The night was so dark that when she opened her eyes, she was not certain that she had. Or perhaps, if her eyes were indeed open once more, she had passed from the world she had known to a place of darkness, a place of shadows - to a place that did not know the light of life.
She closed her eyes once more and consciously tuned herself in to the sensations about her: the cold, wet clay beneath her face and bare arms; the numbness in her legs; the dull ache that permeated her side; the hot fire of pain burning brightly in her belly. She knew at once that she was very near to death, for a coldness crept up her legs, one so profound that it seemed as if her flesh was disappearing beneath its deathly touch.
She tried to lift her head, but could not. She wanted to turn to the side, to get the cold, gritty clay away from her mouth, but she could not.
She wondered then why she had stirred, why death had not simply taken her in her unconscious state.
She got jostled - again, she realized - by something hard pushing against her shoulder.
With tremendous effort, Pony slid her head along the clay enough to change her angle of view. At first she saw nothing except the darkness, but gradually, she made out a darker silhouette.
She got pushed again.
A horse's hoof.
"Symphony?" the woman mouthed, but silently, for she had not the strength to draw enough breath for audible words. She saw the silhouette rear up and kick its forelegs, and she felt the connection, intimate through the powers of the turquoise gemstone that Brother Avelyn had set into Symphony's breast.
"Symphony," she said again, this time whispering through the sand.
The horse nickered and pawed the ground anxiously, prompting her to movement.
But Pony had not the strength.
More insistent, Symphony pushed at her again, shifting her to the side.
Waves of pain rolled up and down her side, but with them came the sensation of feeling, at least, a temporary reprieve from death. Pony wasn't sure that she wanted that reprieve, though. Wouldn't it be easier just to close her eyes and let the nether realm take her? To go to Elbryan? To escape the pain of goblin spears and the more profound agony that was Aydrian? For there before her, hovering like a black wall against her willpower, against her very instinct to survive, was the specter of Aydrian, the mark of true despair. She had seen his power and the blackness within his heart. In looking into his blue eyes - so much akin to her own - Pony had understood the waste of what might have been and the terror of what he had become. She could not defeat him, nor could she bear to watch his rise.
And in the end, for her, there would be only death.
Symphony whinnied and stomped at the ground. The stallion pranced about Pony, snorted with every stride, kicking and bucking insistently. The sheer power of the old horse brought Pony forth from the dark contemplations, made her instead regard the resilience and determination that was Symphony.
In light of that, the broken woman was surely shamed.
In light of that, Pony suddenly felt foolish, lying there in the muddy clay awaiting death with a healing stone somewhere nearby! She brought her hands up by the sides of her chest and tried to lift herself up. But it was too late, she was too far gone, and she fell back to the mud.
"Symphony," she whispered.
The horse moved very near to her and bent his head down, his lips nibbling at her ear and hair.
"Gemstone," Pony tried to say, but more important than the word that would hardly come, the woman projected her thoughts at the stallion, calling for the hematite, trying to make him understand.
But such communication was not possible without the soul stone, she knew.
Stubbornly, Pony considered Oracle, the gift Andacanavar had given to her so that she could reach out for Elbryan's spirit. She had not used the meditative process nearly enough over the last few years. Instead of finding a connection to Elbryan at those times when she sat in front of the darkened mirror, Pony had found only despair at the stinging pain of her loss. But now she went there, fell into that meditative state as surely as if she were sitting in a dimly lit room, staring into a mirror.
She felt a presence about her, the shadow in the mirror.
Symphony sensed it, too, she knew, from the way in which the horse began snorting and pawing again, obviously agitated.
Pony sent her thoughts forth again, to the shadow that she knew was Elbryan. She replayed the goblin battle, from the time she had begun splashing across the lake, but she was watching it from a different perspective, as if she was looking on at her own actions from the side.
She had been holding the soul stone at the pause in the middle of the pond, obviously, for there she had gone south and north, possessing the goblins and turning them against each other. And then she had come out on the bank, to face the charge from the south, and she had thrown her blanket at the goblin and had dived to the sand at the feet of a charging goblin... A moment later, Symphony leaped about and rushed away. Exhausted, the shadow fast dissipating, Pony slumped back into the mud and closed her eyes. She heard some splashing, and then some more a bit later, and followed Symphony's snorts along the bank to the south.
But the cold and empty darkness invited her... A rough push against her shoulder roused Pony once more a few moments later. She resisted the call, and got pushed again and then a third time by the insistent and indomitable stallion. Finally, she opened her eyes, to see a small piece of deeper blackness upon the ground right before her face. With a grunt and a sudden burst, Pony brought her hand up over that spot, over the soul stone.
She ran away from the inviting cold, and into the warm gray swirl of the hematite, freeing her spirit from the weariness and the pain. She felt something full of strength move up against her hand and hardly recognized it as Symphony's leg. But she pressed against it instinctively, the soul stone set firmly between her cold and half-numb hand and the great stallion's hoof.
Her spirit found the fugue area between those two corporeal forms, connecting with Symphony. She understood then what the stallion was offering, but her generous spirit instinctively recoiled.
Symphony pressed in closer and gave a great and insistent cry into the dark night.
Pony joined with his spirit, and pulled back strength from his spirit, infusing herself with the power of the horse. She instinctively recoiled, knowing that this was among the most profane types of possession, which in itself struck her as horrible. But Symphony wouldn't let her go. She recognized that the horse understood what she was doing and willingly lent her part of his own life force.
Energized, the woman reached down to her wound and put the healing powers of the gemstone to work.
Like warm water, the waves of healing magic cascaded down across the prone woman, filling her with warmth and relief from the pain. Soon after, those areas that had long ago gone numb from the wounds began to tingle with renewed life.
As all of this went along, another sort of healing found its way, quite unexpectedly, into a different part of Pony, into the most profoundly wounded element of the woman: her heart. She lay there in the muddy clay, keeping her energies rolling through the gemstone, transforming into magical healing, but focusing her thoughts on the unexpected events that had led her to this point. She remembered again the fight against the demon-possessed Markwart on the field outside of Palmaris. She had been beaten, and surely would have died without rescue by Dasslerond's elves.
That was when she had lost Aydrian to the Touel'alfar.
The woman managed to roll over then, to get her face out of the mud. She lay on her back, staring up at the stars, and then she saw... The Halo.
Pony's heart leaped at the multicolored rings, as if her spirit were reaching for them. She remembered a day long ago, when she and Elbryan were but children, rushing out of Dundalis up the northern slope. They had glanced back to see this same magical sight. This was the source of the gemstones, and seemed to her so perfect a gift from God. She felt such a connection here, between memory and present thought, between her spirit and those of ones who had passed from this life before her. That ring told Pony that Elbryan was with her still, that the song of Nightbird lived on in more than just her own memories. It resonated in the trees and the birds, and in all that Elbryan had touched. It floated on the evening breeze as surely as Bradwarden's haunting melody.
A great sense of calm came over her, as profound a relief to her soul as the waves of healing magic had been to her body. She did not try to halt the tears spilling out of her eyes as she lay there viewing the corona, as she felt her spirit touching that of Elbryan.
He was there with her - she could feel it so keenly! He stood beside her; he had helped to guide Symphony to her! And he was telling her something.
Pony thought back to the day of King Danube's death. She looked past the shock of the moment, past the horror of seeing the ghost of Constance Pemblebury, past the terror of watching her husband get pulled down to his death, past the sudden and brutal shock of the recognition of the son she did not know she had. In that moment in the mud, looking up at the corona, feeling the love of Elbryan all about her, Pony sought a different perspective. She forced away her rage at Lady Dasslerond and instead whispered a thanks to Dasslerond and the elves for saving her life and for saving Aydrian. She forced away the pain and resentment, pushed past her fear of the monster Dasslerond had created, and looked at Aydrian in a new context. He was her son. He was in great pain.
Great pain had brought him to this pinnacle of disaster. Great pain had fostered his resentment toward his mother. Great pain and Marcalo De'Unnero.
Pony let go of that name, as well, as soon as it had occurred to her. She had no room for rage at that moment.
And perhaps it was more than De'Unnero, the woman pondered, and a shiver ran up her spine. She considered again the circumstance under which she had lost Aydrian, in the midst of a spiritual battle with Father Abbot Markwart and with a creature quite beyond the scope of the frail old monk.
For the first time in so long, Pony felt that old spirit rising within her, the same fires that had carried her to Mount Aida to battle the dactyl demon, the same fires that had sustained her through her ordeal at the hands of Markwart and the loss of so many she had loved, the same fires that had bolstered her courage throughout the rosy plague and shown her the truth of community and the way to the shrine of Avelyn.
She considered Aydrian again, and the errant monster he had become, and she admitted to herself that she did not have the heart to fight against her own son.
But Pony pushed past that, and confirmed within her heart that she did indeed have the heart to battle Marcalo De'Unnero.
Without further ado, with the name of the false and discredited monk filling her body with determination, the woman pulled herself from the ground and moved beside the patient Symphony. She stroked the horse's face lovingly, communicating her gratitude, then brought her face up against the side of the great stallion's neck, feeling his warmth. With a whisper in his ear for him to take her home, Pony climbed up on Symphony's back and took hold of the thick black mane.
Off leaped the horse, running as no other animal in all the world could run.
He carried her tirelessly across the Moorlands and into the forests where the leaves had fallen thick upon the paths. He charged up every hillside and gracefully and carefully descended the back slopes, moving ever eastward.
In short days, Symphony galloped through fields of caribou moss, like white powder rising up the stallion's hooves and muffling the sound of Symphony's thunderous passage, and when she recognized the rolling moss- strewn fields about her, Pony knew that she was almost home.
She leaned forward over the horse and whispered a new instruction, and Symphony knew her desire and certainly knew the way. One day about twilight, the horse pulled up near a diamond-shaped grove.
Pony slid down, only then realizing that the song of Bradwarden was thick in the air about her, blending, as always, with the harmonies of nature.
Bolstered by the music, and by the presence she felt in this special place, the woman moved into the copse of trees, to a place before two stone cairns.
"I'll bring back your sword, Mather Wyndon," she promised. "And Hawk-wing for you, my love. All that we worked to achieve will not be lost in the wayward designs of our son."
"Yer words're music sweeter'n anything me pipes have ever blowed," came the voice of Bradwarden behind her.
Pony smiled and turned about.
"Ye seen the elf lady?" the centaur asked.
"Dasslerond and I did not part as friends," Pony admitted. "But we are allies in this, of circumstance and not choice."
"Ye put yerself out to fix the errors o' the Touel'alfar?"
Pony gave a resigned little shrug. "Someone has to."
The centaur broke into a great bellylaugh then. "And once again, it falls to yerself. Ah, but what a life ye've known, Pony o' Dundalis! Pony who fought the demon in its hole, and fought it again in the body o' Markwart."
"And who might yet do battle with Bestesbulzibar," the woman said solemnly, and Bradwarden stopped his laughing and stared at her curiously.
"Prince Midalis will need me," the woman went on, not wanting to elaborate upon her fears at that time. "And now that Symphony has returned to me, I will find him."
"Ye can be thanking meself and Roger for springing that one from the stables o' yer greedy little son," the centaur remarked.
"There are no stables suitable for Symphony beyond the wide, unfenced fields of the world."
"True enough." Bradwarden let the conversation die for a moment, as Pony turned back to stare at the cairn of her beloved Elbryan. A profound sense of relief splayed across her beautiful face, as if her recent ordeal had shown her the truth of her life now, and of her duty.
And it seemed to the centaur, that it was a duty she was ready to meet.
"Ye're to ride out in the spring for Vanguard then?"
Pony turned back, shaking her head. "There can be no delay. I will ride into Dundalis this night and be on the road to Prince Midalis by mid- morning. "
"Yell be running against the winter," the centaur warned.
"As Symphony does every winter."
"True enough," the centaur admitted. "And it's not like I'm needing any warm bed, for I ain't found one yet that'll hold me!"
Pony's quizzical expression fast shifted to one of gratitude as she realized that Bradwarden meant to go with her every step of the way, and that nothing she could possibly say would dissuade her loyal friend from walking the road to war beside her.
"Ye don't be goin' in the morning, though," Bradwarden said to her. "Ye spend the day with yer friend Dainsey. She's frightfully worried about her Roger, and she's needin' ye now, I'm thinking."
"Roger?" Pony asked with sudden alarm.
"He went with meself to get Symphony from yer son," the centaur explained, and he didn't seem overly worried. "He come out o' the city, but turned back. Seems our friend Braumin's got himself caught by Aydrian and De'Unnero, and Roger's set on getting him free."
Pony spent a moment digesting that, and the feeling of dread returned to her tenfold. She trusted in Roger - he was resourceful and clever. But he was no match for Marcalo De'Unnero! And neither was Braumin Herde.
Pony almost shifted her thinking then, almost broke and declared that she would ride for Palmaris. But she knew that her duty was to a greater cause than her personal friendships. As with the ride to the Barbacan to battle the demon incarnate, her duty now was to Honce-the-Bear, was to the society of man. Her course led north and east, to Midalis, and so she would put any of her personal needs aside and trust in her friends and follow that road.
She found Dainsey in Fellowship Way, staying with Belster - who seemed much improved now after Pony's healing session. The bloom of life had returned to the large man's cheeks as the strength had returned to his legs. She found him behind the bar, tending to the many patrons, and he cried a river of tears when she appeared before him, and rushed about the bar to crush her in a hug as great as any father had ever wrapped about his daughter.
His mirth did diminish when she asked about Dainsey.
"She's in the back, worrying for her Roger."
Pony pulled back from Belster, who nodded as he let go of her, then she slipped behind the bar and down the small corridor to the door of Dainsey's room.
She knocked softly, and when she got no reply, she gently pushed the door open. Dainsey sat in a chair by the window, looking out into the dark night.
Pony crouched beside her, and it wasn't until she put a hand on Dainsey's shoulder that the woman even seemed to notice her. Dainsey turned and leaned into Pony's inviting hug.
"It's always a fight, ain't it?" Dainsey said. "Always one finding ye even if ye don't go lookin'."
"Roger does seem to find his battles," Pony agreed, but her tone was much more lighthearted than Dainsey's somber and fearful voice. "Not many have to come to him."
That remark seemed to cheer Dainsey up a bit.
"No friend of Roger ever needs ask for help," Pony went on. "Remember those days when you and he would come to visit me in Castle Ursal? Every look the snooty nobles offered my way was met by a look of challenge from Roger Lockless."
"Aye, and though they were knights all and trained in the ways of battle, and though their armor alone outweighed me Roger, if it'd come to blows..."
"The noblemen would have spent many hours on the ground," Pony finished for her, and now Dainsey did share her smile.
"He's after Braumin."
"So Bradwarden has told me," Pony answered.
"He's got the wretch De'Unnero between him and the bishop."
"Pity De'Unnero then," said Pony.
She stayed with Dainsey for several hours before retiring to her own room. She slept late - later than she had intended - but when she woke, she found Belster and Dainsey waiting for her, saddlebags full of supplies on the table before them.
"I spoke with Bradwarden last night," Belster explained. "We know yer road."
"We're all needin' ye now," Dainsey agreed.
An hour later, Symphony carried Pony out of Dundalis, with Bradwarden charging along beside them.
Vanguard was a long ride, and winter's bite was thick in the air.
But that was nothing compared to the enemy they would face soon enough, all three understood, and so they feared not the discomforts of the road.
For Pony, there were only the defeat of De'Unnero, the restoration of the crown, and the rescue of her son.
