The earth shook violently and the hillside threatened to collapse on the sorcerer. It was not the result Dru had intended and he wondered whether he had hastened his own death. Then whatever had hold of him lost its grip and the startled spellcaster fell back, arms akimbo as he sought uselessly to halt his descent. Dru stuck the ground hard.
A huge, monstrous shape rose out of the earth, filling Dru’s vision. The Vraad looked into a visage of savagery, a long-snouted, red-orbed beast that seemed to glitter. The creature was covered with a natural body armor and stood on two bulky legs. It had clawed appendages large enough to grasp him by the neck and rip his head off, if it so decided.
The terror let loose with a maddened hooting noise that threatened to pierce Dru’s eardrums. It raised a claw, obviously intending to rend the sprawled Vraad’s midsection. The harried sorcerer desperately sought for control, hoping to make one last strike with his haphazard skills. The claws came down.
A black aura surrounded the attacking beast. It let out one frightened hoot, and toppled toward its intended victim.
Dru had, at the very least, enough sense to roll away from the collapsing figure. He had no idea what had happened, save that he had escaped death again-with help from someone or something. The sorcerer ended his rolling by returning to his feet, crouched low in case of a second assault. There was none.
Cautiously approaching his would-be killer, Dru frowned. The creature blended into the region around him with the exception of little spots of glitter buried in the folds of its armor. Suspicions already forming, Dru carefully prodded the huge corpse.
It collapsed the way the first had.
At the same time, the Vraad heard the flutter of wings. He looked up.
More than a dozen copies of the avian horror that had tried to kill him back in Nimth hovered overhead. The largest of them wore a medallion about its neck and cradled the artifact with one of its hands. Dru had no doubt that this was what had killed the armored creature.
It was now focused on him.
VIII
Among the celebrating Vraad, enmities began to spill over the mental dams in what could best be described as the first forerunners of one massive flood of hatred.
Gerrod noted it first in a Vraad called Lord Highcort, a pretty man bedecked in huge, glistening baubles. Highcort wore rings on each finger and was clad in a robe of majestic purple, giving him the appearance of some jaded monarch. The object of his wrath was a female who had once been his mate, or was it twice? She wore nothing but a multicolored streamer of light that occasionally revealed her charms for the briefest of times. Her hair hung low over her face, almost obscuring her eyes. She was presently taller than Highcort, though that could change depending on their moods. What her name was, Gerrod could not recall.
Highcort had evidently had no such trouble finding names for her. The last was the least in a long line that had initially alerted Gerrod to the argument down in the courtyard. “Minx! I grow annoyed at your toying! If you will not cease your diatribes, then I will have to remove the troublesome tongue that makes them!”
“You’ve been trying to remove that tongue for years, Highcort! What’s the matter? Have I struck so close with the truth that you cannot take it anymore?”
The male gritted his teeth. A haze started to form around him, first simply a cloud, then a whirlwind that began circling around.
What the woman was doing, Gerrod had no idea, but he could sense her own powers at work.
Just as the two were about to strike, a pair of dragon riders materialized above them. Both Vraad turned their attention skyward, knowing where the more dangerous threat lay.
“What is it? What goes on?” His father’s booming voice pulled the hooded Tezerenee from the window. Gerrod found he was disappointed that the combatants had not been allowed to continue. At least the others would have been thoroughly entertained and the mutterings would have ceased for a while.
“We can’t mislead them for much longer, Father. The feuds are starting to brew anew.”
The Lord Tezerenee was presently hunched over charts and notations that Gerrod and Rendel had made concerning the passage over to the Dragonrealm. Barakas absently stroked the head of the small wyvern perched on his armored shoulder as he digested both what lay revealed before him and his son’s warning.
Reegan, ever a champion of the head-on charge, slammed a mailed fist onto the table and, ignoring the splintered remnants where his hand had gone through, said, “They should be brought under control, informed of who is in command here! If they knew their true standing, they would abase themselves before us and beg for a place in the new kingdom!”
Gerrod had had enough foolishness. The words escaped his mouth before he considered that he was turning attention away from his brother and back onto himself. “A kingdom we can no longer promise to deliver to them!”
His father jerked straight, causing the wyvern to flutter off in shrieking panic, but the Lady Tezerenee, standing to his left and just behind him, put a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Hush, darling. Gerrod is correct. The thing to do now is recoup our losses and see if we can salvage some sort of victory.”
“I would rather recoup the heads of Ephraim and his band.” Barakas took a deep breath, which threatened to exhaust the air supply in the room, and calmed himself. He turned away from Gerrod, who let out a silent sigh, and focused on one of the coven assigned to monitor Rendel’s passage. They had given up trying to keep the body alive; it had passed away shortly after the initial news that the cross-over itself was in danger. “Esad! How many golems remain?”
The newcomer knelt instantly. “Father, there are some two hundred plus golems ready. That is the best we can say at this point.”
“Acceptable.” Barakas scratched his chin. “More than enough for us to cross over and still have some left for those we deem our allies. As for the rest”-he shrugged uncaringly-“they, being mighty Vraad, should be able to fend for themselves.”
Which still did not answer the initial questions raised earlier, Gerrod thought bitterly. What had actually happened to Ephraim and those of the clan whose task it had been to create and shape the golems? Those shells were to act as the Vraads’ receptacles when their kas passed across to their new domain. When it was reported that they had not responded to a summons, the Lord Tezerenee himself had gone out to find the reason why. All they had found were the pentagram etched in the dead soil and a few minor items that individuals in the band had carried with them. There had been no sign of a struggle and no misty apparition marking an intrusion by the other domain.
The patriarch was of the opinion that the band had somehow crossed, abandoning their bodies in some well-hidden cave so as to delay discovery of their deed. It was possible to create a lifeline of sorts that would enable the kas of each of them to cross, down to and including the last man. Such a task would require the first arrivals to remain linked mentally with those to follow. It was that part of the plan that Rendel had abandoned earlier.
“It is settled, then.”
The gathered Tezerenee, mostly the combined sons and daughters of the lord and lady, grew silent, whispered conversations dying in midsentence. When no one else dared to ask, Gerrod took the burden onto his shoulders, as it always seemed he did, despite a continuing lack of gratitude on the parts of his siblings. “What is settled, Father?”
Lord Barakas glared at his son as if Gerrod had turned into an imbecile. “Pay attention! Our course is settled! We begin transferring over to the Dragonrealm before this day is over. I will summon those who will join our ranks. The announcement will go out that they will be but the first, overall order being done by lottery.”