The Witch's Daughter (38 page)

Before long only Arien and his elven warriors stood to stem the flow. Their main concern had to be the undead brigade, and the zombies went down by the score to the slashing blades of the skilled elves. But so swift had been the zombies’ initial rout that Arien could not hope to contain those talons who had already crossed. Instead the elf Eldar and his troops cut the talon forces in half, slicing back through the throng to the breached bridge and then trampling their way onto the structure. They were fully surrounded, fighting back to back, but they had quelled the terror of the undead monsters and halted the tide of talons.

“Our fate is in the hands of the Calvans,” Arien remarked to Ryell, fighting by his side. “We have given them the opportunity to regroup and come back to the bridge, but if their charge is not swift enough, we will surely perish this day.”

“If the fates decree it,” Ryell said in stubborn determination. Arien looked at his friend with sincere admiration. Once Illuma’s most notorious human-hater, Ryell had indeed amended his ways.

    Surveying the situation, King Benador knew despair. He and his troops could hold the two bridges, and the Calvan forces who had been pushed back had already begun their
answering charge back toward the second bridge. But too many talons had crossed for the Calvans to fully contain them. Even as the King ordered a contingent away to the south and east, he saw several bands of talons converging on the tents of the wounded.

    “We wanted our fight,” Jolsen remarked to Siana and Lennard. “Looks like we got it!” Almost on cue, a talon rushed through the flap at the burly lad. In his surprise, Jolsen never would have been able to block the attack, but Siana was not caught off her guard. A flip of her wrist put a dagger into the neck of the charging beast, and as it lurched over in pain, Lennard chopped it down.

“Teamwork!” Lennard cried.

But then a dozen more talons tore through the tent from every side, and the teamwork of the three, however complementary, however magnificent, hardly seemed adequate. Still, the young warriors could not complain, satisfied that they had more than avenged their dead kinfolk, had done more than their share in the efforts of this terrible but undeniably necessary war.

Most of their parents and kin had died in the fall of Corning and the subsequent retreat toward the river, they had learned, and they took faith now as the talons closed over them that those who had gone before them would be waiting to greet them on this, their last journey.

    Farther to the north, beyond the bridges, the numbers seemed equally disturbing. Sylvia, the daughter of Arien Silverleaf, led a contingent of a hundred elven archers and twice that number of Calvan bowmen against the flotilla Mitchell’s charges had constructed. The men and elves peppered the talon armada as it made its slow but purposeful trudge across the river.

As each boat landed, it was met by a charging force of whirling swords and spears, but each contingent of man and elf forced down to the banks to fight in the hand-to-hand melee weakened the rain of arrows on the approaching boats. And more and more boats were on their way, some just being launched off the opposite bank, a continuing, seemingly endless line.

Sylvia was battle-seasoned enough to realize that though she and her forces could hold out for many minutes, they could not hope to win unless help came down from the army at the bridges—an army, the elven maiden lamented when she looked that way, that was even more pressed than her own forces.

But Sylvia and the hundred elves had faced greater odds than this; to a soldier, they had fought in the Battle of Mountaingate, and their undying optimism lent strength to the fearful Calvans.

“The talons may win through at this position,” Arien’s daughter noted grimly. “But their victory will come at heavy cost.” To accentuate her point, she let another arrow fly at an approaching boat. It whistled out over the water, true in its mark, and caught the craft’s commander right between the eyes.

    “Watch, wizard!” the wraith taunted. “Watch as all of the world is destroyed.”

“Brave words, nonbeing,” Ardaz shot back. He thrust his staff out, and rays of light slammed into Mitchell’s dark form, burning holes where they struck.

Mitchell returned the effort, snapping his scepter above his head, showering Ardaz in black flakes.

Ardaz quickly pulled his light back to him, sensing the unearthly danger. He danced frantically, burning away as
many of the flakes as he could with his staff. But many found their mark, and Mitchell struck again.

Ardaz stamped his staff to the ground, launching a blinding blue bolt that hurled the wraith to the ground.

But it was the wizard who was most dismayed, for when Ardaz had called upon that greater level of magical energy, he began to understand the depth of the breach that the Black Warlock had caused in the harmony.

“Thus ends an age,” the wizard lamented. He hated the thought of taxing that magical plane any further.

But Mitchell was already on his way back in, that wicked scepter raised high.

    No more tender words escaped Bryan’s lips. Rhiannon fell limp in his arms, but he would not let her recline on the ground. “Stand against it!” he commanded, and he slapped the young witch across the face with enough force to raise a welt on her porcelain cheek.

Rhiannon tried to reach out and find a way to slow her descent, but the pit’s walls were too far away. She called out to her mother, ever her source of strength and protection.

Then she realized the true depth of the horror.

Her call brought her mind into the magical plane, where she saw the mental battle in all its fury. Brielle and Istaahl fought bravely and savagely, but so, too, did the twin specters of the Black Warlock. And while Rhiannon’s mother and the White Mage seemed weary, Thalasi and Reinheiser were only growing stronger, the Black Warlock feeding off the chaos he had created.

Rhiannon’s stay was short-lived, for soon she found herself back in the hopeless pit, falling away. A single word escaped her lips, a word that may have saved all of Aielle.

“Bryan.”

Spurred by her call, the half-elf doubled his efforts.

He pulled Rhiannon up straight, forced her to find her footing. “Beat it!” he yelled. “Do not surrender!” He had no idea of the true nature of the young witch’s dilemma, but he understood well enough that the only thing he could do was help her to hold her bearing.

“Rhiannon!”

The call came from a great distance, but Rhiannon heard it clearly. She focused on the sound, sent her thoughts spiraling back toward it.

“Rhiannon!”

Nearer now, but still beyond her grasp. The witch forgot the pain, dismissed the despair. All that mattered was that she find the source of that call.

“Rhiannon!”

The jolt as the young witch regained consciousness sent Bryan flying through the air. He landed heavily on his back. His first reaction was to return to Rhiannon, but then he recognized that she did not need him anymore.

A glow of power emanated from her form, which no longer seemed tiny and frail. Her light eyes glittered as pale sapphires in a bright sun, and her face twisted into a visage of powerful satisfaction.

Rhiannon felt all the power that the world had left to give rushing to her call, its purity burning sweet in her veins. She waited a moment, letting the forces gather until she thought she would burst apart. Then she swept her arms up into the air, releasing a mighty line of energy, radiant green, at that spot of the overcast that hid the sun. It roared into Thalasi’s cloud, sizzling and crackling.

Darkness rushed from every edge of the sky to gather against the bolt, but Rhiannon did not relent. Her mouth opened in a silent scream of stubborn rage, and she snapped her hands up higher, throwing every ounce of her strength into the battle.

Thunder rolled out, the rain crossing the path of the green bolt sizzled and steamed away, and as the black clouds rolled in, they were consumed. All the sky lightened, though the overcast remained unbroken.

But Thalasi’s efforts were elsewhere, locked in mortal combat against Brielle and Istaahl, and his gloom could not be reinforced. Rhiannon thought that this effort would surely kill her, but she did not worry about that now.

“So be it,” she muttered, throwing another pulse heavenward. Relentlessly, the green bolt burned away. The young witch, seeing into the very center of her energy bolt, squinted her eyes at the greater brightness as she cut through to the blue above the cloud.

Now the green beam widened the gap in the clouds, and Rhiannon called upon the sun to help her cause. A single ray came through, not angled back toward Rhiannon but shining through to the north, burning into the globe of darkness that surrounded the Black Warlock.

    Brielle and Istaahl felt the weakening of their respective foes immediately, but before they could press further in and hold the twin spirits down, the Black Warlock’s manifestations blended together into one and vanished from the scene of the mental battle.

Brielle took a moment to contemplate the change in events, then announced to Istaahl, “ ’Tis me daughter!”

“We must go to her!” the White Mage replied, but then another call came to them, a call they could not ignore.

“All the world!” Ardaz cried.

“Me daughter!” gasped Brielle.

Ardaz could see the battle in the west clearly. The Black Warlock had regained his footing and responded to the sun ray with a bolt of midnight blackness. He had pushed the ray
halfway back to the clouds, and the vile line of his blackness was still rising.

But the events at the river were even more desperate. Too many talons had come across, Arien and his troops would soon falter, and the defense along the northern banks was about to disintegrate altogether to the endless armada.

Brielle understood. Her every instinct told her to go to her daughter’s aid, but Rhiannon would simply have to hold on for a while longer.

“It will never be the same,” Istaahl lamented.

“But no choice is to us, then,” said Brielle. “Call to yer sea, me friend. Pull with all yer strength.” Then the witch went to her own work. She fell back into the magical plane, reached out with wide arms to gather all the power she could find.

And then she grabbed at the river.

    Istaahl sent his summons out over the waves, calling to the ocean from the ruins of the White Tower. From far out, but rising swiftly and rushing in toward the mouth of the great river, came a wall of water.

    Brielle pulled against the flow, drove the water back with an invisible wall of energy. In seconds the great river under the Four Bridges was an empty bank of mud. The talons in their boats, now sitting on soft ground, thought this a gift of their godlike master to speed their crossing. Whooping and shouting, they leaped from their craft and plodded out through the thick mud.

“See our power!” Mitchell hissed at Ardaz. “We rule even the river itself!”

But Ardaz recognized the truth of the event. He sent a magically enhanced shout ringing into the ears of all his comrades. “Get back from the river!”

At the end of the bridge, Billy and Bellerian finally got Belexus to his feet. Though wounded by the burning chill of Mitchell’s scepter, the ranger would not retreat. Billy pushed him, trying to get him back from the river as Ardaz had instructed. But Bellerian understood the fire that drove his son.

“Leave him to his duty,” the Ranger Lord instructed.

“Are ye coming with me?” Belexus asked. He knew the answer when he took a moment to consider his father, bent again under the pain of that old wound.

“No, me son,” Bellerian said with a smile. “Me fightin’s at its end.”

Belexus kissed him on the forehead, then helped his father onto the winged horse’s back as Billy turned Calamus toward the safety of the land.

Then Belexus strode out on the bridge to stand beside the brave wizard.

    Benador and his troops needed no encouragement to heed the wizard’s call. They pushed the talons on the southern two bridges back to the west one final time, then broke back toward the fields, where they could have run to safety. But the King and his elite corps would not let the valiant elves die for their cause, not while they had any strength left in their bodies. Benador spearheaded a small group, driving like a wedge through the talon ranks to get to Arien and his forces.

“Fly away!” Arien called to his warriors, while he and Ryell fought as a rear guard.

    Up in the north, Sylvia and her forces wanted to heed Ardaz’s call, but many talons had reached the eastern bank in the first moments after the river had emptied. The elven maiden rushed from group to group, freeing up men and elves and sending them on their retreat, but she remained on
the muddy bank, refusing to leave until all the others had found safer ground.

    “The weakling ranger returns,” the wraith laughed. “I am glad that you live, Belexus. I would not want you to miss this spectacle of my master’s glory.”

Belexus cast a knowing smile at Ardaz. Only one being in all Aielle could make such a demand of the River Ne’er Ending: the Emerald Witch.

“Ye’ve ever been a fool, Mitchell,” he spat at the wraith. “Ye think this yer master’s doin’?”

“Who—” Mitchell began to respond, but the smug look on the ranger’s face caused the wraith to glance back over his shoulder; then he saw the continuing struggle between the Black Warlock and the sun ray. The wraith spun back on Ardaz and the ranger, unbridled rage etched on its grotesque face.

“You’ll not escape the doom!” Ardaz promised, and he slammed his staff on the stone with enough force to break the instrument, and that in turn exuded enough force to split apart the bridge itself.

The center of the structure crumbled down into the mud, and the wraith, Ardaz, and Belexus fell away.

    Brielle and Istaahl could not know the particulars at the battle scene, nor reverse the tide of their actions in any case. When she sensed the approach of Istaahl’s watery wall, the Emerald Witch let loose the gathered waters of the great river.

    “No!” the Black Warlock screamed, turning back to the disastrous battle on the bridges for just an instant.