'So Belli'mar Juraviel has told me, and so I believe,' Dasslerond said.
'But I did not come to you to speak of the sword dance,' Pony went on, feeling the tug of her magic and fearing that exhaustion would overtake her and send her careening back to Dundalis-if that's where her physical form remained. 'Our lands are thick with a disease, the rosy plague.'
'This is known to me.'
'You and your people have battled this disease before,' Pony reasoned, 'or at least, you have watched the humans battle against it.'
Dasslerond nodded.
'Then tell me how to fight it,' Pony pleaded hopefully. 'Show me the wisdom of the ages, that I might bring some hope to a world grown dark!'
Dasslerond's expression dropped, and with it, Pony's hopes. 'That wisdom is already known to the Abellican brothers and to your King,' she explained.
'To hide?'
'Indeed.'
'As you and your people will hide? '
'Indeed,' said the lady of Caer'alfar. 'This plague is the affair of humans, and we intend to keep it that way.' Pony's expression hardened into a sneer, but Dasslerond continued undeterred. 'We are not numer ous,' she explained, 'nor do we procreate quickly. If the rosy plague tounc us in our home, it could destroy all that is left of the Touel'alfar. I canno take that chance, whatever the cost to the humans.'
Pony bit her lip-and felt the physical sensation as it she were indee corporeal. 'This I will give you, and only this,' Dasslerond went on, and she reached her other hand out from within her robes, showing a parchment to Pony. She let go of the parchment and gave a gentle puff, and it floated across the expanse on magical winds into Pony's waiting hands.
'A poultice and a syrup,' the lady of Caer'alfar explained. 'They will not cure the plague-nothing that I know of in all the world will do that-but they will bring some relief to, and extend the life of, those afflicted.'
Pony glanced down at the parchment, recognizing some names of herbs and other plants. 'Why were these mixtures not known before? ' she asked.
'They were,' Dasslerond replied, 'in the time of the last plague. The memory of Man is not long, I fear.'
Pony glanced down at the parchment again, not knowing if it would return with her to Dundalis and wanting to remember well the recipes.
'That is all I can do,' Lady Dasslerond said suddenly, drawing Pony's attention back. 'You must now leave from this place. Perhaps we will survive this time, and if so, then perhaps we will meet again. Farewell, Jilseponie Wyndon.' And she held up her hand and that sparkling emerald gemstone.
Pony held up her hand, as well, trying to make the lady pause long enough for her to commit the recipes to memory; but then, suddenly, she felt the waves of emerald magic and she was flying, flying, across the miles, soaring faster than the wind out of the mountains, away from Lady Dasslerond's secret domain and back to her own room in Fellowship Way in Dundalis.
She was there for just a moment, in body and in spirit, and then, overwhelmed by magical exhaustion, as if Dasslerond had somehow tapped into her own energies to bring about the more complete physical teleportation, she collapsed into unconsciousness.
Belli'mar Juraviel was waiting for Lady Dasslerond just beneath the opaque veil of mist. He nodded his approval and his thanks, for in truth, he had little idea of how sternly Dasslerond would treat their uninvited guest.
'You wanted to tell her,' he remarked slyly.
Dasslerond fixed him with a puzzled expression.
'About her child,' Juraviel said with a hopeful smile.
But that grin could not survive Dasslerond's ensuing glower. 'Not at all,' the lady said determinedly, and Juraviel knew that his hopes and his guess were misplaced.
'She has no child,' Lady Dasslerond added; and she walked past, back down to the world of the Touel'alfar.
Belli'mar Juraviel stood on the mountain slope for a long, long while, wounded by the unyielding coldness of his lady. He had thought that he had found a chink in her armor, a weak link in her great coat woven of duty; but he knew now that he was wrong. He thought of the young ranger in training, Aydrian, and wondered if the boy would ever know the truth of his mother or that she was still very much alive.
'Aydrian,' Juraviel said aloud, an elvish title that meant 'lord of the skies,' or 'eagle.' Lady Dasslerond had allowed Juraviel finally to name the boy, and had approved of his lofty choice wholeheartedly-yet another signal to Juraviel that Lady Dasslerond thought this young lad could aspire to the epitome of the profession, could become the perfect ranger. Only one other ranger in the history of the training had been given the title Aydrian, the very first ranger ever trained in Andur'Blough Inninness.
That ranger had gone on to live a long, though fairly uneventful, life; and since that time, no one had ever presumed to give the name to another young trainee.
But this one was different. Very different and very special.
Juraviel just wished that Dasslerond would involve Jilseponie with the lad, for her sake and, more important, for the sake of the child.
When Pony awoke, she found, to her relief, that it had not all been a dream; for in her hand she held the parchment given her by Lad;
Dasslerond. She didn't understand the magic that had worked the physica transportation of her corporeal body-or at least some of it-and then o the parchment.
But that was a question for another day, for a day when the rosy plagu was beaten. She still had no solution, no cure, but at least she had a weapo; now. She looked down at the parchment and nodded her relief to find ths neither the poultice nor the syrup required any ingredients that could nc be readily found. It also struck her that many of the ingredients wei flowers, including many of those commonly found in the monks' tussti mussie beds. Perhaps there was something to those old tales of posies ar the like.
Armed with her parchment, Pony rushed downstairs, to find that it w morning again, and late morning at that.
'I thought ye'd sleep the whole of the day away,' Belster remarked, ai the grim edge to his voice told Pony of his deeper fears: that this time, t rosy plague had caught her.
'Gather your friends,' Pony said, scampering over to the bar and placi the parchment before the startled innkeeper. 'We need to collect all th‹ things and put them together quickly.'
'Where'dyegetthis?'
'From a friend,' Pony replied, 'one who visited me in the night, and (we can trust.'
Belster looked down at the beautiful script on the page, and, though could barely read, the delicate lines of calligraphy certainly gave him sc indication of who that nighttime visitor might have been. 'Will it work? 'he asked.
'It will help,' Pony answered. 'Now be off and be quick. And find one who can scribe copies, that we might send them to the south!'
Later that same afternoon, Pony knelt beside the bed of Jonno Drinks. She had lathered his emaciated, racked body with the poultice and had spooned several large doses of the syrup into him. And now she had her soul stone in hand, ready to go in and do battle with her newest allies beside her.
She found the plague waiting for her, like some crouched demon, wounded by the elven medicines. But that wound only seemed to make the tiny plague demons even more vicious in their counterattack, and Pony soon found herself slouched on the floor, overwhelmed and exhausted.
Jonno Drinks was resting more comfortably, it seemed, but Pony knew that she had done little to defeat the plague, that she and her elven-made allies might have bought the poor man a little comfort and a little time, but nothing more.
Still, she went at the plague again the next day, and the next after that, fighting with all her strength, again trying various gemstone combinations.
Jonno Drinks was dead within the week, leaving Pony frustrated and feeling very small indeed.
