The Demon Awakens (38 page)

There was some magic here; Elbryan felt that as clearly as he had felt the magic of the elven valley. Reverently, almost as if in a trance, the ranger approached, Bradwarden at his side. They crossed the outer line of thick evergreens into the heart of the grove and found bare paths weaving through the dense undergrowth. Elbryan walked along without speaking a word, as if fearing to disturb the stillness, for not a hint of a breeze came in through that wall of pines.

The path meandered, joining another, then forking three ways. The grove was not large, perhaps two hundred yards across and half again that measure in length, but Elbryan was certain that the paths, if straightened and laid end to end, would cover several miles. He looked back often to Bradwarden for guidance, but the centaur paid him no heed, just followed silently.

They came to a dark, shady spot where the path forked left and right around a great jut of rock covered with a thick patch of short yellow flowers. Elbryan glanced both ways, then, figuring that the paths converged just the other side of the boulder, went right. He soon came to the expected joining, and, looking ahead, he almost continued on.

“Not so perceptive for one trained by elves,” the centaur remarked, Bradwarden’s deep voice shattering the stillness. Elbryan spun around, meaning to hush him, but all thoughts of that, all thoughts of Bradwarden at all, left him as he glanced past the centaur, to the back side of the boulder that had split the path. Elbryan glided back, moving beside the centaur, staring hard at the pile of rocks, eight feet by six and roughly diamond shaped. The ranger glanced all about. They were in the very center of the grove, he realized, and he realized, too, that this cairn was the source of the magic, that the tree-lined borders of the grove seemed to be a reflection of this place.

He went down to one knee, studying the stones, marveling at the care with which they had been placed. He touched one and felt a gentle tingling there, the emanation of magic.

“Who is buried here?” the ranger whispered.

Bradwarden snorted and smiled. “Not for me to tell,” he replied, and Elbryan couldn’t discern if the centaur meant that he did not know, or that it was not his place to reveal the person’s identity.

“Put in the ground by the elves,” the centaur said, “when I was no bigger than yerself.”

Elbryan looked at him curiously. “And how long ago might that be,” he asked Bradwarden, “in the measure of human years?”

The centaur shrugged and pawed the ground uneasily. “Half a man’s life,” he replied; as exact an answer as Elbryan was going to get.

The ranger let it go. He didn’t need to know who was buried here. Obviously the man, or elf or whatever it might be, was important to the Touel’alfar; obviously they had graced this place, this cairn and the grove that had grown about it, with more than a small measure of their magic. He could be satisfied with that; Bradwarden had promised to show him something fine, and indeed the centaur had fulfilled that pledge.

There remained, however, the matter of Elbryan’s prize for winning the archery contest. He looked up at the centaur.

“Ye just keep coming here,” Bradwarden remarked, as if reading Elbryan’s thoughts, “and ye’ll find the one who leads the horses.”

The notion filled the ranger with both excitement and fear. They left the grove soon after, to find an evening meal. Elbryan returned later that night, and then again the next day, but it wasn’t until his fourth journey, some two weeks later, after he had returned from his rounds to End-o’-the-World, that he found Bradwarden’s payment.

It was a brisk autumn day, the wind whipping—though inside the grove, the air remained still—leaves and clouds alike, the puffy white mountains drifting swiftly overhead across the rich blue sky. Elbryan went right to the heart of the grove, paying homage to whoever was buried there, then came back to the edge, wanting to feel the breeze in his face.

Then he heard the music.

At first he thought it was Bradwarden at work with his pipes, but then he realized that it was too sweet, a subtle vibration in the ground and air, a natural song. It didn’t increase in volume or intensity, just played on, and Elbryan soon realized it to be a heralding call, the run of hooves and the wind. He turned and ran along to the southern tip of the grove, though he had no idea of what might be guiding him.

Across the wide meadow, past the flowers and the grass, he saw perfection of form, a huge stallion, milling about the shadows of the distant trees.

Elbryan held his breath as the great horse, shining black except for white on the bottoms of its forelegs and a white diamond above its eyes, came out onto the open field. It was taking his measure, Elbryan knew, though he was not downwind and too far for most horses even to notice him.

The stallion pawed the ground, then reared and whinnied. It came forward in a short burst, a show of strength, then turned and thundered away into the forest.

Elbryan breathed again. He knew the magnificent steed would not return that day, and so he walked away, not in the direction in which the horse had run but back toward Dundalis. He found Bradwarden, at work crafting some devilish arrows, and the centaur’s face immediately brightened.

“Welcome back,” Bradwarden offered with a chuckle. “I see ye’ve already been to the grove.”

Elbryan blushed to think that his emotions were so clearly displayed on his face.

“I telled ye,” the centaur gloated. “So fine a creature is—” He stopped and laughed again.

“The stallion has a name?”

“Different to all,” Bradwarden remarked. “But ye must be knowing it if ye want to get close to him.”

“And how might I learn it?”

“Silly boy,” said Bradwarden. “Ye do not learn it, ye just know it.”

The centaur walked off then, leaving Elbryan with his thoughts.

The ranger was back at the grove the next day, and the next after that, and every day, until finally, more than a week later, he heard, or rather, felt the music once more, this time from the west.

“Smart,” he quietly congratulated when the horse came into view on the edge of the shadows, for the stallion’s approach was downwind this time, that it might get a scent of this intruder to the grove without offering its own scent in return.

After a few minutes, the horse came out onto the open field, and again Elbryan’s breath was stolen away by the sheer beauty of the thing, by its muscled flanks and wide chest, by the intelligence of its features, those knowing black eyes.

A word came to the ranger then, but he shook his head, not understanding. He took a step forward and the horse ran off, breaking the spell and ending the encounter.

Their third meeting came only a day later, the same way as the previous, the stallion approaching tentatively from the west, eyeing Elbryan and pawing the ground.

That word was in his head again, a word that perfectly described the appearance of the great horse.

“Symphony!” the ranger called out, stepping boldly from the grove. To Elbryan’s surprise, to his delight and his horror, the horse reared and neighed loudly, then fell back to all fours and pawed hard at the ground.

“Symphony,” Elbryan repeated over and over as he cautiously approached. What other name could so fit such a horse? What other word could describe the beauty and harmony, the working of muscle with muscle, the songlike vibrations, as if all of nature heralded the run of the great stallion.

Before the ranger even realized it, he was within five strides of the great horse.

“Symphony,” he said quietly.

The horse nickered and threw back his head.

Elbryan moved closer, his hands out wide to show that he was not a threat. Respectfully, he put his hand on the stallion’s neck, stroking firmly and evenly. Slowly, slowly, the horse’s ears came up.

Then the great stallion leaped away, thundering back into the shadows, into the brush.

The pair met day after day, each time growing more comfortable. Elbryan soon realized that this horse was meant for him, as surely as if the elves had put him here as companion for the ranger—and that thought, too, did not seem so ridiculous.

“Did they?” he asked his uncle Mather at Oracle one night. “Is Symphony, for I know that to be the stallion’s proper title, a gift to me from the elves, from Juraviel, perhaps?”

There came no reply, of course, but hearing his own words, Elbryan discovered one distinct flaw in his reasoning.

“Not a gift, then,” he said, “for no such animal could ever be given. But surely the elves have played some role, for this was no chance meeting and the response from the horse was not as would be expected from a creature running fully wild all its life.

“The cairn,” Elbryan whispered a moment later, discovering his answer. It seemed so perfectly clear to him then; the magic of the cairn had somehow brought Symphony to him—no, it had brought the two of them together, ranger and stallion. Now more than ever, Elbryan wanted to know who was buried there, what great man—or elf or centaur, perhaps—had been placed so reverently in the ground by the Touel’alfar, with magic strong enough to tend that perfect grove, strong enough to call Symphony and to give the horse such intelligence. For surely it was the magic of the cairn that had done all of this; Elbryan knew that without doubt.

The next day, he rode Symphony for the first time, bareback, clutching tight to the horse’s thick mane. The wind rushed past his ears, the landscape flying along beneath, such a thrill of the run, such a smoothness of stride, that Elbryan would have sworn he was flying across a cushion of air.

As soon as he dismounted, back in the meadow by the grove, Symphony turned and ran off, and Elbryan made no move to stop the stallion, for he knew that this was not the normal rider-horse relationship, not a relationship of master to beast but a friendship of mutual respect and trust.

Symphony would come back to him, he knew, would let him ride again, but on the stallion’s own terms.

Elbryan gave a salute to that place on the forest’s edge where the stallion had disappeared, a motion of respect and understanding that he and Symphony had their own separate lives but were joined now.

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CHAPTER 31

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Home Again, Home Again

Over the next couple of weeks, as they marched along the trails, Avelyn showed Jill just how much he had come to trust her, for he began formally tutoring her in the ways of the stones. At first, the monk used the conventional methods, the same lessons that had been given to him in St.-Mere-Abelle. He saw at once, though, that Jill was far beyond an average beginning student, was nearly as strong as he had been when Master Jojonah had played the out-of-body game with him that first time. Avelyn understood the source. Jill was naturally strong, but surely not as strong as he had been. But she was no beginner. That joining by means of the hematite when he had been sorely wounded had given her an understanding of accessing the powers on a level that other monks spent months, even years, trying to attain. As their friendship deepened, their trust becoming so strong, Avelyn again dared to use the hematite to instruct Jill. Not only was her gain exponential, but so was the monk’s understanding of this secretive woman—and of her dark past.

“Dundalis.” The word fell from Jill’s lips like the peal of a church bell, a chime that could be of celebration, of hope and the future promise of eternal life, or one that could signify death. The young woman ran a hand through her hair, which had grown thick to her shoulders again, and looked at Avelyn suspiciously. “You knew,” she accused.

Avelyn shrugged, having no practical response.

“Somehow you discovered my history,” the woman went on, using excitement, a sense of betrayal, to block away the more urgent feelings that were welling up inside her as she considered that long-lost name, the name of the village that had been her home and apparently the name of a new village, built on the same spot. “In Palmaris,” Jill reasoned, “you spoke with Graevis!”

“Pettibwa, actually,” Avelyn admitted dryly.

“You dared?”

“I had no choice,” Avelyn retorted. “I am your friend.”

Jill stuttered incoherently for a moment, trying to sort it all out. Avelyn had led her north of the city, along the Masur Delaval to its delta, then turning inland, heading for the wilderness. It had happened in a roundabout manner; Jill feared that she might be wandering into once-familiar territory, but really nothing had sparked recognition within her, not until the pair had ventured into a town called End-o’-the-World and had heard that name “Dundalis” spoken aloud. She wanted to lash out at Avelyn at that moment, but she could not deny his last words. Indeed the monk was her friend, among the best of friends Jill had ever known. She need only look at the gift he was giving to her with the stones to confirm that he loved her.

“You run from ghosts, my friend, my dearest Jill,” Avelyn explained. “I see your pain and feel it as though it were my own. It is evident in every stride you take; in every smile you feign—yea, feign, I say, for have you really smiled, Jill? In all of your life?”

Tears welled in the young woman’s shining blue eyes and she looked away.

“You have, I say!” Avelyn insisted. “Of course you have! But that was before the disaster, before the ghosts began to walk in your footsteps.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Because here those ghosts have nothing to hide behind,” Avelyn remarked firmly. “Here, in this new village that was once your home, you will confront those ghosts and banish them to the peace they deserve, and the peace you deserve.”

It was spoken with such resolve, such strength, that Jill could no longer be angry with him. Brother Avelyn was indeed her friend, she knew, and he wanted only what was best for her, would fight and die for her sake. But still she feared that his decision was folly, based on his underestimating the pain within her. Avelyn could not truly appreciate that grief; nor could Jill, but she feared it lurked right below the surface and, if loosed, would surely consume her.

She nodded mutely, having no answers, having only fears. She walked in the back door of the tavern, then to the private room she and Avelyn had rented. She didn’t know what memories the familiar name might conjure, but she wanted to be alone when she faced them.

He had been angered beyond words, had spat and kicked down the door of his room, had even broken the jaw of one woman of the night who had offered her wares. For Palmaris had deceived him as much as his encounter with the merchant Dosey had unnerved him. Brother Justice had not gained on his intended prey—had, in fact, lost ground, wandering aimlessly about the large city. Only chance had brought him in contact with a man named Bildeborough and a rake named Grady Chilichunk, drunkards both.

Brother Justice found their stories, sputtered for the price of a few cheap ales, quite interesting. Especially Grady’s, when the man mentioned that he had seen yet another Abellican monk only a month before, talking with his mother, Pettibwa, in Fellowship Way. “How uncommon that two of you should come out together,” Grady remarked, not politely. “Normally your kind are so reclusive; and what do you do to entertain yourselves within those abbey walls?”

The implications were clear, considering the man’s lewd manner, and Grady and Connor shared a laugh.

Brother Justice used a fantasy of twisting the fool’s head off to force a smile. The monk remained polite long enough to learn that this other Abellican monk, whom he suspected to be Brother Avelyn, had gone out to the north to the Wilderlands and the Timberlands, to a place called Weedy Meadow.

There were no merchant caravans going north from Palmaris at that time, with autumn settling thick over the land and the promise of a deep winter, but that hardly deterred the resourceful Brother Justice. He set out alone, moving swiftly, running more than walking, determined to make up the ground and be done with this business.

She remembered that long-ago morning on the tree-covered slope, looking at the sky, at the shining Halo, with its rainbow of colors, its heavenly allure. She remembered the music filling all the air. She had not been alone that morning, Jill now realized, for she had called out her discovery.

“A boy,” she whispered to the empty corners of her small room. The name “Elbryan” nipped at the edges of her mind, but with it came an overwhelming sense of grief and loss: that black wall of pain that caused her to shrink away, that had made her put the glowing ember in Connor Bildeborough’s face.

Jill took a deep breath and forced all the memories away. She did not sleep at all that night, but still, she was packed for the road early the next morning, leading a groggy—and hungover—Avelyn by the hand out of the inn, tugging him down the eastern road, toward the village known as Dundalis.

They arrived late that afternoon, the sun settling on the western horizon, the long, slanted shadows rolling out from the buildings of the new village. Jill didn’t recognize the place, not at all, and she was surprised by this fact. She had held her breath along the last expanse of road before Dundalis came into sight, expecting to be overwhelmed by sudden memories. It simply didn’t happen like that. This was Dundalis, built on the remains of the former Dundalis, but it resembled Weedy Meadow, End-o’-the-World, or any other frontier village as much as it resembled its namesake—at least at first glance.

Avelyn let Jill lead him through the village, down the one main road, heading north. There was an old, broken-down fence on the northern edge of town, formerly a corral, Jill realized, and beyond it was the slope.

The slope.

“I saw the Halo from there,” she remarked.

Avelyn smiled, but only briefly, remembering his most vivid encounters with the Halo, so far, far away on board a swift sailing ship on his most important and sacred mission.

“It was real,” Jill whispered, more to herself than to Avelyn. She took some satisfaction in that, in knowing that the small fragment of her past life that was clear to her was indeed something real and not imagined. Looking up from the northern edge of Dundalis to the slope that separated the town from the valley of evergreens and caribou moss, to the slope that had been so important to her in her youth, Jill knew beyond any doubt that her memory of sighting the majestic Halo was indeed real. She felt it again, that tingling sensation, that removal of mortal bonds to soar into the infinite universe.

“The boy,” she remarked.

“You were with someone?” Avelyn asked, trying to coax her on.

Jill nodded. “Someone dear,” she replied.

The moment passed; Jill turned back toward the town. She paused before she got all the way around, though, staring hard at the old corral fence. “I used to play on that fence,” she announced. “We would climb up to the top rail and bet on how long we could walk it.”

“We?”

“My friends,” Jill said, without really thinking about her answer.

Avelyn had hoped that his latest prompt would get her to name some of those lost friends, but he wasn’t too disappointed with its failure. The trip north had been a wise thing, the monk believed, for now, only a few minutes after entering Dundalis, Jill had recaptured more of her past than she had known in many years.

“Bunker Crawyer,” she said suddenly, her expression turning curious.

“A friend?”

“No,” Jill replied, pointing to the old fence. “It was his corral. Bunker Crawyer’s corral.”

Avelyn smiled widely, but hid it when Jill turned to regard him, her frustration evident. It was coming back, but painfully slowly, for now she was growing quite impatient.

“Let us go and get lodging for the night,” the monk offered. “We passed an inn on our way to this place.”

Avelyn knew that another memory had come over Jill, this one more powerful, as they approached the front door of the place called the Howling Sheila, a large tavern near the center of Dundalis. The woman looked not at the building, but at the ground beneath it, her expression shifting from curiosity to fear to outright horror.

She turned away, trembling, and Avelyn caught her even as she started to run. If he let her go, the monk suspected that she would run all the way back to Weedy Meadow, all the way back to End-o’-the-World, all the way back to Palmaris!

“You know this place,” Avelyn said, holding her fast.

Jill’s breath came in gasps; she smelled smoke, thick and black. Though she was outside, she felt as if she were suffocating, closed within a space that was too tight.

“You know!” Avelyn declared forcefully, giving her a shake.

Jill’s deep breath resonated like a growl and she turned, pulling free of the monk, staring hard at the tavern, at its stone foundation. “I hid in there,” she said, working hard so that her voice would not break apart. “While all the town burned down around me. While all the screams . . .”

Her words faded to a choking sniffle, her straightened shoulders slumped suddenly, and she would have fallen to the ground had not Avelyn held her tight.

There was no other inn in Dundalis, and besides, Avelyn had not come all this way simply to allow Jill to run again from her terrible past. He paid for a single room, for there was but one vacancy, pointedly explaining to the jolly Belster O’Comely that there was nothing romantic or lewd between him and the girl, that they were merely good friends and traveling companions. That was the first time he had ever bothered to offer such an explanation, Avelyn mused as he led Jill up the stairs from the common room to their sleeping quarters. The monk believed that they might remain in this town for some time, and since the community was so small and so closed, he felt the need to protect Jill’s reputation. She would face enough trials in Dundalis, Avelyn knew, without hearing the nasty whispers of gossiping townsfolk.

Jill went right to sleep, overcome by the sheer power of the memory. Avelyn remained with her for a long while, fearing that disturbing dreams would visit her.

She slept soundly, perhaps too drained for dreams. Finally Avelyn could not ignore the commotion from the common room below any longer. Most of the village was gathered there, the monk knew, and for all of his love for Jill—and he did indeed love the girl, as a father might love a daughter—the battered monk had needs of his own.

He was downstairs soon enough, drinking and talking amid a huge crowd, for many of the area trappers had come in to lay in provisions in preparation of the coming winter. They were a tough bunch indeed, reclusive and opinionated, men and a few women who lived by their weapons and their cunning, and Avelyn was soon enough arguing with one rake that a town whose history was as dark as that of Dundalis should be better prepared to face the danger.

When the trapper scoffed that the most dangerous thing in the area was the occasional hungry raccoon, Brother Avelyn promptly put his fist in the man’s face.

The monk was alone with Belster O’Comely in the common room when he woke up, a slab of steak positioned over one eye.

“Ho, ho, what?” he asked the innkeeper. “Best training the folk around here have seen in years!”

Belster gave a laugh. The folk of Dundalis were a hardy bunch, not shying from the occasional fight. In a weird way, Avelyn—who had fought well, though he hardly remembered it—had earned a bit of respect that night, though most of the men and women who had been in the common room thought him mad.

Belster presented him with a piece of paper, a bill. “They decided that you would pay for the last round of drinks,” the innkeeper remarked.

“Ho, ho, what!” Avelyn howled, and he was smiling wide as he turned over the pieces of silver.

That jolly smile turned to one of warmth as the monk entered his rented room to find Jill curled up about her pillow, seeming like such a little lost girl. Avelyn knelt by her bed and stroked her thick golden hair, then kissed her on the cheek.