“Oh, silly puss,” the wizard muttered, and he said it again when they found Desdemona on the valley floor, comfortably curled yet again in the nook of a pine tree root.
The cat didn’t even bother to open an eye.
Their hunting took the better part of the day, but Belexus finally brought down a white-tailed deer, and he and Ardaz had a fine meal as they sat around a blazing fire that evening, Calamus standing stoically nearby, Desdemona curled comfortably on the wizard’s warm lap.
“I canno’ ask ye to come along,” the ranger remarked unexpectedly, in all seriousness. “’Tis me own fight, I say, one I’ll be making for me friend.”
“Didn’t we already have this argument?” Ardaz asked, seeming somewhat confused. He began reciting the words of their previous debate, but got hung up on “canno’” again, and shifted his line of muttering to the recitation of many other funny-sounding ranger speech patterns.
“We had the fight,” Belexus finally interrupted after about fifteen minutes of the rambling. “But by me own thinking, we did’no’ finish it.”
Ardaz sobered and stared him right in the eye. “That the son of Bellerian could be such a fool,” the wizard answered with a derisive snort. “And Andovar was Belexus’ friend alone, then?”
“I’m not for saying-”
“But you are!” Ardaz retorted, waggling a long and pointy finger the ranger’s way. “You are saying that very thing, I do daresay! And putting the wraith out as your enemy alone, though in truth, all the living world should hate the thing. And you’ll not find a dragon-a true dragon and not one of those silly whipping things of the swamp-so easy a foe! But easier the dragon will be, I say, if stubborn Belexus has a friend beside him. And a friend with a trick or two, ha, ha! And one who’s good at dodging arrows, to boot!
“Or to butt, I suppose,” the wizard ended dryly.
“How can I be asking?”
“Who said you should?” Ardaz replied with a derisive snort. “Oh, I’m going, and don’t you think you can stop me.” He stared at the fire for a moment, then looked up at the crisp night sky. “A dragon,” he muttered, suddenly talking more to himself than to Belexus. “Fancy that! Oh, but I’d dearly love to meet one! Wouldn’t we, Des?”
Desdemona yawned and stretched, and then, as if the wizard’s words had only then registered, opened wide her mouth in a vicious hiss and smacked the wizard across the face, only his thick beard preventing him from showing three bloody lines from fully extended claws.
“Beastly loyal,” Ardaz mumbled.
“I’d not be so loyal, meself, if me friend was leading me to the likes of a dragon’s lair,” Belexus put in.
“Oh, but you would!” Ardaz countered with hardly a thought. “And you shall, and if you live, you shall thank me for the company, ha, ha!”
The ranger started to reply, but found that he had no sincere argument. Of course, if the situation had been reversed, he would go along with the wizard, and, thus, he had to allow Ardaz a similar show of loyalty. That, above anything else, settled the argument in the ranger’s mind, and in his heart. He could not deny Ardaz the opportunity to join him in this quest, whose ultimate implications for the good of all Ynis Aielle went far beyond avenging the death of Andovar. “Yer friendship is truly a blessing of the Colonnae,” he said in all seriousness.
Ardaz beamed. “Together then!” he said happily. “A party of two.”
Desdemona opened a sleepy eye and looked up at him, as if to ask if she had to hiss and swipe again.
“Er, three,” the wizard promptly corrected.
Across the way, Calamus snorted and stamped a hoof.
“Four,” both ranger and wizard said together, sharing a laugh.
Belexus slept better that night than on any of the previous since he had left Avalon. Ardaz, though, lay awake a long, long while. There weren’t many dragons in Ynis Aielle-fortunately! The few about had been created by evil Morgan Thalasi centuries before, but fortunately, they were not an overly fruitful lot, more concerned with making a meal of each other and stealing treasure than propagating the line. On those rare occasions that a meeting of dragons did produce an offspring-when the female won the inevitable fight after mating-that young dragon would quickly go out into the world in search of its own treasure hoard, and either meet its end at the claws of another dragon, at the end of a wizard’s lightning bolt-Brielle was particularly adept at putting an end to the unnatural things-or, in one notable case, at the end of a warrior’s sword. Belexus was perhaps the only mortal man alive who had ever seen a dragon and survived; certainly he was the only one who had ever killed a dragon.
But that had been a young one, barely larger than the pegasus the ranger now rode. If Brielle’s magic had located the sword in the lair of a dragon deep in the great Crystals, then likely it was an ancient wyrm, one of the originals Thalasi had created as a scourge to the world. And given the weakening of magic, a full-grown dragon might well prove to be the most powerful creature in all of Ynis Aielle.
Ardaz did not sleep so well.
Chapter 9
What Thief, This?
SHE FINALLY AWOKE, rising up from the depths of a complete, dreamless darkness, an emptiness of thought, an emptiness of hope. The young witch blinked open her eyes and tried to sit up, but found to her horror that her hands were tightly tied behind her, that her whole body was bound, but not by any material strands. Black filaments of swirling vapor wrapped about her, holding her physical form tightly, but even worse for Rhiannon, binding her magic, as well. She tried to reach into that well of power, to bring forth a brilliant light that would burn away these gripping filaments.
But she found no channel, no access at all.
“A small trick I learned,” the deep voice of the wretched wraith came. With great difficulty, Rhiannon managed to turn her head enough to regard the ugly creature.
“I find many valuable assets with this form that my old friend gave to me,” Mitchell said, and it seemed to the witch as if he was trying to smile, and that only made him seem all the more grotesque.
“No friend’d ever…” Rhiannon began, but her words were lost before they ever gained momentum, as the wraith walked, glided, over to stand beside her, his smirk more unnerving than any howl of anger, than any growled threat. For in that misshapen smirk, Rhiannon recognized true confidence. The wraith had taken a full measure of her in their battle, and he knew now, beyond any doubt, that he was the stronger.
He continued to look down upon her, to smirk at her, to belittle her. “Who are you?” he demanded at last.
The young witch mustered up all the defiance she could find, wrenched against the sticky black filaments, and looked away.
Almost immediately those black filaments tightened about her, choking her, crushing her, squeezing every part of her body so tightly that she was sure they were halting the blood flow! Rhiannon looked back at the wraith and saw the monster standing there, eyes closed, fist clenching-and that fist, Rhiannon knew, was clenching the bonds, as if they were some half-substantial extension of the wraith’s fury.
No, the witch realized, not half-substantial, for surely they were squeezing the very life out of her.
“Rhiannon,” she gasped, and the wraith’s hand relaxed, and so did the bonds.
“I have little patience, young fool,” Mitchell said in that awful resonant voice. “There are greater foes than you yet to be murdered.”
Rhiannon set her jaw firmly and determined to die bravely-she held little doubt that the wraith would kill her, but this evil thing would get no important information from her. She told herself resolutely that it would kill her whatever she did, whatever she said, and so the less she said, the better for those friends she left behind.