He looked to the north, but not thinking that any help would come from that direction, and his heart sank lower at the sight of Arien and the valiant elves, a force so unified that they seemed as one, a longboat skimming on the very edge of a breaking wave.
But that wave continued to swell behind them.
She came to a hall where two corridors crossed, and glanced both ways, but saw nothing to guide her. Cursing herself for the slight hesitation-for the desperate Black Warlock was right on her heels, closing ground, yelling at her, taunting her-she darted to the left. She had the mighty staff, but had no idea, and certainly no desire, to wield the perverted thing! And, despite the theft, this remained Morgan Thalasi’s castle, his bastion of strength, built with his magical power and offering him residual energy from that long-ago construction.
Through a door, Rhiannon nearly ran over a pair of statuelike zombies.
“Kill her!” Thalasi screamed to them from a few yards back.
Rhiannon gave a slight yelp and tried to circumvent them, thinking that her flight had ended. She might destroy the zombies, but not in time to evade Thalasi’s pursuit.
But the zombie pair didn’t move to attack, didn’t move at all to Thalasi’s call, and the young witch sensed that they had not even heard him, that he had no connection to them and surely no power over them. She crossed by the pair, then glanced at the staff, and then she understood.
“Kill him,” she said quietly, before her good sense could intervene, and the zombies moved immediately, obeying the staff wielder. Thalasi’s hollowed eyes widened indeed when he crossed the threshold of the room to find the zombie pair reaching for his throat.
Rhiannon ran on, knowing that the zombies couldn’t defeat the Black Warlock, couldn’t even hold him at bay for very long. She heard a crackle behind her soon after she had exited the room, and then Thalasi was chasing her once more.
There were more zombies and skeletons up ahead, and these, too, the desperate Rhiannon set to block him.
How easy it was! With a mere thought, she could order them to… to do anything, she realized. To kill Thalasi, or to leap from a cliff face. A grander scheme came to the young witch as she moved along, down another corridor, then up a tight spiral staircase. She came to understand the staff and its powers more fully with each step, and she couldn’t imagine that she had ever wanted to destroy the precious item. With this power…
The thought was intoxicating, overwhelming, and Rhiannon acted immediately, sending her telepathic commands out far and wide. She heard her mother’s voice, from a distant place, crying out in protest, but she ignored it, too concerned with changing the tide of war.
With those simple telepathic thoughts, Rhiannon ordered all the thousands of undead Thalasi had raised to shift sides, imparting a mental image of the wretched talons as the new focus of their attacks. She knew that the staff, the brilliant and beautiful staff, had sent the commands out far and wide, knew, somehow, that every undead creature in all the world would take heed.
Kill talons.
Hollis Mitchell heard the command distinctly, a wave of power washing over him, catching him completely off his guard. He closed his flaming eyes, swaying, seeking his own dominating willpower, and Belexus, ever the opportunist, wasted no time in going on the attack, wading in and hammering hard at the wraith.
Mitchell hardly felt the profound stings of Pouilla Camby, so concerned was he with that curious call. Then he understood; it was not the Black Warlock. That meddlesome young witch had gotten her hands on the Staff of Death!
The wraith came out of his trance with a hiss of defiance, the impartation of the staff, which had never really been his master, thrown aside. He had to finish his business here quickly now, he understood, and get back to Talas-dun to deal properly with Rhiannon. He considered it a promising thing, as he drove the ranger back to a defensive posture. Rhiannon, after all, wouldn’t be as skilled or as powerful with the item as Thalasi, and if he could somehow wrest the staff from her, then his control would be absolute. All the dead-including those who would fall on the field of battle this very day-would rise to his command.
But he had to be quick, the wraith realized as he saw battle erupting not so far from the flat rock, yet far from the lines of the humans and elves, as he saw talons scrambling suddenly to get away from their zombie and skeleton allies, the undead reacting immediately to the new commands of the staff wielder.
“They are fleeing!” Ryell cried, and indeed it seemed true. The undead ranks had turned away from the elven wedge, moving back toward the mountains. Elves cried out in victory and joy, for not one of them, brave though they were, had harbored a thought that they could win through this teeming horde.
But to Arien, always calm and thinking, it made no sense at all. And then it made even less sense, as he noted a group of zombies pull down a thrashing talon and fall over the beast.
Something was wrong here, so very out of place. The elf lord looked to Ardaz, who sat atop his horse, scratching at his beard.
“How very curious,” the old wizard said, reading and agreeing wholeheartedly with Arien’s confusion.
“Might your sister be involved?” Arien asked, for if any in all the world could turn perversion back on Thalasi, it was Brielle.
Ardaz, though, was thinking along slightly different lines. “Or her daughter,” the old wizard replied, and a hopeful smile widened on his wrinkled and hairy face.
Arien’s heart soared with hope, too, but he had no more time to sit and ponder. He tightened the elven wedge and drove them hard to the south, ordering them to focus any attacks on talon enemies.
Their first barrage blew great holes in the lines of advancing monsters, but the crews of the great trebuchets feared to launch their pitch balls now, with the undead so close, with melee soon to be joined, Calvan riders sweeping out from the skirmish line in tight formations. The artillerists looked farther back toward the mountains instead, and their attention was grabbed by the sight of Bellerian, high on the winged horse.
Down he swooped, firing his bow, then up again as a wall of arrows rose up against him.
“Oh, fine Bellerian,” one Calvan exclaimed.
“Coordinate!” The cry came from King Benador, who had also noticed Bellerian and was riding hard now for the catapult line.
The great arms creaked and heaved their loads, one after another, to the spot below Bellerian.
The ranger moved Calamus far from harm’s way, and dipped his wings in salute to the artillerists even as the carnage erupted below him, the splattering pitch bombs scattering and burning the talon entrenchment.
Few of the talons escaped that barrage, and none unscathed. One creature, limping, often crawling, for its legs had been badly burned, managed to get around a rocky wall before the second barrage thundered in. The creature made for that wall, thinking to put its back against it, thinking that it had reached safety.
Head down, belly to the ground, the creature’s eyes widened when it saw the white legs of Calamus. It looked up in time to see Bellerian’s sword cutting down.
The ranger lord wiped his sword on the dead talon’s tunic, then, satisfied that no others were about, he climbed the pegasus high into the sky once more, thinking to scout out another talon nest.
Something else caught his attention, something he could not ignore.
High atop the tallest tower of Talas-dun, Rhiannon heard the fighting, zombie against talon, raging in the courtyard. She went to the window and saw the carnage-dozens of undead pulling down talons, choking them-and she mused that with a thought she could increase her forces-her army-after every battle.