Legends of the Dragonrealm Vol III Part 78

And Zorane. Ephraim's shadow. Also lacking legs, although he, like the rest, moved as if fully bodied. Shade recalled Zorane and his immaculate beard, his fastidious att.i.tude when it came to himself. The warlock envisioned the five as they saw themselves, proud sorcerers of Clan Tezerenee and members of the Vraad race. Once stout of chest and perfect of face and form, their egos would not let them see the truth.

A fearsome, chill gale exploded, nearly sending the warlock tumbling. Shade dug in his boots, but still he was pushed back in the direction the necromancers desired him to go.

They would expect him to resist. He focused on Ghan, opening the earth beneath the latter. Ghan stumbled, seeking to retain his footing, and, as Shade had expected, Hirac moved to aid him.

The warlock reached into his cloak and pulled out a tiny, winged figurine honed from marble. He whispered to it and it disappeared.

In his thoughts, it reappeared before the distracted Hirac. Now the size of a man and screeching loud, the huge marble eagle pounced on the necromancer.

But no sooner had his golem attacked Hirac then the gale became a full storm, pummeling Shade relentlessly. It shoved him along the Lords' route. The warlock leaned against it, but allowed the magical tempest to do its work.

He felt Zorane's satisfaction at this apparent victory. Ephraim might have been more suspicious, but Zorane took matters more at face value. Shade was being forced toward the castle; therefore, all was as it should be.

Keep a.s.suming so, cousin, the hooded figure thought as he pretended to lose track of a spell he had been about to cast.

With an almost contemptuous thrust of his hand, Hirac turned the marble eagle into so much dust. Ghan, meanwhile, levitated over the chasm. Emboldened, the necromancers regrouped and solidified their efforts against Shade. They had him on the run, so they believed, and he did nothing to dissuade them of that notion.

And as the storm forced him up and over a ridge, the hair on the warlock's neck bristled. Holding his cloak tight around him, Shade looked in the direction in which the Lords of the Dead sought to force him.

There, perched on the next hill, the immense stone sanctum balefully greeted his gaze.

"So," he muttered in half satisfaction, half anxious antic.i.p.ation. "It's almost about to begin."

VII.

GERROD STARED AT the floor in shame. Valea turned away from him, preferring even the dismal landscape outside the window. Ephraim had left them to their own devices, stating that Gerrod would know when it was time for his part in their plot.

"You're him," she finally stated.

"He's me," Gerrod corrected. "A casting of me, that is. That which you call Shade is incomplete, has been incomplete since the day that d.a.m.ned spell was cast."

"But he's alive and you-" The enchantress broke off, suddenly feeling cruel in her choice of words.

"It's the land's jest," he replied bitterly. "Its foul humor is surpa.s.sed only by its audacity! It must conform all to its desire and when it finds something it can't conform, it seeks to break that thing until it can be made useful."

She looked back at him. "Such as you?"

"I defied it. I denied it. When my people became in flesh the monsters that they had been in mind, I turned to its own magic to force back my transformation, else perhaps there would have been one more lineage of dragons . . ."

His words did not make complete sense, but Valea understood the gist of them. "You fear the Dragonrealm itself? You fear the land?"

He reached with the instinctive intention of taking her by the arm, but then came to his senses. The ghost instead pointed at the world beyond the window. "That is a mere reflection of the true reality, one of hundreds of pocket worlds, bubble realms, that the first race created. Even we Vraad had no name for them. They were powerful beyond belief and when they realized that they were dying, they created from themselves the seeds for countless successors, each set so that only one group would live." He grimaced. "But while a few survived centuries, none flourished. Most races lived out their spans in their pocket worlds, never advancing enough to enter the true one."

The Vraad had made the leap, although more by accident than promise. Having ruined their own realm, they found a path to the original, arriving just as the avian Seekers began to fall into savagery after their war with their own predecessors, the Quel. The Vraad began filling in the niche, but by seeking to remake their new home as they had their old-which would have eventually resulted in a second catastrophe.

But the land, Gerrod had discovered, had a mind of its own. "I believe that the last of the originators became a part of their world so that they could watch and manipulate whoever came after. Those that fit, they left virtually untouched. Those that did not . . . they altered as their whims dictated."

For the Vraad, it meant extinction as a race. Some fled, falling prey to other forces, but many, especially the powerful, militaristic Tezerenee, transformed. From dragons they had created bodies to house their ka, their spirits, and these had been their method by which they had fled from their world to this one. Now, as if mocking their efforts, the land twisted them, shaped them into the very beasts that they had used. The Tezerenee would rule the realm as they had desired, but as horrors without any memory of their previous might.

They became the first of the Dragon Kings.

Despite herself, Valea listened in fascination. Her father had made some conjectures as to the origins of the drake lords, who had appeared quickly and as if out of nowhere, but even he had not quite made this connection as far as she knew.

"And you?" the enchantress asked.

"Spell after spell I used to keep me as I was. I feared even dying, certain that doing so would only surrender me to the land. Then, I thought at last I had the ultimate spell, one that would give me immortality and make me impervious to whatever the land desired-but in my eagerness, I failed to consider its interference in that spell."

His miscast attempt had resulted in a disaster which had destroyed a mountain and its surroundings for miles in every direction. Gerrod had felt as if ripped in twain. He had blacked out, then awoke in what seemed an endless haze. There he had drifted for what he likened to an eternity.

"Until that point when they claimed me."

They brought him before them, told him that he had died-and yet had not. They then revealed to him that part of his being that remained alive and how it sought to complete itself time and time again. He watched as his shadow self-who in mockery all too close to the truth had named itself Shade-wreaked carnage in one lifetime and then sought to pay rest.i.tution in the next. For a time, the Lords of the Dead let him watch the fruitless struggle of Shade as he attempted over and over-either when good or evil-to make himself whole. That, however, could never be, for he unwittingly lacked the one component that would have made it possible.

His true self.

"Shade, the Shade you know, can never be redeemed. He is not a whole creature, not even a true being . . . and so he is ever doomed to failure."

Valea wanted to deny that. Her own father and, especially, Darkhorse had regaled her with tales of Shade's sacrifices when he had been of better nature. Even if that had not been enough, she had experienced Galani's memories and knew what the elf had read within the warlock. The pa.s.sion, the love, that the elf maiden had carried for Shade could not have been directed at a thing not wholly real. Gerrod had to be wrong . . .

But then . . . who would know better than him?

"What-what exactly do they want you to do?"

For a ghost, he gave a very real grunt. "I must merely reclaim what is mine. I am the true self. I have always been. When we touch, my will shall engulf his. He has no choice in the matter. Everything will be set to rights. He is but a body devoid of a true soul. I am the true soul and I will at last have my body again."

"And all the lives that he has led, for good or ill?"

Gerrod turned from her. "Forgotten. Known only to legends and history. I want nothing of them, for they're no part of me."

It all sounded too much like a slaying to Valea. Shade was a separate life from Gerrod, of that she felt certain. He had committed evil, yes, but had done so much good. More to the point, he had loved and no mere sh.e.l.l could do that. What Galani had exhibited had been returned.

"It's abominable! You can't do it!"

"I must do it," he replied without looking. "For Sharissa-"

She suddenly felt filled with a contempt for him, despite his predicament. "I've gleaned enough to understand your desire there! You lost her once, I'm thinking, and I doubt this path will guide you any better! Besides, what use is regaining your life when she's still dead?"

The ghost wavered, becoming translucent for the first time. Valea thought he intended to vanish, then recalled that he could not. "She will live again . . ."

His words struck her hard, for she immediately understood their meaning. "You're talking about me."

"You are her already. You simply don't remember any more. When Sharissa enters you, she will dominate. You will cease and she will walk the earth once more."

He sounded so horribly certain that Valea could not help but believe him. "And you want this . . ."

Gerrod said nothing.

After a drawn-out silence, the enchantress shook her head. "I won't just stand here waiting for it to happen."

"It's all already in play. Ephraim's planned long for this. You are here. Shade is out there. Even your father and the black beast he travels with have been taken into account. Ephraim was quite willing to talk of his work and its inevitable success."

"My father is out there? And Darkhorse, too?"

"Yes."

Valea smiled. "Then the Lords are doomed to defeat!"

Her confident statement was met by a look of pity. "They're not alone out there, my lady. You forget whose domain this is. As I await Shade, others await them."

"Who?"

"For the one called Darkhorse, that which created him. For your father . . . your grandfather . . ." Gerrod ignored her astounded and suddenly fearful expression. "And as I and Sharissa have been promised, Azran Bedlam and the thing called Yureel have been offered their lives . . ."

"COME, COME, HAVE you nothing to say to your dear father?"

"Several things come to mind," Cabe retorted, his hands balling into fists. "I doubt you'd want to hear them."

The silver-and-black-haired figure smiled malevolently. "A pity I was never given the opportunity to raise you properly! Respect is the first lesson you would've been taught."

"Respect?" blurted the younger spellcaster. "From the man who slew his brother, killed his wife-my mother-and betrayed his own father and humanity's chance to escape the Dragon Kings?"

Azran's own expression hardened. "I was betrayed first! My due was not given to me!"

"I thank the day Grandfather managed to steal me away . . ."

"He's probably about here somewhere," Cabe's father sneered. "Should there be anything left of you when I take your body, perhaps the pair of you can have a long, long philosophical discussion . . ."

Azran's arms stretched forth, twisting far beyond what should have been their limits. His act caught Cabe by surprise, who, despite knowing that his father was a ghost, had still placed upon Azran the limitations of flesh and bone.

As the foul phantasm's elongated fingers touched him, Cabe felt a chill in his heart and a growing sense that he was being smothered. Azran's horrific face filled his eyes and he felt his father intruding in his mind. The fingers probed deep and Cabe's soul seemed to rip, as if a piece of it had been torn away.

You are the flesh of my flesh, my son . . . it's only proper you give something back to your father . . .

But Cabe had no intention of granting Azran anything. He had not come to the dread realm without considering that he might face its ghosts. He also had his past encounter with Azran's grasping spirit to serve him and, aware of the Lords' perverse nature, had a.s.sumed that he might confront his father at some point.

Cabe's hand slipped into a pouch at his belt. Azran sensed what he planned and tried to freeze the wizard in place by burrowing deeper into his soul. With a cry, Cabe fought the pain and clutched tight the object he had been seeking.

He tore it from the pouch and held it toward the ghost of his father. Azran's face distorted, becoming a thing of rotting flesh and monstrous evil.

"Now is that any way to treat your father?" the ghoul mocked.

Cabe held out his hand. The object, a tiny box of rich, quicksilver wood-elfwood-opened.

A tremendous wind sucked in Azran's ghost. The dead sorcerer howled as he fought in vain to escape it. He tightened his hold on Cabe's soul-almost taking his son with him-but the wizard managed to keep his position.

And then-just like that-Azran Bedlam disappeared into the box. The lid shut tight and the crack flared golden as Cabe's creation sealed itself.

"It's exactly the way to treat you," Cabe muttered to the magical container. He had fas.h.i.+oned it after artifacts left behind by the Vraad, one of which had been used in the past to trap Darkhorse.

He had not expected Azran to fall so readily, but had no complaints that it had turned out that way. Still, the box would not hold even his father's spirit for very long and so Cabe had to hurry. He had no idea what had happened to Darkhorse and while he feared for the eternal, Cabe knew that he had to go after the one who mattered most to him . . . Valea.

Silently asking Darkhorse's forgiveness even though he knew that the shadow steed would have urged him to the same course, the wizard eyed the box. It vanished immediately, cast out by Cabe to some random part of the necromancers' realm. He did not want to risk carrying Azran's sinister spirit with him, the dead sorcerer's will so strong it might influence Cabe's mind even when trapped.

As he looked up from his task, the wizard stared. The haze had thinned again with Azran's defeat and in the distance stood the only structure he had so far seen. That it was a castle only verified what he already knew. The Lords of the Dead were not far-which meant that neither was Valea.

Cabe started walking again.

VIII.

DARKHORSE FELT YUREEL invade his essence. The fear that had existed for a thousand mortal lives swelled. He had thought himself rid of such horrors when he and the others had trapped his twin, and Yureel, rather than be cast out forever into the Void, had destroyed himself. Darkhorse had never told his friends how much of a relief that had truly been for him.

Now it appeared he would yet be devoured . . .

But how could this be? As Darkhorse had proclaimed, Yureel had no soul, not in the sense that it was utilized by mortals. The pair were creatures of pure energy, pure magic. They no more had souls than did rocks.

The Lords of the Dead had, therefore, not taken the same thing from Yureel that they had from others. The only way by which Yureel could be here was if the necromancers had recovered some fragment of his essence that had not been destroyed . . .

And that knowledge fueled Darkhorse's resolve. Whole, Yureel might have been too much for him. but if much of what battled the stallion was a construct of the Lords, then the opposite was true.

He steeled himself and fought Yureel's invasion to a standstill. As the two struggled, Darkhorse secretly probed, seeking the key to the truth.

There! In the midst of the blob that was his foe, he found the only true bit of Yureel. It pulsated like a sinister black heart, malevolence radiating from it.

"Aaargh!" Even as he located the true Yureel, it attacked, literally devouring part of him. The loss was minuscule, but served as a vicious reminder of what could happen.

A brilliant sunburst surrounded Darkhorse as he defended himself. It burned away the false bits of his twin, forcing what was left to quickly withdraw into itself. Darkhorse, however, did not relent. He next burned away the haze surrounding them, shedding light for perhaps the first time on this one part of the necromancers' dire realm.

Yureel suddenly exploded.

Caught by surprise, Darkhorse lost control of his spell. As it faded, he was inundated by a downpour of what had once been his adversary. Black splotches struck him everywhere, burning him even when the eternal sought to make himself incorporeal.

But at last, Darkhorse shook off the last desperate attack. The blotches moved swiftly around the landscape, gradually gathering together. Restoring himself to his full stallion form, Darkhorse leapt from spot to spot, stomping on each blotch and eradicating it. The bits of Yureel began scurrying here and there in an attempt to confuse him, but the shadow steed hunted them down wherever he saw them.