was why she now sat in the snow, gazing at the emptiness without truly seeing it.
“There’s no need to hurry,” she stated quietly, finally responding to his words.
“No need to hurry? With Talak under siege by the drakes?” Had her ordeal at last overtaken her mind, too?
“Shade said that I had been rewarded.” Erini laughed bitterly. “It seemed so perfect. They didn’t deserve to survive. I keep telling myself that they would have killed Melicard and all the rest if I hadn’t agreed.” Her voice caught. “Yet, for some unfathomable reason, I can’t help crying at the suffering they must have gone through, the shock when they realized what was happening.”
“You make no sense, mortal!” She did, but Darkhorse had trouble believing what he was imagining.
She looked up, so pale he almost expected her to dissipate in the wind as Shade had done. “I want nothing to do with sorcery, Darkhorse. It seemed the best way to rid us of them, but… so many lives!”
“The drake host?” he finally asked with some misgivings.
She nodded, putting her head in her hands again. “All of them. Swallowed up without damage to anything or anyone else-save Mal Quorin, I suppose. I even pity him, if you can believe it. Shade killed them all with my permission.
Now it was Darkhorse who could say nothing. He wondered at the carnage they would see when they returned. In some ways, it had been necessary, but the scope of what the warlock had been capable of…
Erini looked up again, tears for her enemies in her eyes. “Take me back to Talak, Darkhorse. I–I can’t do it myself. I might-might appear in the middle of-I want Melicard!”
The eternal let her cry some of the pain away as he slowly formed a sphere around them. A variation on the portal, it would allow them to travel without forcing the princess to act herself. When they arrived in Talak, he would see to speaking to Melicard privately about her immediate needs.
He welcomed her sorrow and her need for his aid. Her trials would give him purpose and allow him another chance to learn. Some day, he might yet understand the mortal creatures he had chosen to make his own. Some day, he might understand their path through life and, because of that, the definition of life itself. Perhaps then, the shadow steed might one day come to understand what could have created the man who had become known in legend and face as simply Shade.
Perhaps then, he might also make sense of the continuous, wrenching feeling that had begun within him when he realized that the warlock had surrendered his life.
XXIII
Cabe Bedlam found the eternal overlooking the northern lands from one of the palace balconies. A vast, well-cultivated field, half wheat and half oat, covered nearly every inch of the level plain before them. Upon first glance, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the fact that this was hardly the time of year for such a mature crop. What made the sight stunning, however, was the fact that it was out there where the army of the Dragon King had once stood. It was out there that settlements, wooded areas, and roads had existed prior to this day.
It was there that the drake host had perished down to the least of the minor drakes.
“I’ll never forget the sight,” Cabe said quietly, eyes fixed on the innocent-looking field. “We had barely arrived here ourselves, and then only thanks to the Dragon King Green, who arrived at the Manor and broke the spell Shade had cast over us.” He had already relayed that story earlier, telling how, in response to word from the Lady Bedlam, the master of Dagora Forest had gained entrance and found the two, victims of Shade’s attempt to kidnap their son Aurim. Neither the Bedlams nor their Dragon King ally, Green, could explain why the warlock had abandoned his plan after successfully dealing with the only two standing in his way.
Darkhorse thought he knew, but did not say so to Cabe. It would only make what had happened to the ancient warlock more difficult to accept.
Cabe moved on to the shocking fate that had befallen the charging drakes. “Even with our sorcery, we were only keeping them in check. Some of their number got through from time to time and wreaked havoc until each was killed or driven off. Some of their spells succeeded as well.” The sorcerer shivered, remembering some of the more dire ones. “Word reached us at one point that the expedition to the Hell Plains had turned around, apparently because of some message etched into the ground by a spell of Drayfitt’s just before his death-” Cabe did not notice Darkhorse flinch. That explained the final words he had not heard, the ones the elderly sorcerer had spoken before expiring! To the end, Drayfitt had served Talak with the utmost efficiency. “Though the reinforcements were on their way, the fighting was becoming so fierce that we suspected the drakes would be through Talak’s defenses before they arrived. It was just after that when the ground to the north began to split open.”
What had happened next had driven even stone-hearted Melicard to pity the deaths of his enemies. Great gaps and ravines opened in the earth, but only in and around the moving host. Some estimated that nearly half of the drakes perished in the first minute, as the warriors tried frantically and uselessly to control the sudden panic of their lesser cousins. Warriors and mounts fell screaming into the gaps, which closed up instantly, only to be replaced by others. Many of those who managed to find stable footing during the first onslaught fell easy prey when that ground beneath them suddenly yawned wide.
“Did none of them fly away?”
“Seems logical, doesn’t it?” Cabe wore a grim smile. “They tried it. The sky over the area was literally filled with them-until the winds began to buffet them back to the earth!”
“Winds?”
“Winds followed by lightning followed by a downpour that would have crushed in the roof of the palace had the storms touched the city-which they did not with amazing accuracy! Everything was confined to the area where Silver’s horde was trapped.”
Quakes, wind, lightning, and rain. Earth, air, fire, and water. Darkhorse had to admire Shade’s work. How extravagantly traditional.
No one had seen the Dragon King himself perish nor, for that matter, Mal Quorin’s fate, either. It was safe to assume, however, that they had fallen with the rest. The entire horrible sight had lasted perhaps five minutes. When the last drake had perished, the wounds in the earth healed themselves and the storms dwindled to nothing. No one could really say when exactly the field had risen up, though everyone swore it was there only moments later.
Voices within informed him that the one he had been waiting for had finally recovered enough to join the rest. Darkhorse excused himself from Cabe.
“I’ll not forget the good he did, Darkhorse,” Cabe called after him.
“Do not forget the evil, either.” He trotted into the vast room.
Her face lit up as she noticed him.
“Princess Erini!” He dipped his head in her honor. “Glad I am to see you better! Cherish this woman, King Melicard, for there are few as worthy as she!”
The king had one arm securely wrapped around his betrothed. The love he bore for her was spread equally across both sides of his face. The elfwood arm, the one that held Erini, looked as supple and lifelike as the real thing.
It is the spirit of the wearer that makes of the elfwood what it will be. With love comes life, it seems!
“Darkhorse.” Erini separated herself from Melicard, walked up to the shadow steed, and hugged him by the neck. Off to the side, the Lady Bedlam smiled sourly. “Thank you for giving me my life again!” the princess added.
“It is I who should thank you! Are you truly better?”
“It will take me some time to learn not to shiver each time my eyes turn north and see the field.”
Darkhorse laughed. “Think of the field as the first heralds of peace! What Shade did was horrendous, but did not cowardly Silver bring it upon himself?”
“I suppose.” The princess looked down, as if remembering. Then, she looked back up, staring into his glittering eyes. “What happens to you now?”
The shadow steed felt as if all eyes in the room were now on him. “I shall roam the Dragonrealm as I always
