They danced to a noteless melody, a silent symphony. The shadows danced at the staircase, in utter darkness, repeating the same steps over and over, a brief display caught in time.
And then they disappeared.
II
Valea lived with ghosts.
That was what her brother, Aurim, said of her, anyway. She spent most of her time studying them, dreaming of them, wondering what they had been in life.
The images were not truly ghosts, not in the classical sense. Ghosts existed in the Dragonrealm, just as surely did shapechangers, elves, and sorceresses such as herself. No, the visions that would pop up at unexpected moments throughout her home were, in fact, memories.
The memories of the Manor.
She swept back long, flowing red hair from her face as she leaned over the book kept by her father, the wizard Cabe Bedlam. For years he had inscribed in the leather-bound journal the images he and others had seen throughout the towering structure, a building not only of marble, but, to one side, carved into the very trunk of an even more imposing tree. The Manor had existed by one name or another for longer than even the Dragon Kings, and during that time had been the focal point of many lives and events, not all of them involving the young race of humanity.
Valea not only shared her father’s passion concerning uncovering the history of their home, she had made it her obsession. Her mother worried about the hours she spent in the library, fretted that her twenty-year-old daughter had become reclusive. Valea did not go with them when they visited Lord Gryphon in Penacles nor did she deign to go along when the family went on diplomatic missions to mountainous Talak, domain of disfigured Melicard and his beautiful queen, Erini. Ever the Bedlams’ daughter stayed behind, concerned that she might miss a single apparition.
“Missstresss?” called a tentative female voice.
At the library’s door stood a dark, almost sultry woman with narrow, exotic eyes and an almost elven appearance that made Valea’s own pale, rounded face seem very unremarkable to the sorceress. Setera’s plain but neat black dress perfectly outlined her curves. Even clad in a much more elegant gown of emerald green, Valea felt frumpy and plain.
Only when Setera opened her mouth did the servant reveal that, despite the image, she was anything but an elf. Her teeth were sharp, predatory, and her tongue was forked. Yet, despite this sinister aspect, she treated Valea with the utmost respect, even falling down on one knee.
“Rise up, Setera. You know my father will have no one bend to us, not man nor drake.”
“It isss the cussstom of the emperor . . .”
An involuntary twinge of regret coursed through Valea at mention of the drake’s former lord. The dragon people were very formal, that despite that their young emperor had once been Cabe Bedlam’s student. Valea’s father had tried to train Kyl to be a fair, open-minded ruler, but even he had not been able to weed out some of the race’s ingrained manners.
“But you’re not serving the emperor now. You’re in the household of my father.”
Setera rose, the glittering eyes that beguiled many of the human servitors watching her mistress close. Every time Valea stared into them, she felt plain, even ugly, that despite the fact that once Kyl had looked at her with favor. Of course, then he had also considered the ramifications of having at his side a bride whose lineage included some of the most powerful wizards ever.
Stirring herself from bitter memories, Valea asked, “What do you want?”
“Warnok claimsss to have been confronted by a vision.” Setera made the announcement with a shiver. For all their warlike ways, the drakes who worked at the Manor were unsettled by its spectral images. “You wished to be told of thessse thingsss.”
“Did he?” All thought of Kyl and her own foolishness faded as she seized hold of this news. “Did he recognize it? Where was it? Show me!”
The dark-haired female led Valea through the tall marble halls, heading toward that part of the Manor where stone melded perfectly with living wood. The smooth, light gray walls gave way to rich, brown grain as if the two had always been one. Even the floor transformed.
Ahead, staring over his armored shoulder as if expecting ghosts at every turn, the drake servitor Warnok awaited them. Like Setera, he was a recent arrival from the mountain domain of the Dragon Emperor, a gift, so Kyl said to Valea’s father, to show that the ties between drake lord and human wizard remained strong. That they might also spy for their lord was a given assumption on the part of all the Bedlams.
If Setera looked more than human, Warnok was far less. Unlike the emperor, whose fair face and form entranced women as much as Setera’s did men, Warnok resembled most other male drakes. Almost seven feet tall, he stood armored from head to toe in green scale mail tinted gold, the latter the sign of his clan. His hands were gauntleted and any features were all but hidden in an enclosed helm. From deep within the helm, red, reptilian eyes stared forth and like Setera, from the slit of the barely-seen mouth a sharp, forked tongue darted past fanged teeth.
The image of an armored knight was simply illusion. Everything that Valea saw was a part of the drake, his very skin. This was as close as most older males could come to looking human, although the youngest generation seemed to be producing more like Kyl now.
For a fearsome figure-and one who was in actuality a dragon-Warnok continued to look around anxiously. When Valea called to him, he started.
“Missstresss,” the armored servant gasped, bowing his head slightly.
“You saw it?” she began without preamble, gaze darting here and there in hopes of a repeat performance. “What was it? Did it speak? Was there more than one image? Was it on the staircase? Down the central hall?”
Long ago, Valea had given standing orders to each and every human or drake servant to study in detail the spectral visions that confronted them, ignorant ever of the fact that most people did not share her intense interest in such supernatural sights. Warnok, eyes slits and mouth becoming more and more of a straight line, withered under her inquisition.
“Only sssaw it for a moment,” he hissed nervously, reacting not at all like a giant, scaled warrior. “Near the winding ssstairsss.” The drake pointed at one of the many serpentine staircases filling the Manor.
Valea eagerly studied it, but saw nothing. A bit disappointed, she asked again, “What was it?”
“A figure in a hooded robe . . . a monk, I think, missstresss. Hisss face wasss turned from me and he only ssstood there for a moment before vanishing.”
Questioning Warnok further garnered no new information. Undeterred, Valea headed back to the library in order to search through the listings for any mention of the monk.
“And where are you off to?” asked a musical voice.
Valea’s mother, the Lady of the Amber, stood near the back entrance of the Manor. She wore emerald green riding clothes that accentuated her already-flawless figure. Her face was a perfect oval, with two gleaming green eyes, full round mouth, and a petite nose framed under a full head of hair both richer red and longer than Valea’s own. Like her daughter, a streak of silver cut through the luxurious hair, the sign of wizards, warlocks, and sorceresses.
More than once Valea had been told that she was an almost perfect copy of her mother and it was the “almost” that to the younger Bedlam seemed a statement of her deficiencies. Certainly her face was not flawless, not with a mouth too big and a nose that tipped upward. Nor were her eyes so vivid nor her hair so striking. To Valea, “watered-down” would have been a better choice of words. That her mother was fifty years old at least-not
