Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade (24 page)

VALEA SAW THE FEAR
—
fear
—in Shade’s eyes. The thing in the ice was grotesque, even frightening, but Shade stared at it with deep recognition.

His brief exclamation about its being faceless gave her a hint as to why it frightened him so. She remembered his tale of the bodies his people had created. This could only be one of them.

She stared at it again and something about it disturbed her. It was supposed to be an
empty
shell, but somehow Valea felt as if this was more than that. Even now, there was a presence about it that spoke of an intelligence.

What happened back then?
Valea wondered.
Were all the shells taken by the Vraad? Did they all become drakes or did something else happen, too?

“Why have you shown us this?” Shade suddenly demanded of the Dragon King. “For what purpose?”

“You know what it isss,” the Crystal Dragon replied. “And the reason I show it to you is because the stone led me directly to it.”

“But why?” Valea asked, feeling frustrated at obviously knowing far less than either of her companions.

The drake lord chuckled darkly. “An interesting question.”

He said no more. The enchantress glared at him. The Dragon King continued to eye Shade, as if savoring the sorcerer’s consternation. Valea almost felt as if there was something
personal
involved.

“If we are done with this place, then let us depart,” snapped Shade. To the Dragon King, he added, “All three of us are familiar with like drawing to like. We have the stone; it should lead us to the tower.”

“It should. It will require the efforts of all three of usss, though.”

The occasional sibilance was the only sign that the Crystal Dragon
was not quite as confident as he pretended. Valea found that both comforting and troublesome.

Then what he said sank in more. “You need me. You probably knew that from the start!”

He continued to ignore her. “What else did you learn from the Gryphon, sssorcerer?”

Shade seemed to understand exactly what he meant. “He wasn’t born, not in the proper sense. He was designed.”

Valea had heard none of this from her father nor from the Gryphon himself. The idea sounded impossible, and yet she listened nonetheless.

Shade went on. “Three components. I don’t know the reason. That was too muddled—”

“And utterly irrelevant.”

The hooded spellcaster shrugged. “From the birds of the air one part was drawn. From the powerful feline hunters of the land, the second was drawn.” Shade spoke as if repeating a litany that someone else had written. “But the third part, integral to whatever plan there was, demanded one of
them
.”

The reptilian eyes burned with anticipation, then impatience when Shade did not immediately continue. “Go on! Sssay it!” He spun to the side and thrust a hand toward the macabre corpse. “Say it!”

“One of them. One of the Faceless Ones . . .”

The declaration brought a hiss of triumph from the drake lord. Valea took a moment longer to digest what she had heard. The Gryphon not only had some tie to this unsettling corpse, a part of him had
been
one.

As a child, she had imagined a hundred legends concerning the fabled ruler’s origins, but even the enchantress admitted that she could not have divined such a startling truth. Valea stared at the corpse anew, seeing even more to it than before.

Help . . .

It was all Valea could do to keep from jumping. Fortunately, Shade and the Dragon King were now in some intense discussion. At the
moment, though, the enchantress did not care about that. Instead, she eyed the faceless form, trying to determine if she had imagined the cry felt in her mind.

Help . . .

Valea’s frown deepened. More focused on the cry, she realized that it had
not
come from the body. Rather, it was from another direction.

Slowly, she surreptitiously studied the two males. Whatever had called out to her had done so from their general direction.

Help . . . ,
it repeated.

There was a familiarity about it, Valea realized. The call was so faint that she could not conclude more save that it came from very near the pair . . . and yet from far, far away.

“It isss settled, then,” the Crystal Dragon announced, breaking her concentration. Valea tried to regain the call but could not.

“If it must be.” Shade shook his head, very bothered by something. He looked the Dragon King over. “But while we may pass as we are—providing the medallion doesn’t fail again—you will have to go as something less conspicuous, oh drake lord. Something even less conspicuous than a dwarf, for that matter.”

In response, the Crystal Dragon seemed to shift form. Only belatedly did Valea understand that, like the dwarf, this was not a true transformation but rather an illusion. Even Dragon Kings were limited to their true shapes and the scaled knight forms such as the one before her.

But the Crystal Dragon’s illusion was a very detailed one, obviously defined through much prior practice. He did not shrink as much as he had when pretending to be a dwarf. Instead, a human guise took hold. Even then, the drake lord could not help choosing that of a warrior, for the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man he became could have had no other calling. A dusky travel cloak only partly obscured a worn breastplate. A sword—made useful enough by the drake’s magic, if necessary—hung in a weathered scabbard.

The Crystal Dragon clutched the stone in a hand now seemingly covered in a gauntlet of steel. A trim black beard decorated a sturdy face.
The sharp eyes did not glitter with crystal, but somehow they were still those of the Dragon King, at least to Valea.

“Will this do?” asked the drake lord, both his new voice and his pronunciation not at all like what they knew.

There was no immediate response from Shade. He had an odd expression on his face, one that Valea could not fathom. It was there for perhaps the space of a breath before the sorcerer erased all emotion. “It will do.”

“Where are we going?” Valea asked, once again feeling as if something was going on that only she had no idea about.

“Talak,” Shade answered.

She had expected a number of other places, even Kivan Grath, for that matter, but not Talak. “Why there?”

“Because that is where the stone pulls,” the Crystal Dragon interjected impatiently. “Now, may we go?”

Shade looked to Valea, who reluctantly nodded. She would have liked to alert her father and mother about all that was going on but had already learned from past attempts that the Crystal Dragon’s spell on her also muted her link to her parents.

With little choice but also growing curiosity about where this all would lead, the enchantress joined the duo in their casting. The stone, the fragment of the “phoenix’s egg,” as she thought of it, shimmered. Its iridescence spread beyond its physical form and seemed to reach toward what she knew was the south.

Help . . . Valea . . .

The renewed cry almost made her lose her focus. Fortunately, neither Shade nor the Dragon King noticed. Yet, as the trio vanished, Valea’s last thoughts remained on that cry. She realized at last why it sounded familiar; it was
Darkhorse’s
cry.

And, more significantly, it came from very nearby. In fact . . . she now knew, from very near the vicinity . . . of the Crystal Dragon.

ERINI COULD NOT
cast a spell keeping track of her husband’s well-being, but she had other ways to monitor him. Melicard carried with him a small brooch with her cameo on it. The king generally kept it in a pouch at his side. He likely suspected that it had some spellwork on it, but since nothing could physically affect his person, probably did not pay the favor much mind.

But now, even from a distance, that tiny bauble all but shrieked in her mind.

The enchantress immediately checked on the security of her children, then concentrated on where she believed the king was currently located.

She materialized far ahead of the column just in time to see a red dragon vanish into the clouds. Quickly correcting her estimate, the queen transported herself closer to the front ranks.

Guards scattered as Erini appeared among them, leaving her a view of a stricken Melicard. An arrow thrust deep into his back, one designed to penetrate the hardest armor. His breathing haggard, he lay in the arms of two officers while a third sought to cautiously work at the wound in the hopes of at least removing the arrow. Only then could anything be done to aid the king.

Erini cursed her inability to use her power to heal him. Frustrated, she looked about and noticed a set of grim soldiers marching toward them. At the center of the group were two figures in chains.

“These’re the assassins, my lady,” the captain of the guard said. He looked troubled. “I’ve known one of them for years. They won’t speak and there’s something unsettling about them.”

“Bring them . . . closer,” commanded Melicard.

Erini stepped between her husband and the soldiers. “No. Let
me
see them.”

She made sure to keep Melicard safely behind her as the guards thrust the pair forward. On the surface, the prisoners seemed inconsequential. They were very pale, not a surprise considering the circumstances.

“Look at me,” she ordered.

“Erini . . . let me . . .”

The enchantress did not turn away from the assassins. “No, Melicard.” Erini pointed at the prisoner on the left. “You.”

The eyes met hers. They, too, were pale, the color all but washed away.

“His name’s Jask,” the captain said when the assassin would not speak. “Served Your Majesties well these past six years. Very loyally.”

“So what’s changed, Jask?” Erini asked.

The assassin still refused to talk. As the questioning had progressed, Erini had been quietly testing the man for any spell. It was possible he was entirely innocent, a helpless victim of a geas.

But while she sensed . . . 
something,
it was not magic as she knew it. It also saturated Jask in an odd way, as if it were a part of his very being.

Curious, Erini signaled the guards holding the prisoner to step aside. Shackled securely, the assassin would be unable to attack or flee with any success.

“Now then, Jask. We’re going to find out a little more about you and why you’d dare try to kill my—”

For the first time, the prisoner opened his mouth. Erini waited to hear whatever it was he intended to say, whether a confession, a plea for mercy, or simply a curse word.

A thousand tiny white insects flowed out.

“Protect the king!” Erini shouted. “Step away from the prisoners!”

As the soldiers obeyed, the second assassin also opened his mouth. From his gullet emerged a stream of black, crawling creatures. They poured out with such speed that they reached the ground in barely the blink of an eye, at which point they spread toward the defenders.

Only then did Erini understand that the reason both these men were silent and pale was not because of their fear and guilt . . . but because they were both dead.

“You will not have him!” she roared. The enchantress spread her arms wide. A wall of flame met the white insects head-on, scorching most to ash in a single moment.

They resembled flies. White flies. Erini was reminded of carrion eaters. She watched gratefully as the magical wall burned away the swarm.

However, more and more continued to pour out of Jask’s mouth. The crawling vermin also flowed without pause. Erini realized that she could stand here all day and the swarms would continue unabated.

Taking a deep breath, Erini drew upon the lines of force, brought that energy together, and thrust with all her mental might.

The wall of fire expanded, then shot forward.

Neither of the undead assassins moved, not that they would have had the chance to escape, so swift did the fire engulf them. Armor, cloth, flesh, bone—all were the same to the flames. The fire devoured each with ease. Vermin by the hundreds perished with their hosts, the insects sizzling briefly.

Erini exhaled in relief as the flames died down. Melicard was safe. She had protected him.

There was a sharp pain just above her ankle. The queen swung her foot and tossed away two of the black bugs. She glared at them and they burst into flames.

“Erini!” Melicard called. “Beware! The Lords of the Dead—”

“They’ve failed, my love,” she said, turning to him. “They tried for the children and they tried for you and failed both times . . .”

A horrific chill ran through her. She tried to chalk it up to the
lessening heat after the wall of flame’s dismissal, but the chill grew numbing.

The vermin . . . their bite . . .
The queen teetered.

“Erini!”

She managed to focus on her husband and saw that another bug was just about to crawl unnoticed onto his leg.

“N-no . . .” The enchantress managed to thrust a finger at the creature.

The last of the vermin melted.

Despite his wound, the king tried to reach for her. “Erini! No!”

“Mel-Melicard—I feel so—it’s cold—”

She felt her life slip away. At the last, Erini Suun-Ai, once princess of Gordag-Ai and now queen of Talak, wife, and mother, dropped to her knees and reached for her husband’s hand. It mattered not that it was the one carved from elfwood. She could feel his love.

Erini died.

IN A PLACE
beyond the mortal plane, in a land of grey where things moved at the corner of the eye, there stood the shadow of a citadel. The true citadel lay in ruins, but that meant little to those who inhabited it. For them, the citadel was as whole, as dominating, as they were.

The Lords of the Dead stood in the great chamber from which they had always ruled their domain and sought out the souls of the dying. At least, that was how they chose to see it; what they took was perhaps a
slice
of those souls, a reflection. Still, it was enough and, in greater numbers, offered them tremendous power.