DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (19 page)

Humbled, he said not a word, but went right back to his work, as Juraviel left him.

That night, Elbryan sat upon the bare hillock that he claimed as his own, under the starry canopy, alone with his thoughts. Images, memories of the time o€ his past life, a few weeks that sometimes seemed as a few minutes and other times a few centuries, careened about the edges of his consciousness. He tried to concentrate on the present, on the simple beauty of the starry sky, or on the future, the questions of infinity, of eternity. Inevitably, though, that led Elbryan to thoughts of mortality and thus to the recent fate of his family and friends.

Piled in the emotional jumble were Elbryan's mixed feelings concerning the elves. He did not understand these creatures, so gay and full of almost childish spirit at one moment, so deadly and stern at the next. Even Juraviel! Elbryan had thought the elf his friend, and perhaps Juraviel was, in his own inhuman way, but the ferocity and ease with which Juraviel had put the boy under the trough water was amazing and frightening. Elbryan had always thought himself a bit of a warrior. He had killed goblins, after all, though his body was far from maturity. Yet measured against the speed and agility of the elves, the fluidity of their movements, substituting perfect balance for lack of weight and strength, Elbryan truly felt a novice. Juraviel, lighter and smaller, had put him down with astounding ease, a simple movement for which Elbryan had no counter.

So now here he was, in a land enchanting and terrifying, sharing the forest with these creatures that he could not understand and could not defeat.

Sitting on that hillock that night, Elbryan felt as if he were alone in the universe, as if everything around him — the world and the elves, the goblins that had attacked Dundalis and the folk he had known in the village were but a dream, his dream. Elbryan realized the arrogance of that notion, an almost sinful pride,. but he was so much out of control, so insignificant, so vulnerable, that he suffered the barbs of his conscience for the sake of his sensibilities.

On that hillock, under that sky, Elbryan dared to play God, and that emotional game allowed him to sleep finally in peace and to wake with the determination to go on, with the gritty confidence that today, this day, he would eat hot stew for lunch. He collected his baskets and ran for the bog.

And when he slipped back beside the tenth and last basket, he saw steam still rising from his tea.

It was difficult, exhausting work, repeated every day, endlessly. But it was not without its benefits. As the weeks became months, and they became a year, and then two, Elbryan was hardly recognizable as the short gangly boy that Jilseponie had once beat up. His legs grew strong and agile from carrying loads and dodging traps. His chest and shoulders grew broad and thick, and his arms, particularly his forearms, bulged with iron-hard muscles.

By the tender age of sixteen, Elbryan Wyndon was stronger than Olwan had been.

And Olwan had been the strongest man in Dundalis.

"Corner table, Cat," called Graevis Chilichunk, the barkeep and proprietor of Fellowship Way, reputedly the finest inn in all the great city of Palmaris.

Fellowship Way, or the Way, as it was commonly called, was not a large establishment, boasting only a dozen small, private rooms and a single common bedroom in the upstairs guest quarters, and a tavern that could hold no more than a hundred, and that with most folks standing. But Graevis, a fat, balding man, perpetually smiling, full of laughter and cheer and with the warmest of hearts, had made the place the best of the cheapest, so to speak. The noble visitors to Palmaris mostly stayed at the more haughty establishments, those near or within the duke's castle, but for those who knew, for the lesser merchants and the frequent wanderers, there was no better place in the world than Fellowship Way. In the Way, a single piece of silver would get you a hot meal, and a mere smile, whether you were a paying customer or not, would coax from Graevis or from most of the other usual patrons or workers a marvelous tale. In the Way the hearth was always blazing, the beds were always soft, and the song was always loud.

The young woman sighed deeply, paused a moment, then consciously worked hard to erase the perpetual frown from her face as she made her way to the three men calling her from the corner table. She was aware of their eyes upon her as she approached; always the men looked at her that way. She was in her mid-teens, but had the shapely body of a woman five years older. She was not tall, just four inches above five feet, but that only made her golden hair appear even thicker and longer. She brushed at it and shook it as she crossed the room, for with her sweat and the grease from the meal she had just helped prepare, it clung uncomfortably to her neck.

"Ah, the pretty lady!" one of the men cooed. "Be a good girl for me," he added, winking lewdly.

The young woman — Cat-the-Stray, she was called by the folk of the Way —
tried unsuccessfully to hide her scowl. She caught herself quickly, though, and covered it with a smirk she thought must have appeared, at least a little, as a smile. Not that the seated drunk was even looking at her face; his eyes never seemed to angle quite that high.

Another deep breath steadied her. She thought of Graevis, dear Graevis, the man who had rescued her from a past she could not remember, the man who had taken in a broken little girl and, with his warm smile and warm heart, helped her to heal, at least enough so that she had become functional once again. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the movements, a dance they seemed, of Pettibwa Chilichunk, Graevis' boisterous wife. When she had first come to know the woman, Cat had thought her simple. Pettibwa was forever laughing, dancing with her tray from one table to the next. She got pinched at every stop, hugged by every patron who left at night, but she never seemed to care. Indeed, Pettibwa loved every moment of it. If she had a free hand when a man pinched her on her ample buttocks, she would pinch him right back; often she would grab a man along the path of her table-to-table dance and sweep him with her across the room. And it was all done in such good fun that neither Graevis nor any suitor of her unsuspecting dance partner ever seemed to care.

It took grim Cat a long while to learn the truth of Pettibwa. The woman was not simple, far from it. Pettibwa just had an unrivaled love of life and of other people.

Cat loved her — as much as she had loved her own mother, she believed, for though she could not remember her own mother, she couldn't imagine loving anyone more. Sometimes that thought only made the young woman even sadder than usual.

She took the order from the three — no surprise here, just three more mugs of the cheapest ale — then turned to the bar. She stopped short when the winker gave her rump a solid slap, and she stood there, suffering their laughter. She wanted to turn and lay him out flat on the floor, and anyone who had witnessed Cat's temper knew that she could have done it easily enough, but her eyes met the gaze of Graevis, soaking in his smile. By all his motions —
bobbing head, sparkling brown eyes — he was silently telling her to let it pass.

Not that Graevis wouldn't protect her. He had taken her in, heart and soul, and loved her at least as much as he loved his own son, the surly Grady.

No man would ever take advantage of Cat while Graevis drew breath — and Pettibwa, too, for that matter — but in the Way, a slap on the rump was not to be made into a big deal, especially not considering the everyday actions of the boisterous proprietress.

The young woman didn't look back as she made her way across the crowded floor to get the drinks.

"Take it as a compliment, me deary," Pettibwa remarked in her "commoner accent," as she strolled to the bar beside her adopted daughter.

"I shall have to wash my dress in the morning," Cat-the-Stray replied, her speech not as stilted as the older woman's, though it hinted at her four years with the Chilichunks.

"Bah, ye're always so serious!" Pettibwa replied, pinching the young woman's cheek. "Sure'n ye've come to know the feelings ye stir in menfolk."

The young woman blushed and looked away.

"No, ye're not a pretty one, now are ye?" Pettibwa cooed with smiling sarcasm, stroking Cat's hair. "If only ye'd smile, me girl, then all the world'd be smiling back at ye."

The young woman closed her eyes and felt the gentle, unthreatening stroke on her hair. Had her mother done it that way? She sensed that her hair had been much shorter then, back when she was young and all the world seemed a great adventure, back when the devils were just fireside stories to make, your skin tingle or imagined demons upon whom children could wage war.

The moment ended all too soon, Cat-the-Stray tuning back to the bustle of the lively room about her. She offered a meek smile and a nod to Pettibwa, who returned them with a wink. The older woman collected her tray and rushed away, blending into the continuing party just a step from the bar.

"If he's to bother ye, ye just be letting me know about it," Graevis said to her as he put the three ales in front of her. "Ye're not to play with him if ye're not wanting to."

Cat-the-Stray nodded and smiled weakly again. She knew that Graevis spoke truthfully; she, and not the patrons, was in control in here. But she knew, too, the atmosphere of the Way, and the last thing in the world the young woman wanted was to make things difficult for Graevis and Pettibwa, her saviors.

She took up her tray and weaved across the room, getting back to the corner table with hardly a drop spilled. Master Wink-and-Slap twisted his face at her again and gave a breathless burst of laughter, his throat no doubt numb from the drink. "Might that we be getting together when the hearth's burning low," he stated more than asked. "I've a gold piece to be rid of."

Again that hoarse laughter, this time accompanied by the other two.

Cat ignored it and methodically placed the mugs on the table.

"Two gold, then, and ye best be worth it," the dirty man offered, and when Cat continued to ignore him, he roughly grabbed her by the arm.

Her other hand came across, hooked his thumb, and bent it back over his wrist so quickly that the man, senses blurred by drink, hardly understood what was happening. Suddenly he was off balance, and then he was sitting on the floor, the pretty barmaid gliding out of reach. His friends howled with glee.

Cat suffered his insults, but couldn't dismiss the realization that Pettibwa would have handled it differently, better. Pettibwa would have proclaimed that two gold was an insult to a woman of her talents, and might have gone on to insist that she would never bed a man, no matter the money, who did not understand the meaning of the word "bath."

Pettibwa would have extracted herself delicately, subtly, turning the joke back on the rude man, making him the fool but with such cunning that he probably wouldn't even realize it until she was across the room.

Now, the man continued sputtering. Cat caught the word "whore," and then she was not surprised to see Graevis, several of the other regulars in tow, crossing the room, their faces suddenly grim.

Cat suffered the inevitable apology, the insincere man only offering it at the end of his twisted arm. The young woman pointedly turned away then, not wanting to watch as Graevis none too gently threw the drunk out into the street, and then. pushed his two wretched friends out behind him.

Perhaps worst of all for the young woman were the host of other eager young men ready to defend her honor, offering everything from a thrashing of the man to his very life. One in particular, handsomely dressed and well groomed, with light brown eyes that sparkled with intelligence and a calm demeanor that hinted at good breeding, nodded the young woman's way and smiled slightly, an invitation for Cat to name him as her champion. She eyed the young man for a long moment — the way he sat, the way he moved — and she had no doubt that he was well trained in the use of the slender sword that hung comfortably at his hip. On a single word from her, he would thrash all three of the drunks to within an inch of their lives.

Cat knew it, and knew that many others would have defended her as well.

That should have come as a compliment, but Cat-the-Stray hated being the center of attention, hated the patronizing, the would-be heroes, who, with the sole exception of Graevis, wanted exactly the same thing as the bounced drunk. Their course was more gentlemanly, less straightforward, but. their goal through honor, Cat knew; was precisely the same as the drunk had attempted through offered gold.

She worked for another hour, and when her smile did not return, Graevis graciously bade her to take an early night. Cat resisted, fearing that her leaving would only put more work on Pettibwa's shoulders, but the older woman pooh-poohed that notion and almost forced Cat through the side door, into the family's private chambers. Cat looked back appreciatively, and over Pettibwa's large round shoulder, she saw again the handsome well-dressed young man, watching her go, lifting his glass of wine in apparent toast to her.