The Demon Awakens (11 page)

Elbryan’s expression soured.

“But why would you wish to know?” the ever-elusive Juraviel answered. “To gain advantage in a battle, perhaps?” He quickly added, “Not that you and I shall ever battle, of course,” as soon as he noticed Elbryan’s muscles go tense.

That declaration relaxed the young man, and so, of course, Juraviel put in, “Except during . . .” and then paused and let the teasing thought hang empty in the air.

Thoroughly flustered, feeling very out of place both physically and emotionally, Elbryan took a deep breath and removed himself from his anxiety—as simply as that. He merely let his fears and dark thoughts fall somewhere behind him, concentrating only on the present. It might have been resignation, a simple conclusion that he could do nothing about anything anyway, but to Juraviel, the obvious change that came over the boy was promising. Certainly an emotional detachment would prove healthier for this young human who had been through so much and who had so many more trying experiences ahead of him.

With a widening smile, Juraviel started his wings fluttering, bent his knees, and leaped into the air, a half jump, half flight to the lowest branch of a nearby maple.

“They work,” Juraviel announced, “for short hops and to break a fall. But, no, we cannot fly as do the birds.” He came back to the ground, his face suddenly serious as he contemplated his own words. “A pity.”

Elbryan nodded, in full agreement. How wonderful it would be to fly! He imagined the wind, the green treetop canopy speeding below him . . .

“Your time here will not be unpleasant unless you make it so,” Juraviel announced immediately and grimly before the grin could even begin to spread across young Elbryan’s face.

Elbryan stared at the creature curiously, caught off guard by the sudden change of demeanor.

“Know that there are those among my people who do not believe you belong,” Juraviel went on, his voice stern. “There are those who do not see in you the likeness of Mather.”

“I know of no person by the name of Mather,” Elbryan replied with all the courage he could muster. Again came that feeling of detachment, summoned consciously, an attitude that he had nothing to lose, had already lost all there was.

Juraviel shrugged, a fitting little movement of his slender shoulders. “You shall,” he promised. “Hear me now clearly, young one. You are not a prisoner, yet you are not free. As long as you remain in Andur’Blough Inninness, your conduct must be controlled, as your training shall be guided?”

“Training?” Elbryan started to ask, but Juraviel didn’t pause long enough to hear him.

“Stray from the rules at your own peril. Ask not for a second chance when the harsh justice of the Touel’alfar falls upon you.”

The threat was open and clear. Elbryan, with that typical Wyndon pride, squared his shoulders and tightened his jaw, a movement that Juraviel seemed to take no note of whatsoever. The name Juraviel had given his people, Touel’alfar, had a distinctly familiar ring, and Elbryan was certain he had heard it in conjunction with tales of the elves.

“You may rest now,” Juraviel finished. “I will show to you your duties with the rising of the sun.”

“And rest well,” he finished, his voice grim and somber, “for your duties are many and will weary you indeed!”

Elbryan wanted to shout out that he would do as he pleased, when he pleased. He wanted to proclaim his independence loudly and openly, but before he got the first stuttered word out of his mouth, Juraviel hopped into a short flight once more. The delicate creature stepped lightly onto a branch and jumped again immediately, disappearing into the thick brush so completely and easily that Elbryan blinked and rubbed his eyes.

He stood there, in the valley of Andur’Blough Inninness, doubting what he had seen, doubting all that had happened. He wanted his mother and his father. He wanted Pony, that they might have another chance to warn the village before the goblin darkness descended. He wanted . . .

He wanted too much, all at once. He sat down right in the dirt at his feet and fought hard against his emotions, for he did not want to cry.

From Juraviel’s perspective, the first meeting had gone quite well. He knew there would be many doubts raised about Elbryan, particularly by Tuntun, and he knew how difficult Tuntun could be! But after speaking with the boy, Juraviel was even more convinced that this was indeed the true bloodline of Mather, and an appropriate ranger-in-training. Elbryan had that same impish quality about him as Mather, a love and luster of life, lurking just below the surface. The boy could control it, could find that necessary place of detachment . . . and yet, Elbryan could not resist the question about the wings. He had to know, and then, when he did know, he couldn’t help but imagine the wonder of soaring through the air. Just by the expression on Elbryan’s face, Juraviel had read the boy’s every wonder-filled thought and had relished each of them as much as had Elbryan.

It was good that the boy could think such things at this darkest time in his life, was good that he could press on logically, stoically. Tuntun was wrong, Juraviel knew without any doubt at all; this one had character.

Elbryan wanted to eat, or fall asleep, even looked for a place, a moss bed, perhaps, where he might lie down. That notion was lost along with so many others, fleeting thoughts banging into a wall of images. Andur’Blough Inninness, with all its sounds and colors, all its vivid images, called to him, teased him. Juraviel had said nothing about his remaining where he was, so Elbryan got up, brushed himself off, and started walking again among the trees.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon caught up in the sights and smells. He found a stream filled with yellow fish that he did not know, and watched them for more than an hour. He spotted a deer, its long white tail bobbing, but as soon as he tried to get closer, it caught wind of him and leaped away, disappearing as completely as Belli’mar Juraviel had into the shadows.

For all the sights of that wondrous afternoon, for all the relief of existing simply in the present and not in the most terrible past or the uncertain future, Elbryan was even more greatly overwhelmed as dusk descended.

The hole opened in the middle of the fog that covered the elven valley, showing the deep blue sky. Slowly that hole widened, all sides drawing away evenly, perfectly, and Elbryan, watching in sheer amazement, knew that something supernatural, some magic, guided the mist. Soon the sky was clear above him, the first stars twinkling into view.

Elbryan ran about in search of an open meadow, wanting to see this spectacle more clearly. He found a hillock, bare of trees, and scrambled up its side, stumbling more than once, for his eyes remained fixed on the sky.

The fog had receded now to the edges of the vale, and there it hung, blurring the dark shadows of the towering mountains, blurring the boundary between earth and sky. Elbryan had stopped at the top of the hillock, but he felt as if he were still going up, still ascending to those brilliant, twinkling dots. There was a music that swelled about him, he suddenly realized, a beautiful harmony, and it, too, seemed to draw him higher to walk among the stars, to dwell in their light and mystery. Questions too profound flitted about his consciousness.

He knew not how many minutes, perhaps even hours, had passed when he at last came from that trance. The night was dark about him; his neck ached from holding the position for so long.

Though he was back on earth, spiritually, the music remained, soft and wonderful, emanating from every shadow, from every tree, from the ground itself.

No horrible memories could come to him while he was listening to that elvish song, no fears could gain hold. Slowly, determinedly, Elbryan moved down the hillock, looking back often to the sky. Then he forced himself to stare at the darkest spot he could find, that his eyes could adjust more completely.

He paused and very carefully turned a circuit, listening intently, trying to focus on the sound. His direction chosen, he started off, determined to find the singer.

Many times that night, Elbryan believed that he was close. Many times, he rushed around a bend in the trail or jumped out from behind a tree, expecting to catch an elf at song, and once he thought he glimpsed the light of a distant torch.

The song was strong, though not loud, with many voices joining in, but Elbryan never caught a glimpse of any of the singers, saw no elf nor any other creature the rest of that night.

Juraviel found him at dawn, curled in a hollow at the base of a wide oak.

It was time to begin.

>PART TWO

>
PASSAGE

Often I sit and stare at the stars, wondering, wandering. They are to me the shining symbol of all the unanswered questions of human existence, of our place in this vast sky, of our purpose, of death itself They are sparkles of unanswerable wonder, and, too, the beacons of hope.

The night sky is what I liked most about my years in Andur’Blough Inninness. At dusk, when the fog rolled back to the forest edge, it shrouded the known world, blocked the stark mountain shadows in soft and subtle mystery, and the stars came out shining clearer than anywhere else in all the world. That magical mist drew me up—my spirit and even my physical body, it seemed—into the heavens, above the tangible world, that I might walk among the stars and bathe in the lights of mystery, in the secrets of the universe unveiled.

In that elven forest, under that elven sky, I knew freedom. I knew the purest contemplation, the release of physical boundaries, the brotherhood with all the universe. Under that sky that posed to me so many questions, I dismissed mortality, for I had become one with something that was eternal. I had ascended from this temporary existence, from a place of constant change to a place of eternity.

An elf may live for a handful of centuries, a human for a handful of decades, but for both that is but the start of an eternal journey—or perhaps a continuation of a journey that had begun long before this present conscious incarnation. For the spirit continues, as the stars continue. Under that sky, I learned this to be true.

Under that sky, 1 talked to God.

—E
LBRYAN
W
YNDON

>
CHAPTER 10

>
Made of Tougher Stuff

Elbryan rolled his breeches up over his knees—not that the worn and ragged pants would stay that way for long!—and touched the dark water with his toe.

Cold. It was always cold; the boy didn’t know why he even bothered testing it each morning before plunging in.

From somewhere in the thick brush behind him, he heard a call, “Be quick about it!” The words were not spoken in the common tongue of Honce-the-Bear but in the singsong, melodious language of the elves, a language Elbryan was already beginning to comprehend.

Elbryan glared over his shoulder in the general direction of the voice, though he knew he would not see one of the Touel’alfar. He had been in Andur’Blough Inninness for three months, had watched winter settle over the land just outside the elven valley and in a few places within the enchanted vale. Elbryan didn’t know exactly where Andur’Blough Inninness was located, but he suspected they were somewhere in the northern latitudes of Corona, beyond the Wilderlands border of Honce-the-Bear. By his reckoning, the winter solstice had passed, and he knew Dundalis, or what was left of the village, was likely under several feet of snow. He remembered well the hardships, and the excitement, of Dundalis in the winter, the gusting wind throwing icy particles against the side of the cabin, the piles of blowing snow sometimes so deep that he and his father had to break through a drift just to get outside!

It wasn’t like that in Andur’Blough Inninness. Some magic, probably the same enchantment that brought the daily blanket of fog, kept the winter season much warmer and more gentle. The northern end of the valley was carpeted by snow, but only a few inches, and the small pond up there was frozen solid—Elbryan had once seen a handful of elves dancing and playing on the ice. But many of the hardier plants had kept their summer hue, many flowers still bloomed, and this reedy bog, the one place in all the valley that Elbryan had truly come to hate, had not frozen. The water was chilly, but not more so than it had been on the first day Elbryan had been told to go in, back when the season was still autumn.

The boy took a deep breath and plunged one foot in, held the pose for a moment until the numbness took away the sting, then dipped in his second foot. He picked up his basket, cursed when one pant leg slipped down into the water, then waded out through the reeds. The cold mud squishing through his toes felt good, at least.

“Be quick about it!” came the predictable call again from the brush, and it was repeated several times, sometimes in elven and sometimes in the common human tongue, by different voices in different places. The elves were taunting him, the boy knew. They were always taunting, always complaining, always pointing out his all too numerous shortcomings.

To his credit, Elbryan had pretty much learned to ignore them.

Parting one patch of reeds, the boy found his first stone of the day, bobbing low in the water. He scooped it out and dropped it into his basket, then moved along to a group of nearly a dozen bobbing stones. He recognized which ones were too high in the water, and plunged them under, trying to saturate the spongelike rocks a bit more before taking them out. When he squeezed them, extracting the now-flavored liquid, the elves would inevitably complain about how little he had collected.

It was yet another part of this unchanging daily ritual.

Soon the basket was full, so Elbryan hauled it back to the bank and collected another one. Thus it went for the bulk of the morning, for the bulk of every morning: the boy moving carefully about the chilly bog, collecting ten baskets of milk stones.

That was the easy part of Elbryan’s day, for then he had to haul the heavy baskets, one at a time, nearly half a mile to the collecting trough. He had to be fast, for he could lose precious time at this point and then would have to suffer almost continual insult from the unseen elves. “Five miles laden, five miles empty,” was the way Belli’mar Juraviel had described this part of his work. Ironically, the laden section of each trip seemed the easiest to Elbryan, for the elves often set traps for him on the journey back to the bog. These weren’t particularly nasty traps, designed more to embarrass than to injure. A trip line here, a disguised patch of slick mud on a corner there. The worst part of falling victim to one of the snares was hearing the laughter as he tried to extract himself from whatever had hold of him, be it a thorny bush or some of those silken elven strands, which, Elbryan found out soon enough, could be made as sticky and clingy as a spiderweb.

He got his reward for his morning’s toils when he returned to the bog to collect the tenth loaded basket. There, every day, he would eat his midday meal—though at first, it was usually halfway through the afternoon before Elbryan got a chance to taste it. The elves would set out a grand table, steaming stew and venison, sometimes roasted game fowl, and piping hot tea that warmed the boy from his head to his cold toes. Always it was a hot meal they set, and Elbryan soon understood why. The elves would put the food out at exactly the same time every day, but if he was not fast enough, “
tolque ne’ pesil siq’ el palouviel,”
or, “the steam would be off the stew,” as one particularly nasty elf, a deceivingly delicate maiden named Tuntun, had often chided him.

So Elbryan ran, stumbling with his ninth basket, knowing that any stone he dropped into the dirt would be useless for that day. Carefully placing the basket at last at the trough, the boy then sprinted full out the half mile back to the bog. He ate a cold lunch every day at first, but gradually, as the terrain became more familiar and his legs became stronger, as he grew to recognize and thus avoid many of the devilish elven traps, he graduated to warm food.

This day, Elbryan resolved, that tea would burn his tongue!

He put the ninth basket down by the trough right on schedule, took one deep breath, clearing his thoughts and remembering the last layout of the elvish obstacle course. For only the third time in all these weeks, the lunch had not yet been set out when Elbryan had collected the ninth basket. On those first two occasions, the hopeful lad had fallen victim to ever more cunning elvish traps. “Not this time,” he said quietly, determinedly, and he started his sprint.

He spotted mud at one sharp bend; without slowing, Elbryan leaped atop a stone at the elbow of the trail and skipped off it, landing beyond the slick area. With the aid of a slanting sunbeam poking down through a break in the leafy boughs, he then spotted a series of nearly translucent trip lines, of height ranging from ankle to knee, blocking one long straight section of the trail. Elbryan considered veering off the trail, crashing through the brush, then slowed, thinking he should just walk past this obvious trap.

“Not today,” Elbryan growled, and he put his head down and ran on, full speed. He found his visual focus quickly, locking his eyes upon a point just one step ahead, and high-stepped his way through the region, getting his feet up over every single trip line.

Laughter trailed him as he sped away, and Elbryan sensed that there was some measure of admiration in it.

Within a couple of minutes, his goal—the bog, the basket, the meal—was in sight, down the last stretch of path. Here, high stones lined both sides of the trail, making passage off the path nearly impossible unless Elbryan took a circuitous route quite deep into the underbrush.

He slowed to a near walk, opting for caution and understanding that an extra few seconds would make no difference in the quality of his meal.

They had dug a pit—how could they have done that so quickly?—and had cleverly covered it with a layer of dirt and fallen leaves, supported by a trellis of woven sticks. Despite the addition of the pit, the path appeared almost exactly the same as it had on all of his previous returns.

Almost
exactly.

Elbryan crouched and tamped down his feet, thinking to take a few running strides and then leap the trap. He stopped before he had really begun, though, catching the sound of a soft titter on the breeze.

A smile widened on the boy’s face. He wagged his finger at the underbrush. “Well done,” he congratulated, then he moved to the edge of the apparent pit and pulled aside the phony trellis.

The real pit, he discovered was several feet beyond the apparent pit. He would have leaped clear of the phony, only to drop heavily into the real one.

Now it was Elbryan’s turn to laugh, as he discerned the dimensions of the true trap, then easily leaped it, leaving the last few feet of the path, the last expanse to the food, open to him.

“Not this time!” he yelled loudly, and there was no return laughter from the brush, no sound at all.
“Ne leque towithel!”
he repeated in elvish.

Elbryan slowly passed the last tree, home free, so he thought.

Something zipped by him, just under his chin. He heard a thud at the side and turned to see one of those tiny elvish arrows half buried in a tree. A second bolt whistled behind him, turning him with a start, and only when Elbryan noticed the silvery filament trailing this arrow did he understand what was happening.

There came a third and a fourth, all dangerously close.

“Not fair!” the boy yelled, trying to move—and discovering that the sticky strands were already grabbing at him. He looked at the brush helplessly, at the steaming stew, just a few strides away.

More arrows whistled past, each trailing a strand, each tightening the web about Elbryan, holding him from his meal.

“Not fair!” he yelled repeatedly, tearing at the strands. He managed to pull a few down—a couple of arrows came out of the tree, other strands pulled free of the arrow fletchings—but that helped only a little, as the now-loose strands clung to the boy’s clothing, entangling him even more.

Another arrow came by and slashed across Elbryan’s forearm as he struggled. His protest came out as a snarl, words stolen by the stinging pain, and he stopped his thrashing and clutched at his arm.

“Cowards!” he yelled in total frustration. “Goblinkin! Only a coward would shoot from the boughs. Only a coward of goblin heritage would attack someone who has no weapons with which to strike back!”

The next arrow razored painfully across the back of his neck, drawing a line of bright blood.

“Enough!” came a stern voice from the brush, a voice that Elbryan recognized—and was certainly glad to hear.

Protests, laughter, taunts all came back in reply from, many different places.

“Enough, Tuntun!” Belli’mar Juraviel demanded again, and the elf came forth from the brush, moving to young Elbryan. Tuntun, bow in hand, came out from across the way and moved quickly to follow on Juraviel’s heels.

“Calm, my friend,” Juraviel prompted poor Elbryan, the boy thrashing about and only entangling himself even more. “The strands will not let go until Tuntun commands them.” Juraviel turned and glared at the female then, and she sighed resignedly and muttered something under her breath.

Almost immediately, the strands began to fall from Elbryan, except for those still tight in the line from the tree to the brush where Tuntun had tied them off, and those which the young man had inadvertently twisted and turned about his limbs. Finally, with Juraviel’s help, Elbryan got free, and he immediately stormed up to Tuntun, his green eyes flaring dangerously.

The elf looked up at him calmly, smiling, perfectly relaxed.

“I earned that meal!” the boy stormed.

“So go and eat it,” Tuntun replied, and snickers came at Elbryan from every bush. “You needn’t worry that it will burn your tongue.”

“Elbryan,” Juraviel warned when he saw the boy ball his fist at his side. Tuntun held up a hand to her elvish companion, silently bidding Juraviel to let her take care of this situation. Juraviel knew what was coming, and though he did not like it, for he thought it too soon in the boy’s training, he did on some levels agree that the lesson might be necessary.

“You want so badly to strike me.” Tuntun tittered.

Elbryan fumed but couldn’t, in good conscience, punch this diminutive creature, half his weight, if that, and a girl besides!

Tuntun’s bow came up, faster than Elbryan could follow, and the elf let fly an arrow, down the path. It struck the bowl of stew, overturning it and making a mess of the meal. “You’ll get nothing more this day,” Tuntun said sternly.

The knuckles on both of Elbryan’s hands were white by this point, and the muscles along his jaw strained taut. He started to turn away, thinking that he had to hold his control, had to let all the insults pass, but before be got halfway around, Tuntun slapped her bow across the back of his head.

Elbryan let fly a wide-arcing left hook as he spun back toward the elf. He missed miserably, Tuntun ducking low under the predictable blow, and kicking him twice in rapid succession, once on the inside of each knee.

Elbryan stumbled and squared himself; Tuntun tossed her bow aside, held up both her empty hands, and motioned for Elbryan to come on.

The boy paused. The forest was silent, totally silent, about him, and Juraviel made not a move nor any indication of how Elbryan should proceed.

It was his choice to make, he realized, and so he crouched low, hands out wide, feeling his balance on the balls of his feet. He waited, and waited some more, until Tuntun relaxed, and then he sprang like a hunting cat.

He caught the air, nothing more, and didn’t even realize that the elf was not in front of him until he heard wings fluttering behind him and felt a series of sharp punches on the back of his head.

He wheeled, but Tuntun turned with him, staying behind him and punching out a veritable drum roll on his upper back. Furious, Elbryan finally launched himself sideways, putting some ground between him and his elusive opponent.

“Blood of Mather!” Tuntun said sarcastically. “He fights as any lumbering human might!”

Juraviel wanted to respond that Mather had fought the exact same way in the first years of his training, but he let it pass. Let Tuntun have her fun this day, the elf decided; that would make his victory all the sweeter when Elbryan finally proved himself.