“But how? How is that even possible?” Orriss asked plaintively. “Corriss was older than many of us and he was very quick and clever. Destroying him would have been very difficult for most creatures, even magical ones.”
“This wasn't just any magical creature, Orriss,” Simon told him. “According to Astrandamus, it was the dragon queen herself.”
The grieving elemental gaped up at him.
“The queen? He ran into the queen? But that is not possible. Corriss was nowhere near the desert on the far side of the world where the queen is dwelling.”
“Where she was dwelling,” Aeris corrected him. “Apparently she has moved on, without any of us even being aware of it. Our great lord has informed us that she has produced five eggs that will hatch into a new group of primal dragons. Corriss must have stumbled upon her nest and paid the price. I doubt that he even saw the queen before she struck.”
“Evil monster,” Orriss whispered. “Evil, evil monster.”
“She is that,” Simon agreed. “Orriss, I recalled you to give you the sad news, but also because I didn't want you out there alone. With your brother gone, we need to find the queen's nest before those eggs hatch, and not even Astrandamus knows exactly where it is. Now, Aeris is going to start looking and...”
“I will accompany you,” Orriss stated firmly.
“Well, I was going to ask Brethia,” Aeris began but the other elemental cut him off.
“I will go with you, Aeris,” he said insistently. “If you wish to bring Brethia along, that is your choice. But I am going.”
Simon stared at him, trying to read the expression on that little translucent face.
“Orriss, are you sure?” he asked. “I understand that you are angry and grieving, but it will be very dangerous and a cool head is called for on this mission.”
The elemental rose up from the desk until he floated at eye level to the wizard.
“My lord, if you order me not to go, I will not. But my only brother has been killed and now this world is threatened yet again by the dragon queen and her brood. I could be useful in the search, and I assure you that my loss will not cloud my judgment.”
They exchanged a long look and then Simon smiled at the intense little being.
“Very well, Orriss. If Aeris wants to take you along, then he is free to do so. Personally I think that you should take Brethia too. The three of you have worked well together before and we need any edge that we can get out there.”
“I will take them both,” Aeris told him. “You're right; the more eyes we have for the search, the better. But the three of us will be enough. Are you okay with leaving the tower without rooftop watchers for a while?”
“It's fine,” Simon told him. “I might summon a couple of your people to fill the gap while Brethia and Orriss are gone, but I'll think about that later.”
He looked at both elementals.
“You two had best get at it; the clock is ticking.”
“Orriss, head up to the roof, would you?” Aeris asked. “I'll meet you and Brethia up there after I have word with the wizard.”
“I will. And thank you, my lord, for this opportunity,” Orriss said to Simon, who shook his head.
“Don't thank me. I'm sending all of you into danger and I don't enjoy having to do that. Just watch your back, Orriss. We've lost your brother; I don't want to lose you as well.”
The elemental bowed and disappeared.
“Is this a good idea?” Aeris asked him frankly, once Orriss was gone.
“What? But it was your choice to take him along, not mine.”
The elemental sighed and landed on the desk. He folded his arms and stared past Simon at the window behind him, looking thoughtful.
“I know that,” he said slowly. “But I'm afraid that Orriss is now driven by grief and a need for revenge. Those emotions could get him killed too.”
Simon rested his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes briefly.
“That's true. So what do you want me to do? Order him to stay behind? You know that I won't do that. I don't command any elemental and I never will. You all work for me voluntarily; you aren't slaves.”
“I know. I know. It's funny but, for the first time, I almost wish that you were more like the wizards of old.”
“The slave masters?” Simon asked sharply. “From what all of you have told me, the ancient wizards were horrible, arrogant human beings. I will never be like them!”
Aeris rose up to eye level again and smiled at him.
“Easy does it, my dear wizard. I only meant that they exercised some control over their summoned helpers. You, on the other hand, do not.”
“No, I don't,” Simon agreed, his anger fading as quickly as it came. “Look, if you want me to suggest to Orriss that he remain here, I can talk to him about it. But that's the best that I can do.”
“Never mind then. I think that I'd rather have him where I can see him and keep him safe, rather than take the chance that he'll head off on his own and perhaps share the same fate as his brother.”
“Agreed.”
“Okay then, I'm off. Call me tomorrow and I'll update you on our status.”
The elemental cocked his head to the side slightly.
“Do we still have permission to teleport directly back to the tower if necessary? It's a lot faster than flying the whole way.”
“Always. Tell Brethia and Orriss they are permitted to do the same. Better safe than sorry.”
Aeris nodded and vanished, leaving the wizard alone to worry about whether or not he'd made the right decision. Unfortunately there was no easy answer to that question.
The next few days were a weird time for Simon. Even though his outside wall was still manned by a handful of earth elementals, the tower itself was almost completely silent, with Kronk away in England and Aeris off searching for the dragon queen's nest. He didn't like it.
It was one thing to live a solitary existence; he preferred it that way. But it was another to be totally alone without any friends to talk to. It made him realize how very precious the two elementals were to him.
I'd better not tell Aeris that, he thought with a quick flash of humor. His smugness level would go through the roof. Although I suspect that he already knows.
But because he needed a distraction from the sudden hollow silence of his home, Simon decided to go on a little adventure of his own, of sorts. He sat in his study for an hour with the atlas opened on his desk and jotted down the coordinates of several places on Earth that he'd never been to, back in the old days. He was curious to know how they might have changed since the return of magic to the world.
Kronk would lose his mind if he knew that I was going to do something like this, he thought as he slipped the list of locations along with their coordinates into his robe and hurried downstairs to get his staff.
He felt a giddy exhilaration, as if he was being a naughty child.
Hey, I'm allowed the occasional field trip too, he reassured himself. I mean, who's the wizard here anyway?
He grabbed Mortis de Draconis from its resting place beside the front door and headed outside.
At the front gate, Simon looked up at the wall and spotted an earthen trotting along on patrol. He called up to it.
“Yes, my lord?” the elemental replied. “How may I help you?”
“I just wanted to let you and the others know that I'll be out for a while. Please keep the gates sealed until I return, okay? No one gets in unless it's one of the elementals who works for me.”
“Of course, sir wizard,” the earthen told him in his gravelly voice. “I will pass along your message to the others and lock the rear gate myself.”
“Thanks. I'll be back soon.”
The elemental bowed and hurried off in the direction of the back gate.
Good, that's taken care off, Simon thought. Now let's see here; where should I go first?
He pulled out his list, closed his eyes and pointed at it blindly. When he op
ened them again, he looked at the name and numbers that his forefinger was touching and grinned.
“Okay then. Pyramids of Giza, here I come.”
He memorized the coordinates, slipped the paper back into his pocket and grounded his staff. Then he summoned a shield and focused his will.
“Gate!”
“Wow,” Simon murmured a few minutes later as he turned in a slow circle, his shield shimmering in the twilight. “I wasn't sure that they'd survived.”
He was standing on the summit of the Great Pyramid, with the sun sinking in a glory of orange and red in the west. On one side of him, the endless desert stretched out as far as the eye could see, the eternal Nile still flowing, oblivious to the fate of mankind.
On the other side lay the ruins of the ancient city of Cairo, leveled on the Night of Burning. It was a sobering sight.
“I wonder if anyone survived,” he asked himself. “It's possible, I suppose. There must have been six or seven million people living here before the dragons struck.”
He ground his teeth in useless wrath. What was done was done. The problem hadn't just been the initial dragon attack; it had been the army of drakes that were sent in to ferret out any survivors. It had proven to be a damnably efficient system of extermination.
A hot wind blew by the wizard, making his robe billow and flap around him like wings. There was only the scent of dry sand in the air and Simon could feel his nostrils pinch shut at the lack of moisture. How the Nile wound through the arid desert the way that it did had never made sense to him, but there it still was.
He looked down at the base of the pyramid, still visible in the fading light.
“Might as well poke around for a bit, as long as I can still see.”
He focused on a barren stretch of ground.
“Gate.”
The teleportation took less than a second and then he was abruptly looking back up at the top of the enormous edifice.
Quite the change in perspective, he thought as he absorbed the size of the pyramid in its entirety. How ancient man had built this thing was beyond him. Maybe it was actually older than anyone had thought and had been constructed using magic? It was an intriguing idea.
Simon began walking the perimeter of the massive construct, stepping over scattered rocks and avoiding larger blocks of stone. He was examining the sides of the pyramid, looking for the entrance. He wondered whether anyone had taken cover inside the passages of the building when the dragons struck.
In the end, it wasn't that hard to find. Legions of tourists' feet had worn enough of a path in the hard ground that traces were still easy to spot.
The wizard climbed up the side of the pyramid and summoned a mage light as darkness fell like a blanket over the desert. The silence was eerie and, as he stepped inside of the structure, Simon paused a moment to wonder whether this was a good idea.
It can't hurt to just take a look around, he thought hesitantly. The place is lifeless.
It was much cooler inside of the pyramid and he felt a chill crawl up his spine as he moved slowly along the main passageway, the dust he disturbed rising to float around him like a thin fog. There was an odd scent in the air, a hint of putrefaction, as if something had crawled into the darkness and died. It was a disturbing thought.
He was tempted to climb all the way through to the fabled King's Chamber that he remembered seeing on television shows, but the atmosphere was just too creepy.
God only knows what might be lurking in there, he told himself as he looked down the tunnel beyond the radius of his magical light. I'm out to explore, not get eaten by something horrible.
Once upon a time, such an idea would have just been the product of an overactive imagination. But now? Now the nightmares had been made real and he'd seen enough of them firsthand not to seek out more on his own.
Simon pulled out his list with trembling fingers and read off a random set of coordinates. He spared a final thought for the ancient pharaohs that had once ruled in Egypt and then Gated away. His mage light disappeared in an explosion of multi-colored sparks.
In the darkness that the wizard left behind, something monstrous growled to itself and settled back into an uneasy sleep.
So this is the Grand Canyon, Simon thought with wonder and surprise.
He had just jerked back from the edge of a precipice with a yelp of surprise. His coordinates had been a little too precise and he had exited the Void at the very lip of the massive canyon. Fortunately he wasn't afraid of heights.
“Awesome,” he muttered. “It's enormous.”
It was as dry here as it had been a moment before in Egypt, but way down at the bottom of the canyon, a layer of mist rose from the winding waters of the Colorado River. Simon could see a ribbon of green growing along its distant shores and he was curious to know what sort of life existed down there now.
Up at the top of the abyss, the ground was dotted with stubborn, stunted trees that looked long dead. Rough boulders and heaps of sand and gravel gave the country an image of almost moon-like desolation.
I wonder if it was always like this, Simon thought as he reached down and grabbed a handful of gritty dirt. Or was this an effect of the magic that had altered the whole world in some way?
He dribbled the soil between his fingers and watched it drift away in the arid wind. As he wiped his hand on his robe, a quick shadow passed over him and he whirled around and looked up at the sky.
Another shadow flashed past and then another.
“Whoa,” he whispered in awe.
Soaring majestically hundreds of feet over Simon's head were creatures that he'd never seen before, not even in pictures. Perhaps they were ancient monsters out of legend, but if they were, he'd never heard of them.
Enormous wings covered with multi-colored feathers stretched out at least a dozen feet on either side of the creatures' bodies. But these weren't bird-like forms. Instead, the wizard stared in amazement at what looked like human-shaped figures, gliding and soaring with ease in the pale desert sky.
Long hair whipped behind them and Simon could see distinct arms and legs even at such a great distance. They looked for all the world like angels.
Or demons, came a cold thought. The creatures might have had beautiful plumage, but their bodies were dark and stick-like; thin almost to the point of emaciation. And as he listened carefully, the wizard could hear piercing screeches as the flyers called to each other. They sounded vicious.
Simon counted a dozen or more of the things and he was grateful that either they hadn't noticed him or they were ignoring him. Either way, he decided that a hasty retreat was in order.
Rather than travel to another set of coordinates on his list, the wizard decided to get a closer look at the river at the base of the canyon. He picked out a distinctive rock formation and focused his will upon as he raised his staff.
“Gate,” he said and was yanked forward by an unseen hand as he slipped into the Void.
A moment later he was standing several feet above the raging waters of the river on a rocky outcrop. The air was filled with a steady roar of sound as the water raced along its ancient path.
Simon looked up at the distant rim of the gorge with wonder. It appeared even farther away from down below. He was pleased to see no signs of the mysterious flying creatures from down here. He had a feeling that, whatever they were, they weren't benevolent beings.
He carefully picked his way down off of the outcropping until he stood beside the flowing waters. Using his staff to steady himself, he squatted down and ran his fingers through the liquid. It was surprisingly cool to the touch, but looked clean and free of pollution.
A cure for humanity's environmental sins, he thought bitterly as he stood up again. Just wipe us out. Problem solved.
A distant echo of sound from downstream got his attention as it rose above the rumble of the river. It sounded like horses whinnying.
Horses? Down here? How is that possible?
He got his answer quickly as
a large creature breached the surface of the water a hundred feet away.
With the head and torso of a horse and the long trailing body of a serpent, a pale monster leaped up from the river and dove out of sight again.
“A hippocampus,” Simon gasped, remembering an illustration he'd seen of the mythical beast. “Oh my God.”
It wasn't just an aberration either. Two more water horses leaped out of the river as he watched, apparently just for the sheer joy of it.
“So beautiful,” he said softly. “How can something that looks so awkward be so graceful?”
He leaned on his staff and just watched with a quiet joy as the creatures jumped and played together. Whether they could see him or not, they totally ignored the wizard and he was allowed to observe them without interruption.
Finally the three water horses drifted downstream and around a far bend of the river and Simon let out a long sigh. The trip had already been worth it, just to have seen what he had seen. But now his legs were getting tired and he looked around for a soft spot to sit down and rest.
A small clump of dried grasses a few feet from the flowing waters proved to be comfortable enough and he sat down with a grateful groan. He slipped off his shoes and stretched out his legs until his feet were immersed in the cool liquid. It felt wonderful.
How long has it been since I've been totally alone and on my own, he wondered as he leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the sky. Years probably. It was a nice change, at least for a day.
Perhaps it was the sense of peace brought on by his surroundings, or maybe it was simple exhaustion, but Simon found himself drifting off to sleep to the singing of the river. His shield flickered and faded as his eyes closed.
Chapter 4
“I think that it looks better than the original,” Tamara said happily.
She was standing on a hill that rose above the surrounding forest. It gave her an excellent view of the new Nottinghill Castle, two miles away. Even at that distance, the mage felt dwarfed by the massive building.
The Queen of Dragons (Tales from the New Earth Book 8) Page 4
