"But you are right," Thalasi went on, calming again. "And I commend your work with the talons."

"We will sweep the Calvans from the bridges," Mitch.e.l.l promised. "And chase them all the way back to Pallendara."

"You understand the purpose of your undead legions?" Thalasi asked.

The wraith nodded, that evil smile spreading over his dark features. "I will hold them in reserve," he replied. "And when the battle reaches a critical moment, I will lead them in."

"The northernmost bridge," Thalasi said. "That is the one I enchanted in that past age. Its enchantment is strong; it will not be destroyed."

Mitch.e.l.l nodded his a.s.sent. "And when-if-the wizard Ardaz appears to halt me? Have you prepared my weapon?"

Thalasi reached under the folds of his black robes and produced the wraith's skull-headed mace. Mitch.e.l.l felt it vibrating with dark power when his master handed it to him.

"It feels different to my touch," he commented, a bit confused, for the instrument's heavy balance had changed, had lessened; it seemed less a striking weapon, and its mighty head, the mace that had split boulders, was now lined with tiny holes.

Thalasi laughed at Mitch.e.l.l's hesitation. "Still you have not learned the true meaning of power," he remarked. "Think not of your weapon as a striking mace, my friend, but as your scepter. Strike with it if you choose-it has lost none of its battering strength."

Mitch.e.l.l relaxed visibly.

"But the weapon has another feature now, a darker feature which should dim the light of Ardaz, or of any other fools who try to stand against you." Calling an unfortunate talon to come over and stand before him, he took the scepter from Mitch.e.l.l.

The talon trembled and rubbed its hands together.

It understood, or thought it understood, the terrible implications of becoming a testing ground for the Black Warlock's powers, but the pitiful creature was simply too terrified to run away.

Still, for all its fears, the talon could not have been prepared for the ultimate doom that descended on it when Morgan Thalasi waved the scepter in its direction. Black flakes puffed out of the weapon's head, falling over the talon in a perverted snowfall. The talon's eyes widened in stark, disbelieving horror as it felt the coldness of doom engulf it, stealing its very soul. So terrible was its inner anguish that the talon did not even feel the physical burn of the flakes before it died. But burn they did, and in seconds the scepter's first victim had been reduced to a bubbling ma.s.s of smoldering, shapeless ooze.

A hiss of sheer elation escaped the wraith's mouth.

"You will come to understand power," Thalasi promised. "And you will enjoy your new toy. We will go in the morning, whether Ardaz has made his appearance or not. Let the Silver Mage come in late, if he will. Let him witness the rout of all the army of Calva." Thalasi's glare at the wraith seemed double-edged, promising ultimate glory if they succeeded and ultimate blame if they failed.

"The army is fully yours," Thalasi explained. "I must prepare for my strikes on the witch and wizard. Tomorrow, Avalon burns to ash, and the White Tower crumbles to dust."

Mitch.e.l.l brought the menacing scepter up before his fiery eyes. "And if Ardaz shows his face..." the wraith promised through his wicked grin.

Chapter 26.

The Storm A GLOBE OF GLOBE OF darkness rested on the field behind the stirring talon army, a perverted black ball that scorched the gra.s.s as it moved. And in the center of this wicked sphere loomed a figure, tall and terrible. Morgan Thalasi called now upon the Staff of Death, tapping its lethal black heel against the soft earth and uttering arcane words of power. The staff responded to the commands of its master, its horrid magic drawing the life force from the ground beneath it and giving it to Thalasi. darkness rested on the field behind the stirring talon army, a perverted black ball that scorched the gra.s.s as it moved. And in the center of this wicked sphere loomed a figure, tall and terrible. Morgan Thalasi called now upon the Staff of Death, tapping its lethal black heel against the soft earth and uttering arcane words of power. The staff responded to the commands of its master, its horrid magic drawing the life force from the ground beneath it and giving it to Thalasi.

"What is that?" Bryan gasped when he noticed the dark spectacle. He and Rhiannon had come over the northwesternmost slopes of the Baerendels just before the gray dawn and were still several miles from the talon encampment, but even from this distance, the globe of blackness shone clearly before their eyes.

"Morgan Thalasi," Rhiannon replied in a whisper, as if speaking that name would alert the Black Warlock to their presence.

"Angf.a.gdul," Bryan muttered, using the name his father had used for Thalasi when recounting the legendary Battle of Mountaingate.

"He's gathering his power," Rhiannon explained, though she had no idea of why she was so certain of her observation.

"Then we have arrived just in time," Bryan reasoned. "The battle is about to begin."

"Just in time?" Rhiannon balked. "To watch, then? What good'll we do against the likes o' that one?"

Bryan's expression turned angry. "Words of doom," he scolded. "You surrender before the first arrow is loosed!"

Rhiannon dropped her gaze and accepted his rebuke. Bryan was right: she knew that she would indeed play some vital role in the day's events. For all of her outward helplessness, the young witch could already feel the call of the power tingling within her body.

Thalasi's black globe sucked the very life and energy from the ground, killing the earth beneath its perverted darkness for eternity. More and more power swelled within the Black Warlock's body, wracking him with bulging pain. But he kept at his work, though he thought he would surely burst apart, and took in all that he could steal from the earth below him.

In Avalon and Pallendara, and high in the air on the back of a rushing Pegasus, the other three experienced wizards of Ynis Aielle felt the Black Warlock's pull against the fabric of their magic, bending the cord of the universal energies to his misguided commands.

"Too much," Ardaz gasped, feeling as if the very bonds of natural harmony would split apart, throwing all the world into chaos. In their distant seats of power, Brielle and Istaahl echoed the Silver Mage's grim words.

Thalasi cackled with delirious delight, literally drunk with the excess of energies pouring into him. "I am the G.o.d!" he proclaimed, his unearthly voice rolling out over the plain, across the river and across all Aielle, reverberating in every ear in the world.

Then the Black Warlock let loose.

He threw his arms upward, his fingers reaching for the sky, and out of his limbs came crackling bolts of black energy, hissing and sizzling as they rushed up to lend power to the gray clouds of the conjured overcast. Thunder rumbled to the Black Warlock's call, the clouds rolled in whipped fury, and a driving rain rushed out, bent by great western winds into the blank faces of the stunned Calvan army.

Still more black bolts exploded from the warlock's fingers into the sky, and two particularly dark clouds rushed off, one to the north and one to the east.

Brielle and Istaahl braced themselves, sensing the approach of the mighty storms, for they knew, as did all who witnessed the release of the storms, that the Black Warlock's targets once again were Avalon and the White Tower.

And this time he meant to have them.

The rain beat down on the soldiers defending the bridges, and the wind remained strong and urging at the backs of Mitch.e.l.l and the talons. But the wraith knew that Thalasi had otherwise left the battlefield to his command.

"You have heard the master!" Mitch.e.l.l roared at his lead talon forces. "Take the world for him! Let all the humans run from our fell blades!"

The charge of thirty thousand talons whipped into a killing frenzy by the spectacle of their G.o.d-figure and his dark general was on.

They hit the bridges running, heedless of the crossed stakes erected by the Calvans. Those in front willingly impaled themselves that their ugly kin could run over their bodies headlong into the next lines of defense.

The leaders of the defending forces could not have expected such unbridled fury, but King Benador took strength from the aged wisdom of his commanders, from the calm responses of Arien Silverleaf and Bellerian, and from the unfaltering courage of Belexus. The mighty ranger prince and his comrades from Avalon charged the length of the defensive line, rallying the soldiers with promises of victory.

And the value of their efforts could not be underestimated, for the terror on each Calvan soldier's face changed to grim determination as the rangers pa.s.sed, and when the talons finally clawed their way through the defensive barriers, they were met head-on by a Calvan charge that rivaled their own in intensity. The Calvans fought for all of those who had died, and for all of those helpless mult.i.tudes who would surely die if they could not stop the black tide here and now.

Then all the bridges were thrown into chaos, a clawing, hacking swirl of talon and man. No quarter was asked and none was given; to lose was to die. For the talons, to lose was to face the fury of Morgan Thalasi. For the Calvans, to lose was to realize the destruction of all the world.

Black bile wetted Rhiannon's throat, sheer horror and disgust at the sight of the conflict. The screams of agony and rage rolled across the distance to her ears. Even Bryan, familiar with smaller-scale and more ch.o.r.eographed skirmishes, felt his knees go weak at the sheer viciousness of the battle, and he winced each time one death scream wailed above all the others.

But Bryan soon steeled himself against his revulsion, reminding himself of the importance of the scene before him. He turned to Rhiannon for counsel, but found the young witch fully entranced by the continuing spectacle of Morgan Thalasi, as if Rhiannon could better understand the deadly implications of his dark efforts.

Now the black bolts ripping upward into the sky from the arms of the Black Warlock came as one unending stream, one reaching north and the other east, fueling the frenzy of the storms as they raced to their destinations.

Bolt after bolt of lightning blasted into the defensive sh.e.l.l over Avalon, a bubble of energy that Brielle had created to protect her forest. The initial blasts were dispersed into showers of multicolored sparks. But each ensuing bolt jolted the Emerald Witch, strained her powers to their very limits, and she knew that soon her sh.e.l.l would collapse.

"Too much!" she yelled, echoing her brother's words and sending the thought through the connection of their magical energies to the mind of the Black Warlock. "Ye'll break it all, ye fool!"

Thalasi's answer came as another blast of lightning, a furious bolt that split the earth around the perimeter of Brielle's fortress forest.

Hurricane winds buffeted Istaahl's tower, swaying the tall structure far to the side and then back again. The desperate wizard evoked magical arms to engulf the structure, holding it together in its wild ride.

"d.a.m.n you, Thalasi!" Istaahl growled, for he, too, understood that the Black Warlock had broken all bounds of sensibility, had grabbed at the powers of the universe and pulled them to his evil will with such blatant ferocity that it all could unravel at his feet. All the world would feel the destruction.

But if the Black Warlock had any concern for such possibilities, he did not show it. The winds around the White Tower slammed into the stone and swirled about it, and bolts of lightning scorched its sides and split the ground around its base.

And Istaahl, though he feared the consequences, could only respond by pushing his own magic further, by tugging back on the universal powers with an intensity that rivaled Thalasi's.

"I am the G.o.d!" Thalasi roared, his voice shaking the ground for miles around. "And all the world is mine! Behold Morgan Thalasi and know you are doomed!"

The power continued its twisted flow through the Staff of Death and through Thalasi's limbs, conductors that bent the natural strength of the world to suit the Black Warlock's foul purposes. Thalasi was drunk with it, fully enraptured in the ecstasy of unbelievable might. He had outdone his own expectation, had grabbed at the core of the world and pulled it to his hands. His black globe cracked and crumbled the ground below it into pockets of broken, barren rubble. And then Thalasi moved on to another spot, for the Staff of Death demanded more.

"I am the G.o.d!" Thalasi yelled again. One group of talons rushed by, spurred by the proclamations of their unholy leader.

Too close.

The black sphere of Thalasi sucked them into its vortex, and the unfortunate creatures came out as mere pulses in the black bolts the warlock aimed at the sky.

"What is it?" Bryan demanded. He shook Rhiannon violently, but the young witch showed no signs of consciousness. Her thoughts were fully turned inward as the evil spectacle of Thalasi continued its roar in her ears. Still the magic grew in the young witch despite her efforts, born of sheer instinctual terror, to drive it out.

Bryan understood his companion's dilemma. He had seen her hesitation at calling forth the most destructive uses of her power, and he understood that the power now demanded more of her than ever before, more even than Rhiannon had used when she and he had routed the talon caravan back in the mountains two days before.

And that effort had nearly destroyed the young witch.

"Let it in!" Bryan implored Rhiannon. "Accept the power for the sake of all the world!"

Rhiannon did not blink, every instinct within her fighting against the awful possession, the complete surrender to a strength that might never let her go.

The lines on the bridges rolled back and forth, with each side gaining ground only to be hammered back to where they had started. A dozen men and a score of talons died each minute, and their blood mixed with the rainwater, washing from the sides and staining the great river itself in a garish crimson hue.

Arien still held his elven forces back. They had been a.s.signed as the reserves of the army and would no doubt see more action than they cared to before all was finished. And with all that had gone on in the talon camp the past few days, the Eldar feared something else, a different line of attack. Surely this new general of Thalasi's army was skilled enough to know that he would not so easily breach the defenses of the bridges.

When Arien's daughter called out a short while later, the Eldar knew he had been wise to keep to the side.

"Boats on the river!" Sylvia yelled. A hundred craft, riding low under the weight of talon flesh, moved out from the western bank.

Arien put his archers to action and called for all the reserves that Benador could spare. The trip across the wide River Ne'er Ending would not be an easy one for Thalasi's wicked minions.

But a moment later the Eldar found his attention turned back to the bridges, or more particularly, to the northernmost bridge. The ranks of Calvan defenders split apart suddenly, the brave men fleeing in horror.

The wraith and his legions of undead had made their appearance.

Only the Rangers of Avalon, spurred by the unflinching courage of Belexus Backavar, came onto the bridge to fill the breach.

Mitch.e.l.l stayed back and let his zombie minions pa.s.s him by. They fell by the dozen to the flashing blades of the rangers, but they outnumbered the brave warriors of Avalon by more than five to one, and gradually the press of rotting flesh made its inevitable way toward the eastern exit of the bridge.

Belexus held out in their midst, whacking away arms and heads with each mighty stroke, and soon he no longer even flinched when he beheaded a creature only to see it reach back toward him with its filthy, bone-clawed hands.

And then many zombies focused on the single rider, and they lashed at Belexus' horse, driving the thing down under their sheer weight.

Arien had to leave much of his force behind with Sylvia to contend with the closing line of boats, but the elves, with their deeper understanding of mortality and of experience beyond this life, did not fear the animated corpses as did the humans, and their charge caught the zombie horde at the eastern base of the northernmost bridge.

Arien spurred his stallion right through the zombie ranks, trampling the things to the stone in the singular path of his ride. He had seen Belexus fall and would not accept the death of the gallant ranger.

But Belexus was not finished. He found himself kneeling and then struggled against the press to his feet, brought his huge sword in a killing sweep that cut three of the monsters fully in half. Blood from a score of clawed wounds ran down the ranger's arms and chest, but he lashed out with sword and fist, smashing the zombies away.

Still, their sheer numbers would have buried him where he stood. But then, for some reason he could not understand, the zombies moved away from him, walked past without showing any concern for him at all.

Arien, finally halted in his attempt to get to the ranger, was glad when he saw the sea of corpses flow away from a still standing Belexus, but the Eldar's relief turned to dread when he, like the ranger, at last came to understand the meaning of the zombies' sudden disinterest.

For near the center of the arching bridge now stood only two figures, Belexus of Avalon and Hollis Mitch.e.l.l, the wraith whose mere thoughts guided the zombie army.

"I could not let them kill you," Mitch.e.l.l explained in his grating voice. "That task is for my pleasure alone!"

"Yer boasts are mere words," Belexus retorted, steadying himself and taking full measure of this newest adversary. Brielle had warned him about facing the wraith again, but the ranger could not control the rage within himself, which demanded he avenge the death of his dearest friend and banish this perverted creature and its horrid minions from the world of the living.

"Come and see for yourself, fool." Mitch.e.l.l laughed at him, teasing him with an easy swing of the skull-headed scepter.

Belexus could not know the dark evil that was in that weapon. He clutched his great sword in both hands and worked his way in.

The zombie army continued its push along the eastern range of the bridges, disrupting the defensive lines wherever they went. And on the great river, the line of boats steadily approached, heedless of the shower of arrows. Whatever his desires at that moment, Arien Silverleaf had an army to command, and he could not go to the ranger's side.

From the distant mountainside, Bryan surveyed the dismal scene. Only on the southern bridges, where King Benador and the Warders of the White Walls stood against mere talons, was the defense holding strong. On the northernmost bridge, and riding on a huge fleet on the river north of that, Thalasi's army was clearly winning through. And if they continued to pour across, all the efforts of King Benador and his men would surely be to no avail.

If Bryan's hopes were weakened when he took note of the course of the battle, they were blasted away altogether whenever he glanced at the unholy sphere of Morgan Thalasi. The evil warlock's fury did not relent; the black bolts of energy ripped up into the sky with continued power.

Clearly, some new variable had to enter the battle and claim it back for the forces of good. Bryan turned to Rhiannon, trembling and appearing so frail in her rain-soaked gown.

How could he lend her strength?

The flow of the power drenched the Black Warlock in ecstasy. "Still more!" he demanded, stamping the heel of the Staff of Death on a new patch of ground. A renewed surge exploded upward, nearly blasting the mortal body of the Black Warlock apart. But Thalasi contained it, and bent it, throwing it out to Avalon and Pallendara.

It came in the fury of a single bolt over the enchanted forest. Brielle's weakened shield of defensive magics stood to block it, and the resulting blast dissipated the bolt to a mountain of sparks.

But gone, too, was the shield, and the next lightning bolt that descended on the witch's domain sundered a tree.

In seconds Avalon was burning.

It came in the fury of a wall of wind beside the White Tower of Istaahl, bending the structure far to the side. The civilian onlookers in Pallendara gasped in horror as Istaahl's gigantic conjured arms clutched at the tower like an imperiled mother holding her infant.