DemonWars Saga Volume 1 Read online

  The DemonWars Saga: Volume 1 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or weretiger, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Del Rey eBook Edition

  The Demon Awakens copyright © 1997 by R. A. Salvatore

  The Demon Spirit copyright © 1998 by R. A. Salvatore

  The Demon Apostle copyright © 1999 by R. A. Salvatore

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  The Demon Awakens, The Demon Spirit, and The Demon Apostle were published in hardcover in 1997, 1998, and 1999, respectively, by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54996-9

  www.delreybooks.com

  Map by Laura Maestro

  Cover art: Daryl Mandryk

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  The Demon Awakens

  The Demon Spirit

  The Demon Apostle

  Other Books by This Author

  The Demon Awakens

  To Owen Lock, for having faith in me and reminding me to have faith in myself.

  To Veronica Chapman, for her open mind and sharp eye.

  To Kuo-yu Liang—energy is infectious.

  And to one other, privately, who found me in a dark place at a dark time, and lit a candle.

  And, of course, as with everything I do, to Diane and the kids.

  Contents

  Master - Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prelude

  PART ONE

  Fate

  1 The Unexpected Kill

  2 True Believer

  3 The Lingering Kiss

  4 The Death of Dundalis

  5 God’s Chosen

  6 Carrion Birds

  7 The Blood of Mather

  8 The Preparer

  9 Touel’alfar

  PART TWO

  Passage

  10 Made of Tougher Stuff

  11 Cat-the-Stray

  12 The Windrunner

  13 Running Fast Down a Long, Long Road

  14 Jilly

  15 Miss Pippin

  16 Endwar

  17 Black Wings

  18 The Test of Faith

  19 Truth Be Told

  20 The Oracle

  21 Ever Vigilant, Ever Watchful

  22 The Nightbird

  PART THREE

  Conflict

  23 The Black Bear

  24 The Mad Friar

  25 Brother Justice

  26 Bradwarden

  27 The Fat Prophet’s Warning

  28 Siblings

  29 Of Singular Purpose

  30 Symphony

  31 Home Again, Home Again

  32 Darkness Rising

  33 The Telling Blow

  34 Justice

  35 Escape?

  PART FOUR

  The Ranger

  36 Confrontation

  37 Catch of the Day

  38 Mercy Repaid

  39 The Difference

  40 Nightbird the Leader

  41 Tempest

  42 Reputation

  43 A Place of Particular Interest

  44 The Revelations of Spirits

  PART FIVE

  The Beast

  45 Parting

  46 The Fiend’s Fiend

  47 One Harmony

  48 Enemies Ancient

  49 Hunted

  50 Flight

  51 Aida

  52 Through the Maze

  53 Destiny

  Epilogue

  Prelude

  The Demon Dactyl came awake. It didn’t seem such a momentous thing, just a gradual stirring in a deep cave in a far, empty mountain. An unnoticed event, seen by none save the cave worms and those few insomniacs among the bevy of weary bats hanging from the high ceiling.

  But the demon spirit had awakened, had come back from its long dormancy into the statuelike form it had left behind after its last visit to the world called Corona. The tangible, corporeal body felt good to the wandering spirit. The dactyl could feel its blood, hot blood, coursing through its wings and mighty legs, could feel the twitching of its mighty muscles. Its eyes flickered open but saw only blackness, for the form, left standing in magical stasis in the deep cave, head bowed and wings wrapped tightly about its torso, had been covered by magma. Most of the fiery stuff of that time long past had bubbled and flowed away from the cavern, but enough had remained to harden about the dactyl’s corporeal form. The spirit had come back to Corona encased in obsidian!

  The demon spirit fell deep within itself, summoned its powers, both physical and magical. By sheer will and brute strength, the dactyl flexed its wings. A thin crack ran down the center of the obsidian sarcophagus. The dactyl flexed again and the crack widened, and then, with a sudden powerful burst, the beast blew apart the obsidian, stretched its great wings out to the side, clawed tips grasping and rending the air. The dactyl threw back its head and opened wide its mouth, screeching for the sheer joy of the return, for the thoughts of the chaos it would bring again to the quiet human kingdoms of Corona.

  Its torso resembled that of a tall, slender man, shaped and lined by corded strands of taut muscle and sporting a pair of tremendous batlike wings, twenty feet across when fully extended and with strength enough to lift a full-grown bull in swift flight. Its head, too, was somewhat human, except more angular, with a narrow jaw and pointed chin. The dactyl’s ears were pointed as well, poking up about the demon creature’s thin tuft of black hair. Neither did that hair hide the creature’s horns, thumb sized and curling in toward each other at the top of the demon’s brow.

  The texture of its skin was rough and thick, an armored hide, reddish in hue and shiny, as if lit by its own inner glow. Shining, too, were the demon’s eyes, pools of liquid black at most times, but shifting to fiery red orbs, living flames, when the demon was agitated, a glow of absolute hatred.

  The creature flexed and stretched, extended its wings to their full glory, reached and clawed at the air with its humanlike arms. The demon extended its fingernails, transformed them into hooked claws, and grew its teeth—two pointed canines extending down over its bottom lip. Every part of the demon was a weapon, devastating and deadly. And undeniably powerful though this monster appeared, this demon’s real strength lay in its mind and its purpose, the tempter of souls, the twister of hearts, the maker of lies. Theologians of Corona argued over whether the demon dactyl was the source or the result of evil. Did the dactyl bring the weakness, the immorality, to humanity? Was the dactyl the source of the deadly sins, or did it manifest itself and walk the world when those sins had festered to the point of eruption?

  For the demonic creature in the cave, such questions hardly mattered. How long had it been? the dactyl wondered. How many decades, even centuries, had passed since its last visit to Corona?

  The creature remembered that long-ago time now, savored the thoughts of the streaming blood as army after army had joined in delicious, desperate battle. It cursed aloud the name of Terranen Dinoniel, who had rallied the humans and the elves, chasing the dactyl’s armies back to the base of this mountain, Aida. Dinoniel himself had come into this cave after the beast, had skewered the dactyl …

  The black-winged demon looked down at a darker red tear marring i
ts otherwise smooth hide. With a sickening crackle of bone, the creature’s head rotated completely around and bowed, examining the second imperfection of its form, a scarred lump under its lower left shoulder blade. Those two scars were perfectly aligned with the dactyl’s heart, and thus, with that one desperate thrust, Dinoniel had defeated the demon’s corporeal body. Yet even in its death throes, the dactyl had won the day, using its willpower to bring up the magma from the bowels of Aida. Dinoniel and much of his army had been consumed and destroyed, but the dactyl …

  The dactyl was eternal. Dinoniel was gone, a distant memory, but the demon spirit had returned and the physical wounds had healed. “What man, what elf, will take Dinoniel’s place?” the demon asked aloud in its hollow, resonating voice, always seeming on the edge of a thunderous roar. A cloud of bats shuddered to life at the unexpected noise and flew off down one of the tunnels formed when the lava had flowed from this spot. The dactyl cackled, thinking itself grand to be able to send such creatures—any creatures!—scurrying with a mere sound. And what resolve might the humans and the elves—if the elves were still about, for even in Dinoniel’s day they had been on the wane—muster this time?

  Its thoughts turned from its enemies to those it would summon as minions. What creatures could the dactyl gather this time to wage its war? The wicked goblins certainly, so full of anger and greed, so delighting in murder and war. The fomorian giants of the mountains, few in number but each with the strength of a dozen men and a hide too thick and tough for a dagger to puncture. And the powries, yes, the powries, the cunning, warlike dwarves of the Julianthes, the Weathered Isles, who hated the humans above all others. Centuries before, powries had dominated the seas in their solid, squat barrelboats, whose hulls were made of tougher stuff than the larger ships of the humans, as the diminutive powries were made of tougher stuff than the larger humans.

  A line of drool hung low from the dactyl’s mouth as it considered its former and future allies, its army of woe. It would bring them into its fold, tribe by tribe, race by race, growing as the night grows when the sun touches the western horizon. The twilight of Corona was at hand.

  The dactyl came awake.

  P A R T O N E

  Fate

  What song is this, drift through the trees

  To lift men broken from their knees?

  To untwist hearts from grasping sorrow,

  To offer the promise of the morrow?

  Hark, what song,

  What music sweet?

  Warm whispers of the dawn.

  Hot blood waft steam in night air cold.

  What hopes of treasure, what hunger of gold

  Hath brought foul beast from caverns deep

  To face the Nightbird, to know endless sleep?

  They come for greed.

  They come to bleed.

  At gentle hands of elven breed.

  The shining sword, the horse’s run,

  The bane of monsters all and one.

  To their midst the rider, Nightbird the Ranger,

  Flashing Tempest’s anger, denying the danger

  Cutting and slashing!

  Tearing and gashing!

  Chasing the nightmares away.

  Fast run, you goblins, the Ranger sets his bow,

  To let your blood, to stain white snow

  Arrow and arrow, the river of red

  Fast fall the Evil, to the one is dead.

  Hawkwing’s fury,

  Goblins to bury

  In worm’s cold domain.

  Scatter, goblins, fly and flee!

  You’ll not outrun Symphony.

  Hooves of music rend the gloom

  Bearing Nightbird, know your doom!

  At Tempest’s fall,

  So shall you all

  To blackness evermore.

  Away drifts music, Symphony sweet.

  Away goes Nightbird, the forest to greet

  In springtime sunshine, of Evil no traces,

  Through flowers and lovers, step measured paces

  Hark, listen you all

  The Nightbird’s call

  And sleep peaceful lovers, secure.

  —“THE SONG OF THE NIGHTBIRD”

  CHAPTER 1

  The Unexpected Kill

  Elbryan Wyndon was up before the dawn. He dressed quickly, fumbling with his clothes in the red light of the hearth's glowing embers. He ran a hand through his tousled straight hair — a light brown shock that bleached pale on its top layers under the summer sun. He retrieved his belt and dagger, which he had reverently placed right near his bed, and Elbryan felt powerful as he ceremoniously strapped the weapon about his waist.

  He grabbed the heaviest wrap he could find and rushed out into the dark and chill air, so anxious that he hardly remembered to close the cabin door behind him. The small frontier village of Dundalis was quiet and eerily still about him, sleeping off the well-earned weariness that followed every day's hard labor. Elbryan, too, had worked hard the previous day-harder than normal, for several of the village men and women were out in the deep forest, and the boys and girls, like Elbryan who was nearing his teens, had been asked to keep things aright. That meant gathering wood and tending the fires, repairing the cabins-which always seemed to need repair! — and walking the perimeter of the sheltered vale that held the village, watching for sign of bear, great cat, or the packs of hunting wolves.

  Elbryan was the oldest of those children, the leader of the pack, as it were, and he felt important, truly he felt a man. This would be the last time he remained behind when the hunters went off on the season's last and most important expedition. Next spring would bring his thirteenth birthday, the passage from childhood in the hardy land that was the northern wilderness. Next spring, Elbryan would hunt with the adults, the games of his youth left behind.

  Indeed he was tired from the previous day's labors, but so full of excitement that. sleep had not come to him. The weather had turned toward winter. The men were expected back any day, and Elbryan meant to meet them and lead their procession into the village. Let the younger boys and girls see him then, and afford him the respect he deserved, and let the older men see that the village, under his watchful eye, had fared well in their absence.

  He started out of Dundalis, stepping lightly despite his weariness, passing through the darker shadows of the small, one-story cabins.

  "Jilly!" The call was not loud but seemed so in the quiet morning air.

  Elbryan moved up to the comer of the next house, smiling for his cleverness, and peered around.

  "It could be today!" protested a young girl, Jilseponie, Elbryan's closest friend.

  "You do not know that, Jilly," argued her mother, standing in the open doorway of their cabin. Elbryan tried to muffle his snicker; the girl hated that nickname, Jilly, though nearly everyone in town called her that. She preferred the simple ""Jill." But between her and Elbryan, the title was Pony, their secret name, the one Jilseponie liked most of all.

  The snicker was soon gone, but the smile remained, all the wider for the sight. Elbryan didn't know why, but he was always happy when he saw Pony, though only a couple of years before, he would have taunted her and the rest of the village girls, chasing them endlessly. One time Elbryan had made the mistake of catching Jilseponie without his male companions nearby, and of tugging too hard on her yellow mane to prove the point of his capture. He never saw the punch coming, never saw anything except how wide the blue sky had suddenly seemed as he lay on his back.

  He could laugh at that embarrassment now, privately or even with Pony. He felt as though he could say anything to her, and she wouldn't judge him or make merry of his feelings.

  Candlelight spilled out onto the road, softly illuminating the girl.

  Elbryan liked the image; every day that passed, he found that he enjoyed looking at Pony more and more. She was younger than Elbryan by five months but taller than he, standing about three inches above five feet, while the young man, to his ultimate horror, had not yet reach
ed the coveted five foot mark. Elbryan's father had assured him that Wyndon boys were normally late in sprouting. All jealousy aside, Elbryan found the taller Pony quite a pleasing sight. She stood straight but not stiff, and could outrun and outfight any of the boys in Dundalis, Elbryan included. Still, there was a delicate aura about her, a softness that a younger Elbryan had viewed as weakness, but the older Elbryan viewed as oddly distracting. Her hair, which Jilseponie seemed to he constantly brushing, was golden, silken, and thick enough to lose a hand in; it bounced about, her shoulders and back with an alluring wildness. Her eyes, huge eyes, were the richest and clearest blue Elbryan had ever seen, like great sponges soaking in the sights of the wide world and reflecting Jilseponie's every mood.

  When Pony's eyes showed sadness, Elbryan felt it in his heart; when they soared with sparkling joy, Elbryan's feet moved involuntarily in dance.

  Her lips, too, were large and thick. The boys had often taunted Pony about those lips, saying that if she ever stuck them to a window, they would surely hold her fast for all eternity! Elbryan felt no desire to tease when looking at Pony's lips now. He sensed their softness, so very inviting ...

  "I will be back in time for the morning meal," Pony assured.

  "The night woods are dangerous," said her exasperated mother.