Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol II - By Richard A. Knaak Page 0,86

A true horse would have been too slow and would have fallen to its knees, its front legs useless. Darkhorse, though, nimbly stepped aside. Pulled off balance by the force of his own swing, the officer left his side open. Darkhorse seized the opportunity, sending the man flying with the gentlest of taps with his front hooves.

“Now,” he roared, ignoring the other humans who rushed through the entrance, “if you will be so kind as to listen instead of trying to kill everything in sight, I will—”

“You’ll do nothing, demon!” A man clad in armor decorated intricately enough to designate him as the commander of the expedition pushed aside the rest and strode toward the shadow steed. He carried no sword, but something in his right hand emanated so much stored energy that Darkhorse grew uneasy. There had been, throughout the millennia, objects created by one race or another with more than enough killing power to destroy a hundred Darkhorses.

“Listen to me, you fools! Talak—”

“—will not suffer your masters’ reign of tyranny ever again!” The commander held up a small black cube.

“My masters? I am no thrall of the Drag—”

Darkhorse got no further. The tent interior melted into a surreal, fog-shrouded picture. Darkhorse shook his head, trying to focus on reality. Through the haze, he could still hear the voice of the human.

“Think our king did not imagine your drake masters would try to summon such as you? This talisman is proof against your kind!”

The shadow steed tried to argue, but his words were muted by whatever trap he had been caught in.

“Would that I could command you to tear your masters apart, but such is not within the power of this object! I can only command it to perform its original function—and send you back to whatever hellhole spawned such as you! Begone now!”

“Foooolssss!” was all Darkhorse had time to cry.

“UTTER, ABYSMAL FOOLS!”

“Once there was a tiny dot,” a voice floating in the nothingness commented blandly. “A tiny hole in reality, he was.”

The shadow steed kicked uselessly at the empty space around him. He knew where he was—how could anyone fail to recognize a place as barren as the Void?

Whatever hellhole spawned me? This is not quite the hellhole that spawned me, but nearly enough, curse all meddling mortals! I should stay here and let them suffer their fates!

“The tiny dot grew over—time doesn’t work, does it? I shall have to find something else later, when I have the”—the owner of the soft-spoken voice giggled insanely—“time!”

Darkhorse focused on the direction the voice seemed to be coming from. “Still composing your tales?”

“I compose epics; you wear tails.” Another giggle.

“I’ve no time for your witticisms, gremlin.”

“My name is Yereel, if you do not mind, and even if you do!” A tiny figure, like a child’s doll, coalesced before him. It had no distinct features and was as black as Darkhorse. “And here, as you so well know, there is no time all the time! Have I said ‘welcome home,’ by the way?”

The shadow steed looked around him, noting, as he always did, the densely packed regions of empty space. Nothing crowded against nothing, which jostled even more nothing. Some of the nothing was forced to climb on top of the rest of the nothing just so there was room for all. It was astonishing that so much nothing could fit into so little space.

I begin to sound as bad as this one, Darkhorse thought wryly. To his puppetlike companion, he replied, “A welcome is hardly on my list of desires; I plan to leave here in a moment! You know, too, the mortal who saw you cried out ‘You’re real!’ Hardly a masterful way of choosing a name!”

The puppet did a headstand in the emptiness. “And you chose your name so cleverly! You haven’t commented on the start of my latest epic, dear one! I was thinking of calling it something nonsensical, like, Darkhorse, the Hole That Would Be Whole!” The tiny figure giggled again, then struck an upside-down orator’s pose. “The hole, as it grew, matured into pretensions and delusions of grandeur….”

Darkhorse had had enough. He physically turned himself from the other. “Goodbye, Yereel.”

“Let me come!” The black figure shifted form, becoming a miniature version of the shadow steed. It trotted through space to a point within eye-level. “Take me back! You know what it’s like when we’ve touched the reality! I can’t stand this emptiness!”

Darkhorse sighed. “I understand—more than you could ever imagine—but I cannot and would not even