The dwarf continued to eye Shade, as if expecting something that Shade himself did not. “The stone has its uses, it seems.”
“The stone did this?” Shade asked doubtfully.
“It—helped.”
The sorcerer frowned. “And what else did it do?” Shade tapped his chest where the medallion hung. “Or should I ask what else did you do, drake lord?”
The dwarf continued to grin even as he suddenly stretched taller and wider. The grin took on a carnivorous appearance and the eyes narrowed even as they stretched wider. All semblance of the dwarf fell away . . . and the Crystal Dragon, his form more glittering than the icy cavern, stood before the pair.
“The dwarves were cunning and very protective of this last bit, this tiny piece of refuse,” the Dragon King commented in perfect Common. “It escaped the notice of even their masters, the founding race, who had sought all of this substance for their grandest creation.”
“The tower . . . ,” breathed Shade, for the moment so caught up in this revelation that he forgot his anger. “The Tower of the Phoenix . . .”
Palm open before him, the Crystal Dragon approached. Even before the two could see what he held, an array of fantastic, ever-shifting colors radiated from the gauntleted hand. “The dwarves, they call it Var’Gwalimoridor’Dura in the old tongue. A bastardization, I believe, of the founders’ own word for it. Transsslated, it means ‘the Shining Egg.’”
The stone was barely large enough to even be called a pebble. Had it been grey or any normal color, it would have been easily lost in nearly any landscape. But the utter iridescence of the stone, iridescence that made the finest pearl a piece of rock by comparison, made even Shade gape in wonder.
“It’s—so—beautiful,” Valea managed to say. She reached out to touch it, but even though the Crystal Dragon did not prevent her, the enchantress held back at the end. Shade could understand her reaction; he, too, wanted to grab hold of the stone, but his awe was so great that he could do no more than look at it for a moment at a time.
“You came ssso very clossse,” said the drake lord, his excitement finally growing so great that he could not control his speech. “You were ssso good a friend to the dwarvesss when Iron sssought their realm that their king nearly granted you a brief ussse of thisss.”
The memories flowed through Shade. He and the king had been close friends. Shade had defended the dwarves and because of that had learned about the stone. The dwarves, created to serve the founders, had uncovered the unique vein while digging for other precious elements their master utilized for their magical arts. Even the founders had never known anything so astounding. They had driven the dwarves hard, seeking every bit of the vein and then making their servants dig deeper and deeper in the hopes of finding more.
The dwarves never knew what their lords wanted with the substance, only that the founders’ civilization had already begun to fade and that there were great efforts to try to avert its extinction.
By the time of the last dwarven king, there remained no true memory, no written record, of those who had formed them through the magical arts. Like all other races, the dwarves had some tiny bit of the founders’ essence in them, but, unlike the Seekers, the Vraad, or the Quel, they had never been seen as the intended heirs.
Having seen the dwarves’ resilience, Shade wondered if the supposedly infallible founders had been blind.
The shimmering continued to astonish the pair. Only when the Dragon King shut his palm did both Shade and Valea stir.
“It took many centuriesss to discover what you had already forgotten,” the Crystal Dragon commented to Shade. “This. The only piece not taken by the founders. The only tie we have to the tower.”
“They made the tower from this,” Shade recalled finally. “For what they hoped to achieve, it was the perfect conduit.”
“We can use this to ssseek out the tower.”
“For what purpose?” Valea asked.
The other two looked at her. The Crystal Dragon let out a hiss. “She isss not a part of this.”
“You made her a part of this,” snapped the sorcerer. He returned his attention to Valea. “I hope to deal with my . . . situation.”
“I understand that. What do you plan to do with this tower?” she asked the drake lord.
At first, the Dragon King did not answer, then he said, “Do you recall the well-timed tremor that nearly sssent what remained of the cavern down upon all of usss?”
“I thought that was your doing.”
“And why would I do ssso foolish a thing? The land is to blame for that catastrophe! The land itssself sought to crush us beneath tons of rock and forever bury the one object that can lead us to our goal!”
Valea looked to Shade, who nodded. Either she would believe them or think them both mad.
Two not entirely divergent paths, the sorcerer thought ruefully. This quest had driven him beyond sanity during more than one lifetime, even if all the drake lord said was true.
“The land is trying to kill us,” the enchantress finally said, seeking further confirmation of the amazing suggestion.
The Crystal Dragon went on with some exasperation. “Thisss world is under threat . . . from thisss world. The land seeks to change usss asss it ssseesss fit! If we ssstill do not pleassse it, it pushesss usss aside! We mussst put an end to that or the cycle of one failed race after another will continue . . .”
Valea shook her head, but her face indicated her acceptance at last. “The more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve heard that said before. From my father.” Valea hesitated. “But where does the tower fit into that?”
“When the founders devised their grand plan to create a series of potential successors, they set about designing two points of control,” Shade said.
“Two points?” hissed the Dragon King, suddenly distrusting. “We have not talked of a sssecond point.”
“I only discovered it when I entered the Gryphon’s mind in search of other knowledge.”
“The Gryphon!” the enchantress exclaimed. “I’d forgotten what you were doing when I found you! How could you? We don’t know if he’s even recovered!”
The odd feeling of shame Shade had previously felt when he disappointed her returned. “He will.”
“Never mind such trivialities,” snapped the Crystal Dragon. “Tell me of this other point.”
“The Gryphon recalls it as existing in a place called the Dream Lands. The point itself is called Sirvak Dragoth. There were images of various rooms and the reflections of the last of the founders as they prepared themselves for their part in the grand transformation.”
“So the tower isss across the sea? Thisss goes againssst all—”
“I never said that,” Shade replied with some satisfaction at the drake lord’s momentary consternation. “Yes, that was an integral point, but for the entire spell to work, for the founders to imbue the land—the world, I should say—with their essence, they had to have another major point in this land. In fact, they could not have succeeded without this one. Sirvak Dragoth by itself would have failed utterly.”
“Why, sssorcerer?”
“Because of what you hold in your hand . . . and if you have calculated the levels of power in the lines of force that crisscross everything, as I have through a thousand lifetimes and more, you will see that the nexus of any spell also involving this Sirvak Dragoth must be somewhere on this continent.”
He waited, knowing the question that at least one of them would ask. Shade found himself pleased that it was Cabe Bedlam’s daughter who did so first.
“Do you know where?”
The sorcerer answered with another question, this directed at his ally. “Why are we here in the Wastes?”
“The Ice Dragon, too, sought out the tower, but for the purpose of the Dragonrealm’s destruction. He did not find it, but he did discover something else. Come.”
The Dragon King led them into the passage from which he had come. A short distance later, they
entered a smaller chamber that had managed to survive more intact. Inside and frozen in ice were an array of artifacts of various size and design, many of them clearly from previous races that had ruled the land. Shade recognized Seeker and Quel work, among others.
There were also creatures of various sorts, fantastical creatures, many of which even the sorcerer could not identify. Shade wondered if the Ice Dragon had dealt with an outside source, perhaps even the wolf raiders, to procure some of his collection.
And then, the sorcerer saw the body.
Valea raised a hand toward the figure, but Shade brought it down. This was not some new guardian but rather simply a gruesome addition to the rest of what they saw here.
Yet, for Shade, the sight of it brought forth nightmares he had long forgotten, nightmares that multiplied a hundred times over. Shaking his head, he stepped back from the terrifying sight.
“Faceless . . . ,” the sorcerer whispered in disbelief, caught up in the far, far past. “Faceless . . . a perfect . . . empty vessel, they said . . .”
Indeed, not only was the face missing, but the head itself lacked any features whatsoever. There were not even ear holes or a mouth. The body itself was devoid of anything marking it as either male or female. To any onlooker, it was as if someone had carved the basic structure of a human, then given up on creating details.
But Shade knew well from where those details would have come. He had only just spoken of these . . . things to Valea a short time ago in the dwarven chamber they had occupied while waiting.
“Do you know what it isss?” asked the Crystal Dragon in a tone that indicated he knew what lay sealed in the ice.
Shade did. Your grand plan still haunts us to this day, Father! he thought mockingly.
It was one of the living shells created by the Vraad to house their souls—their ka—after their journey from their ruined home of Nimth to what would someday be called the Dragonrealm.
The same living shells—created from dragon flesh—that had consumed the souls of those Vraad, especially the great Tezerenee, and in the process made of them the first Dragon Kings . . .
VALEA SAW THE FEAR—fear—in Shade’s eyes. The thing in the ice was grotesque, even frightening, but Shade stared at it with deep recognition.
His brief exclamation about its being faceless gave her a hint as to why it frightened him so. She remembered his tale of the bodies his people had created. This could only be one of them.
She stared at it again and something about it disturbed her. It was supposed to be an empty shell, but somehow Valea felt as if this was more than that. Even now, there was a presence about it that spoke of an intelligence.
What happened back then? Valea wondered. Were all the shells taken by the Vraad? Did they all become drakes or did something else happen, too?
“Why have you shown us this?” Shade suddenly demanded of the Dragon King. “For what purpose?”
“You know what it isss,” the Crystal Dragon replied. “And the reason I show it to you is because the stone led me directly to it.”
“But why?” Valea asked, feeling frustrated at obviously knowing far less than either of her companions.
The drake lord chuckled darkly. “An interesting question.”
He said no more. The enchantress glared at him. The Dragon King continued to eye Shade, as if savoring the sorcerer’s consternation. Valea almost felt as if there was something personal involved.
“If we are done with this place, then let us depart,” snapped Shade. To the Dragon King, he added, “All three of us are familiar with like drawing to like. We have the stone; it should lead us to the tower.”
“It should. It will require the efforts of all three of usss, though.”
The occasional sibilance was the only sign that the Crystal Dragon was not quite as confident as he pretended. Valea found that both comforting and troublesome.
Then what he said sank in more. “You need me. You probably knew that from the start!”
He continued to ignore her. “What else did you learn from the Gryphon, sssorcerer?”
Shade seemed to understand exactly what he meant. “He wasn’t born, not in the proper sense. He was designed.”
Valea had heard none of this from her father nor from the Gryphon himself. The idea sounded impossible, and yet she listened nonetheless.
Shade went on. “Three components. I don’t know the reason. That was too muddled—”
“And utterly irrelevant.”
The hooded spellcaster shrugged. “From the birds of the air one part was drawn. From the powerful feline hunters of the land, the second was drawn.” Shade spoke as if repeating a litany that someone else had written. “But the third part, integral to whatever plan there was, demanded one of them.”
The reptilian eyes burned with anticipation, then impatience when Shade did not immediately continue. “Go on! Sssay it!” He spun to the side and thrust a hand toward the macabre corpse. “Say it!”
“One of them. One of the Faceless Ones . . .”
The declaration brought a hiss of triumph from the drake lord. Valea took a moment longer to digest what she had heard. The Gryphon not only had some tie to this unsettling corpse, a part of him had been one.
As a child, she had imagined a hundred legends concerning the fabled ruler’s origins, but even the enchantress admitted that she could not have divined such a startling truth. Valea stared at the corpse anew, seeing even more to it than before.
Help . . .
It was all Valea could do to keep from jumping. Fortunately, Shade and the Dragon King were now in some intense discussion. At the moment, though, the enchantress did not care about that. Instead, she eyed the faceless form, trying to determine if she had imagined the cry felt in her mind.
Help . . .
Valea’s frown deepened. More focused on the cry, she realized that it had not come from the body. Rather, it was from another direction.
Slowly, she surreptitiously studied the two males. Whatever had called out to her had done so from their general direction.
Help . . . , it repeated.
There was a familiarity about it, Valea realized. The call was so faint that she could not conclude more save that it came from very near the pair . . . and yet from far, far away.
“It isss settled, then,” the Crystal Dragon announced, breaking her concentration. Valea tried to regain the call but could not.
“If it must be.” Shade shook his head, very bothered by something. He looked the Dragon King over. “But while we may pass as we are—providing the medallion doesn’t fail again—you will have to go as something less conspicuous, oh drake lord. Something even less conspicuous than a dwarf, for that matter.”
In response, the Crystal Dragon seemed to shift form. Only belatedly did Valea understand that, like the dwarf, this was not a true transformation but rather an illusion. Even Dragon Kings were limited to their true shapes and the scaled knight forms such as the one before her.
But the Crystal Dragon’s illusion was a very detailed one, obviously defined through much prior practice. He did not shrink as much as he had when pretending to be a dwarf. Instead, a human guise took hold. Even then, the drake lord could not help choosing that of a warrior, for the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man he became could have had no other calling. A dusky travel cloak only partly obscured a worn breastplate. A sword—made useful enough by the drake’s magic, if necessary—hung in a weathered scabbard.
The Crystal Dragon clutched the stone in a hand now seemingly covered in a gauntlet of steel. A trim black beard decorated a sturdy face. The sharp eyes did not glitter with crystal, but somehow they were still those of the Dragon King, at least to Valea.
“Will this do?” asked the drake lord, both his new voice and his pronunciation not at all like what they knew.
There was no immediate response from Shade. He had an odd expression on his face, one that Valea could not fathom. It was there for perhaps the space of a breath before the so
rcerer erased all emotion. “It will do.”
“Where are we going?” Valea asked, once again feeling as if something was going on that only she had no idea about.
“Talak,” Shade answered.
She had expected a number of other places, even Kivan Grath, for that matter, but not Talak. “Why there?”
“Because that is where the stone pulls,” the Crystal Dragon interjected impatiently. “Now, may we go?”
Shade looked to Valea, who reluctantly nodded. She would have liked to alert her father and mother about all that was going on but had already learned from past attempts that the Crystal Dragon’s spell on her also muted her link to her parents.
With little choice but also growing curiosity about where this all would lead, the enchantress joined the duo in their casting. The stone, the fragment of the “phoenix’s egg,” as she thought of it, shimmered. Its iridescence spread beyond its physical form and seemed to reach toward what she knew was the south.
Help . . . Valea . . .
The renewed cry almost made her lose her focus. Fortunately, neither Shade nor the Dragon King noticed. Yet, as the trio vanished, Valea’s last thoughts remained on that cry. She realized at last why it sounded familiar; it was Darkhorse’s cry.
And, more significantly, it came from very nearby. In fact . . . she now knew, from very near the vicinity . . . of the Crystal Dragon.
XVI
SACRIFICE
ERINI COULD NOT cast a spell keeping track of her husband’s well-being, but she had other ways to monitor him. Melicard carried with him a small brooch with her cameo on it. The king generally kept it in a pouch at his side. He likely suspected that it had some spellwork on it, but since nothing could physically affect his person, probably did not pay the favor much mind.
But now, even from a distance, that tiny bauble all but shrieked in her mind.
The enchantress immediately checked on the security of her children, then concentrated on where she believed the king was currently located.
She materialized far ahead of the column just in time to see a red dragon vanish into the clouds. Quickly correcting her estimate, the queen transported herself closer to the front ranks.
Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade Page 18