R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

Belexus nodded, then motioned to Desdemona, who was all too happy to go over and wake Ardaz.

“DelGiudice,” the spirit announced, the name at last coming easily to his insubstantial lips. “Jeffrey DelGiudice.”

The ranger nodded again. “And Del, ye were called by yer friends,” he explained. “Ye’re remembering?”

“Much of it,” the spirit replied. “The ship that got me here, the journey across Aielle. Our first meeting-you saved me from some altogether nasty creature.”

“A whip-dragon,” Belexus replied.

“Yes, a whip-dragon.”

“And what else might ye be remembering?” the ranger asked. “Arien and the elves?”

“Of course,” Del replied, and he smiled at the memory of the fair folk of Lochsilinilume. “And Brielle.”

The spirit did not notice the cloud that passed over the ranger’s face at that moment.

“Most of all, Brielle,” Del went on, and he looked to the south and west, the brightening peaks and the dark, mysterious shadows below them.

The cloud darkened for Belexus, but then a chuckle from the spirit broke the tension. Belexus followed Del’s gaze to the sleeping wizard, or more particularly, to the black cat sitting atop the wizard’s chest, every so often batting Ardaz across the nose. With a great sneeze that sent Desdemona scrambling and growling in protest, Ardaz popped open his eyes.

“What? What?” the wizard sputtered. “Oh, Des, you silly beast!” He looked all around then, focusing at last on Del and Belexus. “Morning already?” he quipped, so suddenly seeming more wide awake than either of them could ever hope to be. “Off we go, then!”

“Our friend’s begun to remember,” Belexus announced.

“Splendid!” the wizard roared, coming out of the tangle of blankets, catching his legs in one and falling facedown to the ground but hopping right back up, undaunted, bouncing toward the pair. “All of it?”

“All since the submar-the ship that brought me here,” Del replied.

“Submarine,” Ardaz corrected. “Went on one once-or in one, actually. Wouldn’t do to go on one, now would it? I do daresay! Beastly tight and cramped in there. Could hardly spread my wings. Of course, that was before I was a wizard, after all, and so I couldn’t sprout wings in the first place. Ha ha!”

It took Del a while to sort through that rambling, but as he did, he recalled that Ardaz was from his own world, the world gone twelve centuries, the world before the holocaust, which the elves called e-Belvin Fehte. That realization alone brought Del some recollections of that lost time, but they were distant images, far away and unclear. He tried to clarify them for a long moment but gave up, thinking that he had more important business this day.

When he focused on his companions once more, he found Belexus looking up forlornly at the nearest peaks. Or at least, where the nearest peaks should have been, for a low cloud cover was closing in on them, stealing their sharp, rocky outlines in a blur of gray.

“We’ll not be finding much this day,” the ranger reasoned.

“A bit of, more than a bit of, snow in the air,” Ardaz agreed, shaking his head. “Oh bother.”

“I thought I’d be finding little trouble in getting to the wyrm’s lair,” the ranger admitted. “High up on Calamus, and with all the view before me.”

“But?” Del prompted, not seeming to comprehend any of it.

“But I can’t be keeping up for long in this wind,” the ranger explained. “Too cold for me bones, and for Calamus. And the snow’s been general, and been slowing me, with a bit of it almost every day.”

“The season will change soon,” the ever-optimistic Ardaz said hopefully.

“Not soon enough, by me thinking,” the ranger said. “The wraith’s about, and that one’s naught but mischief.” Again he looked forlornly at the sky, and already the clouds were lower, gathering thick about the mountain peaks. “I canno’ go up in that.”

“But I can,” Del said suddenly, a smile brightening on his ghost face. To prove his point, he lifted off the ground, floating gently, untouched by the wind.

Belexus and Ardaz exchanged incredulous, and then hopeful, looks.

“What exactly am I looking for?” the spirit asked.

“A mountain peak looking like an old man’s profile,” the ranger explained, and he illustrated the image by bending low and cutting a likeness of it into the snow. “That’s the wyrm’s peak, so says Brielle.”

“And the dragon is somewhere inside?”

“Ayuh.”

DelGiudice stood quiet for a moment, studying the drawing, not so certain that he actually wanted to find this particular mountain. He didn’t know much about dragons, for there were no dragons in the world before e-Belvin Fehte, none that weren’t man-made at least. He vaguely remembered some of the legends-Saint George and Bilbo and Smaug and the like-and in his world there were some generally accepted guidelines of what dragons were like. He didn’t remember much of that, but he did understand that dragons were supposedly very, very bad, and not likely to be welcoming his two companions as houseguests.

Whatever business Belexus had with this particular dragon seemed important, though, else why would the ranger have come out into the Crystals in winter? So with an instinctive shrug, which he found most curious, the spirit lifted away from the ground.

“We’ll await here for your return,” Ardaz called.

Del immediately descended.

“What?” the wizard asked.

“Well, I did not want to keep you waiting,” Del explained. “I remember that as being quite rude.”

“We’ll be looking for yer return after ye’ve found the mountain,” Belexus explained.

“Oh,” Del said, and with another shrug, he started into the air once more.

It was quiet up in the clouds, comfortably so, and the floating spirit lost his focus many times, lapsing into thoughts of his previous life, both in Aielle and before Aielle. He thought of Brielle often, of their love, and of his family, the one before the holocaust, of his mother and father and their small house in New England. In his heightened state of being, it was actually more than merely thinking of those times. Through sheer concentration and an understanding of time itself-or rather, an understanding of the lack of time-Del put his consciousness back to those moments, relived them as easily as if they were strung out before him, little bubbles that he could enter at will. And each seemed to lead to a dozen more, and so he did very little searching while he floated up above the sheltered vale, but much remembering.

He did not return to his companions all that day, nor that night, nor the next day, which was even more snowy, nor the next night. On the third morning, the weather breaking somewhat, Belexus announced that he would wait no longer, and he began to saddle up Calamus.

“But what of DelGiudice?” Ardaz wanted to know. “Can’t be running about separately in the mountains, after all. Too many walls, too many clouds. We’ll never find each other again.”

Belexus shared his friend’s concern, but that did not overrule the urgency of his own quest. “Might that he’s gone back to the Colonnae,” the ranger said somberly. “We’re not for knowing why he was here, or if he really was.”

“What could you mean?” Ardaz asked, and then, pop!, he figured it out. “Oh, no,” he said, wagging his hands in the air before him. “No, no, I do daresay. Couldn’t be, no no. No trick of Thalasi, that one.”

“Can ye say that ye’re sure?”

Ardaz nodded so violently that his great hat fell down over his eyes.

“Well, we’re still not knowing what bringed him to us, or for how long,” Belexus reasoned. “And every day we’re waiting, the wraith’s likely bringing pain.”