DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (51 page)

Jill had never even heard of the magic stones before, let alone used one, but now she felt as if she could handle them fairly well, as if their secrets had been unlocked to her in the blink of an eye. On this point, as well, she kept quiet, not knowing yet whether Avelyn had given her a gift or a curse.

Avelyn, too, did nothing to break the silence. He, too, had much to contemplate: the feelings he had viewed within the tortured woman and the scenes that the joining had shown him images of a slaughter in a small town, probably somewhere in or near the Wilderlands. And Avelyn had a name for the place, a name the woman could not remember. He inquired privately about it in the next town the pair ventured through, and then, as the monk gained more and more knowledge, he began to steer Jill generally north.

It was with mixed feelings that Jill followed Brother Avelyn into Palmaris. The woman desperately wanted to seek out Graevis and Pettibwa, to tell them she was all right, to hug them and fall comfortably onto Pettibwa's soft bosom. All of that was, of course, tempered by her realization that she was, in effect, a deserter. A meeting with Connor could prove disastrous, and if Grady happened to spot her or learn of her visit, the greedy man would likely set the Kingsmen on her trail, if for no other reason than to ensure his inheritance.

Jill did go out one night, while Avelyn went down into the common room of the inn they had chosen, spouting his diatribes. She made her way silently across town, taking up a spot in the alleyway across from Fellowship Way. She sat there as the minutes became an hour, taking some comfort in the fact that many patrons came and went; apparently her little disaster hadn't ruined the Chilichunk name. Sometime later, Pettibwa came out of the inn, rubbing her hands on her apron, wiping the sweat from her brow, smiling, always smiling, as she went about the business of her life.

Jill's heart tugged at her to go out and embrace the woman, to run to Pettibwa as she would have run to her natural mother.

Something within, fear for Pettibwa, perhaps, stopped her though.

And then, quickly, the plump woman was gone, back into the bustle of the Way.

Jill left the alley hurriedly, thinking to go back to her room across town. Somehow she wound up on the back roof of the Way, in her private spot, basking one final time in those familiar feelings. Up here, she was, in effect, in Pettibwa's arms. Up here, Jill was Cat-the-Stray again, a younger girl in a world less complicated, with feelings less confusing.

She spent all night watching the stars, the gentle drift of Sheila, the occasional lazy cloud.

She returned to her room as dawn was breaking over Palmaris, to find Avelyn snoring loudly, his breath smelling of ale and more potent drinks, one eye blackened.

They remained in Palmaris, a city large enough to suffer the likes of the mad friar, for several more days, but Jill never ventured near Fellowship Way again.

They gave him but two stones: a smooth yellow-hued sunstone and a cabochon garnet, a carbuncle, the deepest shade of red. The former, among the most valued stones at St.-Mere-Abelle, could protect the man from almost any stone magic, could kill all magic in an entire area and render all spells useless within it, and the latter, the seeking stone, could show him the way to magic. Thus was Brother Justice equipped to find and destroy Avelyn.

He set out from the abbey one dark and dreary morning, riding an ash-gray mare, not swift of hoof but long in heart. The horse could go for many hours, and Brother Justice, so focused on the completion of his vital task, pushed her to her limits.

He traveled first to Youmaneff, the village where Avelyn Desbris had been born, some three hundred miles from St.-Mere-Abelle. He went to the small cemetery on the hill outside the place first, found the stone raised in memory of Annalisa Desbris, and noted with some satisfaction that the name of Jayson Desbris had not been added.

"You have come to tell me of my son Avelyn?" the old man asked as soon as Brother Justice, his brown robes marking him as an Abellican monk, knocked at his door.

The simple question, asked so very sincerely, put the monk on edge.

"Is he dead?" Jayson asked fearfully.

"Should he be?" Brother Justice retorted.

The old man blinked many times, then shook his. head. "Forgive my lack of manners," he bade the visitor, moving to the side of the door and sweeping his hand, an invitation for the monk to enter. Brother Justice did so, his head bowed to hide his cruel smile.

"I had only assumed that a visit from a man of St.-Mere-Abelle would be to give tidings of Avelyn," Jayson explained. "And since the visit was not from Avelyn —"

"Where is Avelyn?" The monk's tone was flat and cold, a snapping question that sent Jayson back on his heels and had the hair on his neck standing on end.

"You would know better than I," the old man replied quietly. "Is he not at the monastery?"

"You know of his long journey?" the monk asked sharply.

Jayson shook his head, and Brother Justice sensed that he was truly confused.

"I last saw my son in the fall of God's Year 816," Jayson explained, "when I handed him into the care of St.-Mere-Abelle, into the arms of God."

Brother Justice found he believed every word, and that fact only made him all the more angry. He had hoped for information from Jayson Desbris, a direction to take that he might end this foul business quickly and efficiently.

But Avelyn had apparently not come home, or at least, had not made contact with his father. Now the monk was torn, not knowing whether he should kill the old man, erasing any trace of his pursuit of Avelyn should he come home, or simply brush away any sense of misgivings Jayson might hold, putting the visit in a more congenial light.

That would not work, Brother Justice realized, for if Avelyn did come home and learn of a visit from a monk, then he would know that this had been no social call. Still, to slay the old man might make things even more complicated, for then he would be marked by the local officials and perhaps even hunted.

There was one other way.

"I fear to tell you that your son is dead," he said with as much conviction as he could muster — and that was not considerable.

Jayson leaned heavily on a table, and seemed suddenly very much older indeed.

"He fell from the abbey walls," Brother Justice went on, "into All Saints Bay. We have not recovered his body."

"Then why did you come here with questions as to his whereabouts?" came a sharp question from the side of the room. A large man, perhaps ten years older than Brother Justice, stormed into the room, his dark brown eyes filled with outrage.

Brother Justice hardly paid the man any heed — at least outwardly. He kept his focus on Jayson and tried to cover his previous questions. "Avelyn has taken his long journey," the monk said quietly, and that reference, put in terms of a spiritual flight, slowed the mounting anger in Avelyn's brother Tenegrid.

"He is with God now," Brother Justice finished.

Tenegrid came right up to the monk, glaring down at the shorter man. "But you never found his body," he reasoned.

"The fall is too great," Brother Justice said quietly. He had his hands in front of him, buried within his voluminous sleeves. They were not clasped, rather, his right hand was cupped, fingers set tight, forearm muscles twitching from the strain.

"Be gone from this house!" Tenegrid commanded. "Foul messenger who comes and taunts with questions before speaking the truth!" It was an obviously misplaced anger, an expression of pain and with no real resentment aimed at Brother Justice. Tenegrid was wounded as much by the sight of his grief-stricken father as by the news of his brother's death. Brother Justice understood this, though he hardly sympathized.

Still, the vicious monk would have let it go, but then Tenegrid made a dangerous mistake.

"Be gone!" he repeated, and he put his hand on the stocky man's strong shoulder and started to push him toward the door. Faster than his eyes could follow, Brother Justice's cupped hand snapped up and out to the right, striking Tenegrid squarely across the throat. The man fell away a couple of staggering steps, grabbed the back of a chair for support, and then fell over anyway, the chair tumbling down about him.

It took considerable willpower for Brother Justice, his blood so hot for the kill, to turn away for the door. He wanted to vent his rage on this brother of foul Avelyn, wanted to rip the man's head right off before his father's eyes and then slowly murder the father as well. But that would not be prudent, would likely make his course to Avelyn, the grandest prize of all, much more difficult.

"We of St.-Mere-Abelle are sorry for your loss," he said to Jayson Desbris.

The old man incredulously looked up from his son, who was still lying on the floor holding his wounded throat and gasping for breath, to see the monk depart.

The one obvious lead fruitless, Brother Justice had to turn to his magic, to the carbuncle, a stone also called Dragon Sight for its ability to detect things magical. He rode out of Youmaneff
shortly thereafter, finding no magical emanations in or about the pitiful village. This was worse than a cold trail, Brother Justice realized, for this was no trail at all.

The world seemed wide indeed.

His first contact with magic came a few days later on the open road when he happened by a merchant caravan. One of the merchants had a stone — and admitted as much when Brother Justice cornered him alone inside his covered carriage. It was merely a diamond chip, useful for saving the candles and oil on long journeys.

The monk was soon again back on the road, riding steadily and making a general course to the north. The largest city in Honce-the-Bear was Ursal, so that, he figured, might be a good place to start. Brother Justice knew the pitfalls, though. Many merchants in Ursal likely possessed stones; the monastery was not averse to selling them. His garnet would lead him down a hundred different avenues, to one dead end after another. But still, considering the limited range of the Dragon Sight stone — it could not locate magic more than a few hundred feet away — Brother Justice would have more of a chance in a confined city than in the vast open spaces of central and northern Honce-the-Bear.

He wasn't a third of the way to Ursal, though, when his course took a different direction, when the trail suddenly heated up.

It happened purely by chance in a hamlet too small even to have a name, a place a certain "mad friar" had passed through only a few weeks before on his way to Dusberry on the Masur Delaval. The reaction of the inhabitants to Brother Justice's brown robes tipped the monk off to the fact that he was not the first Abellican monk to come through this place recently. People sighed when he walked in, seemed fearful at first, and then, as if recognizing that he was a different man than they had originally feared, they sighed again, this time in obvious relief.

When questioned, they were all too ready to give an account of the "mad friar" who had visited their village, offering portents of doom and starting a wild fight in the tavern. One man showed Brother Justice a broken arm, still far from healed.

"Not good business for the church, I'm thinking," the man offered, "to have one o' yer own wandering about hurting folks!"

"More than a few folk have turned away from St. Gwendolyn of the Sea since the fight," the bartender of the tavern added.

"This monk was of St. Gwendolyn?" Brother Justice asked, recognizing the name of the monastery, a secluded fortress nestled high on a rocky bluff, perhaps two days' ride to the east.

The man with the broken arm shrugged noncommittally, then turned to the bartender, who likewise had no answers.

"He wore robes akin to yer own," the bartender remarked.

Brother Justice wanted desperately to inquire if the man carried any magical stones, if there was any magic about him at all, but he realized that these two would not likely have held back such information if they had it, and he didn't want to tip his hand too much to anyone, fearing that Avelyn would be all the more difficult to find if he realized he was being hunted.

So the monk got a description, and though it was not an exact image of the Avelyn Desbris he had known, it was enough to hold his curiosity. So, suddenly, he had a description, a title — "the mad friar" — and a direction, the folk of the hamlet uniformly insisting the monk had gone down the western road with his companion, a beautiful young woman of about twenty years, close beside him.

The trail was warm, and it led Brother Justice from town to town, across the countryside to Dusberry on the Masur Delaval. He picked up even more clues as he went, for in one skirmish in a bar this mad friar had, apparently sent a pair of men flying with a blue shock.

Graphite.

Less than a month after he had set out from the tiny hamlet, confident that he was steadily gaining on this rogue monk, Brother Justice walked through the fortified gates of Palmaris.