"But aren't ye looking like a great feeder o' the pigs this fine morning!" Dainsey Lockless cried out in a spirited tone when she and Pony moved to the back, private rooms of Fellowship Way, the Dundalis tavern named after the place in Palmaris where Pony had grown into womanhood. A scented candle was burning nearby, giving the room a soft and smoky aroma, and a shade was drawn over the room's lone window, keeping out the brilliant sunlight. All in all, the place gave Pony the impression of a room where someone might go to die. Dainsey's words had been obviously exaggerated, for the man at whom she had aimed that phrase so energetically seemed far from worthy of the mood. Old and weary, Belster O'Comely was propped upon several pillows, making his great girth seem even larger. He had always been a man of many chins, as the saying in Dundalis went. Now it looked as if he had found many more.
His shirt was less than fresh; his hair, what little was left of it, unkempt; and he was sorely in need of a shave.
"And here I am thinking that the only thing I'll ever feed to the pigs again might well be my own flesh," he replied in a phlegm-filled voice with as much energy as he could muster - and the exertion had him coughing violently a moment later.
Pony went to his side and instinctively brought the soul stone out of her pouch. "Tell me where you're hurting, Belster."
The portly tavernkeeper, larger now by far than Pony remembered him, looked up at her warmly and smiled. "Ye got a cure for age, do ye?" he asked. "Where ain't I hurting? There's the better question!"
It struck Pony how much Belster's enunciation had taken on the accent of the Timberlands region. She didn't dwell on it, though, for she couldn't resist that wry grin, and she moved forward and wrapped her dear old friend in a great hug.
"Ah, but there's the best healin' any man could ever want," Belster remarked.
Pony pulled back. "You've a tavern full of patrons, old man," she teased.
"Why are you in bed?"
Belster's expression became very serious. "Bah!" he snorted. "It's been this way ever since I hurt the leg, ye know. Kept me in bed - and in bed, things've only gotten worse."
"Because ye've gotten fat, ye old fool," Dainsey scolded, and Belster laughed at her.
"Does your leg still trouble you?" Pony asked, reaching down to feel the man's knee, and as soon as she touched it, Belster gave a little hiss and a jump, showing her just how tender it still was. She remembered her wedding day to King Danube those years ago, when she had first learned of Belster's bad leg, and now she scolded herself privately for not rushing right up here to aid the man! "Some days are better than others," Belster admitted. "I can tell you when a rain's coming, to be sure!"
Pony was glad to share his smile again. Belster had been such a great friend and protector to her in Palmaris in the days of Markwart; she hadn't realized how much she had missed the man until this moment, sitting beside him in his small tavern in the heart of the Timberlands.
How strange it seemed to her! And yet, how much at home she felt. It was as if she hadn't seen Belster in decades, and as if she had been beside him only yesterday, all at once.
"I can help to heal that knee," she said, showing him the soul stone.
"But your belly is your own to fix, and you'll not do that by lying here on your pillows!"
Belster just smiled in reply. Pony started to move toward his leg, but he grabbed her tightly by the arm and made her turn back to face him. "So good, 'tis, to see ye again," he said softly, and he reached up to run his hand over Pony's golden hair. "Ah, the fine times we had! We gave that demon Markwart all that he could handle! And now look at yerself: the queen of Honce-the-Bear!"
He stopped suddenly and looked at her curiously, and Pony knew that a revealing cloud had surely crossed over her face.
"No more the queen," she told him. "King Danube is dead and the throne has been claimed by another."
"Was her own boy, Aydr - " Dainsey started to say, but Pony stopped her with a sudden fierce expression.
Pony turned back to Belster immediately, softening her look. "It's just me, Pony, again," she said. "And that is the way I desire it to be."
But Belster, who had seen so much in his years, who had made his living all his adult life as a tavernkeeper - and as such, as a man who listened to secrets - wasn't so easily deflected. "Whose own boy?" he asked.
"It is nothing to concern yourself with," Pony answered. "Honce-the-Bear will be whatever it will be, and Ursal is of no concern out here, surely.
I have come home, Belster. I have left the court of Ursal far behind, and that is my choice. I care nothing for the events in the far south, and very little for the routines of Palmaris, except in how they affect our friend, Braumin Herde. I have come home, seeking the peace of Dundalis.
This is not the time for Queen Jilseponie, but just for Pony."
She looked back to his leg, elevated on still more pillows. "Your friend Pony, who plans to get you up and about in short order," she finished, feeling again the tender spots on that knee.
She could tell that Belster was looking past her, to Dainsey, and so she glanced the woman's way, to see her chewing on her lips.
Belster, in his typical manner, was pressing the point even before Pony turned back to regard him. "Whose son?" he asked. "Aydr?"
"Aydrian," Dainsey explained. "Aydrian Wyndon, who calls Pony and Elbryan his parents."
Pony spun and flashed her an alarmed look, but Dainsey stood resolute, shaking her head.
And she was right, Pony knew in her heart. Who were they to keep such a secret from Belster O'Comely, the man who had never been anything but the very best of a friend to them both? Pony closed her eyes for a moment before turning back to Belster, trying to figure out how she could begin to explain Aydrian. She was surprised to learn that she'd have less to tell than she anticipated.
"Oh, by the demon dactyl itself," Belster was muttering. "Lady Dasslerond, what'd ye do?"
Pony's eyes popped open wide and she stared hard at the man. "How could you know?"
"Who'd the elves take ye to when they dragged ye off that field after yer fight with Markwart?" Belster replied, his voice stronger than it had been to this point, and stronger than Pony expected it could possibly be, given the man's condition. "Ye went out with a child in yer belly and came back without one, and I never was believing the elves' tale of what had happened!"
With great effort, the man pulled himself to a sitting position. He motioned for Dainsey to go and pull back the room's curtain, then looked Pony in the eye. "Now ye tell me," he said. "And ye tell me all of it.
Don't ye go protecting Belster for Belster's sake, ye hear me?"
Pony stared at him for a moment, caught off her guard. But only until she remembered who this man truly was, and remembered that he had been there, in times good and in times bad, standing with her, defending her, hiding her, and nursing her. He had demanded the truth from her, and how could she begin to think that he deserved anything less than that? And so she told him everything, of the rise of Aydrian and the fall of Danube. And of the return of Marcalo De'Unnero, which seemed to pain Belster most of all.
When she had finished, the three sat in silence for a long time until Belster finally gave Pony a curious look. "He hates ye?" the man asked.
"Aydrian believes that I abandoned him to the elves, and they were less than kind, from what I can gather," Pony admitted. "He hates me profoundly - I am surprised he suffered me to live."
"Poisoned by the tongue of Marcalo De'Unnero, no doubt," Belster reasoned. "Ever was he the serpent. So much better we'd all be if ye had killed the man in Palmaris those years ago."
"But I did not," Pony replied, and she managed a smile as she added, "Though to be sure, I tried!" The smile was short-lived, though, lost in the realization of the darkening world. "And now De'Unnero is with Aydrian, and that is the reality."
"And ye've fled," said Belster. "But why here? Shouldn't ye be in Vanguard, standing beside Prince Midalis?"
"You would have me fight Aydrian?" Pony replied, her tone so downtrodden and defeated as to dismiss any arguments that might be forthcoming. "Nay, I've no anger for him - how could I?"
"Ye're full of anger! It's in yer eyes!"
"Oh, yes," Pony agreed.
"For the elves," Belster said suddenly. "Oh, but ye hate them, don't ye?"
Pony stared at him for a long, long while, her expression as firm an answer as anyone would ever need. "Let me get your leg mended," she said.
"And then you get yourself out of that bed. And then you clean up and find your spirit! Belster O'Comely's not ready for the grave just yet!"
Pony left him a short while later, satisfied that she had done much to help him reverse the downward spiral his injury had caused. Dainsey was with him still, and more than ready to prod him out of his bed and over to the well for a much-needed cleaning! As she moved back to the tavern of Fellowship Way, Pony did not replace the soul stone in her pouch, though. She hadn't used the gemstones much in the last few years, but the connection had come easily to her once more. Now she looked at the stone, into its enticing gray depths, and considered its other possible uses.
She had meant to stay in the tavern for a bit, just to watch the ordinary routines of this place she had once called home, but she found herself walking out almost immediately, moving across the small village to a house the good-hearted and generous folk of the town had offered to her and Dainsey and Roger when they had first arrived.
Inside, she drew curtains over the home's single window, then moved to a quiet corner, rolling the stone about her fingers all the way.
And then she fell into it again, and used it to loose her spirit. Freed of her mortal bonds, she flew out of Dundalis, off to the west, toward the distant mountains she knew housed Andur'Blough Inninness and Lady Dasslerond.
For a long while, Pony's spirit roamed those mountains, seeking the elven valley. But to her dismay, she did not locate it that afternoon. She had made progress, though, taking note of specific landmarks, including one or two that looked familiar to her. She had been to the elven valley on a couple of occasions, and had found it before with the soul stone. She knew that it was very well hidden, though, and suspected that Lady Dasslerond might be working hard with her own magic to ensure that it was even more secluded now.
When she returned to her waiting body, Pony was satisfied with her progress. Using the soul stone, she would soon have the mountains about Andur'Blough Inninness mapped out sufficiently for her to make the physical journey and confront the elven lady who had taken so much from her.
"What do you know?" Belli'mar Juraviel asked Lady Dasslerond when he found her standing on the edge of the forest, staring out at the mountains with a perplexed expression.
"She was here."
"She?"
"Jilseponie," Lady Dasslerond explained. "Her spirit came very close. She seeks us."
Juraviel looked at her curiously, his expression doubting. "How can you know?"
Lady Dasslerond held aloft her shining emerald, the stone of Caer'alfar, given to the elves by Terranen Dinoniel in the first coming of the demon dactyl. Among the most marvelous of the enchanted gemstones, the emerald was also among the rarest. And certainly there was no other stone in all the world quite like Lady Dasslerond's; the power of other emeralds collected at Pimaninicuit served no stronger magic than to speed someone's walking. But Dasslerond's was the stone of the earth itself, the stone that connected her to the ground beneath her feet. With it, she could distort distances, thus allowing her to travel across great expanses with a single step. With it, she could sense the grasses and the fields, and the animals that walked upon them.
And the spirits, perhaps, that hovered about them.
"She seeks us," Dasslerond said again. "She knows of Aydrian now, of course, and she is not pleased."
"We could not expect otherwise," said Juraviel, and sensitive to Dasslerond's dilemma and fears, he did well to keep hidden his relief at learning that Pony was alive.
"She is a human," Dasslerond said with her typical, thinly veiled contempt for those she considered the lesser race. "She could never begin to comprehend the greater implications of her son, and the greater promise."
"And the greater failure," Juraviel dared to add, drawing a sharp look from his Lady.
"Aydrian alone offered us the promise of saving Andur'Blough Inninness from the stain of the demon dactyl that will surely consume it,"
Dasslerond countered. "That decay was brought on by our selflessness in helping humans. We sacrificed for their sake."
"I do remember," Juraviel admitted, for it had been Lady Dasslerond's rescue of him and the band of refugees he was escorting that had brought the demon dactyl to the elven valley.
"And now we ask a sacrifice from one of them," Dasslerond went on. "Would not Elbryan, Aydrian's own father, give of himself to save Andur'Blough Inninness? His mother would not, surely, but Elbryan - "
"Jilseponie would," Juraviel strongly corrected. "Ever have you misjudged her, and underestimated her. She would have willingly sacrificed herself for the sake of the Touel'alfar, had that ever been asked of her. In quality of character, she is every bit the ranger as any we have ever trained."
Dasslerond's expression showed that she really didn't want to have this argument with Juraviel again. Not here and not now.
"She is not seeking us so that she can help us," came Dasslerond's dry reply.
"She just learned the truth of Aydrian," Juraviel replied. "I do not disagree."
"With me or with her?" Lady Dasslerond snapped, and her sudden, uncharacteristic anger told Juraviel just how on edge she was about all of this.
"I do not disagree with your assessment," Juraviel clarified, and he didn't bother to add that he wasn't really sure he disagreed with Pony's anger, as well. Surely he understood that anger; how could anyone be so deceived about her own child and not react with anger? "She will search for us again," said Dasslerond. "And she will eventually find her way to Andur'Blough Inninness."
"In spirit," Juraviel remarked.
"And what is then to stop her from finding us in body, as well?" asked the Lady of Caer'alfar. "Perhaps of even allying with Aydrian to show him the way home?"
"She will not," Juraviel argued.
"It is not a chance that we can take."
"What do you mean to do, Lady?" Juraviel asked, alarms screaming at him in his mind. He knew how cold and merciless Dasslerond could be, especially toward the lesser races! And in most cases, Juraviel agreed with Lady Dasslerond, or at least understood her propensity to err on the side of caution. The Touel'alfar were not numerous, after all, and were not a prolific people. It would not take much to destroy them altogether.
But this was Jilseponie! This was Pony! This was the woman who had stood so strongly beside Elbryan! This was the woman who had faithfully carried the secrets of the elven sword dance, and of Andur'Blough Inninness, with her. This was the woman who had never been anything but a friend of the Touel'alfar, though Lady Dasslerond had never, ever treated her as such.
"There is, perhaps, a way in which I might facilitate the unavoidable meeting at a time and place of my choosing," Lady Dasslerond explained.
"When Jilseponie returns in spirit, I will know of it, and I will find that spirit, and with this - " She held aloft the emerald. " - I can perhaps bring her out here in body, as well."
"Lady..." Juraviel said breathlessly.
"You will be there beside me," Lady Dasslerond continued.
Juraviel wanted to shout at her, to scream that she could not do this.
This was Jilseponie, a friend to the Touel'alfar, a dear friend to Belli'mar Juraviel. He suspected that Dasslerond wanted him there to lure Jilseponie, perhaps to defuse her and help to get her off her guard. Or perhaps his Lady just wanted him to witness this so that she could assess his reactions to her stern judgment, and thus measure his loyalty to his people.
It was all too much for him in that horrible moment, and he truly wanted to scream out.
But he did not.
Pony knew that she was making fine progress toward finding the hidden valley when she went out spiritually from Dundalis again the next day.
Many of the landmarks were familiar to her now; she remembered the images of certain, distinctive mountains clearly from her journey here beside Elbryan.
Pleased, she continued on for a bit longer, taking a wider search and trying to find the elusive trails that would take her to the mountain slopes overlooking the cloud-veiled valley. She hoped that perhaps she would see that gray shroud this very day. But then, wearying from the exertion of spirit-walking, she was forced to turn back for Dundalis and her corporeal form.
But a voice called out to her, both physically and telepathically.
Following that call back along a trail, Pony found the source, and if she had been in her corporeal body at that time, she surely would have had to be reminded to breathe.
For there stood Lady Dasslerond and Belli'mar Juraviel.
Belli'mar Juraviel! For all the hatred Jilseponie felt toward the Touel'alfar at that time, she could not deny the sudden burst of warmth she felt at the sight of her old companion and friend! But even that could not balance her emotions at the sight of Dasslerond, the Lady of Caer'alfar, who had stolen her child from her, and who had created from that child of promise the creature Aydrian.
She flew back before them, and it took every ounce of willpower she could muster not to dive spiritually into Lady Dasslerond and do battle with her soul. She almost did just that, and actually started to, but when she did, she felt a very definite spiritual barrier there, and only then did she realize that Dasslerond was holding a gemstone of her own, a green- shining emerald.
"Fly back to your body," Lady Dasslerond said, speaking perfect Bearman.
"I will go with you that we can have this... meeting, you so desire."
Pony hovered there, her emotions swirling wildly.
"I am one with my gemstone now," Dasslerond went on. "Go now, for I cannot maintain the connection to it and to you for very long! Go, or this meeting will be at its end!"
Pony knew that there was more to it than that; she understood implicitly that Dasslerond was trying to prevent her from finding the elven valley - perhaps out of fear that she would subsequently lead an army there to exact revenge. She had to make a decision, and quickly. Was her argument with the Toue Palfar in general or with Lady Dasslerond alone? The sight of Belli'mar Juraviel standing beside the Lady of Caer'alfar, his expression clearly one of sympathy, helped her find her right course in the clash of emotions, and without offering a response to Dasslerond, the woman flew away with all speed across the miles, all the way back to her quiet and dark room in Dundalis and her waiting physical form. She dove back through the soul stone and into her body, expecting to find Dasslerond standing before her, and perhaps with a sword drawn! And Dasslerond was there - sort of. For beside the image of the Lady of Caer'alfar remained the mountainous scene all those miles away, almost as if the two places had been suddenly linked, a distortion of distance itself! There was Juraviel as well, and he lifted his hand to Pony, and without even thinking, she reached up and took it.
And then she was soaring again, but not spirit-walking! Somehow - through Dasslerond's magical gemstone, she realized! - she was physically moving across the miles.
In the blink of an eye, she was beside Dasslerond and Juraviel, standing on a windblown mountain pass outside Andur'Blough Inninness. Only then did Pony realize that she had been deceived.
Only then did Pony understand that Dasslerond had known her intent and had caught her first. She had no gemstones save the soul stone, and didn't even have her sword! And she faced Dasslerond, the true power of the Toue Palfar.