Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,369

and she was certain that he smiled, although the helm, of course, made it difficult to be certain. As if responding to her anger and confusion, the patriarch pointed into the sky behind her. Sharissa spun around on her saddle, fearing that even more Seekers were winging their way toward the doomed column, cutting them off from any retreat.

There was indeed a mass of winged terrors racing toward the battle, but they were not Seekers.

They were Tezerenee. Not one band, but two. They converged from the east and west, coming together just as they reached the mountains. While their numbers were not as great as those of the avian attackers, they had height and mass to their advantage. They also had the confusion of battle to count upon. Several of the Seekers noted them, but that knowledge did them little good. Engaged in combat, both magical and physical, with the column, they could not break away without opening themselves up to a rain of death from below.

Many tried just that, regardless of the risk. Seeker magic was evidently more limited, at least as far as this particular group was concerned. Those who turned to flee proved inviting targets for the archers, who brought down many before the spellcasters could take their own turn. A few Tezerenee still fell; not all of the avians were abandoning the struggle. The bird people seemed to radiate a quiet desperation as they fought the humans, as if they knew that they were fighting to preserve what was already lost to them. Yet as their arrogance and miscalculations had evidently unleashed some horrifying spell back upon their own—as Faunon and the petrified corpses had suggested to her—so now did those same faults thrust the Seekers into a trap from which there was little hope of escape.

Barakas had expected a trap and laid one of his own. This was why the expedition had moved as slowly as it had. The patriarch had sent out two smaller forces composed of airdrake riders and hidden them somewhere in the wooded lands southwest and southeast of here. Somehow, they had come just in time, though Sharissa could not recall any signal. She had certainly sensed nothing.

The patriarch, she knew, would be more than pleased to explain later. What mattered now was surviving until the newcomers were able to finish the task at hand.

“Beware!” Faunon shouted. “One has his sights upon us, Sharissa!”

That much was true, but the young Zeree felt no assault. Instead, faint images swirled about her imagination, images she vaguely recognized as Seekers.

“Sharissa?” The elf bounced against her, the only thing he could do to stir her since he was bound.

“No! Stop that!” she warned. “It’s trying to tell me something!”

Above, the Seeker dodged two arrows. It increased its mental assault, strengthening the images Sharissa perceived.

Seekers in a cavern… the cavern the Tezerenee sought.

Her father had told her of the fashion by which the avians communicated with outsiders, but he had indicated touch was necessary for the best understanding. That was not possible, but there were barriers that could be brought down.

“Sharissa! You are dropping your defensive spells!”

“I know! Trust me!” She hoped he would not press her, for her own resolve in this was wavering. What if she were playing into the talons of the Seeker?

The last barrier fell… and the Vraad sorceress was deluged with vivid images of what had been and what might be. The vision of Seekers hard at work on a master spell through which they hoped to rid themselves of the last of the Quel, the massive armadillolike race that had preceded them as masters of this continent. Sharissa gasped at the sight of the horrifying beast, although deep down she knew she was absorbing some of the avian’s own fear and hatred of the elder race.

The spell was not totally of their own fabrication. Another had influenced them in its making. Something made the image blur, and she found herself now seeing the effects of that spell. It had not been a sorcerous backlash that had killed so many of the avians, but a successful but costly full reversal of the very spell. They had realized that what they unleashed would not stop with merely the Quel, and if they allowed it to go unchecked until their old enemies were no more, then it would be too strong to ever stop.

It had taken the greater part of their population to force the—Sharissa saw a vision of fur, teeth, and huge