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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Do you believe that he is strong enough to go against the Jacintha warriors?”

  “Many of those warriors have still not returned from the field outside of Dharyan-Dharielle,” Yatol Wadon explained.

  “They stood down readily enough when word came to them from Jacintha.”

  “True, but I assure you that at that time few in Behren wished to continue battle against the Dragon of To-gai. This is a different matter. All across the kingdom there is war now, as old disputes renew without the control of the Chezru Chieftain to mute them.”

  Pagonel sat back and considered the startling admission. To have a Behrenese leader revealing such a weakness within his country to a member of the Jhesta Tu was incredible enough, but when that Jhesta Tu was well known to be in league with the To-gai-ru, the admission became even more unbelievable.

  Pagonel sat back and folded his hands before him. That Yatol Mado Wadon was able to speak so bluntly and openly to him here confirmed the level of desperation that was obviously growing within the man. That Yatol Mado Wadon would even receive Pagonel in anything more than a polite manner in a general audience chamber was a clear indication that the man was deathly afraid of Bardoh. Apparently, the rumors of the Yatol of Avrou Eesa building a tremendous army were not understated.

  “Brynn Dharielle has fewer resources at her disposal at this time than you may believe,” the mystic honestly replied, for he understood that such information would not imperil Brynn in any manner. Certainly Yatol Wadon was in no position to even think of striking against her.

  “Her dragon alone—”

  “Fewer than you may believe,” Pagonel interrupted. “And there is no formal agreement between Dharyan-Dharielle and Jacintha.”

  Yatol Wadon’s dull eyes widened and he gripped the arms of his chair, seeming ready to spring up and assault the mystic.

  “Her course seems clear, though,” Pagonel remarked, and that settled him back just a bit. “What do you ask of her?”

  The simple question seemed to catch Yatol Wadon off balance for a moment, for what indeed might Brynn be able to do? She wouldn’t march her army from Dharyan-Dharielle to Jacintha to protect the ruling Yatol from another Yatol, after all!

  “I have come to understand that she is no friend of Yatol Bardoh,” Yatol Wadon said hesitantly.

  Pagonel merely smiled in response to that monumental understatement. Yatol Bardoh was the man who had ordered Brynn’s own parents murdered. He was the Behrenese leader who had conquered To-gai so brutally a decade before, a man who had never expressed anything but contempt for the To-gai-ru and their traditions. Bardoh had left the field outside of Dharyan-Dharielle, but he had not done so with a light heart. More than anything else, he had wanted to retake the city and be rid of the Dragon of To-gai.

  “To fully engage Jacintha, should it come to that, Yatol Bardoh will need the north road,” Yatol Wadon explained. “He will need Dahdah Oasis, else the promises he feeds to his soldiers will die in the desert sands.”

  “You would like Yatol Bardoh to be looking over his shoulder at another enemy as he marches toward Jacintha,” Pagonel remarked.

  “Or looking over his shoulder at another enemy as he marches on Dharyan-Dharielle,” Yatol Wadon was quick to reply. “He covets Jacintha, agreed, but he covets Brynn’s city for even more personal reasons, and he may come to believe that retaking Dharyan for Behren will elevate him among the people and make his march toward Jacintha all the more plausible.”

  That disturbing thought had carried Pagonel every step of the way to Jacintha.

  “It is time to open a dialogue between our two cities,” Yatol Wadon said.

  The mystic nodded. “Your words are wise, Yatol. I will carry them to Brynn Dharielle. You must prepare your emissaries to accompany me quickly, for the road will grow more difficult with time, I fear.”

  “They are already prepared,” Yatol Wadon told him. “They would have left this very day had not you unexpectedly arrived in Jacintha. Upon hearing of your arrival, I had hoped that you would present yourself as a formal emissary from Dharyan-Dharielle, and I would be lying if I told you that I am not disappointed to learn that this is not the truth. Your friend is not so seasoned in her role as leader, I suspect, and so her ignorance of the present mounting danger is forgivable.”

  Again Pagonel nodded, though he hardly agreed with the assessment. Certainly this issue with Bardoh was more Mado Wadon’s fight than Brynn’s, though the consequences to Brynn and to To-gai could be dire, should Bardoh prove victorious. Still, it was not a point worth arguing over with Yatol Mado Wadon at this time.

  There would be plenty of other more important arguments to make, Pagonel was sure.

  Chapter 6

  When Conscience Knocks

  AYDRIAN AWOKE IN A COLD SWEAT. HE WAS LYING ON HIS BACK, STARING UP AT THE darkness, but the blackness stirred and images of dead Constance Pemblebury assaulted him, her pale arms reaching out for him in his mind.

  Hovering behind her was a huge face, elongated and twisted in agony, and despite its contortions, Aydrian certainly recognized it, for he keenly remembered the horrified look on King Danube’s face as the cold hand of death had closed over his heart that fateful day up on the trial stage in Ursal.

  Had these two ghosts come to haunt him?

  The young king shook himself further awake and the images dissipated, leaving him alone in the dark. “Only a dream,” he told himself.

  Slowly, the young man composed himself enough to roll onto his side. He had killed. He had killed Danube, and Merwick, and Torrence, as well as the unfortunate driver and the other escorts. All had been murdered on his orders.

  For the most part, Aydrian never considered such things, keeping his vision along the greater road that lay before him, his ascent to immortality, his elevation of himself above all others. He believed in that road, desperately so.

  But the price …

  Aydrian winced as he considered the dead already left in his wake. Many had been deserving of their fate—like the pirates who had tried to double-cross him on the return from Pimaninicuit—but others perhaps not so deserving. And worse, Aydrian understood that the dead thus far would be but a minuscule fraction of those who would fall in the war that would inevitably engulf Honce-the-Bear, or in the conquest of Behren, or of Alpinador.

  Aydrian rolled out of bed, propelled by the guilt and the sudden doubts. He rushed out of the house he had procured in this small village north of Ursal and ran over to the grouping of wagons, which included his personal coach. He waved away the confused and concerned guards and climbed into the coach, closing the door behind him.

  The moon was up. The lighting was just right.

  Across from his seat, Aydrian pulled aside a small curtain, revealing the mirror he used for Oracle.

  He sat back and stared, letting his thoughts flow freely within him. He felt the pangs of guilt and did not push them aside, though he did offer internal debate against them.

  Conscience must be the guide of any true leader.

  The thought came out of nowhere, and it startled Aydrian. He digested the notion, panic rising within him as he considered the implications.

  And then he looked at the mirror, at the shadowy form that had taken its blurry shape in the lower left-hand corner.

  Waves of guilt assaulted him; a silent plea arose within him beckoning him to abandon this road of certain war.

  In that moment, it all made sense to him, and he grimaced, tormented, as he considered the cold body of Torrence Pemblebury lying beneath the dungeon stairs of Castle Ursal. In that moment, Aydrian felt adrift.

  In that fleeting moment.

  King Danube played in the arena of glory.

  The second shadow appeared, taking greater shape in the mirror.

  That last thought rang out again within the young king. Danube, too, had been king of Honce-the-Bear. Danube, too, had made decisions of life and death, and had gone to war. This was the game of humanity, the ques
t for glory, the quest for immortality—though few humans understood the truth of it, Aydrian knew.

  And they were all going to die, after all, every one. Was Aydrian to assume responsibility for those who died in his ascent to the throne and to immortality? Was he to bask in guilt because he, above all others, had come to understand the truth and futility of the human condition, and had figured out a way to circumvent that seeming inevitability?

  The young king’s breathing came faster, and he closed his eyes tight against the onslaught of terrible images as he absorbed it all, as he considered those who had died and those many more who surely would be slain along his road. He was robbing from them.

  Days? Weeks? Months? Even years? the shadow in his mind asked him. How much was he truly taking from the pitiful mortals? And would they, to a man and woman, not take the same from him if ever they came to understand the truth of eternity and immortality, as did he?

  Aydrian opened his eyes and looked at the mirror, to see that only one shadow remained there, in the lower right-hand corner.

  King Danube played in the arena of glory, he heard again in his thoughts. He desired the same as you, but was not as strong as you. The reasoning seemed sound to Aydrian. What hubris Danube possessed to claim himself king of Honce-the-Bear! And if he did not have the strength to survive a challenge, then his overblown pride was certainly misplaced. Aydrian was possessed of more pride, perhaps, but he knew in his heart that he had the strength to back it.

  Sometime later, the shaken young man stepped out of his coach and headed back to the procured house. He felt somewhat better; the demons of guilt had been put aside for a while.

  He was surprised, when he opened the door to his sleeping chamber, to find Sadye sitting within. A single candle burned on the small table before her, illuminating her with its soft glow, the light seeming to flow right into her yellow-brown locks. She wore a simple nightshirt that only reached down to the midpoint of her shapely thighs, and her hair was unkempt.

  Somehow that only made her more alluring.

  “Where did you go?” she asked immediately, true concern evident in her voice.

  Aydrian put one hand to his chest, his expression skeptical. “Me?”

  “You are the only one here, Aydrian.”

  “I went out into the night air,” he explained, walking past her to take a seat on the edge of his bed. “To be alone. To think.”

  “To think?”

  Aydrian shrugged.

  “Planning the strategy sessions?”

  “No,” he answered simply, staring off to the side, and when he looked back at Sadye a moment later, he saw true concern on her face, and true curiosity.

  Again, he merely shrugged.

  “We will enter the village of Pomfreth tomorrow,” Sadye said to him, politely changing what was obviously an uncomfortable subject. “By all reports, the townsfolk are preparing a celebration in honor of their new king.”

  Aydrian managed a little smile at the news, and it was one of honest relief. “I am glad that they accept what has happened without opposing me,” he explained. “It would not do my heart good to lay waste to a simple village.”

  “Marcalo believes that we must have one sizable fight at least before we reach Palmaris,” Sadye said. “To show the rest of the common folk of the kingdom the futility of opposing the rule of Aydrian.”

  “Sometimes I believe that Marcalo De’Unnero just likes to fight,” Aydrian replied. He took a good long look at Sadye to measure her reaction to that statement, then he just gave a helpless chuckle, and asked, “Why are you here?”

  “I learned that you had wandered out. I was concerned,” said the woman.

  Aydrian started to ask about Marcalo, but then the former monk appeared suddenly at the open door, hardly dressed and looking none-too-pleased. He stared at Aydrian, then even harder at Sadye, studying her intently.

  Obviously uncomfortable, Sadye got up and straightened and lengthened her nightshirt modestly. “Aydrian left the building,” she explained to the monk. “You should instruct him that such unexpected and unannounced forays into the night could bode evil for us all. He is the king, yet I fear that he has not yet come to understand what that means, or what he means, to the kingdom he rules.”

  Marcalo looked from Sadye to Aydrian as she gave her little speech, and he nodded and grunted a bit in agreement. But he wasn’t being deflected that easily, Aydrian recognized. His concern at that time had less to do with Aydrian leaving to go outside than with Sadye leaving his bed to come to Aydrian’s private room.

  The fierce monk said nothing, though, just placed his arm behind Sadye as she walked out, ushering her all the more quickly.

  Aydrian leaned over and blew out the candle, then sat alone in the darkness. He considered De’Unnero and Sadye for only a moment, and was far more amused than concerned.

  Then he thought of the village they would enter in the morning, and he was indeed relieved at Sadye’s words that the scouts believed that this one, too, would succumb to the rule of the new king without confrontation.

  Yes, Duke Kalas and his minions could roll over any feeble force that the quiet villages north of Ursal might offer. But better for them all if the people continued to follow the lead of their nobles, strengthening Aydrian’s hold even more upon the kingdom.

  And better, Aydrian understood—though he did not openly admit it, even to himself—for his own peace of mind and his own contented slumber.

  Duke Kalas and his Allheart Knights, all resplendent in the shining, meticulously crafted and fitted silvery armor, led the march into Pomfreth, as they had led the way into every village since the march from Ursal had begun. Not far to the east, the Ursal fleet, River Palace among them, cruised the Masur Delaval. And behind the ranks of the Allheart Brigade clustered ten thousand soldiers, all formed in tight ranks, showing the discipline of a trained army. In their center, atop a magnificent black stallion, sat King Aydrian, and his armor outshone that of the Allhearts. Specially made and fitted by a legendary smith, and enhanced by Aydrian with several magical gemstones, it offered better defenses for its wearer than any other suit of metal in all the world. The Allheart armor was comprised of overlapping silvery plates, but Aydrian’s was trimmed not only in silver, but with gold. Dark lodestones were set in a circular pattern about a gray hematite that was placed directly over Aydrian’s heart. His helm was bowl-shaped, less ornamented than Duke Kalas’ plumed helm, perhaps, but designed to give the great young warrior complete visibility. Lined in gold, it tapered down the back of Aydrian’s head and neck, but in the front, it only covered halfway, to the bridge of his nose, with thin golden strips outlining his blue eyes as if they were the wide-cut strips of a bandit’s mask.

  To Aydrian’s right sat Marcalo De’Unnero, dressed in the simple brown robes of an Abellican brother, his face locked in its seemingly perpetual scowl. He had brought quite a number of the younger brothers from St. Honce along with him on the march, mostly to serve as replacements in the chapels where village priests didn’t appreciate or embrace the change that he was bringing to the Church.

  To Aydrian’s left sat Sadye, her three-stringed lute slung across her back, the wind blowing her brown hair, which was growing quite long again, across her face.

  In the distance to the north, they heard the cheering.

  Sadye looked up at Aydrian, whose face showed a clear sign of relief. Apparently the reports were true and he would be welcomed as an accepted king, not as an enemy conqueror.

  They sat and waited a bit longer, until Duke Kalas and his entourage came galloping back out from the cluster of houses.

  “Form up to march through,” Aydrian told the commanders sitting astride their mounts in a line behind him. “You will camp north of Pomfreth this night. We march tomorrow at dawn.”

  The commanders broke ranks immediately and with practiced discipline. With every town they encountered, there were two routes, march through or overrun, and thus far, the latter had not
proven necessary. Still, Aydrian and all the others understood that the farther north they marched, the more likely they were to encounter resistance. And, of course, Palmaris lay at the end of this northern road, where Bishop Braumin would not likely prove so accommodating.

  The seventy-five Allhearts galloped into formation beside and behind their king, and Aydrian nodded to De’Unnero and to Sadye, thus beginning the triumphant parade into Pomfreth.

  All the peasants lined the main road through the small village, cheering wildly for “King Aydrian!” and waving towels at the young man as he paced his mount, the legendary Symphony—the horse his father had ridden to the Barbacan to defeat the demon dactyl—slowly through the town. He nodded to the people every so often, but mostly he watched the road before him, aloof and above them all. That was what they would expect of their king, De’Unnero and Kalas had explained to him. That was what the frightened rabble truly needed from their king. Aydrian was the foundation of their identity. He was not one of them, and was not anything that any of them thought they could become, but was, rather, their deity in the flesh. As king, he was the symbol of their nationality, and the man upon whom they relied to protect them, to provide for their basic needs, and to guide them to a better place, secularly and spiritually.

  And so Aydrian kept his eyes mostly straight ahead, offering occasional glances and nods, and trying to appear as regal and dominating as possible.

  “The parson?” he heard Sadye whisper at his side, talking behind him to Marcalo De’Unnero.

  Following their gazes, the young king noted a man in the distance, behind the lines of waving peasants. He stood leaning on the white wooden door of the town’s small Abellican chapel. He was not cheering. He was not smiling.

  Aydrian glanced at De’Unnero. “He may need convincing,” he quietly remarked.