She was gone again.
He had failed Marissa once more-just like he had on the bridge. If he hadn't hesitated at the last moment, Marissa would still be alive. Despair and self-hatred rose up in him, like old friends who had departed for a long journey and returned. They accused him, called him a wretched failure and a murderer, demanded that he run away and hide in the darkness of his inadequacy.
This time, however, Taen didn't listen.
Though the faces of Talaedra and Marissa, frozen in dying, swept across his vision, the half-elf refused to despair. Both women may indeed have loved him far more than he deserved, but they both saw within him the person that he could become. He would honor them and spend the remainder of his life becoming that person. It did not spare him his grief-that cut like a vorpal blade through his heart-but it was a clean wound, without rancor or disease.
He would have wept, but a vision of the withered crone stumbling to her feet drove all sadness from him.
"Did… did you think you could defeat me?" she spat, blood-matted hair tossed wildly around her head. "I am beyond your power even now."
Taen pushed himself painfully to his feet, though the crone's spell had wounded him badly. Suppurated flesh tore from his skin and arms as he rose, grasping his father's sword. He concentrated for a moment, held the sword aloft-and suddenly the Song sprang to life, as deep and resonant as it had in the moments before the witch's foul spell had struck.
Borovazk and Roberc stood to his left, hacking at what remained of the vrock, who had collapsed beneath the Staff of the Red Tree's final blast. There, in the flickering torchlight, in a mountain cavern locked away from the rest of the world, Taen stood with his sword raised-beyond anger, beyond grief, beyond any emotion that had distracted him throughout the long years of his half-elf life-and he Sang. Slowly, painfully, he opened himself totally to the Song. If it desired his whole life, then he would offer it gladly, as Marissa had done for him and the lives of his friends. Without another thought, the half-elf surrendered, fell down a hole so dark and deep it might well have gone on forever. There was nothing in that hole-no thought, no sense of self-only thick, unrelenting darkness.
When he emerged, it was as if he had fallen into another universe. Power flared around him and through him, lived in each measure of the Song's flow-which was also each beat of his own heart. There was no "Taen" separate from the Song and no part of the Song that was not somehow a part of him. His father's blade sensed the change as well, for it burned with an intense argent light, filling the cavern with its own power.
"You are finished!" Taen shouted at the chanting witch. "By the will of the wychlaran and the blood of my father, it is over."
The half-elf raised his sword and moved to attack.
He gathered his arcane power, but rather than cast a formulaic spell as he had done for most of his life, Taen channeled that energy, used it to speed his limbs. The world slowed around him as he gathered speed.
The crone backed away slightly to her left and shouted, "Die, you fool!" as she brought her ruined eye to bear upon him. A black beam of power shot out once again, but this time Taen leaped to the side, avoiding it. A section of the cavern floor sizzled and popped for a moment before completely disintegrating before his eyes.
Another beam lanced out at him, but this time Taen tumbled behind a long-toothed stalagmite that took the brunt of the attack. Without hesitation, the half-elf sent arcane energy surging through his sword; bolts of force leaped from the blade's tip to strike the crone. She shrieked and fell backward, turning as if to run toward the back of the cave.
Taking advantage of his newfound speed, Taen ran to the side, intercepting the haggard witch before she could reach the circle of light that had just opened in the floor behind him. Her one good eye widened in disbelief. She raised a skeletal hand toward the half-elf and spit forth the words to another spell.
Taen didn't wait for her to finish. "For Cormanthor,'' he cried in Elvish before leaping through the air, "and for Marissa!" Like a living spear, he hurtled toward the witch and, focusing all of his energy, drove his sword deep into the crone's empty eye socket. The witch wailed in agony as the blade bit true, knocking both of them to the ground. Black power erupted from the wound, cascading around both of them, spinning and twirling like a mini whirlwind. Taen could feel the energy burning at his already battered body, but he did not let go of the sword that impaled the now-dead crone. His agony intensified as the ebon power covered him completely.
The walls of the cavern faded, until everything, at last, was darkness.
Epilogue
The Year of Rogue Dragons
(1373 DR)
Taenaran stood silently in the sunlight.
All around him, the vale teemed with life. The full-throated song of wild birds filled the air, while the undergrowth stirred with the patter of tiny furred feet. A small breeze blew across the wooded vale, redolent with the rich scents of summer. The drone of bees, their bodies bloated with pollen and tossed by the wind, rose up from the lush vernal landscape.
Taenaran might as well have stood in a bare stone room, devoid of windows or doors. He felt the touch of the sun-its warm fingers sliding across his skin-distantly, as if in a memory or some long-ago dream of summer. He took in the heady fragrance of the wind without regard to its vintage, each breath mechanically drawing it into his lungs. Deep inside, he wished nothing less than to break that machine, to still its implacable, torturous rhythm.
Grief had hollowed him out, made of his heart a tomb-full of dust and shadow and a longing so deep it reached to the very marrow of his bones. Marissa was dead, yet the half-elf no longer felt anger or bitterness over his weakness, the brokenness that had caused her to die. He had become a true bladesinger now, a master of his father's art-his own art. The red-hilted blade given him by Aelrindel hung comfortably at his side. In the storm-wrought demesne of an evil witch, Taenaran had finally become true forged, made whole for the first time in his life.
At what cost?
Behind him, he could hear Roberc's dour muttering and the answering rumble of Borovazk's voice. Taenaran's two companions had remained with him during the long months spent in the witches' care, and they had followed him here, offering their strength and friendship for the final leagues of his journey. In truth, the bladesinger remembered little of the aftermath of their battle with the witch. His memory of those final moments lay in ruins. From what Borovazk and Roberc had told him during time spent resting by the hearthside, Yulda's own power had consumed her in those last moments, burning away her body-and the half-elf's flesh would have followed had Borovazk not pulled him free.
The two had tried to awaken him, plying him with healing potions, salves, and other unguents, but to no avail. He was, according to Roberc, deader than a Cormyrean soldier after a tenday's furlough." They had resigned themselves to braving the mountains in winter when a contingent of witches had appeared in the cave. The breaking of the Staff of the Red Tree had caught their attention, and Yulda's death had shattered the arcane barriers surrounding her demesne. Within moments, the witches had teleported the wounded and tired group back to the Urlingwood.
Despite the severity of his injuries, Taenaran had begun to heal under the watchful eye of the hathran assigned to watch over him. In the days and tendays that had followed, physical pain receded, leaving only the emotional scars of his loss. Even so, Taenaran had known that Borovazk and Roberc were grieving as well, and when the numbing emptiness rose up within him, the bladesinger took to the deer paths and hidden trails crisscrossing the Urlingwood, not wishing to inflict his own grief upon his companions.