“Mistresss!” Sirvak alighted on the edge of the couch, or what was left of it. The magically formed piece of furniture had sunk halfway into the carpet again, making it more of a lump. Sirvak carefully balanced itself on what remained, the lack of the one forelimb making it more difficult than normal. “Come, mistressss! Trussst Sirvak!”
Sharissa did… now. The beautiful gold and black beast was probably the only one she trusted. Gerrod had succeeded in raising doubts as to Melenea’s interests, but his own were just as debatable. One thing she felt certain of, however, was that Sirvak, even if the familiar had worked with the Tezerenee, was still loyal to her and her father.
“Plaything! You are being naughty!” Cabal had managed to lift one paw out of the soupy floor and was trying to reach her. Of Gerrod there was no trace, and for the first time, she feared for him. He had freed her from the horrible creature before her.
As the massive paw neared her, Sirvak flew from the couch and, paying no heed to its own safety again, attacked the limb with great relish. Cabal took an unsteady swing at the winged attacker, but the horror’s lack of full movement made it impossible for the creature to twist far enough to make contact. Sirvak backed away from the paw until it was obvious that the blue-green wolf had overextended its reach, then moved in close enough to snap at the struggling adversary.
Cabal roared in pain. The toothsome beak of Dru’s creation tore into the limb just above the paw. Sirvak ripped a chunk of flesh from its counterpart and quickly abandoned the attack before the huge monstrosity recovered. It had not been a total payback for the smaller familiar’s loss, but Sirvak’s triumphant cry spoke nearly as much about the extent of the damage inflicted as Cabal’s howl did.
Sharissa felt the floor stiffening. Things were returning to normal, such as that was. She would have to make a decision now. Either she stayed and trusted Melenea or she left and trusted Gerrod the way Sirvak seemed to. It was not a choice that filled her with anticipation. She wished her father was here to make the decision for her.
He may be dead! she berated herself. It was up to her to decide her own fate. When her father had vanished, she had let Gerrod lead her to the Tezerenee. Her first attempts at independence had consisted of refusing to share what she knew with the overbearing patriarch, Barakas. Unfortunately, just as she had been deciding to lead her own life, the young Zeree had found Melenea, someone from her childhood. She had allowed the enchantress to lead her as if Sharissa were still a small child. No more.
The crystals. I have to find the crystals! I can’t leave without them! Only Melenea knew where they were, however. Only Melenea could give her access to the crystals that might lead her to her father. They somehow held the key to passing from Nimth to the realm beyond the veil. Sharissa knew she could not leave this place without them, regardless of the danger that the enchantress possibly represented to her if Gerrod had been telling the truth.
“Damn you! Not again!”
She only barely recognized the Tezerenee’s furious voice before something struck her from behind and sent her facedown into the carpet. Sirvak called out her name.
Someone bundled her up. “We’re leaving! Now!”
Before she could protest, Gerrod brought his cloak around the two of them and started a teleportation spell. Sharissa knew she should warn him about something, but the pain at the back of her head made it impossible to recall exactly what it was that the hooded figure had to beware of. By then, it was already too late. She felt the chamber shift around them, melt away, and become another place.
“Dragon’s blood! This isn’t where I wanted to go!”
“You’re… you’re lucky to have made it at all,” she managed to gasp out. “We might have ended up in the shrouded realm… or some place even farther away!”
Gerrod’s laugh was bitter. “That might have been better for both of us! Look about you!”
“I can’t… wait… my eyes are clearing.” The blow, obviously her unwanted companion’s doing, had blurred her vision. The teleport spell had not helped matters. Fortunately, as the pain eased, her eyesight returned to normal. “Where have we… Serkadion Manee!”
“I think Father’s betrayal has angered the rest of the Vraad.” The sardonic tone in Gerrod’s voice was unmistakable.
They stood in what had once been the courtyard of the Vraad communal city, a place where only days before the race had first started to gather for the coming. It was a city now ravaged by those who had created it and who, Sharissa suspected, would likely greet a Tezerenee and the daughter of the patriarch’s supposed ally with even deadlier fury.
XIV
BARAKAS, LORD AND patriarch of the Tezerenee, the clan of the dragon, gazed at what would be the beginning of his new empire. Gone were the ways of old Nimth, when he had been forced to share the world with so many arrogant and maddening outsiders. Now, only a handful of outsiders remained, all manageable. Most of those were female, too, for the patriarch knew that to start any new civilization required new blood. He had kept his clan to certain numbers because of the restrictions of space in Nimth. That was no longer necessary.
“Those mountains over there.” He gestured at the same peaks Rendel, days ago, had set out for. “I want them explored.”
Reegan looked abashed. “We have no flying drakes and our powers work haphazardly, sire.”
“Do not state the obvious with me, Reegan. I have trained you to do what you must to obey my commands. See to it that what I say is done.” Though Barakas almost looked peaceful, his eldest son, reading into the patriarch’s eyes, bowed quickly and rushed off to see what suggestions some of his brethren might have.
Lady Alcia, stepping away from a conversation with someone who was either a daughter or a niece—Barakas felt it unnecessary to try to keep track of all of his people as long as they did what they were told—joined her husband as he surveyed the fields and forest around them.
“You seem flushed with excitement,” she murmured.
“I have a world to conquer. I have my people to obey me. What more could one ask for?”
“Your son?”
Barakas looked at her in distaste. “Which one, my bride? Rendel, who betrayed us once he was on this side of the veil, or Gerrod, who failed to do anything I asked of him?”
“I can’t say anything concerning Rendel, but Gerrod did as he was commanded. You never paid attention to that fact, however. It may interest you to know that I ran across Gerrod before I returned from our old keep. Even though time was running out, he was determined to find Dru Zeree’s daughter, as you commanded, despite the fact that he believed she was a ‘guest’ of Melenea.”
“I waited as long as possible, Alcia. You saw how they were acting. Any longer and we might not have crossed in time.” The patriarch’s attention wandered to where Lochivan was trying to look busy. He still feared his father’s wrath, though there was nothing he or the others could have done to prevent the disappearance of the golems. That had been Rendel’s province. “Lochivan!”
“Father!” Despite the fear, the Lord Tezerenee’s son rushed to his side and knelt. “You have a task for me?”
“This will be our initial camp. Begin expanding our perimeter. We need drakes, too. If you—”
Both Lochivan and the Lady Alcia looked at the patriarch, curious as to why he had stopped speaking.
“There!” Barakas pointed a finger at one of the nearby treetops. A horrible, agonized shriek filled the ears and souls of the assembled Tezerenee, all of whom turned to stare in the direction of the cry as if mesmerized by the strident sound.
A winged figure, now only a corpse, plummeted to the earth. It landed with a dull thud, a crumpled and twisted rag doll. Even from where he stood, the Lord Tezerenee could see that while it was avian, it was also humanoid. It had most certainly been spying on them, so he knew it was also intelligent. He wondered how long it—and likely others—had watched his people, all the while undetected. Though Barakas had appeared to know where the
spy was, it had actually been a fluke; he had spotted a movement as he had surveyed that part of his new kingdom. No one would need to know that, however.
Pain abruptly wracked the hand from which he had directed his deadly spell. Barakas swore and rubbed at the sore spot. He felt as if part of his assault had backfired, though there was no method by which that could have happened so far as he knew.
“Lochivan!” His pain was assuaged a bit by the speed with which his son came once more to attention. “This is a hostile region! We have an enemy to confront! I want the immediate area cleared of any other spying eyes.”
“We dare not trust our power, Father. Already, three who attempted spells have been injured. There is something amiss with the magic of this world.”
Barakas released his injured hand as if nothing had happened to it. “I felt nothing. The spell worked as it should have.” That was not true; it had been his intention to capture whatever had lurked in the tree for interrogation or, if it had proven to be merely an animal, examination as a potential food or sport source. For some unfathomable reason, he had unleashed a spell more powerful by at least a hundredfold. “I have commanded; your duty is to obey.”
“Father.” Lochivan bowed and backed away. It was evident in his movements that he would have preferred the patriarch’s reprimand to such an impossible task. Yet, being Tezerenee, he would work to fulfill Barakas’s command, no matter what the cost.
The Lord Tezerenee gestured to two clan members who stood nearby, still stunned by what their master had done. With their helms on, he could not judge whether they were his children or merely relations. It did not matter as long as they performed their duties. “Bring that carcass to me. I want to know what our enemy is capable of.”
The Lady Alcia tried to bring the conversation back to Gerrod. “If you could only—”
She was cut off with an imperialistic wave of one gauntleted hand. “Gerrod is dead. Everyone back in Nimth is dead… or as good as dead. I will hear no more about them.” Anticipation tinged his next words. “We must prepare for our first battle. It will be glorious!”
As she watched her husband stalk off to oversee the disposal of the monstrous corpse, the matriarch frowned. Barakas had found new playmates, actual adversaries. There would be no turning him from the task he had set for himself now. The role of conqueror was at last his to claim. Gerrod was no more than a soon-to-be-forgotten memory, as far as the lord of the dragon clan was concerned.
Glancing at the limp bundle of flesh being dragged to the waiting patriarch and thinking of what other potential dangers the new world might yet offer, the Lady Tezerenee wondered if the clan itself would be such a memory before long.
“Perhaps it would be for the best,” she murmured, then strode off herself to help organize her people for the coming threat.
VRAAD AND ELF faced each other, eyes locked. Considering the speed with which she moved, Dru questioned his chances of unleashing a spell before the knife struck home. He also wondered what sort of sorcery she might have to back up her assault, for the stories had always hinted that to some extent the elfin race had had its share of potent spellcasters. Somehow, he could not see the knife as her only weapon; his Vraadish mind-set could not comprehend a foe who would take on a mage with only a small hand weapon. No one was that insane.
Another thing occurred to him as he readied himself for the worst. He knew time had passed, for the sun was bright in the sky. Yet Dru could not recall either sleeping or eating. He was, however, fully rested and not the least bit hungry. The sorcerer thanked the guardians for small favors; maybe they had wanted him to be at his best when he died.
“What did they tell you in there?” she suddenly asked, the blade still poised for immediate use.
He almost laughed. Questions at a time like this? He would have expected such from himself had his mind not still been at least partly back with the very creatures she asked about. “They told me about this place… and about Nimth.”
“It is all falling apart, is it not? Nimth, that is.”
His gaze shifted briefly from her green, almond-shaped eyes to the knife and then back again. “Yes, it is.”
“You destroyed Nimth. You destroyed it the way you destroyed everything else on it other than yourselves.”
“Yes.”
Confusion spread onto her face, lessening the anger a bit. “You admit it? You are very cooperative. Why is that? What are you planning?”
“I have no quarrel with you, elf. If I have a quarrel with anyone, it is our former hosts.”
“Do you think I am a fool because I use a knife against a Vraad? I know how chancy your spells are, but I also know how devious you are said to be. We went through the same difficulty with our own magic, for a short time, when we first came here. I can easily kill you before you take another breath.”
Dru believed her. The grace with which she moved, even seemed to breathe, spoke of skill surpassing his. Still, if it came to a battle, he had a few tricks she could not know about. “The guardians put us together to survive.”
“Or kill one another and save them the problem of dealing with two more who know about this place.”
The sorcerer had considered that but had chosen not to mention it. He had not even dared to ask what had actually been done with the Seekers. The elf was no one’s fool. “Do we do it, then? Would you like to kill me?”
She hesitated. “A trick?”
“Hardly. I would rather form an alliance than fight.” A gust of wind blew his hair in his eyes. He pushed it aside, wondering if this breeze meant that some of the guardians remained, shielded from his senses. That might have been the true reason they had ejected Darkhorse from their world; he represented a potential threat to their security—to their legacy.
“You are Vraad.” Was there just a hint of uncertainty in her tone? Dru wondered.
“A chance of birth,” he replied.
She smiled at his poor attempt at humor, an effect that nearly dazzled him. So used to the unreal and exceedingly arrogant beauty of his kind, he was unprepared for the beauty that nature itself could offer. Dru forgot himself and simply stared. Only Sharissa could claim similar beauty.
Sharissa and her mother…
The knife was suddenly at his throat. “I could have killed you now. You didn’t even bother to move.”
He had been too engrossed in admiring her… something that had to be the work of this land and not his own doing. Dru had not survived all these centuries by letting his mind wander to pleasant things in times of crisis. No, it had to be the land playing with his thoughts. Yet, Dru realized that his adversary did remind him of his wife and daughter, too, so perhaps…
When her enemy continued to pay no heed to the death tickling his neck, the elf withdrew her blade and, after what must have been a tremendous debate with herself, sheathed it. “If you would desire an alliance, I can see no reason to turn you down. Not for the time being. You can call me Xiri. Not my birth name.”
“Xiri.” The Vraad did not ask what she meant by it not being her birth name. Elfin ways were mystery to his kind, who could only go by what little had been passed down over the millennia. Even Serkadion Manee, who seemed to want to chronicle everything, had been sparse in his details of the one other significant race in Nimth history. “Call me Dru, Xiri. My birth name, if you are interested. How did you know I was a Vraad?”
“It is not because I am so old that I remember your arrogant race,” she bit back, though again with a touch of humor. “Those who passed to this place made certain we would remember the forms of our foes.” She sized him up. “You do not seem exceptionally sinister. Merely tall and a touch too confident in yourself.”
“You’ll find enough of my kind that fit your darkest fears. Overall, we are probably everything your ancestors claimed we were, which is why we ourselves have been trying to escape Nimth.” It was peculiar, he thought, how easy it was to talk to her even though she had come close to slitting his throat only a
breath or two earlier.
“How terrible is it?”
Gazing around at the remnants of a civilization far older than his own, Dru pictured Nimth in a few thousand years. “These ruins will look picturesque in comparison to what we have left as a legacy.”
“And now you’ve come here to spread your poison.” The hostility had returned to Xiri’s voice, but it was not meant for Dru personally. “The land will not permit it.”
The sorcerer shivered as she said the last. “Why do you say that?”
Xiri began walking, if only, it seemed, to burn off nervous energy. Without thinking, Dru moved beside her, keeping pace. He was taller than she by nearly two feet and his stride was nearly double her own, but the Vraad was still forced to walk faster to keep up with his new companion.
“You mean you cannot feel it? You cannot feel the presence that is the land itself?”
He had. More than once. He also believed it was the same force that had guided him into this world and then used his horse to lead him here. If what he supposed had truth in it, then there was a purpose for his being in the shrouded realm. Dru was not certain whether he should be pleased or worried.
“I see you have.” Xiri had used Dru’s musings as an opportunity to study his face, reading there the answer he had not given to her in words.
“Do the… the guardians know of it?”
She shrugged. “I am as much of a newcomer to this continent as you. Maybe. It could be that what we feel is like them, though you would know that better than I. Another ‘guardian,’ as you called them.” Xiri mulled over his term. “Guardians. I suppose that describes them better than anything else.”
They were taking a path that would more or less lead them back to where Dru, as a prisoner of the avians, had entered the city. The sorcerer did not ask if there was a reason for this particular direction; he was learning too much to be concerned with anything else. He found he also enjoyed Xiri’s company, she being a more pleasant, straightforward companion than most Vraad… when she was not trying to kill him, that is.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 52
