“Ah, sir wizard. There you are,” the earth elemental rumbled. “I was wondering if I had slipped your mind.”
“Definitely not. Thank you for your efforts with the drakes, by the way. You gave my two friends time to retreat from the battlefield safely.”
“No thanks are needed. I enjoyed the fight. So what is next? That monster out there, I assume?”
He pointed at the queen and Simon nodded.
“Probably. We'll see how things progress. I've called Incendus and his fellows back to aid us, should it become necessary. Perhaps you could join them for now? I'll speak to you all shortly.”
Kassus turned around and saw the group of fire elementals burning brightly, even in the midday sun, and he laughed to himself.
“Eager as always, I see. Yes, I shall wait with them, sir wizard. Call upon us when you have need of our services.”
“Thanks, I will.”
The earthen strode over to stand near Incendus, totally oblivious to the waves of heat rising from them. He and the fire elemental began speaking in low voices.
“Simon,” Tamara called out. “Come over here, please. Something's happening.”
He hurried over to rejoin her, Kronk and Aeris following closely.
Looking across the field, he saw that the queen was pawing at the air in front of her with her absurdly small front legs, obviously agitated by the presence of the argent dragon.
“You dare approach me again?” she cried out, her voice booming across the distance. “I warned you not to interfere. At least those ungrateful whelps,” she looked up at the distant dragons, “have the sense to stay out of my way. What do you want, Argentium?”
The argent dragon stretched his wings once and then folded them neatly across his back. His spiked tail wrapped itself around his front feet like a cat would and he focused on the queen's blazing eyes.
“I am here to ask you one last time to turn away from this path. The humans are no threat to you. They are few and weak and want nothing more than to live in peace. Can you not go your own way and let them go theirs? Must this end in bloodshed?”
“Few and weak?”
The queen's cruel laughter sent shivers down the spines of everyone who heard it.
“Few they may be, but weak? Their wizard helped to destroy my five firstborn children, in case you have forgotten that little fact. And with their deaths came the fall of our people. Our people, Argentium, not just mine. By the nine dark gods of Chaos, if that is weakness, then it is all the more reason to destroy them now, before they can grow any stronger! I must protect my few remaining offspring.”
She looked up again and snarled.
“No matter how ungrateful they may be. In time, they will come around to understanding my side of our argument. But that will not happen if these humans remain a constant threat. Now stand aside, argent dragon, and let me finish my work. Or stay there and be the first to fall. It matters little to me either way.”
“He won't be able to turn her aside,” Sebastian said quietly. “She is determined to have her revenge, not just on Simon, but on all of us.”
Argentium bowed his heavy head.
“I regret your decision, majesty. You force me to choose between madness or death. So be it.”
He extended his great wings and leaped skyward. But he did not fly off. Instead, the argent dragon tilted his body and back-winged toward the castle.
Many of the watchers cried out as the huge silver body seemed like it was about the slam into the building, but Argentium dropped back to the ground in front of the dwarven defenders with room to spare.
He stretched his wings to their full width and glared at the queen.
“You will have to get past me to have your revenge, Aurumallia. I will not fight you, but I will not stand down either. So make your choice and do what you must.”
Tamara reached out and gripped Simon's arm.
“My God, he's as crazy as she is,” she said in disbelief. “The queen will straight up murder him!”
The wizard looked at the noble dragon sadly. He could only see the back of Argentium's horned head, but Simon could picture those clear blue eyes staring fearlessly at his impending doom.
“He knows that,” he told her softly.
“Then why? Why die needlessly for us? She'll strike him down and kill us all anyway!”
Simon spared a quick glance up at the circling young dragons.
“I believe that he's making a point,” the wizard said. “A point of honor. It's a terrible risk and it may be a futile gesture, but for our sakes and for the sake of his own species' future, he intends to die in full view of those dragons above us.”
“But what will that accomplish?”
“Who can say?”
“You fool!” the dragon queen raged. “You will die for those insects? Very well. It will be a good lesson for my children to see what happens when I am betrayed!”
The queen raced across the field toward Argentium with breath-taking speed. As she slithered forward, her jaws gaped open and a pair of fangs, six feet in length, snapped into place as if she was a monstrous cobra.
“But I have no intention of letting such a noble heart sacrifice himself for me,” Simon added. “Incendus! Take her!”
“Done!” the fire elemental yelled joyfully.
He and his brethren shot off of the battlements as if launched from a cannon. They blazed past Argentium, who stumbled sideways in surprise, and slammed straight into the queen's face.
“Kassus! Join in if you'd like to.”
“Thank you, sir wizard. I would.”
The earthen leaped off of the wall and, as he had earlier, slipped into the ground like a diver into water.
“Chao? If you're going to do anything, now is the time.”
The conjurer shook his head, looking a little dazed. He was obviously trying to keep up with all the crazy things that were happening at once.
“Right. Yes, good idea.”
He drew his fan and spun around, swirling it in intricate patterns.
“Come to me, my friends,” he called out, almost singing. “Come to my aid if you will.”
A large glowing oval of golden hue appeared above his head and out of it flew feathered bodies. One, two...a dozen or more.
At first, Simon thought that the conjurer had summoned huge eagles, with wingspans of at least a dozen feet. He changed his mind when he saw that the creatures had the heads of beautiful women, not birds.
“Good grief, they're harpies!” Tamara exclaimed. “I didn't even know that they were real.”
“Me neither,” her brother said breathlessly. “Amazing.”
Chao was speaking to the flock in an odd, whistling kind of language. They saw him point across the field at the dragon queen, who was now rolling and writhing as she battled the fire elementals.
The harpies whistled back and flew off in formation.
“Are they harpies, Chao?” Simon asked as he watched the creatures rise above the field, preparing to attack.
“I do not know what that is, my friend,” the smaller man said with a shrug. “But they are good creatures and they seem to like me for some reason. They are also fierce in battle and their talons are as sharp as razors. I think that they will be able to do some damage to the queen.”
They all watched as the flock banked around the melee happening below, waiting for an opening. As Aurumallia reared back, snapping at one of the blazing fireballs that was an elemental, the entire group of harpies dived straight down at her.
The dragon queen shrieked with fury and then bellowed in agony as the feathered attackers tore into her right eye, bursting it like a ripe melon.
“Wow, that was brutal,” Sebastian said, looking a little nauseated.
“Welcome to the war,” his sister said flatly. “It's her or us, Bastian.”
“I know, I know. It's just...”
“I feel the same way,” Simon told him. “And if she withdraws, I will recall the elementals, e
ven though it's a huge risk. But she won't withdraw, not now. Look, she's gone completely mad now.”
It seemed that he was right. The dragon queen was rolling over and over in agony. She slammed into the trees that lined the western edge of the field and pulverized them.
Perhaps the impact helped her to focus, because Aurumallia suddenly rose up on her coils and scanned the skies with her single eye. She saw the harpies arrowing down at her again and opened her mouth wide.
“Oh no, be careful!” Chao cried out.
But any warning would have been too late. The queen belched out a gout of greenish liquid that drenched the entire flock. They wilted instantly and fell from the sky like wet leaves. All of them were dead in seconds.
“What happened?” he asked Simon in shock. “What was that?”
“Poison, my friend. Virulent and deadly. Your friends didn't stand a chance. I'm so sorry.”
The conjurer covered his face with his hands and Sebastian moved closer to him and whispered something.
Chao nodded but remained silent, grieving for his lost friends.
Simon and Tamara exchanged a grim look and the wizard moved closer to the front of the battlements, putting aside his feelings for the moment to concentrate on the battle.
The fire elementals were circling the queen, keeping her attention on them. Unlike the harpies, poison wouldn't even touch their blazing bodies and the dragon seemed to know that as she leaped and snapped at them, making the ground shake and roll.
The wizard was trying to decide on his next move, when a shout from below got his attention.
“They're in the courtyard! Guards, to the rear gate!”
Simon recognized Malcolm's distinctive voice and he ran over to look down at the interior of the castle.
Tamara and Sebastian hurried to join him and the three of them gasped in unison.
There was a second swarm of drakes boiling into the courtyard from the back of the castle. Apparently they had smashed through the small rear gate while everyone's attention was focused on the battle with the queen.
“She may be mad, but she's clever,” Simon growled. “She diverted us while those monsters attacked from the rear.”
“Damn it! I count at least thirty of them,” Tamara said angrily.
“Well, now it's your chance to pound them with missiles,” the wizard told the siblings. “And may I suggest you re-position your archers?”
“Definitely. You keep an eye on the queen and we'll deal with the drakes.”
Tamara shouted at the archers and she and Sebastian ran off along the wall with the guardsmen in tow.
“Will they be all right?” Chao asked, shaken out of his grief by the attack.
Simon watched as Malcolm and Aiden simultaneously engaged one of the drakes. Between them, they sliced the monster into several pieces before it could even try to attack one of them.
“I think so,” the wizard replied. “They are all very capable, but unfortunately I can only concentrate on one fight at a time.”
“I will see if there is anything that I can do to help,” Chao said and he rushed off.
Simon moved back to the front of the wall to see how the battle between the queen and the elementals was going.
It was going badly, as it turned out, for both sides.
The queen was still bleeding steadily from her destroyed eye, but a quick count revealed that three of the fire elementals had been killed as well.
As he watched, he saw Aurumallia twist her body around as if she was made of rubber and catch an attacker by surprise. Her jaws snapped together like a spring-loaded trap and there was a distant scream and a shower of sparks as the elemental's life was snuffed out.
“Goddamn it!” he cried. “This has to end. Aethos! Come to me and bring your fellows with you.”
No blast of thunder announced the air elementals as they appeared. Seven of the swirling magical creatures, looking like miniature tornadoes, took form on the wall and Aethos altered his shape to look more human.
“You called us, sir wizard?”
“Yes. Battle has been joined with the dragon queen, but Incendus has lost four of his people already, assuming that he isn't one of them, and they could use your help. If you are willing, of course.”
“Consider it done.”
The group of elementals flew off toward the screaming queen, whose rage seemed to increase by the minute. Any chance of her standing down had obviously been lost.
“Simon O'Toole!”
He stumbled back at the fierceness of that call and saw Argentium's head rise up over the battlements to glare at him.
“What are you doing? Why are you attacking her? You were not supposed to interfere!”
“Sorry, I didn't get the memo,” Simon said loudly. “Besides, I know what you were trying to do and I wasn't going to allow it.”
“You weren't going to allow it? I hadn't realized that you were quite so arrogant, little wizard.”
Simon glared into those ancient blue eyes.
“Arrogant? Arrogance is trying to decide the fate of another species all by yourself. This is our fight, Argentium, not yours. I know that you were willing to die in the hopes of convincing your young dragons to turn on their mother. It was a valiant, noble idea. But I wasn't willing to bet that you were wrong. Besides, if she destroys all of our defenders, myself included, you can still commit suicide by letting her kill you. It might get the others to attack her. I doubt it though.”
The argent dragon held his gaze long enough for Simon's knees to begin shaking. But he didn't allow it to show.
With a gusting sigh, the dragon dipped his head.
“You're right; that is what I was hoping to do. But they,” he looked skyward, “never even reacted. I suppose that they are truly emotionless, or above all of this. I honestly don't understand them at all. Perhaps when they mature, in a century or two, they will become more empathetic. I really can't say. All I know is that Aurumallia is fighting for her life, as are your people, and they don't seem to care in the slightest. I find that rather sad, don't you?”
“Spoken like the father of every teenager who ever lived,” Simon replied with a smile. “It's probably just a phase they're going through. For now, perhaps it would be best if you withdrew from the battlefield? I'm sure that the dwarves would like to use their weapons against the queen and you are sort of blocking their shots.”
Argentium looked down in surprise.
“Why, so I am. Yes, I suppose that would be best. I don't know whether to wish you good luck or not, my friend, as I do not want either side in this conflict to lose. But I do wish you well, for what it's worth.”
“Thank you. It's worth a lot.”
The dragon smiled his draconian smile and launched himself into the air. Simon watched as he began flapping rapidly and rose to join the others above. Then the wizard moved to the edge of the wall and looked down at the dwarves.
“You're clear to fire!” he shouted at them.
“About bloody time!” Shandon yelled back. “That great lummox was blocking us completely.”
“Well, he's gone now.”
“Good!”
The king waved and then began directing his forces.
Simon stepped back and looked at Aeris and Kronk. Both were watching him anxiously and he tried to reassure them.
“So far, so good,” he said, even though the phrase rang hollow even to himself.
“Yes master. That is quite true,” Kronk agreed stoutly.
“If you say so,” Aeris replied skeptically.
“Aeris, would you go down and see how the battle in the courtyard is going?” Simon asked as he squinted down into the shadows below. “I can't see a damned thing with this sunlight.”
“Got it.”
He flew off and Simon turned around again to watch the dragon queen. He shielded his eyes and tried to see exactly what was happening.
“Whoa. Is that Kassus?”
He pointed at the tail end of the
dragon and Kronk tip-tapped to the front of the wall and looked in that direction.
“It is, master. It is good to see that he is still doing well.”
“Yeah, but what is he doing? That's what I'd like to know.”
Kronk stared intently at the tiny figure of the earthen for a moment.
“Ah yes, I think I know, master,” he finally said.
“Well?”
“I do believe that he is attempting to rip off one of her back legs.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Oh yes, master. And it appears that he is about to succeed.”
The pair watched as the queen writhed and bit at her attackers. The air elementals had joined with Incendus and his brethren and were keeping her totally confused. Considering how far back her legs were on her body, Simon guessed that the queen simply hadn't noticed Kassus' attack yet. That was about to change.
There was no way to hear the horrible, tearing sound that must have occurred as the earthen finally managed to rip off the queen's left leg, but Simon could imagine it and he shuddered as he watched it happen. He certainly heard her reaction though.
If all of the watchers had thought that her cries were loud before, they were mistaken. Her scream of torment was deafening. Gallons of blood spewed from the open wound and Aurumallia whipped her head around to snap at her attacker.
“Kassus, come here!” Simon said quickly as the dragon's jaws were about to crush the earthen.
He appeared instantly beside the wizard, still soaked with steaming dragon's blood.
“Oh, thank you, sir wizard,” he said in surprise. “I believe that I was just about to die.”
“No problem,” Simon said, choking a bit as he backed away from Kassus, holding his nose.
“Ah yes, the blood. It does stink, doesn't it? I don't really have much of a sense of smell. Handy in this situation.”
“Lucky you,” the wizard said as he waved a hand in front of his face.
“Actually, since you're back, perhaps you could help with another problem?”
“Certainly. But the queen is far from dead. Should I not return to continue the fight?”
“Maybe later. Right now we have a more immediate problem. A group of drakes has broken into the castle courtyard, and your assistance would be invaluable.”
The Queen of Dragons (Tales from the New Earth Book 8) Page 44
