The Witch's Daughter

Chapter 2
The Dance of Rhiannon

FAR FROM THE gloom of Kored-dul, winter’s last sunset sparkled across the sylvan boughs of magical Avalon. The forest teemed with life, shaking off the sleepy mantle of the snowy months in a burst of joyful vitality. Songbirds heralded the end of the day, and the animals of the night stirred in their quiet dens.

A chill wind blew down from the Crystal Mountains, a reminder of the season past, but its bite was not so sharp. Spring had come early to the wood this year.

Near the eastern borders of the great forest, in a wide field protected from the north winds by walls of towering evergreens, a young woman watched the darkening sky breathlessly for the first starlight. And when it twinkled into view, she smiled in contentment and broke into her carefree dance, the dance of Rhiannon.

“Be knowing that me eyes are better for seeing such a sight,” said Bellerian, the venerable Ranger Lord. He stood off to the side of the field, under the boughs of a wide pine.

The wizard Ardaz, gray-haired and with a bristling beard, sniffled and wiped the wetness from his eyes, drawing an exchange of smiles between Bellerian and the third person in the group, a woman of beauty beyond the realm of mortals. “Me brother’s a sentimental sort,” Brielle explained to the Ranger Lord.

“Twenty!” Ardaz cried. “Just a day, I know it was just a day ago that I held the little babe in my arms. Look at her now! A woman! I do dare say!”

“Twenty years might not seem as much to the likes o’ a wizard and witch,” Brielle replied. “Suren the time has brought me girl to womanhood, but it has not touched us at all.”

“Yer fortunes,” Bellerian grumbled lightheartedly, stretching a creak out of his aging back. “Me wish it be that the turnin’ clock’d leave me bones alone.”

“Just a baby,” Ardaz went on, too caught up in his nostalgia to hear the words of his companions.

Brielle winked at Bellerian and moved out to join her daughter. The Ranger Lord started to follow, but Ardaz, understanding what would come next, held him back.

And then the mother, the witch of the wood, joined her daughter in dancing. Their graceful movements, heightened by the mysterious flow of gossamer gowns-white for Brielle, black for Rhiannon-caught the essence of the forest night and translated its beauty into an art that the eyes of those less knowledgeable in the ways of the sylvan world could understand. For watching Brielle and Rhiannon was to watch the dance of the earth in all its glory, an ancient dance, older than the race of man. The dance of life itself.

They twirled and crossed, rising up high into the air and floating to gentle landings that did not even bend the blades of newly sprouting grass under their bare feet. So alike they seemed, in spirit and body, but if Brielle, with her shining golden locks and sparkling green eyes, was the light of day, then Rhiannon was the mystery of night. Black hair rolled across her shoulders as she spun, soft as the moonlight and impossibly thick. But even if it fell across the porcelain features of her fair face, it could not dim the light in her eyes, the palest blue but with a depth that belied the lightness of color.

Bellerian and Ardaz could only watch silently, entranced as the witch and her daughter continued their dance. The hugest and clumsiest of dragons could have crashed through the forest to stand right behind them and they would not have sensed its presence.

And then, after a long while that seemed too short for the onlookers, Brielle leaped in a twirl and froze in her landing, arms wide and eyes unblinking. Rhiannon spun a full circuit around her, coming to a stop in a similar posture, facing her mother and staring into Brielle’s green eyes, staring into her soul.

Inches apart stood mother and daughter, finding the truest serenity in their bond.

“If my life now found its end, I would surely die a contented soul,” came a voice from the side when the mystical moment began to wane, and out from the boughs walked Arien Silverleaf, the King of the Elves, with a brown-skinned man at his side. They crossed the field to join the witch and her daughter.

“My greetings to you, Mistress of Avalon,” the noble elf greeted Brielle. “Blessed are we to be invited to the beauty of your realm.” He bowed low and sincerely.

Ardaz and Bellerian walked out to join the gathering. “Splendid,” cried the gray-bearded wizard. “Then we are all here. Oh, we are, we are indeed! I do so enjoy a party! I do, I do! What fun would life be without them, after all?”

“And glad I am that ye could come to celebrate me daughter’s birthday,” said Brielle. She paused and smiled when she took note of Billy Shank, the man at Arien’s side, his mouth frozen in a silent whistle, his eyes wide and glazed as he looked upon Rhiannon, the legacy of his dearest friend, for the first time in almost two decades.

Brielle brushed her hand across her daughter’s forehead, pushing back the thick mane. Rhiannon kept her eyes to the ground-not an impolite posture, but rather, an embarrassed one. So at home among the creatures of the forest, the young woman was not accustomed to human visitors.

“This is Billy Shank,” Brielle said to her. “The others ye know. He was a friend o’ yer father’s, a friend dear and true.”

Rhiannon peeked out of the corner of her eye at Ardaz, her uncle Rudy, and found courage in his assuring smile. Then she looked at Billy, and found only friendship reflecting back at her from his dark eyes. He was passing middle age and a bit round in the belly now, with flecks of silver in his black hair. But the wrinkles that creased the edges of his mouth and eyes all turned up to smile at her, and even Rhiannon’s profound shyness could not dispute such sincere friendship.

“Me thanks to ye,” the daughter of the witch whispered. “To ye all, for coming to me party.” Her voice grew louder as she spoke, gaining confidence in the knowledge that she was among only friends.

Ardaz bounded over to her and kissed her noisily on the cheek. “And our thanks to you, dear girl!” he cried.

“For what?”

The wizard’s laugh erupted and then ended suddenly. “Why, for everything! And for nothing at all, I do dare say!” He lifted her in his arms and spun her around.

And thus the party began.

Arien, Ardaz, and Bellerian had come to the magical forest in great anticipation this night. They had joined in such celebrations before and knew that they would not be disappointed, could never be disappointed, by an evening spent with the fair ladies of Avalon. But for Billy Shank the night was especially wonderful. He had been to Avalon on several occasions, but this was the first time he truly appreciated the sweetness of the enchanted forest, the primordial magic that marked this place above all others in the world.

An oaken table was brought to the field, and a feast of cakes and fruit, and of water as crystalline as the stars on a clear and moonless night and bringing a tingling chill that invigorated the body yet somehow warmed the soul, was set before them. But if the meal was wondrous, the manner in which it was served stole Billy’s breath altogether.

Birds flew down from the trees, clutching golden plates and chalices in their claws; a great buck emerged from the trees, jugs of drink swinging with its strides from the many points of its majestic antlers; and a huge bear brought the dinner tray.

Laughter erupted from all assembled at the sight of Billy’s shocked expression when the bear set a place before him and then squatted down beside him for its own feast. Only a moment later a gigantic owl swooped down from the trees and landed on Billy’s shoulder. It cocked its head, stared, only an inch from Billy’s wide eyes, and hooted out, “Who?”

And the merriment erupted again, Billy joining in this time. Brielle slapped her daughter playfully on the shoulder. “Ye told the bird to do that,” she scolded.

Rhiannon bit her lip and turned away, sobbing with laughter.

Ardaz heard the comment. He continued to laugh, but secretly pondered the implications of his sister’s words. Rhiannon told the bird? Was she, then, blessed like her mother?

By the time the meal was finished, Billy and the bear had become great friends-though the bear kept sticking its paw into the honey on Billy’s plate-to the continued merriment of them all. Rhiannon, more comfortable with each passing second, grabbed the hand of Arien. “Dance with me,” she begged, a plea the elf-king had no intention of ignoring.

And they danced and sang, all of them, and the animals and the forest itself joined in their song. They called to the stars and were answered; they whispered to an unseen loon and heard its long, mournful cry in response.

And when the night had passed its midpoint, a bright light, colored as a rainbow, appeared in the middle of the field, near the table. Ardaz and the others looked at Brielle, but the witch had no answers for them.

The light spun and swirled and took on a vaguely humanoid shape. Then it was gone, and where it had been stood a white-bearded man, his face wizened with age, his old bent body bedecked in a flowing white robe and the pointed cap of a mage.

“Istaahl!” Brielle and Ardaz cried in unison.

“I see that I am late,” the White Mage of Pallendara, the great human settlement far to the south, said with a bow. “My many apologies.”

“But ye said ye could not be attendin’,” Brielle replied.

“Yes, for it is the celebration of the equinox in Pallendara, you know.” He winked at the others. “But mortal men simply do not know how to throw a proper party. Most of them are already snoring comfortably in their beds.

“Or in someone else’s bed,” he whispered and winked as if he had revealed some great secret.

Rhiannon blushed and looked away, and Ardaz snickered in amusement.

“But the night is only half through,” Brielle said, casting him a stern glance that reminded him to keep his bawdy remarks to himself in the presence of her innocent daughter.

“Yes, well,” stammered Istaahl. “Their merrymaking nears its end; I will not be missed.”

“And how are your old bones?” Ardaz asked the new-comer. “Mine will creak and groan in the morning, I do dare say!”

“Truly you are old beyond your centuries, Silver Mage,” Istaahl teased. “But I have the vigor of springtime yet in my step.”

“And truly you wag your tongue, White One. That you do, that you do,” Ardaz countered. “Idle boasts from idle bodies, I always say.” He jumped up from his seat, a magically enhanced leap that sent him soaring into the air, only to land softly on the other side of the oaken table. “My feet might fly on moonbeams, White One, while yours plod through the mud.”

“Rudy,” Brielle teased her brother, using his original name, the name from the other world before he became Ardaz. “Are me ears hearin’ a challenge?”

“Then back to the dance!” demanded Ardaz and Istaahl, the two oldest of friends, together.

The celebration took on a new depth for Rhiannon with the arrival of Istaahl. He was the wizard of the court of King Benador in Pallendara, the greatest city in all the world, set on the southern shores of Ynis Aielle, and whenever he happened by the forest of Avalon, he filled Rhiannon’s ears with tales of the world beyond, with tales of the rolling plains of Calva and the ways of the good King Benador and his people. The young woman danced with the White Mage often, prompting him continually for songs of the wide world.

Brielle watched her daughter with growing concern.

“You protect her too closely,” Ardaz whispered into his sister’s ear, seeing her scowl. “She is a young woman now, and wants to learn of things beyond the borders of your domain.

“Blessed as it may be,” he added quickly, seeing Brielle’s glare.

“Never I do!” Brielle countered. “I let ye all in whenever ye might want to be in. Ye’re all me guests right now!”

“All?” chuckled Ardaz, glancing around at the five others who made up the celebration. “Where are the rest of Arien’s people, the half-thousand merry elves of Illuma Vale barely two miles from your front door?”

“Too much trouble for a simple party,” Brielle replied. “I’d’ve not bothered them so.”

“Bothered them?” Ardaz’s laughter mocked the witch. “They would have jumped, dear sister, at any invitation the fair Brielle might have extended to them. You know it, too. Yes you do, yes you do! And the rangers! Bellerian’s rangers. Walking the boughs of Avalon, back and again, back and again, back and again…” He got lost in the web of his own words for just a moment, then snapped his fingers as he got his train of thought back on its rails. “Just looking for a peek at you, they are, or your enchanting little girl! No no, Jenny, it’s not for the bother you keep them away. It’s for Rhiannon. Or more for yourself, I do dare say!”

Brielle looked up at her brother. She knew that he was concerned under his laughing facade. He had called her Jenny, her ancient name, and one Ardaz usually reserved for grave moments. “Ye think I’m holding her too close?”

“I dare say I do indeed.”

As if on cue, Rhiannon whirled over to them then. “Me heart’s found the gift!” she said to Brielle. “Ye promised me ye’d grant it if it was within yer power.”

Brielle nodded, suspicious.

“I’m wanting to go to the southland,” Rhiannon explained, and she glanced over at Istaahl. “To Pallendara and to the Four Bridges, and to all the world in between.”

Brielle snapped a cold glare over Ardaz. “Ye knew,” she hissed.

The wizard managed to cast a wink at Rhiannon before he looked away.

“And are ye going back with the White Mage, then?” Brielle asked, her attention back on Rhiannon, and her tone unmistakably disapproving.

“Oh, no, me mum,” Rhiannon answered, trying to keep her cheer in the face of Brielle’s simmering anger. “Too quick that way. I’d be missin’ all the sights!”

“Then who?” demanded the witch. “The world’s not so safe, me girl. I’ll not have ye wanderin’-”

“Belexus and Andovar,” Rhiannon blurted before Brielle could finish. “Off to the south they’re going, in a fortnight they be meaning to leave. I know ye could get Bellerian to make them take me along. Please, me mum.”

“And have ye been talking to the ranger lads?” Brielle asked slyly. “Do ye know the hearts of Bellerian’s son and Andovar?”

“Oh, no,” Rhiannon replied. “Never would I do such a thing against yer asking! I know ye want me keepin’ clear o’ travelers in the wood.”

“Then how do ye know they’re meaning to go?” Brielle was no longer angry, or accusatory, believing her daughter implicitly.

“Me friends heared them talking in the wood,” Rhiannon explained. “ ’Twas the birds that told me.”

Ardaz caught Brielle’s attention with a glance of curiosity. So it was true, the Silver Mage mused. Rhiannon’s power was indeed beginning to bud.

“Please, me mum. Suren I’d love to be goin’ with them.”

Brielle took a long moment to study her daughter.

Rhiannon was a young woman now, and no longer her little girl. Still, the witch feared the possibilities of letting her run off on her own. Rhiannon had lived the entirety of her young life in Avalon, and she would not be prepared to handle the harsh world outside of the forest’s protected boughs.

“Would ye not rather be going to the east, to the far lands?” Brielle asked on a sudden thought. Rhiannon seemed not to understand, but Ardaz opened his eyes wide and stared at his sister in disbelief. “Yer uncle Rudy’ll be going out there. Would ye not enjoy his company on a long road?”

When Brielle looked over to Ardaz for support, he was shaking his head emphatically.

“Ye said ye were going,” Brielle protested. “To study some ruins yer pet found. Ye said it yerself!”

“And so I am. Yes indeed I am!” Ardaz retorted. “But not with her along, oh no no no!” He winked slyly at Rhiannon again to let her know that he wasn’t saying these things as an insult to her character. “Why would a young thing like her want to travel beside an old buffoon like me? I dare say, I would not doom my little Rhi to such a fate as that.”

Brielle’s eyes shot darts at her brother.

“Please, me mum,” Rhiannon said again. “Truly I want to be going, and ye said ye would grant me wish. Would ye talk to Bellerian for me, then?”

Helplessly outnumbered, Brielle gave a resigned shrug. “I will talk to the Ranger Lord,” she replied.

“Me thanks!” Rhiannon cried, and she threw her arms around her mother’s neck. Brielle accepted the embrace for a few moments, then put Rhiannon back at arm’s length.

“I said I’d be talking to the man,” she explained. “No more than that did yer ears hear me promise. Now get ye back to the dancing; we’ll be talking on the morrow.”

Knowing that she had at last broken her mother’s stubborn resolve, the young woman leaped back across the field, her graceful step springing even higher on the cool grass.

“Let her go,” Ardaz said when Rhiannon was back to her play.

“So young,” Brielle replied softly.

“By our counting,” Ardaz countered, his tone suddenly quite serious. He looked into the green sparkle of his sister’s eyes, held her with the intensity of his own gaze. “Her power is budding, so it would seem,” he said. “But we do not know which she will follow, mother or father.”

“What do you mean?” Brielle asked, a bit frightened by her normally cheerful brother’s grim tone.

“Has she the gift of long years, as do we?” Ardaz asked bluntly. “You do not know, nor do I. Perhaps Rhiannon will live through the centuries, and then twenty years will not seem so long. But perhaps…” He let the thought hang, knowing that he had lighted a thousand contemplations in his sister’s mind.

And truly Brielle was dazed by the words. She hadn’t even given that notion much consideration, assuming that her daughter would live by her side through the dawn and wane of centuries to come. But Ardaz was right, Brielle had to admit; she had no way of knowing.

“Let her go,” Ardaz said again. “The life is hers to live.”

Brielle nodded but could not reply past the lump that had suddenly welled in her throat.

Much later, but still before the approaching dawn had pinkened the eastern sky, Billy Shank and Bellerian slumped down on a mossy bed at the edge of the field. The two wizards trotted by them, shaking their heads in good-hearted sarcasm, and returned to their merrymaking.

“Mortal men,” Istaahl muttered to Ardaz.

“So now we might die happy,” Bellerian said to Billy. “To have looked upon these precious and rare sights.”

“Now I understand Del’s love of this place,” Billy replied, referring to the friend he had lost twenty years before, the friend who had loved Brielle and given the witch her daughter. “Truly it is a magical land.”

“And rarer still is the gathering we joined this night,” Bellerian explained. “Suren there be magic in the air.”

Billy regarded the five still at play on the field. The fair witch and her brother Ardaz, Istaahl from faraway Pallendara, and Arien Silverleaf, the Eldar of the elves, who had become Billy’s closest friend over the past twenty years. But most of all Billy found his eye lingering on Rhiannon, Brielle’s daughter, Del’s daughter, so innocent and beautiful.

Looking down from the heavens, his lost friend would have been proud indeed.

“Ardaz of Illuma, Istaahl of Pallendara, and Brielle of Avalon,” Bellerian continued, speaking the words solemnly, as if to remind himself of the gravity of the assembly.

“And the Eldar of Illuma,” Billy added. “If King Benador had come, then all the leaders of the world would be here.”

Bellerian nodded. “But the good young king of Calva and even yer own friend o’ the elves pale by the side of th’other three. Look at them, Billy Shank, and know yerself to be a blessed soul. The powers of all the world they be; any one o’ them could defeat an army, could lay ruin to all the world or shine the light of hope upon it. They check themselves, and a blessing that be, for the bounds o’ their powers’d steal yer breath away and never give it back.”

Billy knew well enough the truth of Bellerian’s observations. He had seen Ardaz in battle once before, and if the Black Warlock had not appeared on the field to counter the magic of the Silver Mage, Ardaz would surely have destroyed the entire army of Pallendara all by himself.

Bellerian shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his own words. “The powers o’ the gods given to man,” he mumbled. “The three wizards of Ynis Aielle all come together.”

Twenty years is a long time in the life of a mortal man, but if Bellerian, the knowledgeable Ranger Lord, had taken a moment to consider his words, he would have remembered that Ynis Aielle boasted of four wizards, not three.

Too many, in the last two decades of peace, had allowed themselves to forget the lurking specter of Morgan Thalasi.

An organ? Reinheiser balked, considering the massive pipes that climbed high into the chamber. You dragged me all the way up here to view an organ?

You can play, of course, Thalasi countered, a rhetorical thought, for Thalasi knew Reinheiser’s every memory and knew that his counterpart was an accomplished musician.

I created this instrument in my first days here, he explained to Reinheiser. My only companion for centuries other than the wretched talons, and I care not for their company.

Reinheiser began to understand. You want us to join in the song, he realized. Every movement so precise and so practiced.

Here we might find our harmony, Thalasi replied. It only occurred to me after the encounter with the usurping talon, after I had felt the ecstasy of our joining.

It will not work, Reinheiser reasoned, and Thalasi felt the sincere disappointment in his thoughts. There remain too many subtle variations.

Perhaps, argued Thalasi. But with the instrument as an audible guide, the futility of our battles will become evident at every misstep. Only when the song flows in harmony will our minds be flowing in harmony.

Reinheiser remained unconvinced, but Thalasi did not have to remind him of their other options. He followed Thalasi’s lead in bringing the body to sit down.

And then they played.

For an unbroken stretch of many days, notes rang out from the central tower of Talas-dun. Rhythmless and offkey, the sound grated in the marrow of the talons of the fortress, and they slumped down and tried to hide their ears whenever they had to cross too close to the place. Whispers spread among the ranks-but only whispers, for none had yet found the courage even to go in and mop up the remains of Grok-that the Black Warlock had gone mad.

But the helpless talons could only sit and wait, and endure the torture of the monstrous music.

Quite the opposite of the talons’ suspicions, the spirits of Thalasi and Reinheiser were preserving their sanity up in that tower room. Ever so gradually, the notes of their playing began to take on the semblance of music. For the first time, the two separate identities found a way to truly anticipate the actions of each other.

In merely a week Reinheiser admitted the value of Thalasi’s plan. In two they found their way through an entire melody without a single error. And still they played, following the music, falling within the music.

It consumed them wholly and broke down the defenses that had kept them apart for so long, as each laid bare his desires to the other. The music was the cause, the harmony their only goal.

And they reached for it and clutched at it. Together.

Talons gathered outside the central tower, basking in the powerful notes of the Black Warlock’s song. The dim-witted beasts could not understand the depth of what their dark master had accomplished, but they knew from the confident roar of the massive pipes that the man who finally emerged from the central tower of Talas-dun would bear little resemblance to the wretched being that had crawled and scratched his way up there.

Fingers glided across the keys in complete confidence, never a bar was missed, and the sheer power that flowed through those once battered digits sent the huge instrument spiraling to new heights of musical majesty.

“Are you there?” the being called out in a strange dual-toned voice.

“Of course I am!” he answered himself.

It was time to go.

The Black Warlock stretched his legs and strode confidently out of the room to the tower balcony. He knew that his talons would be nearby, listening, waiting for some word, any word, of the fate of their master. And here he was, returned to them, whole again and powerful. More powerful.

“And I am Thalasi, not Reinheiser,” the Black Warlock muttered, testing out the depth of his newfound tranquillity with a proclamation that before would surely have brought resistance from the spirit of Martin Reinheiser.

“Of course,” the being agreed with himself. The logic was inescapable. “Morgan Thalasi. A name that strikes dread into every heart of Ynis Aielle.” The Black Warlock found no internal rage at the declaration, though the will of Martin Reinheiser remained an equal part of his makeup. Morgan Thalasi was the obvious choice for the name, both for keeping the talons in line and striking terror into the hearts of foes.

The part of the Black Warlock that remained Martin Reinheiser understood the value of this and accepted the conclusion without argument. All that mattered was the harmony.

And the power that harmony would bring.

He walked out onto the tower balcony. The day was remarkably clear for Kored-dul, and the Black Warlock could see for many miles from the high vantage point.

“Go out!” he cried to the talons assembling at the base of the structure. Their whispers faded away to a hush at the simple utterance of those two words. They sensed the change in the Black Warlock, sensed the hushed power of the being, and they wanted to hear the commands of their true master, the one possessed of the powers of a god that most of them knew only from the tales their fathers and grandfathers had told them.

“Go out to the dark holes and valleys,” Thalasi roared. “Find your kin! Tell them that Morgan Thalasi has returned to lead them all! Tell them that Morgan Thalasi is hungry!

“Tell them that Morgan Thalasi claims this world!”

The proclamation resounded off every stone in Kored-dul, found its way to every talon ear. The call to arms and to glory. And they came, every one, willingly, hungrily.

The Black Warlock had returned.