"I did not ssssummon you, warlock . . . or perhapssss I did."

"I don't understand." Why did it feel like he was always saying that? The frustrated sorcerer wondered if anyone understood what happened in the Dragonrealm. Sometimes it was as if life was but a game. A macabre game.

The great dragon unfurled and furled his wings over and over again. The talons of his forepaws gouged deep into the floor. Cabe looked around and realized that the chamber had grown darker.

"No . . . you wouldn't. No one would, warlock. That issss my bane, the ssssword that hangssss over my head. No one understands what I live with." The cold tones only added to the image of a creature slowly going mad. "I thought of ssssummoning you, Master Bedlam, thought of it but did not." He looked away from the tiny human and studied the chamber from wall to ceiling. "To thissss place, though, ssssuch a thought wa.s.sss good enough." The Crystal Dragon hissed. "Away with you!"

Cabe's first inclination was that his audience had come to an abrupt end, but it was not he to whom the drake lord roared the command. Fascinated, the warlock watched as the images all around him faded away. The crystalline walls dulled. They no longer reflected. The illumination also faded, albeit not completely.

"I ssssometimes think it ha.s.sss a mind of its own," the dragon murmured. He continued to stare at the now blank walls. "I ssssometimes think that the chamber controlsss me and not the other way." The Crystal Dragon laughed in self-mockery. "Ironic if true, would you not say?"

The warlock kept quiet. Noticing the lack of response, the behemoth tilted his head so that he could see his human guest out of the corner of his eye. "It takesss my thoughtsss, Cabe Bedlam, and makessss them reality. I can ssssee anything, any place, any persssson in the Dragonrealm with the aid of thissss chamber. It showssss me the world ssso that I do not have to risssk myself and venture out.

"But there isss another sssside to it. Another side. It issss not ssssatisfied with my direct commandsss, no! It mussst have my deeper thoughtssss, my sssleeping thoughtsss!"

The ma.s.sive drake stirred. Cabe wanted to step back, but something within told him it would behoove him to stay where he was. He had to maintain a strong front. "So you thought of summoning me but did not."

The Dragon King quieted at the sound of his voice. Cabe's calm provided him with an anchor for his sanity. "I thought of you more than once, recalling your part in the sssstruggle with the dragon lord Ice."

Which might explain why there had been more than one vision. Perhaps each time the drake had thought of him, a vision had been sent. So he had journeyed here under a misconception. The dragon had not called him, but rather only thought about doing so. If he understood his host, then the chamber had taken his desire for Cabe's aid and acted upon it even after the Dragon King had chosen otherwise.

"I understood some of what I saw, but some of the images made no sense. The men in dragon-scale armor; what does it have to do with the wolf raiders?"

"Nothing!" snapped the Dragon King. Then, realizing how he had reacted, he withdrew into himself. "Nothing. A twisssting of random thoughtssss and dreamsss. Nothing to concern you."

Perhaps or perhaps not, Cabe thought. Whether or not it concerned him, it appeared he would receive no clarification from his host and the warlock had no intention of pressing the subject. He had no way of predicting what the Dragon King's reaction would be then.

"Then you don't require my aid?"

A pause. "I am the Crystal Dragon."

He knew what the drake lord's response was supposed to imply, but the hesitant manner in which it was spoken belied that implication. The Crystal Dragon was trying to hide something and failing miserably. Yet Cabe dared not make mention of that fact. It would be far too easy for his host to take out whatever frustrations and fears he had on the warlock.

"Your Majesty-"

"I have the ssssituation in hand, mage! That issss your ansssswer; be sssatisfied with it!"

"I only had a question, Your Majesty." When the Dragon King said nothing, Cabe dared push on. "Was it you who unleashed this deadly fog upon your own kingdom?"

His first thought was that he had indeed stepped over the line, for the Dragon King rose to his full height and hissed loudly. The chamber grew stifling. The leviathan spread his wings wide; his talons sliced at the air before him. He thrust his head toward the human, stopping only a yard from Cabe. The warlock struggled to maintain his composure even though every fiber screamed for him to run. Cabe did not consider himself a brave soul in the heroic sense of the word. He remained where he was basically because he knew that to run would be futile. Better to face a threat than turn one's back on it.

"I relea.s.ssed it, Cabe Bedlam! I relea.s.ssed the foulness upon my own domain and it isss my resssponsssibility!"

"But to even call upon a shadow of Nimth's dec-"

"Nimth?" The Crystal Dragon recoiled as if Cabe had just informed him that he carried plague or some other dire disease.

Could he have not known? It was not a simple task to read those draconian features. There was fear there, but of what only the Crystal Dragon knew. "Yes, Nimth, Your Majesty. A world lost in time, ever dying. There was a race of sorcerers there, a race called the Vraad. They-"

"I know what they were! I know better than you!" The glittering behemoth shifted yet closer. "I know all there issss to know about their foul ways! Did you think I wanted to do this?" Again, the Dragon King looked away. His stentorian voice grew softer. "I knew what it wa.s.sss I would unleash. I have alwayssss lived with that. But it issss only a shadow, a.s.sss you mentioned. A shadow! No ssssubstance!" He quieted yet again. "But I fear it will not sssstop them. They will be sssslowed, but not defeated. You are correct to be fearful of it. I dared let it go no further than I did, lessst ssssomething else come through. Things of Nimth wreak only deadly havoc in this world."

Cabe took a deep breath. He had to tell the Crystal Dragon. Only the lord of Legar could possibly send Plool back. It would not solve the problem of the wolf raiders, but it would prevent the Vraad from possibly causing further chaos. That, they did not need. If Plool could have been trusted, Cabe might have held his tongue, but Plool could not be and the warlock knew that.

"You . . . did let something through, Your Majesty. Someone, I should say."

The dragon's eyes narrowed. There was the slightest tremor in his voice, a tremor that shocked the mage despite all he had already noted about his terrible host. "What . . . did . . . you . . . say?"

"A creature . . . a man . . . of Nimth came through when you opened the way. A . . ." Would the Dragon King know enough about the history of Nimth? So far, it sounded as if he might know even more than the warlock did. "A Vraad sorcerer."

"You lie! The Vraad are dead and forgotten! I know! I-" The gleaming t.i.tan's denial ended in a roar that echoed again and again throughout the chamber. Cabe was forced to cover his ears. This time, he was certain that the Dragon King had lost permanent control. This time, there would be no escaping the obvious madness of the drake lord.

Yet . . . yet, the Crystal Dragon did calm. It was as if a different creature were abruptly there before Cabe, a creature more cold, fatalistic.

Like the Ice Dragon? He hoped it was not so. One of the few reasons that the Dragonrealm was not a dead, frozen waste was the leviathan before him. If the Crystal Dragon was now mad in the same manner as his counterpart to the far north had been, then the wolf raiders might become the least of the continent's worries.

"Wheeeerrre? Where issss it?" A scarlet, forked tongue flickered forth. "Where isss the Vraad?"

Cabe was regretting his idea now. He did not want to hand even someone like Plool over to the dragon; yet he had committed himself. "The Quel have him. If you could send him back . . ."

"Ssssend it back? Sssend the monstrosity back?" The Dragon King's maw snapped shut. He closed his eyes for a brief time. When he finally opened them, the Dragon King nodded and said, "You are correct, of coursssse, Cabe Bedlam. That would be for the best. Requiring little in effort, yesss."

"Can you take him from the Quel?" The warlock was startled to find himself asking such a question. He had grown up always believing that if any one of the present Dragon Kings was omnipotent, it was the Crystal Dragon. A few Quel should have required the least of his power.

Here the t.i.tan recovered his aplomb a bit. "I do not have to take him. They will give him to me."

The chamber gleamed. The crystalline walls were alive with not only the Dragon King's reflection but the mage's as well. The drake lord stared at one of the walls and suddenly the reflections melted away, becoming other images. They were images of another cavern, a place where a single Quel toyed with a device. The vision of the Quel was repeated from a thousand different angles and distances, but mixed in with those images was a more important one that Cabe focused on. The sphere that held Plool.

He frowned. It had a reddish tinge to it. It was the same sort of reddish tinge he a.s.sociated with heat. Were they trying to burn the Vraad alive?

The shimmering leviathan leaned toward that particular vision. "He isss mine."

A host of identical Quel jumped as if bitten. A legion of startled, identical countenances looked around in panic. Cabe took some small satisfaction. He had no more sympathy for the Quel plight.

The Crystal Dragon spoke again. "You will give him to me."

The images faded away. Cabe blinked as he watched his own face multiply over and over across the chamber walls. No matter where he looked, he saw only his own uncomprehending visage.

"Hold out your handssss, mage."

Cabe obeyed.

"You hold the doorway to d.a.m.nation."

In the warlock's hands was the very sphere that Plool had led him to atop the hill. It had not been taken by the Quel, the Crystal Dragon had summoned it back to him. He tensed, fearful that his grip might slip and send the fragile-looking artifact to the hard floor. If the door was broken, all of Nimth would flow into the Dragonrealm.

The dragon saw his dismay. "Ssssimple clumsiness will not bring about the end of our world, Cabe Bedlam. It would take tremendoussss power to even sssscratch the surface of thissss toy. It would take more power than even that of a Vraad . . . or a hundred Vraad, if ssssuch cooperation wa.s.sss posssible."

It was unnerving to know what he held in his hands, unnerving to know that what he saw within was an entire other world. It was a world that his ancestors had twisted beyond repair and then abandoned . . . most of them. Yet Nimth had struggled and had survived, if what Plool had become could be called an example of survival. He wanted to throw the horrific sphere away, yet at the same time he wanted to hold it tight so that nothing, no matter how remote, would threaten it.

"It issss time."

With those words, the Vraad's deadly prison formed between them. The reddish tinge that Cabe had noticed before was still there, but it looked older, like a mark left over from something that had already happened. Were they too late? Had the Quel acted as the Crystal Dragon had been tempted to do?

Cabe was no longer certain he wanted to see the contents of the tall sphere.

"Hold the artifact before you. Be prepared."

For what? How? Why do those who say that never really explain?

The Dragon King eyed the spherical prison. He started to reach toward it, then hesitated. The reptilian nose wrinkled. Again, the Dragon King reached toward the sphere and again he paused. His expression went from wary expectation to puzzlement to growing fury.

"Thissss sh.e.l.l holdsss nothing! It issss barren!"

The warlock lowered the artifact in his arms. "Barren?"

"Empty." Long, narrow eyes burned into the warlock's own. "The Vraaaaad ha.s.ss essscaped!"

Cabe stared at the prison. He had misinterpreted the scorch traces. The marks were not the work of the Quel, but rather Plool himself working from within the trap. Both the warlock and his armored captors had underestimated the skills and tenacity of the eccentric Vraad.

"A Vraaaad loossse . . ." The Dragon King was talking to himself. "But I dare not . . . do I? I musssst . . . unlesssss . . ." He blinked and seemed to study Cabe anew. "Yessss . . ."

A taloned hand reached forth. The malevolent sphere tore free of the sorcerer's grip and flew to its master. It came to a halt only a foot or two from the dragon's snout and hovered there, waiting.

Cabe relaxed a little, realizing now that it was the device that had interested the Dragon King, not him. "What will you do?"

"What musssst be done. I musssst withdraw what I have unleashed. It will not sssstop . . . stop . . . the wolf raiders, but it will deal with that thing from Nimth!" Now that he had decided on a course of action, the Crystal Dragon sounded almost human in his speech patterns. There seemed no predicting how he would act from one moment to the next. Cabe hoped that this new att.i.tude would remain for a time. "I must risk it. I will not allow that curse to reenter the world. When all that is Nimth is thrust back through the doorway, he will be weakened. He will be so weakened that the threat will become negligible!"

Weakened . . . with all traces of Nimth gone . . . What was it that bothered Cabe about that? Something about Plool and teleporting. Something . . . Of course! "Your Majesty, if you could hear me out. Instead of what you do, let me try to find Plool first. He can be made to see reason. If you do what you plan-"

"It will be done." The finality in the drake lord's voice left no room for compromise. In his eyes, a single Vraad was more a threat than a legion of Aramites. It almost appeared to be a personal vendetta, as if the Dragon King had dealt with Plool's kind before. Could that be?

What was it that hid behind the mask that was the Crystal Dragon?

The glittering t.i.tan closed his eyes. Before him, the dark contents within the sphere shifted and turned. It was a trick of the eyes, of course. The artifact was only a doorway. Perhaps what the Crystal Dragon did disturbed some small area of Nimth, but he certainly could not control the entire world. That much was evident from his fear of anything Nimthian, especially a lone Vraad.

Cabe was torn. On the one hand, he wanted the madcap ent.i.ty called Plool removed from his world because of what chaos the Vraad might be able to cause even restricted to this one region. On the other hand, the warlock despised what he considered murder. Plool was deadly, but Cabe would have preferred to try to turn the bizarre mage first. Plool was Plool only because of where he had been born.

He had to try again. If his words failed to convince the Dragon King, would he be tempted to action? Was everything else worth risking for a creature he barely knew? "Your Majesty?"

The Crystal Dragon did not hear him.

"Your-" Cabe Bedlam's mouth clamped shut. Suddenly the walls surrounding them had come alive with faces, but not all the same. There were copies of his own, some of them older, some of them younger. He saw the face of the Gryphon and wondered at that. There were others, though, and with a start, Cabe eyed the face of what could only be one of the raider leaders. A tall man with a short beard, much like the wolf raider D'Shay, whom the Gryphon had killed years ago. His face was ghastly, a drawn, scarred thing. Yet, what bothered him most upon sighting that face was the expression, for in many ways it resembled a human variation of the present expression on the Dragon King's reptilian countenance.

Then, among all the other faces, he saw one that made him forget even that of the wolf raider leader. It was a face he had seen only in a vision, but one that had remained with him. A bear of a man, a leader, who wore armor of dragonscale. It was the face of a conquerer, one who brooked no defeat. There was something so compelling about the figure, something that reminded him of Shade. It was the man he had thought of as his father when the vision had controlled him. It was . . . whose father?

Cabe stared at the entranced drake lord. The thought was ludicrous. It was.

Dragon Kings do not live that long . . . and he is a Dragon King at that.

The Crystal Dragon hissed and his eyes flew open. His gaze shifted from the sphere to the wall . . . and to the image of the gaunt, scarred figure that Cabe had taken for the Aramite commander. Their eyes seemed to lock.

The sphere exploded.

XIII.

A SHIVER RAN through the sleepers. They did not wake, but something in the spell that had kept them under for so long had changed. What it was would have been hard to explain in any terms save perhaps to say that now they did not sleep so deep.

Not deep at all.

WHAT ARE THEY doing down there with that blasted toy? Orril D'Marr stalked across the dark, fog-enshrouded camp trying to keep the men organized. Those who were supposed to be getting some precious sleep were still awake for the most part, the mist and rumors keeping many of them too wary to even lie down. The soldiers on night duty, meanwhile, were turning and slashing at shadows and ghosts in the fog. Sentries kept reporting sightings of creatures that did not, could not, exist.

All of this was taking him from his more important tasks. D'Marr had stolen a few precious hours of slumber for himself so that he would be alert for the project he had planned for this night. Tonight he had been planning to open the way to the hidden chamber and finally find out what it was that was so precious to the beasts that they were willing to suffer at his tender hands for it. The explosives were ready and he had chosen the blast points. There would be little damage to the areas nearby and none at all to his master's precious chamber.

That was if he ever had the opportunity to set the explosives. With both his lordship and the blue devil down below, still working after all these hours, Orril D'Marr was the senior officer available. That meant that he had to maintain control, which amounted to running around and beating the other officers until they began acting as their ranks demanded. The officers were his duty and the men beneath them were their responsibility. He did not have time to go running from soldier to soldier.

Something is happening. The fog swirled about, a violent storm of shadow and light. Sometimes, the area was lit for several minutes, as if the sun had risen and finally managed to slice through the mist. At least it had thinned a bit, he thought. Even when it was properly dark it was possible to make out shapes several yards away. Whether that change was due to some success on Lord D'Farany's part or was simply a natural occurrence, the young officer did not care. He was only glad it was happening.

D'Marr hated this place, but the d.a.m.ned heat and sunlight was preferable to this mess. So far this night, two men had simply disappeared and a third . . . well, there were some things that made even him queasy.

And that patrol scattered, more than a dozen men lost there, too. Oddly, that both irritated and excited him. The reports spoke of a huge dark stallion with a rider, the latter having a dozen different descriptions. The survivors all seemed to have been obsessed with the monstrous steed . . . no surprise, if it was what he thought it was. One of the spies from that kingdom, Zou or some such nonsense it was called, had reported trouble involving a mage on a large black horse.

The Gryphon had an ally in this realm who matched such a description, a demon called Darkhorse. D'Rance, of course, had been able to supply that tidbit of information.

Two sentries stumbled across his path and swiftly backed away. They saluted, but the young officer just waved them aside. He had no time for men doing their duties. It was the ones who were not who would feel his wrath if they were so unfortunate as to cross him. D'Marr wanted to be done with this task. Once he had the officers under control and they in turn the men, he could return to the tunnels.

His mind drifted back to the patrol's encounter with the monster known as Darkhorse. The demon could not possibly have come across them by chance; he had to have specifically come here searching for the wolf raiders. Any notion that contradicted that was not acceptable to either Orril D'Marr or his lord. Even the blue man agreed with him on this matter.

The Gryphon had to be here. It fit. The black steed's appearance had come too quickly after their landing. He had a rider with him. If the rider had not been the d.a.m.ned birdman, then it had to be one of his friends. Either way, they could only have known of the raiders' presence through the Gryphon. It made sense to him.

Admittedly, there was some logic missing in the argument, but one other reason superseded all others in this matter. D'Marr recalled the attack on the port city. Lord D'Farany had hoped to accomplish two things there. One had been to steal a series of charts that would aid them in this venture and the other had been the hope that they would catch their greatest adversary off-guard.

They had been unable to kill the Gryphon that day, but his brat had paid for the deaths and defeats the empire had suffered. Not satisfactory, but it would do until the Gryphon's head decorated a lance tip.

And that time is coming soon. True to form, the bird had followed them across the seas. D'Marr had predicted he would and for once he had outdone the blue devil in that respect. You're coming to me, Gryphon, coming to join your brat!

His hand touched the pommel of the scepter. When he had finished the Gryphon, there would remain only the cat woman. She would follow after her mate, being as predictable in her way as he was when it came to revenge. Then I will have taken all three.

No one would deny his greatness then.

His course took him around the camp until he returned to the mouth of the tunnel leading to the Quel city. The camp was at last in order. The officers were now in line and they, in turn, had the men under rein. D'Marr had done as best as was possible. Now it was time to- A tall figure emerged from the tunnel. From his walk and his manner, D'Marr had no trouble identifying the northerner. The man looked bedraggled, exhausted. The young officer smiled briefly, then once more fixed his expression into one of detachment.