R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

“You could have come up to us,” the weary wizard reasoned.

“I didn’t know where you had gone off to,” Del replied. “First rule when you’re lost: Stay put.”

“Well, stay put no longer,” Ardaz said, and Del noted that all the usual cheeriness was gone from his voice. “We’re far too near the dragon’s hole for my comfort.”

“And for me own,” Belexus agreed, glancing nervously up the mountainside. The two of them had watched Salazar slink back into the mountain hours before, but that fact brought little easiness, for dragons, particularly when hunting, have the patience of elves, as only creatures who live through the centuries might understand. “We’ve been too long near this place, and now’s not the time for merrymaking,” he added, seeing the ghost’s widening smile. “Back to Calamus for yerself and me,” he said to Ardaz, “and back to the air for yerself,” he added, pointing at Del. “And let us be long from this place afore we stop to consider our good fortunes.”

The others readily agreed-the others who had accompanied the ranger to this spot, at least, for all about the friends, from behind every conceivable stone, appeared dozens of short, sturdy men, with dark brown skin, and with the knotted muscles that come from years of working stone.

“Dwarves?” DelGiudice asked skeptically.

“What name do ye be puddin’ on us den?” one of them replied in a choppy but lyrical accent that sounded somehow familiar to the ghost.

“Hey boss, de Architect Tribe we be,” another added, poking Belexus hard as he spoke.

“Well, well,” Ardaz remarked. “This does get more interesting by the moment, now doesn’t it?”

HE STOOD UP. It seemed a minor thing to the animals in the forest about him: a man climbing unsteadily to his feet, as one who had been asleep might, or as one who had been sitting too long in an awkward position. But for Bryan of Corning, that movement felt momentous indeed. He remembered the pains and that deathly chill when he had crawled into Avalon more than a week before. He remembered the view of his own feet, black and thick, and he remembered most of all the pain when Brielle had warmed them again, the agony that had so quickly replaced the sheer numbness.

That was all past now. The half-elf wriggled his toes, all ten of them-and how glad Bryan was to see, to feel, that he still had all ten of them! And though his legs were surely tingling and prickly, it was a sensation that Bryan savored: the evidence of life.

“I thought ye’d sleep all the winter,” came a quiet yet strong voice from the side, from the shadows of the lower branches of an evergreen.

And Bryan saw her then, and surely his heart fluttered, though he had already given that heart to another. If the horrid wraith had been darkness incarnate, then this, before him, was the embodiment of beauty itself, walking softly, a dream creature on a blanket of gentle fog, her golden hair shining, green eyes and the emerald wizard’s mark sparkling through the shadows. Bryan understood that the twinkle of those eyes could penetrate the darkest of nights, like the soft gasp or the sharp cry of a lover, like the very stars above.

Bryan’s smile widened as Brielle stepped out of the brush, dressed only in her white gossamer gown and her delicate slippers, though the air was not warm and the ground was covered still with snow. “I am truly indebted to you, fair sorceress of Avalon,” the half-elf said, bowing low.

“Nay,” the witch replied. “ ’Tis me place to do the things I do, and nothing more.”

Bryan didn’t believe a word of it. He knew what Brielle had gone through to save him, knew that she had taken his pains as her own, one at a time, and, with them inside her own seemingly fragile frame, had battled them and overcome them. He knew that she, for the better part of a week, had felt the same agony as he, and he understood, too, from their joining, that Brielle had been near to the brink of death, had come so very close to stepping over that thin line and slipping away forever into the dark realm.

“If Brielle went about the world trying to steal all the pains, as she stole mine, then surely she would have been worn away many centuries ago,” Bryan remarked, trying to put a bit of levity in his tone so as not to offend the witch.

“Not to all the world, but to those who come to me door,” Brielle replied. “Me magic gives to me the healing power; how wicked I’d be not to share it with those in need.”

Bryan nodded, conceding the point, though he still considered Brielle’s actions toward him heroic and beyond any call of duty. “Whatever you may call it, you have my thanks and my heart.”

“Indeed I could’ve had it,” the witch said with a smile. “I could’ve plucked it beating right from yer chest, so battered were ye!”

Bryan shared her laugh, but put on his serious expression almost immediately and dipped a low bow.

“Go on, then,” Brielle said to him. “For I’m thinking that another’s got yer heart.”

The half-elf straightened and eyed the witch directly, all traces of any smile fast flown from his serious expression.

“And it’s for her that I’m wondering,” Brielle went on, a bit tentatively, for she recognized the fear in Bryan’s look.

“And was it for her that you healed my wounds?” the young half-elf asked.

“Might be that I tried the harder,” Brielle admitted. “But no, for suren I’ve heard tell o’ Bryan o’ Corning, and he’s not one deserving death at the hands o’ Mitchell’s foul wraith.”

“How do you know about the wraith?” Bryan asked, letting the conversation continue its tangential flow, for he could not seem to muster the courage to tell the fair witch the truth about her daughter. Not yet.

“I know the nature of yer wound,” Brielle explained. “And know, too, that the wraith’s been about. I’m not so blind and not so much a fool.”

“None of neither,” Bryan agreed.

“But I’m not knowing of me daughter,” Brielle continued. “I’m not feeling her about. And I’m thinking that ye might be.”

Brielle didn’t miss the cloud that passed over Bryan’s face.

“I was with her when Mitchell attacked,” the halfelf began quietly, chewing his lips between words. “I could not hurt the wraith, nor could Rhiannon. I do not understand why she went out to find the foul thing! I don’t know that it was looking for us, and don’t know that we ever would have seen it. But, for some reason, she went out after it.”

Brielle nodded; she understood her daughter’s purpose, and so would heroic Bryan, she knew, if he just stepped back a bit and considered his own actions across the river.

“I got knocked away, and out of mind for a while,” Bryan explained. “And when I awoke, they were gone, the both of them.”

Brielle licked her soft lips nervously.

“I do not think that Mitchell killed her,” Bryan said suddenly, needing to offer some comfort to this worried mother.

“Me girl’s not dead,” Brielle responded firmly, with some certainty.

“Agreed,” the half-elf said. “I believe that Rhiannon led the wraith away to protect me, and probably that she leads him still on a merry chase across the lands. I started out of Corning on their trail-two separate trails-but discovered that my wounds were too great. And so I made for Avalon to warn you.”

“And well ye did,” Brielle replied. “Yer wounds should’ve killed ye long before ye got near to me home.”

“But that was so many days ago,” Bryan said, his expression puzzled.

“Nine days,” Brielle clarified.

“We must out for Rhiannon at once,” the half-elf reasoned, looking all about like an animal put in too small a cage.