Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III (33 page)

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 they too late? Had the Quel acted as the Crystal Dragon had been tempted to do?

Cabe was no longer certain he wanted to see the contents of the tall sphere.

“Hold the artifact before you. Be prepared.”

For what? How? Why do those who say that never really explain?

The Dragon King eyed the spherical prison. He started to reach toward it, then hesitated. The reptilian nose wrinkled. Again, the Dragon King reached toward the sphere and again he paused. His expression went from wary expectation to puzzlement to growing fury.

“Thissss shell holdsss nothing! It issss
barren
!”

The warlock lowered the artifact in his arms. “Barren?”

“Empty.” Long, narrow eyes burned into the warlock’s own. “The Vraaaaad hasss essscaped!”

Cabe stared at the prison. He had misinterpreted the scorch traces. The marks were not the work of the Quel, but rather Plool himself working from within the trap. Both the warlock and his armored captors had underestimated the skills and tenacity of the eccentric Vraad.

“A Vraaaad loossse . . .” The Dragon King was talking to himself. “But I dare not . . . do I? I
musssst
. . . unlesssss . . .” He blinked and seemed to study Cabe anew. “Yessss . . .”

A taloned hand reached forth. The malevolent sphere tore free of the sorcerer’s grip and flew to its master. It came to a halt only a foot or two from the dragon’s snout and hovered there, waiting.

Cabe relaxed a little, realizing now that it was the device that had interested the Dragon King, not him. “What will you do?”

“What musssst be done. I musssst withdraw what I have unleashed. It will not sssstop . . .
stop
. . . the wolf raiders, but it will deal with that
thing
from Nimth!” Now that he had decided on a course of action, the Crystal Dragon sounded almost human in his speech patterns. There seemed no predicting how he would act from one moment to the next. Cabe hoped that this new attitude would remain for a time. “I must risk it. I will not allow that curse to reenter the world. When all that is Nimth is thrust back through the doorway, he will be weakened. He will be so weakened that the threat will become negligible!”

Weakened . . . with all traces of Nimth gone . . .
What was it that bothered Cabe about that? Something about Plool and teleporting. Something . . . Of course! “Your Majesty, if you could hear me out. Instead of what you do, let me try to find Plool first. He can be made to see reason. If you do what you plan—”

“It will be done.” The finality in the drake lord’s voice left no room for compromise. In his eyes, a single Vraad was more a threat than a legion of Aramites. It almost appeared to be a personal vendetta, as if the Dragon King had dealt with Plool’s kind before. Could that be?

What was it that hid behind the mask that was the Crystal Dragon?

The glittering titan closed his eyes. Before him, the dark contents within the sphere shifted and turned. It was a trick of the eyes, of course. The artifact was only a doorway. Perhaps what the Crystal Dragon did disturbed some small area of Nimth, but he certainly could not control the entire world. That much was evident from his fear of anything Nimthian, especially a lone Vraad.

Cabe was torn. On the one hand, he wanted the madcap entity called Plool removed from his world because of what chaos the Vraad
might
be able to cause even restricted to this one region. On the other hand, the warlock despised what he considered murder. Plool was deadly, but Cabe would have preferred to try to turn the bizarre mage first. Plool was Plool only because of where he had been born.

He had to try again. If his words failed to convince the Dragon King, would he be tempted to action? Was everything else worth risking for a creature he barely knew? “Your Majesty?”

The Crystal Dragon did not hear him.

“Your—” Cabe Bedlam’s mouth clamped shut. Suddenly the walls surrounding them had come alive with faces, but not all the same. There were copies of his own, some of them older, some of them younger. He saw the face of the Gryphon and wondered at that. There were others, though, and with a start, Cabe eyed the face of what could only be one of the raider leaders. A tall man with a short beard, much like the wolf raider D’Shay, whom the Gryphon had killed years ago. His face was ghastly, a drawn, scarred thing. Yet, what bothered him most upon sighting that face was the expression, for in many ways it resembled a human variation of the present expression on the Dragon King’s reptilian countenance.

Then, among all the other faces, he saw one that made him forget even that of the wolf raider leader. It was a face he had seen only in a vision, but one that had remained with him. A bear of a man, a leader, who wore armor of dragonscale. It was the face of a conquerer, one who brooked no defeat. There was something so compelling about the figure, something that reminded him of Shade. It was the man he had thought of as his father when the vision had controlled him. It was . . .
whose
father?

Cabe stared at the entranced drake lord. The thought was ludicrous. It was.

Dragon Kings do not live that long . . . and he
is
a Dragon King at that.

The Crystal Dragon hissed and his eyes flew open. His gaze shifted from the sphere to the wall . . . and to the image of the gaunt, scarred figure that Cabe had taken for the Aramite commander. Their eyes seemed to lock.

The sphere exploded.

XIII

A SHIVER RAN
through the sleepers. They did not wake, but something in the spell that had kept them under for so long had changed. What it was would have been hard to explain in any terms save perhaps to say that now they did not sleep so deep.

Not deep at all.

WHAT ARE THEY
doing down there with that blasted toy?
Orril D’Marr stalked across the dark, fog-enshrouded camp trying to keep the men organized. Those who were supposed to be getting some precious sleep were still awake for the most part, the mist and rumors keeping many of them too wary to even lie down. The soldiers on night duty, meanwhile, were turning and slashing at shadows and ghosts in the fog. Sentries kept reporting sightings of creatures that did not,
could
not, exist.

All of this was taking him from his more important tasks. D’Marr had stolen a few precious hours of slumber for himself so that he would be alert for the project he had planned for this night. Tonight he had been planning to open the way to the hidden chamber and finally find out what it was that was so precious to the beasts that they were willing to suffer at his tender hands for it. The explosives were ready and he had chosen the blast points. There would be little damage to the areas nearby and none at all to his master’s precious chamber.

That was if he ever had the opportunity to set the explosives. With both his lordship and the blue devil down below, still working after all these hours, Orril D’Marr was the senior officer available. That meant that he had to maintain control, which amounted to running around and beating the other officers until they began acting as their ranks demanded. The officers were his duty and the men beneath them were
their
responsibility. He did not have time to go running from soldier to soldier.

Something is happening.
The fog swirled about, a violent storm of shadow and light. Sometimes, the area was lit for several minutes, as if the sun had risen and finally managed to slice through the mist. At least it had thinned a bit, he thought. Even when it was properly dark it was possible to make out shapes several yards away. Whether that change was due to some success on Lord D’Farany’s part or was simply a natural occurrence, the young officer did not care. He was only glad it was happening.

D’Marr hated this place, but the damned heat and sunlight was preferable to this mess. So far this night, two men had simply disappeared and a third . . . well, there were some things that made even him queasy.

And that patrol scattered, more than a dozen men lost there, too.
Oddly, that both irritated and excited him. The reports spoke of a huge dark stallion with a rider, the latter having a dozen different descriptions. The survivors all seemed to have been obsessed with the monstrous steed . . . no surprise, if it was what he thought it was. One of the spies from that kingdom, Zou or some such nonsense it was called, had reported trouble involving a mage on a large black horse.

The Gryphon had an ally in this realm who matched such a description, a demon called Darkhorse. D’Rance, of course, had been able to supply that tidbit of information.

Two sentries stumbled across his path and swiftly backed away. They saluted, but the young officer just waved them aside. He had no time for men doing their duties. It was the ones who were not who would feel his wrath if they were so unfortunate as to cross him. D’Marr wanted to be done with this task. Once he had the officers under control and they in turn the men, he could return to the tunnels.

His mind drifted back to the patrol’s encounter with the monster known as Darkhorse. The demon could not possibly have come across them by chance; he had to have specifically come here searching for the wolf raiders. Any notion that contradicted that was not acceptable to either Orril D’Marr or his lord. Even the blue man agreed with him on this matter.

The Gryphon had to be here. It fit. The black steed’s appearance had come too quickly after their landing. He had a rider with him. If the rider had not been the damned birdman, then it had to be one of his friends. Either way, they could only have known of the raiders’ presence through the Gryphon. It made sense to him.

Admittedly, there was some logic missing in the argument, but one other reason superseded all others in this matter. D’Marr recalled the attack on the port city. Lord D’Farany had hoped to accomplish two things there. One had been to steal a series of charts that would aid them in this venture and the other had been the hope that they would catch their greatest adversary off-guard.

They had been unable to kill the Gryphon that day, but his brat had paid for the deaths and defeats the empire had suffered. Not satisfactory, but it would do until the Gryphon’s head decorated a lance tip.

And that time is coming soon.
True to form, the bird had followed them across the seas. D’Marr had predicted he would and for once he had outdone the blue devil in that respect.
You’re coming to me, Gryphon, coming to join your brat!

His hand touched the pommel of the scepter. When he had finished the Gryphon, there would remain only the cat woman. She would follow after her mate, being as predictable in her way as he was when it came to revenge.
Then I will have taken all three.

No one would deny his greatness then.

His course took him around the camp until he returned to the mouth of the tunnel leading to the Quel city. The camp was at last in order. The officers were now in line and they, in turn, had the men under rein. D’Marr had done as best as was possible. Now it was time to—

A tall figure emerged from the tunnel. From his walk and his manner, D’Marr had no trouble identifying the northerner. The man looked bedraggled, exhausted. The young officer smiled briefly, then once more fixed his expression into one of detachment.

D’Rance saw him and did not bother to hide his own distaste. He tried to walk past his shorter counterpart, but D’Marr was having none of that. To know that the northerner had been put through the paces made his own tedious day more palatable. “Tired already?”

“You will play no games with me, Orril D’Marr. Our lord has struggled long and I was forced to help maintain him, yes?”

“And what could you do for him, blue? Wipe his brow when he sweated?”

D’Rance sneered. “The knowledge of a scholar is a greater weapon at times than the sword of a simple soldier, yes? You would have pounded on the crystal device with that toy on your belt, I think, as you did to the walls. Such effort, but so little result.”

“You’re a scholar of magic?”

The blue man suddenly lost interest in the battle of words. “I have given my all for our effort, little man, yes, and our Lord D’Farany knows this. I have been given leave to rest and rest I shall.”

The exhausted northerner turned and stalked into the fog. D’Marr watched him disappear, then glanced at the tunnel mouth. All the blue devil’s efforts would amount to little before this night had ended. Whatever favor he had curried with Lord D’Farany would fade when D’Marr revealed the secret cavern.

He started down the tunnel, finalizing his plans. He would need four or five men, just to be on the safe side. They could plant the explosives in the proper locations and light the fuses. There would be rubble to clear away, too, which meant that five or six men would work better. The most important task D’Marr would save for himself, however. It was he who would be the first to enter the unknown, he, the discoverer.
And whatever secret, whatever treasure lies behind there, I will be the first to know it.