"Go to her!" Elbryan cried to Avelyn, and the ranger leaped forward to meet the monk, Hawkwing spinning to a ready position.
"Not by surprise this time," Brother Justice sneered, setting himself in a crouch. He tried to keep near the door, to prevent Avelyn from getting to the woman, but Elbryan's attack was too fierce, too straightforward. The ranger came rushing in, accepting a punishing blow to the chest but managing to duck his shoulder low against the monk and drive the man back a step. Brother Justice dug in, locking himself in place until Avelyn came roaring in at Elbryan's back, the monk's three-hundred-pound frame blasting the two combatants away.
Elbryan took three quick punches — two to the chest and then one to the face that nearly sent him down — before he managed to break the clench and get away from the dangerous monk.
Facing the man squarely, the ranger wasn't quite sure what to make of him.
Brother Justice turned sidelong and lifted his leading foot, drawing it slowly up his balanced leg, arms lifting as well, as certain snakes might rise before the strike.
It was a dagger, small but nasty, and thrown perfectly to hit the gagged and bound woman right in the throat, just under her jawbone. Her main artery severed, blood was pumping wildly from the wound, already forming a puddle around her slumped form.
"Jill, Jill! Oh, my Jill!" Avelyn wailed, rushing to her. He pulled the dagger free, his hands going to the wound, trying futilely to stem the flow. She had little time left, he knew. Her skin felt cold.
Avelyn pulled out his hematite, then remembered the anti-magic shield that Quintall had constructed. He thought to carry Jill from this place; but realized immediately that she would be dead before he ever got her outside.
He clutched his hematite in both hands, putting them to the wound, putting his lips against his hands, praying with all his will, with all his heart. If there was a God above, if these stones were indeed sacred, then the hematite must work!
The monk's fighting prowess was indeed remarkable, his movements quick and fluid, his frame always in perfect balance. He was too fast for most humans, dizzying them with winding, sweeping feints before the lightning strike killed them.
But Quintall, for all his training, was no faster than Tuntun or Belli'mar Juraviel, or any of the elves that had trained Elbryan, and when he snapped a strike from that snakelike pose, thinking to tear out Elbryan's throat and move on to finish his business with Avelyn, the monk's expression showed he was surprised to find his extended fingers hit only air, while Elbryan's staff gave him a wicked smack on the elbow. With incredible flexibility, both physical and mental, the monk adjusted, rolling his pained arm down across the staff to open a hole in Elbryan's defenses, then snapping off a quick blow with his other hand, followed by a kick that caught the ranger inside the knee and nearly buckled his leg. Elbryan countered by letting go of his staff with his top hand, rolling it under the blocking arm, then grabbing it and sweeping low for the monk's supporting leg.
Brother Justice hopped over the swing, but was forced back.
The monk circled, a confident expression mounting.
Two running steps launched Brother Justice into a double kick. Elbryan jammed one end of Hawkwing into the dirt and swept the staff powerfully across in front of him, left to right, deflecting the blow. He stepped ahead with his left foot then, continuing to turn as Brother Justice landed on his feet and pivoted the other way. Elbryan dragged Hawkwing up and around, slapping a backhand with the staff that connected squarely on the monk's lower back at the same time Brother Justice let fly an elbow to the back of Elbryan's head.
The ranger reacted well, diving forward as the elbow connected, leaping and tumbling over his staff as if it were a tree branch. He came back to his feet and turned as Brother Justice spun around, the two men circling once more.
"I give you one more chance to leave," the monk offered, drawing a smile from his adversary. That smug look by the ranger spurred the proud Quintall into a charge. He skidded to a stop right before Elbryan, throwing a vicious overhead chop.
Up came Hawkwing in a solid horizontal block. Anticipating the following moves, Elbryan snapped his left hand down, taking the power from a right cross, then stepped in closer, putting his right leg inside the monk's left, defeating an attempted kick. Brother Justice wriggled his left arm about the staff, reaching for Elbryan's face, but the ranger pulled the staff and the arm out wide, moving even closer to the monk, then drove his forehead hard into the monk's face.
Brother Justice grabbed hard onto the staff with both hands, as much to support himself as to prevent any attacks. Elbryan let go with his left hand at that same moment and snapped off a series of short, heavy jabs into Brother Justice's face.
The monk was dazed; Elbryan seized the moment. He grabbed the staff again, hard, and tugged it in close, pushed it away to the end of his reach, then pulled it in again. Brother Justice should have let go, but he was fighting to clear his thoughts. Following the tug, he came rushing in close to Elbryan, and his face met the ranger's forehead again.
Still dazed, still hanging on, the monk felt the change in his adversary's angle as Elbryan fell back to the floor, pulling hard, taking the monk right over him. Both his feet planted squarely in Brother Justice's belly, the ranger heaved him right over, sent him flying, to land heavily at the base of the chamber's hard wall.
Pure rage drove the monk on, forced the pain away. He rolled and came up fast but not fast enough. His defenses were not in place when Elbryan grabbed his staff down low with both hands and swept it across mightily, smashing in the side of Brother Justice's face.
The monk went with the blow, turning to a dead run that launched him out the cave's outer opening, into the daylight.
Elbryan was quick to follow, but by the time he got out, the monk was many strides ahead, in a full run. Hardly thinking of the motion, knowing only that he could not lose this advantage against so deadly an adversary, Elbryan popped the feathered tip onto his Weapon and bent it low, quickly setting the bowstring. He ran ahead a dozen strides, seeking an angle to best view the top of the ridge, where the monk was fleeing.
Brother Justice came into view for only a split second, darting between two trees. Elbryan's arrow caught him in the calf, right below the knee, and with a howl of pain the monk tumbled sidelong, gaining momentum as he rolled along the steep slope.
Elbryan scrambled to get to the spot, saw the monk land heavily atop one rocky outcropping and then tumble right over it, a fifteen-foot plummet to bard stone.
Elbryan groaned sympathetically, running to get in view of the man once more. He spotted the monk from a distance, lying among the boulders, one leg bent back up under him, one arm across his chest, the other out straight, then turned back under, obviously broken. The man, gasping for breath, reached inside the fold's of his clothing and produced something that Elbryan could not discern from this distance.
The ranger halted as the monk suddenly glowed, limned in blackish flames.
Elbryan's mouth dropped open as the monk's features twisted, twisted, as his face blurred and seemed to double, and as that second face stretched grotesquely and pulled free of the man's corporeal form, his visible spirit ripping out of that flesh and blood coil, down to the object he clutched in his hand.
There came a bright flash and then the monk lay still, low flames licking his lifeless body.
"'Nightbird!" came a cry from the cave, and Elbryan, thoroughly shaken, scampered back within.
He was careening, flying fast above the forest, across the lakes, over the lands where the snow had already settled deep — too fast for his senses, too fast for the man to understand. The pain was gone, that much he knew. Then he came upon the mountains, whipping through passes, over peaks, to a plateau he had seen before above a vast encampment between the black arms of a smoking mountain. Then came the dizzying ride through tight tunnels, cutting left, right, down and down again to a stone wall creased by a single crack, through that crack, the stone rushing pas
t him so close that his mind screamed out in terror.
Then he was in the room between the columns before the obsidian throne.
Quintall stood on semitransparent legs, caught halfway between the mortal and spirit worlds. He stood on the legs of a wraith facing the dactyl demon.
It was the end, the end of hope, of any pretense of godliness. It was the truth, the dark-shining truth, the reality of what he had become, the only honest end of the road upon which his Abellican masters had set him. It was the dactyl demon, Bestesbulzibar — he knew its name! — in all its horrible beauty, in all its magnificence.
Quintall, Brother Justice, fell to his wraith knees before the dactyl, bowed his head, and spoke.
"Master."
Elbryan took the torch with him as he pushed aside the vines and entered the inner chamber. Avelyn squatted on the floor, cradling the woman. Her wound was closed and she was very much alive, though thoroughly exhausted, as was Avelyn, who had gone into the hematite, who had, by sheer willpower and faith, fought past the sunstone barrier, fought his way into the healing magic.
The monk asked about Quintall, but Elbryan didn't hear him. Avelyn shifted on the floor and tried to rise, nearly toppling for the effort, but Elbryan didn't notice. All that the ranger saw was the woman, all that he heard was her breathing. His eyes roamed over her — the thick mop of blond hair, the blue eyes, shining in the dim light, despite her weary condition, and her lips, those thick and wonderful lips, those so soft lips.
He could hardly breathe, could hardly keep the strength to stand, all his thoughts, all his energy, tied up in a single word, a name he had not spoken for so very long. "Pony."
CHAPTER 35
Escape?
Pony.
The name hit the young woman like a thunderbolt, spoken with such familiar inflection. She watched, mesmerized, as the strong young man eased toward her, his green eyes growing misty.
"Pony," Elbryan said again, and he was stating the name, not asking. "My Pony, I thought..."
He slipped down to his knees before her, closed his eyes, and tried hard to steady his breathing. When, after a long while, he opened his eyes and looked again on this image from his past, he found that her expression was more confusion than anything else.
"Do you not remember me?" Elbryan asked, and the question alone, the need to ask it, seemed to pain him greatly.
The woman didn't know how to respond. She did remember the man — he was there, prodding somewhere in the back of her mind, screaming at her to let him out. The way he said the name, her name — her nickname, she suddenly knew, for her name was not Pony, nor Jill, but Jilseponie! — was so familiar; surely she had heard this man call her Pony before in just that way.
"Give her time, I beg, Elbryan," Brother Avelyn remarked.
That was it. Elbryan. The name hit Pony as hard as Brother Justice ever could, jarred her, sent her thoughts spinning back across the span of years.
"When you ran from me on the slope, running into burning Dundalis, I thought you lost to me forever," the ranger went on, spurred by the sudden sparkle of recognition that came to the woman's blue eyes. "My Pony. How I searched! I found your mother and father, my own, our friends. Carley dan Aubrey died in my own arms. And I would have died, too, trapped by a fomorian giant and a band of goblins, had it not been for —" He stopped, realizing that he was going too fast for the poor young woman, realizing that he had overwhelmed her.
But it was indeed his Pony; Elbryan knew that beyond any doubt. He moved closer to her then, put his face barely inches from hers.
"Elbryan," she said softly, lifting a weary arm to stroke the ranger's face. All those scattered images in her head spun and dropped together, like a vast puzzle, all the pieces magically falling together. She remembered him as if she had never forgotten him, remembered their talks and walks, remembered their friendship, and more than that. In her mind, she saw him moving closer to her, to kiss her.
But then he was Connor, poor Connor, and Pony was suffocating, reaching for the hearth, grabbing a glowing ember.
When she shook the image away, she found that Elbryan had backed away from her and was looking to Brother Avelyn for answers.
"We have much to discuss," the monk said.
Elbryan nodded and, looked back at her, as beautiful now — more beautiful! — than he remembered her.
"Brother Quintall?" Avelyn asked.
Elbryan looked at him curiously.
"Brother Justice?" Avelyn clarified. "The hunter from my own Order, sent to kill me and to kill my friends, do not doubt."
"He is dead," Elbryan replied evenly.
"Take me to him."
Elbryan nodded to Avelyn. "Why did he come after you?" the ranger asked, the question that Avelyn knew he would be forced to answer truthfully. He looked from Elbryan to Pony, then back to the ranger.
"Not all of his claims were untrue, I fear," the monk admitted. "I will explain all when we are far from this place, and then I will accept your judgment," Avelyn offered, squaring his shoulders. "Judgment from both of you.
You decide if Brother Quintall's mission was truly one that deserved the name of Justice, if Brother Avelyn, the mad friar, is truly an outlaw."
"I am no judge," the ranger remarked.
"Then I am a doomed thing," Avelyn replied. "For the only ones who presume to judge me have made their decision, and it is based on greed and fear and in no way on justice."
Elbryan stared long and hard at Avelyn. Finally he nodded, and he helped both Avelyn and Pony to their feet, then led them out of the cave and to the spot where Brother Justice had fallen.
The monk's body was hardly recognizable, a charred, smoldering thing.
"How did this happen?" Elbryan asked, inspecting the corpse but finding no indication of what had caused it to burst into flame.
"Here is your answer," Avelyn explained, indicating the side of the corpse, where one hand was nearly burned to ashes. On the ground beside the body lay the ruined broach, its hematite core melted and misshapen, an elongated black egg. Scattered around it were the small quartz crystals, blackened, some stuck in the remains of the golden setting.
Avelyn scrutinized the broach carefully. "Its power is no more," he announced after a few moments. "Somehow the magic of the hematite and the crystals erupted when Quintall fell." Avelyn paused and considered his own words. Had there been some contingency placed on the magic? he wondered. Avelyn could feel the magical reverberations in the area and knew that some strong energy had been released. Perhaps the stones served as a warning device to the masters back in St.-Mere-Abelle, a signal that Quintall was dead, that Quintall had failed. Or was the magic even stronger than that? Given the powers of hematite, might this have been some transport for Quintall's soul?
Avelyn, who had spirit-walked, who had once possessed the body of another, shuddered at the possibilities.
Elbryan continued to prod at the corpse, searching for clues. What he found instead were two stones intact: a sunstone — which did not surprise Avelyn in the least — and a carbuncle.
"That is how he trailed me across the country," Avelyn remarked, noting the carbuncle. "It is a stone used to detect magic."
"And you have magic about you," Elbryan reasoned.
"A great cache," Avelyn admitted. "Perhaps the greatest individual cache in all the world."
"Stolen from St.-Mere-Abelle," said the ranger.
"Taken from those who did not deserve it, who abused it and brought only misery from the God-given stones," Avelyn said firmly. "Find us a camp, my friend. I will tell you my tale, in all detail, in all truth. You decide which of us, myself or Quintall, deserves the title he carried."
When they arrived at Elbryan's camp, when the ranger and Pony settled beside a fire, Avelyn did as promised. He told his tale, all of it, from the journey to Pimaninicuit to the sinking of the Windrunner and the murder of Dansally, to his escape from St.-Mere-Abelle and the death of Master Siherton.
It was the
first time Avelyn had told his story, though he had hinted at many parts of it to Jill over the course of their travels. It was the first time the monk was able to purge his soul openly, to admit his crimes, if they were crimes. When he finished, he seemed a miserable wretch indeed; his huge form had wilted upon the hard ground, his eyes teary.
Pony went to him, loving him all the more, feeling a true kinship with the man, feeling a great deal of pity, as well. She was sorry that Avelyn had been forced to act as thief and killer, sorry that this gentle man — and despite the barroom brawls, Pony knew Avelyn to be a gentle man — had been put into such an uncompromising position.
Both of them looked at Elbryan after some time, fearing the ranger's judgment. They saw only sympathy on his handsome face.
"I do not envy that whichkh you were forced to do," the ranger said firmly. "Nor do I consider your actions criminal. You acted in self-defense, always justifiable. You stole the stones because you rightly judged that they were being abused."
Avelyn nodded, so glad to hear those words. "Then I must be on my way," he announced unexpectedly. "Jill — Pony, has found her way home, it would seem."
He put a hand to the woman's face, and his own brightened suddenly. "Ho, ho, what!"
"She needs me no more," Avelyn finished.
"But does Brother Avelyn need her?" Elbryan asked.
The monk shrugged. "St.-Mere-Abelle will not give up the search, thus I must keep on the move. I would not bring danger to my friends, now that I know of it."
Elbryan looked hard into Pony's eyes, then the both of them burst into a fit of laughter, as if the whole notion were perfectly ridiculous.
"You stay," Elbryan remarked, demanded. "Pony is home, 'tis true, and her home is Avelyn's, unless I miss my guess."
"Her home is Avelyn's," she said firmly.
DemonWars Saga Volume 1 Page 44
