"And to yerself," Brielle replied, and then she moved away from the small clearing, seeking a hillock that would show her the sunset beyond the western plains.

Rhiannon labored all through the afternoon tending to those freshly wounded in the day's skirmishes and those still healing from the days before. With each soothing charm the young witch grew more at ease with the magical energy flowing through her body. Its course ran smooth and straight, hardly disrupting the normal rhythms of Rhiannon's own life force.

But whenever Rhiannon's thoughts turned dark, to the gorge she had carved into the plain or to the b.l.o.o.d.y battles on the bridges, the magic fluctuated and burned, threatening to overwhelm her in a pit of possession so very deep that she doubted she could ever climb out.

Around her there remained enough blatant, brutal suffering for Rhiannon to ignore those dark urges, though, and concentrate on her healing.

More than a hundred miles to the north, Brielle sent her perceptions into the untainted soil of Avalon and sensed the subtle vibrations of her daughter's work. She feared for Rhiannon, though she trusted implicitly in the young woman's good sense and resourcefulness.

Brielle hoped that only she, so attuned to the emanations of Rhiannon, could feel the budding power in the young witch; certainly Thalasi would be quick to strike if he learned that yet another magic-user was growing to power against him.

The vibrations from Rhiannon's magic rang stronger to Brielle this day, clearer and purer, and the Emerald Witch was pleased that Rhiannon would soon come into her full strength. But the elder witch knew, too, the pain that inevitably accompanied the acquisition of such power. She wanted to fly out right then to the south and scoop Rhiannon up in her protective arms, but she had to trust her daughter, now a young woman and no more a girl. If Rhiannon wanted, or needed, to come home, she would. And if she did not return to Avalon, Brielle had to a.s.sume that some more important duty kept her away.

Then a wicked jolt rocked Brielle back on her heels, a discordant tw.a.n.ging in the song of the earth that brutally reminded her of her own duties. Only Morgan Thalasi could disrupt the earth song so wickedly, and either the Black Warlock's power had grown exponentially during the course of the day...

...or he was very close.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" the Black Warlock hissed, a taunt from a child's game of another world. He stood now, confident and arrogant, on the western border of Avalon. Seeing no answer to his call forthcoming, he sent another searing line of fire into the thick boughs, and the flames leaped higher into the evening sky.

"Oh, do come out and play, Brielle!" he shouted, his tone a mocking whine. "I do so hate to play all by myse-"

A blast of wind exploded out of the forest, smothering the Black Warlock's flames in the blink of an eye and slamming into Thalasi's skinny frame with the force of a hurricane. His cloak whipped out behind him, the folds in his shirt and pants buffeted and tore. But the Black Warlock only smiled and casually held his ground.

And then Brielle appeared on the edge of her domain, surrealistically limned by the first twinklings of the evening's starlight. Even Thalasi had to pause and gape in the face of the stark power of the Emerald Witch, so beautiful and terrible all at once.

"Get ye gone!" Brielle commanded, and Thalasi almost obeyed in spite of himself.

"Pitiful," he snorted instead, masking his initial awe. "I have come to visit; is this how you welcome guests?"

The curious dual tone of the Black Warlock's voice surprised Brielle. "Ye gave up yer right to be calling yerself me guest many centuries ago, Morgan Thalasi," she retorted. She looked curiously at her enemy, wearing the body of Martin Reinheiser. "If that's who ye truly be. And now ye come to me, wrapped in a new coil but smellin' no less foul."

"Morgan Thalasi," the Black Warlock echoed, dipping into a low bow. "That is indeed who we be."

"Then ye've possessed yer lackey," Brielle laughed. "And have ye let Martin Reinheiser remain within, or have ye kicked him out?"

Sudden rage sent a tremble through the Black Warlock's face, as Brielle had suspected: the two spirits were not as completely aligned as Thalasi would have hoped.

"Reinheiser is in here," the Black Warlock began, "and he is not. There is only we, two together in one."

"Two smells for a single stench," the witch mocked.

"Impudent!" Thalasi roared, his bony hands clenching his sides. He composed himself quickly, though, knowing that a calm att.i.tude would be necessary in dealing with Brielle so very near her domain.

"Why have ye come out?" Brielle asked him earnestly. "What do ye hope to be gaining? Suren ye'll kill thousands o' men and talons alike, to yer pleasure. But suren ye'll be driven back as e'er before."

"Not this time," Thalasi countered, his voice a hiss, his eyes angry dots of simmering fire. "I...we are stronger now, Jennifer Glendower. The time has come for Morgan Thalasi to claim the world that is rightfully his."

"Never it is!" Brielle snapped back, equally enraged. "Twice before ye've made the claim; twice before ye've been sent slinking back under yer rock."

"Third time is the charm," Thalasi purred. "This time I will get that which I deserve."

"Ye've long ago been given more than ye deserve," Brielle countered. "Blessings o' the Colonnae upon ye, but did ye put them to rightful use? No, not a one such as yerself! Ye turn the powers for whatever's pleasin' yer whims and with not a care for those around ye."

Rage bubbled inside the hollowed sockets of Thalasi's black eyes. Again his bony hands shook and clenched.

"If ye truly are to get what ye deserve, Morgan Thalasi," Brielle continued, undaunted by the growing volcano that was her enemy, "then me thinking's that ye should be feeling terror."

"You puny..." Thalasi stammered, barely able to spit out the words. "You are nothing more than a sentry, a guardian for powers you cannot begin to understand. You dare to taunt me? Look upon me, Jennifer Glendower. Look upon the G.o.dlike being that is the Black Warlock!"

Brielle's answer, an overripened apple, splatted into Thalasi's face.

His roar bent the mightiest oaks and sent Brielle's golden hair standing out straight behind her. She squinted through the blast to see the Black Warlock polymorph, bending and stretching his form to gigantic proportions.

A dragon.

His inhale sent the trees back over the other way, and the return blast of his breath came out in an explosion of searing fire.

But Brielle was ready for such an obvious attack. She threw her hands out in front of her and called upon the element of water. A geyser erupted from her fingertips, meeting the dragon breath halfway between the combatants in a snarling hiss of harmless steam. Still Thalasi breathed his fire, and still Brielle's water gushed forth to beat it back.

Even dragons run out of breath.

He was Thalasi again, in human form, soaking wet and with wisps of steam trailing out of his nose and mouth. "You have survived only the first round," he promised, and he clapped his hands together, sending a shower of sparks flying into the night air about him.

Feeling the sudden collection of his power, Brielle burst into her own somatic gestures, waving her arms in a circular motion in front of her.

Thalasi's lightning bolt thundered in, but Brielle's conjured mirror blocked its path and sent it back toward its caster.

As soon as he loosed the bolt, Thalasi had set up a defensive pattern of his own, and the lightning bolt found yet another enchanted mirror blocking its path. It ricocheted back and forth between the two magic users, seeming no more than a singular cracking light until its energy dissipated in a shower of harmless sparks.

Blind anger launched Thalasi's next attack; if he had taken the time to think, he never would have used this particular method. A black vine lined with rows of cruel thorns dripping poison rocketed out of the ground and rolled out menacingly toward Brielle.

The witch laughed and snapped her fingers in response to the spell. "Ye mean to use me own earth against me?" she asked incredulously. The vine still came on, but Brielle accepted it.

For soft flowers now bloomed where the thorns had been, and the stem's sickly color now showed bright in vibrant green. It encircled the witch, a triumphant wreath.

And now it was Brielle's turn to attack. She lifted her hands into the air, and the gra.s.s around the Black Warlock responded by growing to the height of the man, each blade reaching in to entwine him with razorlike edges.

"d.a.m.n you!" Thalasi roared, and a ring of fire started around his feet and swept out in a wide arc, destroying Brielle's gra.s.s.

Brielle struck again even before her enemy's fires had completed their work. She pointed a single finger at the ground under Thalasi's feet and spoke a word of doom. The hard ground became mud, and the Black Warlock dropped in and disappeared from sight.

Brielle replaced her finger with a clenched fist, and the ground returned to its previous solid state. Then the witch waited cautiously. She may have humiliated the Black Warlock, but she did not believe for a minute that her simple trick had destroyed him.

A rumble under her feet confirmed her belief.

The ground exploded into man-sized divots, and Thalasi, a dragon once again, roared up into the air. His fiery breath came on, its fury tenfold. But again Brielle met it with a thick and unrelenting spray of water.

And so it went, back and forth for many minutes, each magic-user a.s.suming various forms or manipulating the environment to strike out, and the other inevitably countering with appropriate and cunning defensive actions.

And then they were both in their human forms again, facing each other and gasping too hard for breath even to shout out further insults. Thalasi slammed his bony hands together, and the lightning crackled and built.

Brielle put up her mirror in time, and Thalasi created his before the bolt came thundering back. But this time neither would let the charge dissipate. It was time, they both understood, to finally determine who was stronger. Brielle added a second bolt to the dizzying volley, Thalasi a third. Back and forth the lightning crackled, every circuit exacting a toll upon each of the defensive shields.

Brielle stood resolute, drawing on Avalon for further power. Thalasi, though, so far from Talas-dun, his bastion of strength, eventually began to weaken. The witch recognized the waver in his defensive field, and she added yet another blast on the very next rebound.

The darkness of the night was stolen away in the instant of the explosion; the ground rumbled as far away as the talon and human encampments across the Four Bridges, and up in the Crystal Mountains, where the elves were preparing their march. And when the smoke cleared, the Black Warlock sat on his b.u.t.t, many feet back from where he had begun the encounter, his clothes burned and smoldering.

"You have not seen the last of me!" he cried in defiance. He slammed his fists on the ground, sending two cracks in the earth rushing out toward the Emerald Witch. Brielle easily halted the charge of the gorge, but when she looked back after casting her countering spell, the Black Warlock was gone. She spotted him high in the distance, in dragon form again, flying far away off to the north.

Brielle turned her attention back to her forest, and to the blackened, savaged oak tree that had absorbed the brunt of the Black Warlock's initial a.s.sault on the wood. The witch stroked the charred bark tenderly, hearing the painful mourn of the great tree's death throes. For centuries it had stood, one of the cornerstones of Avalon, one of the very first trees nurtured by the magics of Brielle. It had performed its task to perfection, pulling in the wrath of the Black Warlock, accepting the a.s.sault of flames with its wide branches so that other, younger trees might escape the devastation.

And the oak had paid with its life.

Brielle remained with the tree until it cracked apart, sending a renewed shower of sparks flying into the air, and toppled with a heavy crash onto the open field beyond the forest's thick borders.

The witch had won her confrontation with Thalasi, but the effort had cost her dearly, in strength and in the scars that would linger for many years on this edge of the forest. And the battle had unsettled Brielle as well, for she knew, and no doubt Thalasi knew, too, that if they had met in combat anywhere other than Avalon, the very heart of Brielle's powers, the outcome would surely have been different.

The only weakness the witch had detected in the Black Warlock was the subtle discord between the two spirits inhabiting the single being. But this gave Brielle no cause for hope; what remained of the individual spirits of Martin Reinheiser and Morgan Thalasi seemed diminutive and was likely fading away quickly. The bond between the spirits would only strengthen, Brielle supposed, and when the joining of the two was truly completed, the resulting being would be even more formidable.

She must take care not to turn her back on that one for even an instant.

Especially over the next few hours. For Thalasi had gone north, not back to his talons in the south. Brielle could guess his destination easily enough. Beyond the northern ridge of Avalon, in a box canyon, loomed the foulness of Blackamara, a tangled, evil swamp. Thalasi would find solace in that pit of perversion as surely as Brielle gathered her strength in Avalon. And within the dark gloom of Blackamara, the Black Warlock would be virtually untouchable while he recuperated.

Brielle slumped heavily against an unharmed elm, asking the earth to give her still more power this dark night. She needed to rest, but she knew that she could not. Thalasi lurked but a few short miles away, and her forest had to be defended by magical wards in case the Black Warlock decided to pay another visit on his way back to the southland.

With a last look to the dead oak, Brielle gritted her teeth and started off along Avalon's borders, determined that Morgan Thalasi would not catch her or her forest unawares ever again.

Chapter 15.

The Staff of Death STILL ENCASED IN the body of a dragon, the Black Warlock slammed through the thick canopy of Blackamara, tearing vines and splintering limbs, and swooped down to the swamp's muddy ground in a furious rush. the body of a dragon, the Black Warlock slammed through the thick canopy of Blackamara, tearing vines and splintering limbs, and swooped down to the swamp's muddy ground in a furious rush.

"Never again!" he roared, and the sound of his dragon voice echoed off the high cliff walls surrounding the swamp, shook the trees in Avalon to the south, and sent an alert running through the encampment of the elves who had gathered on the field of Mountaingate.

Then Thalasi walked as a man again, startled by his own outburst. He did not know how much strength Brielle had left to her, but he didn't think it prudent to so blatantly announce his whereabouts. He stalked through the dark, twisting boughs, taking no heed of the snakes and poisonous spiders and darker things that roamed the gloom of the Blackamara night.

New trees did not grow in this swamp, and the fetid water rarely shifted. Little had changed in the twenty years since the Black Warlock had walked through here, and after a few minutes he began to recognize some of the paths. He followed their winding course up to the base of the high eastern wall, and then south a short distance. Bones of hundreds of victims, man and horse, who had fallen over the cliff during the infamous Battle of Mountaingate, littered the region, but the Black Warlock knew exactly where to look, and soon he had found the open grave of an old companion.

"Ah, Captain Mitch.e.l.l," he whispered, bending low to consider the skull and jumble of bones, relieved to find them fairly intact. Thalasi wanted to go after the spirit right then, to relieve his embarra.s.sment over the defeat he had suffered by bringing forth the commander who would lead his army to victory. But little remained of the Black Warlock's power; Brielle had taken everything he had to throw at her. He could not hope to cast such a powerful enchantment in his present state, and he realized that if he truly wished to regain his strength, the sun would rise and ride across to the western sky before he again opened his eyes.

"A curse upon that witch," he spat, wondering how his talon army would fare throughout the next day without his guidance and protection. Would Brielle recover faster than he? And what of Istaahl; would the White Mage sense his absence and use the advantage to strike out against the wizardless army?

He shook the thoughts from his head. Even if the talons were scattered by the forces-magical and otherwise-of his enemies, the cost would be worth the gain. Thalasi knew now that he could not possibly hope to break through to the eastern fields without a trusted general guiding the movements of the army. "And you," Thalasi growled, holding the skull up before his dark eyes, "shall be that general."

And then he was off, back toward the very heart of Blackamara, which was manifested in the form of a gigantic black willow tree. He knew the place well, for this embodiment of perversion Morgan Thalasi himself had planted centuries before.

He arrived shortly after dawn, seeing the monstrosity in all its evil splendor. The willow loomed a hundred feet in height, its trunk three times the girth of a fat man, and was supported by a root system so vast that its underground tendrils reached out to the perimeters of the swamp. Naught but evil could fester above those black roots, transforming, perverting, the pureness and health of the earth into a foul and wicked thing. All around beyond the boundaries of Blackamara the land was a tribute to the majesty and beauty of nature-the northern fringes of Avalon were only a mile or so to the south-but within the borders of the swamp, on the ground tainted by the roots of Thalasi's black tree, the power of the earth had become something sinister indeed.

Brielle and Ardaz had joined forces and attacked the place once, many centuries before. They had sent their magic crashing down upon the swamp, splintering hundreds of trees and tearing the spoiled ground asunder. But the black willow had survived, too entrenched to be displaced even by so powerful an attack, and the swamp had only grown up again, thicker and more evil than before.

Thalasi viewed the tree now and was comforted. He found a nook in the ma.s.sive trunk and curled up to sleep, using the skull of Hollis Mitch.e.l.l as his pillow.

All through the day, the black willow sent its power flowing into the weary body of its creator, and when Thalasi awoke, the sun low in the western sky, he felt stronger than he had the previous day, even before he had tangled with the Emerald Witch.

He stroked the tree gently, his child, then climbed onto the lowest branches. "Awake, heart of Blackamara," he called softly. "The master is come; the master needs your help."

The tree rustled quietly though no breeze blew through its widespread branches. Thalasi's evil smile widened. He spoke again to the willow, louder, using the arcane tongue of the wizards. Enchantish, it was called, and when employed by the other wizards of Ynis Aielle, its many multisyllabic words and tight phrases normally rolled out in a melodic chant speaking to the harmony of the universe. But from the mouth of the Black Warlock, enchantish sounded an evil and harsh language indeed, the croak of demons and ghouls, the discord that offended the purity of the natural world.

But no less powerful came the tw.a.n.ging chanting of Morgan Thalasi. He was a master of the third school of magic, a school that did not ask but rather demanded cooperation from the powers of the universe. Each cracking syllable sent a thrilled shudder through the trunk of the black tree.

He chanted for over an hour, running through a ritual he had devised many years before but had never needed to attempt. Certainly any encounter with the realm of the dead would not be without risk.

The willow answered the Black Warlock's call with the fall of a broken branch, about five feet long and three or four inches in diameter. Thalasi scooped the gift up in his hands, sensing the power the tree had put into it.

"Serpent!" the Black Warlock commanded, and the dark wood became a venomous viper writhing across Thalasi's skinny wrists and forearms. The serpent head wriggled to within an inch of the Black Warlock's face, and he blew into it gently, soothing the enchanted beast.

He knew what he must do now, though any conscious thought of the act surely sent a shiver running through his spine. Yet this being that he had become was much more than mortal man, he knew, so he tilted his head to the side, offering his bared neck to the serpentine gift of the black willow.

The snake coiled and struck, sinking its venom-dripping fangs deep into Thalasi's neck. But the snake had not bitten in any attempt to inject its killing poison-and the poison would have had little effect on the likes of the Black Warlock anyway. Instead the snake's vampiric fangs drew out the lifeblood of Thalasi, sent the potent fluids of the Black Warlock into the thing that would become his magical staff. As Thalasi felt his strength draining away, his knees buckled under him, but still he held the serpent close, giving it every ounce of power he could spare.

He would regain his strength in time, but that which he gave to the staff would be eternal.

And when it was over, sometime later, the snake became a broken branch again, though now its surface shone with ebony smoothness and its length verily vibrated with evil power. Holding, cradling, the wicked thing, Thalasi recovered his strength quickly. They were joined, blood in blood, he and his staff, his extension of perversion.

The Staff of Death.

"Greetings, my lost friend," Thalasi said to Mitch.e.l.l's skull. He tapped the object with his staff, and a red light appeared in each of the empty sockets.

"Good," murmured the Black Warlock. "You have heard my call. How do you find the realm of the dead, Hollis Mitch.e.l.l?"

"That is not for the ears of the living," came a distant reply, as much empathic as audible.

"Of course," said Thalasi. "Perhaps we can talk more when you have arrived."

"Arrived?" The voice reflected concern. "Leave the dead in their sleep, Martin Reinheiser. Especially ones who owe you a wicked debt. I have not forgotten your treachery; eternity itself will not erase my anger!"

"Reinheiser?" chuckled the Black Warlock. "But that is only part of the being you will face. Sleep again, Hollis Mitch.e.l.l," he said, and he tapped the top of the skull once more, extinguishing the red dots of light. "And know that when you awaken to walk in the world of the living, you will be the slave of Morgan Thalasi."

Thalasi dropped the skull into a deep pocket of his robe and clenched his staff tightly. He conjured an image of Mitch.e.l.l's grave below the cliff face, every detail coming into clearer and clearer focus as he deepened his concentration. And then the Black Warlock stepped through his thoughts, walked a mental bridge back to the remaining pile of Mitch.e.l.l's bones.