In the end, it likely did not matter. Gerrod had failed at his task and he could not go back empty-handed. Now, Dru Zeree’s theoretical pathway to the shrouded realm was looking to be his only chance for survival. When the Lord Tezerenee hinted that he would leave a body behind, it was not a jest.
Failure… The familiar was much more calm now, but it still was in no condition to aid in planning. That would fall to Gerrod again.
Though he could not enter the chamber, he had spied upon its occupants for a short time. Sharissa had mentioned Dru’s earlier work involving the sightings and the binding forces of the two worlds. Perhaps there lay the key.
Sirvak! He treated the familiar as he would have treated one of the wyverns back in the clan’s domain. The winged creation responded as if its own master had summoned it.
Listen to me closely, he began, and we may yet save your master and mistress… not to mention myself. He added the last slowly, knowing it was all too true. This is what I think we must do….
IX
DRU WOKE TO a new dawn not even knowing when he had blacked out. The last thing he recalled was the sudden descent of a number of the bird people, creating, in the process, a circle around him. He had tried to act, his mind screeching that he moved in slow motion, but was too late. The blackout occurred then.
His bonds held when he tested them. Attempts at spells left his head pounding at first and then filled with a buzzing that would not depart for several minutes. He gave up after two attempts, knowing that he was very much a helpless prisoner. With escape impossible for now, the sorcerer began to work on satisfying his ever-hungry curiosity. Studying his dusky brown captors in the early morning light, Dru supposed that they were nearly all male. None of them had any special characteristics that were visible, but four of the avians appeared adult even though they were shorter and slighter than their companions. Not knowing any better, he assumed these were the females. If so, the birdlike creatures were great believers in equality, for the four smaller ones worked as hard as the rest and were treated with equal respect.
The avians were little more familiar with this territory than Dru was; it was evident from their jerking movements, their constant vigilance. Territory had been secured, but they were surrounded by unknown lands. Likely, they were also more at home in trees, mountainsides, and, of course, the sky. His captors were in awe of the abandoned city and more than a little afraid of it as well, though they tried to hide both emotions under a mask of arrogance worthy of Barakas. Dru tried to speak to them, but all he received for his attempts were slaps across the face and unintelligible squawks. From their gestures during one of those sessions, he suspected that they had a way of communicating with him, but had debated whether it was necessary to do so. In the end, his captors chose to merely drag him along.
Dru wondered about the beast they had saved him from. Judging by the reaction of the bird creatures, its death was a cause for celebration. Like the killing of a blood enemy, he noted. It would not have surprised him if a war was going on between these two horrific races. From what little experience he had enjoyed so far, neither seemed any better than his own race and bloodshed was quite a favorite pastime of the Vraad.
That they had killed the other figure, the one that the sorcerer assumed must have been one of Barakas’s elves, went without saying. What interested Dru most, despite the danger he was in, was why his captor and members of two other races would come to this place. What did it have that they all wanted so badly? Granted, most of his ideas were pure conjecture, but Dru was fairly certain he was on the right path.
As they grew nearer and nearer to the avians’—and his own, admittedly—goal, Dru wondered what had become of Darkness. A wild notion that his captors had instigated the entity’s odd withdrawal passed quickly from his mind; certainly they would not have left such a threat at their backside. Neither had they been the ones responsible for his horse’s odd actions. The avians had totally ignored the steed other than to initially note its presence. Horses were apparently common here and one wandering loose in the vicinity of the ancient city was beneath their concern. It had, in fact, wandered off at some point after his blackout. The trail it left steered to the north, but that was all Dru knew, unable to track it farther.
Up close, the ruins were even vaster. The outer walls had been more than five times the sorcerer’s height; massive fragments of some still remained standing. The towers, those that had not collapsed, were much taller and easily comparable to anything the Vraad had created. Little remained of any writing or decoration; they had been worn away by the weather of millennia. The city was incredibly old. It had probably already been in ruins when the first of the Vraad race proclaimed themselves.
The party stood near what had been the city gates, the avians evidently preparing themselves mentally for entering the ruins. Only Dru noticed the tremors when they first began and, being so used to such in Nimth, he hardly paid attention.
The ground suddenly ripped open as huge, clawed hands tore at those above.
Dru, stumbling madly away from one claw, instantly recognized the creatures attacking them. The thing that had tried to kill him had not been alone, though the truth of that was only just sinking into the minds of the party. Dru swore at his captors while he tried to evade another grasping hand sprouting from the earth by his right foot. His captors should have searched more carefully; he had assumed they knew to do that much. Like some of his former rivals, however, the birds suffered from too much pride in themselves. They had been certain that they had contained the problem. Now, the problem threatened to contain them.
With a pain-filled shriek, one of the taller creatures was pulled swiftly into the earth regardless of the fact that the jagged crevice was too small for his winged form. Before Dru’s disgusted and horrified gaze, the avian was reduced to a mass of mangled limbs and blood that, after all too long a time, completely sank into the soil. The Vraad renewed his efforts to evade the hands groping for him, wishing that, as his captors were belatedly doing, he could take to the sky.
Of the fourteen avians, all but the unfortunate who had just died made it into the air. Several reached for their medallions.
The air proved no more of a haven than the ground had been. From the earth rose one of the snouted monstrosities, a deep, challenging sound accompanying its appearance. It carried with it a needlelike spear as long as its body. The spear was hurtling toward the avians before the attacker was even completely free of the soil. Its accuracy was perfection itself; another of the bird people died, plummeting to the ground no farther than a yard from the hapless Vraad. The spear stood like a banner, one that had been planted so firmly into the victim’s chest that it even came out the other side.
The avians finally struck back. Dru steadied himself, expecting the foul mummification spell he had witnessed earlier. Instead, a mist formed swiftly around the monster that had come to the surface. The sorcerer frowned. The intended victim hooted its contempt, waving one arm to dispel the light fog. It did not clear, despite the beast’s attempts, but rather continued to thicken, so quickly, in fact, that the blinded earth-dweller was, after only a breath or two, no longer visible. A breath, perhaps two, passed, and then the wind, which itself had pounded fruitlessly at the fog, finally began to have an effect, slowly banishing the magical mist.
When it had at last cleared, there was no sign of the hulking creature it had enveloped. He might have never been, save that the earth was still marred by his initial eruption to the surface.
Another of the winged beings fell prey to a perfect strike, but that was where the newcomers’ luck ended. Two more that rose to the surface suffered the same fate as the first; a fourth shriveled to a stomach-wrenching mass directly in front of Dru. After that, the assault ceased. Either the avians had killed all of their adversaries or the underground dwellers had retreated.
In pairs, the surviving creatures descended to deal with their dead. Two separated from the rest and took hold of the so
rcerer, lifting him high into the air before he even had the breath to protest. Accompanied by a third, they made for the city, passing over the ruins of the gateway instead of trying to walk through.
Dru was brought unceremoniously to the ground in what had been a well-crafted street but was now a jumbled pile of smooth, broken stepping stones.
The Vraad had finally had enough. Bound and with death likely facing him, he turned on his captors, almost daring them to strike him down, and shouted, “Listen to me! I don’t know what you search for, but tell me and I can help! At least have the courtesy to talk to me! I may know something you don’t! I demand that you listen to me!”
He doubted that he knew much of value to his captors, but was not about to reveal that to the avians. The trio stared at him with identical one-eyed looks. Under the unblinking gazes, Dru shifted impatiently.
Without warning and with a speed that left Dru breathless, the two avians who had carried him suddenly stepped forward and took him by the arms. Uncertain as to what they planned, the Vraad could not help struggling, though he might as well have been a tiny child fighting a raging wolf, so powerful a grip the creatures had. The third one, once he saw that the sorcerer was held tight, slowly stepped up to his prisoner, halting within arm’s reach and glaring haughtily at the human.
A clawed hand thrust out so swiftly that the spellcaster did not even have time to fear for his life. The leader’s long hand covered the upper half of Dru’s visage. The palm flattened against his forehead.
The world about him altered, shifting from a scene of long-lost glory to a dark and unsettling place. Somehow, his mind knew this to be a cavern in one of the mountains of a chain—across a vast sea? Yes, it was true. Darkness had brought his tiny companion to the realm beyond the veil, but apparently there was more than just one continent. He had been right in assuming that the bird people were unfamiliar with this land. They had traveled here after an arduous journey that had cut their numbers by a third before they even reached the shore of this place. All this Dru knew through feelings and images filling every niche of his mind.
Dru’s view of the cavern widened until he realized that the central cavern housed a vast chamber that had, in the far past, been used as a throne room or a temple. A dim light illuminated the cavern, but its source was not readily noticeable. There were bizarre stone effigies, things that seemed alive in their own way. Some were human, some were not, but the amazing detail of each remained as testimony to the skill of some ancient master. The Vraad recognized something inherent in the tall statues, in the ancient chamber itself, that reminded him of the ruined city, as if both had been built by the same race despite the gulf of water separating them.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked the avian leader, even though the latter was not visible to him for the moment. “You found the cavern and traced its origin to here.”
A sensation that somehow indicated acknowledgment coursed through him. He did not try to comprehend how the sensations could possibly be translated into replies; that demanded much too much time of its own. Dru knew only that he had guessed correctly about the ruins and the winged creature had informed him so in its own way.
Dru watched as a figure he recognized as himself searched the city alongside the—Sheeka?—seeking something. The… there was the name again, the Sheeka, but somehow it did not work with him. The seekers… yes, the observing sorcerer decided, they were the Seekers. It was as apt a name as the one Darkness had chosen for himself and much more tolerable to the Vraad’s ears and mouth.
The Seekers had found something—what it had been was carefully kept hidden from the sorcerer’s mind—in the cavern, and that had led them to their journey to this other continent. Unfortunately, it had also led their bitter rivals, the ground diggers, to the same place. Dru tried to catch the term for the enemy, but the avian used only the most derogatory symbols for the huge monstrosities, none of which were at all suitable to the mage. He did gather, however, that the other race was more ancient than his captors’ was and its power was waning… but not fast enough, as far as the avians were concerned. That might have merely been the arrogant opinion of the party’s leader, but Dru took it at face value for the time being.
As abruptly as he had been thrust into the cavern, the Vraad was shifted to another scene, this time of vast rookeries, some natural, some created, and the glory that was the Seeker people. Their world, a combination of nature and design, began to fascinate Dru more than the reason for their being on this side of the world. The avians melded the forms of trees and hills with elaborate living quarters that might easily have been constructed by the mage’s own race. It was evident that much of their society demanded that the Seekers be groundlocked at times and so it was no surprise that their buildings resembled those of the Vraad. Cities like these dotted most of the other continent, allowing the race to breed yet not destroying the nature.
Recalling his own world, Dru envied the skill of his captors.
The leader chose that moment to remove his hand from his prisoner’s forehead. Dru had been correct in his assumption; the taller ones were the males.
Although it was guesswork at best in trying to read the more subtle expressions of the birdlike beings, the sorcerer caught what appeared to be a look of disgust and amazement on the leader’s visage. It then occurred to him for the first time that the unique method of communication that the Seekers utilized worked both ways. Dru had unwittingly revealed to them his own origins, including the all-important fact that he was not of this world!
The Seekers evidently needed no physical contact to communicate with one another, for the look of revulsion spread to the two holding him still. He knew they were considering Nimth and its decaying state. He knew also what they must think of him, one of those responsible for spoiling a once-wondrous world.
He was not questioned further, which surprised him. Whatever the avians sought here, they considered it of far more importance than a lone representative of a decadent race from beyond. When the rest of what remained of the party materialized over the walls and landed around them, careful this time to observe the ground beneath their feet, the leader did not even take time to allow the others to digest what he had torn from Dru. Nonetheless, the Vraad was fairly certain that all of them knew what he had let slip, if only because of the difference in the disdainful glances they gave him at various times. Before, it had simply been arrogance at one who was not a member of their “superior” race. Now, it was that arrogance, but peppered with the look Dru’s own race reserved for those Vraad with tastes even too perverse for their brethren to accept.
With Dru in their center, the two guards still holding him by the arms, the party journeyed deeper into the remnants of the city. Now and then, members would flutter off for several minutes, inspecting nearby structures and getting a cloud’s view of the ruins themselves. Gradually, they began to steer toward the east. It was not the center of the city, but it was where the greatest of the rounded buildings lay. So great a building, in fact, that it could have easily housed the several thousand individuals who made up the Vraad race.
The sun was already nearing its zenith when they came upon the cracked and rubble-strewn clearing between themselves and the huge structure that his captors had chosen as their ultimate destination. Dru wondered briefly what, if anything, was happening to Darkness. He had hoped that the entity would revive before the Seekers located their prize and decided they needed their “guest” no longer.
One of the avians squawked and reached down to pluck something from the fragments covering most of the area before them. This had likely been a square, complete with statuary, but one of the towers nearby had completely collapsed and the remains were scattered all over, making even travel awkward. Several treacherous crevices crisscrossing the square bespoke of just a few of the possible dangers awaiting them.
It was not some shard from a crushed statue that the Seekers had noted. Things could not have been that simple. Rather, the
object turned out to be a small pouch made of leather and decorated with symbols. Dru’s own view was cursory at best, but he thought it looked akin to the style of the clothing the dead elf—if it had been an elf, that was still not clear—had worn. That was probably the case; the Seekers were certainly upset about it. Dru was caught between renewed hope and increased fear. This third party might be his salvation, providing he survived any pitched battle between his captors and them, but they also might prove no more hospitable than the avians had been. At this point, however, Dru was willing to take the chance.
The discovery of the pouch changed the attitude of the party. Already having lost three of their number—after having lost so many during the crossing of the seas—the Seekers evidently felt they could not spare any more of their kind. It was thus that Dru found himself walking before them, within easy enough range to be struck down if he attempted to escape, acting as unwilling first scout. Each Seekers had a hand on the medallion that they wore on their chests. Their vision identical to that of true birds, they kept one eye on their destination and the other on the ruins around them, waiting for any potential ambush.
Nothing happened. Dru reached the steps of the building and turned, uncertain as to whether the leader wanted him to continue on or not. The response he received indicated the latter, at least for the time being. The Seekers gathered at the steps, the sorcerer once more under the watchful gaze of two he suspected were the same ones who had acted as his jailers before. He still had trouble telling them apart, save for the leader, who somehow Dru could readily identify, now that they had linked minds.
After some silent discussion that the Vraad could only guess at, he was prodded up the steps. Though they had survived relatively intact, there were places that needed only slight encouragement to collapse, which they did several times for the bound spellcaster. It took more than twice as long to climb than it should have and Dru was out of breath by the time they reached the top.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 45
