Authors: R.A. Salvatore
The pair were in a fine mood this sunny day, approaching Caer Tinella after a leisurely two-week journey from Palmaris, one marked by long visits with one grateful farming family after another or quiet nights beside a fire under the starry sky.
For Pony, the weight on her shoulders had lessened as soon as she had left the turmoil of Palmaris behind her. Now she didn’t have to worry about politics and secret alliances, didn’t have to consider the implications of her every move. Up here, she was not Jilseponie, hero of the demon war, slayer of evil Markwart. Up here, she was Pony, just Pony, the same little girl who had grown strong and happy in Dundalis with Elbryan before the coming of the goblins; the same warrior who had stood beside the ranger to protect the folk and the lands from the demon hordes.
Here, she was not moving her horse carefully through the throngs of people crowding the markets, but rather was riding him freely, feeling his muscles beneath her as he thundered along. Often, she would take him out across a field beside the road, for no better reason than to let him gallop, to feel the freedom and the wind. She had brought a saddle with her, but more often than not, she rode Greystone bareback.
She went off on yet another such jaunt, heading across a long, narrow field. She spotted a downed tree lying in a tangle of brush, its trunk suspended more than half a man’s height from the ground.
“Ho, what are ye thinking?” Belster called, seeing her smile spreading wide, even from twenty feet away.
Pony didn’t answer other than to urge Greystone into a canter and put him in line.
She heard Belster’s complaints that she was a “crazy child,” but they seemed to come from far away as the wind roared past her ears. And then she heard nothing as she took the horse in, so intense became her focus, picking her spot.
Up Greystone went, rounding his muscled neck and shoulders, and Pony rose to a half seat, her hands resting on his neck, her legs clamped tight about Greystone’s flanks, her body in perfect balance. As soon as they landed, she turned her horse back toward the road, where she spotted Belster, the portly innkeeper shaking his
head and giving one great resigned sigh after another.
“Ye’re to get yerself killed, girl,” he said as she trotted past.
Pony just laughed and asked Greystone for a canter, aiming at the fallen tree again.
And then a third time and a fourth, while Belster simply kept the wagon rolling.
Pony caught up to him a few minutes later where the road wound around a small hillock.
“Caer Tinella,” the innkeeper announced, pointing north to where a feather of smoke drifted into the air.
Pony slowed Greystone to a walk, cooling him down. Soon after, she dismounted, tying Greystone to the back of the wagon and taking a seat beside Belster.
“Done yer fun, then?” the innkeeper asked.
“Just beginning,” Pony replied, “especially if my guess about that town is right.”
“Ah, the woman Kilronney,” Belster replied, referring to a dear friend of Pony’s, a soldier from the Palmaris garrison who had helped her when she had been separated from Elbryan.
Pony had seen the woman only once since the last battle. Imprisoned in Chasewind Manor, under the kinder hand of King Danube, Colleen Kilronney had been well on her way to recovering from the wounds she had received during her battles beside Pony. But still, when Pony had at last found her after the deaths of Elbryan and Markwart, Colleen was scarred, physically and within her heart. She had resigned her position with the Palmaris garrison, despite a plea from her cousin Shamus—another friend of Pony’s—and from Duke Kalas himself.
In that brief meeting, all that Pony had gleaned from Colleen was that she was tired and heading north to Caer Tinella.
It didn’t take Pony and Belster long to find Colleen; the first villagers they encountered directed them to a small cottage on the northeastern side of town. Pony left Belster behind, riding Greystone quickly to the place, then jumping down and running to the door.
Her eagerness and excitement diminished considerably when Colleen Kilronney answered, for she seemed now a mere shell of her former self. Once she had been square-shouldered and strong, but now her shoulders sagged. Once her eyes had flashed with eagerness for battle, but now they seemed almost glazed. Even Colleen’s red hair seemed duller, as if the whole woman had faded.
Pony held her hand out, and Colleen, a wide smile growing on her face, reached for it, with her
left
hand, holding her right arm noticeably tight to her side.
“What have you done?” Pony asked, hugging her friend, but taking care not to pain her obviously injured right arm.
“Bad place for catching a sword,” Colleen replied, still managing to smile. She led Pony into her modest cottage, offering her a seat at a small round table, then sitting beside her friend. “Ye’re looking well,” she said. “Are ye gettin’ past the pain?”
Pony sighed. “Will I ever?” she asked. Colleen put a hand on Pony’s shoulder—again, her left hand—and rubbed her.
“Let me see that wound,” Pony said, reaching into her pouch and bringing forth the soul stone.
“Oh, but they’re lettin’ ye keep one now?” Colleen asked. “Or did ye just take the thing?”
Pony helped her to slip her tunic off, and she winced in sympathetic pain when she saw Colleen’s wound, scabbed now but a vicious slash across the top of her biceps.
“Two weeks old,” Colleen explained. “Thought I was to lose the arm.”
Pony put a finger over the woman’s lips, then dropped her hand down onto the cut, rubbing the tender flesh. At the same time, she peered into the soul stone, deeper and deeper into the swirling gray of the hematite, letting herself fall into its magic. She made a connection to Colleen’s wound, sent her consciousness into the woman’s torn muscles.
And then Pony took the injury back to herself, absorbed it with her being. She felt a moment of excruciating pain, but held to her purpose, enveloping, absorbing the wound, and then using her own strength and the soul stone to heal the tears and make the scars into healthy flesh once more.
Then Pony withdrew her spirit, but not before lingering a bit to try to get a sense of the woman’s general health. She wasn’t thrilled with what she sensed there, for it seemed to her as if Colleen’s physical being was somehow depleted, worn out.
A moment later, Pony opened her eyes to see Colleen already flexing her arm, working it in small circles, apparently without pain.
“I was thinkin’ o’ comin’ to ye for just that medicine,” the woman remarked, flashing her smile, “but I expected that ye’d be too busy for helpin’ the likes o’ meself.”
“Never that!” Pony assured her. She wrapped the woman in a hug again, and this time, Colleen returned it with both arms.
“You have not been feeling well,” Pony remarked when they sat back again.
“I took more of a beatin’ than I knew,” Colleen confirmed. “I’m just needin’ the rest, is all.”
“And the new wound?” Pony asked. “It does not seem that you are finding much rest.”
“A bigmouthed son of a drunken powrie,” Colleen replied, “a man named Seano Bellick. Used to be with the Palmaris garrison, same as meself, and we never did like each other much. He’s living in Caer Tinella now, and nothing but trouble, I tell ye. We had a bit of a disagreement in Callicky’s pub.”
“A
bit
of a disagreement?” Pony echoed. “He nearly cut your arm off!”
“Got me good,” Colleen admitted.
“Where can I find him?” Pony asked.
“Just provin’ himself the better,” Colleen said, waving the notion away. “And so he was, but if I’d’a catched him in me better days—”
“It will heal,” Pony promised.
“Mendin’ already, and hardly hurtin’ since ye went at it with yer gemstone,”
Colleen agreed. “Might that ye should wait a bit in town, so that ye can put Seano’s heart back in his chest after I’m done cuttin’ it out.”
They had a good laugh, but for Pony, it was bittersweet. The Colleen she had first met in Dundalis would indeed have paid back Seano Bellick—or any man for that matter—but Pony recognized that Colleen would not prove to be much of a match for any seasoned warrior now. That notion stung Pony, for Colleen had taken that initial, and lingering, beating during their flight from Palmaris, from Markwart and De’Unnero, only for the sake of Pony.
“Will ye be stayin’ long?” Colleen asked. “Or are ye runnin’ right out for Dundalis?”
“I wish you would join me.”
“I’ve got me own home here,” Colleen said with a shake of her head. “We been through this before. Ye got yer own place and I’ve got mine. Oh, I’ll come and see ye, don’t ye doubt—might even set me sights on Dundalis for a home. But not now.”
Pony didn’t press the point. “I’ll need an introduction to the mayor, or whoever it is that leads Caer Tinella.”
“That’d be Janine o’ the Lake,” Colleen replied, “a fine woman. But what’re ye thinkin’ to do that ye’re needin’ to bother her?”
Belster O’Comely poked his head in the door then, and gave a great shout at the sight of Colleen, then stalked across the room and gave her a hug. “So did ye convince her to go north with us?” he asked Pony.
“I already told her that I’d not be runnin’ across the wilds with a drunk like Belster O’Comely beside me,” Colleen replied, and both she and Belster laughed heartily.
Their comfort and familiarity gave Pony pause. Colleen and Belster didn’t know each other all that well, yet they seemed to be chatting like old friends. Might there be some real feelings there, buried beneath a jovial façade?
“But ye will come up and see us?” Belster asked.
“By the pigs, I will!” Colleen replied.
“Good enough then,” said Belster. “I’ll put a bottle o’ me best boggle aside for that fine day.”
“Go get it now, and we’ll make this one a fine day,” Colleen suggested, but before Belster could reply, he found Pony shaking her head.
“I need to speak with Janine,” she said.
“So ye said, but ye didn’t tell me why.”
“We will set up a healing tent,” Pony explained, “to tend to all those in need.”
“For whatever ails them?” Colleen asked skeptically. “Boils and corns, a cut here and a sore belly there?”
Pony nodded, and Colleen’s expression was one of incredulity.
“Them monks’re allowing it?” she asked.
“The monks have no power to stop it,” Pony said.
Within the hour, Belster and Pony had set up a tent in the small square at the
center of Caer Tinella, and word had been sent out through the town and to the neighboring town of Landsdown. Folk came filtering in, slowly at first, only those who already knew Pony and her exploits. But as it became recognized that she was performing miraculous healing, the line at the tent grew and grew.
So many folk of the two towns came—mostly with minor injuries or ailments, but one with a serious tear near the knee and another quite sick from eating rotten food—that Pony agreed to spend the night at Colleen’s and continue the healing for a second day.
Pony and Belster caused quite a stir in the region and caught the attention of all, including a trio of rough-looking fellows, former soldiers, and another, quieter watcher, unseen among the boughs.
That quiet watcher paid heed to the other three and heard much of their suspicious remarks, particularly when one said, “She should be south, far south of Palmaris, where they’re finding the rosy plague.”
Late the second afternoon, Pony and Belster loaded up their wagon and set out again for the north. The weather was clear and warm, the breeze gentle; the pair took an easy pace, enjoying the sights and smells of the summertime forest. And indeed, it seemed obvious to Belster that his companion was in a much better mood now than when they had set out from Palmaris.
“Findin’ a bit o’ heart, are ye?” he asked her as the late-afternoon shadows stretched across the path before them.
Pony glanced over at him, not really understanding.
“With the gemstones, I mean,” Belster explained. “Ye did yer work with more of a smile than I seen on ye for months, girl.”
Pony shrugged, admitting nothing to Belster. To herself, though, she did consider the innkeeper’s words, and carefully. She felt good about the work she had been doing since leaving Palmaris, felt as if she was making a bit of difference in the world—though not on the scale that Brother Braumin or King Danube had envisioned. Not changing the world itself, for that, she had come to believe, was beyond anyone’s control. But what she was doing now was changing a little corner of the world, the lives of a few, and with beneficial results. So yes, Pony’s mood had lightened considerably.
They declined the offer of some farmers to sleep in their barn as twilight descended, and instead went a bit farther down the road, out of sight of any houses. When Pony spotted a small clearing beside the trail, she pulled the wagon up for the night and untied the horses, setting them out to graze, while Belster prepared a fine meal from the food the grateful people of Caer Tinella had given them.
Soon the pair were relaxing and eating, staring up at the stars and listening to the night songs of the forest.
“This was our time,” Pony remarked, drawing Belster’s attention from the last tidbits of stew. “Nightbird’s time,” Pony explained. “We would sit for hours, watching the sunset and the last glows of daylight, watching the stars growing brighter and more numerous.”
“It’ll get easier,” Belster promised.
Pony looked up at the stars and blinked back her tears. She could only hope so.
She fell asleep soon after, but as on every night since Elbryan’s fall, she had a fitful, not restful, sleep. When she opened her eyes to find that it was still dark, she was neither surprised nor alarmed. She lay there for a moment, wondering what, if anything, had awakened her.
Greystone nickered—not a quiet, restful sound but one with a slight element of alarm.
Pony lifted herself up on her elbows and glanced over at the tethered horses. To the untrained eye, everything would have seemed fine, but Pony’s warrior instincts told her that something was amiss. Perhaps it was the way Greystone now stood, muscles tensed as if preparing to bolt at the slightest provocation. Or maybe it was the nighttime sounds, or lack thereof, about her, the forest creatures watchful.