The Demon Awakens (55 page)

Elbryan noted to his relief that Pony, Bradwarden, and the others were making a clean escape, running fast in a line up the north slope, back for the cover of the deeper forest. The ranger noted, too, that Paulson’s riderless mount was close behind them, and while he was glad that the horse had escaped, he was not pleased by the sight.

Now Paulson would have to run all the way out of the valley, and he would never make it unless Elbryan and Symphony could cause enough confusion behind him. On the ranger went, now taking and deftly stringing Hawkwing, weaving a zigzag course about the pines, and letting fly an arrow whenever a monster showed its ugly face.

He kept up the dodging, the quick bursts to break free of any flanking movements, for several minutes, but time was soon working against him as more and more monsters poured onto the valley floor, as his options for flight lessened. A glance back showed the ranger Paulson’s lumbering form—at least he thought the dark speck scrambling up the southeastern slope was Paulson—but showed him also the huge form of the stubborn giant, in close pursuit.

His game was ended, the ranger knew, and he spun Symphony in a tight circle about the next tree—poked a powrie hiding amid the thick boughs in the eye with Hawkwing for good measure—then cut a straight line in pursuit of Paulson and the giant.

Huge stones splattered in the mud all about him, stripping the branches from the sides of nearby trees, and the shouts of a hundred monsters followed Elbryan out of that valley.

But those shouts were fast receding, Symphony’s great strides outdistancing the pursuit, and sheer luck saw the ranger through the shower of giant-thrown stones. He got over the lip of the valley, spotted the distant form of the lumbering giant, and plunged fast among the skeletal forms of the leafless trees.

Paulson was caught; he tripped over an exposed root and went facedown into the mud and slush. He heard the giant’s victorious laughter, imagined the spiked club coming up high, and covered his head with his hands, though he realized that meager defense would do him little good.

The giant was indeed closing for the kill, lifting its deadly weapon, when an arrow thudded hard into its back, turning its evil laughter into a sudden wheeze. Outraged, the behemoth spun.

Elbryan stood right up on Symphony’s back, the horse in full gallop. He drew out Tempest and put his bow to the saddle. The giant was near a wide-branching elm with thick, solid limbs.

“Be quick and be sure,” the ranger said to Symphony, who understood his plan perfectly.

The horse angled near a second elm, its branches intertwined with the one near the giant, and Elbryan leaped away, running, surefooted, along one rain-slicked limb.

The giant turned and stared curiously as the suddenly riderless horse continued to bear down upon it, but the monster, after a moment’s thought, seemed satisfied with that and lifted its club to meet Symphony’s charge.

At the last second, the horse veered sharply to the side, and the giant lunged, and only then did the stupid fomorian notice the second form, running along the branches, running right by its bending form.

Tempest flashed like blue-white lightning, tearing a long line across the monster’s throat. The giant came up with a roar and swung hard, but Elbryan had already dropped off the back of the limb, and that sturdy branch stopped the club far short of the mark. Under the limb came Elbryan, Tempest stabbing, then slashing upward into the monster’s loins as it tried futilely to extract its spiked club from the stubborn branch.

And even worse for the giant than the stabbing, searing pain down low was the wound across its throat, the wound that spurted blood wildly and refused to allow the monster to draw breath. Its rage played out, as the terrible wound and the flying blood took away the monster’s strength. The giant let go of the club, then, and staggered backward, grasping at its torn throat. It looked down through blurred eyes to see the wicked man back atop his stallion, the other man, the easy prey, climbing up behind him.

The giant reached for Elbryan and Paulson, but its senses were playing tricks now and the men were fully twenty feet away. Reaching, reaching, the giant overbalanced and fell to the ground.

The behemoth heard the hooves receding into the forest, heard the distant voice of a human female, and then the darkness closed in.

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CHAPTER 44

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The Revelations of Spirits

“It was a trap, set for you, who lived once in Dundalis,” Juraviel said. The elf sat with Pony and Elbryan near Mather’s grave in the diamond-shaped grove. Tuntun was nearby, along with the other elves who had come to the area, and who, Juraviel had informed Elbryan, would soon be returning to Andur’Blough Inninness.

“How would they know that?” Elbryan asked, not yet willing to believe that the cutting in the evergreen vale had been done specifically for them.

“They knew that many of the folk battling them had fled Dundalis,” Juraviel answered. “The village was deserted before they arrived. It would follow that they understood the valley north of the town to be an important place, perhaps even a sacred place.”

“No,” Pony argued. “They would not believe it to be more important than was the village itself, and that we deserted.”

“And I doubt that powries, and certainly not goblins and giants, hold any appreciation for beauty,” Elbryan added.

Juraviel fell silent, digesting the logical arguments. Still, it bothered the elf that the monsters had gone into that particular valley.

It bothered Elbryan, too, for the scarring of the evergreens made no sense. The monsters’ take of lumber would not have been useful; the spruce and pines were too short for catapults, too wet and sappy for wood fires, and too pliable for any construction. With deeper forests all about them, filled with taller trees of harder wood, why would the powries go into the evergreen valley? Only to lure their enemies, Elbryan had to reason, particularly Jilseponie and him, the two to whom the valley was indeed sacred.

But it made no sense to the ranger, for the plan was too subtle. How might the monsters have garnered such information about the leaders of their enemies?

“They knew,” Elbryan said flatly. “They had to know.”

“How?” Juraviel demanded.

A whistle from the trees—from Tuntun, they realized—alerted them of a visitor, and a moment later, Brother Avelyn ambled in to join them. He looked much better, seeming his old bouncy self, except for a slight limp.

“Ho, ho, what?” Pony said to him playfully, drawing a smile from the monk.

“They knew,” Avelyn remarked as he sat down hard on the ground. “They knew, and they know much of us. Too much.”

“How have you discerned this?” Juraviel asked.

“A ghost told me,” Avelyn replied. Elbryan perked up his ears, wondering if the monk had been in contact with Uncle Mather.

“While you fought in the valley, I went far to the north,” the monk explained. “I tell you now that this force which has come upon us is but a predecessor, a testing probe, and that our enemy, the demon dactyl, has many times this number of soldiers to send down upon us.”

“Then we are doomed,” Pony whispered.

“Our enemy has another ally, as well,” Avelyn went on, looking directly at Elbryan. “The ghost of a man you killed, in my defense.”

“Brother Justice,” the ranger reasoned.

Avelyn nodded. “His name is Quintall,” he said, for the other title seemed perfectly ridiculous now. “I spoke with this ghost briefly, before we battled, and I tell you, he knew of us, of you and of Pony.”

“He and I once did battle,” the ranger reminded.

Avelyn was shaking his head before Elbryan even finished the predictable sentence. “He knew that you were in trouble, in the valley. He predicted that both of you would be slain.”

“Then it was a trap,” Juraviel said.

“Indeed,” remarked Avelyn. “They knew how best to draw us—you, two, at least,” he said to Elbryan and Pony.

“How could they?” Pony wanted to know. “Brother—Quintall did not know us well, certainly did not know our affinity with the pine vale.”

“Perhaps the ghost has been about us,” came a voice from a nearby tree. The group glanced over to see Tuntun sitting calmly on a branch.

That seemed plausible enough, but Avelyn suspected that he would have sensed Quintall’s presence had the spirit indeed been about. “Perhaps,” the monk admitted, “or might it be that Quintall is not the only one who has fallen to the darkness of the dactyl?”

To the small group whose very lives depended on absolute secrecy, there could have been no more unsettling possibility than that of a traitor in their midst. A thousand questions filtered through Elbryan’s and everyone else’s thoughts as he considered each person of the band. When he came to privately question the loyalty of Bradwarden, the ranger realized that this exercise was truly folly.

“We know no such thing,” Elbryan said firmly after a lengthy pause in the conversation. “Likely it was the ghost, a spy for our enemies. Or perhaps the powries are more cunning than we first believed. Perhaps they have prisoners hidden away and have tortured information from them.”

“None from Dundalis, surely,” argued Pony. “None who might know of our fondness for the valley.”

“It is all speculation,” the ranger insisted. “Dangerous thoughts. How will we function if there remains no trust among us? No,” he decided, his stern tone showing that he would brook no compromise on this point, “we will not cast suspicion on any in our group. We will not speak of this outside our immediate circle, and not speak of it at all unless some more substantial evidence can be found.”

“We must be careful then,” Avelyn offered.

“Will this grove be next?” Pony asked, a question that unnerved Elbryan.

“All the world will be next,” Tuntun said, shifting the focus, “if Avelyn’s words are true.”

“They are,” the monk insisted. “I saw the monstrous gathering in such numbers as I would never have imagined.”

“In greater numbers than their nature would allow,” agreed Juraviel, “were they not guided.”

Pony, who hadn’t been involved in the previous discussion at Avelyn’s bedside, seemed not to understand.

“Powries and goblins would not ally for long if there was not a greater power, a greater evil, holding them together,” Juraviel explained.

Pony looked at Avelyn, thinking of his prophecies of doom all those weeks together on the road, thinking of the weakness of the world the monk constantly berated and of the name he gave to it. “The dactyl?” she asked. “You are certain?”

“The dactyl is awake,” Avelyn said without hesitation.

“As we feared in Caer’alfar,” Juraviel added.

“But I thought that the dactyl was the weakness in men’s hearts,” Pony reasoned, “not a physical being.”

“It is both,” Avelyn explained, recalling the training he had received at St.-Mere-Abelle and thinking it ironic now that those same men who had taught him of the demon dactyl had, through their own weakness and impiety, helped to facilitate the return of the monster. “It is the weakness of man that allows the demon to come forth, but when it does, it is a physical monster indeed, a being of great power who can command the wills of those with evil in their hearts, who can dominate the monstrous hordes and tempt men such as Quintall, men who have fallen from the ways of God, to its side.”

“There are more beliefs than those of your church,” Tuntun put in dryly.

“And all our gods are one God,” Avelyn replied quickly, not wanting to offend the elf. “A God of differing names perhaps, but of similar tenets. And when those tenets are misinterpreted,” the monk went on, his voice turning grave, “when they are used for personal gain or as a means of exacting punishment or forcing submission upon others, then let all of Corona beware, for the demon dactyl will rouse from its slumbers.”

“It is a dark time,” Juraviel agreed.

Elbryan bowed his head but in thought and not in despair. Such philosophical discussions did not elude the ranger, but Elbryan understood that his role here was to consider their position in terms of their day-to-day existence, that he might properly guide those folk, closer to two hundred than to one, who had come under his care. At that moment, the ranger had more immediate problems than some mythical monster hundreds of miles away, for if there was indeed a traitor in their midst, then the threat would increase.

“They knew, Uncle Mather,” Elbryan whispered when at last the image came to him at Oracle. “They knew that scourging the valley would wound me, would, perhaps, even bring me out of hiding. Yet, how can they know of me, more than the name of Nightbird, which I have not hidden, and of my exploits against them? How could they know of my loves, of a place that is special only within my heart?”

The ranger sat back, leaning on the back wall of the small cave. He continued to stare silently, not expecting an answer but hoping that, as was often the case, the image of his uncle Mather would guide him through the jumble of his own thoughts, to reason through his dilemma.

He saw another image in the mirror—or was it merely in his mind?—one of a man he had selected to go along on the raid to the evergreen vale, but who had refused, claiming sickness. Elbryan knew well that the man had not been ill, and he considered the sudden cowardice truly out of character. But with no time for such petty problems, the ranger had dismissed the incident.

Elbryan envisioned again the return of the battered group to the main encampment: Paulson dropping down wearily from Symphony’s back, Pony leaning against Bradwarden as if, were it not for the centaur’s solid frame, she would have simply tumbled over to the ground. He saw reflected in the mirror those images that had been peripheral to him at that time: a supposedly ill man standing at the side of the camp and, more important, the expression on that man’s face, hardly noticed at the time, but clear now to Elbryan.

The man was surprised, truly surprised, that they had returned.

Using all the stealth he had learned in his years with the Touel’alfar, Elbryan followed Tol Yuganick out of the encampment late one dark night, several days after the abandoned raid on the evergreen valley.

The big man, supposedly in search of firewood, looked back over his broad shoulders often, Elbryan noted, obviously trying to ensure that he was not being followed. His precaution did little against the stealthy skill of the ranger, though, and so Tol was oblivious of Elbryan’s presence, obviously so, when he met with a bandy-limbed powrie less than two miles from the band’s present hideout.

“I did as you demanded,” Elbryan heard the big man complain. “I delivered them, right where I said I would.”

“Yach! Ye said the ranger,” the powrie grumbled back, “and his woman friend. Ye made no talk of other warriors or of that wretched centaur!”

“Did you think Nightbird would be so foolish as to go so near Dundalis alone?”

“Silence!” the powrie snapped at him. “Take care yer attitude, Tol Yuganick; Bestesbulzibar is not far, I promise, and he hungers for human flesh.”

Elbryan silently mouthed the unfamiliar name and noted how Tol’s ruddy face blanched at the mere mention. The ranger didn’t know what this creature, Bestesbulzibar, might be, but his respect for it as an enemy was already considerable.

“We must defeat Nightbird,” the powrie insisted, “and soon. My master has noticed the problems here, though we are many leagues behind the battle lines, and my master is not pleased.”

“That is your problem, Ulg Tik’narn, and not my own!” Tol growled. “You have used me, powrie, and left a foul taste in my mouth that no river could wash out were I to swallow the whole of it!”

Elbryan nodded, glad that the man felt some remorse for his traitorous actions.

“And I’m done with you and with Bestesbulzibar the winged devil!” He turned indignantly on his heel and started to stride away.

“Yach, and with the ghost that finds yer dreams,” the powrie asked slyly, “the ghost who beckons to Bestesbulzibar’s every call?”

Tol Yuganick hesitated and turned back.

“And what might Nightbird do if he discovers your treachery?” Ulg Tik’narn asked.

“We had a deal,” Tol protested.

“We
have
a deal,” Ulg Tik’narn corrected. “Ye’ll do as I say, fool human, or me master will destroy ye most unpleasantly.”

Tol bowed his head, his face contorting as he struggled, pragmatism against conscience.

“Ye already a fallen thing,” the powrie went on, chuckling. “Yer course cannot be reversed, yer errors cannot be corrected. Ye delivered Nightbird to us once, and now ye must do so again, for unless he’s taken, there’ll be no rest for ugly Tol Yuganick, no sleep that will evade the intrusions of the ghost Quintall, no path that will get you far enough from the flight of Bestesbulzibar, who is all-powerful.”

Elbryan could hardly draw breath at the realization that he and his little band had made such an impact on the very heart of this monstrous army. He recognized the name of the turncoat spirit, of course, and considering that the powrie referred to Quintall as but a pawn of Bestesbulzibar, the ranger suspected the identity of that creature.

“There is a grove,” Tol began reluctantly, “diamond-shaped.”

The words stirred Elbryan; he put an arrow to Hawkwing before he even realized and had the bow leveled, its mark the space between treacherous Tol’s eyes.

“It is even more special to the ranger, a place that he will not allow to be defiled, whatever the odds,” Tol went on.

Elbryan didn’t want to kill the man; whatever Tol’s weakness, the ranger didn’t want to shoot him dead without explanation, without hearing the threats that had been laid upon the man to turn him so.

But Elbryan held no such sympathy for powries, and so he shifted the angle of the bow just a bit, gritted his teeth, and let fly, the arrow whipping across the twenty feet, unerringly, so he thought. At the last moment, the arrow turned in mid-flight, thudding hard into a tree. Ulg Tik’narn was away in the blink of an eye, running fast into the forest night, but before Tol could move, the ranger leaped before him, Tempest in hand. A glance at the fleeing powrie told Elbryan that the creature posed no immediate threat.

Tol, on the other hand, had his huge sword in hand, eyeing Elbryan nervously.

“I heard,” the ranger said, “everything.”

Tol didn’t reply, just glanced around, looking for an escape.