DemonWars Saga Volume 1

by R. A. Salvatore

  "As I was waiting for you," Avelyn huffed.

  "Symphony would not carry us both," Pony said dryly.

  "What?" asked Avelyn. "Ho, ho, good laugh, that!"

  The man's mirth disappeared almost immediately, and the suddenly grim set of his heavy jowls made Pony believe he was concerned for her safety.

  "I will return," she promised.

  Avelyn nodded. "And all the faster," he explained, holding forth a silver circlet, "with this."

  Pony took the band tentatively, knowing as soon as she saw the gemstone set in the silver in front that this `was much more than something ornamental.

  The gem was unlike anything she had seen before, yellowish-green with a black streak down its middle.

  "Cat's eye," Avelyn explained. He took the circlet back from her and set it about her forehead.

  "With it, you will see clearly in the dark of night," the monk explained.

  Indeed, the mounting light of dawn still a while away seemed suddenly brighter to Pony. Not brighter, exactly, but every object became much more distinct. Pony looked at Avelyn, suddenly very appreciative of the training he had given her with the magical stones but somewhat surprised that she could call forth the magic of this cat's eye so readily.

  "How is it that the stone will work so easily for me?" she asked. "And am I now ready to unleash fireballs and bolts of lightning as you did in the battle in Weedy Meadow?" Pony's expression grew sly. "Is the power, then, wholly of the stones?" she asked. "And if that is so, then why is Avelyn so blessed?"

  "Ho, but that hurt!" the good-natured monk bellowed. "Ho, ho, what! Blessed indeed, say some, but cursed, say I, with such a supportive friend as this!"

  "Ho, but that hurt!" Pony echoed, imitating Avelyn's voice, and they shared a much-needed laugh.

  "The power comes from both stone and user," Avelyn explained in all seriousness, a lesson he had explained to her many times during their weeks on the road. "Some stones, though, such as the turquoise I gave to Elbryan and he to Symphony, can be altered to perform their magic continually, whoever their holder might be. Stones become magical items, so to speak, useful to the layman.

  I have seen such minor charms, and so have you, I would guess, among the farmers or the minor seers of the lands."

  "And you prepared this one," Pony reasoned, tapping the cat's eye.

  "For you," replied Avelyn, "or for myself or perhaps for Elbryan. Ho, ho, what! Wherever it is most needed, I say, and now, that will be with you. Take it and use it to guide Symphony well through the night when our enemies will not be aware."

  A snort from the side caught their attention and they turned to see the magnificent stallion standing again atop the nearby ridge, eager to run, as if he had been eavesdropping on their conversation.

  "I doubt Symphony will need much guidance," Pony said, "day or night."

  "Use it to keep your head from smacking into low branches, then." Avelyn laughed, drawing a short-lived smile from Pony.

  Short-lived, because it was time for the woman to go.

  Avelyn turned tier around suddenly as soon as she had started away. The monk held his hand out to her, and when she took it, he gave her another stone, a piece of graphite, the stone used to create lightning.

  "Perhaps you are ready," Avelyn said with respect.

  Pony clenched the graphite tightly, nodded once, and walked away.

  The day was clear and crisp but bitterly cold, the north wind blowing steadily, and Elbryan had to wonder if winter would ever give up its grip upon the land.

  Later that morning, the ranger gathered together the men and a few women who would remain with him as his fighting force. "We cannot defeat the enemy that has come to our homes," he told them bluntly. "They are too great in number."

  That brought a few grumbles, including. a sarcastic, "Inspirational," from Tol Yuganick.

  "But we can hurt them," Elbryan went on. "And perhaps our efforts here will make the war —"

  "War?" Tol demanded.

  "You still think this no more than a raiding party?" Elbryan scolded. "Ten thousand goblins have passed through Weedy Meadow since its fall, passed through and continued south."

  Tol snorted and waved his hand dismissively.

  "Our efforts here will make the war easier on those in the south," Elbryan said loudly, to quench the rising dissent, "to help Caer Tinella and Landsdown, and even Palmaris, where we believe this army to be headed."

  "Bah!" Tol snorted. "The words of a fool, I say! The goblin scum have taken Dundalis, so to Dundalis we must go, to drive them far."

  "To die," Elbryan put in before the big man could gain any momentum. "Only to die." Elbryan walked over to stand right before Tol, the tension mounting with each step. They were about the same height, but Tol, with his barrel-like torso and ample belly, was heavier.

  The man puffed out his chest and glared hard at the ranger.

  "I'll not stop any who wish to follow Tol Yuganick into Dundalis," the ranger said after a long and tense moment, "or into Weedy Meadow or End-o'-the-World or wherever else you choose as your graveyard. These woods have many places I can camp so you'll not be able to betray me when the goblins pull off your fingernails or hold you down and smash your privates with hammers."

  Even Tol blanched a bit at that notion.

  "No, you'll not betray me or my cause, but neither will I cry for your pain, neither will I risk those who wisely choose my way, to rescue those who willingly went to such a death."

  It was enough for one day, Elbryan decided, for the first day of putting his soldiers in line, so the ranger slowly walked away from Tol, then off the field to the edge of the forest, where stood an amused Bradwarden.

  "Oh, nice touch with the hammer story," the centaur greeted him.

  Elbryan gave a wry smile, but it couldn't last. He was too concerned with Pony's opinion of Tol as a troublemaker and with the fact that Pony was probably already many miles away.

  "We've — ye've a long way to go to get them in line," the centaur remarked.

  Elbryan was all too aware of that grim fact.

  "But I gave ye little credit when ye didn't kill the three rogues,"

  Bradwarden offered.

  "You said I should have killed them," the ranger reminded, drawing an embarrassed snort from the centaur.

  "So I did! So I did!" Bradwarden replied. "And the three've proven themselves worthy o' yer mercy ten times over!"

  "They are valuable allies," Elbryan added.

  "Ye'll have a tougher time with that one," Bradwarden remarked, lifting his bearded chin toward Tol Yuganick, who was still standing in the small field, looking none too happy. "He's not for respecting ye, ranger. Might that ye should take him into the woods and beat him about."

  Elbryan only smiled, but Bradwarden's suggestion did not seem like such a bad idea.

  The mood of all the encampment brightened considerably that night when a dozen stragglers — more refugees from End-o'-the-World and mostly under the age of fifteen — wandered in, seeming dazed and sorely hungry; several had minor wounds, but otherwise all were physically sound. They told their remarkable tale to the group, and then their two leaders, a middle-aged couple, repeated the story in depth to Elbryan and Avelyn.

  They had fled the town with the others as the goblin horde descended upon it, heading for the forest. But they had not gotten away cleanly and were forced to separate from the main group. Later that night, they had found themselves cornered in a rocky ravine by powries and a pair of giants, but, as the woman explained it, "The air came alive, like the buzzing of a million bees;" and when the confusion ended, all their would-be murderers lay dead, the victims of many small puncture wounds.

  It sounded all too familiar to Elbryan Wyndon.

  "Then we were guided," the man added, "through the woods by night, camping in the day."

  "By whom?" the ranger asked eagerly. "Who was it that led you to this place?"

  The man shrugged and pointed to one young boy, slee
ping near the fire, a lad of no more than six years. "Shawno said he talked to them," the man explained. " `Tools,' he called them."

  "Tools?" echoed Avelyn, mystified.

  "Not 'Tools,"' Elbryan explained. "Touel." The ranger looked hard at the boy. He would have to speak with that one in the morning, after the child had rested and eaten.

  CHAPTER 41

  Tempest

  "Uncle Mather?"

  Elbryan waited for a long while in the dimly lit cave, the day outside gray and hinting again of snow. He was not physically uncomfortable, for this place he had been using as Oracle, a hole beneath a wide pine, remained surprisingly dry; and, sheltered from the bite of the north wind, the air was not so cold.

  The ranger was anxious, and he wanted to converse with the spirit this late afternoon, to tell his uncle Mather of the responsibilities that had befallen him, of the abrupt change that had come into his life, into the lives of all the folk on the borders of the Wilderlands. He realized then that Pony had been his sounding board, his confidant, and that since she had returned to him, he had not often been to Oracle.

  But now Pony was gone, on the road with Symphony.

  The ranger prayed that his uncle Mather would respond openly this time, would offer him some solid answers, as Pony had done, but that had never before been the way of the Oracle. This time, Elbryan feared, the answers and the strength were not within him, waiting for him to discover them.

  He called again, softly, then again nearly half an hour later, when the cave had grown so dark that the keen-eyed ranger could hardly make out the edges of the mirror, let alone any spirit image within the glass.

  Elbryan closed his eyes and recounted the events in his mind. The boy from End-o'-the-World, Shawno, had been of little help, but Elbryan remained convinced that it was indeed the Touel'alfar who had rescued that fleeing group from the monstrous hordes.

  But where were the elves, then? Surely Belli'mar Juraviel, if he was in the area, would have made some contact with Elbryan.

  Surely Tuntun would have to come to him, if for no other reason than to tell him how miserably he had failed in protecting the three towns!

  The ranger was startled when he opened his eyes to see the reflection of a small light" a candle, burning softly in the depths of the mirror, its sharp glow dulled by a whitish haze whose source Elbryan could not discern.

  No, it was not a reflection, the ranger suddenly realized, but a light within the glass!

  A moment later, Elbryan sucked in his breath, for there, at the corner of the glass stood the quiet apparition of, he knew in his heart, his father's brother.

  "Uncle Mather," he said softly, "glad I am that you heeded my call this troubled day."

  The image stood silently, unblinking.

  Where to begin? Elbryan wondered. "The towns have fallen, all three," he blurted, "but many of the folk escaped, including nearly all those from Weedy Meadow and all of Dundalis."

  The image hardly moved, but Elbryan sensed the spirit was pleased with Elbryan, if not with the situation.

  "And so we are hiding," the ranger went on, "and it is difficult, for winter remains. Now I must get those who cannot fight to safety in the south; that I know and am already seeking to arrange. And the southland will be warned by Pony, my beloved, returned to me and flying fist across the miles upon Symphony. But as for the rest, Uncle Mather, for those who would remain and fight, my course is unclear."

  The ranger paused and waited, hoping for some response.

  "I would choose to use them against the invaders," Elbryan said at length, when no answer was forthcoming. "I can form them into something devilish, a swift and secret band that strikes our. enemy in the night and flies away before the goblins and powries can retaliate."

  Again, the ranger had the feeling that the specter was pleased.

  "So much stronger shall we be if my suspicions are correct," Elbryan went on, "if the Touel'alfar are in the area, ready to lend their silverel bows to our cause. Do you know? Are they somewhere close..."

  Elbryan's voice trailed off as the image in the mirror shifted, as though the lens that was the mirror was drawing back from that single shielded candle, widening to include many others, little burning huts of snow, they seemed, set in a familiar field.

  "Uncle Mather?" Elbryan asked, but the image of the specter was no more, just the field of candles, flickering under the dulling whiteness, dying, gradually dying, until the mirror, until all the small cave, went absolutely dark.

  Elbryan sat there for a long while, considering the course before him. The moon had set when he at last crawled out of the hole, and there, waiting for him, fiddling with some stones, was Brother Avelyn. The monk had set a torch in the nook of a low branch of a nearby tree, its orange light casting twisted shadows across the ground.

  "Cold night," the monk remarked dryly. "A true friend would have come out much earlier."

  "I knew not that you were here waiting," Elbryan replied, and then he paused and looked hard at the man. "I did not know that you even knew of this place."

  "Shown to me by the stones," the monk replied, and he held up one of the stones, a coin-sized quartz.

  "You sought me out, then."

  "We have much work before us, my friend," said Avelyn.

  Elbryan didn't disagree.

  "This is no simple raid, not even a simple invasion," said Avelyn.

  "A simple invasion?" echoed Elbryan, for surely the words sounded curious when put together. "Can an invasion be simple?"

  "If it is without greater purpose," replied the monk. "Powries have oft come to Honce-the-Bear's coastline, striking hard and charging inland until their thirst for blood and pillage is sated. Then their ranks break apart from their constant infighting, they go away, and the land heals. It has been that way for all of time, I believe."

  "But this time is different," reasoned the ranger.

  "That is my fear," said Avelyn.

  "Yet it would seem as if this monstrous force of creatures so hateful and so different from one another would be more likely to turn on itself," Elbryan said.

  "So they would," muttered Avelyn. "So they would, were it not for a guiding hand of the greatest strength."

  Elbryan leaned back against the wide tree, having nothing to offer on that point. He remembered the murmuring of the elves soon before his departure, the whispers of a dactyl demon awakened in the north. "And if you are right?" he asked finally.

  Avelyn's face turned grave. "Then I see my destiny," the monk remarked.

  "Then I understand what prophetic, divine being guided my hand when I filled my pouch with the stones of St.-Mere-Abelle. Even the choice of which stones to take was made for me, then, by something above —"

  "I envy you your faith," said the ranger. "For myself, I feel that our destiny is our own to choose, our mistakes our own to make, our choices wrought of freedom."

  Avelyn thought for a moment, then nodded. "A different way of looking at the same thing," he decided. "My choice that day was based on all that had transpired previously in my life, was the culmination of a course that had begun long before I entered the Abellican Order. I feel that I am right with my God, ranger, and if my suspicions as to the nature of the beast are true, then I see my course before me. That is all. I thought I should let it be known to you."

  "Because you are leaving."

  "Not yet," Avelyn replied quickly, "and know that I am with you, at your command. I will use the stones and all my talents, and all my body in whatever course you set. For now."

  Elbryan nodded, satisfied that the monk would be of great help — as he had already been. The ranger didn't underestimate Avelyn in the least; without the man and his magic, many more would have fallen at Weedy Meadow. And by Elbryan's measure, Avelyn's bravery in all that he had done — in taking the stones and fleeing St.-Mere-Abelle, in facing Brother Justice, and in aiding against the monsters-was above question.

  "Do you believe in visions?" the ranger asked sudden
ly. "In prophecy?"

  Avelyn looked at him hard. "Did I not just say as much?" he returned.

  "And how is one to know if a vision is true or a deception?" the ranger asked.

  "Ho, ho, what!" Avelyn boomed. "You've seen something this night in your hole!"

  Elbryan smiled. "But how am I to know its source and its outcome?"

  Avelyn laughed all the harder. "The responsibility weighs on you heavily,"

  the monk replied. "You consider the vision more closely because so many people depend upon you now, because any course you take will draw many others in your wake. Ho, ho, what! Relieve your mind of the burden, then decide, my friend.

  What would be your course had you seen this vision without the responsibilities that have been placed on your strong shoulders?"

  Elbryan paused for a long while, studying this man, thinking Avelyn as wise as any of the elves who had been so instrumental in the making of Elbryan the Nightbird.

  Then he knew what he must do. And with only a few hours of darkness left before him, and without Symphony to take him swiftly, he knew that he must make haste.

  "Your pardon, my friend," he said.

  "A vision calls?"

  Elbryan nodded.

  "Would you need my company, then?" Avelyn asked.

  Elbryan looked at him again and was glad of the man's offer. He felt that he might indeed need help this night, but he understood, too, that the vision, whatever it foretold, was for him alone. He walked to Avelyn and patted the huge man on the shoulder. "I need you to help Bradwarden," he explained, "to keep the people on the right course."

  Avelyn didn't look over his shoulder to watch the ranger disappear into the night.

  The diamond-shaped grove was eerily quiet, with no rustle of wind nor the call of any animal, of any night bird, to stir the still air. Elbryan wished that he had gotten here before moonset, when he could better see the rolling fields of snow surrounding the dark grove. He considered the sack he had retrieved before coming out to this place, bulging with candles, and he wondered if he should first light the area.

  It didn't matter, the ranger decided boldly, and went to work. He moved slowly and carefully about the field, building domes of snow the size of his two cupped hands. Then he carefully hollowed each out and placed a single candle within. When he was finished with his task, when he had but one candle remaining, the ranger put flint to steel and lit it, then went steadily about the field, lighting each candle in turn, until all the area was glowing softly from two score muffled lights, points in the darkness.