Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,123

tiny piece of the Vraad’s being.

There are points of binding, places where the two realities may be joined. You have only to look.

Joined. They had to be joined. Erini saw that now. It was the only possible way to keep herself from suffering a similar fate to that which Shade had suffered, if not something worse. Either force within her was capable of scattering her body and mind beyond the reaches of forever. If she was to have any chance to survive, she would have to do as her captor’s instructions indicated.

Of course you do, the piece of Shade reminded her. Erini wondered if it was her own mind that made it seem so much alive and, if so, was she going mad?

You have a task. Do it.

That was the only truth she did have at the moment. With growing disgust, she accepted the foreign sorcery completely into her being. In her imagination, it seemed to squirm like a worm trying to burrow deeper. Erini almost rejected it then, but knew that, by doing so, she would condemn herself. What sort of world had the Vraad come from, and how could they possibly be the ancestors of the humans alive today? There were hints of those answers now and then, vague, ghostlike images that danced around her, almost distracting her from the horrid task. None of them were distinct and Erini felt some relief at that. Despite her wonder, these were things she actually had little desire to learn about. They all bore the same stench as the sorcery.

See the points. Take them and marry them to their counterparts. Here. Here. Here.

This part of her task seemed almost laughingly simple now, though she knew that here was where Shade had originally begun his downward spiral to damnation. Erini could not see why. The points her mind saw met willingly with one another. Perhaps it was, as the warlock had indicated, only because she was the vessel—or rather the catalyst—and not the final recipient of the spell’s outcome. She had only one purpose, not several as he had had.

While a portion of her consciousness worked automatically, having no choice to do otherwise, Erini found a change occurring throughout her mind, throughout her very soul. The princess could no more deny the transformation than she could her earlier acceptance of the alien sorcery. After a few seconds—perhaps minutes or even hours, she could not say—Erini even began to welcome the change. Her perspective grew and grew and her comprehension of what her world was truly like expanded until Erini felt she was the Dragonrealm, the vast eastern continent, the smaller southern continents, the islands, the seas… everything.

Shade’s spell became a secondary thing to her, something that had to be done but that did not require more than a trace of her concentration. All events, all people, became known to her. Unconsciously, Erini focused on Talak and her betrothed.

It was there before her gaze, a thought came to life. The drakes were within striking range of the city. The princess gained some perspective on how much time had passed, for the sun was already high and it appeared as if the first blows had already fallen. There were dead, drakes on the landscape between the Dragon King’s host and the city walls, and settlements unfortunate enough to have sprung up near the northern wall were little more than splintered wood and scattered articles. The inhabitants, she remembered, had been ordered in at some point before her kidnapping. There was also damage to the city itself. An aerial assault, some corner of her mind told her. It sounded astonishingly like her grandfather, general-consort to her grandmother, the queen at that time. He had been dead for almost seven years. She studied the dragons. Something pierced their hearts. Something magic.

Melicard. Her view did not alter, for she saw all things at once, but the image of the king somehow was foremost among them. He was in the throne room, giving orders, caught up in the battle. A few of his men were injured and there was a sticky, dark fluid covering one of the walls. Erini belatedly noticed the sky where the ceiling had once been. A drake had nearly broken through all of their defenses. Somehow, though, the magical defenses of Talak—she could not recall if she had ever known about them prior to this—had been restored and, in fact, improved. The Dragon King would find Talak a costly victory.

Victory. It was still within