Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade by Richard A. Knaak Read Free Book Online Page B

rock.
    The name escaped him before he could stop it. “Sharissa?”
    He remembered now what he had thought he had seen before passing out. His seeing her again—and although this second sighting had been a murky, questionable one, Shade felt certain that he had seen the young woman with the silver-blue hair—could be no coincidence. Indeed, the logical assumption should have been that he had been shown her image as a ploy by the necromancers . . . for had she not been dead for thousands and thousands of years?
    Yet, despite being aware of all that, the sorcerer pulled himself together and ran. The ground shoved up under his feet, almost tossing him more than once to his knees. Shade concentrated on protecting himself as he moved on, ever aware that he might simply be charging straight into his enemies’ trap, but compelled by something to believe that the Lords of the Dead could not have cast this vision.
    A figure erupted before him, a towering fighter still wearing the dry, fragmenting scale armor of a drake warrior. The drake, a ragged gap where his throat had been giving testament to the power of Seeker talons, slashed at Shade with a sword nearly as long as the sorcerer’s arm. Shade had to throw himself back to avoid being impaled.
    Bits of scale dropped off the skeleton as it moved to attack again. What appeared armor, including the head, was actually the scale of the dragon when it took this mortal form. Many drakes preferred to walk almost as men despite their contempt for them, a curious subject that only Shade truly understood.
    As the blade came at him again, Shade seized one edge of his cloak and wrapped it around the rusting weapon. The cloak tightened around the blade, forcing it to turn.
    Both the sword and the hand wielding it broke from the drake.
    The drake warrior shook wildly. The sorcerer snapped his fingers.
    The skeleton shattered, the bones and scale scattering for some distance.
    The earth behind Shade had swollen to the size of a hill. Crevices ran across it. It continued to shake. The ground would not much longer hold what was buried there.
    He made it to the other formation . . . and found nothing. Despite having been certain that the necromancers were not responsible, Shade cursed himself for playing the fool. There was nowhere to run now.
    The rock on which he leaned suddenly glowed.
    A magical portal, a passageway called a blink hole by spellcasters, opened up.
    The landscape finally exploded. Something huge began to rise up from the ruined ground.
    Shade leapt into the blink hole.
    The portal sealed the moment that he passed through it. A cool wave of air washed over him as he landed on one knee.
    A glittering light surrounded him. Shade looked up . . . and saw himself over and over and over.
    He was in a vast natural chamber—a cavern—studded with crystalline growths that covered the walls, the ceiling, even the floor. The source of the illumination was not evident, but it was more than ample to enable him to see the incredible length and breadth of the chamber.
    And everywhere his blurred face stared back.
    Then, to his surprise, one of the foremost reflections shifted position and spoke. The words were not audible, but like Kadaria’s voice, Shade heard it quite clearly in his head.
    Call me Madrac . . . this time . . .
    Shade stiffened.
    Call me Simon . . . this time . . .
    He glanced at another reflection in a smaller facet, certain that it had spoken.
    Call me Karas . . . this time . . .
    All at once, every reflection spoke, each using the same phrase but with a different name. Shade knew them all, knew full well what each represented. They were all him, all incarnations created by the death of the previous one. That had been one of the greatest jests of what had once been a spell sought to preserve his life, his soul. Instead, each incarnation sought to be its own self and thus had chosen its own—albeit ever temporary, as it turned