Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,18

unnerving as it as. Even the king’s sorcerer had come up with nothing better after failing to heal his master’s wounds.

Her own fingers began to twitch at the thought and she clasped both hands together in order to fight the urge down. She would not succumb. There was nothing the princess could do that others more skilled, others who were trained, could not do better.

Erini repeated what had become a chant to her—she was a princess of Gordag-Ai and could never be a sorceress or witch. Never. She was destined to be a queen. No king would trust a witch for a wife. Her own people would not have.

Though she fought it down successfully, Erini shook so badly after that, that she rose and dressed herself, not daring to have Galea or Magda or any of Melicard’s people wonder what made her shake. By the time the princess was finished, the danger was past. Erini inspected herself in the vast mirror that overwhelmed the wall opposite her bed and, satisfied, dared to summon a servant. If she succeeded in nothing more today, she would at least eat a decent meal.

NEITHER MELICARD NOR the unsavory Counselor Quorin met her at breakfast. Galea and Magda joined her, but she made some pretext and left them as soon as she was finished. When none of the palace servants seemed to object, the princess began exploring, trying to understand more about Talak and its monarch through the vast building itself. Erini already knew much of the city-state’s “official” history, having been educated about her future kingdom most of her life, but there was more, so much more, beneath the surface of the facts that tutors had poured into her. All she had learned about her betrothed had availed her nothing in his actual presence. It was a mistake she did not intend to make a second time.

As lavishly decorated as the palace was, she soon discovered two things. One was that the vast majority of items had been gathered during the reigns of past kings, to the extent that whole wings had been built to house them. The second and more interesting point concerned those few treasures gathered or created during the years of Melicard’s rule. Most of the pieces were dark in nature and not a few of them dealt with the death and destruction of foes, especially dragons. Faces in portraits were always shadowed or, if they were fully revealed, were sinister and even hideous. It did not paint a pretty picture of her betrothed. Erini began to have doubts.

At a window overlooking an interior garden filled with hanging plants and blossoming flowers of all colors, she paused to relax. A noise at the far end of the garden made her look there. Her eyes narrowed at an curious sight. Far below, two guards were carrying a third man between them. As opposed to the tall, muscular soldiers, the unconscious figure in the middle was thin to the point of emaciation and as old as any soul the princess had ever seen. He wore a dark robe with a cowl on it, identifying him from Erini’s teachings as Melicard’s sorcerer Drayfitt. The history that the ancient spellcaster had lived through had always fascinated her, but not nearly so much as why Drayfitt now needed to be carried anywhere. She leaned closer.

Erini glanced back at the direction the trio had come from and noticed the small doorway buried beneath the vines of the far wall. The way to the sorcerer’s inner sanctum? Possibly, and, if so, it was also possible that his present condition was due to some spell gone awry.

“What’s going on here?” a voice that grated on her nerves snarled.

The two sentries paused and, readjusting their unconscious package, saluted Mal Quorin. He ignored protocol and repeated his question in the same vicious tone as before.

One of the guards, his face no longer visible to Erini, nervously replied, “His majesty gave us orders to seek out the sorcerer Drayfitt and find out why he had not reported to the king this morning. When we arrived, the guards on duty let us in, reporting that no one had entered or left since they had been stationed there.” The man hesitated before concluding quickly, “He was lying on the floor! We tried to wake him, but nothing worked, my lord!”

Quorin looked at both of them, evidently not satisfied. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“The demon is loose, my lord!” the other guard finally blurted. “Or, at