DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (56 page)

“Devastated by your Church most of all,” said Kalas. But Danube hushed him again, this time with a sharp wave and then a threatening look.

The King blew a long sigh then, and sank back into his chair. How quickly the darkness had descended on him and on his kingdom! A few days before, he was celebrating a successful and peaceful summer and the news of another son, and now, suddenly, it was as if he and his kingdom had been thrust back into the midst of turmoil.

“The Brothers Repentant are not sanctioned?” he asked calmly.

Je’howith shook his head. “We know nothing of them, nor would we applaud their efforts.”

“Nor are they unprecedented,” Constance Pemblebury unexpectedly put in, and the other three looked to her. “In time of great desperation, such cults often reveal themselves. In the first onset of the plague, the Brothers of Flagellation—”

“Yes, yes,” Je’howith agreed. “In desperate times come desperate measures.”

Danube rubbed his eyes and sighed again. “See that they are not, and are never, sanctioned,” he warned Je’howith, “or risk war between Church and Crown.”

Je’howith nodded, and wasn’t particularly worried, for he knew Father Abbot Agronguerre well enough to understand that the man would never agree to such actions as were being attributed to this rogue band.

“Is there nothing that we can do against the plague?” Danube asked softly.

Je’howith shook his head. “We can hide,” he answered.

On that sour note, the meeting adjourned, with Je’howith retiring to his private quarters in St. Honce but only after issuing orders to all his brethren that they were no longer to go out among the peasants and that the great oaken doors of the abbey were to remain bolted and guarded. In addition, all but the essential civilian workers at St. Honce were dismissed that day, sent home and told not to return.

Within the week, the brothers of St. Honce had blessed and laid a tussie-mussie bed outside their walls and a second outside the closed gates of Castle Ursal. Reports
of the plague continued to grow within the city, as Je’howith knew it would, as it always had in crowded areas during previous outbreaks.

By the end of the following week, crowds of sufferers appeared outside the walls of both abbey and castle. Wails rent the night air regularly: mothers, mostly, finding the telltale red spots on the limbs of their children.

Abbot Je’howith watched it all from the narrow window of his room, high in the main tower of St. Honce. How old he felt, and how weary! Weary of everything, of his fights with Duke Kalas—arguments where the frustrated King Danube now seemed to be leaning more in favor of Kalas. Weary of the philosophical war he had waged within his own Church. Weary of upstart young brothers—who was this Brother Truth?—who thought they understood the truth of the world but surely did not!

Abbot Je’howith had found purpose after the fall of Markwart in Palmaris in the form of simple survival and of protecting the memory of the former Father Abbot. How moot that seemed now, with the rosy plague spreading fast across the land, a horror that would bury even the terrible memories of the demon dactyl.

Je’howith looked around him at the ancient stone walls, aware of the very real possibility that he would never again see the world outside this sanctuary, this prison. On its previous visits to Honce-the-Bear, the rosy plague had stayed a decade or more. The members of the Abellican Church would turn inward for the duration, would begin the great debates about the universe anew, the purpose of Man and of life itself, the nature of God, the reality of death.

Je’howith, too old and too tired and too certain that he had no answers, wanted no part of it.

He heard the cart men then, as twilight descended, walking the streets of Ursal in their black robes and masks, calling for the folk to bring out their dead.

Je’howith knew that soon enough those carts would make extra trips and would be overloaded at every one.

“Bring out yer dead!”

The words cut profoundly into old Abbot Je’howith, a poignant reminder of impotence and futility.

“Bring out yer dead!”

He shuffled to his cot and, weary of it all, lay down.

It began as a numbness in his arm, a tingling that spread gradually throughout his shoulder and upper chest. His last meal, he presumed, disagreeing with his old bowels.

But the numbness changed to a burning sensation, general at first, but becoming more and more focused about his heart, and the old man understood.

He lay there, frantic but helpless, doubting that he could even find the strength to walk out of his room. He turned his head and stared at his night table. He had a hematite in there, he recalled through the waves of pain. Perhaps he could use it to contact another brother.…

A darker thought came to old Je’howith, a recent memory of his examination of
Constance Pemblebury. He had used the soul stone to enter her body, her womb, had seen the unborn child and felt its warmth and its spirit. He could expel that spirit, he realized. He could use the soul stone to send his spirit into Constance’s womb, to take the body of the unborn babe.

To be reborn as the son of the King!

Je’howith clutched his chest as another sharp wave of pain washed over him.

As soon as it abated, his hand moved for the night table.

But then he recoiled, considering more clearly the course he had devised, recognizing the immorality and wrongness of it! How could he think to do such a horrible thing? He had spent his whole life in the service of God, and though he had made mistakes and though he had often failed, he had never done wrong purposefully! And certainly he had never entertained the idea of something as sinful as this!

With a growl against the pain, Abbot Je’howith did indeed reach over and pull forth the soul stone, bringing it close to his burning heart. He fell into the swirls of the gem, not to attack the spirit of Constance’s unborn child, not even to contact another brother.

No, his time here was over, the old abbot understood. His weariness of it all was, he believed, a call from God that it was time to come home.

The old abbot replayed most of his life in those last few minutes, most of all the final years, when Markwart had gone astray and Je’howith had, out of fear and darker intentions, willingly followed him. He wondered, given the many turns, if he would truly find redemption at the end of this final road.

He wondered, and not without trepidation, what redemption might be.

Abbot Je’howith closed his eyes for the last time.

Chapter 26
 

“C
OMPLAIN
,
COMPLAIN
,” R
OGER CHIDED PONY
. “Y
OU
’
LL SEE
C
OLLEEN
,
AND YOU
know that you want that! We start tomorrow.”

Pony, astride Greystone at the top of the north slope leading out of Dundalis, just waved him away; and off Roger went, skipping as much as trotting, thrilled that he had finally convinced Pony to go to Caer Tinella with him.

Pony couldn’t hide her smile as she watched her friend go. Roger had pestered her all through the summer, but she had steadfastly refused. He wanted her to go all the way to Palmaris with him, and finally, she had relented enough to agree to journey halfway, to Caer Tinella and their friend Colleen.

Looking past Roger, Pony noted the town that had served her so well as a sanctuary. She had been here about a year, and in that time had found some measure of peace. She spent her days working in Fellowship Way beside Belster O’Comely, who was usually too busy chatting with the townsfolk—mostly his very best friend, Tomas Gingerwart—to get any real work done. Pony, though, had been happy enough in just keeping to herself, going about her routines, taking solace in the ordinary work of ordinary days.

And now Roger wanted to upset everything, wanted to pull her back to the south, where, she feared, those memories waited for her. He had worn her down, and she had agreed; but now her smile faded as she wondered if she could hold to that agreement!

She gave a sigh and turned away, for she had another appointment to keep that day. She prodded Greystone slowly down the other side of the ridge, the northern descent, and into the wide pine vale thick with white caribou moss. This, too, was a place of memories, but good ones mostly, of her youth with Elbryan in the days before the goblins.

Pony rode through the vale and into the forest, trotting her horse easily and stopping occasionally for a break or simply to bask in the solitude. This was her refuge, the place where she could forget the troubles of the wider, civilized world. She didn’t fear any large animals, no cats nor bears, nor was she afraid that any remnants of the demon’s monstrous minions might still be about. No, Pony’s only fear was of a different sort, of memories wrought by the foolishness of men, the reminder of how little she had accomplished, of how futile her dear Elbryan’s death had been.

She stopped at the appointed spot, a secluded stream-fed pond not so far from the grove that held Elbryan’s grave. Bradwarden wasn’t there yet, so she hopped down from Greystone and kicked off her shoes, dropping her feet into the comfortably
chilly water.

A long time passed, but Pony hardly cared that the centaur was late. She lay back in the leaf-covered grass, splashing her feet, remembering the good times and putting the bad far, far away.

“I’d throw ye in for the fun of it, if I didn’t think the chill’d kill ye,” came the centaur’s voice, some time later, rousing Pony from a restful sleep.

She looked up at the sky curiously. “Noon?” she asked with sarcasm, for that had been their appointed hour and the sun was now low in the western sky.

“Midday, I said,” the centaur corrected. “And since I’m to bed after the turn of midnight, and asleep until late in the morn, this is close enough, by me own guessin’!”

Pony threw a handful of leaves at him, but the autumn wind got them and sent them fluttering in all directions.

“Ye got to learn to look at the world proper, girl.” Bradwarden laughed.

“A world I’ll be seeing more of soon enough,” Pony replied.

“Aye, I saw yer friend Roger and he telled me as much,” said Bradwarden. “He finally got to ye, did he? Well, ye know how I’m feelin’ about it.”

“Indeed,” Pony muttered, for Bradwarden had been pestering her to go to the south with Roger almost as much as Roger had.

“Ye can’t be hidin’ forever, now can ye?”

“Hiding?” Pony snorted. “Can you not understand that I simply prefer this place?”

“Even if ye’re speakin’ true—and I’m thinkin’ that ye’re tellin’ yerself a bit of a lie—then ye should get out beyond the Timberlands once in a bit and see the wider world.”

“If Roger had his way, I would be spending the whole of my winter in Palmaris,” Pony remarked.

“Not so bad a thing!” Bradwarden bellowed.

Pony looked at him doubtfully. “Life here is peaceful and enjoyable,” she replied after a while. “I’ve no desire to leave, and do so only as a friend to Roger, who does not wish to travel the road to Caer Tinella alone. I cannot understand his restlessness—he has all that he wants right here.”

That brought a belly laugh from the centaur. “All that he’s wantin’?” he echoed incredulously. “And what’re ye thinkin’s here for the boy? The sun’s shinin’, girl. Don’t ye feel it in yer bones and in yer heart?”

Pony stared at him for a long moment, then remarked, “In my bones, perhaps.”

Bradwarden laughed yet again. “Aye, in yer bones alone, and there’s a part o’ Roger’s problem!”

Pony stared at him curiously.

“He’s a young man, full o’ spirit and full o’ wantin’,” the centaur pointed out the obvious. “There be only two single women in all the three Timberland towns, and one’s still a child and showing no hints of love.”

“And the other is me,” Pony reasoned. “You don’t believe that Roger …” she
started to ask, her voice showing her alarm.

“I believe that he’d love ye with all his heart if ye wanted it,” Bradwarden remarked. “But, no, girl, ye rest easy, for Roger’s not thinkin’ on ye in that way. He’s too good the friend, for yerself and for yer Nightbird.”

Pony rested back in the thick carpet of leaves, considering the words. “Roger’s going to Palmaris to find a wife,” she stated more than asked.

“A lover, at least, I’d be guessin’,” the centaur replied. “And can ye blame him?”

That last question, and the rather sharp tone in which it was delivered, made Pony glance up at Bradwarden curiously.

“Have ye so forgotten what it’s feelin’ like to be in love?” the centaur asked quietly, compassionately.

“Spoken from you?” Pony asked with more than a little sarcasm, for, as far as she knew, Bradwarden had never been enamored of any other centaurs; as far as Pony knew, there weren’t any other centaurs in all the world!

“It’s a bit different with me own kind,” the centaur explained. “We’ve ways to …” He paused, obviously embarrassed, and cleared his throat, a great rumbling sound like boulders cascading down a rocky slope. “We go to find our lovin’ once a five-year, and no more. A different love each time, or mighten be the same. And when the mare’s with young, then she’s to rear and raise the little one alone.”