Dru was tugged back from the doorway he had been about to walk through. He cursed the avian who had pulled him and who had nearly succeeded in sending him falling backward down the way he had come.
“What now?” he grumbled, more to himself than the avian who had manhandled him.
A Seeker, one of the females, moved in front of Dru and kicked at the rusted relics that had once been doors. They fell with a clatter that not only vibrated through Dru, but echoed again and again all through the building. A layer of dust rose up, creating a miniature storm. After allowing the dirt to settle again, the Seekers prodded their captive on. The female stood aside as he walked through the doorway, wondering what fate awaited him. A Vraad would have had a thousand lethal snares awaiting intruders, even if that Vraad had died a thousand years before. As old as the ruins seemed, they were in fairly remarkable condition. His fear of some lurking danger was soothed in no way by the actions of the avians, who obviously wanted him to act as a sacrificial lamb.
The builders of this edifice had not been raised on Vraadish ways, though, for nothing struck him down, no ancient spell tore the flesh from his skin, and no metal bolt pierced his chest. The structure, at least the front hall, was safe. Dru would have sighed in relief, but his companions shoved him forward again, eager to explore this place.
Reptilian eyes met his own as he moved into the first chamber, a black place without windows. A maw, opened wide enough to swallow the entire party, beckoned. In the darkness of the windowless room, Dru believed he had finally come face-to-face with one of the Lord Tezerenee’s dragons. Only when one of the Seekers summoned forth light did he realize that what he had seen was actually a huge stone representation. Dru froze where he was, but no one disciplined him for his actions; the avians were as overwhelmed as he was.
Unlike the dragons of his own world, big, lumbering beasts that acted as little more than pets and steeds for those like Barakas, this dragon was a monarch. The unknown artist had chosen to keep its vast wings folded—likely because of the difficulty it would have caused with the statue’s balance—but it was still the largest, most majestic of its kind that the Vraad had ever seen. Here was a leviathan who ruled through both power and intelligence. There was no denying what the sculptor had intended; this was a master of all it surveyed, one who could outwit all but the craftiest of adversaries.
Unbidden returned the question of what had happened to the race that had ruled from here.
Excitement rose among the Seekers; they had recognized a row of items lying on a dais before the overwhelming statue. Dru only now noticed them, the eyes of the giant continually drawing his own despite his efforts.
The dais was more of a display, a platform on which tiny figurines that looked distinctly familiar to Dru stood even after all so much time. In this place, he did not question that. The city, for all its decaying state, was remarkably preserved for having been abandoned so long. The platform and its contents were the only items in the room, which was not to say it was bare. The walls, the floor, even the curved ceiling, were covered with somewhat surreal representations of worlds and races, most of whom the Vraad could not identify. He saw a tiny sphere that contained a Seeker and another that contained one of the avians’ enemies. There was also what Dru assumed was an elf and another that reminded him too much of his own kind.
What is this place?
So many races were represented, but only he had eyes for them. The Seekers were far too interested in the figurines, squawking like excited children… like Sharissa.
Dru wondered if she was safe. In the citadel, she would have Sirvak to watch over her, but he knew that being his daughter, she would be seeking some clue as to his fate. That worried him, for it would be easy for her to gain the notice of one or more of his rivals and, especially, the Tezerenee. They might see Dru’s accident as a new means of escape from Nimth, but it was not past the patriarch’s madness to assume that Barakas might choose to destroy Dru’s work. It would, after all, weaken the Lord Tezerenee’s tightening grip on his fellow Vraad.
A crash made Dru turn back to see what was happening with his captors. Four, including the leader, had been inspecting the artifacts. The care with which they had studied each minute curve of each figurine spoke volumes of their interest. Now, however, something had occurred that infuriated them. The leader had taken one small statuette and flung it at the towering figure of the dragon lord, as Dru was coming to think of it. The relic had shattered, spreading fragments about the room, but the statue had been unmarred.
The sorcerer watched silently. Bitter avians abandoned the figurines, returning to the rest of the party. The leader, frustration and anger at the forefront, pointed at the entranceway, indicating that Dru was to lead them back out. He dared one last glance at the majestic dragon and again felt it return his gaze. The Seeker leader, however, had no patience left and swung a taloned hand at him. Dru fell back, the taste of blood on his tongue, and would have collapsed to the floor if not for his two bodyguards. They kept him on his feet until he had recovered his wits, then pushed him forward, always staying close behind.
In the same manner as they had inspected the first room, the party went through the next dozen. If anything, they were more disappointing than the first. More than one turned out to be nothing but a pile of mortar and rock, the ceilings having collapsed long ago. A few of those chambers that were still whole held nothing but generation upon generation of dust. If the occupants had died here, it had been so long ago that their corpses, even their skeletons, had faded away with time.
They found no trace of the other intruders, although, with the jagged and rocky surfaces they clambered over, it would have been near impossible to find any sort of tracks. Dru suffered over the worst of the treks, his bound arms making it impossible for him to protect his face when he slipped forward. Concerned with their own footing, his two guards often could do nothing for him. By the time they had explored the first floor, the Vraad’s face and body were one mass of bruises and cuts. Given the opportunity, he could have easily repaired the damage, but his health was low on his captors’ priorities. Dru wondered why they had bothered to even keep him alive, so unconcerned did they seem.
The sun moved ever closer to its daily death. The Seekers’ leader grew more and more frustrated and his emotions were echoed by the others. Dru was beyond caring; the sorcerer only wanted to lie down, go to sleep, and wake up in his castle of pearl. He wanted to never have found the tear, the hole between this place and Nimth, even though that meant bowing to Barakas and his clan.
At what had once been the stairway leading to the upper floors but was now a jumble of rock, the Seekers finally lost their last reserves of patience. A look from the leader sent four of them leaping into the air. Dru stirred briefly from his worn musings to watch them fly through the hole where the upper portion of the steps had once led. Although it was a dangerous move, considering there still might be foes lurking somewhere nearby, the avians had chosen to split their numbers in order to facilitate their mad search.
Dragging the harried sorcerer with them, the seven remaining creatures continued their scouring of the main floor. They had come to such a point of desperation that they began to sift through the wreckage of each chamber the instant they entered. Under the watchful, one-eyed gaze of the leader, who held Dru while the search progressed, the avians picked at whatever seemed out of the ordinary among the chunks of ceiling and wall. A few items that they unearthed encouraged them and stirred Dru’s curiosity. One or two artifacts that the birds seemed to puzzle over, he recognized but was careful to pretend otherwise. Slowly, some of the ancient race’s prowess was revealed to the sorcerer. They knew much about crystal magic, that he could tell from the glittering fragments that the avians shoved rudely aside in their quest. What the Seekers sought, however, evidently had nothing to do with that; they seemed far more interested in objects that represented forms, such as dragons, animals, and things that might have been, in a vague way, r
eferred to as human.
The leader, who still held him by the arm, suddenly cocked his head to one side, as if listening to something outside. Dru strained, but heard nothing but the clatter of rubble as the avians tossed bits of ceiling away in order to burrow deeper into the wreckage. A breath later, the rest had paused in their work, also listening.
Dru heard nothing save the beat of his own heart… until he realized that the clap-clap pattern could hardly be coming from him if the others heard it. No, the sounds issued from an unknown location near the main hall, and were getting closer by the second.
Rising, the Seekers looked to their leader. He eyed Dru, then tugged the spellcaster around him and tossed him toward the doorway. Stumbling, Dru stepped out into the corridor. The unsettling clap-clap sounds continued to rise in volume, in some way as familiar to the sorcerer as the icons had been earlier. He tried to recall what made that sort of sound, but his attempt to harness his scattered thoughts into something functional was cut off by a harsh shove from the Seekers’ leader. Lacking any choice in the matter—and that was becoming too common a way for one who had grown knowing there was little he could not have—Dru walked slowly down the corridor in the direction of the noise’s source. The avians followed, spreading out as they moved. Two took to the air, hovering near the ceiling.
The sounds echoed continuously throughout the vast structure, almost to the point where it grew difficult for the hapless sorcerer to estimate where he had to turn. He turned back, and as if knowing his confusion, the leader pointed ahead.
“Thank you,” Dru whispered in bitter tones. There was no hope of avoiding a confrontation with whatever sought out the party. It did not sound like the massive creatures who burrowed beneath the earth—the Vraad would have expected their footfalls to be near silent, considering that blood enemies lurked somewhere within the edifice—and neither did he think it was the elves, whom he had still not seen. They, too, would have taken more caution.
What then lurked in the main hall and had the effrontery to move without care of detection into a place of possible danger?
He was so near now that the clap-clap sounds made it impossible to wonder further. The avian leader put a taloned hand around his neck, essentially turning the Vraad into a living shield. The two of them, with the others following as if all were puppets commanded by the same strings, stepped into the main hall and, all too soon, the confrontation.
Behind him, the avian started, almost losing his grip on the human. Dru could in no way blame him.
It was a stallion of the deepest ebony, an impossible and grand creature more massive than any the sorcerer had ever seen. As it slowed to a halt, the clap-clap noise, the sound of its hooves striking the hard surface of the floor, died. The steed stood taller than either the human or the avian. The animal shook its head, sending the wild mane fluttering. It looked at the two tiny figures before it as if they were specks of dust needing to be swept away and began pawing at the rock-hard floor.
Dru tried to step back, but the leader’s stiff form prevented him from doing so. Before the eyes of the party, the stallion continued to paw at the floor with its hoof… and was quickly succeeding in gouging a crevice in it!
The steed lifted its head high and, instead of a loud neigh, laughed at their dismay.
X
LOCHIVAN CEASED SCREAMING the moment he felt the hands upon him, knowing that he had already shamed himself before his clan. The raging wind and the stormy heavens could not take his mind from that fact.
“Have no fear concerning your reaction to the cross-over,” he heard Esad, his brother, whisper. “Most of us screamed and the rest have all felt the pain. No one will speak of it when Father arrives.”
The newly arrived Vraad gazed down at his naked form, at last feeling the effects of the storm. “My clothing—” He looked up at Esad, who was clad in armor identical to that which they had been forced to abandon back in Nimth… along with their old bodies. The armor and the rest had been conjured, no doubt, but then why could Lochivan not emulate his brother’s work? Why did the magic resist him?
“The first arrivals clothed me,” the other Tezerenee said, reading Lochivan’s mind. “It takes great effort and often more than one person to push the spell to completion.” Even with the helm covering much of his features, it was obvious that Esad was under tremendous strain.
As Lochivan stood and shook his head, causing several locks of brown and gray hair to obscure his vision, he found himself clad once more in the comfortable feel of cloth and dragon scale. The Tezerenee nodded his gratitude to those of his kin who had aided him. “Have we all made it across so far?”
“Yes.”
Something in Esad’s tone encouraged his brother to survey the others assembled. There were ten, so far, including himself, and he could see that each and every one was there. Still, something was amiss. There was no mistaking the worry in Esad’s voice, and Lochivan knew it was not for him. “Tell me what is wrong, brother?”
“A number of the golems are missing.”
“Missing?” The Vraad whirled about until he caught sight of the still forms. Seeing them even now made his stomach turn, though he would not admit that to the others. That the body he wore had once been as these….
It took him a moment to estimate their numbers and then he saw that what Esad said was true; there were perhaps a hundred of the flesh-and-blood golems remaining where Esad had reported two hundred or more. “The dragons!” Lochivan snarled, recalling the beasts that the golems had been formed from. “Ephraim will pay dearly for his betrayal! With he and his band of traitors gone, the dragons returned and devoured the—”
“No.” It was not Esad who spoke, but one of their sisters, a tall, slender woman who favored their mother in form. Tamara was her name, if Lochivan recalled correctly. She had been born some eight or nine centuries prior to both of them. It was sometimes so difficult to keep track of those within the clan, much less the outsiders as well. “No,” she repeated. “It was not dragons. There are no traces, no blood. The bodies vanished in too orderly a manner, as if those who had taken them had stood in line, one following after another.”
“Logan will be crossing in one quarter hour,” Esad reminded the two of them. “We should be preparing to guide him on this side of the veil. If we don’t, there is always the chance his ka may become lost.” The chances of such were slim as long as those back in Nimth still controlled matters; both Lochivan and Tamara knew that Esad was trying to steer them both away from a subject he found unnerving. Father would not be pleased and he would want someone physical to blame. For the moment, Ephraim was beyond his capacity to punish, but they were not.
Lochivan shook his head again. “Father must know before long. The greater our delay in informing him of this latest debacle, the worse it will be.”
“We will still have to wait for Logan,” Tamara reminded them. “We need at least eleven to reach through the veil and establish a true link of communications with the others. Any word we send now would likely be garbled, and I, for one, want everything perfectly clear when we report this to Father.”
The storm, a side effect of the transfer, was rapidly dwindling to nil. Gazing up at the wondrous blue color replacing the dark gray clouds, the latest immigrant quietly cursed the misleading innocence that lay all about him. At any other time, the clear sky would have entranced Lochivan, who had never seen such a thing. Now, though, he thought of the problems the plan had suffered of late and how the Dragonrealm was not going to fall to Barakas’s might so easily.
“Very well.” Unconsciously, he stood in a pose that mimicked the patriarch almost exactly. If his relations paid no notice to it, it was only because they themselves were often guilty of the same mannerisms.
“We have a little over a quarter hour to decide exactly how we’ll tell Father… and how we’ll avoid his anger!”
DRU STARTED TO speak, but his mouth refused to answer his desperate summons. The laughter died away, thoug
h its echo would continue on for several seconds. Trotting closer, the huge ebony steed eyed the avian party with blue orbs that chilled any who stared in them. It chuckled, a low, spine-scraping sound that mocked those who would stand against it.
One of the Seekers held up a medallion and focused on the demon horse. Dru recognized the terrible mist. It started to form around its intended victim in the exact manner it had around the hapless earth dweller earlier. In the space of a breath, it was nearly impossible to see the stallion. The Vraad could feel the sense of triumph that flashed between his captors.
The ebony steed trotted forward, ignoring the mist as the sorcerer might ignore the very air he breathed.
“If that is the best you can do,” the animal boomed, and its voice stunned Dru, for he recognized it instantly, “you should not have struck at all!”
Laughing, the entity calling itself Darkness winked at the captive spellcaster. “You should not run off, little Dru! I was most distressed when I found you missing! At least I waited while you slept!”
Two brown shapes dove down from behind the Void dweller, talons poised, while his attention was focused on the human.
“Look—” A backhand slap from the Seekers’ leader silenced him before he could warn Darkness of the danger to him. Nonetheless, the massive stallion understood enough to twist his head around, though it was too late to avoid the attack.
The first avian struck, his clawed feet ready to rend the back of the impudent creature below. To his horror and that of the rest of the party, the diving attacker found no solid flesh beneath his talons. Instead, he kept diving, sinking into the darker than dark mass that was the phantom steed. The Seeker screeched once, then seemed to dwindle as he sank completely into Darkness. It was as if he had fallen into a bottomless crevice that sucked him ever deeper despite his efforts to the contrary. In mere moments, the would-be killer had vanished, taken completely in by Darkness.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 46
