Her hand slipped from his as she visibly struggled with herself. “There is one other way.”
“What might that be?”
Elfin eyes lowered. “I could try my own powers. Like you, mine have been returned to me.”
In the suddenness of their release by the founders, Dru had forgotten that his companion also worked magic of some kind. “Do you need anything?”
Xiri smiled. “Luck?”
He stepped back as she concentrated. The natural, if they could still be called such, forces of Nimth stirred as they were summoned. Her way felt different from that of his kind, however. It was more gentle, asking instead of taking. A glimmer of light materialized before the elf. Dru rubbed his chin, trying to understand the nuances of her spell. Was this the course in which Vraad sorcery should have developed?
He heard a gasp then, and saw Xiri starting to crumple. Instead of following her desires, it almost appeared as if Nimth sought to use her. Not only had power answered her summons, but it was trying to pervert her spell, almost as if it consciously desired to do so. With the swiftness born of centuries of careful practice, Dru seized control of her spell. The power fought back, not as a living thing but in the way that a raging river might fight against a dam that had broken partly away. Yet he did not turn the spell to the way it would have been had he been the originator. Instead, the spellcaster strained to make a hybrid of the two sorceries, at least long enough to perform the spell. Dru doubted the two could really be joined without a cataclysm resulting.
The strain was horrible, but in the end a shining, circular portal stood open before them. His concentration still monitoring the strength of the spell, Dru reached down and helped Xiri to regain her footing.
“That should never have happened!”
Dru knew better. “You tried to use the binding forces of Nimth as you would those of your own world. Nimth no longer follows the same laws of nature, if it ever actually did. We Vraad have made it too much like ourselves. Vicious and hungry. Still,” he added as encouragement, “I think what you accomplished was likely more effective than the results I would have obtained.”
“We have not crossed through yet. Save your congratulations for then.”
Stepping through the portal was only slightly less unnerving than entering the founders’ living gateway. Dru had a brief vision of a path, one that reminded him greatly of those Darkhorse had utilized to escape the Void, before he and his companion stood once more on the surface of his home world.
They stood in the courtyard that Dru had stared down at only… only… the Vraad gave up trying to count the days since his unexpected departure. After all, those who had ripped the massive structure apart had probably only needed hours, not days. He could not help glancing away from his companion, however. Seen up close, the devastation that had overcome the city was even worse than he had imagined.
“The city of the elders fell to time,” Dru whispered, again shamed of his kind. “Before a fraction of the same time has passed, this place will be a foul blot in comparison.”
“A ruin is a ruin,” Xiri said, more to mollify him than because she believed in the simple statement. “What do you hope to find here?”
“Nothing. I hoped that there might be someone. They can’t have all crossed over. Not so many and not so quickly. This was done by those left behind… the ones I’m supposed to help.”
“What do we do now?” Xiri clearly did not want one of their choices to be to remain in this dark and ugly place. Dru was not so fond of the idea himself. He had hoped part of the city still lived, that some of the magic that enabled it to serve the Vraad still functioned. From what his higher senses told him, nothing had been left undamaged. There would be no food, no water.
It seems I am destined to never eat a normal meal again! The guardians and their masters had removed his hunger and thirst more than once, but they were not available. Dru glanced at his companion. Could Xiri’s sorcery provide them with the sustenance they would be needing before long? “Can you conjure food and drink?”
She mulled it over. “After what happened, I think I might be able to, but there could be a better way.”
“Such as?”
“If we work the spell together, as we did more or less before, then it should be possible.”
It made as much sense to Dru as anything else had in a long time. “Let’s try it, then. We shouldn’t go on without dealing with the problem. I’d hate to think what would happen if we needed food or water in some desperate moment and found we couldn’t do a thing about it.”
He began first this time, determined to keep the forces of Nimth under control from the start. The slow work annoyed him; it was like learning the use of his sorcery all over again. After a moment’s consideration, the spellcaster decided that this was what he was doing.
“I have it,” he told her.
Nodding, Xiri reached out and coaxed the power to work with her. The firm hold that Dru’s consciousness had on it prevented a magical assault akin to that taking place during the teleportation attempt. He felt the elf turn the land’s binding force to the task she had wished completed.
The sorcerer blinked. The abrupt completion of the spell left him dizzy. Xiri, too, was trying to reorient herself. Dru looked down at the broken courtyard floor.
A loaf of bread, some fruit, a bit of meat, and a jug of some liquid made an incongruous image when surrounded by so much destruction.
“Better than I could have hoped,” he said, smiling.
They split every item into equal portions, save the contents of the jug since neither of them had thought to conjure cups. Dru was surprised when Xiri sank her teeth into the meat. He had supposed that being an elf she would abhor the thought of eating the flesh of some wild creature, even if what they ate now was actually magical in origin.
“Eating meat does not decrease my spiritual nature,” she said, swallowing a piece. “Wasting meat would. A diet of plants is lacking in a few necessities. There are a few I know who believe it is the only way we can become more than we are now, but I notice they are usually the ones lacking in strength and mind as time progresses.” With her fingers, Xiri tore off another piece. “I do give thanks to the creature that provided me with sustenance, though it might be impossible in this case since the beast never existed.”
The jug proved to contain wine that tasted vaguely familiar to Dru. It took him several swallows to recall that it was one of his own creations. He wondered if the spell had somehow tapped into his own mind, then decided that it was a matter for a more peaceful time.
It took only minutes to satisfy themselves. Dru noticed that the food and drink had materialized in quantities exactly matching their present needs. Again, it was a thought for another day, but he did want to ask Xiri if she had planned it so or somehow the spell itself had known. He rose and stared in the direction of his own domain. A part of him wanted to fly directly there to see if Sharissa was there. She should have crossed over, but the signs and what the one guardian had said hinted that more than a few Vraad had been abandoned by Barakas. Unless they had dragged her to the pentagram themselves, the Tezerenee had likely just forgotten her. Dru could not say why, but he felt that left to her own devices, his daughter would still be here.
“Dru! There is another nearby!”
The sorcerer sensed it, too. It was almost as if the newcomer had literally popped into the city… and why not if he or she were a Vraad?
Someone laughed. It was loud and lacking somewhat in sanity. Male, that was all the duo could tell other than the fact that they were mere seconds away. It was as if he had been searching for them.
“What should we do?” Xiri asked, deferring to Dru since this was his world, his madness. She knew little about the Vraad and looked as if she would have liked to keep it so.
“We find out who it is.” A dangerous decision, the sorcerer knew, but it might also be their best way to find out the state of things. Between the two of them, he felt they ha
d a definite edge over the newcomer. It was even possible that they would find the intruder friendly. Not likely, of course, but still a possibility to consider.
The real reason, though Dru would have denied it after all he had been through, was that he was simply curious. His unexpected exodus had only temporarily cooled his inquisitiveness.
With the care only experience can bring, Dru and the elf made their way through the rubble of the courtyard and toward the sound of laughter. Neither was too concerned with silence. The newcomer’s laugh continually rose so high in volume that they doubted he could have heard them even if they had stood behind him and shouted.
Xiri was the first to see him as she peeked around the corner of a roofless building that had been, as far as Dru’s memory served, the place where he had first discussed his theories of ka travel with the patriarch. “He just sits there and laughs!”
Dru, looking over her, held his breath. “Rendel?”
It was indeed Rendel. The Tezerenee, clad in torn garments and looking as if he had risen from a harsh burial, sat on a battered bench. He was silent for the moment save for the gasping sounds he made as he gulped in air. Readying himself for another round of madness, Dru decided. What was Rendel doing here and where had he been?
“You know him?”
The tall Vraad nodded, unmindful of the fact that the elf had her back to him. “I’m going out there.”
“You should not!”
Her words went unheeded. Dru stepped out and walked toward Rendel, trying, all the while, to maintain an image of confidence he knew to be false. When he saw that the Tezerenee intended to laugh once more, Dru called out.
“Rendel! It’s me! Dru Zeree!”
The other Vraad leaped to his feet and shook his head. He was silent, though his mouth kept forming words.
“Rendel. I’m real. Where have you been? What happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” Rendel almost began laughing, but found the strength to resist. “What has not happened to me? You should ask that!”
Dru forced his own voice steady. “All right, Rendel. What happeened? Tell me.”
“It took everything away from me.” The tattered Tezerenee’s eyes revealed his close battle between sanity and madness. “Took it all away! I had worked so hard, given so much up!”
“Who did? Who took it from you?” Rendel’s lost prize did not concern Dru so much as what power had returned him from the realm beyond the veil to dark Nimth.
“A dragon. It rose from the depths of the earth… only it was not a dragon! It was the earth!”
A dragon formed from the earth itself? One of the guardians. One with a fondness, it seemed, for the form of that particular leviathan. “The guardian brought you here?”
If Rendel noted the familiarity with which Dru spoke of the ancient familiar the latter had befriended, then he made no sign. “Sent me here. Said it had already interfered more than it had been allowed. Assumed that if I made it back to… to where I was… from Nimth, then I was meant to be there.” His eyes snared Dru’s. “But there is no way to cross! We are trapped here, Master Dru!”
The brown-and silver-tressed spellcaster hesitated, wondering whether his response would weaken or strengthen Rendel’s sanity. He also wondered if he really wanted to tell the Tezerenee his belief.
Rendel, the remnants of his cloak wrapped around him, started to sit again. It was not clear whether he desired to continue with his pointless laughter, but Dru knew that listening to that much longer would drive him insane.
“There may be a way back… if you’ll listen to me.”
“There is no way back!”
Dru stepped closer. “I crossed to the shrouded realm and back again. It’s possible.”
For the first time, hope crossed the Tezerenee’s scarred visage. Dru wondered what he had gone through over in the other domain.
“Possible?”
“It is.”
Drawing himself straight, Rendel managed a shadow of his old, arrogant self. “Then we can still win.”
Rendel’s widening eyes told Dru that the Tezerenee had finally noticed Xiri, who had joined them. A strange look crossed the battered figure’s face for the merest of moments. “Who is that?”
“Xiri. My friend and companion.” The description sounded inane and inefficient to Dru, but he was not about to attempt to define his growing relationship with Xiri at this time, not when he himself was not certain in what manner it had grown. “She’s an elf. We met on the other side, when both our lives were in danger.”
“An elf.” Rendel looked her over as one might look over a prize pet. “I had forgotten there were elves.”
“We have not forgotten the Vraad,” she returned, her voice chilling.
“So I see.” With each passing second, Rendel was becoming more and more his old self. Dru wondered if he had made a mistake.
His worries lessened a bit when the pale-haired Vraad turned back to him and asked, “What about this way across? How did you find it? Can we get there easily?”
“It found me.” Dru described his involuntary crossing and went into vagaries about how he had returned. Rendel’s eyes lit up at talk of the founders and the news that the golems’ purpose had been usurped made him smile.
“Father must have been furious.”
“I suppose.” Dru tried to remain unsuspicious. “I would have thought you’d have come across Barakas and the rest.”
“Circumstances separated me from where they were to arrive.” Rendel would say nothing more about the subject. Taken with what the Tezerenee had said during his less lucid moments, however, a specter of the truth began to form. It was not a truth Dru appreciated.
“Well.” The other Vraad crossed his arms. He still wore his tattered outfit, but no longer looked like one of the walking dead. His bearing was that of a man fully in control of his life. “What now?”
“We have to find whoever is left here. We all have to cross. I have this feeling that Nimth will be cut off at some point soon and left to rot. I don’t want to be left here to rot with it.”
“No, neither do I.” Rendel growled. His anger, it seemed, was for someone else, likely the guardian who had delivered him back to the dying world. “I have a suggestion, however.”
“What might that be?” Xiri asked, moving close to Dru, as if to show Rendel that the two of them were a united force. Neither Dru nor his companion wanted the Tezerenee to become the dominant partner. Their trust hardly ran that deep.
“Instead of seeking them out, let them come to us.”
“Why should they come to us?” Dru rubbed his chin. “They came here once, expecting to begin a new life, and were betrayed. Why should they come here again?”
Rendel uncrossed his arms and indicated himself. A wry smile spread across his face. “Tell them that you have a Tezerenee, myself in particular, and they will come with the speed that only the hunger for revenge can give them.”
He was offering himself as bait, in a ploy that could end in his slow, nigh-marish death. Dru had to admire his daring, if nothing else.
“They will blame everything on you,” the elf remarked needlessly.
“Concerned, little one? Let them, if it pleases them. They will forget when we show them there is a true path, one which would ensure they were never in debt to my father.”
“Only to us. Only to you,” Dru added.
“They might feel some debt to you, outsider, but not to an elf—whom you had better protect—or from me. From me it will only be a balancing of scales.”
“He is correct, Dru.”
“I know.” He did not trust Rendel, knowing there was too much that the Tezerenee had not told them. Yet, the plan had merit. Further argument would only waste time they might not have.
“The only question remains,” the other Vraad interjected, “is how to contact the rest. It will be a long task, I think. My own power works haphazardly, as yours likely does.”
Dru looked down at
Xiri, who returned his gaze with a smile, too. “We have a way around that.”
Rendel glanced from one to the other, openly puzzled. “Do you really?”
It would have been impossible to perform the spell and keep their new companion from discovering the truth. Any attempt to hide their secret from Rendel would have only further weakened the bond they had forged. Dru wanted no trouble from the Tezerenee and admitted to himself that, of all other Vraad, it was Rendel who had the most knowledge concerning the shrouded realm, knowledge they might still need before all this was over.
“Step back.” The curious Tezerenee obeyed without question. Dru and Xiri sat, the better to concentrate fully on their new task. Alone or with another Vraad, Dru doubted the summoning could have been performed with so much chance for success. Even Rendel’s clan would have found themselves hard-pressed at this point. Oh, their summoning might have gone out, but not so clearly or so far. Besides, would anyone believe Dru if they knew that his supposed prisoner was aiding him in the spell?
Though much more complex due to the area that they were forced to cover, the spell proved far more willing than the last. What was sent out was not so much actual words, but images and sensations that repeated and repeated. Dru had intended on sending out an actual message, but it was Xiri who had performed that part of the spell and she had followed elfin ways. It really mattered little so long as what they desired was clear, but the end results reminded the sorcerer too much of the method by which the Seekers had communicated with him.
A glance at Rendel’s suddenly chalky features made him wonder how well the Tezerenee knew the avians.
Dru had hoped that Sharissa would be the first to respond, but as the minutes passed, his daughter made no attempt to contact him, though she had to have noted the message. Instead, when the first response did come, it was as if the maelstrom that he had been eyeing anxiously had finally let loose with a rage intended to tear Nimth apart.
What was left of the tallest tower shook as if coming to life. Several fragments broke loose and struck the battered courtyard. A blue fire spread across the northwest edge of the city, burning solid rock as if it were dry kindling. A ferocious wind threatened to topple one of the smaller, outer towers. Cracks formed in the earth. Rendel had a grim smile on his face, well aware that whoever was coming wanted his head. Dru kept his eyes focused in the direction of the source of the attack, waiting for the Vraad to reveal his or her identity.
Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. II Page 58