R. Salvatore - The Bear

"You have seen the truth of the war, then," Bannagran said. "Laird Ethelbert cannot win, and so you have betrayed him to win my graces."

It wasn't a question, but stated as fact, and in a tone growing darker and more intense. Cormack glanced at Milkeila, who merely shrugged. When he turned back to Bannagran, he saw that the man was standing, towering over him, though Cormack was much taller, with a hateful look in his eyes.

"You think to impress me with treachery?" Bannagran fumed.

"Treachery?"

"That you wish to change your allegiance is for your own conscience, but to so deceive a laird-"

"No, Laird Bannagran!" Milkeila interrupted, and Cormack was glad that she did, for he could see that this ball of anger was gathering speed, rolling down the hill like an avalanche. And with Laird Bannagran facilitating that fall, surely it would prove no less deadly.

"We come as emissaries to promote the cause of alliance," Milkeila went on.

"Dame Gwydre beside Bannagran of Pryd," Cormack added, "and with the Order of Blessed Abelle supporting their cause against King Yeslnik."

"Emissaries with a gift," Bannagran said.

"Not gained through treachery," Cormack explained. "Not our own, in any case. This man and a companion attacked us on the road. If there was treachery afoot, it was-"

"Ethelbert's," Bannagran finished for him.

"Laird Ethelbert!" cried Wahloon, and that earned him another heavy slap that staggered him into Cormack.

On a motion from Bannagran, a pair of guards rushed up to the man and dragged him away.

"Laird Ethelbert tried to kill you, then?" Bannagran asked. "Perhaps he is not as fond of your Dame Gwydre as you believe."

"If it was Ethelbert," said Milkeila.

"That is one of his assassins, is it not?"

"It is," Cormack replied. "But it is senseless for Laird Ethelbert to try to kill us, even as we support his cause-likely his only hope-to Bannagran of Pryd."

"Then what?"

"I know not," said Cormack.

"Ethelbert's court divided?" Bannagran asked, and Cormack could only hold up his empty hands.

Bannagran gave a wicked little chuckle. "We will learn soon enough," he promised, and he waved the guards to drag Wahloon to the dungeons.

"Laird Bannagran, I protest!" said Master Reandu, coming in the door just as Wahloon was being taken out.

Bannagran dropped his face into his hands and sighed.

"They come to us as emissaries, under a flag of truce!" Reandu continued, rushing forward to Cormack's side.

"Truly, he squeezes the blood from my heart," Bannagran whispered to Cormack and Milkeila just before the sputtering Reandu arrived on the spot.

"You remember Cormack and his wife, Milkeila," Bannagran said before Reandu could launch into another diatribe. Reandu glanced at the couple and still seemed ready to erupt, but his expression soon enough changed to one of curiosity as he clearly saw that the two weren't bound.

"We brought the assassin in as a prisoner," Cormack explained.

Master Reandu turned his curious expression to Bannagran.

"It is a long tale they can tell to you at your chapel," Bannagran said, and he waved for more attendants to escort them all out.

"Laird, I beg you to reconsider your course," Cormack pleaded. "Dame Gwydre is noble in heart and mind. The cause of the Order of Blessed Abelle is just."

His voice rose as he was pulled back from the throne.

"My laird, please," Cormack called.

"My course is to kill powries, monk," Bannagran called back at him. "There is no course more just than that!" To Reandu he added, "Keep them in your chapel. I will call for you shortly, as soon as I have spoken to the prisoner."

"Spoken to?" the monk asked suspiciously, for he had seen Bannagran's dungeon.

"With all the respect due an assassin, I promise," said the laird, and before Reandu could answer, another guard, acting on Bannagran's wave, shut the heavy oaken door in his face.

As soon as his spirit entered the realm of Brother Giavno, Bransen found himself enmeshed in a spinning and confusing jumble of opposing thoughts and wants and emotions. It wasn't an internal argument, of the kind every man experienced, and not based in simple puzzlement or torn loyalties or fear of unexpected consequences. No, this jumble was more akin to swirling thoughts and demands, unrelated to and seemingly unaware of contradictory notions moving right beside them, even merging with them.

Chaos, Bransen thought. Pure and unblemished chaos. He tried to search further but found himself distracted, and when he tried to examine the distraction, he found himself distracted again, in an entirely new direction.

Bransen rushed back through the soul stone portal, back into his own body, and opened his eyes. He stood and rubbed his face and shook his head.

"What do you know?" Brother Pinower asked, startling Bransen, who was unaware that the monk had entered the dark room. "What did you see?"

Bransen took a deep breath and tried to formulate some cogent response. What had he seen? He had sensed the identity of Brother Giavno, a man he knew fairly well from their travels in Alpinador and Vanguard, inside the tumultuous swirl of discordant thoughts.

Images of blowing desert sands and dome-topped shining marble structures, pink and white and some covered in gold, flashed in Bransen's mind-little specks of the southern kingdom of Behr, he knew, for he had seen the same type of architecture, on a far lesser scale, in Ethelbert dos Entel.

"Had Brother Giavno traveled to Behr?" he asked aloud, though he was speaking to himself.

"To Alpinador but never south of Pollcree that I have heard," Brother Pinower replied, and again his voice somewhat startled Bransen.

"Spiritually," Bransen clarified. "Is it possible that he flew his soul all the way to the desert lands?"

Brother Pinower's face screwed up for a moment. He shook his head but then merely shrugged. "He was not assigned to any such thing. His mission this night was to find Cormack and Milkeila and learn, perhaps, of their progress. Nothing more."

Bransen considered the words and thought of the last time he had met with Cormack and Milkeila. They accompanied people who would know of such sights as those he had found inside the spinning memories within Brother Giavno. Was it possible that there truly was another entity trapped inside the mind of the mad monk? He stared at the troubled man across from him. Giavno was asleep, but it was far from a contented respite. He trembled and shook, occasionally cried out and waved his arms defensively.

"Dueling spirits," Bransen whispered.

"How so?"

Bransen turned to Pinower. "Or pieces of consciousness," Bransen tried to explain. "They fight for control of the man's mind-one other consciousness at least-and that battle manifests itself as Brother Giavno's madness."

"How could this be? Is it the mind of another brother who was out spirit walking? Surely not Cormack!"

"No," Bransen said repeatedly. "I believe that Brother Giavno possessed someone-likely someone far in the south-and he has inadvertently taken a piece of that person back with him to St. Mere Abelle. Both of them trapped in his one mind, vying for supremacy, though they likely are not even aware of the other." Bransen's face lit up with cognition. "Perhaps that is always the way with the madness that sometimes results with spirit walking. In the act of possession, you are aware of your dalliance, and surely your target understands and recoils immediately from the intrusion. And so it is a furious and desperate battle of willpower, but one with singular identities. This, brother, this is true madness, an oblivious mingling of two minds, two spirits, two souls. I cannot-"

He stopped as Brother Pinower made the sign of the evergreen, and even in the dim light of predawn, he could see the blood drain from the man's face.