Legends of the Dragonrealm Volume 2

VI

The crimson fire that illuminated the throne room of the Dragon Emperor was momentarily drowned out by the brilliant white glow of Darkhorse’s gate as the shadow steed burst through. Chilling eyes quickly drank in the details of the massive cavern, from the few huge effigies still standing, to the flittering, frightened shapes seeking haven in the cracks and crevices. Darkhorse ignored the creatures, knowing them as useless servants of a long-dead Dragon King. There was only one thing, one creature who demanded his attention… and though he was nowhere to be seen, the ebony stallion could feel his nearby presence.

“Shaaade!”

The warlock’s name echoed hauntingly through the endless labyrinth of caverns. It was said that here, if one dared, a way to the bottom of the world might be found. Darkhorse neither knew or cared. He wanted Shade and each passing second made that hope dwindle.

“Come, Shade! It is time to join the ghosts of our pasts! This poor world can ill afford our constant struggle! Let it end now!”

He waited, listening intently as the echoes of his challenge slowly died away. The things hiding in the cracks and crevices chittered in mad fear. More out of impatience than anything else, Darkhorse looked up in their general direction and laughed, sending them scattering to hiding places farther away from the phantom horse.

Still no one answered his challenge.

There was too much old magic here for him to pinpoint the spellcaster. Old spells abandoned, for the most part. There was also something else, something older and newer. Darkhorse sniffed.

Vraad sorcery.

Shade’s words to him while the shadow steed had remained helpless in Drayfitt’s cage resurfaced. The warlock had said that his elderly counterpart had used Vraad-style sorcery. Now, in this ancient place where Shade himself had come, there were again Vraad traces.

Darkhorse cursed silently. Now there was more than Shade to deal with. If he somehow survived his encounter with the warlock, there were still the legacies of the Vraad. Legacies that threatened more than a world.

Dru Zeree, the stallion thought, recalling the first being to befriend him. I’ve need of your guidance. How do I fight what even the Vraad themselves could not?

There was no answer, of course. It was a friendship of the far past. It was a reason that Darkhorse rarely sought the friendship of others, though he yearned for their trust. Everything passed beyond, save him.

And Shade.

If the spellcaster had come seeking the foul inheritance left by that ancient race of sorcerers, he would be deeper in the caverns, possibly miles below the surface. Though the Vraad were recent by this land’s standards, they had been a jealous people and prone to secrets, especially from one another. If one of their number had left artifacts behind, those items would be buried deep-and well-protected.

Mystery upon mystery!

Darkhorse struck the floor furiously, leaving a gouge where his hoof had landed. It also worried him that generation upon generation of Dragon Emperor had made this mountain and its caverns the home of their clans-yet not one of them had ever been known to make use of whatever the Vraad had abandoned.

Scanning the chamber, he chose a likely side cavern. A gate would have been quicker, true, but only if he knew where Shade was. Besides, there was too much sorcery lingering in the air. There was no telling what effect it might have on his own abilities.

Darkhorse trotted cautiously toward the cavern entrance.

A sinewy, metallic appendage wrapped itself around his throat. Another trapped one foreleg and two more snared his hind legs. Momentarily disconcerted, the shadow steed struggled futilely, gouging the earth with the sharp hoof of his sole free limb, as his unseen attackers struggled to maintain their holds from their shadowy hiding places. Then, the true seriousness of his situation jarred him back to reality. No physical bond could hold a creature whose essence was part of the Void itself, not unless master sorcery was at work. Even then, he should have been able to free himself simply by truly becoming a shadow. To his dismay, however, Darkhorse found that the transformation was beyond him. The same sorcery that had been used to create his attackers’ weapons also prevented him from utilizing his own abilities. Someone had planned well, though they could have hardly done so with him in mind. It was only unfortunate coincidence that he had fallen prey.

A final, jagged tentacle darted from one of the lesser caverns and snared his remaining leg. Each limb was pulled in a different direction, making movement impossible. The noose around his neck kept him from using more primitive methods to escape, such as biting his bonds in two.

“Hurry, you foolssss! Bind him quickly!”

Slowly, so as not to lose the hold each had, the ebony stallion’s attackers abandoned their hiding places and moved toward him. Their identities did not surprise him, not after hearing the hissing voice that commanded them. So engrossed had he become in his search that he had not noticed the spells that must have masked their presence, spells which he, more sensitive to sorcery than most, should have at least felt, regardless.

Despite his predicament, Darkhorse responded to his captors presence with disdain. “Drakes! I might have known your kind would be slithering about these holes in the ground!”

The crimson light poured over the newcomers, giving them the appearance of walking dead risen from some terrible battle. Each stood a little taller than a man and, outwardly, resembled savage warriors clad in masterly crafted scale armor that covered all but their heads. The heads themselves were mostly obscured by great dragonhelms that made the humanoid figures seem even taller. Within those helms, eyes the color of fire blazed and mouths full of sharp, predatory teeth opened wide in triumphant smiles. Their noses were little more than slits and, if one was so foolish as to get close enough to see, their skin was scaled, like a reptile.

Darkhorse knew far better than most that the armor was illusion. The scales were real, as real as those on the drakes’ faces. It was not true clothing they wore, but their own skins transformed by the drakes’ own innate sorcery. Even the mighty helms were false in nature, the intricate dragon crests being the true faces of the creature and not some craftsman’s design. The shadow steed had seen drakes revert to their dragon forms, and watched as the fierce dragon head slid down and stretched, becoming animated with life. It was a sight none could ever forget-provided they survived the encounter.

Dragons who preferred the forms of men, that was the drake race. With each generation, there were more and more of those who could better copy the human form. The females were already adept-too adept, some human women said-but they sacrificed much of their power for that perfection.

The drake holding the noose wrapped around Darkhorse’s neck gave it a tug. Pain burned the eternal where the metallic bonds touched his form, and all thought of drakes and their odd ways vanished as anger resurfaced stronger than ever before.

“Thisss isss our domain, demon,” the apparent leader hissed with gusto. “To enter here meansss to sssacrifice your life!”

Darkhorse chuckled. “You sound like your cousin the serpent, reptile! Is proper speech beyond you?”

The leader hissed, revealing a long, forked tongue. A throwback, the shadow steed noted in one part of his mind. A drake whose ties to the dragon form of his birth were stronger than those of his brethren, those ties manifesting themselves in such things as the split tongue, jagged teeth designed to tear flesh, and a savage manner that made them the deadliest of their race.

“Your death will be mossst-most enjoyable, demon! Our lord will gain great pleasure from watching you perish slowly! Too many of our race have suffered the unspeakable at your hands!”

“Hooves, dear lizard, hooves! Those things at the end of your arms are hands-more or less! Tell me; can you really hold a sword with those gnarled appendages-or do you scratch and bite your opponents like a riding drake?”

Riding drakes were huge, swift, wingless dragons of an intelligence just below that of horses. That such mindless beasts were as much a part of the drake race as these warriors before him amused Darkhorse. It did not amuse the leader-as the ebony stallion had hoped. “It might prove interesting to see if a sword could cut you now that you are forced to remain in the form of a beast of burden, demon horse! I will have to make such a suggestion to our lord when we have dragged you before him!”

Darkhorse looked scandalized. “Drag me before him? Did I say that I would be party to such a thing?”

The drakes grew nervous. A few touched their swords, forgetting the type of creature they were dealing with. The sword was the most useless of their weapons.

“You have no say in the matter.”

“Oh, my dear friend, but I do!” Darkhorse retorted. He began to laugh, taunting his captors with the very madness of his act. The sorcerous bonds burned into his solidified form, but he turned the agony, around, adding its strength to his mocking reply. In the vast maze of caverns, the sound of his voice echoed and echoed, but nowhere with more intensity than in the throne room. The more the pain sought to defeat him, the louder he roared.

One by one, his captors lost control as the laughter battered their ears. The drake keeping his right foreleg in check lost his grip on his weapon as he reached up and buried his head in his hands, trying without success to block out the noise. Darkhorse shook the coil loose and used the one leg to pull himself forward. The drakes behind him, barely able to even stand, could not maintain their grips. Freed, the shadow steed whirled and struck at the drake who controlled the coil around his left foreleg. The kick sent the warrior flying into one of the statues that still stood. Though he wrapped around it like a ribbon, the drake never felt his back break; Darkhorse’s blow had killed him.

The noose around his throat still burned. Darkhorse, no longer laughing, turned to the source of his pain, the leader of his attackers. The drake was on one knee and slowly recovering as the agonizing sound died away. Throughout all of it, he had maintained a tight grip. One coil, however, was not enough to hold the shadow steed, not now. Darkhorse prodded two of the other coils before him and, as the drake rose, kicked them expertly toward his adversary. The reptilian warrior had just enough time to realize his danger when both deadly toys dropped on him.

He screamed-almost. The power needed to contain an eternal such as Darkhorse was more than enough to consume the drake completely. There was not even a trace of ash.

Desperate, one of the remaining attackers leaped at the shadow steed, beginning the transformation to dragon form midway through the air. Darkhorse made no move to stop him. To what would forever be his dismay, the drake found no solid flesh to rend. He did not land upon Darkhorse but rather within him. The now-completely transformed dragon sank into the emptiness that was the jet-black stallion. Smaller and smaller the unfortunate attacker became, dwindling the way a figure falling forever and ever gradually diminished-until there was nothing to see. He would continue falling in that abyss, as still did so many before him, until everything-the multiverse, chaos, and even the Void-ceased to be.

“I am the demon to demons. I am the traveller who defies the Final Path. I am the Void incarnate. I am Darkhorse.” The eternal fixed his chilling stare on the remaining drake warriors as he whispered.

The drakes fled, disappearing in all-out panic into one of the caverns. Darkhorse watched them escape, all the while chuckling in morbid amusement.

Lead me to your master, drakes! Though the cursed light that only Shade could have left behind colors you scarlet, I think that silver is more to your lord’s taste! Darkhorse began trotting after the vanished drakes, his hooves making no sound despite seeming to strike the stone floor with enough strength to shatter it. This time, the advantage would be his.

Lead me to your master, brave ones, for I think that there might be a warlock I am seeking with him as well-and I will fight all the clans of your kind if that is what it takes to finally face him!

Faces vaguely recalled. Names only beginning to resurface. Images of the ancient dead walking the earth once more.

Shade could not say what urge had suddenly driven him to this subcavern far, far below the throne room. Not exactly a memory, but something more. Something to do with the insignia carved in raw marble and embedded in the wall he now stood before. An insignia he remembered seeing on the Gryphon’s tapestry and which he now traced in an abstract manner with his left hand. A militaristic banner with the stylized image of a fighting dragon.

The banner of his clan. The banner of his father.

“What memories do you hold?” Shade whispered, not knowing whether he spoke to the relief on the wall or his own, murky mind. He still could neither recall what he had come to this mountain for nor why the image of a great black beast, a demonic horse, had burned itself a permanent place in his thoughts.

“What memories do you hold?” the warlock repeated. Unable as he was to see his own face-or lack thereof-Shade could not notice the brief clarity which played across it. The change came and went in less than a breath, but it left its mark, though the warlock could not know that.

“Give me your memories.” The words were not the product of wishful thinking, but rather a command. The resistance was strong, but not enough, not to one who knew-now. Shade nodded. His own memories were returning again and now he would add new ones as well.

A pale, blue light formed in the center of the chamber and expanded. The warlock, his hand still on the ancient carving, turned to gaze on that light, seemingly fascinated by it as a moth to a flame. The light continued to expand and, as it did so, began to take on shapes. One after the other without stop. Tall. Short. Distant. Near. Simple. Unbelievable.

Memories of a long-forgotten time. Of a race of sorcerers called the Vraad. Of Shade’s kind.

The images were indistinct at first. Shade put his other hand on the relief. The memories had been gathered over generations and from countless places. He could not say exactly when he recalled this information, but it was true, just as it was true that this carving had been set in the wall for just the reason he utilized it for now.

“Give them to me!” he swore between clenched teeth.

An image broke from the rest, solidified, and sharpened. Even though it was not yet distinct, Shade inhaled sharply, knowing already who it would be. It was not the one he had wanted-probably one of the last he had wanted-but it made sense, given the dragon banner on the wall.

Father… Shade raised his left hand to the top of the banner.

With a violent twist of that hand, he banished the image. It flared like a miniature sun-and was gone.

A new image separated from the jumble, grew, and defined itself. A tall figure, female and only recently into womanhood. Shade dismissed it as he had the first, though he briefly wondered why it bothered him almost as much as seeing his father had. There had been no name to put to the woman, but he knew her. He also knew that, whatever her connections to him, she was not part of what he now sought. Still…

Caught up in his thoughts, the warlock looked away for several seconds. When he returned his gaze to the blue light, he started in surprise, for another figure, tall and clad in armor, stood waiting patiently. Where the others had been bright, as if the sun of midday had shone overhead, this one stood with the light behind him, blocking the glow and creating a shadow.

A shadow?

Shade glanced down at the rocky surface, eyeing the shadow that stretched long and narrow. This was no memory of the past. What stood before him was very, very real.

“Warlock. Shade.” The huge, armored newcomer took a few steps toward him. In the light, the scale armor glittered silver-blue. The voice was a quiet, soothing hiss. “I would have words with you, warlock. Words of things that concern both of us.”

The distant sound of mocking laughter echoing through the caverns made both look in the direction of the sole entrance to the chamber. Images of a creature with ice-blue eyes once more demanded Shade’s attention.

His new companion stirred visibly. Reptilian features partially masked by the massive dragonhelm were turned once more toward the warlock. Shade caught uncertainty tinged with greed-and fear.

The Silver Dragon spoke again, his words uttered a bit faster than the first time and his eyes continually darting toward the entrance. “I would have words with you, friend-and quickly, if you do not mind.”

THE DRAKES WHO fled from Darkhorse led him deeper and deeper into the caverns. Even he, who had known that a fantastic system of chambers lay within and below Kivan Grath, was shocked at the complexity and extent of the labyrinth. Still, it did make sense, for this had been the home of the entire clan of Gold, the most royal of drake clans. In one hot, steamy chamber, a hatchery by the look of it, he had even come across the skeletal remains of a huge female dragon who obviously had been the guardian of the newly born drakes. Her death had been quiet if not peaceful from the look of it. Old age or lack of purpose, he judged. Darkhorse had also not missed the brittle fragments of the second skeleton in that area, a drake warrior who looked suspiciously as if he had been killed by the elderly dam herself.

So many things to wonder about, he thought as he turned down yet another corridor. Would he ever find out what had happened since his exile? There seemed to be so much. A sudden uneasy feeling filled him, but it had nothing to do with his unanswered question. Darkhorse paused. No, something else disturbed him. He sniffed the air.

Vraad sorcery-and close!

“Shade…” he whispered to himself. So close the shadow steed could almost see him. Darkhorse opened a path in reality and, without hesitation, stepped through.

The path itself was short, almost nothing, and the ebony stallion emerged from the other end of the portal in mere seconds. He found himself in the center of a chamber, bathed in a pale blue light and surrounded by phantom images that ignored him as they played out their brief lives.

“What manner of monstrosity is this?” the shadow steed bellowed without thinking. Had he fallen into some hell created by Shade?

Two figures whirled at the shout, both momentarily shadowed, Darkhorse stepped quickly from the light, shaking his body as if that would remove the thought of these disconcerting specters from it. They had about them the feel of Vraad sorcery, which made their existence all the more foul.

One of the two figures watching him stepped closer, as if taking a casual walk. “You… you’re… Darkhorse… aren’t you?”

“As much as you are the warlock Shade, my blurry friend! You know that very well! You remember everything-or have you forgotten that?”

Perhaps it was his eyes that played tricks on him, Darkhorse wondered, but he would have been willing to swear even to the Lords of the Dead that Shade was smiling just a little. Was it a trick or were those two dark spots his eyes?

Before the shadow steed could take it further, the warlock nodded and replied, “I remembered… but I forgot. I am remembering again… but not as Madrac. As myself, I think.”

Darkhorse’s eyes glittered. “Yourself?”

“I can’t be certain yet.” Shade indicated his companion. “The drake lord asked me the same question. He seemed disappointed. I think he wanted to make some sort of pact. I don’t know.”

“Thisss isss insssanity!” The Silver Dragon raised a fist. Something crystalline glittered in its grip. “He isss our enemy!”

An oppressing weight crashed down on the black stallion. Darkhorse fell to his knees and grew distorted as the pressure on him increased and he was slowly flattened. The Silver Dragon took a step forward, the light of victory burning in his anxious eyes.

“It worksss! It worksss!”

Shade remained where he was, watching everything with clinical interest. “Of course it does. Vraad sorcery does not fade easily. Still, I doubt if it will be enough.”

The drake cocked his head in sudden confusion. Victory had been replaced anxiety. “What’sss that? What do you mean, human?”

“He means,” Darkhorse forced himself to his feet again, “that you’ll need more than that pretty bauble to keep me kneeling before you, lizard!” The shadow steed chuckled. “Surprise was its only useful weapon-and you’ve used that up!”

The Dragon King cursed and shook the crystal, as if that would make it stronger. Shade shook his cowled head.

“He knows more about it than you do, it seems, drake. I would have to say he probably knows more than I remember, too.”

Slowly, the Silver Dragon backed away. “I have my own power! I can deal with him!”

“Ha!” Darkhorse looked down at the reptilian monarch. “Power includes the confidence and will to back it up, my little friend! Do you have enough of either? Somehow, I doubt that!”

Shade crossed his arms and looked at both of them. “He may be right, Dragon King. He may be wrong as well.”

“You! He is your enemy, too! If he defeats me, you will be next!”

“Possibly. Possibly not. I could just depart-but I suppose he would find me eventually.”

Darkhorse moved cautiously. He was confident that the Dragon King would give him little trouble, being the most pathetic of his brethren that the horse could recall. This is a drake lord? This one would be Emperor? What worried him, however, was this new Shade, this indifferent, even possibly amoral creature who stood talking calmly while two powerful beings prepared to fight to the death-a fight that might very well include the warlock before long.

Desperation was written in every movement of the Silver Dragon. Darkhorse began to understand. This drake lord had lived under the favor of the Gold Dragon and had apparently drawn much of his strength from his emperor-who had been more than a little paranoid about his own position. That paranoia had evidently transferred itself to this Dragon King, who saw himself as the obvious successor to his former master.

The drake hissed and suddenly threw the crystal at Darkhorse.

“That was definitely foolish,” Shade commented.

Knowing the artifact for what it was, the stallion stepped nimbly aside. A magical talisman could be deadlier when used in desperation than in planned combat. The Vraad device went flying past him, striking the cavern wall behind. It bounced two or three times on the floor and then rolled to a stop-all without the slightest sign of danger.

Shade leaned over, clearly interested at the lack of reaction on the talisman’s part.

The crystal split into two perfect pieces and a gray-green smoky substance began to rise from it, forming into a cloud that swelled with each passing second. The warlock straightened quickly with as much emotion as Darkhorse had seen him convey since his arrival here.

“I warned you that it was foolish. I think I may leave after all.”

Darkhorse snorted and trotted a step closer to the cloaked figure. “None of us is leaving here, dear friend Shade, until-”

The shadowy warlock curled within himself and vanished with a slight pop! before the next word was even out of the eternal’s mouth.

“No!” The Dragon King reached toward the spot where the spellcaster had stood, uselessly grasping at air.

“You!” Darkhorse turned on the drake. “Where has he gone, carrion eater? Where?” Notagainnotagainnotagain! the shadow steed mentally cursed.

Sizing up the chamber and knowing his chances against the creature before him, the Silver Dragon came to a rapid decision. He transformed.

The transformation was quick, almost unbelievably so. Wings burst from the drake’s back and the creature hunched forward as his spine arced and his legs bent backwards. Taloned hands grew long and arms twisted, becoming more like the legs. The Dragon King’s neck stretched high, an ungodly sight at first, what with the humanoid head, but then the dragon-crest slid down over the half-hidden face, slid down and lengthened. The jaws snapped and the eyes opened, the true visage of the Silver Dragon revealed at last. All the while, the form of the leviathan expanded, growing and growing until it threatened to fill the cavern and more.

All this in but a breath. Time enough for Darkhorse to have attacked-save that his limbs were suddenly heavy and the chamber was beginning to fade. He blinked, wondering if the ominous smoke cloud had affected his senses. His second thought was that Shade had made a fool of him, had returned somehow without Darkhorse sensing him and struck with some new spell. He struggled forward. The dragon, now whole, did nothing but stare. Stare and slowly smile that toothy smile that only his kind was capable of.

“The nag hasss been sssnared himssself!” the Dragon King hissed jubilantly. He inhaled sharply and, as Darkhorse looked on in helpless frustration, bathed the shadow steed in white flame summoned up from his own magical essence. Darkhorse steadied himself, knowing that here was a fire whose burning touch even he might feel.

The flame passed through the trapped stallion without so much as a hint of its unbearable heat. The Silver Dragon roared angrily. Darkhorse laughed, covering his own surprise with bravado. What was happening?

You will come to me, demon! a familiar voice demanded. Now!

“Damn the Final Path, no!” Darkhorse renewed his struggles, fighting with such ferocity that that Dragon King backed away again. “No!”

The choice is not yours, demon! You will come!

He was wrenched from the cavern and the dragon with the ease that one might reach down and pick up a twig. The world-everything-twisted and faded. Darkhorse struggled, but he might as well have been trying to physically run the boundaries of the Void so futile was his attempt. He had underestimated an adversary again. His self-exile, he grimly decided, had warped his senses beyond help.

The world of the Dragonrealm returned then-and with it a place that he had thought he would never have to see again.

In the dim light of the torch, Drayfitt rose before him, exhausted but satisfied. The look in his eyes was unreadable, even to Darkhorse.

“He will not escape this time. We can stare in those dead eyes until the Dragon of the Depths comes to visit the king for lunch before the demon will be able to trick one of us again. His other abilities are stifled as well.”

The markings around his magical cage had been altered slightly. Darkhorse tried to make them out but could not.

Mal Quorin joined his rival and eyed the shadow steed with a mix of fury and glee. “You’ve cost us much, demon! That book cannot be replaced! Rest assured, though, before long, you will have repaid us for it over and over again!”

“Mortal fools! I am not your fetching slave! Release me! Shade still wanders free and the danger may be greater than I supposed!”

The Silver Dragon was a bully, strong but with little true bravery to back it up. Yet, if he was allowed to study the Vraad for very long, he might become an even deadlier threat. Kivan Grath might again be home to an emperor, if it did not become the citadel of Shade first…

… and Darkhorse, trapped again through his own lack of forethought, would be unable to do anything about either peril.