Bastion of Darkness

Chapter 25
Charon’s Abode

SHE HAD BEEN here once before, but the experience had seemed far different then, as if she was only a spectator in this eternal ritual, as if she didn’t truly belong. On that previous occasion, Rhiannon had been called back from the walk of death. But this time…

This time, she belonged.

She saw the poor departed souls wading past her, seemingly floating among the thick fog blanketing the unseen ground. Humans and elves, soldiers of Arien and Benador, walked solemnly along, their ranks insignificant compared to the many, many talons. Even more numerous, though seeming less substantial, came the hosts of those stolen from their sleep of death, Thalasi’s undead army, released to rest once more with the destruction of the perverted staff.

Rhiannon understood, and had no choice but to accept. She took her place in the line and began the descent, the crossing of the barrier between the living and the dead. She paused, though, for she found a pair of souls she could not ignore.

Morgan Thalasi and Martin Reinheiser. Joined in life, they were two once more, separate souls moving down, down to their rewards. For them, the walk would not end pleasantly, Rhiannon knew, and she pitied them, despite the horrors they had caused. And then she didn’t even care about them anymore. Just like that, she dismissed them, and wandered along.

The thing about the walk that struck the young witch most profoundly was the sense of peace-even the normally brutal talons showed it on their faces-and those returning to the realm of Death showed it most clearly of all. Not Thalasi and Reinheiser, though. Both struggled against the inevitable, tried to turn about and run back the way they had come, back to the living. And they seemed to be making some progress, as if their mighty wills could fight against even this inevitability.

But then Rhiannon spotted the specter, the common image of Death personified, coming for them. The pair tried to scramble away, screaming in futile protest, but Arawn hooked them both with a single swipe of his long sickle and drew them in.

“I have waited for you, John Morgan, who calls himself Morgan Thalasi,” the contented specter of Death said. “And for you, Martin Reinheiser. You joined with John Morgan against me. You stole what was mine. You chose badly.”

And, with a black flash and a swirl of the fog, they were gone from Rhiannon’s view, and soon, she realized, though she did not know how it happened, she was all alone, stranded in a vast, dark plain, the flatness broken by an endless line of barrows.

She kept walking, not knowing what else she might do. There was no sense of time here, so she did not know how long it had been before she came to a tunnel, the flickering light of a fire burning within. Compelled, she entered, and came almost immediately into a wide chamber with a single bier set in its middle. And behind it, holding up a shroud, stood the specter Charon, Arawn, impassive, inevitable.

Understanding flooded through the young witch, the dead witch. This was her place now, and though she did not want to be here, did not want to be dead, she could not resist. Slowly, regretfully, the young witch moved to take her eternal bed.

“A rout!” a joyous Arien Silverleaf cried to Ardaz. “Never could we have hoped for such a victory!” Indeed, with the undead horde’s last attacks against the talons and the ensuing confusion in the enemy ranks, the men of Calva and the elves of Illuma seemed well on their way to the most complete victory ever known in Ynis Aielle. The elf lord surveyed the battle scene before him, saw, far to the south, another ball of pitch soar high and far to scatter a talon position. Then he felt something more profound, a growling rumble beneath his feet, and saw, far to the west, a tremendous plume of black smoke rising. He looked to Ardaz for an explanation, but his question was lost in his throat when he glanced upon the wizard.

Ardaz blanched white. He knew; he felt it. His niece, budding with power, growing into so fine a woman, was gone. Simply gone. Dead and beyond his help. The wizard, feeling very old suddenly, turned about slowly and looked back to the east, toward Avalon. If he knew, then so did Brielle.

Indeed, the horrible sensation, the waves of Rhiannon’s last moment, washed over the Emerald Witch, stealing the blood from her face, stealing the rhythm of her heart. Her knees lost all strength and buckled, and she slumped down to the white carpet of snow, kneeling there, unable to speak, to cry out, even to gasp.

All of it was not lost on the father of Rhiannon. He, too, felt the terrible sensation, and at first couldn’t decipher it. But seeing Brielle, broken beyond belief, helped him sort it out.

“No!” he cried, and he did not cut the word short, but held it: “Noooooooo!” It was a plaintive wail, a howl almost, torn from his heart and his throat, released into the empty air. He was up on his toes, knees bent forward, back arched and head thrown back, throwing the wail up to the sky, to the ears of the Colonnae.

And surely they were deaf, for they did not respond, did not come to him now, when he most needed them, did not repair the grief, or return Rhiannon.

“Noooooooo!”

She was gone, just gone. Rhiannon, his daughter, was just gone.

But then he knew; suddenly he knew. DelGiudice had wondered why he had been put back in this place, in this time, had wondered if his tasks were no more important than the retrieval of the diamond sword. Now he knew. Rhiannon was gone, but he could get to her, only he: half a ghost, half a man. He had been to Death’s dark realm only briefly, an instant of time before Calae had whisked him off to the stars. Only an instant of time, but DelGiudice remembered the way.

The wail continued, so profound, so agonized, that it drew Brielle from her own broken grief to look up at DelGiudice, to wonder what manner of being could offer such an expression of pain. Her expression shifted to one of horror as Del began to thin out, to become more translucent, as if his very life force was escaping this spirit form on the notes of that howl.

“Del, me Del, don’t ye be leaving me now!” the witch cried, scrambling to her feet, rushing over to him.

There was nothing to grab onto, and soon, nothing to see.

The wail diminished, spread wide to the winds, and was no more.

No more was he a separate entity from the giant wave; no more was he Istaahl the mortal man. He sensed the shallows, knew in some primordial way that he was approaching the high cliffs of the shore.

Then he hit, a mountain of water, exploding in ecstasy against the dark stone of Kored-dul, thundering into the stone unabashedly, straight on, throwing all his life into it.

The roar went on and on, reverberating about the stones, and into the stone, the energy of the crashing water reaching every crack like grasping tendrils. And when the water was gone, the wave broken apart and splashed back out toward the sea, the reverberations continued, echoing.

A great slab of the cliff broke apart and slid down, thundering as it bounced off the stone, then hitting the water with a huge splash. The weakened cliff continued to tremble; another piece broke away. And then another; and then another.

And then it fell, all of it, taking the fire-ravaged disaster of Talas-dun with it.

“O Death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?” Del shouted, stealing from an old passage he remembered, from the time before Aielle, from his world and a passage of Corinthians in a book called the Bible. How clear the words of that most ancient tome came to him now. He knew the book so well, though in life he had paid it hardly any heed. It was a book of the angels, the Colonnae, and a work of morality, of life and death, and life after death. He moved along a gray and foggy corridor, a cold place, passing the line of newly disembodied spirits. Their numbers alone told him that the battle was on in full, and also that Thalasi’s hold over the undead spirits was no more.

“O Death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?” he shouted again, running now, passing all of them, descending swiftly to a place darker and colder still. He paused and felt within himself, and there, in a deep place, he sensed the passage of his daughter, and was soon fast on her trail. “And where is thy horror, ugly fiend?” he added, his own thoughts, as he came into the passage and then the chamber, in sight of the cloaked lord of the underworld.

“What terrors have thee left? What pains can thee promise, when thou hast taken all?” Del shouted.

“No promise, ghost of Jeffrey DelGiudice,” the specter replied in its unearthly, rasping voice.

“Is there no sympathy, no passion, no care for all the pain?”

“None,” Charon replied without hesitation. “I take nothing; I give nothing. I am.”

DelGiudice hesitated now, digesting the thoughts, the apparent impassivity. It occurred to him that an apathetic Death was, perhaps, more difficult an opponent than a malignant spirit.

“I will bargain,” he offered.

“I take nothing,” Charon replied. “I give nothing. No barter, no trade.”

“You took her!” Del accused, pointing to the bier where lay his daughter dear, so peaceful.

Too peaceful.

“She came to me by her own actions.”

Del stared at Rhiannon’s spiritual form, mirroring her physical form, lying perfectly still upon the bier, half wrapped by Charon’s eternal shroud.

“Give her back, I beg,” Del said.

“Back to whom?” Charon replied impassively. “To you? Need I remind you that you, too, are dead, Jeffrey DelGiudice? It is not an evil thing.”

“No,” Del agreed. “Not evil. But not for her. Not yet. She was just starting to know life.”

“That temporary aspect of life,” Charon said. “Now she will learn the next.”

Del shook his head. “No, no, no,” he kept saying, for though he knew that death was not a wicked thing, not an emptiness and certainly not painful, he felt, somehow, that this was not Rhiannon’s time, that the manner of her death, the breaking of that perverted staff, did not justify this end to her mortal coil.

But how to tell that to Charon the impassive? How to justify it when so many other young men and women had died, and would continue to die, this very day, long before they had really been given a chance to experience all that the previous life offered?

“I only know,” he said quietly, looking up at the specter, “it is not her time.”

Arien led them into the foothills, the sure-footed Avalon mounts quick-stepping past rocky jags and over the multitude of corpses. Enemies were not readily apparent, for those talons who had remained near the front lines had been brought down by the zombies and skeletons, and those who had been farther back had run away.

Arien meant to find them, though, every one, and end the scourge of the children of Thalasi once and for all. First, though, he turned his elves to the south, linking them up with Benador’s thousands, and he and Ardaz joined with the king.

“The world could not have hoped for a greater rout,” the king of Calva stated, his elation apparent. “The evil talons will be many generations recovering, if ever they do.”

“Never,” a dour Ardaz said, “for Thalasi is defeated, dead and gone forever.”

“Your news is wondrous, yet you speak it with heavy heart,” Benador noted.

“For my niece, Rhiannon, too, is gone,” Ardaz replied. “And so, too, is Istaahl, who has been my friend for centuries!”

The news hit King Benador hard, and he purposefully had to steady himself, else he would have fallen from his mount. “Istaahl gone?” he asked breathlessly, and he seemed a lost child at that moment.

“And Rhiannon,” Arien added grimly.

“Istaahl the White,” Charon stated. “Would you ask for him, as well?”

The ghost paused, digesting the sad news that the White Wizard of Pallendara was gone. Somehow, though, that seemed all right to him, as if it was meant to be, as if it was Istaahl’s time.

“And what of Jayenson Belltower?” Charon went on. “She was killed this hour, taken by a talon spear. Should I release her as well? I can name hundreds more, and thousands of talons, if they, too, are deserving of your misplaced mercy.”

“Not her,” Del said immediately. “Not any of them. Just Rhiannon. I know this. It was not her time; not like that. Calae put me back here, in this world, to deliver this one message.”

Charon did not respond.

“She gave Thalasi to you,” Del reasoned. “She broke his staff, that awful staff, that instrument which the Black Warlock crafted and used to steal from you. She gave it all back to you. You owe her this.”

“I do not bargain, nor do I ask for anything,” Charon said with some determination. “And I cannot be robbed, since nothing here is my possession. I simply am.”

“No!” Del cried, thinking he had found his logical opening. “No, Charon, your actions reveal the truth. How you hungered for Thalasi in that tower room, when the staff was first cracked. How your shadowy minions went after him, pulling him to you!”

The specter of Death did not reply, only, for the first time in all the eons, listened.

Belexus and Bellerian, atop Calamus, moved above the rocky foothills, searching for remnants of the talon army so that they could direct the continuing attacks of their kinsmen and the elves. At Belexus’ insistence, the older ranger turned the pegasus inevitably east, toward Talas-dun.

They came in sight of the broken cliff, all trace of the black fortress gone, and any trepidation they held at the sight of disaster disappeared when they spotted, far below, Bryan of Corning, moving along a narrow trail, bearing Rhiannon gently in his arms.

They were with him in a moment, and their fears returned tenfold, for they knew, without doubt, from his tear-streaked face and from the very still manner in which the beautiful witch lay in his arms, that Talas-dun had not been destroyed without a heavy cost.

Bryan lay Rhiannon down on the stone; Belexus moved very close and stroked the young witch’s face, beautiful in death as it had been in life.

“She did it,” the half-elf said. “She beat Thalasi, and destroyed his staff.”

“And all his undead monsters went back to their rest,” Bellerian added. “Suren Rhiannon won the day.”

Bryan fell to his knees beside her, his emotions pouring out of him.

“We canno’ be stayin’,” the ranger lord remarked. “The stones are thick with talons.”

“Ye take Rhiannon on the pegasus,” Belexus said to his father. “Me and Bryan’ll fight our way through, don’t ye doubt.” He put his hand on the half-elf’s shoulder as he spoke, lending some strength, and lending hope in the promise that he would help Bryan find his vengeance upon many talon heads. The half-elf looked the strong ranger in the eye, and Belexus nodded grimly.

“We’re all to go,” an unexpected reply came, and how the eyes of the three widened! They looked down in unison to see Rhiannon opening her blue eyes, a grin growing on her face. “We’re all to go together,” she said in a labored voice.

Bryan, after a moment of wavering, nearly fainting, wrapped her in a tight hug, and Belexus was quick to join in, but both backed off reverently when the ghost of DelGiudice appeared suddenly, hovering over them.

The spirit moved close, and Rhiannon reached out to touch him. But of course her hand passed right through the insubstantial body.

“My time here is ended,” Del explained, for he had heard clearly the beckoning call of Calae. He considered the angel and the mysteries that awaited him and remembered again that long-lost tome of wisdom, that most holy book from the world that had been, a book inspired by the heavens indeed. How clearly he recognized the truths that lay within that book, how ingrained those truths had been to the man who had scrambled off the sinking Unicorn those decades ago! He thought of that now, just briefly, and considered it in the context of those he had come to know and love, and hate, in Ynis Aielle. Honor and courage, tolerance and respect. Truths for the ages, tenets that did not shift with the passing of years, but remained constant and important. How seamlessly Brielle would fit into that tome, though in Del’s often-intolerant world, those who followed the Bible unbendingly would have considered the witch an unholy, pagan thing. How grand would be the story of Belexus and Andovar, had it been told in the Bible of his previous existence!

Some things did not change.

“Me father,” Rhiannon said softly, her expression thick with love and gratitude. She knew what had transpired in the realm of Death, knew that Jeffrey DelGiudice, her father, had come after her.

Del moved close to her, looked deep into her eyes, then turned his gaze heavenward. “Grant me this, Calae,” he begged, and suddenly, Rhiannon’s reaching hand brushed against his solid cheek.

Del kissed her forehead and hugged her close, then moved away, to arm’s length, until only their fingers were touching, a touch that lessened by the moment as the spirit dissipated.

“Fare well, my daughter,” Del said. “Fare well, my love. We will meet again.”

And with that promise of hope, Del was gone.