Darkhorse saw all and acted accordingly. Whether Melicard succeeded or failed, if there was an opening, the shadow steed would seize it.
The king stretched out his one good arm, tottered. Darkhorse quickly filled the silence that had been extending far too long already.
“What do you hope for now, human? To stand ready until the Dragon King himself stalks into this room?”
“If need be,” Mal Quorin grated. “I doubt I’ll have to wait that long. My only problem is to get rid of you somehow, and I think-”
Reaching forward, Melicard grabbed his treacherous aide by the collar and pulled him back. Quorin’s hand went up, the blade briefly nicking Erini’s chin, but no more. One of the remaining soldiers grabbed the two, who were falling down in one tangled pile of arms and legs.
Darkhorse struck. The man holding Erini, panicking, tried to shield himself with her. Against a physical attack, he would have succeeded. Darkhorse had other tools at his command, though. He hit the floor with his right front hoof, creating a wicked split in the stonework and the earth below. The crack that formed shot unerringly beneath the legs of both the princess and her captor. The soldier looked down in horror as an eye stared back at him from within the crevasse. In his shock, he loosened his grip on his prisoner. Erini suddenly went flying from his hands, pulled free by the power of Darkhorse. She landed softly by the eternal’s side. As her feet touched the floor, the guard’s left it, or rather, it left him. The floor where he stood collapsed into the crevasse, the guard with it. His screams had barely died before the floor had sealed itself back up, looking remarkably untouched.
“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
