“I found him, and his friend-who is now deceased,” Mitchell explained, his chuckle unnerving even the Black Warlock. “They had camped along the banks of the river, offering an opportunity for pleasure I could not bypass.”
“So you crossed and attacked them.”
“And I would have had both of them if that damned witch and her flying horse hadn’t saved Belexus.”
Thalasi slammed his palms together, releasing a jolt of black energy that blasted the wraith to the ground in a heap. Mitchell looked up at the master, fearful respect in his flaming eyes for the first time. He thought himself a doomed and damned thing at that moment, as surely as he had seen his doom when Reinheiser had revealed himself as the new Black Warlock at the bottom of the cliff in Blackamara those twenty years before.
“You revealed yourself to them,” Thalasi scolded, but he was calm again, his outrage quickly dissipating as he tried to salvage his plans. “Brielle knows who you are, what you are, and now she will direct attacks against you. I had hoped to reveal you in the final battle over the river, to let King Benador and the others discover their doom even as it fell upon them.”
Mitchell floated to his feet. “They won’t stop us,” he declared. “Maybe I should not have crossed, but the thought of catching Belexus, of stealing him so easily from the Calvan effort! I did not forget what that one did at the Battle of Mountaingate. With his strength and his leadership he can sway a battle as surely as an entire brigade of skilled warriors.”
“True enough,” the Black Warlock admitted. “The Four Bridges would surely have fallen on the first assault if it had not been for his efforts. The Calvans rally around him, throw themselves in the path of spears aimed for him.”
“His friend, that other ranger, Andovar, is dead,” Mitchell said, his evil smile returning. “And Belexus is wounded-perhaps he, too, is dead by now. I doubt that he will rejoin the battle anytime soon.”
“Do not underestimate the healing powers of Brielle and her forest,” Thalasi warned grimly, but he was also wearing an evil smile upon his face. The notion that his wraith had sent the mighty son of Bellerian running in fright amused him profoundly, so much so that he wasn’t certain if the cost had been too high.
“I shall make you another steed,” he said to the wraith. “But later, when I have the time. You are here now, and you must meet with the talon commanders at once and take immediate command of the army. Summer is slipping from us, and I mean to get to the walls of Pallendara before the first snow.”
“We should cross the bridges this week,” Mitchell agreed.
“Perhaps,” replied Thalasi. “But we have many tasks before us.”
“Boats,” Mitchell said.
Thalasi considered the option and nodded, pleased that Mitchell was so quickly formulating the plans they would need. “I must leave the mechanics of crossing the river to your judgment,” he explained. “It is my task to discern the best way to defeat the witch and Istaahl in Pallendara, or at least hold them at bay. And I must find you the tools to defeat Ardaz, for he has not yet shown himself, but I do not doubt that he shall.”
“Then make me the tools,” Mitchell replied, still grinning. “And worry about the wizard and the wretched witch. I will have the army ready to cross, and at their lead, I will see to the destruction of the Calvan forces.”
“Among them, only Ardaz can stand against you,” Thalasi declared with all confidence. “And together, we will take care of that one.”
Andovar reached out to her, hopelessly begging her to save him. And Rhiannon reached back, stretched her arms out across the misty barrier to catch the doomed man.
But even as her fingers neared the ranger, the cold blackness of death fell over him in an opaque veil so final that even Rhiannon’s magic could not penetrate it. The young witch screamed again and again, crying out in hopeless denial.
And Andovar screamed back, a distant cry falling, ever falling, away from Rhiannon.
Away from the world of the living.
Her breath came in loud gasps; the streaked sweat on her forehead loomed stark in the thin moonlight.
And Bryan was by her side. “A dream,” he whispered into her ear. “Only a dream.”
Rhiannon looked at him for support, took comfort in his touch as though it was some kind of material litany against her inability to grasp the pleading hands of Andovar.
But even as the young witch began to separate the dream from the reality about her, she realized that something was wrong. “Evil,” she said to Bryan’s concerned look. “There be great evil about this night.”
Bryan glanced around, suddenly back on the alert. One hand went to his sheathed sword.
“Not here,” Rhiannon assured him. She let her sixth sense, her witching sense, guide her eyes back to the east and the north, to the talon encampment.
Bryan did not miss the direction of Rhiannon’s gaze.
“What happened?” he asked.
Rhiannon shrugged. “An ally of the Black Warlock?” she asked as much as answered. “Some great and powerful evil has entered the battlefield.” She groped for words to explain her vague sensations. “Me heart sees a blackness.”
Bryan considered her comments and their present position. They had moved deeper into the mountains, but the half-elf knew paths that would get them back to the north-easternmost slopes overlooking the battlefield in merely two or three days. “Do you wish to go back there?” he asked.
Rhiannon wasn’t certain how she might help against whatever was causing this insistent, frightening sensation, or what her role in such a large-scale battle might be. But she felt it her duty to go back to the field, as though somehow fate demanded that she be in attendance when the Black Warlock made his move.
“I must,” she said to Bryan.
Bryan didn’t try to argue. He, too, wondered what his final place in all of this might be. He had carved a fine niche thus far, but when all was over, his contribution to the overall effort would not be so dramatic, particularly if the Black Warlock proved victorious.
“We will set out in the morning,” he agreed. “But for now, get some sleep. The trails ahead will not be easy marching.”
Rhiannon squeezed his arm in thanks, then slipped back to her blanket bed. But she would find no more sleep that night, not with the vision of Andovar falling into darkness so clear in her thoughts.
And not with her suspicion that this evil she now sensed was somehow connected to Andovar’s death.
The talons were no more comfortable around the wraith of Mitchell than they were around the Black Warlock himself. But like Thalasi, Mitchell incited more than enough terror in the beasts to persuade them to follow his every command. He met with the leaders that very night and laid the groundwork for the effort needed to get them across the river.
When the bright summer sun climbed into the sky the next morning, the wraith took shelter under the thick folds of a tent. But the 268talons went to work, organizing their troops into divisions and setting them about the tasks that General Mitchell had outlined.
Across the river, King Benador and his commanders watched with growing concern as all of the wood the talons could gather-deserted wagons, walls of buildings, even uprooted trees-was brought to the northern corner of the encampment.
“It seems that our enemies have found some direction to their meandering ways,” the King remarked to an adviser at his side.
The other man scanned the entirety of the camp, his eyes falling on battle formations that several groups of talons were practicing. “The wedge,” he remarked pointedly, surprised that the untrained things even knew of such advanced tactics. “We might find them better prepared the next time they decide to storm the bridges.”
“A few days of practice.” Benador shrugged. “It will not stand up against the lifelong dedication of the Warders of the White Walls. Alas for the talons, the result will be the same.”