“I was always a slave to the dramatic,” Darkhorse rumbled to anyone who could hear him.
Erini was ignoring him, her only concern Melicard, whom she probably imagined dead by now. Her rescue had taken only a few seconds, though to her and her unfortunate captor, it must have seemed far longer. Darkhorse laughed. Concentrating now on Quorin, he used his powers to pull the hapless counselor into the air and, while the traitor struggled to regain control of his limbs, transported the medallion to a place that burned hot enough to melt even Seeker magic away. Darkhorse contemplated sending Mal Quorin there as well, but he knew that there might yet be need even for something as foul as this creature was.
The princess, however, was not so understanding. While her abilities had been hampered by the protective artifact the counselor had worn, her fury had grown unchecked. Now, feeling the release of those abilities, she struck without thinking. Mal Quorin screamed and tried to scratch off his own skin. The last of his men had run off the moment he had been thrust into the air. There was no one here left to save him. Erini planned to have her revenge now for everything he had done or planned to do.
“Erini!” Melicard’s faint call went unheeded, so caught up was the princess in the full force of her own power.
“PRINCESS!” Darkhorse roared. His voice cut through where the king’s had failed. “Princess Erini! Stop and think!”
Stop and think? The look on her bitter face indicated that she planned to do anything but that. The time for thinking was long past. Now, it was time for vengeance.
Darkhorse persisted. “Think what you do to yourself, princess, not this piece of rotting offal! You might become like Shade, so in love with your power that you lose your humanity.”
She seemed to stir then, for her eyes travelled from her prey to the ebony stallion and finally to her betrothed. Melicard and Erini matched gazes briefly. Whatever the princess saw in the one eye of the king drained the need for vengeance from her heart. Darkhorse felt her withdraw her power back into herself. Above them, Mal Quorin, drenched in sweat and pale as bone, sighed and collapsed. The shadow steed brought him slowly back to the floor.
“Melicard.” The princess looked ashamed, as if somehow her madness had made her less a creature than even Quorin was.
The king would have none of that. He had used the last of his strength in his battle and could only force himself up enough to lean on his elbow. He shook his head as his bride-to-be continued to berate herself and whispered something. Darkhorse, though he could have eavesdropped without either knowing, chose not to. There were some things that were meant to be private.
Whatever Melicard said soothed, if not completely convinced, Erini. She smiled and seemed to regain some of her confidence. Tenderly, the novice sorceress touched Melicard where he had been crippled by the one artifact so many years before.
His visage and arm became whole instantly. Darkhorse had to look closely before it became apparent that Erini had only given Melicard back his elfwood mask and limb and had not actually restored the missing pieces. Even for Darkhorse, that would have been an astounding achievement.
Aided by the princess, Melicard rose to his feet and walked up to the shadow steed. For a time, neither human said anything to the eternal. He waited patiently, knowing some of the limits of their kind. Both of them had suffered greatly at the hands of the crumpled heap on the floor.
“Thank you, dem—Darkhorse,” Melicard finally began. He looked angry with himself. “And I dared to try and make you my slave. It’s a wonder, great one, that you would even help one such as me.”
“The past kindnesses of Counselor Quorin made it nearly impossible at first, I must admit,” Darkhorse responded wryly. “I did it as much for my own benefactor here,” he indicated the princess, “as anyone else, your majesty. I did it for your people as well. The Dragon King Silver is on his way even now with a host that may make all this subterfuge rather unnecessary.”
“And Quorin’s men still hold the palace and the northern gate.”
“That is so, your majesty. Tell me, would your army turn back from its crusade into the Hell Plains if the sorcerer Drayfitt was found murdered?”
Melicard’s mouth dropped open. “Drayfitt? Murdered?” He turned toward Quorin. “I should kill him now and forgo the niceties of a public trial and execution!”
Darkhorse shook his head. “While the effort was there, the true criminal is the warlock Shade—who has his own hand in this enterprise. He and the Dragon King have made a pact, though I would not trust either to adhere to it for very long. Shade is my true quest, but I will do what I have to in order to save your people from the more immediate threat.”
“They will likely go on,” Melicard said, responding to the stallion’s original question. “We have many other tricks. Drayfitt is a great loss—both to my plans and personally—but his death does not mean that all is lost.”
“Can you hold against the Silver Dragon’s host?”
Melicard looked at Erini. “If my bride-to-be will add her strength, perhaps.”
“My—what I am doesn’t turn you?”
“No more than what I am turned you.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Darkhorse swore that the elfwood mask moved exactly as the king’s face would have. There are all sorts of magic…
Erini smiled gratefully. “I don’t know what I can do, but I will help as I can.”
Seeming to draw strength from that, Melicard looked up and said, “Then, the first thing we must do is take this palace back.”
XVIII
THE WARLOCK SHADE haunted the halls and chambers of the vast imperial palace of Talak undetected amidst the chaos commencing around him. Sentries rushing to and fro—whether loyalists or traitors Shade could not say and did not care—did not so much as glance at the hooded figure they passed, even those within an arm’s reach of him.
Unfolding himself at his destination, the warlock knelt down in the midst of the garden. Here, in such an excellent, centrally located area of the palace, he would release the last and largest clutch.
When emerged from his sleeves they were little more than amorphous shapes that flittered and darted about, as if in silent impatience. Unlike the bizarre searchers that he had summoned that other time, these were not living creatures in any sense of the word, merely bits of magical energy shaped to do a particular task. Shade counted out an even dozen before he broke off the spell. His head throbbed briefly, but he assured himself that it was only a headache this time. There had been no further losses of memory—as far as he knew—and his personality had been stable for days. He was himself at last and nothing would change that again.
Without a word, he sent the tiny shapes out and about. They would spread through the palace. No corner of the massive edifice would remain uninvaded.
He drew back into the shadows then, wondering how long it would take Darkhorse to detect him once the masking spell that had protected him thus far was removed. Not too long, he supposed, but long enough.
The warlock smiled to himself as pictured the scene to come.
RETAKING THE PALACE was child’s play, as far as Darkhorse was concerned. Melicard found and freed a number of the prisoners the counselor’s men had captured in the cells surrounding his own. Though still outnumbered and without weapons, they were a force to be reckoned with, even forgetting that the king also had a sorceress and a “demon” to aid him.
After a thorough search through more than half the building, it became apparent to all that the palace was, for the most part, deserted now. Only a few stragglers, looters generally, were uncovered. Melicard’s men rearmed themselves quickly on weapons left abandoned in the corridors. The reason for the abandonment soon revealed itself to them, thanks to a looter caught trying to ransack the king’s chambers. Staring up at Darkhorse all the while he spoke, the prisoner informed them of how Quorin’s men knew now that Melicard had unleashed his personal horde of demons that he had saved just for this moment. Allo
wing the traitors to seize the palace had only been a ploy to discover who was guilty and who was not. Even now, men were fleeing for their lives from the monsters they knew were following them relentlessly.
Darkhorse understood. Seeing him and knowing that he had come for their master, Quorin’s underlings had panicked. In their haste to get as far from the shadow steed as possible, they had likely rushed past their fellows without pausing, spouting out garbled warnings as they ran. As was always the case with fear, the stories had grown, each man shouting some tale of a demon come to get them. Panic escalated.
The eternal chuckled as he told Melicard, “Apparently, I was too pessimistic about your chances of quick success! You have my apologies, King Melicard!”
“We have you to thank for our easy victory. Let us hope that those at the gate surrender so easily.”
“Shall I go there and see to it?”
The king shook his head. “I am grateful, but your appearance may panic people near the gate. I need as much order as possible.”
Erini, who had vanished momentarily from the throne room, returned at that moment with another man, an officer in the dress of Gordag-Ai. Melicard knew him, but the princess introduced him to Darkhorse, who learned the man was a Captain Iston or something. Iston seemed in awe of the ebony stallion, but his military training succeeded in keeping him from making much of a spectacle of himself.
Captain Iston apologized profusely to the king for his failure to keep the princess safe. From the look on her face, Darkhorse hazarded a guess that Erini had heard the same thing only moments earlier.
“I’ve already explained to you,” she said, interrupting his fourth apology, “I am a sorceress, captain. I transported myself out of the room by accident. There was no way for any of your men to keep watch over me.” Beneath her calm tone, the eternal noted some bitterness. Erini had still not forgiven herself for the men who had died trying to rescue her.
While they talked, rather too idly in Darkhorse’s opinion, something nagged at the corner of his mind. Something obvious that they had all been missing, something about the crooked counselor…
Of course! Darkhorse cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. He turned immediately to King Melicard, who was engrossed in a discussion concerning the chameleon cloaks Iston’s two men had worn. “Your majesty!”
When a tall, pitch-black stallion demands attention, he receives it instantly. Melicard fell back under the glittering gaze. “What is it? Is Shade within the palace walls?”
Darkhorse snorted. “I doubt I would be able to tell even if he was, but that is not what I wanted to say! I have a request of you!”
“Name it. I owe you too much to deny you anything.”
“Mal Quorin’s chambers. I want to see them.”
Erini’s face darkened. Melicard nodded grimly and looked rather irritated with himself. “I should’ve thought of that long before. He’s the link, after all, to the Dragon King—and likely Shade, too.”
“Yes! It was he who provided Drayfitt with the book that the drakes had uncovered! I wonder what else remains hidden in his rooms?”
“I’ll have someone drag him back up here!” Melicard rubbed his chin. “He’ll show you everything even if I have to remove a few fingers and toes to get him to do it.”
The eternal disagreed. “Mal Quorin is the last creature I would want in that room. From the tricks he has already played, I would not put it past him to have a few more ready and waiting for him. No, I think I would prefer to probe his room on my own. Your good counselor is best left admiring the cobwebs of his new abode.”
“There’s much in what you say. Do you need someone to lead you to it?”
“It is not a place I think I would care to enter without some prior inspection. I am not impervious to everything.”
Melicard smiled. “I was beginning to think you were unstoppable. However, if otherwise is the case, I can have one of my men show you the way.”
Darkhorse dipped his head in the closest he could come to a bow. “That would be appreciated.”
Little more than a few minutes passed before he was being led to the ex-advisor’s personal sanctum by one nearly panic-stricken soldier. Even knowing that the great leviathan trotting next to him was an ally of the king did not stop the man from shaking and stuttering. It was an amusing sight, a soldier who was obviously a longtime veteran shaking in his boots, but Darkhorse forbore from saying or doing anything that would shame the human.
At last, they came to a set of doors that somehow arrogantly proclaimed power even though they were as plain as any Darkhorse had seen here. He was interested also to note how far they were from the king’s chambers. Quorin had set up his own tiny little kingdom in the palace. It was a wonder that he had, according to Erini and Melicard, always seemed to be around when you expected him least.
Darkhorse dismissed his guide, who happily departed at the quickest walk he could manage while still seeming to keep his dignity. The ebony stallion waited until he was alone and then began to inspect the entrance for traps or tricks.
The first was simple yet devious. There was an intricate triple lock in the door. A normal key would merely cause one lock to be exchanged for another, all without the one turning the key realizing it. He would then find that the door was still locked. Trying again would set the third lock into play. It was an endless cycle. The secret, evidently, was a special key that Quorin had no doubt carried on his person, one that caught all three lock mechanisms simultaneously. A very impressive piece of work, the stallion decided, but not one that would give him any trouble. Darkhorse did not need a key and, in fact, could have ignored the lock altogether. The door was so reinforced that nothing short of a raging, full-grown bull would have been able to break it down, and that only after several painful attempts. That meant nothing to the creature who could create fissures in a mountain with the mere tap of his hooves. In respect to King Melicard and Princess Erini, however, Darkhorse decided to forgo splintering it into so much scrap. Instead, probing the locks again, he caused all three locks to open at the same time, as if the key were actually in there.
After that, it was an even simpler task to make the door open up by itself. Darkhorse laughed silently at the picture he knew he must have made. Not once, however, had he considered giving himself hands and arms, useful though they might have been. The form he wore was more his own than the shapeless mass he had originated with. With his abilities intact, it would serve him as well as any other.
The shadow steed peered inside.
“Curious,” he finally muttered before stepping into the room.
Mal Quorin’s personal chambers had an odd feel to them, as if the rooms, at least the front ones, were more for display than actual use. Things were just too perfect, too much what one would have expected, almost as if even the placement of the chair by the fireplace had been choreographed. This was not the sort of room a man like Quorin would have been happy with. This was a place where he spoke in private to the king or pretended to do work.
Moving swiftly to the next doorway, he noted that the bedroom was the same. Again, everything seemed appropriate for a man of Mal Quorin’s rank and position. Too appropriate. The fixtures were just too gaudy to be believed. The bed was large, well-built and expensive, but hardly right. A row of well-preserved tomes on a shelf revealed the typical books concerning politics and history, including, ironically, several by the late Drayfitt.
Darkhorse laughed, his tone somewhat bitter, wondering if any of them had been read.
These were not Quorin’s personal quarters, he concluded. These were the ones that the traitor had made up for the sake of appearances. Where then…?
He backed out of the room and looked down both ends of the corridor. One would take him back toward the Princess Erini and the others. The opposite direction ended in a cul-de-sac and included two other doors on one wall. Darkhorse stared at the blank wall across from those two doors. Elegant paintings and intricate sculptures a
dorned it. Nothing seemed amiss… from the hallway.
Darkhorse reentered Quorin’s chambers, heading straight into the bedroom. Probing with his mind, he soon discovered what he sought. There was a spell masking it, a strong one that even he had not noticed at first, caught up as he was by the general wrongness he had felt upon first arriving.
Not so clever, dear one! Someone, perhaps Mal Quorin, perhaps not, had sealed the other rooms on this side of the corridor, making it seem as if they had never existed. The only true way to enter them now was through the counselor’s chambers. He found a switch of sorts hidden in the back wall of the bedroom. Darkhorse wasted no time, tripping the switch and immediately stepping back. After so many mishaps, the shadow steed was trying to be cautious. His senses had proven too little too often in the past few days.
The wall slid open without the slightest hint of any danger. Searching, Darkhorse detected nothing potentially threatening in the walls, ceiling, or floor. There was, though, a subtle spell emanating from the secret doorway that tried in vain to turn his thoughts to anything but the desire to enter. A human would have been affected and would have likely walked away, suddenly caught up in some other notion. Darkhorse overwhelmed the spell easily, eliminating it so that the king’s men would have no difficulty entering at some later time. That done, the stallion nosed the secret door open further and slowly entered. Before he was even halfway in, he already sensed that here, indeed, was the true domicile of the traitorous advisor.
It was dark in here, as dark as the former inhabitant’s life. Adjusting his physical senses, Darkhorse brought the world of Mal Quorin into focus. It was not a place he would have invited the Princess Erini.
“And they call me demon when abominations such as this roam freely, advising heads of state!”
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 25