"At the whole target," the elf explained. "Yet the tip of your arrow is not nearly large enough to cover the whole."
Elbryan relaxed and tried to decipher the words. He considered them in relationship to the entire elven philosophy of life, the oneness. Suddenly it seemed possible to him that his arrow and the target were one and that his bow was merely a tool he used that he might join the arrow and target.
"Aim at a specific, very precise point on the target," Juraviel explained.
"You must tighten your focus."
Elbryan understood. He had to find the exact spot where the arrow belonged, the specific point where the two, target and arrow, were to be joined.
He lifted the bow — which was too small for him — again, drew back to the length of the bend, though his long arms would have allowed him to pull much farther, and let fly.
He missed, but the arrow notched into the tree barely two inches above the target by far the closest the young man had come.
"Well done," Juraviel congratulated. "Now you understand." And the elf began to walk away.
"Where are you going?" Elbryan called to him. "We have only been out for minutes. My quiver holds ten arrows yet."
"Your lesson for this day is completed," Juraviel replied. "Contemplate it and spend as long as you desire perfecting it." The elf walked off, disappearing into the thick brush of the forest.
Elbryan nodded grimly, determined that by the time Juraviel brought him out here the next day, he would be able to hit that target with ease. He would stay out here all the rest of the day, and would return as soon as his duties with the milk-stones were completed the next morning, so he thought.
Every time his concentration wavered even a bit, his arrow flew wide of the mark, disappearing into the forest scrub. Elbryan had come out to this place with a full quiver, a score of arrows, but within half an hour, his quiver was empty and not a one could be found. Just as well, the young man thought, for the fingers of his right hand ached, as did the muscle in the middle of his chest, and the inside of his left forearm was badly chafed.
The next day, Juraviel gave Elbryan a black leather guard to put on that left arm and a new bow, this one not of darkfern but the largest the elf could find in all the valley — though it was also too small for the towering man.
Juraviel also brought with him a light green triangular huntsmen's cap, which Elbryan accepted with a confused shrug. This time they went out with two full quivers, and Elbryan, improving minute by minute, spent nearly three hours at the range. At the end of the day, Juraviel revealed a new tool for him, the very cap he wore upon his head. The elf showed him how to bring the front tip of the triangular hat low above his eyes and to use that point as a reference in lining up his shots.
The very next day, Elbryan hit the target two out of every three shots.
All through the fall and winter, Juraviel trained Elbryan with the bow.
The young man learned the practical aspects of the weapon, learned how to fashion arrows, heavy for greater damage and light for longer flight, and how to replace bowstrings — though the elven silverel string rarely broke. Most important of all, Elbryan came to know that archery was more a test of the mind than the body, a concentration and focus. All of the physical aspects — the draw, the aiming, the loosing of the arrow — soon became automatic repetition, but each individual shot remained a mental measure of distance and wind, of the length of the draw and the weight of the arrow. The fingers of the young man's right hand were soon laced with calluses, and the leather on the inside of his black arm guard had been worn down to half its original thickness. For Elbryan went at this training with all the hunger he had shown in his other endeavors, with a pride and determination that had many of the often scatterbrained elves shrugging their shoulders in disbelief. Every day, whatever the weather, Elbryan was at the target, working, training, drawing shot after shot, and inevitably sinking his arrows into the target, near if not in the bull's-eye. He learned to shoot fast — and from different angles: to roll on the ground and come around with an arrow flying; to hang upside down from the branch of a tree, arcing his shot skyward so it held the appropriate range; to let fly two arrows at once and put them near each other, usually both on the target.
Every morning he performed bi'nelle dasada and then his physical conditioning with the milk-stones. He spent his lunches talking philosophy with Juraviel, then went with the elf to the archery range for more practice.
His evenings, to his surprise, were most often spent with Tuntun, for the female had been the primary instructor, and friend, of Mather, a man about whom Elbryan desperately wanted to learn more. Tuntun recounted many stories of Mather, from his training days in Andur'Blough Inninness — he had made so many of the same mistakes as Elbryan! — to his exploits in the Wilderlands. How many thousands of goblins and giants had fallen to Mother's deadly blade! That sword, too; became a topic of many discussions, for Tempest, as the blade was named, was one of but six ranger swords ever crafted, the most powerful swords to ever go out from Andur'Blough Inninness. Of the six, only one was still accounted for, a huge broadsword named Icebreaker, wielded by a rarely seen ranger, Andacanavar, in the far northland of Alpinador.
"You are of a rare breed indeed," Tuntun remarked one starry evening. "It might be that you are the only ranger alive, though we have not felt the sorrow of Andacanavar's demise."
The reverence with which she spoke touched Elbryan and at the same time laid a great weight upon his strong shoulders. He had come to feel special, in many ways superior. Because of the elves, he had been given a rare and precious gift: another language — physical and verbal — another way of looking at the world about him, another way of perceiving the movements of his own body. He had come so far from that frightened waif stumbling out of burned Dundalis. He was the blood of Mather, Elbryan the Ranger.
Why, then, was he so terrified?
To find his answer, Elbryan often visited the Oracle. Each time, it became easier for him to conjure the spirit of Mather, and though the specter never offered any words in response, Elbryan's own soliloquies allowed the young man to keep things fairly sorted out, to keep his perspective and his nerve.
The winter, a difficult one even in the enchanted valley — as Lady Dasslerond had predicted — passed slowly, the snows coming early and deep and holding on stubbornly as the season shifted to spring.
For Elbryan, life went along at its usual frantic pace, learning and growing. He was truly an archer now, not as proficient as some of the elves, but certainly an expert by the measure of humans. His understanding of the natural world about him would never be complete — there was simply too much for any individual to know — but it continued to deepen with each passing day and each new experience. The entire way in which Elbryan now viewed the world around him was conducive to such learning; truly he was the sponge and all the world a liquid.
The shift came dramatically, unexpectedly, when Elbryan was roused from his bed one blustery Toumanay night by Juraviel and Tuntun. The elves prodded and pushed him, finally getting him out of his low tree house wearing only a cloak and a loincloth. They escorted him to a wide tree-lined field, where all two hundred elves of Caer'alfar had gathered.
Juraviel pulled away Elbryan's cloak, while Tuntun pushed him, shivering, to the middle of the field.
"Remove it," she said sternly, indicating the loincloth.
Modesty caused Elbryan to hesitate, but Tuntun wasn't in the mood for a debate. With a flick of her daggers, one in each hand, she cut away the meager covering, caught it before it dropped two inches, then skittered away, leaving the confused, naked man standing alone, with all the eyes of Andur'Blough Inninness upon him.
Holding hands, the elves formed a wide circle about him. Then they began to dance, the circle rotating to the left. They broke their line often, individual elves leaping into pirouettes or simply following steps of their own choosing, but in general the rotation continued about Elbryan.
The elven song filled his ears and all his body, gradually taking him from his place of modesty, relaxing him, intoxicating him. All the forest seemed to join in — the gusty breezes, the birdsong, the croaking of frogs.
Elbryan tilted back his head, considering the stars, the few rushing clouds. He found he was turning as the circle turned, as if compelled, as if the elven movement had summoned a whirlpool about him, spinning him with its currents. All seemed a dream, vague and somehow removed.
"What do you hear?" came a question near him. "At this, your moment of birth, what do you see?"
Elbryan didn't even consider the source — Lady Dasslerond standing right before him. "I hear the birds," he answered absently. "The night birds."
All the world around him went silent, the dream state shattered by the sudden change. Elbryan blinked a few times as he came to a halt, though, to his dizzy perspective, the stars above him continued on their merry rotating way.
"Tai'marawee!" Lady Dasslerond cried out, and Elbryan, hardly conscious that she was out in the middle of the field with him; jumped at the sound of her voice. He looked down at her as the two hundred elves echoed the cry of
"Tai'marawee!"
Elbryan considered the words: tai for "bird" and marawee for "night."
"The Nightbird," Lady Dasslerond explained. "You have been named Nightbird on this, the evening of your birth."
Elbryan swallowed hard, not comprehending what this was all about.
Juraviel and Tuntun certainly had not prepared him for such a ceremony.
Without explanation, Lady Dasslerond then threw a handful of glittering powder in Elbryan's face.
All the world seemed to stop, then to start again but more slowly. The elvish singing and all the harmony of the forest had renewed, and he was alone again in the middle of the field, turning as the circle turned. So gradually that Elbryan never noticed it, the elven voices faded away one by one. He realized he was alone long after all the elves had gone, and before he could decipher any meaning to it all, sleep overtook him, right there, naked in the middle of the field.
The night of his birth.
Belli'mar Joycenevial nodded his head as he considered the product of his love. They had named the ranger Nightbird, and so the elf's dream had not deceived him. This bow, Hawkwing by name, certainly fit all that Elbryan had become.
Joycenevial held the beautiful weapon up before him. It was taller than he, rubbed and stained to glassy smoothness — even in the dim light of the single candle, Hawkwing's dark green, silverlined hue shone clearly — with a sculpted handgrip and delicate, tapered ends. The removable high tip was set with three feathers, so perfectly aligned that they appeared as one when the bow was at rest.
Hawkwing and Nightbird — the old elf liked the connection. This would be the last bow he ever crafted, for he knew beyond doubt that if he made a thousand more, he would never near the perfection of this weapon.
Elbryan awoke as he had fallen asleep, alone and naked on the field, except that he found a red strip of cloth tied about his left arm, a green strip tied about his right, both crossing the middle of his huge biceps. He considered them for a moment, but didn't even think of removing them. Then he turned his attention to the awakening world about him. The dawn had long passed; Elbryan knew that he had missed his sword-dance, for the first time since it had been taught to him. Somehow, that morning, it didn't matter. The young man spotted his cloak and wrapped it about him, but then, instead of returning to his tree house, he went to the Oracle, where he had left his mirror, blanket, and chair.
"Uncle Mather?"
The spirit was waiting for him, serene in the depths of the mirror. A thousand questions came to Elbryan, but before he could utter even the first, his mind was clouded, by images of a road, of a moor and a forest, of a valley of evergreen trees that seemed vaguely familiar.
Elbryan fought to steady his breathing; he was beginning to understand.
Dark terror crept up all around him, threatening to swallow him where he sat, and he desperately wanted to ask Uncle Mather about it all, to relieve himself one more time of those doubts.
But this time, Elbryan was a receptacle and not the speaker. This time, he rested back, even closed his eyes, and let that unknown path find its place in his mind.
He came out of the cave even less relaxed than he had been when he had gone in, his face reflecting his fear and uncertainty, more questions raised than answered.
When he got back to Caer'alfar, he was surprised to see the place deserted. He moved quickly to his tree house and found it empty of all his possessions — his clothing, his baskets for collecting the milk-stones.
A new set of clothes, finely made, was laid out on the floor before him.
They had to be for him, for they would obviously fit none other in Caer'alfar.
Unless, Elbryan pondered, another would-be ranger had been brought in.
He shook that thought away, shrugged off his cloak, and began donning the clothing: deerskin boots, high arid soft; supple breeches with a narrow belt made of rope lined with silverel for strength; a soft sleeveless shirt with a leather vest lined in silverel; and finally, a thick forest-green traveling cloak and a lighter-green triangular huntsmen's cap.
Elbryan looked around, wondering what he was expected to do next. He thought of the field again and made his way there, to find all the elves of Caer'alfar waiting for him, this time standing quietly in neatly ordered rows.
In front of the gathering stood Lady Dasslerond and Belli'mar Juraviel. They motioned immediately for Elbryan to join them.
When he got there, Juraviel handed him a full pack, a fine knife strapped on one side, a balanced hand axe on the other.