The Demon Spirit - Book 2 of the Demon Wars series Read online

  The Demon Spirit

  Book 2 of the Demon Wars

  By R. A. Salvatore

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  Release Date: October, 19th, 2003

  Praise for THE DEMON AWAKENS,

  Book One of The Demon Wars, by R. A. Salvatore

  "Salvatore's best work since the Dark Elf series... An enthralling epic adventure story, it introduces memorable characters and an intricate scheme of magic the readers won't soon forget. I am anxious for the next."

  —terry brooks

  "A new classic! Wonderfully told! Fans will love it!"

  —troy denning

  Author of The Parched Sea

  "Fans of R. A. Salvatore's Dark Elf books will love this tale. It has everything readers have come to expect: compelling characters, fast-paced storytelling, and battle choreography that dazzles without overshadowing the story. The archetype of noble ranger finds a worthy incarnation in Elbryan, the Nightbird."

  —elaine cunningham

  Author of Elfshadow

  "A vigorous new fantasy adventure series... The narrative roils with the action and heroism that Salvatore's fans expect."

  —Publishers Weekly

  "Bob Salvatore always makes the most fantastic seem real. His heroes become friends we care about, and his foes fascinate. The Demon Awakens is a 'good read' with all the color and gusto I've come to expect from a Salvatore book. Evil to be smitten, crawling intrigue, glorious battle, heroic sacrifice ... this one has it all. It left me wanting more. Let us see more of the protectors of the holy stones—soon."

  —ed greenwood

  Coauthor of Cromyar: A Novel

  "The Demon Awakens is Salvatore doing what he does best. Page-turning action provides the backdrop for engaging characters locked in the eternal struggle of good vs. evil. My favorite since The Halfling's Gem."

  —mary kirchoff

  Author of the Defenders of Magic trilogy

  "The Demon Awakens is classic Salvatore. Fans of his Dark Elf books will find all the familiar elements here—ancient evils, dazzling magic, and earnest young heroes—in a combination certain to place the series alongside the best of Eddings and Brooks in the minds of fantasy readers."

  —James Lowder

  Author of Prince of Lies

  "In The Demon Awakens, Bob Salvatore weaves all the elements of a great epic fantasy into an exciting story spanning diverse realms and a large cast of intriguing characters. He brings the world of Corona into vivid focus, creating a rich fantasy setting: a place of legendary histories and dire dangers. Most impressive of all were the fight scenes—Salvatore's action pulls you into the middle of the fight, so immersing that you can almost feel the wind of each deadly strike."

  —DOUG NILES

  Author of A Breach in the Watershed

  "Salvatore's most ambitious book to date."

  —Booklist

  By R.A. Salvatore:

  TARZAN: THE EPIC ADVENTURES*

  THE DEMON AWAKENS*

  THE DEMON SPIRIT*

  THE DEMON APOSTLE**

  Forgotten Realms Novels

  THE CRYSTAL SHARD

  STREAMS OF SILVER

  THE HALFLING'S GEM

  HOMELAND

  EXILE

  SOJOURN

  THE LEGACY

  STARLESS NIGHT

  SIEGE OF DARKNESS

  PASSAGE TO DAWN

  CANTICLE

  IN SYLVAN SHADOWS

  NIGHT MASKS

  THE FALLEN FORTRESS

  THE CHAOS CURSE

  The Spearwielder's Tales

  THE WOODS OUT BACK

  THE DRAGON'S DAGGER

  DRAGONSLAYER'S RETURN

  The Crimson Shadow Trilogy

  THE SWORD OF BEDWYR

  LUTHIEN'S GAMBLE

  THE DRAGON KING

  Ynis Aielle

  ECHOES OF THE FOURTH MAGIC*

  THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER**

  *Published by Del Rey Books

  **Forthcoming from Del Rey Books

  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special Sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  THE DEMON SPIRIT

  R. A. Salvatore

  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1998 by R. A. Salvatore

  Excerpt from Spine of the World copyright © 1999 by R. A. Salvatore

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96542

  ISBN 0-345-39152-7

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Hardcover Edition: April 1998

  First Mass Market Edition: February 1999

  10 9 8 7 6 5

  This one's for Scott Siegel and Jim Cegeilski,

  two guys who have made this business such a pleasure for me.

  part one

  WILDERLANDS

  I am afraid, Uncle Mather, not for myself, but for all the goodly people of all the world. Pony and I rode south from the Barbacan with our hearts heavy in grief, but with hope. Avelyn, Tuntun, and Bradwarden gave their lives, but in destroying the dactyl, we had, I believed, taken the darkness from the world.

  I was wrong.

  Every running stride Symphony carried us south would bring us to more hospitable lands, so I thought, and so I told Pony, whose doubts were ever greater than mine. I cannot count the numbers of goblins we have seen! Thousands, Uncle Mather, tens of thousands, and with scores of fomorian giants and hundreds of cruel powries as well. It took Pony and me two weeks and a dozen fights to reach the area near Dundalis, and there we found only more enemies, firmly entrenched and using the remnants of the three towns as base camps for furthering their mischief. Belster O'Comely and the raiding band we set up before we went to the Barbacan are gone—to the south as we discussed, I pray. But so vast is the darkness encompassing the land that I fear nowhere will be safe.

  I am afraid, Uncle Mather, but I vow to you now that no matter how bleak the situation becomes, I will not surrender my hope. That is something not the demon dactyl, not the goblins, not all the evil in all the world, can take from me. Hope brings strength to my sword arm, that Tempest may cut true. Hope allows me to keep fashioning arrows as score after score are lost to goblin hearts—a line of monsters that seems not at all diminished by my efforts.

  Hope, Uncle Mather, that is the secret. I think that my enemies are not possessed of it. They are too selfish to understand sacrifice in the hope that it will bring better things for those who come after them. And without such foresight and optimism, they are often easily disheartened and chased from battle.

  Hope, I have learned, is a prerequisite for altruism.

  I will hope and I will fight on, and with every battle I am reminded that my attitude is not folly. Pony grows strong with the stones, and the magical forces she conjures are in
deed incredible. Also, our enemies, for all their numbers, no longer fight in any coordinated fashion. Their binding force, the demon dactyl, is gone, and I have seen signs that goblin battles goblin.

  The day is dark, Uncle Mather, but there may yet be a break in the clouds.

  —elbryan wyndon

  CHAPTER 1

  Another Day

  Elbryan Wyndon collected his wooden chair and his precious mirror and moved to the mouth of the small cave. He blinked as he pulled the blanket aside, surprised to see that the dawn was long past. Climbing out of the hole seemed no easy task for a man of Elbryan's size, with his six-foot-three-inch muscular frame, but with the agility given him in years of training with the lithe elves of Caer'alfar, he had little trouble navigating the course.

  He found his companion Jilseponie, Pony, awake and about, gathering up their bedrolls and utensils. Not so far away, the great horse Symphony nickered and stomped at sight of Elbryan, and that image of the stallion would have given most men pause. Sym­phony was tall, but not the least bit lanky, with a powerful, muscled chest, a coat so black and smooth over those rippling muscles that it glistened in the slightest light, and eyes that projected profound intelligence. A white diamond-shaped patch showed on the horse's head, above the intelligent eyes, but other than that and a bit of white on the legs, the only thing that marred the perfect black coat was a turquoise gemstone, the link between Symphony and El­bryan, magically set in the middle of the horse's chest.

  For all the splendor, though, the ranger hardly paid Symphony any heed, for, as was so often the case, his gaze was locked on Pony. She was a few months younger than Elbryan, his childhood friend, his adult wife. Her hair, thick and golden, was just below her shoulders now, longer than Elbryan's own light brown mop for the first time in years. The day was lightly overcast, the sky gray, but that did little to dim the shine of Pony's huge blue eyes. She was his strength, the ranger knew, the bright spot in a dark world. Her energy seemed limitless, as did her ability to smile. No odds frightened her, no sight daunted her; she pressed on methodically, determinedly.

  "Do we look for the camp north of End-o'-the-World?" she asked, the question shattering Elbryan's contemplation.

  He considered the thought. They had discerned that there were satellite camps in the region, clusters of goblins, mostly, supplied by the larger encampments set up in what used to be the three towns of Dundalis, Weedy Meadow, and End-o'-the-World. Because the towns were each separated by a day's walk, Dundalis west to Weedy Meadow, and Weedy Meadow west to End-o'-the-World, these smaller outposts would be key to regaining the region—if ever an army from Honce-the-Bear made its way to the borders of the Wilderlands. If Elbryan and Pony could clear the monsters from the dense woods, there would remain little contact between the three towns.

  "It seems as good a place as any to start," the ranger replied.

  "Start?" Pony asked incredulously, to which Elbryan could only shrug. Indeed, both were weary of battle now, though both knew that many, many more fights lay before them.

  "Did you speak with Uncle Mather?" Pony asked, nodding toward the mirror. Elbryan had explained Oracle to her, that mys­terious elven ceremony in which someone might converse with the dead.

  "I spoke at him," the ranger replied, his olive-green eyes flashing as a shiver coursed his spine—as always happened when he considered the ghost of the great man who had gone before him.

  "Does he ever answer?"

  Elbryan snorted, trying to figure out how he might better explain Oracle. "I answer myself," he started. "Uncle Mather guides my thoughts, I believe, but in truth, he does not give me the answers."

  Pony's nod showed that she understood perfectly what the young man was trying to say to her. Elbryan had not known his uncle Mather in life; the man had been lost to the family at a young age, before Olwan Wyndon—Mather's brother, Elbryan's father— had taken his wife and children to the wild Timberlands. But Mather, like Elbryan, had been taken in and trained by the Touel'alfar, the elves, to be a ranger. Now, in Oracle, Elbryan con­jured his image of the man, an image of a perfect ranger, and when speaking to that image, Elbryan was forcing himself to uphold his own highest ideals.

  "If I taught you Oracle, perhaps you could speak with Avelyn," the ranger said, and it wasn't the first time he had suggested as much. He had been hinting that Pony might try to contact their lost friend for several days now, ever since he himself tried, and failed, to reach Avelyn's spirit at Oracle two days after they had started south from the blasted Barbacan.

  "I do not need it," Pony said softly, turning away, and for the first time Elbryan realized how disheveled she appeared.

  "You do not believe in the ceremony," he started to say, more to prompt than to accuse.

  "Oh, but I do," was her quick and sharp retort, but she lost mo­mentum just as abruptly, as if fearing the turn in the conversation. "I... I might be experiencing much the same thing."

  Elbryan stared at her calmly, giving her the time to sort out her response.

  As the seconds passed into minutes, he prompted, "You have learned Oracle?"

  "No," she answered, turning to look at the man. "Not quite the same as your own. I do not seek it. Rather, it seeks me."

  "It?"

  "It is Avelyn," Pony said with conviction. "He is with me, I feel, somehow a part of me, guiding me and strengthening me."

  "As I feel about my father," Elbryan reasoned. "And you about yours. I do not doubt that Olwan is watching over..." His voice trailed away as he looked at her, for Pony was shaking her head be­fore he finished.

  "Stronger than that," she explained. "When Avelyn first taught me to use the stones, he was badly injured. We joined, spirit to spirit, through use of the hematite, the soul stone. The result was so enlightening, for both of us, that Avelyn continued that joining over the weeks, as he showed me the secrets of the gemstones. In a mere month my understanding and capabilities with the stones pro­gressed far beyond what a monk at St.-Mere-Abelle might learn in five years of training."

  "And you believe that he is still connecting with you in that spiritual manner?" Elbryan asked, and there was no skepticism in the question. The young ranger had seen too much, both enchant­ing and diabolical, to doubt such a possibility—or any possibility.

  "He is," Pony replied. "And every morning, I wake up to find that I know a bit more about the stones. Perhaps I dream about them, and in those dreams see new uses for any given stone, or new combinations between them."

  "Then it is not Avelyn, but Pony," the ranger reasoned.

  "It is Avelyn," she said firmly. "He is with me, in me, a part of who I have become."

  She went quiet, and Elbryan did not respond, the two of them standing in silence, digesting the revelation—one that Pony had not made even to herself until this very moment. Then a smile spread across Elbryan's face, and Pony gradually joined him, both taking comfort that their friend, the Mad Friar, the runaway monk from St.-Mere-Abelle, might still be with them.

  "If your insight is true, then our business becomes easier," El­bryan reasoned. He held his smile and offered a wink, then turned, moving to pack Symphony's saddlebags.

  Pony didn't reply, just methodically went about closing down the campsite. They never stayed in a place more than a single night—often not more than half the night if Elbryan determined there were goblin patrols in the area. The ranger finished his task first, and with a look to the woman, to which she responded with an assenting nod, he took his sword belt and wandered away.

  Pony hurriedly finished her task, then silently stalked after him. She knew his destination to be a clearing they had passed right be­fore they set camp, and knew, too, that she would find ample cover in the thick blueberry bushes on its northeastern end. Stalking qui­etly, as Elbryan had taught her, she finally settled into place.

  The ranger was well into the dance by then. He was naked, ex­cept for a green armband set about his left biceps, and was holding his great sword Tempest, which had b
een given by the Touel'alfar to his uncle, Mather Wyndon. Gracefully, Elbryan went through the precise movements, muscles flowing in perfect harmony, legs turning, body shifting, keeping him always in balance.

  Pony watched, mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the dance, which the elves called bi'nelle dasada, and her love's perfection of form. As always when she spied on Elbryan's dance—no, not Elbryan, for in this fighting form he was the one the elves had named Nightbird, and not Elbryan Wyndon—Pony had pangs of guilt, feeling quite the voyeur. But there was nothing sexual or prurient here, just appreciation of the art and beauty of the interplay between her love's powerful muscles. More than anything, she wanted to learn that dance, to weave her own sword in graceful circles, to feel her bare feet become so attuned to the moist grass below them that they could feel every blade and every contour in the ground.

  Pony was no minor warrior herself, having served with distinction in the Coastpoint Guards. She had battled many goblins and powries, even giants, and few could outfight her. But in looking at Elbryan, the Nightbird, she felt herself to be a mere amateur.

  That dance, bi'nelle dasada, was perfection of the art form, and her lover was perfection of bi'nelle dasada. The ranger continued his slashing, weaving maneuvers, feet turning, stepping to the side, front, back, body going down low and then rising in graceful se­quences. This was the traditional fighting style of the day, the slashing routines of the heavy, edged swords.

  But then, abruptly, the ranger shifted his stance, heels together, feet perpendicular to each other. He stepped ahead, toe-heel, and went into a balanced crouch, his knees bending out over his toes, front arm cocked, elbow down, and rear arm similarly bent except that his upper arm was level with his shoulder, his hand up high and hanging loose. He went forward then retreated in short, measured, but impossibly quick and balanced steps, and then suddenly, right from one such retreat, his front arm extended and seemed to pull him. It happened in the blink of Pony's eye, and this morning, as with every such strike, it stunned her. So suddenly, Nightbird had come forward, the tip of Tempest covering at least two feet of ground, his back arm turning down so he made one long and bal­anced line.