Bastion of Darkness by R. A. Salvatore Page A

fiercely. “And not about yerself. We fight because all the world needs us to fight. Suren it’s a bigger thing than me or yerself, or anything ye think we two might have between us.” She pulled away then and rose, stepping quickly out of arms’ reach.
    “Then think of all the world,” Bryan snapped after her, and he too straightened. “Then think of how little good a bone-weary Rhiannon can do for the world compared to what rested Rhiannon did only a few short months ago. How many did you heal then, at the great battle? And how many talons did you slay with your magics? And all of that before you battled the Black Warlock! Before you, Rhiannon of Avalon, flattened theBlack Warlock to the ground and sent him slithering back to his dark hole!”
    “It was not me alone,” the witch answered softly, her anger subdued by the painful memories of that horrible battle. She looked away, out over the lip of the plateau, out to the wide world spreading before her.
    “But how much could you do now?” Bryan pressed. “If a hundred wickedly wounded soldiers lay waiting for you, how many now would survive?”
    Rhiannon looked back to him and said nothing; she had run out of answers.
    “So rest, my Rhiannon,” Bryan implored her. “Rest and recover your strength, and be ready for that inevitable time when I truly need you, when all the world truly needs you. Do what divining tricks you might to point my sword in the right direction, but then let me take care of the rogue bands. In the end, they are little enough trouble.”
    “The day’s to snow,” Rhiannon said quietly, and started away, but not before she offered a conciliatory nod to the young warrior. “It’d not do for us to get caught up so high.”
    They made their way down the mountain, to a low and sheltered vale, and encountered no more talons that day, nor trouble of any kind. True to Rhiannon’s prediction, a snow did begin to fall, but it was gentle down in the valley, not wind-whipped and stinging, as up on the higher plateaus. Often Bryan tried to broach again the subject of the talons, of his and Rhiannon’s respective roles in their alliance. By Bryan’s estimation, Rhiannon had done more good than any could have imagined, and she should rest now, let her powers be in case they would be needed again in more desperate times. “Whenever your animal friends speak of enemies in the region, passthe word to me,” Bryan said with all confidence, “then take your rest and await my return.”
    Rhiannon was too weary to argue with the eager warrior. She understood that Bryan’s words were as much boast—and a boast aimed at her, and how that set her back on her heels!—as reason. The young warrior wanted to puff himself up—as Rhiannon’s mother used to describe it—in Rhiannon’s eyes. Given the honesty of their relationship, where they saw each other so clearly and truly, she could hardly understand any need he might have to boast.
    Still, given the efficient manner in which Bryan had disposed of the last talon band, and the fact that he had long survived without her help, without anyone’s help, striking at talon encampment after talon encampment, freeing refugees and ushering them to safety across the river, Rhiannon had to admit that there was more than a little basis for his bravado. So the young witch—who had been sheltered in her mother’s forest for so much of her life, but was at last beginning to sort out the wide ways of the wide world—took Bryan’s boasting, his need to protect her and to impress her, as a compliment, and lay down by their fire that night thinking that she might find her first truly restful sleep in a long while.
    Since before this power had awakened within her.
    It was Bryan, supposedly keeping watch, but surely exhausted from the long hike and his escapades of the night before, who first began to snore. Rhiannon lay awake, smiling outwardly at the sound, but her inner turmoil roiled. She had not been properly