What a dark road the three had walked from there: to Aida and the demon dactyl; back across the kingdom to St.-Mere-Abelle, where Pony's adoptive parents had been imprisoned and had died; and then back again-a road that should have lightened, despite the grief, but that had only darkened more as the evil that was Bestesbulzibar, the dactyl demon, infected Father Abbot Markwart with a singular desire to do battle with Elbryan and Pony.
And so he had, in that same mansion where Pony had spent her wedding night with Connor Bildeborough, the mansion of horrors where Elbryan and Pony had waged the final fight against Markwart, and had won, though at the price of Elbryan's life.
Now Pony wasn't sure what they had won and what it had been worth. She recognized the almost circular nature of her long journey; but instead of drawing comfort from that, she felt restless and trapped.
"It is far too cold for you to be up here, I fear," came a gentle voice behind her, the voice of Brother Braumin Herde, the leader of the band of monks who had followed Master Jojonah away from the Church, believing as they did in Avelyn's goodness, one of the monks who had come to join Elbryan and Pony in their efforts against Markwart.
She turned to regard the handsome man. He was older than Pony by several years-in his early thirties-with black, woolly hair just starting to gray and a dark complexion made even more so by the fact that no matter how often he shaved his face, it was always shadowed by black hair.
"It is too unimportant for me to care," she answered quietly. Pony looked back over the city as he walked up to lean on the wall beside her.
"Thinking of Elbryan? " he asked.
Pony smiled briefly, believing the answer to be obvious.
"Many are saddened," Brother Braumin began-the same hollow words Pony had been hearing from so many for the last three months. She appreciated their efforts-of course she did!-but, in truth, she wished they would all leave her to her thoughts in private.
"The passage of time will heal ..." Brother Braumin started to say, but when Pony fixed him with a skeptical glance, he let his words die away.
"Your pain is to be expected," he tried again a moment later. "You must take solace and faith in God and in the good that came of your actions."
Now Pony glared sternly at him, and the gentle monk retreated a step.
"Good?" she asked.
Braumin held up his hands as if he did not understand.
"They are fighting again, aren't they? " Pony asked, looking back over the snowy city. "Or should I say that they are fighting still? "
"They?"
"The leaders of your Church," Pony clarified, "and King Danube and his advisers. Fighting again, fighting always. It changes not at all."
"If the Church is in turmoil, that is understandable, you must admit," Braumin returned firmly. "We have lost our Father Abbot."
"You lost him long before I killed him," Pony interjected.
"True enough," the monk admitted. "But still it came as a shock to so many who supported Dalebert Markwart to learn the truth: to learn that Bestesbulzibar-curse his name, the ultimate darkness-had so infiltrated our ranks as to pervert the Father Abbot himself."
"And now he is gone and you are better off," Pony remarked.
Brother Braumin didn't immediately respond, and Pony understood that she wasn't being fair to him. He was a friend, after all, who had done nothing but try to help her and Elbryan, and her sarcasm was certainly wounding him. She looked at him directly and started to say something but bit it back immediately. So be it, she decided, for she could not find generosity in her heart. Not yet.
"We are better off by far," Braumin decided, turning the sarcasm back. "And better off we would be by far if Jilseponie would reconsider the offer."
Pony was shaking her head before he completed the all-too-predictable request. Reconsider the offer. Always that. They wanted her to become the mother abbess of the Abellican Church, though nothing of the sort had ever been heard of in the long history of the patriarchal Order. Brother Francis, Markwart's staunchest follower, had suggested it, even while holding the dying Markwart in his arms, the demon burned from the Father Abbot's body by the faith and strength of Pony and Elbryan. Francis had seen the truth during that terrible battle, and the truth of his terrible master. Pony had killed