"Take Xabene and leave!"

"She does not desire to be reasonable, sirrah, and I find that neither do I!"

He sighed. A part of him could not help but he relieved at their reappearance. "Help me, then."

The black man came around and took Shade's feet. "I tried to teleport you out, but it did not work for some reason."

"One of the gnome's tricks . . ." Thinking of tricks, he started to look around. A metal object a few feet to his left caught his eye. "Wait!" Lowering Shade, he reached over and retrieved the p.r.o.nged key that the drake lord had dropped during the initial a.s.sault. Wellen pocketed the key and repositioned himself.

"What is that?"

"Something which could buy us time." Continuing his search as he began to back through the gateway, the scholar finally located the tapestry. It had evidently been carried partway down the hall with the two combatants. Wellen calculated his chances. Once Shade was outside, he might still have time to- He heard the Necri shriek.

Both Wellen and Benton Lore turned to the agonized cry. Far down the corridor, the Dragon King had finally gained the upper hand. His adversary was pinned under him. The talons of the drake had torn both the demonic creature's wings to shreds and now an odd foam was spreading over the batlike horror. Purple released his hold on his opponent and stepped back to watch as his spell enveloped the dying beast. The Dragon King himself did not look well. He was bleeding from severe wounds. His stance was none too steady.

"We have to hurry, Master Bedlam!"

They had the warlock nearly through when he began to mutter and struggle. Wellen heard Shade speak to someone he referred to as his father, warning him about some scheme. Then, Lore lost his grip and Wellen stumbled. The warlock's words grew garbled, but he did not cease struggling.

The anxious scholar looked up in the direction of the Dragon King.

The reptilian knight had noticed them. With some effort, he started toward the open portal.

"Step through!" Wellen roared. "Pull him out from my side!"

As the soldier hastened to obey, the scholar reached into his pocket and pulled out the key. His idea was desperate, but not completely mad.

"What are you doing?"

"Just pull him through!"

Xabene joined them, much to his annoyance. We can all die together! "Go back!"

She ignored him. Leaning, the enchantress helped Lore with the mad warlock. Shade's words were complete nonsense now, but his hampering of their efforts was not.

Wellen could wait no longer. He reached forward with the key, choosing a part of the wall just to the left of the portal. A crash nearly made him drop the key.

"It's all right!" Xabene called. "I reached in with one hand and blocked his spell with one of my own! It was a weak attack!"

"He will summon up something much more troublesome in a moment, I'm certain!" the officer added. He gave a final tug. "Your friend is free, Master Bedlam!"

All too aware that he might be totally mistaken, Wellen turned the key as the drake had done, only in the opposite direction.

The mouth of the portal began closing.

The party fell back as sorcerer's tendrils reached forth from within. They were not the target, however. Instead, the tendrils sought to keep the entrance open. The spell on the citadel was far more potent, however, and the portal continued to shrink unabated.

Even as the tendrils failed, Purple stood at the threshold.

"If he gets outside, we're lost!" the enchantress shouted. "He could shift form!" Both she and Lore unleashed their sorcery.

Their spells died at the wall. They could not hope to repel the drake unless he was outside, and if he was, then it would be too late.

Wellen looked at Shade. The injured spellcaster's eyes had opened, but it was apparent he was not seeing the world around him. If only we had his strength! We might be able to do it!

Perhaps there was yet time for one more miracle.

Hurrying over to Shade's side, he knelt and took the warlock's head in his arm. Wellen faced his mad companion toward the portal and leaned down to whisper. He was working on an a.s.sumption, one based solely upon the master warlock's triumphant return from the dank domain of the Lords of the Dead. "Shade, they've broken their word! Your cousins have broken their word! They're coming!"

Purple had a claw through what remained of the gateway and was crawling through. Despite his wounds, he shrugged off the desperate attacks of Benton Lore and Xabene.

Shade stirred, but still did not act.

Wellen tried the last thing he could think of. "They want her, Shade. They want her descendents. They want Lady Sharissa!"

Crystalline eyes blazed. Shade gritted his teeth. For a moment, a much younger, more arrogant figure lay in the scholar's lap.

"It's coming through the hole, Shade! It's coming for her!"

The Vraad glared in the direction of the Dragon King.

A rain of needlelike thorns shot forth at the drake. Concerned only with his escape, he did not see them. Only when they first pierced his armored hide did the drake realize his danger.

A full score more struck home. Several entered wounds left by the Necri. Roaring his agony, the drake lord tried to pull them free, but for every one he pulled out, more than a dozen found root. In mere seconds, he looked like some sort of grotesque parody of a pincushion.

Still the needles flew.

His breathing a ragged hiss, Purple finally realized that to remain outside was to invite certain death. He began to slide back even as more of Shade's missiles. .h.i.t. His pace was too slow, however. It was clear that he would not escape the closing portal on his own.

Then, just before the blood-covered knight would have been crushed, Wellen saw a small hand drag him back.

The gateway closed.

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Shade. Thank you."

Then the weary Bedlam looked down and realized he was holding nothing but air.

Chapter Twenty-One.

"We think he has returned to his caverns beneath the realm of the Dragon Emperor," Benton Lore informed them. "With Shade it is almost impossible to tell, but our spies reported sightings of a cloaked and shadowy wraith." He smiled. "I can think of no one else to whom that description would be appropriate."

"Why did he leave?" Xabene asked.

Wellen, the enchantress, and the Green Dragon's majordomo sat astride horses in the middle of a glen just west of the main portion of the Dagora Forest. In the four weeks since escaping Purple and the citadel of Serkadion Manee, the scholar and his bride had made the small settlement of Zuu their temporary home. The two of them had both agreed that they needed to find a quieter, safer place than even that, but not until Wellen was satisfied as to Shade's fate. Even Xabene agreed they owed the ancient mage that much.

"I think the madness has returned," Lore replied, his smile fading a bit. "He is said to seem a bit at a loss, as if his memory is incomplete or, at the very least, muddled. He may not even recall that he was ever inside the citadel. His failure to secure a method of achieving immortality may have also sent him back to the real of fantasy. From what I have discerned, it would not be the first time."

"I'm not so certain I would ever want to be an immortal. The Lords of the Dead dangled that above my head, but the price seems too high now."

"Two or three hundred years is enough for the two of you, then?"

"Enough," Wellen agreed. One of the benefits of sorcery, even for an inept carrier like himself, was an extended life span. Both he and Xabene might live another two centuries, maybe more, and most of it looking little older than they did now.

"No one has yet seen Purple depart the libraries," Lore said, changing the subject. "Perhaps he will be trapped forever."

"Perhaps." The scholar still had the key. Just in case. He was not so certain that the Dragon King would not escape someday, though. Given time, if he survived his wounds, Purple would eventually reason out the tapestry and how it could be used.

He had not spoken to anyone about the hand he had seen, a hand belonging to an obviously short being.

"My lord fears what his brother will unleash if he does escape. All that knowledge in his vile claws."

Here, Wellen relaxed. He smiled at Xabene, who nodded. It was time to show Benton Lore what they had discovered. Reaching into a pouch, he removed the book.

The black man's eyes widened. "A dragon tome! You have one!"

"Here."

Lore caught the book and quickly opened it. After a few pages, he looked mystified. "It is blank!"

"Not quite. Think of a subject involving the construction of a magical fortress . . . like Serkadion Manee's pentagon."

The major-domo did. Before his eyes, the pages began to turn. At last, they stopped. The smile reappeared, then almost instantly disappeared again. "What is this gibberish? It looks almost like a . . . like a riddle or a poem! I do no understand!"

"Shade stole that particular volume, then lost it. I picked it up, intending on giving it to him if we escaped, but then he vanished first." He looked a bit abashed. "I know I didn't mention its existence, but my curiosity got the better of me. I promise you I would have told the Green Dragon everything."

"I believe you and so will he." Lore inspected the riddle. "What does it mean?"

"The secret is within, one merely has to be willing to spend the time . . . years, even."

"Then . . ." The officer laughed. "If Purple lives it may take him years just to decipher one?"

Wellen joined him in laughing. "It gets worse. Unless you really work at it, what you read in the book will not be retained in your memory. You can't even write it down. Somehow, it always disappears."

"The gnome must have done this!"

"I think so. Just before he died, I imagine." Was he dead, though? What had Wellen seen?

"So the price of Purple's victory is endless searching for even the minutest bit of information. He may spend his lifetime simply deciphering a simple experiment for telling time!"

Knowing how complete the knowledge contained in the libraries was, WeIlen had no doubt that there was such information listed. The Dragon King might have won, but his victory would keep his ambitions curtailed. If anything, the rest of the Dragonrealm had gained much more than it had lost with the change in masters.

Xabene glanced at the sinking sun. "It's time we returned to Zuu. Tomorrow, we head north. I know a settlement up there that the Dragon King Bronze never bothers with. A pleasant place."

"You would both be welcome here. It would be safer. What about the Lords of the Dead?"

"Shade did something to them, that's all we know," Bedlam replied. "We can only tell you that we have this feeling that they will not bother us, neither in this life nor the next."

No one desired to contemplate what could have made the necromancers abandon their plans and their vengeance.

"I think this would be better off in your hands," Lore finally decided. "I only ask that you share whatever you find." The dragon tome was returned to Wellen. "I shall depart, then. Farewell to both of you. Good luck with everything."

"Farewell to you, Commander Lore," the enchantress said, taking a tighter hold of the reins.

Wellen simply nodded. He was savoring being his own master at last, not to mention riding a horse rather than teleporting. His children, on the other hand, would likely be materializing and dematerializing before they were adults. Still, much of the fact that he was now able to live his own life was due to one person. As Benton Lore rode off, Wellen muttered, "May you find your future, Gerrod."

"Shall we go?" Xabene asked him.

They urged their horses to a trot. The sorceress, her lengthy dark hair fluttering, moved her mount alongside Wellen's and asked, "What do you really think is going on in the gnome's place? Couldn't Purple be dead?"

"He might be, but I doubt it. He probably won't recover completely for some time, but I think he survived."

She did not care to think about that. "At least we no longer have to worry about Serkadion Manee. His death is the one good thing we can thank the Dragon King for."

"Mmm . . ." Wellen turned the dragon tome over and stared at the cover. He was tempted to throw the book away and try to forget Serkadion Manee, but curiosity made him put it back where he had originally packed it. It might not hurt to try and decipher the contents. Besides, unlike the Purple Dragon, Wellen only had one book to muddle through.

With two hundred years ahead of him and some peace at last, he was certain to make some progress.

Hissing, the Dragon King threw the yellow-backed book across the corridor. His rage unspent, he cleared shelf after shelf until finally, exhausted, he slumped against one of the library walls.

"You seem ill-tempered. How may I serve you?"

"You again?" Purple whirled on the tiny, calm figure. "You are dead! Dead! Leave me!"

The gnome bowed. "I am here only to serve you, the present master of the libraries. It is all I exist for now, thanks in great part to you."

"Sssstop ssssaying that, cursssse you!" The Dragon King reached forward and took hold of the gnome by the collar. The bald figure simply stared back blandly. This further antagonized the drake. "I killed you once and I shall do sssso again!"

He brought a taloned hand down on the gnome's head.

The squat figure vanished.

"Perhaps if you tell me what it is you search for," came the voice again, this time from behind him. When the Dragon King turned, he once more found himself facing the libraries' former master.

"I want out of thissss place! I want the secret of why it ha.s.sss turned mad!" He picked up one of the tomes and held it open for the other to see. "Mosssst of all, I want to know what you have done to thesssse precious volumessss! What is thissss foolishnessss written here?"

The gnome calmly held forth another book. "I am only an extension of the libraries' purpose; I cannot aid you in that. The one you have there is the wrong volume, however. The one with the information you seek is this one here."

A hand batted the book away. "I cannot decipher it!"

"Perhaps if there was someone to help you . . ."