Things had changed much since those days of hope and wonderment.
The mission had been successful, with a tremendous haul of gemstones taken and properly prepared. And three of the brothers, with the exception of poor Thagraine who was stricken in the meteor shower, had returned alive, though Brother Pellimar had died a short time later.
"A pity that it had not been Avelyn who was hit in the head by a falling stone," Father Abbot Markwart had often said in the years hence, for Avelyn, after achieving the greatest success in the history of the Church as a Preparer of the sacred gems, had returned a changed man, and in Markwart's eyes had committed the highest heresy possible in the Order. Avelyn had taken some of the gemstones and run off, and in that flight, Master Siherton, a peer of Jojonah's and a friend of Markwart's, had been killed.
The Father Abbot had not let the theft pass. Indeed, he had guided the training of the remaining brother from the party of four, a stocky and brutish man named Quintall. Under Markwart's strictest orders, Quintall had become Brother Justice and gone after Avelyn, with orders to bring back the man or his broken body.
Word had come back to the library only the month before that Quintall had failed and was dead.
Still, Markwart had no intention of letting Avelyn run free. He had set De'Unnero, the finest fighter at the abbey—and, by Jojonah's estimation, the most vicious human being alive—to training not one, but two Brothers Justice as replacement for Quintall. Jojonah didn't like De'Unnero at all, considered the man's temperament unbefitting a brother of the Abellican Church, and so he had not been pleased when the still-young man had been named to the rank of master as a replacement for Master Siherton. And the choice of hunters, too, had bothered Jojonah, for he suspected that the two young monks, Brothers Youseff and Dandelion, had only been admitted to St.-Mere-Abelle for this purpose. Surely neither of them qualified above others who had been refused their appointment.
But both could fight
So even that choice of admission to the Order, the greatest responsibility of abbots and masters, had fallen victim to Markwart's desire to clear his own reputation. The Father Abbot wanted those stones back.
Desperately, Master Jojonah thought as he looked upon the old Father Abbot's haggard visage. Dalebert Markwart was a man possessed now, a snarling, vicious thing. If at first Markwart had wanted Avelyn captured and tried, he merely wanted the man dead now—and painfully killed, tortured, rended, his heart torn out and put on a stake before the front gate of St.-Mere-Abelle. Markwart hardly talked of dead Siherton these days; his focus was purely the stones, the precious stones, and he meant to get them back.
All of that had been put aside for the moment, though, out of necessity even greater than Markwart's obsession, for the war had at last come to St.-Mere-Abelle.
"There they are," Father Abbot Markwart remarked, pointing out across the bay.
Jojonah leaned on the low wall, squinting into the darkness, and there, rounding a bend along the northern spur of the rocky seacoast, came the lights of a vessel, obviously sitting very low in the water.
"Powrie barrelboat," Markwart said distastefully as more and more lights came into view. "A thousand of them out there!"
And so confident that they approach in full view with lights burning, Jojonah silently added. And that wasn't even the extent of their problems, though the master saw no need to remark on the potentially greater troubles facing the abbey.
"And how many by land?" the Father Abbot demanded, as though he had read Jojonah's mind. "Twenty thousand? Fifty? The whole powrie nation is upon us, as if all the Weathered Isles had been dumped at our gate!"
Again the portly Jojonah had no practical response. According to the reports of trusted sources, a vast army of the four-foot-tall dwarves, the cruel powries, had landed less than ten miles down the coast from St.-Mere-Abelle. The brutal creatures had wasted no time in laying waste to the nearby villages, slaughtering any humans who could not escape. The image of that brought a shiver along Jojonah's spine. Powries were also called "bloody caps" for their practice of dipping their specially treated berets—caps made of human skin—into the blood of their slain enemies. The more blood one of those berets soaked, the brighter its crimson stain, a sign of rank among the barrel-bodied, spindly limbed dwarves.
"We have the stones," Jojonah offered.
Markwart snorted derisively. "And we'll tire our magics long before we diminish the ranks of the wretched powries—and of the goblin army that's said to be moving south of here."
"There is the report of the explosion far to the north," Jojonah offered hopefully, trying in any way possible to improve Markwart's surly mood.
The Father Abbot didn't disagree; whispers from reliable sources spoke of a tremendous eruption in the northern land known as the Barbacan, reputedly the land of the demon dactyl who had gathered this invading army. But while those rumors offered some distant hope that war had been brought to the dactyl's doorstep, they offered little in the face of the force now moving against St.-Mere-Abelle, something Markwart emphasized with his next derisive snort.
"Our walls are thick, our brothers well-trained in the fighting arts, and our catapult crews second to none in all Corona," Jojonah went on, gaining momentum with every word. "And St.-Mere-Abelle is better suited to withstand a siege than any structure in Honce-the-Bear," he added, preempting Markwart's next glum statement.
"Better suited with not so many mouths to feed," Markwart snapped at him, and Jojonah winced as if slapped. "I wish that the powries had been quicker!"
Master Jojonah sighed and moved a few steps to the side then, unable to tolerate his superior's grating pessimism and that last remark; obviously aimed at the multitude of pitiful refugees who had recently come swarming into St.-Mere-Abelle, it had, in Jojonah's estimation, been on the very edge of blasphemy. They were the Church, after all, supposedly the salvation of the common man, and yet here was their Father Abbot, their spiritual leader, complaining about giving shelter to people who had lost almost everything. The Father Abbot's first response to the influx of refugees had been to order everything valuable, books, gold leaf, even inkwells, locked away.
"Avelyn started all of this," Markwart rambled. "The thief weakened us, in heart and soul, and gave hope to our enemies!"
Jojonah tuned out the Father Abbot's ranting. He had heard it all before—indeed, it had by now been disseminated to all the abbeys of Corona that Avelyn Desbris was responsible for awakening the demon dactyl, and thus setting into motion all the subsequent tragedies that had befallen the land.
Master Jojonah, who had been Avelyn's mentor and chief supporter through the man's years at St.-Mere-Abelle, couldn't, in his heart, believe a word of it. Jojonah had studied at the abbey for four decades, and had never in all that time met a man as singularly holy as Avelyn Desbris. While he had not yet come to terms with Avelyn's last actions at the abbey—the theft of the stones and the murder, if it was a murder, of Master Siherton—Jojonah suspected there was more to the story than the Father Abbot's version would indicate. More than anything, Master Jojonah wanted to speak at length with his former student, to discover the man's motivations, to find out why he had run and why he had taken the gemstones.
More lights appeared in the dark harbor, a reminder to Jojonah to stay focused on the grim situation at hand. Avelyn was an issue for another day; the morning light would bring the full fury of war to St.-Mere-Abelle.
The two monks retired then, seeking to gather all of their strength.
"Sleep well in God's bosom," Master Jojonah said to Markwart, the proper and traditional nighttime parting.
Markwart waved a hand absently over his shoulder and walked away, grumbling something about the wretch Avelyn under his breath.
Master Jojonah recognized a growing problem here, an obsession that could only bring ill to St.-Mere-Abelle and all the Order. But there was little he could do about it, he reminded himself, and he went to his private roo
m. He added many lines about Avelyn Desbris, words of hope for the man's soul, and of forgiveness, to his evening prayers, then rolled onto his bed, knowing he would not sleep well.
Father Abbot Markwart, too, was speaking words about Avelyn when he entered his lavish quarters, four rooms sectioned off near the middle of the massive abbey's ground-level floor. The old man, consumed with anger, muttered curse after curse, spat Avelyn's name in succession with the names of the greatest traitors and heretics in the history of the Church, and vowed again to see the man tortured to death before he, himself, went to view the face of God.
His reign at St.-Mere-Abelle had been unblemished, and having been fortunate enough to preside over the Order in the generation of the stone showers, the tremendous haul of stones—the greatest ever taken from Pimaninicuit—seemed to solidify his place among the most revered Father Abbots of history. But then the wretch Avelyn changed that, brought a black mark to his reputation: as the first father abbot to ever suffer the absolute indignity of losing some of the sacred stones.
It was with these dark thoughts, and none for the invasion fleet that had entered All Saints Bay, that Father Abbot Markwart at last drifted off to sleep.
His dreams were as razor-edged as his anger, showing stark, clear images of a faraway land that he did not know. He saw Avelyn, thick and fat and haggard, snarling orders to goblins and powries. He saw the man fell a giant with a streak of searing lightning, not out of any hatred for the evil race, but because this one had not obeyed him without question.
In the background an angelic figure appeared, a winged man, large and terrible. The personification of the wrath of God.
Then Markwart understood.
A demon dactyl had been the source of the war? No, this disaster had been caused by something greater even than that dark power. The true guiding force of evil was Avelyn, the heretic!
The Father Abbot sat bolt upright in bed, sweating and trembling. It was only a dream, he reminded himself.
But had there not been some shred of truth buried within those visions? It came as a great epiphany to the tired old man, an awakening call as clear as the loudest bell ever chimed. For years he had been proclaiming Avelyn as the root source of all the problems, but much of that had been merely a self-defense technique aimed at deflecting his own errors. He had always known that hidden truth... until now.
Now Markwart realized that it had indeed been Avelyn, beyond any doubt. He knew that the man had unraveled all that was holy, perverted the stones to his own wicked use, worked against the Church and all of Mankind.
Markwart knew, without doubt, and in that profound knowledge he was at last able to dismiss all of his own guilt.
The old man pulled himself from his bed and ambled over to his desk, lighting a lamp. He fell into his chair, exhausted, overcome, and absently took a key from a secret compartment in one drawer and used it to open the lock on a secret compartment in yet another, revealing his private cache of stones: ruby, graphite, malachite, serpentine, a tiger's paw, a lodestone, and his most precious of all, the strongest hematite, the soul stone, at St.-Mere-Abelle. With this heavy gray stone Markwart could send his spirit across the miles, could even contact associates though they were separated by half a continent. He had used this stone to make contact with Brother Justice—no easy task since Quintall was not proficient in use of the stones, and since his single-minded training had given him a level of mental discipline that was hard to penetrate.
Markwart had used this stone to contact a friend in Amvoy, across the Masur Delaval from Palmaris, and that friend had discovered the truth of Brother Justice's failed quest.
How precious these sacred stones were—to the monks of St.-Mere-Abelle, there was no greater treasure—and it was more than Markwart could stand to know that he had let some get away.
He looked at the handful of stones now as if they were his children, then sat up straighter, blinking quizzically. For he saw them now more clearly than ever before, as if a great truth had been revealed to him. He saw the powers buried within each stone, and knew he could reach them with a mere thought, hardly an effort at all. And some of them seemed almost to blend together, as the old man recognized new and more powerful combinations for various stones.
The Father Abbot fell back and even cried out, tears of joy dripping from his eyes. He was free of Avelyn's dark grip, he suddenly believed, for now he understood, beyond doubt. And with his revelations had come a greater knowledge, a deeper understanding. It was always a sharp thorn in Markwart's side that Avelyn, this supposed heretic, had been the most powerful stone user in the history of the Church. If the stones came from God, it followed that their power was a blessing, yet how could that be so if Avelyn Desbris, the thief, was so proficient with them?
The demon dactyl had given Avelyn the power! The demon dactyl had perverted the stones in Avelyn's hands, allowing him the insight to use them.
Markwart clutched his stones tightly and moved back to his bed, thinking that God had answered the dactyl by showing him equal—no, greater—insights. This time he would find no sleep, too consumed with anticipation for the morning's fight.
Dalebert Markwart, the Father Abbot, the highest-ranking member of the Abellican Church, had it all exactly backward, a thought that pleased the spirit of the demon dactyl immensely. How easily Bestesbulzibar had linked with this craven old man, how easily it had perverted Markwart's assumed truths!
Nearly all of St.-Mere-Abelle's more than seven hundred monks turned out on the seawall before the dawn, preparing for the approach of the powrie fleet. With two notable exceptions, Master Jojonah realized, for Brothers Youseff and Dandelion were nowhere to be found. Markwart had put them safely away for what he considered their more important task.
Most of the monks manned the abbey's long parapets, but others moved to their strategic positions in rooms below the level of the wall top. Two dozen catapults were readied as the vast powrie fleet made its way in toward the rocky cliff. Even more deadly, the older and more powerful monks, the masters and immaculates, monks who had studied for ten years and more, prepared their respective stones, and among them was the Father Abbot, with his new insights and heightened power.
Markwart kept most of the monks in position on the seaward side of the structure, though he had to place more than a score of brothers on the opposite wall, watching the many approaches for the expected land attack. Then all of St.-Mere-Abelle hushed and waited as score after score of powrie vessels rounded the rocky spur and moved in line with the great abbey, most resembling a nearly submerged barrel, but others with flat, open decks set with catapults.
A catapult let fly from one of the rooms just below the Father Abbot's position, its pitch ball sailing high and far, but well short of the nearest vessel.
"Hold!" Markwart yelled down angrily. "Would you show them our range, then?"
Master Jojonah put a hand on the Father Abbot's shoulder. "They are nervous," he offered as an excuse for the premature firing.
"They are foolish!" the Father Abbot snapped back at him, pulling from his gentle grasp. "Find the one who fired that catapult and replace him on the line—and bring him up to me."
Jojonah started to protest, but quickly realized that to be a fool's course. If he angered the Father Abbot any more—and he saw no way he could even speak with the man without doing that—then Markwart's punishment of the young monk would only be more severe. With one of his customary sighs, a helpless expression that he thought he seemed to be making far too often these days, the portly master moved off to find the errant artillerist, taking with him a second-year student to replace the man.
More and more powrie ships came into view, but those closest did not move into catapult range, or stone magic range.
"They await the ground assault," remarked Brother Francis Dellacourt, a ninth-year monk known for his sharp tongue and severe discipline of the younger students, attributes that had made him a favorite with
Markwart.
"What news from the western walls?" Markwart asked.
Francis immediately motioned for two younger monks to run off for information. "They will hit us harder from the ground at first," Francis then offered to Markwart.
"The reasoning that led you to such a conclusion?"
"The sea cliff is a hundred feet, at least, and that at its shortest juncture," Francis reasoned. "Those powries in the boats will have little chance of gaining our walls unless we are sorely taxed in the west. They will hit us hard by ground, and then, with our numbers thinned on this wall, their fleet will strike."
"What do you know of powrie tactics?" Markwart said loudly, drawing all of those nearby, including the returning Master Jojonah and the errant artillerist, into the conversation. Markwart knew what Francis would say, for he, like all of the older monks, had studied the records of previous powrie assaults, but he thought that a dissertation by the efficient Francis would be a prudent reminder.
"We have few examples of a powrie dual strike," Francis admitted. "They usually attack primarily from the sea, with incredible speed and ferocity. But I suspect that St.-Mere-Abelle is too formidable for that, and they know it. They will thin our line by attacking from the west, by ground, and then their catapults will put their strong lines up over our wall."
"How high will any climb with us standing defense at the top of those ropes?" one monk asked impertinently. "We'll cut them down, or shoot arrows or magics at the climbing powries."
Master Jojonah started to respond, but Markwart, preferring to hear from Francis on this matter, stopped him with an upraised hand, then motioned for the ninth-year monk to proceed.
"Do not underestimate them!" Francis fumed, and Jojonah noted that Markwart cracked his first smile in many weeks. "Only months ago the powries struck at Pireth Tulme, a fortress on a cliff no less high than our own. In this manner they gained the courtyard before the majority of the garrison had even arrived at the walls to offer defense. And as for those who were in place along Pireth Tulme's seemingly defensible walls..."
The Demon Spirit - Book 2 of the Demon Wars series Page 3