Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens

by The Demon Awakens [lit]

  So they spent the day walking and marveling at the sights of the great city, at the thick rows of exotic flowers in the tree-lined green that centered the place, at the shining white buildings, at the frantic bazaar, the largest open market that any of them had seen, reputably the largest open market in all Honce-the-Bear. Even the vivid, bright colors of the clothing of Entel's inhabitants struck the four as unusual. The city, it was said, wad more akin to those of exotic Behren than to any in Honce-the-Bear, and Avelyn, after half a day of one astounding sight after another, decided that he would indeed enjoy a visit to Behren.

  "Another time, perhaps," he whispered, looking over his shoulder as he made his way back aboard the Windrunner, the sun dipping over the city.

  Resupplied, the Windrunner put out the next day, sails full of wind with a favorable tide, sailing fast to the south.

  Avelyn got his wish sooner than expected, for, without explanation, Captain Adjonas put his ship into the next harbor in line, Jacintha, just a score of miles to the south, but across the mountain range that divided the kingdoms.

  The three, nervous monks looked to Quintall for answers, but he had none, caught as completely off his guard as the others. He went at once to the captain, demanding an explanation.

  "None know the southern waters better than the sailors of Behren," Adjonas explained. "What winds we should catch, what troubles we might face. I have friends here, valuable friends."

  "Take care that your questions do not lead your contacts to the way to Pimaninicuit," Quintall whispered ominously.

  Adjonas straightened, the blood rushing to his face, making that garish scar seem all the more imposing. But Quintall did not back down an inch. "I will accompany you to your . . . friends."

  "Then change out of your telling robes, Brother Quintall," Adjonas replied. "I'll not guarantee your safety."

  "Nor I yours."

  The pair, along with Bunkus Smealy, went out late that afternoon, leaving the nervous gazes of three monks and thirty crewmen at the rail. Pellimar relieved his tensions with a visit to the woman - to Avelyn's satisfaction, his companions still didn't know her real name - but Avelyn and Thagraine remained at the rail, watching the sunset and then the lights of the structures that lined the harbor.

  Finally came the welcome sound of oars and the boat, all three safely aboard. "We are out in the morning, at first light," Adjonas said sharply to Smealy and to the nearby crew when the three gained the deck.

  Thagraine and Avelyn exchanged grave looks, given the man's uncharacteristic tone and the severe look on Quintall's face.

  "The waters are not clear, by any reports," Quintall explained to his brothers.

  "Pirates?" asked Thagraine.

  "Yes, that and powries."

  Avelyn sighed and moved back to gaze at the unfamiliar landscape, layers of lights lifting up to the darkness of the great range known as the Belt-and-Buckle. He felt so far from home, and now, with the vast open Mirianic looming before him and the talk of fierce powries, he began to understand that he had much further yet to go.

  He, too, visited Dansally that night. Brother Avelyn needed a friend.

  CHAPTER 16

  Endwar

  Elbryan's fifth summer in Andur'Blough Inninness was among the very best times in all his young life. He was no more a boy but a young and strong man, with all traces of his youth gone except for a mischievous streak Tuntun feared he would never be rid of. He continued his ritual with the milk-stones, running out eagerly each morning, attacking the task with pride, for he could see the difference the continual exercise had made on his tall, graceful form. His legs were long and covered with muscle, and his arms had grown huge, each muscle clearly defined. When Elbryan bent his fist forward and flexed, he couldn't put his other hand - and his hands were not small by human standards! - halfway around the bulging forearm.

  But even with all that mass, there was nothing awkward about the young man. He danced with the elves, he fought with the elves, he skipped along the winding trails of Andur'Blough Inninness. His light brown hair had grown long, to his shoulders, but he kept it clean and neatly trimmed, pushed back from his face, which he still kept clean shaven.

  He was welcomed in every elven ritual now - in every dance, in every celebration, in every hunt - but still, perhaps more than ever, Elbryan felt alone. It wasn't that he craved human companionship; he continued to fear that thought greatly. It was simply Elbryan's realization of how different he was from these creatures, and not just in stature. They had taught him to view the world as an elf might, with utter freedom and often more veiled in imagination than reality. Elbryan found that he could not possibly maintain such a stance. His sense of order was simply too strong, his sense of right and wrong too keenly developed. He expressed that sentiment to Juraviel one quiet afternoon, he and the elf out on a long walk, talking of the plants and animals.

  Juraviel stopped in his tracks and stared at the young man. "Could you expect differently?" he asked simply.

  It wasn't the wording but the way Juraviel spoke that offered Elbryan comfort. For the first time, he realized that perhaps the elves were not expecting him to be as one of them.

  "We are showing you a different way to view the world about you," Juraviel explained, "one that will aid you in your journeys and trials. We are giving you tools that will put you above your kin."

  "Why?" Elbryan asked simply. "Why was I chosen for these gig?"

  "Blood of Mather," Juraviel replied, a phrase the young man had heard all too often, usually derisively, from Tuntun. "Mather was your uncle, your father's oldest brother."

  As he spoke, Elbryan found his mind drifting back to a specific place and moment, a time nearly five years previous, when he had stood on the ridge outside of Dundalis, Pony beside him, looking up at the glowing Halo. Though his mind conjured that image, that feeling, and placed him squarely within that space and time, he remained alert to Juraviel's every word.

  "He died very young, so it was believed by your father and the others of the Wyndon family."

  "I remember-" Elbryan stopped short. He didn't know what he remembered. He had a feeling that his father had mentioned a lost older brother, Mather perhaps, and it must have been so, because Elbryan now knew he had heard that name before he had ever met with the Touel'alfar.

  "The boy Mather was nearly killed," Juraviel went on. "We found him in the woods, mauled by a bear, and brought him to Caer'alfar. It took him some time to heal, but he was strong, as is the way of your heritage. Afterward, we could have let him return to his family, but many months had passed and the Wyndons, by all the reports of our scouts, had moved along."

  The elf paused, as if wondering how he should proceed. "In centuries past," he began solemnly, "our peoples were not so secluded. Elves and humans lived near each other, often trading stories and goods and sometimes living together in a single community. There were even marriages, two that I know written of, between elf and human, though few offspring ever came from such unions."

  "What drove our peoples apart?" Elbryan asked, for he thought that the world, particularly concerning his race, was a more tragic place for the change.

  Juraviel chuckled. "You have been in Andur'Blough Inninness for five years," he replied. "Have you noticed the absence, of anything?"

  Elbryan crinkled his brow. What could possibly be missing from so enchanted a place as this?

  "Children," Juraviel prompted at length. "Children," he repeated, his voice low. "We are not like humans. I might live a millennium - I am nearly halfway to that point already - and sire no more than one, or perhaps two, children."

  Juraviel paused again, and it seemed to Elbryan as if a cloud passed over the elf's angular features. "Three centuries ago, the dactyl awakened," he said

  "Dactyl?" Elbryan asked.

  "Demon," Juraviel clarified. He turned away from Elbryan, walked to the edge of a small clearing, and lifted his head to the heavens and his voice in song.

  "When the eyes of se
ntries turn inward,

  When the hearts of men covet,

  When love is lost to lust.

  When the ways of merchants turn cheating,

  When the legs of women bow,

  When gain is ill not just.

  Then look ye men to darkness.

  Then see the smoke-filled sky.

  Then feel the rumble 'neath your feet

  And know 'tis time to die.

  So turn your swords away from kin

  Your hatred far from kind,

  And see the charge of goblin and dwarf

  To which lust has left you blind.

  Thus find your hearts and enemies true

  And all ill ways forsake

  And know the time for righteousness!

  The dactyl has come awake!"

  Many images flitted through Elbryan's imagination as Juraviel sang: scenes of war and terror, scenes so very much like Dundalis on that awful day when the goblins came. By the time Juraviel finished, the young man's cheeks were wet with tears, and Juraviel's were as well, Elbryan noted when the elf turned back to him.

  "Dactyl is the name we give to it," Juraviel said softly, "though truthfully the awakening of the demon is more an event of the whole world than of a specific being. It is our own folly - that of human and in times long past, of elf - that allows the dark creature to walk the earth."

  "And when the demon awakens, then there is war," Elbryan reasoned from the song. "Like the battle that claimed my family."

  Juraviel shrugged and shook his head. "Often there are such battles when humans and goblins live near each other," he explained. "On the wide seas, sailing ships often meet the low boats of powries, with predictable results."

  Elbryan nodded; he had heard of the fierce powries and their reputation for destroying human ships.

  "It was three centuries ago when the dactyl last awakened," Juraviel said. "At that time, I and my people traded openly with humans. We were many more. Many more, though not as many as the humans. Co'awille, 'Endwar,' we call that horrible time, for four of every five elves were killed." He sighed resignedly. "And since we do not procreate prolifically . . . "

  "You had to run away," Elbryan reasoned. "For the very survival of your race, you had to seclude yourself from the other races."

  Juraviel nodded and seemed pleased by the perceptive reasoning. "And so we came to Andur'Blough Inninness," he said, "and to other such places of mystery. Aided by the holy humans and their precious gifts, the magical stones, we made these places our own, secluded and veiled from the eyes of the wider world. Know that the dactyl was defeated in that time long past after great cost, but gone, too, was our time in this world. And so we live on, here and there, under blankets of cloud, under cover of darkness. Our numbers are small; we cannot afford to be known, even to the humans whom we consider our friends."

  "Some of you do," Elbryan remarked, thinking of Tuntun.

  "Even Tuntun," Juraviel replied with a laugh. But his smile did not last. "She is jealous of what you have."

  "I?".

  "Freedom," Juraviel went on. "The world is open to you, but not to Tuntun. She does not hate you."

  "I will believe that right up until the next time we spar," Elbryan replied, drawing a laugh from his elven friend.

  "She fights hard," Juraviel admitted. "And on you, she is particularly strict. Is that not proof that she is your friend?"

  Elbryan stuck a blade of grass between his teeth and considered the viewpoint.

  "Tuntun knows that your life may be difficult," Juraviel finished. "She desires you to be properly prepared."

  "For what?"

  "Ah, that is the question," Juraviel answered, his finger pointing into the air, his eyebrows arched. "Though we have forsaken the ways and places of the humans, we have not forsaken your race. It is we, the elves of Caer'alfar, who train those known as rangers, the protectors, usually of people who have no idea they need protecting."

  Elbryan shook his head; he had never heard of rangers, except for occasional references by the elves.

  'Mather was a ranger," said Juraviel, "one of the finest. For near to forty years he kept a line a hundred miles long secure from goblins and fomorian giants alike. His list of victories is far too long to be recited here, if we had a week to spare."

  Elbryan felt a strange sense of family pride. He remembered again that morning on the ridge, viewing the Halo, hearing the name of Mather distinctly within his mind.

  "And so you shall be," Juraviel finished. "Elbryan the Ranger."

  The elf nodded, then walked away. Elbryan understood that his lesson was at its end and understood, too, that this lesson might have been the most important of all during his time in Andur'Blough Inninness.

  "There, do you feel it?"

  Belli'mar Juraviel held his hand up, begging silence, then shifted his sensitive bare feet about on the stone face. A moment later, feeling the subtle vibrations running clearly into him through his toes, he gave a grim nod.

  "Many miles north and west," Tallareyish remarked, looking that way as if he expected some vast horde of darkness to be charging down toward Andur'Blough Inninness.

  "Lady Dasslerond has been told?" Juraviel asked.

  "Of course," an elf by the name of Viellain, one of the oldest in Caer'alfar, answered. "And scouts have gone out. There are reports of a trench, a great upheaval, not twenty miles beyond our valley."

  Juraviel looked to the north, to the wild lands beyond his elven home and far beyond the settlements of any humans. "Do you know this place?" he asked of Viellain.

  "It should not be so hard to find," Tallareyish answered quickly, as eager as Juraviel to glimpse the evidence. The pair looked at Viellain, their expressions revealing much.

  "The scouts will pass by the trench, if there is indeed such a marker, then continue far to the north," the old elf explained. "Thus they shall not return to Caer'alfar for many days."

  "But Lady Dasslerond should be informed," Tallareyish reasoned, guessing that Viellain, usually a stickler for rules, was coming around to their way of thinking.

  "We can reach this place and return before the sun has set tomorrow," Juraviel said, "if we can find it."

  "The birds will know," Viellain assured him. "Always, the birds know."

  The glade was strangely quiet this night, with no elves in the area - or at least none showing themselves, for Elbryan had been around the Touel'alfar long enough to realize that a host of sprites could be within a dozen paces and even he, now so attuned to the forest, would not suspect it unless they chose to make their presence known.

  Still, he was fairly certain that he was alone this night, except for his opponent, standing in the shadows across the way.

  The young man held his breath when the elf came out into the moonlight.

  Tuntun.

  Elbryan clutched his staff and set his heels. He had not battled Tuntun in many weeks; he was determined now to give the upstart elf a bit of a surprise.

  "I shall not stop beating you until you cry out my name," Tuntun taunted, moving to the center and twirling her longer pole, the size of an elven sword, in a circle, while her second weapon, a stick fashioned as a dirk, worked in tighter circles over her fingers. Around and around the weapons went, reminding Elbryan of her uncanny dexterity. Tuntun could roll four coins at a time on each of her hands; she could juggle a dozen daggers, or even flaming brands, effortlessly.

  But that quickness and precision would not be enough, Elbryan told himself. Not this time.

  He stalked in, his staff horizontal before him, right hand palm up, left palm down. Normally, the combatants would speak the rules before a match, but with these two there was little need for such ceremony. After all these years, Tuntun and Elbryan understood each other perfectly; between these two, there were no rules.

  Elbryan went into a crouch, and Tuntun wasted no time in going on the attack, sending her sword straight ahead. Elbryan let go of his staff with his left hand, turned his right hand o
ver, then back. The overhand parry deflected the stabbing blade, but the second attempt, the undersweeping slap designed to send the elf's sword flying up high, was far too slow to catch up to Tuntun's retracting movement.

  Elbryan caught the staff again with his left hand, holding steady, his defenses set.

  But then he surprised Tuntun. Fighting logic said that he, with the heavier weapon and more lumbering moves, should have allowed Tuntun the initial attacks, playing black on the chessboard. Any offensive mistake would leave Elbryan dangerously vulnerable to the elf's darting blades,

  But on the young man came anyway, pressing furiously. He started with an overhand, underhand parry sweep again, but instead of catching the staff with his left hand as it came swishing back to horizontal, he turned his right hand over once more. Halfway through the next sweep, Elbryan's powerful forearm flexed tight, catching the pole in mid-swing, and he brought its low end snapping in against his side, catching it under his right arm, then lowering and thrusting its tip like a spear.

  Tuntun, almost expecting the attack from this man who so hated her, was not caught by surprise. She backed through the first swishes, then ducked under the thrust, crossing sword and dagger in an X above her head to keep the pole harmlessly high. She expected then to find an opening for a counter but had to stay defensive as she realized the young man wasn't yet through with his surprisingly adept routine.

  Elbryan brought the pole right back in, before Tuntun's crossed blades could shift it to either side. Then he sent it straight out a second time, cutting short the thrust as the elf predictably ducked. He brought the leading end of the pole up and back over his head, launching the pole into an immediate spin, catching it again in his left hand after it went once around, then stepping forward forcefully. Now firmly held in both hands, his staff made a second twirl, then came arching diagonally toward the ground, toward Tuntun.