The darkness of the night was stolen away in the instant of the explosion; the ground rumbled as far away as the talon and human encampments across the Four Bridges, and up in the Crystal Mountains, where the elves were preparing their march. And when the smoke cleared, the Black Warlock sat on his butt, many feet back from where he had begun the encounter, his clothes burned and smoldering.
“You have not seen the last of me!” he cried in defiance. He slammed his fists on the ground, sending two cracks in the earth rushing out toward the Emerald Witch. Brielle easily halted the charge of the gorge, but when she looked back after casting her countering spell, the Black Warlock was gone. She spotted him high in the distance, in dragon form again, flying far away off to the north.
Brielle turned her attention back to her forest, and to the blackened, savaged oak tree that had absorbed the brunt of the Black Warlock’s initial assault on the wood. The witch stroked the charred bark tenderly, hearing the painful mourn of the great tree’s death throes. For centuries it had stood, one of the cornerstones of Avalon, one of the very first trees nurtured by the magics of Brielle. It had performed its task to perfection, pulling in the wrath of the Black Warlock, accepting the assault of flames with its wide branches so that other, younger trees might escape the devastation.
And the oak had paid with its life.
Brielle remained with the tree until it cracked apart, sending a renewed shower of sparks flying into the air, and toppled with a heavy crash onto the open field beyond the forest’s thick borders.
The witch had won her confrontation with Thalasi, but the effort had cost her dearly, in strength and in the scars that would linger for many years on this edge of the forest. And the battle had unsettled Brielle as well, for she knew, and no doubt Thalasi knew, too, that if they had met in combat anywhere other than Avalon, the very heart of Brielle’s powers, the outcome would surely have been different.
The only weakness the witch had detected in the Black Warlock was the subtle discord between the two spirits inhabiting the single being. But this gave Brielle no cause for hope; what remained of the individual spirits of Martin Reinheiser and Morgan Thalasi seemed diminutive and was likely fading away quickly. The bond between the spirits would only strengthen, Brielle supposed, and when the joining of the two was truly completed, the resulting being would be even more formidable.
She must take care not to turn her back on that one for even an instant.
Especially over the next few hours. For Thalasi had gone north, not back to his talons in the south. Brielle could guess his destination easily enough. Beyond the northern ridge of Avalon, in a box canyon, loomed the foulness of Blackamara, a tangled, evil swamp. Thalasi would find solace in that pit of perversion as surely as Brielle gathered her strength in Avalon. And within the dark gloom of Blackamara, the Black Warlock would be virtually untouchable while he recuperated.
Brielle slumped heavily against an unharmed elm, asking the earth to give her still more power this dark night. She needed to rest, but she knew that she could not. Thalasi lurked but a few short miles away, and her forest had to be defended by magical wards in case the Black Warlock decided to pay another visit on his way back to the southland.
With a last look to the dead oak, Brielle gritted her teeth and started off along Avalon’s borders, determined that Morgan Thalasi would not catch her or her forest unawares ever again.
Chapter 15
The Staff of Death
STILL ENCASED IN the body of a dragon, the Black Warlock slammed through the thick canopy of Blackamara, tearing vines and splintering limbs, and swooped down to the swamp’s muddy ground in a furious rush.
“Never again!” he roared, and the sound of his dragon voice echoed off the high cliff walls surrounding the swamp, shook the trees in Avalon to the south, and sent an alert running through the encampment of the elves who had gathered on the field of Mountaingate.
Then Thalasi walked as a man again, startled by his own outburst. He did not know how much strength Brielle had left to her, but he didn’t think it prudent to so blatantly announce his whereabouts. He stalked through the dark, twisting boughs, taking no heed of the snakes and poisonous spiders and darker things that roamed the gloom of the Blackamara night.
New trees did not grow in this swamp, and the fetid water rarely shifted. Little had changed in the twenty years since the Black Warlock had walked through here, and after a few minutes he began to recognize some of the paths. He followed their winding course up to the base of the high eastern wall, and then south a short distance. Bones of hundreds of victims, man and horse, who had fallen over the cliff during the infamous Battle of Mountaingate, littered the region, but the Black Warlock knew exactly where to look, and soon he had found the open grave of an old companion.
“Ah, Captain Mitchell,” he whispered, bending low to consider the skull and jumble of bones, relieved to find them fairly intact. Thalasi wanted to go after the spirit right then, to relieve his embarrassment over the defeat he had suffered by bringing forth the commander who would lead his army to victory. But little remained of the Black Warlock’s power; Brielle had taken everything he had to throw at her. He could not hope to cast such a powerful enchantment in his present state, and he realized that if he truly wished to regain his strength, the sun would rise and ride across to the western sky before he again opened his eyes.
“A curse upon that witch,” he spat, wondering how his talon army would fare throughout the next day without his guidance and protection. Would Brielle recover faster than he? And what of Istaahl; would the White Mage sense his absence and use the advantage to strike out against the wizardless army?
He shook the thoughts from his head. Even if the talons were scattered by the forces—magical and otherwise—of his enemies, the cost would be worth the gain. Thalasi knew now that he could not possibly hope to break through to the eastern fields without a trusted general guiding the movements of the army. “And you,” Thalasi growled, holding the skull up before his dark eyes, “shall be that general.”
And then he was off, back toward the very heart of Blackamara, which was manifested in the form of a gigantic black willow tree. He knew the place well, for this embodiment of perversion Morgan Thalasi himself had planted centuries before.
He arrived shortly after dawn, seeing the monstrosity in all its evil splendor. The willow loomed a hundred feet in height, its trunk three times the girth of a fat man, and was supported by a root system so vast that its underground tendrils reached out to the perimeters of the swamp. Naught but evil could fester above those black roots, transforming, perverting, the pureness and health of the earth into a foul and wicked thing. All around beyond the boundaries of Blackamara the land was a tribute to the majesty and beauty of nature—the northern fringes of Avalon were only a mile or so to the south—but within the borders of the swamp, on the ground tainted by the roots of Thalasi’s black tree, the power of the earth had become something sinister indeed.
Brielle and Ardaz had joined forces and attacked the place once, many centuries before. They had sent their magic crashing down upon the swamp, splintering hundreds of trees and tearing the spoiled ground asunder. But the black willow had survived, too entrenched to be displaced even by so powerful an attack, and the swamp had only grown up again, thicker and more evil than before.
Thalasi viewed the tree now and was comforted. He found a nook in the massive trunk and curled up to sleep, using the skull of Hollis Mitchell as his pillow.
All through the day, the black willow sent its power flowing into the weary body of its creator, and when Thalasi awoke, the sun low in the western sky, he felt stronger than he had the previous day, even before he had tangled with the Emerald Witch.
He stroked the tree gently, his child, then climbed onto the lowest branches. “Awake, heart of Blackamara,” he called softly. “The master is come; the master needs your help.”
The tree rustled quietly though no breeze blew through its widespr
ead branches. Thalasi’s evil smile widened. He spoke again to the willow, louder, using the arcane tongue of the wizards. Enchantish, it was called, and when employed by the other wizards of Ynis Aielle, its many multisyllabic words and tight phrases normally rolled out in a melodic chant speaking to the harmony of the universe. But from the mouth of the Black Warlock, enchantish sounded an evil and harsh language indeed, the croak of demons and ghouls, the discord that offended the purity of the natural world.
But no less powerful came the twanging chanting of Morgan Thalasi. He was a master of the third school of magic, a school that did not ask but rather demanded cooperation from the powers of the universe. Each cracking syllable sent a thrilled shudder through the trunk of the black tree.
He chanted for over an hour, running through a ritual he had devised many years before but had never needed to attempt. Certainly any encounter with the realm of the dead would not be without risk.
The willow answered the Black Warlock’s call with the fall of a broken branch, about five feet long and three or four inches in diameter. Thalasi scooped the gift up in his hands, sensing the power the tree had put into it.
“Serpent!” the Black Warlock commanded, and the dark wood became a venomous viper writhing across Thalasi’s skinny wrists and forearms. The serpent head wriggled to within an inch of the Black Warlock’s face, and he blew into it gently, soothing the enchanted beast.
He knew what he must do now, though any conscious thought of the act surely sent a shiver running through his spine. Yet this being that he had become was much more than mortal man, he knew, so he tilted his head to the side, offering his bared neck to the serpentine gift of the black willow.
The snake coiled and struck, sinking its venom-dripping fangs deep into Thalasi’s neck. But the snake had not bitten in any attempt to inject its killing poison—and the poison would have had little effect on the likes of the Black Warlock anyway. Instead the snake’s vampiric fangs drew out the lifeblood of Thalasi, sent the potent fluids of the Black Warlock into the thing that would become his magical staff. As Thalasi felt his strength draining away, his knees buckled under him, but still he held the serpent close, giving it every ounce of power he could spare.
He would regain his strength in time, but that which he gave to the staff would be eternal.
And when it was over, sometime later, the snake became a broken branch again, though now its surface shone with ebony smoothness and its length verily vibrated with evil power. Holding, cradling, the wicked thing, Thalasi recovered his strength quickly. They were joined, blood in blood, he and his staff, his extension of perversion.
The Staff of Death.
“Greetings, my lost friend,” Thalasi said to Mitchell’s skull. He tapped the object with his staff, and a red light appeared in each of the empty sockets.
“Good,” murmured the Black Warlock. “You have heard my call. How do you find the realm of the dead, Hollis Mitchell?”
“That is not for the ears of the living,” came a distant reply, as much empathic as audible.
“Of course,” said Thalasi. “Perhaps we can talk more when you have arrived.”
“Arrived?” The voice reflected concern. “Leave the dead in their sleep, Martin Reinheiser. Especially ones who owe you a wicked debt. I have not forgotten your treachery; eternity itself will not erase my anger!”
“Reinheiser?” chuckled the Black Warlock. “But that is only part of the being you will face. Sleep again, Hollis Mitchell,” he said, and he tapped the top of the skull once more, extinguishing the red dots of light. “And know that when you awaken to walk in the world of the living, you will be the slave of Morgan Thalasi.”
Thalasi dropped the skull into a deep pocket of his robe and clenched his staff tightly. He conjured an image of Mitchell’s grave below the cliff face, every detail coming into clearer and clearer focus as he deepened his concentration. And then the Black Warlock stepped through his thoughts, walked a mental bridge back to the remaining pile of Mitchell’s bones.
Carefully, Thalasi lifted the bones free of the muck that had begun to envelop them and reassembled the skeleton. He knew that what he was about to attempt was a powerful enchantment indeed; it would test him to his very limits, and even the slightest error could prove catastrophic. But arrogance had ever been the calling card of Morgan Thalasi and of Martin Reinheiser, and even the specter of embodied death could not dissuade the Black Warlock in his quest.
When the skeleton was complete, Thalasi walked a slow circuit around it, his staff tracing out the circumference on the soft ground. The staff glowed with an eager black light; this was the primary purpose of its creation.
“Hollis Timothy Mitchell,” Thalasi called softly. “Benak raffin si.”
Another circuit, another summons. And again.
The ground around the skeleton bubbled, and a thin wisp of black smoke rose up and wove in and out of the bones. Thalasi controlled his excitement and continued the ritual. He didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he sensed that the spirit of the dead captain was near, very near.
“Benak raffin si,” he whispered again.
“You dare to disturb the dead?” thundered an unearthly voice. The Black Warlock wheeled to face the skeletal sickle-wielding figure that every man since the earliest days of the race had come to recognize as the embodiment of the netherworld.
“Mitchell?” Thalasi squeaked, his heart failing at the sight.
“Hardly,” replied the specter. “You know who I am, Morgan Thalasi Martin Reinheiser. I purposely assumed the form that you would surely recognize.”
After the initial shock had worn away, Thalasi found himself more curious than afraid. He stooped over a bit, trying to catch a peek under the low cowl of the specter’s hood. “Charon?” he asked, now more curious than afraid.
“Charon, Orcus, Arawn—my names are many,” replied the specter.
“As are your powers, by every reputation, attached to any of the names,” said Thalasi. “So Death himself—itself—has answered my call,” he mused. “Truly I have outdone myself.”
“Fool,” retorted the specter. “Truly you have overstepped the bounds of mortals. You are strong, Black Warlock, but I am blacker still!” The specter uplifted its arms, its bony fingers reaching out toward Thalasi. “Death has indeed answered your call, warlock—your own death!”
Thalasi swung at the bony hands with his staff. The specter caught it in midswing, but the contact between the embodiment of Death and the perverted staff was not what either of the combatants had expected. Black shocks of electricity engulfed both of them, cutting and tearing, draining at their vital forces with a chilling eagerness.
“What have you done?” the embodiment of Death demanded.
“I have beaten even you, inevitable victor!” laughed Thalasi. The lightning crackles wounded the Black Warlock deeply, but he knew already that in wielding the ultimate perversion that was the staff he had created, he was the stronger. He and Death were linked; he could feel the specter’s horror and pain.
“Fool!” Death cried again, but it was Thalasi’s response that carried the most conviction.
“Death will not take me,” he growled. “I am no longer a part of the world you rule. And I can hurt you.” To emphasize his point, the Black Warlock clenched the staff tighter, sending a wicked blue-black bolt coursing through the corporeal form of his nemesis.
“But I ask only a small thing of you,” Thalasi continued, not even trying to mask his sarcastic snicker. “Grant me my wish and I shall let you return to your dark realm.”
The specter’s eyes shot lines of killing red energy at the Black Warlock, but Thalasi accepted the pain of the blast and returned it twofold with another crackle of his staff.
“I want Mitchell.”
“Mitchell is mine,” Death replied. “Fairly won and fairly taken.”
“I gave him to you; I shall take him back.”
“I will have you—”
“You will
have nothing!” Thalasi boomed. “I will hold you here, and those that enter your realm will find no one to greet them. Lost souls forever lost!”
The specter’s grasp of the staff weakened at the wicked truth of the Black Warlock’s words. Death could not be so engaged with one resistant mortal—if Thalasi was indeed mortal. With a flash that knocked the Black Warlock to the ground, the specter was gone.
Thalasi glanced around nervously. Despite his boasting, he was not so certain of the wisdom of making such a powerful enemy. A moment later another being did rise above him as he sat on the ground, but to the relief of Thalasi, it was not the return of the embodiment of Death.
“Greetings, old friend,” smiled Thalasi, holding his staff out in front defensively until he could fathom the intentions of the one he now faced: the wraith of Hollis Mitchell.
“Greetings,” Mitchell replied, his voice grating and broken.
Thalasi rose slowly, taking full measure of the wraith. It looked vaguely like Mitchell, the bloated corpse of the captain, at least, though its form wavered and shifted between two opposing planes of existence. Thalasi had taken the essence of Hollis Mitchell from the realm of the dead, but a part of the wraith existed there still, a fact that would only heighten the being’s power.
Thalasi almost laughed out loud. “What will my talons think when they look upon the likes of you,” he asked, “with a bloated face colored in the grayness of death, and eyes that are no more than simmering red flames?”
“If I am horrid, and truly I am, then only Martin Reinheiser can take the credit,” the wraith answered.
“Oh, truly you are,” agreed the Black Warlock. “And truly you are angry.”
“I face now the being who murdered me,” Mitchell replied. “Should I be otherwise?”
“Indeed you should,” Thalasi replied immediately.
The wraith cocked its head to the side, a curiously human gesture from so unnatural a thing.
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