Legends of the Dragonrealm Volume 2

XXII

The Dragon King Silver hissed bitterly as he watched Talak fend off another assault. Somehow, the crippled vermin that fancied himself a ruler had overcome all obstacles placed before him, save the loss of much of his army. The drake lord glanced briefly to his right, where his human agent stood surveying the same scene with emotions that mirrored the Dragon King’s own. He had no idea why he was letting the creature Quorin live, save that he had a desire to prove to him, to prove to all of them, that he would take Talak if it cost every possible weapon and life at his command.

Shade was next. The alliance had been a fallacy, one the drake lord had thought he needed during a desperate moment and one that neither had followed from the first. The Silver Dragon wondered if the warlock knew yet that his curse had not been lifted. That had been obvious to him, but the arrogant warm-blood had been certain he was whole once more. The drake laughed, making those around him eye him discreetly while they tried to discern what it was their master found amusing at a time such as this.

Shade had taken his information from the mind of the sorcerer Drayfitt, knowing that the elderly spellcaster had studied the warlock’s book thoroughly. Unfortunately for Shade, Drayfitt had never seen some of the final notes. Though the drake lord had had to wait until the sorcerer’s translations of the other pages were passed on to him, that wait had been worthwhile. They had provided the dragon king with the basis of translating the remaining sheets, which were where he had successfully guessed the most valuable information had been written down. The pages contained clues to the foundation of Vraad sorcery and, by sheer coincidence, integral comments that the warlock had written about his original theories. Somewhere along the way, those notes had been forgotten by Shade. The Dragon King had ensured that they would remain forgotten until he could find some use for them.

Yes, Shade would be next… if there was anything left of him for the drakes to kill.

The Dragon King straightened and gave a signal to one of his dukes, a warrior whose clutch he himself had fathered. Most of those around him were his offspring, though none bore the markings of succession. They could never be heirs: All they could be were warriors who gave their lives for him-as they might do now.

The signal was what the main host had waited for. The Silver Dragon King knew what defenses were weakest now. He would throw everything he had at them. He had wanted Talak in one piece. A prize. Now, the drake lord did not care if one stone remained standing, even if it took the last of his force.

One of his offspring had argued that such an assault was madness, that it would only cost lives. His carcass was even now being digested by the Dragon King’s riding beast. No one else had dared speak out and no one else would ever dare hint that he was an incompetent ruler, that he had only thrived in the shadow of his more powerful brother, the Dragon Gold.

No one else would dare call him a coward.

There was no reasoning behind the last, but none was needed. A Dragon King was answerable to no one save himself.

They moved on Talak.

A blur.

The passage through the barriers between the Void and reality of the Dragonrealm had not reversed the spell Shade had unleashed. It had, evidently, altered it in such a way that there was no telling what would happen next. The period of sanity had been little more than a time of dormancy while the next phase of the warlock’s “disease” built up. From his manner, Darkhorse knew that his companion of old did not even realize what had happened. Shade still believed he was back to where he had started, that he was mortal, but whole.

What would this new spell do to him, then?

Erini, locked frozen in the final stage of Shade’s gambit, seemed to fade just a bit. Darkhorse turned his gaze back and forth, his fear for Erini, but his fury for the warlock. The female had little time remaining to her. Darkhorse’s quick action had bought her a delay, but how long that delay would be was questionable. He was forced to expend energy at a growing rate merely to keep the forces gathered within her in check. The ghostly steed had great doubts as to his ability to face Shade and still maintain that balance. He knew that, by rights, his first and foremost duty was to stop Shade at all costs… but that cost would include his benefactress.

Barely more than two or three breaths had passed since his arrival. Seeking to borrow time, he slowly replied to the warlock’s initial statement, “You expected me.”

“There was nothing planned that did not foresee your eventual success at tracking me down,” the faceless figure returned. Shade seemed entirely too much at ease. “Almost everything I have done was merely to maintain your curiosity and stubbornness until our final meeting.”

That caused Darkhorse to laugh. “There are few with the audacity to seek an audience with me-and you are foremost among them, my former friend and current nemesis!”

“That’s because I have nothing more to fear from you, eternal-Eternal!” Shade might have smiled; it was truly impossible to say. Watching him, Darkhorse actually pitied the warlock. To have come so close to escaping his endless curse… “I am one with you now, Child of the Void! I am immortal. I have succeeded at last.”

“Not yet, Vraad. The key is in the lock, but it has not yet turned.”

Shade said nothing, but Darkhorse suddenly became certain that the warlock did wear a smile.

A bitter-tasting wind swept through the chamber, so swiftly birthed that it was near tornado proportions before Darkhorse could even acknowledge its existence. If Shade had created it to destroy him, it was a feeble attempt. Formed in a place between chaos and order, such a wind was little more than a breeze to him and, protected by the shadow steed’s power, it did not even touch the helpless Erini.

What it was doing, however, was tearing the chamber-even the mountain under which the cavern lay-to fragments that flew madly into the air, colliding with one another and flying off into a darkness that was not night. Darkhorse found his footing growing unstable and his bond with Erini being stretched to its utmost. It was too late to stop whatever spell Shade-and it could only be the warlock’s doing-had cast. The eternal could only shield himself and the princess and wait for the storm to pass. If it would.

As the last of the cavern walls tore free from the earth and vanished, a new land formed around the three. A land that seemed out of sync with reality. Its colors were haphazard, clashing, and the landscape was twisted and dying. The sky was an odd shade of green, much like mold or something dead left too long to decay on its own.

Throughout all of this, Shade stood where he was, seemingly passive. As the wind died down, to be replaced by a stale, sulfurous stench, the warlock spoke one word ever so softly. In the still of this ugly, decrepit land, he might have been shouting, for Darkhorse heard that word all too clearly.

“Nimth.”

A single word that spoke volumes. It told Darkhorse where he was. It told him what sort of power Shade must have had to break a barrier that had remained unbroken since the Vraads’ escape from their tortured world, Nimth. It told him something of Shade that he had failed to see upon his arrival.

The warlock had moved more quickly than the eternal had guessed. He had already claimed his due from the princess by the time Darkhorse had thrown up the protective shield around her.

Darkhorse had failed.

“I restore the balance,” Shade abruptly whispered. Again, his voice carried as if he had shouted with all his might.

They were once more in the cavernous chamber in which the warlock had performed his experiment. This time, the transfer was immediate. Shade evidently assumed that there was no reason for further theatrics.

The message behind the sudden return to the Dragonrealm was not lost upon the shadow steed. Shade was telling him through actions that there were deeds within his power that stretched even beyond the laws of nature, beyond the rule of reality.

In the midst of mulling over those thoughts-a period which the warlock was apparently magnanimously willing to grant to his ancient comrade-one realization raised itself above all else and made the huge stallion laugh mockingly.

Shade, who would not have been able to appreciate the humor had he understood what it was that Darkhorse laughed at, lost his calm demeanor. Though his expression was lost to all but himself, his change in stance was message enough. Darkhorse quieted, knowing he had touched the greatest weakness of his adversary and knowing that his chances of capitalizing on that weakness were minimal at best. Better to try and create a friendly peace between the Silver Dragon and King Melicard.

Tiny whips of controlled energy darted from the spellcaster’s arms and struck the stallion like a thousand accurate shafts released by master archers. With each blow, Darkhorse felt a little of his essence fade. He repelled what he could, sending a few back at their creator, but there were too many and they continued to come. There was one certain way he knew that would rid him of the deadly rain, but it would require releasing Erini to her fate and Darkhorse refused to do that. It did not escape him that his death would be followed almost immediately by her own, regardless. Only an ever-increasing output of his own power kept her from being scattered throughout all. Soon, he would have none left to defend and heal himself.

The last of the wriggling missiles faded before they touched the shadow steed. Shade seemed to regain control of himself. His tone was near apologetic. “I was trying to show you what I am capable of, Darkhorse. I am beyond even you now. It would be pointless to pursue your death-and it would be your death, not mine.”

“You have only succeeded in revealing to me how much I dare not allow you to escape me.”

“Your efforts go beyond the point of futility now. I could exile you to a place that would make the Void seem a paradise. I could compact you into a tiny sphere and drop you into the deepest sea.” Shade’s voice was almost pleading, as if he truly did not want to continue this confrontation. “I could do so much more, but there is no point to it, anymore. I’m willing to forget our past differences.”

Darkhorse met his threats and condescending words with disdain. “I think it might be a bit difficult to forget our past differences, considering how they have affected so many. Exile me and I will find my way back. Seal me up and I will outlive my prison. Destroy me… and you will defeat yourself.” The stallion kicked at the floor. “Destroy me and condemn yourself to your fate, to your selfmade curse.”

The warlock straightened, the tension within him visibly mounting. After so many failures, there still remained anxieties. Had he seen his visage or lack of it… “I am free of my past errors. I am whole.”

One of the statues, the one nearest to the faceless spellcaster, collapsed. Darkhorse felt a shrill cry that coursed through his mind as that which had lived within perished. The others quivered in sudden anxiety. The floor of the chamber slowly developed cracks.

Darkhorse knew what was happening, though he doubted the other did. “Listen to me-”

Too late. His adversary was beyond listening. Any hope of a peaceful accord between them had been shattered and Darkhorse knew that it was his own fault as well as Shade’s.

His mind already a sea of confusion and turmoil, Shade saw the destruction around him as an attack and the shadow steed’s words as a ploy to gain time. A hint of sadness touched him. That Darkhorse would act so! That there might be another cause did not occur to him. He, after all, was himself again-and the warlock was not about to give up so quickly what he had sought for so long. Even if it meant killing the one closest to him.

The air around Darkhorse grew oppressingly thick. So thick, in fact, that it began to squeeze him. Had he been an actual horse, he would have been crushed in the first seconds. Instead, the eternal found himself being compressed smaller and smaller. The warlock was making good his threat. If Darkhorse failed to resist, Shade would reduce him to the size of a pebble and throw him somewhere where no one would be likely to find him. The hooded spellcaster might even choose to keep him as a memento.

He resisted instantly, of course, but with only a portion of the strength normally available to him. Erini’s life was demanding almost as much of his energy as his own rescue. It took him far too much time to finally free himself. The next assault took him even before the last vestiges of the first had faded away. A tear in reality sought to draw him inside, pulling at his form with such persistence that he almost succumbed before he was able to fashion a defense. Darkhorse sealed the rip and let it vanish. It lasted long enough, however, to give him a glimpse of where Shade had intended on sending him.

The festering sore that the Vraads had once called home. Nimth.

He had not wanted to do it this way, but Shade was leaving him no options. Unless Darkhorse struck back with the one weapon he knew would be effective, the warlock would take him with his next attack-and success or not, this ploy would likely drive the final wedge between them.

The unsavory deed was done even as Darkhorse pictured it. Shade, sensing something materializing before him, struck at its heart. His target shattered into dozens of glittering fragments, which immediately expanded into exact copies of the original. As one, they focused on their attacker, who could not help but look up at them. Darkhorse, watching, could not help but flinch.

Shade stared, possibly openmouthed, at repetition after repetition of his own blurred, featureless visage. They were everywhere and each told him the one thing he could not face. The truth of his condition.

He screamed denial even as his pent-up power caused each mirror to melt like a single snowflake on a raging campfire. Darkhorse himself was buffeted to the ground by the wild forces unleashed. He barely maintained his bond with Erini. Other than the energy utilized to keep her from dissipating like a wisp of smoke, the shadow steed had little more to call upon. What remained he needed just to survive this latest and most horrid onslaught. It was all he could do just to keep his mind coherent.

“Nononononononononooooo!” Shade was screaming. Rocking back and forth, he clawed at his own face, trying to remove what could not be removed. Portions of the chamber ceiling collapsed, but none so much as struck within two yards of the warlock. Somehow, his own defenses were still intact.

He cannot contain the power and the more he releases, the more destruction! It was worse than Darkhorse had feared. Vraad sorcery had destroyed one world already. It tore at the laws of nature rather than worked with them. As with the sorcery of the Dragonrealm, it was oft times an almost unconscious, automatic thing and the more it was used, the more chaos it caused. Shade, trapped in his own horror, was allowing it to run rampant. Darkhorse wondered if there might have been some other way.

The warlock was on his knees and facing the ground, unmindful of what havoc he was unleashing. Darkhorse had wondered what this new spell would do; the answer seemed to be create more destruction. It was as if the intensity of the original curse had been doubled in scope.

“Shade!” he called out, his voice booming above all else. “You must listen to me! A part of you must know the chaos you have invited into this world! I know from the past few days that there is, within you, a desire to end this madness peacefully! If you would hear me-”

Surprisingly, the warlock did look up. There was a tenseness in his movements. He had heard Darkhorse’s voice, but not the shadow steed’s warning. A fierce presence rose about the warlock as his tortured mind mixed facts and suppositions until they no longer had any true meaning. From that came one final, insane conclusion.

“You!” Shade rose, all fury. His mind, the stallion noted, was shifting from one extreme emotion to another-and with this particular emotion, he needed a focal point. “You did this to me!”

It would have been one of the most absurd things that Darkhorse had ever heard, save that he could have predicted it would be so. Shade could not accept that the grand spell had failed again or that he had not even recovered from the first attempt. He needed a scapegoat in order to preserve what little remained of his sanity-if there was anything left. The warlock needed something to lash out at.

What he does next could level settled areas, the eternal realized. And being in the Tybers, one of those places might be Talak! How ironic it would be if the Dragon King captured Melicard’s kingdom, only to have it sink beneath the earth or simply cease to be.

That image in mind, Darkhorse vanished-

— and reentered the world in the desolate, blistering cold of the Northern Wastes.

Before him, almost as if he had known where the shadow steed had intended fleeing, was Shade. Despite the wind, his cloak remained still, covering him like a shroud. Darkhorse had wondered what death would look like when it finally claimed him. He now knew. There would be no escaping Shade, then. Whatever it took, the warlock would track him down, laying waste to whatever happened to cross his path in the meantime. Perhaps, letting the axe fall here would at least save the Dragonrealm, thought Darkhorse somewhat fatalistically, though he suspected that the tortured figure before him would not completely spend his madness here.

“For our friendship,” the spectral figure said, his calm words more chilling than his angered ones, “I would have left you in peace. I would have. Then, you did this to me! Now, I have only-”

“Shade, if you would just listen to me!”

“-one question to ask of you before I treat you as you’ve chosen to treat me. Why do it? Tell me that.”

There was no correct response and Darkhorse knew that. The best he could do was give no answer at all. Shade’s twisted thought had condemned him already.

“Goodbye, then, my comrade of old.”

Despite the distance now separating them, Darkhorse still maintained the shell protecting the helpless Erini, although it sapped almost all of what remained of his strength. He prepared himself now for the worst. Death or, at the very least, the absence of life. Having never died, he could not say what awaited him, if anything. Certainly, he did not fall within the realms of human afterlife.

Scattered thoughts touched him. Curiosity concerning the eventual fate of Talak. Questions as to where the Bedlams had gone. He wondered what their children would grow up to be like. Most of all, Darkhorse wondered what fate awaited the world of the Dragonrealm, with or without the interference and chaos created by its new, blur-visaged demigod.

He would protect Erini with the last vestiges of his power. When Shade finally took him, the shadow steed would give his essence to her. Perhaps it would buy her time enough for Cabe to find her. Likely not.

I have erred every step of the way, Darkhorse decided. Most of all, I erred in thinking of this one as still human-when all he truly was, was a Vraad!

Shade moved, but slowly, as if unwell. Darkhorse saw little of consequence in that at the moment, instead concerned with bracing himself against what would surely be the warlock’s final blow. His own nature would protect him briefly, but hardly long enough to matter. He only hoped, a foolish hope, that the warlock would feel regret afterward. It might stave off some of the coming devastation.

If only there was some way to take from the warlock the powers he had usurped…

There was. There WAS.

The answer came to him too late. Something darted around Darkhorse like a mad horsefly, something that grew as it circled him. He tried fending it off, but his power was too weak. It expanded as it moved, rapidly wrapping him within a shell whose very presence chilled his form, froze lifelessly his very essence. Given time, it would make of him a monument to his own futility. Given time, there would be nothing more than a shell shaped like a huge, writhing steed.

Given a little more time, there would not even be that.

Darkhorse struggled to maintain his senses. The key was his. He had controlled it all this time, but his own foolish sense of “noble sacrifice” had left him blind to the potential before him. Now, it might be too late.

Entangled in the warlock’s death trap, Darkhorse tumbled into the snow and ice. The link with Erini, the one that still kept her alive, was his only chance. Summoning up his will and foregoing his own defense, he called out to her in his mind. Erini!

If he was wrong, it hardly mattered. Neither he nor she had more than a few minutes left either way.

A dim shadow fell over him. Through partially obscured vision, he saw a spectral Shade loom over him, likely come to gloat over his throes. To the eternal’s confusion, the hooded figure sighed and reached out to touch his foe on the head. Briefly, Darkhorse entertained the thought of absorbing his adversary and trapping him within the emptiness that was his inner self, but he knew that the power of Shade was more than capable of withstanding even that. True enough, the Vraad’s hand pulsated with energy.

The fiendish thing-did it live? — had sealed his mouth and Darkhorse found himself unable to form another. He lay there, silent and nearly mummified, as the warlock continued to move his hand along the shadow steed’s neck and to his head.

For the first time, he felt the probe of Shade’s mind. It was the final defeat. Darkhorse no longer even had the will with which to combat his longtime nemesis and companion.

“Soooo, that’s why you fell so easily,” the shadow lurking above him whispered. He had discovered the stallion’s refusal to abandon Erini. Darkhorse shook, but was no longer able to do anything else… unless…

The shadow steed opened his mind completely and let his captor see everything, but, most especially, what he knew about Shade’s condition.

The warlock shook and pulled his hand away as if touching something unclean. He remained stooped over his defeated adversary for some time, muttering things that Darkhorse could not make out save that Shade seemed to be arguing with himself adamantly. Finally, however, he came to some fateful decision and wrapped himself in his cloak, staring at the point somewhere beyond Darkhorse’s limited range of vision.

“I’ll need the girl again,” he whispered to himself as he rose to a standing position. With an almost careless dismissal of the muffled figure at his feet, Shade stepped over Darkhorse and vanished into the tundra.

The eternal cursed himself. Of course Shade’s first thought would be to recapture Erini! Darkhorse had let him see what was happening: instead of becoming a near-perfect demigod, the warlock was threatened with an existence even less real than in his prior incarnations. As powerful as he had become, Shade was still at the mercy of his self-made curse. The shadow steed had hoped that, knowing this, Shade might come to his senses.

Forgive me, Erini! Oddly, Darkhorse’s error gave him the glimmer of hope. He had been abandoned and the deadly spell that had almost ended his existence had stopped, apparently dormant without its master’s guidance. Given time, he would be able to free himself.

At that moment, he felt the link between himself and the princess break. Shade had reclaimed her for his dire purposes.

A dangerous error on your part, my dear, deadly friend!

No longer forced to divide his strength between his own defense and the protection of the fading Erini, the eternal’s might returned much more rapidly. He had still nearly burned himself out, but now he had at least the ghost of an opportunity. Shade would be vulnerable now, mentally if not magically, and Darkhorse was already devising a way to increase that vulnerability. He no longer felt much remorse about what he plotted to do; Shade’s apparent denial of his own condition had made it clear that the spellcaster was beyond aid. It was either defeat Shade or watch as the Dragonrealm and the rest of this world suffered the same fate as long-forgotten Nimth.

A storm was brewing, one that threatened to become a fullscale blizzard. There was a touch of sorcery about it and Darkhorse knew then that there was no time to waste. Shade had already begun whatever new experiment he planned. If there was a time to catch him with his guard down, it was before the plan reached fruition. The shadow steed had failed at that once. This time, though, the tale would end differently.

Darkhorse rose quickly, tearing and snapping the bonds that had ensnared him. Where they had sought to leech from him, he now returned the favor, causing them to dissipate in mere seconds. Things of sorcery, they left no remains. The only regrets Darkhorse had was the vile taste of them; they were filled with the taint of Vraad sorcery.

In the distance, he witnessed a vast aurora and knew immediately that there was where he needed to go. There, he would finally have Shade where he wanted him.

A portal offered too much risk. Darkhorse raced across the empty land, feeling somewhat at sympathy with it for all it had been through. Once, there had been trees here, life. Now, nothing but emptiness. The land looked much the way the eternal felt.

It was, he thought, a fitting place for what would be coming next.

Erini was the first to come within sight. She stood much the way she had in the chamber, save that her eyes were open and she seemed to be saying something. Darkhorse slowed. Something seemed wrong. When a rise brought Shade into view, the shadow steed knew that the scene before him was not as it should have been, that something was amiss.

The warlock was seated before his captive, his head low and his arms outstretched as if he were the one giving of himself.

Darkhorse sped across the remaining tundra and began casting his first-and likely last-spell. Entranced as he seemed to be, Shade would not notice until it struck. From the corner of his eyes, Darkhorse noted Erini’s gaze turning toward him. Her mouth opened as if she intended to say something, but the ebony stallion ignored her. For the moment, it was only Shade that mattered.

When the attack caught him unaware, the shadow steed’s first angry thought was how the warlock had tricked him again, laying some trap that he knew Darkhorse would be unable to resist. Then, as the world turned upside-down, he realized that it was not his ancient adversary who had caught him by surprise, but Erini. Erini had attacked him, as if she actually wanted her captor’s spell completed.

Before he could rise and demand explanations, Shade’s voice suddenly rose above the howling wind. “No, princess. It’s all right. He doesn’t understand-and, besides, it’s taking its own course now. He won’t be able to touch me; no one will.”

“I can only try!” Darkhorse roared, standing. The snow fell from his huge form as if glad to abandon his fearsome presence. “Stand away, Erini! You shall be compelled no further!”

“Darkhorse!”

He ignored her shout, supposing her to be under the warlock’s influence. “The female is under my protection, Shade! You will release her will and face me!”

Shade lifted his head toward Darkhorse. It was pale and drawn, but distinct. The stallion’s first thought was that he had failed again. Cursing, he kicked at the snow and readied himself to perish fighting. The warlock, however, rose on surprisingly unsteady feet and shook his head at the leviathan ready to charge him.

“I’ll face you, Darkhorse, but only to say goodbye.”

“You will not leave me behind again!”

Shade smiled without malice. His face was as pale as the snow-or was that the snow Darkhorse saw? The warlock stepped toward him, leaving no trail. His movements were slow and he seemed to ripple with the wind. The warlock paused just out of arm’s length from his adversary.

“You can’t follow me where I’m going.”

Darkhorse lashed out with his hooves, hoping to take Shade by surprise with a physical attack. To his dismay, he struck only air. Behind him, the massive stallion heard Erini gasp.

Wrapped in his cloak, the warlock stepped back so that he now faced both Darkhorse and Erini. Turning to the latter, he said politely, “You have what you wanted in return, sorceress. May it please you.”

Erini would not respond, but her face grew almost as deathlike as the warlock’s. She suddenly shook her head and sat in the snow, shivering from something other than the cold. The princess buried her face in her hands.

“What we gain is never quite what we originally wanted, is it, Darkhorse?” It was impossible to deny anymore; Shade was little more than a ghost in form, a memory more than a man.

“What have you done now, warlock? What have you demanded of Erini that leaves her in such pain?”

“She cries at the vast extent of her reward, Darkhorse. I leave that for her to explain. As for me, I have taken the only path left to me. A final path, you might say.”

“Final-!” Darkhorse probed the figure before him-and found nothing but a dying emanation of power. Nothing physical stood there; what remained was of magic. Magic that was fleeing even now to where it belonged. The farthest stretches of the Dragonrealm and a crippled, tortured place called Nimth.

Shade had made Erini reverse his earlier spell, drawing forth not only his newly accumulated powers, but those forces within him that had originally cursed him to what had once seemed an endless chain of phantom incarnations, personalities that existed, but did not truly live.

Sorcery was all that truly remained of the original spellcaster and, when the last of it had dissipated, there would be nothing. No Shade. Not even the ever-present cloak. All of him was magic, nothing more.

“All that power, all that glory, was not worth facing-facing? — a continuation of that damned, horrible mockery of immortality, of life.” There was little left of the warlock now. He looked like a reflection in a piece of glass, wavering in the wind. The storm that had threatened seemed to be dying with the man who had likely been its cause, but the wind, oddly, was picking up in intensity.

Or was that so odd? Darkhorse gaze locked with Shade’s. The warlock smiled again and nodded ever so slightly.

“I had another name, once,” he started, as if seeking to take both of their minds off of the truth. “It was…”

Words and warlock drifted away with the wind.

His name. He wanted to say his name to me. The black steed stared at the place where his adversary, his other half, had last stood. There were no tracks, of course. The last tracks were those where Shade had stood and given himself to Erini. Where he had finally, absolutely, ended his curse in the only way left to him.

“Darkhorse?”

Erini. He had forgotten her presence.

“I will never know love as you do, princess,” he rumbled without removing his gaze from Shade’s last stand. “But I know that I have lost one who could be considered a brother to me despite the evils he caused.”

The sorceress was silent. Darkhorse, urged by a feeling he barely understood, trotted forward and kicked snow across the warlock’s remaining tracks, not pausing until they were buried. Gruffly, he turned to his companion. For the first time, the stallion seemed to see her. Though her abilities protected her from the elements, she had suffered as few others had. Twice Shade had used her, forced her to touch something of a world that was little more than a sick parody of this one. He hoped she would recover once they returned to-

His ice-blue eyes widened as he recalled what was occurring in their absence. “Talak! Lords of the Dead, Erini! You should have said something!”

The human was drawn and weaker than he would have suspected, considering the power she had absorbed. Darkhorse sensed also a loss to the aura, the presence, about her. She was worn to the bone, too, but none of that was why she now sat in the snow, gazing at the emptiness without truly seeing it.

“There’s no need to hurry,” she stated quietly, finally responding to his words.

“No need to hurry? With Talak under siege by the drakes?” Had her ordeal at last overtaken her mind, too?

“Shade said that I had been rewarded.” Erini laughed bitterly. “It seemed so perfect. They didn’t deserve to survive. I keep telling myself that they would have killed Melicard and all the rest if I hadn’t agreed.” Her voice caught. “Yet, for some unfathomable reason, I can’t help crying at the suffering they must have gone through, the shock when they realized what was happening.”

“You make no sense, mortal!” She did, but Darkhorse had trouble believing what he was imagining.

She looked up, so pale he almost expected her to dissipate in the wind as Shade had done. “I want nothing to do with sorcery, Darkhorse. It seemed the best way to rid us of them, but… so many lives!”

“The drake host?” he finally asked with some misgivings.

She nodded, putting her head in her hands again. “All of them. Swallowed up without damage to anything or anyone else-save Mal Quorin, I suppose. I even pity him, if you can believe it. Shade killed them all with my permission.

Now it was Darkhorse who could say nothing. He wondered at the carnage they would see when they returned. In some ways, it had been necessary, but the scope of what the warlock had been capable of…

Erini looked up again, tears for her enemies in her eyes. “Take me back to Talak, Darkhorse. I–I can’t do it myself. I might-might appear in the middle of-I want Melicard!”

The eternal let her cry some of the pain away as he slowly formed a sphere around them. A variation on the portal, it would allow them to travel without forcing the princess to act herself. When they arrived in Talak, he would see to speaking to Melicard privately about her immediate needs.

He welcomed her sorrow and her need for his aid. Her trials would give him purpose and allow him another chance to learn. Some day, he might yet understand the mortal creatures he had chosen to make his own. Some day, he might understand their path through life and, because of that, the definition of life itself. Perhaps then, the shadow steed might one day come to understand what could have created the man who had become known in legend and face as simply Shade.

Perhaps then, he might also make sense of the continuous, wrenching feeling that had begun within him when he realized that the warlock had surrendered his life.