DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (95 page)

—ELBRYAN WYNDON

Elbryan Wyndon collected his wooden chair and his precious mirror and moved to the mouth of the small cave. He blinked as he pulled the blanket aside, surprised to see that the dawn was long past. Climbing out of the hole seemed no easy task for a man of Elbryan’s size, with his six-foot-three-inch muscular frame, but with the agility given him in years of training with the lithe elves of Caer’alfar, he had little trouble navigating the course.

He found his companion Jilseponie, Pony, awake and about, gathering up their bedrolls and utensils. Not so far away, the great horse Symphony nickered and stomped at sight of Elbryan, and that image of the stallion would have given most men pause. Symphony was tall, but not the least bit lanky, with a powerful, muscled chest, a coat so black and smooth over those rippling muscles that it glistened in the slightest light, and eyes that projected profound intelligence. A white diamond-shaped patch showed on the horse’s head, above the intelligent eyes, but other than that and a bit of white on the legs, the only thing that marred the perfect black coat was a turquoise gemstone, the link between Symphony and Elbryan, magically set in the middle of the horse’s chest.

For all the splendor, though, the ranger hardly paid Symphony any heed, for, as was so often the case, his gaze was locked on Pony. She was a few months younger than Elbryan, his childhood friend, his adult wife. Her hair, thick and golden, was just below her shoulders now, longer than Elbryan’s own light brown mop for the first time in years. The day was lightly overcast, the sky gray, but that did little to dim the shine of Pony’s huge blue eyes. She was his strength, the ranger knew, the bright spot in a dark world. Her energy seemed limitless, as did her ability to smile. No odds frightened her, no sight daunted her; she pressed on methodically, determinedly.

“Do we look for the camp north of End-o’-the-World?” she asked, the question shattering Elbryan’s contemplation.

He considered the thought. They had discerned that there were satellite camps in the region, clusters of goblins, mostly, supplied by the larger encampments set up in what used to be the three towns of Dundalis, Weedy Meadow, and End-o’-the-World. Because the towns were each separated by a day’s walk, Dundalis west to Weedy Meadow, and Weedy Meadow west to End-o’-the-World, these smaller outposts would be key to regaining the region—if ever an army from Honce-the-Bear made its way to the borders of the Wilderlands. If Elbryan and Pony could clear the monsters from the dense woods, there would remain little contact between the three towns.

“It seems as good a place as any to start,” the ranger replied.

“Start?” Pony asked incredulously, to which Elbryan could only shrug. Indeed, both were weary of battle now, though both knew that many, many more fights lay before them.

“Did you speak with Uncle Mather?” Pony asked, nodding toward the mirror. Elbryan had explained Oracle to her, that mysterious elven ceremony in which someone might converse with the dead.

“I spoke at him,” the ranger replied, his olive-green eyes flashing as a shiver coursed his spine—as always happened when he considered the ghost of the great man who had gone before him.

“Does he ever answer?”
Elbryan snorted, trying to figure out how he might better explain Oracle. “I answer myself,” he started. “Uncle Mather guides my thoughts, I believe, but in truth, he does not give me the answers.”

Pony’s nod showed that she understood perfectly what the young man was trying to say to her. Elbryan had not known his uncle Mather in life; the man had been lost to the family at a young age, before Olwan Wyndon—Mather’s brother, Elbryan’s father— had taken his wife and children to the wild Timberlands. But Mather, like Elbryan, had been taken in and trained by the Touel’alfar, the elves, to be a ranger. Now, in Oracle, Elbryan conjured his image of the man, an image of a perfect ranger, and when speaking to that image, Elbryan was forcing himself to uphold his own highest ideals.

“If I taught you Oracle, perhaps you could speak with Avelyn,” the ranger said, and it wasn’t the first time he had suggested as much. He had been hinting that Pony might try to contact their lost friend for several days now, ever since he himself tried, and failed, to reach Avelyn’s spirit at Oracle two days after they had started south from the blasted Barbacan.

“I do not need it,” Pony said softly, turning away, and for the first time Elbryan realized how disheveled she appeared.

“You do not believe in the ceremony,” he started to say, more to prompt than to accuse.

“Oh, but I do,” was her quick and sharp retort, but she lost momentum just as abruptly, as if fearing the turn in the conversation. “I… I might be experiencing much the same thing.”

Elbryan stared at her calmly, giving her the time to sort out her response.

As the seconds passed into minutes, he prompted, “You have learned Oracle?”

“No,” she answered, turning to look at the man. “Not quite the same as your own. I do not seek it. Rather, it seeks me.”

“It?”

“It is Avelyn,” Pony said with conviction. “He is with me, I feel, somehow a part of me, guiding me and strengthening me.”

“As I feel about my father,” Elbryan reasoned. “And you about yours. I do not doubt that Olwan is watching over…” His voice trailed away as he looked at her, for Pony was shaking her head before he finished.

“Stronger than that,” she explained. “When Avelyn first taught me to use the stones, he was badly injured. We joined, spirit to spirit, through use of the hematite, the soul stone. The result was so enlightening, for both of us, that Avelyn continued that joining over the weeks, as he showed me the secrets of the gemstones. In a mere month my understanding and capabilities with the stones progressed far beyond what a monk at St.-Mere-Abelle might learn in five years of training.”

“And you believe that he is still connecting with you in that spiritual manner?” Elbryan asked, and there was no skepticism in the question. The young ranger had seen too much, both enchanting and diabolical, to doubt such a possibility—or any possibility.