Bastion of Darkness by R. A. Salvatore Page B

way instead to another nearby cottage. She tried to use her insight, her magical nature, to better sense the presence, and she was not surprised, though surely stunned, when she felt that cold darkness again, the one that had touched her in the Baerendils so many miles away. It was here, so close, feeling her presence as keenly as she perceived its own.
    Suddenly the young witch wished that she had not left Bryan, wished that she was still far, far away in the mountains, away from the darkness, this darkness thatshe feared too profound for the light of Rhiannon. She looked back to the eastern gate, measuring the distance and the time it would take her to cross out of Corning. She considered her magical energy, to transform her into something more agile, more quick, or to attempt to teleport, perhaps, though that was surely a difficult spell to enact, even before the waning of magic.
    She thought and thought, seeking an escape, her mind a whirl of possibilities.
    She heard the evil laughter, and all those thoughts melted away, false hope indeed.
    “Morgan Thalasi, I suppose,” the young witch said in a loud voice, as calmly as she could manage. “So ye crawled from the field after me and me friends beat ye down …”
    That last word stuck in her throat as she turned about to see not Morgan Thalasi, but a creature she did not know. It resembled a large man, and certainly a dead one, though the edges of its features constantly blurred, seeming somehow indistinct, as if the thing was not fully of this realm.
    Rhiannon did not know its name, and could not know that this perversion, this stain upon the living world, was indeed the creation of Thalasi. She could not know that this creature was all that remained of one of the ancient ones, that this horrid being had once been a companion of her father, torn from the grasp of Death by the Black Warlock.
    What she did know, though she did not understand how she could possibly hold such certainty with the thought, was that this creature, this evil unnatural perversion, was the murderer of Andovar.
    “Well, what pleasure has fate sent my way?” the wraith of Hollis Mitchell asked, the timbre of its voicematching its unearthly appearance, a supernatural and evilly charged tone that stung the young witch’s sensibilities and set her back on her heels.
    Rhiannon trembled with rage, not fear. Her mind focused on Andovar, on the record of his death, which was painted indelibly within the features of this horrid creature. She reached into the earth, felt the life there, dormant beneath the wintry blanket, felt the energy there, the strength, and brought it forth. Strands of grass erupted all about the feet of the wraith, pushing through the snow, climbing higher and thicker.
    Mitchell hissed as he felt them brush his half-substantial form, as he felt the sting of earth energy, the burning power of life itself. The wraith growled and lifted one foot, but the grass, moving to Rhiannon’s will, was quick to wrap about the other foot and leg, twining about them, tighter and tighter.
    Now the pain became intense, as searing as anything Hollis Mitchell had ever known. He worked frantically, first by waving his scepter out at Rhiannon, the black flakes filling the air before her and above her, drifting to attack. Then Mitchell went at the grass, raining the black flakes all about it. The earth energy burned at the wraith, how it burned! But wherever one of the mace’s black regurgitations hit, that patch of grass shriveled and died, and gradually, the grip lessened.
    Rhiannon worked furiously as well, to dodge the perverted snowstorm that Mitchell had put over her. She waved her hands about in the air, summoned the wind to her grasp, and blew many of the flakes away. A couple did get through, though, and the young witch yelped in sizzling pain, the first real physical battle wound she had ever felt.
    When at last the deadly storm was passed, Rhiannon looked up to see Mitchell free of the