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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “And when the Behrenese army charges into To-gai to stop us?”

  “We will turn again upon Behren,” said Brynn. “We will sting them over and over again—it is all we can do—and hope that the Chezru Chieftain will come to see his expansion onto the steppes as a fool’s—”

  She stopped suddenly, her face locked in a strange and confused manner, and she blinked her eyes repeatedly.

  “Brynn?” Pagonel asked, moving toward her.

  She lashed out suddenly, her fist speeding for his chest, but the supremely trained Jhesta Tu snapped his hand up to deflect the blow gently.

  She punched out again, and again, and then began to thrash about, and it became apparent to Pagonel that she wasn’t attacking him, but was struggling against some unseen enemy, some demon within herself!

  “Brynn!” he cried repeatedly and he finally found an opening to grab the woman and bring her down to the ground. “Brynn! What is it? Tell me!”

  Undecipherable, almost feral, sounds escaped the woman’s lips and she shuddered violently, nearly tossing the Jhesta Tu off her.

  And then she lay very still, staring at Pagonel, her face a mask of confusion.

  “What was it?” he asked, recognizing that the danger had passed.

  Brynn shook her head. “It was … someone else …” She stammered and shook her head, unable to fathom what had just occurred. She finally started to better explain it when the pair heard a scream from the neighboring tent, where Pagonel had secured the captive Merwan Ma.

  “Someone else?” Pagonel asked as he started to rise, pulling Brynn up beside him.

  “Looking, into me … looking through my eyes!”

  By the time the two got into Merwan Ma’s tent, the poor Shepherd was curled up in a corner, trembling with obvious terror, and whispering “God-Voice,” over and over again.

  “God-Voice?” Brynn asked Pagonel.

  “The Chezru Chieftain,” the mystic replied, and he turned to Merwan Ma. “You have seen him?”

  The Shepherd just continued to tremble, and shook his head repeatedly.

  Brynn and Pagonel looked to each other, then back to the man.

  “He has seen him,” Brynn remarked. “The Chezru Chieftain was here—in spirit, at least.” She looked back to Pagonel. “But how is that possible?”

  “With a gemstone,” the mystic replied. “A hematite.” He watched Merwan Ma as he spoke, and noted that the man’s eyes widened a bit more, a subtle but telling sign.

  “What do you know?” the mystic asked the captive.

  Merwan Ma looked away.

  “The use of gemstone magic is strictly forbidden by the Chezru religion,” the mystic explained to Brynn, who was nodding, already well aware of that fact. “And yet, there is no other way that Chezru Chieftain Yakim Douan could have come to us. The Jhesta Tu know how to walk out of body, but that is a secret we guard carefully, and only our greatest mystics can achieve the state.

  “But Yakim Douan did come out here, did he not, Merwan Ma?” Pagonel went on. “He came to Brynn and then to you, and you recognized him clearly.”

  “You know nothing!” the Shepherd yelled, and he turned about, burying his face in the tent side. “Nothing!”

  Brynn and Pagonel looked to each other.

  “Leave us, I beg,” the mystic whispered. “I believe that this entire picture is beginning to focus. Our friend here knows something—that is why the Chezru Chieftain wanted him killed—and that something is perhaps linked to the surprise we have seen this night.”

  “The Chezru Chieftain uses a gemstone?” Brynn whispered, but she was too excited to keep her voice low enough so that Merwan Ma could not hear, and he shifted and let out a small whimper.

  Pagonel shook his head, then shrugged. “If he does, he would not want anyone to know.”

  “Enough of a threat for him to order this man killed?”

  “Perhaps,” the mystic reasoned.

  Brynn left then, and Pagonel knelt beside Merwan Ma. He grabbed the man by the shoulder and began to turn him about, but Merwan Ma tugged free and turned back.

  Pagonel took him more roughly by the shoulder and pulled him around. “I have been more patient with you than you deserve,” he said bluntly. “You—we—were visited this night by a spirit, and one that you recognized as your God-Voice.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! And now you will tell me the truth of why Chezru Yakim Douan wished you dead. Is it because you knew his secret? That he possessed a soul stone?”

  The man blanched but did not answer, and Pagonel took that as an answer in itself, a clear indication that he had hit on something, something very important. Still, the depth of this escaped him. Yakim Douan had been in power for decades, without threat, for indeed, none of the Yatols would threaten him. The hierarchy of their religion left no room for any such dissension. Given that, why would Yakim Douan even need a soul stone? Or perhaps, in desperation, he had enlisted the Abellicans to help him in his search for the To-gai-ru army. That made some sense to Pagonel, but offered only a partial explanation. For if it was indeed the God-Voice who had come out to them in spirit, then the man’s flirtation with such a gemstone could not have been anything new to him. It took years of training, even with the aid of a hematite, to attempt even a small spirit-walk, let alone the near possession he had witnessed with Brynn. No, it made no sense.

  “We will sit here all through the night, and tomorrow as well, if that is needed,” Pagonel said to Merwan Ma. “I will know the truth of it. And why you so protect this man who would see you dead, I do not understand.”

  “It was the Chezhou-Lei, and not the God-Voice!” Merwan Ma screamed, but his voice lost all power and all conviction at the end of the declaration, and he melted into sobs.

  Pagonel sat back and let him alone for a bit, trying again to sort through all of this startling news.

  With mixed feelings did Yakim Douan re-enter his corporeal body back in Jacintha. He had found her! Had found this woman—Brynn, he had heard her called—and her band of marauding rebels! Now he could direct Yatol Bardoh and destroy the Dragon of To-gai once and for all.

  But he had found Merwan Ma, as well, alive and sitting in a tent right beside the woman and her Jhesta Tu companion. Merwan Ma! Douan had thought him dead and gone, murdered, burned, and buried in Dharyan! What implications did this hold? What dangers might Merwan Ma bring to him personally, whatever the outcome of his hunt for the Dragon of To-gai?

  Few or none, he decided. He would send word out among his troops that the man was a traitor and was guiding their enemies across the desert. He would offer a huge reward for Merwan Ma—no, not for Merwan Ma, but for Merwan Ma’s severed head!

  Yes, that was it.

  Douan hustled through Chom Deiru, back to the circular room, where he replaced the chalice. Then he ran to find his attendant—how he wished he could remember the young dolt’s name!—to proclaim that he had heard the word of Yatol, and that Yatol would deliver their enemies unto them.

  “Your God-Voice has enlisted the aid of the Abellicans in finding us,” Pagonel reasoned to Merwan Ma the next day, after spending more than half the night grilling the man.

  The Shepherd shook his head.

  “It is no secret that he is friends with the abbot from Entel, Abbot …”

  “Abbot Olin,” Merwan Ma said, the first words he had spoken in hours. “Yes, Jhesta Tu, the God-Voice knows Abbot Olin of Entel well, but never has he shown any interest in procuring gemstones from the Abellicans. The gemstones are what separate us—”

  “But he has a stone in his possession, a powerful one, if he can use it to spirit-walk this far from his city.”

  “You believe that you know so much.”

  “Knowledge is the way of Jhesta Tu, Merwan Ma,” said Pagonel. “We know of the To-gai-ru and the Behrenese. We understand the word of Yatol and of St. Abelle. We know of the gemstones, including their properties. I, myself, have used a hematite to walk out of body.” />
  “They are sacrilege,” the Shepherd grumbled.

  Pagonel laughed at him. “To the Jhesta Tu, they are tools, my young friend. As fire is a tool. Some consider them the gift of God, others use them as proof that their religion is better since they forsake them.”

  Merwan Ma looked away.

  “And yet, your God-Voice has one, does he not?” Pagonel pressed, and he moved around, putting his face very near the shaken young man. “Admit it. That is why he wanted to kill you—and it was Yakim Douan who ordered you dead, not some rogue Chezhou-Lei trying to grab for power in Dharyan. Why would a Chezhou-Lei warrior even wish for some power? They are warriors, not governors! They are—”

  “He has a stone!” Merwan Ma shouted back, and fell back in horror at his own words and sat there, gasping.

  “A hematite?”

  The Shepherd nodded.

  “You have seen it, and Yakim Douan knows that you know of it?”

  Another nod.

  “And that is why he wanted you dead,” the mystic reasoned. “Your knowledge of his … indiscretion, frightened him. Profoundly so, it would seem.”

  “It is in the chalice,” Merwan Ma admitted somberly. “A sacrilegious Abellican soul stone embedded in the Chezru Goblet, in the Room of Forever.”

  “The chalice filled with the blood of those chosen for sacrifice?” Pagonel asked.

  “It is among the most important relics in Chom Deiru,” Merwan Ma replied, and he held up his hands and pulled up his sleeves, showing the mystic the line of scars along his wrist.

  “And you found the hematite within that chalice?”

  The Shepherd nodded. “And then I saw the God-Voice with the chalice,” he admitted, shaking his head, his expression full of horror as he remembered that awful moment.

  “And he knew that you saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And soon after, you were sent to Dharyan to serve as governor,” said the mystic, and it was all beginning to come together then, even a definite feeling within Pagonel that this was something deeper than just the God-Voice using a soul stone.

  Chapter 35

  Head-On

  WORD LEFT JACINTHA IN THE FORM OF A SERIES OF FLASHES ON A SHINY METAL plate. And so it went, down a long, long line, from signaler to signaler. By afternoon that day, the signal had crossed through Dahdah Oasis, and continued on, to the south now more than to the west.

  Two days later, the words of Chezru Chieftain Douan reached Yatol Bardoh and Shauntil. They stood over a large map of the region and used Douan’s instructions to pinpoint the location of the Dragon of To-gai and her forces—or at least, the position of that encampment two nights previous.

  “We will receive word every second or third day,” Shauntil explained to his leader. “Soon we will have the woman’s pattern, and can anticipate her movement. Already, if we begin to move our forces here and here”—he pointed to locations on the map, moving his finger to show a swing farther to the south and then east around the point indicated by the message—“we will begin to limit her options.”

  “Forcing her north or back to the west,” the Yatol observed.

  “North to the road where more Jacintha soldiers might join us in encircling the To-gai-ru,” the Chezhou-Lei explained. “And west back to the steppes. It would be better if we pushed her out of Behren altogether, I believe.”

  “She will be harder to find and destroy in the steppes.”

  “But Behren will be secure, and the people will be calmed, and that, I believe is a primary goal of Chezru Chieftain Douan.”

  “Do not presume to know the will of the God-Voice!” Yatol Bardoh snapped back, and then he recoiled, fearing that his suddenly excited tone would reveal much of his thinking. For Yatol Bardoh did not wish any help from Jacintha in ridding Behren of this To-gai-ru witch, nor was he concerned about calming the populace. Bardoh understood well that turmoil was his opportunity to strengthen his own position, and that the more credit he could take for killing the Dragon of To-gai, the more power and influence he would attain throughout the kingdom. He especially needed that great victory now, given his disgrace in losing Avrou Eesa to the woman. Even though the city was firmly back in Behrenese hands, the scars of the Dragon of To-gai’s attack would be enduring indeed.

  And so the man was somewhat ambivalent about this new assistance, where his master, the Chezru Chieftain, claimed to be communicating directly to Yatol. Yes, Bardoh was thrilled to have the intelligence he needed to finally catch up with his adversary. But on the other hand, it galled him that the assistance was coming from Jacintha, and thus stealing his glory.

  “If we do not catch this Dragon of To-gai, and soon, then the people may come to look upon us as failures, Yatol Bardoh,” Chezhou-Lei Shauntil dared to remark, quietly, so that only the Yatol and not the other commanders in the map room could hear.

  Bardoh straightened and stared hard at the perceptive warrior, but he calmed quickly and even nodded his appreciation. It was an important reminder.

  “Let us begin to herd the witch,” he said.

  “They knew that we were moving south,” Brynn said to Pagonel. From a high dune, the pair could see the distant lights of a long Behrenese encampment, stretched out across the desert.

  “Their line is thin,” the woman went on. “We could break through it.”

  “And lose more warriors in the fight.”

  “We would kill many more than we would lose.”

  “And they can afford to lose many, many more,” the mystic reminded. “Our pursuers try to force fights, even skirmishes. They dog us and look to attrition to thin our ranks. We are not on the steppes, and while you know that we are fighting for your homeland, our mere presence here forces the whole of the Behrenese population to feel the same way. If we break through and kill a thousand, and lose only a hundred in the process, then the day will still belong to Yatol Bardoh and not to Brynn.”

  “We must continue to ride hard, then,” said a determined Brynn. “Our opportunities may prove fewer in number, and so we must be vigilant to find and exploit each and every one.”

  Pagonel nodded, but he could not wipe the grim expression from his face. He understood what was going on, and with the Chezru Chieftain using a soul stone to locate the To-gai-ru and relay their position to the pursuing army, Brynn’s greatest advantage, unpredictability, was no more.

  He and Brynn had even discussed the possibility of breaking up the single army into many swifter independent forces. It had been a fleeting thought, though, for how would they supply so many divisions? No small force would be able to take on a city, and Behren was a kingdom of great cities, not small enclaves.

  Pagonel didn’t voice his fear then, but he knew that Brynn already understood that she and her forces might soon be running across the To-gai steppes once more.

  Even there, they would be effectively hunted.

  Agradeleous’ expression told Brynn that he hardly wanted to hear her words of encouragement. She had come to him to explain the need for their continuing run, to beg him to fly off more often and gather the supplies to keep the riders and their mounts fresh and ready to flee.

  “Attack them!” the dragon demanded. “Let us vanquish our enemies here and now and be done with this folly!”

  “You stand straight no longer,” Brynn observed, and the dragon, whose wounds from the breakout at Avrou Eesa had indeed bent him a bit to the side, growled.

  “It is not time,” Brynn said.

  “The opportunity will get no better,” Agradeleous countered. “They follow us as if you yourself are directing their movements!”

  Brynn couldn’t deny the truth of the observation, so she didn’t try. She wasn’t about to tell the dragon about the spirit of Yakim Douan. Pagonel had assured her that there was no way the Chezru Chieftain could use the stone in any detrimental way against a beast as great as Agradeleous. Even attempting to possess a mighty dragon would likely destroy the man. But Pagonel and Brynn had agreed that t
hey would have to watch Agradeleous carefully, now that the tide was turning against them, and now that they needed the dragon to increase his more mundane duties.

  “Our enemies will continue to err, and we will continue to exploit those mistakes,” Brynn said, rather unconvincingly.

  Another low growl escaped Agradeleous.

  “I need you. To-gai needs you, now more than ever,” Brynn said. “On every night that you fly out for supplies, pause and gather a great stone or two and drop them upon our enemies from on high, above the reach of their great spearthrowers.”

  She had to give him that bit of fun, at least, she knew, though she understood that they would likely gain little from such excursions. Dropping a rock upon a burning city was one thing, but hitting a target the size of a stretched encampment to any effect was more a matter of luck than skill. And if the dragon, in its bombing, got excited and tried to attack, then the Behrenese would fight against it viciously.

  Brynn understood all too well that if she lost Agradeleous, her only reliable source of supplying her army, she would have but two choices: initiate the great battle against the overwhelming odds, or flee back to the To-gai steppes and disband into small marauding bands, many of which, she knew, would soon give up the fight altogether.

  Brynn retired late that night full of trepidation and exhausted, so exhausted that she did manage to find some sleep, though it was a light and restless one.

  That would prove fortunate.

  This was nothing that Pagonel often attempted, for it was trying and disturbing, and left him quite vulnerable. Still, the mystic thought it important to try to gain even footing with their adversaries, to spy on the movements of the Behrenese as the Chezru Chieftain was now spying on the movements of the To-gai-ru.

  The mystic fell into himself, sending his consciousness to his line of Chi, his energy of life. And then he filtered that energy out beyond his physical body, out into the open air. He glanced back at himself, sitting alone in his small tent, legs crossed tightly before him, hands on his knees, palms upward, a look of complete serenity on his face.