Bastion of Darkness

Chapter 24
The Lure of Power

THEY WATCHED THE old man, the man who had been as their father for all the years, who had taken them in and sheltered them, these children of Pallendara’s nobles, when wicked Ungden had stolen the throne. They watched him now, this man who had trained them in the ways of survival and of war, this man who had transformed them into the proud rangers. Now, from a seat on the returned pegasus, Bellerian led them again, soaring out on high and issuing subtle signals concerning the whereabouts and strength of the enemy positions.

So the rangers were not surprised in the least when they came around a bend in the trail to find a rocky dell filled with talon spear throwers and archers-all of whom had their gazes set the other way, out across the long spur of Kored-dul to the approaching armies.

Arrows leading, the rangers charged the surprised talons in a wild rush, and so coordinated and efficient was their attack that not a single man was even injured in the sudden and swift fight. In the span of barely a minute, a score of talons lay dead.

“They’ve set talons with spears in pockets all about the arm,” one ranger remarked, peeking up over the other side of the dell.

“Lord Bellerian will sight them for us,” another replied.

“And for the Calvan artillerists,” a third remarked, and with grim nods, they were off again, following the signals of their flying leader, in search of new prey.

None could perform such deadly and secretive tactics as well as the rangers of Avalon, but even with such powerful allies, the armies on the field found themselves hard-pressed before they even reached the rocky arm. Arien’s elves had approached the foothills expecting to battle for every inch of ground, and when the first talons, even the first of Thalasi’s gruesome undead, had risen against them, the elves had maintained their order and their progress, lining their marvelous steeds into a fighting wedge and slicing through the enemy ranks with hardly an effort.

The elf lord fully expected that the talon lizard riders would come next, a more difficult and maneuverable foe, but what he found instead was more undead; thousands and thousands and thousands of zombies and skeletons rising from every shadow, coming out fearlessly though the elves were cutting them down dozens at a time.

“We cannot hope to defeat this many,” Ryell said to him. “Weariness will lay our weapons low, if these perversions do not! We should turn to the south and join with Benador.”

Arien would have agreed, except that when he and Ryell did look that way, they found that the humans were no better off than they, that the vast zombie army on the southern end of the spur outnumbered the large human army as badly as those on this side outnumbered the elves.

Thalasi, or perhaps the wraith of Mitchell, Arien knew, had marked well the approach of the two forces and had set the monstrous army accordingly.

“May the Colonnae be with us,” Arien muttered. “For foul Morgan Thalasi has called back the corpses of every dead talon in all the world, I fear!”

Around to the south of Arien’s position, King Benador did not disagree with the elf lord’s estimation, for he had never seen, had never even imagined, that such a force as this could ever be assembled. Tens of thousands of undead streamed out of the mountains, a seemingly endless line, coming on without hesitation, without fear.

No novice to large-scale battle, seasoned in the brutality of the fight at the Four Bridges, the Calvan king had rightly turned his army about, putting some open ground between his soldiers and the now-advancing enemy. He set up a long skirmish line, hundreds of archers shoulder to shoulder, in ranks three deep so that the barrage of arrows flew out in a nearly constant swarm. Even with that, though, the enemy made great progress. Arrows chipped off skeletal ribs, or plowed right through the rotted corpses of zombies, hardly slowing the horrid things.

“Too many,” the Calvan king muttered, and he feared that the battle would soon degenerate into a swarming melee, where the sheer press of monstrous numbers would overwhelm his gallant force.

He looked to the north, but not thinking that any help would come from that direction, and his heart sank lower at the sight of Arien and the valiant elves, a force so unified that they seemed as one, a longboat skimming on the very edge of a breaking wave.

But that wave continued to swell behind them.

She came to a hall where two corridors crossed, and glanced both ways, but saw nothing to guide her. Cursing herself for the slight hesitation-for the desperate Black Warlock was right on her heels, closing ground, yelling at her, taunting her-she darted to the left. She had the mighty staff, but had no idea, and certainly no desire, to wield the perverted thing! And, despite the theft, this remained Morgan Thalasi’s castle, his bastion of strength, built with his magical power and offering him residual energy from that long-ago construction.

Through a door, Rhiannon nearly ran over a pair of statuelike zombies.

“Kill her!” Thalasi screamed to them from a few yards back.

Rhiannon gave a slight yelp and tried to circumvent them, thinking that her flight had ended. She might destroy the zombies, but not in time to evade Thalasi’s pursuit.

But the zombie pair didn’t move to attack, didn’t move at all to Thalasi’s call, and the young witch sensed that they had not even heard him, that he had no connection to them and surely no power over them. She crossed by the pair, then glanced at the staff, and then she understood.

“Kill him,” she said quietly, before her good sense could intervene, and the zombies moved immediately, obeying the staff wielder. Thalasi’s hollowed eyes widened indeed when he crossed the threshold of the room to find the zombie pair reaching for his throat.

Rhiannon ran on, knowing that the zombies couldn’t defeat the Black Warlock, couldn’t even hold him at bay for very long. She heard a crackle behind her soon after she had exited the room, and then Thalasi was chasing her once more.

There were more zombies and skeletons up ahead, and these, too, the desperate Rhiannon set to block him.

How easy it was! With a mere thought, she could order them to… to do anything, she realized. To kill Thalasi, or to leap from a cliff face. A grander scheme came to the young witch as she moved along, down another corridor, then up a tight spiral staircase. She came to understand the staff and its powers more fully with each step, and she couldn’t imagine that she had ever wanted to destroy the precious item. With this power…

The thought was intoxicating, overwhelming, and Rhiannon acted immediately, sending her telepathic commands out far and wide. She heard her mother’s voice, from a distant place, crying out in protest, but she ignored it, too concerned with changing the tide of war.

With those simple telepathic thoughts, Rhiannon ordered all the thousands of undead Thalasi had raised to shift sides, imparting a mental image of the wretched talons as the new focus of their attacks. She knew that the staff, the brilliant and beautiful staff, had sent the commands out far and wide, knew, somehow, that every undead creature in all the world would take heed.

Kill talons.

Hollis Mitchell heard the command distinctly, a wave of power washing over him, catching him completely off his guard. He closed his flaming eyes, swaying, seeking his own dominating willpower, and Belexus, ever the opportunist, wasted no time in going on the attack, wading in and hammering hard at the wraith.

Mitchell hardly felt the profound stings of Pouilla Camby, so concerned was he with that curious call. Then he understood; it was not the Black Warlock. That meddlesome young witch had gotten her hands on the Staff of Death!

The wraith came out of his trance with a hiss of defiance, the impartation of the staff, which had never really been his master, thrown aside. He had to finish his business here quickly now, he understood, and get back to Talas-dun to deal properly with Rhiannon. He considered it a promising thing, as he drove the ranger back to a defensive posture. Rhiannon, after all, wouldn’t be as skilled or as powerful with the item as Thalasi, and if he could somehow wrest the staff from her, then his control would be absolute. All the dead-including those who would fall on the field of battle this very day-would rise to his command.

But he had to be quick, the wraith realized as he saw battle erupting not so far from the flat rock, yet far from the lines of the humans and elves, as he saw talons scrambling suddenly to get away from their zombie and skeleton allies, the undead reacting immediately to the new commands of the staff wielder.

“They are fleeing!” Ryell cried, and indeed it seemed true. The undead ranks had turned away from the elven wedge, moving back toward the mountains. Elves cried out in victory and joy, for not one of them, brave though they were, had harbored a thought that they could win through this teeming horde.

But to Arien, always calm and thinking, it made no sense at all. And then it made even less sense, as he noted a group of zombies pull down a thrashing talon and fall over the beast.

Something was wrong here, so very out of place. The elf lord looked to Ardaz, who sat atop his horse, scratching at his beard.

“How very curious,” the old wizard said, reading and agreeing wholeheartedly with Arien’s confusion.

“Might your sister be involved?” Arien asked, for if any in all the world could turn perversion back on Thalasi, it was Brielle.

Ardaz, though, was thinking along slightly different lines. “Or her daughter,” the old wizard replied, and a hopeful smile widened on his wrinkled and hairy face.

Arien’s heart soared with hope, too, but he had no more time to sit and ponder. He tightened the elven wedge and drove them hard to the south, ordering them to focus any attacks on talon enemies.

Their first barrage blew great holes in the lines of advancing monsters, but the crews of the great trebuchets feared to launch their pitch balls now, with the undead so close, with melee soon to be joined, Calvan riders sweeping out from the skirmish line in tight formations. The artillerists looked farther back toward the mountains instead, and their attention was grabbed by the sight of Bellerian, high on the winged horse.

Down he swooped, firing his bow, then up again as a wall of arrows rose up against him.

“Oh, fine Bellerian,” one Calvan exclaimed.

“Coordinate!” The cry came from King Benador, who had also noticed Bellerian and was riding hard now for the catapult line.

The great arms creaked and heaved their loads, one after another, to the spot below Bellerian.

The ranger moved Calamus far from harm’s way, and dipped his wings in salute to the artillerists even as the carnage erupted below him, the splattering pitch bombs scattering and burning the talon entrenchment.

Few of the talons escaped that barrage, and none unscathed. One creature, limping, often crawling, for its legs had been badly burned, managed to get around a rocky wall before the second barrage thundered in. The creature made for that wall, thinking to put its back against it, thinking that it had reached safety.

Head down, belly to the ground, the creature’s eyes widened when it saw the white legs of Calamus. It looked up in time to see Bellerian’s sword cutting down.

The ranger lord wiped his sword on the dead talon’s tunic, then, satisfied that no others were about, he climbed the pegasus high into the sky once more, thinking to scout out another talon nest.

Something else caught his attention, something he could not ignore.

High atop the tallest tower of Talas-dun, Rhiannon heard the fighting, zombie against talon, raging in the courtyard. She went to the window and saw the carnage-dozens of undead pulling down talons, choking them-and she mused that with a thought she could increase her forces-her army-after every battle.

They would need no supplies; any instructions would be imparted immediately to the whole of the force. Their numbers would only multiply, for those slain in combat could be brought back, along with those they killed. This was an army that could not be weakened by battle, an army that fed upon carnage. How beautiful it seemed to the young witch. How logical and efficient.

She looked at the staff then, and was not repulsed, seeing it for the power and basking in that might. This was the promise of strength. This was the promise of victory. This was the instrument that could restore order to all the world, could free the goodly races forever from the horrors of war, even from the drudgery of menial tasks.

Rhiannon looked again to the courtyard, saw another talon get buried under a swarm of zombies.

Saw her army grow.

“Me girl!”

Rhiannon heard the call, heard the lie, coming from a faraway place, a horrid place.

Avalon.

“Me girl!” Now it was more insistent, more demanding. Always demanding. But now… Now, holding this staff, no one could make any demands of Rhiannon. She was the staff wielder; she would dictate.

“Me girl!” The plaintive tone of the call this time shook her, and mocked her anger. She pictured the caller, her mother, standing in the forest that had been her home.

That awful, horrid place.

“No,” Rhiannon heard herself saying against the tide of images. No, Avalon was not like that, was not horrid, was more fair than any place in all the world.

“Rhiannon,” Brielle called from across the miles, and across the greater vastness that now separated Rhiannon from the world, a chasm of consciousness. She was in a place of unreality, of fabrication, and now, suddenly, she understood the source.

Rhiannon opened wide her eyes, saw again the fighting in the courtyard. But now she was not pleased by the brutality. She looked to the staff in her hands, the instrument of power, of perversion, and saw the truth.

Morgan Thalasi stumbled into the room, his hollowed face torn from his fight with the zombies, his black eyes filled with outrage.

But the young witch did not back down in the least.

“Ye’re a damned thing, Morgan Thalasi,” she said firmly. “To have bringed such a thing as this into the sunlight.” With that, she grasped the staff tightly and summoned her power-her own power, and not that of the perverted item. A sheath of shining light encompassed her hand, and suddenly-and Rhiannon did not know how it came about-a globe of greenish light covered her body. Thalasi rushed at her.

She gave a cry and tried to focus on the staff, but thought she was dead as the Black Warlock sprang at her-sprang at her and was repelled, sent flying across the room, by the green globe!

Rhiannon knew then that her mother was with her, that she was not alone. Bolstered, she focused the energy on her hand, shaped it like a blade, and chopped down hard on the staff.

A slight crack appeared along the black wood, and from it poured shadows-not insubstantial things, but living shadows: dark, huddled forms that crawled about the room.

Again Rhiannon gave a cry, but the shadows ignored her altogether, rushing, swarming toward Thalasi, reaching for him with groping fingers.

“Charon!” he cried with understanding. He had played a dangerous game with Death, and now, with the staff weakened and out of his hands, Death had come calling. The Black Warlock fought back furiously, loosed crackling bolts of black lightning that splintered stone and rebounded wildly. But the shadowy forms pressed on, encircling him, tightening the ring, grabbing at him from every angle.

Rhiannon closed her eyes and worked hard to ignore his desperate cries. With her glowing, bladelike hand, she hit the staff again and again, each slice cutting a bit deeper.

“Rhiannon!” an obviously terrified Thalasi begged. “Oh, send them away!”

She couldn’t block out that plea, the most desperate tone she had ever heard. She glanced to the side of the room to see the Black Warlock in the clutches of the huddled shadowy horde, his corporeal form shimmering, as if losing its very essence. She knew that she could not help him, knew that the shadowy things were too beyond her control, even with the Staff of Death in hand. They swarmed all over Thalasi now, pulled him screaming and thrashing down, down, right through the floor.

His calls became a distant wail when Rhiannon went back to her work, more furiously now and with tears of terror in her blue eyes. She chopped and chopped; her mother cried out to her repeatedly.

The staff broke apart.

The tower blew apart.

Mitchell felt it keenly, felt as if his connection to the material world was gone, as if he were drifting back, back, to the vast, dark plain that was the realm of Death. Sheer hatred and wretchedness stopped that flight. Mitchell would not leave, would not surrender his lust for power.

He felt that sting again, all about his head and shoulders, Pouilla Camby slashing hard, cutting white lines across the darkness that was the wraith.

But he was back then, fully, growling and rushing fiercely at the ranger, whipping his bone mace to and fro in a frenzy, filling all the air with those burning black flakes.

Belexus retreated desperately, felt the sting and burn as several flakes fell over him. His clothing smoldered; his skin blistered. And Mitchell came on, roaring, swinging, driving the ranger back, accepting the hits from the nasty sword in the hope that he would connect just once. Just once.

Because both knew that one hit from that awful mace would utterly destroy Belexus.

But the ranger was by far the superior fighter, and his sword work as he retreated was nothing short of magnificent. Yet even the beauty of Pouilla Camby could not defeat the momentum of the furious wraith, could not slow the darkness that was Hollis Mitchell, and the wraith rose up above Belexus, the ranger out of running room.

There came a rush of air, the thundering sound of beating wings, as Calamus swooped down and clipped the wraith, not hurting him, but stopping his pursuit and stealing his focus. The bone mace swiped across in futile pursuit of the pegasus’ swift flight.

Belexus was quick to reverse the momentum, taking up his sword in both hands and rushing in, hammering away, slashing and beating, knowing that one mistake, one slip, would let Mitchell get that mace in, would surely destroy him. He cried out for Avalon, for all the world. He cried out and he swung with all his strength, over and over, the diamond light spreading, the sword humming through the air. He ignored the pain as the black flakes settled about him, screamed out too loudly, tensed his muscles too tightly. If he had paused and thought about it, he would have realized how heavy his exhausted arms had become.

But he would not pause, would not slow in the least.

Again and again, Pouilla Camby drove through. Again and again.

It ended suddenly, with a great shudder from the wraith that sent Belexus skidding backward. He regarded Mitchell; the curious, stunned look that glared at him through those glowing white lines. Like the flakes of his own mace, Mitchell fell apart, just broke into pieces, the blackness falling to the stone and dissipating there into swirling tendrils of smoke.

And then Belexus, his hunger for vengeance sated, stood alone.

“Come, and be quick,” Bellerian called, setting Calamus down on the stone beside his battered son. “The talon devils are all about us!”

Belexus looked at the hollowed corpse that had been Hollis Mitchell, the empty dead thing. He thought of Andovar and felt warmed, felt that his friend could now, finally, rest easy. And now Belexus could rightly turn his thoughts to the more pressing problems, to the larger battle and the good of all Aielle. He bounded over to Bellerian, a talon spear skipping off the stone behind his rush, and leaped atop the pegasus’ back, and Calamus, so strong of wing, had no trouble in lifting the two of them high into the air.

His run became a desperate rush, the spirit launching himself at his daughter, seeing her mortal danger, every instinct within him telling him to go and protect her. Fast as thought, DelGiudice careened into the chamber, arrowing for Rhiannon. But that thought had come an instant too late, an instant after the young witch had chopped Thalasi’s staff in half. Del reached her as the blast reached her. He dove for her soul, trying somehow to spiritually embrace her, but he found instead a passage; a long and confusing tunnel.

Gone was the blast, the tower, the fortress. Gone was his daughter.

The confused ghost found himself standing in Avalon, beside a shocked and horrified Brielle.

Far out at sea, the swell rolled, mounting and mounting, a giant wall of water. Istaahl threw all of his energy into it, gave to it all his thoughts and hopes, all his memories and all his fantasies.

On it rolled, inevitably for Talas-dun, the last gasp of Istaahl the White, the purest creation of his magic. As he ascended from the pressing depths, he felt himself spreading out in the water, his very life essence thinning, joining with the rising swell.

All of it, all his energy and all his purpose.

He found her atop a pile of blasted and charred rubble, a delicate flower amidst a mountain of scarred black stone. She didn’t look the least bit battered, didn’t look as if she had been anywhere near that awful explosion, and Bryan watched in pure amazement as the last glow of Brielle’s protective enchantment faded to nothingness. Rhiannon’s body was intact, completely undamaged, and yet Bryan knew, before he ever drew near to her, that she was dead.

The half-elf, his eyes dripping streams of tears, lifted her gently and bore her out of that dark place. There was no resistance, for all the zombies and skeletons were back to their sleep of death, and those talons who had not been killed in the frenzied moments before the explosion were either fleeing Talas-dun or were simply too confused to pay the half-elf any notice.

But damn the talons, every one, the half-elf thought, and then he dismissed them.

Rhiannon was dead, and Bryan could do nothing to help her.