But Majjin ignored him, instead continuing to shout orders. He still planned to get archers near enough to strike.
Darkhorse swore, something he had learned well from humans. So long as the Gordagians refused to retreat, he could not attend to the wizards properly without more lives lost.
The rock slides grew more tumultuous, forcing him once again to race hard if he hoped to save those caught beneath them.
It was all up to Cabe, then. Darkhorse could only hope that his friend could deal quickly with Tragaro...assuming that the latter had not already slain him.
The impossibility of what the Dragon Master had done nearly enabled his surprise to put a quick and fiery end to Cabe. There had been no casting of a spell, no use of a magical talisman.
Tragaro had simply opened his mouth and breathed fire.
All of this Cabe registered in less than a second. Experience, not skill, saved him now, for he had survived by expecting the unexpected time and time again. The flames caught his robes, even singed his right hand, but he rolled away, dousing the fire while at the same time moving out of the dark wizard’s view.
Another burst of flame shot out, scorching the ruined column Cabe planted himself behind. The other wizard flattened to the ground, barely avoiding annihilation. Given a few more moments, he hoped to have the strength to fight Tragaro...but it seemed doubtful that Tragaro would give him those few moments.
Nothing remained in Cabe that could, for now, counter the incredible flame the older spellcaster breathed. It was in itself magical, yet not created by magic. It burned hotter than any fire Cabe had created, possibly burned hotter than even a Sunlance.
Then, of all things, an old expression came to him, an expression more apt now than anytime in the mage’s life.
Fight fire with fire.
It was certainly worth a try...and would use up what reserves Cabe had managed to scrounge.
He would place himself squarely in Tragaro’s sight, certain and terrible death his fate if he failed. Aware, though, of what little other choice was left to him, Cabe leapt up and waited for the inevitable.
Tragaro breathed on him.
The spell Cabe cast was a simple one, so simple that he feared the Dragon Master would know it for what it was and react in time.
But Tragaro did not, so confident was he of victory. The flames came within a foot of Cabe. The younger wizard could feel the incredible heat. Sweat poured down over his face.
And, as he had hoped, his spell sent that same fearsome fire back into the bronze visage of Tragaro.
Perhaps Tragaro was resilient to the flames, but the metal certainly was not. The bronze glowed bright, burned hot—and Tragaro shrieked. He clutched at the mask—yet seemed incredibly resistant to removing it. Instead, he let the sizzling metal sear his flesh.
Humanity bested Cabe’s desire to stand back and avoid further threat. He leapt toward the still-shrieking figure, casting a quick spell that he hoped would keep his own fingers from burning to the bone.
Through the mask, Tragaro’s eyes blazed with pain, but when he saw Cabe trying to remove the cause of it, he stumbled back.
That the elder mage had the strength and endurance he had stunned Cabe. Anyone else would have been writhing on the ground, their flesh roasted.
Yet Tragaro still suffered terribly and despite his reluctance to part with the mask, Cabe refused to back down. He darted forward, snaring the bronze piece and using all his might to rip it away.
Along with it came the Dragon Master’s own face.
In horror, Cabe stared as Tragaro’s eyes and mouth stretched in a comically macabre fashion, as if his flesh had become tree sap. Tragaro howled even more and snatched desperately at the mask, but did so too late.
And with the false face finally gone, the other wizard’s countenance transformed.
All trace of beard, of any hair, vanished...and with them went Tragaro’s nose as well. Only a slit remained. The Dragon Master’s mouth became little more than a long slit, one that spread far wider than on any normal person. His skin darkened, transforming to the color of moss but touched by a hint of the same bronze cast of the mask.
Even Tragaro’s hands transformed, curling inward and growing longer, taloned. Scales developed that swiftly covered the skin.
The eyes remained pale, penetrating, but they had also changed, turning into slits more akin to a lizard or some other reptile.
Darkhorse had believed Tragaro dead with the rest of the original Dragon Masters and it appeared he had been correct. What stood before Cabe now certainly could not be the venerable wizard.
But it could be a drake.
A drake called...Sssorak?
“My masssk!” he hissed. Without the false face, every vestige of humanity was giving way quickly. “I will have my masssk!”
Despite the heat it retained, Cabe did not release his hold. The mask radiated magic of its own, one with a signature not unlike that he had sensed around the false Tragaro.
He had even trained a drake to fight its own...
“You don’t need this,” the wizard insisted, trying to put a peaceful end to the struggle. “You’re not Tragaro. You’re a drake. You’ve no reason to want to destroy your own kind.”
Sssorak hissed. He looked larger, more bestial, and the robes he had worn as Tragaro now fit very tight. “They mussst be dessstroyed! Their monssstrous reign must end!”
The drake looked ready to exhale again. Cabe had never come across a drake who could exhale flame or poison mist while in a humanoid form, but Tragaro’s beast did not even resemble a normal drake. He looked trapped between human and dragon. There were rare cases of magical crossbreeding, of beings whose lineage could be traced to both races, but such was not the circumstance with Sssorak. He was fully drake...but either he or Tragaro had created of him something else as well.
Before Sssorak could inhale again, Cabe held the already half-melted face up. The drake instantly clamped his mouth shut, but he continued to expand in size. From his back, lumps pushed through, lumps recognizable as vestigial wings. Behind Sssorak, a small, narrow tail slapped the stone.
Still holding the artifact, Cabe approached the panting beast. “You must listen to me...Sssorak. You’re not Tragaro. You’re as much a puppet of his legacy as your new Dragon Masters are of you. You’re a drake!” He studied the coloring closely. The bronze tint of Sssorak’s otherwise green scale was not some residue left by the melting mask. “And right now you work to help destroy what’s left of your own clan as well...”
The inhuman eyes stared uncomprehendingly. “Give me my masssk, Bedlam...”
With a roar, Sssorak, his body still transforming, leapt at the spellcaster.
iX
The change came suddenly, so suddenly that Darkhorse first suspected it a trap.
The tremors ceased without warning, quickly followed by the collapsing of one of the robed figures. The others held their ground, but they moved slowly, almost haphazardly. To the eternal, they looked like nothing less than marionettes whose strings had broken or become entangled.
Yet while Darkhorse took relief from this turn of events, General Majjin saw it only as an opening. He quickly ordered his archers forward again. One managed to get just within range before the shadow steed noticed him.
As the soldier took aim, Darkhorse cried, “No!”
But the archer got the shot off regardless of the warning. Darkhorse was too far away and any spell he contemplated took too long to cast.
The shaft hit its target in the chest. The target, a young, brown-haired woman with sleepy eyes, gasped and crumpled.
“No more!” roared the eternal, filling the view of the nearest archers. Confronted by the sight of a pitch-black stallion ten times the normal size, the hardened fighters broke.
Darkhorse charged toward the general, shrinking back
to his preferred dimensions as he neared Majjin. Even then, he made for such an imposing sight that it was all the bearded officer could do to keep his war steed from bolting.
“General! You will cease! Can you not see that they are no longer a threat? Look at them! Now they are the helpless victims you sought to save! Do you still intended to slay them?”
“It could be a trick,” muttered Majjin. “They’re wizards! They can’t be trusted—”
“No? Not even as much as a soldier sent to rescue them who instead decides to execute them without first checking?”
Majjin’s countenance reddened from anger, but he finally nodded. Signaling to another officer, he commanded all archers to hold fire.
“Thank you, general.” Darkhorse eyed the man close. “Give me a moment and I will attest to their condition.”
Without waiting, he whirled about and, to the astonishment of the soldiers, raced up the steep mountainside, heading from one ridge to another.
As he suspected, the threat was most definitely at an end. Several of the young wizards, including the two Cabe had attacked, lay unconscious. The others sat or stood in a daze, most holding their heads or staring blankly.
Just as he had done with the soldiers in the river, Darkhorse seized several of the stunned novices and brought them back down to Majjin. Once those had been delivered, he raced back for more. The speed with which he moved left his charges breathless, but Darkhorse could not think of that. No matter how fast he raced, precious seconds continued to pass.
Precious seconds in which Cabe might still die.
Sssorak’s claws nearly rent Cabe. The wizard rolled back, the drake’s hot breath almost as deadly as the flames themselves. Sssorak now stood twice as tall as the human and his wings had grown some, but he still looked trapped between forms. He lacked the false armor appearance of a humanoid drake warrior, but the open visage was not that of a man, nor was the body that of a true dragon. It was as if Sssorak did not know what he should be now that he was bereft of Tragaro’s mask.
Although they fought, Cabe still pitied the drake. He well understood the enmity between humans and drakes, the results of centuries of domination by the latter, but Tragaro had done something unforgivable to Sssorak. He had twisted the mesmerized drake so much, Sssorak was willing to slaughter both races in pursuit of his dead master’s dream.
And it seemed nothing could convince the drake otherwise.
“This is not the face you should wear,” Cabe insisted. “You are a drake...a dragon, Sssorak! Tragaro’s usurped your identity! Everything you’ve done in his name goes against your very nature!”
“You will not ssspeak of the massster ssso!” Again, Sssorak sought to exhale flame, but again he feared to destroy what remained of the mask. “He taught me the truth, made certain I could carry on without him! The massster taught me everything I mussst do!”
That made Cabe’s decision for him. He had failed to reach the drake with talk. Perhaps Sssorak needed more.
“Tragaro is not your master...not any more.”
With that, the wizard set the mask aflame again.
The spell was a short but intense one, giving Sssorak no time to counter it. Already softened and distorted by the drake’s own fire, the false face had little resistance.
Cabe let the molten mass drop at his feet. “There is only you now, Sssorak. Only you.”
“Noooo!” The drake dropped to the ground, crawling over to and scratching at the melted remains. His breathing turned ragged as he sought vainly to save what little still resembled the original artifact. “Tragaro...Tragaro...”
Stepping back from the pitiful sight, Cabe contemplated his next move. The fight appeared to be out of Sssorak, but the question remained as to what to do with the drake. Return him to his own kind, whom Tragaro had trained him to despise? Bring him to the Manor, the Bedlams’ home, and try to fit him into the human/drake settlement within it?
As he pondered the possibilities, he sensed the arrival of another.
“Cabe! I came as soon as possible! Are you all right? Is the danger past?”
He smiled wearily at Darkhorse, grateful for the eternal’s presence. “I’m all right. It’s—”
“You murdered him!”
The startled wizard turned to find Sssorak standing over the puddle of bronze. Atop his not-quite-human, not-quite-draconic visage he had slapped the bent eye holes and partial mouth—all that remained of the mask. His flesh sizzled where the hot metal touched and a few streaks of burning bronze dripped down his face, but the wild-eyed drake did not seem to notice.
“You murdered the massster!”
Sssorak inhaled, his chest swelling grotesquely.
Both Cabe and Darkhorse reacted instinctively, striking—as they had done so often in the past—in tandem. A bolt of wicked blue lightning from the wizard struck Sssorak full in the mouth, shutting it in mid-exhalation. A tentacle from Darkhorse tightened around the chest.
Trapped, the flames reversed, seeking an outlet but finding none.
Sssorak swelled up like a water sack.
Darkhorse enveloped Cabe, creating for him a safe, secure cocoon.
The drake exploded.
Within the safety of the cocoon, Cabe grimaced, furious with his own weakness. He sensed every agony suffered by the shadowy stallion as the furious forces of the dying drake washed over the chamber.
Yet, as quickly as it had begun, it ended. Darkhorse peeled away slowly, reforming, rather unsteadily, his favored shape.
The torches had been destroyed, but bits of dragon flame illuminated the chamber, revealing the carnage. Of the ancient throne and the columns, only shattered bits remained. The rotting corpse of the other dragon had been nearly reduced to blackened bone. The stench of burnt and decaying flesh forced Cabe to cover his nose with a cloth.
Of Sssorak, there was no trace. Only a few fragments of bronze left any indication of his past presence and only one of those was still recognizable as part of the mask.
The twisted bit of smile gleamed dully in the light of the dying flames.
“And so it ends,” declared Darkhorse, snorting. “So much for new Dragon Masters! Imagine! A drake, of all things! He must have have been mad! I knew it was not Tragaro! I knew he was dead all along!”
“Yes, Darkhorse, you were right.”
They had returned to Gordag-Ai, returned to the court of King Edrik. The young monarch had taken the ensorcelled students into his house and promised that they would be cared for until they could be sent to their respective homelands. Any who wished to study with his own wizards could, of course, remain. The king was happy to provide them with whatever they needed.
Edrik was young, but not stupid.
However, one of Sssorak’s puppets had already chosen to leave. Hala had not even come back with the group, instead riding south, toward Zuu. She had other family there, she had said, who would welcome her.
Cabe had noted Majjin speaking with her earlier. Whether or not the general had actually encouraged her departure, he did not seem disappointed with the choice. It meant a likely end to the king’s infatuation with her and nothing would please Majjin more. The situation bothered Cabe and he made a note to check on Hala as soon as possible. She had been no more guilty than the rest and did not deserve such treatment, but as he could prove nothing, Cabe had to let it stand as it was for the time being.
He and Darkhorse now left laden with gifts from the king for the entire Bedlam clan. The eternal was in fine spirits; not a creature of material things, Edrik’s gratitude had been his present and Darkhorse savored it. More than anything, he enjoyed the friendship of others, possibly because there was no other being like him in all the land.
“At least this was a situation nipped well in the bud! Who knows what would have happened if he had been able to make true use of the Twin’s ascension! True,
there were some deaths—and I mourn Den’s most of all—but if things had continued on, the entire western half of the continent might have been thrown into chaos and war within only a few days! We were fortunate!”
“Yes, fortunate.”
The shadow steed mistook his mood. “We could not save everyone, Cabe! Den, the soldiers, and those other young spellcasters who perished in the name of this false Tragaro have all been avenged, at least! All the wrongs have been righted!”
The wizard nodded and from there on pretended his mood was lighter, but for the rest of the journey, he thought of the one victim who could never be avenged.
Sssorak. The drake had lived for over two hundred years as the twisted, hate-blinded pawn of a man obsessed beyond reason—a dead man. Tragaro had nearly created a worse threat than the drakes he had so hated and in the process he had tortured his servant well beyond the point of madness, a crime Cabe could not forgive, whatever Sssorak’s race.
No, Sssorak could never be avenged...but perhaps now, so the wizard hoped, he could be at peace at last.
A WOLF IN THE FOLD
SUFFER NOT THE CHILDREN...
I
The cavern glittered, its walls encrusted with a multitude of crystals of varying proportion. The flames from the two torches set in niches on opposites ends of the chamber were all that were needed to create the dazzling light that filled his surroundings.
He fidgeted, but not because the constantly-shifting illumination bothered his wide, feline eyes. No, the young, brown-furred figure fidgeted for a far better reason—to try to escape the black ropes which bound him from head to foot.
Although only a small child, the captive tried his best to hide his deep fear. His father and his mother were the bravest people he knew and he tried to emulate them, but it was so, so difficult. They knew everything, could defeat any enemy.
But they were back home and he...he had no idea where he was, save that it was a place worthy of any nightmare.
Legends of the Dragonrealm Page 6