merely smiled.
"You do," she accused. ?You keep speaking of the Behrenese in very hu-man terms, hoping that I will forget my hatred toward them and, it follows, hoping that I will abandon my course against them."
"Or perhaps I understand that if you do not come to understand the Behrenese, even the Chezru, even the Chezru Chieftain and his Yatols, as people of varying intelligence and desires, then your road will surely end as Ashwarawu's ended, in the bloody dirt."
Now it was Brynn's turn to stand and stare. ?Do you believe that I should abandon my road altogether? ? she asked after a long pause.
"I believe that you should continue to grow personally," the Jhesta Tu master replied. ?And when your heart tells you that it is time for you to go and decide your place in the world, among your own people or among the Behrenese, then you should go. Revelations ultimately come from within, not from without."
"Like your own journey to Ashwarawu's camp," Brynn remarked. ?Now that I have seen the Walk of Clouds, now that I have come to know what it is to be Jhesta Tu, your choice puzzles me even more. Why did you go out to the steppes?"
"Perhaps it was simply fate, or a silent command within from a god that I do not understand," the mystic answered. ?Or perhaps it was nothing but luck - and only time will tell us if that luck was good or bad." He ended with a chuckle and turned to leave, but Brynn grabbed him by the arm and forcefully turned him back around to face her.
"Do you believe that it was bad luck that you found me?"
Both became acutely aware of how close they were to each other. The tension between them had somewhat cooled since that uncomfortable day on the field below, but now it was there again, palpably. No," Pagonel answered. ?I could never believe that."
Brynn kissed him before he ever finished the sentence, and then they held each other there in the hallway for a long, long time.
Another unremarkable village," Cazzira remarked, standing on a ridge and looking down at a small collection of houses, ringed by stables.
"Then let me raze it and eat all the villagers, and its name will be long re-membered," Agradeleous offered, and both elves scowled at him, to which the dragon only sighed.
They had spent several weeks moving about the open and empty steppes with the dragon remaining in his bipedal form - except on occasional nights, when Agradeleous resumed his true and magnificent form and went out hunting, returning with stolen livestock or a wild horse or other things that both Juraviel and Cazzira thought it best not to ask him about.
The trio had encountered two villages previous to this one, and had spent time haunting the areas about them, eavesdropping on the conversa-tions of any who happened by. One such discussion, between a pair of el-derly women cleaning their laundry on stones at the side of a small stream had told of a revolt in a town not so far away, of how a Yatol and a Chezhou-Lei warrior had been slain, though now the town had been re-claimed by the Wraps, and was held more tightly than even before.
And this before them was that village, which Juraviel thought might prove not so unremarkable. Few warriors could slay a Chezhou-Lei warrior, he had come to believe.
But he knew one that could.
"You will remain here this night," he instructed Agradeleous.
"Unless I hear an oxen lowing on the grasses," the dragon replied.
"You feasted last night."
The dragon curled its mouth in a grinning reply.
"I ask you to remain here," Juraviel said firmly. ?If you cause any tumult on the grasses nearby, you will rouse the villagers."
Agradeleous' smile faded. ?I will stay," he agreed. ?Do you mean to go and listen in?"
"It would be wonderful if we could start finding some direction to our path," the elf replied, and at his side, Cazzira certainly did not disagree.
Later on, when the sun went down and the bright stars twinkled above, many people gathered in the village common room, talking animatedly. Just outside, huddled in the shadows beside a slightly opened window, Juraviel and Cazzira sat and listened, as silent as those shadows hiding them.
They heard many discussions about many things, most unrelated to any information they could use. They did hear some Behrenese soldiers boast-ing about a great battle, though.
"You will all learn your place, you Ru!" one cried out, the man