The weather had cooperated wonderfully, and with his magical gemstones, Aydrian could light a fire on the wettest wood with ease. Those gemstones had made the trails so much easier, as well, for whenever they came upon a difficult obstacle along the road, Aydrian simply took out his malachite and used its levitational powers to take even the largest wagons across.
Thus the army out of Palmaris had made great progress out into the Wilderlands, crossing the frozen Moorlands without incident and moving up into the mountains. They all suspected that they were getting close to this strange enemy, the Touel'alfar - a fact confirmed that very night when whispering comments filtered throughout the encampment, melodic voices bidding them to "turn back," warning them to "go away, go home."
More than a few of the Kingsmen were unnerved by the ghostly whispers, but Aydrian wandered throughout the camp, full of enthusiasm, telling his men that the mere presence of the elven voices confirmed that they were drawing near to their goal.
"They try to scare us away," he explained, "because they know that they cannot beat us in the field. When we find Andur'Blough Inninness, as we soon will, the Touel'alfar will have to flee or die!"
Bolstered by his words and supreme confidence, the soldiers began shouting back threats and shaking their fists at those wind-carried whispers.
Convinced that the men were back in line, Aydrian went to his own tent, securing a pair of guards at the entrance and three others strategically placed around the sides. Inside, the young king lit no candle, but rather, sat in the darkness, clutching his soul stone. The elves were near! His spirit walked out of his body a moment later, drifting through the encampment and tuning in to the whispers on the wind. Soon after, he found a group of Touel'alfar in a copse of trees in a shallow dell a few hundred yards to the north. They were in the branches, mostly, some alone, others sitting in pairs, and with all of them whispering.
Aydrian knew their tricks; the elves could magically throw their voices, could weave a net of sound or the absence of sound by the very timbre of their song.
He could be out here with a fraction of his army and send them all running, he knew, and he intended to do just that. But then, as his spirit was moving to depart, Aydrian noticed a familiar face among the elves, the only one who had truly befriended him those years ago when he was a ranger-in-training.
Belli'mar Juraviel.
The last time he had seen Juraviel, the elf was setting out on the road to the south with Brynn Dharielle. Apparently, after helping Brynn gain her throne in To-gai, Juraviel had returned.
Aydrian was sorry of that. Of all the Touel'alfar, he felt friendship with only this one, and he didn't want to be forced into destroying Juraviel with the rest of them.
But so be it.
His spirit soared back to his encampment and his waiting corporeal body, then a moment later, he burst outside. "I need our hundred best soldiers ready to march with me immediately," he told the guards at his tent flap.
"Be quick to your Allheart leaders and see to it!"
The two men rushed off.
Aydrian looked to the dark north, a smile growing on his handsome and strong face. "First contact," he whispered. "First victory."
"They are well-schooled and disciplined," Juraviel said to Cazzira as they sat together on the low boughs of a tree. "I would have expected no less of a force led by Aydrian."
"Why is he coming?" Cazzira asked, and it was not the first time. "If these humans are as deserving as you have told my people from the beginning, then why has young Aydrian betrayed the trust of the Tylwyn Tou?"
Belli'mar Juraviel looked away, his expression grim. Dasslerond had told him of her last encounter with the young ranger, of Aydrian's magical assault that had nearly left her dead. She had known that he would return - which was why she had honestly bid Jilseponie to help her to fight the young king - and so this marching force had not been wholly unexpected.
Juraviel had led a sizable force of Touel'alfar out of Andur'Blough Inninness then, moving to shadow the approaching army, using the elven song to try to dissuade some soldiers.
It wasn't working.
"Blynnie Sennanil has them in sight," came the call of another elf from the base of the tree, and the pair looked down. "At your word, she and her archers will begin punctuating our warning with arrows.' For Juraviel, this order was about as difficult as any he had ever issued. On this point, though, Lady Dasslerond had been uncompromising; if the humans couldn't be persuaded to leave by magically enhanced whispers on the night breeze, then Juraviel was to strike terror into their ranks, stinging them in the dark, killing them as they slept.
He hesitated only long enough to remind himself of Dasslerond's expression when she had sent him out, one that left no doubts in his mind, as there were obviously none in hers, that Aydrian would indeed find his way to Andur'Blough Inninness, and that Aydrian meant to destroy it.
"At her discretion," Juraviel replied, and the elf below disappeared into the shadows.
"Perhaps someday you will find it in your heart to answer me," Cazzira remarked when Juraviel turned back to her.
Her tone and look stung Juraviel's heart. "Perhaps someday I will better understand why young Aydrian is so removed from the hearts of his father and his mother," he answered, putting a gentle hand on Cazzira's delicate fingers. "Nightbird was as great a human as I have ever known, and Jilseponie proved to be a worthy companion for him."
"You have never spoken of either with anything less than sincere admiration," Cazzira agreed. "But what of Aydrian? How is it that he, raised in the shadows of your valley, has turned so wrong?"
"It may be precisely that," Juraviel replied. "I do not believe that we were wise in bringing the baby Aydrian into our care that dark night on the field outside of the human city of Palmaris. Does a child not belong with its mother?"
"All ill has come from it," Cazzira agreed. "Jilseponie hates you, and Aydrian hates you.
Powerful enemies." "Jilseponie is wounded and disappointed, but she is no enemy," Juraviel insisted.
"And Aydrian?"
"He is angry, and he is misguided - more so than I ever would have believed possible."
"They will not leave," Cazzira observed. "We will be forced to fight them."
That did not seem like a welcome option to Belli'mar Juraviel.
Cazzira shuddered then, suddenly, her dark eyes going wide as she glanced all about.
"What is it?" Juraviel asked, coming on his guard.
"A coldness," the Doc'alfar female replied. "I do not know. Something passed us, much like the sensation of the spirit departing the human bodies when we offer them to the bog."
Juraviel, too, glanced all around nervously, trusting Cazzira's senses, though he knew not what she meant. A moment later, they locked stares.
"I know not," Cazzira said again.
They marched in hard toward the copse, with Aydrian out front and leading the way, and with Sadye right beside him, playing a rousing song on her lute, the music lifting the spirits of the men all about their king.
"Touel'alfar!" Aydrian cried. "I will see your Lady Dasslerond!"
When no answer came forth, the young king lifted his hand toward the left side of the small and fairly contained grouping of trees and sent forth a burst of brilliant, stinging lightning. He shifted right immediately and fired again, singeing the trees and lighting several boughs.
He brought his free hand up behind him and waved left and right, and his disciplined force broke both ways, rushing to encircle the trees around both sides.
Aydrian strode forward powerfully. "Now, I demand!" he shouted. "Or I shall tear your precious valley down around you!"
A score of small arrows whistled out of the trees, every one slashing unerringly toward the young King. Aydrian didn't flinch, other than to grab Sadye and pull her defensively behind him. He knew the designs of the Touel'alfar and understood that all of those arrows would be tipped with silverel. He reached into the magical gemstones set in the chest plate of his magnificent armor and brought forth a wave of magnetic energy that turned the bolts as surely as any shield.
And then he reached out again with his graphite and loosed a series of devastating lightning strokes that cut searing lines through the trees.
And then he shouted out for a charge, and his soldiers rushed the copse, waving swords and spears.
Arrows reached out at the charging soldiers, and several fell clutching devastating wounds.
In front of the trees, Aydrian watched closely, marking the source of an arrow and responding with a lightning blast that threw the poor elf out the other side, dropping her charred form to the ground.
"By god," Sadye whispered, her mouth agape. "Aydrian... this is..."
He wasn't even listening. He charged straight in behind that last blast of sizzling energy, bringing forth his magnetic lodestone shield and a second, bluish white glowing energy about his body.
He heard a cry, and recognized Juraviel's voice, the elf telling his kin to run away.
Under the trees went Aydrian, reaching into a third stone, the ruby set on the pommel of Tempest, his wondrous sword. The fireball engulfed the central area of the copse and had most of the elves running, and had a few others tumbling from the boughs, their bodies aflame.
Aydrian scrambled out to the right, to see an elf faced off against one of his soldiers. The poor lumbering Kingsman strode forward and took a roundhouse swing that never came close to hitting. The elf skittered back out of reach, then came forward with sudden and devastating efficiency, driving his slender sword in through a seam in the man's armor.
As the man fell away, clutching a brutal wound, a smiling Aydrian took his place.
"And so we meet, traitor," said the elf, whom Aydrian recognized as Tes'ten Duv
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