Such were the horrors of war.
Humbled and embarrassed, Ryell faced Arien, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. “Too much blood has been spilled already,” he said softly.
He threw his sword to the ground.
“We do not accept your surrender, Lord of Caer Tuatha,” Arien said to Benador. “Only your friendship.”
Benador dismounted and extended his hand to the Eldar, and as Arien moved to accept it, he undid the clasp holding his scabbard and let Fahwayn fall to the earth beside the sword Benador had cast down. At that moment of friendship between the Eldar of Lochsilinilume and the Overlord of Pallendara, many elves and men alike came to know and share Del’s hopes for the future of Ynis Aielle.
“You’re free now,” Del said softly to Ryell. “Free of the hate that’s darkened your life for so long.”
Ryell could not manage a smile on his tear-streaked face.
But he offered a handshake to Del.
The funeral fires brightened the evening sky once again on Mountaingate. But this night, the grief of the survivors was not masked under cries of hatred or false glory. Both human and elf accepted their losses as a tragic lesson and vowed never to repeat the grievous error they had made.
In an act of the highest faith and trust, Arien, without opposition from any of his people, laid open the once-secret paths and led his human guests to the Silver City. There, a great feast was prepared and many bonds were made and oaths were spoken. The solemn celebration lasted a full week, its high point an invitation by Benador to the elves and rangers to share in the ceremony of his coronation in Pallendara in the spring of the next year.
On the morning the Calvans were to depart, Del went early to Billy’s room to rouse his friend.
“We did it,” Del said happily, his enthusiasm born of pride. “We were brought here to straighten things out, and damn it, we really did it.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Billy replied as he rolled out of bed and stretched. “You’ve forgotten your own world. Hundreds of years of prejudice and hatred don’t disappear overnight.”
Looking at his black friend, Del could only agree. He moved to the window and threw the curtains aside.
And then he fell entranced as he looked out over the magical valley at the sight of elves and humans bidding fond farewells and trading sincere handshakes and hugs. Serenity flooded over Del; every care and worry seemed to fly from him at that moment, for somehow he knew these to be honest glimpses of Aielle’s future.
“It’ll take time,” he said through a hopeful smile, turning to face Billy. “But they’re on the right path.”
Billy cocked his head curiously at his friend’s sudden and overwhelming visage of calm.
Yet another summer passed into autumn, but he could not know that. He had forsaken all hope; it could bring only torment in a timeless dilemma that knew no cure.
Salvation lay only in meditation, and thus he had grasped at one spell available and turned inward, suspending all but his thoughts in time. How many years had passed? How many yet would?
He knew not, and cared not. As physical suspension eliminated his needs and preserved his body, contemplation of deeper universal truths preserved his mind.
But what had disrupted his spell? What physical change had occurred in the constant to disturb his enchanted sleep?
The latch clanked again and the tiny cell door swung in. Most of the light from the corridor was blocked by the silhouette of a figure stooping to enter, though it still seemed painfully bright to this man who had known only the darkness of dungeons for three decades.
“The blessings of the Colonnae forever upon the head of Ardaz!” Benador cried when he viewed the prisoner. “True was his guess, and Istaahl the White is returned to the side of Pallendara’s throne!”
Epilogue
The sounds of the dance of Tivriasis wakened Del to his surroundings. He had wandered to Shaithdun-o-Illume, the shelf of crystalline reflections. The haunting beauty of the place captured him at once, and he suddenly understood Arien’s protectiveness of this realm and just how much was at stake.
And in that moment of epiphany he understood, too, why Brielle had shut him out.
Del glanced back at the tunnel he had just come through. His personal needs seemed insignificant and selfish at that moment, and freed of their hold, his eyes held a renewed gleam as he watched the growing glow of the moon on the mica walls.
The first moon of spring, the last moon of winter.
When the moon has passed beyond the western horizon and the stars sparkle brighter against a darker sky, when the last notes of the evening’s voices have faded from thought and the first hints of the music of dawn have yet to sound, a man might then truly explore the murmurs of his soul. So it was for Del that night on Shaiuthdun-o-Illume. He found a time of the present, where his inner contemplations could run free of the world’s noise.
Still lost in his musing of the incredible journey that had taken him across time and space, to this place that was his heart and yet not his home, Del took no notice, sometime later, of the unnatural mist that drifted up from the pool to hover a short distance from the ledge, nor did he see the specter that appeared within its cloudy vapors.
“DelGiudice,” spoke the figure, and the angelic tones filled Del with a sense of joy.
“Calae!” he said with a gasp.
“You are troubled, my friend.”
“A woman,” Del explained. “And a world. Loves that I cannot have.”
Down from the mountains, in the quiet magic of Avalon, the woman leaned heavily against a tree.
“Oh, Rudy,” she cried. “I huv breaked me covenant!”
“That is quite obvious, dear sister,” Ardaz replied, chuckling. “Yes, yes, quite obvious.” He became more serious when he realized that Brielle was truly distressed.
“No need to worry,” he said. “The Colonnae rejoice at the news! They themselves sent me to you.”
“Help me,” she begged, taking comfort in his words, though they did little to stem the stabbing pain. “Please ye must. Ne’er huv I known such fright.”
“I’m afraid, too, Calae,” Del continued. “Afraid of myself and the things I might do.”
“Have you cause?” Calae asked.
“After the battle of Mountaingate, I thought I might pen the history of the world,” Del explained. “The world before the holocaust.”
“An ambitious undertaking,” Calae said.
“And stupid,” Del added. “For that tome would carry information that these people do not need to know, information that could well damn them.”
Calae didn’t respond, but the look on his face showed Del that he understood completely. Any recounting of the world before the holocaust might well include information on ways and weapons, the fourth magic of technology, that could prematurely advance Aielle, that could light fires of conquest in the eyes of some.
“This is the world I always dreamed of,” Del explained. “The world of all my fantasies, and I can’t stay because of the things I learned in the world I despised. My knowledge, my ways, could bring ruin to Aielle. I couldn’t bear to do that.”
“Could you not keep this dangerous knowledge to yourself?”
“Maybe,” Del replied. “But I don’t think I want to take the chance. I’m not like Billy. He can accept it all with a shrug and a smile, but I’ll always be trying to improve things.”
“Improve,” Calae echoed. “A dangerous concept.”
“Aielle doesn’t need that,” Del said sincerely, and he looked deeply into the blue flames of Calae’s omniscient eyes. “They survived their Jericho; their battle is won. I am the only danger now.”
“Your fears are valid, my friend,” Calae replied. “It was necessary that you come to this realization on your own. I see your pain and wish that I could tell you otherwise.”
“It’s not fair,” Del said quietly. “To have found my heaven, only to have it pulled out from under me.”
“I am trul
y sorry.”
Del fought back his tears. “What then?” he asked through a stoic front. “Will you send me back to my own time, where I might live out my life?”
“That I cannot do,” Calae replied. “The rivers of time flow at different speeds, but, alas, their waters move ever in the same direction. The moment of your existence in the earth you knew has passed. Even if this were not so, the experience of your world would pale beside the beauty of Ynis Aielle. You would not be happy there.”
The Colonnae prince extended his arm toward Del. “Come with me, Jeffrey DelGiudice,” he said. “Come, that we may travel the stars together.”
Del eyed the entrance of the tunnel to the elven city, then felt his gaze drawn southward, through the crack in the mountain wall to the impenetrable black veil shrouding Avalon. “How can I let it go?” he asked. “Or her?” He looked back at Calae, the wetness on his cheeks twinkling in starlight. “It’s all over?” he mumbled. He thought of Billy, and how he envied his complacent friend, and he took heart that Billy would indeed watch the coronation for him, would watch over this world and the work they had done.
Del looked back to the angelic specter. Calae remained unchanging, his arm extended and his expression beckoning.
Del shook his head and smiled, accepting his fate at the hands of the trusted Calae. He cast a final, dreamy glance down at the enchanted forest.
Then stepped off the ledge.
Perhaps it was merely the winds within the stillness of the night, but more likely it was the magic of Calae, or of Ardaz or Brielle, carrying a final comfort to the man of yesterday who had so touched their lives, as the last sounds of Ynis Aielle carried to Del’s ears were the birth cries of a baby. For at that moment, a child was born unto Brielle, a beautiful girl.
Rhiannon, she would be called, the name of a woman who had graced that long-lost world with wisps of mystery and enchantment.
Also at that moment, snow began to fall across Aielle. Driven by the sea wind, it whipped with blizzard fury against the black walls of Talas-dun, where Reinheiser, the new Black Warlock, sat on his dark throne, awaiting the day when he would rise once again. It fell indifferently on Pallendara, barely visible against the whiteness of the newly polished walls. It shrouded sleeping Illuma, and descended gently on Avalon, where a new mother suckled her child.
That was to be the winter’s last snow, for the dawnslight came bright and clear, the first day of spring.
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Echoes of the Fourth Magic tcoya-1 Page 32