Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,206

of so many sightless gazes chilled even the centuries-old spellcaster.

“These fantastical images that you call pictures… were they not also in the ruined city?”

Darkhorse’s words broke the spell that had tied Dru to the lifelike images. He looked up, annoyed that he had been so engrossed in phantoms of the far past that he had not seen what might prove far more important to his immediate needs.

The ceiling was rounded, which gave it and the walls the appearance of being one. That in itself was nothing, but the pictures that covered the entire chamber stirred the sorcerer’s memories of another place, a place where a dragon lord had gazed with stone eyes down at the avians and their mystified prisoner.

Again, Dru looked over countless little worlds, each with their own representative. The Seeker was there, as was the enemy. The elf, the Vraad-like human, a figure that looked like a walking salamander… there seemed to be more here than in the first building.

Directly above the focus was the only illustration lacking a living figure. It was also the largest, and in the place of a representative race, it had a city… one very familiar, despite the differences time had wrought on the actual one.

The Vraad’s mind worked quickly. With growing suspicions, he looked down at the focus… or rather, the floor beneath it.

Another world was illustrated there, this one greater than the one above. In its center was the very castle they stood in.

“Let us go view something else! I grow bored in here!”

“Not yet.” Dru studied the phantoms—who seemed just a bit translucent now—and then gazed at the worlds above and below him. There was no denying the similarity between what he saw here and what he had devised when researching ka travel. Yet, if the images around him—the races and the worlds they stood within—meant what he had concluded, then the ghostly inhabitants of this place had been to the Vraad as the Vraad were to a lowly insect or, worse yet, a simple grain of sand.

Dru had a great urge to be elsewhere—anywhere—as long as it was far away from these ancient masters of power.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

“As you like it.” The shaken sorcerer quickly mounted and the black steed turned and trotted swiftly through the doorway. In less than a breath, they were already back in the courtyard. Another and they were out the citadel gates and heading back to where the tear had been.

There had probably been so much more that Dru knew he should have investigated, but what little he had seen with what little he had theorized was enough. There had to be another solution that would gain him Nimth. He wanted nothing to do with the memories within that place. Even the ruined city—their ruined city—was better than this.

A horrible notion crossed him mind. “Darkhorse! Can you see the way in which we entered here?”

“I cannot!” Despite the incredible speed at which the dweller from the Void raced, he sounded perfectly normal. Sometimes, it was difficult for Dru to recall that his companion did not have to breathe as he did. “But we are nearly at the spot, I think!”

“Then what will we do if it isn’t—”

A gaping hole opened before them and, at the heartrending speed they were moving, swallowed them before the Vraad could finish.

“—there?” Dru stuttered.

They were back among the ruins, but, this time, they were not alone.

The Seekers had returned, apparently having followed the duo’s trail, and among them, they now had a captive, who struggled vainly against their might.

An elf.

XII

NIGHT, SUCH AS it was, had come to Nimth. With it came the beginning of the end, as far as Gerrod was concerned. He had returned briefly to the Tezerenee stronghold, a vicious-looking iron building that; if Gerrod had been asked his opinion, reflected his clan’s personality perfectly. It was a toothy structure and cold to both the body and the soul. Wyverns and young dragons constantly flew among its dragon-head banners, while the elder beasts slept in their pens. Besides a nasty array of sorcerous defenses, more than a dozen riders generally patrolled the perimeter of the domain.

Not so now. The stronghold was abandoned forever, though it seemed at first glance that the inhabitants had every intention of coming back. Personal effects lay where their owners had last left them. Charts and books gathered dust. Some of the wyverns flew loose through parts of the edifice they would normally have shied away from. Food was left rotting. Even