DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (151 page)

King Danube tried to utter a retort to that, but the words caught in his throat. He stumbled out of his chair and staggered forward, his mind whirling.

Out in the corridor beyond his audience hall, the castle was in tumult, men and women, nobles and peasants, rushing to and fro, all screaming that Lady Pemblebury
had been murdered, all screaming that the Queen was a murderess.

Danube fixed every offender with an icy stare as he passed, one that reminded the gossiper that speaking such words amounted to treason.

But in truth, Danube was overwhelmed, stumbling, wondering what might be happening. But one thing he knew for certain, his wife was no murderess!

Or was she?

An image flashed through Danube’s mind then, a scene of Jilseponie pouring something evil into a goblet, then presenting it to Constance. It touched him below the conscious level, somewhere deep in his thoughts.

Aydrian’s spirit made sure that he didn’t make things too obvious to this love-struck fool.

D
uke Kalas caught Jilseponie leaving the room even as he was trying to enter.

“What is it?” he yelled in her face. “What have you done?”

“Speak not the words of a fool, Kalas,” the Queen replied. “And let me go! Constance is ill, though from what, I do not know.”

“You poisoned her!” another nobleman, who had come on the scene before Kalas, yelled. “By her own words!”

“She does not know what she is speaking about!” Jilseponie yelled right back at him, then she turned to Kalas. “A soul stone, and I will have her up and well in a few moments.”

She tried to pull away, but Kalas held her tightly.

Jilseponie fixed him with a perfectly awful stare.

“Go with her,” the Duke instructed the nobleman, and he shoved into the room past Jilseponie and ran to stricken Constance’s side.

“Murderess!” Constance was saying, whispering and coughing. “The Queen has slain me.”

“Be easy,” Duke Kalas said to his dear friend. He dropped to his knees and took Constance away from the attendant, cradling her head in his hands. “Be at ease,” he said quietly. “Help will arrive. Jilseponie has gone for a soul—”

“No!” shrieked the dying woman, and she found the strength to sit up and grab Kalas by the front of his tunic. “No. She will devour my soul as she has destroyed my body. No! No. Promise me.”

King Danube entered the room then and rushed to Constance’s side.

“She says that your wife murdered her,” Kalas remarked.

“Poison … in the tea,” Constance breathed. “Oh, I am slain.” She found another burst of energy then, and grabbed Kalas hard. “Merwick and Torrence,” she begged. “The witch will take them!”

“This is foolishness!” King Danube cried.

A
ydrian knew that Jilseponie was fast returning with a soul stone that she could use to defeat the poison. He went to Constance, then, speaking to her again. He showed her the Queen hanging from a gallows and showed her Merwick ascending
the throne as king of Honce-the-Bear.

He put her at ease so that she would not fight the poison.

Constance lay back and died.

J
ilseponie rushed into the room, bag of gemstones in hand. She skidded to an abrupt halt, seeing Kalas gently lay Constance’s head back and close her unseeing eyes.

Shaking her head, stunned and not quite knowing what to make of any of this, Jilseponie felt the weight of a dozen accusing stares fixed upon her.

“I did nothing,” she said to her husband, as he rose and turned to her.

King Danube started to say, “Of course, my love,” but the words caught in his throat, as Aydrian again whispered into his mind the suggestion that Jilseponie had murdered Constance.

His hesitation struck Jilseponie as profoundly as if he had walked over and slugged her.

“Search her!” Duke Kalas insisted, rising and motioning for two nearby guards.

“Back!” Jilseponie roared at the tentative pair, and they stopped and looked confusedly at Duke Kalas, then at King Danube.

The King, overwhelmed, looked down.

“Search her!” Kalas growled, and he put his hand to his sword, as if he meant to draw it and run Jilseponie through then and there. He reached down and grabbed the sobbing attendant, pulling her roughly to her feet. “You go and do it,” he instructed. He shoved her forward toward Jilseponie, then motioned for the guards to go to the Queen.

They did, grabbing her by the arms; and she offered no resistance, just stood there, staring at her husband, dumbstruck.

She expected them to find nothing, of course, for she had done nothing; but when the handmaiden fiddled about her sash, gasped, and produced the vial, Jilseponie was hardly surprised.

How had Constance done this to her? she wondered, for certainly this whole thing had been set up. But it made no sense, none at all!

For there lay Constance, dead on the floor, and there stood Danube, seeming broken.

As if in a dream, she felt them take the gemstones and tie her hands behind her back. She heard their words as if from afar, as one after another, the attendants insisted that the Queen had ordered the tea.

She heard the echoes down the corridor, cries that the Queen, that she, was a murderess, that she had killed the Lady Pemblebury.

Still staring at the body of Constance, she heard the sharp bark of Duke Kalas. “Away with her to the dungeons!” and felt the tug of the guards.

But then King Danube intervened, redirecting the guards to Jilseponie’s private quarters, but ordering her locked within and watched.

She looked over at her husband then, and could say nothing, for the look of
sheer despair upon his face wounded her profoundly.

It was all too insane.

Chapter 35
 

T
HE WHIRLWIND SWEPT HER AWAY TO HER PRIVATE QUARTERS
,
HER ARMS BOUND
behind her. Guards rushed around the room, searching for any gemstones or weapons. They took Defender and a circlet that Jilseponie kept that contained a cat’s eye that allowed the wearer to see in the dark.

“You’ll give us no trouble, my lady?” one of the guards asked her, coming up behind and grabbing the ropes that bound her wrists.

Jilseponie merely shook her head, too stunned even to respond to the insanity that had come so suddenly to Castle Ursal. What had happened? Who had murdered Constance and why?

And why had she so adamantly cried out that Jilseponie had killed her? And how—how indeed!—had that open vial gotten under Jilseponie’s sash?

It made no sense to her.

She hardly moved as the guards walked by, leaving the room. The last, the one who had untied her, paused to offer a slight bow, then departed, closing the door behind him.

How had this happened?

Then it hit her, and the reality of it seemed somehow the only explanation, and yet seemed somehow to be even more ridiculous.

Had Constance killed herself? Had she invited her rival to tea with the express purpose of incriminating Jilseponie, even at the cost of her own life? It was crazy, and who would believe such a tale?

But that was the beauty of it, was it not? From Jilseponie’s viewpoint, it all made sense, Constance’s improved mood and her request for the meeting. And then at the bitter end, Constance’s refusing aid from Jilseponie, who was as powerful a user of the healing stone as any person in all the world. From any other viewpoint, though, the tale would seem preposterous, perhaps beyond belief. Was it not likely, after all, that Queen Jilseponie might have noticed Constance’s improved mood and then decided to take action against her, her avowed enemy, simply for that reason?

Jilseponie went over to the bed and sat down. She stayed there, alone, for the remainder of the day, until a fitful sleep came over her.

P
redictably, at least to Duke Kalas, Marcalo De’Unnero came to him that same night, in the guise of Bruce of Oredale.

“I am hardly surprised,” De’Unnero remarked, making himself quite at home, flopping into the comfortable chair opposite the Duke, who was reading another book, this one on the laws of the kingdom. “Ever has she been a vengeful witch.
Poor Lady Constance apparently gnawed too far up Jilseponie’s arm.”

“What do you know of this?” Kalas demanded.

De’Unnero sat back and folded his hands, bringing them to his chin. What indeed did he know of it, any of it? Had Jilseponie really murdered Constance? It made no sense to De’Unnero, given what he knew of Jilseponie and of Constance. What then had brought about this thrilling and unexpected event? De’Unnero could think of only two possible answers. The first was dumb luck, or misfortune, depending on how this played out. He suspected that the rumors of Jilseponie’s denial—her claim that Constance had killed herself—held more than a bit of truth. Had the woman done it of her own accord, a tragic end to a tragic and misguided figure?

Or had another variable entered the game, another source of suggestion and power that pushed Constance to the edge, and then over it?

He knew it. He knew in his heart that Aydrian had done this. Perhaps the young warrior had possessed Constance—certainly he was powerful enough with the gemstones—and then used her mortal body to damn Jilseponie.

But to what end? That, De’Unnero did not understand. Not yet, but he held faith that Aydrian would soon enough enlighten him.

“I know what everyone at court is saying,” he answered the patiently waiting Duke Kalas. “That Jilseponie poisoned Lady Pemblebury’s tea.”

Kalas pushed his chair back from his small desk. “So it would seem.”

“You have reason to doubt the claim?”

Kalas paused, then looked back at De’Unnero and shook his head. “The evidence against her is damning, and Constance proclaimed Jilseponie’s guilt before she expired,” he admitted. “But tell me, my friend, why do you seem so excited by the unexpected turn?”

De’Unnero chuckled. “I pity your lost friend—let me extend my condolences to you in this time of your grief,” he said.

Kalas didn’t blink.

“But am I upset to learn that Jilseponie finally erred in her devious and dangerous ascent?” De’Unnero went on. “Surely not! I have known the truth of the witch for many years. I only wish that I might have had some way to prevent the tragedy.”

“It should upset you,” Kalas reasoned. “Given your agenda for your young protégé.”

De’Unnero shook his head. “Not so,” he replied.

“If she is brought to trial—”

“Do so!” exclaimed the monk. “At once, I beg. Hang the witch or burn her. Surely she deserves no better!”

“Are you so blinded by your hatred of Jilseponie?” Kalas asked, leaning forward. “For if Jilseponie is tried and hanged, as she surely must be, then the King will likely deny your precious Aydrian his rights of ascension.”

“So be it, if that is the consequence,” De’Unnero answered without hesitation. “I believe Aydrian prepared to properly lead Honce-the-Bear, but I am far more
concerned with the health of the kingdom than with his personal gain. The kingdom will survive this. King Danube will find his strength in Duke Kalas and in the others who have been his supporters since before Jilseponie, since before the demon dactyl and the misery that has festered in the kingdom and in the Abellican Church.”

“And what of Marcalo De’Unnero?”

“I will trust in Duke Kalas to aid my reinstatement in the Church, and the return of the Church to its previous Godly ways,” the former monk answered.

“You believe that the King will involve himself in the affairs of the Church?” Kalas asked skeptically. “Or that I will?”

“He will leave the Bishop in place in Palmaris?” the former monk asked bluntly, and doubtfully; and the question made Duke Kalas sit up a bit straighter in his chair.

De’Unnero knew that he had made his point.

“Press forward the charges, the trial, and the execution,” he said to Kalas. “Rid the world of the scourge that is Jilseponie once and for all time. Young Aydrian will find his way, as will Marcalo De’Unnero, do not doubt, but in the end we—both of us—desire only that which is best for Honce-the-Bear.”

Kalas stared at De’Unnero for a short while, offering no confirmation that he intended to do just that.

But De’Unnero didn’t need any confirmation. He knew that this seed needed no watering. In his heart, he understood that Duke Kalas would do everything in his power to see Queen Jilseponie utterly destroyed.

De’Unnero still wasn’t sure how Aydrian planned to play this out to their ultimate advantage, but he was learning quickly to trust the young warrior.

After all, had Aydrian not just destroyed the woman who had haunted De’Unnero for more than a decade?

And with so little effort.

J
ilseponie awakened before dawn and had sat for many hours, again pondering the shocking events, when the door swung open and King Danube and Duke Kalas entered, the Duke striding toward her, as if he meant to throttle her on the spot.

“Murderess!” he said, his tone low and even, though he was surely fighting to control his trembling rage.

“Enough, Duke Kalas,” King Danube said, and he put a hand on Kalas’ shoulder and held him back.