Legends of the Dragonrealm: Volume 04

by Richard A. Knaak

  Wellen knew he would get no answers if he chose to question Shade about his past. It might be that the warlock barely remembered his own history.

  As he completed his meal, something else began to nag at the scholar, something concerning the cavern. Wellen looked up and scanned the area, ignoring Shade's suddenly stiffening posture. What was it about this place . . .?

  For the first time, he realized that he could see nothing of the cavern, save the walls, the throne, and the table. .. and the last only because the warlock had walked over to it. Every time Bedlam sought to focus on an object, he found his eyes turning away and seeking some view of less significance. With concentration, he was able to make out a series of tables, but what lay upon them, the curious explorer could not say.

  "So you pierce the mists," his gray, nebulous host commented. "So there is a bit of Dru within you after all."

  At the mention of the last, Wellen lost concentration. The cavern once more became a place of the almost-seen, the shadowlands. He hardly cared. Twice, perhaps more, Shade had made mention of the name "Dru." "Do you speak of Lord Drazeree?"

  "Drazeree? Lord?" Shade chuckled. It was a dry sound, as if the warlock had only just rediscovered it now. "I speak of things long dead, my friend. I speak of myself and others."

  A typical Shade answer, Wellen was realizing. There was no point in pursuing the matter. His speculations would have to remain just that. Still, if this warlock was what he claimed, a contemporary of the legendary lord, would that not make him over . . .

  The confused scholar shook his head. No one could live so long.

  Shade surprised him then by reaching up and pulling back his hood.

  Perhaps, he amended, one could live so long!

  From a distance, the warlock would have resembled an elder scholar, a man nearing the end of his term, but not yet ready to give up the fight. There was strength there, incredible strength. In any other being, that would have been all Wellen noticed . . . if not for the fact that Shade's skin looked so dry, he wondered whether it would turn to powder at his touch.

  It was the skin of a man who should have been dead, but was not.

  Tearing his gaze from the stretched, parchment skin, he met the eyes of the sorcerer. Too late, Wellen Bedlam wished he had not abandoned his previous view. The eyes of Shade were crystalline. Not eyes created from crystal, but actual ones like Wellen's own that merely exhibited perfectly the attributes of gems.

  If the eyes were the mirror of the soul, then the warlock no longer suffered the existence of the latter. Outside, he might still live; inside, he had died long, long ago.

  Why the words that came then should choose this moment to be blurted out was a question the explorer would wonder later, but Wellen suddenly found himself asking, "What do you plan to do with me?"

  Questions like that had been the death knell of many a character in the plays the scholar had enjoyed back home. Under present circumstances, it would have hardly been surprising to find real life similar.

  Again, the dry chuckle. Shade smiled, but it was forced, as if it, too, had only now been rediscovered and its true use still uncertain to the hermitic spellcaster. "I plan to help you. . . if you choose to help me."

  He was acting much more lucid, but Wellen was hardly encouraged by that. What would a warlock of his host's obvious abilities need with a mortal who could only dream of casting spells? "I can think of no way that I would be of use to you," Wellen admitted, knowing he might very well be throwing away his life but unable to lie under present circumstances. "I ask again; what do you plan to do with me?"

  Shade walked slowly about the cavern, and as he walked, the chamber grew more distinct. Tables and alchemical equipment filled the chamber. Crystalline artifacts flowed with power. Diagrams and patterns that Bedlam had never come across before were hewed into the very stone. The scholar within Wellen desperately wanted to inspect each and every artifact and experiment. He wondered why the warlock would be willing to reveal so much. Either he was extending his trust to his guest or he had no fear that anything Wellen did would be a danger to him.

  "When I saw you . . . and I came to realize how lost my mind was then . . . I thought you another, a man of great courage and strength." The hooded warlock paused and stared at one of the blank cavern walls. He whispered something, a name, Wellen believed, then seemed to recall himself. "A man of ingenuity and determination. A man who could help me with a situation that prevents me from achieving my goal."

  "And that is?" Daring the nebulous figure's wrath, the scholar purposely phrased his question so that it might be referring to either the problem or the goal.

  The crystalline eyes narrowed and focused on Wellen as the warlock turned to him. Wellen had never thought to stare Death in the face before, but surely here was the closest earthly equivalent.

  "You know as well as I. Your reason for journeying here was too transparent. I know the true reason was carefully buried within the folds of your mind." The crystalline eyes seemed to burn. "I know that you've come for the book."

  "What book?"

  Shade frowned, causing Wellen to fear that the warlock thought he was being patronized. "You know its appearance. A massive tome with a stylized dragon on the cover. It is possibly green, though it may be another color. It is kept there by a gnome who is the only one who knows the way in and out."

  The scholar hesitated, but finally asked the next logical question. "In and out of what?"

  A sigh. "Beyond the western edge of the hills lies another field like the one in which you were . . ." Shade shrugged and let the last part hang. "In this field is a single structure, a five-walled place with neither doors nor windows."

  The curious explorer wanted to ask what purpose was served by such a place, but he suspected that the gray warlock would not care for yet another interruption at this juncture.

  "The tome lies within. The gnome has guarded it jealously for . . ." Glittering eyes blinked and Shade seemed to lose track of his present surroundings for a time. At last he shook himself and finished, " . . . for as long as I can recall."

  "I know nothing about any book, gnome, or bizarre structure sitting out in the middle of nowhere," Wellen responded in flat tones. He took a step toward his host. "I came here only because I had grown up on legends of such a land. I—"

  "Ridiculous." For the warlock, there seemed to be no answer but his own that would satisfy. He cut off yet another attempt by Wellen to explain, then slowly returned to the throne that he had been seated in when the scholar had first awakened. Shade pulled the hood back over his head, all but obscuring the upper half of his visage, and sat down again. His breathing was quick and short.

  "We have . . . things to discuss . . . you and I. The book, your . . . being here, and what you are."

  "What I am?"

  The shadowy spellcaster settled back, seeming to sink into the very rock. "What the lands have made you . . . what sort of power . . . and, more important, what sort of monstrosity . . . hides within you . . . that I do not see."

  The tone was cool, almost indifferent, but Wellen read a well-nurtured fear behind it, one the spectral sorcerer had carried for very, very long. It concerned not just his mortality, though that was a part of it, but something more, something at least equally important. He hoped he would not remain with the warlock long enough to find out. Shade was as dangerous to Wellen as the dragon, and the fear within the ancient figure might one day prove too much.

  A mad man with great power was a man to be feared.

  He dared to respond, not wanting Shade to think that his silence was an acknowledgment of the accuracy of the warlock's dark statement. "I'm no monster. I'm as human as anybody."

  At that, the master warlock did laugh, but laugh so that Wellen feared for his existence. Only madness, never humor, tinged the laughter of his host. Bedlam had thought the chuckle dry and unnerving; the laugh made him wish to find a place to bury himself.

  From the dark within his hood, the eye
s of Shade gleamed. Though the cloaked figure had not moved in the slightest, it was as if he loomed directly over Wellen, so forceful was his presence. "Nobody is human, anymore!" he informed his anxious guest, the authority in his voice almost making his words believable. "Nobody on this forsaken world is human anymore, save for me! The lands have changed you all, no matter how you might appear!"

  As if punctuating his insane words, a roar echoed throughout the cavern. The scholar looked about, trying to find the source and cursing himself for being impotent against the chaos around him.

  The roar was followed by another and then another. WeIlen readily identified their source, the knowledge turning him as pale as ivory. He had heard dragons roar before.

  "Pay them no mind," Shade commented in disdain, acting as if he had completely forgotten his outburst. "They often grow lively this time of day. Merely the clan males reaffirming their status with one another."

  "Dragons?" Wellen stared wide-eyed at his host. "There are dragons here?" What sort of fool lived among dragons, especially ones like the horror that had killed his men.

  "They never come this deep into the caverns. They fear the older magics." This satisfied the warlock, but not the scholar.

  "You live beneath dragons?" Visions of the monstrosity in the air made the explorer shake. What if they chose now to start descending into this chamber?

  "I live beneath the foremost of the dragon clans," Shade corrected him. Straightening just a bit, the warlock used his hands to indicate the entire cavern. "Welcome to the interior of Kivan Grath, emperor of the vast and treacherous Tyber Mountains!" The eyes glittered again, then faded into the darkness that was so much a part of Shade. "A most appropriate place, I think, for the dwellings of the Dragon Emperor. . . don't you agree?"

  Wellen neither agreed nor disagreed with the warlock. He could only stand, stare, and once more curse the silver streak in his hair that should have promised so much but instead only mocked his continual helplessness.

  Chapter Six

  Amidst the clutter, the gnome worked feverishly. Tables and shelves filled the tiny room that he had set aside for his research and upon each table and shelf were notes, discarded experiments, and miscellaneous artifacts that he had either created or located over the years. Once every hundred years or so, he cleared everything away in order to make room for more.

  At the moment, the gnarled spellcaster was completing his notes. The feather pen, animated by his abilities, danced about the sheet of paper, scribbling down its master's every notion as he thought it. When that sheet was filled, the pen would lift and the paper would fly off to join those which had preceded it. The pile was already several dozen sheets high. A new piece landed below the quill, which dropped down and hurriedly resumed its momentous task. Even as swift as it was, the pen had to work hard to keep pace with the gnome's thoughts.

  Time, be it measured in hours or days, meant nothing to him when he worked. He had long diverged from his original course, that being the possible explanation for the weak assault by the potentially deadly night creature controlled by the Lords of the Dead. When he had thought about that particular situation at all .. . and that had been rare. . . the gnome had decided that the attack was a ploy and that his adversaries had hooked a more subtle spell to his person. Locating it had been child's play. In the end, the short mage had chosen to leave it attached; while they watched him, he watched them. Besides, they now only saw what he permitted them to see.

  The gnome had been at this game much too long to be taken in by a trick such as this. Once again, he marveled at his own brilliance.

  "End," he abruptly informed the pen. It straightened, shifted to one side of the sheet it had been writing on, and laid down. He stretched out a hand toward the pile of papers, which leaped to him. With his free hand, he indicated an uncluttered spot on the table.

  A book materialized on that spot. It was green, or perhaps red, or perhaps any of a number of colors, depending on how one looked at it. On the front was a stylized dragon.

  Placing the sheets to the right of the tome, the wizened figure took hold of the book and carefully turned the cover over.

  The front page was blank. Taking the first sheet of notes in one hand and the quill in the other, the gnome began to write. This part he always did by hand, for this would be the final version of his research, and because of that he liked to savor each and every word.

  So used to this task, he finished the first page in only a little more than a minute. He pulled the pen back and allowed the page to turn itself.

  A tug in his mind warned him that someone had activated the watcher spell planted during the attack. The gnome carelessly released a spell of his own, one which would give the faraway observers something to interest them. This time it would be him in the midst of some suitably brilliant experiment. Of course, if they tried to follow his work, their own experiment would somehow go awry. He doubted they would watch for that long, however. They were only concerned with books.

  Finished with the second page, he began work on the third. The thrill of his own brilliant discoveries urged him on and on with his writing. That suited him just fine.

  After all, he had an entire book to fill.

  They stood atop the peak of one of the Tyber Mountains, Shade observing the land below and beyond and Wellen observing that he was going to freeze to death if he did not stumble to it first. The two of them were here, apparently, because the master warlock simply liked the view.

  A day had passed since Wellen had first woken in the cavern. The spellcaster had taken him to this place once before, shortly after his talk of how all those around him were monsters in disguise. He had still not yet explained that insane statement, nor had he "decided" about Wellen himself, who was supposed to be just as monstrous as the rest of humanity. The scholar chose not to bring up the subject, fearing it would only be detrimental to his own chances. There was so much he already dared not bring up. Shade was nothing if not mercurial; he brought up and dropped subjects as rapidly as he breathed.

  "Here is your kingdom, Father," the shadowy figure whispered.

  Wellen had already learned to pretend to ignore these various comments that his host muttered. Shade lived half in another world and time. He talked of and to a vast panorama of folk, many of them apparently related to him. The scholar had already counted five certain brothers and two more likely candidates. None of the names were familiar to him save Dru, which he believed must be the basis for Lord Drazeree, and another that sounded like Sharissa, the legendary lord's daughter.

  If it were not all simply a case of madness, then the cloth- enshrouded figure beside him was many, many millennia old.

  Shade turned from his musings and observed his hapless companion. "You should clothe yourself better."

  "I told you that I have no power of my own!" Wellen had long gone beyond the point of civility where this question was concerned. Try as he might, he could not convince the other that the silver streak was only a mistake, not a sign of greatness.

  "Very well, if you insist." Without so much as a negligible wave of a hand, Shade clothed Wellen in a furred cloak with hood. "Thank you," Bedlam replied, his voice on edge. The warlock missed his sarcasm. "Not at all."

  "Are we through here?"

  "A moment more."

  Knowing protest was futile, Wellen tried to occupy his thoughts. He had been awash with relief when he had been told they would be leaving the caverns, not to mention the drakes who lived above, but that relief had died quickly when the scholar had learned where the two of them were headed. Worse yet, Wellen, who had never experienced teleportation, nearly lost his meal upon arrival. It was not the trip itself, which had been so swift that he had missed it by blinking, but rather the abruptness. To find himself going from the depths of a cavern to the precarious heights of a mountain peak had nearly been too much. He was disgusted with his weaknesses.

  Despite having dropped the subject, it was obvious Shade still believed that he
was here to obtain the mysterious dragon tome. All of Wellen's protests had gone unheeded. He knew that he could have opened his mind to the warlock, but to Bedlam his mind was the only private place he had left, and the sanctity of that was not something he was ready to give up. Besides, the warlock would have likely claimed his thoughts all false, the product of a clever spellcaster like himself.

  So far, he did not know why his companion wanted the tome, but Wellen was beginning to suspect it had to do with the pale warlock's incredible age, since that seemed the one topic Shade continued to recall. What part the book played was still a question whose answer or, quite possibly, answers, evaded the scholar.

  "Do you hear them?"

  Wellen could hear nothing but the wind howling.

  "They'll not see us, of course, not unless I will it. My power is forever beyond them now that they've changed. I reestablished the link to Nimth, only this time no one noticed it because I was so much more careful." Shade had mentioned the place called Nimth before, but always talked of it as if it existed elsewhere. Several scholars and spellcasters had begun to debate about worlds beyond this one and the emptiness termed the Void. The latter was a realm of nothingness which those who used certain types of teleportation passed through before arriving at their destinations.

  While much of what Shade said had little bearing on what Wellen knew or understood, there were always a few tidbits that made the younger man pay fairly close attention. One was the status of the legendary Dragonrealm. Wellen had been horrified to discover that the old saying was more than true. Not only were there dragons here, but many of them were intelligent, such as the one that had devastated the column and the many who lived in the upper caverns of Kivan Grath. Worse yet . . . they ruled the entire continent!

  "We have spent enough time here," the gray warlock suddenly announced.

  Wellen let out a gasp. The two of them were now standing on a small hill overlooking a town of some sort. The shaking scholar was surprised to see people in the distance, apparently unconcerned about the fact that they lived in a land ruled by monsters.