DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (84 page)

“You ask much of us,” Agronguerre remarked quietly.

“I tell you the truth and pray that you will choose correctly,” Jilseponie replied.

“This is nonsense,” claimed the one-armed brother. “Your friend survived the plague, but so have others. The ugly scarred woman on the field with the sick so survived. We did not cry miracle and send the whole world marching to the spot where she happened to be when her illness relinquished its grasp upon her!”

Jilseponie shrugged. “Believe what you will, or close your heart to the possibility of miracles and hide behind your walls,” she said, and she gave a chuckle as the irony of her own words hit her. “I can do no more than tell you the truth and then pray that your faith is a real thing and not some mask for you to hide behind.”

The one-armed monk scowled.

“For if you do not believe in the possibility of miracles, then wretched creatures you are indeed for hiding within abbey walls.” And she turned and walked away. Dainsey, after a helpless chortle, followed.

“Those gemstones you carry!” the one-armed monk cried after her, and Jilseponie wheeled about.

“My gemstones,” she said.

“They are the province of the Church,” the monk corrected.

Jilseponie narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. “Come and take them,” she challenged, and when he made no move toward her, she walked away.

She almost expected to take a crossbow quarrel in the back.

But nothing happened, and Jilseponie moved back to the line of patient sufferers again and went back to her duty, working tirelessly with the soul stone. Merry Cowsenfed directed the procession to Jilseponie and then to work gathering supplies.

They left in small groups, feeling better than they had in weeks, and moving with all speed for Palmaris, and for the north. If all went well, Jilseponie explained to them, they could expect to find soldiers guarding the road north and monks ready to give them more healing all along the way.

“A
t least we’ll no longer need suffer the wails and the groans, and the stench,” Fio Bou-raiy said to Glendenhook as they watched the spectacle of the thinning crowd. More sufferers continued to stream in, of course, but Jilseponie continued her work, and Merry sent them right on their way.

“Perhaps there is value to Jilseponie Wyndon after all,” Glendenhook replied.

“Her words were correct,” said Father Abbot Agronguerre, coming over to join the pair. His arrival made Bou-raiy and Glendenhook shuffle embarrassedly, given their previous callous remarks. “All of Palmaris, it seems, is on the road to the north.”

Fio Bou-raiy threw up his hand in disgust.

“Suppose she is right?” Father Abbot Agronguerre asked. “Suppose there is a miracle to be found and we are too cynical even to look.”

“And if she is wrong?” Bou-raiy came back. “Are we to send out all the brethren, as she bade us, only to have half of us die on the road and the other half return to St.-Mere-Abelle ridden with plague?”

“Her work with the gemstones seems nothing short of miraculous,” Agronguerre remarked.

“She is not curing them, by her own admission,” Bou-raiy reminded him.

Agronguerre turned and walked away.

Back in the abbey, the Father Abbot played all the possibilities about in his mind. Was he pragmatic or cowardly? What might be the cost of guessing wrong?

And what might be the cost of guessing right but not having the courage to act on that guess?

Inevitably, the Father Abbot kept coming back to the image of a brother dying on the field before the impenetrable walls of St.-Mere-Abelle, a brother whose courage surely humbled old Agronguerre.

“Ah, Francis,” he muttered with a sigh. He remembered the night when Francis
had gone out to the sick, the eve of the New Year. Not only had the man put himself in obvious physical jeopardy, but the action had brought him only snickers of derision from many of his so-called brothers.

That image haunted gentle Agronguerre as he walked slowly up to his private chambers, and it stayed with him all the way back down the circular stone stairwell.

Down, down, to the first floor of the abbey, he went, and then down again, until he stood before a little-used but extremely important doorway, ornately decorated—so much so that the great latch that secured it could hardly be noticed unless one looked at it carefully.

Agronguerre fumbled with the keys, wanting to get through the door and get done with this business before anyone could persuade him differently. For though his heart was strong now in his decision, bolstered by the image of poor dead Francis, his mind was filled with fear.

He turned open the lock, lifted the latch, and pulled the door open, but only an inch, for another, stronger hand came against the portal, pushing it closed.

Abbot Agronguerre stepped back and turned to see Master Bou-raiy, the man fixing him with a cold glare, a lock of eyes that would have gone on for a long while had not the two men heard the sound of footsteps descending the staircase back down the corridor.

“Live a long time, old man,” Bou-raiy warned ominously. “For, if you do this thing, you must know that when you die, the Abellican Church will be thrown into turmoil beyond anything it has ever known.”

“Is that what is honestly within your heart, Master Bou-raiy?”

“That is what I know to be true.”

“Would you have me preside over a Church that turns its back on the agony of the common folk?” the Father Abbot asked.

“The plague will pass in time,” said Bou-raiy, and he lowered his voice as Master Glendenhook, with Master Machuso right on his heels, appeared a short distance down the corridor. “The Church must be eternal.”

Master Glendenhook walked over to stand equidistant from the two men, glancing curiously back and forth between them. “Pray, brethren,” he asked, “what is it that so troubles you?”

Father Abbot Agronguerre turned a skeptical look on the man, then stepped back from Bou-raiy. “You know our viewpoints,” he replied. “You have heard the tale of Jilseponie and thus have seen the drawing of the line. On which side of that line does Master Glendenhook stand?”

Glendenhook’s shoulders sagged a bit at the blunt question, a reflection of the fact that he did not want to be so drawn into any open argument. He looked at Agronguerre sympathetically, then turned to Bou-raiy, who fixed him with an unyielding stare—one, it seemed to Agronguerre, that demanded the man take a definitive stand.

Glendenhook put out his hand to pat Agronguerre on the shoulder, but then
stepped away from the Father Abbot, to Bou-raiy’s side. He faced Agronguerre and bowed. “With all respect and honor, Father Abbot,” he said, “I fear the plague and heed well the old words written about it—words penned from the bitter experiences of those who have suffered through it. I fear sending the brethren out from St.-Mere-Abelle, and I fear even more the release of the soul stones into hands untrained and undeserving.”

“The brothers will carry the stones,” Agronguerre replied, not understanding that second point.

“And what of the brothers who will surely die along the road?” Bou-raiy asked. “They will fall while carrying soul stones, and those stones will, inevitably, fall into the hands of the undeserving and untrained.”

“Jilseponie will train them,” Agronguerre argued, his tone sharp, for the way in which Bou-raiy had said the word “undeserving” had struck him as very wrong.

“And that, Father Abbot, I fear most of all,” Master Glendenhook remarked.

The words hit Agronguerre as surely as if Glendenhook had just punched him across the face. The Father Abbot felt so old at that moment, so defeated, and he almost threw up his hands and walked away. But then he turned to see the face of Master Machuso, the kindly man who oversaw all the secular workers at St.-Mere-Abelle, the gentle man whom Agronguerre had caught on several occasions stuffing extra supplies into the loads sent out to the sickly masses.

“My young brethren spend too many days looking into old books,” Machuso said, managing a smile, “and too many hours on their knees with their arms and eyes uplifted to the heavens.”

“We are Abellican brothers!” Master Bou-raiy sharply reminded him.

“Who would learn more of the world if they spent more time looking into the eyes of suffering folk,” Machuso was quick to reply. “Abellican brothers who are so wrapped up in their own rituals and own importance, who are so determined to elevate themselves above the flock they pretend to tend that they cannot see the truth of the opportunity presented to us this day.”

“By a laywoman,” Bou-raiy remarked.

“A false prophet,” Glendenhook echoed.

“She who destroyed the dactyl with Brother Avelyn at Mount Aida!” Machuso shot back. “And who defeated the demon spirit within Father Abbot Markwart, by Markwart’s own admission to Master Francis at the time of his death. And now she is showing us the way again, Father Abbot,” the suddenly energetic Machuso went on, turning to aim his words directly at Agronguerre, “the way to Avelyn, in body and in spirit.”

Agronguerre reached for the door again, and so did Bou-raiy, but then the Father Abbot fixed him with such a stare that he backed off.

“Do not do this,” Fio Bou-raiy warned. “You are condemning us all.”

“I am damning myself if I do not,” Agronguerre answered firmly. “Send word throughout the abbey, Master Machuso,” he went on. “This is a choice and not an edict. All who wish to join the pilgrimage should be ready to leave within the
hour.”

“The
hour
?” Glendenhook said, as if the mere thought that hundreds of brothers could be packed with wagons readied within that time was preposterous.

“It will be done,” Machuso answered with a bow. “And I doubt that many will choose to remain.”

“And if the hope is false?” Bou-raiy had to ask one last time.

“Then better to die trying,” Father Abbot Agronguerre said, putting his face only an inch from Bou-raiy’s.

He pulled open the door, the portal that led into the gemstone treasury of St.-Mere-Abelle, where more than a thousand soul stones waited.

Chapter 43
 

W
HEN
J
ILSEPONIE RETURNED TO THE
B
ARBACAN NEAR THE END OF SUMMER
,
SHE
found that her call to Vanguard had not gone unheeded. Led by Brother Dellman and Abbot Haney, the procession from the northernmost Honce-the-Bear province had nearly emptied the place.

The woman saw them up on the plateau, hundreds and hundreds milling about; and she went straightaway to find them, anxious to see Dellman again and Abbot Braumin, who had become the caretaker of the arm itself, the guide to any and all who came to enter Avelyn’s covenant.

She found Dellman first and shared a great hug with him on the rim of the sacred plateau, then made her way through the crowd, toward the arm and Braumin. She was surprised, then, to find a pair of faces that she recognized.

“Andacanavar!” she cried. “Liam O’Blythe!”

The huge ranger wheeled, his face beaming with a great smile. To Jilseponie’s surprise, though, another man off to the side, his hair bright red, his face covered in freckles, also turned to her, beaming.

“Do I know ye, beautiful lady?” the red-haired man remarked.

Jilseponie looked at him curiously as she made her way toward the ranger and the man she thought to be Liam. “I think you do not,” Jilseponie answered politely.

“But ye’re knowin’ me name!” the man protested.

Jilseponie looked at him hard, then turned to see Andacanavar’s companion, the man she had thought to be Liam, blushing.

“You are Liam O’Blythe?” Jilseponie asked the red-haired man.

“Anybody tellin’ ye different?” he inquired back.

“Telling all the world different, and stealing your good name, I fear,” Jilseponie said, staring hard at Andacanavar’s companion.

“Then gettin’ in trouble, not to doubt!” Liam O’Blythe roared, pointing his finger at his friend.

“I preferred to travel anonymously,” the exposed liar explained. “To do otherwise might have invited trouble.”

“A renowned thief, are you?” Jilseponie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Or just a thief of people’s names?”

“A prince, actually,” Liam O’Blythe answered for Midalis. “Brother o’ the King, he is, and Prince o’ all Vanguard.”

Jilseponie’s jaw dropped open, her eyes going so wide that it seemed as if they might fall right out of their sockets. Now that the man’s identity had been clarified, she could see the resemblance he bore to Danube, a younger and thinner version of the King.

“I would have expected you to tell her,” Andacanavar said, looking past the woman, and Jilseponie took the cue and turned to see Bradwarden moving up beside her.

“Didn’t think it was needed,” the centaur said dryly. “Suren her head’s big enough without her knowin’ that she beat the Prince of Honce-the-Bear in a sword fight!”

“You knew?” Jilseponie asked.

“I telled ye once, girl, there’s not a thing in me forest that I’m not knowin’. When are ye to believe me?”

Jilseponie just shook her head helplessly.

“We are all in your debt,” Prince Midalis remarked, moving up to her and taking her hand. He bowed low and kissed that hand.