DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (128 page)

But all of those questions ran into the same solid wall, Jojonah realized. Father Abbot Markwart was following his own agenda, one bent on retrieving the stones Avelyn had stolen and discrediting the renegade monk at any costs. As he looked at the man now, it seemed to him that Markwart was spiraling down, down, into depths of blackness, that every word the Father Abbot spoke carried him further from the path of God.

“I will go and pack my belongings,” Master Jojonah said.

“Already done,” Father Abbot Markwart replied as the man turned to leave. “They await you at the abbey’s back door.”

“Then I will go and speak with—”

“You will go straightaway to the back door,” the Father Abbot said calmly. “All the arrangements have been made, all the supplies secured.”

“Magic stones?”

“My friend,” Markwart said, standing and moving around the side of the desk, “you will be traveling through civilized lands. You will need no magical assistance.”

Master Jojonah felt as though he was at a pivotal moment in his life. To go all the way to Ursal without any magical assistance, and on a mission that could become so very complicated, given the sheer paperwork of the canonization process, could keep him out of St.-Mere-Abelle, where he felt that he was desperately needed, for a year and more. Yet his only recourse would be to challenge Markwart here and now, perhaps to make it a public display, calling the man out concerning his beliefs, demanding proof that Brother Avelyn Desbris had gone to Aida to work with the dactyl demon.

His allies would be few indeed, Master Jojonah realized. Brother Braumin would stand behind him, perhaps even young Dellman. But what of Abbot Dobrinion, and thus the hundred and fifty monks of St. Precious?

No, Markwart had beaten him to that, Jojonah understood. He was leaving to discuss a situation near and dear to the heart of St. Precious, the sainthood of one of their own. Dobrinion wouldn’t go against Markwart, not now.

Master Jojonah spent a long time staring at this wrinkled old man, his onetime mentor who had become his nemesis. But he had no answers and no recourse—or perhaps, he feared, it was just a lack of courage. How old he felt at that moment, how beyond his days of action!

He went to the back door of the abbey, then walked, for Markwart had not even secured donkey or cart, down the roads of Palmaris, exiting by the southern gate.

Late in the afternoon of his tenth day with the refugee band, Elbryan sought out Oracle for the first time in more than a week. The passing of the monkish caravan had unnerved him, but so had a new detail that was presented that very morning: Roger Lockless walking back into the refugee camp at the head of fifteen former prisoners of Kos-kosio Begulne. The young man, learning in his scouting that the prisoners had been moved from Caer Tinella to Landsdown, took the opportunity to slip into the less defended town and bring the men out.

Still, despite the powrie leader’s error in moving the prisoners to the weaker community, disaster had almost found Roger in the woods, for another Craggoth hound remained with the prisoners and was hot on his trail, and only the arrival of Juraviel had allowed Roger and the fleeing prisoners to get away into safety.

That was a detail Roger was quick to omit when he described the events of the previous night to an excited and thrilled gathering of refugees.

The ranger saw a new problem here, a deeper and potentially more devastating problem, and so he went to his uncle Mather to sort things out.

It is as I feared, Uncle Mather,he began when the image appeared to him in the mirror in the near dark gloom.The rivalry with Roger Lockless heads toward disaster. Just this morning he came into the camp at the head of fifteen people, prisoners of the powries whom he had freed the previous night. Of course we all rejoiced at their appearance, but in speaking with them afterward, I came to understand just how great a chance Roger had taken, with his life and with theirs, in going after them. For though we all desire to relieve the powries of their every prisoner, there seemed to be no pressing need for such a desperate act at this time. The prisoners were safe enough, by all indications, for the moment at least, and we might have formulated a wider-reaching plan that would have facilitated not only their escape, but the downfall of Kos-kosio Begulne and his evil brethren, as well.

But I understand what drove Roger into the town last night, and so does Pony. By his erroneous thinking, he has lost his rank among his people. Where they used to look to him, he sees them looking to me.

The ranger paused and contemplated that meeting when Roger had first returned. He considered the man’s bluster, the way Roger puffed out his chest when he spoke, the way he looked, particularly at Pony, when he recounted his daring efforts. “Pony,” Elbryan said with a great sigh.

He looked back to the mirror, to the perceived ghostly image within its edges.Pony, he repeated.Roger has taken a fancy to her. Or perhaps he merely views her responses as the greatest indicator of his worth. Pony is my partner, as all know well, and if he can win her approval, then perhaps he believes they all will rank him above me.

With the realization of Roger’s “crush” on Pony, the ranger saw just how dangerous the situation might soon become. Roger, with his obvious talents, could be an incredibly valuable addition to their group, but with his immaturity, he might bring disaster upon them all.

“He and I will fight,” Elbryan said quietly, aloud. “I fear it will come to that.”

The ranger left the room soon after, to see that night had come in, the fires of the encampment burning brightly not far away. He approached at once, and was accosted by loud voices before he drew near.

“We should strike at them,” Tomas Gingerwart, full of fire, argued. “And hard! Drive them from our lands and back to their dark mountain holes.”

Elbryan came into the ring of firelight to see most heads nodding agreement with Tomas’ assessment. He noted Pony, sitting to the side of Tomas, a distressed look on her face.

All the talk paused then, in deference to the ranger, all eyes turning his way, as if awaiting his judgment. As soon as Elbryan and Tomas locked stares, they both understood that they would be on opposite sides of the debate.

“They are without prisoners,” Tomas said. “The time to strike is upon us.”

Elbryan paused for a long while, truly sympathizing with the man, remembering his own feelings, that desperate need for revenge when his home of Dundalis had been burned to the ground. “I understand—” he started to say.

“Then put the warriors in line,” Tomas growled back at him, a response echoed many times over throughout the group.

“Yet I fear that you underestimate the strength of our enemies,” the ranger went on calmly. “How many of us, of our friends, will die in such a raid?”

“Worth it,” cried one man, “if Caer Tinella is freed!”

“And Landsdown!” cried another, a woman from that more southern settlement.

“And if they are not?” the ranger calmly asked. “If, as I fear, we are repelled, slaughtered on the field?”

“What then for those who cannot fight?” Pony added, and that simple logic, that reminder of the larger responsibility, defeated many retorts.

Still, the argument went on and on, and ended out of exhaustion and not agreement. Elbryan and his side could claim a minor victory, though, for no battle plans were yet being drawn. They were all excited now, the ranger realized, about the arrival of three new powerful allies, the victory in the forest fight, the safe return of Roger Lockless, and Roger’s subsequent stealing of the rest of Kos-kosio’s prisoners. Now, in the security of these new developments, the folk dared to think of reclaiming their homes and punishing the murderous thieves who had come to Caer Tinella and Landsdown. Hopefully, as things settled down once more, logic would replace emotion.

Pony understood and agreed with the rationale, and so she was quite surprised later on, when she and Elbryan met with Juraviel in a pine grove some distance to the south of the encampment, and the ranger announced, “The time to strike hard at our enemy is upon us.”

“You just argued against such a course,” the woman retorted.

“Our enemies are wounded and disorganized,” Elbryan went on, “and a furious attack upon them now might send them running.”

“Might,” Juraviel echoed grimly. “And it might cost us many of our warriors.”

“Our entire existence is a risk,” the ranger replied.

“Perhaps we should consider sending those too infirm to fight to the south, to Palmaris, before we plan an attack on Caer Tinella and Landsdown,” the elf reasoned. “We might even find allies in the southern cities.”

“We have allies in the southern cities,” said Elbryan. “But they are concerned for their own borders, and rightly so. No, if we can hit Kos-kosio Begulne hard now and drive him from the towns—”

“That we might hold them?” the elf put in sarcastically, for the mere thought of their ragtag band holding a defensible position was ludicrous.

Elbryan put his head down and sighed deeply. He knew that Juraviel was playing a vital advocate role here, more to help him see through his formulating ideas and work out the finer points than to discourage him, but talking to the Touel’alfar and their pragmatic, if stilted, way of looking at the world was always a bit discouraging to one who saw the world through human eyes. Juraviel didn’t understand the level of frustration in Tomas and the others, didn’t understand how dangerous that frustration might soon become.

“If we drive Kos-kosio Begulne and his powries from the two towns,” the ranger began slowly, deliberately, “it is possible, even likely, that many of their allies will desert the dangerous powries, perhaps even abandon the war altogether. Neither goblins nor giants have any love for powries—they hate the dwarves at least as much as they hate humans—and it is only the strength of the powrie leader, I believe, that is now binding them into a singular force. And even though giants and goblins have been known to ally in the past, there has never been a great fondness between them, by any reports. Giants have been said to eat goblins on occasion. So let us discredit this powrie leader, this binding force, and see what may transpire.”

Now it was Juraviel’s turn to sigh. “Always are you looking for the greatest possible advantage,” he said quietly, his tone edged with resignation. “Always pushing yourself and those around you to the very limits.”

A wounded Elbryan looked at the elf curiously, surprised that Juraviel would criticize him so.

“Of course,” the elf went on, perking up and a sly smile widening on his angular face, “that is exactly what the Touel’alfar taught you to do!”

“We are agreed, then?” Elbryan asked anxiously.

“I did not say that,” Juraviel replied.

Elbryan gave a frustrated growl. “If we do not hit at them, if we do not take advantage of our advantage—and it will prove a fleeting thing, I believe—then we will likely find ourselves in exactly the same desperate situation we just wriggled our way out of. Kos-kosio Begulne will regroup and reinforce and come back at us, forcing another fight in the forest, and sooner or later one of those battles will turn against us. The powrie leader is outraged, no doubt, by the defeat in the forest and the loss of his prisoners.”

“He might even suspect that Nightbird has come to the region,” Pony added, drawing curious looks from the elf and the ranger.

“I remember the name, and so do you, if you pause long enough to think about it,” Pony explained. “Kos-kosio Begulne remembers us from Dundalis.”

Juraviel nodded, recalling the ambush the monsters had once set for Nightbird, destroying a pine vale that the ranger dearly loved to draw him out of the forest. That ambush had been turned back against the monsters, though, like every tack they took against the ranger and his cunning and powerful friends.

“It is even possible that the monkish caravan which Roger spoke of was running from something,” Elbryan went on.

“We could use our temporary advantage to slip around the towns and flee to the south,” Juraviel reasoned. He did not miss the look, almost one of alarm, that passed between Pony and Elbryan at that notion.

“What else?” the elf asked bluntly.

“Anything that would make the monks, with their powerful magic, flee so, must be a considerable force,” Pony put in, but she was far from convincing to the perceptive elf.

“Still more rationale that we should simply flee to the south, as did the monks,” Juraviel pressed. He noted again the look between his companions. “What else?” he asked again. “There is something more to the passage of the monks. I know you too well, Nightbird.”

Elbryan laughed in concession to that point. “Pony and I cannot remain in the area,” he admitted. “Nor would we dare to go south.”

“Brother Avelyn’s stones,” Juraviel said.