Robert Salvatore: Mortalis

"I'm not feelin' good, Mum," the girl admitted.

"Come on, then. I'll get ye to bed and get ye some soup to warm ye," the woman said, taking Brennilee by the wrist.

"But the chickens…"

"The chickens'll get theirs after ye're warm in yer bed," Merry Cowsenfed started to say, turning back with a wide, warm smile for her daughter.

Her smile evaporated when she saw on the little girl's arm a rosy spot encircled by a white ring.

Merry Cowsenfed composed herself quickly for her daughter's sake, and brought the arm up for closer inspection. "Did ye hurt yerself, then?" she asked the girl, and there was no mistaking the hopeful tone of her question.

"No," Brennilee replied, and she moved her face closer, too, to see what was so interesting to her mother.

Merry studied the rosy spot for just a moment. "Ye go to bed now," she instructed. "Ye pull only the one sheet over ye, so that ye're not overheatin' with the little fever ye got."

"Am I going to get sicker? " Brennilee asked innocently.

Merry painted a smile on her face. "No, ye'U be fine, me girl," she lied, and she knew indeed how great a lie it was! " Now get ye to bed and I'll be bringing ye yer soup."

Brennilee smiled. As soon as she was out of the room, Merry Cowsenfed collapsed into a great sobbing ball of fear.

She'd have to get the Falidean town healer to come quickly and see the girl. She reminded herself repeatedly that she'd need a wiser person than she to confirm her suspicion, that it might be something altogether different: a spider bite or a bruise from one of the sharp rocks that Brennilee was forever scrambling across. It was too soon for such terror, Merry Cowsenfed told herself repeatedly.

Ring around the rosy.

It was an old song in Falidean town, as in most of the towns of Honcethe-Bear.

It was a song about the plague. Was the victory worth the cost?

It pains me even to speak those words aloud, and, in truth, the question seems to reflect a selfishness, an attitude disrespectful to the memory of all those who gave their lives battling the darkness that had come to Corona. If I wish Elbryan back alive-and Avelyn and so many others-am I diminishing their sacrifice? I was there with Elhryan, joined in spirit, bonded to stand united against the demon dactyl that had come to reside in the corporeal form of father Abbot Markwart. I watched and felt Elbryan's spirit dimmish and dissipate into nothingness even as I witnessed the breaking of the blackness, the destruction of Bestesbulzibar.

And I felt, too, Elbryan's willingness to make the sacrifice, his desire to see the battle through to the only acceptable conclusion, even though that victory, he knew, would take his life. He was a ranger, trained by the Touel'alfar, a servant and protector of mankind, and those tenets demanded of him responsibility and the greatest altruism.

And so he died contented, in the knowledge that he had lifted the blackness from the Church and the land.

All our lives together, since I had returned to Dundalis and found Elbryan, had been one of willing sacrifice, of risk taking. How many battles did we fight, even though we might have avoided them? We walked to the heart of the dactyl, to Mount Aida in the Karbacan, though we truly believed that to be a hopeless road, though we fully expected that all of us would die, and likely in vain, in our attempt to battle an evil that seemed so very far beyond us. And yet we went. Willingly. With hope, and with the understanding that we had to do this thing, whatever the cost, for the betterment of the world.

It came full circle that day in Chasewind Manor, when finally, finally, we caught, not the physical manifestation of Kestesbulzibar, but rather the demon's spirit, the very essence of evil. We won the day, shattering that evil.

But was the victory worth the cost?

I look back on the last few years of my life, and I cannot discount that question. I remember all the good people, all the great people, who passed from this world in the course of the journey that led me to this point, and, at times, it seems to me to be a great and worthless waste.

I know that I dishonor Elbryan and likely anger his ghost with these emotions, but they are very real.

We battled, we fought, we gave of ourselves all that we could and more. Most of all, though, it seems to me as if we've spent the bulk of time burying our dead. Even that cost, I had hoped, would prove worthwhile in those few shining moments after I awakened from my battle with the demon spirit, in the proclamations of Brother Francis, of Brother Braumin, and of the King himself that Elbryan had not died in vain, that the world, because of our actions, would, he a better place. I dared to hope that my love's sacrifice, that our sacrifice, would be enough, would turn the tide of humankind and better the world for all.

Is Honce-the-Bear better off for the fall ofMarkwart?

With sudden response, the answer seems obvious; in that shining moment of clarity and hope, the answer seemed obvious.

That moment, I fear, has passed. In the fog of confusion, in the shifting and shoving for personal gain, in the politics of court and Church, that moment of glory, of sadness, and of hope has diminished into bickering.

Like Elbryan s spirit, it becomes something less than substantial and drifts away on unseen winds.

And I am left alone in Palmaris, watching the world descend into chaos. Demon inspired? Perhaps, or perhaps-and this is my greatest fear-this confusion is merely the nature of humankind, as eternal as the human spirit, an unending cycle of pain and sacrifice, a series of brilliant, twinkling hopes that fade as surely as do the stars at dawn. Did I, and Elbryan, bring the world through its darkness, or did we merely guide it safely through one long night, with another sure to follow?

That is my fear and my belief. When I sit and remember all those who gave their lives so that we could walk this road to its end, I fear that we have merely returned to the beginning of that same path.

In light of that understanding, I say with conviction that the victory was not worth the cost.

— Jilseponie Wyndon

The mud sucked at his boots as he walked along the narrow, smoky corridor, a procession of armored soldiers in step behind him. The conditions were not to his liking-he didn't want his "prisoners" growing obstinate, after all.

Around a bend in the tunnel the light increased and the air cleared, and before Duke Targon Bree Kalas loomed a wider and higher chamber, its one entrance securely barred. Kalas motioned to a soldier behind him, and the man hustled forward, fumbling with keys and hastily unlocking the cell door. Other soldiers tried to slip by, to enter the cell protectively before their leader, but Kalas slapped them back and strode in.

A score of dwarvish faces turned his way, the normally ruddy-complexioned powries seeming a bit paler after months imprisoned underground.

Kalas studied those faces carefully, noting the narrowing of eyes, a reflection, he knew, of seething hatred. It wasn't that the powries hated him particularly, but rather that they merely hated any human.

Again, almost as one, the dwarves turned away from him, back to their conversations and myriad games they had invented to pass the tedious hours.

One of the soldiers began calling them to attention, but Duke Kalas cut him short and waved him and the others back. Then he stood by the door, calmly, patiently letting them come to him.

"Yach, it's to wait all the damned day if we isn't to spake with it," one powrie said at last. The creature removed its red beret-a cap shining bright with the blood of its victims-and scratched its itchy, lice-filled hair, then replaced the cap and hopped up, striding to stand before the Duke.