Free Bastion of Darkness by R. A. Salvatore Page B

company he meant to keep only for this night. He had considered asking Calamus to accompany him—of course he had!—before he had ever left Avalon, but like his decision not to ask any of the rangers or the elves, Belexus had determined that he could not accept such a responsibility. Surely the pegasus would make his journey far easier—though he doubted he could fly very high for any stretch of time in the cold mountain air—but if anything ill befell the pegasus, Belexus would never be able to forgive himself. And dragons were known to prize horseflesh!
    “I’ll take yer bags,” the ranger said. “And glad I am for the help. But in the morning light ye’re to go back to Avalon, me friend, back home where ye belong.”
    The pegasus snorted defiantly, and the stomp of hooves came more insistent now, and surely not in agreement with the ranger’s plan.
    Belexus let it go at that, an argument to be resolved in the light of morning. He tended the fire, then went back to the wall and slept soundly, confident of his companion’s diligence.
    Calamus proved no more agreeable in the morning, and was not about to leave, even when Belexus tried to push the winged horse from the ledge. After nearly an hour of the futile dispute, the ranger finally relented. It would be foolhardy to take a horse into the rough mountain terrain, but a pegasus could go almost anywhere. And in thinking about it without the blindinginfluence of his stubborn pride, Belexus had to admit again that Calamus might certainly prove valuable on this expedition, the pegasus taking him faster and higher than he could ever hope to climb. How much easier might his search be from the vantage point of the flying horse’s back?
    “So ye win,” he admitted to the pegasus, though he was really speaking to distant Brielle. He loaded up the saddlebags, climbed into the saddle, and urged the pegasus away, soaring high through the cold mountain air.
    Unbeknownst to steed and rider, a third creature, a large raven, watched their departure with more than a passing interest.

Chapter 6

The Black Warlock
    H E STOOD IN the driving rain on the narrow walkway overlooking the muddy courtyard. This was his home, his bastion, Talas-dun, that he, with powerful magics, had pulled up from the very stone of these mountains, bending and shaping it to the designs of his mighty will. Talas-dun had stood for centuries, since the time Morgan Thalasi had led the wicked talons, the first mutation of mankind, out of Pallendara, ostensibly so that they could cause no more mischief, but in reality, to breed them and train them and bend them, as he had shaped the stone of Talas-dun to the designs of his will. How like a god Morgan Thalasi had felt then! To bring an entire race under his absolute control! The talons were his pawns: sentient, reasoning creatures that he had transformed into mere extensions of his will. They would not disobey him, even if he told them to leap from a cliff to jagged stones, preferring certain and horrible death above facing the wrath of Morgan Thalasi, the anger of their god.
    Because they feared him, feared the Black Warlock, more than they feared Death itself.
    There were many of the ugly talons milling about the courtyard now, wandering aimlessly and without the strict discipline that had always been the norm of Talas-dun.
    No, not always, the Black Warlock recalled; there hadbeen one notable lull in discipline before this latest one. When first Thalasi had come back to this place after the disaster at Mountaingate, after Jeffrey DelGiudice had brought forth that terrible weapon from the ancient times and shot him through the heart, he had been a weakened creature indeed. He had stolen the body of Martin Reinheiser, but with that feeble mortal coil came the stubborn and powerful spirit of the dispossessed man. The resultant dual being, Thalasi and Reinheiser in one physical form, so uncomfortable, so out of control of even its simplest bodily movements, had