At that moment, he felt the link between himself and the princess break. Shade had reclaimed her for his dire purposes.
A dangerous error on your part, my dear, deadly friend!
No longer forced to divide his strength between his own defense and the protection of the fading Erini, the eternal’s might returned much more rapidly. He had still nearly burned himself out, but now he had at least the ghost of an opportunity. Shade would be vulnerable now, mentally if not magically, and Darkhorse was already devising a way to increase that vulnerability. He no longer felt much remorse about what he plotted to do; Shade’s apparent denial of his own condition had made it clear that the spellcaster was beyond aid. It was either defeat Shade or watch as the Dragonrealm and the rest of this world suffered the same fate as long-forgotten Nimth.
A storm was brewing, one that threatened to become a fullscale blizzard. There was a touch of sorcery about it and Darkhorse knew then that there was no time to waste. Shade had already begun whatever new experiment he planned. If there was a time to catch him with his guard down, it was before the plan reached fruition. The shadow steed had failed at that once. This time, though, the tale would end differently.
Darkhorse rose quickly, tearing and snapping the bonds that had ensnared him. Where they had sought to leech from him, he now returned the favor, causing them to dissipate in mere seconds. Things of sorcery, they left no remains. The only regrets Darkhorse had was the vile taste of them; they were filled with the taint of Vraad sorcery.
In the distance, he witnessed a vast aurora and knew immediately that there was where he needed to go. There, he would finally have Shade where he wanted him.
A portal offered too much risk. Darkhorse raced across the empty land, feeling somewhat at sympathy with it for all it had been through. Once, there had been trees here, life. Now, nothing but emptiness. The land looked much the way the eternal felt.
It was, he thought, a fitting place for what would be coming next.
Erini was the first to come within sight. She stood much the way she had in the chamber, save that her eyes were open and she seemed to be saying something. Darkhorse slowed. Something seemed wrong. When a rise brought Shade into view, the shadow steed knew that the scene before him was not as it should have been, that something was amiss.
The warlock was seated before his captive, his head low and his arms outstretched as if he were the one giving of himself.
Darkhorse sped across the remaining tundra and began casting his first-and likely last-spell. Entranced as he seemed to be, Shade would not notice until it struck. From the corner of his eyes, Darkhorse noted Erini’s gaze turning toward him. Her mouth opened as if she intended to say something, but the ebony stallion ignored her. For the moment, it was only Shade that mattered.
When the attack caught him unaware, the shadow steed’s first angry thought was how the warlock had tricked him again, laying some trap that he knew Darkhorse would be unable to resist. Then, as the world turned upside-down, he realized that it was not his ancient adversary who had caught him by surprise, but Erini. Erini had attacked him, as if she actually wanted her captor’s spell completed.
Before he could rise and demand explanations, Shade’s voice suddenly rose above the howling wind. “No, princess. It’s all right. He doesn’t understand-and, besides, it’s taking its own course now. He won’t be able to touch me; no one will.”
“I can only try!” Darkhorse roared, standing. The snow fell from his huge form as if glad to abandon his fearsome presence. “Stand away, Erini! You shall be compelled no further!”
“Darkhorse!”
He ignored her shout, supposing her to be under the warlock’s influence. “The female is under my protection, Shade! You will release her will and face me!”
Shade lifted his head toward Darkhorse. It was pale and drawn, but distinct. The stallion’s first thought was that he had failed again. Cursing, he kicked at the snow and readied himself to perish fighting. The warlock, however, rose on surprisingly unsteady feet and shook his head at the leviathan ready to charge him.
“I’ll face you, Darkhorse, but only to say goodbye.”
“You will not leave me behind again!”
Shade smiled without malice. His face was as pale as the snow-or was that the snow Darkhorse saw? The warlock stepped toward him, leaving no trail. His movements were slow and he seemed to ripple with the wind. The warlock paused just out of arm’s length from his adversary.
“You can’t follow me where I’m going.”
Darkhorse lashed out with his hooves, hoping to take Shade by surprise with a physical attack. To his dismay, he struck only air. Behind him, the massive stallion heard Erini gasp.
Wrapped in his cloak, the warlock stepped back so that he now faced both Darkhorse and Erini. Turning to the latter, he said politely, “You have what you wanted in return, sorceress. May it please you.”
Erini would not respond, but her face grew almost as deathlike as the warlock’s. She suddenly shook her head and sat in the snow, shivering from something other than the cold. The princess buried her face in her hands.
“What we gain is never quite what we originally wanted, is it, Darkhorse?” It was impossible to deny anymore; Shade was little more than a ghost in form, a memory more than a man.
“What have you done now, warlock? What have you demanded of Erini that leaves her in such pain?”
“She cries at the vast extent of her reward, Darkhorse. I leave that for her to explain. As for me, I have taken the only path left to me. A final path, you might say.”
“Final-!” Darkhorse probed the figure before him-and found nothing but a dying emanation of power. Nothing physical stood there; what remained was of magic. Magic that was fleeing even now to where it belonged. The farthest stretches of the Dragonrealm and a crippled, tortured place called Nimth.
Shade had made Erini reverse his earlier spell, drawing forth not only his newly accumulated powers, but those forces within him that had originally cursed him to what had once seemed an endless chain of phantom incarnations, personalities that existed, but did not truly live.
Sorcery was all that truly remained of the original spellcaster and, when the last of it had dissipated, there would be nothing. No Shade. Not even the ever-present cloak. All of him was magic, nothing more.
“All that power, all that glory, was not worth facing-facing? — a continuation of that damned, horrible mockery of immortality, of life.” There was little left of the warlock now. He looked like a reflection in a piece of glass, wavering in the wind. The storm that had threatened seemed to be dying with the man who had likely been its cause, but the wind, oddly, was picking up in intensity.
Or was that so odd? Darkhorse gaze locked with Shade’s. The warlock smiled again and nodded ever so slightly.
“I had another name, once,” he started, as if seeking to take both of their minds off of the truth. “It was…”
Words and warlock drifted away with the wind.
His name. He wanted to say his name to me. The black steed stared at the place where his adversary, his other half, had last stood. There were no tracks, of course. The last tracks were those where Shade had stood and given himself to Erini. Where he had finally, absolutely, ended his curse in the only way left to him.
“Darkhorse?”
Erini. He had forgotten her presence.
“I will never know love as you do, princess,” he rumbled without removing his gaze from Shade’s last stand. “But I know that I have lost one who could be considered a brother to me despite the evils he caused.”
The sorceress was silent. Darkhorse, urged by a feeling he barely understood, trotted forward and kicked snow across the warlock’s remaining tracks, not pausing until they were buried. Gruffly, he turned to his companion. For the first time, the stallion seemed to see her. Though her abilities protected her from the elements, she had suffered as few others had. Twice Shade had used her, forced her to touch something of a world that was little more than a sick parody of this one. He hoped she would recover once they returned to-
His ice-blue eyes widened as he recalled what was occurring in their absence. “Talak! Lords of the Dead, Erini! You should have said something!”
The human was drawn and weaker than he would have suspected, considering the power she had absorbed. Darkhorse sensed also a loss to the aura, the presence, about her. She was worn to the bone, too, but none of that
