Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade (29 page)

Darkhorse snorted furiously. “Free of that abomination! Free!” He faced the Dragon King, his ice-blue eyes radiating cold fire. “By the Void! This is the end of one drake I truly look forward to.”

“No!” Valea sounded as if she were reprimanding a child. “You won’t touch him!”

The shadow steed tore at the ground, gouging it deeply. He took another step, then hesitated. “He should pay! He should pay!”

“No, Darkhorse. Leave it be. For me.”

The eternal let out another frustrated snort before finally nodding. “Very well.” His inhuman gaze fixed on Shade. “A curious thing to find you with
this
one.”

“I am not your enemy, Darkhorse . . . this time.”

“Words I learned could be as true as they could be false!” Darkhorse peered at the crimson-tressed enchantress. “If you trust him, I shall . . . for now.”

“Help us, then.” She pointed at the Dragon King. “Carry him for us.”

“Carry him? Rather would I leave him for whatever predator might be nearby and carry you back to your parents, who must be concerned.”

The eternal’s comment about the elder Bedlams caused Valea to look sad for a moment. Almost immediately, though, the enchantress
steeled herself. “They must wait. Please, Darkhorse, carry him until he awakes.”

“What of you? I can carry you, also.” Darkhorse kicked at the ground before adding, “And Shade, too, if I must.”

“I will walk,” the warlock responded.

Valea stepped closer to Shade. “I’ll be walking, too.”

With a curious glance at the duo, Darkhorse finally shook his head and returned his attention to the Crystal Dragon. Out of his chest burst two appendages whose ends shaped into crude, three-fingered hands. The new arms stretched down until the huge hands were able to seize up the prostrate drake.

As if he always had such limbs, Darkhorse easily hefted the Crystal Dragon up and onto his back. The eternal’s torso reshaped itself so that the body would not slip off.

The arms sank back into the body. Darkhorse looked to the others. “Where do we head? I have no familiarity with this place! Where is it?”

Shade allowed Valea to answer, the better to hopefully gain more of the eternal’s trust. Darkhorse would be more willing to help if he saw that the enchantress needed to follow this through.

But why should she? Why don’t she and Darkhorse just leave?

The simple answer was that neither of them would dare leave Shade to continue his quest out of fear of what the consequences might be for the Dragonrealm. The more complicated answer was far too discomfiting for even the ageless sorcerer to contemplate.

Darkhorse let out a more surprised snort. “So! I had wondered about much of what you’ve mentioned and even trapped I sensed a peculiar change, one that seemed to weaken the Vraad trap until I could feel your presence better, Valea!”

“And a good thing for all of us,” she replied, starting to lead the way at the same time.

Under the eternal’s watchful eye, Shade joined her. The stone continued to illuminate their immediate surroundings. Shade considered
adjusting his vision but in this odd place was hesitant to cast any such spell. One never knew what else it might affect.

A shiver suddenly ran through him. Even though the night sky was completely black, Shade knew that once more they were not alone.

“It’s passed over us again!” he hissed.

Valea, her face screwed up in concentration, held the stone up. Its astounding illumination rose skyward.

There was a glimpse of a gargantuan feathered form. Merely a tantalizing glimpse. A thing of fire-red and orange.

Valea tried to follow its flight but could no longer find the creature. Shade added more illumination of his own, but it was clear that the mysterious creature was gone.

Darkhorse shifted uneasily. “What happened? What are you two doing?”

“That thing has been tracking us since just before we passed through,” Valea explained. “I thought it was that—that specter following us.”

Darkhorse studied Shade with suspicion. “The Vraad were monsters, no exception, but them I could sense! I felt and saw nothing now! Tell me what you saw!”

Shade described it as best he could, but Darkhorse still looked perplexed. For all his unique ability, the eternal had been unable to either hear, see, or feel the creature.

“What have the founders left to guard this place?” Shade finally asked, voicing what he knew Valea was also thinking.

“Is it these founders or something serving another master?” Darkhorse retorted. “From what you say, this place is near the ruins of Azran’s citadel! He, too, no doubt searched for this! It can be no coincidence that he set his sanctum so close to this area.”

“And yet, he obviously didn’t find it,” the enchantress said. “It could be something that served him, but I don’t believe that. I think you would’ve sensed such a creation, Darkhorse.”

“Very true, but there are also the Lords of the Dead to consider, then!”

Shade shook his head. “No. They would not send Reegan’s foul spirit and another such fiend. To control both would be difficult. Magic does not always work the same in this sliver of a world.”

A slight hiss came from the eternal’s back. Darkhorse twisted his head completely around. “The Dragon King stirs!” Flaps of Darkhorse’s torso slipped over the drake, binding him to the shadowy stallion’s back. “If he makes even the slightest threat, I will absorb him and be done with it!”

The threat was not an idle one. To be absorbed into the eternal was to fall forever in darkness, screaming all the way. Shade highly respected Darkhorse’s power.

“Do nothing of the sort unless I say so,” Valea said. “At the very least, we may need him.” Unspoken was that she was not the type to condemn even the Crystal Dragon to such a fate unless he forced her to.

Darkhorse was undaunted. “No Dragon King can be trusted even so much as—”

Bright light filled their eyes. Darkhorse cried out.

As abruptly as it had come, the night ceased. Yet, in doing so, it had some effect on the shadow steed that no one could have predicted. Darkhorse completely melted, his body becoming a great, oozing mass. The body of the Dragon King rolled to the side.

Valea immediately dropped near what was left of the eternal. Shade joined her, equally stunned by what had happened. The pocket worlds forged by the founding race were ever different and did not always follow the same laws of nature.

“Darkhorse!” Valea reached toward the mass, but Shade grabbed her hand before it could touch. As unstable as the eternal was, even a slight touch might condemn Valea to the fate the shadow steed had earlier suggested for the drake lord.

“I am—it is—passing!” Darkhorse’s voice started as a croak but grew stronger quickly. “I—this world—it was as if some force tried to tear me to pieces . . .”

As he spoke, the ebony stallion re-formed himself. The two spellcasters stepped back, giving him room. The eternal returned to his favored shape, shaking his mane when he was finished.

“I am well again!” Darkhorse looked past them. Even equine, he evinced absolute surprise.

Shade and Valea whirled, the sorcerer thinking that perhaps the creature had returned.

The
tower
loomed over them.

THE DEFENDERS OF PENACLES
were excellent, just as Duke Ravos had expected and hoped. As he cut through a daring soldier foolishly hoping to down Lochivar’s heir, the drake relished the battle thus far. He wished that it could go on much, much longer—with Lochivar triumphant in the end, naturally—but suddenly his sire’s voice echoed in his head. The Black Dragon’s overexuberance nearly cost Ravos a nasty wound from a pikeman. The duke signaled two of his guards to take his position as he reined back his beast.

Ravos would have preferred to contact the Dragon King as he had prior, but his sire was insistent. The Black Dragon’s mental voice, always still representative of the rasping nature of his physical one, allowed little room for concentration, something the heir needed at the moment.

The path isss breached! The time isss imminent!

The scaled duke appreciated that significant knowledge but had to hold back his irritation at his sire’s lack of concern for anything else. Still, well-shielded from the Black Dragon was Ravos’s thought that the news presaged the duke’s own grand plans coming to fruition.

I am pleased for you, Father,
he responded with the utmost respect.
Soon, you will achieve your full glory again!

Soon, yes . . .

The Black Dragon broke the link. Ravos inhaled deeply to clear the madness of his father from his thoughts. He studied the pitched battle.
Two dragons flew overhead, seeking to tear into the defenders. One of them swept down and threw half a dozen screaming men into the air.

The second never had the opportunity, for a massive metal ball with long, sharp spikes collided with him. The ebony behemoth roared as some of the points penetrated his scaly hide. Momentum sent the dragon hurtling back beyond Lochivar’s own lines.

The stalemate continues,
thought Ravos.
Perfect.

He barked a command to a drake officer, then turned his mount from the chaos. Pushing back farther, Ravos spotted another drake, a trusted ally in his ambitions . . . an ally willing to sacrifice himself for the good of Ravos.

The other drake nodded ever so slightly as the duke closed. Ravos rode up to him. The two turned their mounts toward one another and as they did, the officer took on Ravos’s guise while Ravos took on his. The other drake moved on toward the front, while the masked duke departed from the view of any in the army.

But as he abandoned the field, a figure approached from the dankest part of the mists. The figure was no warrior of Lochivar, but rather a pale soldier from Penacles. He, too, carried a sword, albeit a much smaller one. Like the duke’s weapon, it was well covered in blood.

“The blood on this sword belongs to Penacles,” the soldier remarked in a dry, toneless voice. “The blood of three.”

Ravos lowered the sword. “Which one are you?”

The soldier smiled, a sickly display. Up close, it was apparent that his eyes stared sightlessly. “No one less than
I
for you, Duke Ravos.”

“Lady Kadaria.” The drake dismounted. “In the flesh, ssso to speak.”

The soldier laughed as Ravos had heard Kadaria laugh. It was an unsettling sound even to his ears, and more so coming from the walking corpse. “Are you ready?”

“My sire just informed me that his glory was about to be restored,” Ravos said mockingly. “He will be in for a surprise.”

“So he will.” The necromancer indicated a path to the left. “We go this way.”

The drake eyed his companion. “Why this form?”

She looked down at it. “I had in mind it might be useful should either the Gryphon, his mate, or one of the Bedlams step just outside Penacles’s walls, but it was also meant to garner information and sow
disinformation
among the defenders. Your warriors would have found the going even harder if not for my efforts.”

“How gratifying, but the crushing of Penacles can wait until I am king, as you promised.”

The undead smile spread wider. “Duke Ravos will sit upon the throne in Lochivar.”

Ravos nodded. He had a trick in mind should the necromancers betray him, but Kadaria’s declaration somehow had a ring of truth to it. “Will you ride with me or abandon this body and drift away?”

“I will let the body guide you. I myself will meet you ahead.”

I will let the body guide you.
Ravos did not care that an empty shell would be his temporary companion. He would travel with the shambling corpses of every dead fighter on the battlefield if that was what it would take to achieve the throne. “How long will it take?”

“Less time than you think.”

A blink hole opened up before the corpse. It was just wide enough to admit Ravos and his mount.

Before urging his mount forward, the drake asked, “Where are we heading?”

“The Hell Plains.”

“How appropriate.” Still Ravos did not urge the beast on. “Lead on, then.”

The corpse turned and stepped through. Duke Ravos hissed, realizing that a dead human crossing into the blink hole did not mean the way was safe for a living drake. Yet, he saw no reason to distrust the necromancer that far.

Visions of himself seated on the throne of Lochivar finally urging him on, Ravos rode into the blink hole.

CABE STIRRED.
His first conscious thoughts concerned the revelation that his son—
Aurim
—had been behind the attack.

His second thought concerned the fact that he was bound tight by strong bonds of pure energy.

“It was necessary to do it, Father.” As Cabe raised his head, Aurim, clad in a dark blue wizard’s robe, appeared before him. The long, pure golden hair, the result of a childhood casting that even Aurim could apparently never correct, marked by the swathe of silver was a hint of just how powerful a wizard the younger Bedlam was. Both father and son bore great streaks of silver, as opposed to thinner, far finer lines in the hair of less adept spellcasters.

Aurim favored his mother in certain features and those combined with Cabe’s coarser ones had given him a face something akin to the heroes of legendary sagas. However, Aurim had had a less-than-spectacular experience with spellcasting most of his life and had for a time become the puppet of others because of his uncertainties.

All that had appeared to have ended, though. Here was Cabe’s son very much in command.

“How long have I been out?”

Aurim looked a bit guilty. “Several hours. I didn’t mean to strike you so hard. I just meant to stun you long enough to get you away.”

“Several hours—?” Cabe looked aghast as he stared at the sun. “That would make this the next morning!”

His son looked even guiltier. “I’m very sorry. It had to be done, though.”

“What are you up to, Aurim? Why is there a need to do this?”