Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III (123 page)

As one, the other Lords began chanting, their words in some language that Valea had never heard. The entire pattern suddenly flared bright, the runes burning like fire.

The enchantress felt a sense of vertigo—then discovered herself once again before Ephraim. However, they were no longer alone, for a third figure now hovered next to the prisoner.

The ghost of Sharissa.

“Twins born out of sync,” murmured Ephraim. “Such perfect reincarnation! Such uniqueness! It is almost as if time itself seeks to guarantee our victory over our cousin and mastery over the living lands!”

“Get on with it,” rumbled the male who had last spoken. “This must be done!”

“It will be, Zorane! It will be because I have planned it so!”

Ephraim spread his hands to encompass both captives. Valea found that she could no longer move save to breathe. The tiny stone she wore rose and fell as she did, ever touching her skin.

The necromancer slowly brought his hands toward each other . . . and as he did, Valea felt another presence begin to melt into her body.

Sharissa’s spirit filled her . . .

X

SHADE SENSED THE
powerful forces emanating from the castle.

“So,” he whispered. “They’ve begun.”

He started up toward the wall, not at all daunted by the lack of any door. When the warlock desired to enter, he would enter.

Suddenly, something launched from the battlements. Shade did not have to look close to know that they were a pair of Necri.

“I’ve had quite enough of your kind.” He pointed at the first, which immediately exploded in flames. The Necri’s shriek cut off as the fire swiftly burned it to ash.

The other creature started to pull up, but its doom had already been set in motion. Shade gave a twist of his wrist and the batlike demon crumpled together, every bone crushed magically. The warlock continued on his trek even as the mangled remnants collided with the ground nearby.

Coming to the wall, he tested the spells surrounding it. None were beyond him. In fact, most were quite infantile compared to what the warlock had expected. His cousins might as well have created a vast, open gateway for him to walk through. Clearly they desired his presence inside and Shade saw no reason to disappoint them.

He folded his voluminous cloak about him and disappeared.

VALEA FELT THE
female Vraad’s presence begin to overwhelm her own. It was not that Sharissa
wanted
to do this; on the contrary, the ghost’s sadness was evident even as she began to take over.

If Valea hoped to survive at all, she had to pray that her will remained strong enough.

Galani
. . . the enchantress called.

She sensed the stone stir. When she had decided that she must pursue Shade, put an end to his curse, the enchantress had returned to the place where she had discovered the entrance to the elf’s tomb. She could no longer gain admittance, but that had not been what she had wanted. All that Valea had desired was a tiny piece of that which surrounded Galani—the Wyr Stone. She had hoped to use its intricate properties to transform things in order to craft a spell to imprison Shade, then change him from the cursed warlock to a harmless and quite mortal being.

To her surprise, though, not only had the piece chipped free with barely any effort—but upon touching it, Valea had sensed the presence of her former incarnation. Galani intended to be with her on this quest, doing what she could.

No, Ephraim might have somehow stirred the matter up, but the elf’s desire to help had been very real. Now, Valea needed that help in a different way than she had intended.

There were suddenly three minds within her head. Valea felt Sharissa’s confusion. The latter’s invasion faltered as she confronted two wills, not one.

“Hold!” Ephraim immediately shouted. “Something is wrong!” He strode up to Valea, waving one hand across her form. Immediately it halted where the stone hung.

The necromancer hissed and tore at her garment, revealing the source of his frustration. Valea could do nothing as he seized the piece and pulled it free.

But as he did, a sense of total displacement enveloped her. A tremendous force pulled her from her own body and into an eternal whiteness. Valea looked around, found nothing. She put a hand to her face . . .

And discovered she had neither fingers nor face to touch.

Somehow . . . somehow
her
spirit had become ensnared in the Wyr Stone.

GERROD WAITED. HE
knew that Shade would come to him. Like a fly drawn to honey, the other piece of him could not stay away from that for which it had ever searched.

Gerrod stood in the courtyard, where Ephraim had told him to make the encounter. The ghost waited, head down, knowing that the meeting was imminent.

He sensed Shade before he heard him.

“So . . . there you are.”

The specter looked up. He felt no fear, no anxiety, when he stared into that blur that was all the visage that Shade could ever have. No, Gerrod only felt sadness . . . and not just for the two parts of him. He felt sadness for what was taking place and what the Lords would do when they had what they wanted.

But he had no choice but to obey if he wanted to live.

“I admit . . . I was startled when I knew that it would be you,” Shade went on. “I expected more from you.”

“You know me as well as yourself,” Gerrod chided. “You know what I want.”

“And I’m supposed to give it to you?”

“You’ve no choice.” The ghost stamped the floor. As with his cell, it reacted to him as if he was as solid as the figure before him.

The crash of his boot echoed in their otherwise silent surroundings. Immediately, a huge pattern covering the entire courtyard flashed bright crimson.

Shade sought to react, but it was already too late. He had no hope of leaving now. He could barely even move. His arms, his legs, everything acted in slow motion. Gerrod had a twang of guilt, seeing how his shell struggled in the face of the inevitable. Almost he could imagine the torment on the unseen countenance.

“You shouldn’t battle so,” the ghost said, closing on him. “I’ll be giving you peace. You could’ve never had what you wanted . . .”

“Neither . . . can . . . you . . .”

“I’ll
live
.”

The warlock struggled futilely. “At what . . . cost? As . . . Ephraim’s p-puppet? What . . . what is life . . . when the Lords . . . take over . . . the living?”

Gerrod drew back in bitterness. “Be silent! What would you know about life? A shell seeking to be real? You were doomed from the start because you weren’t even our true self!” He beat his chest twice. “I am Gerrod Tezerenee! You are nothing but a walking mockery of my existence! When I’ve taken over, I will be whole again!”

“And the Lords . . . will have . . . won. And the . . . Land . . . will have won . . .”

“What do you mean?”

The murky features almost came into focus. “The Lords’ rule . . . will be short . . . in the scheme of things. In the end . . . the Land . . . will do with them . . . as it has . . . the Seekers . . . the Quel . . . and others. Only this time . . . the humans . . . the hope . . . will go with them . . .”

“You’re stalling,” Gerrod decided. He started toward the warlock again. “Stalling the inevitable.”

“And when you . . . are me . . . the Land . . . will have its greatest . . . triumph,” Shade went on despite his approaching doom. “Gerrod Tezerenee. Not Shade. You will live . . . you will change . . . the Land will finally alter you as it did our people . . .”

“No . . . I will live! I will be me! I will have all I wanted!”

“All you wanted?” The warlock’s head dipped low as his battle against the spell failed. “Any care . . . Sharissa had for one lowly . . . Gerrod Tezerenee . . . will die as surely as she.”

“Sharissa will live, too!” the ghost declared, his hand almost upon the captive’s chest. They both knew what would happen when he touched the warlock. “She will
live
! I give her the greatest gift—”

“As Ephraim’s. Cursing life . . . cursing you.” Shade shrugged, then leaned forward. “Do what you must. I look forward to missing the world you will help shape.”

With a frustrated roar, Gerrod thrust his hand into Shade’s ribs. It sank in without hesitation. The warlock roared in agony. The ghost pressed forward.

And as he did, he sensed the tumultuous emotions and thoughts racing through Shade’s mind—his mind.

Gerrod gasped, almost pulled his hand back in horror. He had never expected to find such a rich trove of sensations—of life—within.

Then his eyes hardened. “No . . . I
will
do it!”

He entered the screaming captive.

XI

“THE WYR STONE
. . .” Ephraim’s ghoulish countenance darkened. “Or, rather, a pathetic fragment of it . . . the Zeree cunning has not been watered down either by endless generations or incarnations . . .”

“Has it disrupted our work?” asked Zorane anxiously.

“A hesitation, nothing more.” The lead necromancer thrust the chain through his rotting belt. “It will be remedied—”

“Ephraim . . .” the imprisoned female suddenly uttered. “This is madness.”

The Lord performed a mock bow. “My Lady Sharissa . . . so good of you to join us . . . in the flesh.”

“I am the only one here in any sort of flesh,” the voice from Valea Bedlam’s body snapped back. “If you could see what your obsession’s made of all of you . . .”

“Spoken like the daughter of the self-righteous Master Zeree,” smirked Zorane. “Ever the voice of temperance among those with no need to be . . .”

“And the result of not listening was the devastation of Nimth.”

“But leaving Nimth brought us to power undreamed,” returned Ephraim. “Enabled us to become
gods
.”

“Demons, perhaps, but never gods . . .”

The towering necromancer waved away her comments. “This conversation is superfluous. You are bound to our will. You will do as we demand. Now there is only one other we await.” Ephraim looked to his right. “And he comes now.”

As one, the other sorcerers looked to the far end of the chamber, where what seemed black light flashed briefly.

In its wake, a bent, hooded form unfolded the voluminous cloak that surrounded him.

“Our dear cousin, Gerrod. How appropriate a moment. Come. Let the two of you gaze upon one another alive again. Look upon one another’s sweet faces . . .”

“Yes, Ephraim.” But as he straightened, he revealed that he had no face upon which
any
of them could look.

Zorane shifted out of position. “That’s not possible! Gerrod taking over should—”

Sharissa’s pleased laughter erupted from Valea’s mouth.

“Gerrod Tezerenee loved you, my lady,” Shade murmured.

The captive’s expression became sad but proud. “I know.”

The warlock struck.

A shimmering, red field surrounded the Lords of the Dead, a protective spell cast at the last moment by them. Yet, the chamber still shook violently and several of the necromancers teetered from their chosen places. The field flickered on and off and on again.

But in the end, it held.

“Whether he took you or you took him does not matter!” hissed Ephraim. “You will find us more than before! You will bow to us this time and fulfill the role we have arranged for you, cousin!”

The Lords of the Dead stared at Shade . . . and with them stared Cabe, Darkhorse, and Sharissa.

The warlock drew his cloak around him.

From the walls, from the floors, erupted monstrous, winged fiends of yellow energy. They immediately clawed at Shade, ravaging his garments, ripping through the protected cloak. Some scored cuts on his arms and torso, but he never once cried out.

He opened his palm and a wind scattered to pieces the nearest. Shade spun about and the wind followed, whipping across his tormentors and decimating them.

But no sooner had he deflected the first horrendous assault when a new and more horrific sight surrounded him. They were ghosts, pained spirits—and all were victims of his past darkness. Worse . . . they had all been friends, close friends, whom he had betrayed.

“They haunt you every waking moment . . . and you
never
sleep, do you, cousin?” mocked Ephraim. “Now see their true sorrow, their true anguish . . . and know that it is all your doing!”

Although his hood lay in tatters from the first assault, nothing of Shade’s head or face could yet be made out with any definition. His voice, though, spoke well of the emotions boiling within. “No! They are not my doing! I would never have willingly done such evil!”

“But you did, time and time over! You would happily do so again! Your own miscast spell ensures that!”

They crowded around Shade, pressed him close. “No! It’s the Land that ensured it! The Land that twisted my work!”

Several of the necromancers laughed.

Xarakee bellowed, “Are you still on that? ‘The land is alive! The land is out to change us into monsters!’ Ha!”

“As it did the rest! You know how the drakes came to be! Their kings were my brothers!”

“Those were fools who used the dragon-based golems,” Ghan returned. “The inherent traits of the flesh and blood taken from the beasts simply demanded their natural design! It was poor sorcery, not some malevolent plot by a thinking world!”

“If the land was such a horrific foe,” Ephraim concluded, “we would not be as we are . . . masters of it, not its pawns . . .”

Despite the horrible memories surrounding him, Shade straightened. He no longer stared at the ghosts around him, only the eleven figures standing so confidently. “No? Perhaps you should see yourselves as others do, then,
cousin
! Perhaps you should see the truth!”

Grunting from agony and effort, he cast.

It flared like a silver beacon, spreading across the chamber. Its presence was so tremendous that the ghosts haunting the warlock fled from what it revealed to them. Shade ignored them, although the pain of their faces remained with him. He only cared that he make the Lords of the Dead see.