R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

It passed right through the coat and the skin, slid right into the deer’s side.

The animal took flight, leaping wildly, running on and on at the edge of control.

“Oh pooh,” the spirit said, and he thought those words the most curious of all.

As if in answer, a bird chattered at him from above.

He answered with a telepathic thought, and the bird seemed less afraid, and would stay and converse with him. So he spent a long time standing there, below the tree branch, and he remembered even more of that past time, of this mortal coil. Soon he sensed hunger in the little creature, and then the bird flew off.

He lifted from the ground, too, thinking to follow, but he changed his mind, and instead went back to his stone by the stream. If the Colonnae had put him here for a purpose, then it was possible the reason would come to him, rather than he going off to try and find it. Because this place, though so infinitesimally tiny next to the star cloud, seemed large indeed when he was trapped within this corporeal coil.

He stood passively on the stone for a long time, then sat down-not because he was tired, but simply because he remembered that he used to sit down. Truly the new position was no more or less comfortable than standing, or than standing on his head for that matter, but he remembered that once it had been. The day brightened around him, then darkened once more, then brightened again and darkened, and again; and all the time he sat there, he recalled more and more of what had been, found more and more the perspectives imposed by this tangible world and these tangible trappings. He had been here once, in this frame of reference, this perspective. He knew that.

“Where, oh where, oh where, oh where?” the wizard mumbled, twiddling his thumbs. “Do go find him, Des. I do not want to waste my magical strength.”

The cat atop the boulder purred all the louder and made absolutely no move to leave.

“Beastly loyal,” Ardaz grumbled, a chant he felt was becoming all too common concerning Des, and he pulled himself to his feet. Indeed he did not want to delve into the realm of magic this morning; he was still exhausted from the magical flight that had brought him to Belexus, though that transformation had occurred more than a week before. “This is the old-fashioned way,” he said, and he started off, walking through the trees of the low valley.

Desdemona didn’t bother to follow.

Some time later, Ardaz sensed that he was being watched. At first he thought it to be Desdemona, but when he glanced all around, he came to know the truth. A white-tailed deer stood not so far away, motionless except for a slight trembling.

“Hmmm,” the wizard mumbled, rubbing at his thick white beard, for he knew that this was not the ordinary way a deer, a creature born to run, would react to the scent of a man-and obviously the deer had sensed him. And who could not? the wizard silently asked, thinking that it had been far too long since last he had bathed. But still the deer did not run, so Ardaz did go into the realm of magic, sent a mental image there, and that image came back to him, multiplied by the power of the realm. The wizard’s clothing twisted and changed hue, sprouted many leafy branches and twigs. “Much like a bush, I should say,” he quietly congratulated himself, and indeed, he did resemble the area’s flora. With that disguise, he moved slowly, very slowly, toward the deer, taking care not to step on any twigs and to keep his usually babbling mouth still.

To his surprise, despite the enchantment, Ardaz soon found himself right beside the creature, and he understood then that its fear was not a fear of him. “What has so terrified you?” he asked softly and, using a trick his sister Brielle had taught him, he attuned his thoughts to those of the deer, let his mind slip into the mind of the animal. A most curious image came over him then, one of a man-or was it a man?-sitting not so far away.

A decisive twang brought Ardaz from his contemplations and sent the deer leaping away. “What?” the wizard babbled repeatedly, looking all around at the brush and at the flicking white tail as the deer disappeared from sight. Then his gaze settled on his own bushy-looking robes, and there he found his answer in the form of an arrow, hanging loosely in the folds of the camouflaged outfit. A moment later, a confused Belexus came running toward him-confused, that is, only until the ranger spied Ardaz.

“Do you mean to keep shooting me then?” the wizard asked, prodding the arrow tip and opening a tiny wound on his finger. “I’m beginning to get the point, so to speak.”

“What’re ye about?” the exasperated ranger replied. “I telled ye I’d be hunting. I been chasing that deer for all the morn, and now I’ll not fill our packs afore the dusk!”

“Skittish deer,” Ardaz replied casually. “Says it saw a man not so far from here, sitting by the stream.” As he spoke, the wizard pointed to the north.

“A man?” Belexus echoed. The ranger didn’t doubt the wizard’s words-he had grown up in the shadow of Avalon, where Brielle was known to converse with animals routinely-but how could any man be out this far from the civilized world? “Man or talon?” he asked suspiciously, for indeed talons were known in the Crystals.

“Could be a talon, I suppose,” the wizard admitted, for the image the deer had shown to him had not been that detailed. “Don’t know that a deer would know the difference, after all. Either way, we should look into it.”

Belexus glanced over his shoulder. He had left Calamus in a clearing not so far away. He thought the better of calling the pegasus, though. If it was a talon, or a band of talons, for rarely was one of those wretched creatures ever found alone, then the flying horse and its riders would make too fine targets for arrows or spears. With a nod, Belexus motioned for Ardaz to follow and reached into his quiver for another arrow.

“Take this one,” the wizard offered dryly, pulling the arrow through his robe and handing it over. “I really have no need for it, after all, and even should I find a use for one, sure I am that you’ll be shooting me again soon enough!”

Belexus surrendered to a chuckle, then turned and led the way down to the one stream crossing this valley. He looked to Ardaz, who pointed north again, and so north they went, picking their careful way, with even the wizard managing to keep his mouth shut after only a few sharp reminders.

The going was easy, and quiet enough with the footfalls hidden beneath the song of the stream, and soon they came in sight of the man, and it was indeed a man, sitting passively on a large stone, wearing only a slight white shift, though the weather was brutally cold. At first, both of them thought that Istaahl must have come, for who but a wizard could have survived in this land in winter in so flimsy a gown, but then the man turned to face them, and recognition only added to the confusion.

Ardaz, mistrusting his eyes, tried to hold the ranger back, but so elated was Belexus that he burst away from the wizard, scrambling over the slippery stones to get near to his long-lost friend. “Jeffrey DelGiudice!” he cried.

“Jeffrey DelGiudice,” the spirit echoed, the strange words sounding familiar. “Jeffrey DelGiudice.”

“Can it really be?” the ranger asked, skidding to a halt barely five feet from the spirit. “I’d thought ye lost to me and to all the world; the elves been saying that ye jumped from the ledge at Shaithdun O’Illume.”

“Stepped, not jumped,” the spirit replied before it understood what it was saying, before it could even consider the words. As those words registered, a perplexed look crossed the spirit’s features, and indeed, it did remember that moment, long ago-or was it just an instant past?-when it had gone to the call of Calae of the Colonnae.