DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (12 page)

The old abbot could hardly believe it, and the emotions of the moment lent him new strength. He took the graphite from Brother Haney, lifted his hand, and let fly the most powerful lightning stroke of the morning, a searing blast that blew aside a score of goblin spearthrowers, the monsters dying with their weapons still
in hand.

“Ring the bells!” the invigorated old abbot cried, and he let fly another thunderous bolt. “To arms! To arms!”

T
he tide had turned, the appearance of the powerful Alpinadorans lending strength and courage to the besieged men of Honce-the-Bear and shattering the previous discipline of the goblin attackers. As many monsters turned and fled as remained to do battle, and those that did remain caught arrows from above or lightning from the abbot, or they were trampled down by horses and barbarians alike.

Within a matter of minutes, the only goblins that remained alive on the field were on the ground and squirming in agony. Some begged for mercy, but they would find none, neither from Midalis and his men nor from the fierce barbarians.

The day was won, the siege broken, the goblin army scattered and running, and Prince Midalis trotted his mount across the field to meet with Andacanavar and Bruinhelde, each with their respective forces lining up behind them.

“A great debt we owe you this day,” the Prince graciously offered.

Andacanavar looked to Bruinhelde, but the stoic chieftain did not reply to the Prince in kind, nor did he offer any hint of where his heart might be. He did glance up at the abbey wall, though, his face stern and set, and Midalis followed that gaze to the reciprocal look of Abbot Agronguerre.

The abbey doors had opened again, and monks were fast exiting, many carrying bandages, some with soul stones in hand. Their line bent to the right, Midalis noted with distress, toward the wounded warriors of Vanguard, and not at all to the left, where lay the wounded Alpinadorans.

The day was not yet won.

Chapter 4
 

W
INTER HAD FOUND THE MOUNTAIN PASSES WEST OF
H
ONCE
-
THE
-B
EAR
,
WITH
snow falling deep about the elven valley of Andur’Blough Inninness, strong winds piling it up into towering drifts. That hardly proved a hindrance to Belli’mar Juraviel, though, the nimble elf skipping across the white blanket, leaving barely a trace of his passing. For the Touel’alfar of Corona did not battle the moods of nature, as did the humans. Rather, they adapted their ways to fit the seasons outside their protected valley, and they reveled in each season in turn: a dance of rebirth each spring, of excitement and play in the lazy summer heat, of harvest and preparation in the autumn, and of respite in the winter. To the Touel’alfar, the harshest winter blizzard was a time of snow sculpting and snow-throwing games, or a time to huddle by the fire.

Prepared, always prepared.

This blizzard had been just that type, with stinging, blowing snow; and though it had abated greatly, the snow was still falling when Juraviel left the cloudy cover of the sheltered elven valley.

But, despite the storm, he had to get out, to be alone with his frustrations. Again Lady Dasslerond had refused his request to parent the young child of Elbryan and Jilseponie, the babe the lady had taken from Pony on the field outside Palmaris, when Markwart had overwhelmed the woman and left her near death. In the ensuing months, Lady Dasslerond had kept Juraviel very busy, had sent him running errand after errand; and while he had suspected that she was purposefully keeping him away from the babe, he could not be certain.

Until that very morning, when he had asked her directly, and she had refused him directly.

So Juraviel had run out of the valley, up onto the slopes, to be alone with his thoughts and his anger, to let the quiet snow calm his frustration.

He skittered up one drift, using the piled snow as a ladder to get him to the tip of a rocky overhang, and there, in the wind, he sat for a long, long while, remembering Elbryan and Pony, remembering Tuntun, his dear elven friend who had given her life in the assault on Mount Aida and the demon dactyl.

Gradually, like the storm, his angry energy flowed out, and he was sitting quite comfortably when he saw another form rise out of the low clouds of Andur’Blough Inninness. He looked on curiously for a few moments, thinking that another of the Touel’alfar had decided to come out to enjoy the storm or to see if it had completely abated yet or perhaps to check on Juraviel’s well-being. But when the new-come
elf turned his way, stared at him from under the cowl of the low-pulled hood, Belli’mar Juraviel recognized those eyes and that face and was surprised—indeed, stunned—to discover that Lady Dasslerond herself had come out to find him.

He started to move down to her, but she motioned for him to stay and scampered up the snowbank at least as easily as he had, taking a seat on the stone beside him.

“You were correct in your guess,” she informed him. “Tien-Bryselle returned this morning with information concerning Tempest and Hawkwing.”

Juraviel breathed a sigh of sincere relief. Tempest and Hawkwing had been the weapons of Elbryan. The elven sword Tempest had been forged for the ranger’s uncle Mather and won by Elbryan in honest duel with the dead man’s spirit; and Hawkwing had been crafted by Juraviel’s own father specifically for Elbryan the Nightbird. Both weapons had been lost when Elbryan had been captured by Father Abbot Markwart. Juraviel, convinced that they were in St. Precious in Palmaris, had tried to find them.

But then had come the confrontation between Elbryan and Markwart in Chasewind Manor, a battle that the elf could not ignore, and Juraviel had run out of time. Thus had Dasslerond sent another to find the weapons, following a report that they had gone with Elbryan back to Dundalis, his final resting place.

“Bradwarden confirmed their location,” she explained, “and took Tien-Bryselle to them.”

“He is a fine friend,” Juraviel remarked.

Lady Dasslerond nodded. “A fine friend who came through the trials of the demon dactyl, and who came through the responsibilities of calling himself elf-friend.”

Juraviel narrowed his eyes, easily catching the not-so-flattering reference to both Elbryan and Jilseponie. Lady Dasslerond had not been pleased to learn that Elbryan had taught Jilseponie the elven sword dance,
bi’nelle dasada
, nor had she been happy with many of Jilseponie’s choices during the final days of conflict with Father Abbot Markwart.

“But we are glad to know that the weapons are safe,” she quickly added—for his benefit, Juraviel knew, “guarded by the spirits of two rangers. Perhaps they will belong to
yel’delen
one day.”

Yel’delen
, Juraviel echoed in his mind, so poignantly reminded that Lady Dasslerond had not even yet named the baby; for in the elvish tongue,
yel’delen
meant simply “the child.”

“Jilseponie did not fight the return of the weapons,” Juraviel dared to remark.

“She is in Palmaris still, and likely knew nothing of their return to the north,” she answered, “nor that we went to find them.”

Juraviel looked at her curiously, hardly agreeing with her first claim. If Tempest and Hawkwing left Palmaris with Elbryan’s caisson, then they did so on the instructions of Jilseponie. “But she would not have fought the interment of the elven weapons even if she had known,” Juraviel insisted, “nor would she argue if
we decided to take them back.”

Dasslerond shrugged, apparently not prepared to argue the point.

“You underestimate her,” Juraviel went on boldly, “as you have from the very first.”

“I judged her by her own actions,” the lady of Caer’alfar replied firmly. She shook her head and chuckled. “You cloud your memories with friendship, yet you know that your friend will be cold in the ground centuries before your time has passed.”

“Am I not to befriend those of like heart?”

“The humans have their place,” Dasslerond said somewhat coldly. “To elevate them beyond that is a dangerous mistake, Belli’mar Juraviel. You know that well.”

Juraviel looked away, feeling the tears beginning to rim his golden eyes. “And is that why?” he asked, and then he blinked away the tears completely, replacing them with resolve, and looked at her squarely. “Is that why you deny me the child?”

Dasslerond didn’t blink, nor did she shrink back an inch. “This child is different,” she said. “He will carry the weapons of Nightbird and Mather, the Touel’alfar weapons of a true ranger.”

“And a glorious day it will be,” Juraviel put in.

“Indeed,” she agreed, “even more so than you understand. The child will become the purest of rangers, trained from birth to our ways. He will hold no allegiance to the humans, will be human in appearance only.”

Juraviel considered the words and her determined tone very carefully for a long moment. “But is not the true power of the ranger the joining of the best that is human and elven?” he asked, thinking that his beloved Lady Dasslerond might be missing a very important point here.

“So it has been,” she replied, “but always I have understood that it is the joining of the elven way with the human physical form and the impatience that is human. This child will have physical strength beyond that of even its father, a strength fostered by the trials we shall place upon him and the health that is Andur’Blough Inninness. And we will foster, as well, the understanding of mortality, the short life which he can expect, and thus, the sense of immediacy and impatience so crucial for warriors of action.”

Juraviel looked at her, not quite understanding her reasoning behind this talk—words he almost regarded as nonsense. Understanding the source, though, the lady of Caer’alfar, the leader of his people, Juraviel looked past the words to the hopes and the fears. She had taken the child and had flatly refused to return him to his mother, even now that the darkness of Markwart and Bestesbulzibar had passed. Indeed, it seemed to Juraviel that Lady Dasslerond had
claimed
the child for Andur’Blough Inninness.

And then he understood those hopes of his lady even more clearly. This child, perhaps, so true of bloodline, so strong of limb and of thought, would have the power to heal Andur’Blough Inninness. This child of the ranger might aid Lady Dasslerond in her defense against the spreading rot, the stain the demon dactyl
had placed upon the elven valley.

“He will be strong and swift, as was Elbryan,” Juraviel remarked, as much to measure the response as to speak the truth.

“More akin to his mother,” Lady Dasslerond replied.

Juraviel cocked an eyebrow in surprise that she would offer such a compliment to Jilseponie.

“Jilseponie is strong and swift with the sword, strong in
bi’nelle dasada
, as was her teacher,” Dasslerond explained. “And though she was not as strong in the dance as Nightbird, she was the more complete of the parents, powerfully versed in the gemstone magic, as well. The complete human warrior. This child will be all that his mother was and is and more—for he will have the guidance of the Touel’alfar throughout his journey.”

Belli’mar Juraviel nodded, though he feared that Lady Dasslerond might be reaching a bit high here in her expectations. The child was but a few months old, after all, and though his bloodlines seemed as pure as those of any human—and Juraviel, who had loved both Elbryan and Pony, understood that more clearly than did Lady Dasslerond!—that was no guarantee of anything positive. Furthermore, Juraviel, apparently unlike Lady Dasslerond, appreciated that bringing up the infant in Andur’Blough Inninness was an experiment, an unknown.

“Jilseponie made mistakes that we cannot tolerate,” Lady Dasslerond stated flatly, a sudden and stern reminder to Juraviel of her feelings toward the woman, “as Elbryan, our beloved Nightbird, erred in teaching her
bi’nelle dasada
. And do not doubt that we will continue to watch her from afar.”

Juraviel nodded. On that point, at least, he and his lady were in agreement. If Pony started sharing the elven sword dance, became an instructor in the finer points of
bi’nella dasada
, then the Touel’alfar would have to stop her. To Juraviel, that would have meant taking her into their homeland and keeping her there; but he held no illusions that Lady Dasslerond, whose responsibility concerned the very existence of the Touel’alfar, would be so merciful.

“Yet that was Nightbird’s error,” he replied, “and not Jilseponie’s.”

“Not yet.”

Again, Juraviel nodded, taking well her point. He wasn’t sure that he even agreed with his own last statement—that Elbryan’s tutoring of Pony was a mistake at all. Juraviel had watched them fighting together, each sword complementing the other to the level of perfection, a weaving of form and of weapons so beautiful that it had brought tears of joy to the elf’s eyes.

How could such a work of art be a mistake?

“You trust her,” Lady Dasslerond stated.

Juraviel didn’t disagree.

“You love her as you love Touel’alfar,” she went on.

Juraviel looked at her but said nothing.