“Perhaps you overestimate its power and your own,” the wraith replied, confidence still strong in his voice. A peal of thunder aptly accentuated the point.
“Let us see,” the Black Warlock said, his voice a hiss, and he thrust forth the staff, reaching his power out through it in a mighty assault on the wraith’s sensibilities.
An overwhelming desire to kneel nearly dropped the wraith to his knees, but Mitchell found within him enough independent will to resist, to gradually turn the force back on Thalasi. “Give me the staff!” the wraith demanded, and he came forward, reaching with both hands.
Thalasi growled and redoubled his efforts, waves of energy rolling out to halt the wraith’s progress. Mitchell moved forward an inch, then back several, then stubbornly forward again. Soon Thalasi was roaring like some wild animal, and Mitchell was issuing forth a long unbroken hiss.
Thunder boomed outside; waves of energy passed back and forth between them, hammering at them.
“It is mine!” both declared, and then they roared and hissed and fought with all their strength. Mitchell’s gray fingers were barely an inch from the staff, and Thalasi knew that if the wraith managed to grasp it at all, his own advantage would be stolen and this creature, many times more powerful than he, would utterly and horribly destroy him, would take Talas-dun and all that he had created.
Sheer desperation caused the Black Warlock to reach out from that room, into the rain and wind, and, as fortune would have it, into the lightning stroke that had just begun. Thalasi’s power channeled that stroke into the room, into his body, then down his arms and through the staff, to blast out at Mitchell, hurling him across the room. The wraith slammed against the wall and slumped there, dazed.
Simple luck had won the day, Thalasi realized, but he knew, too, that he could not let the wraith in on that secret. “The time of magic is not fully passed,” he said sharply, confidently. “You would do well to remember that, my pawn, for the next time we battle, I assure you that I will decide you are not worth the trouble! Now be gone, before the next lightning, and the one after that, sears the dead skin from your bones!”
The wraith pulled himself to his feet, the red fires of his eyes simmering, simmering, as he looked with the purest hatred upon Morgan Thalasi. Mitchell suspected that the fight had been much closer than the Black Warlock’s bravado would indicate, suspected that bad fortune, and not a superior will, had won the day for Thalasi.
But defeated the wraith was, and Mitchell could not rightfully deny Thalasi’s words when the Black Warlock proclaimed, “I am the master.”
She awoke in a place of near darkness, with only the shadowy light of a single torch burning outside her chamber in a low earthen corridor. Cobwebs hung all about the corners of the small room, about the thick stones of the archways, muting the light, tasting thick in her mouth and nostrils with every breath she took. It took Rhiannon a few seconds even to register that she was not lying down, that she was hanging from the wall, her wrists and ankles tightly chained.
She saw a humanoid form nearby and tried to speak to it through the cobwebs that seemed to be, too, in her throat and mouth. “Please,” she begged.
The form turned about, another joined it, and the young witch recoiled in horror, for these were not humans, nor even living talons, but were zombies: horrid, rotting things with skin hanging off in flaps, bones showing in many places. Silently they approached her, and then they beat her, bony fists pounding about her head, until she knew no more.
She awakened nearly an hour later, one eye closed, the taste of warm blood thick on her lips. The zombies remained, standing impassively, seeming more garish statues than animated creatures. Rhiannon thought to speak to them again, but wisely reconsidered and held her tongue. These things, she realized, were mere automatons, incapable of independent thought. Her last words had spurred them to beat her, and so if she spoke again, she would likely get the same brutal treatment. It made sense to the young woman. She was in Talas-dun, she knew that beyond doubt, for she had indeed seen the black castle just before the last time she lost consciousness. Yes, she clearly remembered that darkened blur on the edges of her vision, all the darker still for the evil that brooded there. She was in Talas-dun, and these zombies, these guards, were pawns of either Thalasi or Mitchell. Neither of them would want her talking, spellcasting perhaps, and so the orders to the zombies had likely been simple and explicit.
She held silent, just hung against the wall, and soon the realization of her various pains nearly overwhelmed her. Her head hurt, and her face ached with its fresh bruises. Her stomach growled for lack of food-how long had it been since she had taken a decent meal, or any food at all?
But her wrists, her poor wrists, proved the most agonizing of all! She dared to glance up at them, to see lines of dark, dried blood ringing them just under the shackles, and she recognized that if she shifted in the least, those scabs would reopen.
And so she hung there, for hours, until she drifted off to something akin to sleep, but not nearly restful enough to be called so. She hung there, and she fought the delirium and the awful boredom, and the more awful helplessness. Had they put her down in this dungeon to starve? she had to wonder as time passed into irrelevance, just one long aching black pain, a complete emptiness.
And all the while, the zombies simply stood there, rotting, smelling, unblinking, and drawing no breath.
Rhiannon didn’t know how long had passed-a few days at least-when at last she heard a commotion outside of her immediate chamber, somewhere along the low corridor. Her relief remained, even when the source of that commotion, Mitchell and Thalasi, walked into the dungeon.
“You live still?” Thalasi asked, his expression showing that he was amused. “Ah, but that is the curse of the blessed wizards, my dear, for you shall not die, shall hang here in empty torment through all the years, through all eternity.”
“I could kill her,” Mitchell remarked, for no better reason, Rhiannon supposed, than to boast. She knew that he wouldn’t kill her, wouldn’t so easily alleviate her suffering.
She tried to reply to them, but could barely move her parched lips.
Thalasi laughed heartily. “Consider this your reward for your actions on the field near to the Four Bridges,” he said. “Yes, Rhiannon, daughter of Brielle, I know who you are, and I know what you did. Naughty child.”
Now the words did come, the discomfort stolen by the sheer revulsion welling in Rhiannon’s throat. “Ye did it yerself,” she rasped, ending with a hacking, dry, and dusty cough. “Ye reached too far. Took too much. And so ye breaked it. Ye-” She stopped, gasped, as a cold, invisible hand clamped about her throat. The zombies, too, moved to attack, but Thalasi waved his black staff and stopped them.
Rhiannon felt most keenly the power of that staff, and noted Mitchell’s wince as it was presented. She knew then the importance of the item, and the power, for in this time of weakened magic, that staff alone brought the Black Warlock such strength. Her concerns quickly became more immediate, though, as that awful cold hand squeezed tight, cutting off her air, strangling her.
Then it was gone, leaving the young witch gasping. She looked at her two adversaries, and understood that Thalasi, with that staff, had been responsible.
“I had thought to make you comfortable,” the Black Warlock said to her. “To pamper you with finery and luxury.”
Rhiannon spat at him.
“But there it is,” the Black Warlock continued without missing a beat, smiling widely at her disrespect. “That trademark stubbornness, so much like your mother. You would not appreciate my hospitality. No indeed. Not you, the daughter of Brielle. You would do as she would do, act as she would act, and plot against me, every second.”