“So ye’re saying, but ye’ve no place in the coming fight, not with the staff in Thalasi’s hands,” Rhiannon said firmly.
Del couldn’t argue, and Rhiannon and Bryan weren’t waiting to hear his protests anyway. The ghost watched them go, up the stairs, swift and silent, and again he felt so very impotent. He had been helpful these last weeks, in retrieving the diamond sword, in aiding Belexus’ spying, and now, in getting Rhiannon and Bryan through the maze that was Talas-dun, but again, his ability to help was limited, frustratingly so.
He watched the pair go through the door, then heard the fighting beyond—a battle that lasted but half the time of the slaughter on the lower landing—and then he heard them crash through the next door.
He knew that his daughter was in trouble then, and knew that he could do nothing to help her.
Belexus skidded to an abrupt stop, shifted direction, and threw himself to the side as a wall of black flakes filled the air before him. He glanced at Mitchell, then to the spot before the wraith, the stones smoking wherever the deadly flakes had touched.
“How easy your mortal skin shall burn,” the wraith taunted.
Belexus’ first thought was to rush right in again and score a hit. The time for talking was ended, his rage told him. But his rationale told him otherwise. He saw the eyes upon him—dozens of talons crouched nearby, watching the fight—and understood that even if Pouilla Camby did her work and he was victorious over Mitchell, spears would come at him from every angle.
“Bah, ye’re fearing me!” the ranger shot back, and Mitchell laughed all the louder.
“So ye’re keeping yer talon dogs about,” the ranger went on, managing a laugh of his own. “Ye’re needing them in case ye’re losing.”
With a glare and a word, the supremely confident wraith dismissed those talons nearby, who were all too happy to run away from these two!
Now Belexus was satisfied; now he let his anger take over, fury driving his sword arm. The wraith was still laughing when he charged, and kept laughing, putting up little defense against the ranger’s first swing.
Mitchell’s smile quickly disappeared. Always before the wraith had counted on its magical nature, an empowerment that prevented weapons from hurting it. But the ranger’s slash, a downward cut from shoulder to belly, stung profoundly.
Belexus, hopping back out of range of the wicked mace, stared hopefully at the wound: a line of white across the darkness that was Mitchell, as if the diamond-edged sword had left behind some of its enchanted light. So, the sword was indeed effective, he thought, silently congratulating Brielle, but he had hit Mitchell solidly and apparently done only a bit of damage. How many hits would it take, then?
And how many clean strikes would he get? he wondered, for now Mitchell was on his guard, now outrage replaced the smile on his horrid features. He came on roaring, swinging his mace.
Belexus dove and rolled to the side, came up in a short run, then dove again, changing his angle so that he was going behind the slower-turning Mitchell. He came up gracefully to his feet once more and reversed momentum, hopping in and stabbing hard, then rushing away. He was the strongest man in all Aielle, a warrior who could bash through the defenses of any talon with the sheer power of his strokes, but he needed speed now, and agility, and cunning.
The wraith pursued, and Belexus squared against him. Mitchell’s attack came straightforward and predictable, an angled downward chop. Belexus stepped his right foot ahead and swiped across with his sword, hooking the mace under its bulky head before it could gain any momentum, before it could throw forth the deadly flakes.
Powerful Mitchell was quick to improvise, coming forward as well and grabbing the man by the shoulder.
Belexus ignored the coldness of that grip, the permeating iciness that chilled to the bone. He dropped Pouilla Camby, and Mitchell howled, thinking his grip had forced that. Belexus caught the sword in his left hand, though, before it had fallen far, as he was stepping ahead, and a quick turn of his wrist changed the angle and stabbed the weapon’s point right into Mitchell’s face. Belexus turned and slashed the holding arm next, then scrambled out of the tangle as the mace whipped in a flurry, black flakes filling the air. For all his speed and agility, though, the ranger didn’t quite make it out; several of the flakes caught him on the back and hip, and he rushed away, grimacing against the burning pain.
The pair squared off once more. Mitchell was hurt, clearly so, with white lines creasing his chest and arm, a blotch of white marring his gray face, and another on his back. But Belexus was hurt, too, with several blistering burns on his back.
Mitchell narrowed his flaming eyes; he had no more taunts for the ranger, no more games. Just hatred, and a bit of respect.
For Belexus, there was only hatred.
They circled and stalked for a long while, each showing caution now.
A catapult shot broke the tension, a ball of pitch slamming into a boulder tumble not so far away, followed by the screams of burning talons.
“They’re getting closer, Mitchell,” the ranger said. “King Benador and Lord Arien. Yer army’s to fall this day, along with their dead leader.”
Mitchell glanced far and wide from the high rock. In the minutes he and Belexus had been fighting, battle had begun in full all about the rocky arm. He heard the twang of bows, the rush of horses, the swoosh of catapults, the cries of man and talon. This was the moment Mitchell had craved, the moment of his glory, and he was stuck up here with the ranger, fighting a personal battle. Anger welled within him and drove him to the attack once more.
Belexus, understanding the wraith’s urgency, understanding the frustration this delay would bring to Mitchell, was more than ready. Deceivingly, he stared at the spot where the catapult shot had struck, his smile wide as he watched one talon, engulfed in flames, thrashing about futilely. But it was all a ruse, and the ranger really watched the wraith’s approach, and as the mace went high for a strike, Belexus exploded into motion, diving ahead and down, passing right by the surprised Mitchell and coming up a full stride away, but close enough so that he could hit home with a mighty backhand slash.
The wraith howled in pain and frustration and was quick to pursue.
The specter of Morgan Thalasi, that bone-skinny, hollowed creature, stole Bryan’s breath. Rhiannon had faced him before, though, in magical combat, and she was not deterred.
“How dare you?” the Black Warlock cried.
A lightning bolt slammed him in response, throwing him back against the wall of his throne room. It hadn’t really hurt him, but it gave Bryan’s wits the time to recover. Rhiannon began her charge immediately, thinking it wise to get the Black Warlock in close, that she might disrupt his powerful magics, yet Bryan, so quick of foot, beat her to the spot, his sword slashing hard at the Black Warlock’s arm, trying to cut loose the mighty staff.
Thalasi accepted the blow with hardly a flinch, and his backhand slap sent poor Bryan flying head over heels across the room. He landed hard, groaning, dazed, and by the time he looked up again, Rhiannon and the Black Warlock were in a desperate clinch, sparks of power arcing all about their mortal forms.
The young witch howled in pain as she grabbed hard at the staff, for merely touching the perverted weapon wounded her to her soul. Grab it she did, though, and she held it with all her strength and stubbornness even as Thalasi began raining powerful blows all about her. Then they were wrestling, each holding tight the staff, all energy, magical and physical, bursting out about their twined forms, the cloud of Thalasi’s blackness matching the white shine of Rhiannon’s diamond wizard mark.
Bryan understood that the young witch could not win, not while the Black Warlock held that terrible staff. He forced himself to his feet, forced the dizziness from his head. And then he charged, headlong, hurling himself through the air to crash hard against Thalasi, twisting and pushing so that he was in between the Black Warlock and Rhiannon, facing Thalasi and with the staff behind him. Desperately, Bryan pulled the am
ulet from his neck and hooked it over Rhiannon’s arm, and then he twisted and turned again, trying to find leverage to weaken Thalasi’s grasp on the staff.
Rhiannon pulled it from Thalasi’s hands.
Bryan tried to hold on a bit longer, to delay the Black Warlock’s pursuit, but Thalasi slapped him aside once more, as easily as if he were some young child, and this time, crumpled against the wall, he could not muster the strength to regain his feet.
Lying twisted on the floor, he watched Rhiannon flee the room, the Black Warlock close behind. He saw the ghost of Rhiannon’s father stand to block Thalasi, but the Black Warlock ran right through the apparition, apparently too consumed in his chase with Rhiannon even to notice Del.
Chapter 24
The Lure of Power
THEY WATCHED THE old man, the man who had been as their father for all the years, who had taken them in and sheltered them, these children of Pallendara’s nobles, when wicked Ungden had stolen the throne. They watched him now, this man who had trained them in the ways of survival and of war, this man who had transformed them into the proud rangers. Now, from a seat on the returned pegasus, Bellerian led them again, soaring out on high and issuing subtle signals concerning the whereabouts and strength of the enemy positions.
So the rangers were not surprised in the least when they came around a bend in the trail to find a rocky dell filled with talon spear throwers and archers—all of whom had their gazes set the other way, out across the long spur of Kored-dul to the approaching armies.
Arrows leading, the rangers charged the surprised talons in a wild rush, and so coordinated and efficient was their attack that not a single man was even injured in the sudden and swift fight. In the span of barely a minute, a score of talons lay dead.
“They’ve set talons with spears in pockets all about the arm,” one ranger remarked, peeking up over the other side of the dell.
“Lord Bellerian will sight them for us,” another replied.
“And for the Calvan artillerists,” a third remarked, and with grim nods, they were off again, following the signals of their flying leader, in search of new prey.
None could perform such deadly and secretive tactics as well as the rangers of Avalon, but even with such powerful allies, the armies on the field found themselves hard-pressed before they even reached the rocky arm. Arien’s elves had approached the foothills expecting to battle for every inch of ground, and when the first talons, even the first of Thalasi’s gruesome undead, had risen against them, the elves had maintained their order and their progress, lining their marvelous steeds into a fighting wedge and slicing through the enemy ranks with hardly an effort.
The elf lord fully expected that the talon lizard riders would come next, a more difficult and maneuverable foe, but what he found instead was more undead; thousands and thousands and thousands of zombies and skeletons rising from every shadow, coming out fearlessly though the elves were cutting them down dozens at a time.
“We cannot hope to defeat this many,” Ryell said to him. “Weariness will lay our weapons low, if these perversions do not! We should turn to the south and join with Benador.”
Arien would have agreed, except that when he and Ryell did look that way, they found that the humans were no better off than they, that the vast zombie army on the southern end of the spur outnumbered the large human army as badly as those on this side outnumbered the elves.
Thalasi, or perhaps the wraith of Mitchell, Arien knew, had marked well the approach of the two forces and had set the monstrous army accordingly.
“May the Colonnae be with us,” Arien muttered. “For foul Morgan Thalasi has called back the corpses of every dead talon in all the world, I fear!”
Around to the south of Arien’s position, King Benador did not disagree with the elf lord’s estimation, for he had never seen, had never even imagined, that such a force as this could ever be assembled. Tens of thousands of undead streamed out of the mountains, a seemingly endless line, coming on without hesitation, without fear.
No novice to large-scale battle, seasoned in the brutality of the fight at the Four Bridges, the Calvan king had rightly turned his army about, putting some open ground between his soldiers and the now-advancing enemy. He set up a long skirmish line, hundreds of archers shoulder to shoulder, in ranks three deep so that the barrage of arrows flew out in a nearly constant swarm. Even with that, though, the enemy made great progress. Arrows chipped off skeletal ribs, or plowed right through the rotted corpses of zombies, hardly slowing the horrid things.
“Too many,” the Calvan king muttered, and he feared that the battle would soon degenerate into a swarming melee, where the sheer press of monstrous numbers would overwhelm his gallant force.
He looked to the north, but not thinking that any help would come from that direction, and his heart sank lower at the sight of Arien and the valiant elves, a force so unified that they seemed as one, a longboat skimming on the very edge of a breaking wave.
But that wave continued to swell behind them.
She came to a hall where two corridors crossed, and glanced both ways, but saw nothing to guide her. Cursing herself for the slight hesitation—for the desperate Black Warlock was right on her heels, closing ground, yelling at her, taunting her—she darted to the left. She had the mighty staff, but had no idea, and certainly no desire, to wield the perverted thing! And, despite the theft, this remained Morgan Thalasi’s castle, his bastion of strength, built with his magical power and offering him residual energy from that long-ago construction.
Through a door, Rhiannon nearly ran over a pair of statuelike zombies.
“Kill her!” Thalasi screamed to them from a few yards back.
Rhiannon gave a slight yelp and tried to circumvent them, thinking that her flight had ended. She might destroy the zombies, but not in time to evade Thalasi’s pursuit.
But the zombie pair didn’t move to attack, didn’t move at all to Thalasi’s call, and the young witch sensed that they had not even heard him, that he had no connection to them and surely no power over them. She crossed by the pair, then glanced at the staff, and then she understood.
“Kill him,” she said quietly, before her good sense could intervene, and the zombies moved immediately, obeying the staff wielder. Thalasi’s hollowed eyes widened indeed when he crossed the threshold of the room to find the zombie pair reaching for his throat.
Rhiannon ran on, knowing that the zombies couldn’t defeat the Black Warlock, couldn’t even hold him at bay for very long. She heard a crackle behind her soon after she had exited the room, and then Thalasi was chasing her once more.
There were more zombies and skeletons up ahead, and these, too, the desperate Rhiannon set to block him.
How easy it was! With a mere thought, she could order them to … to do anything, she realized. To kill Thalasi, or to leap from a cliff face. A grander scheme came to the young witch as she moved along, down another corridor, then up a tight spiral staircase. She came to understand the staff and its powers more fully with each step, and she couldn’t imagine that she had ever wanted to destroy the precious item. With this power …
The thought was intoxicating, overwhelming, and Rhiannon acted immediately, sending her telepathic commands out far and wide. She heard her mother’s voice, from a distant place, crying out in protest, but she ignored it, too concerned with changing the tide of war.
With those simple telepathic thoughts, Rhiannon ordered all the thousands of undead Thalasi had raised to shift sides, imparting a mental image of the wretched talons as the new focus of their attacks. She knew that the staff, the brilliant and beautiful staff, had sent the commands out far and wide, knew, somehow, that every undead creature in all the world would take heed.
Kill talons.
Hollis Mitchell heard the command distinctly, a wave of power washing over him, catching him completely off his guard. He closed his flaming eyes, swaying, seeking his own dominating willpower, and Belexus, ever the opportunist, wasted
no time in going on the attack, wading in and hammering hard at the wraith.
Mitchell hardly felt the profound stings of Pouilla Camby, so concerned was he with that curious call. Then he understood; it was not the Black Warlock. That meddlesome young witch had gotten her hands on the Staff of Death!
The wraith came out of his trance with a hiss of defiance, the impartation of the staff, which had never really been his master, thrown aside. He had to finish his business here quickly now, he understood, and get back to Talas-dun to deal properly with Rhiannon. He considered it a promising thing, as he drove the ranger back to a defensive posture. Rhiannon, after all, wouldn’t be as skilled or as powerful with the item as Thalasi, and if he could somehow wrest the staff from her, then his control would be absolute. All the dead—including those who would fall on the field of battle this very day—would rise to his command.
But he had to be quick, the wraith realized as he saw battle erupting not so far from the flat rock, yet far from the lines of the humans and elves, as he saw talons scrambling suddenly to get away from their zombie and skeleton allies, the undead reacting immediately to the new commands of the staff wielder.
“They are fleeing!” Ryell cried, and indeed it seemed true. The undead ranks had turned away from the elven wedge, moving back toward the mountains. Elves cried out in victory and joy, for not one of them, brave though they were, had harbored a thought that they could win through this teeming horde.
But to Arien, always calm and thinking, it made no sense at all. And then it made even less sense, as he noted a group of zombies pull down a thrashing talon and fall over the beast.
Something was wrong here, so very out of place. The elf lord looked to Ardaz, who sat atop his horse, scratching at his beard.
“How very curious,” the old wizard said, reading and agreeing wholeheartedly with Arien’s confusion.
“Might your sister be involved?” Arien asked, for if any in all the world could turn perversion back on Thalasi, it was Brielle.
Bastion of Darkness Page 27
