Tales from the New Earth: Volume One

by Thompson, J. J.

  Simon stood up with the mirror, brushed off some remaining dust from his robe and crossed the room to stare out the door.

  “No idea, but I assume that it doesn't involve us at all. My presence down below must have made a tempting target when whoever sent that dragon after me realized I was down there. But I think it was a side-mission, not the reason that monster was down there in the first place. My question is, do you have a way to reach the dwarves to warn them? Just in case we're correct in our speculations?”

  His heart sank as he watched Clara shake her head sadly.

  “None. They show up when they show up. It could be today, next week, next month. There's no way to know.”

  “Damn it,” Simon muttered. “I can't believe that they will expect a dragon attack on their stronghold so deep underground. I know they're tough, and they have amazing weapons and machines, but down there in close quarters? It could be a slaughter.”

  Kronk jumped down from the table and joined him in the doorway. Both of them watched as Aeris flew from right to left along the top of the wall, staring at the surrounding forest.

  “But Simon, why can't you get in touch with the dwarves?” Clara asked suddenly.

  Simon stared into the mirror.

  “What?”

  “Well, you've met Shandon Ironhand before; at the fight against the primal black dragon, remember? You know what he looks like. So, use your magic and call him.”

  Simon was stunned at his own stupidity.

  “Unbelievable,” he said as he felt himself blushing. “Just when I thought that I couldn't get any thicker, a moment like this happens.”

  “You aren't thick, master,” Kronk hissed from knee level. Simon spared him a quick smile and looked back into the mirror.

  “I actually didn't think I'd be able to reach him using Magic Mouth or Magic Mirror,” he said to the cleric. “Something I read once, in a fantasy book, mind you, said that dwarven cities were warded against magic.”

  “Fantasy is reality these days, my friend,” Clara said with a tired smile. “I would guess that they are warded, against hostile magic. Yours isn't, so perhaps you can reach them. Certainly it's worth a try.”

  Simon leaned on the door frame and tried to recall Shandon's features as best he could.

  “You're right. I'll try to contact him right away. And I'll let you know what happens later.”

  “Good luck,” she said, still watching the fields beyond her wall. “My prayers are with you.”

  “Thanks, Clara. Talk to you soon.”

  He lowered the mirror and canceled the spell. Aeris flew around the corner of the tower and up the front steps.

  “All clear, my dear wizard.” He looked at Kronk. “Will your compatriots be along to patrol the wall tonight?”

  “Of course,” the earthen responded. “We all decided that they were only needed after dark, didn't we?”

  The air elemental agreed.

  “We did. The area is clear at the moment, anyway. So what did the cleric have to say?”

  Simon went back inside and sat down again.

  “She reminded me that as I've actually met the dwarven leader, I should be able to contact him directly.”

  He rolled his eyes and laughed at himself.

  Aeris floated to the tabletop and Kronk joined them.

  “Aren't the dwarven strongholds protected against that sort of thing?” he asked.

  “That's what I thought, but Clara says that friendly magic might let me get in touch regardless. No way to know unless I try, is there?”

  Simon picked up the mirror and cast the Magic Mirror spell. He focused all of his mind on what he remembered of Shandon Ironhand as he chanted the incantation.

  Long black beard, plaited with braids, heavy brows and a rather prominent nose. Yes, he thought. I do remember him.

  He uttered the word of command and watched as the mirror fogged over.

  “Any luck, master?” Kronk asked curiously as he moved over to see the surface of the mirror.

  “No idea. It's obviously trying to reach, well, someone. But whether it's the dwarf or not, we'll have to wait and see.”

  The three of them stared anxiously at the mirror and waited. And waited some more.

  “Who in the bloody hell is trying to attack me with magic?” a gravelly voice suddenly barked from the mirror. Simon almost dropped it in surprise.

  “Um, hello?” he said tentatively. “Is this Shandon Ironhand?” The mirror was still cloudy and all he could see was a vague, shadowy figure.

  “That depends. Who wants to know?”

  Simon sagged with relief. He recognized the voice of the dwarven leader.

  “It's me, Simon O'Toole. Do you remember? I'm the wizard who...”

  “Who fought and killed that damned dragon. Of course I remember you!”

  The mirror abruptly cleared and Simon found himself staring at the face of Ironhand. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Well, this is a surprise. Imagine me getting a call from a wizard! The first dwarf to receive such a thing in millennia.”

  The dwarf was looking around vaguely and Simon realized that he couldn't see him.

  “If you'd like to speak face to face, just find a mirror and you'll be able to see me,” he told Ironhand.

  “Ah, a Magic Mirror spell, is it? Excellent. You've caught me in my quarters so I do have a lovely mirror close at hand. Made from a buffed sheet of platinum. Just the thing.”

  The heavy-set figure stomped across the room and Simon had a chance to see that his quarters were quite opulent.

  The stone walls were mostly covered with rich tapestries and fine paintings. Torches hung in brackets along the walls where the stone was bare. A fire roared in a massive fireplace with a mantle holding rich ornaments of gold and other precious metals.

  Dwarves sure love their baubles, Simon thought with amusement.

  The scene faded away to be replaced by Shandon's face again.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said as he settled into a chair. The mirror must have been quite large; Simon could see all of the dwarf, not just his face.

  “Now, to what do I owe this pleasure? As you saw, we have ways of blocking magic and I would normally have just dismissed this intrusion as a possible attack.”

  The dwarf grinned and stretched out his short legs, lacing his fingers together behind his head.

  “But you caught me on a good day, so I thought I'd see who was attempting to contact me. Now, what is it?”

  Simon took a deep breath.

  “Thanks for the welcome, sir, but this isn't a social call, I'm afraid.”

  “Well, it won't be if you call me sir again,” the dwarf warned him, still smiling. “I'm no knight. Ironhand will do just fine as a title. Go on.”

  “Right. Okay, Ironhand it is. Anyway, let me explain what happened earlier today.”

  The wizard told his story as quickly and as concisely as possible. He was worried that they might be running out of time. After the first few sentences, Ironhand sat up and leaned forward, his smile replaced by a frown as he listened intently. When Simon was done, he stood up abruptly and clapped a hand to his waist. He was armed with an axe that shone in the firelight like silver.

  “Dragons! Underground? I've never heard of such a thing.”

  He paced back and forth, leaving Simon's field of view and then returning again. The dwarf was muttering to himself.

  Finally he stopped and stared at Simon.

  “Thank you for the warning, sir wizard. You have more than proven your friendship to my people with this. As your air elemental said, I too cannot think of any other reason for dragons to be crawling through our tunnels unless it is to attack us.” He scowled fiercely. “They'll get a surprise when they arrive, I assure you. Now that we are warned, we'll be ready for them.”

  “If you need any help, Ironhand, I'd be happy to lend a hand.”

  The dwarf looked at Simon speculatively.

  “Would you now? Well,
that is quite generous. But I'm afraid that my people are a little...insular. They don't take kindly to strangers and even less kindly to other races. Comes with living in isolation for thousands of years, I suppose. So I thank you, but we'll be fine. Call me back in a few days and we'll talk again. I'll tell you how we kicked those dragons' asses all the way back to the surface!”

  Simon laughed.

  “All right then. I wish you the best of luck, Ironhand. Take care.”

  “You don't need luck in a battle, wizard. All you need is a trusty axe and a strong arm to wield it. Now, good bye.”

  With a wave of his hand, Simon canceled the spell and then put down the mirror and sat back with a relieved sigh.

  “At least we managed to warn them,” he said to the elementals.

  “That is all you could do, master,” Kronk told him. “We earthen know how isolated the dwarves are. We have an affinity with them, you could say, but even we are not made welcome in their cities.”

  Simon stood up and went over to the sink to fill his kettle.

  “Yeah, I guess I've done my best. I hope that Ironhand isn't overestimating his people's chances against God knows how many dragons.”

  Aeris chuckled and Simon looked at him curiously.

  “I think that the dragons are in for a surprise, my dear wizard,” he said, sounding a bit smug. “It's one thing to rain fire down on dwarves from the skies, but fighting them in their natural habitat? Oh, that is something else entirely. One thing the tales always speak of is draconian arrogance. They believe that they are superior to all other living things. That arrogance will, I think, be their undoing.”

  Simon hung the kettle over the fire and nodded, feeling a little more reassured.

  “Let's hope so. In the meantime,” he paused and yawned, feeling drained, “I'm going to get cleaned up, then have some tea. It's been a busy, not to mention very weird, kind of day.”

  Simon called Clara the following day and told her about his conversation with Ironhand. She was pleased and thankful that the dwarves had been warned.

  “This is all presupposing that the dragons are actually down there to take on the dwarves,” Simon had told her. “We could be totally wrong about that.”

  “But that else could draw them below ground?” the cleric had asked reasonably. “They are creatures of the air. To crawl beneath the earth must be so confining and unnatural for them, only an assault on the stronghold of the dwarves could be behind it.”

  Simon had to agree. But whatever the dragons were up to, and by extension their masters, the dark gods, he could only wait to see what happened next.

  With nothing else to do except wait, the wizard decided to make use of his Magic Mirror spell in other ways. That afternoon, Kronk tip-tapped into the study to find Simon sitting hunched over his desk.

  The sun was beaming down from the window behind him and the wizard was holding his hand mirror in one hand and running his finger across the pages of a large book. Aeris was floating next to him and nodding.

  “I would think that would be a main target,” he said to Simon as Kronk entered.

  “What are you working on, master?” the little guy asked as he jumped up on the desk to join them.

  Simon smiled at him and rapped a knuckle on the book. It was his atlas.

  “I've decided that we need to know more about what's been happening in the world around us, my friend,” he said. “So I'm using the coordinates of the maps in here to take a look at the major capitals of the old countries around the Earth.”

  “Really? That's an interesting idea, master.”

  Kronk moved around and looked into the mirror. It was misted over, obviously about to show a scene of some sort.

  Simon looked dejected.

  “Interesting? I suppose. Depressing is the word I'd use for it.”

  He looked down at the map of North America he was using.

  “I'd always assumed that other cities had been attacked by the dragons, just like Ottawa was, but I've never really had confirmation of that. I think,” he hesitated, “I think some small part of me was hoping that at least a couple of the larger cities had survived, somehow.”

  “And they haven't,” Aeris stated flatly.

  “He's right,” the wizard said as he waited for the mirror to reveal his latest target. “I've checked out Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and New York.”

  He stopped speaking and shook his head helplessly.

  “Bad, master?” Kronk asked sympathetically.

  “Devastated, just like Ottawa. Leveled. Smashed flat like a child's model of a city. Just...gone.”

  “So where are you looking now, master?” Kronk asked him as the mirror began to clear.

  “Miami. If it's the same as the others, I'll try some European cities, although I don't hold out much hope.”

  The three of them watched the mirror intently and Simon wilted a bit as the picture revealed a twisted mass of melted metal and smashed stone.

  “The same. Damn it.”

  He muttered under his breath and the view moved steadily across the once-great city, as if they were seeing through the eyes of a great bird. Or a dragon.

  There was no movement on the ground. It was raining there and the water added a sheen to the devastation.

  “All those people,” Kronk said quietly. “All those lives just...gone.”

  “There may be pockets of life left, my dear wizard,” Aeris said reflectively. “Changlings like the ones you found in your old home city may have survived.”

  “Perhaps. Yeah, perhaps they have. One day, if we win this war, we'll have to seek them out. Or someone will, anyway. They may be as insular as the little group back in Ottawa was.”

  Simon shook the mirror to cancel the spell and set it down as he flipped through the atlas.

  “Are you sure you want to continue, master?” Kronk asked softly. “You are obviously upset over what you are seeing.”

  The wizard found the map of Europe and then sat back with a sigh and looked at the earthen.

  “No, I don't want to. But I will. It sounds weird, I guess, but I feel like I somehow owe it to the memories of my people to check on them, you know? Maybe like a memorial or something. After all, I survived where so many didn't. I should at least honor them in my memory if nothing else.”

  “I see, master,” Kronk replied.

  Simon had to smile as he realized that the little guy didn't understand. That was okay. He didn't really understand either.

  “I'll be right back,” Aeris told them and zipped from the room.

  Simon watched him go and then looked down at the map.

  “Okay. Let's try...London. You know, I always wanted to go to London. My ancestors were Irish. It would have been nice to tour some of the old castles, see Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London. Maybe even get to Ireland itself.”

  He blinked back sudden tears, surprised at himself and the overwhelming sense of loss that had come crashing down on him.

  “Well, so much for that dream,” he said sadly.

  He traced the coordinates for the center of London and cast the Magic Mirror spell again. As he held the mirror and waited for it to clear, he turned to see Kronk staring at him.

  “What is it?” he asked the earthen.

  “Nothing, master. It's just that I do not like to see you upset for no reason. I understand that you feel you have to do this...tour of humanity's old cities. You want to remember your people and I respect that. But to what end, really? You know what you will find and the more you view the devastation, the more sad and depressed you become. Are you not simply punishing yourself for surviving where they did not?”

  Simon stared at him blankly. He sometimes made the mistake of thinking the little guy was child-like or not too bright because of his size and his simple way of speaking. But he reminded himself that Kronk was thousands of years old. He was intelligent and obviously capable of insights that the wizard didn't give him credit for.

  He looked back at
the frosted mirror and nodded slowly.

  “You might have a point, my friend. I do feel guilt, even if none of what happened was my fault. But that's not the reason I'm doing this, I think. It's also tactical. The prime black dragon is dead. Its lesser dragons died with it. But that still leaves others. The red, green, brown, white and yellow dragons are out there, somewhere, and I have to find them. I'm hoping to get some idea of which dragons are controlling which parts of the planet.”

  “Ah, I see, master. Now I understand.”

  The mirror began to clear and the two of them watched intently.

  Simon felt his heart ache again at the sight that met his eye. It was the tower with the clock known as Big Ben. Like the Peace Tower in Ottawa, all that remained of the once-great structure was its lower four walls. All the rest was rubble and blasted stone.

  “Whoa!” Simon said abruptly and pulled back from the mirror. He almost dropped it.

  The image of the city had been momentarily blocked by a massive shape that had flown across his field of view. Simon hunched forward again and instructed the spell to scan the area.

  It took a moment but he finally zeroed in on what had startled him. It was a dragon.

  “A red! It's a red dragon, Kronk!” he said excitedly.

  “Yes, master, I can see that.” The little guy stepped closer to the mirror. “It appears to be searching for something, doesn't it? Why would it be doing that? The city is destroyed.”

  They had their answer a moment later.

  From the ruins below the high-flying creature, a flash of light was followed by an explosion that smashed into the dragon and knocked it sideways in the air, sending it rolling end-over-end across the sky.

  “Someone's attacking it!” the wizard shouted, almost cheering as he watched the winged monster scream in obvious pain and abruptly change course, fleeing the area.

  Simon hurriedly changed the view of the mirror and it zoomed toward the spot where he thought the attack had originated.

  “Look, master. Humans.”

  They watched a small group of people, maybe a dozen or so, standing in a street cleared of debris and staring up at the retreating dragon. To Simon's astonishment, two of the group, a man and a woman, were wearing robes very similar to his own. The others were clad in armor that looked very old, maybe authentic armor from the middle ages.