The Chronicles of Willow, Page 3 (from the Willow Movie Magazine)

The Chronicles of Willow - Page 3

Madmartigan and Willow ride hard, Raziel flying above them like an omen of protection. They ride through the volcanic region of Nockmaar, fearful of pursuit.

General Kael and the Nockmaar minions storm the Tir Asleen wall as they make a final attempt to retrieve the baby.

It is not long before General Kael appears on the horizon behind them. Raziel leads them into the safety of a narrow canyon. Sorsha tells them that they cannot hope to escape. She questions Madmartigan about his earlier protestations of undying love.
"I...I wasn't myself last night," Madmartigan mutters uncertainly.
"I suppose my power enchanted you, and you were helpless against it?" Sorsha asks.
"Sort of," Madmartigan admits, adding, "It went away."
"Went away!" Sorsha flares. " 'I dwell in darkness without you' and it went away?"
Sorsha breaks free. Madmartigan tackles her. They stare into one another's eyes, uncertain of one another's true intent. Then, Sorsha punches Madmartigan and runs away. Madmartigan starts after her, but the thunder of approaching hoofbeats dissuades him.
They ride hard, finally reaching a lush flowered valley. In the distance stand the breathtaking battlements of a walled castle.
"Tir Asleen," Raziel announces.

One of the many trolls who have made their home in Tir Asleen advances on a terrified Nelwyn. Willow's attempt to use his novice knowledge of magic against the creature only makes things worse.

"We're safe," Willow breathes.
Finding the great gates to Tir Asleen half open, they cross the drawbridge into the castle courtyard. There, the citizenry of Tir Asleen stand about, frozen into quartz-like statues. They are obviously victims of Bavmorda's magic.
"Why did I listen to you, Peck?" Madmartigan grumbles.
"But Cherlindrea said we would be safe here," Willow protests.
Madmartigan suddenly steps into something squishy. He looks down and sees that his boot is mired in troll droppings.
"Trolls?" he groans. "I hate trolls."
While a disgusted Madmartigan goes in search of weapons, Raziel implores Willow to again try the transformation spell.
"I can't do it, Raziel," Willow says. "I'm just not a sorcerer."
"But you can be," Raziel says. "Speak--and be one with the words!"
Willow begins to chant. But the sounds of General Kael's charging army breaks his concentration. He returns to his task, only to see that he has accidentally turned Raziel into a goat! She looks at him with dismay. "Willow, you idiot!" she bleats.

General Kael escapes Airk Thaughbaer's forces and brings the Queen her prize.

Out in the courtyard, now clad in gold-plated armor, Madmartigan is preparing the castle's defense. He orders Willow to arm the catapult, while he rushes to close the castle gates against the charging Nockmaar army.
General Kael's hosts are brought up short by the closed gates. Kael calls for a battering ram.
Soon, the Nockmaar troops are battering down the gates with a tree trunk. They pour through like armored insects on horseback. Madmartigan picks off the first wave with a crossbow. Willow is filling the catapult spoon with arrows and stones when he is attacked by castle-dwelling trolls.
Willow smacks one hairy troll with the wand. It collapses into a gurgling blob of boneless jelly that Willow kicks into the moat below.
Madmartigan lets fly with the catapult. The Nockmaar advance melts. Madmartigan grins with triumphant pleasure. But a shadow falls across him and he looks back over his shoulder. He sees that the Nockmaar warriors did not quail before him, but at the sight of an Eborsisk.
The two-headed creature roars, flames spewing from each blunt snout. The Eborsisk torches the drawbridge, cutting Madmartigan off from the castle. General Kael orders him hunted down.

As Airk's warriors prepare to launch their attack against Bavmorda, the sorceress casts a spell against them.

In the courtyard, Willow is frantically trying to quench the growing fires. He is once again beset by trolls. Remembering the High Aldwin's magic acorns, Willow is about to throw one, when it slips from his fingers and falls into the cracks of the burning drawbridge.
Madmartigan, caught between the Eborsisk and the Nockmaar minions, sees his little friend in trouble on the bridge. Bravely, he catapults himself across the courtyard, onto the bridge, and routs the trolls. Then, he leaps onto one Eborsisk head and drives his sword into its horny skull. He jumps off just as the Eborsisk head explodes in flames. The remaining head screams in anguish.
Madmartigan's fall knocks him out for a second. As he awakes, he sees Sorsha standing over him. Wide-eyed, Madmartigan waits for the death thrust from her sword. The blade touches his gulping throat. Sorsha grabs him up and with fighting going on all around them, gives him a longing kiss.

After many disappointments, Willow finally manages to return Fin Raziel to human form.

Out of the east comes a great thunder--Airk Thaughbaer leading hundreds of rebel warriors. At the sight of the new forces, General Kael scoops up Elora Danan and orders his cavalry to retreat to Nockmaar. He has his prize. But the way is blocked by Airk's arrayed forces.
Escaping the maelstrom of men and horses locked in mortal combat, Kael and two minions whip their frothing horses to Nockmaar castle, Madmartigan, Sorsha and Willow riding hard after their dust.
The Nockmaar drawbridge lifts just as Madmartigan reaches it. He is soon joined by Airk's revenge-thirsty forces. Unable to pass the moat, they make camp and await nightfall.
Within the castle, Queen Bavmorda accepts the infant, Elora Danan, from General Kael. She orders the altar prepared and asks for her daughter, Sorsha. General Kael informs her that Sorsha has turned against Nockmaar.
Furious, Bavmorda stares out at the encamped rebels and begins a wicked chant. In the camp, the rebels begin to swell as if from some leprous disease. Their armor bursts as they are transformed into grunting swine. Only Willow, who has muttered a counter-chant at Raziel's command, retains his true form.
While Queen Bavmorda places Elora Danan on a copper altar attended by robed druids, Willow finally completes the chant that at last restores Fin Raziel (Patricia Hayes) to her normal form--that of an old woman whose longlost beauty still shines through her wise wrinkles. Raziel reverses Bavmorda's spell. The rebels are human once again and stranded astride the impenetrable fortress.
Through the night, Bavmorda toils in her tower sanctum while a storm brews among the stars. As the hours pass, her face grows more and more grotesque. She is at the height of her powers--and of her evil.

With a bit of trickery, the rebels make their way into Nockmaar castle.

When the dawn comes, the forces of Nockmaar spy the ruins of the rebel encampment. Only flattened tents and discarded shields remain. It appears that the rebels have slipped away in darkness.
But when General Kael looks down at the moat, Willow and Raziel stand there, alone and unarmed.
"We are all-powerful sorcerers!" Willow challenges. "Give us the baby or we will destroy you!"
"Kill them," Kael rages.
The drawbridge drops. Eight Nockmaar minions ride out. And out of hastily dug pits covered by tent canvas and shields, the rebels spring up, giving vent to a savage war cry.
The Nockmaar horsemen are chopped down and trampled by Airk's forces. Willow, Sorsha and Raziel slip into the castle just ahead of Airk's men. But Willow, overcome by fear, hesitates on the winding steps that lead to Bavmorda's tower. The frightened Nelwyn can go no further. Sorsha and Raziel go on alone. They burst in on Bavmorda's sanctum, where Elora Danan lies in a deathlike spell on the copper altar surrounded by smoking bowls of magic fluids and burning tapers.
"I won't let you kill that child," Sorsha warns, lunging for Elora Danan.

To avenge his fallen friend, Madmartigan faces off against General Kael in a duel to the death.

"Traitor!" Bavmorda hisses. "I despise you now."
Bavmorda levitates Sorsha toward a wall of rusty spikes. But Raziel's magic prevents her from being impaled.
"You have gained strength," Bavmorda grudgingly admits to Raziel.
"I have Cherlindrea's wand," Raziel says, using it ot explode a battle axe Bavmorda causes to fly at her.
"Elora Danan will be queen," Raziel intones as the air crackles with the snarling energies of the clashing sorceresses.
Outside the castle walls, the battle rages. Madmartigan has his horse killed under him, but he comes up, sword flashing. Airk and General Kael face off for the final struggle. And under the stomping hooves of frightened horses, Franjean and Rool scurry for their tiny lives.
On the tower stairway, Willow has summoned up his courage. He sneaks to the sanctum door behind which the awesome spells flare and snap.
Inside, it is a contest of wizardry. Stone gargoyles come to life at Bavmorda's command and pounce upon Raziel. She blasts them apart with Cherlindrea's wand.

Bavmorda prepares her spell of destruction that will erase Elora Danan's existence from the entire world.

"My ritual will kill the prophecy," Bavmorda screeches. "The child's energy will be exiled--into oblivion!" And she hurls a fireball at Raziel.
A counter spell envelops Bavmorda in thick ice. But Bavmorda bursts free of her icy coating and sends a pillar crashing down on Raziel, pinning her to the floor. The wand skitters out of reach. Raziel is helpless.
In the confusion, Willow sneaks into the room, tip-toeing for the copper altar and the helpless Elora Danan.
As Bavmorda closes in for the kill, she is sent crashing into the ceiling rafters by Raziel's wand, which has magically returned to its owner's hand. Bavmorda lies on the floor. Raziel is free. But suddenly, Bavmorda jumps to her feet, grabbing for the wand. The two sorceresses grapple for possession of the wand as bursts of power fly out from it like sparks from a whetstone. A bolt hits a chair, transforming it into a scampering creature. Another bolt brings a table to horrid life. The table attacks Willow, who bashes it into helplessness with a heavy candlestick.
Airk is dying. Madmartigan takes his friend's broken sword and promises to win the war for him. He goes after Kael, following him to the wall outside Bavmorda's tower. As the Tir Asleen rebels slowly overcome the Nockmaar army below, like a symbol of the turning tide of battle, a determined Madmartigan slashes and whacks at Kael's sparkling black blade. Through sheer swordsmanship, the agile Madmartigan beats down the brutish Kael. Kael is faltering. Seeing an opening, Madmartigan slips his sword past Kael's wavering defense and the swordpoint goes in over the general's heart and comes out the back, red and dripping.
General Kael falls to his death.

The triumphant hero returns home to his loved ones with new knowledge of himself and the world beyond. For Willow, it is a happy ending.

In the tower, the flaring wand has fallen to the floor. Reduced to her basest instincts, Bavmorda is choking Raziel. Raziel slumps into unconsciousness. Bavmorda, gasping but triumphant, steps to the copper altar. She stops suddenly. It is bare. Searching the room with hateful eyes, she spies Willow clutching the baby. Bavmorda locks the only entrance and advances on the frightened Nelwyn, monstrous and menacing.
"Who are you?" Bavmorda demands.
"I'm Willow Ufgood. I'm a great sorcerer. Greater than Raziel. Greater than you, even."
Bavmorda laughs. Willow plucks one of the High Aldwin's magic acorns from a pocket and flings it at Bavmorda. She catches it with a nervous snakelike gesture. To her surprise, her hand starts to petrify, turning to stone. The flesh along her arm darkens and hardens. But the queen's magic is great. Concentrating mightily, she wills her hand to return to normal. Gleefully, she crushes the acorn and drops the powder to the floor.
"Is that the extent of your powers, little one?" Bavmorda asks mockingly. "Now, you will watch me draw upon the energy of the universe to send that child into the netherworld. Place it on the altar."
"You stupid hag," Willow warns angrily. "With my magic, I'll send her into a realm where evil cannot touch her."

Photo from the magazine's table of contents.

"Impossible. There is no such place!"
Willow begins to chant. Bavmorda launches into her own spell, causing the fallen wand to zip into her hand. With the wand, she will destroy both the Nelwyn and the baby.
But with a simple flourish of his cloak, Willow causes Elora Danan to vanish before Bavmorda!
"Impossible!" Bavmorda cries, recoiling into the copper altar. She upsets a sorcery bowl, whose contents pool at her feet. She screams in rage and raises the wand to destroy Willow. But instead, the wand summons the final lightning meant for the child. It strikes Bavmorda. Her muscles contort, as she bursts into flames. In seconds, she is a shriveling pillar of ash.
Madmartigan breaks in through the door. He revives Sorsha with a passionate kiss. On the floor Raziel comes to her senses, asking, "Willow...Willow...where's Elora Danan?"
Willow lifts his cloak and reveals Elora Danan, asleep in its secret pocket.
"It was just my old disappearing pig trick," Willow explains.
Days later, in the restored kingdom of Tir Asleen, Willow is preparing to return to his village. The entire kingdom has assembled to see him off. Trumpets blare. Flags flap along the castle ramparts. Sorsha hold the infant, Elora Danan. Franjean and Rool attend them, dressed in tiny uniforms.
"Take this Book of Magic," she says. "You are on your way to becoming a great sorcerer."

Photo from the magazine's back cover.

Willow accepts the book gratefully. He kisses Elora Danan in tender farewell. Madmartigan lifts Willow onto a white pony. And with the entire kingdom waving goodbye, Willow rides across the flowered valley of Tir Asleen.
When Willow reaches his village, the Nelwyn people have turned out to give him a deserving hero's welcome. His wife, Kiaya, rushes to greet him warmly, trailed by their children.
Solemnly, the proud High Aldwin honors Willow by handing him an apple. Willow throws it into the air as it magically transforms into a bird that flies happily away. The Nelwyns cheer their hometown hero, as Burglekutt, remembering how he treated Willow, turns and runs for his life.

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"The Chronicles of Willow" The Official Willow Movie Magazine. Ed. David McDonnell. New York: Jacobs,1988. 4-14.