“Not a piece bigger’n me little finger,” Burgle mumbled. His partner shuddered and nodded, praying that the Black Warlock would be satisfied with the single kill.
We must punish the others, the spirit of Thalasi mused. And leave no doubt about who is in command. He started to rise from the chair.
But the trembling had returned.
“Why do you resist?” Thalasi demanded in a shaky voice.
I do not! Reinheiser silently countered. The traitorous guards must be punished!
Still, the battered body could not find the strength to rise, as muscle worked against muscle. Both wills strained in their common desire, but the focus of crystalline rage, that singular moment of terror when the big talon had raised its blade, had dulled. Their subconscious unity was no more, whatever their conscious desires. After several torturous minutes, the form slumped back helplessly in the throne, the two surrendering their hopes to go out and punish the guards.
The pained eyes darted discordantly, taking in the mess of the room, as both spirits sought to remember that one moment of harmony, that one moment when other emotions too base for petty arguing had washed away the pain.
Do you know what this means? Thalasi pondered.
We have bought some time, reasoned Reinheiser. News will spread quickly of the fate of Grok. Others will not be so quick to try for the throne.
“I destroyed him,” Thalasi sneered through the twisting mouth.
“Not you, fool,” Reinheiser verbally countered, and Thalasi felt him try to turn the corners of the mouth up in a wry smile and quickly counterattacked. I have found your secret to the darker magics, Reinheiser went on, silently. I, too, heard the ringing of the universal powers. I went with you, Thalasi, into that secret realm, understood your journey as clearly as if I had made it all by myself. It was Martin Reinheiser who sent the unruly talon to its horrid grave!
“Never!” Thalasi hissed, but the words lacked conviction. Even at the height of his power, Morgan Thalasi had never been able to accomplish such complete destruction as the explosion of Grok. The energy that had ripped the unfortunate talon to tiny pieces had flowed through the broken limbs of the battered body of the Black Warlock pure and powerful.
Too powerful.
I know that I was part of the execution, Thalasi thought, surrendering the taxing control of the mouth, a calmness sweeping over him. He had felt the power surge, familiar from the days before he had joined with Reinheiser. But although he had been part of the being that issued the explosive blast, he had been only one part.
And yet, somehow, not a part at all, as if the result of the combination of the two spirits, joined by the threat of the talon, had been a completely new being, something greater than both of them.
Yet I know and admit that it was beyond me, Thalasi continued, asking as much as explaining.
What, then? Reinheiser prompted, equally uncertain.
Unity, Thalasi answered him. Did you feel it? Of course you felt it, and you know the truth. It was neither Reinheiser nor Thalasi that sundered the flesh of Grok.
Both, Reinheiser completed the thought.
They did not have to consciously communicate to know that they continued to entertain similar thoughts and emotions. How good that moment of power had felt! Like freedom. The promise of strength beyond anything either of them would have believed possible hovered about them, a dangling carrot.
If they could only reach out and grab it!
Snap the fingers of the left hand, Thalasi begged Reinheiser. Join me in this action.
Reinheiser willed the hand to move. It rose up in front of the face, trembling through every inch of the ascent. Both spirits ignored the pain, focused solely on the task at hand. Thumb and middle finger moved tentatively, their tips resting together.
They crossed and twisted as the arm bulged in discordant pain. Desperately trying to retrieve that moment of ecstasy, the two wills frantically pulled at the fingers, ordering them to their task. Muscles knotted and tore, a new bruise erupted in the wrist. Still the spirits fought on to accomplish this simplest of tasks. But more stubborn than their willpower was the impossibility of harmony. Despite all their efforts, the fingers trembled uselessly.
The mouth opened again in a silent scream of frustration.
“Blew ’im to little bits, ’e did!” Burgle said to the gathered crowd. “I seen it, I tell ye! Never hopin’ to see it again, neither!”
“Bah, yer words is spit, is all,” said another, a large, burly talon that had served as one of Grok’s lieutenants and had been expecting a position of authority once Grok took care of the feeble human.
“Burgle’s tellin’ ye right!” cried yet another. “I seen the room. Bits an’ blood liken a wars was foughted.”
“Proves nothin’!” yelled the lieutenant.
“Then where’s Grok?” Burgle retorted. He turned toward the tower to accentuate his next point. “An’ why’s the Thalasi still sittin’ at home?”
A dozen misshapen talon heads followed Burgle’s gaze to regard the high black wall of Talas-dun.
There would be no more threats to the Black Warlock this day or any day soon.
No use, Reinheiser thought at length. Too many actions are involved in every motion. We cannot hope to synchronize our thought patterns so completely.
Are we doomed, then? replied Thalasi. Doomed in this living hell?
So it would seem.
“No!” This time Thalasi’s reply came out audibly, as his frustration momentarily wrenched the mouth to his sole possession. Reinheiser recovered quickly, before Thalasi could utter any more words without obstruction.
Get out! Thalasi’s will demanded. The muscles of the torn body heaved to action again, took up their fight.
Reinheiser’s reply caught Thalasi completely out of sorts. Always before, Reinheiser had met the challenge with equal vigor, demanding that Thalasi get out and return the corporeal body to its rightful owner. This time, though, Reinheiser issued no challenges or demands.
Are we to endure the agony of our battle again? Reinheiser asked calmly.
The will of Thalasi relented, and the body slumped back to the stone chair. It felt so good, he lamented.
The power, added Reinheiser. Never have I felt such power!
But how? Thalasi wondered.
Defense, answered Reinheiser. The critical moment, it would seem, incited emotions too powerful for the discord of our wills. The critical moment brought us harmony.
Harmony, Thalasi mused. Yes, and how wonderful it was. A moment later he sent the word back to Reinheiser once again, this time as a question. Harmony?
Reinheiser did not understand, though he sensed from Thalasi’s growing excitement that an idea had suddenly occurred to his counterpart.
Harmony, Thalasi thought again, more insistently. Music.
What do you mean?
Thalasi wasn’t sure if he was grasping at straws, if in his desperation false hopes were floating through his mind. Music, harmony.
Still Reinheiser did not understand.
There is a place in the loft of the central tower, Thalasi explained. A place where emotion overrides conscious thought. Help me, I beg you, to get our broken body there.
Reinheiser shut his thoughts off from Thalasi for a long moment, considering the possibilities of his counterpart’s vague hints. Was this just another one of Morgan Thalasi’s devious tricks? Was there a weapon up in this loft, a magic unknown to him, Reinheiser, that Thalasi could use to drive his will from his own body, to fully possess the mortal form they both now inhabited?
Help me! Thalasi pleaded. We must attain harmony; I must feel that surge of power again.
The lure was simply too great, and the alternative too grim, for Reinheiser to decline. Slowly, painfully, the body rose from the throne and stumbled to the door.
Dozens of yellow talon eyes fixed upon the crawling progress of the Black Warlock, wondering how one so obviously feeble could exude such unspeakable pow
er. But if they needed any reminders to keep them in line as the dual being that was the new Black Warlock inched his pitiful way across the stone floor of Talas-dun, all they had to do was glance through the open doors of the Throne Room.
To the gory puddle that had once been Grok.
Chapter 2
The Dance of Rhiannon
FAR FROM THE gloom of Kored-dul, winter’s last sunset sparkled across the sylvan boughs of magical Avalon. The forest teemed with life, shaking off the sleepy mantle of the snowy months in a burst of joyful vitality. Songbirds heralded the end of the day, and the animals of the night stirred in their quiet dens.
A chill wind blew down from the Crystal Mountains, a reminder of the season past, but its bite was not so sharp. Spring had come early to the wood this year.
Near the eastern borders of the great forest, in a wide field protected from the north winds by walls of towering evergreens, a young woman watched the darkening sky breathlessly for the first starlight. And when it twinkled into view, she smiled in contentment and broke into her carefree dance, the dance of Rhiannon.
“Be knowing that me eyes are better for seeing such a sight,” said Bellerian, the venerable Ranger Lord. He stood off to the side of the field, under the boughs of a wide pine.
The wizard Ardaz, gray-haired and with a bristling beard, sniffled and wiped the wetness from his eyes, drawing an exchange of smiles between Bellerian and the third person in the group, a woman of beauty beyond the realm of mortals. “Me brother’s a sentimental sort,” Brielle explained to the Ranger Lord.
“Twenty!” Ardaz cried. “Just a day, I know it was just a day ago that I held the little babe in my arms. Look at her now! A woman! I do dare say!”
“Twenty years might not seem as much to the likes o’ a wizard and witch,” Brielle replied. “Suren the time has brought me girl to womanhood, but it has not touched us at all.”
“Yer fortunes,” Bellerian grumbled lightheartedly, stretching a creak out of his aging back. “Me wish it be that the turnin’ clock’d leave me bones alone.”
“Just a baby,” Ardaz went on, too caught up in his nostalgia to hear the words of his companions.
Brielle winked at Bellerian and moved out to join her daughter. The Ranger Lord started to follow, but Ardaz, understanding what would come next, held him back.
And then the mother, the witch of the wood, joined her daughter in dancing. Their graceful movements, heightened by the mysterious flow of gossamer gowns—white for Brielle, black for Rhiannon—caught the essence of the forest night and translated its beauty into an art that the eyes of those less knowledgeable in the ways of the sylvan world could understand. For watching Brielle and Rhiannon was to watch the dance of the earth in all its glory, an ancient dance, older than the race of man. The dance of life itself.
They twirled and crossed, rising up high into the air and floating to gentle landings that did not even bend the blades of newly sprouting grass under their bare feet. So alike they seemed, in spirit and body, but if Brielle, with her shining golden locks and sparkling green eyes, was the light of day, then Rhiannon was the mystery of night. Black hair rolled across her shoulders as she spun, soft as the moonlight and impossibly thick. But even if it fell across the porcelain features of her fair face, it could not dim the light in her eyes, the palest blue but with a depth that belied the lightness of color.
Bellerian and Ardaz could only watch silently, entranced as the witch and her daughter continued their dance. The hugest and clumsiest of dragons could have crashed through the forest to stand right behind them and they would not have sensed its presence.
And then, after a long while that seemed too short for the onlookers, Brielle leaped in a twirl and froze in her landing, arms wide and eyes unblinking. Rhiannon spun a full circuit around her, coming to a stop in a similar posture, facing her mother and staring into Brielle’s green eyes, staring into her soul.
Inches apart stood mother and daughter, finding the truest serenity in their bond.
“If my life now found its end, I would surely die a contented soul,” came a voice from the side when the mystical moment began to wane, and out from the boughs walked Arien Silverleaf, the King of the Elves, with a brown-skinned man at his side. They crossed the field to join the witch and her daughter.
“My greetings to you, Mistress of Avalon,” the noble elf greeted Brielle. “Blessed are we to be invited to the beauty of your realm.” He bowed low and sincerely.
Ardaz and Bellerian walked out to join the gathering. “Splendid,” cried the gray-bearded wizard. “Then we are all here. Oh, we are, we are indeed! I do so enjoy a party! I do, I do! What fun would life be without them, after all?”
“And glad I am that ye could come to celebrate me daughter’s birthday,” said Brielle. She paused and smiled when she took note of Billy Shank, the man at Arien’s side, his mouth frozen in a silent whistle, his eyes wide and glazed as he looked upon Rhiannon, the legacy of his dearest friend, for the first time in almost two decades.
Brielle brushed her hand across her daughter’s forehead, pushing back the thick mane. Rhiannon kept her eyes to the ground—not an impolite posture, but rather, an embarrassed one. So at home among the creatures of the forest, the young woman was not accustomed to human visitors.
“This is Billy Shank,” Brielle said to her. “The others ye know. He was a friend o’ yer father’s, a friend dear and true.”
Rhiannon peeked out of the corner of her eye at Ardaz, her uncle Rudy, and found courage in his assuring smile. Then she looked at Billy, and found only friendship reflecting back at her from his dark eyes. He was passing middle age and a bit round in the belly now, with flecks of silver in his black hair. But the wrinkles that creased the edges of his mouth and eyes all turned up to smile at her, and even Rhiannon’s profound shyness could not dispute such sincere friendship.
“Me thanks to ye,” the daughter of the witch whispered. “To ye all, for coming to me party.” Her voice grew louder as she spoke, gaining confidence in the knowledge that she was among only friends.
Ardaz bounded over to her and kissed her noisily on the cheek. “And our thanks to you, dear girl!” he cried.
“For what?”
The wizard’s laugh erupted and then ended suddenly. “Why, for everything! And for nothing at all, I do dare say!” He lifted her in his arms and spun her around.
And thus the party began.
Arien, Ardaz, and Bellerian had come to the magical forest in great anticipation this night. They had joined in such celebrations before and knew that they would not be disappointed, could never be disappointed, by an evening spent with the fair ladies of Avalon. But for Billy Shank the night was especially wonderful. He had been to Avalon on several occasions, but this was the first time he truly appreciated the sweetness of the enchanted forest, the primordial magic that marked this place above all others in the world.
An oaken table was brought to the field, and a feast of cakes and fruit, and of water as crystalline as the stars on a clear and moonless night and bringing a tingling chill that invigorated the body yet somehow warmed the soul, was set before them. But if the meal was wondrous, the manner in which it was served stole Billy’s breath altogether.
Birds flew down from the trees, clutching golden plates and chalices in their claws; a great buck emerged from the trees, jugs of drink swinging with its strides from the many points of its majestic antlers; and a huge bear brought the dinner tray.
Laughter erupted from all assembled at the sight of Billy’s shocked expression when the bear set a place before him and then squatted down beside him for its own feast. Only a moment later a gigantic owl swooped down from the trees and landed on Billy’s shoulder. It cocked its head, stared, only an inch from Billy’s wide eyes, and hooted out, “Who?”
And the merriment erupted again, Billy joining in this time. Brielle slapped her daughter playfully on the shoulder. “Ye told the bird to do that,” she scolded.
R
hiannon bit her lip and turned away, sobbing with laughter.
Ardaz heard the comment. He continued to laugh, but secretly pondered the implications of his sister’s words. Rhiannon told the bird? Was she, then, blessed like her mother?
By the time the meal was finished, Billy and the bear had become great friends—though the bear kept sticking its paw into the honey on Billy’s plate—to the continued merriment of them all. Rhiannon, more comfortable with each passing second, grabbed the hand of Arien. “Dance with me,” she begged, a plea the elf-king had no intention of ignoring.
And they danced and sang, all of them, and the animals and the forest itself joined in their song. They called to the stars and were answered; they whispered to an unseen loon and heard its long, mournful cry in response.
And when the night had passed its midpoint, a bright light, colored as a rainbow, appeared in the middle of the field, near the table. Ardaz and the others looked at Brielle, but the witch had no answers for them.
The light spun and swirled and took on a vaguely humanoid shape. Then it was gone, and where it had been stood a white-bearded man, his face wizened with age, his old bent body bedecked in a flowing white robe and the pointed cap of a mage.
“Istaahl!” Brielle and Ardaz cried in unison.
“I see that I am late,” the White Mage of Pallendara, the great human settlement far to the south, said with a bow. “My many apologies.”
“But ye said ye could not be attendin’,” Brielle replied.
“Yes, for it is the celebration of the equinox in Pallendara, you know.” He winked at the others. “But mortal men simply do not know how to throw a proper party. Most of them are already snoring comfortably in their beds.
“Or in someone else’s bed,” he whispered and winked as if he had revealed some great secret.
Rhiannon blushed and looked away, and Ardaz snickered in amusement.
“But the night is only half through,” Brielle said, casting him a stern glance that reminded him to keep his bawdy remarks to himself in the presence of her innocent daughter.
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