Bastion of Darkness (3 page)

“Few?” Clouster barked. “Few! Why, ten thousand got away, and there’s probably another fifty thousand still out there, waiting to come in. And don’t you forget the Black Warlock. He was thrown down to be sure—I saw that with my own eyes, and a beautiful sight it was indeed!—but often’s been the times we’ve thought him dead, only to see his ugly face arise once more!

“No, my friends, this war’s not yet won. Not yet. Not until we chase the damned talons all the way back to Mysmal Swamp, all the way to Talas-dun and pull the damned place down around them.”

The mere mention of Talas-dun, the black fortress, the heart of Morgan Thalasi, sent a shudder coursing down the spines of the brothers. They glanced at each other nervously, silently agreeing that poor old Clouster had lost his wits. Truly the men loved their king, good Benador of the line of Ben-Rin, restored to the throne after the
fall of Ungden the Usurper at the Battle of Mountaingate. Truly Benador had given all of Calva back its pride and hope for the future, had secured an alliance with the rangers of Avalon and even with the Moon Dancers, the elves of Illuma. Yes, they each loved Benador, and would gladly take an arrow aimed for the king’s breast, but neither entertained any notion of following the king to Talas-dun. Not that.

Not ever.

“You’ve gone daft, poor Clouster,” the first brother, the older of the pair, said. “We’ll win back the western fields, to Corning and beyond, perhaps even to the eastern edge of Mysmal, but no further: not to the coast, and certainly not to the Kored-dul! I’ve no desire to ever see the likes of black Talas-dun.”

“Ah, but it does seem a wondrous place,” an unfamiliar voice said from the side of their small camp, just on the edge of the firelight. At that moment, the dog raised his hackle and growled, white teeth gleaming in the firelight. “A place to seem as the fitting throne-seat of all the world,” the deep resonating voice continued.

The brothers gained their feet quickly, swords drawn, standing beside Clouster, who held a throwing dagger in each hand. Of the group, Clouster was the most concerned, for he couldn’t understand why his dog, Yostrol, a trusted companion for several years, hadn’t noted the approach long before the man, or whatever it might be lurking in the shadows, got so close. The three couldn’t get a good view of the speaker from this vantage point, but they knew, at least, that he was no talon. He was too large, much too large, for that, and his voice did not have the guttural croak of the wicked race, but sounded human, though perhaps more resonant than usual, a deep and commanding baritone.

Yostrol trembled then, growling and whining all at
once, a reaction Clouster had never before witnessed. Clearly the dog was afraid, terrified, yet Clouster had seen this brave companion go at a thousand-pound bear with hardly a thought, and had watched the dog rip up talon after talon in the fight for the river three months before.

“State your name and business,” the older brother demanded.

The speaker held his distance and chuckled softly, an unnerving sound indeed.

“We can kill without fear of retribution,” the younger brother remarked. “On word of the king—”

“Not my king,” said the intruder.

“Benador is king to all!” the youngest man cried defiantly.

“Not my king,” the intruder said again.

Clouster let go the leash, a movement that eager Yostrol would usually take as a signal to attack. Amazingly, though, the dog held his ground, even shifted a bit backward, behind his master.

“Who is your king then, if not Benador?” Clouster asked, hoping to clarify things in a proper light, but fearing, given the intruder’s cryptic attitude and the reactions of his dog, that this meeting would end in a bad way. “Arien Silverleaf of Illuma, perhaps? Or Bellerian, lord of rangers?”

“Who is my king?” the intruder echoed, ending with a snort. “A fine question, and one that I must consider.” As he spoke, he moved into the firelight, and all three men gasped in unison at the specter of the wraith of Hollis Mitchell. He was huge and barrel-chested, as Mitchell had been in life, but he was also obviously dead, his skin gray and bloated, blotched by rot, his eyes red dots of flame.

Clouster reached around and grabbed Yostrol and
yanked the dog in front, and the animal, spurred beyond reason, barked and charged.

Hardly considering the action, the wraith flicked his unholy scepter, and the air before it, the air in the dog’s path, filled with black flakes. How Yostrol yelped when he entered that zone, when the flakes of the deadly weapon fell over him, burning his hide, boring through his hide. The dog whined pitifully, turning tight circles, biting at his own burning skin.

Clouster had both his daggers away, and both sailed right into the wraith—and both simply disappeared, as if they had passed right through the monster, or had been somehow absorbed within its blackness.

“Yes, my king,” Mitchell went on, obviously taking no overt notice of the attacks. “Why, I believe that I shall be my own king! Yes, that will do fine.” He looked at the three terrified men and advanced a long step.

“I am King Mitchell,” he declared, then slyly added, “Tell me again, who is your king?”

Clouster never blinked, staring defiantly at the man, looking down only once to see that the poor dog was lying on the ground, panting his last breaths. The two brothers looked to each other desperately, not knowing how to respond.

Clouster spoke for them, though they weren’t sure that he gave the right answer.

“My king is Benador of Pallendara,” the man stated flatly, moving out toward the fire, standing across from the pallid specter. “The true and rightful king, and if you mean to call yourself a king within the borders of lawful Calva, then know that King Benador will surely destroy you.”

Mitchell roared with laughter.

Clouster dove down and grabbed up a burning stick, then thrust it hard at the wraith.

The fire stung, but more than that, Mitchell was wounded by the sheer impudence, the sheer lack of respect. He grabbed the end of the burning brand, clasping it right about the fire, which immediately began to glow a weird, blackish hue.

Clouster cried out and let go of the brand, meaning to flee, but the wraith moved more quickly, striding right through the fire—and it, too, turned that eerie, blackish hue—and grabbing the horrified man by the hand.

How cold was that touch! Clouster cried out in fear and pain and wrenched wildly to break free. Then he saw his doom and shielded himself from the expected shower of burning flakes as Mitchell raised the scepter up high. But now the weapon served Mitchell as a conventional mace, an extension of Mitchell’s wrath, and he brought the weapon down hard on Clouster’s head, shattering the man’s skull into a thousand pieces.

Back a few paces, the two brothers gasped and flinched, showered with flecks of their mentor’s brains. “Run on!” the older cried. “And apart!”

And so they did flee, one running into the darkness to the left, the other straight back, and then to the right. It was the second, the younger of the two, that Mitchell first followed, gaining easily, for while the man stumbled in the darkness, the wraith, a creature of the night, surely did not. And then he was upon the frightened man, who turned and thrust his sword at Mitchell.

And then the man was dead.

With that kill completed, Mitchell tuned his senses to the night around him. He felt the eyes of night animals upon him, creatures huddling in deep holes, their hearts beating furiously as this undead monster passed by. In a few moments, Mitchell sensed a stronger life force, and a greater fear, the fear of a rational creature. Easily tuning
in to that sensation, knowing it to be the remaining man, the wraith took up the pursuit.

Mitchell caught him near to the riverbank, and the horrifying shrieks of those last terrible moments echoed across the way, to the ears of the gathered Calvans, to the ears of King Benador, unnerving them, shaking them to the marrow of their bones. They knew not who or what had made the cries, be it human or talon or some other beast, and they knew not what manner of creature had brought about such terror.

Few on the eastern side of the river slept well that night.

Nor did the wraith, friend of the night, creature of the darkness, sleep. Hollis Mitchell stood quiet on the riverbank, looking across the way at the campfires, barely able to contain the hunger that burned within his bloated form, despite the recent feasting. It was never sated, this hateful desire to destroy and devour. It itched constantly, burning at Mitchell’s belly, tugging at his will.

He controlled it this night, with all those inviting campfires so very close, only by reminding himself of who he was, of who he had been. He had come from the sea, drifting in on a life raft from the destroyed submarine, the
Unicorn
, along with six other men, survivors from another age. Two whose names were long lost to the perverted memory of the evil wraith had died quickly, before ever the party had reached the halls of the angelic Colonnae, before they had discovered the truth of this world, their world, burned in flames and reborn. A third man—the wraith could not remember his name, either—had died in Blackemara, the tangled swamp north of Avalon, the place where Mitchell, too, had died, and where his spirit, a score of years later, had been pulled from the realm of Death and brought back to this world.

The death of the third man had left only four survivors
of the
Unicorn
, and of the two who had sided with the elves in the Battle of Mountaingate, Billy Shank and Jeffrey DelGiudice, Mitchell now knew little. Of the last, Martin Reinheiser, once Mitchell’s friend, then Mitchell’s betrayer, the wraith knew much. Somehow, through some incomprehensible act of magic, Reinheiser had joined in body to become one with Morgan Thalasi, the Black Warlock. The result of that joining, that curious dual being, Reinheiser and Thalasi, had then brought the wraith to the world, to serve as commander of their talon army. And now the Black Warlock was gone from this place, slithering, Mitchell suspected, back to his dark hole at Talas-dun. Mitchell would go there and meet again with this creature, this betrayer, this salvation, this bringer of death and undeath.

And then what?
the wraith wondered. Would he do battle with the Black Warlock? Like all otherworldly beings, creatures living half in the world and half in the realm of Death, surviving only through magic, Mitchell suspected that something was amiss within the realm of the wizard, suspected that the Black Warlock, and the other wizards and the witch of Avalon, as well, if they still lived, were weaker now. Might he then destroy the Black Warlock and take Talas-dun as his own?

The thought surely intrigued him—perhaps he would indeed name himself as a king. Again Mitchell found his focus in the distant memories. He recalled his feelings on the day the survivors of the
Unicorn
had set out from the halls of the Colonnae, across the brown stretches of the desolate land of Brogg. Mitchell had vowed then that he would someday soon rule this world.

Perhaps …

But it was a fantasy for another day, the wraith realized, for those campfires across the way tugged at the
wraith’s incessant hunger, promised him warm blood and flesh.

So there it was, settled in his mind. He meant to rule the world, but now, he understood, was not the time to reveal himself, especially on the other side of the river, where, perhaps, two wizards and a witch worked their magic.

No, not now. That night by the river, the wraith of Hollis Mitchell gained perspective and purpose. And direction. He would go west, not east, to the Kored-dul and the castle Talas-dun. He would confront the Black Warlock—as servant if Thalasi were still the more powerful, as master if not—and from that place of dark strength he would gather his powers and his minions.

The Calvans and their brave King Benador had won the day at the Four Bridges, and the magically swollen river was indeed an impressive barrier, but the war was not over, the wraith decided then and there.

Not at all.

He found a dark hole before the sun came up; he was on the road west soon after it had set.

“O
NLY SIX,” THE
warrior muttered quietly as he stalked down the forested hillside on the western borders of Avalon. “Only six.” He wasn’t speaking to bolster his confidence as he approached the half dozen talons butchering the deer they had just slain. While lesser warriors might have needed such soothing words, or might have simply turned about and run away from half a dozen talons, this one’s words sounded as an honest lament that there were merely six of the creatures to stand against him.

“Six, six.” He spat, and then he called in an even louder voice, so that the talons surely heard him. “Where are all yer stinking friends?”

The creatures came up from the deer carcass, dancing all about, falling all over each other. They should have fanned out, forming a semicircle about this lone figure stalking them through the morning mist; they should have formed a defensive alignment, seeking any other humans that might be about; they should have set a line based on the strength of each, and which sidekicks best complement. They should have done many things, but talons were neither very bright nor very brave, and each glanced nervously at another, as if hoping to use its companion as a shield should the need arise to flee.