DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (154 page)

“King Danube is dead,” he proclaimed. “Mark this day as black.”

“A runner to Prince Midalis!” came a cry from one of the noblemen near to the stage. “Long live Midalis, King of Honce-the-Bear!”

As was customary, even in this moment of shock and grief, many took up that cry for the new King.

Duke Kalas looked to the side, to Marcalo De’Unnero and to the young warrior standing beside him, the young unknown prince who had defeated Kalas and then had pulled him back from the realm of death.

“Not so!” the Duke proclaimed, and as those words echoed about, the crowd grew very silent, every eye, particularly those of Aydrian and Merwick, locked upon him.

“By King Danube’s own words, the successor to the throne would be Prince Midalis only if Jilseponie did not bear any children,” the Duke explained.

“She is with child?” one nobleman cried in shock and outrage, and many confused expressions fell over Jilseponie, whose look was no less dumbfounded.

“She bore a child,” Kalas explained, struggling with every word, but keeping his course and his composure.

As he spoke, Aydrian leaped onto the stage, striding forward confidently, and De’Unnero flashed his signal to his nearest agent, who passed it along from conspirator to conspirator.

Abbot Olin, too, made his appearance then, ascending the platform from the stairway at the side.

“Tai’maqwilloq!” Duke Kalas cried. “Aydrian the Nighthawk, the son of Queen Jilseponie, the new King of Honce-the-Bear!”

“Never!” shouted Merwick, and many others shared that sentiment.

Half the crowd was cheering, half screaming in protest.

“This is insanity,” Jilseponie breathed, and she staggered, staring at Aydrian, knowing then the truth of it, knowing without doubt that this blond-haired youth was indeed her son, and the son of Elbryan. His walk, his fighting style, his sword—which now hung undisguised at his hip and which she now recognized as Tempest!—and his horse all spoke the truth to her.

“Dasslerond,” she gasped, “what have you done?”

“Never!” cried Merwick, drawing his sword.

“I am the Duke of Wester-Honce!” Kalas yelled at the Allhearts, many of them bristling and readying their weapons. “Stand down, I say! They are Danube’s own words, spoken on the day of his marriage. The King is dead, long live Tai’maqwilloq!”

“What do you know of this?” one nobleman shouted from the edge of the platform.
“How do you know his name, Kalas? What treachery?”

“I am the abbot of St. Bondabruce,” Olin interjected, coming toward the nobleman with his entourage of monks clearing a wide path about him. “Soon to be the father abbot of the Abellican Church, do not doubt. Beware that your words do not come back to haunt you, good sir.”

Never had Ursal seen such confusion, such wailing, such screaming, all edging toward explosive levels. Fights broke out among the crowd and among many of the soldiers.

De’Unnero’s agents, his mercenaries, were right there, finishing every battle in the favor of their secret cause.

On the stage, Jilseponie stood dumbstruck, hardly hearing Kalas at all and not even registering the appearance that a conspiracy had occurred here, one that had perhaps just taken the life of her husband. No, she just stood there helplessly—and even more helpless did she become when Kalas took the soul stone from her bound hands!—staring at Aydrian, gawking at this man who was her son.

She saw Merwick’s approach, murder in his eyes.

She shook her head, trying to yell out for the foolish young man to desist. She knew what was coming as she watched Aydrian, smiling widely, draw out his sword in response. To her horror, Duke Kalas and the other Allhearts stepped back from the spectacle—apparently duels were an acceptable way to decide such issues.

Certainly the spectacle of the proclaimed King and the man who had been second in line for the throne brought a measure of calm about the stage, where men held their punches to turn and gawk.

Merwick came on hard, his sword led by fury. “I deny you!” he cried, ending his words with the punctuation of a downward slash and then a sudden stab.

The slash got nowhere near to hitting Aydrian, and the stab slid harmlessly wide, turned by a subtle parry of Tempest.

Still Merwick pressed forward—another slash, a stab, a stab again. Then, as the retreating Aydrian pressed to the edge of the stage, Merwick retracted and leaped ahead, his sword going up over one shoulder, to come careening down at Aydrian’s head.

He stopped short, though, his sword barely clearing his shoulder, when he realized that Tempest had sunk deep into his chest.

Aydrian came forward, driving the blade in to the hilt, putting his face very close to Merwick’s.

“I deny your denial,” the young King casually remarked.

With a rough shove and jerk, he sent Merwick sliding off the sword and down to the stage, to lie dying beside the body of his father.

Jilseponie lowered her gaze and shook her head, thinking that there could be no greater insanity.

Then she looked up, to see a strangely familiar man striding up beside Aydrian and Duke Kalas.

Marcalo De’Unnero.

She did not breathe for a long while, did not blink. The issue seemed settled then, and so quickly, with those yelling for Prince Midalis beaten down and silenced, with poor Torrence brought forward by a pair of Allheart knights.

Allheart knights! Men loyal to the Crown, but not blindly so. Yet here they were, presenting Torrence to the new King!

Unlike his brother, the younger son of Constance and Danube did not seem so brash and brave, did not even attempt to draw out his sword or challenge Tai’maqwilloq. He was beaten already, his eyes begging for mercy, and it seemed as if he needed the support of the two flanking soldiers to even stand up.

Jilseponie could appreciate that. He had just seen his mother’s ghost, had just watched his father and his only sibling die. And now he stood before the man who could, and likely would, destroy him utterly.

“C
hoose wisely here,” Duke Kalas whispered to Aydrian, as the new king stood staring at Torrence. “Prince Midalis will not suffer this.”

“He will not suffer any of it,” Aydrian replied with a snicker. “But what might he do?”

“Merwick challenged you openly and was defeated,” Kalas reminded. “Torrence has offered no challenge.”

“And if you kill him, then you will be giving Midalis cause to rally even more about him,” Marcalo De’Unnero agreed.

“Be gone from Ursal,” Aydrian pronounced to Torrence, “this day—at once. A horse!” he cried. “A horse for Torrence Pemblebury.

“For that is your name now,” Aydrian explained to the boy—for indeed, Torrence seemed much more a boy than a man at that moment. “No longer do you claim the name of Ursal, nor any bearing that name would bestow upon you. Go and make your way, in good health and with our respect.”

For a second, it seemed as if Torrence would lash out at Aydrian, but the young King only smiled, obviously inviting it.

Duke Kalas moved past Aydrian to the young Pemblebury. “I promised your mother that I would look after you,” he explained, and he looked to dead Merwick as the irony of that statement hit him. “I could do nothing to protect Merwick from Merwick, but for you, I beg, take the horse and ride far from Ursal. Forsake this place and thoughts of the throne. It is Aydrian’s now, rightfully, by the words of your father the King.”

“King Danube never meant—” Torrence started to protest, but Kalas brought a finger to his lips, silencing the boy.

“What he meant cannot now be known,” the Duke explained. “Nor does it matter, given the reality before us. I pray you, Torrence, be gone. When the world has settled, we will talk again.”

Kalas motioned for the flanking knights, and they took Torrence away to the waiting horse.

And Kalas’ knights broke up the gathering then, leading the way for the new
King to assume his throne.

“D
UKE
K
ALAS WAS MOST USEFUL IN CONTROLLING THE MOB
,” D
E
’U
NNERO REMARKED
to Aydrian later that day, when the city was, at last, fully secured.

De’Unnero had not returned to the castle with Aydrian but had gone to St. Honce with Abbot Olin and the entourage from St. Bondabruce, and with Abbot Ohwan to reinstate him as head of St. Honce.

Abbot Ohwan was welcomed back by many, which made Olin and De’Unnero’s task of controlling the dangerous brothers of the abbey all the easier. They made no secret of their intentions to redirect the Abellican Church, to install Olin as father abbot even at the risk of splitting the Church asunder. And as they did not mince their words, they did not minimize the consequences to those who would not agree. By the end of the afternoon, a dozen brothers had been killed and a dozen more imprisoned beneath the great abbey.

But the abbey, like the castle, now wore the mantle of peace and security.

“He hates me,” Aydrian replied absently to De’Unnero’s statement. The young King threw a leg over one arm of the chair. “He hoped that Merwick would run me through—that is the only reason he allowed the fight to continue.”

“He did not seem to hate you so much,” Sadye remarked.

“Because he fears me more than he hates me.”

“And that I find most curious of all,” De’Unnero admitted. “Duke Kalas is not a timid man and has faced death a hundred times. Why would he shy from the prospect now?”

“Because I promised him more than death,” Aydrian was quick to answer. “When I brought him back from death at the tournament, I showed him that I could destroy his very soul, or hold it and use it to my advantage. Oh, yes, our good Duke understood the truth of the spectacle this morning. He knows that it was I who tore Constance from the grave—he even likely suspects that it was I, or Constance acting on my behalf, who killed King Danube.

“But Kalas also knows that I am the way,” Aydrian went on. “Or more important, he knows that there is no other way.”

De’Unnero shook his head.

“What of Torrence?” Sadye asked then. “You did well in showing mercy, but I fear that one and the support he might find—support to bolster Prince Midalis, no doubt.”

“He is on the road to the north, yes?” Aydrian asked.

“By all reports,” said Sadye.

“Then send men out to find him and catch him,” Aydrian instructed.

De’Unnero chuckled and looked at Aydrian in complete agreement.

“And when they catch him?” Sadye asked.

“Kill him,” replied the King, “quietly and without any witnesses. Kill him and
bury him under the stairs that lead to the lowest dungeon.”

Sadye appeared shocked, but only for a moment, then she turned and started away, De’Unnero at her side.

“He is ruthless,” she remarked. “He will destroy any who stand against him.”

De’Unnero glanced back at Aydrian, still seated comfortably on his throne.

“I knew it from the moment I first encountered him, first battled him,” the monk replied.

“Knew what?”

“The beauty that is Aydrian,” said De’Unnero. “Simply magnificent.”

“The son of your most hated enemies,” Sadye reminded him.

“Which only makes it all the more beautiful,” the monk was quick to reply.

Sadye went off then, to set Aydrian’s latest orders into motion, while De’Unnero went to fetch the next order of business, returning to the throne room soon after with Jilseponie in tow.

The woman, obviously having regained much of her composure after the morning’s momentous events, pulled free of De’Unnero and strode boldly right up before the young King, even pushing aside the herald who had gone in to announce her.

“Are you so much the fool,” she asked, “to fall into the conspiracies of this man?” She swept an accusing hand out toward De’Unnero. “Do you not know his history, of the terrible tragedies he has brought about? Do you not understand the misery you have brought upon us all this day?”

“You dare to speak to me so?” Aydrian replied with a laugh. “You, who gave up on me, who abandoned me to the clutches of the heartless elves—yes, I will pay Lady Dasslerond back appropriately for her treatment! After your own behavior, you dare to accuse me or to judge him?”

“I did not know,” Jilseponie stammered, her bluster stolen by more than a fair amount of guilt. “I had no idea that you were alive.”

“Then you should have found out, should you not?” was Aydrian’s simple and devastating response.

“This man you name as an adviser served beside Markwart,” Jilseponie accused, pointing to De’Unnero with a finger that trembled from explosive rage. “Brother Justice, he was called, a ruthless killer—and ultimately, one of the murderers of your father!”

Aydrian’s bemused expression and the way he was following her angry movements with mocking gestures stopped her short, showed her that her words were falling on deaf ears.

“The throne is mine,” Aydrian remarked. “You can choose to accept that or to be a thorn that I must pluck from my side.”

“The throne was Danube’s,” Jilseponie countered in a low and even voice. “It now falls to Prince Midalis. Never did my husband intend—”

Aydrian stopped her by bringing his hand out to her, by dropping a single gemstone, a lodestone, into her hand. The young King sat back, then, and pulled open
his shirt, shifting a metallic pendant he had fixed on a chain about his neck so that it rested against the hollow of his breast. “You perceive that the kingdom is broken,” he said. “So fix it, Mother. One burst of magical energy and I am no more, and the way is cleared for Prince Midalis—even Duke Kalas would not deny that ascension.”

Jilseponie stared at him, her gaze narrowing. She lifted her hand, and Aydrian smiled all the wider.

“One burst of energy and it is done, the lodestone shot through my heart,” Aydrian said.

Jilseponie lifted her hand toward him. At the side, De’Unnero and Sadye bristled—but they did not intervene, and that told Aydrian that they had come to trust him.

Jilseponie held the pose for a long while; a couple of times, she clenched her hand and her teeth and seemed to be trying hard to inject magical energy into the deadly stone.