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Guardian of Ajalon

By Joan Campbell

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PROLOGUE

The Rif’iend moved effortlessly through the Rif’twine’s Darkzone, unhampered by the thick growth of trees, creepers, and vines. Crafted from darkness and malevolence, his essence was the same as that of the forest, making it as easy for him to melt through the Rif’twine as it was for dirt to mix into sludge.
He paused, breathing deeply of the death-and-decay-laced air, savoring the brief surge of energy that followed. He did not normally stray this far into the Darkzone. Most of his kind preferred to hover at the border of the Dark-and-Dimzone. It was there—where the forest pulsed outward to claim the southlands—that the Rif’twine’s power was the greatest . . . and feeding the easiest. Until the southerners started to fight the forest, he and his fellow Rif’iends had satiated themselves on all the Rif’twine devoured.
But the Rif’twine’s power was declining, and the Rif’iends grew edgy. Now they tussled daily for the small scraps of death and pain the forest still stole. The fear and anguish of the rooters—especially the small ones—were a good source of food and power, but the Rif’iends were never satisfied for long. It was only when the delirea plant bloomed with death that the Rif’iends feasted as well as they had in the past.
He glided forward again through the silent forest. He detected the poison sap creeping deep in the towering trees and heard age-old echoes of the magic words that had called the trees to life and then death. The air was thick and cold. It enveloped him in its safe darkness.
But something was amiss.
He sensed a disruption in the darkness ahead of him. He slowed, approaching this strangeness cautiously. The air around him grew warmer. He quivered with disgust, but forced himself forward to discover this source of heat.
Suddenly the Rif’iend found himself in open space. His eyes burned as the light scorched him with its brightness. Dread coursed through him and he shrieked, fleeing back to the trees. How could this be? He was nowhere near the north, was he?
From the safety of the trees, he peered back at the open space—a clearing, completely free of trees, except for one. Flowers carpeted the floor around this single tree—a bright green weeping willow—and water bubbled up from the ground below it. The creature wrinkled up his nose at the sweetness of the flowers and the freshness of the water.
Why had the forest not claimed this clearing with its foreign tree, flowers, and fresh water?
The creature backed away slightly, letting tendrils of his remaining power slither out into the Rif’twine, seeking an answer to this anomaly. Deeper and deeper those tendrils explored. He drew comfort from the Rif’twine’s vastness. Of course, he skirted away from the north’s intense glare, following his senses to the south, to Gwyndorr, where he perceived the answer lay.
Suddenly he saw in his mind’s eye events he had not witnessed for a long time. For hadn’t he been there when they had occurred, watching from the edges of the Dimzone? The time shift, he realized, had brought it to him again.
A crowd of southerners pulsing with excitement and a single poison tree. A gathering storm that meant the end of it all.
And finally the creature understood where he was and how this clearing had come to be. This was the place where the Rif’iends had scuffled over the ring, the one he had finally laid claim to. But why hadn’t they noticed what was happening here, deep in the Rif’twine, while they fought?
He shuddered at the thought.
What power was so great, so frightening, that it could push back the very core of evil?

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