his betrayal! With he and his band of traitors gone, the dragons returned and devoured the-”
“No.” It was not Esad who spoke, but one of their sisters, a tall, slender woman who favored their mother in form. Tamara was her name, if Lochivan recalled correctly. She had been born some eight or nine centuries prior to both of them. It was sometimes so difficult to keep track of those within the clan, much less the outsiders as well. “No,” she repeated. “It was not dragons. There are no traces, no blood. The bodies vanished in too orderly a manner, as if those who had taken them had stood in line, one following after another.”
“Logan will be crossing in one quarter hour,” Esad reminded the two of them. “We should be preparing to guide him on this side of the veil. If we don’t, there is always the chance his ka may become lost.” The chances of such were slim as long as those back in Nimth still controlled matters; both Lochivan and Tamara knew that Esad was trying to steer them both away from a subject he found unnerving. Father would not be pleased and he would want someone physical to blame. For the moment, Ephraim was beyond his capacity to punish, but they were not.
Lochivan shook his head again. “Father must know before long. The greater our delay in informing him of this latest debacle, the worse it will be.”
“We will still have to wait for Logan,” Tamara reminded them. “We need at least eleven to reach through the veil and establish a true link of communications with the others. Any word we send now would likely be garbled, and I, for one, want everything perfectly clear when we report this to Father.”
The storm, a side effect of the transfer, was rapidly dwindling to nil. Gazing up at the wondrous blue color replacing the dark gray clouds, the latest immigrant quietly cursed the misleading innocence that lay all about him. At any other time, the clear sky would have entranced Lochivan, who had never seen such a thing. Now, though, he thought of the problems the plan had suffered of late and how the Dragonrealm was not going to fall to Barakas’s might so easily.
“Very well.” Unconsciously, he stood in a pose that mimicked the patriarch almost exactly. If his relations paid no notice to it, it was only because they themselves were often guilty of the same mannerisms.
“We have a little over a quarter hour to decide exactly how we’ll tell Father… and how we’ll avoid his anger!”
Dru started to speak, but his mouth refused to answer his desperate summons. The laughter died away, though its echo would continue on for several seconds. Trotting closer, the huge ebony steed eyed the avian party with blue orbs that chilled any who stared in them. It chuckled, a low, spine-scraping sound that mocked those who would stand against it.
One of the Seekers held up a medallion and focused on the demon horse. Dru recognized the terrible mist. It started to form around its intended victim in the exact manner it had around the hapless earth dweller earlier. In the space of a breath, it was nearly impossible to see the stallion. The Vraad could feel the sense of triumph that flashed between his captors.
The ebony steed trotted forward, ignoring the mist as the sorcerer might ignore the very air he breathed.
“If that is the best you can do,” the animal boomed, and its voice stunned Dru, for he recognized it instantly, “you should not have struck at all!”
Laughing, the entity calling itself Darkness winked at the captive spellcaster. “You should not run off, little Dru! I was most distressed when I found you missing! At least I waited while you slept!”
Two brown shapes dove down from behind the Void dweller, talons poised, while his attention was focused on the human.
“Look-” A backhand slap from the Seekers’ leader silenced him before he could warn Darkness of the danger to him. Nonetheless, the massive stallion understood enough to twist his head around, though it was too late to avoid the attack.
The first avian struck, his clawed feet ready to rend the back of the impudent creature below. To his horror and that of the rest of the party, the diving attacker found no solid flesh beneath his talons. Instead, he kept diving, sinking into the darker than dark mass that was the phantom steed. The Seeker screeched once, then seemed to dwindle as he sank completely into Darkness. It was as if he had fallen into a bottomless crevice that sucked him ever deeper despite his efforts to the contrary. In mere moments, the would-be killer had vanished, taken completely in by Darkness.
A raucous noise rose among the Seekers as they voiced their dismay.
That was what he meant by taking me, Dru realized when thought was finally possible again. He swallowed hard, thankful for his escape from such a fate.
Unable to combat his own momentum, the second winged fury joined his brother, dwindling and vanishing even faster than the first had. It was almost anticlimactic after the first, though no less horrible, and in less than a minute, Darkness had destroyed-devoured? — two opponents without even striking.
“And who will be next? All you really need do is release my friend to me! What say you?” The shadowy steed indicated Dru with a nod of his head. Once, the thought of a talking horse would have been simply a matter of amusement to the Vraad; not so now. There was nothing humorous about the astonishing stallion that the Seekers faced.
The leader glanced at Dru, at his remaining fellows, and then back at Darkness. He released his grip on the spellcaster’s neck, for which the Vraad was extremely grateful. The bonds vanished as quickly.
As one, the avians spread their wings and took to the air. With equally swift speed, they abandoned the hall-and, apparently, their goal-and flew out the same tall doorway through which the party had initially entered. All the while, Darkness kept a cold blue eye on them, openly daring them to face him down. As the last departed, he let loose with another earsplitting laugh, his final cut at the fleeing foe.
“This is too amusing! One adventure after another! I shall ever be in your debt, little Dru!”
The sorcerer did not answer, choosing to collapse to the floor, the first time he had been able to rest without the painful interference from his captors. Darkness trotted toward him, still chuckling. Dru shook his head at the incongruous sight, as yet unable to believe either the entity’s new appearance or his own luck.
“It’s fortunate that you left a trail for me to follow, friend Dru. Those things did not seem friendly sorts; I suspect they would have harmed you.”
“They certainly seemed to not be.” The weary sorcerer knew that he should move on, but the opportunity to rest unhindered for once was too sweet to pass on.
“You have not commented on my form! Is it not exceptional? Truly, the sensations and movements are nearly overwhelming! I felt the urge to push to greater and greater speeds and never slow down again… it took some doing to not keep going once I did reach this place.” The shadow steed peered around at the ruins, his attention wandering as he finally got a good look at the ancient wonders around him.
“How did you… how did you come to take that form?”
Darkness snorted, recalling what he had been speaking of. “This magnificent creature strode up to me as I unfolded, altered but still at a loss as to a final form. I thought of shaping myself into something akin to you, but the creature was so fascinating that I could not help but wonder what it would be like to move as it did, to live as it did.” The ebony stallion laughed low. “It was a most prepossessing being! Once it saw what I wanted, it allowed me to examine it. Then, when I was at last complete, it showed me the path you had taken. What do you call such a remarkable creature?”
The Vraad had grown colder with each passing word. “A horse. My kind calls such a creature a horse.” No horse was so knowing, however, at least none that Dru had ever raised. He was certain that the animal Darkness had met was the very same horse that he had once ridden. Yet, its actions had not been that of the true beast, but that of an intelligent mind. “Where is it now?”
“Hmm?” Darkness seemed distracted in his thoughts. He shook his head, sending his mane whipping back and forth. It took him another moment to answer. “It departed! I do not know where. ‘Horse’! I like it, but it lacks something!”
Dru puzzled over the last. “What about it?”
The ghostly stallion gazed at his tiny companion as if he could not comprehend the latter’s confusion. “I have a brand-new form! I need a new name!”
This was hardly the time for such things and Dru tried to tell the entity so, but the shadow steed was already tossing words about, seeking a combination that would please himself. “Mighty… black… amazing…
