It was Darkhorse, but not Darkhorse as she knew him. The huge ebony stallion looked distorted, as if he had forgotten how to form his equine shape. His legs were twisted, the body looked bloated, and the head was only in part formed. Worse, other appendages of varying design sprouted from his body.
"Rheena!" her companion gasped.
The shadow steed did not move. Yssa slowly descended, her eyes fixed on the bizarre tableau. What had happened to Darkhorse? Why was he frozen in place like some statue?
"Yssa, wait!" Valea darted down the steps to her side. "I think that it"s just-"
"Look!" Before the blond enchantress"s eyes, Darkhorse faded away. It was as if someone had erased the stallion. "We"ve got to find out what-"
Valea seized her hand. Aurim"s sister was a surprisingly strong woman for her size. "Wait! Listen to me. It startled me, too, at first, but only because I"ve never seen that one! Don"t worry, Yssa, I know what it was now."
"What are you talking about? That was Darkhorse! He"s in danger!" How could Valea be so calm?
Looking Yssa straight in the eye, the other woman quietly said, "It was a ghost. One of the Manor"s ghosts. They"re images from the past, usually, images that for some reason remain behind. Some of them move, some of them even talk."
"I"ve never heard of that!" Tales about ghosts and the like abounded throughout the realm, but Yssa had never confronted any such spirit herself. She knew something of the Manor thanks to her father, but he had failed to mention this interesting tidbit of information.
"It doesn"t happen very often. Generally it"s either Father or Aurim who sees them. I don"t know why. I"ve seen my own share, though. You should witness the wedding scene; it"s beautiful if a little sad when you think about the fact that the bride and groom are long dead."
"So the image we saw . . . that happened in the past?"
Here Valea hesitated. "I don"t remember ever hearing about this one, but there"s one way to be certain. We can ask Father. After all, he"s with Darkhorse now."
That was exactly what Yssa wanted to do. The ghost had been too real, too immediate an image. The memory of its appearance still made her shiver a little.
"They"re out in the garden maze," the younger sorceress announced, evidently having searched for them with her mind. "They seem to be all right. I didn"t probe hard enough to disturb them. Darkhorse is telling him about something."
Yssa had forgotten that. Something about a creature like him. That in itself sounded fascinating, although also frightening if there was any truth to it. She hoped to ask the shadow steed some questions herself when she had the opportunity.
"I don"t think I want to disturb them just yet, Yssa. There"s another way to check, though. My father keeps a journal of sightings in his private library. He won"t mind if I look there. He asked us all to record sightings whenever possible. It"s a hobby of his, I suppose."
Yssa still wanted to interrupt Cabe and Darkhorse, but she was a guest, a somewhat undesired guest at that, and so it behooved her to follow the suggestions of her host. Fortunately, Cabe Bedlam"s private library was nearby. The room was small but neat and consisted mainly of a desk and some shelves filled with journals, scrolls, and the like.
Valea reached unerringly for one of the journals. She opened the volume, then placed it on the desktop so that both of them could read its contents at the same time. To her surprise, Yssa saw that over the years, Cabe Bedlam and his family had listed hundreds of sightings. Fortunately, Valea evidently knew most of the listings by heart, for she ran through the list so fast that the other sorceress barely had time to read some of the entries. Those that she did read surprised her. Besides the wedding, which she spotted just before Valea turned the page, there were sightings of Seekers, sword fights, even a Quel. Oddly, many of the visions were mundane ones. Yssa even noted more than one listing concerning a woman cooking in the kitchen. There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason to which images appeared.
Two toward the end of the listing interested her. One, recorded by Aurim, noted that Cabe Bedlam himself had materialized as an image. The other, recorded in turn by Cabe, concerned the drake Toma, with whom Yssa had long been familiar thanks to her father. Although he was now dead, simply seeing the renegade"s name made her uneasy. To think that Toma had come so close to seizing control of both the Manor and the young successor to the Dragon Emperor"s throne . . .
The listing was a particularly long one, but before Yssa could read more than a line, Valea interrupted her by pushing aside the journal. "Nothing! I didn"t see one mention of Darkhorse in here. Now I"ll have to interrupt them." The young woman sighed. "But first I guess that I"d better record this one, otherwise Father will probably scold me later on. He takes this so seriously."
While Valea wrote, Yssa took the opportunity to read the rest of the entry concerning Toma. The sighting had taken place not long before Emperor Kyl"s ascension and had evidently been a shocking sight to the one confronted by it, namely Cabe Bedlam. He had noted that there had been several unusual factors concerning the vision, including the fact that it had been of a very recent event. The vast majority of the other sightings had been of things and events from the far past. More important, Cabe had noted that the image had probably been some sort of warning, the Manor"s way of trying to alert its inhabitants to the drake"s intrusion. Toma had actually entered the Manor, having stolen the ident.i.ty of a trusted human scholar named Benjin Traske.
The entry was interesting, but Yssa could make no link between it and the image of Darkhorse they had witnessed. She leaned back, pondering the matter while her companion finished the new entry.
"Do you want to add anything, Yssa?"
Relegating the other entry to the back of her mind, the enchantress read what Valea had written. "No, I don"t think I could add anything. You were very thorough."
"I have to be. Father generally questions us about the sightings later on. The more I write down, the less I have to try to recall later on. It"s self-preservation."
"Then he"ll want to know about this as soon as possible." Yssa straightened: "Is it far to where he"s located? Your lands are vaster than some baronies. The garden seems to go on forever."
Valea giggled. "I know, believe me. It won"t take us long to walk there, though. There"s no reason to use a spell for something as minor as this probably is. My parents don"t like us to waste our strength popping from place to place." She turned toward the doorway and her amus.e.m.e.nt vanished. "That"s odd. I don"t remember the door being closed."
Neither did Yssa. "One of us probably did it when we came in and we just forgot."
"You"re probably right." Valea tried to open the door, but it remained shut. She tugged again with no better success. "I don"t understand. It"s not locked."
"Let me try." Yssa tugged, but also failed. Lacking the patience of her companion, she did not try a second time, but rather concentrated her power on the defiant door.
It still would not budge.
Valea looked at her. "Something"s terribly wrong. You just tried to open the door with sorcery, didn"t you?"
"I did. It should"ve opened easily."
"Maybe if we both try."
The pair stared. The door glowed bright green and quivered, but it remained sealed.
"Take my hand," Yssa commanded. They had one option of escape left, but she suspected that they had to act fast or not at all. "Don"t lose your hold, whatever you do."
Once Valea obeyed, Yssa completely focused her attention on her spell. She had always been good at travel spells, be they blink holes or otherwise. What she planned should be simple.
At first, it seemed it would be. A circle of light formed before them. Yssa"s hopes rose. The blink hole was forming perfectly . . .
Before the enchantress could open it, the hole suddenly dissipated. A slight backlash of power sent Yssa to the desk, where Valea barely kept her from falling onto it. Both women stared at the sealed entrance.
"That should"ve worked!" Yssa nearly hissed, but managed at the last moment to smother the sound. Hissing was a habit she had acquired as a child, but one she purposely worked to suppress for fear that others might discover her origin.
"Maybe I can contact my father . . ." Valea stared toward the ceiling.
A giggle echoed through the room, a malevolent, taunting giggle that did not sound human.
No! Yssa whirled around, but could neither see nor sense the source of the foul laughter. Valea shook her head as if trying to clear it. She had failed to reach her father, of that the half-breed enchantress had no doubt.
"What was that, Yssa? Where did it come from?"
Zuu. Zuu is where it"s come from . . . A sense of dread rose within her. A short time past, the Manor had warned the Bed- lams about the drake renegade in their midst. She wondered now if perhaps it had been trying to warn them again. Darkhorse had said that the thing that served Lanith was like him, so much so that even Cabe could not tell the magical signatures apart. The mad image of Darkhorse, his form twisted into something perverse, might have been the Manor"s unique way of trying to tell someone that the evil had gained access to what should have been the safest domain in all the Dragonrealm.
Worse, if what she believed was true, it was now moving against them . . . and Yssa,wondered if anyone would realize the danger before it was too late.
Cabe Bedlam was his dearest friend and yet telling him of Yureel was a task Darkhorse found daunting. He forced himself to proceed, though, knowing that it was necessary. If anyone might be able to help him, it would be Cabe.
"I neither know when nor where Yureel first came into being or whether, like the Void, he was simply there when the multiverse blossomed. If age matters at all in that empty realm, Yureel is far, far more ancient than I. He existed there, floating about and, on occasion, inspecting the few bits of matter that slipped into the Void, but never finding their place of origin. I do not even know if at that time he cared where such bits came from. It is my suspicion that for as long as Yureel has existed, he has mostly concerned himself with his own amus.e.m.e.nt. Other matters, other creatures, existed only to entertain him."
"You say he was first," Cabe interrupted. "If so . . . how did you come to be?"
The stallion shuddered. "The notion was evidently one long in the forming. Its origin, I believe, was due to an encounter like none he had ever experienced before. Yureel himself told me of the encounter time and time again. He seemed to take particular pleasure in repeating it to me whenever I did not care to join in his foul games, which was often." Darkhorse faltered, recalling the ruthlessness of those games. It was fortunate that Yureel"s opportunities for such sport had been rare. "A being of intelligence-Yureel described it only by saying that it talked and had six limbs-had the misfortune to be cast into the Void. Yureel, who had no name at the time and did not even understand the meaning of "self," found the hapless one. He was fascinated. Never had he come across such a thing. Yureel decided that he needed to completely understand what this new and unusual toy was like."
"What . . . what did he do?"
Darkhorse gouged the earth with one hoof. "He did as he had always done with the objects he found. He absorbed him, Cabe. Swallowed him as a pit of tar would a helpless riding drake. You have seen me open myself when touched by a foe and you have seen that foe vanish within as if falling forever. It is not a fate any would desire, but some might find it more suitable than what Yureel did to this one. He took in the lost one, took in his essence, his very being . . . and made it his own. Where there had been two, there was now only one, but one who now held much of the knowledge, the experience, and the power of the one taken."
The sorcerer shifted uneasily. "Darkhorse, are you saying that you can do this? You can . . . swallow . . . someone and make what they knew, what they were, yours?"
For quite some time, the eternal could not look at his friend, much less respond to the question. Finally, with a slow, regretful dip of his head, Darkhorse answered, "Yes . . . I can, Cabe. If I were wont to, I could seize a full-grown human, take him inside, and make mine all that he is." His icy eyes widened. "But I would never do such a thing! Never, Cabe!"
"I know you wouldn"t, Darkhorse. I know."
What he could never tell the sorcerer was that he had done so, far in the past. In the Void, he had not understood what he was doing, only that this was what Yureel always did. In the Dragonrealm . . . there had been a couple of times when the only way to save others had been to take lives in such a manner. The ones he had taken had deserved no mercy, but he could not help feeling sorry for them nevertheless.
The story. He had to keep his mind on the story. "Now Yureel saw things as he had never seen them before. He knew that there were other places beyond his reach, places full of things, full of life. It frustrated him that he could not find these places, although I know he did try. The frustration grew worse the longer he dwelled upon it. When next he confronted a hapless visitor to the Void, he seized that one faster than the first, thinking it would help alleviate his frustration. It did not. It only added new dimensions to it. Now Yureel realized that the places he could not reach had to number into infinity. So many creatures, so many playthings, kept from him . . ."
The shadow steed paused, momentarily distracted. For a moment Darkhorse thought he sensed someone using sorcery to contact him, but when he tried to verify it, the eternal felt nothing.
"You don"t have to go on if you don"t want to," Cabe commented, taking his latest pause for reluctance.
"I need to." It had only been his distraught mind. That was it. Nothing more. "This has to be told." He shook his head, trying again to clear his thoughts. "As I have indicated, to Yureel, the unfortunates were nothing but entertainment. Those that he did not take immediately he generally killed soon afterward for one reason or another. However, it was not until he happened upon a pair of identical beings, creatures who spoke and acted together at all times, that a fantastic notion occurred to him. In his mind, they were the same being but in different sh.e.l.ls. They had one another to ever work with . . ." The shadow steed thought over the last statement and corrected himself. "They were never alone . . ."
Yureel had taken them as he had taken the others, but this time he studied them closely first. If they could have each other, then why could he not have another "self" with whom to play, with whom to share his pastimes . . .
Never had Yureel found any being akin to himself, so he decided that he would create one. The concept of creating something was one he had learned from some of his toys, but until that moment it had made no sense. He pondered it long, testing out one process after another. Nothing seemed to work.
"Then he hit upon the answer, Cabe. If he could absorb other things, make them part of him, why could he not reverse the process and separate a piece of his being, give it strength, and make it grow into another version of himself? There had been incidents when he had misjudged some of the playthings he had found and they had injured him, separating one bit of his essence from the whole. Being a creature much like . . . shall we say a cloud or puddle, for lack of a better earthly description . . . he was generally unhurt by these attacks and always afterward reabsorbed the fragments. It had never occurred to him to do anything otherwise."
"Didn"t he ever miss a . . . a piece . . . before?"
Darkhorse understood. "Small fragments, yes, Cabe, but the small ones did not last. That, in fact, was something Yureel discovered for himself during his initial experiments. His first attempt was a tiny blob that he could manipulate but that had no intelligence of its own. He tried yet a larger one, but ended with the same results. It came to the point where Yureel understood that he would have to divide more or less into two equal parts to achieve his goal. Unfortunately, he had also learned that the constant attempts to divide had weakened him already. He needed to absorb more substance to make further attempts but in the Void there was little to find. His patience, though, had reached its limits and so Yureel dared to try one more time even despite his weakness."
Like a ma.s.s of wet clay pulled apart by an artisan, Yureel had stretched in two opposing directions. At first the creature had felt no change, but the more tenuous the physical connection between the two parts became, the more separate the controlling forces of each half also grew. The process also began to speed up, perhaps because the second portion now had some desire for existence of its own.
When had Darkhorse first experienced consciousness? Even the shadow steed could not really say. He thought he recalled some part of the separation, but if so, the memory was a faint one. More distinct were the first memories after the process had finally come to an end, when both shapeless forms had floated weak and unmoving in the vast emptiness. That weakness had threatened both and at one point the new "self" had been forced to retreat from the other, for in hunger the elder had tried to reabsorb his offspring. That was a memory that always haunted Darkhorse. Yureel had thought nothing of the separate personality he had created; he had been just as willing to reabsorb his new counterpart as he had his many ill-fated playthings.
Yureel was a name that would come later. At this point, the two identified themselves by such concepts as "self" and "other self." In appearance, they were identical, but even from the start, subtle differences in personality became evident.
"It was when I first encountered a creature other than either myself or Yureel that I learned just how different we were, Cabe. The one who I found was nearly dead, but he struggled to live. I was curious, for I did not retain much memory of Yureel"s encounters. The newcomer seemed weak, so I, who had regained strength by then, gave him enough to heal him. I wanted to know what he was and why he looked different. Naturally, my newfound toy was frightened, but he overcame that."
"How were you able to talk to him?"
The stallion considered this long before answering. "I cannot say for certain, Cabe. In the Void, it seemed much easier to touch the minds of others, especially those unshielded. I have not always found it so in the Dragonrealm. Regardless, we eventually did communicate and I found him so fascinating that I just wanted to listen and learn."
Something in his tone evidently made the sorcerer extremely uneasy. "What happened to him, Darkhorse? I can tell that something did." The human"s eyes narrowed. "Yureel . he didn"t really-"
"Yes, my friend, he did." Darkhorse kicked at the earth again. "He found me, not so difficult a task then, and was delighted with the new toy. Yureel seized him, wanting to play, and when I protested. . he grew angry and absorbed him."
"G.o.d!"
"I did not at first understand how terrible that was, but I did not think his actions right. You must understand; Yureel was not kind with his captives before he absorbed them . . . not kind at all. That was what drove me away more than anything."
Darkhorse paused to think, not wanting to say anything more that might hint at how he had been little better than Yureel. Best to move on to the end. The final fear that had sent him fleeing from his counterpart. "I will not bore you with the tale any longer. I will only say that there came a time when because of his cruel actions to the creatures he found, I did not want to remain near Yureel any longer. I started to drift farther and farther from him, but he caught up to me and demanded to know why I had left him behind. I told him that I wanted to be by myself, that I did not like his games." The shadow steed shuddered. "He said that I did not have to leave. He would simply reabsorb me and create a new playmate, a better one. Before I realized what was happening, Yureel was trying to envelop me!"
The sorcerer shifted uneasily on the bench. His face had grown pale with each successive revelation. "You don"t have to go on, Darkhorse! Not if you-"
"I felt my mind, my self, dissipating!" the eternal cried, almost talking to himself now. "He tried to do with me what he had done with the others! I am sorry to say that at the time the realization of what they had suffered did not strike me; I only knew my own personal terror, that I was about to cease to be!" Darkhorse stomped the ground in an attempt to relieve himself of the remembered fear. "Yureel did not expect me to be able to resist. Nothing had ever been able to resist him! I left him stunned, no doubt also shocked, and fled through the Void until long past the time when I could sense his presence, much less see him in that empty place! I do not know how long I journeyed, for you yourself know how meaningless time can be in the Void, but ever I kept careful watch in case he had tracked me down. I feared him then, Cabe, just as I admit to fearing him now! After the Dragonrealm was revealed to me by a lost sorcerer, I believed that at last I was free of Yureel, but that a.s.sumption proved false. He had never ceased following me, so I later discovered. Once before he found his way into this world and only through luck did others succeed in banishing him, again, supposedly forever." The stallion shook his head. "But forever is a long time. He has finally returned . . . and although I fear for the Dragonrealm, I fear more for myself."
Cabe Bedlam rose from the bench. "Why didn"t you ever tell me this before?"
"The spell the other sorcerers used to bind Yureel in the Void seemed perfect. I thought him gone forever, unable to harm even those unfortunates who drifted into his realm. I thought myself rid of him."
"How long ago did this happen?"
Darkhorse hung his head low. "Your grandfather"s grandfather had not yet been born. I know that because I knew the man. Zerik Bedlam, by the way. Among the spellcasters who forced Yureel back to the empty realm was the woman who would be his mother. I only remember her as Lamaria of the Hidden Grove."
"Someday, you and I will have a long talk about just exactly how many of my ancestors you"ve met." The human reached out, putting a calming hand on the shadow steed"s muzzle.
Although Darkhorse was no true equine, he appreciated his friend"s gesture. Telling the story had filled him with shame, not only for his own weaknesses, but the excesses of his brother, his other self. Yureel was a monster in every sense of the word, the demon that mortals had always mistaken for. Some of the sinister legends that had made the ebony stallion so feared had their roots in the battles against Yureel.
"He must be destroyed, Cabe. Somehow, we must destroy Yureel. He will not listen to reason, and no earthly prison is secure enough. There can be no safety from him. Somewhere in the past, he developed a fondness for epics. I think more than one mortal tried to placate him with such stories. Yureel now sees worlds such as the Dragonrealm as the setting for his own tales, and those tales always revolve around destruction on a ma.s.sive scale. I believe that it was he who saw the taste for conquest in Lanith"s mind and then seduced the horse king with grand promises of an empire spanning the continent."
"But I can"t imagine how Lanith thinks he"ll win even with Yureel and the Order. All he"ll do is maybe succeed in destroying the last vestiges of peace. The entire Dragonrealm could erupt as some kingdoms fight him while others try to take advantage of the chaos!" Cabe mentioned no names, but they both knew that two Dragon Kings, Storm and Black, were among those who would take such an advantage.
"Yureel does not care if Lanith is victorious! He wants only for the armies of Zuu to create such havoc that it takes years for peace to prevail! Yureel is anarchy, Cabe! That is all he strives for!"
The sorcerer looked shaken. "I can"t believe that he"s so terrible a monster. The way you talk about him . . . is he that much more powerful than you? I"d think the two of you would be equals, yet . . . you really fear him . . ."
"I do. Cabe, I have never been Yureel"s equal. To be his equal, I would have to do as he does. That would give me but two choices. I could absorb power wholesale as he has always done . . . and spellcasters, of course, provide the greatest source of power . . ." Darkhorse gave thanks that Aurim had escaped the fate of so many others in the past. From Cabe"s shifting expression, it was clear the elder Bedlam"s thoughts ran a similar course.
"And . . . the other method?" the human finally managed.
"Yureel is a parasite in every sense of the word, Cabe! What he does not swallow whole, he often slowly sucks dry. I cannot be certain, but I suspect that he has been drawing strength from the sorcerers of Lanith"s Magical Order. . . and was doing so from your son as well."
"He wouldn"t!"
Darkhorse shook his head. "There is nothing Yureel would not do, friend! Nothing! If we do not destroy him, my foul twin will certainly destroy us . . . but only after we are nothing but empty husks. We must-"
His warning was interrupted by the sudden materialization of Lady Bedlam. The scarlet-tressed sorceress"s expression was dark. The shadow steed found himself somewhat relieved to see her; her intrusion put a welcome end to his painful conversation. Rather would he deal with trying to free Aurim of the spell that bound him than speak more about the past he shared with Yureel.
"Darling, have you seen Valea and that woman?"
"I"ve not seen Yssa since the two of you took Aurim to his room. I expected Valea to join you there."
Gwendolyn Bedlam looked uncomfortable. "I found I didn"t need help from either of them and so I asked Valea if she wouldn"t mind showing that woman more of the Manor. Now I"m beginning to regret that decision."
The sorcerer shared a worried glance with Darkhorse. "Why?"
"Because I can"t sense them anywhere. I wanted to ask Valea to look up something for me in the main library, but I couldn"t locate her. I tried a stronger, more direct probe, but for all practical purposes, both she and that wood witch are missing."
"Valea wouldn"t leave the Manor without telling us, dear, and you"ve got nothing to fear from Yssa. She"s not a threat."