V
Three days had passed. One day he might have understood, but not three. Sharissa Zeree did not ignore her promises. She had said she would come, and he had prepared for her-three days ago. Now he could sense her nearing presence, at last, but there was another with her, one who fit nothing in his experience. Sharissa had brought someone with her, but who it was defied his abilities. He knew only that the two of them would be within sight of his hut in little more than a minute.
Hardly enough time to prepare himself. The glamour cast three days past had faded.
What goes on here? Gerrod Tezerenee wondered as he pulled the hood of his cloak about his head, carefully assuring that his features would be shadowed. With so little time available, it was possible he might blunder and cast a spell of insufficient strength. It would not do for her to see what had become of him… though eventually all Vraad might suffer the same fate. How ironic that he should be one of the first.
His eyes on the window facing the southwest-and the city he avoided with a passion-the warlock tried to concentrate. He had to finish before she was too close, lest she notice his conjuring and wonder. Dru Zeree’s daughter was far more knowing than she had been when they had first met. Then, she had been a woman in form but a child in mind. Now, Sharissa walked among the Vraad as one to whom those thousands of years her senior paid homage. She was the sorceress.
A tiny figure on horseback materialized at the horizon. Gerrod frowned and lost his concentration. A single rider. Sharissa. What she rode upon, however, was like no steed he had ever known. Even from here he could see it was taller than the tallest horse and stronger, the warlock suspected, than any drake.
It dawned on him then that what he felt was the ebony mount. It was the source of great power that he had sensed.
The pace the creature set ate swiftly at the distance separating Sharissa from the hut that Gerrod presently called his home. Cursing silently, he forced himself to concentrate again on the glamour. It would be a hurried, confused thing, but it would have to do.
A light wind tickled his face. Gerrod allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was no true wind that had touched him, but rather one that indicated his spell had held. He wore his mask once more.
“Gerrod?” Sharissa was still far away, but she knew that, at this distance, the Tezerenee could hear her with ease.
There was no time to locate a looking glass and inspect his work. He would just have to hope that he had not given himself some horrible disfigurement. That would be bitter irony, indeed.
It was late afternoon, which meant that the sun was more or less behind the newcomers. Gerrod knew he would have to work things so that it was Sharissa and her-what? — that had to suffer the sun. He dared not let the light shine too bright upon his visage.
“Gerrod?” The slim figure leaned forward and whispered something to the tall stallion, who laughed loud and merrily. Sharissa shook her head and whispered something else.
It was time for him to make his entrance… or exit, since he was presently within his hut.
Black cloak billowing around his somber, gray and blue clothing, Gerrod stepped out into the sun, his head bent downward to maximize the shadows he desired. His heavy boots on the rocky soil alerted Sharissa of his presence.
“Gerrod!” Her smile-a true smile, not the one formed by the natural curve of her mouth-caused a twinge within him that he pretended to ignore.
“You are late, Mistress Zeree.” He had meant to say it as if her tardiness had hardly mattered, but instead it had come out as if he had felt betrayed. Gerrod was pleased that she could not see his face now, for it was surely crimson.
“I’m sorry about that.” She dismounted with ease. “I brought you a visitor I think you’ll be interested in meeting.”
He studied the equine form before him, noting how it was somewhat disproportionate to a normal horse. After that, he nearly stumbled, for the longer he gazed at the beast the more Gerrod felt as if he were being drawn into it. In an effort to escape the sensation, the warlock looked into the creature’s eyes-only to find he had made a mistake. The pupilless, ice-blue eyes snared him like a noose, nearly drawing him further to the brink of… of a nameless fate he had no desire to explore further.
Blinking, he withdrew deeper into his cloak. There was always safety there. A cloak had spared him the anger of his father more than once while he had still lived among his clan. It would protect him now.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It? I am no it! I am Darkhorse, of course!” The stallion pawed at the earth, digging gullies in the hard, rock-filled ground. “Talk to me, not around me!”
“Shhh!” Sharissa pleaded to the menacing form. “He was not being insulting, Darkhorse! You should know that by now! He can’t be blamed for not understanding what you are, can he?”
“I suppose not.” Mollified, the beast ceased his excavation. He trotted a few steps closer to the warlock, who dared to be defiant and not back away, though he desperately wanted to. What was this monstrosity?
“Easy,” the sorceress suggested to her companion.
“I merely wanted to see him better!” Darkhorse studied Gerrod’s darkened visage so thoroughly that the Tezerenee knew the stallion saw through his glamour. “Why do you hide in such shadow?”
“Darkhorse!”
“My own desire, nothing more,” Gerrod returned, speaking a bit more sharply than he had wanted. This was not going the way he wanted it to; he had no control over the situation. Between Sharissa’s belated appearance and her unbelievable companion, the warlock could not think quickly enough.
“Darkhorse!” The slim woman came between them, guiding her companion back to a more decent distance as she spoke. “What Gerrod chooses to do is up to him; I’ve warned you about how we Vraad are. We are very much individuals; I thought three days would have shown you that already.”
This beast is responsible for her not coming sooner, Gerrod noted. He had assumed as much, but it was a part of his nature that he liked to have things verified for him. It also made Sharissa’s absence more forgivable in his mind. What was he compared to the mighty Darkhorse?
As he wondered that, memories concerning the unsettling creature returned to the warlock. Master Zeree had spoken of his unusual companion during his temporary exile from Nimth, an accidental exile due to too much curiosity upon the sorcerer’s part. Gerrod had taken some of the elder Zeree’s tale as pure embellishment, finding that the concept of a being such as Darkhorse was beyond him at the time.
Not so now. The hooded Tezerenee knew now that, if anything, Dru’s story had failed to fully emphasize the astonishing nature of the ebony stallion. Small wonder. He doubted that tale could do justice to what stood before him.
“You apologize to Gerrod,” Sharissa was telling Darkhorse. The warlock found that amusing; she treated the leviathan as if he were no more than a child. Yet Darkhorse did look contrite.
This creature… a child? Gerrod could not believe his own notion. “I apologize, one called Gerrod!”
“Accepted.” It was fortunate that the hood and the glamour hid his expression; the smile on his face would have likely angered both newcomers. A child!
“I’d wondered what became of you, Sharissa,” the warlock said, seizing control of the conversation now that he had a better idea of what it was he faced. According to Dru Zeree, Darkhorse was an eternal creature, but one that had, it seemed, a very limited experience with things. Gerrod knew how to handle such personalities. “I can see now why you might have forgotten.”
She colored, a simple act that somehow pleased him. It was a becoming sight… not that he cared about such things. His work was all that mattered.