Elbryan rolled his breeches up over his knees -- not that the worn and ragged pants would stay that way for long! -- and touched the dark water with his toe.
Cold. It was always cold; the boy didn't know why he even bothered testing it each morning before plunging in.
From somewhere in the thick brush behind him, he heard a call, "Be quick about it!" The words were not spoken in the common tongue of Honce-the-Bear but in the singsong, melodious language of the elves, a language Elbryan was already beginning to comprehend.
Elbryan glared over his shoulder in the general direction of the voice, though he knew he would not see one of the Touel'alfar. He had been in Andur'Blough Inninness for three months, had watched winter settle over the land just outside the elven valley and in a few places within the enchanted vale. Elbryan didn't know exactly where Andur'Blough Inninness was located, but he suspected they were somewhere in the northern latitudes of Corona, beyond the Wilderlands border of Honce-the-Bear. By his reckoning, the winter solstice had passed, and he knew Dundalis, or what was left of the village, was likely under several feel of snow. He remembered well the hardships, and the excitement, of Dundalis in the winter, the gusting wind throwing icy particles against the side of the cabin, the piles of blowing snow, sometimes so deep that he and his father had to break through a drift just to get outside!
It wasn't like that in Andur'Blough Inninness. Some magic. probably the same enchantment that brought the daily blanket of fog, kept the winter season much warmer and more gentle. The northern end of the valley was carpeted by snow, but only a few inches, and the small pond up there was frozen solid -- Elbryan had once seen a handful of elves dancing and playing on the ice. But many of the hardier plants had kept their summer hue, many flowers still bloomed, and this reedy bog, the one place in all the valley that Elbryan had truly come to hate, had not frozen. The water was chilly, but not more so than it had been on the first day Elbryan had been told to go in, back when the season was still autumn.
The boy took a deep breath and plunged one foot in, held the pose for a moment until the numbness took away the sting, then dipped in his second foot. He picked up his basket, cursed when one pant leg slipped down into the water, then waded out through the reeds. The cold mud squishing through his toes felt good, at least.
"Be quick about it!" came the predictable call again from the brush, and it was repeated several times, sometimes in elven and sometimes in the common human tongue, by different voices in different places. The elves were taunting him, the boy knew. They were always taunting, always complaining, always pointing out his all too numerous shortcomings.
To his credit, Elbryan had pretty much learned to ignore them.
Parting one patch of reeds, the boy found his first stone of the day, bobbing low in the water. He scooped it out and dropped it into his basket, then moved along to a group of nearly a dozen bobbing stones. He recognized which ones were too high in the water, and plunged them under, trying to saturate the spongelike rocks a bit more before taking them out. When he squeezed them, extracting the now-flavored liquid, the elves would inevitably complain about how little he had collected.
It was yet another part of this unchanging daily ritual.
Soon the basket was full, so Elbryan hauled it back to the bank and collected another one. Thus it went for the bulk of the morning, for the bulk of every morning: the boy moving carefully about the chilly bog, collecting ten baskets of milk-stones.
That was the easy part of Elbryan's day, for then he had to haul the heavy baskets, one at a rime, nearly half a mile to the collecting trough. He had to be fast, for he could lose precious time at this point and then would have to suffer almost continual insult from the unseen elves. "Five miles laden, five miles empty," was the way Belli'mar Juraviel had described this part of his work. Ironically, the laden section of each trip seemed the easiest to Elbryan, for the elves often set traps for him on the journey back to the bog. These weren't particularly nasty traps, designed more to embarrass than to injure. A trip line here, a disguised patch of slick mud on a corner there. The worst part of falling victim to one of the snares was hearing the laughter as he tried to extract himself from whatever had hold of him, be it a thorny bush or some. of. those silken elven strands, which, Elbryan found out soon enough, could be made as sticky and clingy as a spiderweb.
He got his reward for his morning's toils when he returned to the bog to collect the tenth loaded basket. There, every day, he would eat his midday meal -- though at first, it was usually halfway through the afternoon before Elbryan got a chance to taste it. The elves would set out a grand table, steaming stew and venison, sometimes roasted game fowl, and piping hot tea that warmed the boy from his head to his cold toes. Always it was a hot meal they set, and Elbryan soon understood why. The elves would put the food out at exactly the same time every day, but if he was not fast enough, "tolque ne 'pesil siq'el palouviel, " or, "the steam would be off the stew," as one particularly nasty elf, a deceivingly delicate maiden named Tuntun, had often chided him.
So Elbryan ran, stumbling with his ninth basket, knowing that any stone he dropped into the dirt would be useless for that day. Carefully placing the basket at last at the trough, the boy then sprinted full out the half mile back to the bog. He ate a cold lunch every day at first, but gradually, as the terrain became more familiar and his legs became stronger, as he grew to recognize and thus avoid many of the devilish elven traps, he graduated to warm food.
This day, Elbryan resolved, that tea would burn his tongue!
He put the ninth basket down by the trough right on schedule, took one deep breath, clearing his thoughts and remembering the last layout of the elvish obstacle course. For only the third time in all these weeks, the lunch had not yet been set out when Elbryan had collected the ninth basket. On those first two occasions, the hopeful lad had fallen victim to ever more cunning elvish traps. "Not this time," he said quietly, determinedly; and he started his sprint.
He spotted mud at one sharp bend; without slowing, Elbryan leaped atop a stone at the elbow of the trail and skipped off it, landing beyond the slick area. With the aid of a slanting sunbeam poking down through a break in the leafy boughs, he then spotted a series of nearly translucent trip lines, of height ranging from ankle to knee, blocking one long straight section of the trail. Elbryan considered veering off the trail, crashing through the brush, then slowed, thinking he should just walk past this obvious trap.
"Not today," Elbryan growled, and he put his head down and ran on, full speed. He found his visual focus quickly, locking his eyes upon a point just one step ahead, and high-stepped his way through the region, getting his feet up over every single trip line.
Laughter trailed him as he sped away, and Elbryan sensed that there was some measure of admiration in it.
Within a couple of minutes, his goal -- the bog, the basket, the meal -- was in sight; down the last stretch of path. Here, high stones lined both sides of the trail, making passage off the path nearly impossible unless Elbryan took a circuitous route quite deep into the underbrush.
He slowed to a near walk, opting for caution and understanding that an extra few seconds would make no difference in the quality of his meal.
They had dug a pit -- how could they have done that so quickly? -- and had cleverly covered it with a layer of dirt and fallen leaves, supported by a trellis of woven sticks. Despite the addition of the pit, the path appeared almost exactly the same as it had on all of his previous returns.
Almost exactly.
Elbryan crouched and tamped down his feet, thinking to take a few running strides and then leap the trap. He stopped before he had really begun, though, catching the sound of a soft titter on the breeze.
A smile widened on the boy's face. He wagged his finger at the underbrush. "Well done," he congratulated, then he moved to the edge of the apparent pit and pulled aside the phony trellis.
The real pit, he discovered was several feet beyond the apparent pit. He would have leaped clear of the phony, only to drop heavily into the real one.
Now it was Elbryan's turn to laugh, as he discerned the dimensions of the true trap, then easily leaped it, leaving the last few feet of the path, the last expanse to the food, open to him.
"Not this time!" he yelled loudly, and there was no return laughter from the brush, no sound at all. "Ne leque towithel!" he repeated in elvish.
Elbryan slowly passed the last tree, home free, so he thought.
Something zipped by him, just under his chin. He heard a thud at the side and turned to see one of those tiny elvish. arrows half buried in a tree. A second bolt whistled behind him, turning him with a start, and only when Elbryan noticed the silvery filament trailing this arrow did he understand what was happening.
There came a third and a fourth, all dangerously close.
"Not fair!" the boy yelled, trying to move -- and discovering that the sticky strands were already grabbing at him. He looked at the brush helplessly, at the steaming stew, just a few strides away.
More arrows whistled past, each trailing a strand, each tightening the web about Elbryan, holding him from his meal.
"Not fair!" he yelled repeatedly, tearing at the strands. He managed to pull a few down -- a couple of arrows came out of the tree, other strands pulled free of the arrow fletchings -- but that helped only a little, as the now loose strands clung to the boy's clothing, entangling him even more.
Another arrow came by and slashed across Elbryan's forearm as he struggled. His protest came out as a snarl, words stolen by the stinging pain, and he stopped his thrashing and clutched at his arm.
"Cowards!" he yelled in total frustration. "Goblinkin! Only a coward would shoot from the boughs. Only a coward of goblin heritage would attack someone who has no weapons with which to strike back!"
The next arrow razored painfully across the back of his neck, drawing a line of bright blood.
"Enough!" came a stern voice from the brush, a voice that Elbryan recognized -- and was certainly glad to hear.
Protests, laughter, taunts all came back in reply from many different places.
"Enough, Tuntun!" Belli'mar Juraviel demanded again; and the elf came forth from the brush, moving to young Elbryan. Tuntun, bow in hand, came out from across the way and moved quickly to follow on Juraviel's heels.
"Calm, my friend," Juraviel prompted poor Elbryan, the boy thrashing about and only entangling himself even more. "The strands will not let go until Tuntun commands them." Juraviel turned and glared at the female then, and she sighed resignedly and muttered something under her breath.
Almost immediately, the strands began to fall from Elbryan, except for those still tight in the line from the tree to the brush where Tuntun had tied them off, and those which the young man had inadvertently twisted and turned about his limbs.. Finally, with Juraviel's help, Elbryan got. free, and he immediately stormed up to Tuntun, his green eyes flaring dangerously.
The elf looked up at him calmly, smiling, perfectly relaxed.
"I earned that meal!" the boy stormed.
"So go and eat it," Tuntun replied, and snickers came at Elbryan from every bush. "You. needn't worry that it will burn your tongue."
"Elbryan," Juraviel warned when he saw the boy ball his fist at his side. Tuntun held up a hand to her elvish companion, silently bidding Juraviel to let her take care of this situation. Juraviel knew what was coming, and though he did not like it, for he thought it too soon in the boy's training, he did on some levels agree that the lesson might be necessary.
"You want so badly to strike me." Tuntun tittered.
Elbryan fumed but couldn't, in good conscience, punch this diminutive creature, half his weight, if that, and a girl besides!
Tuntun's bow came up, faster than Elbryan could follow, and the elf let fly an arrow, down the path. It struck the bowl of stew, overturning it and making a mess of the meal. "You'll get nothing more this day," Tuntun said sternly.
The knuckles on both of Elbryan's hands were white by this point, and the muscles along his jaw strained taut. He started to turn away, thinking that he had to hold his control, had to let all the insults pass, but before he got halfway around, Tuntun slapped her bow across the back of his head.
Elbryan let fly a wide-arcing left hook as he spun back toward the elf. He missed miserably, Tuntun ducking low under the predictable blow, and kicking him twice in rapid succession, once on the inside of each knee.
Elbryan stumbled and squared himself; Tuntun tossed her bow aside, held up both her empty hands, and motioned for Elbryan to come on.
The boy paused. The forest was silent, totally silent, about him, and Juraviel made not a move nor any indication of how Elbryan should proceed.
It was his choice to make, he realized, and so he crouched low; hands out wide, feeling his balance on the balls of his feet. He waited, and waited some more, until Tuntun relaxed, and then he sprang like a hunting cat.
He caught the air, nothing more, and didn't even realize that the elf was not in front of him until he heard wings fluttering behind him and felt a series of sharp punches on the back of his head.
He wheeled, but Tuntun turned with him, staying behind him and punching out a veritable drum roll on his upper back. Furious, Elbryan finally launched himself sideways, putting some ground between him and his elusive opponent.
"Blood of Mather!" Tuntun said sarcastically. "He fights as any lumbering human might!"
Juraviel wanted to respond that Mather had fought the exact same way in the first years of his training, but he let it pass. Let Tuntun have her fun this day, the elf decided; that would make his victory all the sweeter when Elbryan finally proved himself.
On cue, Elbryan came back in, measuring his steps this time, not taking his eyes off the dancing elf. Tuntun was on the ground again, swaying slowly, hands waving before her.
Elbryan saw an opening and let fly a combination left jab, step, and right cross. He meant to retract the left, which missed, that he could roll his shoulders and put some weight behind the right. He meant to do a lot of things, to follow the combination with a shoulder tackle or another quick one-two if the opportunity presented itself. He found, however, that as soon as his left arm extended, his fist flying so tantalizing near Tuntun's swaying head, that his moment of control had passed.
Tuntun turned in accord with the punch, her head fading back across to Elbryan's right, her right hand catching the boy's wrist and pushing outward, her left hand coming back in and catching the outside of his elbow, driving in.
As Elbryan's arm locked, and before he could even step in and begin the cross, Tuntun turned her right wrist over and down.
Elbryan had no choice but to follow, scampering out to the left a step before tumbling hard to the ground, crashing into one nearby bush. To his credit, he didn't fight the roll or even try to break his fall. He went right over and came back out low, scrambling for Tuntun's legs.
The elf straightened and stiffened, and leaned forward over the lunging boy's head and shoulders.
Tuntun's strength surprised Elbryan, for he could not break the elf's position, and then he was surprised even more as Tuntun locked her hands together and brought them down hard onto the tender area just below Elbryan's right shoulder blade.
The boy felt the strength leave that side of his body. He staggered down again, was barely even conscious that his hold on the elf was broken. He noted the elf's spring, heard the wings fluttering. He went up fast to his knees, realizing that he was vulnerable. He heard a snicker, then felt the explosion as Tuntun, half turning and landing easily on one foot right between the boy's ankles, let fly a kick with the other, up between Elbryan's thighs to catch him right in the groin.
The boy went down hard, clutching and groaning, feeling suddenly weak and nauseous.
"Tuntun!" he heard Juraviel protest, and it seemed to him as if the elf's voice had come from far away.
"He fights like a human," Tuntun answered indignantly.
"He is a human!" Juraviel reminded.
"All the more reason to kick him hard." The laughter from the forest was painful to Elbryan, at least as much as his wounded groin. He remained on the ground for a very long time, eyes closed, curled in a fetal position.
Finally, he opened his eyes and rolled to find Juraviel alone standing near him. The elf offered a hand, but Elbryan stubbornly refused, struggling shakily to his feet.
"Suffer the barbs, my young friend," Juraviel offered. "They are not without merit."
"Lick a bloody cap," Elbryan cursed, a common insult among humans, but one referring to powries. Elbryan hardly knew what a "bloody cap" was, and so the meaning of his own curse was lost on him.
It wasn't lost on Juraviel, though, for the elf had battled the fierce, evil powries many times over the centuries. Recognizing the boy's ultimate distress and embarrassment, Juraviel generously let the insult pass.
Elbryan walked a crooked path to the food and stubbornly salvaged what he could. That done, he hoisted the last basket and started back the half mile to the trough.
Juraviel followed silently, some distance behind. He wanted to make the most of Tuntun's painful lesson, but he wasn't sure that Elbryan was in any frame of mind to learn.
Titters came at Elbryan from the shadows several times as he walked. He ignored them, didn't even hear them, lost in his self
pity, consumed by frustrated rage. He felt so alone and isolated, felt as if he would have been better off had these vile elves not come and rescued him from the fomorian.
Back at the trough, Elbryan began his more difficult work. He took up one of the saturated stones and squeezed it with all his strength over the trough. When the porous thing was light once more, the flavored bog water extracted, Elbryan tossed it near the basket and took up the next. All too soon, before he had even finished with the first basket, his forearms ached from the effort.
Juraviel walked past Elbryan to the trough and dipped his cupped hands in. He stared at the water for a moment, eyeing its hue, then sniffed its delicate bouquet. The combination of bog water and milk-stones, as the elves called them, produced some of the sweetest juices in all of Corona. From this raw product, the elves would make their intoxicating wine, Questel ni'touel to the elves, but known to the wide world simply as "boggle." The swamplike connotation of the name was usually completely lost on the humans, who thought the term a mere reference to their state of mind after but a few sips of the potent liquid. Not that many humans had ever tasted the elixir, for the elves did not deal openly in the juice. Their contacts in the wide human world were discrete and few, but the elves did enough trading so that they could bring desired items, curiosity pieces mostly, and a sampling of songs of the few human bards who could bring them pleasure, into their valley.
"A good take today," Juraviel commented, hoping to draw the boy from his sour mood.
Elbryan grunted and did not reply. He took up another stone, held it high over the trough and squeezed with all his might, hoping to splash the juices enough to wet Juraviel.
The elf was too quick and wary for that.
Juraviel nodded at the surprising effect, though, taking note of the boy's gain in strength after just a few short weeks. He thought to leave Elbryan then, but decided to try one last time to calm the boy, to put a positive meaning on the embarrassing and painful lesson. "It is good that you have such spirit," Juraviel said, "and better still that you keep it under such control."
"Not so tight a rein," Elbryan replied, growling with each word. To accentuate his point, Elbryan lifted the next stone, and, instead. of holding it over the trough, hurled it into the brush nearby, an act of defiance and of finality. Even if he went and retrieved it, the liquid within the stone had been tainted and was no good.
Juraviel stared solemnly at the spot where the stone had bounced for a long moment. He tried to view things through Elbryan's eyes, tried to sympathize with the frustration, tried to remember the terrible tragedy the youngster had suffered just this past season.
It was no good. For whatever had happened, today and in the days and weeks before, this stubborn behavior could only lead to disaster. Juraviel turned on Elbryan swiftly and suddenly, wings lifting the elf into a short hop. One hand grabbed the back of Elbryan's hair, the other cupped under the boy's chin, and though Elbryan, at least as strong as the elf, got his arms up to defend, when Juraviel turned his arms, turned Elbryan's head, the boy had no chance to resist. Juraviel took full advantage, put Elbryan off balance and kept on twisting, angling the boy over the trough. Quite a bit of juice might be ruined, but Juraviel figured the loss was worth it.
He put Elbryan's head under the liquid, brought him up, sputtering, then dunked him again. The third time, he held the boy under for what seemed like minutes, and when he brought Elbryan up and subsequently let him go, the stunned boy fell to the ground, gasping desperately.
"I am your friend," Belli'mar Juraviel said sternly. "But let us both understand the situation from the proper perspective. You are n'Touel'alfar, not of the People. You have been brought into Andur'Blough Inninness to be trained in the way of the rangers. This is fact, it has begun and there can be no turning back. If you fail in this, if you do not prove yourself worthy of elven friendship, you cannot be let out into the world with the knowledge you have attained of our home and of our ways."
Even as Elbryan started to protest, horrified at the thought of becoming a prisoner, Juraviel finished grimly, "Nor can you stay."
Elbryan's thoughts shifted to the illogic of it all. He couldn't leave, and he couldn't stay. How could that be?
The boy's jaw drooped as he realized the only remaining possibility, as he considered that Tuntun would carry out his execution, if Juraviel would not, without hesitation.
Humbled, he said not a word, but went right back to his work, as Juraviel left him.
That night, Elbryan sat upon the bare hillock that he claimed as his own, under the starry canopy, alone with his thoughts. Images, memories of the time o� his past life, a few weeks that sometimes seemed as a few minutes and other times a few centuries, careened about the edges of his consciousness. He tried to concentrate on the present, on the simple beauty of the starry sky, or on the future, the questions of infinity, of eternity. Inevitably, though, that led Elbryan to thoughts of mortality and thus to the recent fate of his family and friends.
Piled in the emotional jumble were Elbryan's mixed feelings concerning the elves. He did not understand these creatures, so gay and full of almost childish spirit at one moment, so deadly and stern at the next. Even Juraviel! Elbryan had thought the elf his friend, and perhaps Juraviel was, in his own inhuman way, but the ferocity and ease with which Juraviel had put the boy under the trough water was amazing and frightening. Elbryan had always thought himself a bit of a warrior. He had killed goblins, after all, though his body was far from maturity. Yet measured against the speed and agility of the elves, the fluidity of their movements, substituting perfect balance for lack of weight and strength, Elbryan truly felt a novice. Juraviel, lighter and smaller, had put him down with astounding ease, a simple movement for which Elbryan had no counter.
So now here he was, in a land enchanting and terrifying, sharing the forest with these creatures that he could not understand and could not defeat. Sitting on that hillock that night, Elbryan felt as if he were alone in the universe, as if everything around him -- the world and the elves, the goblins that had attacked Dundalis and the folk he had known in the village were but a dream, his dream. Elbryan realized the arrogance of that notion, an almost sinful pride,. but he was so much out of control, so insignificant, so vulnerable, that he suffered the barbs of his conscience for the sake of his sensibilities.
On that hillock, under that sky, Elbryan dared to play God, and that emotional game allowed him to sleep finally in peace and to wake with the determination to go on, with the gritty confidence that today, this day, he would eat hot stew for lunch. He collected his baskets and ran for the bog.
And when he slipped back beside the tenth and last basket, he saw steam still rising from his tea.
It was difficult, exhausting work, repeated every day, endlessly. But it was not without its benefits. As the weeks became months, and they became a year, and then two, Elbryan was hardly recognizable as the short gangly boy that Jilseponie had once beat up. His legs grew strong and agile from carrying loads and dodging traps. His chest and shoulders grew broad and thick, and his arms, particularly his forearms, bulged with iron-hard muscles.
By the tender age of sixteen, Elbryan Wyndon was stronger than Olwan had been.
And Olwan had been the strongest man in Dundalis.