Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,129

repetition of his own blurred, featureless visage. They were everywhere and each told him the one thing he could not face. The truth of his condition.

He screamed denial even as his pent-up power caused each mirror to melt like a single snowflake on a raging campfire. Darkhorse himself was buffeted to the ground by the wild forces unleashed. He barely maintained his bond with Erini. Other than the energy utilized to keep her from dissipating like a wisp of smoke, the shadow steed had little more to call upon. What remained he needed just to survive this latest and most horrid onslaught. It was all he could do just to keep his mind coherent.

“Nononononononononooooo!” Shade was screaming. Rocking back and forth, he clawed at his own face, trying to remove what could not be removed. Portions of the chamber ceiling collapsed, but none so much as struck within two yards of the warlock. Somehow, his own defenses were still intact.

He cannot contain the power and the more he releases, the more destruction! It was worse than Darkhorse had feared. Vraad sorcery had destroyed one world already. It tore at the laws of nature rather than worked with them. As with the sorcery of the Dragonrealm, it was oft times an almost unconscious, automatic thing and the more it was used, the more chaos it caused. Shade, trapped in his own horror, was allowing it to run rampant. Darkhorse wondered if there might have been some other way.

The warlock was on his knees and facing the ground, unmindful of what havoc he was unleashing. Darkhorse had wondered what this new spell would do; the answer seemed to be create more destruction. It was as if the intensity of the original curse had been doubled in scope.

“Shade!” he called out, his voice booming above all else. “You must listen to me! A part of you must know the chaos you have invited into this world! I know from the past few days that there is, within you, a desire to end this madness peacefully! If you would hear me—”

Surprisingly, the warlock did look up. There was a tenseness in his movements. He had heard Darkhorse’s voice, but not the shadow steed’s warning. A fierce presence rose about the warlock as his tortured mind mixed facts and suppositions until they no longer had any true meaning. From that came one final, insane conclusion.

“You!” Shade rose, all fury. His mind, the stallion noted, was shifting from one extreme emotion to another—and with this particular emotion, he needed a focal point. “You did this to me!”

It would have been one of the most absurd things that Darkhorse had ever heard, save that he could have predicted it would be so. Shade could not accept that the grand spell had failed again or that he had not even recovered from the first attempt. He needed a scapegoat in order to preserve what little remained of his sanity—if there was anything left. The warlock needed something to lash out at.

What he does next could level settled areas, the eternal realized. And being in the Tybers, one of those places might be Talak! How ironic it would be if the Dragon King captured Melicard’s kingdom, only to have it sink beneath the earth or simply cease to be.

That image in mind, Darkhorse vanished—

—and reentered the world in the desolate, blistering cold of the Northern Wastes.

Before him, almost as if he had known where the shadow steed had intended fleeing, was Shade. Despite the wind, his cloak remained still, covering him like a shroud. Darkhorse had wondered what death would look like when it finally claimed him. He now knew. There would be no escaping Shade, then. Whatever it took, the warlock would track him down, laying waste to whatever happened to cross his path in the meantime. Perhaps, letting the axe fall here would at least save the Dragonrealm, thought Darkhorse somewhat fatalistically, though he suspected that the tortured figure before him would not completely spend his madness here.

“For our friendship,” the spectral figure said, his calm words more chilling than his angered ones, “I would have left you in peace. I would have. Then, you did this to me! Now, I have only—”

“Shade, if you would just listen to me!”

“—one question to ask of you before I treat you as you’ve chosen to treat me. Why do it? Tell me that.”

There was no correct response and Darkhorse knew that. The best he could do was give no