DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (46 page)

“But how many peasants might then become ill?” one of the sisters asked.

“If a hundred peasants gave their lives to save a single brother, then the reward would be worth the cost,” De’Unnero insisted.

“And how many brethren sacrifices would suffice to save one peasant?” the same sister asked.

“None,” came the harsh answer. “If one Abellican monk saved a dozen peasants but forfeited his own life in the process, then the cost would be too high. Do you place no value on your training? On your years of dedication to the highest principles? We are warriors, do you hear? Warriors of God, the holders of the truth, the keepers of the sacred stones.”

“Beware the sin of pride, brother,” the sister remarked, but before she had even finished the sentence, the fierce master was there, scowling at her.

“Do you believe that you can save them all, sister?” he asked. “Do you so fear death that you must try?”

That set her back a bit, as she tried to sort through the seeming illogic.

“We will all die,” De’Unnero explained, spinning away from her to address the entire gathering, the remaining monks of St. Gwendolyn. “You,” he said to one young monk, “and I, and he and he and she and she. We will all die, and they will all die. But we bear the burden of carrying the word of God. We must not be silenced! And now, when the world has gone astray, when our Church has wandered from the holy path, we—you brethren and I—who have witnessed the folly, must speak all the louder!”

He stormed out of the room, full of fire, full of ire, stalking through the courtyard and calling for the portcullis to be lifted and the gate to be thrown wide.

Outside, he found Merry Cowsenfed wandering about the flower bed, like some sentinel awaiting the arrival of death.

“With all them other monks dead, have ye and yer fellows decided to come out and help us again?” she asked hopefully when she spotted De’Unnero. “Ye got to help Prissy first, poor little one—”

“I came for the soul stone and nothing more,” De’Unnero replied sharply.

Merry looked at him as if she had been slapped. “Ye can’t be forgettin’ us,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “The abbess and her friends—”

“Are all dead,” De’Unnero reminded her. “Dead because they refused to accept the truth.”

“The truth, ye’re sayin’?” Merry questioned. “Is it yer own truth, then, that I should be dead and buried? The plague had me thick,” she said, raising one bare arm to show the master her ring-shaped scars.

“The soul stone,” De’Unnero insisted, holding out his hand.

“Ye got more o’ them things inside, more than ye could need,” Merry argued. “We’re wantin’ only the one.”

“You could not begin to use it.”

“We’ll find one that can, then,” said Merry. “If yerself and yer fellow monks aren’t to help us, then ye got to at least let us keep the stone. Ye got to at least let us try.”

De’Unnero narrowed his gaze. “Try, then,” he said, and he looked to another nearby fellow, one obviously quite sick with the plague. “Go and fetch … what was the name?”

“Prissy,” Merry answered. “Prissy Collier.”

“Be quick!” De’Unnero snapped, and the man ran off.

He returned a few moments later, bearing a small girl, two or three years old. Gently he laid her on the ground near Merry, and then, on De’Unnero’s wave, he backed off.

“She’s near to passin’,” Merry remarked.

“Then save her,” De’Unnero said to her. “You have the soul stone, so invoke the name and power of God and rid her of the plague.”

Merry looked at him incredulously.

“Now!” the monk roared at her.

Merry looked all around, very conscious of the growing audience, the many sick folk looking on from a distance and the many monks now lining the abbey’s parapet and front gate tower.

“Now,” De’Unnero said again. “You desire a miracle, so pray for one.”

“I’m just a washerwoman, a poor—”

“Then give me the stone,” De’Unnero said, holding forth his hand once more.

Merry reached into her pocket and did indeed bring forth the stone, but she didn’t give it to De’Unnero. She clutched it close to her bosom and fell to her knees beside poor, sick Prissy. And then she began to pray, with all her heart and soul. She invoked every prayer she had learned as a child, and made up many more, words torn from her heart. She kissed the soul stone repeatedly, then pressed it to Prissy’s forehead and begged for God to let her and the girl join, as she had done with Abbess Delenia.

Merry prayed all through the rest of the day and long into the night. Tirelessly she knelt and she prayed, and tirelessly did De’Unnero stand over her, watching her, judging her.

The dawn broke and Merry, her voice all but gone now, begging more than praying, still cried out for a miracle that seemed as if it would not come.

Prissy Collier died that morning, with Merry sobbing over her. After a long while, De’Unnero calmly reached down and helped the woman up.

“The soul stone,” he said, holding forth his hand.

Merry Cowsenfed seemed a broken woman, her face puffy and blotchy, streaked with tears. Her whole body trembled; her knees seemed as if they would buckle at
any moment.

But then she straightened and squared her sagging shoulders. “No, ye canno’ take it from us,” she said.

De’Unnero tilted his head in disbelief and a wry smile came over him.

“It did no’ work with Prissy, but it will,” Merry insisted. “It has to work, for it’s all we got.”

As she finished, she felt the sudden, burning explosion as De’Unnero’s tiger paw swiped across her face, tearing the flesh. She felt the sharp tug on her arm next, saw her hand fly out and fly open.

Then she was falling, falling, and so slowly, it seemed!

The last thing Merry Cowsenfed saw on the field outside St. Gwendolyn was Marcalo De’Unnero’s back as the monk callously walked away.

Chapter 20
 

D
OWN SOUTH
,
IT WAS STILL AUTUMN
,
BUT UP HERE
,
IN
A
LPINADOR AND ON THE
slopes of a steep mountain, winter had set in. The stinging winds and snow hardly seemed to bother Andacanavar as he led Bruinhelde and Midalis. The ranger walked lightly, despite his years, despite the storm, as if he were more spirit than corporeal, as if he had somehow found a complete unity and harmony with nature—something made even more painfully obvious to poor Prince Midalis, trudging on, plowing through the snow up to his knees.

Bruinhelde’s steps were even more strained, for the barbarian leader had not fully healed, and never would, the embedded arrowhead grinding painfully against his hipbone. Still, he had no trouble pacing Midalis, who was not used to such climbs nor such heights, for they were nearly two miles higher than Pireth Vanguard now, approaching the cave of the snow-crawler, the spirit shaggoth.

Finally, Andacanavar stopped and shielded his eyes with his hand, pointing to a windblown, rocky spur up ahead. “The opening,” he announced.

Midalis came up beside the ranger, staring hard, but he could not make out any opening in the snow and rocks.

“It is there,” Andacanavar assured him, seeing his doubtful expression.

“The home of the spirit shaggoth?”

The ranger nodded.

“How do you know?” the Prince asked.

“Andacanavar has walked this range for many years,” Bruinhelde put in, catching up to them.

“But how do you know that the beast is still alive?” Prince Midalis asked. “How many years have passed since you have seen the creature?”

“As long as men are alive, the spirit shaggoth is alive,” the ranger answered confidently. “With haste, now,” he said, starting away, “before the night catches us on the open face.”

There was indeed a cave entrance up ahead, though Midalis was practically on top of it before he even discerned it. Andacanavar led the way in, and they had to crawl beneath the low-hanging rock ceiling for some distance, along a dark, winding corridor—something that didn’t bring much comfort to the Prince, with a legendary monster supposedly residing just within!

They came into a chamber, dimly lit by daylight creeping in through a small opening where the overhanging rock of the western wall overlapped a bit but did not join with the western edge of the floor. It was a small room, barely large enough for the three to get apart without bumping elbows, with only two exits: the one they had crawled through and another tight tunnel across the way, this one
ascending at a steep angle.

Andacanavar methodically went about his preparations, building a small fire near that tunnel. He produced a hunk of venison, a thick and juicy steak, and set it on a spit above the fire, then sat back, fanning the smoke, letting the aroma of cooking meat drift up the natural chimney.

“Whetting his appetite,” the ranger explained with a wink.

From his large pack, the ranger then brought forth the items the pair would need: two pairs of iron spurs, which angled downward rather than backward; a palm-sized ornate item of flint and steel; a metal pole tipped on both sides by lengths of chain; a pair of javelins, specially crafted to hook to the free end of each chain; and finally, reverently, a disc-shaped object wrapped in deerskin. The ranger put this on the ground before the three of them and spoke several prayers in his own tongue as he gently unfolded each layer of leather.

Prince Midalis stared at the revealed item curiously, at the beauty of the thing in light of the knowledge that it had been crafted by the fierce Alpinadorans. It was a burnished wooden hoop, holding within it what seemed like a spiderweb set with dozens and dozens of crystals, or diamonds, perhaps. In the very center, and suspended back from the web, was a single candle.

“What is it?” he dared to ask.

“Your only hope of getting out of there alive,” the ranger answered with a wry grin. He lifted the hoop and the flint and steel, and with a flick of his fingers, created a spark that ignited the candle. Then he turned to face the other two, with the candle flame pointing toward him.

Slowly, Andacanavar moved the hoop, left and right. The crystals caught the candle’s flame and reflected it and brightened it and bent it into different colors so that Bruinhelde and Midalis felt as if they were sitting in the middle of a brilliant rainbow.

“Behold Towalloko,” the ranger said, and quietly, so that his voice did not break the mounting trance, “the bringer of dreams.”

“Towalloko,” Midalis repeated softly, and he was falling, falling, deeper and deeper into the web of colors and images, his mind soaring from the cave on the side of the mountain to a different place, a quieter and more peaceful place.

With a puff, Andacanavar blew out the candle, and Midalis’ eyes popped wide as if he had just awakened from a restful sleep. He stared at Towalloko, trying to piece it all together. There was magic here, he knew, gemstone magic; and Andacanavar had spoken of the hoop as if it were one of the many Alpinadoran gods. And yet the Alpinadorans rejected the sacred stones outright and completely. Midalis furrowed his brow at the apparent contradiction. He stared hard at Andacanavar, seeking some explanation, but the ranger only smiled knowingly, and went back to sorting the many items.

Then the ranger explained, in precise detail, the procedure for this task that lay before the two leaders. The ritual of blood-brothering had ancient traditions in Alpinador, ever since the tribal ancestors, who worshiped the spirit shaggoth as the
mountain god of snow, had captured the beast in this cave. Once, the feat of riding the creature had been a passage of manhood for every tribal youngster, but as the years had passed with many, many of the adolescent boys losing their lives or limbs in the attempt, the ritual had been moved to a more remote and even more special place in Alpinadoran culture, the blood-brothering.

This blood-brothering between Midalis and Bruinhelde, Andacanavar explained, would be the first in over a decade.

“And how did the last one end?” a clearly worried Midalis asked.

Andacanavar only smiled.

“You are not to harm the shaggoth,” the ranger explained a moment later, “in no way, not even at the cost of your own life.”

Bruinhelde nodded, his jaw set, but Midalis gave a doubtful smirk.

“Not that you could bring harm to the great beast anyway,” Andacanavar said, his tone somber, “not even if you brought fine weapons in there with you. This is a test of your courage, not your warrior skills, and a test of your trust in each other. If either of you fails, then you both will surely die, and horribly.”

Midalis wanted to remark that he doubted Andacanavar would risk such a loss, but he held the thought and considered, then, that the ranger would not do this thing, would not bring them here and risk so very much, if he didn’t trust both Midalis and Bruinhelde. The Prince turned to regard this giant man who would become his blood-brother. In truth, he didn’t care much for stubborn Bruinhelde, found him driven by honor to the point of callousness, but he did trust the man would keep his word. And in battle, in any test where he had to depend upon the honor of an ally, Midalis couldn’t think of another man, except perhaps Liam, with whom he would rather be allied.