Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

you.”

Perhaps or perhaps not, Cabe thought. Whether or not it concerned him, it appeared he would receive no clarification from his host and the warlock had no intention of pressing the subject. He had no way of predicting what the Dragon King’s reaction would be then.

“Then you don’t require my aid?”

A pause. “I am the Crystal Dragon.”

He knew what the drake lord’s response was supposed to imply, but the hesitant manner in which it was spoken belied that implication. The Crystal Dragon was trying to hide something and failing miserably. Yet Cabe dared not make mention of that fact. It would be far too easy for his host to take out whatever frustrations and fears he had on the warlock.

“Your Majesty-”

“I have the ssssituation in hand, mage! That issss your ansssswer; be sssatisfied with it!”

“I only had a question, Your Majesty.” When the Dragon King said nothing, Cabe dared push on. “Was it you who unleashed this deadly fog upon your own kingdom?”

His first thought was that he had indeed stepped over the line, for the Dragon King rose to his full height and hissed loudly. The chamber grew stifling. The leviathan spread his wings wide; his talons sliced at the air before him. He thrust his head toward the human, stopping only a yard from Cabe. The warlock struggled to maintain his composure even though every fiber screamed for him to run. Cabe did not consider himself a brave soul in the heroic sense of the word. He remained where he was basically because he knew that to run would be futile. Better to face a threat than turn one’s back on it.

“I releasssed it, Cabe Bedlam! I releasssed the foulness upon my own domain and it isss my resssponsssibility!”

“But to even call upon a shadow of Nimth’s dec-”

“Nimth?” The Crystal Dragon recoiled as if Cabe had just informed him that he carried plague or some other dire disease.

Could he have not known? It was not a simple task to read those draconian features. There was fear there, but of what only the Crystal Dragon knew. “Yes, Nimth, Your Majesty. A world lost in time, ever dying. There was a race of sorcerers there, a race called the Vraad. They-”

“I know what they were! I know better than you!” The glittering behemoth shifted yet closer. “I know all there issss to know about their foul ways! Did you think I wanted to do this?” Again, the Dragon King looked away. His stentorian voice grew softer. “I knew what it wassss I would unleash. I have alwayssss lived with that. But it issss only a shadow, assss you mentioned. A shadow! No ssssubstance!” He quieted yet again. “But I fear it will not sssstop them. They will be sssslowed, but not defeated. You are correct to be fearful of it. I dared let it go no further than I did, lessst ssssomething else come through. Things of Nimth wreak only deadly havoc in this world.”

Cabe took a deep breath. He had to tell the Crystal Dragon. Only the lord of Legar could possibly send Plool back. It would not solve the problem of the wolf raiders, but it would prevent the Vraad from possibly causing further chaos. That, they did not need. If Plool could have been trusted, Cabe might have held his tongue, but Plool could not be and the warlock knew that.

“You . . . did let something through, Your Majesty. Someone, I should say.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. There was the slightest tremor in his voice, a tremor that shocked the mage despite all he had already noted about his terrible host. “What . . . did . . . you . . . say?”

“A creature . . . a man . . . of Nimth came through when you opened the way. A . . .” Would the Dragon King know enough about the history of Nimth? So far, it sounded as if he might know even more than the warlock did. “A Vraad sorcerer.”

“You lie! The Vraad are dead and forgotten! I know! I-” The gleaming titan’s denial ended in a roar that echoed again and again throughout the chamber. Cabe was forced to cover his ears. This time, he was certain that the Dragon King had lost permanent control. This time, there would be no escaping the obvious madness of the drake lord.

Yet . . . yet, the Crystal Dragon did calm. It was as if a different creature were abruptly there before Cabe, a creature more cold, fatalistic.

Like the Ice Dragon? He hoped it was not so. One of the few reasons that the Dragonrealm was not a dead, frozen waste was the leviathan before him. If the Crystal Dragon was now mad in the same manner as his counterpart to the far north had been, then the wolf raiders might become the least of the continent’s worries.

“Wheeeerrre? Where issss it?” A scarlet, forked tongue flickered forth. “Where isss the Vraad?”

Cabe was regretting his idea now. He did not want to hand even someone like Plool over to the dragon; yet he had committed himself. “The Quel have him. If you could send him back . . .”

“Ssssend it back? Sssend the monstrosity back?” The Dragon King’s maw snapped shut. He closed his eyes for a brief time. When he finally opened them, the Dragon King nodded and said, “You are correct, of coursssse, Cabe Bedlam. That would be for the best. Requiring little in effort, yesss.”

“Can you take him from the Quel?” The warlock was startled to find himself asking such a question. He had grown up always believing that if any one of the present Dragon Kings was omnipotent, it was the Crystal Dragon. A few Quel should have required the least of his power.

Here the titan recovered his aplomb a bit. “I do not have to take him. They will give him to me.”

The chamber gleamed. The crystalline walls were alive with not only the Dragon King’s reflection but the mage’s as well. The drake lord stared at one of the walls and suddenly the reflections melted away, becoming other images. They were images of another cavern, a place where a single Quel toyed with a device. The vision of the Quel was repeated from a thousand different angles and distances, but mixed in with those images was a more important one that Cabe focused on. The sphere that held Plool.

He frowned. It had a reddish tinge to it. It was the same sort of reddish tinge he associated with heat. Were they trying to burn the Vraad alive?

The shimmering leviathan leaned toward that particular vision. “He isss mine.”

A host of identical Quel jumped as if bitten. A legion of startled, identical countenances looked around in panic. Cabe took some small satisfaction. He had no more sympathy for the Quel plight.

The Crystal Dragon spoke again. “You will give him to me.”

The images faded away. Cabe blinked as he watched his own face multiply over and over across the chamber walls. No matter where he looked, he saw only his own uncomprehending visage.

“Hold out your handssss, mage.”

Cabe obeyed.

“You hold the doorway to damnation.”

In the warlock’s hands was the very sphere that Plool had led him to atop the hill. It had not been taken by the Quel, the Crystal Dragon had summoned it back to him. He tensed, fearful that his grip might slip and send the fragile-looking artifact to the hard floor. If the door was broken, all of Nimth would flow into the Dragonrealm.

The dragon saw his dismay. “Ssssimple clumsiness will not bring about the end of our world, Cabe Bedlam. It would take tremendoussss power to even sssscratch the surface of thissss toy. It would take more power than even that of a Vraad . . . or a hundred Vraad, if ssssuch cooperation wassss posssible.”

It was unnerving to know what he held in his hands, unnerving to know that what he saw within was an entire other world. It was a world that his ancestors had twisted beyond repair and then abandoned . . . most of them. Yet Nimth had struggled and had survived, if what Plool had become could be called an example of survival. He wanted to throw the horrific sphere away, yet at the same time he wanted to hold it tight so that nothing, no matter how remote, would threaten it.

“It issss time.”

With those words, the Vraad’s deadly prison formed between them. The reddish tinge that Cabe had noticed before was still there, but it looked older, like a mark left over from something that had already happened. Were