DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (179 page)

Read DemonWars Saga Volume 1 Online

Authors: R. A. Salvatore

Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Collections & Anthologies, #Dark Fantasy, #Fiction / Fantasy / General, #Science Fiction/Fantasy

BOOK: DemonWars Saga Volume 1
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Jojonah fell silent; he knew that he would not be heard at that time no matter how loud his protests.
Abbot De’Unnero came next, detailing the events on the road that had allowed Jojonah to sneak away, opening a timetable during which the master could indeed have gone to St.-Mere-Abelle. “And I spoke with the merchant, Nesk Reaches,” De’Unnero insisted, “and confirmed that Master Jojonah had not returned to their encampment.”
A strange sense of calm began to wash over Jojonah, an acceptance that this indeed was a fight he could not win. Markwart had come here well-prepared.
He looked over at the fanatical Allheart soldiers and smiled.
Next Markwart called for one of Jojonah’s companions on the road to Aida, a monk who would no doubt explain to the gathering how Jojonah had manipulated the group away from Avelyn’s body.
Every piece seemed to be falling in place against him.
“Enough!” Jojonah cried, breaking the momentum. “Enough. I was indeed in your dungeons, evil Markwart.”
The gasps came louder, accompanied by more than a few shouts of anger.
“Freeing those imprisoned unlawfully and immorally,” Jojonah asserted. “I have seen too much of your wickedness. I watched it exact a toll upon gentle—yes, gentle and godly!—Avelyn. I saw it most keenly in the fate of theWindrunner.”
Master Jojonah paused with that last statement and even laughed aloud. Every abbot, master, and immaculate in this room understood, and approved of, the fate of theWindrunner, every leader in this room was complicit in the murders.
Jojonah knew he was doomed. He wanted to rail out against Markwart, to show the ancient texts that described the previous method of collecting stones, to scream out that Brother Pellimar, who had been on that journey to collect the stones, had also been murdered by this supposedly holy Church.
But there was no practical point to it, and he did not want to give everything away. He looked to Brother Braumin Herde then, the man who would take up his torch, and he smiled.
Markwart screamed again for a declaration of Avelyn as a heretic, then added that Jojonah, by his own admission, was a traitor to the Church.
And then Abbot Je’howith, the second most powerful man in the Order, rose tall and seconded the motion, and with a confirming nod from Markwart, motioned to his soldiers.
“By your own words you have committed treason against the Church and the King,” Je’howith proclaimed as the soldiers surrounded Jojonah. “Have you any offering of defense?” He turned about to face the congregation. “Will any others speak for this man?”
Jojonah stared up at the gathering, at Braumin Herde, and the man dutifully remained silent.
The Allheart soldiers swarmed over the master, and with Markwart and Je’howith’s blessings, so did many monks, beating him, dragging him away. As he was ushered out the door, he saw Brother Francis standing quietly, taking no part, seeming distressed and helpless.
“I forgive you,” Jojonah said to the man. “As does Avelyn, as does God.” He almost added the forgiveness of Brother Braumin, but could not go that far in trusting Francis.
And then he was gone, dragged from the room as the mob gained momentum.
Many were still in their seats, sitting quiet and stunned, including Brother Braumin. He caught sight of Francis staring up at him, but had only a glare to offer in return.
Later that same cold Calember day, Master Jojonah, stripped naked and placed in an open cage on the back of a wagon, was taken through the streets of St.-Mere-Abelle village, his porters crying out his sins and crimes to the nervous townsfolk.
Insults became spit, became stones hurled Jojonah’s way. One man ran up to the cart with a sharpened stick, stabbing the monk hard in the belly, opening a vicious wound.
Brothers Herde, Viscenti, and Dellman, and all the other monks of St.-Mere-Abelle, and all the visiting abbots and masters, watched it solemnly, some with horror, some with satisfaction.
For more than an hour Jojonah was carted about the streets, and he was a battered and broken man, hardly conscious, when the Allheart soldiers at last dragged him from the cart and lashed him to a stake.
“You are damned by your actions,” Markwart proclaimed above the frenzy of the excited crowd. “May God show you mercy.”
And the pyre was lit beneath Jojonah’s feet.
He felt the flames biting at his skin, felt his blood boiling, his lungs charring with every breath. But only for a moment, for then he closed his eyes and he saw…
Brother Avelyn, reaching for him with outstretched arms…
Jojonah never screamed, never cried out at all.
It was, to Markwart, the biggest disappointment of the day.
Braumin Herde watched the whole of the execution as the flames climbed higher, engulfing his dearest friend. Beside him, both Viscenti and Dellman turned to leave, but Herde grabbed them and would not let them go.
“Bear witness,” he said, and they were the last three monks to leave the awful scene.
“Come,” Braumin Herde bade them when at last it was over, when the flames had died away. “I have a book you must see.”
In the crowd of villagers, Roger Lockless also watched. He had learned much since his flight from the road south of Palmaris, from the monster that had destroyed Baron Bildeborough. In the last few hours alone, he had learned of Jojonah and the freeing of the half-man, half-horse prisoner, and while the news had given him hope, this sight had brought only despair and disgust.
But he watched, and understood then that the Father Abbot of the Abellican Order was indeed his enemy.
Far from that place, in the lands north of Palmaris, Elbryan held Pony close on an empty hillock, watching the rise of Sheila. The war with the monsters was over, but the war with the greater enemy, they both knew, was only beginning.

The Demon Apostle

This one’s for Gary, the purest warrior.

Contents

 
P A R T   O N E

The Road Home

Winter is settling on the land, Uncle Mather, but somehow, fittingly, it seems quiet and soft, as if the season will be gentle this year, as if Nature herself, like all the folk of the land, is in need of respite. I do not know how I recognize that this will prove true, but I cannot deny that which my ranger instincts tell me. Perhaps it is just that I am in need of respite, Uncle Mather, and I know that Pony is, as well. Perhaps my belief that the season will be gentle is no more than hopeful thinking.
Still, Pony, Juraviel, and I heard few reports of fighting, even of any sightings of goblins, powries, or giants all during our return trip from St.-Mere-Abelle. Our journey north from Palmaris to the sister towns of Caer Tinella and Landsdown was without incident, with the only substantial garrison in the region being a contingent of Kingsmen sent from Ursal to reinforce Palmaris. They subsequently struck out north of the city to help secure the resettlement of the handful of communities in the region north of Palmaris farms.
We have heard of few skirmishes in the weeks since our arrival; mostly it has been quiet, comfortably so. Tomas Gingerwart, who leads the three hundred daring settlers, and Shamus Kilronney, captain of the Kingsmen brigade, speak hopefully of a return to normalcy by the time winter relinquishes its grip on the land.
A return to normalcy?
They do not understand. Many have died, but many will be born to take their places; many homes have been burned to the ground, but they will be rebuilt. And so in the coming months the region may outwardly resemble what we once knew as our "normal" lives.
But I have trod this road before, Uncle Mather, after the first sacking of Dundalisbefore I came to know the Touel'alfar, before I found you and I know the scars of this war will be lasting. It is in the hearts of the survivors where the mark of the demon dactyl will remain, in the grief of those who lost friends and family, the shock of those displaced, the pain of those who return to their former villages to find a blackened field. Though they do not yet know it, the very definition of what is normal has changed. The aftermath of war may be more painful than the fighting itself.
Would I see the world the same way had the goblins not come to Dundalis those years ago? Not only was the course of my life changed by my rescue by the Touel'alfar and the training they gave me, but so were my perspectives on reality itself my view of duty, of community, even of mortality, that greatest of human mysteries.
And so these people are changed in ways they do not yet understand.
My greatest concern is for Pony. The first destruction of Dundalis of which she and I were the only survivors and in which her entire family was slaughtered nearly broke her, sent her careening down a road that led her to Palmaris and a new life, one in which she could not even remember her tragic past. Only the love of her adoptive parents saw her through that dark time; and now they, too, have become victims of evil. Tragedy has visited Pony again.
When we ran out of St.-Mere-Abelle, our mission there complete, our friend Bradwarden freed, she nearly turned around and went back. Had she re-entered that structure, gemstones in hand, she would have wreaked devastation before meeting her ultimate end.
And she didn't care, Uncle Mather, for herself or for those she might have killed. So blind was her rage at the discovery of the mutilated corpses of her dead adoptive parents that she was ready to destroy St.-Mere-Abelle and all in it, to destroy all the world, I fear, in one mighty outpouring of rage.
She has been quiet since we left the abbey and crossed the Masur Delaval into lands more familiar. Setting Belster O'Comely in place as the new proprietor of fellowship Way has helped to calm her, I believe, helped her to find a bit of "normalcy" in her life once more.
But I fear for her and must watch over her.
For myself, I know not what the lasting emotional effects of this latest struggle will be. As with all the survivors, I will grow from the losses, will find new insights as I contemplate the nearness of death. I hold few fears now. Somehow, amid all the carnage, I have found an inner peace. I know not what waits after death, Uncle Mather, and I know that I cannot know.
A simple, foolish sentence that sounds, and yet it strikes my heart and soul as a profound revelation. What I understand now is the inevitability of death, whether through battle, disease, or simply age. And because I understand and accept that, I no longer fear life. How strange that is! It seems to me now that no problem is too daunting and no obstacle too imposing, for all that I have to do is remind myself that one day I will be no more, that my body is ultimately food for the worms, and I am not afraid to try. Many times recently I have been asked to stand before hundreds of men and women and explain to them the course I think we should all follow. And while to many people to a younger Elbryan, perhaps that would have been uncomfortable fearing how the audience might view my words, fearing that I would do something foolish, like trip and fall down before them all now that nervousness seems a petty, stupid thing.
All I need do when so asked is to remind myself that one day it will not matter, that one day I will be gone from this world, that one day, centuries hence, someone might find my bones and the embarrassing stumble, should it ever happen, seems like little to fear indeed.
So the land is at peace, and Elbryan is at peace, and greater indeed will that peace become if I can find a way to calm Pony's emotional turmoil.
—ELBRYAN WYNDON

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