Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

sprouting up everywhere.” Valea listened with fascination at the words she-or rather Galani-spoke. The confidence of the speaker was undermined by the sorceress’s own knowledge of the lengthy reign of the Dragon Kings and how humans, not elves, would begin supplanting the drakes.

Arak nodded-somewhat hesitantly, Valea thought-then led her toward what the sorceress knew to be the entrance to the back of the estate.

Outside, the fanciful topiary animals she already knew greeted them, as did the high, vast hedge maze in which Valea and her brother had cheerfully lost themselves as children. Instead of night, the bright sun illuminated everything. Yet, where Valea’s world was one bustling with the activity of the human/drake settlement that dealt with the Manor’s expansive lands, Arak’s domain seemed one of emptiness, loneliness. The two of them looked to be the only inhabitants and Galani clearly had come as a guest.

“Why are we out here?” her mouth asked.

“I thought you’d feel more at home out among the foliage.” Again, the male elf spoke with some hesitation in his voice.

The ties between the two clearly ran deeper than blood, that Valea could sense. She knew that among the elves cousins did marry, but for some reason any hope of that happening between Arak and Galani had long faded.

Her body shivered. “It is very pretty, but . . . there is something different about the plants here . . . something not natural.”

“This place has been touched by magic in more than one way since its creation, cousin. You simply feel that.”

Valea abruptly found herself staring up into the elf’s eyes. She could imagine losing herself in them-until Kyl’s visage briefly overlapped Arak’s.

Valea pulled away. Valea . . . not Galani.

“What is it, cousin? Do I now disgust you the way I disgust the elders?” The handsome face twisted into something not so handsome.

The sorceress could say nothing, too stunned at having interacted. Fortunately, Galani answered. “Never that, Arak! I only fear that you underestimate the pressures you put upon yourself-” The eyes surveyed the grounds and the tall marble and wood facade of the Manor. The statue of a soaring Seeker, one of the avian humanoids Valea knew of even in her own time, stood perched on one edge of the sloped roof. “-and this place . . . this place is not good for an elf’s mind. I feel that.”

“Rubbish. This is why our people remain nothing more than incidental influences in the land! Beware of the unknown! Beware of change! Beware of outsiders-”

“Surely not all outsiders, my friend . . .” came a voice that, despite its calm, quiet tone, still made every fiber of Galani’s and Valea’s mutual body grow taut.

Arak reacted with anything but uncertainty, He spun around to face the Manor, a look of pleasure on his face. “You are back! How timely! Perhaps between the two of us we can talk some sense into my cousin. I told you of her imminent arrival, did I not?”

“You did.”

Through Galani’s eyes, Valea stared at the newcomer who had so brazenly appeared out of nowhere as if he, not the elf, was master of this domain. Valea tried to speak, but her host’s own startlement kept both frozen.

Not at all sensing his cousin’s mood, Arak reached out an arm toward the newcomer. “Cousin, permit me to introduce the most ardent supporter of my efforts, a fellow exile whose aid in my work has been invaluable! Galani, this is-”

The figure, a tall man in leather boots and wearing flowing-almost living-robes of black, reached forth a gloved hand to take Valea’s own. He interrupted Arak’s own introduction, saying, “Call me Tylan . . . this time.”

Through Galani, Valea stared and stared at the imposing form, stared mostly at the face . . . or where the face should have been. Beneath a voluminous hood, she caught a glimpse of brown hair and a streak of silver. However, beneath that, the face remained just out of focus. No matter now hard her host or she tried, it never quite defined itself. Eyes could be made out and a mouth and nose, but seen as if in a fog or through water.

And the gasp that escaped belonged to Valea, for she, if not Galani, knew whom she confronted. The name burst forth, with its uttering the sorceress’s entire world turning into a blur worse than that beneath the hood.

“Shade!”

IV

“Missstresss Valea! Missstresss, pleassse!”

Valea blinked, realizing her eyes had closed. She moved her head, only to feel a hard surface beneath. Above her, a blinding light coalesced, becoming a candle in a brass holder in the hand of a very distressed Setera.

The drake put the candle holder down, then knelt beside her mistress. Valea looked around, saw that she lay at the foot of the staircase and that the first hints of daylight had just begun to creep in through the windows.

“Are you well?” hissed Setera. She touched the sorceress’s hand. “Missstress! You are cold!”

That was not a great surprise to Valea, considering that she had been lying on the floor all night in only her gown. She rose quickly, then regretted her swiftness when her legs nearly buckled.

Setera kept her from slipping. This close, the drake’s much hotter, more rapid breathing quickly warmed Valea up.

“What-what are you doing here?” Valea asked her.

“I heard a noissse . . . a gasssp! And sssome word or name!”

Shade . . . She remembered calling out his name, but that had been in the dream.

Recollection of what she had experienced suddenly made all else insignificant. Valea had done something her father had never managed, to reach into one of the memories of the Manor and experience a part of its reason for existing. The elves Arak and Galani and their dealings with the warlock Shade . . . small wonder that the ancient edifice would have such an encounter burned into its core.

Gently shaking off Setera’s concern, Valea hurried to her bedroom. Her mind raced over and over the scene and the final instant. She knew of Shade, of course, even though she had never to her memory met him. When last he had appeared, it had been when then-Princess Erini had been on her way to marry Melicard I of Talak. The hooded spellcaster had nearly brought that situation to ruin, but in the end had not only aided the new queen with her fledgling magical skills, but had also prevented Talak from being overrun by one of the Dragon Kings. At the time, it had been assumed that it had finally cost him his life . . . but then Shade had died many, many times before.

Her father believed Shade to be as old as, if not older than, the drake race, which had itself seemingly come out of nowhere far in the past. Cabe Bedlam suspected that Shade was the last of the human race’s precursors, the legendary and sinister Vraad. Refugees from another world, if his research was correct, they had colonized briefly what was now the Dragonrealm . . . and then vanished as a civilization.

If Shade was an example of the might of Vraad sorcery, he was also an example of their arrogance and self-destructive natures. From the stories her father had told her, Shade had early on attempted some mad immortality spell, a spell driven on by a more than normal fear of death. He had succeeded in a horrific fashion, much to his dismay. Shade could die, but each time he did, he instantly resurrected far away . . . and returned not at all the same man he had been prior.

Each incarnation of the warlock emerged with a splinter personality, one that sought final domination of Shade’s body. Worse, those personalities swung from light to darkness depending on the previous one. Her own parents had faced Shade as friend and foe and only the intercession of Darkhorse, the phantasmic creature from the Void and a loyal friend of the Bedlams, had prevented Cabe’s death.