The Demon Awakens (DemonWars), page 75
Pony followed his gaze to the base of a large tree, one root pulled up out of the soft ground to create a small hollow underneath. “A fine place to be sitting when the goblins come charging in,” the woman replied sourly.
“There were only two.”
“You doubt that they’ll find friends in this wretched place?” Pony asked. “We could set our camp with thoughts of a quiet night, only to find that we are fighting half the entire goblin army before the dawn.”
Elbryan seemed to have run out of answers. He chewed his bottom lip for a bit, looking to the nearby tree, its hollowed base inviting him to Oracle. He had to go to Uncle Mather, he felt, and soon, before the images of that long-lost trail faded from his thoughts.
“Go and do what you must,” Pony said to him, recognizing the true dilemma etched on his face. “But give me the cat’s-eye. Symphony and I will scout about for any signs of enemies.”
Elbryan was genuinely relieved as he took the circlet from his head and handed it to the woman. It was a gift from Avelyn Desbris that he and Pony had been passing back and forth as needed. He couldn’t use it in Oracle anyway; it would defeat the whole mood of the meditation, for the gemstone set in the front of the circlet, a chrysoberyl, more commonly known as cat’s-eye, would allow the wearer of the circlet to see clearly in the darkest of nights, even in the darkest of caves.
“You owe me for my indulgence,” Pony informed him as she placed the circlet about her thick mop of blond hair. Her tone, and the sudden grin that lifted the edges of her mouth, told the ranger what she might have in mind, a notion reinforced when she hopped over to him a moment later and kissed him passionately.
“Later,” she said.
“When we are not surrounded by goblins and insects,” Elbryan agreed.
Pony swung up onto Symphony’s saddle. With a wink at Elbryan, she turned the horse about and trotted away into the growing gloom—but with the cat’s-eye securely in place, the images before her remained distinct.
Elbryan watched her go with the deepest affection and respect. This was a trying time for the young ranger, a time when all his skills, physical and mental, were being put to the absolute test every day. Every decision could prove tragic; every move he made could give his enemies the advantage. How glad he was to have Pony, so thoughtful, so skilled, so beautiful, at his side.
He sighed when she passed out of sight, then turned to the business at hand: the construction of a proper sight for Oracle and a meeting with Uncle Mather.
It didn’t take Pony long to discern that the goblins had not given up the chase, and had in fact begun trailing her and Elbryan. And the tracks she found when she circled back indicated that the goblin pair had indeed found some friends, more goblins, perhaps as many as a dozen. Pony looked ahead, back toward her camp, which was now no more than a mile away. She would be hard-pressed to ride by the goblins and get to Elbryan in time, she realized.
“Oracle,” she said, shaking her head and giving a great sigh. She bade Symphony to stay put, then reached into her pouch for her malachite. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups as she put her thoughts into the gem, summoning its power. Then she began to rise, slowly, into the nighttime sky, hoping the darkness was complete enough to keep her hidden from sharp goblin eyes.
She had only gone up about twenty feet when she spotted the creatures, gathered about a small, well-concealed fire in another copse of trees, barely a couple hundred yards from her position. They hadn’t settled for the night, she knew, but were up and agitated, sketching in the dirt—probably approach routes or searching routes—pushing each other and arguing.
Pony didn’t want to expend too much of her magical energy, so she gradually released the malachite’s levitational powers, drifting back down to land atop Symphony. “Are you ready to have some fun?” she asked the horse, replacing the malachite in her pouch and taking out two different stones.
Symphony nickered softly and Pony patted his neck. She had never tried this particular trick before, and especially not while taking a horse in with her, but she was brimming with confidence. Avelyn had taught her well, and, given her newfound insights into the gemstones—an understanding that went beyond anything she had ever known—she believed with all her heart that she was ready.
She started Symphony walking in the direction of the goblin camp, then took up a serpentine and began gathering its magic. In her other hand she held both bridle and a ruby, perhaps the most powerful stone in her possession.
With the cat’s-eye, Pony picked her path carefully, a trail that would take her and Symphony in fast and hard. Barely twenty yards away, Symphony’s hoofbeats covered by the sounds of arguing goblins, the woman communicated her intentions to the horse via the turquoise, then kicked the powerful stallion into a dead gallop and let her own thoughts fall into the serpentine, bringing up a glowing white shield about her and the horse, making it look as though she and Symphony had fallen into a vat of a sticky, milky substance.
Pony only had seconds to secure the shield about them both, to switch hands on the bridle and bring the ruby up high dropping the serpentine shield about the ruby, then completing the protective bubble about her hand under the gemstone.
Goblins howled and reached for their weapons, diving and rolling as horse and rider thundered into their midst. One ugly brute had a spear up and ready to throw.
Pony paid it no heed, could see nothing but the red swirls within the ruby, could hear nothing but the wind in her ears and the simmering, mounting power of the gemstone.
Symphony ran straight and true, right to the goblins’ fire, then skidded to an abrupt halt and reared.
Goblins shouted; some charged, some continued to scramble away. Not far enough away.
Pony loosed the destructive power of the ruby, a tremendous, concussive fireball that exploded out from her hand, engulfing goblin and tree alike in a sudden blazing inferno.
Symphony reared again and whinnied, pulling wildly. Pony held on and called comforting words to the horse, though she doubted that Symphony could even hear her through the tremendous roar of the blaze, or even sense her calming thoughts with the sheer commotion of the conflagration. Pony could hardly see, smoke rolling all about, but she urged Symphony forward, and so solid was her serpentine shield that neither she nor the great horse felt any heat whatsoever. They passed by one fallen goblin, the one who had raised its spear to throw, and Pony looked on in disgust as the blackened creature, still holding fast the charring spear, settled, its super-heated chest collapsing with a crackle.
Soon after, horse and rider came out of the copse, into the cooler night, and moved away, an exhausted and coughing Pony dropping the protective shield. “Oracle,” she said again and sighed again, glancing back at the blaze.
No goblins would emerge from that catastrophe, she knew.
When she got back to her camp, she found Elbryan standing on the edge, staring at the continuing fire nearly a mile away.
“Your doing,” he stated more than asked.
“Somebody had to see to the goblins,” Pony replied, slipping down from the still-agitated black horse. “And it should interest you to know that their numbers had swelled.”
Elbryan gave her a disarming grin. “I had confidence that you could handle whatever situation arose,” he said.
“While you played at Oracle?”
The smile left the ranger’s face and he shook his head slowly. “No play,” he said gravely. “A search that might save all the world.”
“You are being very mysterious this night,” Pony remarked.
“If you took a moment from your insults and considered the tales I told you about my time away from Dundalis, you would begin to understand.”
Pony cocked her head and regarded the man, the ranger, the elven-trained ranger.
“Juraviel?” she asked suddenly, breathlessly, referring to an elf she had once known, friend and mentor to Elbryan.
“And his kin,” Elbryan said, nodding his chin toward the west. “I believe that I have remembered the road back to Andur’Blough Inninness.”
Andur’Blough Inninness, Pony echoed in her mind. The “Forest of Cloud” wherein lay Caer’alfar, home to the Touel’alfar, the slight, winged elves of Corona. Elbryan had told her many tales of the enchanted place, but always answered her pleas to go there with a frustrated reply that he could not recall the trail, that the elves desired their privacy even from him, the one they named Nightbird, a ranger trained in their home. If he was right now, if he could indeed find the trail back to the elven home, then his words about the unimportance of a couple of goblins suddenly rang with more conviction.
“We shall set off in the morning,” Elbryan promised into her eager expression. “Before the dawn.”
“Symphony will be packed and waiting,” Pony replied, her blue eyes twinkling with excitement.
Elbryan took her hand and led her to the small tent they shared. “Have you any enchantments which will repel insects?” he asked on a whim.
Pony considered the thought for a moment. “A fireball would give us a short reprieve,” she replied.
Elbryan glanced back to the east, to the still-burning, thoroughly decimated copse, then scrunched up his face and shook his head. He’d suffer the inconvenience of a few thousand gnats.
No goblins bothered them the rest of that night, nor the next day as they exited the Moorlands through the western border. Both rode atop Symphony as soon as the ground became more firm, and Elbryan pushed the horse at a swift pace. Joined telepathically through the turquoise, the ranger understood that Symphony wanted to run hard, had been born to run hard. And so they made their swift way, setting camps for only short hours in the darkest part of the night, and, on Elbryan’s insistence, avoiding any goblins or giants or powries, or any other distraction. His purpose was singular now, while the ever-elusive trail to Andur’Blough Inninness remained clear in his thoughts, and Pony didn’t argue with the wisdom of trying to enlist the elves in their continuing struggle.
And there was an added benefit for the woman. With all the enchanting tales Elbryan had told of his days training as a ranger, she dearly wanted to see the elven forest.
She used the reprieve from battle for another purpose, as well. “Are you ready to begin your new career?” she asked one bright morning, Elbryan breaking down the camp and grumbling that they had overslept and should have been on the trail before the dawn.
The ranger cocked his head curiously.
Pony held aloft the pouch of gemstones, and gave them a definitive shake when Elbryan’s expression soured. “You have seen their power,” she protested.
“I am a warrior, and no wizard,” Elbryan replied. “And certainly no monk!”
“And I am not a warrior?” Pony asked slyly. “How many times have I put you down to the ground?”
Elbryan couldn’t suppress a chuckle at that. When they were younger, children in Dundalis before the goblins came, he and Pony had wrestled several times, with Pony always emerging the victor. And once, after being caught by the hair by Elbryan, the girl had even laid the boy out cold with a punch to the face. The memories, even of the knockout, were the brightest of all for Elbryan, for then had come the dark time, the first goblin invasion, and he and Pony had been separated for so many years, each thinking the other dead.
Now he was Nightbird, among the finest warriors in all the world, and she was a wielder of magic, a wizard trained in the use of the sacred gemstones by Avelyn Desbris, who had been perhaps the most powerful magic-wielder in all the world.
“You must learn them,” Pony insisted. “At least a bit.”
“You seem to do well with them on your own,” Elbryan replied defiantly, though he was privately a bit intrigued by the prospects of using the powerful gemstones. “Would we not be weakened as a fighting team if some of the stones were in my possession?”
“That would depend on the situation,” Pony answered. “If you get wounded, I can use the soul stone to mend your injuries, but what if I get wounded? Who will heal me? Or would you just leave me sitting against a tree to die?”
The image conjured by that thought nearly buckled Elbryan’s knees. He couldn’t believe that neither he nor Pony had thought of that possibility before—at least not enough to do anything about it. All objections gone, he said, “We must be on the trail.” He held his hand up as Pony began her expected protest. “But with every meal and every break, I will be tutored, particularly with the soul stone,” he explained. “All our waking hours will be filled, then, with traveling and learning.”
Pony considered that for just a moment, and nodded her agreement with the concession. Then, with a sudden wistful smile, she took a step closer to Elbryan, hooked her finger in the top of his tunic and pursed her sensual lips. “Every waking moment?” she asked coyly.
Elbryan couldn’t find the breath to reply. That was what he most loved about this woman: her ability to keep him always off-balance, to surprise him and entice him with the simplest statements, with movements subtly suggestive. Every time he thought he was planted firmly in the ground, Pony found away to make him realize that the ground was as tentative as the shifting silt of the Moorlands.
They were late for the trail, the ranger knew, and he knew, too, that they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a little while.
What struck them most was the pure majesty of the mountains—there was simply no other word for it. They walked along rocky trails, with Elbryan in the lead, checking the trail and watching for tracks. Pony, walking behind, held Symphony by the bridle, though with its telepathic connection to both these humans, the horse would have followed anyway. Neither Elbryan nor Pony spoke, for the sound of voices seemed out of place here, unless those voices were raised in glorious song.
All about them great mountains reached up their white caps of snow to touch the sky. Clouds drifted by, sometimes above them, sometimes below them, and often they walked right through the gray air. The wind blew constantly, but it only dulled the sound even more, making this majestic place utterly silent, utterly serene. So they walked and they looked, and were humbled by the sheer power and glory of nature.
Elbryan knew he was on the right trail, knew he was closing in on his intended destination. This place, so powerful, so overwhelming, felt like Andur’Blough Inninness.
The trail forked, going up and to the left, down and to the right, around an outcropping of stone. Elbryan started left and motioned for Pony to move on to the right, figuring the paths would cross again soon enough. He was still climbing, and still veering left, when he heard Pony cry out. Down he sprinted, cutting over the rough ground between the paths, leaping atop any boulders in his path and springing away, as surefooted as any mountain cat. How often Nightbird had run along such terrain during his years of training with the Touel’alfar!
He slowed his pace when he spotted Pony standing calmly with Symphony by her side. When he got up beside her and followed her gaze over the lip of a steep descent, he understood.
There was a valley below them, obviously, but it was hidden from view by a wall of thick fog, an unbroken blanket of gray.
“It cannot be natural,” Pony reasoned. “No cloud as I have ever seen.”
“Andur’Blough Inninness,” Elbryan replied breathlessly, and when he finished his statement, the corners of his mouth rose in a wide smile.
“The Forest of Cloud,” Pony added, the common translation of the elven words.
“There is a cloud above it all the day, every day—” Elbryan started to explain.
“Not a cheery place,” the woman interrupted.
Elbryan gave her a sidelong glance. “But it is,” he replied. “When you want it to be.”
Now it was Pony’s turn to regard her companion curiously.
“I cannot even begin to explain it,” Elbryan stammered. “It seems so gray from up here, but it’s not like that underneath, not at all. The blanket is illusionary, and yet it is not.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Elbryan gave a great sigh and searched for a different approach. “It is gray down there, and melancholy, beautifully so,” he said. “But only if you want it to be. For those who prefer a day in the sun, there is plenty to be found.”
“The gray blanket looks solid,” Pony remarked doubtfully.
“Appearances are often far from the truth where the Touel’alfar are concerned.”
Pony couldn’t miss the reverence with which Elbryan spoke of the elves, and having met a couple of them, she could understand his respect—though she wasn’t so enamored of them, and in truth found them to be a bit arrogant and callous. Still, looking at Elbryan now, she noticed that he was beaming, as obviously delighted and charmed as she had ever seen him.
And the source of that charm, she knew, was right below them. She stopped her arguing then, taking the ranger at his word.
“It was not until this very moment that I realized how much I miss my days in Caer’alfar,” Elbryan said quietly. “Or how much I miss Belli’mar Juraviel, and even Tuntun, who made my life quite difficult in those years.”
Pony nodded grimly at the mention of Tuntun, the gallant elf maiden who had given her life in Aida saving Elbryan and her from one of the demon dactyl’s monstrous creations, the spirit of a man encased in magma.
Elbryan chuckled, stealing the somber mood.
“What is it?” Pony prompted.
“The milk stones,” the ranger replied.
Pony looked at him curiously; he had told her quite a bit about his days with the elves, but had only mentioned the milk stones in passing. Day after day, week after week, month after month, young Elbryan had spent his mornings with the stones. They were sponge-like, though harder and more solid. Each day they would be placed in a bog, where they would soak up the liquid. It was Elbryan’s job to fish them out and carry them to a trough, where he would squeeze the now-flavored water out of them, a concoction that the elves used to create a sweet and potent wine.
