Bastion of Darkness

Chapter 3
Reflecting Pool

“ONLY SIX,” THE warrior muttered quietly as he stalked down the forested hillside on the western borders of Avalon. “Only six.” He wasn’t speaking to bolster his confidence as he approached the half dozen talons butchering the deer they had just slain. While lesser warriors might have needed such soothing words, or might have simply turned about and run away from half a dozen talons, this one’s words sounded as an honest lament that there were merely six of the creatures to stand against him.

“Six, six.” He spat, and then he called in an even louder voice, so that the talons surely heard him. “Where are all yer stinking friends?”

The creatures came up from the deer carcass, dancing all about, falling all over each other. They should have fanned out, forming a semicircle about this lone figure stalking them through the morning mist; they should have formed a defensive alignment, seeking any other humans that might be about; they should have set a line based on the strength of each, and which sidekicks best complement. They should have done many things, but talons were neither very bright nor very brave, and each glanced nervously at another, as if hoping to use its companion as a shield should the need arise to flee.

The warrior, Belexus Backavar, waded into them with hardly a hesitation, his heavy broadsword swinging easily at the end of one arm. He was taller than the talons, and much stockier, with corded bulging muscles and broad shoulders that had not even begun to slacken with the passage of fifty winters. His hair, too, held the luster of youth, tousled and raven black, such a stark contrast to his sparkling blue eyes.

Those eyes burned with angry fires now, simmering and then explosive as the man neared the hideous talons.

“Alone?” the closest talon asked skeptically, and its lips curled into a smile at that notion, for indeed, there seemed to be no other humans in the immediate area. “Alone,” it said again, not a statement and not a question, a remark that showed it thought the man foolish.

In response, Belexus leaped ahead in a wild rush, his sweeping blade leading the way. The talon put up a staff to deflect the obvious attack, but it couldn’t properly gauge the strength of mighty Belexus, the strength of a giant, and even greater now for the rage that burned hot in his blood. The sword swept the staff aside, and Belexus thundered ahead, rushing past the talon and reversing his grip so quickly that there was no parry and no dodge for his vicious backhand swipe, the blade spilling talon guts.

The other talons whooped and charged, but Belexus skipped ahead another stride and launched a fast thrust at the nearest, beating the parry and skewering the beast in the chest. A roar and a heave brought the dying creature flying about with the blade, and then tumbling at the feet of the next two, tripping them up.

Belexus kicked one in the face, drove the butt of his sword hilt onto the back of the other’s head, then leaped over them, growling like an animal. The blood lust had taken hold of him fully now, had brought a red blur into his eyes. The last two talons wanted no part of this monstrous human, and off they ran.

Belexus, swift and graceful, caught up to one as it turned about a tree. The creature made a deft move then, cutting left, then back to the right, actually putting itself in solid position to the warrior’s left flank. With a shriek, thinking the prize grand indeed, the talon pivoted and sliced with its sword, but Belexus flipped his sword from right hand to left and swung, too, a powerful backhand, aiming for the descending weapon. By far the stronger, the warrior drove the talon’s blade from its hands, sent the inferior sword flying far through the air.

The talon staggered and straightened, trying to catch its balance, trying to run away.

Belexus spun and came in fast, pinning its outstretched right arm with his sword, and clamped his free hand over the thing’s face.

With hardly an effort, with a bellow that sent all creatures scurrying in fear, the powerful man lifted the talon from the ground and shook it violently.

The pitiful creature whimpered and clawed, thrashed desperately with both hands, and kicked futilely with dangling feet.

One long stride put the warrior in line and he drove the talon’s head hard against the unyielding trunk of a wide oak, the resulting splatter bringing to Belexus’ thoughts a distant time when his old friend Andovar had dropped a melon twenty feet to a flat stone.

The thought of Andovar sobered the mighty warrior. He tossed the talon aside and took many long and steadying breaths, then stalked back to the original scene, to the deer carcass and the four talons.

One, the one the warrior had kicked, was back up by then, trying to rouse its dying friend. The talon abandoned that course when it noted the approach of the dangerous man. Waving its sword defensively out in front, it steadily backed as Belexus calmly came on.

Blades met several times in quick, darting movements; hope came into the talon’s sickly eyes as it parried thrust after thrust.

Belexus calmly continued, playing the fencer now, maneuvering, working his opponent’s blade left, then right, then a bit farther left, then a bit less right. And so on, until he had the talon turned awkwardly. Then came a sudden, violent two-stroke, both hits aimed for the talon’s sword, the first nearly knocking the creature all the way about, the second deftly weaving over and around the blade as the talon tried to turn back to face the man squarely.

A flick of Belexus’ wrist sent the talon’s sword skipping to the ground out to the right.

The creature whined and stumbled back, the warrior easily pacing. Both glanced to their surroundings, but only briefly, neither truly breaking the stare.

The talon noted a tree, Belexus knew, and he came forward in a slight rush, forcing the creature’s hand. Predictably, the talon darted behind the tree, rushing past it, putting it in the way of the human.

“Andovar!” the warrior cried suddenly, brutally, throwing out all of his rage in one cut, taking up his sword in both hands and sweeping it mightily across, sweeping it through the two-inch diameter trunk of the young tree, and through the waist of the surprised talon behind it.

The top half of the tree fell to the side of the trunk, planted in the ground for just a moment, then fell away. The talon was already on the ground, its upper body lying awkwardly across its lower, mouth gasping in horror, gulping air uselessly.

Belexus spat on it and walked away.

In a clearing not so far from the spot, Calamus, the winged lord of horses, awaited the warrior’s return. Without a word, Belexus climbed onto the mount’s strong back and the pegasus took to the air, flying low and steady to the northwest, the direction in which the last talon had fled. Belexus soon spotted the miserable creature, running, stumbling, out of the wood, along a grassy slope, cutting a straight line to the west. The warrior urged Calamus ahead.

But then a song came into his ears, causing him to hesitate, a voice sweet and pure, the soothing voice of Brielle, the Emerald Witch of Avalon. “Greater will be yer reputation, greater their fear of ye, if ye let some live to tell the tale,” the witch coaxed.

Her words, or more particularly, the gentle way in which they were carried to the warrior’s ears, almost made Belexus turn Calamus about, almost allowed him to let this last talon run off.

But then came that all-too-familiar image, the haunting memory of Andovar being bent in half backward by the horrid wraith of Hollis Mitchell, the image of the proud ranger, Belexus Backavar’s dearest friend, then being tossed carelessly into the great River Ne’er Ending.

Calamus, charmed by the intonations of the witch, had indeed slowed and begun a long, easy turn.

“Onward!” the warrior demanded, grabbing the long white mane, forcing the pegasus back on course for the fleeing talon.

Calamus owed no man, could not be so commanded, but there was indeed a bond between this magnificent horse and Belexus, son of Bellerian, who was lord of the rangers of Avalon, and so the pegasus relented, dismissed the song of the witch, and flew on with all speed, angling for the scrambling talon, diving fast and straight.

The talon saw the terrible shadow, stretching long from the east and the rising sun, and shrieked, diving into a roll.

Calamus swooped by, and Belexus leaped from the mount’s back, scrambling as he landed, with amazing dexterity, and somehow holding his footing. A firmly planted, booted foot promptly stopped the rolling talon, and then a second clamped on its other side, holding it fast. The creature tried to turn about onto its back, to face and defend, and managed it easily enough, for Belexus wanted the talon to see him clearly, to see his rage, to know its doom.

As the talon turned, the warrior grabbed its spiked club with one hand and tore it free of the talon’s grasp, throwing it far aside. The talon lifted its arms above its face, then moved them in confusion and gave an incredulous stare when the warrior tossed his own sword to the ground.

Any hope that surprising action might have inspired soon flew from the talon, though, as Belexus reached down and grabbed it by the head, one hand clamped to its chin, the other grabbing fast to a scraggly clump of hair on the back of its head. With a grunt, the powerful ranger lifted the talon to its feet, lifted it right from the ground so that it was looking straight into his piercing blue eyes.

The creature clawed at the warrior’s cheek. Ignoring the claws, keeping firm his grasp, Belexus drove one hand out and yanked the other in, turning the talon’s head right about on its shoulders. Then he tossed the thing aside and gathered his sword, calling for Calamus.

He spent a long while waiting, and thought of Andovar. Even the blood of six talons had done little to diminish the pain.

Finally the winged horse lighted on the field, and Belexus was swift to Calamus’ back, urging him up into the air and then flying straight off for the deeper boughs of Avalon.

He was not surprised to find Brielle waiting for him, was not surprised that her look was clearly one of disapproval. Even so, even with a pout upon her face, and even with Belexus in so foul a mood, he could not deny her beauty. Her golden hair hung far down her delicate back, a wild and untamed mane, and her eyes shone greener than the emerald wizard’s mark set in her forehead. Brielle was the shining day to her daughter Rhiannon’s alluring night, and either of them could fell a man with a look, tearing his heart so completely that he would spend a long time retrieving his strength.

“And yet again, ye let the rage take ye,” the witch said, her voice calm and even, and not overtly accusatory.

Belexus understood that tone completely, knew that Brielle was not really judging him, but was, rather, subtly forcing him to judge himself. That trial, both of them knew well, would prove far worse to the proud ranger’s reckoning.

“I slay talons,” he replied firmly after a moment of thought and a deep sigh. “That is me lot in life.”

“Ayuh, and a good one it might be,” Brielle answered. “It’s the way ye do it that’s got me so worried.”

“I’m not for denying me pleasure at me tasks,” the ranger said, and turned away. “With each talon that falls dead to the ground, the world, by me own estimation, is a bit better a place.”

“Ayuh,” the witch honestly agreed. “And so ye should be cutting the beasties down. But if ye let the rage take ye, if ye’re thinking about what was, and not what is, then ye’re losing yerself, me friend, and worse, ye’re liken to make a mistake that’ll cost ye yer own neck.”

“Not to a talon,” the ranger spat sarcastically. Brielle’s words had stung Belexus profoundly, particularly her reference to “what was”-her reference, Belexus understood, to Andovar. She knew Belexus so well, too well-knew even his thoughts. Was he that transparent, he wondered, or was Brielle just so damned perceptive?

“There be darker things than talons walking the ways of Aielle,” Brielle said quietly, but grimly, and her tone told Belexus of whom she was speaking. Again, that only added to the ranger’s frustration. He wanted to destroy the wraith of Hollis Mitchell more than he wanted anything in the world, even more than he wanted the love of Brielle. Mitchell had shattered Belexus’ world, had utterly destroyed his dearest friend, and through it all, the ranger had only been able to look on in horror. Nothing he could have done would have made a difference, would have bothered the wraith in any way, for his weapon, so solid and deadly to most of Aielle’s monsters, could not even scratch the undead wraith.

Nor had the river brought any harm to Mitchell, Brielle had informed Belexus, and had told her brother, Rudy Glendower, the Silver Mage of Illuma, who was known by the name of Ardaz. For the fair witch of Avalon, with her senses so attuned to the natural world, had sensed the return, the sheer perversion, of the undead thing. She had sent out her eyes to search for her daughter, and had found instead the horrid wraith, staining the very ground with its every step.

“Might that the beast will come to Avalon,” Brielle said after a long and uncomfortable silence. “I canno’ go out and destroy the thing, for to leave would be to leave behind the power I’m needing against it, but if it comes near to me wood…”

She let the ominous threat hang there, but Belexus would not seize the thought and revel in it. He didn’t doubt her claim, but neither did he want to see that battle. “The wraith is mine to slay,” he announced coldly and determinedly.

“Ye canno’,” the witch said calmly.

“Then, by the Colonnae, I’ll die in trying!” the ranger growled, spinning back on her, his blue eyes flashing with fury.

Brielle took a good measure of the man, this man, this prince of rangers. Always, Belexus had been the cool and calm leader of men, the warrior who had single-handedly rallied the Calvans to hold the Four Bridges against Thalasi’s assaults until reinforcements could arrive, the man who had saved the elves on the field of Mountaingate when he had put aside his own desires and used his body and that of his pegasus mount to clear the way for Arien Silverleaf, that the elf lord, fittingly, might be the one to slay wicked Ungden the Usurper, who had led his army north to destroy all of Arien’s people. Always, Belexus had been unselfish, purely giving, and unquestioning of the code of rangers, a pledge to a set of tenets and principles that worked for the betterment of the world, and not of the rangers.

But now… now that Brielle had informed the man that the wraith was still about, that the wraith, with the weakening of magic in the last desperate battle, might well stand as the most powerful creature in all Aielle, Belexus had changed. Now his thoughts festered on poor dead Andovar, his rage becoming singular and all-consuming. His only smiles of late were ones of cruel glee, a grin that more resembled a grimace and that only appeared when he cut another talon down.

Brielle, so gentle and wise, remained patient with him. In his anger, he had taken a vow that superseded all others, she realized; a vow that he would avenge the death of Andovar. With that seeming an impossibility, the ranger’s frustration continued to grow. Perhaps it would pass as the darkness further retreated toward the Kored-dul, as time itself replaced those last bitter images of Andovar’s life with the memories of better times Belexus and Andovar had shared throughout the decades.

Belexus gave a nod then, a curt bow, and walked away into the forest, preferring to be alone, and Brielle was left to wonder if this frustration would ever pass, if Belexus would ever truly recover from his inability to fulfill his vow.

“He’s gone ugly,” the beautiful witch said to Calamus, and the pegasus, a creature far more intelligent than its equine frame would indicate, gave a snort and pawed the ground.

The truth of her words assaulted her, and made her determine then and there that she had to do something to help the man, for though he would not admit it, he needed her now.

At sunset, the emerald witch began her preparations upon a still pool of water, melted snow that had collected in the broken stump of an ancient oak, a tree that had been battered to death in the magical battle the witch had waged against Morgan Thalasi. There was still some resonance of power in that tree, Brielle knew, in its deepest roots and in the inner rings that had seen the dawn and death of centuries. And so it was here that Brielle began her enchanting, pouring oils into the water, singing and dancing about the tree, offering a bit of her own blood, and offering all of her thoughts and, more important, her wishes, to the mix. She focused those thoughts on the wraith, and soon the image of the blackness that was the zombielike Mitchell came into focus within the depths of the pool.

Brielle had found him with her divining, crawling out of a small cave-his daytime shelter, it seemed-stepping out into the night. The mere fact that she had so easily located the wraith, how easily her enchantment had sensed his presence though he was obviously far, far away, hinted to her just how powerful Mitchell had become. Now the witch called to the deepest knowledge of the tree, to the understanding of the earth itself, begging it to give her a sign, a hint, of how such a perversion as the wraith could be destroyed, of what magic, or magical weapon, perhaps, might at least hurt the thing.

The water clouded over, swirling, then a small spot appeared at the center of the pool. And in that spot, under the water, the witch saw a craft, a barge poled by a gaunt, robed figure, drifting upward, upward, closer and closer.

Then it was gone, and so was the fog, and all that remained in the bowl was the clear water and the reflection of the evening’s first stars.

Brielle gave a long sigh; perhaps no such weapon existed. Perhaps Thalasi’s meddling in places where no mortal belonged had loosed upon Ynis Aielle a horror that would endure for eternity.

“Not so,” came a low, coarse voice behind Brielle. She froze in place, purely amazed that any person, that anything at all could so sneak up on her here in Avalon, stunned that her many forest friends had not alerted her to the presence-a presence that she felt so clearly now, so cold and deadly. She turned about slowly, thinking that she would face the wraith, thinking that Mitchell had somehow come through her divining instrument to strike at her.

Her fair face blanched even more when she saw and recognized the speaker. Not the wraith and not Thalasi, but one darker and more mysterious by far.

Death itself had come to Avalon.

It took the distracted Belexus a long while to realize that the wintry forest had gone strangely quiet around him, that the nightbirds were not singing, not even the snowy owl that always seemed to be about. But it was more than the absence of animals, the ranger somehow sensed; it was as if all the forest had suddenly hushed: the wind, the trees, the eternal music of Avalon.

The ranger spotted Calamus, flying in low, landing in a small clearing not so far ahead and pawing the ground frantically, as agitated as Belexus had ever seen the creature.

“What do ye know?” the ranger asked, and the pegasus snorted, though the sound seemed unnaturally muffled, as if it had come from far, far away, as if the air itself were heavy with dread. This was too wicked, the ranger realized, as if the very heart of Avalon-

“Brielle?” the ranger asked in a hush, hardly able to draw breath.

Again Calamus snorted, and stamped his front hoof hard on the ground.

Belexus sprinted across the small clearing and verily leaped atop the winged horse’s powerful back, and Calamus sped away, running to the far end of the clearing and cutting a sharp turn, then galloping back-one stride, two-and leaping high into the air, wings beating furiously to get the pair up above the trees. A sheer sense of wrongness guided horse and rider, a perversion of the natural order, a darkness to the area where stood the emerald witch.

“Arawn,” Brielle said quietly, respectfully, her name for this ultimate of specters, and truly she was surprised and confused, for though she knew that Thalasi’s meddling with the universal powers had wounded her and all the magic users of Aielle, she had thought herself strong still, and in the best of health. “Has me time so passed by, then, that I did not even expect ye?”

“I came not for Brielle,” the embodiment of death informed her.

“For whom then?” Brielle dared to ask, though she knew that death was a personal event, one in which she need not be informed. “For Bellerian, who is old?”

There came no answer, the specter standing impassively, leaning heavily on its long sickle.

“For Belexus, then?” the witch prompted fearfully, and she knew as soon as she heard the words leave her mouth that, if that was the case, she truly didn’t want to know!

The specter tilted its hooded head, regarding her curiously.

“If ye mean to take Belexus, then know ye’ll be fighting meself!” Brielle declared, though she understood her claim to be a foolish and impossible boast, for she could no more battle Death than she could burn down Avalon. They were the same, this specter and her forest, both embodiments of the natural order of the universe, and Brielle drew her power completely from that very order. She could not fight Death; she, above all others, who served the First Magic, the school of Nature, could not hope to battle that most elemental of all beings.

“Yer pardon,” she said, and she respectfully lowered her gaze.

“I have come not for Belexus,” Arawn replied somberly-the only tone Death ever used, Brielle thought. “You should fear, though, if you care for him, that perhaps he comes for me!”

The witch looked up curiously, not understanding-until she looked past Death to see the ranger swooping in on Calamus, flying straight for the specter’s back. Belexus had no sword drawn, though, and seemed to be looking only at the witch, his expression as much of curiosity and relief as anything else.

“He canno’ see ye,” Brielle remarked, and of course, it made sense. Only the wizards had such insight, and no mere human or even elf could see Death until that final moment, the time of passage.

“And fortunate that is for him,” Arawn remarked. “I am of no mood to tolerate the foolishness of lessers.”

Brielle sent her thoughts out then, on sudden impulse, flooding the mind of Calamus, letting the winged horse know that she was not afraid, and more important, that this was not his place, and certainly not the place for Belexus. The ranger was just preparing to slip his leg over the mount and drop to the ground running when Calamus angled his powerful wings and broke the swoop, rising steeply into the night sky.

Brielle heard the ranger’s protesting calls, calls fast diminishing as the wise pegasus, heeding her telepathic commands, carried him far away.

“Then who?” the witch asked of Death when that crisis was passed. “If I might be knowing. And if not, then why have ye taked the time to stop and visit?”

“Visit?” the specter echoed, a hint of incredulity slipping into the edges of its grave tone. “No, Jennifer Glendower,” it said, using Brielle’s older name, the name she had been given by her mother and father those centuries before-before e-Belvin Fehte, the killing fires, before the dawn of Ynis Aielle. “I have not come for any-in these dark times, they easily enough come to me.” A rasping sound-a sarcastic chuckle?-emanated from the specter, sending the hairs on the back of Brielle’s neck dancing. Death was the most serious and somber being in all the universe, the one Colonnae who could not, or certainly should not, laugh.

“And your ranger friend has kept me busy, lo, these last weeks,” the surprising specter went on. “I dare say!”

“Then why have you come?” an unnerved Brielle bluntly pressed, too fearful and too intrigued to allow this most unusual conversation to be sidetracked.

Death did not answer, and in the course of that uncomfortable pause, the wise witch solved the riddle. “Ye’re angered at Thalasi,” she reasoned. “He took something from ye.”

“And still he takes,” Death confirmed.

Brielle breathed a lot easier then, as she came to understand the truth. Thalasi had torn Mitchell from the grasp of Death, and that, above all else, the somber Colonnae specter could not tolerate. “Then ye hate the black thing as much as do we all,” the witch said quietly. “And can ye destroy it?”

“Thomas Morgan, Martin Reinheiser, the two who have become one, has defeated even me,” the specter explained.

Brielle was caught off guard, both by the revelation that Death, who, by the very definition of his name, could never be beaten, apparently had been, and also by the use of Morgan Thalasi’s birth name, Thomas Morgan, a name the witch had not heard in many, many years. Also, the reference to both Thomas Morgan and Martin Reinheiser, used in the singular, was indeed telling. The two had become one, as Brielle had suspected and as Death had just confirmed. Yet another perversion, Brielle reasoned. Another insult against the natural order to add to Thalasi’s growing list.

“Thalasi is not so strong now,” Brielle explained, hoping that Death would whisk off right then and there and destroy the wretched Thalasi, and Mitchell, in one fell swoop. “He’s bent the fabric-”

“Our score was settled,” the specter interrupted before she could gain any real momentum.

“Then what do ye want?” Brielle asked impatiently-and nervously, once again.

“What is rightfully mine,” Death matter-of-factly replied.

“Hollis Mitchell.”

“May he rest in peace.”

“Then show me how to deliver him to ye!” the witch growled. “Ye cannot take him back yerself, it’d seem, or ye’d have done so and been done with it, so show me how I might deliver him to ye!”

“That is what you asked at the pool,” Death said calmly. “And that is why I have come.” And with that, the specter lifted one bony arm, its skeletal finger pointing past the witch to the broken tree stump.

Brielle followed the line and moved to the side of the pool, and in its dark waters, as the image of the many stars now overhead faded away, she saw clearly a vision of a sword.

And such a sword! Shining metal edged in diamonds, and glowing of its own inner light. She stared at it for a long, long while, saw into it and through it, glanced at its vast surroundings only for a few moments-enough time to see a treasure hoard beyond anything she had ever imagined; enough time to see the scaly guardian, its wings folded about it as it slept comfortably.

Hardly drawing breath, the witch turned about, but Death, Arawn, was gone. She looked back to the pool, to see only the reflection of stars.

“Brielle!” came a desperate cry, the voice of Belexus, huffing and puffing as he ran and stumbled through the trees. He burst into the clearing, brandishing his sword-a sword that had always seemed so magnificent to the witch, though she cared little for instruments of war, but that now, considering the vision she had just witnessed in the pool, seemed rather ordinary indeed.