R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

The ranger just gave a great sigh and held up his hands hopelessly.

“I will go, I think, and so I will,” Ardaz said with finality. “But, oh, first I must, I must, I must, find my hat. What with the hole in the backside, after all. Oh, the draft does tickle! Where, oh where, might it have gone off to?”

Belexus again started to formulate a more reasonable protest against the wizard’s intentions, but seeing Ardaz already hopping about the ledge again, searching frantically for his lost hat, the ranger realized that he might as well scream at the mountain wall. “It flew over the ledge,” he explained. “Caught in the wind, is me guess, and long from here.”

“Would’ve had it if you hadn’t shot me,” Ardaz remarked quietly.

“Would’no’ve shot ye if ye came in announced, or asked for,” Belexus replied in the same dry manner.

Ardaz shrugged and began looking once more.

“Come,” Belexus bade him, motioning for the wizard to follow him to Calamus. “I need go to the valleys below in any case. Might be that we’ll find it along the way.”

Down the pair went on the back of the magnificent steed, Calamus seeming to hardly notice the added burden of skinny Ardaz. The wizard complained continually about the wind whistling through the holes against his backside, but his grumbling fell away soon enough, when they spotted a patch of blue on a ledge halfway down the sheer cliff. It proved a tricky maneuver, but one worth making-or, Belexus realized, he’d have to listen to Ardaz complaining forevermore. The ranger brought the pegasus in as close as possible to the ledge and Ardaz, holding Belexus’ bow, leaned out to the side, hooked the brim of the hat, and slipped it free of its perch.

The ensuing shriek startled both wizard and ranger as a curled black cat fell out of the hat, plummeting down the cliff. Desdemona was a quick one, though, fast sprouting wings, fur going to feather, and then drifting down lazily, cawing in protest.

“Oh, silly puss,” the wizard muttered, and he said it again when they found Desdemona on the valley floor, comfortably curled yet again in the nook of a pine tree root.

The cat didn’t even bother to open an eye.

Their hunting took the better part of the day, but Belexus finally brought down a white-tailed deer, and he and Ardaz had a fine meal as they sat around a blazing fire that evening, Calamus standing stoically nearby, Desdemona curled comfortably on the wizard’s warm lap.

“I canno’ ask ye to come along,” the ranger remarked unexpectedly, in all seriousness. “’Tis me own fight, I say, one I’ll be making for me friend.”

“Didn’t we already have this argument?” Ardaz asked, seeming somewhat confused. He began reciting the words of their previous debate, but got hung up on “canno’” again, and shifted his line of muttering to the recitation of many other funny-sounding ranger speech patterns.

“We had the fight,” Belexus finally interrupted after about fifteen minutes of the rambling. “But by me own thinking, we did’no’ finish it.”

Ardaz sobered and stared him right in the eye. “That the son of Bellerian could be such a fool,” the wizard answered with a derisive snort. “And Andovar was Belexus’ friend alone, then?”

“I’m not for saying-”

“But you are!” Ardaz retorted, waggling a long and pointy finger the ranger’s way. “You are saying that very thing, I do daresay! And putting the wraith out as your enemy alone, though in truth, all the living world should hate the thing. And you’ll not find a dragon-a true dragon and not one of those silly whipping things of the swamp-so easy a foe! But easier the dragon will be, I say, if stubborn Belexus has a friend beside him. And a friend with a trick or two, ha, ha! And one who’s good at dodging arrows, to boot!

“Or to butt, I suppose,” the wizard ended dryly.

“How can I be asking?”

“Who said you should?” Ardaz replied with a derisive snort. “Oh, I’m going, and don’t you think you can stop me.” He stared at the fire for a moment, then looked up at the crisp night sky. “A dragon,” he muttered, suddenly talking more to himself than to Belexus. “Fancy that! Oh, but I’d dearly love to meet one! Wouldn’t we, Des?”

Desdemona yawned and stretched, and then, as if the wizard’s words had only then registered, opened wide her mouth in a vicious hiss and smacked the wizard across the face, only his thick beard preventing him from showing three bloody lines from fully extended claws.

“Beastly loyal,” Ardaz mumbled.

“I’d not be so loyal, meself, if me friend was leading me to the likes of a dragon’s lair,” Belexus put in.

“Oh, but you would!” Ardaz countered with hardly a thought. “And you shall, and if you live, you shall thank me for the company, ha, ha!”

The ranger started to reply, but found that he had no sincere argument. Of course, if the situation had been reversed, he would go along with the wizard, and, thus, he had to allow Ardaz a similar show of loyalty. That, above anything else, settled the argument in the ranger’s mind, and in his heart. He could not deny Ardaz the opportunity to join him in this quest, whose ultimate implications for the good of all Ynis Aielle went far beyond avenging the death of Andovar. “Yer friendship is truly a blessing of the Colonnae,” he said in all seriousness.

Ardaz beamed. “Together then!” he said happily. “A party of two.”

Desdemona opened a sleepy eye and looked up at him, as if to ask if she had to hiss and swipe again.

“Er, three,” the wizard promptly corrected.

Across the way, Calamus snorted and stamped a hoof.

“Four,” both ranger and wizard said together, sharing a laugh.

Belexus slept better that night than on any of the previous since he had left Avalon. Ardaz, though, lay awake a long, long while. There weren’t many dragons in Ynis Aielle-fortunately! The few about had been created by evil Morgan Thalasi centuries before, but fortunately, they were not an overly fruitful lot, more concerned with making a meal of each other and stealing treasure than propagating the line. On those rare occasions that a meeting of dragons did produce an offspring-when the female won the inevitable fight after mating-that young dragon would quickly go out into the world in search of its own treasure hoard, and either meet its end at the claws of another dragon, at the end of a wizard’s lightning bolt-Brielle was particularly adept at putting an end to the unnatural things-or, in one notable case, at the end of a warrior’s sword. Belexus was perhaps the only mortal man alive who had ever seen a dragon and survived; certainly he was the only one who had ever killed a dragon.

But that had been a young one, barely larger than the pegasus the ranger now rode. If Brielle’s magic had located the sword in the lair of a dragon deep in the great Crystals, then likely it was an ancient wyrm, one of the originals Thalasi had created as a scourge to the world. And given the weakening of magic, a full-grown dragon might well prove to be the most powerful creature in all of Ynis Aielle.

Ardaz did not sleep so well.

SHE FINALLY AWOKE, rising up from the depths of a complete, dreamless darkness, an emptiness of thought, an emptiness of hope. The young witch blinked open her eyes and tried to sit up, but found to her horror that her hands were tightly tied behind her, that her whole body was bound, but not by any material strands. Black filaments of swirling vapor wrapped about her, holding her physical form tightly, but even worse for Rhiannon, binding her magic, as well. She tried to reach into that well of power, to bring forth a brilliant light that would burn away these gripping filaments.