Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

The wolf raider was almost inclined to agree with him.

Tenuous, frantic strands of light, the blue bolts struck the crystalline device, bathing it in brilliant color. D’Marr felt his hair stand of its own accord and saw that the others suffered the same effect. Only Lord D’Farany, standing within the bright cobalt glow, was untouched . . . at least on the surface.

He was smiling. Smiling as a lover might while in the tender embrace of his desire. It was perhaps a very apt description, the officer realized, for to the former keeper the power that bathed him was both his love and desire. The loss of it had killed most of his kind and sent him into madness.

Orril D’Marr was too young to really recall the keepers when they had been at the apex of their glory. He only knew the stories and the few survivors he had seen. He knew that without the will of the Ravager and the work of his most trusted servants, the keepers, the empire had begun to crumble. Part of him had always wondered at the speed of that decay. Why had the great armies so depended on a tiny minority in their ranks?

Seeing D’Farany, he thought he understood. A keeper at the peak of his power was an army unto himself.

The Pack Leader still smiled. His eyes stared upward at the spiderweb of energy pouring into the crystalline artifact. Blue sparks drifted from his fingers whenever he moved his hands. His eyes gleamed blue.

With each passing second, the glow surrounding both the Pack Leader and his newfound toy became less bearable. D’Marr turned away, but found himself facing the blinding glow in a thousand reflections. He turned farther, seeking some respite, something that did not reflect the light.

What the raider found instead was the very passage he had been searching for.

A gaping mouth, it was so blatant a sight he could not understand how it had taken him even this long to notice it. He took a step toward it, but then something caught him by the foot, nearly sending him crashing to the harsh floor. The Aramite regained his balance and glanced over his shoulder. He saw the desperate Quel, the inhuman eyes wide, struggling to roll over to him and somehow stop the raider’s advance. D’Marr smiled briefly at the pathetic sight, but a sudden change in the Quel’s eyes, a change from fear to burgeoning hope, shattered the smile and sent the raider’s attention flying back to the secret entranceway.

It was already fading. The same crystal-encrusted wall was slowly re-forming, growing more solid with each passing breath. The Quel suddenly forgotten, D’Marr raced toward the vanishing passage. The wall was still transparent, but that was rapidly changing. Reaching out in desperation, he slammed a hand against it, but his efforts only rewarded him with pain. It was too late to cross through. The split-second delay caused by his gloating had lost him his opportunity.

Still, he had a moment, but only a short one, in which to glimpse what secret lay behind the cursed wall. It was a harried glimpse, made the worse by the lessening transparency of the stone and crystal. Nonetheless, he was able to make out shapes, hundreds of shapes, in a cavern that must have been nearly as immense as the one in which the city lay.

D’Marr saw no more than that. The wall became completely opaque, the stone and crystal completely innocent in appearance.

He slowly turned back to the others and was not at all surprised to find that Lord D’Farany had just completed his work. The tentacles of energy had withdrawn; if not for the blue glow about the top of the Quel device, the chamber would have looked exactly as it had before they had entered.

“Not the same . . .” the Pack Leader was muttering. Despite his words, however, a smile had crept across his scarred visage. “Not the same, but so very close . . . I will just have to accept that.”

His eyes were still focused.

“My lord, I shall remove the tooth, yes?” D’Rance looked exceptionally eager. D’Marr momentarily put his discovery aside and started to mouth a protest. He knew, through careful observance, that the northerner had some trace of power. Was it possible that he had more? Did he have the will and ability to control the keeper talisman? That would take more skill than the Aramite had suspected him of having.

His words of protest never left his lips, for Lord D’Farany was quicker to respond. His eyes bore down on the blue man and D’Marr had the distinct pleasure of watching his rival cringe under the intensity of those suddenly alive orbs. “Your readiness to assist me in all is commendable, Kanaan, but you may leave it where it is. There is no more secure place for it now than where it presently stands.”

D’Rance assumed a more servile position. “Yes, my lord. I meant nothing by it, my lord.”

The Pack Leader had already dismissed him from his attention. Now those eyes focused on the peculiar scene of the Quel lying on his side far from where he had been earlier positioned and Orril D’Marr standing near the wall, much too far away from the prisoner that he had been charged with guarding. “And you, Orril?”

The raider wondered how he was to convince Lord D’Farany of what he had seen. An entire cavern lay hidden from the invasion force, yet only he believed-knew, rather-that it was there. The Pack Leader and the blue devil had been so engrossed in the spectacle above them that they had missed the unveiling of the Quel’s secret.

“Forgive me also, Lord D’Farany. Sorcery is not my realm. I admit to having been somewhat . . . overwhelmed . . . by the results. I’ve seen things I’d never expected to see.”

“Wonderful things . . . and there will be so much more . . .” The Pack Leader gazed down at the Quel creation, his eyes filled with great fondness. “We shall do so much together, the two of us . . .”

The eyes were losing focus.

With a last gentle touch, the Pack Leader separated himself from his prized possession and, to neither subordinate’s surprise, departed without a word. Kanaan D’Rance remained behind only long enough to look from the device to his rival before he disappeared into the tunnel after the Aramite commander.

D’Marr stared thoughtfully at the wall that had, so far, beaten his efforts to unmask it for what it was. He would have to find another way in than this place, that was all. Perhaps there was another chamber that also shared a wall with the hidden cavern. It would be a simple matter of exploration, of hunting. He excelled in hunting, no matter what the prey. Then, with the aid of his explosive toys, he would create for himself a new and permanent way inside. There would be no magic to stop him then.

From the mouth of the tunnel, a wave of black armor flowed into the room. It was the guard contingent Lord D’Farany had brought with him. The ranks split as each man entered, one line moving to the left side of the chamber and the other to the right. D’Marr signaled two of the soldiers to take custody of the Quel. The captive departed without protest, but inhuman eyes watched the young officer until the depths of the tunnel swallowed the creature. The other guards shifted their ranks to make up for the slight loss to their number.

I will have to make measurements, D’Marr thought, returning with anticipation to the project ahead. Too much powder and the explosive would bring down not only the wall but the rest of the cavern as well. Best to find the proper spot first. Then I can judge how much will be needed.

There were already men mapping the complex system of caverns and tunnels that made up the Quel domain. While far from complete, he was certain that their charts already revealed enough for his present concerns. With so much importance placed on this particular section of the underground world, it had only been logical to map it first.

He had much work ahead of him, but Orril D’Marr was pleased. He was on the verge of shattering the last hope of the beastmen and discovering what great secret lay in that cavern behind the wall.

The guards came to even greater attention as he passed them on his way out of the chamber, but the raider officer paid their fear of him no mind this time. His only thought was on the coming success of his project and the look on the blue man’s face when D’Marr revealed to Lord D’Farany the most closely guarded of the underdwellers’ mysteries . . . whatever it was.

They did not know how close they had come.

The Crystal Dragon stirred himself from the self-imposed stupor. Trust the wolf raiders to be both