Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

XII

The heat ceased abruptly, giving Valea respite. She sensed something else happening, but knew not what.

Then, an incredible urge to drift forward filled her. She did not fight it, the sensation feeling so right. Like a siren’s call, it pulled her on.

As she neared what she felt her goal, Valea noted other presences, as familiar to her as her own family-and yet even more so. She sensed Galani among them. The elf’s spirit comforted her. With the others surrounding her, the enchantress completed the last bit of her journey-and realized that she entered her own body.

But even there she was not alone. She felt the elf maiden and others stay around her, guide her.

And they were all her.

But there was one that did not join, instead receding. That one most of all Valea wanted to stay, but such was not to be. The enchantress felt a caress where her cheek should have been . . . and then the other departed.

Sharissa was gone.

“Cabe! Beware!” Darkhorse immediately enveloped the wizard, possibly the only thing that saved his human friend.

Cabe had only a moment to acknowledge the vision of a very battered Shade falling upon the crystal. Then, the faceless warlock vanished in a searing explosion of energy.

The entrails of the explosion spread throughout the pattern, catching each of the necromancers in turn. They screamed.

But if their suffering was terrible, it compared little to that which filled Ephraim. Set to accept the power offered him by his compatriots, the lead sorcerer now became the ultimate vessel in which the unleashed forces of the pattern spilled.

The ghoulish figure swelled, his armor groaning. His skeletal form burned bright from within. His fleshless jaw swung wide as he cried out the loudest and most agonized.

Ephraim vanished, still wailing. A thin trail of ash was all that marked his memory.

The castle, long held together by the will of the Lords of the Dead, began to crumble. On one side, the ceiling collapsed. The remaining sections groaned ominously.

Still caught, the rest of the Lords continued to scream. The floor containing the pattern began to buckle as it, too, lost cohesion.

“We must flee!” Darkhorse roared.

“Valea! I’ll not leave her body here!”

The eternal snorted. “As if I would!”

Now resembling more of a spherical ant than a stallion, Darkhorse maneuvered toward Valea. As they neared, Cabe’s eyes widened.

“She’s breathing! Darkhorse! She’s breathing!”

“And if we would have her continue to do so, we must get her and you out of this abysmal realm swiftly! It seems to be folding in on itself!”

Sure enough, not just the castle but the entire world seemed to be coming apart. The Lords had held their kingdom together and now that they could not, it was decaying rapidly.

Darkhorse scooped up Valea, placing her inside him as he had earlier Cabe. Then, with a prodigious leap, he soared through one falling wall and out into the open.

Beyond the castle, the landscape was still eerily silent. However, Cabe had the odd sensation that there was movement everywhere and all of it fleeing the direction of the Lords’ sanctum.

“They are free!” the eternal rumbled. “The shadows held by the Lords are free!”

And as he said it, they suddenly saw thousands of flittering shapes moving off. Humans, elves, Quel, Seekers, and others undetermined appeared and vanished like flickering dreams. All headed with grateful purpose for some destination far from the collapsing center of the realm.

A screech caused Cabe some fear. Two Necri descended from the grey sky. However, they did not dive in to attack, but rather collided with the ground. As they struck, their bodies scattered like dust. They, too, had been held together by the necromancers’ incredible minds.

“I am going to try to teleport us to the gateway!” the stallion rumbled. “With the Lords in disarray, I should be able to do it!”

Cabe looked back, where a tower from the castle had begun to collapse inward. “Hurry!”

Darkhorse shimmered-and their surroundings altered. Ahead of them, a sliver of blackness appeared. The gateway from this side.

“Hold her tight!”

He need not have said anything to his friend. Cabe would have held on to Valea even at the cost of his own life if it would somehow save her.

The shadow steed leapt at the tear, which suddenly began to fade . . .

Valea screamed.

“Hush,” said a feminine voice. “You’re all right, daughter.”

“Mother?” She looked up to see not just Gwendolyn Bedlam, the elder enchantress a much more glamorous and beautiful version-so Valea thought-of herself, but her father and brother, too. The three stood over her, quite concerned. Valea lay in her plush, down bed back in the Manor. Outside, sunlight shone and birds sang merrily, all as if nothing had ever happened.

“Three days of sleep, that’s the only aftereffect I sense,” Gwen continued, pushing back some of her luxurious, fiery hair. Valea’s mother gazed to the side. “Aurim, see if there’s any sign of Darkhorse returning yet. He said he would be back by now.”

The golden-haired youth, only a few years older than Valea, nodded. “Yes, mother.” He eyed his sibling. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Valea blinked. Generally when she and Aurim spoke, they argued. This time, however, he had looked so very serious she began to wonder just how close to death she had seemed.

Aurim suddenly vanished, a slight twinkle of stars in his wake. Possibly stronger even than his father, he had, of late, become something of a show-off. Valea found the familiarity of that situation comforting.

Then she remembered the Lords.

Her father must have read her expression. “Their realm was collapsing. Shade-Shade sacrificed himself to destroy their pattern. The chaos incinerated the lead necromancer-”

“Ephraim!” she gasped.

“Ephraim,” Cabe corrected himself. “As to the others, the last I saw, their castle, their world, was crumbling, and they were caught by their own magic. They may be no more, but I’m not counting on it.”

“Whatever the case,” Gwen interjected, “they are nothing to fear, at least for the moment.”

“No.”

But Valea no longer thought of them. She recalled her father’s other words. “Shade-he sacrificed himself?”

“Without hesitation.”

That made no sense. “But Gerrod-the-the ghost of the original Shade-he was supposed to take over and use the body for the Lords’ purposes. They had him under their control.”

“Somehow, Shade overcame him, I suppose. It’s what saved us.”

No. Valea understood enough to know that only by Gerrod’s own decision could Shade have withstood the possession. Gerrod had decided that his manic desire to live had been outweighed by what he would cause to happen afterward.

But it had not been that alone. Some part of her, some part that was and was not Valea, suddenly reminded her of Gerrod’s love of Sharissa. Sharissa would have despised what Gerrod would have become. In the end, the ghost had likely come to that conclusion, too. He had instead given Shade the opportunity to undo the necromancers’ evil and help the spirit of the woman he had loved.

“You said-” Tears wanted to flow freely from her eyes, but Valea fought them back. Tears for both aspects of one man. There was an emptiness in her heart at the sacrifices and the thought that he might be no more. “You said . . . he’s dead?”

The grim expressions on both her parents’s countenances grew. Her mother pursed her lips and quietly said, “This is Shade of whom we speak.”

So he very likely was not dead . . . but they feared what he might have become.

“Darkhorse is already searching,” Cabe added, growing more determined in his tone. “I’ve alerted the Gryphon and King Melicard of Talak. They have the resources to watch also.”

Gwendolyn Bedlam nodded. “From what I’ve gathered, he could be more terrifying than ever, my love. He is more whole now. The Lords may have unleashed a threat that would make theirs comical by comparison.”

“We won’t let him. Shade will be hunted down no matter what.”

The elder Bedlams continued to discuss the possible danger. Valea listened to them, but she did not feel the fear that they did. Instead, her heart seemed to leap to life.

He was alive.

Her parents, the others, they recalled the past all too well. But so did Valea. She recalled the past even better than them, she believed. In her memory were not only the events of Galani’s life, but a hundred and more others-all her reborn again and again, in some ways just like the warlock. More important, Valea also remembered what she had learned in the castle and that, most of all, gave her hope.

I’ve got to find him before they do, she thought. If I do . . . if I do . . . he may have a chance yet. He might become mortal again. This time he has a chance . . .

Her face a mask, she listened to her parents talk . . . and began planning.

He sat upon the winter peak, high above altitudes where most creatures could breathe. The winds whipped at his hooded form, but could not in the least dislodge him. Far, far below and some distance south, the young Dragon Emperor struggled to hold together his people. Farther on, near the base of those mountains, an aging king and his beautiful witch of a queen hoped that the dire news that they had received would not mean a return of fear to their realm. Much more south than that, where the lionbird ruled, the anxious monarch worried that his newborn son might be a target.

They all feared him. He could taste their fear. Shade looked to the horizon, looked to where the length and breadth of the Dragonrealm lay and sensed fear of him in every direction.

He had died saving them-saving her. They all knew what that meant. He had reformed, fully grown and garmented as his curse ever demanded, in the hot, fiery lands of the Hell Plains. His mind had been addled for a time-as always-but gradually cleared enough so that he could recall what had happened. He remembered his surprise at the ghost’s decision to give itself to him, not take over as planned by the Lords. He remembered memories of his far past filling him and feeling more whole than in all his monstrous existence. He remembered the choices he had made and the results, good or ill, of each.

And as his mind organized itself, he came to that point, as he always had, when either the light or the darkness seized him, directed his newest mockery of a life.

But this time . . . this time nothing happened.

This time, he felt no different than when he had looked into the eyes that had been Sharissa’s, Galani’s, and all the others-but had especially belonged to a young, arresting enchantress who was the daughter of those most likely to now seek his destruction.

He had not transformed. He had not fallen to the side of darkness as the curse demanded. His face, which he had gazed at in a river, was still but a blur, yet Shade felt the same within as he had when he had chosen to sacrifice himself for his companions-and especially her.

The warlock sat upon the mountain, knowing he would have to flee from Darkhorse’s probing spells soon, pondering this astounding turn of events.

Pondering and, for the first time in a thousand false lifetimes, hoping.