Bastion of Darkness (30 page)

There was nothing more that needed to be said about it, for Brielle certainly understood.

“We’ll get her back,” Del promised, seeing the fair witch’s expression drop. “I know that you must feel helpless, stuck here in the forest,” he dared to say, and he wished he hadn’t when Brielle looked up sharply. Her expression was not one of helplessness, however, but one of determination.

“Not so stuck,” she said. “I gave a piece of meself to Bryan o’ Corning, Rhiannon’s friend and love, and if he gets to me girl, then I’ll be there beside him, don’t ye doubt.”

Del’s thoughts went back to the battle he had fought on the field of Mountaingate, when Brielle had been there, posing as a small horse. The witch had been pivotal in that battle, resisting Thalasi, delivering Del and the one weapon that could defeat the Black Warlock. She had found a way then to be useful, and so she would again, the ghost knew. He took great comfort in that—as he had in the passage of Arien and the elves, as he had in the flight of Belexus—knowing that Rhiannon, his daughter, had so many powerful allies on her side.

For all the days of Benador’s march, for all the long nights awaiting word of Rhiannon, Istaahl the White had sat calmly in a private place, gathering his strength, allowing the weakened magic to build strong within his weary bones once more.

He called out to the sea often, and heard its distant
reply, but he came to realize that such a call would not suffice, that to truly find a weapon against the power of Talas-dun, the White Wizard of Pallendara would have to go to the source. As Brielle gathered her power from Avalon, so did Istaahl from the great sea, and so there he went, mind and soul, soaring out and diving down.

He felt the great press of the place as he descended into darkness, more fully engulfed by the watery realm than he had ever before been.

And still his thoughts dove: down, down, to the ocean floor, to the source.

And there, he studied. And there, he called.

And there, he begged.

Morgan Thalasi went out from Talas-dun that very night, his powerful staff in hand. He filtered his senses through that staff as he walked, sensing below him any remains of creatures that had gone before.

And he found them, and everywhere, and with a thought and the tap of his staff, he brought them to clawing animation, struggling, many futilely, for their bones had settled centuries before under tons of solid stone. But many more, garish zombies and white-boned skeletons, did find their way to the surface: lizards and birds, small animals and talons, so many talons.

The procession behind Thalasi grew with every step he took, winding his way through the mountain passes. He found another talon graveyard and promptly emptied it, then entered the remains of a talon village that he remembered, that had been destroyed in an earthquake a hundred years before.

Five hundred animated talon skeletons and nearly half that number of bony lizards followed Thalasi out of that village.

And so it went, through the day and through the
night, and all the next and the next after that, the Black Warlock growing his power out of the very ground, robbing Death yet again. In but a few days, Thalasi’s ghoulish army easily dwarfed that of the forces coming to Talas-dun.

And with the Staff of Death in his hands, the Black Warlock found that he could control these unthinking minions as easily as he could clench his own fist.

Hollis Mitchell watched it all, and was not pleased.

“IF ALL THE
blackness in all the world had been bunched together, then suren it’d be such an evil sight as this,” Bellerian muttered grimly as he and Bryan stared across a wide rocky valley to the black castle perched upon a high plateau overlooking the sea. Patches of fog drifted past their line of sight, obscuring the image—and both were glad for those moments, for the relief offered against the pain of merely looking upon the bastion of Morgan Thalasi.

For Bryan felt no less strongly about the sight than Bellerian, and his heart sank when he considered that Rhiannon was in there.

“We can go no further with the light on the wane,” the ranger lord explained. “We’ll set the camp about, then be out with the morn. If luck be with us, we’ll be into Talas-dun afore the setting of the next sun.”

The estimate was obviously optimistic, given the terrain, and truly disheartening to both anxious warriors, but given the trouble the group had already experienced in crossing the Kored-dul range, Bryan knew that Bellerian had to voice a positive opinion if for no other reason than the morale of the frustrated group. They had been in the mountains for several days, winding their way along treacherous trails where even the surefooted Avalon horses could barely cross. They had followed
a path that seemed promising, but that had ended abruptly at a thousand-foot drop on the edge of a long ravine that they had then spent hours and hours circuiting. And always, with every step, the troupe had been aware that danger was never far away. These were Morgan Thalasi’s mountains, for centuries infected by his pervasively evil will, serving as a breeding ground for talons and the man-eating lizards the creatures often rode.

Now, at least, Talas-dun was in sight, but there was no clear trail to get to the place, and Bryan feared that they might spend several days simply looking for the correct approach. And each of those days, the young half-elf knew, Rhiannon would remain in the dark one’s clutches.

Bellerian kept on speaking of his plans, but Bryan was only half listening—a fact that was not lost on the ranger lord. Thus, when the rangers awoke the next morning, Bellerian was not surprised to find that the young half-elf had stolen away in the night, though his Avalon horse remained tethered beside the others.

“We can find his trail,” one of the other rangers said to Bellerian.

The ranger lord thought that over for a minute, then shook his head. “He’s gone by ways our horses canno’ follow,” Bellerian reasoned, and he was not upset—though surely concerned—by the thought. He and his kin had delivered Bryan in sight of Talas-dun, but the rest of the trek was better made by the half-elf alone. The score of rangers could not storm the castle with any hope of success, of course, and a path of stealth was better accomplished by one than by twenty.

“Then what’s for us?” the ranger asked.

“Others will be along, unless I miss me guess,” Bellerian reasoned. “Benador’s sure to come, Arien as well.
And by the time they get near to Kored-dul, we’ll have all the region scouted.”

The ranger nodded, then ran off to rejoin the rest of the troop, informing them of their new mission.

Bellerian watched them at their hasty, practiced preparations, secure in the knowledge that his rangers were the best scouts in all the world and that when Benador, or Arien, arrived, the rangers would be able to give them a complete report on the enemy’s strength and whereabouts, and on the best passes for their approach.

The ranger lord’s gaze inevitably shifted back across the misty valley, to the black heart of the mountains. Bryan had done well in slipping off in the night, Bellerian knew; the young half-elf had absolved the rangers of a duty that was better left unserved. If Bryan had announced openly that he planned to go on alone, Bellerian would have had a hard time in convincing some of his more headstrong protégés to agree—might have had a hard time agreeing, himself. And even if they all did come to consensus that Bryan’s choice was best, then every one of the proud rangers would carry a heavy heart, beset by the knowledge that they had sent a warrior who was not one of their own to attempt this most dangerous and important mission.

No, Bellerian understood, young Bryan of Corning had done him, and all the rangers, a great service by setting off alone, in the dark of night. No easy path, that, in the dreaded Kored-dul, and such a display of bravery gave the ranger lord hope. Now he held faith in the young warrior. Still, it pained the old ranger that he was not beside Bryan of Corning, and that his son was not there. For forty years, Bellerian had lived in the shadows of Brielle’s enchanted forest, and now, when she needed him most, he wanted nothing more than to aid her. But he could not; he was old and he was crooked with a
wound from a whip-dragon, and he could not climb steep mountain walls, or castle walls.

“Fare well, young Bryan,” he said into the wind. “Bring her back to her home, for Brielle’ll not survive losing her daughter dear.”

“They are yours,” Morgan Thalasi announced to Hollis Mitchell, quite unexpectedly.

The wraith glanced down at the courtyard and the open region surrounding Talas-dun, the whole of the place filled with thousands and thousands of gruesome standing corpses and animated skeletons, mostly talon, but with hundreds of animals in the mix.

“You are my general, the conqueror, and to you I give this army,” Thalasi explained.

“To command at your will?” the wraith asked suspiciously.

“To command at your own,” the Black Warlock replied, and then, with a wicked grin, he added, “So long as your desires and my own are one and the same.”

Mitchell marked well that threat.

“Take them,” Thalasi instructed. “Go out from Talas-dun with your army, my general. Meet King Benador and Arien Silverleaf on the field and let them see their folly!”

Mitchell did not immediately respond to the battle cry. “Perhaps our stand would be all the stronger if made here,” he reasoned.

“And perhaps our enemies will learn the truth of our power and turn away before they ever reach the place,” Thalasi countered. “Perhaps Belexus will not come.” He knew that bait would prove too much for Mitchell to ignore.

“Look at your thousands,” Thalasi added. “The humans and elves cannot resist us.”

Mitchell did look out at the standing throng, so perfectly
disciplined, mere weapons for his will, extensions of his very thoughts. Then he looked back to Thalasi and came to share the Black Warlock’s confident smile.

And then they went out, a great black wave, and all living things fled before them. And Mitchell had started the march with a mere thought, a telepathic call that the zombies and skeletons could not resist.

After they had gone, flowing like black lava from Talas-dun, Morgan Thalasi gathered his talon commanders and sent them, too, and nearly all of their warriors, out into the field, to flank the army, to watch over Mitchell, and to join in the joy of slaughter.

While the night had been difficult for Bryan, it had gone much better than he ever would have hoped. He had encountered no enemies—none that had seen him, at least—as he nearly blindly picked his way among the boulders and scrub. Instead of traversing the valley, the young warrior had crossed it up high, hugging its western wall, and now he was halfway up its steep northern face, climbing hand over hand, finding holds on juts of barely half an inch, then using his strong muscles to twist his agile body ever higher. When the sun came up—and again, it was a sun dimmed by the perpetual gloom of Kored-dul—Bryan noted that he was nearing the top of the cliff face, fully five hundred feet above the rocky valley floor. The young warrior was no stranger to mountains, having spent many weeks in the Baerendils south of Corning hiking with his father. He knew better than to keep looking down, and focused instead on what lay above him, and soon enough, he was over the lip of the nearly vertical climb.

Talas-dun was not in sight from this vantage, for the ground continued to slope upward, winding among pillars of wind-blasted, gray stone. Anxious, Bryan was off
in a slow trot, and he was soon enough berating himself for that eagerness.

He scrambled up a series of narrow and high natural stairs, each about chest height above the previous. The sides were fairly enclosed by rock walls except for a few narrow breaks, almost like the corridors of a castle. Bryan hardly noted them, except to quickly pass them by, until he came alongside one in which a large lizard was resting.

The half-elf cursed himself silently and rushed on, leaping the next stair at a full run, and then the next, and the next. The lizard had seen him, though, and the vicious and ever-hungry creatures could run nearly as swiftly as a horse, and on sure, sticky feet, well-designed for travel in the rocky mountains. Four steps up, Bryan could hear the slapping lizard feet right behind him, gaining on him by the moment, and he had to turn and fight. He scrambled to the back end of the step as he swung about, forcing the lizard to climb before it could attack. Across whipped the elvish blade, the fine sword his father had given to him, scoring hard on the pointy end of the lizard’s nose, cleaving through scales, right to the creature’s teeth. The stubborn thing came on anyway, putting its hind claws on the lip of stone and propelling itself forward, maw wide, front claws slashing.

Bryan leaped and rolled over backward on the next higher step, landing on his knees and coming ahead once more fiercely, slashing his sword, left and right.

The lizard, surprised by the sudden move, by its own clean miss, lunged off balance, smacking against the riser of stone with only its head and neck going over, with no defense, no chance to do anything except catch Bryan’s sword with its face.