Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

“As they are the lords, masters, and creators of this infernal pocket world, I find that hard to believe even from your ethereal lips, Master Zeree.”

“Your threat awaits you in the castle. I come as one who knew you and felt your fear-”

“I fear nothing and no one!”

Dru chuckled, an unearthly sound even to the jaded warlock. “Your father would beg to differ.” His tone darkened. “They will be here quickly. You must listen to me. The death you fear is your victory . . . that, and her.”

“Her?” Shade waved him away. “You can’t possibly mean who I think, Master Zeree . . .”

“I always knew how you felt, as did Sharissa.” The ghost shook his head. “Your cause was not so hopeless as you think. You were just . . . at the crossroads at the wrong time.”

“How eloquently put . . . and how useless to me now. If that’s all you’ve to say, then begone with you!”

Dru Zeree’s crystalline eyes narrowed. “Ever the stubborn one. Despite that, she’ll try to do what she can for you . . .” He suddenly peered into the mist. “They’re near.”

Glancing in the direction his ethereal companion had looked, the hooded warlock saw nothing. “Who are-”

But the phantom of his past had vanished.

And almost immediately, Shade sensed the approaching figures. Five of them, a good Vraad number. They were spread all along the path behind, moving unafraid of his notice. They wanted him to know that they were there, the better to force his hand.

The Lords of the Dead were on the hunt.

Shade started away. He was not weak in their domain, but certainly weaker than he liked. They had planned long for this moment, perhaps even centuries, and it did not behoove him to wait to confront them, not yet.

As he picked up his pace, he probed with his mind his pursuers. Images flashed in his head of each. He saw the monstrous, armored warriors, the ancient symbol of their clan still visible upon their rusting breast plates. They marched toward him whether or not they still had flesh and bone with which to carry themselves. Some merely drifted along, bits of human ivory dangling limply across the ground. Most had no flesh upon their half- hidden faces, but all had fiery orbs that represented what truly remained of them after so long. They were a macabre, ghoulish parade, completely unaware that no life existed in their decaying shells. They were more ghosts than the slivers of souls that they collected.

But they were powerful, powerful ghosts.

He dared probe deeper, identifying each and recalling well when they had been of the same blood. Hirac and Ghan, the brothers. They strode near one another, the former with one leg, the latter, both arms gone and his jaw hanging loose. Delio, the giant among the necromancers. Nearly eight feet tall and almost intact. A few bits of flesh still hung to his emaciated form. Xarakee, the closest in bloodline to Shade, almost a half brother, if ancient rumors held truth. He was little more than a rib cage and a head.

And Zorane. Ephraim’s shadow. Also lacking legs, although he, like the rest, moved as if fully bodied. Shade recalled Zorane and his immaculate beard, his fastidious attitude when it came to himself. The warlock envisioned the five as they saw themselves, proud sorcerers of Clan Tezerenee and members of the Vraad race. Once stout of chest and perfect of face and form, their egos would not let them see the truth.

A fearsome, chill gale exploded, nearly sending the warlock tumbling. Shade dug in his boots, but still he was pushed back in the direction the necromancers desired him to go.

They would expect him to resist. He focused on Ghan, opening the earth beneath the latter. Ghan stumbled, seeking to retain his footing, and, as Shade had expected, Hirac moved to aid him.

The warlock reached into his cloak and pulled out a tiny, winged figurine honed from marble. He whispered to it and it disappeared.

In his thoughts, it reappeared before the distracted Hirac. Now the size of a man and screeching loud, the huge marble eagle pounced on the necromancer.

But no sooner had his golem attacked Hirac then the gale became a full storm, pummeling Shade relentlessly. It shoved him along the Lords’ route. The warlock leaned against it, but allowed the magical tempest to do its work.

He felt Zorane’s satisfaction at this apparent victory. Ephraim might have been more suspicious, but Zorane took matters more at face value. Shade was being forced toward the castle; therefore, all was as it should be.

Keep assuming so, cousin, the hooded figure thought as he pretended to lose track of a spell he had been about to cast.

With an almost contemptuous thrust of his hand, Hirac turned the marble eagle into so much dust. Ghan, meanwhile, levitated over the chasm. Emboldened, the necromancers regrouped and solidified their efforts against Shade. They had him on the run, so they believed, and he did nothing to dissuade them of that notion.

And as the storm forced him up and over a ridge, the hair on the warlock’s neck bristled. Holding his cloak tight around him, Shade looked in the direction in which the Lords of the Dead sought to force him.

There, perched on the next hill, the immense stone sanctum balefully greeted his gaze.

“So,” he muttered in half satisfaction, half anxious anticipation. “It’s almost about to begin.”

VII

Gerrod stared at the floor in shame. Valea turned away from him, preferring even the dismal landscape outside the window. Ephraim had left them to their own devices, stating that Gerrod would know when it was time for his part in their plot.

“You’re him,” she finally stated.

“He’s me,” Gerrod corrected. “A casting of me, that is. That which you call Shade is incomplete, has been incomplete since the day that damned spell was cast.”

“But he’s alive and you-” The enchantress broke off, suddenly feeling cruel in her choice of words.

“It’s the land’s jest,” he replied bitterly. “Its foul humor is surpassed only by its audacity! It must conform all to its desire and when it finds something it can’t conform, it seeks to break that thing until it can be made useful.”

She looked back at him. “Such as you?”

“I defied it. I denied it. When my people became in flesh the monsters that they had been in mind, I turned to its own magic to force back my transformation, else perhaps there would have been one more lineage of dragons . . .”

His words did not make complete sense, but Valea understood the gist of them. “You fear the Dragonrealm itself? You fear the land?”

He reached with the instinctive intention of taking her by the arm, but then came to his senses. The ghost instead pointed at the world beyond the window. “That is a mere reflection of the true reality, one of hundreds of pocket worlds, bubble realms, that the first race created. Even we Vraad had no name for them. They were powerful beyond belief and when they realized that they were dying, they created from themselves the seeds for countless successors, each set so that only one group would live.” He grimaced. “But while a few survived centuries, none flourished. Most races lived out their spans in their pocket worlds, never advancing enough to enter the true one.”

The Vraad had made the leap, although more by accident than promise. Having ruined their own realm, they found a path to the original, arriving just as the avian Seekers began to fall into savagery after their war with their own predecessors, the Quel. The Vraad began filling in the niche, but by seeking to remake their new home as they had their old-which would have eventually resulted in a second catastrophe.

But the land, Gerrod had discovered, had a mind of its own. “I believe that the last of the originators became a part of their world so that they could watch and manipulate whoever came after. Those that fit, they left virtually untouched. Those that did not . . . they altered as their whims dictated.”

For the Vraad, it meant extinction as a race. Some fled, falling prey to other forces, but many, especially the powerful, militaristic Tezerenee, transformed. From dragons they had created bodies to house their ka, their