"What issss this?" Asaalk snarled. "Where is the gnome? Why is he not here?"
Turning, Wellen stared at the endless corridor. "I suspect that we're to go to him."
"Down the corridor?"
"Do you see anywhere else to go?" he asked. Sure enough, when Xabene and the blue man looked around, they too, saw that the corridor was the only path open to them. Wellen wondered if the same thought was going through their minds that had gone through his . . . had there not been other corridors running along each side? Now, there were only blank walls. The notion that they were being herded was not an attractive thought.
"Let us be done with this!" Prentiss Asaalk began stalking down the corridor, his lengthy strides taking him several yards from his comrades before either could even react. Wellen hurried after the northerner, not wanting Asaalk to run off too far on his own, for both his sake and theirs. Especially theirs. Xabene kept pace with him.
"Perhaps we should let him keep a distance ahead of us," she whispered. "Maybe there's a trap or two and he'll spring them."
"We stay together, regardless of you two."
"A pity."
The blue man, despite their best efforts, continued to lead the way. Wellen soon settled for merely keeping pace a few feet behind the warrior. He was not too concerned with Prentiss Asaalk's attempt to seize control of the situation. Let Asaalk lead the way; it was still Wellen who the mysterious gnome wished to see. The blue man could be no more than a minor irritant to someone as omnipotent as the lord of this magical place.
Several minutes passed without incident, but everyone sensed that something was awry. Still walking, Wellen glanced over his shoulder to observe the path they had already trodden, then faced forward again. While he was still mulling over his discovery, he heard a muttered curse from the figure before him.
"What ails our friend now?" Xabene asked quietly. "He's likely discovered the same thing I did."
"What's that?"
"That we are no closer to the end of the hall than we were just after we started."
She blinked, scanned the entire corridor, and finally frowned. "I'd wondered . . . it didn't seem right, but . . ."
"I know. It's hard to sense it; part of the spell, I imagine." Is he laughing at us? Wellen asked himself. Have we been admitted only to amuse him?
Asaalk paused. When the others had caught up to him, he turned and snarled, "The faster I go, the less distance I seem to cover. What do you suggest we do, Master Bedlam?"
There was only one thing to do, but he dreaded telling it to the frustrated blue man. "We keep walking."
"That is all?"
"We could turn back."
"Never!"
The northerner's outburst was much too intense. Wellen regretted having him with them now, but it was too late. Perhaps Prentiss Asaalk merely fretted over the collar, which was reasonable enough, but his interest was more of a coveting nature. He wanted the dragon tome as much as the Lords of the Dead or the Purple Dragon did.
"Then we continue on." Wellen, taking Xabene's arm, stepped around the seething blue man and resumed his trek. As she passed, the enchantress could not help displaying to Asaalk a brief, mocking smile.
They walked for a time more and then it became obvious that while their progress was slow, it was definitely progress. Wellen squinted and thought he made out doors both at the end of the corridor and on the side walls farther ahead. He asked Xabene if she saw them.
"I do. What do you think lies behind them?"
"That's not the question that runs through my mind," he returned, eyeing the distant portals. Considering where the trio was, such doorways were tempting, indeed. "I was wondering whether we're allowed to open them or not."
The doors had also captured the blue man's curiosity. Prentiss Asaalk broke past his two companions and increased his pace further.
"Asaalk!"
The hulking figure ignored them. Now the distance melted away with a swiftness. In only a few minutes, the rows of doorways became apparent; Wellen estimated that there had to be over a hundred on each wall. They were simple in design and blended with the white walls. A handle was the only thing that decorated each, a plain, metal handle that like so much else, seemed austere in design for something conjured by one with the power to do almost anything he desired.
The more evident it became that they were nearing the doors, the faster Asaalk traveled. He moved as if the Dragon King himself was on his heels. The last few steps he fairly leaped. When at last he reached the doorways, the blue man did not hesitate. Asaalk seized the handle of the closest one and pulled.
It would not open.
He pulled harder. Despite his strength, the door did not even so much as shake. Cursing, the blue man released the handle and tried pulling the one next to it. That portal, too, rebuked his efforts.
"Asaalk! Wait!"
Ignoring them, the enraged northerner turned to the opposite wall and took hold of the handle of the nearest door there. It, like the others, refused him entrance. He put his foot against the wall beside the portal and tried to use his weight.
Still nothing.
"Asaalk, it's obvious these paths are not meant for us." Wellen tried to pull the ever more furious figure from his obsession, but the blue man pushed him away with a snarl. To his surprise, the smaller man barely saved himself from flying into one of the other doors. Instead, he roiled to a stop just inches away. Asaalk's strength was so incredible that Wellen was surprised his companion had not torn the entire door from its hinges.
"Stop that!" Xabene called, stepping toward Asaalk. She, like Wellen, was ignored.
"One of thesssse must open!" He turned toward the final portal at the end of the corridor. "Sssso be it!"
Before they could stop him, Prentiss Asaalk was running toward the far doors.
"He's gone mad!" the enchantress cried, helping Bedlam to his feet.
"Mad or ensorcelled! The collar, remember?"
"Then this was all—" She had no time to finish. Prentiss Asaalk had nearly reached his goal, and showed no sign of slowing down.
The hard, massive form of the blue man struck the twin doors where they met.
With a shriek of metal resounding through the hall, Asaalk's body continued through as the barrier before him gave way.
Wellen and Xabene rushed after the blue man. The scholar feared that all hope of peaceful contact with the gnome was lost. The citadel's master surely would not long tolerate this vandalism, this plundering.
"There!" roared Asaalk from within. The chamber was fairly well lit. With his large form blocking most of their view, however, they could not entirely make out what was in the room beyond, save that Wellen thought he saw some sort of pedestal upon which something lay.
There was an inhuman quality about the northerner now. His breathing grew heavy and fast and his stance was a bit awkward. He seemed even larger for a moment or two.
"At lasssst!" he hissed. "My dragon tome!"
"Did he say . . ." Xabene hesitated at the battered doorway. " . . . the dragon tome?"
Bedlam only partly heard her. He was still staring at Asaalk. A horrible, unthinkable notion was creeping into his mind, one he tried to reject but could not.
He started to move, realizing that whatever the truth, one thing was certain. "We have to keep him from taking that book!"
It was already too late. Heedless of whatever else might wait in the chamber, the blue man rushed toward his prize. As much as Wellen both hoped and dreaded it, nothing stayed the crazed figure. The scholar had some hope that he and the enchantress might still have a chance when Asaalk suddenly slowed just before the pedestal. The northerner, though, wasted only a few seconds as he seemed to study the area before him for traps. Evidently finding none, he reached for the massive book.
Wellen did not need any magical warning sense to tell him to stay back. He grabbed hold of Xabene's arm and pulled her to the floor.
Prentiss Asaalk lifted the dragon tome from its
resting place. He laughed.
Then vanished.
With a heavy thud, the ancient tome fell to the marble floor. It bounced twice, then settled a few yards in front of the two gaping onlookers.
"Predictable in the end," commented a voice behind them. Wellen had a sense of great age and authority . . . and not a little pride. "Obsession will always do that, even to a creature like a Dragon King."
Very slowly, the two humans, still lying on the floor, turned around.
The figure towered over them, but only because they were not standing. He cannot be any taller than my chest! Bedlam decided. And that if he can straighten up. The latter seemed doubtful; the figure before them had been permanently bent by both centuries of study hunched over desks and by the centuries themselves, for though he might be immortal, this being was old.
The gnome, clad in a brown robe that nearly touched the floor, smiled at them. It was a smile reminiscent of a dragon, but without the warmth. "Rise, please."
The duo obeyed immediately. The master of the citadel glanced over Xabene, found nothing of interest, then studied Wellen. He stared longest at the scholar's eyes.
"A few flakes of crystal, I see. A throwback, no doubt. Most interesting."
His words raised questions, but nothing that Wellen would have dared ask now.
A staff was in the gnome's left hand. It had not been there the previous moment. With it, the aged figure prodded at the two humans. "Step aside."
Again, they obeyed without hesitation. The gnome moved with amazing grace to the fallen book. It lay flat with its pages fanning upward.
"Wellen," Xabene whispered. "Do you sense anything?"
He thought about it. He had not sensed danger in the corridor and he had not sensed danger in the chamber, despite the trap offered by what had to be a false book.
His ability had vanished. From the moment Bedlam had entered this place, it had ceased to be. How had he missed its sudden absence?
The answer was the squat creature before him.
She understood his silence. "It's the same with my own power. I've lost it all now," the enchantress muttered. "I think it was the moment Asaalk touched the book."
Blocking out his ability to sense danger was one thing, but the citadel's lord must have known he would give his plot away if he stole the last of Xabene's power. Unlike Wellen, she was not one to fail to notice the absence of something so important to her.
"That it was him at all was the most fascinating part of all this," the smiling gnome explained to his baffled audience. He flipped through the pages of the tome and chuckled at something he saw within. "I have always wondered just how he planned to get in even if he succeeded in capturing me."
"What is it . . . " The scholar took a deep breath. "What is it you're saying?"
"You know very well," the gnome admonished him. "You know that he was not your companion of old."
Xabene's eyes rounded. "Not the blue man?"
"I would say that your blue friend . . . what was his name, my young friend?"
"Prentiss Asaalk," Wellen responded. "Is the true man dead, then?"
"Probably so. If this is the kind of spell I think it is, then he died the moment our scaly friend put on this form. That he mastered even a human one is astonishing, but that he wore the shape and form of one you knew, too, is impossible."
"Who is he talking about, Wellen? You and he both seem to understand what you're saying, but I—" The enchantress broke off. "He just said scaly . . . "
"Indeed I did, young woman." The staff turned to so much smoke as the gnome made use of both hands to hold the huge tome open. He held it much the way it had lain on the floor, both covers down and the pages all displayed like a peacock's feathers. "Allow me to show you what he looks like. .. without the spell of seeming that made him be your friend."
The spellcaster tore a page from the false tome and tossed it into the air before them. The single sheet fluttered about for several seconds, at last coming to earth roughly in the trio's midst. It did not settle, however, but rather continued to turn and turn, a top spun by an invisible hand.
The page stood on one end. Transfixed by this continuing feat of sorcery, Wellen and Xabene watched as the paper expanded, swiftly rising to a height equal to the scholar's own and then rising even higher. Bedlam estimated it ceased growing when it was a little over eight feet tall.
It was still turning, but now that its growth had ended, it began spinning faster and faster, raising a breeze that forced the two humans to turn away until they could shield their eyes.
Beyond them, beyond the whirling page, the gnome chuckled.
As Wellen, his hand above his eyes, squinted, much of the sheet started to darken. The darker the paper grew, the slower the turning became. He made out a manlike form, but one taller and more massive than even Prentiss Asaalk.
The hairless spellcaster nodded. With a stop so jarring it made Wellen and Xabene jump, the page froze before them. There, in all its inhuman glory, stood what had truly traveled with the two humans to the citadel.
A demonic warrior clad in enshrouding scale armor. The monstrous countenance was all but hidden within a helm, but they could make out the fiery eyes and part of the flat, horrific face within nonetheless. Atop the helm was an elaborate dragon's head crest, a crest so lifelike that one expected the head to open wide its maw and snap up the onlooker. No weapon hung from the warrior's waist, but it was doubtful that any was needed. The gauntleted hands and the savage mouth looked readily able to tear apart a foe gobbet by bloody gobbet.
From head to toe, the fiendish knight was colored a very distinctive shade of purple.
"Allow me to introduce, albeit in a form much removed from his original, His Infernal Majesty, the lord of this land . . . the Purple Dragon."
The illustration on the page was so very lifelike that Wellen could see the evil, the power, and at the moment, the incessant frustration of the trapped drake lord.
It was the Dragon King.
Not an illustration. Not an image of the captured creature as he stood waiting in some hidden dungeon. The true dragon. Held prisoner on the very sheet of paper—a prison of only two dimensions—that stood before them.
The gnome shuffled toward them. It was all the humans could do to keep from stumbling back. There could be no doubting the short, squat mage's skills now, not that the scholar ever had.
"And since it seems time for introductions," the gnarled figure continued, closing the book with a finality that was all too noticeable, "you may call me Serkadion Manee."
Chapter Seventeen
Benton Lore had not believed that the outsider Bedlam would succeed with his insane, sophomoric plan, but his lord had thought differently. Now he saw that the Green Dragon must have made a careful study of both the outsider and the gnome, for who could have predicted Bedlam's success otherwise?
From his hiding place in a copse of trees not too distant from the featureless pentagon, he watched. There was little else to do until they exited the cursed place.
If they did leave, he wanted to speak with the scholar in private. Whatever secrets or even passing knowledge that Bedlam picked up would be useful to the major-domo's true cause. He could have cared less about the fate of the mad warlock Shade, whose chief concern, in Lore's eyes, was always his own existence. The gnome had the potential to give all humans their freedom from the Dragon Kings, make them master of their own fate. WeIlen Bedlam represented a possible bridge for Lore to that knowledge and power.
His lord knew of his desire, of that the officer was aware. The Green Dragon, however, foresaw mankind's ascendancy as a certainty, whereas Lore saw it as something attainable only if he and those like him strained to reach it. Nothing was certain as far as the black man was concerned, especially freedom.
All of that would be a moot point if the trio never departed. Benton Lore and humanity would be back where they had left off. Nowhere.
He settled down to wait, knowing that his own
sorcerous abilities would warn him of any approaching threat. The forces of the Dragon King Purple, however, were very absent tonight. That could only mean that they had fallen for the diversions. Asaalk was still a problem, but not one he could not handle. After all, it was not as if the blue man, human or not, were the Dragon King himself.
Another pair of eyes, white, soulless ones, also watched the pentagon. Another watcher, just as eager as the dark man, waited for the trio, especially the scholar, to leave the safety of the citadel.
The gnome spoke his own name with such authority that Wellen supposed that he should have recognized it. He did not. Neither, he saw, did Xabene. Name or not, though, Serkadion Manee was to be respected, if only because of his power.
Something about the name did strike him, however. Wellen could not say what it was, save that it reminded him of another name . . . two, in fact. Shade had used those names, Dru Zeree for the legendary lord Bedlam had known as Drazeree, and Sharissa Zeree, the wraith who had also been the lord's illustrious daughter. In fact, there had been another title with the same distinctive syllable at the end, a mysterious people called the Tezerenee.
Could Serkadion Manee, like Shade, be a representative of the same ancient race?
Xabene was not so concerned with history. Her priorities surrounded the menacing figure of the Dragon King, who literally seemed to be struggling to free himself of the page. "Can he escape?"
Manee glanced back at the prisoner. A brief frown crossed his unsightly visage. "He is stronger than I imagined; I had not thought it possible for him to fight it as much as he has." The rounded shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "But struggle is all he shall do."
The bizarre, flat image did not seem to agree. The Dragon King only increased his visible efforts.
"How did he obtain such a near-human form?" the unnerved yet fascinated woman asked, ignoring the annoyed look on Serkadion Manee's visage. Wellen hoped he was not the type that used his sorcery to erase from his existence all those who irritated him, however slight the irritation might have been.
Legends of the Dragonrealm: Volume 04 Page 26
