried in the folds of his sleeves. He didn’t glance up at the imposing row of Allheart knights lining both sides of the walk, with their exquisite armor, so polished that it gleamed even on this gray day, and their huge poleaxes angled out before them.
He understood the meaning of it all, that Duke Targon Bree Kalas had offered to meet him on the Duke’s terms and in the presence of his power. The battle between the two was just beginning, for the city hadn’t really settled down after the fall of Markwart until after King Danube had departed. Then winter weather had minimized the duties of both Church and Crown. Now, the King was back in Ursal and most of the brethren from St.-Mere-Abelle had returned, or soon would, to that distant abbey. For the first time in more than a year—indeed, for the first time since the coming of the demon dactyl and its monstrous minions—the common folk of Palmaris were settling back into their normal routines.
He was let in immediately, but then he spent more than an hour in the antechamber of Kalas’ office, waiting, waiting while it was reported to him several times that Kalas was attending to more pressing matters.
Abbot Braumin recited his prayers quietly, praying mostly for the patience he would need to get through these trying times. He wished again that Jilseponie had agreed to accompany him—Kalas would never have kept her waiting!—but she would hear none of it, claiming that her days of meetings and political intrigue had reached their end.
Finally, the attendant came out and called for the abbot to follow him. Braumin noted immediately upon entering Kalas’ office that several other men stood about—bureaucrats, mostly—shuffling papers and talking in whispered, urgent tones as if their business were of the utmost importance. Duke Kalas, Baron of Palmaris, sat at his desk, hunched over a parchment, quill in hand.
“Abbot Braumin Herde of St. Precious,” the attendant announced.
Kalas didn’t even look up. “It has come to my attention that you have put out a call for craftsmen, masons, and carpenters,” he remarked.
“I have,” Braumin agreed.
“To what end?”
“To whatever end I desire, I suppose,” the abbot replied—and that brought Kalas’ eyes up, and halted every other conversation in the room.
Kalas stared hard at him for a long and uncomfortable moment. “Indeed,” he said at length, “and might those desires entail the expansion of St. Precious Abbey, as I have been told?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then save time,” Kalas said sternly, “both for yourself and for the craftsmen. There will be no such expansion.”
Now it was Braumin’s turn to put on a steely expression. “The land about the abbey is Church owned.”
“And no structures may be built within the city walls, Church or otherwise, without the express consent of its baron,” Kalas reminded him. He looked to one of the bureaucrats at the side of the room, and the mousy man rushed over, presenting Abbot Braumin with a parchment, signed and sealed by Baron Rochefort Bildeborough and by Abbot Dobrinion Calislas, that seemed to back up Kalas’ claims.
“This refers to structures built by ‘common men,’ ” Braumin noted, pointing out the phrasing.
Kalas shrugged, not disagreeing.
“This text was written to prevent the influx of Behrenese,” Braumin reasoned, “to prevent every open space within the city walls from becoming even more crowded. Common men, which includes neither the Church nor the nobility.”
“That is one way to interpret it,” Kalas replied. “But not the way I choose.”
Abbot Braumin tossed the parchment to the desk. “You obscure meanings and pervert intentions, then,” he said. “This parchment is irrelevant to any construction upon St. Precious Abbey, upon lands owned by the Abellican Church.”
“No, my good Abbot,” Kalas said, rising up ominously and matching the monk’s unblinking stare with one of equal determination. “It is perfectly relevant. It is the written law, endorsed by your own beloved former abbot, which I can use to arrest any who work upon your abbey, the written law I can use to confiscate tools and materials.”
“You risk angering the populace.”
“As do you, good Abbot,” Kalas snapped back. “You offer work to craftsmen who already have much work to do in the aftermath of the war. They do not need your work at this time, Abbot Braumin, but they do need their tools. Who will they come to hate? I wonder. The lawful baron, acting according to law, or the presumptuous new abbot of St. Precious?”
Braumin started to answer, but stuttered repeatedly, having no appropriate reply. He understood the bluff—Kalas would be starting a battle for the hearts of the Palmaris citizenry that could go either way. But was Braumin ready to join such a battle? He knew the fights he would soon face within his own Church; would he be able to withstand those inevitable challenges if the people of Palmaris turned against him?
A smile found its way onto Braumin’s face, an admission that, for the time being at least, Kalas had outmaneuvered him. He chuckled and nodded, then turned and walked briskly from the room and out of the mansion, this time leaving his hood back despite the rain. The Allheart knights remained in position along the walk to the gates, and the nearest soldier moved over and pulled them wide for the abbot’s exit.
“Your workers did an excellent job in repairing them,” he remarked loudly, noting the gates, “after Jilseponie so easily threw them aside, I mean, as she threw aside your brethren who tried to stand before her.”
He heard the bristling behind him as he walked out and took some comfort, at least, in that minor victory.
He smelled it, so thick in the air that he could almost taste the sweet liquid on his feline tongue. The young girl had hurt her arm, scratching it on a branch, and now she was coming his way, calling for her mother, holding the arm up, the line of red, sweet red, visible to the weretiger.
De’Unnero turned away and closed his eyes, telling himself that he could not do this thing, that he could not leap out and tear her throat. He had killed only once throughout the harsh winter, an old lecherous drunk who had not been missed by the folk of the town of Penthistle.
The scent caught up to him, and the tiger’s head shifted back toward the approaching girl.
She would be missed, De’Unnero reminded himself, trying to make a logical argument to go along with his moral judgment. These people, who had taken him in during the early days of winter, after he had devoured the powrie and run away from the fields west of Palmaris, had accepted him with open arms, glad to pass an Abellican brother from house to house. He had offered to work for his food, but never had the folk of Penthistle given him any truly difficult jobs, and always had they given him all that he could eat, and more.
Thus, De’Unnero had run off into the forest whenever the tiger urges had called to him, too great to be withstood. He had feasted many times on deer, even on squirrel and rabbit, but he had killed a person only that one time.
But now the winter had passed. Now it was spring and with the turn of the season, the folk were again active outside their homes. De’Unnero had come out in search of conventional prey, hopefully a deer, but he had found this child instead, far from her home. As soon as he had spotted her, he had managed to turn away, thinking to run far, far into the forest, but then she had cut her arm, then that too-sweet scent had drifted to his nostrils.
Hardly even aware of it, he gave a low growl. The girl tensed.
De’Unnero tried to turn away, but now he could smell her fear, mingling with that sweet, sweet blood. He started forward; the girl heard the rustle and broke into a run.
One leap and he would have her. One great spring would put him over her, would flatten her to the ground at his feet, would lay bare that beautiful little neck.
One leap …
The weretiger held his place, conscience battling instinct.
The girl screamed for her mother and continued to run.
De’Unnero turned away, padding into the darker thicket. The hunger was gone now, for the girl, even for a deer, and so the creature settled down and willed himself through the change, bones popping, torso and limbs crackling and twisting.
It hurt—how it hurt!—but the monk pressed on, forcing out the tiger, fighting the pain and the killing instinct resolutely until a profound blackness overtook him.
He awoke sometime later, shivering and naked on the damp ground, the cold night wind blowing chill against his flesh. He got his bearings quickly and found his brown robes, then donned them and headed for Penthistle.
As chance would have it, the first person he encountered within the small cluster of farmhouses was the same little girl he had seen out in the forest, her arm now wrapped in a bandage.
“Ah, but there ye are,” said her mother, a handsome woman of about forty winters. “We were needin’ ye, Brother Simple. Me girl here lost her fight with a tree!”
De’Unnero took the girl’s hand and gently lifted her arm up for inspection. “You cleaned the wound well?” he asked.
The woman nodded.
The monk lowered the girl’s arm, let go, and patted her on the head. “You did well,” he told the mother.
The monk headed for the house now serving as his home. He stopped just a few steps away, though, and glanced back at the little girl. He could have killed her, and, oh, so easily. And how he had wanted to! How he had wanted to feast upon her tender flesh.
And yet, he had not. The significance of that hit De’Unnero at that moment, as he came to understand the triumph he had found that day. Fear had forced him out of Palmaris after the fight in Chasewind Manor, after he had been thrown out the window by Nightbird.
It was not fear of Nightbird or of the King or of the reprisals from the victorious enemies of Markwart, the monk realized. No, it was fear of himself, of this demanding inner urge. Once he had been among the most celebrated masters of St.-Mere-Abelle, the close adviser of the Father Abbot, the abbot of St. Precious, and then the Bishop of Palmaris. Once he had been the instructor of the brothers justice and had been touted as the greatest warrior ever to walk through the gates of St.-Mere-Abelle, the epitome of the fighting tradition of the Abellican Order. In those days, Marcalo De’Unnero had relied heavily on the use of a single gemstone, the tiger’s paw; for with it, he could transform a limb, or perhaps two, into those of a great cat, a weapon as great as any sword. During Markwart’s rise to unspeakable power, the Father Abbot had shown De’Unnero an even stronger level of the stone’s transformational magic, and with that increase of intensity, the young master had been able to transform himself totally into the great cat, an unprecedented accomplishment.
But then something unexpected had happened. De’Unnero had lost the gemstone, or rather it seemed to him as if he had merged with the gemstone, so that now he could transform himself into a tiger without it—and often against his will.
That was really why he had run away from Palmaris. He was afraid of himself, of the murderous creature he had become.
It had been a wretched existence for the man who had once achieved such a level of power, despite the hospitality of the folk of Penthistle. Marcalo De’Unnero had feared that he would be forever doomed to travel through the borderlands of civilization, run
ning from town to town whenever the killing urge overpowered him. He pictured himself in the not too distant future, fleeing across a field, a host of hunters from half the kingdom in close pursuit.
But now …
The ultimate temptation had been right before him—the smell of fear and blood, the easy, tender kill—and he had battled that temptation, had overcome it. Was it possible that De’Unnero had gained control over this disease?
If he could control it, then he could return to Palmaris, to his Church.
De’Unnero pushed the absurd notion away. He had murdered Baron Bildeborough, after all, and his escorts. He had wounded Elbryan, which had sent the man, weakened, into battle with Markwart, the wound that, as much as the Father Abbot’s efforts, had truly killed the man. If he went back to Palmaris, what trial might await him?
“What trial indeed?” De’Unnero asked aloud, and when he considered it, his lips curled up into the first real smile he had known in more than half a year. There was no evidence implicating him in Bildeborough’s murder, nothing more than the speculation of his enemies. And how could he be held accountable for anything that had happened at Chasewind Manor? Was he not merely performing his duty of protecting his Father Abbot? Were not Elbryan and Jilseponie, at that time, considered criminals by both Church and Crown?
“What’s that, Father?” the girl’s mother asked, not really catching his words.
De’Unnero shook himself out of his thoughts. “Nothing,” he replied. “I was only thinking that perhaps it was time for me to return to my abbey.”
“Ah, but we’d miss ye,” the woman remarked.
De’Unnero merely nodded, hardly hearing her, too lost in the intriguing possibilities his victory over the weretiger urge had presented to him this day.
“The Saudi Jacintha will take me,” Brother Dellman reported to Abbot Braumin, the younger monk entering the abbot’s office at St. Precious to find Braumin talking excitedly with Brother Viscenti. “Captain Al’u’met plans to sail within the week, and he was excited to be of service, so he said.”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 11