Legends of the Dragonrealm: Volume 04

by Richard A. Knaak

  Someone whispered.

  He turned in the saddle, seeking the speaker, only to be snared by another voice coming from the opposite direction. Both spoke unintelligibly, but with tones of urgency.

  A pale figure moved through the trees, seemingly unconcerned by either the downpour or the lightning. The knight leaned forward, squinting. It took Evan a moment to recognize the fur-clad form of an ax-man from Tepis—a warrior from the battle some two centuries before. The fur had been stained by something dark and the figure’s head wobbled as if not entirely attached. No living being this, but rather some specter wandering the earth.

  Despite his mount’s disagreement, he forced the animal toward the murky figure. What part this apparition played Evan did not know. He grew tired of unanswered mystery after unanswered mystery—

  The ashen steed drew up short as a veiled, feminine figure in armor burst forward from the brush, waving her sword. She made not a sound and when the horse rose up and kicked at the horned helm of the attacker, his hooves went through her. She continued on, one of Haggad’s lithe and deadly Knights of the Veil, swinging at foes Evan could not see.

  He shivered, the ghosts of memory a faint thing compared to this. The worn knight shifted his gaze and through rain-drenched eyes watched as his most ancient nightmares more and more took on form and fury. From the mists emerged a Wallmyrian archer, his gut spilled open by a sword, readying his bow for another volley. The empty stare of death greeted Evan when he sought the man’s eyes.

  Beyond the archer, a knight in old Rundin wear straggled along, one leg twisted, armor soaked in blood, and half his head and helm missing.

  And in the background, the whispers and the thunder of the storm gave way to the mournful wail of battle horns.

  A bolt of lightning from the vicinity of the mound struck the earth nearby, startling man and mount and briefly illuminating the area for a mile around. In that instant of light, Evan Wytherling beheld a sight so blood-freezing that he nearly turned and fled, whatever the consequences to his tarnished honor and his cursed quest.

  The dead had come in force to replay their roles in the great battle.

  They formed from mist, from rain, from thin air. Elfin warriors with skin paler than even in life marched toward the mountains, some without limbs, some without heads, some crawling along with only one hand to push them forward. Trolls pincushioned with longbow shafts tottered toward them, grotesque faces made more so by death. A scorched and mangled skeleton swung at an almost perfectly preserved Rundin warrior.

  From above came the roar of a dragon. Evan immediately looked up, but saw nothing but the overcast heaven. He returned his gaze to the ground just in time to notice one ghost in particular, a ghost who stared back . . . no mean feat as the wraith’s massive head lay cradled in his arm.

  “Come to play, boy?” sneered the bony, snow-eyed visage. In his other hand he waved a wicked, toothed sword stained with dried blood. “We’ve waited long for you . . .”

  Evan fought to control his mounting distress as he greeted the foul apparition in turn. “Hello, General.”

  “Meek as a kitten! You’ve been away from good bloodshed far too long, boy! No more fire in your gut . . . just water!” The rail-thin specter tapped his steel-gray breastplate where a dozen or more heavy swords had been driven into his torso. “Look at me, boy! I don’t even have a gut anymore and yet I’m still more alive than you!” The gaunt face cracked into a skeletal smile again. “Why don’t you come down and play a little? I’ll get the fire going in you again . . . before I split your gullet . . .”

  Control yourself, Evan urged. The macabre figure before him could not hurt the knight; none of these apparitions could. They were phantasms called up by latent magic seeping from the cairn of Grimyr. At worst, they might steer him toward madness if Evan gave them substance with his fear. Even the monstrous figure before him, one of those best guaranteed to strike at his innermost being, did not really exist as a threat. The veteran knight had faced far more dangerous ghosts and knew the difference. “You are long dead, General Haggad. Go back to your rest.”

  “But I’m not done with this world yet, boy . . . and not with you, either. You owe for a lot of deaths.” The wraith held his nearly hairless head up high, the better for Evan to see the soulless eyes, the outline of the bone beneath the very thin layer of dead flesh. “You owe Novaris, especially.”

  The silver knight’s skin tingled. Evan pulled quickly on the reins, trying to urge his mount elsewhere. The horse obeyed without argument, perhaps sensing the same danger that his rider had.

  A bolt struck the drenched earth a scant distance from them.

  The force threw the stunned crusader from his horse. Evan heard the animal shriek, then he himself cried out as he bounced against rock and wood. His outfit did little to cushion the blow; he doubted that even his full armor would have aided. The stunned knight rolled forward, unable to stop and yet somehow still managing to hold on to his weapon.

  Another bolt struck, ripping open the earth and unleashing a new element to the storm already raging, a torrential rain of dirt and stone. Clumps of dirt pelted Evan as he tried to stop himself. A crevice opened before him and the knight nearly tumbled into it, but at the last moment Evan managed to drive the tip of his sword into the remaining ground. He held on and wiped his eyes clear, finding himself staring into a black chasm that seemed to go on forever.

  The rain continued to torment him, but no new bolt struck. Gasping, Evan pushed himself up to his knees, looking for Haggad. The ghost had vanished. All the ghosts had vanished, as had his horse. Laying his blade on his knees, the bedraggled warrior pulled off one muddied glove, put two fingers in his mouth, and let loose a high whistle. A moment later, he heard whinnying, but from impossibly far away.

  Forcing himself to his feet, Evan again surveyed the region. The phantom warriors had indeed vanished, but somehow he knew that he had not seen the last of them.

  A lupine howl cut through the storm, a howl answered immediately by one just like it, then another, then another, and another still. From all sides.

  Evan immediately whistled again, but once more the reply came from too far away. The shadowy steed should have been able to reach his rider by now, and that they still remained separated by so much distance indicated that something interfered. Estimating the direction from which the horse’s call had come, the mud-soaked knight trudged on, sword at the ready for whatever he would next face.

  The howls grew nearer. Evan picked up his pace. He suspected the creatures would not be so easy to deal with this time, not with the numbers that he estimated hunted him and certainly not with so much power radiating from the vicinity of the mound. As with the wraiths, the wolves were clearly tied to Grimyr’s tomb.

  Thinking of that, Evan paused. Through the abilities Centuros had bequeathed upon him, he found he did sense some evidence of Novaris’s magic, but it still seemed too faint, too old. The sorcerer-king must have set this trap long, long ago, which meant Evan had a good chance of outwitting it; the spell had to stay true to how it had been cast, unlike a thinking creature.

  A more opportune decision Evan could not have made, for just then, a dark form with claws and teeth leapt upon him, humanlike eyes glaring into his own. Knight and beast rolled once, then Evan kicked at the lower torso of his attacker, freeing himself. He brought the blade up, cutting into the stomach region. As before, no blood, no organs, spilled forth, yet the creature howled as if dealt a deadly blow, then, with a sigh, evaporated.

  By now they had to know that to face his sword directly meant their doom and yet still they most often tried to charge him. Did they not fear the weapon?

  From both his left and right came a new pair seemingly forming out of thin air. Swinging the sword wide with both hands, Evan Wytherling severed the head of one monster, then cut across the chest of the second. The first fell, fading even as it hit the drenched and ruined ground, but the second staggered toward its intended prey as if
driven by a force it could not fight. Evan felt little pride as he finished the wounded shadow beast, his adversary moving so clumsily that the knight simply thrust his jeweled blade through it to the hilt.

  The hair on his neck rose as shadows in every direction separated from the surrounding trees and moved in on him. Evan glanced around, saw that he stood surrounded by more than a dozen of the murky demons. Vulnerable they might be, but sheer numbers would tell a sorrowful end to his tale after all, unless . . .

  He had never cast the spell with so little preparation, but all his years of working the wizard’s magic had to help him now. Muttering the words of power under his breath, Evan spun in a circle, dragging the tip of his sword over the earth. In the wake of the blade’s path, a faint blue line of light grew into being.

  Perhaps realizing what he intended, one of the beasts leapt toward the remaining open area. Evan muttered faster, completing the spell, then tugged the tip of the sword until it touched the beginning of the blue loop.

  Airborne, the lupine monstrosity could not halt its attack. It fell across the glowing boundary that raggedly encircled the desperate knight. No cry. No gore. No ash. Its entire body simply evaporated inch by inch as the spell’s victim crossed.

  A second creature pulled back just before it would have committed itself. One of the half-seen monsters snarled, others following. They jostled as if trying to urge some of their members forward, but no one desired to achieve the fate of the first. As willing as they were to directly chance his sword, they clearly saw no value in throwing themselves uselessly at such a barrier.

  Protected for the moment, Evan fell to one knee, gasping again for breath. Still the rain poured down, giving him little respite. Nonetheless, the knight took what rest he could get, ever, of course, keeping his eye on the beasts.

  This had turned out to be a very personal trap, he realized, but one that should have been beyond Valentin’s abilities. That Valentin could affect the town, Evan understood. The crimson warrior lay imprisoned directly underneath its center . . . and Evan now recalled at least in part the pattern Pretor’s Hill itself created. The town’s layout formed a sign of power, one that amplified a spell cast in its center. No coincidence, that. Novaris’s hand surely had prompted the early settlers to assist in building the method of their own destruction.

  Still, could the spell have been so well set that Valentin could reach out even here and cause such disaster for his adversary? The only other explanation seemed less likely. For all his attention to detail, even the sorcerer-king would have been hard-pressed to put together such an elaborate spell designed to last centuries and strike only when Evan appeared. Surely Novaris, if he lived, had not been so fearful of one determined yet weary warrior?

  Questions and more questions, none of which he should have been presently wasting his time on. The creatures would not simply stand and watch; they were more than animal. Evan had a disturbing feeling that he knew more about them than he thought he did. He sensed a familiarity that went deep, went back to a time before he had been sent upon this endless quest.

  At that moment, the faint voices began again . . . but this time there were words that Evan could make out.

  whywhywhywhywhywhy . . .

  lostlostlostlostlost . . .

  betrayedbetrayedbetrayedbetrayed . . .

  lostlostlostlostlost . . .

  whywhywhywhywhywhy . . .

  The sword slipped from Evan Wytherling’s frozen hand. He knew not the names, but he knew the voices. They were voices from the war belonging to men he had once fought beside in that previous life. Evan clutched his ears, not wanting to hear those voices, be reminded that their owners had all perished in that battle, their lives, so many lives, wasted because of the ambitions of one sorcerer.

  Nothing shielded his ears from the voices, though. They seeped through his clenched hands, ripped into the cloth of the hood of his cloak, repeating endlessly words of condemnation.

  The lupine hunters crouched close, possibly waiting to see if through madness Evan himself might cross the barrier.

  “This is not real,” he muttered at last, almost throwing the words at the watching pack. “This is a spell of yours, Novaris, a spell to make your enemies do themselves in! I am stronger than it!”

  Yet no sooner had he uttered his defiance when the next and even more foul step of his torture commenced, for the indistinct faces of the furred horrors surrounding him shifted, grew somewhat identifiable. They were not, however, the faces of beasts, but rather those of men, lost men, dead men. Slaughtered, left for the carrion crows. Each and every one of them.

  Evan knew them all by face, if not by name.

  And each mouthed the same words over and over . . .

  why . . . lost . . .

  betrayal . . .

  He shut his eyes, trying to will the faces and words away. Memories welled up within, adding to his desperate situation. Faces Evan had not recalled in decades passed through his mind. Bloody skirmishes long fought replayed themselves. The whispered words continued on in the background, now accompanied by the low, consistent beat of war drums and the mournful wail of horns signaling the doomed into battle.

  Despite his strong struggles, Evan Wytherling found himself slipping deeper into despair. He had never imagined reaching such a point and certainly not here. Emotions he had cast aside for so very long poured forth, the guilt of two hundred years at last seeking its due in full. The stricken knight grabbed for the hilt of the sword, uncertain at that moment whether he needed it to fend off foes or put an end to his own miserable condition.

  From beyond the circle came a familiar cry, one that ripped through his despair, tore him from his descent into relentless guilt. Evan looked up in time to see a massive, pale phantom burst through the startled creatures, turning them once more into shadow beasts, not condemning ghosts. Great hooves struck out at the nearest, sparks of magic flying as the lupine horror fell back, stunned.

  Reaching forward with the sword, Evan muttered a few words, eradicating the protective circle. The massive stallion charged up to him, turning so that the human could immediately leap onto the saddle. Evan did, then clutched at the reins. One of the beasts sought to pull him back down, but the knight’s mount turned again, enabling Evan to strike. His attacker fell back, one arm severed.

  The pack reformed, pressing them from two sides. Forced to higher ground, the pallid steed had to fight for footing. Evan noticed burns on the animal’s sides, evidence that the steed’s attempts to reach him had been fraught with danger. Disturbing enough how quickly this trap had worn the veteran warrior to the core; now Evan saw he could not even rely on the full strength of his companion.

  The horse stumbled, something he rarely did. Evan nearly slipped off. He peered around them, trying to judge the landscape. They were within but a few yards of Grimyr’s mound.

  Another grim notion occurred to him, one that risked much but might save them. Limited though his own skills at magic might be, the tricks Centuros had taught him could still help Evan reverse his dire situation. Given a few moments’ respite, he believed he could seize control of the magic spell and turn it. During that attempt he risked leaving himself open to attack, but that might be unavoidable.

  Tugging hard on the reins, he steered his mount toward the dragon mound just as the shadows closed. Kicking at the nearest fiends, the animal reluctantly obeyed. Evan himself did not entirely like his choice of action but felt it best. They were already being herded farther and farther from safety.

  In the rain the mound almost took on the shadowy shape of the great leviathan buried within. How Grimyr would have roared with anger if he had known that someday Evan would try to use what remained of the dragon’s magic against the very power Grimyr had once served. As for Valentin, Evan realized that this might be his chance to put an end to the crimson knight’s foul curse. Surely his suspicions had to be correct; Valentin had to be drawing power from this same source through his ancient link to Grimyr.


  He sensed the presence of magic, a presence much stronger than during his previous visit. The moment they reached the edge of the mound, Evan leapt off, landing several feet up its side. The baleful steed snorted, then turned to a defensive position. The horse understood that he had to buy his rider precious time.

  The soaked knight climbed farther up, trying to locate the highest point of the mound. He heard the nearby growls of the shadowy beasts and the defiant snort of his horse. Evan knew he did not have long; the stallion could not take them all on.

  At last finding a satisfactory position atop the dragon’s tomb, Evan prepared to drive his blade into the wet earth. He did not intend opening a passage to the rotting remains of the reptilian beast; instead the sword would act as a focus, as a way of drawing what magic there was to Evan’s hand.

  “Grasping at straws, boy?”

  The suddenness of the voice nearly made the knight stumble backward off the mound. Regaining his footing, he glared at the apparition of General Haggad, who stood but a few feet to his left. The general’s cadaverous head smiled from the crook of his arm. As usual, the bloodied, jagged blade remained a fixture in the ghost’s other hand.

  “You are becoming tiresome, General.”

  “And you are becoming desperate and pathetic, boy. Give in to your guilt. Give in to the past. This isn’t the course you want to take.”

  Evan kept his expression masked, although inside his anxiety swelled. Haggad could be no less devious in death as in life. “You are nothing but the product of a madman’s spell, General. You’ve failed to drive me mad, so you might as well go.”

  “I’d like to cut you wide open,” the snow-eyed ghoul commented cheerfully, “to see how yellow your blood’s become . . .”

  The silver knight turned from him. “I have no more time for you, General.”

  “Then you’ll have no more head, boy!”

  Evan twisted around, but too late. Haggad’s fiendish blade cut through the air in line with the paladin’s throat. Sheer reflex caused Evan to reach up with one hand in a futile attempt to stop the jagged blade, but the general shifted, bringing his wicked weapon over.