Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“Your truth!” De’Unnero snarled at him, and Aydrian heard a bit of a feral, feline growl behind those words. “So do the victors rewrite the histories to shed a favorable light upon them!”
“Even after the covenant of Avelyn, you speak such foolishness?” Anders Castinagis said boldly, apparently regaining his heart after the terrible shock of seeing his old nemesis. “All the world knows the truth of Avelyn now, and of Jilseponie, who is queen!”
“All the world believes the lies,” De’Unnero replied. “But I will teach them the truth. Yes, I shall!” He came forward as he spoke, poking his finger hard into Parson Castinagis’ chest.
“Begone from this place!” Castinagis roared at him. “In the name of God—”
His words were lost as De’Unnero stiffened his finger and poked hard again, this time hitting the man in the throat. Coughing, Castinagis staggered backward, and De’Unnero stalked in.
Aydrian expected the tiger to come forth at any second, to rend the man apart, but De’Unnero did not need the great cat at that moment. Indeed, he wanted to savor this fight with all of his human senses.
He walked up to Castinagis and slapped the man hard across the face, then blocked the parson’s responding punch, catching Castinagis by the wrist and giving a sudden and violent jerk to twist his arm. The two were barely two feet apart, but that was enough room for Marcalo De’Unnero to bring his foot up hard against the parson’s face.
Castinagis stumbled backward and would have fallen to the floor had not a railing caught him.
“Pity, brother, that you have forsaken your training,” De’Unnero taunted, wagging his finger in the air. “You are a decade and more my junior, and yet you have grown soft.”
With a growl, Anders Castinagis pushed out from the railing, charging hard at De’Unnero.
De’Unnero slapped his hands aside, but the big parson drove on and managed to grab De’Unnero by the shoulders, pushing on, driving his enemy back.
But Marcalo De’Unnero never even blinked, just snapped his hand up to clamp tightly on Castinagis’ windpipe, and with a look of pleasure, he began to squeeze.
Castinagis grabbed wildly at the man’s arm, and when he could not pry the grip free, he punched at De’Unnero’s face. But De’Unnero was too quick, knifing his free hand up to intercept the blow. He did let go of the windpipe then, and stabbed his hand hard into Castinagis’ throat, then hit the man with a left-right
combination, finding holes in the pitiful defensive stance, then lifted his knee hard into Castinagis’ groin.
As the parson doubled over in pain, De’Unnero grabbed him hard by the hair and jerked his head up high. “The trial commences,” he declared. He cupped his free hand under Castinagis’ chin and ran and turned him, then jerked hard and flipped Castinagis over the railing to crash down on his back, his neck resting on the rail.
“Guilty,” De’Unnero proclaimed.
Aydrian looked away as De’Unnero dropped a forearm smash onto Castinagis’ forehead, but he heard the terrible sound as the parson’s neck shattered.
It took the young warrior a long, long time to compose himself. “What have you done?” he managed to ask, staggering out from behind the pillar, his legs weak from the sight of the brutality, of the murdered man.
“What I should have done years ago in Palmaris,” De’Unnero replied. If he was surprised or upset at seeing Aydrian, he hid it well.
“Are we to go on the run again?” Aydrian asked, his thoughts whirling.
De’Unnero snorted and smiled, as if it hardly mattered. With a look at Aydrian, he walked out of the chapel.
Aydrian watched him go, every step, noting the ease, the peace, that had come over him. He didn’t know what to make of all of this. He, too, had killed, but this … this was something very different, something more awful.
And yet, Aydrian found it hard to judge Marcalo De’Unnero, who had been treated so badly by these hypocritical priests. He looked at Castinagis, lying dead, propped against the railing, and thought of a way he could prevent this from forcing De’Unnero back into the wilds.
He took out his ruby.
A short while later, Sadye joined De’Unnero and Aydrian as they watched the flames leap high into the night from the burning Chapel of Avelyn, the confused and frightened towns-folk running all about, helpless to control the blaze.
De’Unnero, obviously satisfied, was the first to start away, walking off into the woods, heading north.
T
he information that Sadye had garnered in Dundalis proved perfect, and she led the way through the forest to the grove that held the cairns of Elbryan and Mather.
De’Unnero went at the cairns immediately, removing one stone after another, eagerly tossing them aside. After a few throws, though, he recognized that something strange was going on, for he seemed to be making no progress at all. He lifted another rock and stepped back, staring at the seemingly intact cairn.
“Magic,” Sadye remarked, and De’Unnero nodded. He turned to Aydrian then, but the young warrior seemed distracted and was staring off through the trees.
“There is magic on the cairn,” De’Unnero said, rather loudly, getting Aydrian’s attention. “What is it?” he went on, seeing a perplexed look on the young man’s face.
Aydrian seemed unsure. He shrugged and said, “A call, perhaps. Perhaps not.” Then he shook his head.
“There is magic on the cairn,” De’Unnero said again. “I cannot move the stones.” As he finished the statement, his gaze went back to the seemingly undisturbed grave.
Aydrian, too, looked at the cairns, but said nothing as a long, long while slipped past.
“I knew that it could not be this easy!” De’Unnero fumed at length. “It all seemed too convenient.”
“Better that it is not easy,” Sadye reasoned. “Else the items would likely already have been taken.”
Again it seemed as if Aydrian was only then considering the situation. “Earth magic,” he remarked, staring at the cairns. “Lady Dasslerond’s emerald holds such powers.”
“Gemstones?” De’Unnero remarked. “Then you can defeat the magic with your own.”
Aydrian seemed unsure. “Dasslerond is difficult to beat where the earth is concerned,” he said, and he screwed up his face and shook his head. “There is more here,” he said. “I sense it.”
“What, then?” De’Unnero asked.
“I will soon enough know,” said Aydrian, and he walked to a stone outcropping farther back in the grove. There he found a tiny cave and took out his pack, fumbling through it to find the mirror he had wrapped in a thick blanket.
He went to Oracle then and discovered a curious image in the mirror: a field of small snow domes with burning candles set inside them. He understood what was meant, what was expected of him—that he should build those glowing snow domes, thus summoning the spirits of his father and great-uncle—but he searched for some alternative, since the first snows could be weeks away and he knew that De’Unnero did not wish to spend the winter trapped up here.
An hour later, Aydrian emerged from the small cave knowing that he had few options. He went quietly by the camp De’Unnero and Sadye had set, and strode back into the grove, pulling forth his hematite, graphite, and sunstone.
He went at the rocks physically first, bringing forth a tremendous, stone-splitting lightning blast. But again, as with De’Unnero’s excavation efforts, the attack seemed to have little effect on the integrity of the cairn.
Next Aydrian worked the sunstone, the antimagic stone. He clearly felt the bonds Dasslerond had enacted here, strong earthen bonds. He went at them with all his heart, trying to insinuate his negative energy to break their hold, or at least to weaken them. He soon realized that he might as well be trying to steal the strength from the earth itself. This was an old enchantment, he recognized, something more powerful than Dasslerond, some ancient and powerful bond, a covenant of some sorts, between the elven lady and the earth.
“That was your work?” De’Unnero asked him when he returned to camp. Both
the former monk and Sadye were up and about, awakened by Aydrian’s thunderous strikes.
“Futile,” he replied. “There is an enchantment about the place that I cannot circumvent.”
“But there is a way?” Sadye quickly asked.
“I must wait for the first snow,” Aydrian explained. “There is no other way.”
De’Unnero started to respond—and he did not seem pleased at all—but he held back and merely nodded. “Then so be it.”
The reaction surely surprised Aydrian, and on some level, it was not the response he had wanted to hear. Patience was not the young man’s strong suit. On many levels, he had hoped that De’Unnero would either dismiss this mission for the time being and press on to other matters, or work harder to find some way to circumvent Aydrian’s claim.
“We should go into Dundalis in the morning, then,” said Sadye. “I do not care to spend the next weeks sleeping on the forest floor.”
Thus, the trio entered the small community the next morning. They were greeted warmly by the secluded folk, eager, like so many living on the borderlands of the wilds, for outside news and new tales. De’Unnero grew a bit anxious when he noted the name of the one tavern in the town, Fellowship Way—the same name as the tavern that Jilseponie’s adoptive parents had owned in Palmaris. He knew the barkeep, as well, an old man named Belster O’Comely; but Belster, half blind now and not in the best of health, did not seem to even suspect the true identity of one of the strangers who had come to his town.
And so they stayed, and lived among the people of the small community, as they had in so many towns over the years, as the autumn passed into winter. As luck would have it, the first snows came very late that year.
That first storm began early one morning, stretching late into the afternoon. Aydrian, a sack of candles tied to his belt, was out before the last flakes had fallen, trudging his way through the drifts to get back to the grove and the cairns. Sheltered by the thick evergreens about them, those cairns had not been fully covered.
Aydrian went right to work, moving about the field outside the grove, bending low to shape small domes out of the snow, then opening one side and setting a candle in each. He used his ruby to move about and light candles when the last of the domes was completed, and then he went back to the grove, in sight of both the cairns and the glowing snow domes, and waited.
And waited.
He fell asleep soon after, or thought he had, for certainly everything about him seemed dreamlike and surreal. He imagined stones rolling open of their own accord, imagined …
Aydrian’s senses returned in a flash as the grisly image of a rotting corpse rose up right in front of him! It lifted a heavy arm and swung it hard, and if Aydrian had any doubts of the reality of this creature, they were greatly diminished when he flew away, his jaw nearly broken.
He came up in an instant, recognizing this for what it was: the test of the rangers seeking to possess the elven-crafted artifacts of their forebears. To defeat the ghost in battle was to earn the right to carry its weapon. Aydrian then understood some of the shadowy images he had seen at Oracle over the last few weeks, blurry scenes of Elbryan battling in this same place against the ghost of Mather, earning the right, Aydrian then realized, to carry Tempest.
The ghost advanced, saying nothing, revealing no emotion at all, just methodically stalking in. Aydrian studied it carefully and didn’t even have to glance over at the cairns to realize that it was the right one, Elbryan’s, that had opened to release this horrid creature. Yes, this was his father, the young ranger knew without doubt, and he knew, too, that he was expected to take up his weapon and drive the specter back.
The very idea that fighting this battle was expected of him—by the elves who had placed the enchantment here—made Aydrian recoil. He had no intention of following any rules placed by Dasslerond!
He ducked another swing of the approaching ghost, then got clipped and sent flying again by a backhand across his shoulder as he tried to skitter to the side. He stumbled toward the open grave and noted the polished wood of a magnificent bow within its dark depths.
He noted, too, that the stones of the other grave had begun to shift, and understood then that he might be in trouble, that his glowing globes had awakened both ghosts!
He veered away from the open grave then, stumbling to turn and put his back against a tree, watching the approach of his father’s ghost, watching the stones of the other cairn roll away and the second, even more decomposed and gruesome creature, rise from the realm of death.
Aydrian fought hard to maintain his composure. If only the other grave, the one holding Tempest, had opened first! Sword in hand, he could have gone straight to Elbryan’s ghost then and dispatched it quickly, before the ghost of Mather could join the fighting!
But, no, he decided. No, that was the route expected of him,
demanded
of him by wretched Dasslerond!
Aydrian only then realized that he was holding a gemstone, a hematite, the soul stone, the portal that could bring him to the realm of his opponents or perhaps …
Smiling wryly as the first ghost stalked in, Aydrian lifted his arm and sent all his tremendous willpower into the soul stone, through the soul stone, hitting the unwitting spirit with a wave of mighty magical energy. The ghost stopped abruptly and seemed to teeter.
Aydrian felt beyond the rotting corporeal trappings, reaching to the spirit itself, the tiny flicker of the consciousness of Elbryan that remained. He grabbed at that with his spiritual will, called to it, demanding that it, and not this mockery of human mortality, come forth to face him. With sheer willpower and magical energies, Aydrian did battle then and there with the oldest and strongest bonding of
them all, the bonds of death itself.
He watched in amazement, but worked hard not to lose his concentration, as the gruesome figure began to transform, gray rotting skin taking on the healthy hues of life, a hollowed eye socket refilling as the collapsed eyeball lifted back into place. And in that eye, a flicker of inner spirit, a flash of life!
The creature before him was suddenly more Elbryan than Elbryan’s ghost!