The majestic spires of a palace grew before them. From a distance it appeared that a great serpent enveloped each, baring its head at each tower’s summit. The company followed an ancient byway that unfolded toward the palace gates, which stood agape as they approached. Amir and Aven led the way, with Shchander and Shalimar close behind them. Adrina walked beside Xith with Tnavres perched on her shoulder.
The palace was oddly still as they entered. The eyes of most were fixed on the structure directly before them. Its six towers and one center spire with broad stairs circling their way to lofty pinnacles inspired their hearts. Here they paused, for the long race through the frozen wastes of the Lost Lands was now at an end. For a time they relished the moment. Eventually they did continue on, but the urgency was gone. The pace was slow and deliberate.
They marched up many stairs and came to stand before the doors of a grand hall. They did not hesitate or ask permission to enter; instead, they held their heads high, almost with regal airs, and passed within. The first signs that the palace was occupied arose before their eyes. Flames burned from huge urns placed along the corridor. A faint glow from a distant point told them where the end of the long hall lay, and as they walked its length their footsteps echoed, replacing the silence.
A set of double doors sat before them, but they did not have to touch a finger to them. The doors crept inward, as if on command, just after the travelers had paused. Adrina was visibly the most animated of all. She felt that here she would have her answers, and the past would be well behind her. She followed Amir and was the second one into the chamber beyond the great double doors.
The room was unexpectedly dark and shadowy, but its echoes gave its depth away as they slowly faded. Upon a raised dais low flames burned, casting eerie shadows about the chamber. Amir put a hand on Adrina’s shoulder as she sought to move past him. He walked alongside her into the gloom. As their eyes adjusted, it became readily apparent that the shades of gray held shapes, and the images about the room called out to them.
Most visible of all the images was a figure standing on top of the dais, and as it lifted its arms up toward the ceiling the shadows were lifted. The hungry tongues of many flames sprang bright and crisp from their cisterns set along the walls. A handful surrounded the dais and swept out along a path toward the guests. The fires along the path seemed to writhe and move, dancing with the shadows cast upon the floor.
A herald of welcome issued forth and an enormous host swept from the recesses of the chamber. “We have waited long!” said a voice, pleasant and familiar. Amir and Adrina continued toward it. The others were more reluctant to follow. They held their places despite the warm invitation. Adrina turned to look back at Xith and Aven, waving for them to follow. “Do as you must,” Aven whispered to her, but he made no move to catch up with her.
With her right hand, she scratched Tnavres under the chin absently as she walked, thinking how marvelous a place they had come to. Xith had promised her that here she would have all her answers. It was all she could do to keep words from springing from her lips. She wanted the questions answered and she no longer had the patience to wait.
At first she thought that the one on the raised dais was a woman, but as they drew closer she began to think otherwise. It was definitely the face of a man that she gazed upon, and she also remarked in her mind his fairness. She returned the gentle laughter in his voice as he spoke again.
Amir grabbed Adrina’s hand and pulled her back, but she wanted to go forward. Her laughter fell hollow about the room as it died and she wondered what she had done in life to deserve such abasement. Further tepid words brought Adrina to her knees in deep, fitful sobs.
The eyes, Adrina remembered the eyes and the voice; it was so familiar, yet it, too, was changed. “Stand up, child,” whispered Xith, coming up behind her and helping her to stand. His matter-of-factness sparked her anger. “Why have you done this to me?” she cried out.
“I have done nothing your destiny would not have brought to you.”
“But, you were—” The remainder of Adrina’s words were drowned out by her tears.
“I had no choice,” returned Xith.
“You could have—”
“Silence!” screamed a loud and powerful voice. “I demand silence, and I will have it! I have not waited and watched for so long to hear your pitiful cries. Put them on their knees! I like them that way. And if they should stand, kill them all save the one. I want her to suffer until the last when I take that which is due me. Then when her suffering is at its worst and only then may you kill her.”
The darkly robed figures swept off their cloaks to reveal raven-hued armor as they withdrew their blades. Adrina closed her eyes, expecting dispute, but none came. Her mind exploded. A white searing light swam through her mind, but she clung to the darkness. She rebuked with words of her own. “Would you kill your own flesh and blood?” she begged.
The other stammered through the next words. Adrina continued her verbal assault, sensing the dilemma. “That’s right. I knew it when I first gazed upon your face against the light. You hold a likeness that I know well, though I can see you try to hide it, even now.”
“I am He, and I shall have Silence! Speak not a word, or I’ll separate you from your tongue!”
Even as Adrina attempted to stand, hands strong and true held her to her knees. “You cannot hide your past. You cannot deny your heritage. I heard the words Keeper Martin spoke the night you were birthed, and he cursed your name!”
“You lie! Foul treachery spews from your lips. Cut out this creature’s tongue and bring it to me upon a plate so that I may relish it.”
Many hands held Adrina’s head firm. She bit at the hand that probed her mouth. Tnavres clawed and raked all who came near. “Did not your mother have my eyes? Do you not have your father’s hair? Your eyes and your hair? What of the softness of your voice?”
“Lies, lies! Silence her! Kill them all and rid them from my sight! You have no right to speak to me in such a way. I order you to silence and if you do not listen, I will deliver your life by my own hand.” He grabbed a dagger from another’s belt and lunged at Adrina as she cried out and begged him to remember.
The point of the blade never found its mark although it did meet flesh. Amir’s face was not lit by sorrow or fear as he fell, but disbelief. The wielder of the blade backed away; a tiny voice cried out in his thoughts. It knew the truth. He had not always been.
Shchander and Shalimar jumped over Amir as he went down. They struggled to reach Adrina but Xith moved between them and the girl. “This is not your fight,” Xith told them.
“Come back to us,” Adrina repeated as she fought off her attackers. “What of the boy I once knew?”
“A man, no longer a boy,” the other said as he set upon her brutally, swatting away her tiny dragon as it sought to defend her. A savage kick to her stomach brought her to her knees. She would have collapsed to the floor if his followers had not held her. Instead, she doubled over, coughing up blood.
Tnavres returned, clawing at the man’s face. He angrily snatched the dragon from the air, squeezing with all his might and then thrusting out, sending the tiny flailing beast flying into the stone chair upon the raised dais. Grinning savagely, he returned his attention to Adrina who was now on her hands and knees, kicking her again and again.
Tears such as she had never known welled up in Adrina’s eyes. She cried out, “Please no more, please no more.” Her eyes wide and pleading turned to Xith who was no more than a handful of steps away.
The other brought the heel of his boot to her left forearm, crushing bone as he twisted and smashed down with all his might. The vision flowed strongly. He felt the surge of strength within him peak and the power came unbidden to his hands. As he spread his hands, brilliant bolts of blue and white spread between them, arcing wildly.
“Why, oh why?” Adrina cried out. “What have I ever done? Please no more. Please, please no more.”
For an instant her pleas touched him, he reached down to her, but as he did so pain swept over him. “No, no, not again,” he cried out. He watched as the three circled the other in his mind. “Go away!” he told them but the thoughts would not go.
Seeing the inner turmoil reflected in his eyes, Adrina reached out to him with her good arm, her hand finding his leg. He clasped his ears, pounded the sides of his head until the pain within was replaced by the pain from without, but the voices would not fade.
He pulled her to her feet, grabbed her broken arm, twisted. Adrina’s screams of agony intensified. “Stop, Stop!” she yelled.
His eyes wild, he laughed madly. “You are a great fool. The boy is gone.”
“Fool?” Adrina screamed back at him, finding sudden anger. “Never underestimate the fool. The fool on the board can capture the king just as easily as any.”
She stood firmly, defiantly, despite pain, staring into his wild eyes. She did a thing no one looking on expected of her, he least of all. She raised her broken arm into the air and called Tnavres to her. “Tnavres return,” she said as she lunged, wrapping her good arm and both legs around the other, causing both to fall to the stark, gray granite of the dais.
The granite that should have met them cold and full, pulled them in, allowing them to pass by as if they instead met the waters of some gray dark lake. Soon after, they were falling through the air, landing on firm ground in a shadowed land. It was a place Adrina knew though she wished she did not; it was a place the other apparently knew as well for he howled his displeasure in a long stream of angry words. “Not this place, not this place. It is not fair to return. The master promised more. The master promised all. This must be a lie! This is a lie!”
Adrina crab-crawled backward away from him. It never occurred to her as she looked up to him that in this place she had full use of both her arms. As she looked on, one became three and then suddenly there was a fourth in the space between them.
The Dragon King and his queens came winging in. Their great speed surprised Adrina for it seemed that one minute she saw them distant in the gray sky overhead and the next they were landing beside her.
“Dalphan, it is time,” the Dragon King said in his firm deep voice.
One of the figures broke from the circle and climbed onto the Dragon King’s back. “Has my beloved been found?” he asked.
“She has,” replied the Dragon King. “She waits for you.”
“On the other side?”
“As ever.”
Before the Dragon King took wing, Dalphan called back to those in the circle. “Brother,” he spoke firmly.
A dark figure, his face hidden in the cowl of his cloak, turned from the circle. As he climbed onto the back of one of the queens, the skulls and bones in his armor showed clearly. He did not speak as the other had, though he did clench a hand into a fist and wave it defiantly in the air as the queen dragon took to the air.
Tnavres jumped onto Adrina’s lap and licked her cheek. To her it felt more like soft lips than the tongue of a dragon. Indeed as she looked on she saw a beautiful lady elf and not a tiny dragon.
The lady elf said in as beautiful a voice as Adrina had ever heard, “I am Adrynne, Servant of the Dragon, as you will one day be again.”
“What is happening?” Adrina asked.
Adrynne said, “Take the boy’s hand and let us go from this place.”
“But what of the other?”
“The Fourth will remain as must be so. Quickly now, we must be away from this place.”
As Adrina took the boy’s hand, Vilmos’ hand, Adrynne took hers. The shadowland faded.
Adrina found herself lying supine on cold, gray granite, her arms and legs wrapped around Vilmos, who looked ever the boy and nothing like the man she had leapt upon.
She squealed with delight when she found herself looking into his eyes. “Vilmos, by the Mother, I have never been so happy to see anyone in all my life.”
Vilmos, somewhat dazed and confused, sought to untangle himself from Adrina. Adrina didn’t want to let go for fear that if she released him she might find that by some dark twist of fate the other was there and not the boy from Tabborrath Village.
Taking a leap of faith, Adrina released Vilmos and rushed him to his feet. She turned him around and inspected him. “By the Mother, it is you!” she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around him.
“Is Xith here?” Vilmos asked.
“I am,” Xith said, stepping to the dais.
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I—I—”
“You need say no more. You could not have known what was to happen. You could have no more turned back the wind. It is done. It has run its course.”
“Has it?”
Having dispatched the last of the foes, Shchander, Shalimar and what remained of their band of free men from Solntse pressed suddenly close around Adrina, Vilmos, and Xith.
Aven stepped between the men, moving onto the dais. “It has. It is the start of a new age, an age of hope.”
Xith cleared his throat. Aven looked over to Xith and to Amir struggling to his feet. Amir bit back his grimace of pain, his eyes going to Adrina and Vilmos.
“But there is work to be done before it is over,” Amir said knowingly.
“True,” Aven said, reclaiming the guise of Noman, Keeper of the City of the Sky. Xith added a moment later, “Indeed.”