Not knowing whether she was mad to trust him, Erini reluctantly followed. Drayfitt led her along for quite some time, refusing to release her hand from his own. She began to worry. What if the spellcaster cared as little for her as Mal Quorin did? Despite his polite, sometimes helpful attitude, he might object to the marriage as much as the counselor did. What did he see in her hand?
As if trying to relieve her fears, Drayfitt turned and smiled assurance. He led her around a corner and stopped. There were no guards in sight.
“I could’ve touched the minds of some of the sentries and had our talk in a more open place, but such flamboyancy always backfires. Knowing something as simple but important as that was one reason I lived peacefully most of my life. I dearly wish it was still true.”
“What do you want with me?”
“You have a natural affinity like none that I have ever seen.”
The sorcerer continued to hold her hand, studying it closely as if looking for some minuscule marking. Erini had a very uncomfortable idea that she knew what he was searching for. Nevertheless, she played innocent. “What sort of affinity? For excellent fingernails? For having the ‘fair skin’ of a maiden in the tales of the minstrels and players?”
His features grew grim. “Don’t play games with me, your majesty! You know what sort of affinity I talk of. Have you felt the involuntary desire to test your skills? What do you see? Most burgeoning spellcasters see the lines and fields of power that crisscross the world. Others see the spectrum, the dark and the light, and choose what they need from that. Which are you, Princess Erini?”
He’ll tell Melicard! The thought was an irrational outburst, but Erini did not care. She was not yet ready to face the king with her own curse, not until she was certain her relationship with him was stronger. The princess tried to pull away, pretending to be offended. “You’re mad! I am a princess of Gordag-Ai and the betrothed of your own monarch! Release me at one and forget this nonsense!”
Drayfitt’s other hand shot forward and Erini had momentary fear that the sorcerer was going to strike her. Instead, his hand went up to the hair above her eyes. Mystified, she stood silent as the elderly man searched for something.
“Aaaah! The growth is slower than I would’ve thought, but it seems to be different with each magic-user. Interesting. Ishmir was wrong.”
“What—what are you talking about now?” She jerked her head away, as if suddenly feeling continued contact would affect her somehow. Simultaneously, Drayfitt released her hand.
“There is a lock of silver amongst your beautiful, golden tresses, Princess Erini. The silver will expand—magically, you might say—as your abilities grow. Soon—and sooner than you want, I know—it will be impossible to hide it. Before that point, you must decide what you will do.”
This was the last thing she had expected to deal with this morning. Erini stepped back and smoothed her dress, more to try to calm herself than because it needed it. “You don’t know what you’re saying! If you will excuse me, Master Drayfitt, I believe I will retire to my chambers. I’m not feeling well.”
She started to go around him, but the aged sorcerer took hold of her again. His strength was phenomenal, a complete contrast to his weakness a moment before. A fire burned in his eyes. “Don’t make the mistake I did, milady. Even if you never need them, it is best to hone your skills. I can help you. I’ve lived through the pain and the fear—more than most, I regret to say. I can teach you. There is no choice; your abilities will grow with or without your permission.”
“Let me go,” Erini commanded icily.
Drayfitt obeyed, but he was not yet through speaking. “Think about it. I’ll be honest. I may need your assistance later on.” As her eyes widened, he immediately added, “What I ask of you will only benefit King Melicard, not hurt him. I want the best for him, as do you. I think that your marriage will may possibly save him from the fate of his father—or worse.”
Erini could listen no more. There was too much in what Drayfitt had said that had the ring of truth or, at the very least, conviction. A part of her wanted to turn to him for whatever aid he could give her… but the fear of losing everything and the shame of what she was becoming held her back. Perhaps some time alone would let her clear the fog that had grown thick in her mind.
As she walked stiffly away, the sorcerer called after her, “I hope you feel better, your majesty. Let us talk again soon.”
She did not respond.
THE THRONE FELT proper beneath him. Taloned hands stroked the cracked armrests. He smiled as he thought of the others making obeisance to him, awarding what was due to him after these frustrating past few years.
The hatchlings are tainted, the Silver Dragon decided. They have lived with humans for too long. That was the fault of the Green Dragon, master of the Dagora Forest and ally to the humans. When the Gold Dragon had been defeated, the royal hatchlings had been taken by traitorous Green and turned over to Cabe Bedlam, the foulest of the human race. Now, those hatchlings that would have become Dragon Kings were on their way to becoming human sheep instead.
It is the only thing to do. They must be eliminated eventually so that some other traitor does not try to use them as puppets. The line that rules all others will be mine. My claim is strongest. They will see that. I will make them see that.
“I didn’t return to you so that you could sit dreaming in a broken-down chair.”
The Dragon King jumped. “Curse you, warlock! Announce yourself from now on!”
Shade stepped out of the darkness of a nearby tunnel and looked around. “Where are your brave warriors? Out trying to scrounge up some more toys to replace your crystal bauble?”
“What of it?” The crystal had been a double blow to the drake’s ambitions. Not only had it broken, but the chamber of the Vraad and several others nearby were now impassable. The smoky substance released by the artifact showed no sign of dissipating, either. Even Shade, who had come back to look for the Silver Dragon, would not enter.
The shadowy sorcerer had still not explained exactly why he had chosen to finally accept the drake’s offer of an alliance. It was not for what the Dragon King had already discovered, though there was one item of interest that the warlock wanted—or at least remembered—nor was it because they shared common goals. Shade seemed to care little who was emperor, as it long as it did not interfere with his own goals, whatever those might be.
“Nothing,” Shade finally replied in answer to the drake lord’s question. “Let them search.”
“What about you?” Silver’s reptilian eyes narrowed sharply. “Did you find it?”
“You said it was in the palace.”
“Correct.”
The warlock shook his head. “I will try again later. Something went amiss.” A slight hint of humor touched his normally indifferent voice. “I ended up in the personal chambers of the king’s bride-to-be. She’ll probably have nightmares for weeks and drive Melicard mad.”
The Silver Dragon chuckled. “Such a tragedy is little in comparison to what I intend to do to that cowardly scavenger of a human! Talak will fall as Mito Pica fell—but, this time, there will not be enough left over to rise again. After Talak… Penacles, I think.”
“Why not Gordag-Ai in the region of Esedi? Your ‘brother’ there is dead and few of his clan remain active; you’ve already taken claim to his kingdom. Teach your subjects that they must obey you. That is the point of having true power.”
Shade watched the Dragon King visibly mull over the thought. Gordag-Ai would be easier pickings and boost the morale of the drake’s clans. It would also guarantee that his erstwhile draconian ally would remain busy, thereby gaining Shade valuable time—time to remember what it was he had set out to do and whether he had any right to do it.
Staring at one of the majestic effigies lying broken on the cavern floor, the warlock tried to ignore the increased pressure building in his head. He knew his mind had changed again, simply by the added pain. Shade also knew th
at the fact that he could recall his personality changes meant that he was beginning to stabilize. What worried him was what he would be like at that point.
He felt some shame and remorse for his past actions, especially against Darkhorse, but yet, at the same time, it was his growing feeling that those who stood in his way, regardless of their reasons, were simply in the wrong. If they surrendered to the inevitable, the warlock would leave them be—maybe—but if they continued to oppose him, he felt he was justified in removing them in whatever way necessary.
Shade realized that the drake lord was speaking. “What was that you said?”
“I asked you what you think you are doing, human! Is this how you vent your frustrations?” The Dragon King pointed toward the spot Shade had been staring at moments before.
The warlock returned his gaze to the effigy—or to where it had once lain. Now, there was only a pile of fine dust. Very fine dust. Shade looked down at his hands. They literally glowed with the use of the powers.
“I am Vraad,” he whispered to himself. “Vraad is power.” The words had been spoken millennia before by many, all of whom, save Shade, were dead now. It had almost been a litany to the race, and his remembrance of it was yet another sign of what was happening to him. Still, it bothered the spellcaster that he had reduced the ancient statue to ash without realizing it. A warning beat briefly against the walls of his mind, but the pain drowned it out. He looked up at the impatient and somewhat nervous Dragon King. “Merely a little carelessness on my part.”
The drake’s burning red eyes narrowed. “Yesss. That is what got you into your predicament originally, is it not?”
“Watch your tongue, drake lord. It might dart too far out of your mouth once too often.”
The Silver Dragon hissed anxiously. Because Shade had found a need for him, he had grown overly confident about his power. Only now did the drake realize that there were limits to which he could push the spellcaster. Both knew that the alliance was temporary at best. Quickly, the would-be emperor turned the conversation back to an earlier subject. “What do you ssseek in the book? Most of it makes little sense.”
“A key, of sorts. I really don’t know what. Not yet, but soon. Soon I’ll be my old self again.” A vague line that was what now passed for his smile surfaced briefly, faltered, and died. Shade wrapped his cloak about him and, as the Dragon King rose in the sudden realization that something was amiss, vanished.
Through his own words, the warlock had just rediscovered the purpose, the goal, of his search—and why he dared not let anyone, even Darkhorse, stand in his way.
VIII
THE PAIN INFLICTED upon him was like such he had not suffered in centuries. The human called Mal Quorin claimed it was on order of the king, but Darkhorse, in his more lucid moments, suspected that Melicard knew only vaguely what his underlings were doing. Something in the feline features of the counselor, as if he were toying with his prisoner the way the creature he so resembled toyed with its prey, told Darkhorse that.
It was obvious that the sorcerer was reluctant to question his rival and that alone spoke volumes as to their respective positions of influence with the king. Drayfitt’s loss of face was the shadow steed’s doing, made doubly worse by the successful destruction of the spellbook by the entranced mage. For that, even Drayfitt had exercised a bit of vengeance.
They had abandoned him for other matters some time back—how long, Darkhorse could not say. Now, the eternal recovered slowly in his accursed cage, his present form little more than a blot of shadow darker than the rest. Had he been human, he would have died several times over and that fact had not escaped him. With one part of his mind, he plotted the torture of his foes; with the other, he cursed himself for his stupidity and lack of foresight. Drayfitt had taken care with his original spell. Had the stallion delved deeply, he would have discovered the thin magical bond that still tied him to the sorcerer, a tie that the elderly human had used to recapture him. His escape, it seemed, had been no more than a farce.
So close! Shade was no doubt laughing at him even now. He had come so close, actually confronting the warlock. Darkhorse knew he should have come in striking, beating down Shade before the warlock had a chance to think. Hesitation had cost him the battle and his freedom.
Once more, he re-created the equine form he favored. A hollow victory, creating a form again, but a victory nonetheless. With nothing else to do, Darkhorse began a slow and thorough scan of his magical prison. Perhaps this time…
Nothing. If anything, Drayfitt had tightened the control of the pattern, used the power of the cell to cancel out the shadow steed’s own abilities to the point where even eye contact would not help. The aged sorcerer was a survivor and learned readily from his mistakes.
Odd, he wondered, that Melicard’s spellcaster would have access to a Vraad artifact at the same time that both Shade and the Silver Dragon were searching for such things. What was the connection? What did Shade want with a work from so ancient a time? Surely not to summon a true demon. Its power would be insignificant compared to his own. Was this latest madness just the product of his unstable mind? The warlock had undergone yet another personality change; in centuries past, he had done stranger things during various incarnations. These rapid and continuous changes, however, smelled of something different, something gone awry. When would they stop? Which “Shade” would be the final result?
Significant questions weaved in a hundred different directions like a swirling mass of tentacles, confusing and unanswerable for the most part. He soon realized there was little point in pursuing them for now, though he knew that forgetting them entirely would be impossible.
More time passed. All the while, Darkhorse stubbornly continued to raise, revise, and reject options as they occurred to him. There was no way that he could physically—so to speak—pass through the boundaries. His magical abilities all seemed useless while he languished in his prison. He did not even know what was going on; the Dragonrealm might be on the brink of destruction—
Darkhorse did not breathe, though he often pretended to for appearance. Nevertheless, he came close to holding that nonexistent breath when it occurred to him that, though his magical abilities were muted, there were natural ones—unnatural by human standards—that he might make use of. Regardless of his careful work, Drayfitt could not hope to completely understand the nature of the ebony stallion.
There were many over the centuries who had called the legendary Darkhorse the Child of the Void. They were closer and farther from the truth than they knew. Darkhorse was a creature of the border regions between reality and the Void who only wandered that empty realm, much akin to the mist dwellers who guarded the secret paths that crossed into and out of the world like portals. Through practice, Darkhorse had made himself stronger than most, though that had tied him to reality and lost him some mastery over the Void. He did not regret that; there was so much more to the multiverse. Had it not proved necessary in his prior struggle with the warlock, the shadow steed would have chosen never to return to the dismal domain he had dwelled in for so long.
Yet, it was the Void to which he now turned in hope.
While willing himself back into the form of a horse had proved difficult after his ordeal, the act of literally separating himself into two parts was sheer agony. The strain alone threatened to overcome him. Despite the horror, however, he was willing to suffer that pain and even the permanent loss of that smaller portion of self. What mattered most was learning what he could in the hope of using it to engineer his escape. There might even be a clue as to how he could stop Shade, though his hopes in that respect were less than nothing after what had happened.
He willed one of his hooves into a wide circular shape a little less than a foot in diameter. That was the easy part of his task. The second was far worse, a strain on his already worn consciousness. There was also the danger of losing too much of his essence. He planned to separate a tiny portion of himself from the main body. It was a dangerous th
ing, risking his very identity in the process, for a piece of his “self” would be lost along with his essence. Humans who had lost a limb might claim to have lost a part of who they were, but with Darkhorse it was literal. It would take him years to fully recover.
Straining his concentration to the limit, he forced the reshaped hoof to expand away from his leg. Slowly, as the two masses separated, the ankle grew thinner and thinner until it was little more than the thickness of a twig. Darkhorse felt his mind separate into two distinct “selves,” one greater, one lesser. With one last effort, they broke the remaining physical link between the fragment and the main body.
What must be done… He wondered why such a thought would come to him unbidden—then paused in sudden guilt as he realized it was a fading thought from another, that piece of “self” he had sacrificed. Darkhorse stared at the black spot for several seconds before he could bring himself to work the rest of his plan. With great reluctance and a little revulsion, he extended his essence and created a new hoof to replace the old. The shadow steed could not help feeling as if he had abandoned himself.
“It is said,” Darkhorse whispered to his other self pulsating on the floor, “that, from the Void, all places may be reached or viewed. The danger lies in forgetting yourself, losing the way home. I am my own home, yet I am also the path to the Void. I will consume you the same way that I have consumed so many of my adversaries, such as the drake in the cavern, over the endless years; but rather than be condemned to floating in the emptiness forever, you, who know the way as I do, will find the path and return through my body, the Void, and the border realms to this world, to the place called the Dragonrealm. Waste no energy in seeking the path closest to this palace, but enter at the first available. Entering reality will cost you your “self” and eventually your essence, but you will provide me with eyes and ears in the world out there—in the hope that there is still something that can be done.”
He felt better saying it out loud, though communication between his two selves could have just as easily been accomplished by mere thought.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 10
