Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

discover exactly what that was.

“What . . . what . . . what . . .” Darkhorse was shivering. The demon steed appeared caught in some sort of fit. He was changing, too, becoming stretched out like a true shadow. Cabe felt the saddle move. He looked down and saw that it was sinking into his companion.

The spellcaster threw himself off. The saddle disappeared within Darkhorse as if it had never existed. Wild magic. Once in existence, it could create earthquakes, fires, anything. The very fabric of reality would be turned about for the time it existed. Literally anything that magic was capable of doing might happen depending on the intensity of the wave. It could also concentrate in one area, become a well of sorts where anyone who entered became subject to its insanity.

Sometimes it was caused by an irregularity in the natural forces of the world. Most often, it was because some mage had been too careless. Reckless spellcasting could pull and bend those forces beyond safe limits. Sometimes the world repaired itself, but other times it tried to adjust to the new patterns of force and then would come the ripples or waves of pure energy. Pure, unfocused energy.

There was nothing that could be done. Cabe only hoped that the wave would play itself out and leave them alone.

“You! Keeper!”

He realized the voice was directed at him. The warlock twisted around. A gruff, bearded Aramite wearing the cloak of an officer was moving toward him, battle-ax in his huge hands. Cabe felt a buzzing in his head, then saw the small crystal hanging around the soldier’s neck. A Quel talisman and one evidently designed to deflect sorcery.

“Stop what you’re doing to my men, keeper, or I’ll save the inquisitors the trouble of questioning you!”

The title by which the raider called him puzzled Cabe Bedlam until he recalled that to the Aramites the only mages were all of the keeper caste. “This isn’t my doing!”

“You lie!” He swung the ax, coming within arm’s length of the anxious warlock’s chest. “Your last chance! Do it! Don’t think you’ll be able to take me, either! Your spells won’t even touch me! I’m protected!”

“Are you now?” came a singsong voice. Cabe recognized it as the one he had heard only moments earlier. “Or aren’t you?”

To Cabe, the voice cut through all else, demanding his complete attention. Not so for the Aramite, who still waited for the warlock to obey. Then, both of them looked at the crystal, which had, without warning, begun to glow with an internal fire.

The officer snarled. “What did you do?” He reached for the crystal with one hand. “You can’t have-”

The Quel talisman melted through his breastplate before he could even finish the statement. He dropped his ax and tried to take hold of the crystal, but it was already too deep for him to reach that way. The raider’s eyes widened. He scrambled to tear the chain from his neck but his fumbling, gauntleted hands were too slow.

Cabe tried to help him even before the screaming began, but the man would not hold still and the warlock’s spells would still not affect him. There was the smell of burning flesh.

It was over relatively swiftly. The crystal burned through his chest with rapid, unchecked success. When the end came, the Aramite literally had only time to stiffen and gasp before collapsing in a limp heap on the inhospitable ground.

“Not very strong it was. Strong it definitely wasn’t.”

“Who are you?” Cabe searched for the owner of the singsong voice, fairly certain that it was a strange creature with a round form and long, spidery appendages.

“Cabe . . .” At first he thought that the voice was mocking him, but it was not the same one. Turned about by the sudden series of events, it took him several seconds to recognize the demon steed.

Darkhorse still stood where he had been, but now he was able to move his head a bit. Cabe rushed over to him and would have taken hold of his companion, but Darkhorse vehemently shook his head. “No, do not touch me! I am not yet stable. You might be pulled in. I could never forgive myself for that!”

“Are you all right?”

“Not by far, Cabe! Now I recognize this madness! I thought it impossible. I thought the last traces had perished with Shade, but this is too real. This has the taste of Vraad about it . . . the taste of a cursed realm called Nimth.”

They both knew of Nimth, the place from which, countless millennia ago, a race of sorcerers called the Vraad had fled into the Dragonrealm. Humans today were the descendants of the Vraad, although from what he had unearthed of them, Cabe would not have cared to call the dark race ancestor. They had flourished briefly in this new world, but had disappeared as a culture, if arrogance and indifference could be considered a culture, before the first generation finally died off.

Yet it was said their world still lived despite the damage they had done to it with their careless, godlike attitudes toward sorcery. Shade had hinted that and he, it had turned out, had been one of them. Darkhorse had even known them, although he refused to speak of that time and could not or would not remember much of it. Some Vraad, it appeared, had had a penchant for torture.

The ground rose under them again, but not much. There were fewer shouts now. Most of the wolf raiders had either vanished back into the mists or were dead. Only a few, either stubborn or trapped by the ever-shifting reality, still remained. At the moment none of them was very concerned with the horse and rider. They were either trying to help fallen comrades or simply trying to survive. “It can’t be Nimth, Darkhorse! Nimth is lost, sealed off from everything!”

“Not so sealed. Shade always had a link with it. I tell you it is Nimth . . . or a taste of it at the very least.”

“But how?”

“That, I cannot-”

A thing like a nightmare hodgepodge of plant, animal, and mineral formed from empty space. Without preamble, it charged the warlock before it was even fully solid. It had hundreds of vinelike tendrils for legs, reptilian forearms that ended in claws much like those of a crab, and an oval body that resembled a simple hunk of granite. Carved into the center of that was what at first glance appeared to be a crude image of a human face, but the jade eyes that stared with hunger at the warlock and the huge maw that opened and closed, constantly revealing row upon row of sharp teeth, looked real enough. It moved at an incredible speed, considering that each tendril had to push forward to give it momentum. It spattered a greenish slime about as it traveled. Cabe noticed with dismay that the trail it left behind it burned into the hard ground beneath as the monster passed. There was no doubt that it was a magical construct; no creature could have been born so.

“Stand away, Cabe!” Darkhorse demanded, putting himself between the monster and his friend. “I will deal with this abomination!”

The warlock stepped aside, but not to protect himself. There was no way that he could prevent Darkhorse from trying to defend him, but he was also not the kind of man who would let others do battle while he stood by watching.

The magical abomination slowed as it neared Darkhorse. It shifted to one side, as if trying to get around to the eternal’s flank. Darkhorse kept the monster before him, which resulted in Cabe ending up behind the shadowy stallion. The warlock started toward the left, but then the abomination moved again and Cabe once more found himself standing to the rear of his companion.

The two leviathans continued to square off. Darkhorse, Cabe knew, was trying to evaluate the thing’s abilities. Where anything associated with Nimth was concerned, the demon horse was unusually careful. He had a long and bitter memory of things spawned from that sorry realm.

The warlock once more tried to join Darkhorse and once more the madcap abomination shifted also, again leaving Cabe where he had started. Things were going from bad to worse, for in addition to the beast, the fog was thickening further. Already, both Darkhorse and his adversary were half-hidden from his view and that with the warlock only standing two or three yards from the ebony stallion’s backside. If they had to battle this thing blind, there was no telling what the outcome would be. Darkhorse was not invulnerable and Cabe thought even less of his own chances.

Despite his wishes, the foul mist continued to thicken . . . no, at this point, solidify almost seemed a more fitting word. The magic-wrought beast was already little more than a shape. Not wanting