DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (102 page)

A shudder coursed up the powrie’s spine as he remembered the fate of a former leader of this band, a goblin named Gothra. In a fit of its all-too-typical rage, Bestesbulzibar had ripped the skin from the goblin while it remained alive to watch and to feel. That was when Kos-kosio had been put in charge, and the powrie had known from the beginning that this was a tentative command.

The powrie studied the tree closely, trying to remember, without success, if the sapling had been there all along. Had Bestesbulzibar really returned, or was it a trick? the ever-suspicious powrie wondered.

“Search all the area!” Kos-kosio ordered his minions, and when they started out cautiously, eyes darting about, the powrie roared even louder, promising death to any who did not hustle.

“And yerself, human dog,” Kos-kosio said to the man nearest the tree. “Pick up yer stinking axe and cut Mrs. Kelso down!”

The man’s horrified expression was convincing enough to bring a smile to the ugly powrie’s square-chinned face.

Roger realized he was taking a chance in coming back near the town, but with Mrs. Kelso safely on her way to Tomas and the others, he simply couldn’t resist the sport of it all. He relaxed comfortably, his back against a tree, as two stupid goblins wandered right below him. When that patrol had moved farther along and no others were in the immediate area, he moved in even closer, climbing into the same oak he had slithered around to get to Mrs. Kelso in the first place.

Then he watched contentedly. The humans were back to work— the two men who had been flanking Mrs. Kelso now shackled together—and the powries had returned to the town, leaving a handful of goblins to guard the humans, and another dozen or so of the nervous wretches searching the woods.

Yes, it was a perfectly wonderful situation, Roger mused, for never in his young life had he found so much fun.

Graceful and strong, Nightbird slipped down from Symphony’s side while the horse was in mid-gallop. The ranger hit the ground running, stringing Hawkwing as he went, while Pony, who had been sitting behind him on the horse, hopped forward, took up the reins and kept Symphony’s run true and in control, for the muddy ground was treacherous. She expertly veered the horse to the left, around the base of a wide mound, while Elbryan went right.

Before Pony and Symphony were halfway around, they spotted the trio of goblins they had been chasing. Two were far ahead, running wildly for the cover of a copse of trees, but the third had doubled back and was going around the mound the other way. “Coming fast!” Pony yelled and bent low on Symphony, angling the horse more sharply about the hillock.

Symphony broke stride as the goblin came staggering back out from behind the mound, clutching at the arrow lodged in its throat A second arrow hit it in the chest, dropping it to the mud.

“They made for the trees,” Pony said to the ranger as he came running into sight. “They will lay up in there,” she reasoned.

The ranger slowed and glanced at the copse, then, apparently agreeing, he went to the dead goblin and began extracting his arrows. That done, he stood again and scanned the landscape, a curious expression crossing his handsome face.

“We can do a circuit of the copse,” Pony reasoned. “Find the best way to get in and strike at them.”

Nightbird seemed not to be listening.

“Elbryan?”

Still the ranger kept looking around, his mouth open now, his face full of wonderment.

“Elbryan?” the woman said again, more insistent.

“I know this place,” he replied absently, his gaze darting from spot to spot.

“The Moorlands?” Pony asked incredulously, her face scrunching with disgust as she looked around at the desolate region. “How could you?”

“I passed this very way on my road back to Dundalis,” he explained. “When I left the elves.” He ran to a nearby birch tangle, bending low as if he expected his long-ago campsite to still be under there. “Yes,” he said excitedly. “I slept here in this very place one quiet night. The gnats were horrific,” he added with a chuckle.

“The goblins?” Pony asked, nodding in the direction of the distant copse.

“I did find some goblins in here, but farther to the east, on the edges of the Moorlands,” Elbryan replied.

“I meanthose goblins,” Pony said firmly, pointing ahead.

Elbryan waved his hand dismissively. The goblins were not important to him at the moment, not with that long-ago-traveled road coming clearer and clearer in his mind. He scrambled to the side, past Pony and Symphony, and looked over the splotchy brush and the rolling clay to the black silhouette of mountaintops just visible far in the west, their outlines silver under the light of the descending sun.

“Forget the goblins,” Elbryan said suddenly, grabbing Symphony’s bridle and leading horse and rider away, on a course that would bring them well to the side of the copse of trees and more directly in line with the distant mountains.

“Forget them?” Pony echoed. “We chased that tribe twenty miles, into the Moorlands and more than halfway through. I’ve got a thousand gnat bites swelling on every part of my body, and the smell of this place will follow us for a year to come! And you want me to just forget them?”

“They are unimportant,” Elbryan said without looking at her. “The last two out of thirty. With their score-and-eight companions slain, I doubt they’ll head back toward End-o’-the-World for some time to come.”

“Do not underestimate goblin mischief,” Pony replied.

“Forget them,” Elbryan said again.

Pony lowered her head and growled softly. She could hardly believe that Elbryan was leading her farther west, away from the Timberlands, even if he meant to dismiss the goblin pair. But she trusted him, and if her guess was right, they were closer to the western edge of the Moorlands than the eastern. The sooner they got out of this wretched, bug-ridden place, the better she would like it.

They went on for a short while, until the sun began to set over the distant mountains, then Elbryan went about the task of setting up camp. They were still in the Moorlands, still haunted by the buzzing insects, and, even more to Pony’s dislike, they were still too close to the copse of trees wherein the goblins had disappeared. She repeatedly tried to point this out to her companion, but he would hear none of it. “I must go to Oracle,” he announced.

Pony followed his gaze to the base of a large tree, one root pulled up out of the soft ground to create a small hollow underneath. “A fine place to be sitting when the goblins come charging in,” the woman replied sourly.

“There were only two.”

“You doubt that they’ll find friends in this wretched place?” Pony asked. “We could set our camp with thoughts of a quiet night, only to find that we are fighting half the entire goblin army before the dawn.”

Elbryan seemed to have run out of answers. He chewed his bottom lip for a bit, looking to the nearby tree, its hollowed base inviting him to Oracle. He had to go to Uncle Mather, he felt and soon, before the images of that long-lost trail faded from his thoughts.

“Go and do what you must,” Pony said to him, recognizing the true dilemma etched on his face. “But give me the cat’s-eye. Symphony and I will scout about for any signs of enemies.”

Elbryan was genuinely relieved as he took the circlet from his head and handed it to the woman. It was a gift from Avelyn Desbris that he and Pony had been passing back and forth as needed. He couldn’t use it in Oracle anyway; it would defeat the whole mood of the meditation, for the gemstone set in the front of the circlet, a chrysoberyl, more commonly known as cat’s-eye, would allow the wearer of the circlet to see clearly in the darkest of nights, even in the darkest of caves.

“You owe me for my indulgence,” Pony informed him as she placed the circlet about her thick mop of blond hair. Her tone, and the sudden grin that lifted the edges of her mouth, told the ranger what she might have in mind, a notion reinforced when she hopped over to him a moment later and kissed him passionately.

“Later,” she said.

“When we are not surrounded by goblins and insects,” Elbryan agreed.

Pony swung up onto Symphony’s saddle. With a wink at Elbryan, she turned the horse about and trotted away into the growing gloom—but with the cat’s-eye securely in place, the images before her remained distinct.

Elbryan watched her go with the deepest affection and respect. This was a trying time for the young ranger, a time when all his skills, physical and mental, were being put to the absolute test every day. Every decision could prove tragic; every move he made could give his enemies the advantage. How glad he was to have Pony, so thoughtful, so skilled, so beautiful, at his side.

He sighed when she passed out of sight, then turned to the business at hand: the construction of a proper sight for Oracle and a meeting with Uncle Mather.

It didn’t take Pony long to discern that the goblins had not given up the chase, and had in fact begun trailing her and Elbryan. And the tracks she found when she circled back indicated that the goblin pair had indeed found some friends, more goblins, perhaps as many as a dozen. Pony looked ahead, back toward her camp, which was now no more than a mile away. She would be hard-pressed to ride by the goblins and get to Elbryan in time, she realized.

“Oracle,” she said, shaking her head and giving a great sigh. She bade Symphony to stay put, then reached into her pouch for her malachite. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups as she put her thoughts into the gem, summoning its power. Then she began to rise, slowly, into the nighttime sky, hoping the darkness was complete enough to keep her hidden from sharp goblin eyes.

She had only gone up about twenty feet when she spotted the creatures, gathered about a small, well-concealed fire in another copse of trees, barely a couple hundred yards from her position. They hadn’t settled for the night, she knew, but were up and agitated, sketching in the dirt—probably approach routes or searching routes—pushing each other and arguing.

Pony didn’t want to expend too much of her magical energy, so she gradually released the malachite’s levitational powers, drifting back down to land atop Symphony. “Are you ready to have some fun?” she asked the horse, replacing the malachite in her pouch and taking out two different stones.

Symphony nickered softly and Pony patted his neck. She had never tried this particular trick before, and especially not while taking a horse in with her, but she was brimming with confidence. Avelyn had taught her well, and, given her newfound insights into the gemstones—an understanding that went beyond anything she had ever known—she believed with all her heart that she was ready.

She started Symphony walking in the direction of the goblin camp, then took up a serpentine and began gathering its magic. In her other hand she held both bridle and a ruby, perhaps the most powerful stone in her possession.

With the cat’s-eye, Pony picked her path carefully, a trail that would take her and Symphony in fast and hard. Barely twenty yards away, Symphony’s hoofbeats covered by the sounds of arguing goblins, the woman communicated her intentions to the horse via the turquoise, then kicked the powerful stallion into a dead gallop and let her own thoughts fall into the serpentine, bringing up a glowing white shield about her and the horse, making it look as though she and Symphony had fallen into a vat of a sticky, milky substance.

Pony only had seconds to secure the shield about them both, to switch hands on the bridle and bring the ruby up high, dropping the serpentine shield about the ruby, then completing the protective bubble about her hand under the gemstone.

Goblins howled and reached for their weapons, diving and rolling as horse and rider thundered into their midst. One ugly brute had a spear up and ready to throw.

Pony paid it no heed, could see nothing but the red swirls within the ruby, could hear nothing but the wind in her ears and the simmering, mounting power of the gemstone.

Symphony ran straight and true, right to the goblins’ fire, then skidded to an abrupt halt and reared.

Goblins shouted; some charged, some continued to scramble away.

Not far enough away.

Pony loosed the destructive power of the ruby, a tremendous, concussive fireball that exploded out from her hand, engulfing goblin and tree alike in a sudden blazing inferno.

Symphony reared again and whinnied, pulling wildly. Pony held on and called comforting words to the horse, though she doubted that Symphony could even hear her through the tremendous roar of the blaze, or even sense her calming thoughts with the sheer commotion of the conflagration. Pony could hardly see, smoke rolling all about, but she urged Symphony forward, and so solid was her serpentine shield that neither she nor the great horse felt any heat whatsoever. They passed by one fallen goblin, the one who had raised its spear to throw, and Pony looked on in disgust as the blackened creature, still holding fast the charring spear, settled, its super-heated chest collapsing with a crackle.