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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Those who see truth as such are doomed to …” De’Unnero started to respond, and he sputtered and looked all around, waving his arms. “Are doomed to … are doomed to this!” he yelled, and he leaped off the edge of the low roof and stormed across the dirt courtyard. He thought of going to Sadye then, and of taking her powerfully, without a word.

  But even that thought gave him pause. Sadye had been talking lately of having a child, De’Unnero’s child, and she was certainly still young enough to do so. The thought of a child did not put Marcalo De’Unnero off so much—until he looked closely at his surroundings. How could he bring forth his child and Sadye’s—an intelligent one, to be sure—into this?

  The Abellican Church envisioned hell as a place of fire and brimstone and evil creatures torturing hapless souls. To De’Unnero, it seemed more and more likely with each passing day that hell was a peasant village on the edge of nowhere.

  The tormented former monk walked out of Tuber’s Creek then, into the forest, breaking any branches low enough to reach and thin enough to crack. He even stopped at one small, dead tree and fell into a martial practice routine, similar to the ones he had taught so well at St.-Mere-Abelle. Feet and hands flying, De’Unnero splintered the dead tree apart and dislodged its trunk from the ground.

  Even that did not satisfy him, though, and so he kept walking through the forest. He thought to sing, to try to use music to quiet himself as Sadye often did, but even as he started, his senses became overwhelmed by a different kind of tune, the discordant tune that Sadye had played to bring the weretiger out. At first, De’Unnero tried to block those twanging notes, tried to flush them from his thoughts, fearful of what they might cause in his agitated state.

  But it was precisely that agitated state that forced him to continue playing the song in his head, that led him to embrace the twanging.

  Within minutes, Marcalo De’Unnero was running on four padded paws, leaving his shredded clothing behind. Perhaps if he killed a deer, it would satiate his anger. Perhaps if he found a bear to do battle with, he could play out his rage.

  Bad fortune brought a pair of huntsmen in his path, returning to the village, after a successful hunt, a bloody deer strung out on a pole between them.

  Ah, the sweet scent of blood!

  The weretiger sprang to a low branch, then leaped again mightily, soaring across the expanse to crash down on the huntsmen in a blind fury. In the span of a few heartbeats, a few agonized screams, three carcasses littered the ground.

  The weretiger feasted, unaware that the death cries had carried through the forest to those peasants working in Tuber’s Creek.

  As soon as she heard the screams—primal, utterly terrified, and agonized—Sadye knew the source, knew that the beast had come forth again. She joined the gathering of the villagers at the end of Tuber’s Creek closest to the screams. Most of the strongest men were out and many of the women, as well. There was quite a bit of confusion and finger-pointing. Sadye used that to her advantage, ordering the others to form up some line of defense back here in town, while she went out to see what she could learn.

  Of course, a couple of the younger men argued that course, and so Sadye offered them scouting positions, as well, and pointedly sent them off in the wrong directions.

  She sprinted through the trees, her thoughts whirling. Marcalo hadn’t been at the gathering, though she knew that he was working in town this day, and that only confirmed to her what she, in her heart, already knew.

  She had a keen ear and was fairly certain of the direction and the distance, but, still, how could she hope to find him in this tangle of forest, an orange cat running along the backdrop of dead, fallen leaves?

  She’d need more than a bit of luck, she knew, and so she thanked God profoundly when she came upon the first signs, the tattered clothing of her lover. She scooped the garments up and ran on, bending low and finding a trail; and soon enough, she came upon the grisly scene.

  The weretiger turned to face her, growling low and threateningly. She could sense its agitation, had never seen De’Unnero so on the edge of explosion. Suddenly thinking that coming out here might not have been a good idea, Sadye pulled her lute around and began playing a soft and gentle melody.

  The weretiger growled again, dropped the human leg it was gnawing, and began to stalk her.

  Sadye knew better than to try to run. She played on and began to sing, her voice cracking more than once with sorrow and remorse, for she thought herself doomed.

  She sang and she played, and she interjected more than a little begging into her music, pleading with De’Unnero not to kill her. The great cat was barely ten feet away, within easy pouncing distance, and Sadye’s heart skipped a beat and she nearly ran off when she saw the weretiger shifting its rear paws, to get solid footing for a leap.

  She held her heart and her hope, and she played and she sang, and her voice nearly cracked again, when she saw the cat suddenly relax.

  She changed her song to the one she had often used to send the weretiger off into the forest, but this time, De’Unnero did not run away but just stood there staring at her for a long, long time.

  She heard the cracking of bones, then came the low, pained growl as the transformation began.

  Marcalo De’Unnero soon lay naked on the ground before her, covered in the blood of the two dead villagers.

  “What have you done?” Sadye asked, slinging her lute behind her and running to her lover.

  De’Unnero looked from her to the scene of destruction and growled again, this time a human sound, but one of utter frustration. He grabbed at his black hair and pulled, then balled his hands into fists and punched them against his eyes.

  Sadye rubbed his shoulders, trying to comfort him, but trying, too, to get some answers. “Why, my love?” she gently asked.

  De’Unnero let out a wail, and Sadye caught as much outward anger as self-loathing in its notes.

  “How did this happen?” Sadye demanded. “You must tell me!”

  No answer.

  “How could this happen?”

  De’Unnero growled at her. “How could it not?” he asked angrily, spitting every word with frustration. “For a decade and more I have lived among the small villages, trying to survive among … them!” he said contemptuously, waving his arm in the general direction of the distant village.

  Voices in the forest cut the conversation short. “Run off!” Sadye whispered harshly into his ear. “Be long gone from this place that you so hate!” There was anger in her tone and pure venom, but De’Unnero, despite any questions he might need answered from her, found himself complying, found himself running naked through the autumn forest.

  Sadye watched him go, then rushed to the gory scene and rubbed his tattered clothing with the blood. She fell to a sitting position and began talking to herself, alternating her voice so that it seemed as if she was holding both ends of a two-sided conversation.

  Two of the scouts crashed onto the scene a moment later, crying out as they came to recognize their fallen friends.

  “And my Callo!” Sadye wailed, holding up the shredded clothing. “Oh, but the beast took him!” The irony that there was more than a little truth in that last statement was not lost on the witty woman, but she kept her amusement private.

  The hunters brandished their weapons and proclaimed that they would go and kill the beast straightaway, but Sadye stopped them short. “A great cat, it was,” she wailed. “Bigger than three men! My Callo’s already long dead, to be sure, and he’d not have others running foolishly to their deaths in pursuit! Back to town we must all go, to set our defenses.”

  She was amused again, this time by how quickly the brave men agreed.

  “Bah, but we could’ve used the likes o’yerself,” the man said to Nighthawk as they sat with all the folk of Festertool in Rumpar’s common room one evening, the stranger showing off his ghastly scars like medals of honor. “Though I doubt that even a giantslayer would’ve had much of a chance against the
beast!”

  Aydrian didn’t respond, just narrowed his gaze and listened to every word the man, Mickael by name, spoke.

  “What remains of Micklin’s Village?” he did ask sometime later, after Mickael had recounted the tale yet again.

  “There’s a few living there,” Mickael answered.

  “How long would it take me to get there?”

  “Three weeks o’ hard walkin’,” Mickael answered doubtfully, his tone sounding to Aydrian much like that of someone who didn’t want his lies uncovered. “Why’d ye be going? Ye’re not to find a hot trail.”

  “But I will find some trail,” Aydrian replied. “Some place to start. If there is such a beast as you describe—”

  “Are ye doubting me wounds, then?” Mickael protested loudly.

  Aydrian stared at the man’s bare leg, the outside of it nothing more than four deep scars. “Then I must go to Micklin’s Village at once,” he said, “to learn the nature of this beast. To find its trail and destroy it.”

  “Ye’ll be dead in the forest,” Mickael said with a laugh, turning back to the others at his table and lifting his glass in a toast, chuckling as he did.

  Aydrian grabbed the man’s shoulder and abruptly turned him. “Draw me a map to the village,” he said evenly, his voice grim enough to take the blood from Mickael’s face. “And tell me again every detail of the night, every detail of the beast.”

  Mickael did just that, and, with a grim nod to the folk of Festertool, Nighthawk left the common room.

  “He’s going right out,” Rumpar remarked, and several others nodded and murmured their agreement.

  “He’s to be dead soon, then,” Mickael said, “if he’s finding the cat-man.”

  His words were met with great derision from the folk of Festertool, the folk who had come to rely upon Nighthawk, who had come to transform this wayward youth into some vision as one of their own. Nighthawk was the ranger of Festertool, by his own words, and the folk of Festertool had come to take great pride in that.

  But every one of them sitting in the common room that night was deathly afraid that Mickael might be right, that their young hero might soon be their young, dead hero.

  She found De’Unnero two mornings later, sitting on a hillock not so far out of town, a favorite place where she and the former monk had often wandered to make love. She had left Tuber’s Creek behind, telling the villagers that, with her husband dead, there remained nothing there for her and explaining that she was returning to her family in Palmaris. Of course they had argued, and when she had denied those arguments, several had offered to travel with her. And when she had refused that help, they had advised her to wait a few more days, at least. She didn’t want to run into the great murderous cat, after all!

  But that was precisely the point; and now she had found him, sitting calmly, wearing the extra set of clothing he had buried in the forest not far from the town, and seemingly completely at ease.

  “I did not believe that you would come,” De’Unnero admitted coolly, as if it did not matter—though Sadye, of course, knew the truth, knew that he had been sitting here desperately hoping for her company.

  “And would you hunt me down?” she asked teasingly. “Or are you fool enough to believe that you can live without me?”

  That last statement, and even more than that, the absolutely cocksure and collected manner in which she had spoken it, brought a burst of laughter from the tormented De’Unnero. He came forward suddenly, powerfully, catching the woman in a great hug and bearing her down to the soft, leaf-covered ground beneath him.

  “Are you not afraid?” De’Unnero asked her when they were done, lying in each other’s arms under the blue autumn sky.

  “If they find us, you will send them away, I am sure,” Sadye answered flippantly, but De’Unnero clasped her face hard with his powerful hand and forced her to look at him directly.

  “Not of them,” he asked, as if the mere notion was preposterous. He clarified, speaking every word slowly and deliberately, “Are you not afraid of me?”

  “Perhaps that is the allure, Marcalo De’Unnero,” Sadye purred in reply, her grin genuine.

  They were on the open road soon after, bound for … wherever.

  Chapter 17

  Hearth and Soul

  “IT IS NOT THE WISEST CHOICE,” DUKE KALAS SAID IN MEASURED, CONTROLLED tones, and Jilseponie could easily read beneath the man’s calm façade. The man was screaming inside that the appointment would be foolhardy, that giving the Church any kind of a foothold in Palmaris was akin to ceding the entire northland of Wester-Honce to the hated—by Duke Kalas, at least—Abellicans.

  “The precedent for the situation was a smashing success, by every measure,” King Danube calmly replied, and Jilseponie at his side did well to keep her satisfied smile hidden. She had spent the better part of a week preparing Danube for this decision: to allow Abbot Braumin Herde to succeed her as bishop of Palmaris. Danube had at first resisted, and strongly, despite his feelings of goodwill toward the man who, it was well known, had played more than a minor role in securing Jilseponie as Danube’s queen. But Danube had understood the implications within his jealous and guarded court. Duke Kalas, in particular, had never been quiet about his hatred for the Abellican Church.

  “By your pardon, my King, but the precedent was an appointment of State, not the Church, though Queen Jilseponie’s allegiance to the Church is well known,” Duke Kalas said. Now Jilseponie did smile and wanted to cheer the man for his self-control in uttering such hated words without the slightest hint of derision or disdain. Not an easy feat for the volatile man, she well knew!

  “And so it is only fitting that we respond in kind by allowing this second Bishop to come from the Abellican Order,” King Danube reasoned. Duke Kalas flinched, and it seemed to Jilseponie—and she found that she was enjoying the spectacle all too much—that the man was about to explode. “Abbot Braumin is a good man, by all accounts,” the King added. “And I assure you that I have that from the very best of sources.” He glanced over at Jilseponie as he finished, then took her hand and squeezed it.

  Even brash Duke Kalas could not overtly go against that statement, Jilseponie realized, though she saw the little daggers hiding behind the man’s outwardly conciliatory expression.

  “Take heart, Duke Kalas, that Bishop Braumin will rule Palmaris in the best interest of Church and State,” the Queen said confidently. “For he will rule Palmaris in the best interest of the folk of Palmaris.”

  “A Baron rules in the best interest of the King,” Kalas interrupted, correcting her.

  “I know that you have little faith in the Church,” Jilseponie went on, ignoring the remark and unwilling to enter a debate. She—and not Kalas and not the majority of the King’s court—truly believed that the best interests of the common folk were, in fact, the best interests of the King. “And I do not necessarily disagree with your assessments of that which occurred before. But I tell you now that this Abellican Church is not the Abellican Church of decades past but is an order more dedicated to the welfare of the citizenry—King Danube’s flock.”

  Duke Kalas eyed her throughout her little speech with all the outward politeness necessary, but again Jilseponie had little trouble in seeing the murderous anger behind his dark eyes.

  Secure that her husband would not waver in this, now that he had at last come to agree to the appointment, Jilseponie found that she enjoyed that undercurrent of frustration.

  Again, far too much. For it did Jilseponie good to see any defeat of the haughty nobles, with their heartfelt beliefs that they were the only important persons in the kingdom, and that the common folk had to be appeased only to the point where they would not revolt against the Crown.

  Duke Kalas was defeated in this matter, and he obviously knew it. He glanced around, as if looking for support, but his customary backer—Constance Pemblebury—the one who would have surely been a voice of dissension against the appointment of Braumin—was nowhere to be fou
nd this day, as with most days. Constance had not been visiting King Danube much since the wedding a month before. She had even spoken of traveling to Yorkey County for the milder climate for the coming winter.

  Jilseponie hoped the woman would go, but she doubted for a moment that Constance, like Kalas, would let the new Queen so easily out from under her scrutiny.

  Jilseponie knew enough to savor this minor victory, for she understood that she would find King Danube a difficult man to persuade. That, too, did not bother her. Indeed, had Danube simply caved in to her request without a week of arguing and debating, Jilseponie would have been disappointed in him. She and her husband would argue often concerning the actions of the Crown, she realized, and better for both if they could thoroughly and honestly discuss each issue before taking any drastic action. In this matter, though, Jilseponie’s confidence had never even slightly wavered. Despite the unease it might cause in Ursal, she knew that the appointment of Abbot Braumin was to the great benefit of Palmaris and all the northland.

  Duke Kalas bowed curtly and excused himself, explaining that he would prepare the horses for his and King Danube’s scheduled hunt. It wasn’t difficult for Jilseponie to see, from his every movement, that Duke Kalas did not agree with her assessment of Bishop Braumin Herde.

  Somehow, and she knew that it was a wicked thought, Jilseponie found that his attitude made the little victory all the sweeter.

  Soon after, King Danube excused himself from the audience room, leaving the afternoon appointments in the capable hands of his wife. It was a light schedule anyway, discussing a few points of minor contention among some of the lesser nobles; addressing one charge by an important silk merchant that an annoying street vendor was driving away customers; and one meeting Jilseponie did not look forward to in the least, but one that by request had to be conducted in private with Master Fio Bou-raiy.

  “I sail before dawn,” the master from St.-Mere-Abelle explained when he entered much later, to find a weary Jilseponie leaning heavily against the side of her throne.