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

by R. A. Salvatore

  Abbot Braumin nodded his agreement, his smile wide; and Brother Dellman, too, was beaming.

  “Now for a less pleasing matter,” Father Abbot Agronguerre announced. He rose from his chair, motioning for Abbot Braumin alone to follow him into an adjoining room, where several masters and abbots were waiting, including Francis, Bou-raiy, Glendenhook, and Machuso.

  “I had asked Abbot Je’howith to join us, as well,” Agronguerre remarked to them all, taking his seat at the head of the table and motioning for Braumin to sit right beside him—again a subtle but distinct hint about his attitude concerning the last days of Markwart’s reign. “But he has already departed, well on his way back to Ursal and St. Honce.”

  Abbot Braumin nodded, recognizing that he understood that departure better than did the new Father Abbot. Braumin knew, and Je’howith knew, that they now had gathered to discuss the disposition of Marcalo De’Unnero. Abbot Je’howith, so tied to Markwart, certainly wanted no part of this potential battle.

  And it did become a battle, immediately.

  “He has declared himself abbot of St. Gwendolyn,” Master Fio Bou-raiy spouted angrily, “an unprecedented act of arrogance.”

  “Or of necessity,” Master Machuso, ever the peacemaker, put in.

  “St. Gwendolyn is traditionally led by an abbess, not an abbot,” one of the lesser abbots argued.

  “That may be true enough,” Father Abbot Agronguerre conceded, “but by Master De’Unnero’s words, there are no suitable women to take the position at this time. All but one of the sovereign sisters are dead, and the remaining one has become ill.”

  “Or had her heart removed by a tiger’s paw,” Master Bou-raiy remarked under his breath but loud enough for several seated near him, including Agronguerre and Braumin Herde, to hear.

  “Interim abbot, then?” Machuso innocently asked.

  “No!” Bou-raiy flatly declared, pounding his fist on the table. He turned to Agronguerre. “Deny him this, I beg of you. His record is one of destruction, and if the plague is thick in the southland, St. Gwendolyn will be key to holding the common folk loyal to the Church.”

  Surprised by the forcefulness of the master’s argument, Agronguerre looked to Abbot Braumin, who, in turn, motioned to Master Francis. “You served beside him,” Braumin said. “You know him better than any other in this room.”

  Francis narrowed his eyes as he stared hard at Braumin, obviously not pleased to be so put on the spot. “We were never friends,” Francis said evenly.

  “But you followed him to Palmaris and served in positions vacated by Master De’Unnero,” Father Abbot Agronguerre reasoned.

  “True enough,” Francis conceded. “Yet I want it made clear here before I speak my opinion that you all understand that I harbor little friendship for Master Marcalo De’Unnero and that I would have preferred to remain silent on this matter.

  “But I have been asked, and so I will answer,” Francis went on quietly. “Master De’Unnero’s record in Palmaris was less than exemplary. The people there would not have him back, I am sure.”

  “They would have him on a gallows,” Abbot Braumin remarked. “Indeed, I requested that he leave the city because his mere presence within St. Precious was bringing us disdain that bolstered Duke Kalas.”

  “But Master De’Unnero is not known in the region of St. Gwendolyn,” Master Machuso pressed. “Can we presume that his actions in Palmaris were at the explicit instructions of Father Abbot Markwart and, thus, are mistakes that will not be repeated?”

  “A dangerous assumption,” Master Glendenhook replied.

  “Am I to replace him?” Agronguerre asked distastefully. It was obvious to all in attendance that the gentle man did not want his first official act in office to be one of division. And yet, given the mood of all around him, of masters as diverse as Bou-raiy and Francis—obviously not in any alliance—what choice did Father Abbot Agronguerre have?

  “Recall him,” Master Bou-raiy said determinedly. “We will not find it a difficult task to find a more suitable abbot or abbess for St. Gwendolyn, I assure you.”

  That call was seconded by many about the table, including Abbot Braumin, who made a note to speak with the new Father Abbot at length about his true feelings concerning Marcalo De’Unnero—the man, in Braumin’s honest opinion, who posed the greatest threat of all to the Abellican Church.

  Father Abbot Agronguerre took in all the nods and calls with a resigned nod of his head. Yes, the year would end on a grave note, Agronguerre realized, and given the confirmation of the rosy plague, he doubted that the next year would be any better.

  Where is the balance, I wonder, between community and self? When does the assertion of one’s personal needs become mere selfishness?

  These are questions that followed me to Dundalis, to haunt me every day. So many hopes and dreams were placed upon me, so many people believing that I somehow magically possessed the power to change their world for the better. If I had fought that battle, I believe that not only would I have accomplished little, and perhaps nothing lasting, but also I would have completed the destruction of myself that the wretch Markwart began in the dungeons of St.-Mere-Abelle when he murdered my parents; that he continued on the field outside Palmaris, when he stole from me my child; and then, in Chasewind Manor, when he wounded me deeply and when he took from me my husband, my love. This was my fear, and it chased me out of Palmaris, chased me home to a quieter place.

  But what if I was wrong? What if my efforts might have had some impact upon the lives of so many deserving innocents? What obligation, what responsibility, is then incumbent upon me?

  Ever since I first witnessed Elbryan at his morning routine of bi’nelle dasada, I longed to learn it and to understand all the lessons that he had been taught by the Touel’alfar. I wanted to be a ranger, as was he. But now, in retrospect, I wonder if I am possessed of that same generous spirit. I learned the sword dance, and attained a level of mastery in it strong enough to complement Elbryan’s own, but those other qualities of the ranger, I fear, cannot be taught. They must be a part of the heart and soul, and there, perhaps, is my failing. Elbryan—no, not Elbryan, but Nightbird—so willingly threw himself into my battle with Markwart, though he was already grievously wounded and knew that doing so would surely cost him his very life. Yet he did it, without question, without fear, and without remorse because he was a ranger, because he knew that ridding the world of the demon that possessed the Father Abbot of the Abellican Church was paramount, a greater responsibility than that of protecting his own flesh and blood.

  I, too, went at Markwart with every ounce of my strength and willpower, but my motive at that time was not generosity of spirit but simple rage and the belief that the demon had already taken everything from me. Would I have been so willing to begin that battle if I understood that it would cost me the only thing I had remaining? If I knew that Elbryan, my dearest husband, would be lost to me forever?

  I doubt that I would.

  And now, with all those questions burning my every thought, I came north to the quiet Timberlands to find peace within myself. But this, I fear, is yet another of life’s twisted and cruel paradoxes. I am moving toward inner peace now—I feel it keenly—but what awaits me when at last I attain that level of calm? When I find the end of turmoil, will I find, as well, the end of meaning? Will inner peace be accompanied by nothing more than emptiness?

  And yet, what is the other option? The person who strives for peace of community instead of inner peace must find just the opposite, I fear, an unattainable goal. For there will always be trouble of one sort or another. A tyrant, a war, a despotic landowner, a thief in the alley, a misguided father abbot. There is no paradise in this existence for creatures as complex as human beings. There is no perfect human world, bereft of strife and battle of one sort or another.

  I know that now, or at least I fear it profoundly. And with that knowledge came the sense of futility, of running up a mud-slick steep slope, only to slide back over
and over again.

  Will the new Father Abbot be any better than the previous one? Likely, since those electing him will be cautious to seek certain generous qualities. But what about the next after that, and after that? It will, it must, come back to Markwart, I fear; and, given that, how can I see anything more than the futility of sacrifice?

  And, given that, how can I agree with Elbryan’s gift of his own life?

  And so here I am, in Dundalis, the place quiet and buried in deep snow as the world drifts into God’s Year 828. How I long for seasons far past, for those early years when Elbryan and I ran about Dundalis, oblivious of goblins and demons and men like Father Abbot Dalebert Markwart!

  Perhaps the greatest thing of all that has been stolen from me over these years was my innocence. I see the world too clearly, with all of its soiled corners.

  With all of its cairns over buried heroes.

  —JILSEPONIE WYNDON

  Chapter 22

  Playing Trump

  THE SNOW WAS DEEP, THE NORTHERN WIND BITTERLY COLD, BUT ABBOT BRAUMIN showed a distinct spring in his step as he approached the gates of Chasewind Manor.

  The sentries at the outer gate held him in check for a long while, as he expected, and didn’t even offer him the meager shelter of their small stone gatehouse nor any of their steaming tea. No, they merely eyed him, their stares as cold as the north wind; and Abbot Braumin, despite his fine mood, had to wonder if he could ever repair the damage Duke Kalas had done to the relationship of Church and Crown in Palmaris.

  A short while later, the abbot was finally admitted to the main house, and there he was made to sit and wait yet again, as the minutes became an hour, and then two. Braumin took it all in stride, whistling, singing some of his favorite hymns, even coaxing one flustered servant into an impromptu penitence session.

  That session—certainly not a welcome thing in the court of Duke Targon Bree Kalas—was interrupted almost immediately by Kalas’ aide, bidding the abbot to enter and commence his business with the Duke.

  Abbot Braumin muttered a little prayer for himself, begging forgiveness for so using the unwitting servant, and promised to attend his own penitence session once he returned to St. Precious.

  “Good morn, God’s morn, Duke Kalas,” Braumin said cheerfully as he entered the man’s study.

  Kalas peered up at him from behind a great oaken desk, his expression one of pure suspicion.

  Braumin took a long moment studying that scowl. It was no secret about the city that the Duke had been in a particularly foul mood of late; and Braumin could guess the source of that discontent. Many of Ursal’s nobles were no doubt wintering in Entel or at Dragon Lake, a favored winter palace, while he was stuck up here, in the bitter Palmaris winter, alone and without any close friends.

  Even many of the stoic Allheart knights were beginning to shows signs of discontent, of homesickness.

  “It is morning,” Kalas replied gruffly, shuffling some papers and nearly overturning his inkwell, “and I suppose that every morning is God’s to claim.”

  “Indeed,” Braumin said, intentionally making his tone annoyingly chipper.

  “Whatever concept of God one might hold,” Duke Kalas continued, narrowing his eyes.

  “Ah, the purest concept of all,” Braumin answered without the slightest hesitation. He tossed a rolled parchment on the desk in front of Kalas.

  Still eyeing Braumin suspiciously, the Duke picked it up and slipped the ribbon from it. He snapped it open with a swift, sudden movement, his eyes scanning, scanning, while he tried to hold his expression steady. Then, finished, he simply dropped the parchment back to his desk and sat up straight, folding his hands together on the desk before him. “A chapel for Avelyn Desbris?” he asked.

  “In Caer Tinella,” Abbot Braumin said cheerfully, “with the blessing of new Father Abbot Agronguerre—a good friend of your King’s brother, I understand.”

  Kalas, well aware of Prince Midalis’ relationship with the Abellican Church in Vanguard, didn’t blink. “How steady is your Church, Abbot Braumin,” he remarked. “First you claim Avelyn a heretic, now a saint. Do you so sway between good and evil? Do you worship God today and a demon tomorrow, or in your eyes are they, perhaps, one and the same?”

  “Your blasphemy does not shock me, Duke Kalas,” Braumin replied, “nor does it impress me.”

  “If you believe that I have any desire to impress you, or any of your clergy leadership, then you do not understand me at all,” came the confident and firm answer.

  Abbot Braumin gave a slight bow, conceding the point, not wanting to go down this tangent path.

  “I have no jurisdiction over Caer Tinella,” the Duke of Wester-Honce went on. “You should be throwing your writ upon the desk of Duke Tetrafel of the Wilderlands.”

  “I need not the permission of the Crown or any of its representatives to begin construction of the chapel of Avelyn in Caer Tinella,” Abbot Braumin returned.

  “Then why come here?” asked Kalas. “Do you mean to taunt me by flaunting the expansion of your Church? Or to convince me, perhaps, that your way—the Light of Avelyn, I am hearing it called—is the one true way, and that Markwart and all the evil he wrought was but an aberration, a corrected mistake?”

  “I inform you of the construction of the new chapel in Caer Tinella merely as a courtesy,” Abbot Braumin answered. “I intend to use masons from Palmaris for that work, and for the expansion of St. Precious.”

  Kalas was nodding, obviously bored, and it took a long moment for that last part to even register. He snapped his glare up at Abbot Braumin, his eyes again going narrow and threatening. “We have already settled this matter,” he said.

  “What is settled in one moment might be altered in another,” Braumin replied.

  Kalas just stared at him.

  “There is new information,” the abbot said.

  “You have found a way around the law?” Duke Kalas asked skeptically.

  “You decide,” Abbot Braumin replied, with equal confidence. “Brother Dellman told me of a most unusual encounter up in Vanguard, Duke Kalas: a battle fought with powries.”

  “Not so unusual in these troubled times,” Kalas replied, glancing at the lone sentry in the room, an Allheart knight, standing at attention to the side of the great desk.

  Abbot Braumin studied the Duke carefully, looking for any signs of unintentional personal betrayal, as he continued. “Apparently, these powries had some trouble with their ship.”

  “A barrelboat?”

  Now it was Abbot Braumin’s turn to glance at the Allheart knight, then questioningly back to Kalas.

  The Duke caught the cue. “Leave us,” he instructed the knight. The man looked at him curiously, but then snapped a chest-thumping salute and strode from the room.

  “Palmaris ship,” Braumin said bluntly as soon as the door had closed, and he paused and let the notes of that devastating information hang in the air. Kalas did shift in his seat then, and Braumin imagined the man fighting an inner struggle at that moment. Should he feign ignorance? Or should he concoct some wild tale of escape?

  The Duke folded his hands but did not sit back comfortably in his chair, a clear sign to Braumin that his words had intrigued the man and, perhaps, had scared him.

  “A curious thing,” Braumin went on, his tone now casual. “Brother Dellman insists that he recognized one or two of the powries.”

  “They all look alike, so I have observed,” Duke Kalas said dryly.

  “Though some might carry remarkable scars or wear distinctive clothing,” Abbot Braumin remarked.

  Duke Kalas sat very still, staring, probing; and Braumin knew that he had hit the man squarely, that Brother Dellman’s beliefs about the origins of the powrie band in Vanguard had been right on the mark. And now, given Kalas’ reactions, Abbot Braumin knew that the powrie band had not escaped from Palmaris. Duke Kalas had a secret, a very dark one.

  “And where does your Brother Dellman believe he once saw these
same powries?” Kalas asked, again in dry and seemingly unconcerned tones. But again, a subtle shift in his seat betrayed his true anxieties.

  “He cannot yet be certain,” Abbot Braumin replied, emphasizing the word “yet.” “He envisions a misty and drizzly morning.…” He let his voice trail off, the threat to Kalas hanging obvious and ominous.

  The Duke stood up suddenly. “What games do you play?” he asked, walking to the side of his desk to a brandy locker with, Braumin noted, a rather large sword hanging over it. The Duke poured himself a drink and motioned an offer to Braumin, who shook his head.

  Kalas swirled the liquid in his glass a couple of times, then slowly turned, half sitting on the edge of the locker, his expression calm once more.

  “If you have more to say, then speak it clearly,” he bade the abbot.

  “I doubt there will ever be more to say,” Braumin replied. “I will be too busy with the construction of the chapel of Avelyn in Caer Tinella and with the expansion of St. Precious.”

  There it was, laid out clearly and simply.

  Duke Kalas sat very still for a long while, digesting all of the information, sipping his drink, then swallowing it suddenly in one great gulp. He threw the glass against the wall, shattering it, and rose up so forcefully that the heavy locker skidded back a few inches.

  “You have heard of the word ‘extortion’?” he asked.

  “You have heard of the word ‘politics’?” Braumin came right back.

  Kalas reached back and above him and tore the sword from the wall, bringing it out before him. “Perhaps a personal meeting with your God will teach you the difference between the two,” he started to say, but he stopped, staring curiously, as Abbot Braumin presented his hand forward, palm up, revealing a small dark stone, a graphite, humming with power.

  “Shall we see which of us God chooses to take and instruct this day?” he asked, a wry, confident smile on his face; though in truth, his guts were churning. Braumin Herde had never been a warrior, nor was he overproficient with the gemstones. With his graphite, he could bring forth a small bolt of lightning, but he doubted it would do more than slow fierce Kalas for a few moments, and perhaps straighten a bit of the curly black hair on the man’s head.