“Your majesty is not looking well,” he rumbled.
“A lack of sleep,” she murmured. It was evident that the woman before him did not want him so near.
“How is your concentration? Will you be able to aid in the cause?”
“I hope so.” Her tone suggested otherwise.
Darkhorse fixed his glittering eyes on hers. Erini tried to struggle, but her will was surprisingly weak and she quickly succumbed.
“I know now what so disturbed me about you! I know now that you could not have summoned my aid!”
Behind him, Melicard moved quickly to stand beside his bride-to-be. He faced Darkhorse with blood in his good eye.
“What are you doing to her? What in the name of the Tybers are you doing?”
“Resolving my own uncertainties about a few things—and cursing myself anew for missing the obvious!” Darkhorse drew Erini toward him, repelling Melicard at the same time. While the king struggled in vain and his men watched in stunned confusion, the shadow steed probed the human before him. He was not surprised at the results.
“This is not your future bride, King Melicard! This woman has no sorcerous ability whatsoever! She who stands before you, though she looks like the Princess Erini, is but a poor creature caught in a spell whose origins can only derive from that master of mayhem, Shade!”
Melicard’s jaw dropped. “Not Erini?”
“No, not the princess! I should have noticed instantly that she projected no sorcerous presence! Princess Erini did not have the skill yet to mask that presence, at least not so completely!”
The false Erini was struggling with the spell that held her. A spellcaster she might not have been, but whoever—and that was likely to be Shade—had ensorcelled her had shrouded her in a few defensive spells. Darkhorse, though, strengthened by his own fury, tore away each of them, until only the illusion remained. While everyone waited—Melicard shaking—the shadow steed removed that last spell, revealing a shorter, slightly stout woman.
“Galea!” Captain Iston surged forth, trying to reach the woman. Darkhorse nodded imperceptibly. The female’s deepest emotions had forced themselves to the surface the moment the officer had entered the room. Only strong love or hate was capable of that and Darkhorse knew enough to tell which was which. He released the confused Galea, who turned to her soldier and buried herself in his arms. A quick glance into her thoughts had already revealed that she knew nothing.
“Erini! Where’s Erini?” Melicard demanded of him.
“I do not know, your majesty! When the summons reached me, I paid its point of origin no attention, assuming that since little time had passed, she must be in the palace with you!” The ebony stallion laughed madly, mocking his own stupidity and carelessness. “Every turn! Every direction! He trips me each time and I continue to take the falls!”
The king’s split visage became a grim mask. Staring at some point in space, he calmly and quietly commanded, “Find her, Child of the Void. Find my queen and save her. I don’t care what the cost might be. Start now.”
“Now?” Darkhorse studied the human incredulously. “I cannot search for her now, though a part of me screams to do just that! Talak is endangered and the life of one being cannot outweigh the fate of an entire kingdom!”
“I have no need of you. We will hold. We will hold until the end of everything, if necessary. Go! I refuse your help! Will that free you of your obligation?”
The shadow steed stamped a hoof against the marble floor. He knew what the king was doing and liked it not at all. All of Talak! “King Melicard… I cannot do this—”
“Get out of my sight, then, demon! I want nothing of you if you will not do this for me!”
Melicard’s subordinates were finding everything else to do other than stare at their ranting monarch. Darkhorse knew that the king’s ravings were only an act. An act of love.
Sighing, Melicard visibly pulled himself together. “We will still be here when you return. As I have said, Talak has long been prepared for such an invasion—even if most of my forces are scattered elsewhere.”
They would be arguing until the Silver Dragon himself burst through the chamber doors, Darkhorse finally realized. There was no changing the king’s mind. The eternal knew that accepting the human’s decision was not the correct thing to do, but it was too close to his own desires for him to fight it. He felt he owed much to Erini for releasing him—and much more because there was a quality about her that he had found in so few others, making it all the more admirable. There was no one name for it and he did not care to think of one. What mattered was the princess.
“Very well,” he finally replied, his words as close to a whisper as he could manage.
The look he received from Melicard was a mixture of gratitude and relief.
“I do not even know where to look.” That was somewhat of a lie. Darkhorse did know where to look; the only trouble was that there were too many places and certainly not enough time.
“You do what you can.” With that final statement, the king turned away, momentarily unable to continue.
Deciding silence was more appropriate than any response he could give, the shadow steed departed immediately—for where, he could not say.
WITH THE IMPOSING presence of Darkhorse gone, Melicard was slowly able to get his thoughts under control. He had sworn that he would make Talak hold, and hold it would. The defenses had never been tested in actual combat, but he tried not to think about that. Ironically, Melicard no longer thought about the potential for destruction. That hundreds of the cursed drakes would die meant little to him. His own people would die as well and the kingdom might fall.
“Captain Iston!” He had come to rely heavily on the foreigner, impressed as he was with the man’s loyalty and experience. If they somehow survived, he would offer the soldier a permanent position on his staff—if Iston still wanted to remain in Talak. Should Darkhorse fail—and the horrid thought refused to die—the complement from Gordag-Ai would likely return to their homeland, having no further ties with his own kingdom.
“Your majesty?” The officer reluctantly abandoned his woman’s side. Melicard felt a twinge within.
“You have your orders. I must ask that you now follow them.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
As an afterthought, the king added, “You may say your farewells before you depart.”
“Thank you.” Iston saluted, took Galea’s hand, and led her away.
Melicard turned to the others. Several already had their orders and these he dismissed immediately. The rest waited, somewhat reassured now that their liege had taken control again.
The king surveyed the horizon. Was it his imagination or was the Dragon King’s host moving more slowly? He grimaced. Wishful thinking, no doubt.
“We have,” he finally began, “only a few hours before havoc reigns. The others know their duties. What I want from each of you are suggestions—or comments on anything I’ve forgotten about. I want anything that will buy us time.” He also wished he had at least one spellcaster. Thanks to the talismans he had kept, despite his own dislike for them since his disfigurement and what little Drayfitt—poor Drayfitt—had succeeded in accomplishing, the king had assumed his palace was fairly safe from the invasions of spell-throwing drakes and such. Now, however, he was not so certain. Darkhorse’s ability to come and go as he pleased did not bother him. Shade’s did, but here was a warlock with the knowledge of millennia. What bothered him was that an agent of the Silver Dragon had worked actively underneath his very nose and there was no doubt that Quorin had been in contact with his true master several times. It would take only one breach in those sorcerous defenses…
“My lord!” A guard stood by the doorway, awaiting permission to enter.
“Yes, what is it?” Were there not enough troubles?
“There is a drake demanding entrance to the city!”
“A drake?” How had they missed that? No doubt an emissary from the Silver Dragon, here to
issue the demands of his lord. Best to kill him… no. Best to send him back with a message! “Tell the reptile that his master will never have this city and that I have said his head will hang alongside the banners when we have crushed gaggle of monstrosities!”
“My lord—”
The king knew it was emotion speaking, not thought, but he hardly cared. The audacity of his foe angered him. “You heard me! Go!”
The sentry bowed low, but did not move. He had something he felt had to be said, regardless of the king’s anger. Melicard nodded permission.
“The drake is not at the northern gate, my lord, and he does not appear to be of the clan Silver.”
“No?”
“He claims to have ridden from south.”
South? “The Dagora Forest?”
“That was what he said.”
Melicard did not know whether to laugh or curse. The Green Dragon had sent an emissary, but, considering that Talak and the monarch of the Dagora Forest had clashed in the past, the question was—was he here as an ally or a new foe?
There was only one way to find out.
XXI
ERINI WAS FRIGHTENED, though she tried as best she could not to show it. She was frightened of many things, but what frightened the princess most was the curious behavior of her captor.
Despite his claims to the contrary, she doubted that Shade’s mind was as complete as he thought it to be. His personality seemed fluid to her, changing from one extreme to another. So close to what he believed would be his triumph, Shade was beginning to recall more and more about his tragic failure—and he insisted on sharing each detail with her, as if trying to purge himself of the memories.
“When men came back to this land,” he was telling her companionably, “and settled, bowing for a time to the will of the first Dragon Kings, I moved back among them. Weaklings! Their ancestors had given in to this world, taking up its magic instead of strengthening their own! There were a few who could do outstanding things with that magic, though, and from them I learned much of what I had dared not attempt for fear of losing myself as my counterparts had.”
Erini, held by his spells in a standing position with her arms outstretched—as if challenging the world, she thought bitterly—did not understand half of what he said. He was talking for himself. As long as it kept her from the fate he had planned, Erini did not object.
“I took many names and many guises in those days, learning what I could. Several times, I renewed my lifespan. Someday, though, I knew that those spells would fail me. I would die and the Vraad would pass from this world forever, a world ours by right.” He smiled coldly. “There were a few others who survived, in a sense, but they had also given themselves over to this world’s nature, becoming less Vraad and more—more—”
Shade rose, seeming to forget his tale completely. It was not the first time he had changed so abruptly. Shade stretched out one arm and caused the blue ball of light floating high above them to increase in intensity. The warlock’s stronghold, little more than shadow prior to this, was revealed to his captive for the first time. Erini was properly awed.
Erini had never seen the throne room of the drake emperor, so it was understandable that she would miss the incredible similarity between that place and this. Grand effigies of people and creatures long dead or vanished lined the walls on each side. Some were so real as to force the princess to look elsewhere, for fear one of them would start staring back at her. Erini was brave, but, even with her limited experience in magic, she could sense the cold presence within each one. These things were alive, although hardly in the sense that most people thought of as living. In some ways, they almost reminded her of Darkhorse, though she hated even considering such a thought.
“My cache. Plundered by those scaly wretches above. This was where I formulated my spell and stored all my notes and special—toys. A Vraad habit. Though I performed my spells among humans and lived in human communities, it was here, in this place, that I first conceived of my notion. It was here that I found and began to travel the path of immortality and true power such as even the Vraad had never dreamed.”
As he spoke, Shade reached into his cloak and removed a rather ordinary-looking tripod. The care with which he handled it told Erini it was anything but ordinary. She watched in helpless frustration as the warlock placed it at her feet.
“The concept came to me early on, but the doing of it escaped me for centuries. I feared I was lost. To understand what I needed, I would have to give myself. Become changed by this world—have I said that already?” Shade looked up from what he was doing, uncertain. There was a slight trace of fear in his tone, as if he were finally realizing that his mind was not as it should be.
While he puzzled over his own question, Erini continued her own struggle. Though she could not move, her mind was still free. Shade needed her mind free yet malleable. The princess desperately tried to capitalize on that, continually summoning up whatever strength she could find within herself and sending out a sorcerous cry for aid that she hoped Darkhorse would detect. It was a slim, almost mad hope, but it was all she had. She lacked the skill and experience she needed to break free of her physical predicament. The warlock knew too many tricks.
“It won’t even hurt—not much, that is,” Shade suddenly told her, coming within a hand’s width of her face. She tried to close her eyes, but his spell prevented that. Instead, she was forced to stare into his glimmering, seemingly multifaceted orbs. There were those who said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul, and what there was of Shade was more reflection than substance. More than life, but also less.
He was no longer human and likely had not been since the very day that he had fallen victim to his own obsessive desires.
His hand came up before her eyes, his voice was soothing, yet with that undercurrent of anxiety and fear. “Listen to me now. I’m going to begin. I don’t need your cooperation, but I ask it. Give me what I want and I’ll see what I can do for you afterward. You will give it to me regardless of your desires, but the transition will be easier on both of us if you do your part willingly.”
Frozen as she was, Erini could only respond with her eyes, which she did promptly. Shade backed away, his face initially the picture of remorse, then, in an abrupt change, arrogant and lordly. “Very well, then. I offered for your sake, really. Suffer if you like. Here is what you will do for me.”
The warlock reached up and touched her forehead. Erini’s mind was suddenly filled with images and instructions. She found herself unable to continue her desperate summons under such circumstances and finally gave in. Her only consolation was the thin hope that something in the shadowy warlock’s instructions might give her an idea.
Erini’s task, as he had defined it, was to be the vessel in which two radically different forms of sorcery would be meshed together. Unlike the tales the princess had heard as a child, it was not the powers of darkness and light that Shade had sought to master. It was the vestiges of a power that lingered from whatever world the Vraad had originated from and this world’s own strength. The images both horrified and fascinated her.
“We will begin now.” Wrapping himself deep within his cloak, Shade leaned forward and focused his gaze on the tripod.
Though she could see little, Erini felt everything. She felt the power that she summoned forth fill the chamber—she summoned forth? No, it only appeared that way. From the instructions that the warlock had implanted in her mind, she understood that he was utilizing the tripod in order to draw energy through her. To draw upon so much power himself would be to risk the success of his plan. He had to be free to control the situation, and without her that would have been impossible.
Erini knew that there must be defenses she could summon, things that would disrupt his spell permanently, but her mind was not skilled enough to cope with the influx of power and still concentrate on shielding herself. The princess now saw why Shade desired an untrained and inexperienced spellcaster with high potential. Even Dra
yfitt’s mind would have been too closed for Shade to have trusted the outcome of his experiment. Erini was like a child, uncertain of what her limitations were; an open book on which Shade could write what he pleased.
“You feel the power flowing into your soul.” A statement, not a question. “Hold it there. Let it gather.”
She did as he bid her, unable to do anything else. It was frustrating to feel so strong and yet be so helpless. The strength of the world seemed to flow into her. For the first time, Erini saw the world in terms of the lines and fields of energy that many spellcasters did. Yet, the spectrum remained there as well. The two were one. It was impossible to tell if one had resulted because of the other or if they had both sprung into existence simultaneously. There was so much potential here that even the greatest sorcerers of legend had probably never known the like. There was power enough here to make one almost a god—
—and this was only a part of what Shade desired. Shade, not her. She was a vessel, the princess reminded herself, for all the power that she contained was for her captor, not herself.
“The flow will continue slowly. You must guide its intensity, make certain it does not overwhelm you—and be prepared to accept the next offering.”
It was too much! Erini panicked. How could she hope to contain so much energy, so much pure power? Erini struggled to assert her mind. Darkhorse! If only I could summon him!
Erini?
It was brief and lost to her completely after that single word, after the calling of her name, but she knew that she had touched the eternal’s thoughts. Her mind filled with hope.
A cold, loathsome essence entered Erini just as she sought Darkhorse again, caressing her soul as if tasting a treat. Caught unaware, the princess wanted to scream and scream and scream, but Shade’s earlier spell prevented such a release of her horror at the unthinkable invasion. The world around her shrank away, as if she were looking at it from above. The warlock looked into her eyes, curiosity and anticipation at the forefront. She wanted to ram him through the earth, peel away every layer of skin while he writhed in agony—anything—as long as it would free her mind from the unspeakable presence seeking to become a part of her.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 29