He sensed the approach soon after, his eyelids just beginning to droop, and all sleepiness flew from him in a rush of adrenaline. He forced himself to hold steady, though, slumped against the wall, and kept his eyes half closed, feigning sleep, with one hand clenched tightly about his sword hilt.
Up Belexus sprang as the creature glided in, his signature cry of “Oi Avalon!” issuing forth, his mighty sword flashing in the firelight.
And then Belexus nearly toppled in surprise, as Calamus, winged lord of horses, lighted easily on the plateau, stomping his hooves with delight at the sight of his ranger friend.
Belexus blinked many times as he viewed the unexpected, and not unappreciated, sight, as he noted the bulging saddlebags draped across the magnificent steed’s back, right behind the saddle in which Belexus had sat so many times. He went to the pegasus at once, stroked the muscled neck and flank, then moved to the saddlebags and was not surprised at their contents of wrapped foodstuffs and warm clothes.
“Brielle,” Belexus reasoned, for someone had saddled the pegasus, and no one in all the world held a closer bond to Calamus than the Emerald Witch. “Brielle sent ye.”
Calamus snorted and stomped a hoof.
The ranger smiled warmly, glad for the company this cold night-but company he meant to keep only for this night. He had considered asking Calamus to accompany him-of course he had!-before he had ever left Avalon, but like his decision not to ask any of the rangers or the elves, Belexus had determined that he could not accept such a responsibility. Surely the pegasus would make his journey far easier-though he doubted he could fly very high for any stretch of time in the cold mountain air-but if anything ill befell the pegasus, Belexus would never be able to forgive himself. And dragons were known to prize horseflesh!
“I’ll take yer bags,” the ranger said. “And glad I am for the help. But in the morning light ye’re to go back to Avalon, me friend, back home where ye belong.”
The pegasus snorted defiantly, and the stomp of hooves came more insistent now, and surely not in agreement with the ranger’s plan.
Belexus let it go at that, an argument to be resolved in the light of morning. He tended the fire, then went back to the wall and slept soundly, confident of his companion’s diligence.
Calamus proved no more agreeable in the morning, and was not about to leave, even when Belexus tried to push the winged horse from the ledge. After nearly an hour of the futile dispute, the ranger finally relented. It would be foolhardy to take a horse into the rough mountain terrain, but a pegasus could go almost anywhere. And in thinking about it without the blinding influence of his stubborn pride, Belexus had to admit again that Calamus might certainly prove valuable on this expedition, the pegasus taking him faster and higher than he could ever hope to climb. How much easier might his search be from the vantage point of the flying horse’s back?
“So ye win,” he admitted to the pegasus, though he was really speaking to distant Brielle. He loaded up the saddlebags, climbed into the saddle, and urged the pegasus away, soaring high through the cold mountain air.
Unbeknownst to steed and rider, a third creature, a large raven, watched their departure with more than a passing interest.
Chapter 6
The Black Warlock
HE STOOD IN the driving rain on the narrow walkway overlooking the muddy courtyard. This was his home, his bastion, Talas-dun, that he, with powerful magics, had pulled up from the very stone of these mountains, bending and shaping it to the designs of his mighty will. Talas-dun had stood for centuries, since the time Morgan Thalasi had led the wicked talons, the first mutation of mankind, out of Pallendara, ostensibly so that they could cause no more mischief, but in reality, to breed them and train them and bend them, as he had shaped the stone of Talas-dun to the designs of his will. How like a god Morgan Thalasi had felt then! To bring an entire race under his absolute control! The talons were his pawns: sentient, reasoning creatures that he had transformed into mere extensions of his will. They would not disobey him, even if he told them to leap from a cliff to jagged stones, preferring certain and horrible death above facing the wrath of Morgan Thalasi, the anger of their god.
Because they feared him, feared the Black Warlock, more than they feared Death itself.
There were many of the ugly talons milling about the courtyard now, wandering aimlessly and without the strict discipline that had always been the norm of Talas-dun.
No, not always, the Black Warlock recalled; there had been one notable lull in discipline before this latest one. When first Thalasi had come back to this place after the disaster at Mountaingate, after Jeffrey DelGiudice had brought forth that terrible weapon from the ancient times and shot him through the heart, he had been a weakened creature indeed. He had stolen the body of Martin Reinheiser, but with that feeble mortal coil came the stubborn and powerful spirit of the dispossessed man. The resultant dual being, Thalasi and Reinheiser in one physical form, so uncomfortable, so out of control of even its simplest bodily movements, had found little power over the talons those first years, those twenty agonizing years. But during all of that troubled period, even after a new generation of talons, one that did not remember Thalasi as he had been, had arisen as Talas-dun’s primary guard, the creatures had shown the Black Warlock fear, had shown him respect.
A movement along the walkway stirred Thalasi from his recollections. He turned to see a pair of talons walking his way, conversing in their guttural tongue and laughing, looking at each other mostly, and apparently oblivious to the presence of their master.
“Close enough!” the Black Warlock bellowed, and the talons skidded to an abrupt halt and looked up, their eyes wide with surprise.
Thalasi liked that look.
“How dare you disturb me?” The Black Warlock fumed. “I did not summon you.”
The larger of the pair held up its arms helplessly, apparently having no excuses. It was obvious to Thalasi that the pair had come upon him quite by accident, that they had no idea he was up here, else they would have chosen a different route.
“Enough!” he cried, though neither talon had uttered a sound. “I care not for excuses. You,” he said, indicating the larger, “throw your companion from the wall as penalty for your insolence!”
The larger talon’s face screwed up curiously. It looked from Thalasi to its companion, who stood tense, eying it and the Black Warlock nervously. The big brute grunted and whispered something, then the pair, with a unified shrug, simply turned around and walked back the way they had come.
Thalasi tried to call out after them, but he was too stunned, too stupefied, to even get a meaningful word out of his mouth. He clutched the banister, his bony knuckles whitening even more than their normal, pallid hue, and trembled violently. How he trembled, explosive rage building within him!
But it was an empty threat of explosion, he knew, a firecracker’s pop where once such anger might have leveled a mountain. Thalasi, perhaps more than any of the other wizards of Aielle, had been wounded in the war, had been struck hard in that special place wherein wizards found and fostered their power. Across the lands, Brielle used her pool for divining, Rhiannon spoke often with the birds, Istaahl worked with masons and magic to construct a new tower, and Ardaz often assumed the forms of various animals, that he might get about his mountainous home more easily. But all of those spells, even the simplest, were beyond Morgan Thalasi at that time. He could see only with his physical eyes, could speak only with creatures that used the same language as he, could build nothing, save what his feeble hands could place together, and could take no form other than this one: a battered, frail body, appearing more skeletal than human, face hollowed and eyes sunken so deeply that they appeared as black holes in a gray skull.