"Please don't be dead," Elbryan said to the quiet wind. He closed his eyes, wet again with tears for his mother and father, for all his friends and all his community. "I can survive this," Elbryan said determinedly, "but only with you." He lay back on the ground and crossed his forearms over his face. "I need you, Pony. I need you."
"A very needy young boy," Tuntun remarked.
"Some sympathy," Juraviel scolded.
A short distance away, Elbryan sat bolt upright, confused.
Juraviel glared at Tuntun, for the female's sour attitude had forced the words out before any sound screen could be cast up.
Elbryan drew out his short sword, glancing warily into the shadows. "Come out and face me!" he commanded, and there was no fear in his voice.
Tuntun nodded. "Oo, so brave," she said sarcastically.
Juraviel responded with a nod of his own, but his admiration was sincere. The young man, so suddenly no more a boy, had passed through grief and through fear. He was indeed brave - it was no act - and would willingly face whatever enemy he found without fear of his own death.
After a few moments, Elbryan's nerves began to wear thin. He moved to the nearest tree, stalked about it, then darted to the next. The elves, of course, had little trouble keeping ahead of him, silent and out of sight. After a few minutes, the young man began to relax, but, exhausted though he was, he realized he should not remain so vulnerable here out in the open. He couldn't think of any defensible spots nearby, but perhaps he could strengthen this one. He went to work quietly, methodically, using the lace of his shirt, his belt, anything he could find to secure saplings into snares.
The elves watched every move, some with respect, some with a hugely superior attitude. Elbryan's traps couldn't catch a squirrel; certainly any elf could run into one, untie it before it ever went off, then reset it as he scampered out the other side!
"Blood of Mather!" Tuntun remarked more than once.
Juraviel, Elbryan's chief sponsor with Lady Dasslerond, took it lightly. He remembered Mather at the start of the legendary ranger's career, a bumbling boy no more adept and probably not even as resourceful as this Elbryan.
Within the hour, Elbryan had done all he could - and that was not much. He found a tall pine with low-hanging branches and slipped underneath them into the natural tent. Only the keenest of eyes could have picked him out within that blocking canopy, but of course, his field of vision likewise was severely limited. He put his back to the tree trunk, put his sword across his lap. Nagged by a distinct feeling that he was not alone and believing that he would be safe if he could just make it to the dawn, he tried hard to stay awake. But weariness overtook him, caught him where he sat, and brought his eyelids low.
The elves gradually closed in.
Something brought Elbryan awake. Music? A soft singing he could not quite discern? He had no idea how long he had slept. Was morning close? Or had he slumbered right through the next day?
He forced himself to his knees and crawled to the edge of the overhanging canopy, carefully pushing aside one of the branches.
The moon, Sheila, was up, but not yet directly overhead. Elbryan tried to calculate the duration of his rest, knew it had been no more than a couple of hours. He paused and listened hard, certain there was something out there beyond his vision.
A soft melody vibrated in his ear, somewhere just below his consciousness. Quiet and sweet were the notes, but that did little to comfort Elbryan.
It went on and on, sometimes seeming to rise, as if his enemies were about to rush out at him from the shadows but then it diminished to near nothingness once again. Elbryan clutched the sword hilt so hard his knuckles whitened. It wasn't Pony out there, he knew; it wasn't anything human. And to the young man who had somehow survived a goblin raid, such a conclusion meant it could only be one thing.
He should have stayed hidden. Rationally, Elbryan knew his best defense lay in concealment, the best he could hope for against returning goblins was to keep as far away from them as possible. But thoughts of his slain family and friends, of Pony, spurred him on. Despite very real fears, Elbryan wanted revenge.
"I told you he was brave," Juraviel whispered to Tuntun as Elbryan slipped out from under the pine boughs.
"Stupid," Tuntun corrected without hesitation.
Again Juraviel let the insult to Elbryan pass. Tuntun had thought Mather stupid, as well - at first. Juraviel motioned to his companions and started away.
The teasing fairy song, remaining at the very edge of his consciousness, led Elbryan on for many minutes. Then abruptly it was no more, and for Elbryan, the sudden silence was like waking up from a dream. He found he was standing in the middle of a nearly circular clearing, a small meadow ringed by tall trees. The moon was above the easternmost boughs, casting slanted rays upon him, and he realized how foolish he had been and how vulnerable he now was. Ducking low, he started for the edge of the clearing but stopped almost immediately and stood up straight, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.
He spun in a complete circle, watching as they stepped into the clearing's perimeter, dozens of creatures of a type he did not know. They were no taller than he and couldn't have weighed close to his ninety pounds. They were slight of build, delicate, and beautiful, with angled features, pointed ears, and skin that seemed almost translucent in the soft light.
"Elves?" Elbryan whispered, the thought coming from somewhere far back in his memories, the stuff of legends so remote the flustered young man had no idea what to make of these creatures.
The elves joined hands and began to walk in a circle about him, and only then did Elbryan realize they were indeed singing. The syllables came clear to him, though they joined into words he could not understand, distant melodic sounds he somehow recognized as part of the earth itself. Soothing sounds, and that made defiant Elbryan panic even more. He glanced all around, tried to focus on individual creatures that he might discern their leader.
Their tempo increased. Sometimes they held hands, and other times they let go long enough for every other elf to turn a graceful pirouette. Elbryan couldn't focus; every time he sorted out an individual, some movement at the edge of his vision, or some higher note in the chorus, distracted him. And by the time he looked back to the original spot, the individual elf had blended away, for surely they all looked alike.
The dance intensified, the pace, the spins. Now whenever the elves broke apart for their pirouettes, those not spinning lifted off the ground as if by magic - for Elbryan could not see their delicate wings in the moonlight - floating and fluttering to land back in place.
Too many images assailed poor Elbryan. He tried to push them away, closed his eyes, and several times took up his sword and started a charge, meaning to break through the ring and run off into the forest. Every attempt proved futile, for though he started straight, the young man inevitably turned with the flow of the dancers, going around in a circle until the multitude of images and the sweet melody distracted him and defeated him.
He realized then he had dropped his sword and thought it might be a good idea to pick it up. But the song . . .
The song! There was something about it that would not let him go. He felt it, a tender vibration all along his frame, more than he heard it. It caressed him and beckoned him. It brought images of a younger world, a cleaner and more vibrant world. It told him these creatures were not of the evil goblin race; these were friends to be trusted.
Elbryan, so full of grief and rage, fought that last notion fiercely and so remained standing much longer than usual for a mere human. Gradually, though, his resolve drained away and so did his strength. He accepted the invitation of the soft earth.
He was lying down; that was the last thought that came to him.
"Blood of Mather," muttered Tuntun as the elvish caravan started off, Elbryan moving with their line on a floating bed woven of silken strands, feathers, and music.
"You keep saying that," replied Juraviel. As he spoke, the elf fingered a green stone, se
rpentine, feeling its subtle vibrations. Normally such trivial magic would prove useless against one as wise as Tuntun, who had seen the birth and death of several centuries, but the female was clearly distracted by her distaste for this night's work.
"I shall keep saying it!" Tuntun insisted, but her bluster was lost in the whoosh of a sapling. The agile elf managed to slip her foot out of Elbryan's belt snare and come dropping back to the ground, though even with her wings fluttering hard, she hit rather unceremoniously.
Her glare at Juraviel was almost threatening as laughter erupted about her. She knew, as did all the gathering, that there was no possible way she could have stumbled into such a coarse trap had not a bit of magic been worked.
It wasn't hard for Tuntun to guess who had worked it.
CHAPTER 8
The Preparer
The schedule was grueling, designed to find weakness and break those who were not fit for the daily rigors of the Order of St.-Mere-Abelle. For the four chosen Preparers candidates, Avelyn and Quintall, Thagraine and Pellimar - two students from the class of God's Year 815 - life was even more difficult. In addition to their daily duties as first - and second - year students at the abbey, they were given the extra chores of preparation for their journey to Pimaninicuit.
After vespers, their classmates knelt to pray for one hour, spent an hour with their letters, then retired early to meditate and sleep, to reinvigorate their bodies for the tasks of the next day.
But after vespers, the four Preparers began a four-hour regimen, each with an appointed master. They studied the Halo, the charts that determined the astronomical data which would indicate the time of the showers. They learned of seamanship, of how to navigate by the stars of the night sky - and of how those stars would change when the ship carrying the monks crossed certain latitudes. They learned how to tie ropes in a variety of ways, knots necessary for the many uses aboard a sailing vessel. They learned sea etiquette, the rules of the wide waters, and they learned, most of all, the properties of the various stones and of how they must prepare the stones immediately after the shower.
For Avelyn, the night lessons were the promise of his greatest aspirations. He was with Master Jojonah most nights, and Avelyn lived up to his reputation as the finest student to enter St.-Mere-Abelle in many decades. After only two weeks, his predictions of astronomical shifts were perfect, and within the first month, he could recite all the known magical stones, from adamite to turquoise, their reputed properties, and the greatest known magical effects which had been brought about by each.
Master Jojonah watched the young brother with mounting pride, and Avelyn recognized that the older man considered him a protégé. There was security in that, Avelyn came to realize, but also responsibility. Some of the other masters, Siherton in particular, watched him closely, very closely, seeking an excuse to berate him. It seemed to Avelyn as if he had fallen into the middle of a running rivalry between the two older men.
That bothered the young monk profoundly. To see such human frailty in the masters of St.-Mere-Abelle touched the very core of Avelyn's faith. These were men of God, the men closest to God, and such petty actions on their part diminished the very meaning of the Abellican Church. All that should have mattered was the retrieval of the stones. Toward his fellow Preparers, young men he would compete against for the coveted two positions of those who would actually step onto the island of Pimaninicuit, Avelyn felt no rivalry. He exalted in their successes as much as in his own. If they proved the better, he believed, then that was obviously God's will. The proven better two must go to the island; all that mattered was the success of the journey, the retrieval of God's highest gift to humanity.
It quickly became apparent to the watching masters that Avelyn Desbris would be one of the two. During the long hours put in at night, not one of the other three came close to him; they were still mired in charting the stars when Avelyn had moved on to the specific humours that caused the "magical" reaction, having already passed through the recognition of the stones by touch as well as sight and the recognition of their potential intensity by their brightness, shape, and hue. After only five weeks of a four-year training program, the first position of Preparer was nearly secured. If Avelyn did not take ill, the competition to go onto the island of Pimaninicuit had been narrowed to three monks fighting for one slot.
The daytime training was not as easy or as inspiring for Avelyn. He found the many prayer rituals boring, even trite, in light of the revelations he was finding every night. The candle ceremonies, the water bucket lines, the stone carriers bringing material to the newest sections of the abbey, the gift of the class of God's Year 816, simply did not measure up against the mysteries of the God-given stones. Worst of all, and most intense of all, was the physical training. From sunrise to noon each day; with only an hour break - half for a meal and half for a prayer the students assembled in a courtyard for a lesson in the martial arts or ran barefoot along the rough walls of the abbey or swam in the frigid waters of All Saints Bay. For months they learned to fall and roll; they hardened their bodies by slapping, slapping, slapping one another until their skin grew less sensitive. They walked through attack and defense routines, slowly, endlessly, building in their sore muscles memories of the moves. For the first year, they would study barehanded techniques, punching and grappling. After that, the monks would move on to weapon mastery. And through it all, bare-handed and with weapons, they would square off against each other, pounding on each other relentlessly. Physical perfection was the goal; it was said that a monk of St.-Mere-Abelle could outfight any man alive, and the masters seemed determined to keep that reputation intact.
Avelyn was not the worst of his class, but he was certainly not near the best: Quintall. The short, stocky man went at the martial training as eagerly as Avelyn went at the nighttime studies. As the year progressed, as Avelyn further separated himself from the other three candidate Preparers, he came to dread his daytime matches against any of them, particularly Quintall. There was supposed to be no anger toward an opponent, only respect and mutual learning, but Quintall growled whenever the masters paired him against Avelyn.
Avelyn understood the man's motives. Quintall was carrying over the nighttime rivalry. He could not beat Avelyn at the Ring Stone studies, but he gained a measure of superiority during the day. In most of the maneuvers, the monks were supposed to pull their punches, but Quintall often blasted the breath from Avelyn; there was no striking above the shoulders allowed, but more than once, Quintall knifed a "serpent hand" across Avelyn's throat, dropping him to his knees, gasping for breath.
"Is this how you plan to get to the island?" Avelyn quietly asked after one such mishap. The slips had become too common; Avelyn honestly believed Quintall meant to eliminate the competition.
The look the stocky man gave him in reply did little to allay the monk's mounting suspicions. Quintall's grin was certainly as far from Godlike as anything Avelyn had ever seen, and the fact that their training with weapons, where wounds could easily become more severe, was not far away, brought goose bumps to the scholarly young man.
What bothered Avelyn even more was that if he could recognize what was going on here, then so could the masters, who watched every move of every student so closely. The Order of St.-Mere-Abelle took its physical training seriously; perhaps Avelyn was expected to defend himself against such tactics. Perhaps this training was not so far removed from the nighttime training, which Avelyn considered more important. If he couldn't survive in the courtyard of the abbey, after all, what chance did he have on the high and wild seas?
He watched Quintall walk away from him, his stride so confident, even cocky. Avelyn folded his hands and bowed his head, closed his eyes and began to plot his defense for the next time he and Quintall were paired.
All the troubles of the day were lost each night when Avelyn went to his true work, usually under the tutelage of Master Jojonah. Sometimes that work entailed exhaustive study, reading text after text and reciting p
rocedures so many times in rapid succession that Avelyn would often continue reciting them after he had gone to sleep. Other nights Avelyn and Master Jojonah would simply spend on the roof, huddled against a chill ocean breeze with no fire between them. They would sit and stare at the stars. An occasional question might pass between them, but otherwise their vigil would be as silent as it was dark. Master Jojonah's instructions were vague at best, but Avelyn came to understand them in his heart. He was to watch the night sky, to learn every twinkle of light, to become so familiar with the visible stars that he would not only know their given names but also might create pet names of his own for them.
Avelyn loved those nights. He felt so close to God, to his dead mother, to all humanity, living and dead. He felt a part of the larger and higher truths, a oneness with the universe.
But the quiet awe of stargazing placed a distant second on Avelyn's preferred list of duties. His real zest and heart came shining through on those nights he and Master Jojonah worked with the stones. There were nearly fifty different types at the abbey, each with its own particular properties, and each individual stone with its own particular intensity. Some stones had multiple uses - hematite, for example, could be used for simple out-of-body experiences, for possession of another's body, for domination of another's spirit, and also to heal another's physical wounds.
Avelyn knew all the uses of all the stones, and gradually he was coming to sensitize his fingers to the magical humours within any stone he touched. Handed two similar stones, Avelyn could quickly discern which was the stronger.
Jojonah nodded on each occasion as if expecting that of any student, but in truth the master was again amazed by the young man's prowess. There were in the abbey no more than four other monks, three of them masters and one Father Abbot Markwart himself, who could so distinguish magical intensity, and that fact had been the determining factor in Dalebert Markwart's ascension to the highest rank, for his chief rival could not determine magical intensity in individual stones.
Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens Page 9