Once upon a dreadful time

devastating, and Big Jack with Lady Bronze dealt death. Borel and Michelle and the Wolves entered the fray with fangs and sword and arrows.

And Roel and Luc and Blaise and Laurent and the other knights mounted horses and charged in with lance and sword, while lightning split the black skies above, and the heavens roared with rage.

And in Time’s flow Orbane shrieked, “Mother, help me!” And the air on one bank shimmered as of a silver mirror, and stepping through the glisten came Gloriana.

Orbane reached out his arms toward her. “Aid me, Mother.” Yet Gloriana wrung her hands and cried out in torment, for she could do nothing, her own unbreakable geas preventing her from doing ought. And she stood on the shore and wept, as upon the linn did Auberon weep.

And seemingly from nowhere and striding across the vale toward the river and Orbane came the huge man they called the Reaper, and he held in his hands his scythe. “My lord, I will come when the time is right,” he had told Luc, and now the Reaper was here. On he strode, toward the bank opposite from Gloriana, and he paused not at the edge of the flow but walked out upon it instead.

In that moment, Orbane began chanting, and slowly the aging of his face and form began to reverse.

But the Reaper cast his hood over his own head, and with every pace he took, he changed: his coarse-spun cloak turning dark and darker and finally to black. The flesh on his hands became withered, and then his fingers and the forearms showing from his sleeves turned skeletal, and his face, what could be seen of it, became skull- like.

Along the shore, Gloriana raged at the Reaper, yet just as Death held no power over her, she was equally ineffective in dealing with mortality.

But Orbane now saw the Reaper coming, and he began canting a faster chant, yet with one sweep of his scythe, the Reaper took off Orbane’s head. . and something dark and wispy was caught on the blade, and it struggled as if to get free yet could not, and the grim being and his scythe and mayhap a black soul then vanished altogether. And in the stream Orbane’s head and body rapidly decayed and fell into dust and were swept away in the currents of Time.

Seal

Yet the Sickness continued to drift toward the linn, and it drove away allies and Firsts alike, all but Jotun and Raseri, the Dragon with Rondalo astride, for Raseri flew well above the miasma, and the contagion only swirled about Jotun’s feet.

They continued to go after the throng now hiding in the putrescence, with Jotun stomping and Raseri breathing fire and Rondalo loosing arrows against the dim shapes within.

At the cascade, with Scruff flying about and chirping frantically, the Bear reared up and roared and looked about for more enemies to slay. But Camille cried, “Alain! Alain! We must flee the precipice; Orbane’s Sickness yet comes.” The Bear swung ’round toward Camille. “Alain!” she called again, and a dark shimmering came over the Bear, and from the shadow the prince emerged.

“What?” he asked, even as Camille pulled at him to get him out of the path of the contagion.

“The Sickness comes. We must away.” Camille pointed to those now fleeing up the slopes of the vale, some running, others riding.

“Duran?” asked Alain, looking frantically about.

“Gone with Saissa and Valeray,” said Camille, “and you and I must ride.” She gestured at two of the colts of Asphodel, both of whom waited nigh at hand.

The contagion continued its drift.

Camille called Scruff to her, and then she and Alain started to mount, but of a sudden, Alain called, “Wait!” He stepped back to Hradian’s corpse, and there he sought to retrieve Luc’s amulet, yet its protection stung him, for only the rightful heirs or those to whom it was freely given could safely touch the gem-set silver talisman. But then Alain espied the clay amulet on its leather thong about Hradian’s neck, and he realized it was one of the Seals of Orbane.

Quickly he snapped the thong and snatched up the clay token and called out, “Camille, ride. I will come, yet I think I have the means to deal with the corruption.”

“What is it?”

“A Seal of Orbane.”

“But it can only lay curses and do harm to others,” cried Camille.

And now the fringes of the putrescence came upon the pair, and a wave of queasiness swept through them.

But still Alain persevered. How to curse the cloud? Wind?

Non, for then it would simply blow elsewhere and harm others. Rain? Non, for then it would but run off into the River of Time and pollute it still. What of Mithra’s light? Perhaps there’s a chance.

Coughing, nauseated, for neither he nor Camille had been protected by the Fey Lord’s spell, Alain gagged, and yet he managed to lift the seal toward the darkness above, and as he called out, “I curse the Sickness to suffer the light of the sun,” he broke the clay amulet in two.

A rift in the raging sky opened, and a beam shone down upon him, and then the heavens parted, the black skies were riven open, and the lightning vanished, taking with it the roar of thunder as all the darkness fled. And the full of the vale was bathed in the bright light of the midday sun.

There came a thin wail from the Sickness as the corruption boiled away in the clean rays of light. And the wail became a scream, and the scream a roar, as of a raging forest fire, yet no heat was emitted as the radiance utterly destroyed the contagion. And then the roar suddenly dropped to a whisper and then to nought as the miasma vanished. The throng was again exposed, and once more the Firsts and the allies rushed into battle, and Buzzer, now awake in the sunlight, joined the fray, her bumblebee stings assisting Flic in stabbing whatever enemy Regar fought. The Bear and Big Jack fought side by side, and they, along with Jotun and Raseri and the four deadly horsemen, were particularly devastating, and soon the Goblins and Bogles and Trolls were no more, but for a smattering that managed somehow to escape the field.

Under bright skies, Luc came riding back to the linn, and he dismounted and took up the amulet that was rightfully his from Hradian’s eviscerated corpse.

And Liaze came unto Luc, and they stood on the precipice hand in hand and looked out over the River of Time, and in the distance along the shore they saw Auberon embracing Gloriana, the Fairy King and Queen holding one another and weeping, as the River of Time flowed on.

Restoration

The Fey Lord sounded his silver horn, and Asphodel trotted down from the linn to the banks of the River of Time. Auberon mounted, and he took Gloriana up on the Fairy horse before him, and they rode over the crest to an adjoining vale and fared starwise, and then turned back toward the valley in which the arcane river flowed, and they came in among the allies. And when Liaze asked Luc why the Fairy king and his queen hadn’t ridden directly up from where they had been standing, Luc replied, “Auberon told us that one cannot go against the flow of time, hence he had to leave its presence to return to the fount.” Gloriana then passed among the wounded, and lo! with nought but a simple touch she healed each and everyone entirely of cuts and broken bones and bruises and such and of the effects of the Sickness, for her powers in this regard were remarkable. Yet she could do nought for the slain-they had passed beyond her ability to restore.

And Jotun, with his great wide hands, collected the allied dead. Many were the pyres, and Camille and Alain and Rondalo sang their souls to the stars, while comrades and warriors wept.

Having announced their intent to wed, Regar and Lisane stood with Auberon and Gloriana during these rites. And though Gloriana did not wholly accept Regar into her heart, still she came to a polite but cold truce with the bastard prince.