Wellen tried to struggle, but the part of him that had not succumbed to the encroaching floor was still frozen. Manee had only allowed him speech. "For god's sake, don't do this!"
"I am the closest thing to a god around here, I imagine, and this is for my sake. Bear with it, won't you please? I have other things to look up. There is still your companion to find and a rather annoying pest to clean out." The insidious gnome bowed. "I am afraid that I will not be back before it is too late. Please believe me, Master Wellen Bedlam, when I say that it was both a pleasure and a pain to meet you. Who knows? Perhaps enough of you will remain coherent so that we might have a discourse or two in the future."
With that, Serkadion Manee vanished.
Blinking, the scholar realized he could move again. Unfortunately, that meant being able to move only the top half of his body, for the living stone that was the citadel had already crept up to his waist and was continuing its climb at far too fast a pace.
Xabene! was his first thought, but she was probably almost as powerless as he seemed to be. Shade was the only one who might be able to help him but he had vanished, either a victim of Manee or simply a wiser soul who had departed the moment he could. Still, Wellen wished that one or both of his companions were here. Perhaps there was some spell they knew that would free him or—
Before him stood both the hooded warlock and the pale enchantress.
To say they were as surprised as he was would have been understating matters. Xabene looked as if she expected either the Dragon King or the gnome to snatch her. When she realized who it was she stood next to, the sorceress stepped away. Her gaze drifted to Wellen, but her sudden joy died when she saw the fate that had befallen him.
"Wellen! By the Lords of the Dead!" She took hold of him and tried to pull him free, not understanding the true nature of his predicament.
"Stop! Unless you desire to become a part of him permanently!" Shade separated the two. Xabene raised her hand, but instead of the spell that the warlock likely expected, she slapped him instead.
Shade looked at her, mouth a grim, straight line, and then laughed. "I think I like you after all, female, despite the fact that you remind me too much of my dear, unlamented family."
"Like me or hate me; I could care less! Do something about Wellen!"
"I was going to." The warlock turned glittering eyes on the scholar. "You need not have shouted in my head, Master Bedlam; a simple summons would have been sufficient."
"Shout?" The shadowy figure extended a gloved hand, which Wellen immediately took hold of. All at once, he felt able to move his legs again.
"You brought us here, you know. That infernally unpredictable power of yours."
Looking down, the novice spellcaster saw that the stone was receding. It had taken on an almost liquid quality and was so soft he was able to pull one of his legs entirely free. With a hand from both of his companions, he was soon away from the treacherous spot. The trio watched as the floor reformed its flat self, then solidified.
"A Vraad through and through," muttered the ancient warlock. Now free, Wellen took hold of Xabene. "Where were you? What happened to you in that madcap corridor?"
She gave Shade a chilly glare. "He did. It was he who rescued me."
"I would have rescued you also," the hooded warlock added, "but you vanished before I could. It was Manee, then, who took you."
"No, Manee didn't." Wellen relayed what had happened to him, not excluding even the tortured minds he had discovered.
When Wellen was done, Shade shook his head. "Worthy of Lady Melenea." When the other two stared at him blankly, the warlock added, "An old acquaintance. Your ancestor, Master Bedlam, was the last to see her before she herself vanished forever. No loss." He grimaced. "All this activity stimulates the memory too much. I was better left dreaming in my cavern, going ever more mad."
"You are welcome to return to your madness," Xabene snapped, "but not until we've escaped this place!"
"Xabene—"
Shade raised a hand to forestall arguing. "Have no fear that I take her words the way she meant them. I am a child of the clan of the Tezerenee, the dragon men." He paused dramatically for reasons Wellen would never understand. At last, twisting his dry features into something resembling pleasure, he finished, "I have been threatened and bullied by far more intimidating forces than her."
"Listen you—"
"This can wait," Wellen said, taking charge, much to his surprise. "What concerns us now is escaping."
"Do you have an idea?" Shade asked. His parchmentlike countenance had slipped back into the shadows of his hood.
"Then," responded the master warlock, reaching into his flowing cloak, "perhaps you might be interested in my idea, after all."
His gloved hand emerged with a dragon tome of a pale white that reminded the scholar of the color of the undead Yalso's decaying flesh.
"What's so special about that particular volume?" the raven- haired enchantress asked. She no longer seemed to have any interest in the gnome's treasures. In fact, the very presence of all the other books had made her even more anxious. Wellen had seen her gazing at them every now and then out of the corner of his eye and her expression had not been one of desire but the opposite.
He found he was glad.
"This," Shade said, "tells us the citadel's weaknesses in detail."
"You're joking! Why would he put together something like that?"
"Because," the dark warlock replied, opening to a particular page and turning it toward them, "he is, after all, Serkadion Manee."
In another corridor of the vast libraries, the gnome remateralized. By now, the unfortunate mortal scholar was a well- integrated part of his citadel, but it would take a little time for the shock to recede. It was much the same as the first few minutes after a mind had been introduced to the pentagram. Not until the spell completely took control was it worth trying to get what had once been a living being to obey even the simplest of instructions.
That meant that the citadel was open to further infestation by the Dragon King and there was only one thing that Serkadion Manee knew of that was quick and cunning enough to foil the intruder.
A creak made him glance around, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. With no guidance, the citadel's vast interior was shifting randomly. This was not the first such noise he had heard and he doubted it would be the last. Things would need time to return to normal.
A gray book leaped into his hand from one of the shelves. The pages turned until he found what he wanted. Manee read and, by reading, cast the spell.
The squat gnome allowed himself a chuckle as he sent the dragon tome back to its resting place. That would teach the would-be conqueror a thing or two. It would almost be worth the risk just to watch the drake open one of the books now.
See how much you learn now! The stooped Vraad chuckled again. The spell had almost been a joke when he had devised it, a change of pace from his more serious work. Now, it would be the final strike in his counterattack.
Jagged streaks of pain shook his body. He felt moisture on his back and neck. The world around him began to blur.
What is happening to me? It almost feels—was his last coherent thought.
He fell to the floor, the blood from the gaping tear in his neck and shoulders spilling over onto the floor.
Looming over the quivering figure of the dying gnome, the Purple Dragon dropped his spell of hiding and wiped his bloodied talons on Serkadion Manee's robe, only briefly pondering what it was that might have amused the former immortal so much.
Chapter Twenty
Torches lit by themselves as the trio teleported into the chamber.
"Where are we now?" Wellen asked. He looked forward to a time when he could once more travel purely by conventional means. Still, I suppose to a spellcaster teleportation is a conventional method.
"In the lair of the beast," Shade replied, unfurling himself. There was something foul about the way he teleported, something so different
that Wellen had so far been unable to pinpoint it. The grotesque manner in which the warlock twisted himself . . . and the two of them, this time . . . before each teleport was not what the scholar wondered about. It was the way Shade's magic always made him want to shy away.
To a lesser extent, the same applied to Serkadion Manee's power, albeit with the gnome it had always seemed more of a residue, as if he no longer drew from the same source that his counterpart did.
What was the land called? Nimth, that was it.
"I could think of many other places to be than Serkadion Manee's private study," Xabene muttered, her eyes darting around the room as if she expected the gnome at any moment. Quite possibly that just might happen, but they had no choice. Shade had indicated that a key to their release lay in the very heart of the immortal's domain.
Wellen was not entirely trustful of the shadowy spellcaster, but Shade had rescued him more than once.
"What are we looking for?" he asked.
The quiet laugh startled him. "A key, of course."
"A key?"
"Serkadion Manee is either often literal-minded or has a touch of dry humor. The key to opening the portal in the wall without his aid is to use a key. He apparently created a few precautions in case something happened to his powers. Very kind of him, don't you think?"
Neither Wellen nor the enchantress bothered responding. The trio commenced a rapid search of the crowded chamber, discovering almost immediately that like so much else in the citadel, appearances were deceiving. The more they searched, the more to search there seemed to be. It was as if random things simply materialized from some pocket world, like the one in Xabene's tree. In only moments, they were already wading in stack after stack of abandoned experiments and notes. Wellen could not help returning to his early days as a student, when all of his assignments had seemed so mountainous.
"What do we have here?" Shade finally asked.
The others quickly joined him. It was not a key he had found, however, but a tapestry.
Looking it over, the master warlock could not keep the admiration out of his tone. "Exceptional work! Still so new! It might have been weaved yesterday!"
"It reminds me of the tapestry I weaved," whispered Xabene to Wellen.
"I would not be surprised," Shade interjected. "Since in that respect it serves a similar purpose to the one Serkadion Manee influenced you to create."
"He did?" A flush of red filled the cheeks of the pale sorceress. She did not like being used, but especially by the crafty gnome.
"It appears so, but this is not a Vraad thing. I think, despite its condition, that it was weaved even before our cursed host came to this world." Shade touched the side of the cloth artifact gingerly. "Yes, no doubt about that. He may have learned the method of its creation and passed it on to you, but this was created by another hand . . . or claw, depending on who ruled here then."
"That's it! I will not be used again!" Xabene raised a hand toward the artifact. Shade, seeking to protect the tapestry, caught hold of her wrist. Wellen saw the look on her face and tried to warn the aged warlock, but it was too late. Not caring what happened, the enraged sorceress unleashed raw power at the struggling Shade.
He shrugged it off as a dog might shrug off rain.
With the release of her anger, Xabene grew sullen. Letting go of her wrist, the hooded figure blinked his crystalline eyes and said, "That tickled. Was that your intention?"
Wellen took hold of her before her anger, now directed at Shade, renewed itself sufficiently. "Forget it! We need him. He needs us."
"He doesn't need us. He could find this thing and leave without dragging us along with him."
The cloth-enshrouded mage shook his head. "I abandoned her. I will not abandon her children."
She looked at him in angry puzzlement. "And what does that mean?"
"Master Bedlam knows." Leaving it at that, Shade returned to admiring the tapestry. "If he did not weave this, then at the very least the gnome has made many changes in its usage. Some of them quite new. I can sense as well as see them. I wonder what purpose this marvel now serves."
Wellen, caught up by Shade's interest, was forced to admit to himself that the tapestry was certainly worthy of the attention being given to it. As with Xabene's creation, it was a representation of a region, but with such stark detail that it was like gazing at a true image. A tiny book marked the location of the Libraries. Scanning further, he easily noted the hills to the east, but then did not recognize something that lay to the southwest. He pointed at it and asked Shade, "What is that? A town? Every building looks to be there."
"Penacles. One of the human habitations that the Purple Dragon allows in his domain. Only a small human town now, but once, long before refugees from Nimth foolishly invaded the Dragonrealm and even before the reigns of the Dragon Kings, the Quel, or a dozen races who preceded them, Penacles was known as a city of knowledge. Its original builders, who may have also created this tapestry, were not human, I think . . . at least not in the end."
"It seems a strange coincidence that Serkadion Manee would pick this location," Wellen commented. His eyes narrowed and he looked at the hooded warlock. "Could he have been here that long?"
"Perhaps, but I suspect it predated even him. Despite his talk of a thousand thousand years, Manee is not that old. Not hardly. Perhaps it just seems so long to him, I do not know." Shade put a hand to his face, as if growing exhausted. "I think he must have stripped the city's ancient bones of whatever he could find, though. I once searched its ruins, even spied upon the human town in the course of my own desires, but I learned all too soon that ancient Penacles was bare of anything that might have aided me. I wondered then where it had gone. That was before I knew of him." He leaned forward. "Interesting. The entire plain, I see, was part of the original city."
"Is this thing of any use to us or are we wasting precious time?"
"It may very well be useful to us, enchantress." Shade reached up and removed it from where it hung. "This is the method by which our host may reenter the citadel directly from no matter where he is. Normal teleportation does not work, as you know. Not even for Serkadion Manee. This would have been good for times when it was vital to materialize within and not outside. I wonder . . ."
Wellen noticed a tiny slot in the wall where the tapestry had been hung. He reached into it and felt something metallic. "I think I've found our key."
"Be careful, Wellen!"
Despite Xabene's warning, he was not worried. So comfortable had Serkadion Manee become in his private quarters that he had evidently felt little reason to overprotect them. Those few who he had allowed in had never had free access to this chamber.
The key, if that was what it was, had a rounded end for holding and a stem, but that was all that resembled a key that Wellen would have recognized. The other end, the part that must touch the wall, was a wicked five-pronged affair that looked as it if were more designed for torture than opening a lock. The scholar wondered how it was supposed to work. Turning it so that the prongs faced him, he noted that with so much else here, the five points made up the corners of a tiny pentagram. He mentioned this to his companions.
"A Vraadish taste, that. Pentagrams and fives." Shade folded the tapestry and thrust in into his deep cloak. He reached for the key, but Wellen chose to hold onto it. The master warlock already had the book and the tapestry. Shade took it in stride. "We have no more need to be here, then. It is time to leave this infernal place. Let the gnome and the lizard decide who its master is."
He was just beginning the spell that would teleport them out when his entire frame coursed with light. Shade, a burning sun, gasped once and fell.
"The decissssion hassss been made, thank you."
The Purple Dragon stretched forth a taloned hand and flames from the torches encircled the two mortals. Xabene tried a counterspell, but the flames would not be denied. Wellen tried to shift out of the way. He failed. Like a snake, the magical fire followed him, then darted
around him again and again, tightening its circle until he could no longer move without burning himself.
"Thissss has been a mosssst informative conversation. I appreciate your effortssss on my behalf." The key flew from Bedlam's fingers and into the waiting hand of their captor. The Dragon King gazed at it in fondness. "At last! The curssssed gnome hassss made it impossssible to open the portals without thissss!"
A scratching sound made them look down. Shade was still alive. His gloved hand scraped against the floor, as if even while unconscious he sought to escape.
"Ressssilient. I ssssuppose I shall have to take you with me," the drake lord said to the still figure. "You might have some knowledge of worth."
Shade's body rose into the air, making him look like a limp marionette with invisible strings. The Dragon King turned to his other two captives. "This time, I will not trust to chance. My will is your will. Your bodies will move as I command."
Wellen, with Xabene beside him, staggered toward the drake. This time, Purple had assured that his control was complete. The only movements left to the scholar were blinking and breathing. He could not even ask the question that burned on his tongue.
The Dragon King must have noted his expression, however, for he held one of his taloned hands before the human. "For an immortal, the gnome died assss eassssily assss any mere mortal!" Straightening, the drake looked at the key, then back at his prisoners. "Now I truly have everything. All I need issss to ssssecure you ssssafely and then I can return and begin the processss of going through thissss treasure trove." Purple's eyes blazed with anticipation. "Sssso much to do!"
Legends of the Dragonrealm: Volume 04 Page 32
