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

by R. A. Salvatore

  She smiled as she finished and looked into the pinto’s blue eyes knowingly. When she was a young girl, she and her mother used to play many word games, nonsensical and simple fun, and one song in particular stood out to her as she looked upon the beautiful pony, a rhyme that she and her mother had made up about another smallish horse, the runt of the clan’s herd. Brynn could not completely remember the rhyme, but she did remember the word, “runtly,” that her mother had used to both describe the horse and fit lyrically into the song.

  “Runtly, then,” Brynn announced to the pony. “I will call you Runtly!”

  The pony threw its head up and down, several times.

  Brynn knew that it had understood, and she couldn’t have been more delighted.

  The young ranger and her pony spent the next several days together, sometimes riding the lower trails, but more often just walking, with Brynn leading the way and Runtly plodding along, seemingly contentedly, behind. The weather remained mostly clear and chilly, for though they were moving lower in the foothills, the season was pushing on.

  All the while, Brynn tried to get her bearings, looking for some landmark—the jagged, peculiar face of a mountain, perhaps, or a winding stream—that would jog her childhood memories and give her some idea of where a tribe of To-gai-ru might be encamped. She knew that the season was somewhat late for any of the tribes to be so close to the mountains, and so she was relieved indeed when she saw a line of thin smoke, marking a camp.

  She climbed onto Runtly’s strong back and urged the willing pony along at a swift pace. Goose bumps showed on her bare arms, and her mouth went dry, her hands damp, at the thought of seeing her people again for the first time in more than a decade, for the first time since becoming an adult. She grew more nervous with each passing stride and had to remind herself over and over again that she was well prepared for the meeting. The Touel’alfar had trained her in many of the arts that her people held dear, and had gone out of their way to tutor her, often using her own language and not their singsong tongue.

  It occurred to her, then, that the elves had not similarly treated Aydrian concerning language. Brynn never recalled Lady Dasslerond, nor any of the others, speaking to Aydrian in the tongue common to the folk of Honce-the-Bear, but only in the elven tongue. That struck her as odd indeed and, for some reason she did not understand, set the hairs at the back of her neck on edge, but she couldn’t pause and ponder it just then. Aydrian’s road out of Andur’Blough Inninness was years away, she believed—not knowing that the young man, barely more than a boy, was even then in fast retreat from Dasslerond’s captivity—while hers lay right before her, right under that line of gray smoke, perhaps.

  She bent lower and urged Runtly along, soon cresting a ridge and pulling the pony up to a stop, her smile wide.

  And fast disappearing. For there below her was not a To-gai-ru encampment as Brynn remembered them, with deerskin tents set about in a rough circle around a large cooking pit, with horses running free in the fields all about and watchers guarding those fields from high vantage points, protecting the herd that was so vital to the To-gai-ru survival. Brynn had even suspected that she might encounter a watcher up there on the northern ridge.

  There was no watcher. There were no horses running in the fields, as far as Brynn could tell. And no tents! The settlement below her was not the temporary encampment of To-gai-ru, but a true settlement, with permanent structures, and even a trench-and-wall barrier surrounding the whole of it. There were houses fashioned of wood and clay, with sod roofs. They were connected by cleared pathways, roads, all centered around a wide town square. Directly across that square from Brynn stood the largest structure in the town, a long and tall building with a sloping roof constructed of interlocking beams that formed a row of X’s, front to back, and with small towers, minarets, at each of the four corners.

  It was a distinctive design, and one that Brynn would come to mark well and despise in the days ahead.

  Her eyes scanned the structure for a bit, but were drawn away, to the side, to the second-largest structure in the settlement, long and wide and low, and with several fenced-in areas about it. A stable, she knew, for more than a dozen horses milled about those corrals, and even from that distance, she could hear more whinnying from within.

  Her mouth open now, with shock and with anger, Brynn just shook her head helplessly.

  It took her a long, long while to muster up the strength to prod Runtly down the slope to the settlement. As she neared the gate, Brynn noted that there were many Behrenese about, wearing their typical light-colored robes and turbans, and more than a few suspicious expressions turned her way. The To-gai-ru who saw her looked on with equal curiosity, but with expressions that showed less sinister undertones.

  Brynn feared that wearing her surcoat and her armor, and particularly the beret and that fabulous sword hanging at Runtly’s side, might have been a mistake. Perhaps she should have stripped off the pilfered items and bagged them, coming in as a simple To-gai-ru wanderer.

  “Too late now,” the young woman said with a shrug of her shoulders, and she pushed Runtly forward at an easy, unthreatening pace.

  “Halt!” came the expected cry from one of the four guards standing about the gate area.

  Brynn shifted back and gave a slight tug on the pony’s mane.

  The four guards, Behrenese all and with one of them, a woman, wearing the distinctive overlapping scale armor of the Chezhou-Lei, came forward. The three common Behrenese soldiers looked a bit nervous at first, but quickly settled beside their mighty Chezhou-Lei companion.

  The female warrior regarded Brynn gravely, then grunted at one of her companions.

  “Who are you?” the man said immediately, and obediently, Brynn thought.

  “I am Brynn Dharielle,” she answered honestly, for she could think of no reason to hide the name she was best known by, though it was not her true name.

  “From where have you come?”

  Brynn shrugged and looked back over her shoulder at the mountains. “From there, the foothills.”

  The To-gai-ru quickly translated to the Chezhou-Lei, and the mighty warrior regarded Brynn even more closely, her dark eyes narrowing. She said something in the Behrenese tongue, which Brynn did not understand.

  “What village do you call home?” the translator asked. “And what tribe?”

  “I was of Kayleen Kek,” Brynn answered, again honestly. “But that was many years ago.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, a wanderer.”

  The man tilted his head, as if not understanding.

  “A wanderer,” Brynn said again. “Surely you have encountered To-gai-ru wanderers, in this season, in this region near to the mountains.” The man still didn’t seem to catch on, and Brynn worked hard to suppress her smile. In Behren, there were nomads, mostly desert bandits riding from oasis to oasis, and in To-gai, wanderers—as they were called, for they were even more nomadic than the tribes—were even more common, and much respected among the tribes. Wanderers were the information bearers, informing the tribes of news from other encampments and often guiding the hunters to areas with better game signs. Brynn remembered well the excitement among her friends whenever a wanderer approached Kayleen Kek.

  “You are young.”

  “Not so young,” she answered. “But I am tired and desire a warm bed this night, and a fine, cooked meal.”

  The Behrenese translated to the Chezhou-Lei woman, and she paused for a long moment, then nodded at the man.

  “Dee’dahk would not turn you away, Brynn Dharielle,” the man explained. “If the Ru will have you, then enter. But be warned,” he added grimly, staring hard at Brynn, “Champion Dee’dahk will tolerate no insolence from any under her watchful eye.”

  Keeping her face devoid of expression, revealing nothing that could be viewed as threatening or mocking, Brynn slipped down from Runtly and straightened her clothing, then pointedly untied the sword and strapped it about her slender waist. D
ee’dahk was watching her every movement, she knew, and so she tried to appear a bit clumsy, at least.

  “You can stable your horse inside,” the Behrenese soldier continued. “Bargain the price as you desire. For your lodging, you will have to seek out among the other Ru, but expect that my master, Yatol Daek Gin Gin Yan, will wish to speak with you.”

  Brynn held her ground for a long moment, digesting the names and the tone, trying to make some sense out of the obviously huge changes that had come over her homeland. So, there was a Yatol here, and a Chezhou-Lei? Was every “village” like this, under close scrutiny?

  She started forward, Runtly stepping easily behind her, but she stopped suddenly and turned to her pony. She scratched his face and neck and pulled his ears and whispered to him comfortingly, then she turned him about and gave him a smack on the rump, and the pinto trotted off for greener grasses.

  Dee’dahk immediately exploded with a stream of agitated words.

  “That is not allowed!” the Behrenese translator shouted at her. “The horse will be brought in!”

  “This is their land as much as ours,” Brynn explained.

  “This is the land of Yatol Daek Gin Gin Yan!” the man screamed at her. “The horse will be brought in!”

  Brynn considered it for a moment, telling herself repeatedly that this was not the time to start a fight. She understood that the Behrenese would in no way harm Runtly—a To-gai pony as fine as he would be far too valuable for that! She gave a short whistle and the pony stopped and looked back to regard her. A second whistle turned Runtly around, walking back at his own leisurely pace.

  “Then I expect that I shall not be staying here for long,” Brynn explained when the pony reached her, and she started toward the open gates, Runtly right behind. She didn’t bother to return the glare that Dee’dahk was casting her way.

  She reminded herself again, many times, that her duty to her people now was to gain information, to learn all that she could about the present state of affairs in To-gai.

  The time for fighting would come soon enough, she knew.

  “You are a bit young to be a true wanderer, are you not?” an old woman, Tsolona, said to Brynn that same night, when she joined most of the village adults in a common room set off the village square, in full view of the distinctive and huge Yatol Temple.

  “Not so young. And older than I appear in experience, if not in years.”

  “Ah,” said Balachuk, the woman’s companion, a wrinkled and leathery old man whose eyes remained as bright and sharp as those of any twenty-year-old. “And where is it that you’ve been wandering?”

  Brynn smiled as she considered the depth of her forthcoming answer. She wanted this discussion to go completely the other way around, with her asking the questions about To-gai, and not the To-gai-ru interrogating her. She had found no trouble in getting lodgings; several To-gai-ru families had offered to take her in at the cost of a few tales, and she had accepted the invitation of this very couple. One Behrenese man had offered, as well, and Brynn had almost accepted, thinking that she might garner much information about her enemies by becoming a confidant of one of them. But then she had looked into the man’s eyes and had seen the truth of his intent, though his wife would be in the same house.

  “Along the mountains, mostly,” Brynn answered slowly, very conscious of the fact that a pair of Behrenese men were sitting at a table not too far away and were listening somewhat more than casually. She knew that she was being watched wherever she went, as the leaders of the town tried to learn as much as they could about this strange woman and her unusual equipment. Brynn looked at the two men out of the corner of her eye, and added, loudly enough for them to hear, “And under the mountains.”

  The old couple looked to each other in surprise, and others about the immediate area of the large room shared that expression. The whispers began almost immediately, and within a few moments, Brynn found herself surrounded by folk, To-gai-ru mostly, but even with a few Behrenese, all waiting to hear her tales.

  And so she told them—the part under the mountains, at least, though she kept out any mention of Juraviel and Cazzira. Every face screwed up with confusion as she told of the dwarf city, for the To-gai-ru and Behrenese alike had little knowledge of powries, and every eye went wide indeed when Brynn told her tale of the great dragon and its hoard of treasure.

  She played it to maximum effect, dramatizing her words by standing and even mimicking some of the battle actions as she described the fight. At one point, she cried out, “So I thrust my new sword against the great beast’s leg!” and spun to the side as she did, stabbing out with her bare hand, and taking delight, along with all of the others, in the way several of the audience leaped back, one even giving a shriek.

  All the while, though, Brynn subtly glanced at the two Behrenese, who were still sitting at their table, still pretending, unsuccessfully, to be ambivalent about the newcomer or her tale. They were hearing her words, she knew, and marking them well, and likely, they’d be speaking with Yatol Daek Gin Gin Yan before Brynn’s scheduled meeting with him the next morning.

  “They say you are of Kayleen Kek,” one man to the side remarked.

  “Long ago,” Brynn replied, and simply hearing the tribal name evoked memories of her carefree childhood days.

  “A fine tribe!” another man offered, and many about nodded and sounded their accord, and at that moment, Brynn knew that she had come home. The tribes of To-gai were not often friendly with each other, and were oftentimes at war. But there was a mutual respect among them, and an understanding, in the greater scheme of the world, that they were all one people, the proud To-gai-ru.

  The one disconcerting expression that Brynn saw came to her from Barachuk, who seemed a bit confused, even suspicious.

  She wasn’t overly surprised, then, when, after many more tales, including many that Brynn at last coaxed out of the others, old Barachuk turned to her on the way back to the house, and said, “I knew Kayleen Kek. I once traded with them and hunted beside them. I know of no family Dharielle.”

  Brynn noticed the gentle, but firm, way Tsolona put her hand on Barachuk’s forearm, as if reminding him that Brynn was one of them.

  Still, Brynn certainly understood Barachuk’s concern. Kayleen Kek had not been a large tribe, numbering no more than three hundred, and with only twenty distinctive families. And in this day, under the harsh rule of Behren, there was reason for suspicion.

  Brynn stopped walking, as did her two companions. She stared into Barachuk’s sharp eyes. “Do you know the family Tsochuk?”

  The man assumed a pensive pose for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Keregu and Dhalana,” he started to say, hesitantly.

  “And their daughter, Dharielle, who was spared on that evil morning when they were murdered, left to carry the image,” Brynn finished.

  “Brynn Dharielle,” Tsolona breathed.

  “You are that little girl?” Barachuk asked, then he nodded, scrutinizing her. “The age is appropriate.”

  “Poor girl,” said Tsolona, in a voice that was both sympathetic and strong, resigned to the harsh realities of life. She moved closer and put her hand on Brynn’s arm in the same manner she had done to Barachuk a bit earlier.

  Brynn shrugged and let it all go, holding her strong expression and posture and refusing to allow herself to bring back that terrible image. There was no room for any show of weakness here, no time to allow her pain to transfer into anything other than that simmering and determined anger that drove her on in her mission.

  “I left Kayleen Kek, alone, the next day,” Brynn explained. “I know nothing of the tribe—are they still traveling the steppes?”

  “In a village, much akin to our own, I would guess,” said Tsolona.

  “Few follow the old paths,” said Barachuk. “To-gai has changed.”

  “Become civilized,” added Tsolona, an obvious frustration in her snappy voice.

  They walked on quietly, arriving at the small and unremar
kable house a few minutes later. Barachuk waited until after they had settled before pressing on. “How did you survive? Which tribe took you in as their own? And are they still up there, in the foothills?”

  The tone of that last question and the glimmer in his dark eyes tipped Brynn off to Barachuk’s feelings on that particular subject, and she knew then that she was among allies, among To-gai-ru who longed for the old ways, the customs from before the coming of the hated Behrenese. Relief accompanied that realization, for though Brynn could hardly imagine many of her people surrendering their identity to the conquerors in but a decade, she had indeed feared that very possibility.

  “I was with no tribe,” Brynn admitted. “I was not even in To-gai. I traveled north of the mountains.”

  That widened her companions’ eyes! The To-gai-ru were a nomadic people, but their travels had distinct borders, the mountains being one of them. Few To-gai-ru had ever traveled through them; fewer still, and none in memory, had ever returned.

  “Your words are …” Barachuk started to say, but he stopped and just shook his head.

  “Hard to believe?” Brynn finished for him. “Trust me, both of you, if you knew all of my tale, your eyes would widen even more.” As she finished, she reached into her pouch and pulled forth the powrie beret, placing it on her black hair. The two looked at her curiously, obviously not understanding.

  For a moment, Brynn entertained the thought of drawing forth her sword and setting its blade ablaze, but she held back, thinking it wise not to reveal too much, even to this couple, whom she already trusted implicitly. For they would likely talk, to friends at least, and Brynn knew that the Behrenese might well start evesdropping on Barachuk and Tsolona now, as they had already been observing her.

  “It is the headpiece treasured by a race of mighty and wicked dwarves, called the powries,” Brynn explained. “Much of this armor that I wear is of powrie make, I believe.”

  “You befriended dwarves?” asked Tsolona.

  “No.”

  “You warred with them, then. The spoils of battle?”