“It won’t even hurt-not much, that is,” Shade suddenly told her, coming within a hand’s width of her face. She tried to close her eyes, but his spell prevented that. Instead, she was forced to stare into his glimmering, seemingly multifaceted orbs. There were those who said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul, and what there was of Shade was more reflection than substance. More than life, but also less.
He was no longer human and likely had not been since the very day that he had fallen victim to his own obsessive desires.
His hand came up before her eyes, his voice was soothing, yet with that undercurrent of anxiety and fear. “Listen to me now. I’m going to begin. I don’t need your cooperation, but I ask it. Give me what I want and I’ll see what I can do for you afterward. You will give it to me regardless of your desires, but the transition will be easier on both of us if you do your part willingly.”
Frozen as she was, Erini could only respond with her eyes, which she did promptly. Shade backed away, his face initially the picture of remorse, then, in an abrupt change, arrogant and lordly. “Very well, then. I offered for your sake, really. Suffer if you like. Here is what you will do for me.”
The warlock reached up and touched her forehead. Erini’s mind was suddenly filled with images and instructions. She found herself unable to continue her desperate summons under such circumstances and finally gave in. Her only consolation was the thin hope that something in the shadowy warlock’s instructions might give her an idea.
Erini’s task, as he had defined it, was to be the vessel in which two radically different forms of sorcery would be meshed together. Unlike the tales the princess had heard as a child, it was not the powers of darkness and light that Shade had sought to master. It was the vestiges of a power that lingered from whatever world the Vraad had originated from and this world’s own strength. The images both horrified and fascinated her.
“We will begin now.” Wrapping himself deep within his cloak, Shade leaned forward and focused his gaze on the tripod.
Though she could see little, Erini felt everything. She felt the power that she summoned forth fill the chamber-she summoned forth? No, it only appeared that way. From the instructions that the warlock had implanted in her mind, she understood that he was utilizing the tripod in order to draw energy through her. To draw upon so much power himself would be to risk the success of his plan. He had to be free to control the situation, and without her that would have been impossible.
Erini knew that there must be defenses she could summon, things that would disrupt his spell permanently, but her mind was not skilled enough to cope with the influx of power and still concentrate on shielding herself. The princess now saw why Shade desired an untrained and inexperienced spellcaster with high potential. Even Drayfitt’s mind would have been too closed for Shade to have trusted the outcome of his experiment. Erini was like a child, uncertain of what her limitations were; an open book on which Shade could write what he pleased.
“You feel the power flowing into your soul.” A statement, not a question. “Hold it there. Let it gather.”
She did as he bid her, unable to do anything else. It was frustrating to feel so strong and yet be so helpless. The strength of the world seemed to flow into her. For the first time, Erini saw the world in terms of the lines and fields of energy that many spellcasters did. Yet, the spectrum remained there as well. The two were one. It was impossible to tell if one had resulted because of the other or if they had both sprung into existence simultaneously. There was so much potential here that even the greatest sorcerers of legend had probably never known the like. There was power enough here to make one almost a god-
— and this was only a part of what Shade desired. Shade, not her. She was a vessel, the princess reminded herself, for all the power that she contained was for her captor, not herself.
“The flow will continue slowly. You must guide its intensity, make certain it does not overwhelm you-and be prepared to accept the next offering.”
It was too much! Erini panicked. How could she hope to contain so much energy, so much pure power? Erini struggled to assert her mind. Darkhorse! If only I could summon him!
Erini?
It was brief and lost to her completely after that single word, after the calling of her name, but she knew that she had touched the eternal’s thoughts. Her mind filled with hope.
A cold, loathsome essence entered Erini just as she sought Darkhorse again, caressing her soul as if tasting a treat. Caught unaware, the princess wanted to scream and scream and scream, but Shade’s earlier spell prevented such a release of her horror at the unthinkable invasion. The world around her shrank away, as if she were looking at it from above. The warlock looked into her eyes, curiosity and anticipation at the forefront. She wanted to ram him through the earth, peel away every layer of skin while he writhed in agony-anything-as long as it would free her mind from the unspeakable presence seeking to become a part of her.
“Accept it, princess. You have no choice.”
She didn’t. Erini wanted to destroy, to tear her own body apart and remove the cancerous thing from her soul. Shade’s commands prevented all but the weakest resistance. This was the essence of the power that the warlock’s kind had utilized in that nameless hell they had been-forced? — to leave. It was alien to the Dragonrealm, following different, twisted laws of nature that should not-could not-exist here.
There is a way around that.
The thought was not her own, but rather one of Shade’s imprinted instructions, rising forth, now that its task was at hand. It felt like something almost alive, as if it had been imbued with a tiny piece of the Vraad’s being.
There are points of binding, places where the two realities may be joined. You have only to look.
Joined. They had to be joined. Erini saw that now. It was the only possible way to keep herself from suffering a similar fate to that which Shade had suffered, if not something worse. Either force within her was capable of scattering her body and mind beyond the reaches of forever. If she was to have any chance to survive, she would have to do as her captor’s instructions indicated.
Of course you do, the piece of Shade reminded her. Erini wondered if it was her own mind that made it seem so much alive and, if so, was she going mad?
You have a task. Do it.
That was the only truth she did have at the moment. With growing disgust, she accepted the foreign sorcery completely into her being. In her imagination, it seemed to squirm like a worm trying to burrow deeper. Erini almost rejected it then, but knew that, by doing so, she would condemn herself. What sort of world had the Vraad come from, and how could they possibly be the ancestors of the humans alive today? There were hints of those answers now and then, vague, ghostlike images that danced around her, almost distracting her from the horrid task. None of them were distinct and Erini felt some relief at that. Despite her wonder, these were things she actually had little desire to learn about. They all bore the same stench as the sorcery.
See the points. Take them and marry them to their counterparts. Here. Here. Here.
This part of her task seemed almost laughingly simple now, though she knew that here was where Shade had originally begun his downward spiral to damnation. Erini could not see why. The points her mind saw met willingly with one another. Perhaps it was, as the warlock had indicated, only because she was the vessel-or rather the catalyst-and not the final recipient of the spell’s outcome. She had only one purpose, not several as he had had.