Legends of the Dragonrealm Volume 2

XI

“Do you like my home, Shari darling?”

“It’s so… alive!” the younger woman breathed. Melenea’s citadel, what Sharissa could see of it, was awash with gay colors and glittering crystals. Silk was everywhere. Figurines of fantastical design capered and celebrated. A furry carpet that Dru’s daughter was tempted to lose herself in covered the entire floor. Bright candles lit up the vast room they had materialized in, candles whose flames were of all sizes and more than a dozen different flickering colors. Panoramas of women and men competing in game after game covered one wall. The Vraadish symbol of gaming, used most often when announcing a forming duel, was the centerpiece of the wall across from the entranceway of the chamber. It would be the first thing someone saw when they entered here. The symbol consisted of two masks, one crying and one laughing, with the former partly obscuring the latter. Sharissa knew that the masks represented the basic aspects of the Vraad mentality.

Her father had summed it up in his own special way. “When your enemy flaunts his weakness, look to your back. When your allies grow too friendly, trust in your enemies.”

Sharissa was not certain she liked what she read into her father’s definition, but she allowed that there was probably some truth to it.

“Have a seat, sweet thing! Rest yourself. I know how terrible things have been for you of late. There’s so much I have to prepare, anyway.”

“I really couldn’t…” Despite her words, Sharissa wanted all too much to relax, to sleep. Her constant fears, the race against time, and the very dominant worry that it might all be for nothing, that her father might be dead, were taking their toll on her again.

“I insist.” Melenea shoved her backward. As Sharissa fell, the thick, shaggy carpet swelled upward, catching her softly in what was, a second later, a comfortable couch. The soothing fur encouraged the young Zeree to rest. “I promise that I will not forget you, Shari. You may count on that.”

It was too overpowering. Sharissa settled in and nodded, already half asleep.

“That’s fine,” the enchantress said, smiling at her guest. She raised a hand, palm upward, and formed a fist. When she opened it again, a small pouch lay within. Melenea took hold of the pouch and opened it. She reached in and pulled out a tiny, squirming figure.

Sharissa, though a part of her wondered what her companion attempted, could not rouse herself to do more than watch through half-closed eyes. Even when the tiny creature, now set loose on the floor, began to grow and grow, the novice sorceress simply stared. It was as if everything around her had taken on a dreamlike quality.

“Come, Cabal,” she heard Melenea say to the creature, a blue-green wolf already as tall as its mistress. It had fangs that seemed as long as Sharissa’s forearm, and though she was in no state to truly count them, she was certain that its teeth numbered more than a thousand.

When it was almost a foot taller than Melenea, the wolf ceased growing. Sharissa focused long enough to know that she was staring at the enchantress’s familiar.

“I live to serve you, lady.” The wolf’s voice was little more than a deep growl.

“We have a guest with us, Cabal. Her name is Sharissa Zeree.” Melenea turned and smiled at the younger Vraad. “This is Cabal, Shari sweet. It’ll watch over you so that you can rest easy. Cabal will let nothing happen to you.”

“Will I get to play with her, lady?” Cabal asked, eyeing Sharissa in a manner that seemed more suited for sizing up a snack as opposed to studying a potential playmate.

“Perhaps later. I have given you a duty to perform. You will watch Shari at all times, make certain she is secure.”

“I obey knowing my life is yours.”

“That’s as it should be.” Melenea stroked the head of the massive wolf, then stepped closer to Sharissa, who tried in vain to concentrate enough to rise. The beautiful enchantress sat down beside her and stroked her hair. “No need to rise,” she heard Melenea say, though the voice sounded as if it had passed through a long tunnel. “You sleep. Later, you’ll have my undivided attention.”

The kiss on her forehead tickled Sharissa, making her giggle rather giddily. Her last view of Melenea was of the sorceress rising and smiling to herself. The crystals she had gotten from Sharissa were in her hand. There was something not quite right about the image, for the smile had no warmth in it. Dru’s daughter shifted uneasily, rest momentarily put off.

Melenea had vanished by the time she forced herself to look again, but the familiar, Cabal, lay watching her from no more than ten feet away. It had an eager expression on its lupine visage, as if looking forward to something. Its size further unsettled Sharissa. She rolled over so that if she opened her eyes again, they would not settle immediately on the massive wolf.

The masks stared back at her.

Frustrated, more awake than asleep now, the young Zeree squeezed her eyes closed. Of all places, this was the one in which she should have felt most at ease. Here, Sharissa should be able to get the rest that she knew she needed. It was only a matter of letting her exhaustion take over again. That was all.

Lying on the floor, with its gaze ever on its charge, the huge Cabal opened its mouth wide and yawned its boredom. Its eyes glittered in the candlelight, black, pupilless things that never blinked.

Outside, a storm was brewing. Such was not uncommon on magic-torn Nimth and, especially, near the domain of one such as Melenea, who cast spells almost wantonly. There would be no rain… there was never any rain. Sharissa enjoyed the sounds of a storm even though she knew that the storm itself was a product of Nimth’s twisted nature. The thunder eased her troubled mind… and at last allowed her to sleep.

The stonework monster snapped its peculiar jaws closed, sending bits of mortar and marble flying. It was constantly losing pieces of itself, but new fragments continually replenished its form.

Go! Flee! The words sprang to life within Dru’s head unbidden. He was sorely tempted to follow them, but some deep, arrogant pride kept him from doing so.

Below him, Darkhorse shook his head, as if trying to clear it of noise. The sorcerer suspected that his companion was hearing the same words, that those words had been planted by the chaotic creature before them.

Fear! Death!

On cue, the leviathan stretched forward, snapping its make-shift jaws at them. A shower of dust and fragments threatened to smother Dru. Fortunately, none of the fragments was large enough to injure him.

“They are all around us, friend Dru! One of them has taken on this form! I find it interesting, but also highly annoying! Must it shout within our minds so? Does it need us to fear it so much?”

That was the question that the sorcerer had been asking himself. For all its size and apparent strength, the behemoth was holding back. Why? If it meant to destroy them, it certainly had the opportunity.

Darkhorse had said that one of the unseen beings-they could no longer be simply thought of as concentrations of sorcerous power-had clothed itself in this form. The beings had known about them since at least the huge, circular edifice, yet had not confronted them sooner. That meant that they were guardians, yet as guardians, would they not be able to strike back?

Somehow, Dru suspected that they could or would not. The only question remained-if it was a case of the latter, was there a point that he might cross that would unleash their strength?

“Ride forward, Darkhorse.”

“At our peculiar friend? Little Dru, you never cease to entertain me!” Laughing, the ebony steed pushed forward.

Wolves! Teeth that tear! Mangled bodies! Blood!

The words by themselves would not have bothered Dru, but each was accompanied by images of his corpse-what was left of it-scattered about on the rocky surface of the city. He saw the wolf grinding up his bones in its stony teeth. Despite his attempts, he could not help feeling more than a little uneasy as they drew nearer and nearer to the odd horror.

When they were within what the Vraad estimated was no more than twenty feet of the monster, it collapsed.

The ensuing storm of dust and rock caught Dru by surprise. He coughed for several seconds, trying to breathe in a cloud of dirt. Darkhorse froze where he was, evidently knowing that the sorcerer’s grip was nonexistent and a wrong step would send him falling. The ebony stallion’s grasp of human frailties was growing.

It took some time for the dust to settle, but when it had, Dru’s view left him puzzled. There was nothing before him that seemed to warrant such protection. Yet, this close he could feel the consternation of the unseen beings, the questioning sensation, as if they did not know what to do about the twosome. In Darkhorse they must have sensed incredible ability. Dru pictured servants, much like his darkdwellers, whose ultimate purpose was something other than fighting. The darkdwellers would attack his enemies if there was no one else to protect his sanctum, but they would do so haphazardly, lacking as they did any real knowledge of combat. The guardians of this place, he decided, were much the same.

Wisdom, a voice, different from the first, whispered in his mind. Understanding.

Aberration, came another. Not to be here.

Darkhorse roared at the unseen speakers, shouting sentiments that matched Dru’s quite closely. “Enough voices in my mind! Speak to us or be gone! Come! Are you so afraid of us?”

That was the truth of it, the sorcerer knew. The guardians did fear them. Not just because the two of them had come this far, either. It was because they knew the two to be different, to be outsiders.

Remove them! That was the first voice, the one that had taken the thought of wolves from the Vraad’s mind and attempted to use it as a means of scaring them off. Remove them!

No, the one who had commented on wisdom said calmly. Each of the guardians seemed to have a separate personality or perhaps a separate characteristic. There were more than the three who had spoken, but Dru took these as the more dominant of the guardians.

No interference, the one who had called them aberrations said, almost as if reminding the others of something. All must proceed.

Darkhorse kicked at the rubble, frustrated that the beings would not speak directly to them. The sorcerer put a warning hand against the shadow steed’s side. In his ear, Dru whispered, “Calm yourself. I think they may leave.”

“Why should they leave?” Darkhorse asked much too loudly. The tired Vraad winced, knowing that the guardians must have heard his companion. For that matter, they probably knew what the sorcerer himself had said, so easily did they touch the mind.

No interference, a multitude of ghostly voices echoed suddenly in Dru’s head. With that, the entities withdrew from both his mind and the vicinity. One breath they were there, the next they were gone. Dru could sense no trace of them.

“They have departed,” Darkhorse announced needlessly. “Good! They were hardly entertaining company after the one dropped the fascinating form!”

Somehow, the ebony stallion’s almost humorous attitude eased the tension that Dru was suffering. He leaned forward and stared at the visibly unprepossessing area they had been protecting. He could still see nothing of value and there seemed only the slightest touch of power.

“Do you know where they went?” he finally asked Darkhorse.

“I cannot feel them,” the steed replied.

“What about the region before us? Do you sense anything there?”

“Only what I felt before.”

The tall sorcerer straightened and rubbed his chin, which had developed stubble, he noted belatedly. “We may as well go and see what they thought was so worth protecting.”

“Of course! Did you actually consider otherwise?” Still sounding amazed that his companion had even thought of turning away, Darkhorse worked his way across the rubble.

Dru turned his head this way and that as the phantom steed moved. He fully expected the guardians to return, this time with more than just bluffs as weapons. What sort of beings were they? Certainly not the builders of this city. If they were akin to familiars, as Dru thought they were, why did they remain so long after their masters had turned to memories?

The air shimmered before them, slowly peeling away. It took the sorcerer time to recognize what lay before them and Darkhorse, ever curious, had picked up his pace at first sign of this latest phenomenon.

“Darkhorse! No! Stop!”

The demon horse backstepped quickly, coming to a stop only a few feet from the shimmering gap, a tear in reality.

“What is the matter? I find nothing dangerous about this! Do you fear it?”

“It… it’s like the thing I investigated just before I was cast adrift in the Void.”

“Ah! Then perhaps this will get you to the home you keep complaining I have not brought you to! Shall we enter, then?”

Dru had not considered the idea that this might be exactly what he had been looking for. Whatever lay within the tear was not yet visible. Likely, they would have to literally be standing in it to see their destination. It was still a hope, however, and one that Dru was willing to cling to if it meant reuniting himself with Sharissa.

“Go in.” He tightened his grip and prayed to some of his less repugnant ancestors that he was not making the final mistake of his existence.

Darkhorse stepped into the tear, which seemed to widen so as to admit him more easily.

At first, Dru was aware of nothing but bright illumination, as if he were staring into the sun of the shroud realm. Then, while his eyes were still recuperating, sound returned. The sorcerer had not even been aware of the fact that there had been no sounds until they had returned. With them also came touch and smell. Dru felt the cool breeze and smelled the flowers. He heard the small birds singing where there had been none in the abandoned city.

His eyes finally focused. Before Dru could speak, a voice from below him boomed, “Worlds within worlds! I shall never tire of your fantastic home, little Dru!”

The Vraad, on the other hand, was growing tired of being shocked all the time, though he was no less astonished this time than he had been when he had met his companion, been delivered to the shrouded realm, and discovered the city-was there nothing simple and straightforward in this domain? It was as if someone had designed everything as in a game or a vast experiment.

Where the two of them had once stood in the midst of an ancient, ruined citadel, they now stood at the bottom of a grassy hill on which was perched a beautiful and not at all ruined castle. Banners still fluttered in the wind, crisp and new, not tattered and torn. The castle consisted of spiral towers and a great wall, at least as far as Dru could see, with more buildings likely hidden. The grassy field that covered the rest of the hill was neat and orderly. Someone might have trimmed it only yesterday, so immaculate it was.

Dru did not even hesitate. Things had gone on too long for his strained nerves. He wanted answers, not to mention food, drink, and rest. “We go inside. Now.”

The ebony stallion said nothing, but his laughter cut across the hillside as he reared and charged up toward the castle. They were at the gates before Dru even blinked. Regaining his breath, the startled mage wondered exactly how swift his companion was. If the time came, he would question Darkhorse thoroughly. Now, however, this new castle was priority.

The gate was open. Dru could sense nothing, but as usual did not trust himself. Darkhorse seemed disinclined to hold back. They were through the gate and into the courtyard in the next breath. As with the outside, the courtyard was in perfect condition. The inhabitants might have stepped out only this very morning. For all the sorcerer knew, they had.

Sculpted bushes and vast, colorful flower beds added to the feeling of walking into someone’s home while they were away for a moment. Dru admired the marble benches and a tiny bit of his mind noted the style for later use when the Vraad settled in their new world… if they did.

“Hold up,” he whispered to Darkhorse. The phantom steed came to a halt and Dru dismounted. For their purposes, he preferred to continue on foot.

“Worlds within worlds within worlds…” Darkhorse was saying. “What fun it would be if we entered and found a way to yet another! Just imagine if they went on forever!”

“I’d rather not! Nimth is the only world I want… my Nimth,” he added quickly, noting his companion ready to argue the point again. Studying the buildings, Dru settled on the largest, the one whose towers they had seen from beyond the walls. “That’s where I want to go.”

Not waiting for Darkhorse, the sorcerer crossed the courtyard. He heard a chuckle from behind him. “And has impatience now become a virtue?”

Dru ignored him, fairly rushing through the open doorway. The main hall sparkled; he had not doubted it would by this point. From the doorway the sorcerer had just entered, Darkhorse stepped within, his hooves making the same clap-clap sound they had when he had followed Dru and the avians into the one rounded edifice. The sounds echoed throughout the building.

For reasons he could not explain, the Vraad felt ashamed of the harsh noise Darkhorse was making. The castle touched him in an unusual way; Dru felt as though the sounds violated a peace that had reigned here for thousands upon thousands of years. It was a different sensation than what he had felt in the ruined city. There, he had felt the ghosts of memory and the remnants of power. Here was tranquility, a rare thing to a Vraad. If he died, this was where Dru wanted to be laid to rest. Here, he could-

The sorcerer shivered. Beside him now, Darkhorse asked, “Is there something amiss with you?”

“No. Nothing.” Merely, Dru thought, that he had been almost willing to lie down right here and now and wait for death to claim him.

More cautious now, he strode ahead. There were two massive iron doors at the end of the hall, each more than twice as tall as the Vraad. Somehow, he could feel their importance. Behind them were the answers to the endless questions filling his mind. Whether he understood those answers was yet another question, but one Dru was willing to live with for the time being.

Putting a hand out to where the doors came together, the sorcerer pushed gently. The hinges groaned, but access was still denied him. He pushed harder, leaning into the two doors, but was granted no greater success than in the initial attempt.

Putting his shoulder to the crack, Dru angrily threw his weight against the obstructions. For his trouble he received a sore shoulder. Even though there was nothing to indicate that the way was locked, the Vraad could not get the doors to swing back.

“Perhaps if I-” Darkhorse began.

“No!” This was one that the angered spellcaster wanted for himself. Worn beyond his limits, Dru could no longer check his Vraadish temper. It swept over him, a crimson curse that seized control of his body. Shouting words he would not recall later, Dru raised his left hand and brought it down on the massive metal doors.

With a spark that seemed to course from his fist to the entire doorway, the Vraad opened the way. “Opened” was perhaps misleading. What actually happened, if Dru could still believe his eyes, was that the two doors flung back, going the full turn of their hinges and then tearing free of the walls themselves. While the two watched, Dru in dismay and the shadow steed in growing amusement, the doors, now free of all restriction, teetered for a breath… and then fell with a resounding clatter that shattered forever any remaining feeling of tranquility that the spellcaster might have retained.

“Nicely done,” Darkhorse commented wryly. He had quickly developed a knack of sarcasm equal to any Vraad.

“It wasn’t… I didn’t…” Dru gazed at his fist, then at the battered doors.

“Would it be of interest to mention that the boundaries of this place seem to have suffered from your calm, collected solution?”

Dru turned and eyed the walls of the hallway. An intricate system of fine cracks ran along each wall. The ceiling and floor had suffered from a similar network of these skeletal branches, and Dru could see where bits of ceiling had fallen. “I did this?”

“It seemed a reaction to your power. I noted resistance, but you overwhelmed it.”

His madness had defeated the shrouded realm’s resistance… that is, if this was still the shrouded realm. He wondered how well it would work back in the ruined city. There was also the question of what these side effects had to do with it. They were too akin to what Nimth suffered each time the Vraad utilized their abilities. Was this how his world’s death had begun? Were the Vraad going to destroy their new home as well?

Too many questions. Dru snarled and turned back to the chamber that his fury had finally allowed him entry to.

His eyes widened to saucers and his mouth grew dry. It seemed the realm beyond the veil was not yet depleted of surprises.

Before him, obscured by robes that made them resemble lumpy sacks; knelt more than a hundred figures. They had their backs to the newcomers and all faced a clear crystal in the center of a pentagram that covered the entire floor. The crystal stood on a bronze, pyramid-shaped platform. As with all else, the ages had been unable to touch either the focus, for that was what the sorcerer knew the crystal to be, or the base upon which it stood.

Dru backed up a step. The figures remained motionless despite the noise and damage he had caused. They were, he noted quickly, lined along the points, corners, and sides of the pattern, creating, by themselves, a second pentagram atop the one etched in stone.

“Where did they come from?” he whispered to Darkhorse. The tall Vraad knew that they had not been there when the doors had fallen.

His companion did not reply and a glance at the creature’s equine visage helped little. Darkhorse’s eyes stared vaguely at the chamber, as if he had trouble seeing anything in there at all. A repeat of his question gave Dru an equally silent response.

Admittedly more secure now that he knew he could summon up tremendous power-despite the effect Dru knew it likely had on the land-the sorcerer stepped forward again. He made no attempt to walk silently, knowing that any folk who could ignore the earsplitting sound of two gigantic metal doors collapsing would hardly notice his footfalls.

Dru studied the area with his higher senses, noting how the lines crisscrossed exactly at the point where the focus stood. There were secondary lines as well, weaker links that followed the pattern of the pentagram… and piercing each cowled figure from back to chest.

He blinked, then squinted, returning his vision to the normal plane. There was something wrong with the meditators. Too much of what he saw already reminded him of something else, something back in Nimth.

“What do you do?” Darkhorse asked from behind him. A few hesitant steps informed him that his companion was following the sorcerer inside.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, running one hand through his hair as he pushed himself toward the nearest of the baggy forms. Was he mad to risk himself?

Stretching his left hand forward, calmly this time, Dru touched the figure.

Tried to touch it. His hand went through in much the same manner as it had in the wraithlike forest. Both emboldened and frustrated, he waved the hand back and forth, trying to draw some response.

“They don’t exist,” Dru finally told the shadow steed. “They’re ghosts… no… they’re memories.”

“Memories?”

Nodding, the fascinated mage walked around the one he had tried to touch. Its visage was fairly covered by the hood, but he saw that the being before him had been human and male. The visage was disquieting in some ways, though. It was and it was not the features of a Vraad. Not quite elfin, either. The man’s eyes were open and in them Dru noted an age far greater than the figure’s appearance would appear. So great, in fact, that any Vraad would have been but a toddler in comparison. “You can still feel the vestiges of their power if you stand among them. It was so intense that even after all this time, the shadows of their faces and forms have been imposed upon reality… burned into it, you might say. I think my use of sorcery, even Vraad sorcery, was all they needed to grow substantial enough to see.”

“All I know,” the majestic stallion snorted, “was that they unnerved me. I could make no sense of their existence whatsoever.” It was a deep admission, coming as it did from the amazing creature.

Dru continued to study the wraiths. There were men and women, all handsome in the same disturbing way, as if they were part of one tremendous clan, even more so than the Tezerenee. All stared at the focus and the image of so many sightless gazes chilled even the centuries-old spellcaster.

“These fantastical images that you call pictures… were they not also in the ruined city?”

Darkhorse’s words broke the spell that had tied Dru to the lifelike images. He looked up, annoyed that he had been so engrossed in phantoms of the far past that he had not seen what might prove far more important to his immediate needs.

The ceiling was rounded, which gave it and the walls the appearance of being one. That in itself was nothing, but the pictures that covered the entire chamber stirred the sorcerer’s memories of another place, a place where a dragon lord had gazed with stone eyes down at the avians and their mystified prisoner.

Again, Dru looked over countless little worlds, each with their own representative. The Seeker was there, as was the enemy. The elf, the Vraad-like human, a figure that looked like a walking salamander… there seemed to be more here than in the first building.

Directly above the focus was the only illustration lacking a living figure. It was also the largest, and in the place of a representative race, it had a city… one very familiar, despite the differences time had wrought on the actual one.

The Vraad’s mind worked quickly. With growing suspicions, he looked down at the focus… or rather, the floor beneath it.

Another world was illustrated there, this one greater than the one above. In its center was the very castle they stood in.

“Let us go view something else! I grow bored in here!”

“Not yet.” Dru studied the phantoms-who seemed just a bit translucent now-and then gazed at the worlds above and below him. There was no denying the similarity between what he saw here and what he had devised when researching ka travel. Yet, if the images around him-the races and the worlds they stood within-meant what he had concluded, then the ghostly inhabitants of this place had been to the Vraad as the Vraad were to a lowly insect or, worse yet, a simple grain of sand.

Dru had a great urge to be elsewhere-anywhere-as long as it was far away from these ancient masters of power.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

“As you like it.” The shaken sorcerer quickly mounted and the black steed turned and trotted swiftly through the doorway. In less than a breath, they were already back in the courtyard. Another and they were out the citadel gates and heading back to where the tear had been.

There had probably been so much more that Dru knew he should have investigated, but what little he had seen with what little he had theorized was enough. There had to be another solution that would gain him Nimth. He wanted nothing to do with the memories within that place. Even the ruined city-their ruined city-was better than this.

A horrible notion crossed him mind. “Darkhorse! Can you see the way in which we entered here?”

“I cannot!” Despite the incredible speed at which the dweller from the Void raced, he sounded perfectly normal. Sometimes, it was difficult for Dru to recall that his companion did not have to breathe as he did. “But we are nearly at the spot, I think!”

“Then what will we do if it isn’t-”

A gaping hole opened before them and, at the heartrending speed they were moving, swallowed them before the Vraad could finish.

“-there?” Dru stuttered.

They were back among the ruins, but, this time, they were not alone.

The Seekers had returned, apparently having followed the duo’s trail, and among them, they now had a captive, who struggled vainly against their might.

An elf.