by W. C. Conner
“Think, Wil. Others scrabble in the dirt like animals just trying to stay alive, but you can have anything you see before you – anything you can imagine. Here at last can be a purpose in life worth fighting for, and with it the wealth and power you deserve.”
Wil’s mind was trying to reject what he was hearing but it was seductive, stroking him intimately at the back of his mind, arousing a need within him he didn’t recognize or know how to satisfy. There was something within him that resonated overpoweringly to Greyleige’s words, promising a way to relieve the tension that had been aroused and he found himself breathing heavily as if in anticipation of that release.
Yes, the power was special, it was very special. And that made him special. And that made those others lesser. It placed them and even his brother wizards beneath him. He looked into Greyleige’s eyes and saw the understanding in them.
“You know, don’t you Wil?” Greyleige said, nodding, a conspiratorial smile on his lips. “You know we are better than they are.”
Wil nodded, his mind in a state of turmoil, longing for some sort of release as he fell deeper under Greyleige’s spell.
Gleneagle had summoned a large cavalry troop to join him as he and his generals, unknowingly trailed at some small distance by the companions from Wisdom, thundered into the seething mass of mindless creatures that had broken through the bubble.
The wizards yet worked to maintain the invisible line, though it was clearly beginning to fail. Sensing the danger, they shifted more of their attention toward removing the spell of terror upon the unnatural enemy warriors so that Gleneagle’s army should perceive them as they were; dangerous, but not truly objects of terror. The weakening of the magical barrier sent more and more of the enemy surging toward the brave men who no longer pursued them, but stood ready to battle them hand to hand.
The companions saw something Gleneagle and the others did not as they charged into the enemy and they pulled their horses to a halt a short distance behind the charging cavalry. Another bubble had burst and a pincer of living hatred circled toward them from the rear.
Shouting in their attempts to get the attention of Gleneagle’s mounted force, they urged their horses forward but it became apparent the enemy would close with the prince’s cavalry before they could be warned. They arrived almost simultaneously with the mindless creatures who turned as they drove into them and they instantly found themselves fighting desperately for their own lives.
Both Wil and Greyleige looked up in annoyance at a loud knock at the door. Before Greyleige could move to stop it, Bertrand entered accompanied by two of the wizard’s distorted creations. Scrubby hung between the two creatures, beaten and bloody. The fingers of one hand were broken and bent at unnatural angles from the boot that had stomped on it as Scrubby had fallen, and there was a great welt over his left eye that was all but closed with the swelling from the multiple blows his face had received. A steady stream of blood flowed down the left side of his face and into his shirt from somewhere in his scalp.
“We found this... person trying to sneak in through the scullery, Excellency,” Bertrand said, disgust evident in his voice. “He fought our guards as if possessed, but he has no skill at arms at all. He was easily subdued as you can see.” A pleased growl came from the creatures holding Scrubby.
Greyleige regarded Scrubby as if he were an insect which had spoiled his meal by walking across his food. “Why did you bring him here?” he asked coldly. “Why isn’t he dead already?”
“He said he came to protect the key,” Bertrand replied. “He said he wouldn’t let him fight you alone.”
As Wil looked at Scrubby, he was revolted by his appearance. This creature was filthy and bloody and uncommonly plain looking. Stringy brown hair fell over a badly pockmarked, almost homely face and the small, beady eyes which looked up at him pleadingly disgusted him. What had he ever seen in this inferior thing, he wondered? He turned his eyes away in revulsion.
Greyleige smiled in satisfaction when he saw Wil’s expression. “There is no battle here,” he said. “Throw him out.”
As the guards carried Scrubby toward the open window and picked him up to pitch him from the tower, Wil looked back toward him out of morbid curiosity, wondering what this creature’s face would look like as it fell to its death. Scrubby’s mouth moved as he tried to speak, but no sound came. Wil watched his mouth form only one word; ‘Wil’, or was it ‘why’?
The look of hurt and abandonment on his friend’s face stabbed into Wil’s soul, breaking through the web that was being carefully woven around his mind. “NO!” he shouted just as the guards threw Scrubby from the window. His mind had cleared of the fog that enveloped it as he realized Scrubby was supposed to be back on the hilltop with Caron and the others.
The smile that had appeared on Scrubby’s face after Wil had said, “I must go alone to Greyleige,” crashed into his memory. It was a wan little smile that had crossed Scrubby’s face as he replied “and you will go alone. I promise,” and he had kept his promise and let him go alone. And in the same wise, he had kept the promise he had made to Caron back in Wisdom, “I won’t ever let him fight alone.”
It took no more than a thought from Wil as Scrubby fell silently, rigid with terror toward the ground far below the tower window. Without any consciousness of what he was doing, Wil saw within his mind the place that Scrubby was supposed to be, back at the allied command post upon the hill. As the thought formed a shimmer of light twinkled briefly, and where Scrubby’s body had been there was now but empty air. At the same instant, Scrubby stood once again beside the command post where he had stood with Tingle, Kemp, Thisbe and Peg. He looked bewildered but otherwise exactly as he had before he had quietly left the camp and worked his way through the battlefield to share the fight with his friend just as he had promised Caron – and more importantly, himself – that he would.
He looked to his left to find Peg throwing her leg over the saddle of a dappled palfrey. With her mouth set in a thin line of determination, she kicked the horse to a canter and set off toward a fearsome battle that seemed to be swirling closer and closer to them.
There had been no way for Greyleige to know that the revolting person he had ordered flung from the tower window was the only true friend that Wil had ever accepted into his life. He was perplexed at Wil’s reaction but when Scrubby’s body winked out of the air, Greyleige’s eyes hardened as he recognized that his carefully constructed web of control over Wil’s mind had somehow collapsed. He must be destroyed, he thought. His eyes rolled upwards in his head and he began a chant with which to summon dark powers to destroy the frighteningly powerful young wizard before him and send his essence beyond the boundary into that damned place from which Greyleige’s powers derived.
Turning from the window, Wil sensed the building of an unwholesome magical summoning. Reflexively, he reached into his shirt and drew forth the talisman. Holding it before him he started to recite the chant he had memorized from the scrolls which would open the lock binding the magic of the Old Forest and summon it to him. As he did so, the elven gemstone gifted to him by Caron sparkled and glowed on his chest.
Though deeply immersed in his own chant of summoning, Greyleige sensed a change in the magical currents within the tower room. When his eyes rolled back to see what had caused the disturbance, a wave of near panic broke the rhythm of his spell when he recognized that Wil had, indeed, brought the talisman with him, and that it had been hidden by Gleneagle’s life force elfstone, glittering next to the talisman on Wil’s chest. His teeth clenched in determination as his eyes rolled back into their trance-like state and he frantically resumed his spell of destruction. For the first time since he had learned of his magical potential as a child, he truly felt fear – a fear that had caused him to stumble during his summoning – a fear that gave Wil a critical split-second advantage.
Wil completed the recitation of his spell to unlock the talisman and opened his eyes to find Greyleige just completing his own sp
ell. There was a long pause in which it seemed to Wil that everything shifted into slow motion. Then, as the eyes of the two wizards locked, the summonings of their separate spells arrived simultaneously.
Peg had spotted Kemp’s large form looming above the others as the companions fought, surrounded by the mindless enemy. Caron and Thisbe were unhorsed and stood back to back defending one another as Tingle and Kemp rode about them in their desperate battle to keep the women safe. Caron swung her blade, cutting off the sword arm of an enemy warrior but turning away from Thisbe’s protection as she did so.
As Peg swept toward the little group, Kemp’s horse was struck from behind and crashed heavily to the ground, throwing Kemp clear but leaving him rolling at the feet of one of the enemy warriors who lifted his sword high over his head. He had barely begun the down stroke toward Kemp’s prostrate body when Peg’s little horse leaped over Kemp and crashed into the creature. The shock of the crash threw her from the saddle and both she and the horse went down in a heap on the ground.
As she fell, she could hear Morgan’s voice raised in full battle cry coming toward them. She struggled to raise herself, to get to her feet so she could get to Kemp, but her body refused to respond and her vision began to fail. Just before she lost consciousness altogether it seemed she heard the distant sound of approaching thunder as Morgan’s enormous war horse vaulted into the midst of the swirling melee and he launched himself from the saddle into a knot of four of the enemy, his sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.
“Remember all that I taught you, daughter,” he yelled as he hacked his way through the creatures. “Use well my gifts to you!”
At his cry, Thisbe’s head rose in pride and defiance as she met yet another creature with a twirling slice from her short sword which left its head wobbling uncertainly on its shoulders before it fell toward the ground.
One of the creatures came at Caron from the side, its blade starting its killing swing just as Kemp, unaware of Peg’s courageous charge into his own attacker, regained his feet and hammered the creature squarely in the chest, collapsing its ribs into its heart.
At the same moment, Morgan’s shoulder went numb from a blow to his back as he jumped with a shout between Thisbe and a creature attacking her. He spun from the blow and his dagger buried itself in the throat of his own attacker before he took two quick steps and sliced through the creature threatening his daughter.
It seemed to Morgan that the ground rushed up to meet him. He lay stunned, watching as a growing puddle of blood inched past his eyes while he heard a roaring in his ears as if a monstrous waterfall was moving toward him. The sound stopped suddenly and he smiled in peace as a brilliant light flashed in his eyes. “I come, Berlayne,” he whispered, and he knew no more.
Around him, the warriors of both sides had paused and fallen silent in their battles as the great noise swept toward them from two sides. It built rapidly to a deafening crescendo and then stopped. At that same instant, in the absolute silence following the sudden cessation of the roaring noise, a pinprick of light atop the wizard’s tower at the center of Blackstone blinked into existence and grew in the ongoing silence to a painful blinding light encompassing everything, then just as rapidly receded back to a pinpoint before winking out of existence. The roaring sound crashed back upon them, paralyzing all movement until the noise rumbled off into the distance like thunder in the mountains.
When their eyes regained their sight, those looking toward Blackstone and the wizard’s tower pointed and started cheering wildly. The walls of the fortress had changed from charcoal black to pure white in the instant of the flash of light while the tower had disappeared as if it had never existed. At the same moment, the entire enemy army fell to the ground as if they were animals dropped by a butcher’s blow to the head. The soldiers watched in horror as the bodies bounced and bubbled on the ground before subliming to sickly purplish-blue and yellow-green vapors that disappeared into the air as if sucked up by some huge, invisible mouth.
35
At the command post, Scrubby stood staring in disbelief at the space where previously the tower had stood; the tower from which he had been thrown but a few short minutes before. His lips moved soundlessly as he breathed the word “Wil” again and again.
Down the hill the stunned survivors looked around and found themselves alone. All about them lay the bodies of men of the allied armies, both the dead and the wounded, but nowhere could be seen any sign of the enemy fallen. Tingle, his leg roughly bandaged against a stab wound of the outer thigh, stood close to Caron and Kemp. The three of them looked down at Thisbe who sat on the turf with Morgan’s head in her lap, stroking his cheek silently as tears slid down her face.
With Mitchal beside him, Gleneagle rode toward them. He stopped not far from where the companions stood and slid from the saddle beside a small, red haired figure lying motionless between Kemp’s fallen horse and her own little palfrey which itself lay with its head at an unnatural angle. Lifting her into his arms, he bore her over to Kemp.
“She breathes, Kemp,” he said. “But I fear not for long, for her body is broken.”
The little group watched quietly as Kemp, his face ashen, took Peg’s small body in his arms and strode away from the companions, her head cradled against his shoulder as he walked alone toward the command post. He walked slowly and carefully with his head bent to hold hers steady against his shoulder.
Caron led the surviving companions up the hill on whatever horses they had been able to catch running free on the battlefield. Morgan’s body lay across the saddle of his own great warhorse, his arms swaying at the stirrup as it walked. Orderlies came forward and lifted him gently from Tenable as if he could yet feel the hurt from his mortal wound. Placing him on a field litter, they carried him into the command tent and laid him beside the body of General Kolburn who had fallen defending Gleneagle in the final rush by the enemy. Thisbe accompanied her father, holding his hand tightly.
She looked briefly toward Caron as she walked into the tent. “He died saving me,” she said.
The Princess reached out to touch Thisbe’s arm in sympathy as she passed. “He would have wanted it no other way, Thisbe,” Caron replied. “He willingly gave all that he had for that which he loved most.”
Once inside the tent, Thisbe released Morgan’s hand and turned to Tingle who had limped up beside her and placed his arm around her shoulder. Looking from his face to the rough bandage around his thigh, she shook her head. “Come along, Tingle,” she said wearily, sounding much like a tired mother scolding her child, “let’s get you properly taken care of. I don’t think my father would want to see you over on the other side just yet.” After leaning down to kiss the brow of her fallen father, she took Tingle by the hand as a mother might do with her errant child and led him in the direction of the surgeon’s tent.
Outside the command tent, Caron held a devastated Scrubby in her arms. “I promised you I wouldn’t let him fight Greyleige alone, Caron,” Scrubby sobbed, “and I tried. I made it to Blackstone, but they found me and chased me and I fought them, but there were too many of them and after they caught me they beat me and then they took me up to the top of the tower.”
He turned a haunted face up to Caron’s. “Wil was there with that Greyleige wizard and they were sitting at a table eating a fancy meal as if there was nothing wrong in the world, and when he looked at me there was nothing but hate in his eyes.” He paused briefly and shuddered. “It didn’t even feel like I was looking at Wil. I tried to say something to him but no words would come out, and then Greyleige told the guards to throw me from the tower, and they did. But it seemed like something must have happened to Wil right then because I heard his voice scream ‘NO!’ just as they tossed me out the window.” He shuddered again with the memory. “I was falling, and then, all of a sudden I was back here and everything was just like before I snuck off after him. It’s almost like I never even tried to help him for all the good I did.” He looked at her once again, t
he haunted look still in his eyes. “I failed him, Caron.”
“No, Scrubby,” she answered, shaking her head slightly as she removed her arms from about him, “you didn’t fail him at all, nor me nor any of us, for that matter. And you especially did not fail yourself.” She held him by the shoulders for a few moments more as she took several deep breaths to control her own emotions.
“Back in Wisdom when you promised me you would never let him fight alone, do you remember what I told you in reply?” He shook his head. “I told you ‘I know you’ll be there for him when he needs you most’, and you were, Scrubby. If you hadn’t been there, he would have been lost to himself and to us.
“From what you said, it would seem Greyleige was trying to take control of his mind so that he could capture and use his power. Because you kept your promise to yourself, I believe you broke whatever spell it was that Greyleige was weaving around Wil, and he recognized what Greyleige was doing. Just by being there you saved him, Scrubby, and he saved you. And then he called the power of the talisman. If he hadn’t, we would have all been overrun and killed by those mindless creatures of hatred.”
“But he’s gone, Caron,” Scrubby said quietly. “His own magic killed him.”
“Before he left us to ride to Blackstone,” she responded, “he told us he did not know what would happen when he called on the magic of the talisman.” She placed her hand on her chest over her heart as she continued, “My heart tells me that what happened here today was more than just the magic he summoned.” A startled look of wonder came over her face as she finished. Reaching into the neck of her shirt, she drew forth the green Gleneagle elfstone on its silver chain. His words whispered in her mind. I feel the time is at hand for this to be returned to you.