DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (38 page)

Even Juraviel couldn't suppress a chuckle at his elven companion's unending games. "Come," he bade Elbryan. "It would be better to show than to tell."

The three left Caer'alfar, moving purposefully into the deep woods. The day was not bright above them, even darker than usual with the misty blanket, and a light rain tickled the forest canopy. They walked for nearly an hour, no one talking except Tuntun, who offered an occasional verbal jab at Elbryan.

Finally Juraviel stopped at the base of a huge oak, its trunk so wide that Elbryan couldn't put his arms halfway around it. The two elves exchanged solemn looks.

"He'll not do it," Tuntun promised, her melodic voice rising singsong.

"Nor could he ever defeat you in battle," Juraviel was quick to respond, drawing an angry stamp of Tuntun's delicate foot.

Elbryan took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. So, this was but another test, he thought. One of his will and mental prowess, no doubt, considering the three gifts he carried. He was determined not to disappoint Juraviel and not to let Tuntun be right about anything.

Around the back of the tree, Elbryan saw there was a narrow opening between the roots, a tunnel that seemed to widen as it descended at a steep angle.

"There is a pedestal of stone inside on which you must place the mirror,"

Juraviel explained, "and a place before it where you might set up your chair.

Use the blanket to cover the entry, so that it becomes very dark within."

Elbryan waited, expecting more instructions. After a long moment, Tuntun nudged him roughly. "Are you afraid even to try?" she chided.

"Try what?" Elbryan demanded, but when he looked to Juraviel for support, he found the elf was pointing to the narrow opening, indicating that the young man should enter.

Elbryan had no idea what they expected, what he should do, beyond the simple instructions Juraviel had offered. With a shrug, he took up his items and moved to the opening. Getting in would be test enough, for the cave was far more suited to one of elven stature. He slipped the chair in first, easing it down as far as he could reach, then closing his eyes and letting go. From the sound of its descent, the floor of the cave was not more than eight feet below the opening, he figured. Next he lay the blanket along the bottom of the shaft, using it to cover uneven jags of roots, that he wouldn't hook his clothing, get stuck, and look completely stupid in Tuntun's always judging eyes. With a final glance at Juraviel, hoping futilely that some further information would come his way, Elbryan closed his eyes and started in, going headfirst and protecting the mirror with his body. As soon as he crossed under the tree, he opened his eyes, now more sensitive to the darkness, and scouted. A bear or a porcupine or even a smelly skunk might have slipped in here, and it was with great relief that Elbryan found the cave apparently empty, and not so large. It was fairly circular, perhaps eight feet in diameter. As promised, a stone pedestal rested near the wall just to Elbryan's side, and hooking his arm around a root in the ceiling, he turned right side up and swung his feet to the pedestal, then stepped down easily to the cave floor. A bit of water had accumulated in one low spot, but nothing threatening or even inconvenient.

Elbryan quickly set the mirror on the pedestal, leaning it against the back wall of the cave, and opened his chair; placing it before the mirror, as instructed. Then he went about draping the blanket over the cave entrance, darkening the room so that he could barely make out his hand if he held it in front of his face. That done, the young man felt about, found his chair, and slipped into it.

Then he waited, wondering. His eyes gradually adjusted so that he could just barely make out the larger shapes in the room.

The minutes continued to pass him by; all was quiet and dark. Elbryan grew frustrated, wondering what test this might be, wondering what purpose could be found in sitting in the dark, facing a mirror he could hardly see. Was Tuntun right in asserting that this trip was a waste of time?

Finally Juraviel's melodic voice broke the tension. "This is the Cave of Souls, Elbryan Wyndon," the elf half spoke and half sang. "The Oracle, where an elf, or a human, might speak with the spirits of those who have passed before them. Seek your answers in the depths of the mirror."

Elbryan steadied himself with the breathing routine of bi'nelle dasada and focused his eyes on the mirror — or at least on the area where he knew the mirror to be, for it was hardly discernible.

He brought out a mental picture of. the pedestal and mirror, recalled the image from the few moments before he had draped the blanket. Gradually, the square shape was visible, at least in his mental image, and so he sent his gaze within the frame of that square.

And he sat, as the minutes became an hour, as the sun behind the elven mist and the clouds made its way toward the western horizon. Boredom crept into his concentration, along with the frustration of realizing that Tuntun might be right. Still, no further calls came from beyond the cave, so the two elves, at least, were apparently being patient.

Elbryan dismissed all thought of the elves, and each time one of those distracting notions — or any other thoughts from outside this one room — came back to him, he fought it off.

He lost all sense of the passing of time; soon nothing invaded his focus.

The room darkened even more as the sun moved westward, but Elbryan, his eyes long past the gloom, didn't notice.

There was something in the mirror, just beyond his vision!

He slipped deeper into his meditative state, let go of all the conscious images that cluttered his mind. Something was there, a reflection of a man, perhaps.

Was it his own reflection?

That notion stole away the image, but only for a moment.

Then Elbryan saw it more clearly: a man, older than he, with a face creased by the sun and wind, a light beard trimmed low to follow the line of his jaw. He looked like Elbryan, or at least as Elbryan might look in a score of years. He looked like Olwan, and yet it was not, the young man somehow knew. It was . . .

"Uncle Mather?"

The image nodded; Elbryan fought for a gulp of air.

"You are the ranger," Elbryan said quietly, barely finding his voice. "You are the ranger who went before me, who was trained by these very same elves."

The image made no move to reply.

"You are the standard to which I am held," Elbryan said. "I fear that you stand too tall!"

Something seemed to soften in the visage of the spirit, and Elbryan got the distinct feeling that, in Mather's eyes at least, his fear was misplaced.

"They speak of responsibility," the young man went on, "of duty, and the road that lies before me. Yet I fear I am not all that Belli'mar Juraviel believes me to be. I wonder why I was chosen in this — why was Elbryan saved that day in Dundalis? Why not Olwan, my father, your brother, so solid and strong, so knowing in the ways of battle and the world?"

Elbryan tried to pause and collect his thoughts, but he found the words kept coming out as if compelled by the spirit, by this place, and by his own state of mind. Even if this was his uncle Mather, he realized he was speaking to the spirit of a man he had never known! But that fear couldn't hold against the river of his own soul, pouring forth in great release.

"What height must I attain to satisfy the judgment of Tuntun and the many other elves of like mind? I fear that they ask of me the strength of a fomorian giant, the speed of a frightened deer, the wariness of a ground squirrel, and the calm and wisdom of a centuries-old elf. What man could measure such?

"Ah, but you did, Uncle Mather. By all that they say of you, even by the look in Tuntun's eyes — one of sincere admiration — I know that you were no disappointment to the fairy folk of Caer'alfar. How will they judge me twenty years hence, a mere day by an elf's measure?. And what of this world I will soon know?"

Terrifying images, mostly of other humans, flitted across Elbryan's vision, as if they were flying across the face of the mirror.

"I am afraid, Uncle Mather," he admitted. "I do not know what it is that I fear, whether it is the judgment of the elves, the dangers of the wilderness, or the company of other people! More than a quarter of my life has passed since I have seen another who stands as a human, who sees the world as a human.

"But then," he continued, his voice dropping low, "I fear most that I no longer see the world as a human, nor can I truly view it as an elf might, but as something in between. I love Caer'alfar, and all of this valley, but here I do not belong. This I know in my heart, and I fear that out there, among my own kind, I will not be among my own kind.

"Kin and kind," Elbryan decided, "do not always go together. What is left of me, then? What creature am I that is neither elf nor human?"

Still the image did not answer, did not move at all. But Elbryan felt that soft feeling — that sympathy, that empathy — and he knew then that he was not alone. He knew then his answer.

"I am Elbryan the Ranger," he asserted, and all the implications of that title seemed to fall over him, their weight not bowing but bolstering his broad shoulders.

Elbryan realized that he was bathed in a cold sweat. Only then did he notice the room had darkened almost to the point of absolute blackness. "Uncle Mather?" he called in the direction of the mirror, but the image of the specter and even of the mirror itself was no more.

Juraviel was waiting for the young man when he crawled out of the hole.

The elf looked as if he meant to ask some question, but he stared instead at Elbryan's face and apparently found his answer. They said nothing all the way back to Caer'alfar.

Jill looked out past the towering rocks to the dark waters of the wide Mirianic, great swells rolling lazily, then breaking fast against the rocks two hundred feet below her. The rhythm continued, through the minutes, through the hours, through the days, the weeks, the years. Through all eternity, Jill supposed. If she were to return to this place in a thousand years, the waves would remain, rolling gently and then crashing against the base of this same rocky rise.

The young woman looked back over her shoulder at the small fortress that she called home, Pireth Tulme. In a thousand years, the scene would be the same, she decided, except that this structure, with its single low tower, would not remain, would be taken by time, by the wind and the storms that swept into Horseshoe Bay with disturbing regularity.

She had only been here for four months and she had witnessed a dozen such storms, including three in one week, that had left her and her forty companions, all members of the elite corps known as the Coastpoint Guards, soggy and sullen.

Yes, those were the words, Jill decided. "Soggy and sullen," she said aloud, and nodded, thinking that a fitting description of all her life.

She had been given her chance, the one opportunity that most people, particularly women in the patriarchal kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, never had. Jill closed her eyes and let the ocean sounds

take her. back to another shore, a gentler shore on the banks of the Masur Delaval, to the city of Palmaris, the only home she remembered. How fared Graevis and Pettibwa? she wondered.

And
what of Grady? Had her disaster with Connor Bildeborough destroyed the man's attempts at entry into the high society?

Jill laughed and hoped that it had. That would be the one good thing to come of the tragedy. Nearly two years had passed since her "wedding night," but the pain remained vivid indeed.

She looked around again, then up at the sky and noticed that many of the stars had disappeared. A moment later, a light rain began to fall. "Soggy," she said again, shaking her head. No matter how many times she witnessed it, Jill could hardly believe how quickly the rain came on in Pireth Tulme.

Like the rain that came into her life, first in that frontier village, when the goblins came, then in Palmaris. She could hardly remember that first incident, but she knew that her life had gradually grown wonderful. And then, in the snap of fingers, in the space of a single kiss, it was all gone, all taken away.

How much more could she have hoped for above the wedding in Palmaris? She had been married in St. Precious, considered by many to be the most beautiful chapel in all of Corona. And Dobrinion Calislas, Abbot of St. Precious and thus the third ranking priest in the entire Abellican Church, had performed the ceremony himself! What young woman would not swoon at the mere thought of such a day? And then the night, spent in the mansion of Baron Bildeborough!

A shiver traced Jill's spine as she remembered the grand room, the change that had come over Connor, and then the look on his face, first feral and then, with the side of his nose and one cheek burned and blistering, even worse. His expression had softened only a bit the next morning when he and Jill had gone again before Abbot Dobrinion. Of course, since it had not been consummated, the marriage had been annulled immediately.