Mortalis

Chapter 43

When Jilseponie returned to the Barbacan near the end of summer, she found that her call to Vanguard had not gone unheeded. Led by Brother Dellman and Abbot Haney, the procession from the northernmost Honce-the-Bear province had nearly emptied the place.

The woman saw them up on the plateau, hundreds and hundreds milling about; and she went straightaway to find them, anxious to see Dellman again and Abbot Braumin, who had become the caretaker of the arm itself, the guide to any and all who came to enter Avelyn's covenant.

She found Dellman first and shared a great hug with him on the rim of the sacred plateau, then made her way through the crowd, toward the arm and Braumin. She was surprised, then, to find a pair of faces that she recognized.

"Andacanavar!" she cried. "Liam O'Blythe!"

The huge ranger wheeled, his face beaming with a great smile. To Jilseponie's surprise, though, another man off to the side, his hair bright red, his face covered in freckles, also turned to her, beaming.

"Do I know ye, beautiful lady? " the red-haired man remarked.

Jilseponie looked at him curiously as she made her way toward the ranger and the man she thought to be Liam. "I think you do not," Jilseponie answered politely.

"But ye're knowin' me name!" the man protested.

Jilseponie looked at him hard, then turned to see Andacanavar's companion, the man she had thought to be Liam, blushing.

"You are Liam O'Blythe? " Jilseponie asked the red-haired man.

"Anybody tellin' ye different? " he inquired back.

"Telling all the world different, and stealing your good name, I fear," Jilseponie said, staring hard at Andacanavar's companion.

"Then gettin' in trouble, not to doubt!" Liam O'Blythe roared, pointing his finger at his friend.

"I preferred to travel anonymously," the exposed liar explained. "To do otherwise might have invited trouble."

"A renowned thief, are you? " Jilseponie said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or just a thief of people's names?"

"A prince, actually," Liam O'Blythe answered for Midalis. "Brother o' the King, he is, and Prince o' all Vanguard."

Jilseponie's jaw dropped open, her eyes going so wide that it seemed as if they might fall right out of their sockets. Now that the man's identity had been clarified, she could see the resemblance he bore to Danube, a younger and thinner version of the King.

"I would have expected you to tell her," Andacanavar said, looking past the woman, and Jilseponie took the cue and turned to see Bradwarden moving up beside her.

"Didn't think it was needed," the centaur said dryly. "Suren her head's big enough without her knowin' that she beat the Prince of Honce-the-Bear in a sword fight!"

"You knew? " Jilseponie asked.

"I felled ye once, girl, there's not a thing in me forest that I'm not knowin'. When are ye to believe me?"

Jilseponie just shook her head helplessly.

"We are all in your debt," Prince Midalis remarked, moving up to her and taking her hand. He bowed low and kissed that hand.

"I was near death," Liam added. "I thought that'd be the end o' Liam O'Blythe! But for Avelyn's hand, it suren would've!"

"You saved the world, young ranger-in-training," Andacanavar said with a smile.

"That is Avelyn's deed," Jilseponie was quick to correct, motioning toward the upraised arm. "I was but a messenger."

"A fine one indeed," said Prince Midalis, and he had her hand clasped between both of his, then, and he stared admiringly into her dark blue eyes.

The sudden tension was broken almost immediately, as Abbot Braumin came bounding over, crying out for Jilseponie, then wrapping her in such a hug that he squeezed all the air out of her.

They spent the rest of the day together, and held a great celebration that night in the valley before the mountain. Jilseponie noted, then, that not many of Andacanavar's Alpinadoran people were in attendance.

"They fear the gemstone magic, and thus, the covenant," Midalis explained.

"I do not believe that conversion to the faith is a requirement for the healing," Jilseponie replied; and when she did, she noted that Abbot Braumin's eyebrows went up in surprise.

"This is a holy place for the Abellican Church," Braumin noted.

Jilseponie nodded, not beginning to disagree. "It is the place where the Abellican Church should understand that it stands for all the goodly people of all the world, whether Abellican or not," she remarked. "If this is the covenant of the Avelyn that I knew, then healing will be given to any who come to this place, without question of their beliefs."

Her tone became a bit more sharp as she ended, and that made all gazes settle on Abbot Braumin.

"I never refused Andacanavar's people," he explained, "nor would I begin to turn them away or demand anything of them should they taste of the blood. It is their own fears that keep them away, and not words from me or any others. Perhaps they fear that this is some ruse designed to convert them to a faith they have many times rejected."

"Or perhaps they fear to see the truth, fear that their old beliefs will become irrelevant," Dellman added, and Jilseponie did not miss the scowl that came over Andacanavar's face.

"That is as foolish as it is prideful," she said. "And neither are traits I would attribute to Avelyn Desbris." She turned to the ranger then, her face full of compassion. "Has the plague found your homeland? "

He nodded. "Not as bad as in your own, as yet," he explained. "But, yes, many have been stricken ill and many have died."

"Bring them," Jilseponie said. "Convince them. Tell them that this is as much a gift of your own God as it is of ours. Tell them whatever you must to bring them here."

"There are no conditions," Braumin Herde added, and Jilseponie was glad to see that he was seeing things her way.

"I intend to do just that," the ranger assured her. "Now that I have tasted the blood."

"And all the brothers of St. Belfour will go with you, if you desire," Dellman said, "to offer healing along the road, as the brothers of St. Precious are doing along the road south."

"We shall see," was all that Andacanavar would concede.

The procession from Vanguard left the next day. The next after that, to Jilseponie's absolute delight, the brethren of St.-Mere-Abelle began to show up. Nearly half the brothers of that greatest of abbeys arrived, some three hundred, led by Agronguerre himself. They went to the plateau and they learned the beautiful truth. And as they set out again for the south, that very night-for Agronguerre understood that any delay would mean more suffering to many people-the Father Abbot promised that the rest of the abbey would arrive within a couple of weeks.

Jilseponie slept well that night, knowing that her vision, the vision given to her by the spirits of Elbryan and Avelyn at Oracle, would indeed come to fruition.

A few weeks later, Jilseponie and Bradwarden watched from a distant mountainside the seemingly endless procession snaking along the road from the south, some heading for the mountainous ring and Mount Aida, others already rushing back to the southland in the hopes that some of the crop might be brought in before the onset of winter.

Now that the seven hundred monks from St.-Mere-Abelle had joined in the healing line, and soldiers from Ursal had come in support of Tetrafel's Palmaris garrison, the road was swift and secure.

"They're sayin' that King Danube's on his way," Bradwarden remarked.

Jilseponie nodded, for she had heard the same rumors, claims that his royal entourage, including a couple of sons, would arrive at the entrance to the Barbacan by nightfall.

"He's bringin' all o' his court," Bradwarden remarked, and he eyed her curiously as he finished. "Includin' a pair o' sons, by the tales I'm hearin'."

Jilseponie merely nodded, and did well to hide her smile. Bradwarden was testing her, she knew, trying to find out if she harbored some feelings for the King of Honce-the-Bear. In truth, it was nothing that Jilseponie had even thought about much before and nothing that she was in any hurry to examine more deeply.

They met with King Danube that very night, and it was obvious to all in attendance, particularly to Constance Pemblebury, that the years had done nothing to diminish the man's feelings for this heroic woman of the northland.

"My work is here," Jilseponie explained against his insistence that she reconsider accepting the position of baroness of Palmaris.

"It seems to me that the work here will continue with or without you," Danube argued.

Jilseponie conceded that fact-to a point. "The northern walls of the Barbacan teem with goblins and giants," she explained. "And thus I have become the self-appointed ranger of the Barbacan, for now at least."

"A title she should no' be wearin'," Bradwarden cut in with a chuckle. "But she's got meself to keep her out o' trouble!"

They all shared a good laugh at that.

"Palmaris awaits your change of mind," Danube said to her in all seriousness. "Whether today, tomorrow, or years hence, the city will be yours with but a word."

Jilseponie started to reply, but changed her mind. The man had just paid her such a great compliment that she could not deny it, whatever might then be in her heart. She bowed her head respectfully and let it go at that.

When she looked up, though, she didn't-couldn't-miss the look of jealousy that Constance Pemblebury had put over her, nor the narrow-eyed warning gaze of Duke Targon Bree Kalas.

Yes, indeed, she thought, the wonderful world of politics!

"He means to make her his next queen," Duke Kalas said to Constance as they trotted their horses along the road back to the south. "You know that, of course." Constance didn't reply, but her silence spoke volumes to Kalas. Of course, she knew. How could she not? All Danube had spoken of in the five days since they had left the Barbacan was Jilseponie Wyndon, the savior of the world. He had promised her Palmaris, and sincerely; and Kalas knew that the invitation would be extended, at but a word from her, to include Castle Ursal and the city itself, to include all the kingdom.

Yes, Kalas knew it and so did Constance: King Danube was stricken with love for Jilseponie Wyndon. He had to bide his time for now, because she would not be moved from the Barbacan, but Danube was a patient man and one who knew how to get what he most desired.

"Queen Jilseponie," Kalas muttered quietly.

Constance Pemblebury fixed him with a perfectly awful stare.

They came in droves, the sick and the healthy, marching north from every corner of Honce-the-Bear, from Vanguard and from the Mantis Arm, from southern Yorkey, people living in the shadow of the Belt-and-Buckle mountain range, and from distant Entel.

Even from Behren, they came in small numbers, frightened people defying their yatol priests, daring to stow away on trading ships going around the mountain range's easternmost spurs, sailing up the coast all the way to the Gulf of Corona and to the mouth of the Masur Delaval, where they disembarked and began the land journey, desperate for healing.

The line of pilgrims thinned considerably, of course, with the onset of winter, but Jilseponie and Bradwarden and Braumin held their posts atop the plateau-an area sheltered by the magic of Avelyn from winter's coldest blows.

Few came as the year turned, and rumors filtered up the line to the sentinels of the covenant that many had died along the road, caught by storms or by exhaustion.

Jilseponie and the others held their faith, though. Yes, the plague would continue to claim victims, but hundreds and hundreds were now immune to its devastating bite.

And hundreds more would come to the Barbacan in the spring, they knew, for other rumors told of a great swelling of folk in the city of Palmaris, waiting for the word that the trails were clear.

One pleasant surprise came to them in the early part of the second month of the year, when a familiar form, bundled in layers of skins, scaled the rim of the plateau to stand towering above them.

Jilseponie's smile only widened and widened as more and more Alpinadorans followed Andacanavar up to that plateau.

"You did not believe that I could lead them here in the winter?" the ranger asked with a chuckle. "What feeble ranger do you take me for, woman-ranger-in-training? "

Jilseponie could only laugh and shake her head. Andacanavar introduced them to Bruinhelde, then; and the man, to Jilseponie's eyes, didn't seem overthrilled to be there.

But, she noted, he was thick with plague.

A few tense moments followed, with Jilseponie and Andacanavar offering their reassurances that partaking of Avelyn's blood would not be an admission of any change of faith, that the covenant would hold for them without any promises of that. "You can return to your homeland, safe from the plague, and go back to your ways and your God," Jilseponie said, but she was looking more to Braumin than to the Alpinadorans as she spoke.

"You know the Father Abbot of my Church, good Bruinhelde," Braumin said, surprising both Jilseponie and Bradwarden. But Braumin had spoken at length with Agronguerre about the possibility of this very meeting. "You know the value of the alliance that you entered into with him and with Prince Midalis. Well, consider this an extension of that alliance, a furthering of the bond of friendship between our peoples."

They all waited as Andacanavar translated the words into the Alpinadoran tongue, making certain that Bruinhelde understood not only the literal meaning of them but the manner in which they had been offered.

Bruinhelde then said something to the ranger, and Andacanavar turned to the trio. "He fears that his actions here will offend his gods," the ranger explained.

Jilseponie turned to her companions, then looked back to the Alpinadorans. "Then you do it, alone," she said to Bruinhelde. "Act as vanguard for your people, the first to try."

Andacanavar cleared his throat.

"The second, then," Jilseponie corrected, for the ranger certainly had tasted the blood on his first visit to the Barbacan. "But the first of your people who was not raised and trained outside Alpinador. Go to the hand and accept the covenant, of free will. Then you will know better how to guide those who followed you here."

Andacanavar started to translate, but Bruinhelde held up his hand, motioning that he had understood the words well enough. He took a deep breath then, his massive chest swelling, and he strode past Jilseponie and the other two, right up to the upraised arm.

He dropped to one knee before the arm, studying it intently, even sniffing at the bloody palm.

Jilseponie came up beside him. "Kiss the palm and you will understand," she promised.

Bruinhelde looked up at her suspiciously.

"How can you properly guide your people if you do not know? " she asked innocently.

The barbarian stared at her long and hard, and then he bent low and, with but a single quick steadying breath, he dipped his head and tasted the blood.

His expression showed surprise, and then…

Elation.

He looked up at Jilseponie again.

"You are the same man, with the same God," she said quietly, "but now the plague cannot touch you."

And so it went, throughout the day, the barbarians of Alpinador finding salvation at the hand of a soon-to-be Abellican saint. They stayed in the Barbacan for some time, celebrating; and when they left, Bruinhelde promised Jilseponie that he would spread the word throughout his homeland, that other Alpinadorans would follow.

And she promised him that they would be greeted as friends.

As predicted, the swarm of pilgrims began again in the early spring, flowing endlessly out of Palmaris, filtering through the city from points all across Honce-the-Bear.

Jilseponie and Bradwarden watched them from their mountain perches, taking heart again that Avelyn's promise would be fulfilled, that the rosy plague would be washed from the land.

From the wooded trails far below the line of the Barbacan, another watched the procession, but with very different emotions.

For Marcalo De'Unnero, the nocking of all the world to Avelyn Desbris was like a dark mirror held up before his wretched eyes, a reminder of his own mistakes and failings.

He was a beast now as often as a man, consumed by the power of the tiger's paw gemstone that had somehow become a part of his very being. He understood it now to be a curse, and surely no blessing, for no longer could he control the urges of the hunting and hungry cat. He survived by killing, pure and simple. Deer, rabbits, and, when he could find no alternative, feasting on the flesh and blood of humans.

He knew that he was sinking, that the creature was consuming him, mind and soul.

But not in body. Nay, it seemed as if another gemstone, the hematite ring he had taken from a merchant in Palmaris, had also found its way to De'Unnero's wretched being. He should have died from the wounds he had received on that day when he had been chased out of Palmaris, for several of the arrows had struck him in vital areas. He had spent days pulling out the arrowheads, the extraction on several occasions followed by a gush of blood that had left him weak and even unconscious.

But every time, he had reawakened, his wounds healed. The soul stone would not let him die!

And truly, at that time, all that Marcalo De'Unnero wanted was to die, to be released from the bonds of the weretiger, to be freed of this hellish prison his own body had become for him.

He had even considered going to the shrine of Avelyn. He didn't fear the plague-nay, he knew somehow that it could not affect him-but he wondered if this covenant he had been hearing repeated excitedly by every person going to or from the Barbacan, this gift of Avelyn, might extend to the curing of his present condition.

In fact, De'Unnero had even started toward the Barbacan on one occasion, but had become sidetracked, for a woman in the caravan on the road north of him had strayed out from the revealing light of the campfire one calm and quiet night.

After his gory feast, De'Unnero understood that he could not continue, that there would be no salvation for him from the likes of saintly Avelyn Desbris.

So he melted back into the forest, back to the west and the wilder lands, where deer were more plentiful and human flesh harder to find.

It went on through the seasons and the years, until the spring of God's Year 834. The previous spring had brought only thin lines of pilgrims-so few, in fact, that Abbot Braumin had returned to his duties at St. Precious and many of the monks along the northern road had been dismissed back to their respective abbeys-and by all the reports coming out of the southland, fewer still would make the journey this year.

The plague had been beaten, it seemed, and so, with mixed emotions, Jilseponie and Bradwarden left their post at Mount Aida and returned to the lands they knew so well, the Timberlands and Dundalis.

Jilseponie lingered a long time at Elbryan's cairn before going into the town. She went to Oracle there, and found that Elbryan's spirit was with her. For the first time in years, she was not Jilseponie but Pony. Just Pony: the girl who had grown up in the region beside Elbryan, who had taken such a strange and roundabout journey to get to this place in her life.

She stayed with the spirit of her lost husband for a long, long time, and it was late into the evening when she at last emerged. Bradwarden was nowhere about, but she could hear his piping distantly on the evening breeze.

So reminiscent of those long-ago days.

She found Dundalis larger than when she had left it, with many of the pilgrims deciding to remain there rather than march all the way back to their southern homes. The other towns of the region-and all along the south road to and including Palmaris-also boasted of many, many newcomers, so many, in fact, that Palmaris' population was now estimated as larger than it had been before the plague had begun to claim victims there.

Fellowship Way in Dundalis was a bustling place now, always full of patrons; and the cheers that greeted Pony when she walked through the door that spring night resounded as loudly as any she had heard at the previous Fellowship Way, one of Palmaris' busiest taverns.

She found Belster behind the bar along with Roger. Dainsey was working tables-whenever her toddler son was asleep enough for her to slip out to the front of the establishment and do some work.

"Can you take a break from the work?" Pony asked the trio after the greeting and tearful hugs.

Belster nodded to a couple of patrons, who quickly stepped into place serving the customers, and Pony led the three into the back room.

"Good to have ye back," Belster remarked.

"For a short while only," Pony replied, and she let her gaze drift from person to person. "I am going to Palmaris," she announced, "to accept King Danube's offer."

"Baroness Pony? " Dainsey said with a great and joyful laugh.

"Baroness Jilseponie," she corrected.

"What about yer Church friends?" Belster asked. "They're busy makin' Avelyn a saint now-should be done this very year-and are hopin' to open a new chapel in Caer Tinella. I'm thinkin' that Braumin's wantin' ye to head that chapel, girl, or at least to join with him in his Church."

Pony shook her head throughout the speech. "They will understand," she insisted. "I can do more good for the teachings of Avelyn as a secular leader than if I went into the Church, where I would have to fight every day for my survival in any position of power merely because I am a woman."

She looked to Roger mostly, for support, because he, above all others except for Bradwarden, knew her the best. And he was nodding and smiling.

This was the right course for her.

"I will have a place at Chasewind Manor for Belster," Pony promised, "and for Roger and Dainsey."

"And Bryan," Dainsey put in with an impish grin.

"Bryan?" Pony started to ask, and then, given the expressions worn by both Roger and Dainsey, she understood. Again came the hugs; and then Dainsey, leading Pony by the hand to the back room where little Bryan slept peacefully, detailed every moment of the child's birth and life thus far.

Jilseponie Wyndon left Dundalis a month later, after having sent word ahead to Palmaris requesting that King Danube honor his word and give the city to her as baroness. By the time she arrived in the city, Duke Tetrafel had long-and gladly-vacated Chasewind Manor.

Brynn Dharielle thought she had him beaten, a clever twist-thrustdisengage-and-thrust-again movement that seemed as if it had young Aydrian caught off balance.

But the disengage cut both ways, and as Brynn's slender blade knifed in for a low strike, Aydrian's slapped down atop it, driving the point to the ground. A twist of the wrist had the boy's sword tip at Brynn's throat.

"Finally," Aydrian said, for this was his first victory over the older ranger-in-training, a warrior the Touel'alfar regarded very highly. "Remarkable progress," Lady Dasslerond said to Belli'mar Juraviel, the two of them standing in the brush off to the side, unseen by the combatants. "His work is even more promising than that of young Brynn."

Juraviel nodded, finding it hard to disagree, given what had just happened on the field before them. He didn't know much of Aydrian, hadn't spent time with the boy, but from what he had heard, the child was possessed of an enormous amount of pride, and more than a bit of a temper. Those factors seemed to bother Lady Dasslerond not at all, though, for whenever Juraviel had mentioned them to her, or anything at all negative about the youngest ranger, she had merely labeled it "passion," and had gone about her business.

"It is time to begin the other side of his training," Lady Dasslerond remarked then, catching Juraviel off his guard.

"The gemstones?" he asked hesitantly.

Dasslerond nodded. "With the inclusion of magical prowess, he will become the most complete warrior the world has ever known," she said. "Greater than his father, greater than the original Aydrian, and greater even than Terranen Dinoniel."

"He is still young," Juraviel dared to say, but what he really wanted to scream out at his lady was that this one needed more than training with weapons and gemstones. That he needed emotional training, as well, some measure of the balance within his own thoughts and, more important, within his heart.

He didn't say that, though, because he knew that she wouldn't hear his words.

He listened then to Aydrian, taunting Brynn Dharielle and begging her for another fight so that he could "beat her again."

Belli'mar Juraviel had a very bad feeling about all this.