“I wanted to send someone to check on you, but we've yet to find any horses out in the wild and slogging for hours to your place is a challenge in winter.”
Simon had to smile at her chatter. It was good to speak to someone who knew him, after being alone for a few days.
“I'm glad you didn't send anyone,” he told her. “The cold has been pretty bad and I'd hate for someone to get injured on my account. Besides, I'm fine.”
Clara had poured him some tea from a pot on a sideboard but stopped at the sudden change of tone in his voice.
“Really? I mean, you look fine. But you don't sound fine.”
She offered him the tea, took her own cup and sat down at the other end of the couch.
“What's wrong?” she asked as she watched him closely. “Considering how cold your hands are, I'm guessing you didn't just Gate here.”
The wizard took a few sips of tea and sighed. The chamomile was a gift from himself and Kronk, who'd had a special touch when it came to growing things.
“You're very perceptive, as usual,” he said with a tight smile. “And you're right. I didn't Gate here. The truth is...”
He hesitated and stared down into his cup.
“The truth, Clara, is that I can't Gate anymore. In fact, I can't cast any spells at all. My magic is gone.”
The cleric stared at him in disbelief.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Just that. It's gone. All the spells I learned from the gods of Justice have been erased from my mind. And even the spells that I discovered on my own are useless. I memorize them just fine, but when I try to cast them, nothing happens.”
He flinched at what he thought was a whiny edge in his voice.
“Look, I'm not complaining. Not really. It's just that after more than three years, magic had become second nature to me, like my physical strength was back in the old days. To lose it, just like that, well...” He paused and tried to smile. “I'm feeling a bit lost and scared, to be honest.”
Clara smiled in sympathy, reaching out to pat his hand as she listened.
“I didn't think such a thing was possible, Simon,” she told him. “The magic that you and I and some of the others use is a gift from the gods, as you know. They've slipped it into the stream of power that their evil brethren are pumping into the world. It sounds as if the evil ones found that power and, I don't know, blocked it somehow.”
Simon nodded dejectedly.
“My thought exactly,” he said. “And if that's true, then I'm done as a wizard.”
The cleric stared at him for a long moment and then snorted.
“Nonsense,” she said firmly.
The wizard looked at her in confusion.
“What?”
“I said nonsense.”
Clara stood up abruptly and went to fill her cup. She spoke as she poured.
“Simon, my powers are still intact, as are the powers of Eric and the others.” She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “The ones you call the Fantastic Foursome.”
The wizard smiled in spite of himself. Four of the Changlings; Eric, Virginia, Gerard and Anna, used magic as a group. Singly, their powers were practically nonexistent. But together, they were very powerful indeed.
“Which means,” Clara continued, ”that the flow of magic from the Void, from the gods of Light and Justice, continues.”
She sat down again.
“So whatever has happened to you, has been achieved through some other means. Something specifically aimed at you.”
Simon felt a spark of hope at that thought. He'd been sure the magic itself had been cut off. If it hadn't, maybe there was a way to regain his powers.
“Tell me what happened after we lost contact,” she asked. “You had repelled the dragons attacking the tower and all was well. Then the Magic Mouth spell failed.”
“Right, that's true.” He took a deep breath. “Well, right after we spoke, I...lost Kronk and Aeris.”
He spoke flatly but Clara looked alarmed.
“Lost them? You mean they're..?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I think they were drawn back into the elemental realms. It was a shock, to say the least. I tried calling them back but nothing happened. The spells I used to know were gone from my memory. My staff wouldn't channel magic anymore and, when I tried to cast one of my own spells, absolutely nothing happened.”
He looked away and blinked rapidly. Losing the elementals still hurt and he felt a sense of loss that was almost painful.
Clara put a gentle hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“You miss them, don't you?” she asked softly.
“More than the magic, actually,” he said with a shrug. “Kronk especially. He's been with me almost from the beginning, after the old world was destroyed. He wasn't a servant; he was a friend.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
Clara rose again and began to pace the room slowly, frowning in thought.
“I have no idea how to reverse what has happened to you, Simon,” she said and he felt a rush of despair.
“But,” she stopped abruptly and looked at him, ”I'm guessing that the gods I serve might. Now normally I have to wait for them to contact me in dreams to know their will. But in this case, I'm going to try to speak to them directly. It's a bit presumptuous on my part, I know, but they've taken an interest in you and I'm hoping that will encourage them to listen to my petition.”
Simon allowed himself a tiny degree of hope.
“What do you need to do?” he asked.
“Pray,” the cleric said with a little shrug. “How else do you speak with a god, after all? I wonder if I could ask you to step out into the main hall for a little while. I need privacy for this.”
“Yes, of course,” Simon said as he scrambled to his feet. He put down his cup and walked to the door. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“Have patience, my friend,” Clara told him with some amusement. “This isn't like an old-time phone call. They may take their time answering me, or they may not answer at all. Relax as best you can and I'll see you in a while.”
He nodded, grabbed his coat from the hook beside the door, and went out into the hall.
Simon made his way to a bench that was close to the fire pit, sat down and tried to be patient, as Clara had suggested. It could take hours, he supposed and, important or not, you couldn't rush something like this.
But patience was in short supply and, after half an hour or so, Simon put on his coat and stepped outside.
It was only around two o'clock and the clear icy-blue sky blazed with sunlight. The wizard went over to Chief, removed his bridle and put on a halter that he'd brought along in his saddlebags. The horse whuffled into his neck as he worked and Simon had to laugh. It was as if Chief thought of himself as a lapdog instead of a stallion.
When he was done, Simon headed toward the main gate. The narrow cobble-stoned street was swept clean of snow and he was grateful in the intense cold that the footing wasn't slippery.
Halfway there he saw a woman coming from the opposite direction. It was Virginia. She smiled and waved as she recognized him.
“Simon!” she called. “How are you?”
When she got closer, she gave him a warm hug. Wrapped in thick, fur-lined hide the way she was, Simon felt like he was being hugged by a rather short bear.
“The gatekeeper said that you were in town when I passed by.”
“Passed by? Where are you going in this freezing weather?” he asked curiously.
Virginia chuckled. She was quite pretty and Simon found the way her nose scrunched up when she laughed very endearing.
“You can't stay huddled inside all the time, even in the winter. I like to get out every day for a walk and some fresh air. Anyway, he said that you were meeting with Clara, so I thought I'd drop in and say hello. Looks like you saved me the trouble.”
“Happy to help,” he responded with a grin of his own. “Actually I was going down to ask
the guard if I could get a bucket of water for my horse, and if there's a store of hay somewhere.”
“Aha!” Virginia exclaimed with obvious pleasure. “Now I've saved you some trouble. As one of the poor peasants who helped to harvest the hay in the fall for the sheep, goats and assorted other livestock, I'm intimately familiar with where we store the stuff. Come along and I'll show you.”
“Hey, thanks. I appreciate that.”
Simon followed the young woman to a large building set against the wall on the other side of town. Inside, he grabbed an armful of hay and Virginia found a wooden bucket and they walked back toward the town center to use the community water pump.
All the while, Virginia chatted about the various goings-on in town, getting Simon caught up on all the news.
There had been two more births among the population. That brought the total number of children born since the Night of Burning, when the dragons had decimated the human race, to three.
Well, it's a start, he thought.
All of the population of the village were Changlings and some had feared that the newborns might actually be monsters or some type of mutants.
“They're all just normal kids though,” Virginia said as she filled the bucket.
She looked at Simon with an impish expression.
“But the last one born, Amy, was born with two different colored eyes. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”
Simon, with one brown eye and one blue since he Changed, felt himself blushing.
“Of course not! I certainly haven't been involved with...”
He stopped protesting as he realized that Virginia was teasing.
“Funny girl,” he grumbled as they walked back to the hall. “Actually, I'm pleased that that's the only evidence of the Change in them. Some kids did mutate into monstrous forms back before the end. I'm not sure what happened to them, considering the anarchy that society descended into. It's quite possible that they didn't survive.”
His friend stopped walking abruptly, the water in the bucket slopping over the edge a bit.
“You don't mean you think they were killed?” Virginia asked, horrified. “Children?”
Simon nodded once, his expression bleak.
“Some people were blaming the Changlings for the loss of technology. Remember how it was? No power meant no water, no heat, no refrigeration, no communications. It all fell apart so quickly.”
He laughed humorlessly.
“We never realized just how fragile our 'advanced' society really was. My buddy Daniel actually hid me at his place in the last few weeks, as my Change became fairly obvious. And I was an adult. Imagine defenseless children in those circumstances.”
They began walking again.
“Well, I don't need to tell you,” he said gently. “You and Eric and the others experienced the brutality of humanity firsthand when you were kept as slaves by that group of mundane humans for almost three years.”
“Yeah. True that.”
Conversation died at that point as both of them became lost in their own memories.
When they reached the hall, Virginia put down the bucket in front of Chief and Simon let him drink his fill before scattering the hay for him. The big horse rubbed his head affectionately against the young woman and she giggled as she was almost knocked over by his enthusiasm. Their gloomy mood evaporated.
“So why did you ride here in this cold, Simon?” she asked as they watched Chief munching the hay contentedly.
The wizard was torn. On the one hand, Virginia was a friend and he was tempted to tell her everything. But until he knew if his condition was permanent, he found that he didn't really want anyone else to know about his loss of magic.
It's as if I have a nasty disease and am embarrassed to tell anyone, he thought wryly.
“Well, the big guy needed some exercise,” he said, stretching the truth a long way. “And I wanted to see how the village was doing. Besides,” he glanced up at the cold blue sky, “we could be looking at a long period of frigid weather. It might be my last chance to ride down for quite some time.”
She nodded, accepting the flimsy explanation equably.
“Well, it was great to see you again. I'm sure you and Clara have a lot to talk about.”
She picked up the now empty bucket.
“I'll take this back to the storage shed,” Virginia said and gave Simon a one-armed hug.
“Thanks for your help,” he told her with a warm smile. “Say hi to the others for me, will you?”
“Of course I will. If you decide to stay over, come by and see us.”
“We can't stay,” Simon said with real regret. He nodded at the stallion. “Chief gets nervous if he's away from his harem for too long.”
Virginia's guffaw of laughter rang through the cold, still air.
“Lucky guy,” she said, chortling, and patted the munching horse, who whickered at her as he ate steadily.
They parted company then with mutual waves and Simon entered the hall again.
His visit with Virginia had cheered him up immeasurably and had, at least for a short time, made him forget his own problems. But walking back toward Clara's quarters, his loss of magic and the chance that he might no longer be a wizard slammed back into his consciousness. By the time he reached her door and knocked on it softly, his depression had settled back in again.
“Come in, Simon,” he heard Clara call out and he opened the door and walked inside.
The cleric was sitting on the couch again and smiled at him tiredly as he entered. She patted the sofa next to her and Simon hung up his coat and walked over to sit beside her.
He was reluctant to hear any bad news but braced himself to learn the truth.
“So, any luck?” he asked quietly.
Clara had dark circles under her eyes and her face was pinched with exhaustion. Whatever had happened, it had taken a lot out of her.
She shrugged at his question.
“It depends on your definition of luck, I suppose. The news is good and bad. I did have a...visitation, I suppose you could call it. Our gods of Order are distressed by the attack on you. For one human to be singled out by their opponents is extraordinary.”
She smiled a bit.
“You angered the dark ones by destroying one of their most powerful servants. The black may have been the weakest of the primal dragons, but it was still one of only five. Now they are lessened. So at least we can celebrate that victory.”
She settled herself more comfortably into the couch and looked at him closely.
“I have some questions, my friend, about the dragons that attacked your tower.”
Simon crossed his legs and leaned back.
“Sure. What did you want to know?”
“You told me about the attack, but you didn't give me many details. I'd like to know exactly how those creatures attacked. Did they try to tear down your home or..?”
The wizard went through the assault in his mind.
“Now that you mention it, I actually remember thinking how odd it was that they didn't do exactly that. So in answer to your question, no they didn't. They circled the tower, blasting it with fire and brushing it with their wings, but they didn't actually hit the building directly.”
Clara nodded.
“Yes. That's interesting.”
“Is it? Why?”
She looked at the window, seeming to watch as several dust motes floated lazily through the beaming sunlight that lit the room.
“Because of what the gods believe has happened to your powers.”
Simon's stomach clenched. Here it comes, he thought.
Clara looked at him and then smiled compassionately. She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed it reassuringly.
“It's not as bad as you believe it is, my friend. At least, I don't think it is.”
She dropped his hand and sat back, speaking slowly and carefully.
“The nature of the dragons' attack is the key. Those two reds wer
e sent to your home, not to kill you, but to render you powerless.”
“What?”
Simon sat up abruptly.
The cleric nodded again.
“Yes. You see, they circled your tower and set up a barrier between you and the magic that the gods have been channeling to you. And then they absorbed it. You aren't powerless, Simon. Instead, your magic had been drained away by these dragons.”
Simon blinked rapidly, thinking through Clara's explanation.
“But if that's true, then why didn't the power return when the dragons died?”
“Ah, now here is where we have to take the gods' explanation on faith, I suppose. Once the magic was consumed, it was gone. All of it. Including your knowledge of those spells that the divine ones passed on to you.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“When the dragons died, did you examine the remains?”
“The remains?” Simon was confused. “There were no remains. The beasts burned up to nothing when they were destroyed.”
“No Simon, they did not.” Clara sounded firm as she said this. “The gods tell me that you must search the spot where each dragon fell. Find their hearts. That is the reservoir of their power. If you can find those objects, and destroy them, your magic will be restored.”
“What, just like that?” he asked skeptically.
She chuckled at his expression.
“Yes, my friend. Just like that.” She held up a warning hand. “But, unfortunately, the spells that were imparted to you by the gods are gone for good. If and when you regain your magic, you will be back to being that young wizard who struggled along to discover spells through research and trial and error. The gift cannot be given twice, so you will have to relearn all that you need to learn on your own.”
Simon was disappointed to hear that he would be back almost to square one with his spell-casting, but his excitement at the thought that he at least wouldn't be powerless for the rest of his life smothered that feeling.
“I can deal with that, Clara. To be honest, the idea of being useless in this new world of ours was, well, devastating.”
Now it was his turn to take her hand in both of his.
“Thank you. And thanks to the gods of Order for answering your prayers. I feel...whole again.”
The Dragons Revenge (Tales from the New Earth #2) Page 4
