Robert Salvatore: Mortalis

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.