DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (105 page)

She came at him again, forcefully, full of passion that bordered on anger, and De’Unnero resisted.

For the span of about three heartbeats. And then he was kissing her back, their arms rubbing all about each others’ bodies, their legs entwining and bodies pressing. Sadye pulled him to the side, tripped him, and down the pair went in a passionate tumble.

Marcalo De’Unnero had never known the love of a woman, both because of his standing among the brothers of St.-Mere-Abelle and, even more important, because giving in to such base emotions had always seemed to him an admission of weakness and a denial of discipline. He gave in then, though, wholly and with all his battered heart and soul; and it was not until that moment of completion, of complete release, that he understood the depth of the danger.

For in that instant of ecstasy, the beast within him growled, the primal urges of the tiger found their release to the surface.

Marcalo De’Unnero leaped away from Sadye and shoved her back when she tried to pursue. “Warned you,” he managed to gasp as the feline change began to strangle his throat.

And then he fell back, angry, so angry, because he knew that he was about to slaughter this one, too, thus throwing himself back into absolute solitude. He was becoming the weretiger and could not stop it, and Sadye would die as all the others had died.…

In the throes of the agonizing change, Marcalo De’Unnero did not hear his own screams of protest and denial.

But he did hear the music.

He opened his eyes and stared at Sadye, sitting cross-legged and naked, her lute in hand, gently brushing the strings and singing softly. He couldn’t make out the words, but that hardly diminished their sweetness.

For a brief moment, he was Marcalo De’Unnero again, the man and not the beast, but, no, he realized, Sadye’s music alone could not deny the weretiger once it had been roused.

And then he knew no more, for the cat had won.

Sometime later, after feeding upon an unfortunate deer, Marcalo De’Unnero, cold and naked, walked back to the camp, expecting to find the gruesome remains of his latest human victim.

Sadye sat by the fire, smiling at him.

If a wind had come up then, it would have knocked an astonished Marcalo De’Unnero to the ground. “How …” he started to stammer.

“Sit with me,” Sadye said with a teasing, wistful smile, and she lifted a blanket that she obviously meant to drape about his shoulders. “You owe me a bit of conversation, I guess, and then, perhaps, we can rouse the beast once more.”

“You should be dead,” De’Unnero managed to say, and he did take a seat beside the amazing woman.

“I already told you that I was not without a bit of magic,” she replied, and she lifted her gem-encrusted lute. “Music to charm the wild beast, perhaps?”

De’Unnero stared at her with a mixture of amazement and admiration. She was on the very edge of destruction here, facing the prospect of a terrible death. And yet, there was no hesitance in her voice.

“You are a far preferable companion than the last group,” Sadye said with a laugh. “And a better lover than I have ever known.” She gave a lewd chuckle. “And I assure you that I am not without comparisons!”

De’Unnero merely continued to stare.

“And less dangerous than that last group,” Sadye went on.

The former monk’s eyes widened at that remark.

“ ’Tis true!” Sadye declared. “There is that power within you, indeed, but there remains within you, as well, a code of honor and discipline.”

“You cannot be certain that I will not destroy you,” De’Unnero said.

Sadye turned and moved very close to him. “That is the fun of it,” she said.

And he believed her, every word, and they made love again and the tiger did not appear.

They walked together the next day, talking easily, and with Marcalo De’Unnero admitting feelings and pains to Sadye that he had not, before that time, even admitted to himself.

Chapter 10
 

“B
UT
I
KNEW YOU WOULD BE HERE
!” J
ILSEPONIE CRIED WHEN SHE SAW THE COUPLE
enter the common room of Caer Tinella. She rushed across the room to Roger Lockless and wrapped him in a big hug, then moved to similarly embrace Dainsey.

Jilseponie’s smile did not hold, though, when she glanced behind the pair to see that the third expected arrival was apparently not with them.

“Belster could not make the journey,” Roger explained, for Jilseponie’s distress was obvious.

“He is ill?” Jilseponie asked, her blue eyes wide. “I will go to him straightaway—”

“Not ill,” Dainsey interjected to try and calm her.

“He hurt his leg,” Roger explained. “He fares well and tried to make the journey, but we had to turn back, for the bouncing of the wagon was paining him greatly.”

“I will go to him,” Jilseponie said again and this time, instead of protesting, Roger looked at her warmly.

“I told him as much,” Roger explained. His gaze went across the room to King Danube, sitting at the bar and chatting easily with another man, whom Roger recognized as Duke Bretherford of the Mirianic. “And perhaps it would do you well to visit Elbryan’s grave this season.”

Jilseponie narrowed her gaze as she continued to eye Roger.

“Has he asked you to wed him?” Roger bluntly asked.

“Ooo, me Queen,” Dainsey teased with a little curtsey.

Jilseponie scowled at her, but it was feigned anger and Dainsey knew it. “He has not,” Jilseponie answered.

“But neither has he left yet,” Roger replied slyly.

Jilseponie glanced back over her shoulder at King Danube and merely shrugged, not denying the truth of that and revealing her belief that King Danube did indeed intend to propose before he returned to the southland.

“And if he does?” Roger asked, somewhat suspiciously. His tone more than anything else made Jilseponie turn back around to regard him.

“Will Pony agree to become the queen of Honce-the-Bear?” the straightforward Roger asked, using Jilseponie’s long-discarded nickname, a name that only Roger could use without invoking her anger.

“No,” Jilseponie answered without the slightest hesitation.

Roger and Dainsey, apparently struck by the sudden definitive answer, looked at each other with wide eyes.

“
Pony
will never marry another,” Jilseponie explained, putting heavy emphasis on the nickname. “For I fear that Pony died when Elbryan died, not to be seen again.”

Roger swallowed hard, then blew a sigh. “Forgive me,” he said, and he gently took Jilseponie’s hand in his own. “But do tell me how Jilseponie will answer King Danube, should the proposal come. That is, if Jilseponie even knows.”

She glanced over her shoulder again, studying the King as if she meant to make that decision then and there. “She does not know,” she admitted, and she turned back. “But after yet another summer beside him, I remain convinced that King Danube is a fine and honorable man, a worthy king.”

“But do ye love him?” Dainsey was quick to ask, cutting Roger’s forthcoming statement short before it could even begin.

“I enjoy his company greatly,” Jilseponie said. “I know that I feel better when he is beside me. So, yes, Dainsey, I believe that I do.” She didn’t miss Roger’s slight scowl at that nor his sincere attempt to bite it back.

“Not as I loved Elbryan,” she quickly added, because Roger Lockless, who so adored and admired Elbryan, had to hear her speak those words. “That love,” she went on, and she pulled her hand free of Roger’s light grasp and placed it on his arm, then put her other hand on Dainsey’s arm, drawing them together, “the love that you two have found, I know that I will never find again. Nor, in truth, do I desire to find it again—unless it is in the existence beyond this mortal body with my Elbryan. But I suspect that I can be satisfied—nay, even more than that, I can be happy—with the type of love that I believe I have found with King Danube. Will I agree to his proposal, should it come? I know not, because I will not know the truth of my feelings until that moment is upon me.”

Roger was nodding—satisfied, it seemed—and also smiling, as if he knew something that Jilseponie did not.

“Honce-the-Bear will thrive under the reign of Queen Jilseponie,” he remarked dramatically, and Jilseponie narrowed her eyes again.

And then they all laughed, and this was exactly the way that Jilseponie had hoped her reunion with Roger and Dainsey would go, touching on the most serious of subjects with the intimate humor that only best friends might know. Asking the most important questions but doing so in friendship with complete trust.

How she had missed Roger’s company for the last year!

What Jilseponie had known for certain was that she would never have accepted King Danube’s proposal without first speaking of it, should it come, with Roger and Dainsey. She glanced over her shoulder at the King again.

No,
Pony
could never marry him, could never love him; but Jilseponie?

Jilseponie, perhaps.

O
n a cold and windy autumn day, falling leaves filling the air with a dance that was both animated and somber, King Danube Brock Ursal, Baroness Jilseponie, Roger and Dainsey Lockless, Duke Bretherford, Abbot Braumin Herde, Master Fio Bou-raiy, and other dignitaries from Palmaris’ secular and religious communities stood about the main room, the chapel, of the simple stone structure that had been erected in Caer Tinella, some hundred and fifty miles north of Palmaris.

The dedication of the Chapel of Avelyn Desbris was well attended, given the season and the locale, with all of the folk of Caer Tinella and her sister town of Landsdown, a small group that had come south from Dundalis and the other two towns of the Timberlands, and a smattering of common folk who had made the journey from Palmaris, clustered within and about the building. Still, for Jilseponie and for Braumin Herde, the number of people just didn’t seem sufficient.

“All the world should be here,” Roger whispered to Jilseponie when it was evident that no other caravans were on their way in. “How many thousands did he save?”

“Meself among them,” said Dainsey. Roger’s wife, indeed, had been the first to taste of the blood of Avelyn and enter the sacred, plague-defeating covenant. “Be sure that I’d have traveled all the way from the Weathered Isles to see this day!”

Jilseponie looked at the woman and smiled warmly, believing every word. She had known Dainsey for years, since the woman had been Dainsey Aucomb, a seemingly hapless serving girl in the Fellowship Way. What a transformation the change in name had seemed to bring to the young woman—that, and the trials of the rosy plague. No more was Dainsey a giddy young girl, wearing her heart like an open invitation for anyone to come along and wound. Now she was much more reserved and calm, thoughtful even. Life with Roger was suiting her very well.

As that union was obviously suiting Roger well, Jilseponie realized. She had known Roger since he had first taken what was now his proper last name, Lockless. Such a young man he had been, a braggart and a bit of a fool, but with enough talent and that other intangible quality, charisma, that had made him valuable to Elbryan and Jilseponie during the aftermath of the Demon War, and had truly endeared him to them. As he had grown, Roger had taken back his true surname, Billingsbury; but as he had grown more, in the years after Elbryan’s death, he had again taken the name of Lockless, this time formally. How he had grown! And right before her eyes, Jilseponie realized. She could still remember the joy she had found on that day when she had first learned that Dainsey and Roger, two of her best friends in all the world, were to be wed. And how she had missed them over these last months. Many times over the course of the summer, she had wandered toward Roger’s usual room in Chasewind Manor, hoping to speak with him about her adventures with Danube, only to remember that he was not there for her this time.

Indeed, Jilseponie was glad that they were with her now, in what might prove to be one of the most important seasons of her life.

It was a day of many speeches and many cheers, a day both solemn and somber, and yet, like the leaves blowing about on the autumn wind outside, a day full of the dance of life. Former abbot and now Parson Braumin led it off with a long recounting of his days at St.-Mere-Abelle, secretly following Master Jojonah, the one man at the parent abbey who had come to truly understand that Father Abbot Markwart had strayed from the path of righteousness, that Avelyn Desbris, branded a heretic, should be named a saint. Braumin’s voice broke many times
during his long retelling, since the road to victory for those who now followed the teachings of Brother Avelyn and Master Jojonah had not been without tragedy. Avelyn was dead, consumed by the blast he had used to take down the demon dactyl at Mount Aida, and Jojonah was dead, consumed by the fires lit by Father Abbot Markwart’s fury.

And Elbryan was dead, killed by the beast within Marcalo De’Unnero and the tainted spirit of Markwart in the great final battle of the Demon War.

“How representative of the darkness that resided within the Church was the beast that resided within Marcalo De’Unnero,” Parson Braumin said. “A power that Brother De’Unnero thought he could use for the gain of the Abellican Church, but which, along the errant path he and Father Abbot Markwart had taken, came to consume so much that was beautiful in the world.”