“Be quiet!” Kronk bellowed. “Stop trying to assign blame and think. Where could they have gone?”
“I don't know! Anywhere. Nowhere. We can't track either one of them.”
The earthen kept looking around frantically as if expecting Simon to appear out of the now-raging blizzard. But there was nothing to be seen and only the wind could be heard.
“We will have to go home and wait,” he finally told Aeris reluctantly. “Master will return there eventually. He must.”
“Must he? Who says?”
Kronk scowled at the air elemental and Aeris looked away, a little ashamed of himself and his gloomy attitude.
“Fine then, let's head back. At least our dear wizard gave us permission long ago to return directly to the tower whenever we needed to. It would be a long trip otherwise.”
Kronk nodded slowly but took a final, long look around, just in case. He was coated in ice and snow now and Aeris was tempted to tease him a bit, but resisted. He doubted that the earthen would appreciate the joke.
“I'll see you at home,” he told Kronk.
“Yes. I will be along in a moment.”
Aeris nodded and disappeared.
“Master, where are you?” the little guy muttered. “Oh, be careful. Remember what you told me once; never trust a dragon.”
He sighed heavily, looked to the east and faded away, leaving only the wind, the snow and the solitude behind.
Chapter 28
It took less than a second, an eye blink, for Simon to find himself somewhere...else.
He looked around in a panic and discovered that he was standing on a high cliff above the raging sea. Which ocean or sea it was, he didn't know, but the wind was warm, if brisk, and was thick with a salty tang.
Both his shield and his diamond skin had faded away during the transition from where he'd been to where he was, but the wizard held off recasting his shield spell for the moment as he tried to get his bearings.
Where was Argentium, he wondered as he searched the landscape. For as far as the eye could see, the land was covered in low ferns and grasses. The cliff's edge was only a few feet away and Simon stepped back quickly, in case a misstep sent him tumbling off.
“Where the hell am I?” he wondered aloud.
“You are on the western coast of what your people used to call Europe,” a sweet voice replied calmly.
Simon spun around and stared. Standing a dozen feet behind him was a woman.
Silvery hair flowed to her waist and she wore a glittering gown made of metallic links that tinkled as she moved. Her blue eyes were huge and her mouth tiny and red, like a flower. And she was the last person that Simon had ever wanted to see again.
“Esmiralla,” he said flatly, barely hiding his distaste.
“Sir wizard,” she replied remotely.
He had forgotten just how beautiful she was. Perhaps that was the way with beauty, he thought for the first time. True beauty is so rare, so unique, that it cannot be held on to in memory. It fades like smoke over time.
“What's going on?” he asked her. “Where is Argentium?”
“My lord has ordered me to attend you for the moment. He has duties elsewhere. But as I am familiar with this world more than he, I have been tasked with showing you something.”
Simon didn't reply, just waited for her to go on.
Esmiralla's flawless face seemed to be carved from ice, expressionless and cold. But it was an illusion. She raised a hand toward the wizard and then dropped it again with a helpless shake of her head.
“What happened between us cannot be undone,” she said in a voice barely audible over the sea breeze. “And what I did is unforgivable. But I ask you, Simon O'Toole, to put that aside if you can. Allies we were and allies we remain, for the good of this world. And if I live for another thousand years, I will never be free from the guilt of my transgression.”
Simon wanted to lash out at her, say something cruel and cutting. But holding grudges was simply something that he could not do and never had. He hated the Chaos lords and their servants, yes, but what this creature had done, as wrong and as much of a violation as it had been, had resulted in the return of the argent dragon.
At least some good had come of it, he thought as he wondered what he should say to Esmiralla. She obviously wasn't looking for forgiveness and he had none to give. But he didn't hate her anymore; he simply didn't care about her at all.
“Esmiralla,” he replied carefully. “We can work together toward a common goal. We can even hold a civilized conversation. We are allies. But we will never be friends. And I will never trust you.”
It sounded harsh as he said it, but it was the truth.
She looked away as he spoke and, when he was done, nodded in acceptance.
“Thank you. It is more than I deserve. But now, come. Allow me to show you what my lord wished you to see.”
She turned away and Simon followed curiously. What could there possibly be to see in this barren place?
They climbed over ridges and descended into shallow dips in the ground, all the while trudging through the same vegetation. It became monotonous very quickly and Simon found himself fighting back to urge to whine and say “Are we there yet” like a bored child on a long trip. He secretly grinned as he wondered how the silver dragon would respond to that question.
He blessed Mortis de Draconis several times as the staff saved him from tripping in the thick grass and the short brush.
The hem of his robe was stained green and his feet were aching by the time Esmiralla stopped up ahead and motioned for him to join her.
They were standing on yet another cliff, this one apparently overlooking a fjord, with waves crashing against a cliff several hundred feet across from their vantage point. A rocky beach rose out of the fjord to their right and the crash of the sea as it hit the shore was brutal and unending.
“What am I supposed to see?” Simon asked a bit breathlessly. He wasn't much of a hiker.
“Patience, sir wizard.”
Esmiralla turned to face the sun as it was dipping toward the sea far to the west.
“We must wait a few minutes until the water below us is in shadow.”
Simon pushed his hair out of his eyes and frowned, wondering what was going on.
“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “Hope you don't mind if I sit down.”
She didn't answer as he lowered himself carefully and sat on the grass. He laid his staff down next to him, stretched out his legs and began massaging his calves.
The silver dragon stood glowing red in the setting sun. Simon peeked up at her but she was looking off into the distance, her face devoid of expression. He wondered what she was thinking about.
When his legs had begun throbbing a little less, he pushed himself back to his feet using his staff and watched the sun descending into the sea.
No wonder ancient man thought that the Earth was flat, he thought as the red orb blazed across the ocean. It looks like a mirror from here. And the sun looks like it's being extinguished by the distant waters.
“Now, sir wizard,” the silver dragon said to him.
She pointed toward the rugged beach and Simon squinted down at it, his eyes a bit dazzled from watching the setting sun.
Something was moving down there. Something, no, many somethings, were crawling and scrabbling out of the sea on to the beach.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered, as if afraid he would be heard over the crashing waves.
“Keep watching and you will see.”
His vision adjusted somewhat to the dim light and he leaned forward on his staff, straining his eyes.
Was that a flash of white? A hint of rotten cloth? A shimmer of bone?
“Oh, damn it,” he said as he stepped back involuntarily. “They're undead.”
“Yes, Simon O'Toole. Undead. Hundreds of them. The necromancer servants of the Chaos lords are drawing forth the dead from the oceans of the world. How many have been lost to the sea over the centuries? Thousand
s? Tens of thousands? We do not know. But on beaches around the globe, once the night closes in, the remains of the dead are crawling back to land to fill the ranks of the undead armies.”
“But where is the summoner?” Simon asked as he looked down at the horrors that were making landfall. “Surely there has to be a necromancer casting spells to draw those things to him?”
“There is not. Follow me, please, and I will show you how diabolical these dark wizards truly are.”
The sun had set now and the sky was fading from pink to black. Esmiralla seemed to have no problem seeing in the growing gloom, but Simon began stumbling over brush and loose rocks. He was sure that he was going to break an ankle.
The silver dragon stopped abruptly and turned to look at him, only her eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
“You may summon some illumination if you wish,” she told him. “The undead do not care; they are mindless and will not be attracted to your light.”
Feeling foolish, even though Esmiralla had been trying to be helpful, Simon thanked her curtly and created a globe of light.
He sent it up to hover a few feet above his head and followed the silver dragon as she set off again.
From the way they kept the edge of the cliff on their left, Simon knew that they were heading for the beach where the skeletons of lost sailors and others were crawling up on to the land. He wondered if they were going to fight and forced himself to ask Esmiralla.
“Fight?” she asked without looking back. “No, we are not going to fight. At least, not with those pathetic creatures. But be ready anyway, sir wizard. One never knows. Perhaps a shield?”
Simon cast a shield spell with some relief and felt better immediately. He was under no illusions when it came to his own toughness. He was both very squishy and quite breakable; a bad combination in a fight.
How the mighty have fallen, old boy, he said to himself with an absent smile. But then again, he had exchanged strength and stamina for magic and youth. All in all, more than a fair trade.
“Please extinguish your light,” Esmiralla told him a few minutes later. “You need to see something.”
The wizard canceled the light spell with a wave of his hand and tightened his shield so that it barely fit around his body. He joined the silver dragon and they stood a few feet from the cliff's edge.
“We are directly above the beach now,” she told him in a hushed voice. “It is perhaps thirty feet below us. Listen. You can hear the risen dead as they leave the sea.”
It was true. Simon heard the scrape of bone on rock and an occasional hiss of malevolence. How something without lungs, not to mention vocal cords, could make any sound at all was beyond him. But they did and it was horrible.
“Now look down. What do you see?”
Simon peered carefully over the edge, wondering what Esmiralla expected him to see in the almost total darkness. The sky was cloudless and the moon hadn't risen yet, which made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction.
“What am I...wait. What is that?”
On the beach, just above the water line, was something written on the rocky shore. It glowed a hideous shade of greenish-yellow, the color of pus and rot. Against the symbol were the outlines of the undead as they crawled across it and headed off to God knew where. The symbol, or rune, had to be at least ten feet across. Simon had never seen anything like it.
“Is it a rune?” he asked quietly.
“A glyph. Ancient and forbidden. The Chaos lords are truly desperate to give such a thing to a human.”
“But why? It summons the dead, obviously, but the necromancers could do that anyway, right?”
“It awakens the dead, yes, but over a massive area. On their own, necromancers must raise the dead one at a time. The ritual is slow, it is laborious. It drains the caster, much as the summoning of elementals does to you.”
Simon nodded in the dark.
“But this glyph draws the dead from miles out into the ocean. It raises the dead en masse and, more tellingly, it binds them to the personal servitude of the necromancer.”
Simon stepped back from the edge, a little nervous about his footing in the dark.
“Okay, now you've lost me. Aren't all of a necromancer's servants bound to him?”
“Certainly not,” Esmiralla replied, sounding a bit tense.
Simon had never heard that in her voice before and peered at her in the darkness.
Interesting, he thought. So there is something that can scare even a silver dragon.
“Think of a necromancer as more of a shepherd than a master,” she continued in a strained voice. “They can direct the undead, push them to perform certain deeds or attack certain targets. But if the spell-casters attempt to use those mindless tools for something other than what the lords of Chaos wish, they will not do it. They are linked to the gods, not the necromancers.”
“Ah, I see,” Simon told her, a light going on in his brain. “This glyph gives the casters total control over the walking dead, right?”
“Precisely. So if one of these necromancers decided to use their army to, say, set up a kingdom for themselves, the Chaos lords would be powerless to stop it.”
“Well, considering how few humans are left in the world, it would literally be a kingdom of the dead,” Simon told her sourly. “And where's the fun in that for any of those evil bastards?”
“For now,” Esmiralla said. “My point, and the reason Argentium wanted you to see this, is to show you that this evil is out there now. The dark gods have released this glyph, taught it to mortals, and now the knowledge cannot be locked away again. What else have they given to their servants, I wonder?”
Simon shuddered, a sudden chill tickling his spine. She made a good point. Once the genie is out of the bottle, or you open Pandora's box, you can't seal it up again. What was about to be used against them?
“However, that worry is for another day. For now, if you would not mind a suggestion, I think that you should destroy that glyph. It will break the spell and send those undead back to their rest.”
“Me? Can't you do it?”
“It is your task, sir wizard, not mine. I have red dragons to kill. Good luck, Simon O'Toole. I feel sure that we will meet again.”
There was a strange, drawn-out sound, like fingernails scraping across silk and then a massive gust of wind blew Simon backwards on to his butt.
“Ouch!”
He looked up just in time to see the stars above him blotted out by huge wings, and then the dragon flapped once and was gone.
She sure knows how to make an exit, he thought as he pushed himself to his feet again and rubbed his backside.
He walked back to the cliff edge and looked down again. Hmm, it looked like the symbol had been painted on to the ground, although God knew what horrible substance was used instead of real paint.
Nothing a little fire can't erase, he thought with relish.
The idea would have the added benefit of sending a message to at least one of the necromancers; someone is willing to stand against you.
Simon stood up straighter, lowered his staff and pointed it at the glyph. He knew that he was smiling even though the situation was very grim.
Maybe I enjoy this stuff a little too much, was his fleeting thought, to which another part of his mind replied 'absolutely' and laughed.
“Fireball!”
Simon had no idea what time it was when he appeared in the front yard of his tower. The night was just falling and the sky was still bright as he stumbled out of the void, bracing himself with his staff.
I could really use a nap, he thought dully. And a drink.
“Ah, there you are!” someone exclaimed from atop the outer wall.
He turned and looked up and saw Aeris flying down toward him.
“Hey, how are you doing?” the wizard asked with a tired smile.
“Better than you, from the look of things. Are you all right?”
Simon nodded as he walked
up the steps to his front door.
“Yeah. Bit tired but I'm fine. What about you and Kronk?”
“Fine, fine. We came home after you were taken away by Argentium. How did that go?”
They entered the tower and Simon lit all of the candles with a thought. He leaned his staff against the wall next to the door, walked to the stairs and looked back at Aeris.
“I'll tell you all about it in a minute. I want to change first. Um, could you...?”
“Put on the kettle? Yes, I can do that, oh great and powerful one.”
“Ugh.”
Simon made a face at Aeris and began trudging up the stairs.
“Thanks. I'll be back down in a bit.”
In his bedroom, the wizard stripped off all of his clothes and changed completely. Somehow being near those undead monstrosities made him feel contaminated and he needed fresh clothing to get over the sensation.
He put on a new pair of woolen socks that he'd traded for at Nottinghill and sighed in relief. They just felt so good. Then he went into his study carrying his boots, lit the candles and grabbed his mirror.
Back downstairs, Kronk greeted him while Aeris puttered around the kitchen. Simon grinned at the little guy, left his boots by the cabinet near the front door and walked over to the kitchen table.
“Are you well, master?” the little guy asked. He was already standing on the table near the wizard's usual chair.
“I'm good, thanks.”
Simon sat down at the table and leaned back. He stretched and rotated his spine, trying to ease his aching back.
“How are you two? Sorry about leaving so abruptly from that mountaintop, but it wasn't my idea.”
“We know that,” Aeris assured him as he carried the hot kettle to the counter. “Who can argue with a being as powerful as the argent dragon? So what happened?”
The wizard got up again and gratefully accepted a cup of tea. He walked over to his easy chair, sat down and made himself comfortable while he waited for the elementals to join him.
This really is domestic in a weird sort of way, he thought as he sipped his tea and watched Kronk hop on to an arm of the chair.
The Dragons of Argent and Silver (Tales from the New Earth #6) Page 35
