by Mark E Lacy
The beast pushed back his cowl.
I am the Bear, came a throaty, disembodied voice.
The preternatural glow in the cavern seemed to waver.
I am the Bear, totem of the Kings of Thrae. My form is taken from the brave men who have given me my power. I am both of them, and neither.
“So?” replied Raethir Del, somewhat louder than before.
On my hands are the Paws of the Bear. In my hands is the Sword of Helsinlae. The Bear extended the Sword, pointing at the sorcerer. I am your doom, Ban-breaker.
“Totem or ghost or demon, I care not. I am Raethir Del. I am the Gatekeeper, abramusara, wielder of the Dreamtunnel. Serve me and live, or oppose me and die.”
The Bear growled long and low.
The Dreamtunnel is no more, Changer. And I do not make choices. I give them. Serve me by dying at your own hand, or oppose me and die at my hand. Which shall it be?
A wild gleam sparkled in the sorcerer's eyes, a mad smile upon his face. “You have made your choice, Bear.”
And you have made yours, musara. You have made many poor choices, but none more fatal than breaking the Ban of Irsisri. Your punishment is death.
Raethir Del crouched, cupping water in his hands and pouring it over his head. A nimbus of power surrounded him, swallowing the gentle sounds of dripping water and the dancing light within the cavern. As his power grew, he laughed and cast a spray of water into the air.
But in the hands of the Bear, the Sword began to glow, a light that grew to a blazing flare that lit the entire cavern.
Without warning, Raethir Del sprang through the air, changing completely into a gar-wolf. As the Bear looked up and saw the wolf descending with bared fangs, he dodged to one side. With a roar, he parried, pushing the wolf away, sending him tumbling with a yelp.
The wolf lay partly in the water, his fur beginning to soak through. It was a poor choice of form and a careless attack, and Raethir Del cursed his haste. He stood on all four legs, facing the middle of the lake. As the Bear drew near, Raethir Del changed his lower half into a horse and kicked violently backward. He was rewarded by a cry of pain from the Bear, who fell back and landed on a sharp boulder with a grunt of pain and expelled breath. The Bear struggled up and charged the wolf-headed horse that now faced him.
The form of the wolf-horse shimmered and changed into a tailless, tusked pyreshai mount.
The Bear, startled to see the monstrous demon-beast, averted his charge in time to prevent being gored by the creature's tusks, but the beast lowered his head and succeeded in grazing the Bear's side. The Bear roared in pain and, turning, brought the Sword around to open a long gash in the monster's flank.
It was the sorcerer's turn to cry out. Though not in man-form, he could still be injured, and he could most definitely feel pain. A ribbon of flesh hung from his side, and blood pulsed onto the sand.
I cannot afford to prolong this, thought Raethir Del.
Though back in the Lair of Ualdrar where he could call up strength while standing in the water, the abramusara had hoped he wouldn't have to resort to his final option, for it would require the remainder of his power and strength. The battle must be ended quickly, to prove to the world that prophecies were meaningless, but above all, to take the Gauntlets.
Much sooner than he had hoped, Raethir Del summoned all he had and made a final transformation.
Leaping high in the air, the sorcerer closed his wounds with large bronze scales. In moments, he took on the head of a serpent. His arms became wings like those of a giant bat's, dusky membranes unfolding with a snap. His legs doubled in size, ending in huge talons. From the rear of the beast emerged a long, barbed tail.
He was a Wyvern, and he hovered momentarily in the vault over the lake.
Somewhere within the mind of the Bear, he remembered a vision by the shore of Lake Cinnaril, and he knew that this was the end.
Screaming his anger and intention to kill, the Wyvern dove, mouth open wide and fangs dripping poison. With a snap of his muscled neck, he struck the Bear's shoulder with his fangs. The Bear cried out and stumbled backward as the Sword of Helsinlae flew from his hand to disappear in the dark water of the lake. The brilliant light of the Sword was extinguished, leaving only the cavern’s dim glow.
The Wyvern did not let go of the Bear. He hung on for a few seconds more till all his venom was injected. The winged beast rose to the top of the cavern and watched as the Bear fell to the sand, moaning in agony. The Bear tried to stand and fell once more before crawling to the lake and thrusting his wounded shoulder into the cold water. He reached into the water, searching for the Sword, but came up empty-handed.
Pain, consuming pain.
The water failed to numb the Bear’s wound, and he stood, anger fueling his muscles. It seemed like something was wrong with his eyes. Haze seemed to surround him like a shell. As the venom took over his senses, and the pain began to master him, the metamorphosis that had created the Bear was threatening to reverse. Visylon and Enkinor stared at the haze, recognizing the cocoon, realizing soon Raethir Del could emerge the victor.
The Bear struggled again to stand, his limbs difficult to control as they hesitated somewhere between ursine and human form. He watched the flight of the Wyvern as the scaled creature wheeled in a turn that would bring the sorcerer back to attack him again. While the Bear paused, wondering what to do, the poison in his system spread over his mind like a flashfire on a dry prairie. He was dimly aware that he had to hide, that he had to protect himself, but he felt paralyzed.
Fear.
The Bear threw his head back and roared. Fear took hold of him, horrible and painful fear unleashed by the Wyvern's poison. All the terror Visylon and Enkinor had felt in their journeys to this cave was now taken and amplified and poured back over them, from the panic that had gripped Enkinor when he first entered the Dreamtunnel to the horror that had consumed Visylon when he was smothered by tomb-wraiths. The Bear cowered, remembering the grotesque child in the swamp who had wanted to kill the Saerani men. Waves of dread crashed against him like physical blows, and the sorcerer, in saurian form, was closing in again.
The Wyvern descended, barbed tail brought under and forward. The creature stung the Bear in the back, injecting more poison. The Bear tried to swipe at the Wyvern's wings, a desperate attempt to grasp the creature and bring it down, but he missed him. With a scream of pain and frustration, the Bear fought to master the poison somehow. Too weak to escape another attack, the Bear lumbered slowly toward the minimal shelter provided by some nearby boulders.
Anxiety.
The eyes of the Bear rolled back in his head. Now, to the fear was added waves of anxiety, anxiety whose roots could be found in the dire, desperate circumstances the Saerani had experienced because of Raethir Del and the Dreamtunnel. The Bear felt once again Enkinor's worry as the Gauntletbearer pursued the monstrous ape that carried Invedra off to the island. He relived Visylon's struggle to get his demon-wounded friend off the chasm bridge, escape the soldiers, and heal Enkinor before the Gauntletbearer lapsed into death.
The cocoon continued to take on more substance. The two Saerani men that made up the Bear became more aware of their separate selves. They saw with painful apprehension that the Wyvern had turned for another attack.
Despair.
With a cry of anguish, the Bear clapped his hands to his head. Every fateful moment Enkinor had experienced in the Dreamtunnel, without hope, doomed by a curse, poured into the Bear's mind and was multiplied by sorcery from the Wyvern's poison. He remembered how Enkinor's first hopes of having escaped the Dreamtunnel were crushed when the Saerani was caught up by the curse again. He knew Visylon's despair upon reaching the final room in the Rivertree and finding the Codex Indrelfis gone, the hopelessness which gripped him when he reached the irrilai camp and learned that he had missed the Gauntletbearer. Above all, the Bear felt Enkinor's anguish over being in a situation he could not control and had no power to escape.
Grief.
Panic.
Enkinor remembered the helplessness he felt when he was tied to the stone monolith and couldn't get to Maeryl, as he watched her calling the Dreamtunnel down on herself; the confusion he felt when he was transported by the Dreamtunnel from one experience to the next, not knowing which ones were real and which were not.
Failure.
Once more, the Bear roared, racked by physical and mental pain. To all the other burdens was now added the overwhelming certainty of failure. After all that Enkinor and Visylon had experienced, all the dangers they had survived, all the pain and suffering they had been dealt, the sacrifices of the many people who had fought for them and tried to help in any way they could; after all the preparations and planning that Indrelfis had set in place so long ago, and the careful guarding of the Gauntlets and the Tree of Helsinlae and the Codex Indrelfis, it looked like Raethir Del would triumph.
As the Wyvern stooped for the kill, the Bear leapt for safety behind a boulder. A moment later, the talons of the winged nightmare scraped harmlessly against the stone.
“Coward!” Raethir Del railed, but it erupted from the monster's throat as a saurian scream of anger.
The Bear struggled to hold on to consciousness. He had only a few precious moments in which to find the Sword. He stumbled back to where the Sword had disappeared, but he couldn’t see into the dark water, and the cocoon of white light surrounding him was nearly solid. Soon, Enkinor and Visylon would regain their human forms, no longer able to channel the power of the kings of Thrae to destroy Raethir Del.
Almost casually, the Wyvern perched upon a nearby outcropping and once again became the Gatekeeper.
The sorcerer watched with curiosity and satisfaction as the Bear flailed in the water, entombed in a shell of white light, and then dropped, to move no more.
Death.
Ignoring the seeping wound in his side, the sorcerer climbed down to the beach, wincing, and walked over to the still and silent creature who was beginning to change back into two humans.
“Give up, Bear. You've lost.”
No! said the Bear.
“It's hopeless,” said the Gatekeeper. “It's done. You're finished, and I have a demon waiting for your soul.”
With one last laugh, Raethir Del used his remaining power to return to the form of the Wyvern, sailing around the vault of the cavern for a final time.
Enkinor and Visylon began to panic as they sensed the end of the Bear. They felt like helpless onlookers.
But, the Bear asked himself, after all we’ve survived in this quest, will we simply accept defeat?
The Bear plunged once more into the water, sweeping his feet along the bottom of the lake, praying he would kick the Sword and take it in his hand once more before the Wyvern stooped for the kill.
A sudden pain shot through his foot as the Sword’s sharp edge sliced his heel. With a surge of hope buoyed by panic, the Bear reached underwater for the Sword. The moment his hand grasped the blade, the Sword flared once more, and a flood of energy pulsed through him.
For a moment, a host of possibilities presented themselves.
Can I heal myself?
But there was no time to try. Even now, the Wyvern was descending, and the Bear might not survive the next blow.
Can I stop him without destroying him? Are there more choices than I realize?
The Bear felt the powerful downdraft of the Wyvern’s wings. He leapt from the water, holding high the blazing Sword, torn between rushing in for a kill and wondering if the sorcerer’s death was the only path to victory. At the last moment, the Bear ducked beneath the creature’s claws, but the Wyvern’s tail swung and knocked him to the ground. The Bear got to his feet, gasping for breath and holding his side. As the Wyvern flapped his wings, turning for a final attack, the Bear rushed in with a Saerani war-cry and thrust the Sword of Helsinlae deep into the creature’s abdomen. The Wyvern screeched in agony as the Sword pierced him, and the power of the Thraean kings smashed through Raethir Del’s sorcerous shields.
The winged monster fell, and the Bear released the Sword, leaving it lodged in the Wyvern’s belly, and jumped to safety.
The Wyvern crashed in the shallows, wings crumpled beneath him. As the Bear watched, the creature’s wings shriveled and disappeared. The muscles in its legs and tail seemed to melt away. Talons and fangs vanished. When the creature’s form was once more that of the sorcerer, Raethir Del’s hands gripped the blade in his gut, his body convulsing. The power in the Sword was turning the Ban-breaker’s sorcery back on himself.
The cocoon around the Bear began to fade. The Gauntletbearer and the Swordbearer began to merge once more. Mind clear, strength once more at his command, the Bear stood before the dying sorcerer.
Raethir Del lay on the dark sand, blood oozing from around the blade of the Sword of Helsinlae, features contorted in pain. He looked up, expecting the Bear to free his sword.
But the Bear made no move. He so desperately wanted to end the sorcerer’s life. Raethir Del had been careless and over-confident. Now, he was powerless.
The Bear thought for a moment. He remembered when Visylon and Hyphos had healed the demon in the Yalventa Forest, the demon who had been no more than a poor, cursed human.
Death to Raethir Del? What if there is another way?
The Bear knelt and took the sorcerer’s head in his Gauntleted hands, one on each of Raethir Del’s temples. He closed his eyes and entered the sorcerer’s mind. Raethir Del was too weak to resist the intrusion. The Bear wasted no time in assessing the sorcerer’s intestinal damage and the severed artery draining his life-force, but he went no further. What was broken went much deeper than bodily wounds. Raethir Del’s evil was woven into every fiber of his being. The Bear almost broke contact so he could turn and retch. Enkinor and Visylon had witnessed only a small part of this man’s history, the atrocities that had gone on for years.
The urge to walk away and allow Raethir Del to die was strong. The sorcerer did not deserve to live.
The part of the Bear that was Enkinor spoke to the musara. I once told you I would not rest until you had paid for your killings.
A desire for vengeance welled up in the Bear, to avenge Rigalen’s death, the attack by the Draelani, the murder of Strigin, the wrecking of Maeryl’s life.
He had always believed his destiny was to kill Raethir Del, but what if his destiny was to stop him, not kill him? Was that even possible? Would deep healing stop the sorcerer?
Whatever course the Bear chose, one thing had to be done first.
Raethir Del, observe.
The Bear showed his enemy what he had to face. The sorcerer watched the actions of his life unfold before him in rapid succession. He saw the people he had tortured, the minds he had destroyed, the bodies he had crushed. He saw the pain in his victims’ eyes. He felt their anger at his deceit. He felt the souls of his victims go numb to protect them from the full impact of his brutality. All in the name of taking and using what he wanted for his own.
Even the pain of the Sword buried in his abdomen could not distract Raethir Del from observing his evil deeds.
The Bear increased the rate at which the sorcerer observed his past. Raethir Del cried out as the pain he had inflicted during his lifetime came flowing back and crashing over him.
I told you your punishment is death, said the Bear. But now I offer you mercy.
Raethir Del opened his eyes for the first time. “Mercy? What mercy?”
I am not without compassion. You have another choice before you, Changer. Do you wish to be healed? I cannot force it upon you.
“Healing? You want me to show remorse, so you can ‘heal’ both body and soul?” The sorcerer coughed up blood. “I’ve taken pleasure in everything I’ve ever done. What sickens you, what
makes you judge me broken, is who I am. I would rather die than be ‘healed.’”
But having once committed himself to killing the man, the Bear could not now accept the death of the sorcerer as inevitable.
Raethir Del, you are indeed dying. I have the power to stop that or to hasten that. I will ask you one last time. Do you wish to be healed?
“No, damn you.”
The Bear swallowed hard, unable to comprehend this man’s choice but compelled to respect it.
You have one final choice, then. Allow me to hasten your death, or else end it by your own hand.
But the sorcerer hadn’t the strength. He struggled to whisper the vradu words he needed, but he couldn’t form the words properly. He couldn’t control the spell. The Bear, seeing this, made his own last choice. Hands still on the sorcerer’s head, eyes closed, he lent his strength to Raethir Del’s. When at last the words were spoken, the sorcerer breathed his last.
Enkinor slowly opened his eyes. The Gauntlets were still on his hands. He raised his head, stiff, tired muscles complaining, and saw Visylon facing him. The warrior once again held the Sword of Helsinlae, examining it in a curious way.
The two men stood in the Lair of Ualdrar, weary in mind, and body, and spirit. The cool air of the cave bore the odor of death. There were marks in the sand that looked like something had been dragged into the water. They looked out to the lake and saw the body of Raethir Del floating face down, but they were not prepared for one last mind-blasting horror.
Standing waist-deep in the water, clawed hands clasping the sorcerer's skull, a demon with a large saurian head and rows of razor-sharp teeth fed on the soul of the musara. As the ephemeral blue spirit drifted like smoke from the sorcerer's body, Jogaziddarak laughed and grabbed it in his teeth, tossing his head back and forth, ripping it loose with glee.
When, at long last, the demon finished his feast, his gaze raked the stunned Saerani, and with one last great laugh, he vanished. Visylon and Enkinor were finally alone.
Epilogue
