“Ever did Hollis Mitchell crave power,” Thalasi explained after he took a moment to consider the somewhat disturbing movements of the wraith. “I have given you that. Power beyond your belief!”
“An undead thing,” remarked Mitchell. “Yes, I am powerful,” it admitted, taking a quick measure of itself, “but at what cost?”
“What price should we set upon the throne of all the world?” Thalasi laughed. Suddenly Mitchell seemed more curious than angry.
“Yes, the world!” Thalasi said again to the wraith’s blank, simmering stare. “Did you think that I would battle with the likes of Charon simply to torment you? Do not be a fool, old friend. I would not have called you back to my side without due cause.”
“What cause?” All traces of anger had slipped from the wraith’s voice. Mitchell understood the power of the wizard standing before him; he knew that this being was somehow much more than the hollowed shell of his old companion, Martin Reinheiser.
“Do you know who I am?” Thalasi asked.
“I knew you as Reinheiser.”
“And still I am and yet I am not!” the Black Warlock proclaimed, his weirdly dual-pitched voice lending credence to his words. “Within me remains he who was Martin Reinheiser, and he who was Morgan Thalasi. You see the result of the joining, a power beyond your comprehension. A power mighty enough to wrest you from the arms of Death itself.
“You will forget my treachery, Hollis Mitchell,” Thalasi promised. “Beside me, you will come to rule the world.” He moved to the side, to the skeleton of a horse.
“Witness my power,” he said, and he touched his staff to the white bones. He would not summon the spirit of the beast; he did not need it and was in no mood for another contest against the embodiment of Death. But where the bones had been, now stood the animated body of a horse, coal-black with dull eyes. Thalasi added a few enhancements to his handiwork and created a saddle and bridle, handing the reins to Mitchell.
“Its run is swifter than any natural beast,” the Black Warlock proudly explained. “Its breath is fire! Water and air will neither slow nor turn your ride! Truly a fitting steed for the commander of my talon army.”
Mitchell took the reins eagerly, taking full measure of the enchanted mount. The horse’s eyes glowed like embers, and sparks shot out every time it lifted and dropped one of its hooves to the ground. Physically the stallion appeared gaunt and frail, but Mitchell understood the power within its frame. Magical, unearthly power.
The stallion dropped to its knees at Mitchell’s mere thought, to allow its master to mount easily. The wraith did so, and turned back to the Black Warlock, but Thalasi was off on another chore. He returned to Mitchell’s side a moment later, bearing yet another gift for his general.
“Your weapon,” he explained, handing it to Mitchell. It was the leg bone of a horse, capped with a human skull, a garish mace that glowed blue-black.
Mitchell’s twisted smile widened when he took it.
“What shield will stop your blow?” Thalasi asked him.
“None!” the wraith roared.
“Wrong!” Thalasi retorted. “You are mighty, wraith of Mitchell, and you will rule all of the world. All of the world except for me.” Thalasi pointed his staff at the wraith and uttered a simple rune.
The form of Mitchell wavered and faded. For a second the hellish stallion seemed a broken pile of waste again, and the mighty mace appeared as simple bone. But Thalasi’s lesson was a quick one, and in the blink of an eye the stallion, mace, and wraith were restored to their previous strength.
“Know always who is the master,” Thalasi remarked. “If ever you forget, I shall—”
“You promised me rulership,” Mitchell interrupted.
“And so you shall have it,” said Thalasi, a smile widening on his thin lips. “Once the wretched people of this world are conquered, my purpose will be fulfilled.”
“And what is your purpose, Black Warlock?”
“Power!” Thalasi growled. “I care not for the petty responsibilities of such a pitiful command. When I am finished with this place, I will find another. And another after that.”
“Will there be no end?” Again Mitchell seemed amused.
“Never!” Thalasi sneered, white drool on his lips. “That is the joy of infinity and eternity; there will always be something more for the taking, and always the time to steal it.
“I am back to the field now; too long have my talons waited for my return. You will ride south—be wary of Avalon’s cursed borders—and keep the great river to your left-hand side. With the tireless energy of your mount, you will rejoin me in three short days.” He held his black staff out in front of him and launched himself into a dizzying twirl. And then he was gone, walking through his thoughts to the talon encampment beside the Four Bridges.
Mitchell took his mace up and spurred his stallion on, gliding easily through the tangle of Blackamara. He slowed as he approached one huge boulder, smacking the thing with all his strength. When the smoke and crackling power diminished, the horrid wraith chuckled at his handiwork, for the rock had split and cracked under the blow of the skull-headed mace.
Perhaps he would indeed find this second journey through the realm of the living enjoyable.
Chapter 16
Tales of Valor
“HE’LL LOSE IT for sure,” the excited girl cried. “We came to you as soon as we heard of your miracle-working, but too late for his leg.”
Rhiannon moved beside the feverish young lad to examine the wound. The talon spear had dug very deep, severing muscles and tendons, even snapping the bone. And now infection had set in: the limb was purplish and green and pus oozed from the edges of the bandages.
“A wicked cut,” Rhiannon remarked. She put her hand on the lad’s sweaty head. He was beyond sensibility, lost in a feverish delirium. “What is his name?” Rhiannon asked the girl.
“Lennard,” Siana replied.
Rhiannon moved close to the lad’s face. “Lennard,” she called softly.
Lennard stirred slightly, but could not respond.
“Will he live?” Siana asked.
Rhiannon tossed her a comforting smile. “The wound is bad and the sickness has set in,” she explained. “But we might be findin’ a way to fight back against it. Ye should be leaving.”
“I wish to—” Siana started to say, but her large friend, Jolsen Smithyson, standing behind her, put his huge hands on her shoulders and urged her toward the door.
“It will be better if we go,” he said.
“Save him, won’t you please?” Siana begged, resisting Jolsen’s gentle tug. “We have lost so much, and with Bryan still across the river …”
Rhiannon did not miss the reference to Bryan, a name that she and everyone else in the encampment had been hearing quite a lot lately. Rhiannon decided that she would have to speak with Siana later on about this mysterious hero.
But for now, she reminded herself, taking another look at the ugly wound, she had another matter to attend.
She waited until Jolsen had escorted Siana from the tent, then let the magic well inside her. She waited until her body throbbed with the power; she would need all the strength she could muster against so wicked an infection as now ate away at Lennard’s leg.
And then the young witch pulled away Lennard’s bandages and attacked the wound with fury. Her hands burned as soon as they came into contact with the rotting skin, but Rhiannon grimaced away the pain and held her ground. Behind the closed lids of her eyes, she could envision the battle in imaginary embodiments: a grotesque lump of disease, with sickly stumps of arms reaching out to smother her, and she slapped back with hands that glowed of the earth’s power, a hiss of ugly smoke bursting from the bulbous fiend’s form with each strike. They went back and forth in their struggles for many minutes. The monster lump almost smothered her in its wretched hug on several occasions. But each time the resilient witch beat the thing back, and gradually it began to shrink and lose its form.
Rhiannon
did not know how much time had passed, minutes or hours, when she again opened her eyes. She was lying across the waist of the young man. She was incredibly weary and her hands hurt still, but she knew that those ills would eventually pass. And to her heartfelt relief, Rhiannon saw that Lennard’s misery would also pass. He rested comfortably now, all hints of his fever gone and a look of genuine peace etched on his young face. The wound was still wicked, but the infection had been fully beaten and it seemed that the leg would heal cleanly.
With great effort Rhiannon pulled herself up to her feet. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to fall down on a cot and sleep.
But another battle had been fought that afternoon across the Four Bridges, small but vicious, and more groups of pitiful refugees had no doubt found their way across the river. Rhiannon knew without even looking beyond the tent flap that the line of wounded had been renewed.
After a short, impromptu nap curled up on the floor beside the bed of her last patient, Rhiannon emerged into the brightening morning sun of the next day. Siana and Jolsen were just outside her tent, waiting anxiously but patiently for her.
“How is he?” Siana was quick to ask.
“Comfortable,” Rhiannon replied with a smile. “Suren ’twas a wicked disease that put its claws into him, but me thinks he’s fought the thing away. He’s a brave lad, and not to be giving up.”
“And he had a bit of help,” Siana said, her eyes rimmed with tears and her hand resting easily on Rhiannon’s arm.
“A bit, perhaps,” Rhiannon admitted.
“Can we go to him?” asked Jolsen.
“Ye can, though I’m not for knowing if he’ll hear yer words.” Jolsen started off toward the tent flap, but Rhiannon motioned for Siana to stay behind.
“I will join you in a moment,” the young girl said to Jolsen.
“Ye spoke a name that I’m wanting to hear more about,” Rhiannon explained after Jolsen had disappeared into the tent.
Siana did not understand.
“Bryan,” Rhiannon explained. “Do ye know o’ the lad?”
“Indeed I do,” replied Siana. “We were companions, all of us.” Her eyes dropped and her voice came out barely as a whisper. “Along with ten others who did not escape when the talons came. I, too, would now lie dead in the Baerendels if not for Bryan.”
“Why did he not cross with the rest of ye?”
Siana’s gaze instinctively went to the dark form of the distant mountain range.
“He felt there was more that needed to be done,” she replied. “Many others have spoken of his deeds in helping them across the river since the night we came in; it would seem that he was right.”
“He must be a brave lad,” Rhiannon remarked, watching the young girl’s distant gaze. Siana’s eyes sparkled at the compliment, as surely as if Rhiannon had aimed it at her.
“Oh, he is,” she said. “His father is—was—an elven warrior. He fought at the Battle of Mountaingate beside Arien Silverleaf himself. It seems that he passed a measure of his valor to his son.”
“Bryan’s an elf?” Rhiannon asked, startled. She did not think that many elves lived in the southland, so far from Illuma Vale.
“Half-elf,” Siana explained. “His father married a human woman, but she died when Bryan was very young. Bryan and his father stayed on in Corning.”
“Meriwindle!” Rhiannon exclaimed, putting the pieces together as she recalled the valiant elf she had met when she and the rangers ventured into the town.
“You know him?”
“ ’Twas in Corning we met,” said Rhiannon, “on the very morn—” She held the rest of her thought to herself, not wanting to evoke any more unpleasant memories in the battle-weary girl.
“I believe that he died bravely,” Siana remarked, steeling her jaw.
“Me guess’d be the same,” Rhiannon assured her, and she let a few moments of silence slip by, seeing Siana deep in private thoughts, her gaze distant, to the west.
“How long do ye think he’ll be staying out there?” the young witch asked when Siana finally looked back at her.
“Until he has done his work,” Siana said grimly. She still held her jaw firm. “Or until the talons finally catch him.” She looked at Rhiannon squarely, her hands unconsciously clenching her sides.
“But know this,” she continued in the same determined tone. “Bryan will do more than his share in the war.”
“He has already,” Rhiannon was quick to put in.
“And a hundred talons and more will wish he had crossed the river with the rest of us!”
Rhiannon dropped a hand on Siana’s shoulder to steady the young girl. “Go to yer friend,” she said, glancing over at the tent flap. “Suren he’ll be looking for yer face when again he finds the strength to open his eyes.”
The tension eased out of Siana’s expression. “Thank you,” she said to Rhiannon. “For everything.”
And then she was gone, and Rhiannon was left alone in that empty spot on the field, gazing across the river, wondering how many more brave deeds this newfound hero would perform before a talon sword found his heart.
* * *
The cloaked body of the talon rose slowly in the tree. High above it, his feet planted firmly on thick branches and his back against the trunk, Bryan pulled and tugged on the rope, looping it farther over a branch every time he gained an inch of slack. It took the half-elf nearly a half hour to get the dead talon into place, but he knew that the decoy would be worth the trouble if he was discovered.
Then, on the lower branches, Bryan spent another half hour setting the heavy crossbow into place and checking the tension on the trip line. He suspected that none of these precautions would be necessary, but he had survived this long by keeping all of his options open. In the wilds that had formerly been western Calva, carelessness would surely bring his doom.
Back in his high perch, Bryan looked out to the west beyond the copse to the shadow of an outcropping of rocks and a small cluster of houses. Talons now occupied the little settlement, Bryan knew, for every now and then one of the filthy things peeked its head over the wall surrounding the houses. On the field outside the wall, a dozen or so talon corpses lay stretched out in the morning sun, carrion for the vultures. The frontiersmen hadn’t fled from this settlement, not all of them anyway, and they had apparently taken their share of invaders before they were overrun.
Bryan shuddered as he thought of the grim fate those people must have met when their defenses finally collapsed. Talons were not a merciful bunch.
“But they shall be avenged,” the half-elf vowed to the empty wind, and he looked to the east. Talons were not overly fond of daylight, he knew, and when the shadows of the outcropping slipped away as the sun rose higher in the sky, the activity along the settlement wall diminished. Bryan crept in along the rocks, making a complete circuit of the place, and saw only one guard, cowl pulled low and leaning heavily—probably asleep, Bryan thought—against a wooden beam.
The young warrior drew back on his bowstring, taking deadly aim. Bryan held the shot and reconsidered. Still the talon did not move; perhaps he could get in closer for a less risky strike.
He slipped up to the base of the wall, just a few feet to the side of the guard. The wall was fully ten feet high, but the nimble half-elf had little trouble scaling it enough to poke his head over.
No activity.
Bryan stepped over onto the parapet; still the guard did not move. Bryan knew for certain that the thing was snoozing now. He inched his way in, dagger in hand.
The talon would never again open its bulbous eyes.
There were only six houses inside the wall, and a couple of smaller storage sheds. Like so many similar settlements on the eastern end of the Baerendels, this cluster of houses had no name, at least none that Bryan knew of. The people here were trappers mostly, traveling down to Corning or Rivertown twice a year to trade their skins for the supplies they would need. They probably had had no idea of the extent of the talon
invasion when this one small force attacked and conquered their town.
Bryan moved along the parapet and down a ladder near one of the houses, a small one-story building. The place had no windows, but one of its doors was cracked open enough for Bryan to get a glimpse inside.
“Nothins to eat,” he heard. “Nothins, nothins, nothins! What’s these peoples do fer food, then?”
At the door now, Bryan scanned the room: a pantry, with a large talon going from cupboard to cupboard, knocking over sacks and boxes and issuing a steady stream of curses to no one in particular.
When Bryan was certain that the thing was talking to itself, he slipped in, scooping an apple from a shelf just inside the door as he went.
“Nothins!” the big talon bitched again.
“How about this?” Bryan asked.
The startled talon spun about to see Bryan, a clever smile on his face, holding out the piece of fruit.
“Here,” Bryan offered to the thing’s dumbfounded look, and he tossed the apple up into the air. And when the stupid talon instinctively cocked its head to follow the apple’s flight, Bryan drove his sword tip through the front of its exposed neck.
The next room was empty, but snores from the third put Bryan back into a cautious crouch. From the thunderous sounds and the ensuing complaints, he knew there were several of the monsters within. Prudence demanded that he retreat.
But Bryan’s elven sword, glowing an angry blue, told him otherwise. He managed to stifle his chuckle for the moment it took him to spring across the empty room and barrel through the door.
Two of the five talons in the room were awake, and Bryan honestly felt that the horrified looks on their faces alone had been worth the risk.
He quieted one of the snoring talons with a sidelong chop of his sword, then got his shield up just in time to deflect a thrown chair from one of the standing beasts. The other talon bolted for the room’s second door, but Bryan had anticipated such a move. He flipped his sword up into the air, catching it with his shield hand, while in the same easy motion his free hand grabbed a dagger off his belt and launched it at the fleeing talon. It thudded into the monster’s back, hilt deep, knocking the talon off balance.