Brother Mars chewed his lip for a bit, trying to find some response to that reasonable claim. He turned back to Thaddius, to find that the small man had simply walked away.
Bishop Braumin Herde stood as if in a daze in the blasted and bloodied courtyard of St.-Mere-Abelle. All about him, his fellow monks worked frantically with magical hematite, the soul stones, to bring healing to scores, hundreds, of injured warriors who had done battle this dark day within the abbey and on the fields beyond her shattered gates. Those brothers didn’t ask the allegiance of those they healed; the battle had been settled in no uncertain terms when Prince Midalis and his closest allies had defeated King Aydrian.
Still, so many had died, and would die, and Braumin could only shake his head at the horrors of war, and all the misery that had plagued Honce-the-Bear in the last decades.
But in that darkness, Bishop Braumin had found, too, hope.
Now Midalis would be King of Honce-the-Bear — he already was in the eyes of those huddled about St.-Mere-Abelle. Indeed, even by Aydrian, who had laid claim to the throne!
Many times in the course of that morning, had those healing brothers turned to Bishop Braumin with their gemstones, and truly it appeared as if Braumin could use more of the soul stone magic. He was a muscular man, not tall and no longer young, having passed his fortieth year. Usually he seemed as solid as any, strong of frame and with determined features, but now his jaw hung crooked, and Bishop Braumin stood crooked, favoring ribs that had been pulverized by the heavy kick of Marcalo De’Unnero. He was missing a few teeth from the right side of his mouth, too, from a punch that had knocked him nearly senseless.
De’Unnero had almost killed him with that strike; indeed, that apostate monk could hit with the force of a fomorian giant!
What a day it had been! Four armies joined in furious combat on the fields about the ancient and huge monastery.
What a day it had been! A dragon — a true dragon! — had crashed through the huge circular stained glass window of the great foyer of St.-Mere-Abelle, only to be thrown back out by the demonic power of Aydrian possessed, a bolt of searing white lightning that seemed as if it was still resonating within the deep stones of the high seaside cliff wall that held St.-Mere-Abelle.
What a day it had been! The great warrior, the ranger Nightbird, had been pulled from the grave and summoned halfway across Honce by the dark power of Aydrian, to fight by Aydrian’s side as a horrid zombie.
But love had conquered the darkness of demonic powers, and Elbryan Wyndon, the ranger the elves had named Nightbird, had been coaxed from his state of undeath by Jilseponie, the wonderful Pony, the woman who had loved him for so many years, the woman who had been his wife, and who had given birth to his child soon after his death those two decades before.
And that child, tainted by the demon dactyl, had taken the throne of Honce-the-Bear. By sheer force and unrivaled power, that child had become King Aydrian.
Bishop Braumin Herde had watched the conclusion of the titanic battle within the monastery this day. Laid low by Aydrian’s second, the apostate De’Unnero, the Bishop had managed to hold onto consciousness just enough to witness the glory, the beauty, of Elbryan and Pony expelling the demon from their son’s heart and soul.
And so the battle had ended, so abruptly. De’Unnero was dead, killed by Pony, as was the woman, the bard, who had come in beside De’Unnero and Aydrian. Indeed, for some reason Bishop Braumin had not yet discerned, De’Unnero himself had killed the woman in the last fleeting moments of his own life.
And the demon was gone, expelled from this young man it had taken as host. The light had returned to the shining eyes of young Ardrian Wyndon, but with it, too, had come the sorrow of great regret. Bishop Braumin glanced over at the broken young man, sitting in the shadow of the wall with the centaur, Bradwarden, and Belli-mar Juraviel of the Touel’alfar.
“A centaur,” Braumin whispered. “And an elf, with wings, fighting for St.-Mere-Abelle.” He shook his head.
What a day it had been!
What might brothers reading the accounts of this battle a century hence think of the tale, he wondered? Would the reclusive elves, the Touel’alfar and the Doc’alfar, certain to return to their hidden lands and magical shadows, be forgotten again in the lands of men by that time? Would the rare centaurs be no more, again, than fireside tales?
And would the lessons of the travesty of Aydrian Boudabras be forgotten, only to be painfully realized once more in the land of Honce?
With that dark thought in mind, Bishop Braumin moved a bit closer to eavesdrop on the two most important people in Honce, Prince Midalis who would soon be King, and Pony, perhaps the most powerful person in the world (and if not her, then surely her son Aydrian, who was under her control once more, it seemed).
“I have so much to do, so much to repair,” he heard Midalis admit to Pony, and it was hard to dispute the remark, for not far from where they stood, many of Midalis’s soldiers piled the dead beside a hole that would become a common grave.
So many dead.
“You have pardoned Duke Kalas?” Pony asked him.
“It will be done,” the soon-to-be King replied. “In time. I want him to consider long and hard all that he has done. But yes, I will pardon him. I will invite him into my Court, to serve me as he served my brother. He was deceived by Aydrian…”
Braumin held his breath as Pony’s eyes flashed, but Midalis calmed her with a warm smile
“He was deceived by the same demon that stole from you your son,” he corrected, and Pony nodded.
“A wise choice,” Pony replied. “Vengeance breeds resentment.”
How true, Bishop Braumin silently noted, for that lesson would be something that he would need to keep in mind in the coming days, he knew, and he feared. He would have to rise above his very human emotions.
“Jilseponie would serve me well,” he heard Midalis say, drawing him from his contemplation.
Pony smiled and managed a little laugh. Braumin held his breath, knowing what was coming. “Jilseponie is dead,” she said, and though it was a joke, Braumin couldn’t miss the fact that her expression became more serious suddenly, as if she noted some definite truth in her own words, an epiphany she would not escape.
And how it pained the gentle monk to hear such talk from this woman!
“Twice I have personally cheated death,” Pony went on. “In the Moorlands and on the beach of Pireth Dancard. I should have died, but Elbryan would not let me.”
“Then credit Elbryan with saving the kingdom,” Midalis was quick to say.
“But that was not his purpose,” Pony explained. “He saved me to save my son, and so I shall. And then I will join him. As I rightfully should have already joined him.”
Midalis stammered for a response, and Braumin surely understood that shock, given the woman’s startling remarks. This woman, Pony, the most powerful gemstone user in the world, trained and skilled in the elven sword dance, a woman who was younger by perhaps a decade than Braumin Herde, had just claimed that she would not live much longer!
“You will leave us now?” Braumin heard Midalis ask when he turned his focus back to the conversation, and the monk held his breath. He did not want her to go.
“My time here is ended,” Pony replied. She hugged Midalis. “Rule well — I know you shall! For me, I will spend my time in Dundalis, back home again. How long ago, it seems, when Elbryan and I would run carelessly about the caribou moss, awaiting the hunters’ return or hoping for a glimpse of the Halo.”
Pony stepped back and motioned to the side, to her son and his two companions sitting in the shade of the wall.
Braumin’s gaze went that way. The centaur stood up — Pony had healed his broken leg so completely that he barely limped now, only hours later. Yet another reminder of the power of this woman, Braumin thought.