R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

Down he swooped, firing his bow, then up again as a wall of arrows rose up against him.

“Oh, fine Bellerian,” one Calvan exclaimed.

“Coordinate!” The cry came from King Benador, who had also noticed Bellerian and was riding hard now for the catapult line.

The great arms creaked and heaved their loads, one after another, to the spot below Bellerian.

The ranger moved Calamus far from harm’s way, and dipped his wings in salute to the artillerists even as the carnage erupted below him, the splattering pitch bombs scattering and burning the talon entrenchment.

Few of the talons escaped that barrage, and none unscathed. One creature, limping, often crawling, for its legs had been badly burned, managed to get around a rocky wall before the second barrage thundered in. The creature made for that wall, thinking to put its back against it, thinking that it had reached safety.

Head down, belly to the ground, the creature’s eyes widened when it saw the white legs of Calamus. It looked up in time to see Bellerian’s sword cutting down.

The ranger lord wiped his sword on the dead talon’s tunic, then, satisfied that no others were about, he climbed the pegasus high into the sky once more, thinking to scout out another talon nest.

Something else caught his attention, something he could not ignore.

High atop the tallest tower of Talas-dun, Rhiannon heard the fighting, zombie against talon, raging in the courtyard. She went to the window and saw the carnage-dozens of undead pulling down talons, choking them-and she mused that with a thought she could increase her forces-her army-after every battle.

They would need no supplies; any instructions would be imparted immediately to the whole of the force. Their numbers would only multiply, for those slain in combat could be brought back, along with those they killed. This was an army that could not be weakened by battle, an army that fed upon carnage. How beautiful it seemed to the young witch. How logical and efficient.

She looked at the staff then, and was not repulsed, seeing it for the power and basking in that might. This was the promise of strength. This was the promise of victory. This was the instrument that could restore order to all the world, could free the goodly races forever from the horrors of war, even from the drudgery of menial tasks.

Rhiannon looked again to the courtyard, saw another talon get buried under a swarm of zombies.

Saw her army grow.

“Me girl!”

Rhiannon heard the call, heard the lie, coming from a faraway place, a horrid place.

Avalon.

“Me girl!” Now it was more insistent, more demanding. Always demanding. But now… Now, holding this staff, no one could make any demands of Rhiannon. She was the staff wielder; she would dictate.

“Me girl!” The plaintive tone of the call this time shook her, and mocked her anger. She pictured the caller, her mother, standing in the forest that had been her home.

That awful, horrid place.

“No,” Rhiannon heard herself saying against the tide of images. No, Avalon was not like that, was not horrid, was more fair than any place in all the world.

“Rhiannon,” Brielle called from across the miles, and across the greater vastness that now separated Rhiannon from the world, a chasm of consciousness. She was in a place of unreality, of fabrication, and now, suddenly, she understood the source.

Rhiannon opened wide her eyes, saw again the fighting in the courtyard. But now she was not pleased by the brutality. She looked to the staff in her hands, the instrument of power, of perversion, and saw the truth.

Morgan Thalasi stumbled into the room, his hollowed face torn from his fight with the zombies, his black eyes filled with outrage.

But the young witch did not back down in the least.

“Ye’re a damned thing, Morgan Thalasi,” she said firmly. “To have bringed such a thing as this into the sunlight.” With that, she grasped the staff tightly and summoned her power-her own power, and not that of the perverted item. A sheath of shining light encompassed her hand, and suddenly-and Rhiannon did not know how it came about-a globe of greenish light covered her body. Thalasi rushed at her.

She gave a cry and tried to focus on the staff, but thought she was dead as the Black Warlock sprang at her-sprang at her and was repelled, sent flying across the room, by the green globe!

Rhiannon knew then that her mother was with her, that she was not alone. Bolstered, she focused the energy on her hand, shaped it like a blade, and chopped down hard on the staff.

A slight crack appeared along the black wood, and from it poured shadows-not insubstantial things, but living shadows: dark, huddled forms that crawled about the room.

Again Rhiannon gave a cry, but the shadows ignored her altogether, rushing, swarming toward Thalasi, reaching for him with groping fingers.

“Charon!” he cried with understanding. He had played a dangerous game with Death, and now, with the staff weakened and out of his hands, Death had come calling. The Black Warlock fought back furiously, loosed crackling bolts of black lightning that splintered stone and rebounded wildly. But the shadowy forms pressed on, encircling him, tightening the ring, grabbing at him from every angle.

Rhiannon closed her eyes and worked hard to ignore his desperate cries. With her glowing, bladelike hand, she hit the staff again and again, each slice cutting a bit deeper.

“Rhiannon!” an obviously terrified Thalasi begged. “Oh, send them away!”

She couldn’t block out that plea, the most desperate tone she had ever heard. She glanced to the side of the room to see the Black Warlock in the clutches of the huddled shadowy horde, his corporeal form shimmering, as if losing its very essence. She knew that she could not help him, knew that the shadowy things were too beyond her control, even with the Staff of Death in hand. They swarmed all over Thalasi now, pulled him screaming and thrashing down, down, right through the floor.

His calls became a distant wail when Rhiannon went back to her work, more furiously now and with tears of terror in her blue eyes. She chopped and chopped; her mother cried out to her repeatedly.

The staff broke apart.

The tower blew apart.

Mitchell felt it keenly, felt as if his connection to the material world was gone, as if he were drifting back, back, to the vast, dark plain that was the realm of Death. Sheer hatred and wretchedness stopped that flight. Mitchell would not leave, would not surrender his lust for power.

He felt that sting again, all about his head and shoulders, Pouilla Camby slashing hard, cutting white lines across the darkness that was the wraith.

But he was back then, fully, growling and rushing fiercely at the ranger, whipping his bone mace to and fro in a frenzy, filling all the air with those burning black flakes.

Belexus retreated desperately, felt the sting and burn as several flakes fell over him. His clothing smoldered; his skin blistered. And Mitchell came on, roaring, swinging, driving the ranger back, accepting the hits from the nasty sword in the hope that he would connect just once. Just once.

Because both knew that one hit from that awful mace would utterly destroy Belexus.

But the ranger was by far the superior fighter, and his sword work as he retreated was nothing short of magnificent. Yet even the beauty of Pouilla Camby could not defeat the momentum of the furious wraith, could not slow the darkness that was Hollis Mitchell, and the wraith rose up above Belexus, the ranger out of running room.

There came a rush of air, the thundering sound of beating wings, as Calamus swooped down and clipped the wraith, not hurting him, but stopping his pursuit and stealing his focus. The bone mace swiped across in futile pursuit of the pegasus’ swift flight.