Bastion of Darkness Read online

  The water clouded over, swirling, then a small spot appeared at the center of the pool. And in that spot, under the water, the witch saw a craft, a barge poled by a gaunt, robed figure, drifting upward, upward, closer and closer.

  Then it was gone, and so was the fog, and all that remained in the bowl was the clear water and the reflection of the evening’s first stars.

  Brielle gave a long sigh; perhaps no such weapon existed. Perhaps Thalasi’s meddling in places where no mortal belonged had loosed upon Ynis Aielle a horror that would endure for eternity.

  “Not so,” came a low, coarse voice behind Brielle. She froze in place, purely amazed that any person, that anything at all could so sneak up on her here in Avalon, stunned that her many forest friends had not alerted her to the presence—a presence that she felt so clearly now, so cold and deadly. She turned about slowly, thinking that she would face the wraith, thinking that Mitchell had somehow come through her divining instrument to strike at her.

  Her fair face blanched even more when she saw and recognized the speaker. Not the wraith and not Thalasi, but one darker and more mysterious by far.

  Death itself had come to Avalon.

  It took the distracted Belexus a long while to realize that the wintry forest had gone strangely quiet around him, that the nightbirds were not singing, not even the snowy owl that always seemed to be about. But it was more than the absence of animals, the ranger somehow sensed; it was as if all the forest had suddenly hushed: the wind, the trees, the eternal music of Avalon.

  The ranger spotted Calamus, flying in low, landing in a small clearing not so far ahead and pawing the ground frantically, as agitated as Belexus had ever seen the creature.

  “What do ye know?” the ranger asked, and the pegasus snorted, though the sound seemed unnaturally muffled, as if it had come from far, far away, as if the air itself were heavy with dread. This was too wicked, the ranger realized, as if the very heart of Avalon—

  “Brielle?” the ranger asked in a hush, hardly able to draw breath.

  Again Calamus snorted, and stamped his front hoof hard on the ground.

  Belexus sprinted across the small clearing and verily leaped atop the winged horse’s powerful back, and Calamus sped away, running to the far end of the clearing and cutting a sharp turn, then galloping back—one stride, two—and leaping high into the air, wings beating furiously to get the pair up above the trees. A sheer sense of wrongness guided horse and rider, a perversion of the natural order, a darkness to the area where stood the emerald witch.

  “Arawn,” Brielle said quietly, respectfully, her name for this ultimate of specters, and truly she was surprised and confused, for though she knew that Thalasi’s meddling with the universal powers had wounded her and all the magic users of Aielle, she had thought herself strong still, and in the best of health. “Has me time so passed by, then, that I did not even expect ye?”

  “I came not for Brielle,” the embodiment of death informed her.

  “For whom then?” Brielle dared to ask, though she knew that death was a personal event, one in which she need not be informed. “For Bellerian, who is old?”

  There came no answer, the specter standing impassively, leaning heavily on its long sickle.

  “For Belexus, then?” the witch prompted fearfully, and she knew as soon as she heard the words leave her mouth that, if that was the case, she truly didn’t want to know!

  The specter tilted its hooded head, regarding her curiously.

  “If ye mean to take Belexus, then know ye’ll be fighting meself!” Brielle declared, though she understood her claim to be a foolish and impossible boast, for she could no more battle Death than she could burn down Avalon. They were the same, this specter and her forest, both embodiments of the natural order of the universe, and Brielle drew her power completely from that very order. She could not fight Death; she, above all others, who served the First Magic, the school of Nature, could not hope to battle that most elemental of all beings.

  “Yer pardon,” she said, and she respectfully lowered her gaze.

  “I have come not for Belexus,” Arawn replied somberly—the only tone Death ever used, Brielle thought. “You should fear, though, if you care for him, that perhaps he comes for me!”

  The witch looked up curiously, not understanding—until she looked past Death to see the ranger swooping in on Calamus, flying straight for the specter’s back. Belexus had no sword drawn, though, and seemed to be looking only at the witch, his expression as much of curiosity and relief as anything else.

  “He canno’ see ye,” Brielle remarked, and of course, it made sense. Only the wizards had such insight, and no mere human or even elf could see Death until that final moment, the time of passage.

  “And fortunate that is for him,” Arawn remarked. “I am of no mood to tolerate the foolishness of lessers.”

  Brielle sent her thoughts out then, on sudden impulse, flooding the mind of Calamus, letting the winged horse know that she was not afraid, and more important, that this was not his place, and certainly not the place for Belexus. The ranger was just preparing to slip his leg over the mount and drop to the ground running when Calamus angled his powerful wings and broke the swoop, rising steeply into the night sky.

  Brielle heard the ranger’s protesting calls, calls fast diminishing as the wise pegasus, heeding her telepathic commands, carried him far away.

  “Then who?” the witch asked of Death when that crisis was passed. “If I might be knowing. And if not, then why have ye taked the time to stop and visit?”

  “Visit?” the specter echoed, a hint of incredulity slipping into the edges of its grave tone. “No, Jennifer Glendower,” it said, using Brielle’s older name, the name she had been given by her mother and father those centuries before—before e-Belvin Fehte, the killing fires, before the dawn of Ynis Aielle. “I have not come for any—in these dark times, they easily enough come to me.” A rasping sound—a sarcastic chuckle?—emanated from the specter, sending the hairs on the back of Brielle’s neck dancing. Death was the most serious and somber being in all the universe, the one Colonnae who could not, or certainly should not, laugh.

  “And your ranger friend has kept me busy, lo, these last weeks,” the surprising specter went on. “I dare say!”

  “Then why have you come?” an unnerved Brielle bluntly pressed, too fearful and too intrigued to allow this most unusual conversation to be sidetracked.

  Death did not answer, and in the course of that uncomfortable pause, the wise witch solved the riddle. “Ye’re angered at Thalasi,” she reasoned. “He took something from ye.”

  “And still he takes,” Death confirmed.

  Brielle breathed a lot easier then, as she came to understand the truth. Thalasi had torn Mitchell from the grasp of Death, and that, above all else, the somber Colonnae specter could not tolerate. “Then ye hate the black thing as much as do we all,” the witch said quietly. “And can ye destroy it?”

  “Thomas Morgan, Martin Reinheiser, the two who have become one, has defeated even me,” the specter explained.

  Brielle was caught off guard, both by the revelation that Death, who, by the very definition of his name, could never be beaten, apparently had been, and also by the use of Morgan Thalasi’s birth name, Thomas Morgan, a name the witch had not heard in many, many years. Also, the reference to both Thomas Morgan and Martin Reinheiser, used in the singular, was indeed telling. The two had become one, as Brielle had suspected and as Death had just confirmed. Yet another perversion, Brielle reasoned. Another insult against the natural order to add to Thalasi’s growing list.

  “Thalasi is not so strong now,” Brielle explained, hoping that Death would whisk off right then and there and destroy the wretched Thalasi, and Mitchell, in one fell swoop. “He’s bent the fabric—”

  “Our score was settled,” the specter interrupted before she could gain any real momentum.

  “Then what do ye want?” Brielle asked impatiently—and nervously, once
again.

  “What is rightfully mine,” Death matter-of-factly replied.

  “Hollis Mitchell.”

  “May he rest in peace.”

  “Then show me how to deliver him to ye!” the witch growled. “Ye cannot take him back yerself, it’d seem, or ye’d have done so and been done with it, so show me how I might deliver him to ye!”

  “That is what you asked at the pool,” Death said calmly. “And that is why I have come.” And with that, the specter lifted one bony arm, its skeletal finger pointing past the witch to the broken tree stump.

  Brielle followed the line and moved to the side of the pool, and in its dark waters, as the image of the many stars now overhead faded away, she saw clearly a vision of a sword.

  And such a sword! Shining metal edged in diamonds, and glowing of its own inner light. She stared at it for a long, long while, saw into it and through it, glanced at its vast surroundings only for a few moments—enough time to see a treasure hoard beyond anything she had ever imagined; enough time to see the scaly guardian, its wings folded about it as it slept comfortably.

  Hardly drawing breath, the witch turned about, but Death, Arawn, was gone. She looked back to the pool, to see only the reflection of stars.

  “Brielle!” came a desperate cry, the voice of Belexus, huffing and puffing as he ran and stumbled through the trees. He burst into the clearing, brandishing his sword—a sword that had always seemed so magnificent to the witch, though she cared little for instruments of war, but that now, considering the vision she had just witnessed in the pool, seemed rather ordinary indeed.

  Chapter 4

  An Evil He Couldn’t Know

  THE YOUNG WITCH stared long and hard at the reflecting pool, which she had created just as her mother had taught her, but the image would not come to her. She knew that there were talons in the area—the birds had whispered as much—but for some reason she couldn’t understand, Rhiannon’s magical eye was blind to them.

  Behind her, Bryan paced anxiously, fingering the hilt of his sword. A hungry lion, he seemed, impatient for the kill, and with prey close by.

  That image of Bryan’s distress spurred Rhiannon on, urging her to try more forcefully. She sent her heart and soul into that pool of dark water, pricked her finger and gave to it a piece of herself, a bit of her own life blood, though as soon as she let the drop of red liquid fall to the pool, she realized to her horror that she would never get it back. Somehow, throwing herself into the magic had taken that bit away from her forevermore.

  She knew that beyond doubt, and suddenly the young witch found her breathing hard to come by. For all that she had learned in Avalon, the use of magic was not supposed to be like this. Her mother had practiced witchery for centuries, and had only grown, and surely had not diminished, by the summoning of universal powers. And yet, after only a few short months of truly coming into her power, Rhiannon felt weakened, felt as if the magic constantly took from her, as if it would eventually absorb her completely. She thought of her father, then, the mortal human, and no wizard. Perhaps her magic wasn’t pure, she feared, for, unlike the four older wizards of Ynis Aielle, Rhiannon had not been taken away by the Colonnae to learn and experience the mysteries of the universe, that she might comprehend the universal powers she found at her fingertips.

  The young witch could not know, of course, that all the magic was tainted now, that her mother and Ardaz, Istaahl, and Thalasi, too, suffered a personal loss with each expenditure of magical energy. True to her suspicions, though, the cost was more profound for Rhiannon than for the others. So young and inexperienced, Rhiannon did not recognize the barriers that she had to cross with each spellcasting, and did not fully understand the cost until it had been exacted upon her increasingly frail frame.

  Desperate thoughts drifted away as the image in the divining pool at last came distinct. “Five o’ them,” the young witch said to Bryan, working hard to keep her voice sounding calm and steady. “Putting their camp on the rocky spur just south o’ Bendwillow Pass. We’ll find them easy enough, for they’re setting a big fire to ward off the chill.”

  Bryan instinctively looked to the northeast, the direction Rhiannon had indicated, as if expecting to see a campfire spring up against the darkening background. The spur Rhiannon had spoken of was well sheltered, though, and the young man knew logically that he would see nothing from this perspective, especially not now, with the sky still light from the last rays of the cold day.

  “Tonight,” he said quietly.

  Rhiannon tossed her black hair back from her face so that she could better view Bryan, for she knew that tone of his, the voice that Bryan held for occasions of planned mayhem.

  “Tomorrow,” Rhiannon replied against the young half-elf’s cold resolve.

  Bryan looked at her skeptically.

  “I’m needing me rest,” the young witch explained.

  Bryan nodded, and tried hard to look away from Rhiannon, not wanting his stare to seem accusatory. “Tomorrow,” he agreed, so obviously unhappy, but so obviously conciliatory to this woman. “When you are ready.”

  Bryan eyed Rhiannon often that evening, studying her whenever he thought her eyes focused on something else.

  Rhiannon knew. She felt his stares keenly, a gaze complete with silent sighs, the looks of an impatient lover. She knew them and understood well, because her own looks at young Bryan were not so different, she had to admit—to herself at least.

  They were not lovers, not yet, and neither had made any overt gesture of passion at all. Rhiannon, the older of the pair, wondered about that, wondered if Bryan felt the same stirring as she, and wondered if she should take the lead in their romance.

  But she could not, she realized, closing her eyes and seeking the solace of sleep. She could not even afford to think about it. Not out here, and not now.

  Bryan watched her through it all, stealing glimpses and holding them fast within his heart and soul. He wanted to go over and kiss her, and hold her, wanted it more than anything in the world.

  And yet, Bryan, so mature for his sixteen years, so sympathetic and empathetic, and so pragmatic, Bryan who had been forced to grow up by tragedy and catastrophe, could accept the obvious hold in their relationship. He understood that there was something holding Rhiannon back, something deep and powerful. But he knew that she cared for him, more deeply with each passing day, a budding love that he had to trust she would soon enough admit.

  His looks this night were different than the simple gazes of a lovesick youth, though—they were of concern and very real fear. Bryan had seen the cost of the divining enchantment, had seen Rhiannon’s shoulders slump when she had dropped a bit of blood into the pool. He knew that the magic was taking from her, was killing her, and yet he knew, too, that Rhiannon, so selfless, so giving to all the goodliness of the world, would not stop, would press on until her shoulders slumped to the ground, until her last breath drifted from her body.

  That image shook Bryan of Corning more than anything in all the world, more than the thoughts of his father, who had died bravely defending his city, more than any thoughts of his own possible death.

  He waited until Rhiannon was asleep, and that was not so long, and then he set out alone into the cold, cold night. It was time for him to take some of the tremendous pressure off the fair young witch.

  Rhiannon, thinking that her dear companion was watching over her, and so weary from her divining, drifted to sleep.

  Bryan felt the brutal bite of the north wind gnawing at his flesh even through the thick cloak he had confiscated from an abandoned farmhouse. Winter was not so punishing on the southern plains of Calva, but this high in the Baerendils, it came on early and held fast for a long time. Thus, the young man was not surprised when he did at last spot the light of a blazing fire on the jut of stone that Rhiannon had indicated.

  He took a circuitous route, moving behind and above the talon campsite, to a second, higher plateau in the stone, overlooking the talon camp from a height
of about fifteen feet. He carefully worked his way out to the very edge; the wind had cleared all snow from the stone, but traces of dangerous ice remained. A slip might send him plummeting over the edge, bouncing down a thousand-foot mountain slide, or even if he did not go over, his fumbling would surely alert the talons that they were not alone and leave him in a desperate position.

  All that in mind, and with all due caution, he managed to get to the lip of the stone. Peering over, he was hardly surprised to find that the scene was exactly as Rhiannon had predicted, with five of the ugly talon wretches gathered about a central fire that was piled high with logs. At least a couple of the brutes were asleep, clucking and snoring, and only one was standing, pacing slowly in tight circles about the fire.

  Bryan huddled against the wind, trying to keep his eyes from tearing. Logical battle tactics told him to wait until the camp had settled down even more, until all of the talons had fallen asleep, or at least until all but the sentry had taken up the chorus of snoring. But practicality told the young man that he could not wait for long. Already, his fingers tingled with hints of numbness, and such a chill had come into his body that he feared it might slow his blade. Worst of all, crouching here, so close to his enemies, he could not even move about to generate some body heat.

  Bryan pictured Rhiannon’s expression, one of shock and outrage, one of contempt for his foolishness, if she came in search of him in the morning and found him frozen to death against the stone, killed before he had ever even lifted his sword against the oblivious talons.