by Wayland Drew
“You have gained strength since we last met!”
“I have Cherlindrea’s wand. See.” Raziel raised her hand, and an axe which Bavmorda had conjured and sent hurtling toward her halted in midair, and hung. “You cannot defeat our combined powers, Bavmorda!” She turned the axe and sent it flying back. “Elora Danan will be empress! The prophecy will be fulfilled!”
Bavmorda exploded the axe with a gesture of her fist. She scuttled behind her stone crucible. She swayed, muttering, claws beckoning. Stone gargoyles on the wall behind Raziel grew flesh, writhed free, slid from their perches, reaching for her.
“Bellanockt!” Raziel spun and blasted them. They burst, splattering like jellyfish.
The queen laughed. “You believe you are my match? Never! My Ritual has undone the prophecy! The child’s energy will be obliterated! Strockt!”
Charms, chants, countercharms—all flew thick and fast, and with them such berserk violence that Willow cringed whimpering against the steps. He watched.
“Avaggdu suporium avaggdu!”
He saw Raziel enveloped in fire which could not consume her. He saw fireballs and lightning bolts carom wildly off the walls, narrowly missing Elora.
“Furrochk! Furrochk lithrak!”
He saw the room plunged into a deep freeze, howling with arctic winds, and Bavmorda clenched in a block of ice so cold that smoke rose from it. He heard her laughter echoing, saw the ice shatter, felt the searing blow of her curse as she hurled Raziel to the floor, toppled a pillar on her, and scuttled forward, whipping cords of fire across Raziel’s face. He saw Raziel struggle to clasp her fallen wand, lift it, and hurl Bavmorda against the ceiling, against pillars and the wall of spikes, against buttresses and gargoyles’ claws until Willow was sure that the queen must be cut to ribbons.
“Hither walha! Tuatha la!”
Up Bavmorda rose, blasting the wand out of Raziel’s hand and sending it spinning on the slimy floor. Ghastly creatures sprang out of whatever it touched. A chair turned into a five-headed coil of snakes, each with an agonized human face, a thing so appalled at life that it swarmed to a window and hurled itself out. A table became a gelatinous mass with myriad teeth that slid gnashing at Willow. He pounded out its life with a bronze candlestick.
“Elora . . .” Willow murmured. Without thinking he crept into the room and crawled along the wall toward the altar where the child lay.
Torn and bloody, whirling in the chaos they had created, the two sorceresses at last came to grips with one another. In that final encounter it was Bavmorda who drew quicker on untapped reserves of strength. It was Bavmorda who triumphed. Her nails raked Raziel’s face. While Raziel groped blindly, her eyes full of blood, Bavmorda’s hand closed like iron claws on her throat and wrung out the last of her consciousness.
Raziel sank to the flagstones.
Bavmorda uttered a hoarse cry, part laugh, part curse, part howl of triumph.
The door of the chamber slammed shut. The winds ceased.
Stiff, hunched, arms spread and bent, Bavmorda turned in the silence and faced Willow with Elora in his arms. “Bring back that child! And who are you?”
He held the child tight, her small head against his heart. She gave him strength, enough to say clearly. “I am Willow Ufgood. I am a sorcerer greater than you, Bavmorda.”
“Ha!” Bavmorda stared at the destruction and the horrors the fight had spawned. “Put her on the altar!” She gestured at the twelve candles and they sprang into flame. She pointed to the gong, and a ghostly reverberation echoed—the thirteenth. She pointed to the thirteenth candle. “Avaggdu tuatha . . .”
“Wait!” Willow groped for the last of the magic acorns given to him by the High Aldwin, found it, and threw it.
Bavmorda caught it.
She watched her hand turn to stone, watched her arm begin to petrify. Her eyes rolled back, white orbs in black sockets. She groaned. Her teeth ground together. She reached down a final time, down into the depths of sorcery for the means to confront this threat. She uttered a charm like the cry of a waking reptile.
Willow watched her wrist bend as flesh and sinew returned. He saw her fingers clench, pulverizing the acorn. He saw her hand open and brown powder drift across Fin Raziel’s body.
“Is that the extent of your power, fool? Now you will see my power. Now you will see the Ritual completed. Place the child on the altar!”
“No! You hag! You murderess! With my magic I’ll send Elora into . . . into a realm where Evil cannot touch her!”
“There is no such place.”
“Helgafel swath! Ben helgafel!” Willow chanted. “Bairn off danu famoww . . .”
Bavmorda grunted contemptuously.
“You’re no sorcerer! You’re a charlatan! A clown! You will go with the child!” She turned and beckoned. Cherlindrea’s wand flew from Raziel’s limp hand and into hers.
In that instant, Willow whipped his cloak and Elora vanished.
“What! Impossible!” Bavmorda scuttled forward. “Lightning!” As she lifted the wand, her gown brushed against the lip of the last bowl laid ready on the platform of the great crucible, and thick fluid spilled over and around her feet. She had only an instant to realize what had happened; an instant to understand that her conjuring, driven by weird fate, had twisted back upon her. An instant to know that she herself—all that she had been or would have been—was the victim of her Ritual of Obliteration.
In that instant she cried out her fury and frustration, and something even more terrible—an echo of lost innocence, a sound like water gurgling over stones, or like the laughter of a child . . .
Then the lightning struck, a single, quivering, jagged spear that pierced Bavmorda from head to foot and stayed, writhing above and through her.
She neither exploded nor flamed. She incandesced. She turned white hot like some magic metal, and when her flesh had gone her skull and skeleton hung intact in that white aura before they also vanished, leaving only drifting particles of ash.
The lightning became a ray of sun; the thunder, a roar of victory from the courtyard.
Sorsha revived as Madmartigan rushed in and gathered her into his arms. Fin Raziel returned to life as Willow touched her hand. “Willow . . . where’s the child? Where’s Elora Danan?”
“Here,” he said. “Safe.” He reached into the secret inside pocket of his cloak and drew out the smiling child. Wonderingly, he gazed at her and at the surrounding death and chaos caused by the sorceresses. “It . . . it was just the old disappearing-pig trick,” Willow said.
EPILOGUE
After the defeat of Bavmorda, all those lands grew natural again, even the black slate valley of Nockmaar. Renewal came like the thawing after a hard winter, so gently that no creature could be sure when it began. All living things felt it, and responded, and added their songs to the resonant hymn of Earth. Old rhythms returned. Old cycles revived.
Fresh winds blew over Nockmaar, sweeping away the stench of death. Bright wildflowers sprang up on the crags and in the slate crevasses. New shrubs and bushes bloomed. Clear springs welled up from deep underground to sweeten the caustic moat.
Despite this revival, no one stayed at Nockmaar. So dreadful were the memories of it, and so frightful would be the legends surrounding it, that the valley would never be inhabited again. Even when forests towered there and hawks soared, no roads would lead to Nockmaar, no hunters would venture close. In time the fortress would be overgrown and crumble to ruin. The green world would claim it once again; but until then Bavmorda’s tower remained—a stark warning of awful possibilities . . .
When the last of the dead had been buried, and the sally ports and main gates of Nockmaar Castle had been sealed, Willow and Raziel, Sorsha and Madmartigan rode west, toward Tir Asleen.
That was a triumphal procession. In the vanguard fluttered the proud standard of Airk Thaughbaer. Behind, ringed by banners, rode Willow Ufgood with Elora in his arms. Then came Fin Raziel, then Sorsha and Madmartigan, and then the Gallado
orns, their pennants high. All the way, at every village, people strewed flowers in their path and crowded close to see and touch Elora. All the way, her laughter joined the laughter of the brooks and streams.
Two stately eagles escorted them all the way to Tir Asleen, bearing two proud brownies.
Tir Asleen was most miraculously transformed. Bavmorda’s maze had vanished, as had all traces of the battle. The broad avenue was thronged with citizens. Royal banners flew on the towers of the castle, and music and laughter drifted across its battlements. The gates stood open, and as Willow and his party approached, an equerry bearing the king’s standard rode out to greet them.
Many days the festivities continued in that valley, for there was much to celebrate—the joyous reunion of Sorsha and her father, the commencement of the reign of Elora Danan, and the restoring of Madmartigan to knighthood and to honor.
Urged by his friends and by the king to stay with them, Willow lingered for three days. Then, on the evening of the third day, he confessed his great yearning for Nelwyn Valley, and for Kiaya and his children. The king smiled. “You shall have our best pony,” he said.
So, next morning, Willow bade farewell to Sorsha and her father. He accepted the gift of a sacred book from Fin Raziel, and heard her tell him that he could, in the fullness of time, be a great sorcerer. He kissed Elora Danan. Madmartigan lifted him onto the white pony and he rode away down the broad avenue and through the valley toward the banks of the Freen. He was going home, toward the Lake of Fin Raziel and the Woods of Cherlindrea where he said good-bye to the brownies. He was going back to Nelwyn Valley, home to Ufgood Reach.
There is no need to dwell on his arrival—how Vohnkar was the first to greet him and question him about the child and Tir Asleen; how Meegosh welcomed him soon after, and how his two friends led the pony down the last stretch of the river road, where it came out of the forest as if from the end of a long tunnel; or how, as they passed the old burial ground in the meadow, the High Aldwin materialized, saying, “What? What?” and led the little procession to the village, holding his staff high and shouting, “Triumph! Triumph! Sound the gongs! Beat the drums! Music and revelry!”
There is no need to describe how warmly Willow was welcomed by all, even by Burglekutt; or how the Council declared a festival in his honor; or how the High Aldwin, beaming with pride, insisted that he change a stone into a white dove; or how the bird spiraled higher and higher above Ufgood Reach until it was lost to sight.
The honor, the acclaim, the gratitude—these embarrassed Willow Ufgood, for he was, after all, a modest and private person. His most important welcome came later, when he was free at last to walk with Kiaya and the children down the path to Ufgood Reach, and when, laughing wearily, he promised to look at all Mims’s new paintings the very next morning, and to answer all Ranon’s questions, and to tell them both the story of Elora Danan as often as they wished.
Then, when the children were settled for the night, Willow embraced his beloved Kiaya, and they walked a little distance away from the house to a spot where they could watch the moonlight on the bountiful fields of Ufgood Reach and the silver eddies of the Freen. There they stood a long time in one another’s arms, content with that simple life, at peace in the Mystery of that green world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WAYLAND DREW was born in Oshawa, Ontario, and received his early education there. He began to write seriously in high school and continued while studying English language and literature at the University of Toronto. Since graduation he has combined high school teaching and writing. He is the author of The Erthring Cycle, a trilogy published by Del Rey books.
Mr. Drew and his wife Gwendolyn live in Bracebridge, where he has taught English for eleven years at Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School. They have four children.
Table of Contents
Backcover
Film
Titlepage
Copyright
Quote
WILLOW
I: NOCKMAAR
II: UFGOOD REACH
III: NELWYN FAIR
IV: DAIKINI CROSSROADS
V: MADMARTIGAN
VI: CHERLINDREA
VII: HILDA
VIII: FIN RAZIEL
IX: SORSHA
X: AIRK THAUGHBAER
XI: TIR ASLEEN
XII: BAVMORDA
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR