Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,40

as the Dragon King rose in the sudden realization that something was amiss, vanished.

Through his own words, the warlock had just rediscovered the purpose, the goal, of his search—and why he dared not let anyone, even Darkhorse, stand in his way.

VIII

THE PAIN INFLICTED upon him was like such he had not suffered in centuries. The human called Mal Quorin claimed it was on order of the king, but Darkhorse, in his more lucid moments, suspected that Melicard knew only vaguely what his underlings were doing. Something in the feline features of the counselor, as if he were toying with his prisoner the way the creature he so resembled toyed with its prey, told Darkhorse that.

It was obvious that the sorcerer was reluctant to question his rival and that alone spoke volumes as to their respective positions of influence with the king. Drayfitt’s loss of face was the shadow steed’s doing, made doubly worse by the successful destruction of the spellbook by the entranced mage. For that, even Drayfitt had exercised a bit of vengeance.

They had abandoned him for other matters some time back—how long, Darkhorse could not say. Now, the eternal recovered slowly in his accursed cage, his present form little more than a blot of shadow darker than the rest. Had he been human, he would have died several times over and that fact had not escaped him. With one part of his mind, he plotted the torture of his foes; with the other, he cursed himself for his stupidity and lack of foresight. Drayfitt had taken care with his original spell. Had the stallion delved deeply, he would have discovered the thin magical bond that still tied him to the sorcerer, a tie that the elderly human had used to recapture him. His escape, it seemed, had been no more than a farce.

So close! Shade was no doubt laughing at him even now. He had come so close, actually confronting the warlock. Darkhorse knew he should have come in striking, beating down Shade before the warlock had a chance to think. Hesitation had cost him the battle and his freedom.

Once more, he re-created the equine form he favored. A hollow victory, creating a form again, but a victory nonetheless. With nothing else to do, Darkhorse began a slow and thorough scan of his magical prison. Perhaps this time…

Nothing. If anything, Drayfitt had tightened the control of the pattern, used the power of the cell to cancel out the shadow steed’s own abilities to the point where even eye contact would not help. The aged sorcerer was a survivor and learned readily from his mistakes.

Odd, he wondered, that Melicard’s spellcaster would have access to a Vraad artifact at the same time that both Shade and the Silver Dragon were searching for such things. What was the connection? What did Shade want with a work from so ancient a time? Surely not to summon a true demon. Its power would be insignificant compared to his own. Was this latest madness just the product of his unstable mind? The warlock had undergone yet another personality change; in centuries past, he had done stranger things during various incarnations. These rapid and continuous changes, however, smelled of something different, something gone awry. When would they stop? Which “Shade” would be the final result?

Significant questions weaved in a hundred different directions like a swirling mass of tentacles, confusing and unanswerable for the most part. He soon realized there was little point in pursuing them for now, though he knew that forgetting them entirely would be impossible.

More time passed. All the while, Darkhorse stubbornly continued to raise, revise, and reject options as they occurred to him. There was no way that he could physically—so to speak—pass through the boundaries. His magical abilities all seemed useless while he languished in his prison. He did not even know what was going on; the Dragonrealm might be on the brink of destruction—

Darkhorse did not breathe, though he often pretended to for appearance. Nevertheless, he came close to holding that nonexistent breath when it occurred to him that, though his magical abilities were muted, there were natural ones—unnatural by human standards—that he might make use of. Regardless of his careful work, Drayfitt could not hope to completely understand the nature of the ebony stallion.

There were many over the centuries who had called the legendary Darkhorse the Child of the Void. They were closer and farther from the truth than they knew. Darkhorse was a creature of the border regions