Legends of the Dragonrealm Volume 2

XXI

Erini was frightened, though she tried as best she could not to show it. She was frightened of many things, but what frightened the princess most was the curious behavior of her captor.

Despite his claims to the contrary, she doubted that Shade’s mind was as complete as he thought it to be. His personality seemed fluid to her, changing from one extreme to another. So close to what he believed would be his triumph, Shade was beginning to recall more and more about his tragic failure-and he insisted on sharing each detail with her, as if trying to purge himself of the memories.

“When men came back to this land,” he was telling her companionably, “and settled, bowing for a time to the will of the first Dragon Kings, I moved back among them. Weaklings! Their ancestors had given in to this world, taking up its magic instead of strengthening their own! There were a few who could do outstanding things with that magic, though, and from them I learned much of what I had dared not attempt for fear of losing myself as my counterparts had.”

Erini, held by his spells in a standing position with her arms outstretched-as if challenging the world, she thought bitterly-did not understand half of what he said. He was talking for himself. As long as it kept her from the fate he had planned, Erini did not object.

“I took many names and many guises in those days, learning what I could. Several times, I renewed my lifespan. Someday, though, I knew that those spells would fail me. I would die and the Vraad would pass from this world forever, a world ours by right.” He smiled coldly. “There were a few others who survived, in a sense, but they had also given themselves over to this world’s nature, becoming less Vraad and more-more-”

Shade rose, seeming to forget his tale completely. It was not the first time he had changed so abruptly. Shade stretched out one arm and caused the blue ball of light floating high above them to increase in intensity. The warlock’s stronghold, little more than shadow prior to this, was revealed to his captive for the first time. Erini was properly awed.

Erini had never seen the throne room of the drake emperor, so it was understandable that she would miss the incredible similarity between that place and this. Grand effigies of people and creatures long dead or vanished lined the walls on each side. Some were so real as to force the princess to look elsewhere, for fear one of them would start staring back at her. Erini was brave, but, even with her limited experience in magic, she could sense the cold presence within each one. These things were alive, although hardly in the sense that most people thought of as living. In some ways, they almost reminded her of Darkhorse, though she hated even considering such a thought.

“My cache. Plundered by those scaly wretches above. This was where I formulated my spell and stored all my notes and special-toys. A Vraad habit. Though I performed my spells among humans and lived in human communities, it was here, in this place, that I first conceived of my notion. It was here that I found and began to travel the path of immortality and true power such as even the Vraad had never dreamed.”

As he spoke, Shade reached into his cloak and removed a rather ordinary-looking tripod. The care with which he handled it told Erini it was anything but ordinary. She watched in helpless frustration as the warlock placed it at her feet.

“The concept came to me early on, but the doing of it escaped me for centuries. I feared I was lost. To understand what I needed, I would have to give myself. Become changed by this world-have I said that already?” Shade looked up from what he was doing, uncertain. There was a slight trace of fear in his tone, as if he were finally realizing that his mind was not as it should be.

While he puzzled over his own question, Erini continued her own struggle. Though she could not move, her mind was still free. Shade needed her mind free yet malleable. The princess desperately tried to capitalize on that, continually summoning up whatever strength she could find within herself and sending out a sorcerous cry for aid that she hoped Darkhorse would detect. It was a slim, almost mad hope, but it was all she had. She lacked the skill and experience she needed to break free of her physical predicament. The warlock knew too many tricks.

“It won’t even hurt-not much, that is,” Shade suddenly told her, coming within a hand’s width of her face. She tried to close her eyes, but his spell prevented that. Instead, she was forced to stare into his glimmering, seemingly multifaceted orbs. There were those who said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul, and what there was of Shade was more reflection than substance. More than life, but also less.

He was no longer human and likely had not been since the very day that he had fallen victim to his own obsessive desires.

His hand came up before her eyes, his voice was soothing, yet with that undercurrent of anxiety and fear. “Listen to me now. I’m going to begin. I don’t need your cooperation, but I ask it. Give me what I want and I’ll see what I can do for you afterward. You will give it to me regardless of your desires, but the transition will be easier on both of us if you do your part willingly.”

Frozen as she was, Erini could only respond with her eyes, which she did promptly. Shade backed away, his face initially the picture of remorse, then, in an abrupt change, arrogant and lordly. “Very well, then. I offered for your sake, really. Suffer if you like. Here is what you will do for me.”

The warlock reached up and touched her forehead. Erini’s mind was suddenly filled with images and instructions. She found herself unable to continue her desperate summons under such circumstances and finally gave in. Her only consolation was the thin hope that something in the shadowy warlock’s instructions might give her an idea.

Erini’s task, as he had defined it, was to be the vessel in which two radically different forms of sorcery would be meshed together. Unlike the tales the princess had heard as a child, it was not the powers of darkness and light that Shade had sought to master. It was the vestiges of a power that lingered from whatever world the Vraad had originated from and this world’s own strength. The images both horrified and fascinated her.

“We will begin now.” Wrapping himself deep within his cloak, Shade leaned forward and focused his gaze on the tripod.

Though she could see little, Erini felt everything. She felt the power that she summoned forth fill the chamber-she summoned forth? No, it only appeared that way. From the instructions that the warlock had implanted in her mind, she understood that he was utilizing the tripod in order to draw energy through her. To draw upon so much power himself would be to risk the success of his plan. He had to be free to control the situation, and without her that would have been impossible.

Erini knew that there must be defenses she could summon, things that would disrupt his spell permanently, but her mind was not skilled enough to cope with the influx of power and still concentrate on shielding herself. The princess now saw why Shade desired an untrained and inexperienced spellcaster with high potential. Even Drayfitt’s mind would have been too closed for Shade to have trusted the outcome of his experiment. Erini was like a child, uncertain of what her limitations were; an open book on which Shade could write what he pleased.

“You feel the power flowing into your soul.” A statement, not a question. “Hold it there. Let it gather.”

She did as he bid her, unable to do anything else. It was frustrating to feel so strong and yet be so helpless. The strength of the world seemed to flow into her. For the first time, Erini saw the world in terms of the lines and fields of energy that many spellcasters did. Yet, the spectrum remained there as well. The two were one. It was impossible to tell if one had resulted because of the other or if they had both sprung into existence simultaneously. There was so much potential here that even the greatest sorcerers of legend had probably never known the like. There was power enough here to make one almost a god-

— and this was only a part of what Shade desired. Shade, not her. She was a vessel, the princess reminded herself, for all the power that she contained was for her captor, not herself.

“The flow will continue slowly. You must guide its intensity, make certain it does not overwhelm you-and be prepared to accept the next offering.”

It was too much! Erini panicked. How could she hope to contain so much energy, so much pure power? Erini struggled to assert her mind. Darkhorse! If only I could summon him!

Erini?

It was brief and lost to her completely after that single word, after the calling of her name, but she knew that she had touched the eternal’s thoughts. Her mind filled with hope.

A cold, loathsome essence entered Erini just as she sought Darkhorse again, caressing her soul as if tasting a treat. Caught unaware, the princess wanted to scream and scream and scream, but Shade’s earlier spell prevented such a release of her horror at the unthinkable invasion. The world around her shrank away, as if she were looking at it from above. The warlock looked into her eyes, curiosity and anticipation at the forefront. She wanted to ram him through the earth, peel away every layer of skin while he writhed in agony-anything-as long as it would free her mind from the unspeakable presence seeking to become a part of her.

“Accept it, princess. You have no choice.”

She didn’t. Erini wanted to destroy, to tear her own body apart and remove the cancerous thing from her soul. Shade’s commands prevented all but the weakest resistance. This was the essence of the power that the warlock’s kind had utilized in that nameless hell they had been-forced? — to leave. It was alien to the Dragonrealm, following different, twisted laws of nature that should not-could not-exist here.

There is a way around that.

The thought was not her own, but rather one of Shade’s imprinted instructions, rising forth, now that its task was at hand. It felt like something almost alive, as if it had been imbued with a tiny piece of the Vraad’s being.

There are points of binding, places where the two realities may be joined. You have only to look.

Joined. They had to be joined. Erini saw that now. It was the only possible way to keep herself from suffering a similar fate to that which Shade had suffered, if not something worse. Either force within her was capable of scattering her body and mind beyond the reaches of forever. If she was to have any chance to survive, she would have to do as her captor’s instructions indicated.

Of course you do, the piece of Shade reminded her. Erini wondered if it was her own mind that made it seem so much alive and, if so, was she going mad?

You have a task. Do it.

That was the only truth she did have at the moment. With growing disgust, she accepted the foreign sorcery completely into her being. In her imagination, it seemed to squirm like a worm trying to burrow deeper. Erini almost rejected it then, but knew that, by doing so, she would condemn herself. What sort of world had the Vraad come from, and how could they possibly be the ancestors of the humans alive today? There were hints of those answers now and then, vague, ghostlike images that danced around her, almost distracting her from the horrid task. None of them were distinct and Erini felt some relief at that. Despite her wonder, these were things she actually had little desire to learn about. They all bore the same stench as the sorcery.

See the points. Take them and marry them to their counterparts. Here. Here. Here.

This part of her task seemed almost laughingly simple now, though she knew that here was where Shade had originally begun his downward spiral to damnation. Erini could not see why. The points her mind saw met willingly with one another. Perhaps it was, as the warlock had indicated, only because she was the vessel-or rather the catalyst-and not the final recipient of the spell’s outcome. She had only one purpose, not several as he had had.

While a portion of her consciousness worked automatically, having no choice to do otherwise, Erini found a change occurring throughout her mind, throughout her very soul. The princess could no more deny the transformation than she could her earlier acceptance of the alien sorcery. After a few seconds-perhaps minutes or even hours, she could not say-Erini even began to welcome the change. Her perspective grew and grew and her comprehension of what her world was truly like expanded until Erini felt she was the Dragonrealm, the vast eastern continent, the smaller southern continents, the islands, the seas… everything.

Shade’s spell became a secondary thing to her, something that had to be done but that did not require more than a trace of her concentration. All events, all people, became known to her. Unconsciously, Erini focused on Talak and her betrothed.

It was there before her gaze, a thought came to life. The drakes were within striking range of the city. The princess gained some perspective on how much time had passed, for the sun was already high and it appeared as if the first blows had already fallen. There were dead, drakes on the landscape between the Dragon King’s host and the city walls, and settlements unfortunate enough to have sprung up near the northern wall were little more than splintered wood and scattered articles. The inhabitants, she remembered, had been ordered in at some point before her kidnapping. There was also damage to the city itself. An aerial assault, some corner of her mind told her. It sounded astonishingly like her grandfather, general-consort to her grandmother, the queen at that time. He had been dead for almost seven years. She studied the dragons. Something pierced their hearts. Something magic.

Melicard. Her view did not alter, for she saw all things at once, but the image of the king somehow was foremost among them. He was in the throne room, giving orders, caught up in the battle. A few of his men were injured and there was a sticky, dark fluid covering one of the walls. Erini belatedly noticed the sky where the ceiling had once been. A drake had nearly broken through all of their defenses. Somehow, though, the magical defenses of Talak-she could not recall if she had ever known about them prior to this-had been restored and, in fact, improved. The Dragon King would find Talak a costly victory.

Victory. It was still within the drake lord’s grasp. At the very least, Talak would be in shambles and most of its population would be dead. Another Mito Pica.

The two magics were nearly one now. Erini’s perspective altered again, this time in a puzzling manner. A bit worrisome, too, though that emotion was becoming less and less a part of her. The princess, despite the understanding of her world that she had gained earlier, could not fathom what was happening now. In some ways, it reminded her of how the world looked when the spectrum was visible to her. Like one image superimposed upon another. It was an apt comparison, she decided, but hardly one that explained what was overlaying the Dragonrealm and the rest like a shroud.

There were mountains where mountains should not have been. There were seas and rivers where only dry sand or lush forests existed now. Where Talak stood, another city, smaller in width yet stretching far higher into the heavens, also rose, ziggurats of Melicard’s kingdom fighting for supremacy with odd, twisted towers that ended in spearlike points. It was and was not the same world.

Though she felt life on this world, something warned her not to seek it out. Instead, she turned her inner gaze to the most fascinating and most chilling sight visible. The heavens themselves. The beautiful blue of her world had been replaced by a green of dark intensity. Not a green such as a leaf might be colored, however, but a green that reminded Erini of nothing more than rot. Decay. A world that was festering and had been festering for over thousands and thousands of years.

The world which Shade and the Vraad had abandoned for this one. A world they had made into this putrefying abomination.

This was the potential that Shade represented.

Without willing it, her view turned to the warlock himself. He knelt before her, enraptured by the progress of his spell, almost ready to accept the fruits of her forced labor. To her shock, she saw things about him she doubted even he had ever known. Not just his myriad incarnations, but what the distorted spell had done to his essence over the millennia. Shade was far from whole, far from untouched by the world to which his people had fled. He was possibly in a worse condition than he had been during the time of his previous incarnations-and he refused to see that.

She was astounded at his latent abilities. He had held back throughout all of this, the princess realized. In the hooded warlock was the potential to devastate a region larger than the Tyber Mountains themselves. Shade had hinted at the godlike powers of his kind, but the truth was far more overwhelming. It had only been his desire to complete his lifelong goal that had checked a madness that might have seen the Dragonrealm in complete ruins in less than a week. That and a tiny, nagging doubt-guilt, she correct herself-about what he was doing. There was more good in Shade than he realized. There had been more in the original, too. His own memories were playing him false.

This is a new form of incarnation, Erini concluded. Shade has not escaped his previous failure; he has become even more mired in it than before.

What would happen when his power increased a hundredfold?

Erini found she was growing beyond the point of caring. Her perceptions continued to expand. Soon, she would no longer be a part of her world, not in the true sense. This was the fate that Shade had suffered, but Erini would not be returning in any form. Shade’s variation on his original work would guarantee that. He would gain command of the powers he sought, but lose his vessel in the prospect.

What remained of Erini sought to fight that fate, but she lacked any weapon with which to do it. She did not have the concentration to strike back with her own insignificant talent-and what good would it have done, anyway? Shade would have dismissed any assault on a magical level with as much effort as what he needed to breathe.

Erini felt herself beginning to fragment. Her task was almost complete, but she would never see the outcome. The strain was too much.

She thought of Melicard, who would have no one to keep him from falling into the same darkness that he had lived within before her coming. His image, commanding his aides in the defense of Talak, flickered before Erini. She thought of her parents, who would never know what fate had befallen their daughter. Melicard seemed to fade as the king and queen of Gordag-Ai took precedence. Lastly, Erini thought of Darkhorse, a being she had known only for a short time, but with whom she felt a rapport, a bond.

Erini?

The image of Darkhorse strengthened. He stood, confused, in an area she recognized from its ungodly bleakness as the Northern Wastes. The cold and snow did not bother him in the least. Darkhorse remained where he was, his head cocked to one side, almost as if he were listening to-something.

Erini!

Had he sensed her? The novice sorceress was no longer certain she cared. Still, because of their bond, she acknowledged her presence to him.

Now he stood ready, seeking a direction in which to run. Erini! Where are you?

Where was she? “Everywhere” seemed the most appropriate response, but she knew that was not what the shadow steed meant. He was searching for her physical form.

A wave of urgency washed across her consciousness. Erini could not be certain whether it was a stray emotion of her own or one of Darkhorse’s, relayed somehow by their contact. Whichever was the case, she acted upon that urgency and allowed him to see, to experience, where she was.

The eternal grew very grim and shot back, I know where your are! Do not lose yourself! Keep a hold on your existence, Erini!

She lost track of him, then, for, to obey his instructions, on top of all else, the princess was forced to concentrate her remaining will on maintaining her essence. She was uncertain as to how long she could do this, for the intensity of the warlock’s spell was becoming more and more difficult to withstand. It would not be long, regardless of her efforts.

Erini wondered whether Darkhorse would find her in time-and whether even he now stood a chance against the powers of Shade.

In that part of her that was puppet to the warlock, the final binding was at last completed.

In the chamber, below the watchful eyes of the effigies, a triumphant Shade, hood pulled low over his face, reached forth with those abilities at his command and prepared to at last accept what he felt was his due. The faces of Vraad he had known, most of them clan, others friends or, more often, foes, drifted in and out of his memories. He would have life eternal now, and power to make even those who watched over the Dragonrealm and the other lands, those would-be gods, acknowledge his mastery.

He would have a world to play with. No Vraad had ever had an entire world to play with.

Most of all, he would not die. The Vraad would not become a shadow of the past.

A presence oh so familiar to him forced the sorcerer from his dreams. He felt a barrier form about the princess.

“The last false trail has been removed, Shade! Come! Turn around and greet your old friend! Have you no words for Darkhorse-words that I may have them etch upon your crypt?”

The hooded warlock turned slowly toward his ancient adversary, his friend of old. “You took long enough getting here.”

Darkhorse stepped back anxiously, but not because he was frightened by the Vraad’s confident words. Of course, Shade had known the shadow steed would be coming. He would have expected nothing else. No, what disturbed Darkhorse was something that Shade from his angle, could not see-and, as a matter of fact, neither could the stallion.

Nothing met his gaze from beneath the deep hood save a blur that might have been a face.