The gate was open. Dru could sense nothing, but as usual did not trust himself. Darkhorse seemed disinclined to hold back. They were through the gate and into the courtyard in the next breath. As with the outside, the courtyard was in perfect condition. The inhabitants might have stepped out only this very morning. For all the sorcerer knew, they had.
Sculpted bushes and vast, colorful flower beds added to the feeling of walking into someone’s home while they were away for a moment. Dru admired the marble benches and a tiny bit of his mind noted the style for later use when the Vraad settled in their new world… if they did.
“Hold up,” he whispered to Darkhorse. The phantom steed came to a halt and Dru dismounted. For their purposes, he preferred to continue on foot.
“Worlds within worlds within worlds…” Darkhorse was saying. “What fun it would be if we entered and found a way to yet another! Just imagine if they went on forever!”
“I’d rather not! Nimth is the only world I want… my Nimth,” he added quickly, noting his companion ready to argue the point again. Studying the buildings, Dru settled on the largest, the one whose towers they had seen from beyond the walls. “That’s where I want to go.”
Not waiting for Darkhorse, the sorcerer crossed the courtyard. He heard a chuckle from behind him. “And has impatience now become a virtue?”
Dru ignored him, fairly rushing through the open doorway. The main hall sparkled; he had not doubted it would by this point. From the doorway the sorcerer had just entered, Darkhorse stepped within, his hooves making the same clap-clap sound they had when he had followed Dru and the avians into the one rounded edifice. The sounds echoed throughout the building.
For reasons he could not explain, the Vraad felt ashamed of the harsh noise Darkhorse was making. The castle touched him in an unusual way; Dru felt as though the sounds violated a peace that had reigned here for thousands upon thousands of years. It was a different sensation than what he had felt in the ruined city. There, he had felt the ghosts of memory and the remnants of power. Here was tranquility, a rare thing to a Vraad. If he died, this was where Dru wanted to be laid to rest. Here, he could—
The sorcerer shivered. Beside him now, Darkhorse asked, “Is there something amiss with you?”
“No. Nothing.” Merely, Dru thought, that he had been almost willing to lie down right here and now and wait for death to claim him.
More cautious now, he strode ahead. There were two massive iron doors at the end of the hall, each more than twice as tall as the Vraad. Somehow, he could feel their importance. Behind them were the answers to the endless questions filling his mind. Whether he understood those answers was yet another question, but one Dru was willing to live with for the time being.
Putting a hand out to where the doors came together, the sorcerer pushed gently. The hinges groaned, but access was still denied him. He pushed harder, leaning into the two doors, but was granted no greater success than in the initial attempt.
Putting his shoulder to the crack, Dru angrily threw his weight against the obstructions. For his trouble he received a sore shoulder. Even though there was nothing to indicate that the way was locked, the Vraad could not get the doors to swing back.
“Perhaps if I—” Darkhorse began.
“No!” This was one that the angered spellcaster wanted for himself. Worn beyond his limits, Dru could no longer check his Vraadish temper. It swept over him, a crimson curse that seized control of his body. Shouting words he would not recall later, Dru raised his left hand and brought it down on the massive metal doors.
With a spark that seemed to course from his fist to the entire doorway, the Vraad opened the way. “Opened” was perhaps misleading. What actually happened, if Dru could still believe his eyes, was that the two doors flung back, going the full turn of their hinges and then tearing free of the walls themselves. While the two watched, Dru in dismay and the shadow steed in growing amusement, the doors, now free of all restriction, teetered for a breath… and then fell with a resounding clatter that shattered forever any remaining feeling of tranquility that the spellcaster might have retained.
“Nicely done,” Darkhorse commented wryly. He had quickly developed a knack of sarcasm equal to any Vraad.
“It wasn’t… I didn’t…” Dru gazed at his fist, then at the battered doors.
“Would it be of interest to mention that the boundaries of this place seem to have suffered from your calm, collected solution?”
Dru turned and eyed the walls of the hallway. An intricate system of fine cracks ran along each wall. The ceiling and floor had suffered from a similar network of these skeletal branches, and Dru could see where bits of ceiling had fallen. “I did this?”
“It seemed a reaction to your power. I noted resistance, but you overwhelmed it.”
His madness had defeated the shrouded realm’s resistance… that is, if this was still the shrouded realm. He wondered how well it would work back in the ruined city. There was also the question of what these side effects had to do with it. They were too akin to what Nimth suffered each time the Vraad utilized their abilities. Was this how his world’s death had begun? Were the Vraad going to destroy their new home as well?
Too many questions. Dru snarled and turned back to the chamber that his fury had finally allowed him entry to.
His eyes widened to saucers and his mouth grew dry. It seemed the realm beyond the veil was not yet depleted of surprises.
Before him, obscured by robes that made them resemble lumpy sacks; knelt more than a hundred figures. They had their backs to the newcomers and all faced a clear crystal in the center of a pentagram that covered the entire floor. The crystal stood on a bronze, pyramid-shaped platform. As with all else, the ages had been unable to touch either the focus, for that was what the sorcerer knew the crystal to be, or the base upon which it stood.
Dru backed up a step. The figures remained motionless despite the noise and damage he had caused. They were, he noted quickly, lined along the points, corners, and sides of the pattern, creating, by themselves, a second pentagram atop the one etched in stone.
“Where did they come from?” he whispered to Darkhorse. The tall Vraad knew that they had not been there when the doors had fallen.
His companion did not reply and a glance at the creature’s equine visage helped little. Darkhorse’s eyes stared vaguely at the chamber, as if he had trouble seeing anything in there at all. A repeat of his question gave Dru an equally silent response.
Admittedly more secure now that he knew he could summon up tremendous power—despite the effect Dru knew it likely had on the land—the sorcerer stepped forward again. He made no attempt to walk silently, knowing that any folk who could ignore the earsplitting sound of two gigantic metal doors collapsing would hardly notice his footfalls.
Dru studied the area with his higher senses, noting how the lines crisscrossed exactly at the point where the focus stood. There were secondary lines as well, weaker links that followed the pattern of the pentagram… and piercing each cowled figure from back to chest.
He blinked, then squinted, returning his vision to the normal plane. There was something wrong with the meditators. Too much of what he saw already reminded him of something else, something back in Nimth.
“What do you do?” Darkhorse asked from behind him. A few hesitant steps informed him that his companion was following the sorcerer inside.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, running one hand through his hair as he pushed himself toward the nearest of the baggy forms. Was he mad to risk himself?
Stretching his left hand forward, calmly this time, Dru touched the figure.
Tried to touch it. His hand went through in much the same manner as it had in the wraithlike forest. Both emboldened and frustrated, he waved the hand back and forth, trying to draw some response.
“They don’t exist,” Dru finally told the shadow steed. “They’re ghosts… no… they’re memories.”
“Memories?”
&nbs
p; Nodding, the fascinated mage walked around the one he had tried to touch. Its visage was fairly covered by the hood, but he saw that the being before him had been human and male. The visage was disquieting in some ways, though. It was and it was not the features of a Vraad. Not quite elfin, either. The man’s eyes were open and in them Dru noted an age far greater than the figure’s appearance would appear. So great, in fact, that any Vraad would have been but a toddler in comparison. “You can still feel the vestiges of their power if you stand among them. It was so intense that even after all this time, the shadows of their faces and forms have been imposed upon reality… burned into it, you might say. I think my use of sorcery, even Vraad sorcery, was all they needed to grow substantial enough to see.”
“All I know,” the majestic stallion snorted, “was that they unnerved me. I could make no sense of their existence whatsoever.” It was a deep admission, coming as it did from the amazing creature.
Dru continued to study the wraiths. There were men and women, all handsome in the same disturbing way, as if they were part of one tremendous clan, even more so than the Tezerenee. All stared at the focus and the image of so many sightless gazes chilled even the centuries-old spellcaster.
“These fantastical images that you call pictures… were they not also in the ruined city?”
Darkhorse’s words broke the spell that had tied Dru to the lifelike images. He looked up, annoyed that he had been so engrossed in phantoms of the far past that he had not seen what might prove far more important to his immediate needs.
The ceiling was rounded, which gave it and the walls the appearance of being one. That in itself was nothing, but the pictures that covered the entire chamber stirred the sorcerer’s memories of another place, a place where a dragon lord had gazed with stone eyes down at the avians and their mystified prisoner.
Again, Dru looked over countless little worlds, each with their own representative. The Seeker was there, as was the enemy. The elf, the Vraad-like human, a figure that looked like a walking salamander… there seemed to be more here than in the first building.
Directly above the focus was the only illustration lacking a living figure. It was also the largest, and in the place of a representative race, it had a city… one very familiar, despite the differences time had wrought on the actual one.
The Vraad’s mind worked quickly. With growing suspicions, he looked down at the focus… or rather, the floor beneath it.
Another world was illustrated there, this one greater than the one above. In its center was the very castle they stood in.
“Let us go view something else! I grow bored in here!”
“Not yet.” Dru studied the phantoms—who seemed just a bit translucent now—and then gazed at the worlds above and below him. There was no denying the similarity between what he saw here and what he had devised when researching ka travel. Yet, if the images around him—the races and the worlds they stood within—meant what he had concluded, then the ghostly inhabitants of this place had been to the Vraad as the Vraad were to a lowly insect or, worse yet, a simple grain of sand.
Dru had a great urge to be elsewhere—anywhere—as long as it was far away from these ancient masters of power.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
“As you like it.” The shaken sorcerer quickly mounted and the black steed turned and trotted swiftly through the doorway. In less than a breath, they were already back in the courtyard. Another and they were out the citadel gates and heading back to where the tear had been.
There had probably been so much more that Dru knew he should have investigated, but what little he had seen with what little he had theorized was enough. There had to be another solution that would gain him Nimth. He wanted nothing to do with the memories within that place. Even the ruined city—their ruined city—was better than this.
A horrible notion crossed him mind. “Darkhorse! Can you see the way in which we entered here?”
“I cannot!” Despite the incredible speed at which the dweller from the Void raced, he sounded perfectly normal. Sometimes, it was difficult for Dru to recall that his companion did not have to breathe as he did. “But we are nearly at the spot, I think!”
“Then what will we do if it isn’t—”
A gaping hole opened before them and, at the heartrending speed they were moving, swallowed them before the Vraad could finish.
“—there?” Dru stuttered.
They were back among the ruins, but, this time, they were not alone.
The Seekers had returned, apparently having followed the duo’s trail, and among them, they now had a captive, who struggled vainly against their might.
An elf.
XII
NIGHT, SUCH AS it was, had come to Nimth. With it came the beginning of the end, as far as Gerrod was concerned. He had returned briefly to the Tezerenee stronghold, a vicious-looking iron building that; if Gerrod had been asked his opinion, reflected his clan’s personality perfectly. It was a toothy structure and cold to both the body and the soul. Wyverns and young dragons constantly flew among its dragon-head banners, while the elder beasts slept in their pens. Besides a nasty array of sorcerous defenses, more than a dozen riders generally patrolled the perimeter of the domain.
Not so now. The stronghold was abandoned forever, though it seemed at first glance that the inhabitants had every intention of coming back. Personal effects lay where their owners had last left them. Charts and books gathered dust. Some of the wyverns flew loose through parts of the edifice they would normally have shied away from. Food was left rotting. Even projects, such as those he and Rendel had been working on, were forever abandoned. The Tezerenee could take nothing with them.
It was Rendel’s notes Gerrod wanted. Rendel knew more than he did about the shrouded realm. Not all of it had been shared with his closest brother, though Gerrod doubted they had been as close as he had once supposed. You left me behind with the rest, brother dear. He only hoped that Rendel had also left behind his work. It was quite possible that his elder sibling had destroyed everything so as to keep that much longer whatever advantages he had uncovered in his research.
Fortune was with him. Not only were the notes he sought easy to locate, but they had been so meticulously organized that Gerrod found the proper sections within seconds. Evidently, Rendel was unconcerned about what these notes contained. They verified what he had read in Dru Zeree’s notes and added new information that the outsider had not known… or perhaps purposely ignored, dealing as they did with the region in which Melenea made her home. Gerrod allowed himself a quick, triumphant smile and closed the book. He knew that there were other notes, much more well hidden, but there was no time to search for those. What he had would suffice, anyway.
“So it is you.”
“Mother!” Gerrod turned on her, wondering desperately how she had been able to sneak up on him and also wondering if there were others behind her whom he also could not sense.
“I came back to see our home once more. Silly sentimentalism, isn’t it, my son?” The look on her face was unreadable, suggesting both mockery and truth.
“Some would not see it so,” he responded in neutral tones, hoping she would draw her own conclusions.
“The plan falls apart, Gerrod.”
He had suspected as much, but hearing it from the mouth of one of the few he trusted, the hooded Vraad shivered. “What happens now?”
Her smile held no humor in it, only bitter irony. “It would seem that the golems, not all of them but a great many, have vanished.”
“How many are left, Mother?” The noose he had felt tightening around his neck since his last confrontation with his father began to choke him.
“Barely enough for the clan. To assuage suspicions, Barakas has selected a few outsiders already.”
“And me?”
“For the moment, there is still a place for you. You know that much of the anger your father throws at you should rightfully be directed at Rendel?”
“
I know.” Gerrod smiled darkly. Rendel was his mother’s favorite, but he saw no reason to hide his feelings of betrayal.
“You are your father’s sons in the end, Gerrod.”
“Speaking of dear Father—much as I’d like to avoid doing so—you may tell him that Melenea has the Zeree brat. It was not my fault; she must have been the one who instigated the girl’s departure in the first place.” Whether that was true or false, he could not say. What it would do, however, was steer some of the trouble from his shoulders to those of the enchantress. Perhaps even Reegan, Melenea’s toy, would feel some sort of backlash.
“Leave her, Gerrod. There’s no time to get her out. As it is, she probably would have been left behind, regardless.” There was a trace of regret in his mother’s face, but she was hardly willing to risk one of her offspring being left behind. Alcia despised Melenea as much as any being did, but there were higher priorities than the daughter of Dru. “I do not think Barakas will wait too much longer before he decides to finish the cross-over. Some of the outsiders have been raising a fuss. The coming has broken up.”
Gerrod rubbed his chin. “How long left?”
“By dawn, your father wants everyone over. He will be the last to go.”
“How brave.”
She gave him a silent reprimand. “I cannot promise he will hold a place for you even that long.”
“Then damn him, Mother!” He would have thrown the notebook, but recalled in time what vital information it held. “Perhaps I’m better off here!”
Lady Alcia wrapped her cloak about herself. In the flickering light, she looked as if she wore a shroud. “It may be so, my son.”
Gerrod found himself alone. Snarling, he buried the notebook in the deep confines of his own cloak and also departed, leaving the keep of the Tezerenee and possibly his own future to the whims of crippled Nimth.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 49
