the bow, where Juraviel met him with an extended hand. Before the soldiers curiously following Pagonel ever got near enough to see, he and Juraviel took a giant, magical step back to the rocky shoreline north of the city of Jacintha.
"An ally?" Juraviel asked.
"I know not," Pagonel admitted. "But continuing information may well lead him in that direction." He looked at the elf directly. "This stone you carry, combined with the powers of the gemstone of the Doc'alfar, will prove to be our greatest advantage, perhaps. I beseech Belli'mar Juraviel to lead his people and his pale-skinned cousins more deeply into this conflict."
"We are small in number, and no match for Aydrian and his charges."
"But you are our eyes and ears and mouths," Pagonel explained. "When Brynn Dharielle freed To-gai from Behren, she did so because she knew more of her enemy than they could understand of her. Mobility and cunning strikes won the day for To-gai."
"That was a war for freedom," Juraviel countered. "This is a struggle against the homeland of King Aydrian. Eventually, whatever we might, we will have to do battle with him and his great armies directly. No treaty and no minor victories will grant us what we desire. Not in Honce-the- Bear, at least, though there remains more hope for the kingdoms south of the mountains."
"Minor victories might bring hope to potential allies, and lead them to join our cause," the mystic replied. "What role will Belli'mar Juraviel and his people play?"
"It was Lady Dasslerond's step into the affairs of humans that led to the catastrophe that is Aydrian," said the elf.
"Then it is Belli'mar Juraviel's responsibility to help put things aright."
Juraviel mulled those words over for a long while.
Chapter 34 Help from Beyond
There was no pain. There was no cold. There was no physical sensation at all. Time and space seemed to have no meaning to her.
It took Pony a long time to recognize that she had entered the spirit realm, the same one in which she walked out of body. No, it was more complete than that, obviously, for she saw no sign of the true physical world about her, and no apparent portal back to that world of substance and color. This was more akin to the place she had gone to battle the spirit of Father Abbot Markwart that long-ago day in Chasewind Manor, the only other time she had ventured so far into the nether realm. That memory of a specific real-world event sparked other thoughts in Pony, but only gradually did the specifics of the fight at Pireth Dancard begin to come back to her. Only after a long while did she remember her desperate flight, and getting shot with the arrow, and then the ocean taking her in its grasp and pulling her back.
Am I dead? She didn't voice the question, for she had no physical voice at that time. Nor, as she continued to glance around at the seemingly endless plain of gray swirling mists, did she require an answer. She was not a part of her corporeal body, she realized, and to her understanding, that could only mean one thing.
It occurred to her then that she might soon become a shadow in an Oracle mirror - in her son's perhaps. Maybe this was the answer; maybe in death, Pony could reach misguided Aydrian in ways that never manifested to her in life.
Is this it? her thoughts cried out again. Am I dead? Elbryan! Go back, came an answer in the woman's thoughts, and though it was not the sound of physical words, it was a "voice" that Pony recognized.
It was Elbryan! She knew that it had to be Elbryan! And then she saw him, or rather, felt his presence, and though there was no physicality to any of this, she knew that he was there, not far from her, standing, or hovering, before her.
Elbryan, her thoughts reached out to him. Oh, my love! I am so weary.
Pony willed her spirit forward, looking to embrace him, soul to soul. But as she approached, he retreated.
Go back! came the plaintive cry in her head. You cannot be here. Not now! You cannot forsake our son when his hour of need approaches! Pony halted her movement, and she knew that if she possessed a physical jaw at that moment, it surely would have been hanging open.
Go back! Elbryan, do not chase me away! Go back! Aydrian is beyond me, beyond all the world. There is nothing - Go