Bastion of Darkness Read online

  Ardaz, though, was thinking along slightly different lines. “Or her daughter,” the old wizard replied, and a hopeful smile widened on his wrinkled and hairy face.

  Arien’s heart soared with hope, too, but he had no more time to sit and ponder. He tightened the elven wedge and drove them hard to the south, ordering them to focus any attacks on talon enemies.

  Their first barrage blew great holes in the lines of advancing monsters, but the crews of the great trebuchets feared to launch their pitch balls now, with the undead so close, with melee soon to be joined, Calvan riders sweeping out from the skirmish line in tight formations. The artillerists looked farther back toward the mountains instead, and their attention was grabbed by the sight of Bellerian, high on the winged horse.

  Down he swooped, firing his bow, then up again as a wall of arrows rose up against him.

  “Oh, fine Bellerian,” one Calvan exclaimed.

  “Coordinate!” The cry came from King Benador, who had also noticed Bellerian and was riding hard now for the catapult line.

  The great arms creaked and heaved their loads, one after another, to the spot below Bellerian.

  The ranger moved Calamus far from harm’s way, and dipped his wings in salute to the artillerists even as the carnage erupted below him, the splattering pitch bombs scattering and burning the talon entrenchment.

  Few of the talons escaped that barrage, and none unscathed. One creature, limping, often crawling, for its legs had been badly burned, managed to get around a rocky wall before the second barrage thundered in. The creature made for that wall, thinking to put its back against it, thinking that it had reached safety.

  Head down, belly to the ground, the creature’s eyes widened when it saw the white legs of Calamus. It looked up in time to see Bellerian’s sword cutting down.

  The ranger lord wiped his sword on the dead talon’s tunic, then, satisfied that no others were about, he climbed the pegasus high into the sky once more, thinking to scout out another talon nest.

  Something else caught his attention, something he could not ignore.

  High atop the tallest tower of Talas-dun, Rhiannon heard the fighting, zombie against talon, raging in the courtyard. She went to the window and saw the carnage—dozens of undead pulling down talons, choking them—and she mused that with a thought she could increase her forces—her army—after every battle.

  They would need no supplies; any instructions would be imparted immediately to the whole of the force. Their numbers would only multiply, for those slain in combat could be brought back, along with those they killed. This was an army that could not be weakened by battle, an army that fed upon carnage. How beautiful it seemed to the young witch. How logical and efficient.

  She looked at the staff then, and was not repulsed, seeing it for the power and basking in that might. This was the promise of strength. This was the promise of victory. This was the instrument that could restore order to all the world, could free the goodly races forever from the horrors of war, even from the drudgery of menial tasks.

  Rhiannon looked again to the courtyard, saw another talon get buried under a swarm of zombies.

  Saw her army grow.

  “Me girl!”

  Rhiannon heard the call, heard the lie, coming from a faraway place, a horrid place.

  Avalon.

  “Me girl!” Now it was more insistent, more demanding. Always demanding. But now … Now, holding this staff, no one could make any demands of Rhiannon. She was the staff wielder; she would dictate.

  “Me girl!” The plaintive tone of the call this time shook her, and mocked her anger. She pictured the caller, her mother, standing in the forest that had been her home.

  That awful, horrid place.

  “No,” Rhiannon heard herself saying against the tide of images. No, Avalon was not like that, was not horrid, was more fair than any place in all the world.

  “Rhiannon,” Brielle called from across the miles, and across the greater vastness that now separated Rhiannon from the world, a chasm of consciousness. She was in a place of unreality, of fabrication, and now, suddenly, she understood the source.

  Rhiannon opened wide her eyes, saw again the fighting in the courtyard. But now she was not pleased by the brutality. She looked to the staff in her hands, the instrument of power, of perversion, and saw the truth.

  Morgan Thalasi stumbled into the room, his hollowed face torn from his fight with the zombies, his black eyes filled with outrage.

  But the young witch did not back down in the least.

  “Ye’re a damned thing, Morgan Thalasi,” she said firmly. “To have bringed such a thing as this into the sunlight.” With that, she grasped the staff tightly and summoned her power—her own power, and not that of the perverted item. A sheath of shining light encompassed her hand, and suddenly—and Rhiannon did not know how it came about—a globe of greenish light covered her body. Thalasi rushed at her.

  She gave a cry and tried to focus on the staff, but thought she was dead as the Black Warlock sprang at her—sprang at her and was repelled, sent flying across the room, by the green globe!

  Rhiannon knew then that her mother was with her, that she was not alone. Bolstered, she focused the energy on her hand, shaped it like a blade, and chopped down hard on the staff.

  A slight crack appeared along the black wood, and from it poured shadows—not insubstantial things, but living shadows: dark, huddled forms that crawled about the room.

  Again Rhiannon gave a cry, but the shadows ignored her altogether, rushing, swarming toward Thalasi, reaching for him with groping fingers.

  “Charon!” he cried with understanding. He had played a dangerous game with Death, and now, with the staff weakened and out of his hands, Death had come calling. The Black Warlock fought back furiously, loosed crackling bolts of black lightning that splintered stone and rebounded wildly. But the shadowy forms pressed on, encircling him, tightening the ring, grabbing at him from every angle.

  Rhiannon closed her eyes and worked hard to ignore his desperate cries. With her glowing, bladelike hand, she hit the staff again and again, each slice cutting a bit deeper.

  “Rhiannon!” an obviously terrified Thalasi begged. “Oh, send them away!”

  She couldn’t block out that plea, the most desperate tone she had ever heard. She glanced to the side of the room to see the Black Warlock in the clutches of the huddled shadowy horde, his corporeal form shimmering, as if losing its very essence. She knew that she could not help him, knew that the shadowy things were too beyond her control, even with the Staff of Death in hand. They swarmed all over Thalasi now, pulled him screaming and thrashing down, down, right through the floor.

  His calls became a distant wail when Rhiannon went back to her work, more furiously now and with tears of terror in her blue eyes. She chopped and chopped; her mother cried out to her repeatedly.

  The staff broke apart.

  The tower blew apart.

  Mitchell felt it keenly, felt as if his connection to the material world was gone, as if he were drifting back, back, to the vast, dark plain that was the realm of Death. Sheer hatred and wretchedness stopped that flight. Mitchell would not leave, would not surrender his lust for power.

  He felt that sting again, all about his head and shoulders, Pouilla Camby slashing hard, cutting white lines across the darkness that was the wraith.

  But he was back then, fully, growling and rushing fiercely at the ranger, whipping his bone mace to and fro in a frenzy, filling all the air with those burning black flakes.

  Belexus retreated desperately, felt the sting and burn as several flakes fell over him. His clothing smoldered; his skin blistered. And Mitchell came on, roaring, swinging, driving the ranger back, accepting the hits from the nasty sword in the hope that he would connect just once. Just once.

  Because both knew that one hit from that awful mace would utterly destroy Belexus.

  But the ranger was by far the superior fighter, and his sword work as he retreated
was nothing short of magnificent. Yet even the beauty of Pouilla Camby could not defeat the momentum of the furious wraith, could not slow the darkness that was Hollis Mitchell, and the wraith rose up above Belexus, the ranger out of running room.

  There came a rush of air, the thundering sound of beating wings, as Calamus swooped down and clipped the wraith, not hurting him, but stopping his pursuit and stealing his focus. The bone mace swiped across in futile pursuit of the pegasus’ swift flight.

  Belexus was quick to reverse the momentum, taking up his sword in both hands and rushing in, hammering away, slashing and beating, knowing that one mistake, one slip, would let Mitchell get that mace in, would surely destroy him. He cried out for Avalon, for all the world. He cried out and he swung with all his strength, over and over, the diamond light spreading, the sword humming through the air. He ignored the pain as the black flakes settled about him, screamed out too loudly, tensed his muscles too tightly. If he had paused and thought about it, he would have realized how heavy his exhausted arms had become.

  But he would not pause, would not slow in the least.

  Again and again, Pouilla Camby drove through. Again and again.

  It ended suddenly, with a great shudder from the wraith that sent Belexus skidding backward. He regarded Mitchell; the curious, stunned look that glared at him through those glowing white lines. Like the flakes of his own mace, Mitchell fell apart, just broke into pieces, the blackness falling to the stone and dissipating there into swirling tendrils of smoke.

  And then Belexus, his hunger for vengeance sated, stood alone.

  “Come, and be quick,” Bellerian called, setting Calamus down on the stone beside his battered son. “The talon devils are all about us!”

  Belexus looked at the hollowed corpse that had been Hollis Mitchell, the empty dead thing. He thought of Andovar and felt warmed, felt that his friend could now, finally, rest easy. And now Belexus could rightly turn his thoughts to the more pressing problems, to the larger battle and the good of all Aielle. He bounded over to Bellerian, a talon spear skipping off the stone behind his rush, and leaped atop the pegasus’ back, and Calamus, so strong of wing, had no trouble in lifting the two of them high into the air.

  His run became a desperate rush, the spirit launching himself at his daughter, seeing her mortal danger, every instinct within him telling him to go and protect her. Fast as thought, DelGiudice careened into the chamber, arrowing for Rhiannon. But that thought had come an instant too late, an instant after the young witch had chopped Thalasi’s staff in half. Del reached her as the blast reached her. He dove for her soul, trying somehow to spiritually embrace her, but he found instead a passage; a long and confusing tunnel.

  Gone was the blast, the tower, the fortress. Gone was his daughter.

  The confused ghost found himself standing in Avalon, beside a shocked and horrified Brielle.

  Far out at sea, the swell rolled, mounting and mounting, a giant wall of water. Istaahl threw all of his energy into it, gave to it all his thoughts and hopes, all his memories and all his fantasies.

  On it rolled, inevitably for Talas-dun, the last gasp of Istaahl the White, the purest creation of his magic. As he ascended from the pressing depths, he felt himself spreading out in the water, his very life essence thinning, joining with the rising swell.

  All of it, all his energy and all his purpose.

  He found her atop a pile of blasted and charred rubble, a delicate flower amidst a mountain of scarred black stone. She didn’t look the least bit battered, didn’t look as if she had been anywhere near that awful explosion, and Bryan watched in pure amazement as the last glow of Brielle’s protective enchantment faded to nothingness. Rhiannon’s body was intact, completely undamaged, and yet Bryan knew, before he ever drew near to her, that she was dead.

  The half-elf, his eyes dripping streams of tears, lifted her gently and bore her out of that dark place. There was no resistance, for all the zombies and skeletons were back to their sleep of death, and those talons who had not been killed in the frenzied moments before the explosion were either fleeing Talas-dun or were simply too confused to pay the half-elf any notice.

  But damn the talons, every one, the half-elf thought, and then he dismissed them.

  Rhiannon was dead, and Bryan could do nothing to help her.

  Chapter 25

  Charon’s Abode

  SHE HAD BEEN here once before, but the experience had seemed far different then, as if she was only a spectator in this eternal ritual, as if she didn’t truly belong. On that previous occasion, Rhiannon had been called back from the walk of death. But this time …

  This time, she belonged.

  She saw the poor departed souls wading past her, seemingly floating among the thick fog blanketing the unseen ground. Humans and elves, soldiers of Arien and Benador, walked solemnly along, their ranks insignificant compared to the many, many talons. Even more numerous, though seeming less substantial, came the hosts of those stolen from their sleep of death, Thalasi’s undead army, released to rest once more with the destruction of the perverted staff.

  Rhiannon understood, and had no choice but to accept. She took her place in the line and began the descent, the crossing of the barrier between the living and the dead. She paused, though, for she found a pair of souls she could not ignore.

  Morgan Thalasi and Martin Reinheiser. Joined in life, they were two once more, separate souls moving down, down to their rewards. For them, the walk would not end pleasantly, Rhiannon knew, and she pitied them, despite the horrors they had caused. And then she didn’t even care about them anymore. Just like that, she dismissed them, and wandered along.

  The thing about the walk that struck the young witch most profoundly was the sense of peace—even the normally brutal talons showed it on their faces—and those returning to the realm of Death showed it most clearly of all. Not Thalasi and Reinheiser, though. Both struggled against the inevitable, tried to turn about and run back the way they had come, back to the living. And they seemed to be making some progress, as if their mighty wills could fight against even this inevitability.

  But then Rhiannon spotted the specter, the common image of Death personified, coming for them. The pair tried to scramble away, screaming in futile protest, but Arawn hooked them both with a single swipe of his long sickle and drew them in.

  “I have waited for you, John Morgan, who calls himself Morgan Thalasi,” the contented specter of Death said. “And for you, Martin Reinheiser. You joined with John Morgan against me. You stole what was mine. You chose badly.”

  And, with a black flash and a swirl of the fog, they were gone from Rhiannon’s view, and soon, she realized, though she did not know how it happened, she was all alone, stranded in a vast, dark plain, the flatness broken by an endless line of barrows.

  She kept walking, not knowing what else she might do. There was no sense of time here, so she did not know how long it had been before she came to a tunnel, the flickering light of a fire burning within. Compelled, she entered, and came almost immediately into a wide chamber with a single bier set in its middle. And behind it, holding up a shroud, stood the specter Charon, Arawn, impassive, inevitable.

  Understanding flooded through the young witch, the dead witch. This was her place now, and though she did not want to be here, did not want to be dead, she could not resist. Slowly, regretfully, the young witch moved to take her eternal bed.

  “A rout!” a joyous Arien Silverleaf cried to Ardaz. “Never could we have hoped for such a victory!” Indeed, with the undead horde’s last attacks against the talons and the ensuing confusion in the enemy ranks, the men of Calva and the elves of Illuma seemed well on their way to the most complete victory ever known in Ynis Aielle. The elf lord surveyed the battle scene before him, saw, far to the south, another ball of pitch soar high and far to scatter a talon position. Then he felt something more profound, a growling rumble beneath his feet, and saw, far to the west, a tremendous plume of black smoke rising. He looke
d to Ardaz for an explanation, but his question was lost in his throat when he glanced upon the wizard.

  Ardaz blanched white. He knew; he felt it. His niece, budding with power, growing into so fine a woman, was gone. Simply gone. Dead and beyond his help. The wizard, feeling very old suddenly, turned about slowly and looked back to the east, toward Avalon. If he knew, then so did Brielle.

  Indeed, the horrible sensation, the waves of Rhiannon’s last moment, washed over the Emerald Witch, stealing the blood from her face, stealing the rhythm of her heart. Her knees lost all strength and buckled, and she slumped down to the white carpet of snow, kneeling there, unable to speak, to cry out, even to gasp.

  All of it was not lost on the father of Rhiannon. He, too, felt the terrible sensation, and at first couldn’t decipher it. But seeing Brielle, broken beyond belief, helped him sort it out.

  “No!” he cried, and he did not cut the word short, but held it: “Noooooooo!” It was a plaintive wail, a howl almost, torn from his heart and his throat, released into the empty air. He was up on his toes, knees bent forward, back arched and head thrown back, throwing the wail up to the sky, to the ears of the Colonnae.

  And surely they were deaf, for they did not respond, did not come to him now, when he most needed them, did not repair the grief, or return Rhiannon.

  “Noooooooo!”

  She was gone, just gone. Rhiannon, his daughter, was just gone.

  But then he knew; suddenly he knew. DelGiudice had wondered why he had been put back in this place, in this time, had wondered if his tasks were no more important than the retrieval of the diamond sword. Now he knew. Rhiannon was gone, but he could get to her, only he: half a ghost, half a man. He had been to Death’s dark realm only briefly, an instant of time before Calae had whisked him off to the stars. Only an instant of time, but DelGiudice remembered the way.

  The wail continued, so profound, so agonized, that it drew Brielle from her own broken grief to look up at DelGiudice, to wonder what manner of being could offer such an expression of pain. Her expression shifted to one of horror as Del began to thin out, to become more translucent, as if his very life force was escaping this spirit form on the notes of that howl.