Bastion of Darkness

Chapter 15
The Witch’s Gift

HE STOOD UP. It seemed a minor thing to the animals in the forest about him: a man climbing unsteadily to his feet, as one who had been asleep might, or as one who had been sitting too long in an awkward position. But for Bryan of Corning, that movement felt momentous indeed. He remembered the pains and that deathly chill when he had crawled into Avalon more than a week before. He remembered the view of his own feet, black and thick, and he remembered most of all the pain when Brielle had warmed them again, the agony that had so quickly replaced the sheer numbness.

That was all past now. The half-elf wriggled his toes, all ten of them-and how glad Bryan was to see, to feel, that he still had all ten of them! And though his legs were surely tingling and prickly, it was a sensation that Bryan savored: the evidence of life.

“I thought ye’d sleep all the winter,” came a quiet yet strong voice from the side, from the shadows of the lower branches of an evergreen.

And Bryan saw her then, and surely his heart fluttered, though he had already given that heart to another. If the horrid wraith had been darkness incarnate, then this, before him, was the embodiment of beauty itself, walking softly, a dream creature on a blanket of gentle fog, her golden hair shining, green eyes and the emerald wizard’s mark sparkling through the shadows. Bryan understood that the twinkle of those eyes could penetrate the darkest of nights, like the soft gasp or the sharp cry of a lover, like the very stars above.

Bryan’s smile widened as Brielle stepped out of the brush, dressed only in her white gossamer gown and her delicate slippers, though the air was not warm and the ground was covered still with snow. “I am truly indebted to you, fair sorceress of Avalon,” the half-elf said, bowing low.

“Nay,” the witch replied. “ ’Tis me place to do the things I do, and nothing more.”

Bryan didn’t believe a word of it. He knew what Brielle had gone through to save him, knew that she had taken his pains as her own, one at a time, and, with them inside her own seemingly fragile frame, had battled them and overcome them. He knew that she, for the better part of a week, had felt the same agony as he, and he understood, too, from their joining, that Brielle had been near to the brink of death, had come so very close to stepping over that thin line and slipping away forever into the dark realm.

“If Brielle went about the world trying to steal all the pains, as she stole mine, then surely she would have been worn away many centuries ago,” Bryan remarked, trying to put a bit of levity in his tone so as not to offend the witch.

“Not to all the world, but to those who come to me door,” Brielle replied. “Me magic gives to me the healing power; how wicked I’d be not to share it with those in need.”

Bryan nodded, conceding the point, though he still considered Brielle’s actions toward him heroic and beyond any call of duty. “Whatever you may call it, you have my thanks and my heart.”

“Indeed I could’ve had it,” the witch said with a smile. “I could’ve plucked it beating right from yer chest, so battered were ye!”

Bryan shared her laugh, but put on his serious expression almost immediately and dipped a low bow.

“Go on, then,” Brielle said to him. “For I’m thinking that another’s got yer heart.”

The half-elf straightened and eyed the witch directly, all traces of any smile fast flown from his serious expression.

“And it’s for her that I’m wondering,” Brielle went on, a bit tentatively, for she recognized the fear in Bryan’s look.

“And was it for her that you healed my wounds?” the young half-elf asked.

“Might be that I tried the harder,” Brielle admitted. “But no, for suren I’ve heard tell o’ Bryan o’ Corning, and he’s not one deserving death at the hands o’ Mitchell’s foul wraith.”

“How do you know about the wraith?” Bryan asked, letting the conversation continue its tangential flow, for he could not seem to muster the courage to tell the fair witch the truth about her daughter. Not yet.

“I know the nature of yer wound,” Brielle explained. “And know, too, that the wraith’s been about. I’m not so blind and not so much a fool.”

“None of neither,” Bryan agreed.

“But I’m not knowing of me daughter,” Brielle continued. “I’m not feeling her about. And I’m thinking that ye might be.”

Brielle didn’t miss the cloud that passed over Bryan’s face.

“I was with her when Mitchell attacked,” the halfelf began quietly, chewing his lips between words. “I could not hurt the wraith, nor could Rhiannon. I do not understand why she went out to find the foul thing! I don’t know that it was looking for us, and don’t know that we ever would have seen it. But, for some reason, she went out after it.”

Brielle nodded; she understood her daughter’s purpose, and so would heroic Bryan, she knew, if he just stepped back a bit and considered his own actions across the river.

“I got knocked away, and out of mind for a while,” Bryan explained. “And when I awoke, they were gone, the both of them.”

Brielle licked her soft lips nervously.

“I do not think that Mitchell killed her,” Bryan said suddenly, needing to offer some comfort to this worried mother.

“Me girl’s not dead,” Brielle responded firmly, with some certainty.

“Agreed,” the half-elf said. “I believe that Rhiannon led the wraith away to protect me, and probably that she leads him still on a merry chase across the lands. I started out of Corning on their trail-two separate trails-but discovered that my wounds were too great. And so I made for Avalon to warn you.”

“And well ye did,” Brielle replied. “Yer wounds should’ve killed ye long before ye got near to me home.”

“But that was so many days ago,” Bryan said, his expression puzzled.

“Nine days,” Brielle clarified.

“We must out for Rhiannon at once,” the half-elf reasoned, looking all about like an animal put in too small a cage.

Brielle’s upraised hand calmed him.

“You know of her?” Bryan asked hopefully.

“With what ye telled me, I can find out more,” the witch explained. “Take yer breakfast alone.” She pointed to the evergreen. “I’ll be back to ye afore the sun crests.” With that, Brielle was gone, disappearing into the brush so quickly that Bryan blinked many times.

He did as she asked, moving to the spruce tree and finding a most delicious meal set out for him, and though he was too worried for Rhiannon to feel hunger, he ate well, realizing that he would soon need all of his strength. And how he marveled at how much of that strength had already returned! As the morning passed, the half-elf began to feel much more himself. His legs soon steadied, his head cleared, and he felt as if he had spent a year at rest, eating well and training easily.

The only things that tempered the near euphoria were thoughts of and fears for Rhiannon, and Bryan knew that if she did not return to him, his health would fly away.

Brielle came back to him late that morning, her face grim, her gait slow and even awkward. Bryan ran up to meet her, took her by the shoulders, then lifted her chin so that she looked him in the eye.

“No,” he breathed.

“She’s not dead,” the witch whispered, seeming so very old suddenly, the twinkle in her green eyes flown away. “But she’s been taken.”

“The wraith?”

Brielle nodded. “And Thalasi, I’m fearing, for me divining telled me that Mitchell put out for Talas-dun, and likely he’s there already.”

Talas-dun. Morgan Thalasi’s black fortress. The name hit Bryan like a heavy stone, a name known by every person in all Aielle, a name synonymous with the deepest terrors and the greatest evil.

Brielle straightened and pulled from Bryan’s supportive grasp. “I canno’ go after her,” the witch said bitterly. “Me magic forbids me leaving Avalon at this dark time, yet how am I to abandon me daughter to the clutches of Morgan Thalasi?”

“I can go out,” Bryan said with a determined growl.

Brielle nodded, for Bryan’s sake not daring to disagree openly, but she understood the futility of it all. The brave young man was no match for Mitchell, let alone Thalasi, and certainly no match for either of them in that dark place, in Talas-dun.

“By all the precepts of me very existence, I canno’ go out from me wood,” the witch said. “For if I did, then suren Thalasi’d come a’calling, and Avalon’d be taken down, and all the world’d know a deeper pain.”

“Deeper than the pain Brielle now feels?”

Her green eyes narrowed as she looked at him, and he understood that, in the witch’s estimation, no pain could be deeper than the one that now tore at her heart.

“You said that I am not in your debt, and though I offer you my sincerest gratitude, I accept that premise,” Bryan said suddenly, taking on haughty tones that surprised the witch, a demeanor she would have expected from one of King Benador’s knightly warders, perhaps, but not from the half-elf.

“And as such, I am not bound here,” Bryan went on. “And so I choose to go, at once.”

“And yer destination?”

“Is my own to pick,” the determined half-elf replied.

“Not so hard to guess,” Brielle said.

“Then if you know me so well, dear Brielle, you know, too, that I must go to the west, to Talas-dun, to the court of Thalasi, to hell itself if need be, in pursuit of Rhiannon.”

“Ye love her,” Brielle stated.

“More than I love my own life,” Bryan replied without hesitation, and the words felt so good as he said them, a confirmation of truth, an admission that he knew he’d have to make again, to Rhiannon.

Brielle spent a long while studying the young half-elf, her perceptive gaze reading his body language, reading his heart. After a few moments, she began to nod slowly. “Ye’re going after her, though I fear ye’ll find the road too dark. I’ll not try to slow ye, though I’m thinking that one who might help might be returning to me soon. And I’ll not try to stop ye, for I know that I could not, not if I showed to ye the truth o’ Talas-dun in all its splendid wickedness.”

“Not if you showed me that I would have to wrestle Thalasi and all his minions bare-handed,” Bryan replied.

“And if ye die?”

Bryan shrugged, as sincere a reply as Brielle could ever have asked for.

“Ye get yer rest, Bryan o’ Corning,” Brielle instructed. “I’ll gather yer sword and armor-I been mending both-and bring them to ye afore the morrow’s cold dawn.”

Bryan’s expression became tentative, and Brielle read it easily. The half-elf feared any more delays, feared leaving Rhiannon in Thalasi’s clutches for a moment longer. “I’m not fighting yer feelings that ye should go off at once,” the witch said. “But know that if ye go unprepared, then ye’ve got no’ a chance o’ e’er seeing the black castle. Ye give me the one night and I’ll help ye, I promise, and I’ll get ye a horse that’ll run swifter than any ye’ve known.”

That last promise quieted any protests from Bryan. “I fear that I have tarried too long already,” he said. “But I trust in your judgment and in your word.” Indeed Bryan did, for he, like everyone else, understood that Avalon’s horses were the greatest in all the world, both in speed and in heart, and it was common knowledge, too, that none could rope or ride such a beast without the blessings of the forest and the lady who guided and guarded it.

In the morning, true to her word, Brielle returned to Bryan leading a small, well-muscled chestnut mare. Saddlebags bulged with supplies, and Bryan’s fine sword was set through a loop on the side of the saddle, his elven-crafted armor and shield strapped atop the seat. When he took down that armor, the young half-elf’s eyes widened indeed, for the mail had been interwoven with ribbon, green, laced with gold thread.

Bryan put a quizzical look over Brielle, who only smiled and nodded, all the assurance the half-elf would ever need.

“Ye’ve got food enough to take ye across the world and back,” the witch explained after helping Bryan to don his armor. “And take heart that yer metal shirt’ll block most any blow,” she added, “excepting, perhaps, the horse-bone mace of the wraith, and I’m not for knowing what terrible weapons Morgan Thalasi will use against ye.”

The value of such a gift from the witch of the wood was not lost on Bryan. He started to bow, then changed his mind, stepped forward and kissed Brielle lightly on the cheek. “I will bring her back to you,” he promised.

Brielle could not speak past the lump in her throat. She reached into her pouch and produced an amulet: an emerald set in silver and hung on a thread of vine. She looped it around the half-elf’s neck, drawing his attention to the green gemstone, turning it up so that it glittered before his eyes.

“Ye know that I’m with ye,” she said cryptically, and let the amulet hang low once more. “Don’t ye ever be forgetting that.”

Bryan nodded and kissed her cheek again, then, without hesitation, he swung up onto the saddle and kicked the mare into a quick canter.

He was out of Avalon soon after, riding hard to the west. That western edge of the forest did not border the rolling green Calvan plains, though, but met with the land of Brogg, the Brown Wastes, the desolation of Thalasi. This was the wildest edge of Avalon’s perimeter, a place untamed, and thus, a place always guarded.

The ever-vigilant rangers of Avalon, watching the lone rider gallop out of the forest, were more than a little confused and suspicious of his passage. Lord Bellerian, father of Belexus, leader of the proud warriors, was back into the deep forest soon after, calling out at the top of his lungs for Brielle. He found her after midday, and was surely relieved to see that she was unharmed. He questioned her about the slender rider, garbed in the fine armor of Lochsilinilume.

“A friend o’ me daughter,” Brielle admitted, taking pains not to lock gazes with the venerable ranger. Bellerian was old and crooked from a long-ago battle wound, but his will remained iron-strong, as great as that of any man alive. “So brave a lad,” the witch went on, and the sadness in her voice could not be denied. “Though I’m fearing his days left are not so long.”

“He rode an Avalon horse,” Bellerian said, a bit of accusation in his tone.

Brielle only shrugged.

“And his armor, too, had been worked by the witch of the wood,” the ranger lord pressed. “We saw the green and gold, such as ye’ve recently put into our own shirts.”

“Yer eyes might be a bit too fine, me friend,” the witch answered with a dismissive wave.

“Ye helped him.”

Again, the shrug. “A fine lad, his blood running near to elvish,” she explained. “His heart’s against Thalasi, and so his heart’s with me own.”

That last line, coupled with the pervasive sadness, hinted at something much deeper to Bellerian. Indeed, he wondered, might the half-elf’s heart be akin to Brielle’s on the matter of her missing daughter? “I did not know that gifts o’ the lady came so easily,” he remarked.

“Ye’re too old for jealousy,” the witch said dryly.

Bellerian caught her by the shoulder and forced her to match his stare. “Ye’ve never lied to me, Brielle,” he said quietly, forcefully.

“And I never telled ye that which I wasn’t planning to tell ye,” the witch replied calmly, and it was true enough. No man, no elf, no one in all the world held any bond over the witch of Avalon.

“Ye sent him after Rhiannon,” Bellerian said.

“Go back to yer kinfolk,” she replied, somewhat sternly, and she turned and walked away.

“How dare ye?” Bellerian yelled at her, just as she was about to make one of her trademark disappearances into the brush. Those words stopped the witch short and brought her back to the ranger lord, her eyes narrow. Green flames, they seemed.

“How dare ye?” Bellerian said again, not backing down, though a lesser man would have fallen to the ground and whimpered for mercy in the face of Brielle’s terrible wrath. “For two score and more of years, me and me kin’ve been standing beside ye, helping protect yer forest.”

“Me own gifts to yerself and yers have been no less,” Brielle answered.

“And all of them to hell, I say, if ye canno’ trust me and me kin on this most important ride!” Bellerian yelled right back at her. “If yer girl’s in trouble, then know without doubt that ’tis our bound duty, and our heart-bound pleasure, to go and find her. Our duty, I say, and our love, and not the work for a young warrior o’ mixed blood!”

“He loves Rhiannon, of that I do not doubt,” the witch said quietly, all of the fight suddenly flowing out of her.

Bellerian, too, calmed, recognizing her deep pain. He put his arm about Brielle’s shoulders. “He loves her no more than do the rangers,” he promised. “For Andovar and for Brielle, and for the beautiful young creature that Rhiannon has become, so much her mother, and yet so different.”

Brielle looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears, the hint of bobbing sobs just beginning about her delicate shoulders. “Thalasi’s got her.”

Bellerian blanched.

“And I’m thinking that Bryan o’ Corning might get through where an army could not,” she explained.

“But he has to first get near to Talas-dun,” Bellerian pointed out. “And the Brown Wastes run thick with talon scum.”

“Don’t ye be underestimating that one,” the witch replied. “Spent all the time since the first battles west o’ the river, killing talons.”

Bellerian did not disagree, for he, too, had heard the tales of Bryan of Corning, and had been truly impressed. “But ’tis me duty, and the duty o’ me kin to go with him,” he said firmly. “Out to the west we ride, for Rhiannon, for Avalon.”

“I canno’-”

“Stop us,” Bellerian interrupted. “Ye canno’ stop us,” he finished, “for if ye do, then know that ye’ve ended our covenant. And know that ye’ve broken our very hearts.”

Brielle could not hold her stare against the proud ranger. Truly Bellerian meant his grave threat, and truly, Brielle came to know that she and her daughter were blessed with some of the finest friends anyone could ever hope for.

“Bring her back to me,” she whispered, and then she broke, falling into Bellerian’s strong embrace, burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing.

The ranger held her for many minutes, until she found the strength to stand alone once more. And then he looked at her, full of respect and full of love, bowed once, and was gone.

Twenty-two rangers pounded out of Avalon late that afternoon, riding hard to the west on Avalon steeds, in pursuit of Bryan of Corning, in the hunt against Thalasi.

In the quest to find Rhiannon.