Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

VII

Gerrod stared at the floor in shame. Valea turned away from him, preferring even the dismal landscape outside the window. Ephraim had left them to their own devices, stating that Gerrod would know when it was time for his part in their plot.

“You’re him,” she finally stated.

“He’s me,” Gerrod corrected. “A casting of me, that is. That which you call Shade is incomplete, has been incomplete since the day that damned spell was cast.”

“But he’s alive and you-” The enchantress broke off, suddenly feeling cruel in her choice of words.

“It’s the land’s jest,” he replied bitterly. “Its foul humor is surpassed only by its audacity! It must conform all to its desire and when it finds something it can’t conform, it seeks to break that thing until it can be made useful.”

She looked back at him. “Such as you?”

“I defied it. I denied it. When my people became in flesh the monsters that they had been in mind, I turned to its own magic to force back my transformation, else perhaps there would have been one more lineage of dragons . . .”

His words did not make complete sense, but Valea understood the gist of them. “You fear the Dragonrealm itself? You fear the land?”

He reached with the instinctive intention of taking her by the arm, but then came to his senses. The ghost instead pointed at the world beyond the window. “That is a mere reflection of the true reality, one of hundreds of pocket worlds, bubble realms, that the first race created. Even we Vraad had no name for them. They were powerful beyond belief and when they realized that they were dying, they created from themselves the seeds for countless successors, each set so that only one group would live.” He grimaced. “But while a few survived centuries, none flourished. Most races lived out their spans in their pocket worlds, never advancing enough to enter the true one.”

The Vraad had made the leap, although more by accident than promise. Having ruined their own realm, they found a path to the original, arriving just as the avian Seekers began to fall into savagery after their war with their own predecessors, the Quel. The Vraad began filling in the niche, but by seeking to remake their new home as they had their old-which would have eventually resulted in a second catastrophe.

But the land, Gerrod had discovered, had a mind of its own. “I believe that the last of the originators became a part of their world so that they could watch and manipulate whoever came after. Those that fit, they left virtually untouched. Those that did not . . . they altered as their whims dictated.”

For the Vraad, it meant extinction as a race. Some fled, falling prey to other forces, but many, especially the powerful, militaristic Tezerenee, transformed. From dragons they had created bodies to house their ka, their spirits, and these had been their method by which they had fled from their world to this one. Now, as if mocking their efforts, the land twisted them, shaped them into the very beasts that they had used. The Tezerenee would rule the realm as they had desired, but as horrors without any memory of their previous might.

They became the first of the Dragon Kings.

Despite herself, Valea listened in fascination. Her father had made some conjectures as to the origins of the drake lords, who had appeared quickly and as if out of nowhere, but even he had not quite made this connection as far as she knew.

“And you?” the enchantress asked.

“Spell after spell I used to keep me as I was. I feared even dying, certain that doing so would only surrender me to the land. Then, I thought at last I had the ultimate spell, one that would give me immortality and make me impervious to whatever the land desired-but in my eagerness, I failed to consider its interference in that spell.”

His miscast attempt had resulted in a disaster which had destroyed a mountain and its surroundings for miles in every direction. Gerrod had felt as if ripped in twain. He had blacked out, then awoke in what seemed an endless haze. There he had drifted for what he likened to an eternity.

“Until that point when they claimed me.”

They brought him before them, told him that he had died-and yet had not. They then revealed to him that part of his being that remained alive and how it sought to complete itself time and time again. He watched as his shadow self-who in mockery all too close to the truth had named itself Shade-wreaked carnage in one lifetime and then sought to pay restitution in the next. For a time, the Lords of the Dead let him watch the fruitless struggle of Shade as he attempted over and over-either when good or evil-to make himself whole. That, however, could never be, for he unwittingly lacked the one component that would have made it possible.

His true self.

“Shade, the Shade you know, can never be redeemed. He is not a whole creature, not even a true being . . . and so he is ever doomed to failure.”

Valea wanted to deny that. Her own father and, especially, Darkhorse had regaled her with tales of Shade’s sacrifices when he had been of better nature. Even if that had not been enough, she had experienced Galani’s memories and knew what the elf had read within the warlock. The passion, the love, that the elf maiden had carried for Shade could not have been directed at a thing not wholly real. Gerrod had to be wrong . . .

But then . . . who would know better than him?

“What-what exactly do they want you to do?”

For a ghost, he gave a very real grunt. “I must merely reclaim what is mine. I am the true self. I have always been. When we touch, my will shall engulf his. He has no choice in the matter. Everything will be set to rights. He is but a body devoid of a true soul. I am the true soul and I will at last have my body again.”

“And all the lives that he has led, for good or ill?”

Gerrod turned from her. “Forgotten. Known only to legends and history. I want nothing of them, for they’re no part of me.”

It all sounded too much like a slaying to Valea. Shade was a separate life from Gerrod, of that she felt certain. He had committed evil, yes, but had done so much good. More to the point, he had loved and no mere shell could do that. What Galani had exhibited had been returned.

“It’s abominable! You can’t do it!”

“I must do it,” he replied without looking. “For Sharissa-”

She suddenly felt filled with a contempt for him, despite his predicament. “I’ve gleaned enough to understand your desire there! You lost her once, I’m thinking, and I doubt this path will guide you any better! Besides, what use is regaining your life when she’s still dead?”

The ghost wavered, becoming translucent for the first time. Valea thought he intended to vanish, then recalled that he could not. “She will live again . . .”

His words struck her hard, for she immediately understood their meaning. “You’re talking about me.”

“You are her already. You simply don’t remember any more. When Sharissa enters you, she will dominate. You will cease and she will walk the earth once more.”

He sounded so horribly certain that Valea could not help but believe him. “And you want this . . .”

Gerrod said nothing.

After a drawn-out silence, the enchantress shook her head. “I won’t just stand here waiting for it to happen.”

“It’s all already in play. Ephraim’s planned long for this. You are here. Shade is out there. Even your father and the black beast he travels with have been taken into account. Ephraim was quite willing to talk of his work and its inevitable success.”

“My father is out there? And Darkhorse, too?”

“Yes.”

Valea smiled. “Then the Lords are doomed to defeat!”

Her confident statement was met by a look of pity. “They’re not alone out there, my lady. You forget whose domain this is. As I await Shade, others await them.”

“Who?”

“For the one called Darkhorse, that which created him. For your father . . . your grandfather . . .” Gerrod ignored her astounded and suddenly fearful expression. “And as I and Sharissa have been promised, Azran Bedlam and the thing called Yureel have been offered their lives . . .”

“Come,come, have you nothing to say to your dear father?”

“Several things come to mind,” Cabe retorted, his hands balling into fists. “I doubt you’d want to hear them.”

The silver-and-black-haired figure smiled malevolently. “A pity I was never given the opportunity to raise you properly! Respect is the first lesson you would’ve been taught.”

“Respect?” blurted the younger spellcaster. “From the man who slew his brother, killed his wife-my mother-and betrayed his own father and humanity’s chance to escape the Dragon Kings?”

Azran’s own expression hardened. “I was betrayed first! My due was not given to me!”

“I thank the day Grandfather managed to steal me away . . .”

“He’s probably about here somewhere,” Cabe’s father sneered. “Should there be anything left of you when I take your body, perhaps the pair of you can have a long, long philosophical discussion . . .”

Azran’s arms stretched forth, twisting far beyond what should have been their limits. His act caught Cabe by surprise, who, despite knowing that his father was a ghost, had still placed upon Azran the limitations of flesh and bone.

As the foul phantasm’s elongated fingers touched him, Cabe felt a chill in his heart and a growing sense that he was being smothered. Azran’s horrific face filled his eyes and he felt his father intruding in his mind. The fingers probed deep and Cabe’s soul seemed to rip, as if a piece of it had been torn away.

You are the flesh of my flesh, my son . . . it’s only proper you give something back to your father . . .

But Cabe had no intention of granting Azran anything. He had not come to the dread realm without considering that he might face its ghosts. He also had his past encounter with Azran’s grasping spirit to serve him and, aware of the Lords’ perverse nature, had assumed that he might confront his father at some point.

Cabe’s hand slipped into a pouch at his belt. Azran sensed what he planned and tried to freeze the wizard in place by burrowing deeper into his soul. With a cry, Cabe fought the pain and clutched tight the object he had been seeking.

He tore it from the pouch and held it toward the ghost of his father. Azran’s face distorted, becoming a thing of rotting flesh and monstrous evil.

“Now is that any way to treat your father?” the ghoul mocked.

Cabe held out his hand. The object, a tiny box of rich, quicksilver wood-elfwood-opened.

A tremendous wind sucked in Azran’s ghost. The dead sorcerer howled as he fought in vain to escape it. He tightened his hold on Cabe’s soul-almost taking his son with him-but the wizard managed to keep his position.

And then-just like that-Azran Bedlam disappeared into the box. The lid shut tight and the crack flared golden as Cabe’s creation sealed itself.

“It’s exactly the way to treat you,” Cabe muttered to the magical container. He had fashioned it after artifacts left behind by the Vraad, one of which had been used in the past to trap Darkhorse.

He had not expected Azran to fall so readily, but had no complaints that it had turned out that way. Still, the box would not hold even his father’s spirit for very long and so Cabe had to hurry. He had no idea what had happened to Darkhorse and while he feared for the eternal, Cabe knew that he had to go after the one who mattered most to him . . . Valea.

Silently asking Darkhorse’s forgiveness even though he knew that the shadow steed would have urged him to the same course, the wizard eyed the box. It vanished immediately, cast out by Cabe to some random part of the necromancers’ realm. He did not want to risk carrying Azran’s sinister spirit with him, the dead sorcerer’s will so strong it might influence Cabe’s mind even when trapped.

As he looked up from his task, the wizard stared. The haze had thinned again with Azran’s defeat and in the distance stood the only structure he had so far seen. That it was a castle only verified what he already knew. The Lords of the Dead were not far-which meant that neither was Valea.

Cabe started walking again.