"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 which 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.
A light snow had begun to fall all across the forest, but it seemed to shy from the ranger's camp, from the heat of the ranger's fire, from the warmth of Brother Avelyn's newfound home.
Part Four
THE RANGER
How I desire to go to her, to be with her, that we might know again the peace that was in our lives before that terrible day. How I want to hold Pony, to kiss her, to tell her all my feelings, all my secrets, my pain, my hopes. To see Pony now is to see what was and to wonder what might have been had the goblins not come to Dundalis. To see Pony now is to ponder what other road might have been before me - might I have farmed the land and hunted, as Olwan my father did? Would Pony and I be wed, perhaps with children?
How would the world look to Elbryan had he not spent those years in Andur'Blough Inninness?
But that is the problem, Uncle Mather. I cannot know, can only guess, and I fear that any guess I make will be tainted by the observations of my current life. Perhaps my life would have been better if God had presented me a different path, one more like Olwan's. I wish all those folk of Dundalis - my mother and father, Pony's parents, and all the others - had been spared their grim fate. I wish with all my heart that the goblins had not come to Dundalis!
But where would that leave me? At peace, I suppose, and probably with Pony, and that is a fate about which no man could complain.
Yet I refuse to dismiss or diminish my years with the Touel'alfar; those elven friends helped to shape the man Elbryan. Those elven friends created Nightbird, this ranger, hopefully for the betterment of the world and surely for the betterment of me. Looking through the perspective of their shining eyes, I have gained a newer and brighter appreciation of the world about me; one I would never have known had the goblins not come to Dundalis, had the elves not rescued m
e and taken me to their secret valley. Through that tragedy, I, Elbryan, have come to know and love life all the more. Through that tragedy, I have become the man I am, the man who can see the world through the vision of an elf as well as the vision of a human.
That is my guilt, Uncle Mather, for why should I have been chosen, and not another of Dundalis - not Olwan or Shane McMichael, not Pony or Carley don Aubrey. That is my guilt, and seeing Pony alive, so beautiful, so wonderful, only heightens my pain, reminds me of those who died, tempts me to ask what might have been, and makes me wonder if I would indeed prefer that lost course.
It is only worse for poor Pony. The sight of me, of Dundalis, has brought back to her memories long buried. I have seen her little in the few days since Brother Avelyn and I rescued her from Quintall. She is avoiding me, I know, and I do not begrudge her that. She needs the time; she has seen again so much of her lost past in so short a time.
Everyone in Dundalis died except the two of us. And we have continued from that moment of tragedy, have grown strong and true, have found lives pleasing, and, now that we are together again, the potential seems all the greater. Yet, in our pleasures . . .
That is the guilt, Uncle Mather, our guilt. I cannot rescue Pony from the pain of her memories, as she cannot rescue me from mine. I only hope that she comes to accept our fate and that she desires to forge ahead in the best manner that we may.
I knew it from the moment I saw her in that cave. I love her, Uncle Mather, as I loved her that fateful day on the ridge above our home. I love her, and all the world will be sweeter indeed if I may hold her in my arms and feel her soft breath against my neck.
-ELBRYAN WYNDON
CHAPTER 36
Confrontation
"They think me madder still!" Brother Avelyn roared happily.
"Ho, ho, what!"
Elbryan looked at Bradwarden, and the centaur only shrugged, not about to disagree with the volatile friar's estimation of himself.
"Cavorting with the likes of you, after all," Avelyn went on. "And, oh, would they talk if they knew that I was dining with a centaur!"
"They would talk respectfully if they knew Bradwarden as I know him," Elbryan put in, "else, I fear the centaur would trample them."
Bradwarden swallowed a huge chunk of mutton and gave a great belch.
"Ho, ho, what!" Avelyn howled, charmed by it all. The monk was feeling better now, feeling more at home than he had since his earliest days in St.-Mere-Abelle, since that innocent time before he had learned the truth of the Abellican Order. In Elbryan, Avelyn had found a man he could honestly respect, a stoic individual, wary of the very real dangers of the world, ready to fight against evil and injustice. He had told his tale in full to the ranger, and the ranger had judged him not according to the penned laws but by the true ideal of justice.
Now Avelyn spent his nights in Dundalis or in Weedy Meadow or End-o'-the-World, and his days in the forest with Elbryan and Pony - and sometimes with the ranger's more unusual friends, such as Bradwarden and that magnificent horse Symphony. There was something right about it all to Avelyn, some sense of godliness here that he had not felt in many years. His only lament was that Pony seemed truly shaken by her return to this area. She spent little time with any of them, preferring to walk alone, mostly near Dundalis. She was confronting her past, the monk knew, and he was glad of that, though he wished he could be of more help to the young woman.
Bradwarden took up his pipes then, following the meal with a mournful, soulful tune that conjured in Avelyn images of the rolling hills, the wheatfields, and grapevines of Youmaneff. He thought of his mother and father, hoped that his father was still well. Of course, Jayson Desbris would not know it, but he could rest well when thinking of his youngest son now.
On a hillock not so far away, Pony, too, heard the centaur's haunting music. Her thoughts rolled back to the carefree days of her childhood, of her times with Elbryan - Elbryan! All those terrible images of that fateful day in Dundalis remained with her, but somehow they were easier to deal with. She could look at the tragedy rationally, and now, with Elbryan beside her, she was beginning to come to terms with her fate.
Pony came to know that it was not simple terror and grief that had forced her to bury those awful images, but guilt. She had lived, but everyone else, so she thought, had perished. Why her?
Seeing another from her village, seeing dear Elbryan again, had allowed Pony to remove some of that guilt. She knew the truth now, all of it, and she was strong enough to accept that truth - and on those occasions when she found she was not strong enough, she knew Elbryan would be there for her, as she would be there for him. For the first time in many years, Pony was not alone.
"You are not going into town this night?" Elbryan asked Avelyn, the monk tarrying near to the fire.
"Jill - Pony went into Dundalis," Avelyn clarified, "but I believe I will spend this night in the forest."
"Cold wind and a hard ground," Elbryan warned, and indeed, winter was fast approaching.
"Ho, ho, what!" Avelyn laughed. "You would not guess the hardships I have endured, my friend. This round body does not tell of them."
Elbryan smiled and considered the monk, understanding there was indeed a hardened frame beneath the soft exterior.
"No, I will stay this night," Avelyn went on. "I feel it is time for me to begin repaying you the debt I owe."
"Debt?" Elbryan asked incredulously.
"I owe you my life, as does Pony."
"I followed the only course open to me," Elbryan replied.
"And glad I am that you did!" Avelyn snorted. "Ho, ho, what!"
Elbryan gave a smile and shook his head, entertained, as usual by the complex man. "So you shall repay me with your company," the ranger reasoned.
"Oh, more than that," the monk replied. "And I fear that if I offer too much of my company, then I shall owe you all the more!"
Again came the laughter, but it died away quickly, Avelyn's face growing suddenly serious. "Tell me of your horse," he bade the ranger.
"I have no horse."
"Symphony?"
"Symphony is not mine," Elbryan explained. "Symphony is free and belongs to no man."
"All the better then!" said Avelyn. He fumbled about his robes, then with his pouch.
Elbryan caught a glimpse within that pouch as Avelyn searched for a certain stone, the ranger's jaw dropping low at the myriad sparkles, shimmering brightly, magnificently, even in the light of the low fire. No wonder, then, that the Abellican Church had come after Brother Avelyn!
Finally the monk found the stone he was looking for and held it up before him: a turquoise.
"Is Symphony about?" the monk asked.
Elbryan nodded slowly, cautiously. "What magic do you intend for Symphony?" he wanted to know.
Avelyn snorted. "Nothing the horse will not desire," he assured the ranger.
They went off together into the night, finding Symphony in a moonlit field, grazing calmly. Avelyn bade Elbryan to wait at field's edge, then the monk walked slowly toward the horse, holding forth the stone and chanting quietly.
Elbryan held his breath, not certain what the powerful Symphony might do. The stallion had accepted the ranger, but Elbryan knew that to be an unusual thing for proud and wild Symphony. If the stallion now bolted forward suddenly, trampling the monk into the earth, Elbryan would not be surprised.
But Symphony did no such thing. The horse nickered quietly as Avelyn came right up to him. The monk continued to chant - it seemed to Elbryan as if he were conversing with the horse - and whatever he was saying, Symphony was listening! After a long while, Avelyn motioned for the ranger to join him.
The monk was still whispering softly when Elbryan moved up beside him. Symphony had gone perfectly still, his head raised high, his magnificent, muscled chest presented openly to the two men.
Avelyn handed the turquoise to Elbryan. "Finish," he instructed.
Elbryan took the stone, having no idea what he should do w
ith it. Before he could begin to question the monk, he felt an urge, a calling. The ranger looked up into Symphony's dark eyes, understanding suddenly that it was the stallion calling to him! Elbryan blinked in disbelief, then looked back at the turquoise and realized that its glow was not reflected moonlight but its own inner light, a radiating magic; only then did Elbryan realize how warm the stone had grown.
"Touch it to the horse's breast," the monk instructed.
Elbryan moved his hand slowly toward the stallion. Symphony closed his eyes, seeming as if in a deep trance. The ranger put the stone right against the horse's breast, right in the "V" where the muscles of the powerful shoulders came together. He held it there for a long time, while Avelyn took up a louder, more insistent chant that sounded as a song.
Elbryan was hardly conscious of the stone's action, and Symphony seemed perfectly at ease, as the turquoise burrowed into the horse's flesh, as the stone set itself perfectly upon Symphony's breast.
The ranger retracted his hand suddenly, his expression horrified as he regarded the stone, which seemed now a natural part of the horse. Avelyn stopped his chanting and put a comforting hand on Elbryan's shoulder; Symphony opened his dark eyes and seemed perfectly calm, pained not at all.
"What have I done?" Elbryan asked. "What have you done?"
Avelyn shrugged. "Not exactly sure," he admitted. "But the stone's magic was for animals, of that I am certain."
"To heal?" Elbryan asked. "To strengthen?"
"Perhaps both," the monk replied. Avelyn's face crinkled as he tried to sort out a feasible explanation. "You see, I do not always know what magic the stones will provide," he began. "They call to me; they tell me what to do."
"Then you have no way of knowing what we just did to Symphony," Elbryan reasoned, his tone showing clearly that he was not pleased. Symphony was no toy for experiments, after all! "Beneficial or baneful?"
"Beneficial," Avelyn said with all confidence and without hesitation. "Ho, ho, what! I told you that I meant to repay a debt."
Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens Page 44
