Pony.
The name hit the young woman like a thunderbolt, spoken with such familiar inflection. She watched, mesmerized, as the strong young man eased toward her, his green eyes growing misty.
"Pony," Elbryan said again, and he was stating the name, not asking. "My Pony, I thought..."
He slipped down to his knees before her, closed his eyes, and tried hard to steady his breathing. When, after a long while, he opened his eyes and looked again on this image from his past, he found that her expression was more confusion than anything else.
"Do you not remember me?" Elbryan asked, and the question alone, the need to ask it, seemed to pain him greatly.
The woman didn't know how to respond. She did remember the man -- he was there, prodding somewhere in the back of her mind, screaming at her to let him out. The way he said the name, her name -- her nickname, she suddenly knew, for her name was not Pony, nor Jill, but Jilseponie! -- was so familiar; surely she had heard this man call her Pony before in just that way.
"Give her time, I beg, Elbryan," Brother Avelyn remarked.
That was it. Elbryan. The name hit Pony as hard as Brother Justice ever could, jarred her, sent her thoughts spinning back across the span of years.
"When you ran from me on the slope, running into burning Dundalis, I thought you lost to me forever," the ranger went on, spurred by the sudden sparkle of recognition that came to the woman's blue eyes. "My Pony. How I searched! I found your mother and father, my own, our friends. Carley dan Aubrey died in my own arms. And I would have died, too, trapped by a fomorian giant and a band of goblins, had it not been for --" He stopped, realizing that he was going too fast for the poor young woman, realizing that he had overwhelmed her.
But it was indeed his Pony; Elbryan knew that beyond any doubt. He moved closer to her then, put his face barely inches from hers.
"Elbryan," she said softly, lifting a weary arm to stroke the ranger's face. All those scattered images in her head spun and dropped together, like a vast puzzle, all the pieces magically falling together. She remembered him as if she had never forgotten him, remembered their talks and walks, remembered their friendship, and more than that. In her mind, she saw him moving closer to her, to kiss her.
But then he was Connor, poor Connor, and Pony was suffocating, reaching for the hearth, grabbing a glowing ember.
When she shook the image away, she found that Elbryan had backed away from her and was looking to Brother Avelyn for answers.
"We have much to discuss," the monk said.
Elbryan nodded and, looked back at her, as beautiful now --
more beautiful! -- than he remembered her.
"Brother Quintall?" Avelyn asked.
Elbryan looked at him curiously.
"Brother Justice?" Avelyn clarified. "The hunter from my own Order, sent to kill me and to kill my friends, do not doubt."
"He is dead," Elbryan replied evenly.
"Take me to him."
Elbryan nodded to Avelyn. "Why did he come after you?" the ranger asked, the question that Avelyn knew he would be forced to answer truthfully. He looked from Elbryan to Pony, then back to the ranger.
"Not all of his claims were untrue, I fear," the monk admitted. "I will explain all when we are far from this place, and then I will accept your judgment," Avelyn offered, squaring his shoulders. "Judgment from both of you. You decide if Brother Quintall's mission was truly one that deserved the name of Justice, if Brother Avelyn, the mad friar, is truly an outlaw."
"I am no judge," the ranger remarked.
"Then I am a doomed thing," Avelyn replied. "For the only ones who presume to judge me have made their decision, and it is based on greed and fear and in no way on justice."
Elbryan stared long and hard at Avelyn. Finally he nodded, and he helped both Avelyn and Pony to their feet, then led them out of the cave and to the spot where Brother Justice had fallen.
The monk's body was hardly recognizable, a charred, smoldering thing.
"How did this happen?" Elbryan asked, inspecting the corpse but finding no indication of what had caused it to burst into flame.
"Here is your answer," Avelyn explained, indicating the side of the corpse, where one hand was nearly burned to ashes. On the ground beside the body lay the ruined broach, its hematite core melted and misshapen, an elongated black egg. Scattered around it were the small quartz crystals, blackened, some stuck in the remains of the golden setting.
Avelyn scrutinized the broach carefully. "Its power is no more," he announced after a few moments. "Somehow the magic of the hematite and the crystals erupted when Quintall fell." Avelyn paused and considered his own words. Had there been some contingency placed on the magic? he wondered. Avelyn could feel the magical reverberations in the area and knew that some strong energy had been released. Perhaps the stones served as a warning device to the masters back in St.-Mere-Abelle, a signal that Quintall was dead, that Quintall had failed. Or was the magic even stronger than that? Given the powers of hematite, might this have been some transport for Quintall's soul?
Avelyn, who had spirit-walked, who had once possessed the body of another, shuddered at the possibilities.
Elbryan continued to prod at the corpse, searching for clues. What he found instead were two stones intact: a sunstone -- which did not surprise Avelyn in the least -- and a carbuncle.
"That is how he trailed me across the country," Avelyn remarked, noting the carbuncle. "It is a stone used to detect magic."
"And you have magic about you," Elbryan reasoned.
"A great cache," Avelyn admitted. "Perhaps the greatest individual cache in all the world."
"Stolen from St.-Mere-Abelle," said the ranger.
"Taken from those who did not deserve it, who abused it and brought only misery from the God-given stones," Avelyn said firmly. "Find us a camp, my friend. I will tell you my tale, in all detail, in all truth. You decide which of us, myself or Quintall, deserves the title he carried."
When they arrived at Elbryan's camp, when the ranger and Pony settled beside a fire, Avelyn did as promised. He told his tale, all of it, from the journey to Pimaninicuit to the sinking of the Windrunner and the murder of Dansally, to his escape from St.-Mere-Abelle and the death of Master Siherton. It was the first time Avelyn had told his story, though he had hinted at many parts of it to Jill over the course of their travels. It was the first time the monk was able to purge his soul openly, to admit his crimes, if they were crimes. When he finished, he seemed a miserable wretch indeed; his huge form had wilted upon the hard ground, his eyes teary.
Pony went to him, loving him all the more, feeling a true kinship with the man, feeling a great deal of pity, as well. She was sorry that Avelyn had been forced to act as thief and killer, sorry that this gentle man -- and despite the barroom brawls, Pony knew Avelyn to be a gentle man -- had been put into such an uncompromising position.
Both of them looked at Elbryan after some time, fearing the ranger's judgment. They saw only sympathy on his handsome face.
"I do not envy that whichkh you were forced to do," the ranger said firmly. "Nor do I consider your actions criminal. You acted in self-defense, always justifiable. You stole the stones because you rightly judged that they were being abused."
Avelyn nodded, so glad to hear those words. "Then I must be on my way," he announced unexpectedly. "Jill -- Pony, has found her way home, it would seem." He put a hand to the woman's face, and his own brightened suddenly. "Ho, ho, what!"
"She needs me no more," Avelyn finished.
"But does Brother Avelyn need her?" Elbryan asked.
The monk shrugged. "St.-Mere-Abelle will not give up the search, thus I must keep on the move. I would not bring danger to my friends, now that I know of it."
Elbryan looked hard into Pony's eyes, then the both of them burst into a fit of laughter, as if the whole notion were perfectly ridiculous.
"You stay," Elbryan remarked, demanded. "Pony is home, 'tis true, and her home is Avelyn's, unless I miss my guess."
"Her home is Avelyn's," she said firmly.
A light snow had begun to fall all across the forest, but it seemed to shy from the ranger's camp, from the heat of the ranger's fire, from the warmth of Brother Avelyn's newfound home.
Part Four THE RANGER
How I desire to go to her, to be with her, that we might know again the peace that was in our lives before that terrible day. How I want to hold Pony, to kiss her, to tell her all my feelings, all my secrets, my pain, my hopes. To see Pony now is to see what was and to wonder what might have been had the goblins not come to Dundalis. To see Pony now is to ponder what other road might have been before me -- might I have farmed the land and hunted, as Olwan my father did? Would Pony and I be wed, perhaps with children?
How would the world look to Elbryan had he not spent those years in Andur'Blough Inninness?
But that is the problem, Uncle Mather. I cannot know, can only guess, and I fear that any guess I make will be tainted by the observations of my current life. Perhaps my life would have been better if God had presented me a different path, one more like Olwan's. I wish all those folk of Dundalis -- my mother and father, Pony's parents, and all the others -- had been spared their grim fate. I wish with all my heart that the goblins had not come to Dundalis!
But where would that leave me? At peace, I suppose, and probably with Pony, and that is a fate about which no man could complain.
Yet I refuse to dismiss or diminish my years with the Touel'alfar; those elven friends helped to shape the man Elbryan. Those elven friends created Nightbird, this ranger, hopefully for the betterment of the world and surely for the betterment of me. Looking through the perspective of their shining eyes, I have gained a newer and brighter appreciation of the world about me; one I would never have known had the goblins not come to Dundalis, had the elves not rescued me and taken me to their secret valley. Through that tragedy, I, Elbryan, have come to know and love life all the more. Through that tragedy, I have become the man I am, the man who can see the world through the vision of an elf as well as the vision of a human.
That is my guilt, Uncle Mather, for why should I have been chosen, and not another of Dundalis -- not Olwan or Shane McMichael, not Pony or Carley don Aubrey. That is my guilt, and seeing Pony alive, so beautiful, so wonderful, only heightens. my pain, reminds me of those who died, tempts me to ask what might have been, and makes me wonder if I would indeed prefer that lost course.
It is only worse for poor Pony. The sight of me, of Dundalis, has brought back to her memories long buried. I have seen her little in the few days since Brother Avelyn and I rescued her from Quintall. She is avoiding me, I know, and I do not begrudge her that.' She needs the time; she has seen again so much of her lost past in so short a time.
Everyone in Dundalis died except the two of us. And we have continued from that moment of tragedy, have grown strong and true, have found lives pleasing, and, now that we are together again, the potential seems all the greater. Yet, in our pleasures . . .
That is the guilt, Uncle Mather, our guilt. I cannot rescue Pony from the pain of her memories, as she cannot rescue me from mine. I only hope that she comes to accept our fate and that she desires to forge ahead in the best manner that we may.
I knew it from the moment I saw her in that cave. I love her, Uncle Mather, as I loved her that fateful day on the ridge above our home. I love her, and all the world will be sweeter indeed if I may hold her in my arms and feel her soft breath against my neck. -ELBRYAN WYNDON
