R. Salvatore: The Witch_s Daughter

Knowing that she had at last broken her mother’s stubborn resolve, the young woman leaped back across the field, her graceful step springing even higher on the cool grass.

“Let her go,” Ardaz said when Rhiannon was back to her play.

“So young,” Brielle replied softly.

“By our counting,” Ardaz countered, his tone suddenly quite serious. He looked into the green sparkle of his sister’s eyes, held her with the intensity of his own gaze. “Her power is budding, so it would seem,” he said. “But we do not know which she will follow, mother or father.”

“What do you mean?” Brielle asked, a bit frightened by her normally cheerful brother’s grim tone.

“Has she the gift of long years, as do we?” Ardaz asked bluntly. “You do not know, nor do I. Perhaps Rhiannon will live through the centuries, and then twenty years will not seem so long. But perhaps…” He let the thought hang, knowing that he had lighted a thousand contemplations in his sister’s mind.

And truly Brielle was dazed by the words. She hadn’t even given that notion much consideration, assuming that her daughter would live by her side through the dawn and wane of centuries to come. But Ardaz was right, Brielle had to admit; she had no way of knowing.

“Let her go,” Ardaz said again. “The life is hers to live.”

Brielle nodded but could not reply past the lump that had suddenly welled in her throat.

Much later, but still before the approaching dawn had pinkened the eastern sky, Billy Shank and Bellerian slumped down on a mossy bed at the edge of the field. The two wizards trotted by them, shaking their heads in good-hearted sarcasm, and returned to their merrymaking.

“Mortal men,” Istaahl muttered to Ardaz.

“So now we might die happy,” Bellerian said to Billy. “To have looked upon these precious and rare sights.”

“Now I understand Del’s love of this place,” Billy replied, referring to the friend he had lost twenty years before, the friend who had loved Brielle and given the witch her daughter. “Truly it is a magical land.”

“And rarer still is the gathering we joined this night,” Bellerian explained. “Suren there be magic in the air.”

Billy regarded the five still at play on the field. The fair witch and her brother Ardaz, Istaahl from faraway Pallendara, and Arien Silverleaf, the Eldar of the elves, who had become Billy’s closest friend over the past twenty years. But most of all Billy found his eye lingering on Rhiannon, Brielle’s daughter, Del’s daughter, so innocent and beautiful.

Looking down from the heavens, his lost friend would have been proud indeed.

“Ardaz of Illuma, Istaahl of Pallendara, and Brielle of Avalon,” Bellerian continued, speaking the words solemnly, as if to remind himself of the gravity of the assembly.

“And the Eldar of Illuma,” Billy added. “If King Benador had come, then all the leaders of the world would be here.”

Bellerian nodded. “But the good young king of Calva and even yer own friend o’ the elves pale by the side of th’other three. Look at them, Billy Shank, and know yerself to be a blessed soul. The powers of all the world they be; any one o’ them could defeat an army, could lay ruin to all the world or shine the light of hope upon it. They check themselves, and a blessing that be, for the bounds o’ their powers’d steal yer breath away and never give it back.”

Billy knew well enough the truth of Bellerian’s observations. He had seen Ardaz in battle once before, and if the Black Warlock had not appeared on the field to counter the magic of the Silver Mage, Ardaz would surely have destroyed the entire army of Pallendara all by himself.

Bellerian shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his own words. “The powers o’ the gods given to man,” he mumbled. “The three wizards of Ynis Aielle all come together.”

Twenty years is a long time in the life of a mortal man, but if Bellerian, the knowledgeable Ranger Lord, had taken a moment to consider his words, he would have remembered that Ynis Aielle boasted of four wizards, not three.

Too many, in the last two decades of peace, had allowed themselves to forget the lurking specter of Morgan Thalasi.

An organ? Reinheiser balked, considering the massive pipes that climbed high into the chamber. You dragged me all the way up here to view an organ?

You can play, of course, Thalasi countered, a rhetorical thought, for Thalasi knew Reinheiser’s every memory and knew that his counterpart was an accomplished musician.

I created this instrument in my first days here, he explained to Reinheiser. My only companion for centuries other than the wretched talons, and I care not for their company.

Reinheiser began to understand. You want us to join in the song, he realized. Every movement so precise and so practiced.

Here we might find our harmony, Thalasi replied. It only occurred to me after the encounter with the usurping talon, after I had felt the ecstasy of our joining.

It will not work, Reinheiser reasoned, and Thalasi felt the sincere disappointment in his thoughts. There remain too many subtle variations.

Perhaps, argued Thalasi. But with the instrument as an audible guide, the futility of our battles will become evident at every misstep. Only when the song flows in harmony will our minds be flowing in harmony.

Reinheiser remained unconvinced, but Thalasi did not have to remind him of their other options. He followed Thalasi’s lead in bringing the body to sit down.

And then they played.

For an unbroken stretch of many days, notes rang out from the central tower of Talas-dun. Rhythmless and offkey, the sound grated in the marrow of the talons of the fortress, and they slumped down and tried to hide their ears whenever they had to cross too close to the place. Whispers spread among the ranks-but only whispers, for none had yet found the courage even to go in and mop up the remains of Grok-that the Black Warlock had gone mad.

But the helpless talons could only sit and wait, and endure the torture of the monstrous music.

Quite the opposite of the talons’ suspicions, the spirits of Thalasi and Reinheiser were preserving their sanity up in that tower room. Ever so gradually, the notes of their playing began to take on the semblance of music. For the first time, the two separate identities found a way to truly anticipate the actions of each other.

In merely a week Reinheiser admitted the value of Thalasi’s plan. In two they found their way through an entire melody without a single error. And still they played, following the music, falling within the music.

It consumed them wholly and broke down the defenses that had kept them apart for so long, as each laid bare his desires to the other. The music was the cause, the harmony their only goal.

And they reached for it and clutched at it. Together.

Talons gathered outside the central tower, basking in the powerful notes of the Black Warlock’s song. The dim-witted beasts could not understand the depth of what their dark master had accomplished, but they knew from the confident roar of the massive pipes that the man who finally emerged from the central tower of Talas-dun would bear little resemblance to the wretched being that had crawled and scratched his way up there.

Fingers glided across the keys in complete confidence, never a bar was missed, and the sheer power that flowed through those once battered digits sent the huge instrument spiraling to new heights of musical majesty.

“Are you there?” the being called out in a strange dual-toned voice.

“Of course I am!” he answered himself.

It was time to go.

The Black Warlock stretched his legs and strode confidently out of the room to the tower balcony. He knew that his talons would be nearby, listening, waiting for some word, any word, of the fate of their master. And here he was, returned to them, whole again and powerful. More powerful.