The Storm Lord lay motionless, but alive. His entire body had been seared by the powerful blast, but, thanks to his great power, the dragon would survive.
One eye opened. It slowly focused on the figure before it. Hatred began to burn in the eye as recognition took place-
“Time to sleep again,” Shade whispered.
The eye struggled . . . then closed. The dragon’s breathing grew calm. The inner edges of the huge maw curled slightly upward.
Shade drew his cloak around him. “Now I am whole,” he said to himself. “Now I can do what must be done.”
And with that, he disappeared.
The tempest covered the world. Wherever the Storm Lord focused his will, lightning struck and fierce winds blew. Rain poured and thunder crashed. No place was safe from his godly wrath and the people knew that. From Dragon Kings to Seekers to ground-dwelling Quel to elves to humans-all fell to their knees before his glory.
And from the heavens, the Storm Lord looked down and smiled to himself. All was as it should be. All was perfection.
Just as he had always dreamed it would one day be.
THE STILL LANDS
Beware Death’s shade . . .
I
Silence filled the gray land, but despite that, the young, cloaked woman sensed that she was far from alone. At a glance, the murky, shadowy place only gave hints of dour hills and macabre trees with empty, clutching branches, but whenever she neared any of those landmarks, they seemed to fade away like dreams at waking. Peering over her shoulder, she would see a different background than the one she had walked and yet, if she tried to go back even a step, everything in the direction that she had originally been walking would also change.
Again, the hooded traveler sensed others around her. She focused her mind and what she saw in that brief moment caused her to utter a gasp that sounded like thunder in this still place.
Gray figures, countless grey figures, milled around her, moving with no purpose that she could see. They were young, old, human, drake, elven-even an armored Quel briefly made an appearance. All had the same hollow look.
And just like that, they were gone again-or rather, she could no longer focus on them.
Shaken, she paused to sip from the thinning water sack at her waist. The water had taken on a brackish taste since her arrival, no surprise to her. The young sorceress forced herself to swallow it, then took a bite of a biscuit that, like the water, now had all the consistency and flavor of clay.
As she retied the sack, she could not help but again look herself over. Her once-emerald travel outfit had, here, become a dull, faded green and the brown leather boots looked a dead black. Her skin, already pale, resembled that of a corpse and even her cascading rich, red hair had a coloring more akin to dried blood. Only the streak of silver running down the right remained as bright as ever. Everything else about her was a shadow of what it had been before her coming here, but while it disquieted her, it no longer surprised.
What would one expect in the realm of the dead?
She should not have come here alone. Her father and mother would have been horrified beyond belief that she had attempted this and they were not ones to shirk from danger. Cabe and Gwendolyn Bedlam were the most renowned of spellcasters, the former from a legendary line that had produced both heroes and villains. The two had become instrumental in transforming the collective lands called the Dragonrealm into a continent all but free of the once-sweeping tyranny of the drake lords. Humans now dominated, for good or ill, in most places. Her parents had faced dragons, warlocks, the avian Seekers, demons, and the incessant evil of the wolf raiders without hesitation, but here was one place that they and any sensible being avoided.
But Valea had set herself upon a mission from which she felt no obstacle could deter her. From the dead, a figure had emerged again in the Dragonrealm and the crimson-tressed young woman was certain that she had been marked as the one who had to deal with him. It had begun with dreams and ghosts haunting her own ancient home, a collection of events that tied her to that resurrected danger as none other.
Only she, Valea felt, could confront the warlock, Shade.
He had lived a thousand lifetimes, his curse alternating him between good and evil. He existed somewhere between reality and imagination, his hooded features ever blurred, indistinct. Shade had been friend and enemy to all, with each ‘death’ shifting from one end of the spectrum to the other. Valea found him a tragic figure, but she steeled herself with the knowledge that if he had returned, surely that meant danger to those she loved. Whatever sympathy the young sorceress felt-and whatever other emotions had arisen since her ghostly encounter with his past-they had to be kept in check. She had to stop whatever it was he intended.
That it had led to this place had stunned her, but Valea had persevered. She had fought her way to the realm of the Lords of the Dead and now she would cross their domain following Shade’s trail no matter what impediment rose before her.
But so far, Valea had come across nothing. The unearthly realm was filled with phantoms all but invisible to her and a landscape that, despite its changing shape and murkiness, had held no dire threats. She sensed that Shade had been this way, but that was all.
A buzzing in her ears made her swat at it. With some frustration, Valea kept her hand in check. Now and then the buzzing arose and when she had listened close once, she had heard the voices of the shadows, the whisperings of lives long past. They were, like everything around her, a disturbing distraction, but nothing to concern the spellcaster.
The buzzing, however, suddenly increased in intensity. The whisperers sounded upset, fearful. They almost seemed to be warning each other . . . or even her.
Something fluttered among the dead trees ahead of her, moving so swiftly out of sight that Valea could not be certain that she had actually seen anything.
The buzzing grew more insistent. Now it became words that she could make out with some ease.
A form flew overhead.
Valea reacted immediately, casting a spell upward. A flash of light illuminated both her and her surroundings and she heard a monstrous shriek.
Something with batlike wings darted from her view. She spun in the direction it had gone, trying as best she could to make out its shape.
Instead, a tall structure that Valea knew she had not passed earlier perched atop a high, jagged hill overlooking her location.
It was a castle or, being this place, perhaps the ghost of one. Certainly it was no place that welcomed the weary traveler. Like monstrous claws, five towers rose above the outer wall, each one topped by sharp, toothy battlements. Flanked on each corner by four of the towers and using the fifth as its centerpiece, a broad, rounded building made up the bulk of the castle. Further details, Valea could not make out. In fact, there was little else of descriptive value where the castle was concerned. No banners flew from its heights and she could not make out any gates. The battlements were empty of movement.
And yet . . . Valea took a step forward, squinting. Was there a light of sorts in the main building? Something
