Darkhorse shook his head after a moment. “They have no pattern. Their movements show judgment, but not a regular path.”
The Vraad did not like the way his companion spoke of the power as something with intelligence. Darkhorse himself was difficult enough to accept. Dru was still getting used to the entity.
He considered further. “Is there any one area they tend to avoid or congregate near?”
When the wraithlike stallion answered, Dru’s hopes rose dramatically. “There is a place they move near and then away from. There is no place they seem to avoid completely. They…” The blue orbs dulled a touch.
“They what?”
“I do not know. It escapes me for now.”
Curious but also cautious, Dru asked, “Have any of those… concentrations… shifted near us?”
“They have all crossed this place since I arrived. Some have even passed through this very chamber while we spoke.”
“What?” The sorcerer’s mouth fell open and remained that way until he was able to force his next question to the surface. “Why didn’t you-?” Dru clamped his mouth shut and berated himself. Darkhorse was an innocent in many ways; the manner with which he had dispatched the two avians had made the human forget that. “Forget it. You didn’t tell me because I didn’t ask and you felt it was nothing dangerous, correct?”
“On the contrary! I only recalled when you asked me. For reasons I cannot fathom, my recollection of many things has become faulty. Is this what you termed ‘exhaustion’?”
“Possibly.” The worried spellcaster doubted such was actually the reason. From what he had seen, his companion from beyond did not suffer exhaustion as others did. Once again, the shrouded realm itself was acting against the outsiders.
“Shall we go to this place, then?”
“This-” Dru had forgotten about the location the black horse had mentioned, the one that the sorcerer suspected might house whatever it was the Seekers had wanted so desperately. “You know where it is?”
“Little Dru! I can find it easily! It has an aura of its own, one far different from that which surrounds this place.”
“Does it?” That interested Dru. He started to move again, eager suddenly to be on the trail, but his body protested. “I need to rest a little. I don’t think that I have the strength to go climbing over more wreckage just yet.”
“There is no need for you to do so if it wearies you! Simply climb atop my back and I will carry you to our destination.”
“Your back?” Memories of the two Seekers swallowed whole were enough to make Dru reject such a mad plan without further thought. “That would-”
Darkhorse laughed. “Poor, simple Dru! Of course my backside will be solid! You are too good of an entertainment for me to take you as I did those others! You are my friend!”
Mounting the shadow steed proved a bit difficult for the tired sorcerer, partly because Darkhorse had no bridle or saddle. There were those, like Sharissa, who could ride a horse bareback if the whim was upon them. Dru preferred his comforts. Once he was aboard, however, things changed. Darkhorse was not built exactly like the animal he had so boldly copied. Despite his muscular appearance, the ebony stallion’s back was soft, almost padded. It was, in fact, better than a saddle. Dru wished all horses had been designed like his companion and decided that any he raised from now on would have a few minor magical alterations made.
He found it easy to accept Darkhorse as some fantastic steed. Thinking of him as such was easier than trying to cope with the concept of an intelligent black hole… not that Dru was going to truly forget what the entity was. It was just more comfortable thinking of Darkhorse as a physical being, especially now that he was riding the creature.
The fearsome stallion picked his way through the rubble to the doorway leading out of the ancient structure. Dru worried about some trap laid by the Seekers, but Darkhorse sensed nothing. The spellcaster wished his own senses were so infallible. He was lucky to even sense the aura of raw power that covered most of the city. Dru wondered if at one time a shield of such power had enveloped the entire citadel. The sorcerer who cast it could have literally made for himself a world of his own, for no one would be able to enter-or exit, if that was his desire-without his permission.
Useless conjecture, he reprimanded himself. Best to keep his eyes upon the ruins around him, just in case there was some threat that Darkhorse did not notice in time. What he would do if such happened was beyond him; Dru trusted his own abilities as much as he trusted the Seekers not to attempt one last ploy.
“How odd!” The shadow steed’s booming words bounced again and again throughout the devastated city.
“What is it?” Dru peered around, looking for Seekers or elves or anything to justify his companion’s cry.
“I saw a figure, but only as a vague form! It was built akin to you, but that was all I could tell.”
An elf, perhaps. Yet, what was there about an elf that Darkhorse found so disquieting? “Why do you find that odd?”
“Because I could sense nothing from him. No presence. No… existence.”
“An illusion?”
Darkhorse evidently knew the term now, for he shook his head with great vehemence. “Not an illusion. I think I would sense the… the sorcery… at least.”
“Where was it?” The Vraad cursed whatever fickle trait made him miss everything that happened until it came crashing down on him.
“Directly ahead. It stood on our very path.”
The sorcerer reached down to his belt, wishing he had a sword. While spells had always been a way of life, he, like many Vraad, dabbled in the physical, especially when it involved violence toward another. Dru was adept with many blades and had even killed one rival in a duel using nothing but a sword. “I was looking ahead. I didn’t see anything up there.”
“Beyond the tall structure leaning to one side.”
The “tall structure” was a tower, far in the distance, that had partially fallen onto a smaller building on the other side of the street they were following. The only thing that it now revealed to the sorcerer was that they might have trouble getting around it unless they took a different path. Darkhorse’s vision was evidently much more efficient than his own. The Vraad was not quite desperate enough to start experimenting with his eyes.
A low grumble from his stomach informed him of other matters he would also soon have to deal with if he hoped to continue on. The Seekers had fed him, but only small portions of some vile meat that tasted as if it had been stored in salt and left to age for a few years. All that could be said for it was that it had assuaged his hunger for a time.
Darkhorse continued on the route he had chosen, despite the mysterious appearance. The demon steed was confident in his ability to handle whatever threats confronted them and so was becoming more and more lost in his ongoing game of discovery. A statue that had somehow stood the test of time made him pause for a moment. It was unremarkable save that it was whole. Like the stone behemoth that the sorcerer had come across while a prisoner of the avians, this, too, was a dragon. In fact, it was identical to the other save in size. There were a few other statues and some had recognizable attributes, though they were, for the most part, cluttered together and broken. One was a wolf and another a human garbed in a robe. The rest were too broken up to identify readily, though Dru imagined he saw the gryphon and a cat in the pile.
They eventually reached a point where the Vraad saw that his fears about the fallen tower were true; the opening it left was too small for the sorcerer, much less the huge stallion.
Darkhorse was in the process of locating a new path free of blockage when they came across the elf.
She was young in appearance-though with elves that meant as much as it did with the Vraad-athletic in build, and had straight silver hair that would have reached her waist had she been standing. This elf would stand no more, however, for she was dead, a needle spear that had pierced her chest a certain sign as to who her murderers had been. Dru wondered how long ago she had died; the blood had congealed, but she still appeared too close to life to have perished very long ago.