the world, if Dru read the signs right. Now, more than ever, the importance of his own plan became unmistakable. Unconsciously, he urged the horse to greater speed.
“Father!” Sharissa suddenly called out, her voice partly obscured by the continued rumbling.
He turned toward her, careful to make certain that the steed was following a safe path, and saw what had caught her attention.
A crack had opened in the earth far to the north of their present location. It was small now, little more than a scar, but it was widening with each passing moment. The walls of each side of the growing ravine crumbled, causing a rain of rock and dirt. The sight would not have disturbed Dru save for the fact that the path of the tear would cut through his own domain closer than any such vast instability had prior to this. In fact, the horses might not be able to clear it on the way back. He would be forced to use his sorcery… and so near to an untrustworthy region.
Complications and disaster; it seemed he was never to be free of them. Dru hoped that the point of intersection would at least prove peaceful, like the eye of a storm.
The horse stumbled, nearly causing him to lose the reins. The path was rocky and rose higher than he recalled. When he pulled on the reins in order to slow the animal, it gave him no argument. Sharissa’s mount caught up to them, then slowed to a similar pace as the young woman copied her father’s action.
The wind was picking up, much the way it had at the city. There seemed, however, no one direction to its movement, for it struck the tiny party from all sides, changing with each passing breath. Dru cursed his own impatience, for they had left their cloaks behind. With some trepidation, he stretched out his left arm and summoned one for each of them.
On his outstretched arm appeared two brown cloaks with hoods. Sharissa took hers and gratefully put it on, drawing the hood partly over her massive waves of hair. Dru donned his own, but left the hood down for the time being. He had simply wanted the garment as a precaution.
“How much farther?”
Dru pointed at a ridge. Though both of them could follow the lines of binding, the odd strings of power cut through the ridge and came out somewhere on the other side, completely hidden. “Over that ridge! This must be where the rift was birthed!”
“But that was elsewhere!”
“The power… the flow from the other realm… spreads as it enters Nimth! The rift was the weakest of spots, perhaps created by some surge! I don’t know yet!”
Their conversation continued as they encouraged their mounts around the ridge. As they drew closer to their destination, the wind abruptly changed again, this time dying to next to nothing. It was so calm, in fact, that Dru felt as if he had ridden into a tomb. The only sounds were the clatter of hooves against loose rock and the breathing of the riders and steeds.
“Serkadion Manee!” Dru tugged tight on the reins as he spoke, for the horse had begun to shy at the disquieting sight before them.
“It’s-” Sharissa struggled futilely for words and finally just let her silence speak for her.
Dru had seen the phantom lands three times before, but they never ceased to stun him. A part of his mind that still functioned understood what Sharissa, who had never seen such a sight, must be feeling.
The ridge that was truly a part of the Vraad’s world was a sharp, twisted thing that rose high in the air and went on for some distance. A few scraggly trees stood here and there, along with some equally misshapen bushes. Of animal life, there was no trace. The ridge was more or less a great gray-brown mass of dirt and rock, hardly worth looking at by itself.
Not so, the other realm.
A forest of spectral trees, high and strong, seemed to stand guard at the base of the ridge. When Dru looked closer, he saw that the forest went into the ridge itself, much the same way the lines of force had on the other side. Transparent waves of grass, knee-high to the spellcaster, dipped back and forth, brushed gently by some breeze that existed there, but not in Nimth. A tiny form flitted beyond, an avian of some sort, though it looked like no more than a shadow. The curious mist hung over all, making both regions appear blurred.
“It’s frightening… and beautiful,” Sharissa finally managed to say.
“Yes.” Dru stirred, knowing he was wasting valuable time. “Stay where you are. I want to go farther.”
“Father! You can’t do that! This isn’t like the others, the intruding power-”
He was already dismounting. “I won’t be able to find out what I want unless I walk through it.” That was not quite true, but he could not resist. This was not the solid, absolutely real mountain peak he had spotted earlier, but it was the most complete image yet. More important still, the point of intersection was almost in sight. There, he would learn the most.
Dru started to hand the reins of his mount over to Sharissa, then decided it might be better to have the horse handy. He whispered a short spell to the animal, calming it in case the unnatural landscape made it too distraught.
“Be careful.”
“I will. You watch. Let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary.”
“Everything here is out of the ordinary.”
He chuckled. “True.”
Leading the horse he slowly walked into the chaotic region. Even the ground, the watchful spellcaster noted, had its wraithlike counterpart. Twice, he stepped into depressions that he had assumed were not part of his reality and once he nearly tripped when what he thought was better footing proved to be a slightly more solid-looking bit of the other realm.
The translucent field of grass invited him to enter. After a moment of hesitation, he put a foot forward. Finding nothing but the hard soil of his own world, he grew more confident.
All around him, Dru began to feel a tingling. He was close to the invading lines of force. For reasons the sorcerer could not fathom, a great revulsion at the thought of using Vraad magic overwhelmed him. He had not had any desire to cast a spell, but the feeling was with him, regardless. Dru steadied himself and pushed the emotion to the back of his mind. It continued to nag him, but no more than if he had been experiencing a mild headache.
Halfway through the field, Dru paused. The forest was far more solid now and tinges of color pervaded it. The lines converged within the forest after all, but he could still not make out where.
“Father!”
Dru whirled back, but all he saw were Sharissa and the other horse. She did not appear fearful, only worried. He waited for her to say or do something.
Sharissa pointed at the treetops, which Dru had more or less ignored. It was hard to hear her; the shrouded realm seemed to deaden sound. All that he could make out from her shouts and gesturing was that she had seen some fairly large shape in the trees. The master mage turned and studied them for more than a minute, waiting for some sign of whatever it was his daughter had noticed. His own impatience, however, got hold of him and he finally turned back to her and shrugged. She still looked disturbed, but indicated her willingness for him to continue if he wished.
His steed was beginning to act up now, despite the spell. Dru held tight to the reins and talked to it. Slowly, he got the animal under control. When he was at last able to gaze upon the forest again, it had grown even more real. Now, he could almost imagine the sounds of wildlife.
Within a few yards of the first trees, Dru paused again. The true landscape of Nimth was no longer visible through the trunks; he might have very well been standing at the edge of an actual forest, though none such remained in his world. Leading the reluctant horse on, Dru moved to within arm’s length of the nearest tree. Slowly, cautiously, he reached out.
His hand waded through something that had the consistency of mud. It was as if the tree was there, but not quite.
The horse reared, screaming as it did.
A man-sized shape with a wingspan greater than the length of the maddened steed fell upon the startled Vraad. Dru saw taloned hands and feet and a beak designed for tearing flesh come racing at him. So sudden was the attack that it was all he could do to raise his arms in a feeble effort to block the airborne monstrosity. There were spells that he wore upon his person that should protect him, but should and would were two different things. Whatever assaulted him was a creature of the other realm and there was no way of telling what powers it might
