R. Salvatore - The Witch_s Daughter

He strolled to a wide pit behind the vast talon encampment, an open grave for the many talons and humans who had fallen on the field in the previous days.

“Beigen kaimen dee,” the Black Warlock chanted, waving his most powerful tool, the Staff of Death, over the pit. For a moment nothing happened.

“Beigen kaimen dee,” Thalasi growled again, sensing the conception of the enchantment. There came a stirring in the pit and then several of the corpses rose up and crawled out to the summons of the Black Warlock. Thalasi chuckled as the wretched things, some missing an arm or a leg, one without a head, scrambled to his bidding, and all the while thinking it grand that he could so easily steal from the realm of death.

The Black Warlock repeated the spell several times until he sensed that the host of his zombie army had reached the limits of his control. These were not like Hollis Mitchell, not wraiths encompassing the spirit and consciousness of the beings they had once been. Rather, these were unthinking zombies, slow-moving and capable of following only rudimentary commands.

But Thalasi understood their value in the coming battle. How the humans would flee from the specter of his undead brigade!

“Rest, my pets,” he bade them, and as one the zombie force dropped to the ground and lay still. Thalasi knew he would have to be very careful with them. Even his talons might flee the camp at the appearance of such horrifying comrades. The Black Warlock would give them over to Mitchell’s command and let the wraith hold them in check until battle was fully joined.

“Then let all of Calva tremble,” Thalasi muttered to the empty night. “Let them know the power of Morgan Thalasi. Let them know their doom.”

Rhiannon shot up from the blankets Bryan had set out for her bed, her face stark with terror.

“What is it?” Bryan asked, rushing to her side.

Rhiannon just shook her head and buried her face in the front of the half-elf’s tunic. Bryan rested a hand on her back to calm her trembling. “Yet another nightmare?” he asked.

Rhiannon looked up at him, unable to find the words to explain. But Bryan was sensitive to the young witch’s dilemma; he had come to understand her quite well in their few days together, and he knew from the expression on her face that her release of power had nearly torn her apart.

“You did as you had to,” he said to her. “You cannot accept any blame for your actions.”

“Ye canno’ understand,” Rhiannon replied. “It takes me, steals me from meself.”

“But it passes,” Bryan reasoned.

“And leaves nothin’ but destruction in its wake.”

“Not true!” Bryan was quick to protest. “You saved my life! And many others, from what you have told me of your work on the field of Rivertown.”

“Suren it is two-faced,” Rhiannon admitted. “But the healin’ side and the seein’ side are at me bidding. This other, this anger ye’ve seen, comes of its own and goes when it’s through with me.”

“Accept it for what it is,” Bryan urged her. “How many lives did you save this night, dear Rhiannon? How many men would have died on the bridges fighting off the talons you dispatched?”

Somehow the answer seemed inadequate to the young witch. “I have scarred the earth,” she said. “I have killed-talon and beast.” The image of her black and white horse on the northern field, lying dead after it had split the earth with its enchanted run, assaulted her thoughts.

“You have done what you were forced to do,” Bryan said stubbornly. “Thanks are owed to the daughter of Brielle. Yet to herself she gives only blame.”

“Ye canno’ understand,” the young witch whispered again, and she dropped her face back into the security of the folds of Bryan’s shirt.

Bryan did not reply; for all of his pretty words, he suspected that Rhiannon was right in her estimation. He had seen the coldness in her eyes as she executed the spells of destruction upon the talon caravan, a simmering wrath so foreign to the young woman’s gentle character. Such emotions exacted a heavy toll, Bryan knew from his own grim experiences. He tried to remember the last time he had flashed a carefree smile, and he wondered if he would ever smile that way again.

“And it must be worse for you,” he whispered, though his voice was so soft that the witch, finding comfort in slumber, did not stir. While his strength came from his skills, he could see that the power that Rhiannon used insinuated itself into her being, possessed her and controlled her.

That image of the young witch, standing coldly beside him as her fires burned away the stain of the talons, stayed with Bryan for the remainder of the night. He wanted to tell her that she would never have to use that destructive power again, that her world would be one of creation and healing. He wanted to help her fight off the insinuating power and be true to her gentle spirit.

But the thought of the armies on the fields beside the Four Bridges washed away Bryan’s hopes. For all of his desire to shield Rhiannon, the awful reality told him the truth of his duties.

Rhiannon had a part to play in all of this, Bryan knew, a voice in the outcome of the war and the very future of Ynis Aielle. Her power was there whether she or he accepted it or not, and with the carnage of war so thick in the air, that power could not be denied.

“I will help you,” Bryan promised when Rhiannon awoke the next morning-the first sunless morning.

Rhiannon considered the gray shroud of Thalasi’s dark magic, now stretching from horizon to horizon, and knew she would need that help.

HAD HE LOOKED back to Kored-dul, to his black fortress of Talas-dun, Morgan Thalasi might have been concerned. In the weeks after he had found harmony of his twin spirits, before he set out with his talon army, he had reinforced the iron fortress to its previous state of power.

But now, with Thalasi out on the Calvan fields, pulling at the magical plane with all of his power-hungry desperation, some of those old cracks in Talas-dun had reappeared, and when the heavy sea breeze rolled in on the high cliff, the tallest of the black castle’s towers swayed ominously, no longer able to fully defy the force.

The Black Warlock was consumed in the business at hand, with his eyes looking to conquest in the east, not back to those lands he already claimed as his own. He took no note of the strain his dominating will, and the responses of his magic-using adversaries, placed upon that shared magical plane.

Brielle walked slowly through Avalon, taking advantage of the unexpected lull in Thalasi’s attacks to soothe her trees with comforting promises of a brighter time. But while the Emerald Witch held fast to the belief that Morgan Thalasi would once again be defeated and driven back to his black fortress, she honestly wondered whether Ynis Aielle would ever be as it had been.

Avalon, the shining light of all the world, had weakened in the weeks of Thalasi’s assaults, and more than the borderlands of the forest had been affected. Even in the heart of the wood, in the fields and groves that Brielle held most dear, the colors of the flora seemed less vibrant and the permeating fragrance of the wildflowers could not hold up against the burning stench of decay and devastation. For Thalasi’s assaults were more than physical manifestations of destructive power. The response demanded by the Black Warlock’s attacks heavily taxed the defending witch, to the core of her magic itself. Brielle had aged more in the past weeks than she had in a dozen centuries, and her growing weariness, she feared, was merely a reflection of the exhaustion of her magical energy.

And it was that same magical energy, drawn upon by the Emerald Witch, that bound the forest of Avalon in its perpetual enchantment of beauty.