“How do you know about the wraith?” Bryan asked, letting the conversation continue its tangential flow, for he could not seem to muster the courage to tell the fair witch the truth about her daughter. Not yet.
“I know the nature of yer wound,” Brielle explained. “And know, too, that the wraith’s been about. I’m not so blind and not so much a fool.”
“None of neither,” Bryan agreed.
“But I’m not knowing of me daughter,” Brielle continued. “I’m not feeling her about. And I’m thinking that ye might be.”
Brielle didn’t miss the cloud that passed over Bryan’s face.
“I was with her when Mitchell attacked,” the halfelf began quietly, chewing his lips between words. “I could not hurt the wraith, nor could Rhiannon. I do not understand why she went out to find the foul thing! I don’t know that it was looking for us, and don’t know that we ever would have seen it. But, for some reason, she went out after it.”
Brielle nodded; she understood her daughter’s purpose, and so would heroic Bryan, she knew, if he just stepped back a bit and considered his own actions across the river.
“I got knocked away, and out of mind for a while,” Bryan explained. “And when I awoke, they were gone, the both of them.”
Brielle licked her soft lips nervously.
“I do not think that Mitchell killed her,” Bryan said suddenly, needing to offer some comfort to this worried mother.
“Me girl’s not dead,” Brielle responded firmly, with some certainty.
“Agreed,” the half-elf said. “I believe that Rhiannon led the wraith away to protect me, and probably that she leads him still on a merry chase across the lands. I started out of Corning on their trail-two separate trails-but discovered that my wounds were too great. And so I made for Avalon to warn you.”
“And well ye did,” Brielle replied. “Yer wounds should’ve killed ye long before ye got near to me home.”
“But that was so many days ago,” Bryan said, his expression puzzled.
“Nine days,” Brielle clarified.
“We must out for Rhiannon at once,” the half-elf reasoned, looking all about like an animal put in too small a cage.
Brielle’s upraised hand calmed him.
“You know of her?” Bryan asked hopefully.
“With what ye telled me, I can find out more,” the witch explained. “Take yer breakfast alone.” She pointed to the evergreen. “I’ll be back to ye afore the sun crests.” With that, Brielle was gone, disappearing into the brush so quickly that Bryan blinked many times.
He did as she asked, moving to the spruce tree and finding a most delicious meal set out for him, and though he was too worried for Rhiannon to feel hunger, he ate well, realizing that he would soon need all of his strength. And how he marveled at how much of that strength had already returned! As the morning passed, the half-elf began to feel much more himself. His legs soon steadied, his head cleared, and he felt as if he had spent a year at rest, eating well and training easily.
The only things that tempered the near euphoria were thoughts of and fears for Rhiannon, and Bryan knew that if she did not return to him, his health would fly away.
Brielle came back to him late that morning, her face grim, her gait slow and even awkward. Bryan ran up to meet her, took her by the shoulders, then lifted her chin so that she looked him in the eye.
“No,” he breathed.
“She’s not dead,” the witch whispered, seeming so very old suddenly, the twinkle in her green eyes flown away. “But she’s been taken.”
“The wraith?”
Brielle nodded. “And Thalasi, I’m fearing, for me divining telled me that Mitchell put out for Talas-dun, and likely he’s there already.”
Talas-dun. Morgan Thalasi’s black fortress. The name hit Bryan like a heavy stone, a name known by every person in all Aielle, a name synonymous with the deepest terrors and the greatest evil.
Brielle straightened and pulled from Bryan’s supportive grasp. “I canno’ go after her,” the witch said bitterly. “Me magic forbids me leaving Avalon at this dark time, yet how am I to abandon me daughter to the clutches of Morgan Thalasi?”
“I can go out,” Bryan said with a determined growl.
Brielle nodded, for Bryan’s sake not daring to disagree openly, but she understood the futility of it all. The brave young man was no match for Mitchell, let alone Thalasi, and certainly no match for either of them in that dark place, in Talas-dun.
“By all the precepts of me very existence, I canno’ go out from me wood,” the witch said. “For if I did, then suren Thalasi’d come a’calling, and Avalon’d be taken down, and all the world’d know a deeper pain.”
“Deeper than the pain Brielle now feels?”
Her green eyes narrowed as she looked at him, and he understood that, in the witch’s estimation, no pain could be deeper than the one that now tore at her heart.
“You said that I am not in your debt, and though I offer you my sincerest gratitude, I accept that premise,” Bryan said suddenly, taking on haughty tones that surprised the witch, a demeanor she would have expected from one of King Benador’s knightly warders, perhaps, but not from the half-elf.
“And as such, I am not bound here,” Bryan went on. “And so I choose to go, at once.”
“And yer destination?”
“Is my own to pick,” the determined half-elf replied.
“Not so hard to guess,” Brielle said.
“Then if you know me so well, dear Brielle, you know, too, that I must go to the west, to Talas-dun, to the court of Thalasi, to hell itself if need be, in pursuit of Rhiannon.”
“Ye love her,” Brielle stated.
“More than I love my own life,” Bryan replied without hesitation, and the words felt so good as he said them, a confirmation of truth, an admission that he knew he’d have to make again, to Rhiannon.
Brielle spent a long while studying the young half-elf, her perceptive gaze reading his body language, reading his heart. After a few moments, she began to nod slowly. “Ye’re going after her, though I fear ye’ll find the road too dark. I’ll not try to slow ye, though I’m thinking that one who might help might be returning to me soon. And I’ll not try to stop ye, for I know that I could not, not if I showed to ye the truth o’ Talas-dun in all its splendid wickedness.”
“Not if you showed me that I would have to wrestle Thalasi and all his minions bare-handed,” Bryan replied.
“And if ye die?”
Bryan shrugged, as sincere a reply as Brielle could ever have asked for.
“Ye get yer rest, Bryan o’ Corning,” Brielle instructed. “I’ll gather yer sword and armor-I been mending both-and bring them to ye afore the morrow’s cold dawn.”
Bryan’s expression became tentative, and Brielle read it easily. The half-elf feared any more delays, feared leaving Rhiannon in Thalasi’s clutches for a moment longer. “I’m not fighting yer feelings that ye should go off at once,” the witch said. “But know that if ye go unprepared, then ye’ve got no’ a chance o’ e’er seeing the black castle. Ye give me the one night and I’ll help ye, I promise, and I’ll get ye a horse that’ll run swifter than any ye’ve known.”
That last promise quieted any protests from Bryan. “I fear that I have tarried too long already,” he said. “But I trust in your judgment and in your word.” Indeed Bryan did, for he, like everyone else, understood that Avalon’s horses were the greatest in all the world, both in speed and in heart, and it was common knowledge, too, that none could rope or ride such a beast without the blessings of the forest and the lady who guided and guarded it.
In the morning, true to her word, Brielle returned to Bryan leading a small, well-muscled chestnut mare. Saddlebags bulged with supplies, and Bryan’s fine sword was set through a loop on the side of the saddle, his elven-crafted armor and shield strapped atop the seat. When he took down that armor, the young half-elf’s eyes widened indeed, for the mail had been interwoven with ribbon, green, laced with gold thread.
Bryan put a quizzical look over Brielle, who only smiled and nodded, all the assurance the half-elf would ever need.