DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (265 page)

“We have never had any days together,” Pony spat back at her.

Dasslerond conceded the point. “My duty is to my people, as yours is to your own, first and foremost,” she said. “And your duty now demands that you do battle against the forces that have darkened your lands.”

“You ask me to wage war against my own son?”

“Do you believe that any of us have a choice?” asked Dasslerond. “You do not understand who he is. He is mightier with the gemstones than any who have come before, and greater with the blade, perhaps, than was Elbryan himself! He has Oracle—we thought that the gift would inspire him to follow his true path. But alas, he has found naught but ill counsel there!”

“And ill counsel from those humans closest about him,” Belli’mar Juraviel added, and neither Pony nor Dasslerond was about to disagree with that.

“Fear him,” Dasslerond warned the woman. “You cannot understand the truth of him until it is too late for you.”

“For you, you mean,” Pony accused.

Dasslerond didn’t flinch at all, didn’t even blink. “Return to your people,” she said, and she moved her hand holding the emerald up before her. “Defeat your son, for the good of the humans if not for the good of the Touel’alfar. Forget that we exist, Jilseponie, for your own sake …”

The elf’s voice began to waver and fade, and Jilseponie felt herself receding, back to Dundalis, she knew. But she lifted her own stone, too angry to let it go at that, with too much hatred for the superior-minded Lady of Caer’alfar. She dove into the hematite, releasing her spirit, and charged at Dasslerond.

She nearly overwhelmed the elven lady in that initial assault, nearly got through the iron willpower of Lady Dasslerond that had kept together the Touel’alfar and their enchanted valley for centuries.

But then there came a sudden distortion of distance, a spinning vision of landscapes, as Dasslerond, in her horror, abruptly retreated.

Pony felt as if she was falling from on high, as the spinning ground leaped up to swallow her.

And then it was over, suddenly, and she lay in a pool of cold water on a field of clay and soft mud. Her body aching from the hard landing, she pulled herself up to her knees and looked all about.

She was in the Moorlands, she realized. The desolate, goblin-infested wastelands far to the west of Dundalis. She glanced all around, though she knew that the elves were not with her. In that moment of confusion and attack, Dasslerond had
retreated—likely back to Andur’Blough Inninness.

And Pony was left alone in a desolate and hostile region, without food and without a weapon.

She fell back and put her wet and muddy hands over her face, defeated.

Chapter 17
 

I
T TOOK THE THUMP OF
A
GRADELEOUS LANDING BESIDE HER TO BREAK
B
RYNN
from her trance. Seeing the headless body of Yatol Bardoh lying in the sand before her was almost too much for her. The image, the reality of having finally avenged her parents, made her think back to her childhood days on the steppes of To-gai. The circumstances around her childhood had not been happy: the Behrenese conquerors were a brutal lot; and her parents, both resisting the occupation, had been almost constantly on the run. Still, Brynn’s mother and father had nurtured her and loved her, taught her the old ways. They had taught Brynn that there was something bigger than she, something bigger than all of them, and that they were a part of it, living in harmony with the soil, the plants, and the animals. They had given so much to her in the few years they had known her.

And then they were gone, taken by the wickedness of this man, Tohen Bardoh—now a headless corpse bleeding into the dirt before her.

“The battle continues,” came a voice, and Brynn looked around to see Pagonel coming over the dune behind her.

Brynn moved to join him, and saw the Chezhou-Lei warrior sitting in the sand, rubbing his throat. She shook her head, confused, certain that her strike should have proven fatal. But then she figured it out and looked over at her companion.

“You healed him.”

“He will not fight us again,” said the mystic. “Was I to allow him to die?”

“He tried to kill us.”

“He protected his master, as his code of honor demanded.” The mystic glanced back at Bardoh’s corpse, drawing Brynn’s gaze with his own. “His master needs protecting no longer.”

Brynn considered the words and the logic. Ever was Pagonel tempering her fighting spirit, ever was he edging her toward mercy.

Ever was Pagonel making Brynn a better person and a better leader.

“The battle continues,” Pagonel remarked, and they both looked back toward Jacintha, where the sounds of metal ringing against metal and the screams of the wounded and victor alike echoed in the air.

“Where are the emissaries?”

“Hiding,” the mystic explained. “Come. Perhaps the sight of Brynn and Agradeleous will convince these warriors that nothing more is to be gained here.”

Brynn turned with him and started for the dragon, but she stopped and ran to the side instead, scooping up something from the sand. Pagonel was already astride the dragon when she got there, offering her his arm to pull her up behind him.

A short run and but two flaps of Agradeleous’ great leathery wings had them up into the air, flying to the east and banking to the north. Spying ships out in the harbor, Pagonel bade the dragon to stay along the coast, in full view of whoever was out there, be it friend or foe.

The sounds of battle diminished almost as soon as the great shadow of Agradeleous rolled across the battlefield. Behrenese traitor, loyalist, and Bearman alike rushed out from before the terrible splendor of Agradeleous, forgetting their own battles in the face of this much more significant danger.

And there sat Brynn astride the beast, clutching with one hand as the dragon swerved left and right and with her other hand aloft and in clear view, holding the head of Yatol Bardoh.

The Jacintha loyalists cheered.

The Behrenese followers of Peridan and Bardoh cowered and begged for mercy.

The soldiers of Honce-the-Bear filtered back, tightening ranks defensively. Unsure of this new presence, stunned by the sight of a dragon, the men of the northern kingdom continued their well-disciplined retreat right through the southern slum of Jacintha and back to the city wall.

O
ut in the harbor, Abbot Olin, Master Mackaront, and Duke Bretherford found themselves drawn to the rail, along with the other crewmen, to view the spectacle of the great beast. They had heard of dragons, of course—mostly in old legends—but none of them had ever actually seen one.

“The Dragon of To-gai,” mumbled Mackaront. “Then she is more than a legend, more than the imaginings of frightened Jacintha soldiers.”

“Our soldiers are in retreat,” Abbot Olin realized. “What does this portend?”

“Wisdom?” Bretherford asked dryly.

“The cheering along the wall names the dragon as an ally,” answered Master Mackaront, who was well aware of the previous agreements between Brynn of To-gai and Yatol Wadon, and who better understood the significance of this unexpected arrival. “It is Brynn Dharielle, come to the aid of Yatol Wadon.”

Abbot Olin started to turn to face the man, but couldn’t take his eyes from the spectacle of the beast as it swooped about the battlefield south of the city. “Send couriers to the docks,” he instructed Mackaront. “Nay, go yourself! Find out what this means.”

“You fear the arrival of the beast will bring trouble for you with your new friend Yatol Wadon?” Duke Bretherford asked when Mackaront walked away.

“Not so,” said Abbot Olin. “It is Brynn, once a friend of Aydrian from what De’Unnero and Sadye have told me. It is possible that our new young king has just found a great ally.”

If Abbot Olin could have pried his eyes from the dragon at that moment, he would have noticed that Duke Bretherford didn’t seem altogether pleased by that prospect.

A
gradeleous didn’t join Brynn and Pagonel as they entered Jacintha later that day. There was no need to send the populace running in fear, after all, as would have undoubtedly occurred even if the dragon had gone in using his lizardman form.

The pair was greeted warmly by the soldiers at the southern gate and taken through the streets of Jacintha to the palace of Chom Deiru. Neither missed the significance of the many soldiers in the streets that night, particularly the many soldiers of Honce-the-Bear.

“It would seem that Yatol Wadon found another ally when he learned that To-gai would not aid him,” Brynn remarked.

“Long before that,” Pagonel corrected. “Such an army as this could not have been pieced together so quickly. It would seem that your friend who now leads the northern kingdom had determined weeks ago that he would support Yatol Wadon.”

His reference to Aydrian drew a look from Brynn. She had hardly been thinking of the young ranger these last weeks, too engrossed was she in setting up her own kingdom and, of late, in rousing Agradeleous and plotting her moves in favor of Wadon.

“Or perhaps it was Abbot Olin of Entel,” Pagonel went on. “He has had a long relationship with Jacintha, by all accounts.”

Brynn had no idea of the situation, for she had little knowledge of Honce-the-Bear. She had heard that Aydrian was king soon after she had forged a truce with Behren and settled into Dharyan-Dharielle, but it had been a single courier with only vague information. Was it possible that Aydrian was here in Chom Deiru waiting for her?

She got her answer—that he was not—a few moments later, when she and Pagonel were escorted into a grand dining hall where a huge feast had been set out. Paroud was there, along with Pechter Dan Turk, who ran forward to greet Brynn warmly.

Pechter Dan Turk then led the pair about the long table, which bent in a semicircle about the tables piled with food. So much food! More than Brynn had ever seen! Enough to feed a To-gai-ru tribe for half the winter.

And yet, there were only about twoscore people assembled, stuffing their faces, spilling their drinks, tossing half-eaten racks of pork and lamb to the floor without regard.

Pechter Dan Turk showed Brynn and Pagonel to Yatol Wadon first, and the old Behrenese priest nearly leaped across the table to embrace Brynn.

“You have brought the head of Bardoh, yes?” asked the man beside him, Yatol De Hamman, as he looked down at the sack Brynn carried.

She lifted it and nodded. “It is given as a show of support to Yatol Wadon,” she said. “Though I wished to leave it outside of this place where you are feasting.”

“Your escorts insisted that we bring it in,” Pagonel added.

“Of course they did!” cried the exuberant De Hamman, and indeed, it was obvious that he was thrilled to see his enemies vanquished. He motioned to a guard,
who rushed over to take the satchel, and then, to Brynn’s disgust, the soldier pulled forth Bardoh’s head and placed it upon the table of food, in a predetermined spot, raised and central, at the end of a headless pig body.

Immediately, all of the feasting Behrenese rose up and lifted their glasses of wine in toast to the death of the traitor Bardoh, and then in another to the arrival of the Dragon of To-gai.

Brynn hid her disgust well.

At a nod from Yatol Wadon, Pechter Dan Turk led Brynn along the table, introducing the various Behrenese lords and Yatols and the Jacintha garrison commander. Then he took her to the three foreigners in attendance, Bearmen all.

“I give you Abbot Olin of Entel,” Pechter Dan Turk said, and the old monk rose and extended a hand covered in bejeweled rings toward Brynn.

Not understanding that she was supposed to kiss the back of that hand, Brynn gave it a rather lame shake.

Abbot Olin only smiled at her, then turned to the two men standing on his right. “This is Master Mackaront, my emissary to Jacintha,” he said, indicating another monk. “And beside him is Duke Bretherford of the Mirianic, a lord in high standing with King Aydrian Boudabras.”

Brynn couldn’t help but reveal her interest in that name as it was unexpectedly spoken, her light brown eyes flashing as she looked from Bretherford back to Abbot Olin.

“Do you know of my king?” Abbot Olin asked her.

“It is possible,” Brynn replied. “But it was many years ago, good Abbot. I knew an Aydrian once.”

“Trained by the Touel’alfar in the Wilderlands beyond Honce-the-Bear,” the abbot agreed, and Brynn could only stare at the man. “The son of Elbryan the Nightbird and Jilseponie Wyndon Ursal, who was queen of Honce-the-Bear before him. Yes, I suspect that it is the same Aydrian you once knew, good lady. Could there be two such extraordinary young men with the same name?”

Abbot Olin looked past Brynn, as if only then noticing Pagonel standing beside her. “You have walked a strange and unexpected road, good lady,” he said, a bit too politely. “And find yourself in strange and unexpected company.”

Pagonel didn’t flinch at the obvious insult, both in words and in the smirking way that Abbot Olin was regarding him, but Brynn surely took up the defense of her friend. “Could any less be said of Aydrian?” she remarked.