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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “And this is the next step ahead of Oracle?” Brynn asked, and still there was a hint of sarcasm in her tone, one that Pagonel caught, if his laugh was any indication.

  “This is a step to the side, not ahead,” the mystic explained. “This is our Oracle—one manifestation of it, at least.”

  Brynn held her intended sharp retort. “Then lead on,” she decided a moment later, and she took Pagonel’s offered hand.

  They continued climbing for nearly an hour, their pace slowing as the terrain grew more difficult. Soon, they caught up to the other Jhesta Tu mystics, with Pagonel falling into line behind them, Brynn behind him. The woman feared that she might not be accepted, but none of the mystics seemed to even acknowledge her presence. Besides, she realized, Pagonel was the highest-ranking of their order, along with Master Cheyes and Matron Dasa, and so she supposed that he could pretty much make the rules as he saw appropriate, especially the rules concerning his visitor to the monastery.

  By midafternoon, the troupe was high up on the mountainside, with a cold wind blowing fiercely about them, and patches of snow holding fast in the shaded areas. Brynn was about to remark that she was not properly dressed for the elements, but she held the thought private, for the seven Jhesta Tu mystics ahead of her in line were wearing no more than their light robes, and while a couple wore sandals, the others were barefoot.

  They came up over a rocky rise, and the path split, veering out to the left, to the facing of the steep mountainside, and continuing to the right, climbing higher. Brynn was surprised when the mystics went left, and even more surprised when she came to the cliff facing, out of the shelter of the rocks and walls. The path dipped lower there, running out to a narrow north-facing ledge.

  The wind blew cold, so cold! The mystics went out calmly, the lead brother moving to the end of the ledge and sitting down, cross-legged.

  Pagonel stopped and ushered Brynn past him, onto the ledge in place behind the other mystics. She looked to her mentor, then to the others, who were all settling in with that same cross-legged posture.

  Pagonel motioned for her to do likewise, and so she settled down.

  The others brought their hands up, pressing palms together before their faces. By the time Brynn did the same, the others released their hands down to their hips. In unison, they arched their backs, lifting their hips up and back, then rolled forward slowly but steadily, folding up at the waist so that they wound up bent double over their crossed legs, heads pressing the stone, arms extending up above them.

  Brynn looked up at Pagonel, who was still standing, and he nodded for her to assume the same pose.

  With a shrug, the woman rolled her hips back, then rotated forward, bending low. She couldn’t get quite as far down as the mystics, but she was fairly limber and managed to settle into a somewhat comfortable position.

  Then she waited.

  And waited.

  For a long time, Brynn kept peeking out under her arms to the others, expecting them to shift to another position. But none moved at all. A couple of them moaned softly, but other than that, they were all perfectly still and quiet.

  The minutes passed and became inconsequential. After some time, Brynn stopped peeking out, just fell into the moment and allowed her thoughts to drift away, to memories, to fantasies, and then, to nothing at all.

  She fell deeper and deeper away from the world.

  A cold numbness brought her back to her consciousness sometime later. She blinked open her eyes and was surprised to see that the sun had set.

  Brynn felt her muscles contracting; her teeth started chattering. With great effort, she lifted her head into the face of the cold night wind. Shaking, the cold biting at all of her exposed flesh, the woman managed to sit up.

  And then Pagonel was there, beside her, wrapping a heavy woolen blanket about her and helping her to her feet, then holding her steady while the feeling returned to her legs.

  He started to lead her away.

  “What of them?” Brynn asked.

  “They will return to the monastery tomorrow.”

  Brynn stopped, her stare incredulous as she looked from Pagonel to the six meditating mystics. “They will freeze.”

  “They have consciously slowed their bodies. Their hearts barely beat now, and the cold will not wound them,” the Jhesta Tu master explained.

  Brynn stared at him in disbelief.

  “As you learned your Oracle, so these Jhesta Tu have learned theirs. In time, you will come to understand, if you choose to learn.” He started away, and Brynn went along for a short while, before stopping and staring at him hard.

  “But you were able to succeed at Oracle on your first try,” she said, again with a hint in her voice that something wasn’t quite right here, that perhaps Pagonel was mocking her.

  “Are you so concerned with how you measure beside me?” the mystic asked bluntly. “Are you so concerned how your training measures against that of the Jhesta Tu?”

  Brynn didn’t blink.

  “All of the mystics now giving themselves to the wind are your seniors,” he explained. “And I am likely twice your age. Waste not your time, your emotions, and your talents on such negative feelings, my friend.”

  “Did you bring me here to fail?” the unrelenting Brynn asked. “To prove to me that I had a lot more to learn?”

  “I brought you here not knowing whether you would fail or not,” Pagonel answered. “But it hardly matters. I will teach you the technique over the next weeks, and when you return here, you will pass the night in quiet comfort, falling within yourself to shelter from the cold.”

  Brynn glanced back up the path.

  “Even in winter,” Pagonel promised. “Even on winter’s coldest night.”

  He led her back down to the monastery then, walking along the dark path with the ease of familiarity.

  Brynn began her lessons the next day, with Pagonel teaching her how to focus her thoughts upon one part, one aspect, of her body. He showed her how to consciously relax, strengthening the connection between mind and body, strengthening her control over herself, even to the point of slowing the beat of her heart.

  Brynn returned to the shelf three weeks later. The following morning, feeling thoroughly refreshed, Brynn Dharielle walked down the path beside a handful of Jhesta Tu, back to the monastery. None of the mystics said anything to her on that long walk, but whenever she managed to catch their eyes, the looks that she got back were inevitably ones of acceptance.

  Brynn went up the mountain to give herself to the wind many times over the next weeks and months, and even though summer had blossomed on the land far below, up there only the discipline she had learned from Pagonel and from the elves allowed her to survive the brutally cold nights. On one occasion, Brynn remained up on that shelf for three days, deep within herself, and within the emptiness of dark peace.

  Every time she came back down the mountain, the woman felt refreshed, felt stronger, and felt that the road of her life was a bit more clearly defined.

  She left the Walk of Clouds in the other direction often, as well, traveling down the thousands of stone stairs to the valley floor. Finding the grassy fields where the horses ran was not difficult, and a single whistle and call always brought Brynn’s best friend galloping to her side.

  On one such morning, when the summer of God’s Year 841 was giving way to autumn, Brynn and Runtly basked in the sunshine. The woman had brought a bucket and brushes down with her, and she knew all the right places to brush the pony, using just the right texture of bristle so that the pony kept throwing his head with approval.

  Brynn had come down before the dawn this morning, so that she had caught up to Runtly just as the sun was rising, intending to spend the whole of the day with the pony, brushing him clean, riding him, just sitting in the grass beside him as he meandered about, seeking out delicious clover.

  The young ranger was surprised when she saw a figure approaching, tall and slender, though with a bit of a belly. As he came o
ut of the direct sunlight, she recognized Pagonel.

  “Am I needed above?” Brynn asked, concerned, not because of any expression or posture of the mystic, but merely from the fact that he had come all the way down there.

  “I thought that I might come and enjoy the day with you,” Pagonel replied. “And with him.” As he finished, he walked over and stroked Runtly’s muscled neck as the pony happily munched at some clover. Runtly’s head snapped around and he bit at Pagonel’s hand, not seriously, not trying to injure, but merely as a warning gesture.

  “He likes you, I am certain,” Brynn said with a chuckle.

  “Or he likes the way I taste.”

  “Perhaps he sees our friendship as a threat to my friendship with him.”

  “Or perhaps he simply likes the way I taste!” Pagonel reiterated, patting the pony hard on the neck.

  “I enjoyed several hours of Oracle this morning,” the mystic went on.

  Brynn knew that he was not lying, nor was he saying that just to make her feel a bit better about her place at the Walk of Clouds.

  “A lesson learned in exchange for a lesson given?” she asked.

  “A valuable exchange.”

  “Was it?” Brynn asked in all seriousness. “Do your brethren share your enthusiasm for that which I might contribute to your order?”

  “You are anxious.”

  Brynn considered the statement for a moment, then nodded. “The Walk of Clouds is unaccustomed to casual visitors.”

  “Is that what you are?”

  “Is that what I am?” the woman came right back at him. “I am not a member of your order, yet you share its secrets with me. Does that sit well with your peers, Pagonel?”

  “I wear the Belt of All Colors and am thus answerable only to my own judgment,” he explained. “There is no questioning, not to me, nor behind your back in whispers. It is no Jhesta Tu’s place to question your presence here.”

  “But where do I fit in, in the judgment of Pagonel?” Brynn asked. “Do you think me Jhesta Tu? Do you hope that I will walk that path?”

  “I think that you have been walking that path for most of your life,” the mystic explained. “Whether you one day choose formally to claim yourself Jhesta Tu is irrelevant.”

  Brynn started to reply, but Pagonel stopped her with an upraised hand, patted Runtly hard on the neck one last time, then moved over and sat beside the woman. “Many centuries ago, soon after the establishment of the Abellican Church in Honce-the-Bear, one of their missionaries happened upon us, gemstones in hand, to spread the good word of his version of god. He was taken in at the Walk of Clouds, as were you, and shared with us as we shared with him. Both our order and his understanding were strengthened by that commune, I believe, and thus am I strengthened in my understanding by learning the truths as you have learned them. And thus, I pray, will you be strengthened by your experiences here at the Walk of Clouds.”

  Brynn looked at the older man hard, locking his gaze and not blinking. “Why do you wish me strengthened? Is my cause your cause?”

  “I do not know,” the mystic admitted.

  “Then why?” Brynn asked. “Why did you risk your life to pull me off the battlefield outside of Dharyan? And why did you then bring me all the way to the south? Would you have done as much if it was another you had saved? Would you have taken another—even Ashwarawu himself—all the way here and opened the secrets of your order to him?”

  “No,” Pagonel admitted without even considering the words.

  “Then why?”

  The mystic took a deep breath and leaned back a bit as Brynn leaned in eagerly toward him. After a few moments, he looked away.

  “Because I see in you so much of my own heart,” he said a short while later, and he turned back to stare into Brynn’s puzzled expression, that beautiful face only an inch from his own. “You understand Jhesta Tu—I knew that you would. I knew that both of us would benefit …” He stammered a bit, at a loss for words for the first time Brynn had ever seen.

  She stopped him, then, putting her finger over his lips. “I know,” she said. “I knew it, too, when first we met at Ashwarawu’s camp.”

  She moved her finger away, but Pagonel didn’t resume speaking. He just sat there, staring at her, and she at him.

  All that Pagonel wanted to do at that moment was kiss her. But he didn’t, holding back and reminding himself that he was twice Brynn’s age.

  All that Brynn wanted to do at that moment was kiss this man, but she wasn’t bold enough to initiate that level of intimacy, though in truth, to her, physical intimacy between them could be nothing more than an extension of the emotional intimacy they had been sharing all these months. They were so in harmony, spirit and soul, that Brynn hardly cared about any age difference.

  But Pagonel held back, and Brynn, so innocent and unawares in matters of physical intimacy, would not take this first step.

  They stayed on the field with Runtly until late that afternoon, then walked together up the long staircase back to the Walk of Clouds, Pagonel’s home and Brynn’s welcomed sanctuary.

  Chapter 21

  The Relief of Resignation

  YAKIM DOUAN WAS TRULY SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT THE CHEZHOU KALIIT, THE master of that warrior order, was in Jacintha to meet with him, for though the Chezhou-Lei were dedicated to the Yatol priests, serving as bodyguards who would throw their own bodies in front of a spear aimed for a Yatol, the Kaliit, an old barrel-chested man named Thog Timig, rarely left his home village, some hundred miles south of Jacintha. His mere presence told Yakim Douan that something extraordinary was afoot.

  The door to the private audience chamber cracked open and Merwan Ma entered, leading the old and bent man. The Kaliit was hunched at the shoulders, and while his torso had retained the size and strength of his former warrior years, his arms and legs were spindly things, withered and crooked from an assortment of injuries. But if there was any infirmity in the Kaliit’s physical body, it didn’t show in his dark and sparkling eyes, strong and intense. He fixed a glare on Douan from the moment he strode through the door, one that showed appropriate respect, but also conveyed the inner power of the man.

  “Welcome, Kaliit Timig,” Douan greeted warmly. “I have oft feared that I would not have the chance to greet you again before Yatol took one of us or the other to his side.”

  The Kaliit stiffly, but with great dignity, slid into a chair beside the Chezru Chieftain.

  “It will not be long,” he replied dryly. “Every storm rages in my body before the sky has clouded.”

  Douan nodded and smiled, more to himself than to his visitor. He had no idea of the Kaliit’s true age, but the man was very, very old, ancient even. Thog Timig had risen to the position of Kaliit early on during Douan’s reign as Chezru Chieftain, but while Yakim Douan had been barely more than a boy at that time, those few decades ago, Thog Timig had already been a middle-aged man.

  “Which makes your decision to visit me at this time all the more mysterious, I must admit,” Douan said a moment later, when the God-Voice noted that the Kaliit seemed to be staring off into nothingness.

  The old man turned his head slowly to regard the man beside him. “The Chezhou-Lei will march as one,” he explained. “For the first time in three hundred years, the warriors will be recalled from every corner of Behren.”

  Yakim Douan stared at the man incredulously. What was he talking about? The To-gai-ru had been put down, and definitively, outside the gates of Dharyan, and there had been little stirring over the last months from any would-be rebels. So secure had the situation become that Yatol Grysh had sent the Jacintha twenty-squares marching home again. Even the ever-present pirates along the coast had quieted in recent months, now that the eyes of all of Behren’s military power could be turned upon them.

  “Recalled to march where?” Douan asked, trying hard to hide his surprise at all of this. “To the west? The north? Do you mean to swim out into the Mirianic and throttle the rag-tag pirates?”

/>   “To the south,” Kaliit Timig said.

  “The south? To the hot jungles and the great Serpent Masur?”

  “To the Mountains of Fire and the Jhesta Tu mystics,” the Kaliit admitted.

  “Jhesta Tu?” Mixed in with Douan’s surprise was a fair degree of budding anger. Why would the Chezhou-Lei desire to wake the sleeping tiger that was Jhesta Tu? The old mystics sat up on their mountaintops, removed from all the world—just the way that Yakim Douan wanted it!

  “Chezhou-Lei Dahmed Blie did not return with your soldiers from Dharyan,” Kaliit Timig remarked.

  “No,” Douan admitted. “He was among the fallen. The few fallen. And I admit my surprise and dismay when I learned that a Chezhou-Lei warrior had been killed at Dharyan. I never would have believed that the pitiful rebels could have struck such a blow!”

  “Chezhou-Lei Dahmed Blie was killed, not by a rebel Ru, but by a Jhesta Tu mystic, God-Voice,” Kaliit Timig explained. “Our ancient enemies have come down from their mountains and have begun a war.”

  “You cannot be certain of this.”

  “The Jhesta Tu was seen in southern To-gai earlier,” Kaliit Timig croaked, his voice rising in anger for the first time since he had entered, and for one of the very few times in the dispassionate man’s entire life. “The wound was quite telling,” he went on, holding forth his crooked fingers as straight as he could get them, thrusting them out, hooking them farther, and pulling back, an imitation of the strike Pagonel had used to kill Dahmed Blie. “It confirmed for us what those who witnessed Dahmed Blie’s fall have told. Jhesta Tu killed Chezhou-Lei. There can be no doubt.”

  “The actions of a rogue mystic, then,” a hopeful Douan remarked.

  “Even if that were so, God-Voice, the actions of that day were consummated with the killing strike of order against order. It is not a challenge that we can ignore.”