R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

“I came not for Brielle,” the embodiment of death informed her.

“For whom then?” Brielle dared to ask, though she knew that death was a personal event, one in which she need not be informed. “For Bellerian, who is old?”

There came no answer, the specter standing impassively, leaning heavily on its long sickle.

“For Belexus, then?” the witch prompted fearfully, and she knew as soon as she heard the words leave her mouth that, if that was the case, she truly didn’t want to know!

The specter tilted its hooded head, regarding her curiously.

“If ye mean to take Belexus, then know ye’ll be fighting meself!” Brielle declared, though she understood her claim to be a foolish and impossible boast, for she could no more battle Death than she could burn down Avalon. They were the same, this specter and her forest, both embodiments of the natural order of the universe, and Brielle drew her power completely from that very order. She could not fight Death; she, above all others, who served the First Magic, the school of Nature, could not hope to battle that most elemental of all beings.

“Yer pardon,” she said, and she respectfully lowered her gaze.

“I have come not for Belexus,” Arawn replied somberly-the only tone Death ever used, Brielle thought. “You should fear, though, if you care for him, that perhaps he comes for me!”

The witch looked up curiously, not understanding-until she looked past Death to see the ranger swooping in on Calamus, flying straight for the specter’s back. Belexus had no sword drawn, though, and seemed to be looking only at the witch, his expression as much of curiosity and relief as anything else.

“He canno’ see ye,” Brielle remarked, and of course, it made sense. Only the wizards had such insight, and no mere human or even elf could see Death until that final moment, the time of passage.

“And fortunate that is for him,” Arawn remarked. “I am of no mood to tolerate the foolishness of lessers.”

Brielle sent her thoughts out then, on sudden impulse, flooding the mind of Calamus, letting the winged horse know that she was not afraid, and more important, that this was not his place, and certainly not the place for Belexus. The ranger was just preparing to slip his leg over the mount and drop to the ground running when Calamus angled his powerful wings and broke the swoop, rising steeply into the night sky.

Brielle heard the ranger’s protesting calls, calls fast diminishing as the wise pegasus, heeding her telepathic commands, carried him far away.

“Then who?” the witch asked of Death when that crisis was passed. “If I might be knowing. And if not, then why have ye taked the time to stop and visit?”

“Visit?” the specter echoed, a hint of incredulity slipping into the edges of its grave tone. “No, Jennifer Glendower,” it said, using Brielle’s older name, the name she had been given by her mother and father those centuries before-before e-Belvin Fehte, the killing fires, before the dawn of Ynis Aielle. “I have not come for any-in these dark times, they easily enough come to me.” A rasping sound-a sarcastic chuckle?-emanated from the specter, sending the hairs on the back of Brielle’s neck dancing. Death was the most serious and somber being in all the universe, the one Colonnae who could not, or certainly should not, laugh.

“And your ranger friend has kept me busy, lo, these last weeks,” the surprising specter went on. “I dare say!”

“Then why have you come?” an unnerved Brielle bluntly pressed, too fearful and too intrigued to allow this most unusual conversation to be sidetracked.

Death did not answer, and in the course of that uncomfortable pause, the wise witch solved the riddle. “Ye’re angered at Thalasi,” she reasoned. “He took something from ye.”

“And still he takes,” Death confirmed.

Brielle breathed a lot easier then, as she came to understand the truth. Thalasi had torn Mitchell from the grasp of Death, and that, above all else, the somber Colonnae specter could not tolerate. “Then ye hate the black thing as much as do we all,” the witch said quietly. “And can ye destroy it?”

“Thomas Morgan, Martin Reinheiser, the two who have become one, has defeated even me,” the specter explained.

Brielle was caught off guard, both by the revelation that Death, who, by the very definition of his name, could never be beaten, apparently had been, and also by the use of Morgan Thalasi’s birth name, Thomas Morgan, a name the witch had not heard in many, many years. Also, the reference to both Thomas Morgan and Martin Reinheiser, used in the singular, was indeed telling. The two had become one, as Brielle had suspected and as Death had just confirmed. Yet another perversion, Brielle reasoned. Another insult against the natural order to add to Thalasi’s growing list.

“Thalasi is not so strong now,” Brielle explained, hoping that Death would whisk off right then and there and destroy the wretched Thalasi, and Mitchell, in one fell swoop. “He’s bent the fabric-”

“Our score was settled,” the specter interrupted before she could gain any real momentum.

“Then what do ye want?” Brielle asked impatiently-and nervously, once again.

“What is rightfully mine,” Death matter-of-factly replied.

“Hollis Mitchell.”

“May he rest in peace.”

“Then show me how to deliver him to ye!” the witch growled. “Ye cannot take him back yerself, it’d seem, or ye’d have done so and been done with it, so show me how I might deliver him to ye!”

“That is what you asked at the pool,” Death said calmly. “And that is why I have come.” And with that, the specter lifted one bony arm, its skeletal finger pointing past the witch to the broken tree stump.

Brielle followed the line and moved to the side of the pool, and in its dark waters, as the image of the many stars now overhead faded away, she saw clearly a vision of a sword.

And such a sword! Shining metal edged in diamonds, and glowing of its own inner light. She stared at it for a long, long while, saw into it and through it, glanced at its vast surroundings only for a few moments-enough time to see a treasure hoard beyond anything she had ever imagined; enough time to see the scaly guardian, its wings folded about it as it slept comfortably.

Hardly drawing breath, the witch turned about, but Death, Arawn, was gone. She looked back to the pool, to see only the reflection of stars.

“Brielle!” came a desperate cry, the voice of Belexus, huffing and puffing as he ran and stumbled through the trees. He burst into the clearing, brandishing his sword-a sword that had always seemed so magnificent to the witch, though she cared little for instruments of war, but that now, considering the vision she had just witnessed in the pool, seemed rather ordinary indeed.

THE YOUNG WITCH stared long and hard at the reflecting pool, which she had created just as her mother had taught her, but the image would not come to her. She knew that there were talons in the area-the birds had whispered as much-but for some reason she couldn’t understand, Rhiannon’s magical eye was blind to them.

Behind her, Bryan paced anxiously, fingering the hilt of his sword. A hungry lion, he seemed, impatient for the kill, and with prey close by.

That image of Bryan’s distress spurred Rhiannon on, urging her to try more forcefully. She sent her heart and soul into that pool of dark water, pricked her finger and gave to it a piece of herself, a bit of her own life blood, though as soon as she let the drop of red liquid fall to the pool, she realized to her horror that she would never get it back. Somehow, throwing herself into the magic had taken that bit away from her forevermore.