That comment stung Pony and she turned fiercely.
"I'm not sayin' ye shouldn't be," Belster explained. "I'm just askin' so ye can get it clear in yer own head. Ye got one lookin' for healin', and needin' yer healin', and ye got the healin', but are ye to tend only those ye're thinkin' deservin'?"
"I cut them just to fix them? " Pony asked.
Belster gave a shrug.
He wouldn't commit to an answer, but the question alone had given her his opinion of the matter, of course, had held a mirror up before Pony's anger so that she could clearly see that growling expression upon her own face.
She had the power now of life or death over Seano, and over so many. The gemstone, the gift of God, bestowed that upon her, and thus was she to play in the role of God, as judge of the man and all the others? She nearly laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, but she went for her soul stone and moved close to Seano.
Before she fell into the magic of the gem, she looked the man straight in the eye and promised coldly, "If ever you try to steal from me again or to hurt me or any of my friends or any other innocent person, I will hunt you down and we will replay this fight. My gemstone cannot attach a severed hand, nor, I promise you, can it attach a severed head."
Pony went into the stone and sealed up the blubbering Seano's wound in short order.
"What say you, Juraviel? " she called to the boughs. "Would the Touel'alfar have shown such mercy? "
"The Touel'alfar would have properly finished the job in the first place," came the answer of a melodic, and most welcome, voice. "A thrust through the heart, perhaps, and certainly nothing as messy as you have shown.
"The third archer has long fled," the still-unseen elf informed her. "Have Belster send this fool along down the south road, and then you come out into the forest to the north, that we might speak privately."
Pony looked plaintively at Belster.
"Must have somethin' important to tell ye, then," the innkeeper remarked, and he moved for Seano Bellick. "Come on, ye great feeder of the pig. Get ye back to Caer Tinella, where ye can tell 'em all that ye met with Pony, and met with disaster. Aye, that's the way of it, ye met with the disaster named Pony.'"
"Well put," Pony remarked sarcastically, and she walked northward, as Belster half walked and half carried the shocked Seano south.
"Did I do well, then?" Pony asked Juraviel when she finally spotted the elusive elf siting on a bare branch a dozen feet off the ground.
"In fighting or in healing? " Juraviel asked.
"Both."
"If that clumsy thug gave you any trouble in battle, then surely I would have questioned Nightbird's sanity in ever teaching you bi'nolle dasada," the elf replied. Even as he spoke the words. Pony noted that there was indeed some strain behind his jovial facade. "In healing him, you did as I knew you would."
"What would Belli'mar Juraviel have done?" Pony asked.
"I would have killed him cleanly in the first place, as I said," the elf answered matter-of-factly, with that cold and calm pragmatism that almost always crept into the thinking of any of the unforgiving Touel'alfar.
"But if you did not," Pony pressed, "if you found yourself in the same situation as I just faced, would you have tended his wound? "
Belli'mar Juraviel spent a long while honestly considering the question. Certainly many of his kin, Lady Dasslerond among them, would have let the man die-elves showed no mercy to any n'Touel'alfar whose actions labeled them as enemies. "I would have been sorely disappointed in you if you had let the fool die," was all the answer that Juraviel would give. "And so would you, a profound failing within yourself, a clear contradiction of that which you are, one that would have haunted you for all your days."
It was Pony's turn to pause and reflect, and she found herself nodding her agreement, glad indeed that she had not let Seano die. "Are you to sit up there all the night?" she asked suddenly. "Or are you to come down here and give an old friend a hug she sorely needs? "
How Belli'mar Juraviel wanted to go to her and do just that! He even started propping himself off of the branch. But two words, rosy plague, echoed in his mind. He had no idea, of course, if there really was such a plague beginning in the human lands, had no evidence except for rumors coming from an unknown source about some problems far in the southland.
But for Belli'mar Juraviel, this moment sang out to him as another critical choice in his life's course. If there was a plague, and Pony had contracted it, and, in going to her, Juraviel brought it upon himself, then what would happen to Andur'Blough Inninness? Could the elven population, so tiny, survive such a plague?
Belli'mar Juraviel weighed the odds that Pony was so infected, and they seemed long indeed. Very long. But he was Touel'alfar, and she was not. It came down to something as simple as that.
And there was one other thing that Belli'mar knew, whether he admitted it to himself or not: if he went down to Pony and hugged her, if he allowed himself to recognize the deep and abiding friendship between them, the love that had bound him to the sides of Elbryan and Pony all the way to the dungeons of St.-Mere-Abelle and back, then how could he not tell this woman of the child now living in Andur'Blough Inninness? Her child, Elbryan's child.
"You have a soul stone," he remarked suddenly, needing to change the subject. "Where are your others?"
Pony shrugged. "I hardly care," she said honestly. "Nor is the Church overly concerned. More gemstones will find their way out of the abbey coffers."
"You have heard this?" Juraviel asked, and he truly wanted to know. If the magical gemstones began flowing out of the various abbeys, the implications to the Touel'alfar could be significant and dire.
"I sense it," Pony answered. "The era of Markwart, and the centuries of policies that led to the creation of such an animal as he, has ended, and the era of Avelyn will soon begin."
"You believe that Avelyn would be careless with the stones? "
"I believe that Avelyn would put them where they could do the most good," Pony answered confidently. "As he did with the turquoise he gave to Symphony, to heighten the bond between the horse and Elbryan."
Juraviel let it go at that, understanding Pony's mind in this, and knowing that any further answers from her would be nothing more than conjecture. Juraviel understood, and was even a bit envious, of the motivations behind those avowed followers of Avelyn: a generosity and clear mission to make all the world a better place. But Juraviel was more pragmatic and realistic than to believe that their plans would be realized so easily. The gemstones were power, pure and simple, and letting that kind of power out into the world could have many more disastrous side effects than those people blinded by compassion could ever foresee.
Humans did not live a long time, Juraviel reminded himself. They considered a mere century as more than a lifetime, and so they often acted shortsightedly; humans would do that which helped immediate situations, often to disastrous effect for future generations.
But Belli'mar Juraviel was not human; he was Touel'alfar and had seen the birth and death of several centuries. Pony's words now only strengthened the elf's feelings on that which he had to do and made Juraviel wonder honestly if Lady Dasslerond hadn't foreseen this impending change in Church policy.
"I tell you this last thing because I am your friend," Juraviel said. "Understand well the gift that Nightbird gave to you; it is, among my people, as high an honor as can be bestowed."
"Bi'nelle dasada," Pony reasoned a moment later.
"It was not his to give," Juraviel explained. "And he should not have done so, not even to you, without Lady Dasslerond's permission."
Pony didn't even begin to know how to answer that surprising remark.