Authors: R.A. Salvatore
That was even if another Chezru Chieftain would be found, for any child now selected, given the believed deception of Yakim Douan, would face a brutal inquiry period. And if that child uttered nothing miraculous—truly miraculous!—he would be rejected and the kingdom would be thrown into even more disarray. On one level, Mado Wadon regretted the decision to kill Douan. Perhaps they should have allowed him to go on with his practice of stealing the bodies of unborn children to use as his own.
Would Behren survive?
Would the Chezru religion survive?
And should it? Mado Wadon had to ponder.
“Yatol Peridan is the least of your troubles,” an increasingly frustrated De Hamman stated suddenly, drawing Mado Wadon from his disturbing thoughts. “Your eyes should focus upon Yatol Bardoh and the legions he commands.”
“The Jacintha legions are mine,” Mado Wadon said.
“Bardoh commands them. It is no secret that he has used Chezru Douan’s inability to capture the Dragon of To-gai to foster his own ends. How much more powerful will he become once Dharyan is recaptured and the rebels are all dead.”
Mado Wadon winced at the thought.
He went back to the lower levels of Chom Deiru almost immediately, down the cold and wet steps to the dungeons and to the filthy, barred hole in the wall where Pagonel of the Jhesta Tu had been placed.
“We must speak,” he said to the man.
Pagonel, dirty and unshaven, his wounds thick with infection, looked at the man curiously, blinking his eyes repeatedly against the sudden intrusion of light.
“Tell me of the Dragon of To-gai,” Mado Wadon bade him. “What does she desire?”
Pagonel continued to stare at him.
“Time is short,” Mado Wadon said. “Save yourself.”
“I will not betray my friend.”
“Betray?” the Yatol echoed incredulously. “I offer you the chance to save her.” Mado Wadon leaned in closer, his face barely inches from Pagonel’s. “I offer you the chance to realize her dreams.”
“You will pardon my skepticism.”
Mado Wadon nodded, expecting as much.
He did notice that Pagonel’s mood had brightened considerably the next day when they sat together on the wagon in the midst of a great caravan rolling down the western road out of Jacintha.
“T
hey will not eat the horses,” Tanalk Grenk said to Brynn. “Nor will they stay in here to starve.”
“They want us to try to break out,” she replied, looking down at the besieging army, as she had for more than a week.
“We have a few days more of food, even if we starve the prisoners.”
“Which we shall not do!”
Tanalk Grenk’s expression grew intense for a moment, but he relaxed and nodded. “I would rather die with a sword in my hand,” he said. “And not with that hand limp from starvation.”
Brynn looked hard at him, and at those others standing along the wall, listening in to the conversation. Gradually, she began to nod. “As would I,” she said. “As shall I!”
A cheer went up about her.
“Let us consider our options more carefully,” she said to Grenk. “Perhaps we can make a ruse of a breakout, luring our enemies in to us one more time.”
The man’s expression was doubting, and when she thought about it, Brynn could not disagree. “Or if not, then let us ride out in full force and kill as many as we may before our end.”
“I will begin formulating the plans,” the fierce To-gai-ru warrior offered, and Brynn nodded.
It wasn’t the end she had hoped for, but it would have to do.
The next morning, the To-gai-ru leaders met and argued over the plans, with some thinking it would be best to charge east, instead of the expected burst to the west. “If we are not going to break through anyway, then better to gain even more surprise,” one argued.
The banter settled much, and Tanalk Grenk and Brynn broke away to draw up the final plans. They were nearly finished, when a call from the wall roused them.
“A lone emissary!” came the cry.
“No doubt to reiterate their call for surrender,” Tanalk Grenk reasoned as the pair made their way to the parapets. “We should send his head back without his body.”
His words were lost in his throat as he gained the wall and looked out. No response was forthcoming from Brynn, either, for both recognized the lone figure walking toward them, his gait the practiced and balanced walk of a Jhesta Tu mystic.
Brynn fell into Pagonel’s arms as he came through the gate, burying her face in his strong chest.
“Yakim Douan is dead,” Pagonel said to her, to all of the warriors gathering about. “The new leading Yatols wish to discuss the terms of peace.”
“We have already dismissed their calls for surrender!” Tanalk Grenk said angrily. “We will die as warriors before surrendering the freedom of To-gai!”
That brought a cheer, of course, but Pagonel held calm. “I said peace, not surrender,” the mystic replied.
The expressions were doubtful, even Brynn’s.
“Their kingdom is in disarray,” the mystic explained. “They cannot hope to continue a unified struggle to hold To-gai.”
“But this is the hour of their victory,” reasoned Brynn.
“A victory that many of them fear more than defeat,” Pagonel replied. “Come with me, Brynn, and you, Tanalk Grenk, to the tents of our enemies.”
Brynn wore a puzzled expression, but Tanalk Grenk’s was one of open suspicion.
“This is no ruse,” said Pagonel. “For they need none to finish this battle. We have caught ourselves in the middle of their political games, and they would all prefer that we leave.”
“T
hose are my terms,” Brynn said coldly, after three days of arguing with Mado
Wadon and the others at the Behrenese encampment encircling Dharyan.
“Preposterous!” said Yatol Bardoh, Brynn’s greatest enemy at these discussions, and the Yatol who least desired peace. Pagonel had explained it all to her, and so she understood that Bardoh wanted this fight to strengthen his own position in the aftermath.
Brynn moved out from the table, to the back of the tent, and motioned for Yatol Bardoh to join her.
“I know you,” she whispered.
The man looked at her curiously.
“I watched you murder my parents, a decade and more ago.”
Bardoh glared at her wickedly.
“Know that if this battle ensues, the Behrenese will likely win,” Brynn assured him. “But my dragon has healed, and with his help, I will find my own victory among the ruins, for I will avenge my parents. Of that, do not doubt.”
The man blanched, and Brynn patted him on the shoulder and returned to her seat at the table.
It amazed her how much more responsive Yatol Bardoh became after that little private conversation.
But still, when Brynn and Pagonel returned to Dharyan that night, nothing had been settled, and now the food was beginning to run thin.
“We will meet one more time,” the woman said to Pagonel. “And then we will fight.”
“You could relent,” the mystic replied. “They have offered you a chance to run back into To-gai and be free of Behrenese rule. Is that not all that you wanted?”
Brynn took a deep breath, understanding that she was playing a very dangerous game. But she held firm to her resolve against the doubts. Her demands were the insurance against another invasion, one that she knew would come soon enough after Behren solidified itself once more, if Yatol Bardoh had his way.
The next day, Mado Wadon came alone to Dharyan, under the flag of truce, as Brynn insisted. In a quiet room, the Yatol, the Dragon of To-gai, and the Jhesta Tu mystic sat and talked.
“Dharyan-Dharielle, then,” Brynn improvised, as the Yatol again argued the one sticking point in the negotiations. “We will call the city Dharyan-Dharielle, and leave it as an open city, to Behrenese and To-gai-ru alike.”
“And what would possibly prompt the Behrenese to come here, other than to scorn the invading To-gai-ru?”
“Invading?” Brynn echoed. “It is a word you should take care when speaking. Your people will come for the trade, open trade, between To-gai-ru and Behrenese. And your scholars will come for the library.”
“Library? Do the To-gai-ru even write?”
“The library formerly of Pruda,” Brynn said with a crooked smile, and Yatol Mado Wadon’s eyes widened indeed!
“Yes, I have it, buried and hidden in the desert, never to be found unless I so
deem it,” Brynn explained. “I will retrieve the items, and build a new and grander library here, open to all the scholars of our respective kingdoms.”
Mado Wadon waved his hands and shook his head. “You speak foolishness! Why should I hear these words? Why should I allow for any concessions from the Behrenese? You are beaten, if we choose to attack! Never forget that!”
“But at a great cost.”
“Greater costs have already been paid!”
Brynn nodded, conceding the point. “But greater gains are hard to find,” she said. “Yatol Mado Wadon, I asked you to come out here alone this last day of our discussions because you above all others should understand the true prize I offer to you now.”
“And that is?”
“Alliance,” said Brynn.
“Between To-gai and Behren?”
“Between Dharyan-Dharielle and Jacintha,” Brynn corrected. “Between the Dragon of To-gai and Yatol Mado Wadon. If you force me from this city, then who will replace me? One loyal to Jacintha, or to Avrou Eesa?”
The man did not reply.
“And if you send your hordes against me, or I charge mine out against you, then who will be blamed for the thousands of Behrenese dead on the sands, and the hundreds I will execute in my dungeons? Yatol Bardoh or Yatol Mado Wadon?”
Brynn leaned forward and grabbed the man’s hands suddenly, moving very close to his face, locking his gaze with her own. “And I offer to you a vision of a better way between our peoples, one of strength and not of animosity. Can you not see the wisdom of that course?”
“Do you believe that you can eliminate centuries of mistrust and hatred in one action?” the Yatol asked sincerely.
“I believe that we two can take one large stride, that is all,” Brynn replied. “And will Jacintha not benefit from the alliance with Dharielle?”
“Dharyan-Dharielle,” Mado Wadon corrected a moment later, and Brynn smiled wide and looked to the side, to a nodding Pagonel.
The great army encircling Dharyan-Dharielle stood down that same afternoon, even sending supplies in to the beleaguered To-gai-ru.
“It was not done without arguments among the Yatols,” Pagonel assured Brynn.
“Let them fight, then,” the woman replied.
“You risked much.”
“Every step of my journey,” said Brynn.
T
he city under Brynn’s control actually had more Behrenese citizens than To-gai-ru, once the situation had sorted itself out after that long winter of God’s Year 844–845. Many To-gai-ru did come down from the steppes though, including some old friends, Barachuk and Tsolona.
“You will be prized advisors,” Brynn said to them, after many hugs and kisses.
“Our way is not yet clear.”
“Indeed,” said the old man who had just come down from the steppes, where the tumultuous ripples of Brynn’s surprising victory were only then reverberating. “Indeed!”
As she had promised, Brynn Dharielle left the gates open to men and women of either land, and many Behrenese merchants flocked in to reap the rewards of open trade with the To-gai-ru for their prized horses.
Late that spring, the first column bearing items from the Library of Pruda arrived, while craftsmen worked to construct a new and more fabulous library. Though the scholars of Pruda offered a letter of defiance and complaint, they did begin showing up in the city to peruse the ancient tomes.
Brynn heard reports of many battles being fought in the east, mostly south of Jacintha along the coast, and she knew that Pagonel’s estimate of the crisis now befalling Behren had not been exaggerated. She determined to be a good neighbor, though, and take no gains from the Behrenese distress. In truth, she had enough trouble in keeping her own kingdom, To-gai, united—and for the first time! Things were not going smoothly on the steppes, for there remained many outposters and much bitterness.
But they would get through it, Brynn believed. After what she and her friends had accomplished, no obstacle seemed too great.
That spring brought a pair of partings, as well, one expected and somewhat welcomed, and the other one that caught Brynn completely by surprise.
“Agradeleous has agreed to fly me to my home before he returns to his own,” Pagonel announced to her, the dragon standing behind him.
“My wounds have healed enough for me to fly again,” Agradeleous added. “How good it will be to feel the wind upon my face!”
“You will return to the Walk of Clouds?”
“I must,” Pagonel replied, and he took her in his arms. “For how long, I do not know. But it is my place to go to Master Cheyes and Mistress Dasa, that we three might determine where the Jhesta Tu can fit into this new order of Behren and To-gai. With the death of the Chezru Chieftain and the Kaliit of the Chezhou-Lei, there may be some gains to be made between our orders. It must be explored.”
Brynn wanted to argue against it all, wanted to beg Pagonel to stay beside her as she continued to work through this confusing and dangerous time. But as she had let Belli’mar Juraviel and Cazzira go, so, too, must she grant Pagonel this priority.
“I will return there one day,” she promised.
“And I will be there to greet you, with arms open wide,” the mystic replied. “Unless, of course, I have already returned to you, in which event, I will escort you up the five thousand steps, to a place of greater enlightenment.”
Brynn fought back the tears and so did Pagonel. It was a bitter parting, but was made with the sincere understanding and belief between these two that they would indeed meet again.
“And of you, good Agradeleous,” the woman said suddenly, turning away from
the mystic. “You will return now to your mountain home?”
“I will mark a cave for the bearers of treasures and the bearers of tales,” the dragon replied, reminding Brynn of their bargain.
“Promise me that you’ll not eat them.”
“You ask much.”