Brother De’Unnero, now approaches to battle this reversal, to battle the brothers who have declared this intent, and yet, Marcalo De’Unnero, too, is possessed of great affinity with the sacred stones. None have ever called upon the tiger’s paw more powerfully than he! Nor were any of recent memory as dedicated in the physical training – is there anyone in the world who can defeat the man in martial combat? – though that means little to me. The physical training is a distraction. The Ring Stones are the power of God, and holding that, who needs to throw a punch? Still, though, Brother De’Unnero’s willingness and expertise in the training surely speaks to loyalty.
And yet, here we are, a Church torn against itself, with the sacred Ring Stones surely to be used by both sides in the coming conflagration.
This is madness!
For only godly men can use the stones, and proficiency should be the highest test of worth! Are they, or are they not, the direct gifts from God?
So many seek to obfuscate that question, it seems, to weave in shades of gray about that which is black or white. And always, they do it for their own convenience and personal gain!
Human failing has no place before Godly magic.
I must fight in the next few days for St.-Mere-Abelle, for the Church, which I hold above all else. But is that the Church of Fio Bou-raiy or the Church of Marcalo De’Unnero? Is that the Church which is generous with the sacred stones and their powers, granting them to all in need, based on sophistry, even, on justifications other than the word of God? Or is it the Church, as Brother De’Unnero has always claimed, which holds the gemstones close, which bestows the power upon the deserving alone and which teaches the undeserving the error of their ways through lack of mercy?
Is not such a lack of mercy truly merciful if the result is to enlighten the undeserving?
And that is my madness, roiling within me these last years and now forced to the head by the storm that approaches. I serve the Abellican Church and so I must fight for St.-Mere-Abelle, but I see the truth of Brother De’Unnero’s vision, and wish my current brethren, Father Abbot Bou-raiy, Bishop Braumin, Master Viscenti and all the rest, would see the error of their ways, would see that their generous and liberal sharing of that which is sacred diminishes the value of the Church itself, diminishes the mystery of God, and diminishes the glory of those of us who, through God’s good grace, understand the power of the stones and can channel it through our imperfect mortal coils.
Oh, but how I wish that diplomacy would win the day and that brother De’Unnero would return to his rightful place as a Master of St.-Mere-Abelle! A Master and soon enough to be elected as Father Abbot, for that is a vote that I would surely cast!
By the Pen of Brother Thaddius Roncourt
This troubled midsummer day, God’s Year 847
PART 1: THE POWER VOID
The great hall of St.-Mere-Abelle had remained untouched in the hours since the battle. Even the bodies remained, exactly where they fell. Braumin Herde and the other masters had ordered this – they wanted every monk at the monastery to see the harsh reality of this most awful day.
Father Abbot Fio Bou-raiy lay crumpled on the floor just before the throne, a hole blown through his head. The result of a hurtling lodestone, certainly, and the reality of a gem propelled so powerfully by someone considered an enemy of the Church stung Brother Thaddius profoundly, a poignant reminder to him of the madness.
Before the throne, the gigantic circular stained-glass window was no more than twisted metal and shattered shards. A dragon had flown through that window, so the story went.
A dragon! Never in his life had Brother Thaddius expected to see such a beast, never had he even believed that such beasts existed.
Most of the other brothers who were now filtering through the great hall on their way to the front doors of the monastery focused on that window, of course. It was a recent construction, a beautiful depiction of the petrified arm of Brother Avelyn, standing defiantly in the midst of the carnage of the Barbican volcanic explosion. Now it was gone, so suddenly, so violently, so…amazingly.
For one of the other brothers, however, the window seemed to hold little interest. Brother Thaddius smiled as he watched the stocky monk, a bruiser named Mars, standing before the sweeping stairway that led up to the balcony encircling the room. On those stairs lay two bodies: a woman Thaddius did not know and Marcalo De’Unnero.
Thaddius moved over to stand beside Brother Mars, measuring the intensity on the monk’s face. Thaddius knew him well, for though Mars was several years older than Thaddius, they had come into the mother abbey in the same month, Thaddius as a newly-ordained monk and Mars transferring in from St. Gwendolyn. Because of that circumstance, Mars had made more acquaintances among Thaddius’s peers than among those of his age.
It hadn’t taken Brother Thaddius long to figure out that he didn’t much like the man. For Mars was everything Thaddius was not. He was handsome and powerful, as solid as stone and as good a fighter as any brother of the class.
But he could barely light an oil-soaked rag with a ruby, and anyone needing magical healing from Brother Mars’s soul stone would surely perish. By Thaddius’s estimation, brothers like Mars were the reason the Abellican Church was in such disarray and dire straights. The man was not worthy to be a brother.
A situation that might soon be remedied, Thaddius understood as he noted the moisture gather in Brother Mars’s eyes as he stared at the face-down body of Marcalo De’Unnero.
“They know the truth of your loyalties,” Thaddius remarked quietly, and Brother Mars turned to him with a start.
“I…of what do you speak, brother?” the man replied.
“Your loyalty to De’Unnero. To the heretic. It is obvious. It has been obvious for a long while. The masters know, and so does everyone in the room who sees you now, your hero dead before you.”
“You presume much, brother,” Mars answered.
“I think not,” Thaddius was quick to reply. “There were many here at St.-Mere-Abelle, serving under Father Abbot Bou-raiy who were intrigued with the vision of Marcalo De’Unnero. I can name myself among those. It is no secret, nor does it need to be, for we brothers are expected to question and explore. But some, it would clearly seem, moved beyond simple intrigue. Some brothers here were loyal not to the Father Abbot, but to the man they thought should hold the title. This man, De’Unnero.”
Brother Mars did not reply, and stared stoically straight ahead, all signs of his grief gone.
“They know, brother,” Thaddius said. “You are my classmate, perhaps a friend, and so I tell you this with confidence that you will pretend this conversation never happened. Surely you are smart enough to realize that Bishop Braumin has spent many weeks studying the remaining brothers of the Order, and that he will claim the position as Father Abbot – who else could it be? – and among his first duties will be a purge. Bishop Braumin hated Marcalo De’Unnero above all, of course, and he will surely root out any followers of the heretic.”
Brother Mars chewed his lip for a bit, trying to find some response to that reasonable claim. He turned back to Thaddius, to find that the small man had simply walked away.
*****
Bishop Braumin Herde stood as if in a daze in the blasted and bloodied courtyard of St.-Mere-Abelle. All about him, his fellow monks worked frantically with magical hematite, the soul stones, to bring healing to scores, hundreds, of injured warriors who had done battle this dark day within the abbey and on the fields beyond her shattered gates. Those brothers didn’t ask the allegiance of those they healed; the battle had been settled in no uncertain terms when Prince Midalis and his closest allies had defeated King Aydrian.
Still, so many had died, and would die, and Braumin could only shake his head at the horrors of war, and all the misery that had plagued Honce-the-Bear in the last decades.
But in that darkness, Bishop Braumin had found, too, hope.
Now Midalis would be King of Honce-the-Bear – he already was in
the eyes of those huddled about St.-Mere-Abelle. Indeed, even by Aydrian, who had laid claim to the throne!
Many times in the course of that morning, had those healing brothers turned to Bishop Braumin with their gemstones, and truly it appeared as if Braumin could use more of the soul stone magic. He was a muscular man, not tall and no longer young, having passed his fortieth year. Usually he seemed as solid as any, strong of frame and with determined features, but now his jaw hung crooked, and Bishop Braumin stood crooked, favoring ribs that had been pulverized by the heavy kick of Marcalo De’Unnero. He was missing a few teeth from the right side of his mouth, too, from a punch that had knocked him nearly senseless.
De’Unnero had almost killed him with that strike; indeed, that apostate monk could hit with the force of a fomorian giant!
What a day it had been! Four armies joined in furious combat on the fields about the ancient and huge monastery.
What a day it had been! A dragon – a true dragon! – had crashed through the huge circular stained glass window of the great foyer of St.-Mere-Abelle, only to be thrown back out by the demonic power of Aydrian possessed, a bolt of searing white lightning that seemed as if it was still resonating within the deep stones of the high seaside cliff wall that held St.-Mere-Abelle.
What a day it had been! The great warrior, the ranger Nightbird, had been pulled from the grave and summoned halfway across Honce by the dark power of Aydrian, to fight by Aydrian’s side as a horrid zombie.
But love had conquered the darkness of demonic powers, and Elbryan Wyndon, the ranger the elves had named Nightbird, had been coaxed from his state of undeath by Jilseponie, the wonderful Pony, the woman who had loved him for so many years, the woman who had been his wife, and who had given birth to his child soon after his death those two decades before.
And that child, tainted by the demon dactyl, had taken the throne of Honce-the-Bear. By sheer force and unrivaled power, that child had become King Aydrian.
Bishop Braumin Herde had watched the conclusion of the titanic battle within the monastery this day. Laid low by Aydrian’s second, the apostate De’Unnero, the Bishop had managed to hold onto consciousness just enough to witness the glory, the beauty, of Elbryan and Pony expelling the demon from their son’s heart and soul.
And so the battle had ended, so abruptly. De’Unnero was dead, killed by Pony, as was the woman, the bard, who had come in beside De’Unnero and Aydrian. Indeed, for some reason Bishop Braumin had not yet discerned, De’Unnero himself had killed the woman in the last fleeting moments of his own life.
And the demon was gone, expelled from this young man it had taken as host. The light had returned to the shining eyes of young Ardrian Wyndon, but with it, too, had come the sorrow of great regret. Bishop Braumin glanced over at the broken young man, sitting in the shadow of the wall with the centaur, Bradwarden, and Belli-mar Juraviel of the Touel’alfar.
“A centaur,” Braumin whispered. “And an elf, with wings, fighting for St.-Mere-Abelle.” He shook his head.
What a day it had been!
What might brothers reading the accounts of this battle a century hence think of the tale, he wondered? Would the reclusive elves, the Touel’alfar and the Doc’alfar, certain to return to their hidden lands and magical shadows, be forgotten again in the lands of men by that time? Would the rare centaurs be no more, again, than fireside tales?
And would the lessons of the travesty of Aydrian Boudabras be forgotten, only to be painfully realized once more in the land of Honce?
With that dark thought in mind, Bishop Braumin moved a bit closer to eavesdrop on the two most important people in Honce, Prince Midalis who would soon be King, and Pony, perhaps the most powerful person in the world (and if not her, then surely her son Aydrian, who was under her control once more, it seemed).
“I have so much to do, so much to repair,” he heard Midalis admit to Pony, and it was hard to dispute the remark, for not far from where they stood, many of Midalis’s soldiers piled the dead beside a hole that would become a common grave.
So many dead.
“You have pardoned Duke Kalas?” Pony asked him.
“It will be done,” the soon-to-be King replied. “In time. I want him to consider long and hard all that he has done. But yes, I will pardon him. I will invite him into my Court, to serve me as he served my brother. He was deceived by Aydrian…”
Braumin held his breath as Pony’s eyes flashed, but Midalis calmed her with a warm smile
“He was deceived by the same demon that stole from you your son,” he corrected, and Pony nodded.
“A wise choice,” Pony replied. “Vengeance breeds resentment.”
How true, Bishop Braumin silently noted, for that lesson would be something that he would need to keep in mind in the coming days, he knew, and he feared. He would have to rise above his very human emotions.
“Jilseponie would serve me well,” he heard Midalis say, drawing him from his contemplation.
Pony smiled and managed a little laugh. Braumin held his breath, knowing what was coming. “Jilseponie is dead,” she said, and though it was a joke, Braumin couldn’t miss the fact that her expression became more serious suddenly, as if she noted some definite truth in her own words, an epiphany she would not escape.
And how it pained the gentle monk to hear such talk from this woman!
“Twice I have personally cheated death,” Pony went on. “In the Moorlands and on the beach of Pireth Dancard. I should have died, but Elbryan would not let me.”
“Then credit Elbryan with saving the kingdom,” Midalis was quick to say.
“But that was not his purpose,” Pony explained. “He saved me to save my son, and so I shall. And then I will join him. As I rightfully should have already joined him.”
Midalis stammered for a response, and Braumin surely understood that shock, given the woman’s startling remarks. This woman, Pony, the most powerful gemstone user in the world, trained and skilled in the elven sword dance, a woman who was younger by perhaps a decade than Braumin Herde, had just claimed that she would not live much longer!
“You will leave us now?” Braumin heard Midalis ask when he turned his focus back to the conversation, and the monk held his breath. He did not want her to go.
“My time here is ended,” Pony replied. She hugged Midalis. “Rule well — I know you shall! For me, I will spend my time in Dundalis, back home again. How long ago, it seems, when Elbryan and I would run carelessly about the caribou moss, awaiting the hunters’ return or hoping for a glimpse of the Halo.”
Pony stepped back and motioned to the side, to her son and his two companions sitting in the shade of the wall.
Braumin’s gaze went that way. The centaur stood up – Pony had healed his broken leg so completely that he barely limped now, only hours later. Yet another reminder of the power of this woman, Braumin thought.
He couldn’t help himself. “Wait!” he called and he ran over to Pony and Midalis. “Wait, I beg!”
Pony greeted him with a great hug.
“I cannot believe you are leaving us,” the monk said, and he wouldn’t let her go. He wanted to say so much more! He wanted to tell her that he and his brothers had discussed the prospect of handing her the Abellican Church, to serve as the first Mother Abbess! It would be a monumental action. It would change the world! Surely she could not refuse such an opportunity…
Before Bishop Braumin could begin to spout out the many thoughts swirling in his mind, though, Pony replied, “You have your church to restore, and I have my son to save.”
It wasn’t just what she said, but how she had expressed it, and that included a bit of magic, Braumin realized, as the woman used her soul stone to speak within his heart and mind.
You have your church to restore.
You. Bishop Braumin. Pony wasn’t simply making an off-handed and obvious remark about the state of the world, she was charging Braumin with this most important duty. She was giving him her blessing – nay, her dema
nd – that repairing the broken Abellican Church, the institution that had suffered so greatly under the De’Unneran Heresy, fell squarely upon the shoulders of Bishop Braumin Herde.
And indeed, this would prove a heavy burden, the monk knew. The Abellican Church lay in ruins. So many brothers had been killed or driven out by De’Unnero’s minions, and many of those minions, fanatically loyal to the vile man, remained in positions of power at various chapels and even abbeys! Other chapels were empty and in disrepair, and even one of the great abbeys, St. Gwendolyn by the Sea, was now by all reports a deserted and haunted place.
Braumin Herde gave a great sigh. A sniffle from behind turned him to regard his dearest friend, Master Marlboro Viscenti, standing there with his head bowed.
“What better place to save him than St.-Mere-Abelle?” Braumin slyly remarked, more for Viscenti’s sensibilities than his own.
For Braumin already knew the answer, and he was already nodding as Pony replied, “Dundalis.”
True to her word, Pony left later that same day, with Bradwarden, Juraviel and her son Aydrian, bound for the Timberlands and the town of Dundalis.
From a high window in the monastery, Bishop Braumin and Master Viscenti watched them go, and knew the truth: Pony would never return to Honce-the-Bear.
“We have a lot of work to do, my friend,” Braumin remarked, trying to sound as optimistic as he could manage – and surely he thought the attempt pitiful. “I fear that our struggle has only just begun.”
“No,” Viscenti said, draping an arm about his friend’s broad shoulders. When Braumin turned to regard him, he found Viscenti staring at him intently, and nodding.
“No,” the skinny man said again. “The demon is expelled and King Midalis will help us as we help him. A lot to do, yes, but we go with honest hearts and a desire to do good things. We will prevail.”
It wasn’t often that Viscenti served as the calming and optimistic voice.
Braumin was glad that this was one of those rare occasions. He dropped his hand over Viscenti’s, and looked back out at the distant procession, hearing again the words of Pony, the charge that he must fix the Abellican Church.
The Education of Brother Thaddius and other tales of DemonWars (The DemonWars Saga) Page 5