"ITHINK ITbetter to skirt the city," De'Unnero said to Sadye as they crested a hill and came in sight of the mighty city of Ursal, the many sails beyond the docks and the great castle and abbey set on the hill facing the water.
"You fear that Aydrian will hear talk of his mother the queen," Sadye reasoned, and both glanced back at Aydrian and Symphony, who were just crossing the gully behind them.
"I fear that he will hear things from the wrong perspective," De'Unnero explained. "He is ready to learn the truth, I think, but not the adoring lies that would inevitably accompany that truth on the streets of Jilseponie's city." He looked back at Aydrian again. "Come here, lad," he said. "Come and see the greatest city in all the world."
Aydrian hardly had to urge Symphony forward, the great stallion picking up the pace as soon as he hit the upward slope. The awe on Aydrian's face was visible when he, too, saw the view of Ursal, his eyes wide, his smile bright. Almost without thinking, he urged Symphony on, but De'Unnero caught the horse's rein and held him back.
"Are we not going in?" a surprised Aydrian asked.
"Not now," De'Unnero answered. "We have business to the east. Important business. It would not do well to reveal ourselves within Ursal at this time."
Those last words caught Aydrian's attention and he looked at the former monk curiously.
"You see the castle?" De'Unnero asked.
"How could I not?" Aydrian asked with a grin.
"Tell me again of your mother," De'Unnero prompted, and Aydrian's smile disappeared.
"I know nothing of her, not even her name," the young ranger remarked sourly. "She died in childbirth. . . ."
"No, she did not," said De'Unnero.
Aydrian's face went stone cold.
"I confirmed it when we were in Dundalis," De'Unnero lied, for he did not want Aydrian to figure out that he had been lying to him, by omission at least, since first they met. "It is as I suspected, confirmed by reliable sources. Your father, Nightbird, had but one lover, one wife, and she did not die when you were born, though surely the world would have been spared much misery if she had."
Sadye winced at those harsh words.
"Do you see the castle, lad?" De'Unnero asked again. "There is your mother, Jilseponie, queen of Honce-the-Bear."
"W-what?" the stunned young man stammered, and he swayed as if he might fall off his horse.
"Jilseponie, once the wife of Elbryan and now the wife of King Danube Brock Ursal," De'Unnero explained." 'Twas she who gave birth to you on a battle-ravaged field outside Palmaris. There can be no doubt."
"But Lady Dasslerond - "
"Lied to you," De'Unnero finished. "Does that surprise you?"
Aydrian started to respond, then stopped, then started again, but just shook his head, his words trailing away into grunts and soft moans.
"You missed nothing through your ignorance, I assure you," said De'Unnero.
Aydrian turned on him sharply; and Sadye, positioning her horse behind the young ranger, flashed De'Unnero a sour expression and shook her head slowly, trying to tell the eager former monk that he was pushing too hard, too fast.
"But enough," De'Unnero said abruptly, throwing up his hands. "Look upon the castle, young warrior. Castle Ursal, the home of Jilseponie, your mother. Look upon it and hold faith that it will one day be yours."
The ranger held fast his angry and hurt posture and expression, but there was no mistaking the flash, the gleam, that flickered behind his eyes at those tantalizing words.
"You will live to hear Jilseponie call you king," De'Unnero promised. "And to have her explain to you her actions those years ago - when you are in a position of power, when she must tell you the truth.
"But you still have much to learn, about the world and about Jilseponie," De'Unnero went on. "I will teach you. I will tell you everything about Queen Jilseponie."
He motioned for the others to follow, then kicked his horse into a trot, taking a route south skirting the great city. True to his word, Marcalo De'Unnero did tell Aydrian about Jilseponie over the next days, as the trio made their way across the rolling southern expanse of Honce-the- Bear, fertile Yorkey County. But unlike his tales of Aydrian's father - for De'Unnero held Elbryan in high regard and had spoken of the man as a respected rival - his views of Jilseponie were less than complimentary. No, De'Unnero spoke of the woman in the most cynical and jaded terms he could find, claiming that she used tricks instead of honor in personal battles, and even hinting to Aydrian that she likely had abandoned him at birth.
"By your words, I would think that Jilseponie was a more-hated enemy of yours than was Nightbird himself," Sadye remarked when she and De'Unnero were alone, setting camp that evening, having sent Aydrian out to gather firewood. "And what you label as tricks in battle was nothing more than gemstone magic use, was it not? Not unlike the magical tiger's paw that Marcalo De'Unnero has ever favored."
De'Unnero laughed at her. "It is important that the boy feel no bonds to his mother," he explained. "The fact that he is the son of the Queen could bring us great disaster or great success - it is how we present that situation to Aydrian that may well determine which."
"The angry young prince comes home?" Sadye asked.
"The angry young prince tears down the home," De'Unnero replied slyly, "and rebuilds it in a better manner." He saw then the clouds of doubt passing over Sadye's face. "What I tell him is true enough."
"From your perspective," she replied.
"Is there any other honest perspective I might offer?" De'Unnero asked. "Am I to claim that Jilseponie and Avelyn are the light and the truth? Am I to agree with the preposterous notion that somehow Avelyn Desbris, the murderer and heretic, truly brought forth the miracles others have attributed to him? Am I to praise the present state of the kingdom? Of the Church? What then for us? Outcasts and outlaws?"
"The politics of personal gain?" Sadye asked.
"Is that not the current situation?" De'Unnero was quick to respond. "Fio Bou-raiy is the father abbot of the Abellican Church, something that never should have happened. The man is no great leader and no true Abellican. He has neither the generous heart of Agronguerre nor the glorious vision of Markwart. He is a bureaucrat and nothing more, a schemer of the greatest measure, hardly trustworthy, hardly worthy in any sense of the word."
Sadye gave a sly smile. "Pray, do not embellish your words," she said sarcastically. "Tell me bluntly how you feel."
De'Unnero gave a self-deprecating chuckle, only then realizing how strongly he disliked Fio Bou-raiy. "Abbot Olin of Entel should have succeeded Agronguerre, without doubt," he said calmly. "Only the politics of personal gain prevented that ascension. You cannot imagine the depths of intrigue among the members of St.-Mere-Abelle's hierarchy. It is all a game, and one hardly related to the teachings of St. Abelle and the intentions of God."
"And if we must play such a game, then better that we play to win," Sadye agreed.
"Aydrian will rightfully despise his mother and all that she has come to represent," De'Unnero remarked. "In the Church, at least," he added, "and if in the State, as well, then so be it."
Sadye nodded and offered no more questions that hinted at dissent. For whatever she might think of De'Unnero's current tactics concerning the boy, she knew that she was enjoying this.
They kept the distant skyline of the Belt-and-Buckle Mountains on their right always, and kept the setting sun at their backs, traveling at a swift but easy pace. They smelled the sea before they saw it,and then saw, too, another mighty city, though very different from Ursal, with low and ornate stone buildings built on many levels of the long sloping hillside that led down to the enormous docks - docks more extensive than those of Palmaris and Ursal combined! Twisting pillars rose everywhere, their tops buttressed by round-edged balconies, and top walls delicately bending together into a point, like a closed flower waiting to blossom.
And the colors! Pink and white stone, shining brilliantly in the southern sun, adorned every structure. All of the folk - and there seemed thousands and thousands of them clamoring about the many markets - wore bright white robes or many-colored and vivid outfits.
That was the thing that struck Aydrian most of all about his first view of Entel: the colors and the bustle.
He went into the city beside his companions, wide-eyed and mesmerized.
Marcalo De'Unnero's expression was not so innocent, though he was no less eager than the young ranger, wondering how he might be greeted after all these years by his old friend - or comrade, at least - Abbot Olin.
"He will speak with me," De'Unnero insisted to the brothers standing vigilant before the doors of St. Bondabruce, the larger of the two abbeys in Entel.
"Good sir," said one of the young brothers in his thick Entel accent, which made the word "good" sound more like "gude." "Abbot Olin is not in the habit of allowing personal meetings. You may enter and pray - our doors are ever open - and if you attend the eventide service, you might catch sight of the good abbot, should he choose to grace us this evening."
"Announce me," said De'Unnero, working very hard to keep calm. "Tell him that an old friend, a former master of St.-Mere-Abelle, has come to speak with him. He will see me."
The two brothers glanced at each other, wearing skeptical expressions. "The only former masters of St.-Mere-Abelle that I know of are Father Abbot Bou-raiy, Abbot Glendenhook of St. Gwendolyn, and Abbot Tengemen of St. Donnybar. You are not Father Abbot Bou-raiy, obviously, nor Glendenhook, who has visited us before. That would leave Abbot Tengemen, though I have been told that he is nearing his seventieth birthday. Pray, good sir, no more of this foolishness."
De'Unnero came forward suddenly, grabbing the surprised brother to hold him steady and whispered harshly into his ear. "Tell Abbot Olin that Marcalo De'Unnero has come to speak with him."
The brother pulled away and stepped back, staring at De'Unnero, his expression showing some recognition of the name, but nothing substantial.
"He will speak with me," De'Unnero said. When the younger brother didn't begin to move, he fixed him with a threatening stare. "If you go to Abbot Olin, and he refuses me an audience, then you will have lost nothing. But if you do not go to Abbot Olin, and he later learns that an old friend and colleague was turned away without his even being given the opportunity to see him . . ."
The confused young brother looked to his companion, who nodded, and then he went into the abbey. A few moments later, he returned, seeming flustered. "You will open your tunic," the man instructed. "If you are who you say . . ."
"Then I must have this scar," De'Unnero answered, pulling wide his shirt, "from a wound received when the powries came to St.-Mere-Abelle."
There were the scars from that long-ago fight, and the young brother bowed and motioned for De'Unnero to follow.
"You do not know enough about the history of Marcalo De'Unnero to question me for authenticity before going to Abbot Olin?" De'Unnero asked the man. When the young brother merely shrugged and continued on his way, De'Unnero grabbed his shoulder, stopping him abruptly and turning him.
"How old are you?" he demanded.
"Twenty and two," the brother answered.
"It was not that long ago," De'Unnero insisted, and he could not keep the sharp pain out of his voice. To think that he, and the momentous events that had so shaped the present-day kingdom, could be so easily forgotten! And by a brother of the Abellican Order, the Church dedicated to preserving history!
The young brother stared at him wide-eyed, obviously having no idea of how he should respond.
"Take me to Abbot Olin," De'Unnero said firmly and with disgust.
He hardly recognized the man when he entered Olin's private audience chamber, a second poignant reminder to De'Unnero that many years had passed since their days of battle, since the days when Markwart had tried to bring the Abellican Church to new and greater heights, only to be thwarted by Jilseponie and Elbryan in Chasewind Manor. Old, his hair thin and stark white, and bent over his desk, hunchbacked Abbot Olin Gentille appeared much more frail than De'Unnero remembered him. That is, until the old man looked up.
The fires were there, De'Unnero clearly saw. Angry, simmering. Olin's physical frailties hid well that energy within, but in merely looking into those blazing eyes, Marcalo De'Unnero knew that he had been wise to come here, knew that this angry old man would prove a valuable ally.
"Unbelievable," Abbot Olin muttered.
"That I am alive? Or that I dare to come out into the open once more?" De'Unnero asked.
"Both," said Olin. "The fallen bishop, the fallen leader of the Brothers Repentant, who revealed himself as the weretiger, and thus, likely, the murderer of Baron Bildeborough. And here you are, alive still, when so many others, whose roads seemed so much easier, have long ago fallen."
"Perhaps it is the will of God," said De'Unnero, and though he was only half joking, Abbot Olin burst out into cackling laughter.
"God abandoned the world long ago," the old man said. And De'Unnero couldn't keep the surprise from his face - or his joy at hearing Olin speaking such blasphemous words.
"God tries us to the limits of our tolerance," De'Unnero replied.
"Beyond those limits," muttered Olin.
"To the weak," De'Unnero was quick to counter. "Because those who break and fail are not deserving of the ultimate triumph at the end. Have you broken, Abbot Olin?"
The old man stared at him skeptically. "Why are you here?" he asked. "Why is Marcalo De'Unnero even still alive?"
Now it was De'Unnero's turn to laugh, but when he finished, he came forward suddenly, leaning his hands on Abbot Olin's desk, putting his very serious face close to the old man's equally intense one. "Because it is not over," De'Unnero said ominously, "because we have gone astray, far astray, and I intend to fight to my last breath to bring the Church back to the proper path."
"That again?" Olin cried in response. "Are we back to rehashing the follies of Markwart? He lost, the ambitious fool, and was discredited. There is no going back. Neither the Church nor the people would allow it."
"And so you believe that the Church's present incarnation is correct?" De'Unnero asked skeptically. "The election of Fio Bou-raiy to father abbot was proper, a position the man deserved?" He noted Olin's futile attempt to hide his scowl at that painful reminder.
"It was the decision of the College of Abbots," the old man replied, his lips very tight. "I have no choice but to accept it."
De'Unnero wore a perfectly awful smile then, and he leaned forward even further and whispered. "Suppose that I could offer you a choice?"
Olin pulled back and sat up as straight as his battered old body could manage. He crossed his hands before him and stared at De'Unnero for many minutes without so much as blinking.
"I've no time for this," the old abbot said at length. "I am surprised and amused, I must admit, to see you alive and to see you here. You must understand that the Church would never deign to allow you any voice. The Church would not even allow you back in as a simple member, despite their claims of the hope of redemption. Do you know that Jilseponie is the queen of Honce-the-Bear? Do you know that she is also a sovereign sister of St. Honce - and some claim that since Abbot Ohwan's unexplained departure from the abbey she has assumed some degree of control there? Do you know that Avelyn is now formally beatified? Well on his way to a sainthood with at least two miracles sanctioned by the Church?"
De'Unnero nodded through it all, and his smug agreement only seemed to infuriate Olin - another sign that the old man's bitterness was deeply entrenched. "How much do you hate them?" De'Unnero asked quietly, and Olin bit back the rest of his speech and stared hard and incredulously.
"How much?" De'Unnero pressed. "You despise Fio Bou-raiy - you always have. And while you were no big supporter of Markwart, you knew that he was essentially right, that the Church had grown soft before he took action, and is grown soft again. The gentle shepherds," De'Unnero said with biting sarcasm. "It is a road of tolerance that will lead to loss of faith. It is a road along which we build shrines to murderers like Avelyn and elevate simple whores like Jilseponie to greatness. Do not look so surprised, Abbot Olin! I speak only that which you already know, that which you would like to scream from the bell tower of St. Bondabruce. How different would the Abellican Church now be if Olin had been elected father abbot, as he should have been? Would Jilseponie now be a sovereign sister?"
"No!" the man replied sharply, slamming his hands on his desk, all pretense of composure flown. "Never that!"
"Then let us change it," De'Unnero remarked, his conniving smile returning. "Let us take the whole of the Church, and of the kingdom, and steer it back to the proper course."
"How?" the old man asked, his tone full of doubt, even ridicule. "Has your body survived while your mind has withered? Are you the opposite of broken Olin?"
"I have not journeyed to Entel alone," De'Unnero explained. "I rode in alongside one who carries the sword of Elbryan, the bow of Elbryan, and a direct bloodline to the throne, though his mother does not even know he exists."
"What nonsense - "
"He is the son of Jilseponie and Elbryan, strong with sword and gemstones," De'Unnero declared.
"The Queen has no son," Olin protested.
"But she does," De'Unnero replied. "The child thought lost when she battled Father Abbot Markwart. He lives."
"And you have spent the last decade and more with him?" Olin asked.
"I found him only recently," De'Unnero admitted, "and quite by accident. As sure a sign from God as Marcalo De'Unnero has ever witnessed. Aydrian, the boy, has provided me the opportunity to return and the proof I needed to understand that my fight was not in vain and, more important, was not in error."
"How can you be so certain of his identity?" asked the obviously intrigued Olin.
"I know," said De'Unnero, "from his power with the gemstones to his skill with the blade. He was taken by the Touel'alfar and trained by them."
"Then he is akin to his father, and no ally of Marcalo De'Unnero," said Olin.
De'Unnero's grin showed Olin that he could not be more wrong.
"What do you propose?" Olin asked after a long silence. "How might an undeclared, unknown child who is not of Danube's blood offer us anything we might use to bring about any of the changes you say you desire? Are you wasting my time, Marcalo De'Unnero, and offering me things that are impossible?"
De'Unnero pulled up a chair then, and spent the rest of the day speaking with Olin, but only in general terms, sharing a vision of the Church and the world that he knew the old man would embrace, despite his reluctance and his doubts. He didn't reveal his second secret to the abbot, concerning the parchments he had kept all these years and now had rolled up beneath his tunic.
When they finished, Abbot Olin spent a long time sitting in his chair, staring and thinking. "I will see what I might learn," he at last agreed. "Though I understand not at all how any of this will make a difference in the world. We agree that things are not as we would desire - "
"Are not as God would desire," De'Unnero interrupted, and his words brought a burst of laughter from Abbot Olin.
"Do you doubt?"
"Do I believe that there is a God who cares?" Olin replied.
It was De'Unnero's turn to sit back and take a more informed measure of this man across the desk from him. He had come in here thinking to appeal to the piousness he had always thought to be within Abbot Olin, to elevate the discussion, the plan, to the level of a holy crusade. Had he miscalculated? He looked hard at Olin, then, and finally asked, and bluntly, "Does it matter?"
"Return to me tomorrow, after vespers," said Olin, and De'Unnero took his leave.
" 'But hear ye all and scribe in stone,' " Abbot Olin read from a parchment spread upon his desk the moment De'Unnero entered his private audience hall the next night and the escort went away. " 'That should Jilseponie bear a child, then that child, male or female, will enter the line of succession immediately behind me, above even Prince Midalis of Vanguard.' " Olin looked up, smiling. "So declared King Danube Brock Ursal on the day of his wedding to Jilseponie."
Marcalo De'Unnero's eyes sparkled as he digested the words - a declaration more promising than anything he could have ever hoped to hear. "What else did King Danube say concerning the offspring of Jilseponie?" he asked, seeming almost afraid of the answer.
"Nothing," said Olin. "Since he believed, as we all believed, that Jilseponie had never borne a child, he saw no need to address that potential problem. And since he believed then and still believes that she would never betray him - and even if she did, the rumors seem true that the woman is barren."
"He said nothing more because there was nothing more to be said," De'Unnero summed up. "But what does this truly mean? Those words would never be accepted in context given this extraordinary situation."
"Your companion will not ascend the throne without a war," Olin assured De'Unnero. "But in the event of King Danube's demise, your companion does have a claim to the throne, one that will be decided by the noble court or by battle."
De'Unnero sat back in his seat, reminding himself that patience was the key to all this. He had an idea, a long-term plan to bring Aydrian to prominence and to ride that wave to his own redemption, and Olin's information certainly allowed that plan to continue. Nothing more.
"How many know of the boy's parentage?" Olin asked earnestly. At that moment, De'Unnero understood that the old man's hesitance was a defensive measure and that in truth Olin had embraced De'Unnero's promise with all his heart.
"Four," De'Unnero answered, "including the boy and including you."
"And so you are left with a secret," Olin then remarked, "a potent one, but one that, I suspect, will bring you nothing but another . . ."
De'Unnero's smug expression and movement, the former monk reaching under the folds of his tunic, gave Olin pause.
De'Unnero pulled forth the parchments and tossed them onto Olin's desk.
"What are these?" the old abbot asked, unrolling them, and recognizing them as navigational charts of the great Mirianic.
"The way to a treasure that mocks the coffers of King Danube himself," said De'Unnero. "The way to Pimaninicuit."
Olin's glowing eyes seemed as if they would fall out of their sockets. "How?" he sputtered. "Why have you . . . what can you hope . . ." He looked up, shaking his head in complete disbelief.
"Consider the riches that lie beneath the sands of Pimaninicuit," De'Unnero remarked, "centuries, millennia, of gemstones fallen from the Halo."
"They have not been blessed, and so are no longer magical," Olin countered.
"Do they have to be?" asked De'Unnero. "Is an emerald a thing without value if it is not possessed of magical powers?"
Abbot Olin pushed the parchments back De'Unnero's way. "This is forbidden," he declared, obviously terrified by the prospect.
"By whom?"
"Church canon!" Olin cried. "Since the beginning of time. Since the days of St. Abelle!"
"Does it matter?" De'Unnero replied, mimicking Olin's tone from the previous day's discussion when the conversation had turned to the matter of God.
Olin spent a long while considering his reply, and the maps on the desk before him. "What do you ask of me?" he asked quietly. "And what are your plans?"
"You have ties to the sailors," De'Unnero replied. "I will need ships for this journey - fear not, for if there is trouble, your name will not surface."
"How many ships?"
"As many as I can muster," De'Unnero replied. "For each will return with a king's treasure in its hold, the funds we will need to raise an army, the funds we will need, when the time is upon us, to bring Aydrian to the throne of Honce-the-Bear."
"And then use that gain to reshape the Church," Olin reasoned.
De'Unnero only smiled.
"King Danube is a younger man than I," said Olin, "by decades, not years. I will not outlive him."
The sinister De'Unnero only smiled again.