“Ye’ve got food enough to take ye across the world and back,” the witch explained after helping Bryan to don his armor. “And take heart that yer metal shirt’ll block most any blow,” she added, “excepting, perhaps, the horse-bone mace of the wraith, and I’m not for knowing what terrible weapons Morgan Thalasi will use against ye.”
The value of such a gift from the witch of the wood was not lost on Bryan. He started to bow, then changed his mind, stepped forward and kissed Brielle lightly on the cheek. “I will bring her back to you,” he promised.
Brielle could not speak past the lump in her throat. She reached into her pouch and produced an amulet: an emerald set in silver and hung on a thread of vine. She looped it around the half-elf’s neck, drawing his attention to the green gemstone, turning it up so that it glittered before his eyes.
“Ye know that I’m with ye,” she said cryptically, and let the amulet hang low once more. “Don’t ye ever be forgetting that.”
Bryan nodded and kissed her cheek again, then, without hesitation, he swung up onto the saddle and kicked the mare into a quick canter.
He was out of Avalon soon after, riding hard to the west. That western edge of the forest did not border the rolling green Calvan plains, though, but met with the land of Brogg, the Brown Wastes, the desolation of Thalasi. This was the wildest edge of Avalon’s perimeter, a place untamed, and thus, a place always guarded.
The ever-vigilant rangers of Avalon, watching the lone rider gallop out of the forest, were more than a little confused and suspicious of his passage. Lord Bellerian, father of Belexus, leader of the proud warriors, was back into the deep forest soon after, calling out at the top of his lungs for Brielle. He found her after midday, and was surely relieved to see that she was unharmed. He questioned her about the slender rider, garbed in the fine armor of Lochsilinilume.
“A friend o’ me daughter,” Brielle admitted, taking pains not to lock gazes with the venerable ranger. Bellerian was old and crooked from a long-ago battle wound, but his will remained iron-strong, as great as that of any man alive. “So brave a lad,” the witch went on, and the sadness in her voice could not be denied. “Though I’m fearing his days left are not so long.”
“He rode an Avalon horse,” Bellerian said, a bit of accusation in his tone.
Brielle only shrugged.
“And his armor, too, had been worked by the witch of the wood,” the ranger lord pressed. “We saw the green and gold, such as ye’ve recently put into our own shirts.”
“Yer eyes might be a bit too fine, me friend,” the witch answered with a dismissive wave.
“Ye helped him.”
Again, the shrug. “A fine lad, his blood running near to elvish,” she explained. “His heart’s against Thalasi, and so his heart’s with me own.”
That last line, coupled with the pervasive sadness, hinted at something much deeper to Bellerian. Indeed, he wondered, might the half-elf’s heart be akin to Brielle’s on the matter of her missing daughter? “I did not know that gifts o’ the lady came so easily,” he remarked.
“Ye’re too old for jealousy,” the witch said dryly.
Bellerian caught her by the shoulder and forced her to match his stare. “Ye’ve never lied to me, Brielle,” he said quietly, forcefully.
“And I never telled ye that which I wasn’t planning to tell ye,” the witch replied calmly, and it was true enough. No man, no elf, no one in all the world held any bond over the witch of Avalon.
“Ye sent him after Rhiannon,” Bellerian said.
“Go back to yer kinfolk,” she replied, somewhat sternly, and she turned and walked away.
“How dare ye?” Bellerian yelled at her, just as she was about to make one of her trademark disappearances into the brush. Those words stopped the witch short and brought her back to the ranger lord, her eyes narrow. Green flames, they seemed.
“How dare ye?” Bellerian said again, not backing down, though a lesser man would have fallen to the ground and whimpered for mercy in the face of Brielle’s terrible wrath. “For two score and more of years, me and me kin’ve been standing beside ye, helping protect yer forest.”
“Me own gifts to yerself and yers have been no less,” Brielle answered.
“And all of them to hell, I say, if ye canno’ trust me and me kin on this most important ride!” Bellerian yelled right back at her. “If yer girl’s in trouble, then know without doubt that ’tis our bound duty, and our heart-bound pleasure, to go and find her. Our duty, I say, and our love, and not the work for a young warrior o’ mixed blood!”
“He loves Rhiannon, of that I do not doubt,” the witch said quietly, all of the fight suddenly flowing out of her.
Bellerian, too, calmed, recognizing her deep pain. He put his arm about Brielle’s shoulders. “He loves her no more than do the rangers,” he promised. “For Andovar and for Brielle, and for the beautiful young creature that Rhiannon has become, so much her mother, and yet so different.”
Brielle looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears, the hint of bobbing sobs just beginning about her delicate shoulders. “Thalasi’s got her.”
Bellerian blanched.
“And I’m thinking that Bryan o’ Corning might get through where an army could not,” she explained.
“But he has to first get near to Talas-dun,” Bellerian pointed out. “And the Brown Wastes run thick with talon scum.”
“Don’t ye be underestimating that one,” the witch replied. “Spent all the time since the first battles west o’ the river, killing talons.”
Bellerian did not disagree, for he, too, had heard the tales of Bryan of Corning, and had been truly impressed. “But ’tis me duty, and the duty o’ me kin to go with him,” he said firmly. “Out to the west we ride, for Rhiannon, for Avalon.”
“I canno’-”
“Stop us,” Bellerian interrupted. “Ye canno’ stop us,” he finished, “for if ye do, then know that ye’ve ended our covenant. And know that ye’ve broken our very hearts.”
Brielle could not hold her stare against the proud ranger. Truly Bellerian meant his grave threat, and truly, Brielle came to know that she and her daughter were blessed with some of the finest friends anyone could ever hope for.
“Bring her back to me,” she whispered, and then she broke, falling into Bellerian’s strong embrace, burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing.
The ranger held her for many minutes, until she found the strength to stand alone once more. And then he looked at her, full of respect and full of love, bowed once, and was gone.
Twenty-two rangers pounded out of Avalon late that afternoon, riding hard to the west on Avalon steeds, in pursuit of Bryan of Corning, in the hunt against Thalasi.
In the quest to find Rhiannon.
Chapter 16
The Architect Tribe
“YOU WAKED DE beast, you stupid bean growers!” the first of the dark-skinned tribesmen protested, and again, his kin poked Belexus hard.
In the blink of an eye, the ranger had the short man by the front of his dusty tunic, lifting him high off the ground.
“Easy, my friend,” Ardaz warned, seeing the others bristling, seeing their pickaxes gleaming.
“This man could break de rock,” the hoisted tribesman remarked, and he reached over and felt the ranger’s bulging biceps. “Could break de rock,” he said again with certainty.
“Or the dwarf,” Belexus warned.
“Don’t you be calling me dat, boss,” the tribesman replied.
“No need of this, oh no, no!” Ardaz put in, moving to the center of the group. “Ow!” the wizard added suddenly, a sharp pain sticking him in the butt. He turned about at once but found that none of the short men were anywhere close to him.
“Hey boss, you don’t piss her off, eh?” the first man said.
“Piss her off?” the wizard echoed, scratching his head.
“Caribbean,” Del said suddenly, his face brightening with recognition. He looked to Ardaz. “Before the holocaust,” he explained. “The dialect, the black skin…”