“It might be that the monks Roger spoke of were looking for us,” said Pony. “Or at least looking for the stones that I hold in my possession. When Brother Justice was searching for Avelyn, he used this stone,” she explained, fishing a red garnet out of her pouch and holding it up for Juraviel to see. “This stone detects the use of magic, thus Avelyn’s conjuring powers led Brother Justice right to him.”
“And you feel that your use of magic has put the monks on your trail,” Juraviel reasoned.
Pony nodded. “It is possible, and too important for us to take any chances.”
“The last act of Brother Avelyn’s life was to entrust us with the sacred stones,” Elbryan put in determinedly. “We will not fail him in this.”
“Then perhaps the three of us should be on our way now,” Juraviel said. “Are these stones, then, more important than the refugees we now lead?”
Elbryan looked to Pony, but she had no answers for him. “In the measure of history, they may well be,” the ranger said.
A noise from the brush, a gurgling, angry sound, brought all three on their guard. Juraviel moved fast, lifting his bow as he disappeared into the flora, then returning a moment later, a furious Roger Lockless beside him.
“You are naming rocks as more important than the people you pretend to lead!” the young man fumed. As he spoke he moved farther from Juraviel, obviously not comfortable near the diminutive creature.
“You need not fear him,” Pony remarked dryly, thinking it ridiculous that Roger would act so skittish around one of the two who had rescued him from Kos-kosio Begulne’s cruel grasp. She recognized that the young man’s hesitance to embrace Juraviel was wrought of more than fear. “Belli’mar Juraviel, indeed all the Touel’alfar, are allies.”
“So I’ve come to understand your meaning of the word,” Roger snapped at her.
Pony started to respond, but Elbryan stepped in front of her. “As I was explaining,” he said evenly, staring hard at the young man, “these stones are as vital”
“More vital, you said,” Roger interrupted.
“Do not underestimate their importance!” Elbryan yelled right back in his face. The ranger noted Juraviel’s disapproving expression then and calmed himself down. “The stones represent much more than even the great power stored within them,” Elbryan went on, his voice controlled and even. “They may well be more important than my life, or Pony’s, or yours, or the lives of all the people of our band.”
“Those are your foolish thoughts” Roger started to yell back, but Elbryan cut him short with an upraised hand, a movement so quick and so forceful that the end of the young man’s sentence came out as a startled gurgle.
“However,” the ranger went on calmly, “having said all of that, and truly believing it, I cannot leave this situation as I have found it. I must get these people to the safety of the southland, or at least make certain that the road there is clear ahead of them.”
“You name yourself as leader,” Roger accused.
“Thus you wish to strike, and strike hard, against Kos-kosio Begulne,” Juraviel reasoned, ignoring the petty turn of Roger’s argument. “If we hit them hard in the two towns and scatter them to the forest, the whole of this band can flee south in relative safety, without Nightbird guiding them.”
“For there, Nightbird would not be wise to go,” said Pony. “And yet,” she added, looking squarely at her lover, “you just argued against that very course.”
“I did,” Elbryan agreed. “And I still do argue against a fight that will send all of the warriors, even the majority of them, against the towns.”
Pony started to ask what he might be talking about, but then she caught on. Elbryan had just gone into Caer Tinella to rescue Roger, and so now he was thinking of going back, with just his most powerful friends about him, and tilting the balance of power.
Juraviel, also catching on, nodded. “I will go into Caer Tinella this night and gather information,” he agreed.
“I can go,” said Roger.
“Juraviel is better suited to the task,” Elbryan was quick to respond.
“Have you forgotten that I was in Caer Tinella just two nights ago?” Roger protested. “That I returned with the prisoners?”
The other three watched him closely, noting how he emphasized that personal pronoun.
“If the prisoners were still in there, you could not even think of attacking the town!” Roger finished.
Elbryan nodded, conceding the point. Roger’s action had indeed set the stage for this possible strike. But still, especially after speaking with the freed prisoners and hearing of their desperate run through the dark forest, Elbryan remained convinced that Belli’mar Juraviel was better suited for the task. Juraviel had told him that one hound, at least, might still be alive, and if that creature had come forth on the trail, none of them, not Roger nor the prisoners, would have likely returned. “Juraviel is the choice,” the ranger said calmly.
Pony noted the young man’s expression and realized that Elbryan had just further compromised Roger’s standing and hurt his inflated pride.
“Can you fly from treetop to treetop when the hounds sniff your trail?” Elbryan asked bluntly before Roger could begin to protest.
Roger chewed his bottom lip; both Elbryan and Pony thought he would strike out at the ranger. He only stamped his foot, though, and turned to leave.
“Stop!” Pony cried, surprising all three. She was coming to understand Roger, and while she did not dislike him, she recognized that he was young and too full of pride and self-importance for his own good.
Roger spun about, eyes wide and blazing with anger.
Pony took out a gemstone, carefully concealing it in her hand so he could not see it clearly, and walked up before him. “What you have overheard is private,” she explained.
“Now you deign to order me?” Roger asked incredulously. “Are you my queen, then? Should I kneel?”
“You should be wise enough, even at your age and with your lack of experience, to recognize friend from enemy,” Pony scolded. She wanted to go on, laying bare to Roger his shortcomings concerning their relationship, but she realized that such lessons must be truly learned, and not explained, to be fully appreciated. “Yet I see that you cannot, that for some reason you have decided that we are not your friends. So be it.”
The woman reached into another pouch, and Roger backed off a step. Not far enough, though, for Pony’s hand came out and up fast, and with a yellow-hued weed she marked an X on Roger’s forehead. Then she lifted her hand with the gem before him and spoke a series of phrases that sounded very much like some ancient incantation.
“What have you done to me?” Roger demanded, nearly falling over as he continued his retreat.
“I have done nothing to you unless you betray us,” Pony replied calmly.
Roger’s face screwed up with confusion. “I owe you nothing,” he said.
“As I owe you nothing,” Pony replied sternly. “Thus I have just evened our relationship once again. In your eavesdropping, you heard things which do not concern you, and as such, it is your responsibility to forget them.”
Roger had no answer, other than to shake his head.
“Or to remain silent on the issue, at the very least,” Pony went on. “However, if you cannot, you will find a most unpleasant consequence.”
“What are you talking about?” Roger asked, and when Pony smiled wickedly, the young man looked past her to speak to Elbryan. “What has she done to me?” he demanded.
Elbryan honestly didn’t know, and so his shrug was sincere.
“Tell me!” Roger yelled in Pony’s face.
Elbryan closed his eyes as Roger started to reach up for Pony, fully expecting that his love would knock the foolish little man out cold. Roger, though, did not carry through with the movement, and simply stood before Pony, fists clenched in frustration.
“I have put a curse on you,” Pony said quietly. “But a curse with a contingency.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, his angry tone showing a hint of fear.
“I mean that as long as you do the right thing and remain silent about that which you should not know, nothing ill will befall you,” the woman calmly explained. Her expression changed abruptly, grew dark and ominous, and she closed the distance between herself and Roger and rose up tall and terrible on her toes, towering over the small man. “Betray us,” she warned in a voice so grave that it raised the hairs on the back of Elbryan’s neck, and sent shivers through Roger’s body, “and the magic I have put on you will melt the brains in your head so that they will flow out of your ears.”
Roger’s eyes widened. He knew little of magic, but those displays he had seen were certainly impressive enough for him to believe that the woman was capable of carrying out her threat. He stumbled backward, nearly fell over, turned and ran away.
“Pony!” Elbryan scolded. “How could you do such”
“I did nothing except mark his forehead with dandelion,” the woman replied. “I’ve done as much to your chin in the buttercup game we played as children.”
“Then” Elbryan stopped and chuckled, somewhat surprised by his companion.
“Was that really necessary?” Belli’mar Juraviel asked dryly.
Pony’s expression was dead serious as she nodded in response. “He would have betrayed us to the others,” she explained. “And I do not wish it to become public knowledge that we two are outlaws in the eyes of the Abellican Church.”
“And is our secret so terrible?” Elbryan put in. “I learned long ago to trust these people.”
“Like Tol Yuganick?” Pony retorted, referring to a man who had betrayed her and Elbryan and all the folk of Dundalis before the journey to Aida.
Elbryan had no answer to that, but Pony, recognizing that her cynicism had stung her lover, continued. “I, too, trust Belster and Tomas and all the others,” she admitted. “But Roger would have told the story in a way to bolster himself, and that, I fear, might have put us in an unfavorable light. Who knows what tales might then be spun when the folk are safely in Palmaris?”
Elbryan, who was also beginning to understand Roger Lockless, couldn’t disagree with that.
“You did well,” Juraviel decided. “The time is too critical for us to take such a chance. Young Roger may have had difficulty recognizing the right course, but I think that you painted for him a fairly clear signpost.”
Elbryan snorted. “And here I was for all my life believing that morality was somehow tied to conscience.”
“And so it is,” Pony replied.
“Ideally,” Juraviel added. “But do not underestimate the power of fear. Your own Church has used the threat of an afterlife in fiery brimstone to keep its congregation in line for more than a thousand years.”
“Not my Church,” Elbryan replied. “Not the Church that Avelyn espoused.”
“No, the Church that pursued the renegade monk, as much to silence his radical ideals as to retrieve the gemstones, do not doubt,” Juraviel replied without hesitation.
Elbryan looked to Pony, to find her nodding her assent with the elf’s every word. He gave a chuckle, unable to argue the point. “The Church that pursues Pony and me,” he remarked.
“The monks that came through were heading southand quickly, so Roger said,” Pony put in. “I have used the garnet, but can detect no magic in the area, so I assume that Roger’s guess about their speed was correct.”
“I hope that they continued right past Palmaris,” Elbryan added.
“But in any case, our time here is limited. I hope to make the most of it.”
“Caer Tinella and Landsdown,” Belli’mar Juraviel said.
Elbryan’s face was dead serious, even grim, as he nodded and gave his reply. “We will meet with you back here at dusk, perhaps to attack before the next dawn.”
“As you wish, my friend,” the elf said. “I am off to scout out the towns, then. Prepare the attackand do reconcile, a bit at least, with Roger Lockless. He has done great things for these people, to hear Belster O’Comely speak, and I would guess that he has great things ahead of him, if he does not let his pride hinder him.”
“We will take care of Roger,” Pony answered.
“Paint the signpost clearly,” Juraviel said with a laugh and a snap of his fingers, and then he was gone, disappearing into the underbrush so completely that Pony blinked and rubbed her eyes, wondering if they had deceived her. Elbryan, though, more accustomed to the Touel’alfar, and more knowledgeable in the ways of the forest, was not surprised.
“It is him,” Kos-kosio Begulne insisted. “I’m knowin’ ‘is ways, the bastard!”
Maiyer Dek pondered the words for a long time, as he always did when speaking of anything even remotely important. The huge fomorian was quite impressive for one of his race, both physically and mentally. Though not as sharp-witted as his powrie peer, not even as wise as Gothra, who had ruled the goblins, Maiyer Dek understood his shortcomings and so took his time, examining everything slowly and deliberately.
The giant’s silence did little for the anxious Kos-kosio Begulne’s already foul mood. The powrie paced the floor of the great barn, picking his nose with one hand, the other slapping repeatedly against his hip.
“There might be other humans like Nightbird,” the giant offered.
Kos-kosio Begulne snorted at the notion. “If that’s so, then we’d’ve been kicked all the way back to Aida by this time!”
“One other, then,” the giant replied.
“I’m hopin’ not,” the powrie answered. “And I’m thinkin’ not. This one be him. I can smell the bastard. It’s Nightbird come a’calling, don’t ye doubt. So are ye to give me yer prisoners, or aren’t ye?”
Again Maiyer Dek went into a long, drawn-out consideration.
He and the other three giants who had accompanied him had just returned from the southland, where they had waged a huge battle against the Kingsmen, just to the west of Palmaris. Many giants had died in the fight, and many more humans, and Maiyer Dek and his surviving cohorts had taken a host of men prisoner. “Traveling foodstuffs,” the giant leader called them, and indeed, ten of the two-score men they had taken were eaten by the time the cruel fomorians got to Caer Tinella. Now Kos-kosio Begulne wanted the remaining thirty as bait for the Nightbird, and in truth, Maiyer Dek wasn’t overly fond of human flesh. But still, the giant remembered vividly the disastrous battle in the pine vale the last time he and his fellow leaders had baited this man called Nightbird. Did Kos-kosio Begulne really want to bring him in?