„I think that you should have a long, long talk with our companion „ Cazzira said dryly.
„That is what got us into this in the first place,“ Juraviel reminded her.
The elves stalled for as long as they possibly could, but as the hours turned to days, the dragon’s song only became more insistent and frantic Finally, Agradeleous landed beside them with a reverberating thump, and explained that it was time to leave. Both elves tried to offer protests, but the dragon just scooped them up under powerful arms and leaped away. When they got settled into the main chamber, the elves found that he had set out all of their belongings, along with other general supplies and an assortment of weapons and armor.
„Gather your trinkets and let us go,“ the dragon insisted, and when they were finished their outfitting, and just stood there looking at Agradeleous and at each other, the beast asked bluntly, „Do you know the way?“
„We were searching for that when we stumbled upon your lair,“ said Juraviel.
„Back the other way then!“ Agradeleous roared, and Juraviel glanced over at Cazzira, to see her porcelain skin seeming even more pale, and to see her swaying as if she would just fall over.
„No,“ Juraviel replied. „There are one-way doors, and corridors too twisting to navigate. South is the better course.“
„You are certain?“ the dragon asked. „I can fly over the mountains with ease. They are no barrier to mighty Agradeleous!“
Again, Juraviel glanced over to see Cazzira growing unsteady on her feet.
„We go south,“ Juraviel said more firmly. „But before we walk with you into the human lands, Agradeleous, I will have your word of agreement.“
The dragon tilted his head, seeming somewhere between amusement and disbelief.
„You will not kill any humans,“ Juraviel demanded.
The dragon began to growl.
„Except in defense,“ the elf added.
Still the dragon growled.
„Or in battle,“ Juraviel went on. „I will determine your course in this, Agradeleous. You may defend yourself, of course, but you will take no actions against the humans, any humans, without my direction and permission. I will have your word on this.“
„Or?“
„Or I will not lead you to Brynn and the grand adventure you desire,“ Juraviel was quick to respond. „If you wish to simply go out from your hole and ravage the land, then do so without me and without Cazzira. If you wish to participate in a war that will change the world, in a tale that will be
centuries to come, then you will agree to my terms. You will 1 me your word, and truly, do I ask anything so difficult?“
od enough,“ the dragon agreed after a moment’s reflection. „I will -t vour judgment on this, Belli’mar Juraviel. To the south we go - let us 11 ir search down the hole where we lost your companion. If she did e it out alive, then better that we learn the truth before we step out not begin our search down not make it out alive, the der the wide sky. Perhaps we will not need to be discerning in whom we kill!“
Now it was Juraviel who truly needed a bit of physical support, but he somehow managed, and so did Cazzira, to follow the magnificent and terrible beast out of the treasure chamber.
It was all guesswork, of course, as the tunnels forked and forked again, and so their progress was painfully slow, and so the days meandered past.
But then Agradeleous stumbled upon a tunnel long and straight and ascending, and with just a hint of current in the air.
It was late autumn of God’s Year 841, almost a year since entering the Path of Starless Night, when Juraviel and Cazzira and their newest companion walked out of the tunnel, under a beautiful, crisp, starry sky. The two elves stood there transfixed, hardly remembering the sheer beauty of this sight, and so entranced were they that they didn’t notice the crackling of reshaping bones behind them. So they were both taken by complete surprise when Agradeleous issued a dragon’s roar - not the rock-shaking roar of his lizardman form, but the rock-splitting thunder of a true dragon!
The two swung about, and for a moment, neither doubted that they were about to be consumed, that the agreement Juraviel had forged with the dragon was a meaningless thing after all.
But Agradeleous calmed his roaring and stretched his great wings out to the sides.
„It is good to feel the breeze upon my wings again!“
chapter
What Agradeleous Wants…
early every day, Brynn descended the long staircase of the Walk of Clouds, down to the base of the rocky valley nestled within the Mountains of Fire, and then out the valley trails to the fields where Runtly ran with the other horses. Sensitive to her desires to spend time with her pony, the Jhesta Tu mystics gave her duties that would have taken her to the floor anyway.
As summer gave way to autumn, her job was to collect the black lava stones from the broken landscape and bring them up in buckets so that they could be ground into powder and used to fertilize the many gardens about the monastery. Brynn worked without complaint, taking the burdened climb back up the five thousand stairs in the same stoic manner she had utilized to get her through her years of training with the Touel’alfar. In Andur’Blough Inninness, like all of the other ranger trainees, Brynn had spent many days collecting spongelike milk-stones from the bog, carrying them back to a distant trough, then squeezing the bog juice out of them. In those mornings, Brynn had learned the power of meditation, of falling within herself to block out unpleasant external events, and so she used that now, slowly walking up the stairs each afternoon, deliberately and carefully placing one foot in front of the other so that she did not twist her leg, with a pole across her shoulders, a full bucket of stones dangling from each end.
It was a good life for the young woman, a necessary respite from the trials of the wider world, a time to reflect and to grow strong again, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
She spent most of her nights with Pagonel and other Jhesta Tu. Unlike her days in Andur’Blough Inninness, her times at the Walk of Clouds were full of openly asked questions and brisk discussions about philosophy and the ways of the various religions. Here Pagonel often led the way, inevitably veering the discussion toward the Behrenese Chezru religion and the concept and ways of Yatol.
o n soon enough recognized that he was doing this for her benefit, that in times while learning about herself, the young woman was also learning hie lessons about her enemy. Even more than that, she came to believe
U Pagonel was subtly forcing her to view her enemy not as the singular-
a ded and thus, singularly hated, Wraps, but as a collection of people fol-precepts that were not so variant from her own, or from anyone else’s.
„You try to distract me from my destiny,“ she said to the man one night fter a particularly heated discussion about how the To-gai-ru, the Abelli-
ns and the Jhesta Tu were not so different in the artistic renderings of their respective pantheons.
Pagonel looked at her curiously, then merely smiled.
„You do,“ she accused. „You keep speaking of the Behrenese in very human terms, hoping that I will forget my hatred toward them and, it follows, hoping that I will abandon my course against them.“
„Or perhaps I understand that if you do not come to understand the Behrenese, even the Chezru, even the Chezru Chieftain and his Yatols, as people of varying intelligence and desires, then your road will surely end as Ashwarawu’s ended, in the bloody dirt.“
Now it was Brynn’s turn to stand and stare. „Do you believe that I should abandon my road altogether? „ she asked after a long pause.
„I believe that you should continue to grow personally,“ the Jhesta Tu master replied. „And when your heart tells you that it is time for you to go and decide your place in the world, among your own people or among the Behrenese, then you should go. Revelations ultimately come from within, not from without.“
„Like your own journey to Ashwarawu’s camp,“ Brynn rema
rked. „Now that I have seen the Walk of Clouds, now that I have come to know what it is to be Jhesta Tu, your choice puzzles me even more. Why did you go out to the steppes?“
„Perhaps it was simply fate, or a silent command within from a god that I do not understand,“ the mystic answered. „Or perhaps it was nothing but luck - and only time will tell us if that luck was good or bad.“ He ended with a chuckle and turned to leave, but Brynn grabbed him by the arm and forcefully turned him back around to face her.
„Do you believe that it was bad luck that you found me?“
Both became acutely aware of how close they were to each other. The tension between them had somewhat cooled since that uncomfortable day on the field below, but now it was there again, palpably. No,“ Pagonel answered. „I could never believe that.“
Brynn kissed him before he ever finished the sentence, and then they held each other there in the hallway for a long, long time.
Another unremarkable village,“ Cazzira remarked, standing on a ridge and looking down at a small collection of houses, ringed by stables.
„Then let me raze it and eat all the villagers, and its name will be long remembered,“ Agradeleous offered, and both elves scowled at him, to which the dragon only sighed.
They had spent several weeks moving about the open and empty steppes with the dragon remaining in his bipedal form - except on occasional nights, when Agradeleous resumed his true and magnificent form and went out hunting, returning with stolen livestock or a wild horse or other things that both Juraviel and Cazzira thought it best not to ask him about.
The trio had encountered two villages previous to this one, and had spent time haunting the areas about them, eavesdropping on the conversations of any who happened by. One such discussion, between a pair of elderly women cleaning their laundry on stones at the side of a small stream had told of a revolt in a town not so far away, of how a Yatol and a Chezhou-Lei warrior had been slain, though now the town had been reclaimed by the Wraps, and was held more tightly than even before.
And this before them was that village, which Juraviel thought might prove not so unremarkable. Few warriors could slay a Chezhou-Lei warrior, he had come to believe.
But he knew one that could.
„You will remain here this night,“ he instructed Agradeleous.
„Unless I hear an oxen lowing on the grasses,“ the dragon replied.
„You feasted last night.“
The dragon curled its mouth in a grinning reply.
„I ask you to remain here,“ Juraviel said firmly. „If you cause any tumult on the grasses nearby, you will rouse the villagers.“
Agradeleous’ smile faded. „I will stay,“ he agreed. „Do you mean to go and listen in?“
„It would be wonderful if we could start finding some direction to our path,“ the elf replied, and at his side, Cazzira certainly did not disagree.
Later on, when the sun went down and the bright stars twinkled above, many people gathered in the village common room, talking animatedly. Just outside, huddled in the shadows beside a slightly opened window, Juraviel and Cazzira sat and listened, as silent as those shadows hiding them.
They heard many discussions about many things, most unrelated to any information they could use. They did hear some Behrenese soldiers boasting about a great battle, though.
„You will all learn your place, you Ru!“ one cried out, the man obviously a bit drunk.
„Aye, cleaning the dung from your boots!“ one of the To-gai-ru man villagers replied, and all about him laughed.
„Better for you that our boots are covered in dung than in blood, as they were at Dharyan!“ the Behrenese soldier shot back, and in the blink of an eye, the room went dead silent.
Both Juraviel and Cazzira peeked up and over the window rim, trying to better measure of it all. Another soldier jumped from his seat and & libed the speaker, holding him steady and bidding him to be quiet.!R“Thev know of Dharyan!“ the drunken speaker protested. „Do you?“ he asked the room, leaning forward and smiling wickedly. „When all heroes were trampled into the mud by the power of Yatol Grysh? When brave Ashwarawu’s head parted from his shoulders?“
Several To-gai-ru men stood up at that, their chairs skidding out behind them, while others held them back.
„A fairly recent battle,“ Juraviel observed to Cazzira, for it was obvious that the emotions here were too high for Dharyan to be a memory from the war when Behren had conquered To-gai.
„We remember it,“ one To-gai-ru from the far corner did respond. „Aye, and well. Almost as well as we remember Yatol Daek Gin Gin Yan and Dee’dahk, and the fine To-gai-ru lass who cut them down!“ Juraviel could hardly draw his breath, and felt as if he would simply
fall over.
„Speak no more of it!“ the soldier holding the drunk ordered the To-gai-ru, and when his drunken friend started to respond, he smacked the man hard across the back of his head.
All the Behrenese soldiers were standing then, and several drew out their weapons.
But it was all bluster and boast, and no real challenge came against them, and soon enough the room settled back into its easy flow of many disjointed conversations.
Over the course of the next couple of hours, Juraviel did note, though, that many of the To-gai-ru veered on the path to the common room’s door to a table where a pair of elderly couples sat quietly, and often patted one old man on the shoulders, sometimes looking back as they did to the boastful and drunken Behrenese soldier.
When that old man and his wife left the common room later on, a pair of quiet little figures followed them through the town and to their small and humble cottage, and when they sat down within, at their own table, they did not know that they were not alone.
„I am warmed whenever they speak of her,“ the old man said, and his companion walked behind him and put her arms about his neck, bending low.
„You think they refer to Brynn?“ Cazzira whispered to Juraviel. The elf nodded, and held his breath as he put his ear back up to the crack in the cottage wall.
Come, old man, let us find our sleep,“ he heard the old woman say, and he was sorely disappointed.
A good one, it will be,“ the old man agreed, and the elves heard the creak of wood as he stood, and the shuffling of feet as the old couple made their way across the room to their bedding.
„Now what?“ Cazzira asked. „Back to Agradeleous or back to the common room?“
Juraviel took a third route, around the house so that he was against the wall closest to the couple’s bed. As soon as he got there, purely on instinct he tapped on the wall.
When no response came back, he tapped again, harder.
„Eh?“ he heard the old man say, followed by movement within.
„Tell me of her,“ Juraviel said to them, though Cazzira was grabbing his arm so tightly that the blood couldn’t get to his fingers. „Tell me of the fall of Yatol Daek Gin Gin Yan.“
„Who are you?“ came a harsh whisper.
„I am a friend.“
There came some muffled conversation within, and the elves heard the old woman remark, „A friend of the Behrenese!“
„A friend, I believe, of she who slew the Yatol,“ Juraviel said, and Cazzira tugged him hard, pulling him away from the wall.
„You cannot do this!“ she protested.
„It is the only way!“
They both stopped as they heard the door around the other side of the cottage swing open. Around the corner, armed with a small hammer, came the old man. „Who are you?“ he demanded, though neither elf was anywhere in sight. He looked all about, shaking his hammer.
„I traveled with Brynn Dharielle,“ Juraviel said, using a Touel’alfar trick to throw his voice, so that the old man spun the wrong way in response.
„Then show yourself!“
„That I cannot do,“ Juraviel replied, throwing his voice to a different place, and the old man spun again. When he had settled, Juraviel started ag
ain, his voice coming from a completely different shadow. „She thought me lost in the Path of Starless Night, tunnels beneath the great mountains to the north. But I have found my way to here and, I hope, soon to her side again.“
The man’s shoulders seemed to slump a bit at that last statement, and a lump wrought of fear welled in Juraviel’s throat.
„Bah, but I’ll not talk to ghosts!“ the old man said firmly. „Nor to Behrenese spies - and how do I know you’re not that?“
Juraviel started out and Cazzira grabbed him tightly. „No,“ she whispered.
„He knows,“ Juraviel said back at her, and he pulled away.
The old man was heading back around the house by that time, so Juraviel jumped out behind him. „Have you ever seen a Behrenese soldier who looks like this?“ he asked, and the man spun about.
And then he stood there, trembling, his hammer falling to the ground at his feet.
„I am no enemy of To-gai,“ Juraviel declared. „And I am a friend of Brynn Dharielle. Tell me, I beg of you.“
„T d’elfin faerie,“ the man stuttered, using the To-gai-ru label for the el-neople, a race that was prominent in their fireside tales.
„Belli’mar Juraviel at your service,“ the elf said with a sweeping bow. „You know of Brynn, so tell me, I beg of you.“
„I sent her to her death,“ the old man remarked, trembling, his hands coming up to hide his face.
„No Balachuk!“ the old woman said, rushing around the house and grabbing at his arms. „We do not know that!“
„She did battle here, against a Yatol priest and one named Dee’dahk?“ Juraviel prompted.
„A Chezhou-Lei warrior,“ the old woman said, nodding. „She killed them both, and others besides, and she freed the horses, though the Wraps have returned to put them back.“
The couple exchanged worried looks.
„You’d best come inside,“ the old woman said. „We saw Brynn once again after she fled, and we know where she went, but it is not a pretty
tale.“
Juraviel entered the humble cottage behind the couple and took an offered seat at their table, with Balachuk sitting across from him and the woman - Balachuk introduced her as Tsolona - moving to the fire to heat some water for tea.
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