DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (140 page)

Yes, this could get even more interesting.

Whoever said that he would have to stop with the conquest of Honce-the-Bear?

Chapter 29
 

“B
ETTER THAT SHE IS GONE
.”

Those were the last words Duke Kalas had said to Danube that day, in an abrupt and dismissive tone. And that was precisely the sentiment being echoed throughout Danube’s court, the King knew.

All his friends and companions, including many who had been with him since his childhood, were thrilled that Jilseponie had left for Palmaris, that the Queen was gone from court, perhaps never to return. He heard the laughter and the snide remarks. He heard the excited recounting of his wife’s ride out of Castle Ursal many times over, usually as it was whispered in the shadows of the main rooms or at the edges of the grand dinner table. He felt the renewed warmth of all his courtiers, their agreement with Jilseponie’s decision to leave, their apparent relief that somehow, in all of this, King Danube had come to his senses and dismissed the peasant Queen back to her wilderness realm.

Every pat on the back might as well have been delivered by the sharp point of a poisoned dagger, as far as Danube was concerned. Every cheer, every chuckle, bit at him as viciously as might one of Duke Kalas’ ferocious hunting dogs.

No matter how hard King Danube tried to tell himself that Jilseponie had done the proper thing in leaving—and that, obviously, it had been a terrible mistake for him to bring her here, to this place where she did not belong—no matter how hard King Danube tried to focus on the pain of all the rumors concerning his wife, of her infidelity in intent if not action or her sinister plotting against his best interests, there was one truth that would not be diminished, to the King’s great distress.

Jilseponie was the only woman he had ever truly loved.

These last few weeks without her had been the loneliest King Danube Brock Ursal had ever known.

“Lady Pemblebury, my King,” a page announced with a bow.

Danube winced, but motioned for the boy to admit her.

Constance, seeming frail and shaky, entered the room tentatively, without any of the former bravado she had once exhibited. That, too, made Danube wince, for he could not deny some responsibility in creating this broken shell of the formerly strong woman, a woman who had borne him two fine sons and who had been one of his closest friends and his lover for two decades.

“I came to speak of Merwick’s training,” Constance remarked quietly. “It is time for him to join the Allhearts.”

King Danube looked at her skeptically. “There is plenty of time for that,” he replied.

“He is past his sixteenth birthday,” Constance said, a bit more forcefully. “He
must be outfitted, and by the finest smith in the service of the crown. And then he must be trained, by Duke Kalas himself, to lead men. To lead warriors. It is a necessary step for one who is to be king.”

Danube smiled and looked away. Despite her fragile state, it hadn’t taken Constance long to fully insinuate herself into the affairs of Castle Ursal. Danube was quite certain that Constance had already picked out the smith and had likely already scheduled Merwick’s fittings for his suit of armor.

Not for the first time, King Danube wondered if he had been wise to place his bastard sons, Constance’s sons, into the line of royal succession. He could not ignore the truth that Jilseponie’s unintentional displacement of Constance Pemblebury had been the primary source of all the distress in court these last years, and what made it all the more frustrating for him was that he could not rightly blame Constance for any of that.

He gave a great sigh and nodded his agreement. “Duke Kalas will relish the assignment,” he said, managing a smile; and Constance smiled back at him, a thin, forced expression. She turned and started to leave but glanced back over her shoulder and remarked, “Your Queen has not sent word that she will soon return? The roads from Palmaris will fast close with the coming of snow. Will you be forced to spend the season alone?”

There was something more in her tone than concern for him, Danube easily recognized. Buried under the obvious statement of that which everyone already knew—that Jilseponie would not soon return—there was a flicker of something that again bit hard at Danube.

Hope.

Constance turned back and left him.

He had no doubt that she would try to use the Queen’s absence to wriggle back into his arms and good graces, and he had no doubt that everyone at court would embrace that hope and do everything they could to strengthen Constance’s position.

The mere thought of it made Danube drop his head into his hands, then run them back wearily over his thinning salt-and-pepper hair.

It was going to be a long winter.

S
he was wearing her old clothes again, peasant clothes: a simple brown tunic and white breeches, doeskin boots, and a green traveling cloak. Only the pouch on her left hip, full of magical gemstones, and Defender, her fine, magical sword, strapped to the left side of her mount’s saddle, betrayed her as someone other than a common and quite average woman.

Indeed, as she had shed her royal raiments, so had she shed her title and her formal name. It was not Queen Jilseponie who had ridden back into Palmaris beside Roger Lockless and Dainsey, but rather, it was Pony. Just Pony. A friend and not the Queen. A friend and not the hero of the northland.

Just Pony.

And that name at that time sounded to her as sweet as the sweetest note ever played.

“We could continue to Caer Tinella,” Roger offered as the trio walked their horses along the city’s cobblestoned streets, “perhaps all the way to Dundalis and back, long before the first snows find the roads.”

Pony didn’t even hesitate before saying no, simply and without much emotion. She wasn’t ready to return to Dundalis; it seemed better to her to ease back into this life as Pony—this previous identity—gently, gradually. Going to Dundalis would mean going to the grove outside the town, to the grave of Elbryan.

“Not yet,” she clarified, looking over to see that Roger wore a surprised expression. “Perhaps in the spring. That way, we can get the whole season there and not be trapped so far north if we find that the new Dundalis is not to our liking.”

“Spring?” Dainsey asked. “Then ye’re plannin’ to be with us for a bit?”

Pony smiled, not bothering to answer. “You can ride ahead to Chasewind Manor, if you want,” she told her companions, and she nodded her head in the direction of a street they were fast approaching, a wide lane that led to the front gates of St. Precious Abbey. “It is past time that I see Bishop Braumin—in his home instead of mine.”

She had meant the line as a simple joke, but when she heard the words, they did anything but cheer her up. Referring to Castle Ursal as her home struck a chord in Pony, for in truth she had never looked upon the place as such. Castle Ursal was Danube’s home, and Pony was Danube’s wife, but never had she been able to honestly extend that connection to thus make Castle Ursal her own home.

She heard Roger begin to reply that he and Dainsey would accompany her to St. Precious, but Dainsey interrupted him, clearing her throat rather loudly. Although Pony did not look back at them, she could easily imagine Dainsey nodding her head at Roger, silently telling him that she, Pony, needed some time alone.

“We will go to Chasewind, then,” Roger said. “I’ll alert the guards and ready your rooms.”

Pony wanted to tell him to dismiss the guards altogether, but that, of course, she could not do.

Soon after, she turned her mount down the lane, St. Precious towering before her, though it was still several blocks away. She considered again Castle Ursal; Dundalis; and this town, Palmaris, and wondered where among all three there was a place that she could truly call her home.

“Thrice married, and alone again,” she said with an amused chuckle.

She gave a profound sigh, not sure at all where she now fit into the world. Was she Pony, the woman who had grown up a peasant in Dundalis, and then spent her adolescence in Palmaris? Was she Jill—Cat-the-Stray—that orphaned and confused young woman who had married Connor Bildeborough, the nephew of the Baron of Palmaris, only to have the marriage annulled soon after, when her inner demons of a childhood shattered by raiding goblins had prevented her from consummating the union? Was she the same Pony who had then found her true
love, Elbryan, and had spent the years riding with him, battling the demon and its minions, and then battling Father Abbot Markwart, whose tainted soul had so warped the Abellican Church?

Or was she Queen Jilseponie, the wife of King Danube? Truly his wife and truly the queen? Or was she, as so many in Ursal insisted, a peasant impostor, thrust into a world that she could not understand and could not tolerate?

“A bit of all,” she whispered, and she felt a twinge of pain, not for herself but for Danube. He had said some pretty horrible things to her, had, despite his own best efforts, heard clearly the many rumors disparaging her name; but, in truth, Danube had never treated her badly, and she knew—and this is what pained her the most—Danube had never stopped loving her.

So was this a desertion or a needed respite? Would she return to Ursal to fulfill her duties as wife and as queen or would she forever hide here, chosing a life simpler by far in a land cleaner and easier to understand?

The only thing that Pony knew for certain was that she didn’t know anything for certain.

The gates of St. Precious were open, so she walked her horse into the courtyard before the main building. Bishop Braumin came bounding out before she could even dismount, as news of her arrival spread like wildfire through the abbey.

Braumin, carrying at least twenty pounds more than when Pony had last seen him, rushed up to her. After she dismounted he wrapped her in such a great hug that the pair nearly fell over onto the ground.

“I would have expected trumpets blaring at the docks,” Braumin said, “to announce the arrival of the Queen!” The Bishop pushed her back to arm’s length, studying her admiringly and shaking his head.

Pony laughed at his antics and his remark. “I took no boat,” she explained, “but rode all the way from Ursal.”

“Then trumpets at the south gate!”

“And with no entourage,” Pony went on, “just me and Roger and Dainsey. A quiet ride through a quiet land.”

Braumin’s expression turned to one of curiosity. “A much longer journey by road,” he said, “and one that will take away from our time together.” He wasn’t frowning as he said this, but he continued to look at Pony curiously, as if suspecting that her trip here was something more than a visit.

“We will have all the time that we desire,” Pony replied. “I promise.”

“Still, for the Queen to be riding without armed escort …”

“Do not think of me as the Queen,” she replied. “And pray, have none of your brethren announce my arrival beyond your abbey walls. I am not Queen Jilseponie here but just Pony, your friend of old.”

Braumin’s look shifted to a knowing expression, and he nodded and hugged her again.

Pony spent the rest of the day with Braumin and with Viscenti, who, quite the opposite of Braumin, seemed to have lost more than twenty pounds, and that
from a frame that could ill afford it. Viscenti looked emaciated, worn away, but his smile was genuine and the inquisitive sparkle remained bright in his eyes.

They talked of old times and caught each other up on more recent events, Pony diplomatically edging around her present problems at Danube’s court, and with the other two politely not pressing her.

As the sun was setting, Pony rode out from St. Precious, walking her horse along a meandering course that generally led her to the western section of the city. To her relief—though when she thought about it, she realized that her fears were unfounded—she was not recognized by any of the folk along the streets.

Perhaps she would find a simpler existence here.

With that thought in mind, she changed her course and, instead of going to Chasewind Manor, rode to an inn and took a room, then sent a message to Roger and Dainsey.

Thus she lived, as the weeks of summer passed, not as the queen or a noblewoman at all, not as a sovereign sister, but merely as Pony, just as she had lived before the tide of momentous events had swept her anonymity and simple existence from her. She spent her days with Roger and Dainsey, and sometimes with Braumin and her friends at St. Precious. Together, they all planned a trip to the north, to Caer Tinella and Dundalis, to begin as soon as winter passed.

It was a quiet and calm and peaceful existence.

Pony knew that it would all change again, though, one autumn morning, late in the season, when the blare of trumpets and the cries of heralds awakened her, and nearly everyone else in the city, to the news that King Danube Brock Ursal had sailed into Palmaris.

She thought of going to the docks, but decided against it—she didn’t know who the King might have brought with him, after all. She headed instead for Chasewind Manor, knowing that Danube would expect to find her there and recognizing that there, at least, she could limit in attendance the companions the King might have brought with him from Ursal.