R. Salvatore: Bastion of Darkness

Nor had the river brought any harm to Mitchell, Brielle had informed Belexus, and had told her brother, Rudy Glendower, the Silver Mage of Illuma, who was known by the name of Ardaz. For the fair witch of Avalon, with her senses so attuned to the natural world, had sensed the return, the sheer perversion, of the undead thing. She had sent out her eyes to search for her daughter, and had found instead the horrid wraith, staining the very ground with its every step.

“Might that the beast will come to Avalon,” Brielle said after a long and uncomfortable silence. “I canno’ go out and destroy the thing, for to leave would be to leave behind the power I’m needing against it, but if it comes near to me wood…”

She let the ominous threat hang there, but Belexus would not seize the thought and revel in it. He didn’t doubt her claim, but neither did he want to see that battle. “The wraith is mine to slay,” he announced coldly and determinedly.

“Ye canno’,” the witch said calmly.

“Then, by the Colonnae, I’ll die in trying!” the ranger growled, spinning back on her, his blue eyes flashing with fury.

Brielle took a good measure of the man, this man, this prince of rangers. Always, Belexus had been the cool and calm leader of men, the warrior who had single-handedly rallied the Calvans to hold the Four Bridges against Thalasi’s assaults until reinforcements could arrive, the man who had saved the elves on the field of Mountaingate when he had put aside his own desires and used his body and that of his pegasus mount to clear the way for Arien Silverleaf, that the elf lord, fittingly, might be the one to slay wicked Ungden the Usurper, who had led his army north to destroy all of Arien’s people. Always, Belexus had been unselfish, purely giving, and unquestioning of the code of rangers, a pledge to a set of tenets and principles that worked for the betterment of the world, and not of the rangers.

But now… now that Brielle had informed the man that the wraith was still about, that the wraith, with the weakening of magic in the last desperate battle, might well stand as the most powerful creature in all Aielle, Belexus had changed. Now his thoughts festered on poor dead Andovar, his rage becoming singular and all-consuming. His only smiles of late were ones of cruel glee, a grin that more resembled a grimace and that only appeared when he cut another talon down.

Brielle, so gentle and wise, remained patient with him. In his anger, he had taken a vow that superseded all others, she realized; a vow that he would avenge the death of Andovar. With that seeming an impossibility, the ranger’s frustration continued to grow. Perhaps it would pass as the darkness further retreated toward the Kored-dul, as time itself replaced those last bitter images of Andovar’s life with the memories of better times Belexus and Andovar had shared throughout the decades.

Belexus gave a nod then, a curt bow, and walked away into the forest, preferring to be alone, and Brielle was left to wonder if this frustration would ever pass, if Belexus would ever truly recover from his inability to fulfill his vow.

“He’s gone ugly,” the beautiful witch said to Calamus, and the pegasus, a creature far more intelligent than its equine frame would indicate, gave a snort and pawed the ground.

The truth of her words assaulted her, and made her determine then and there that she had to do something to help the man, for though he would not admit it, he needed her now.

At sunset, the emerald witch began her preparations upon a still pool of water, melted snow that had collected in the broken stump of an ancient oak, a tree that had been battered to death in the magical battle the witch had waged against Morgan Thalasi. There was still some resonance of power in that tree, Brielle knew, in its deepest roots and in the inner rings that had seen the dawn and death of centuries. And so it was here that Brielle began her enchanting, pouring oils into the water, singing and dancing about the tree, offering a bit of her own blood, and offering all of her thoughts and, more important, her wishes, to the mix. She focused those thoughts on the wraith, and soon the image of the blackness that was the zombielike Mitchell came into focus within the depths of the pool.

Brielle had found him with her divining, crawling out of a small cave-his daytime shelter, it seemed-stepping out into the night. The mere fact that she had so easily located the wraith, how easily her enchantment had sensed his presence though he was obviously far, far away, hinted to her just how powerful Mitchell had become. Now the witch called to the deepest knowledge of the tree, to the understanding of the earth itself, begging it to give her a sign, a hint, of how such a perversion as the wraith could be destroyed, of what magic, or magical weapon, perhaps, might at least hurt the thing.

The water clouded over, swirling, then a small spot appeared at the center of the pool. And in that spot, under the water, the witch saw a craft, a barge poled by a gaunt, robed figure, drifting upward, upward, closer and closer.

Then it was gone, and so was the fog, and all that remained in the bowl was the clear water and the reflection of the evening’s first stars.

Brielle gave a long sigh; perhaps no such weapon existed. Perhaps Thalasi’s meddling in places where no mortal belonged had loosed upon Ynis Aielle a horror that would endure for eternity.

“Not so,” came a low, coarse voice behind Brielle. She froze in place, purely amazed that any person, that anything at all could so sneak up on her here in Avalon, stunned that her many forest friends had not alerted her to the presence-a presence that she felt so clearly now, so cold and deadly. She turned about slowly, thinking that she would face the wraith, thinking that Mitchell had somehow come through her divining instrument to strike at her.

Her fair face blanched even more when she saw and recognized the speaker. Not the wraith and not Thalasi, but one darker and more mysterious by far.

Death itself had come to Avalon.

It took the distracted Belexus a long while to realize that the wintry forest had gone strangely quiet around him, that the nightbirds were not singing, not even the snowy owl that always seemed to be about. But it was more than the absence of animals, the ranger somehow sensed; it was as if all the forest had suddenly hushed: the wind, the trees, the eternal music of Avalon.

The ranger spotted Calamus, flying in low, landing in a small clearing not so far ahead and pawing the ground frantically, as agitated as Belexus had ever seen the creature.

“What do ye know?” the ranger asked, and the pegasus snorted, though the sound seemed unnaturally muffled, as if it had come from far, far away, as if the air itself were heavy with dread. This was too wicked, the ranger realized, as if the very heart of Avalon-

“Brielle?” the ranger asked in a hush, hardly able to draw breath.

Again Calamus snorted, and stamped his front hoof hard on the ground.

Belexus sprinted across the small clearing and verily leaped atop the winged horse’s powerful back, and Calamus sped away, running to the far end of the clearing and cutting a sharp turn, then galloping back-one stride, two-and leaping high into the air, wings beating furiously to get the pair up above the trees. A sheer sense of wrongness guided horse and rider, a perversion of the natural order, a darkness to the area where stood the emerald witch.

“Arawn,” Brielle said quietly, respectfully, her name for this ultimate of specters, and truly she was surprised and confused, for though she knew that Thalasi’s meddling with the universal powers had wounded her and all the magic users of Aielle, she had thought herself strong still, and in the best of health. “Has me time so passed by, then, that I did not even expect ye?”