The Dragons of Bone and Dust (Tales from the New Earth Book 7) (8 page)

“
Remember to
take to the branches once you get deeper into the forest,” he
shouted down at her.

She smiled ruefully as she began to
run.

“
It won't
matter,” she called back, her voice fading quickly.
“Kallorian's can climb trees.”

And then she was gone.

Simon stared after her in disbelief,
frozen in the moment. And when the kallorian shot by beneath him,
hissing like a gigantic snake, it never even looked up at the still
figure.

My God, that thing can climb? It
moves like the wind. Ethmira doesn't stand a chance against it!

Move, damn it, another part of his
mind shouted at him. She did this for you, so move your ass!

There was no sound except for a few
distant bird calls. Both Ethmira and the kallorian had been swallowed
by the forest. He hesitated again, and then with an angry growl,
began to climb out of the tree as quickly as he could.

Once on the ground, Simon didn't
hesitate. Maybe the monster would stay focused on the elf, but maybe
it would return to the open field. He couldn't take any chances. He
ran.

Small bushes, thick weeds and dead
branches snagged at his feet at he raced toward the fort, and Simon
stumbled and skittered like a drunkard as he sprinted as fast as he
could. Time was running out. He could feel it, as if the air around
him was thickening like pudding and slowly smothering him. In the
back of his mind, he heard the tick tick tick of a dire clock
counting down the minutes until the portal opened. He had to move
faster.

The fort loomed above him, a squat
giant sitting on the edge of the mountains, waiting to swallow him
whole. He aimed for its gaping maw of a doorway and ran like he'd
never run before; sides burning, lungs gasping for air. He had to
make it, for Ethmira's sake if not his own. He had to.

He burst through the large empty
gate, slipped on a pile of dead leaves and fell down, scraping his
palms as he braced himself. The bite of pain almost made him cry out,
but pain wasn't a new sensation to him and he smothered the urge and
pressed his lips together as he silently cursed.

The entrance hall to the fort wasn't
much wider than the doorway, perhaps eight feet, and Simon wondered
whether the kallorian would even fit through the entrance if it did
return to chase him. Certainly whoever had built the place in the
distant past hadn't created it to accommodate parades.

The corridor was dark after the
sunlight from outside, but the walls were surprisingly bright,
covered in tiny ceramic tiles of many colors. The tiles created
patterns that the elves loved so much and that often gave Simon a
headache if he stared at them too long. But they were still vibrant
after eons and glowed a bit, even in the darkness.

He pushed himself to his feet with a
hiss of pain and wiped his hands off clumsily on some dead leaves.
They crackled and crunched and he flinched at the sound. Now that he
was still again, he realized just how quiet, how heavy the atmosphere
had become. It was ominous.

The main hall is straight ahead, he
told himself. That was what Ethmira had said. Now to find it.

He walked cautiously forward,
stepping over some fallen masonry. Dellis Varna had held up
remarkably well over the centuries, but still it was slowly
deteriorating, falling into ruin.

No wonder Ethmira wanted to renovate
it, Simon thought a bit sadly. If they leave it much longer, the
place will be beyond repair. If it isn't already.

There were doorways that opened into
shadow on the right and left as he moved forward, but Simon couldn't
make out any details as he passed them and couldn't spare the time to
explore. He wondered what amazing secrets they might hold. He'd never
know now.

At the end of the hallway was an
intact door, made of rusted iron and almost closed. Simon stared at
it, squinting in the gloom. He reached out and touched it with his
fingertips and felt pieces of rust flake off of its surface.

Elves don't build with metal, he
thought nervously. And they certainly don't make massive iron doors
with it. Why is this here?

He hesitated and then stepped
forward. He leaned against the door with his shoulder and gave it a
shove. After a brief hesitation, it slowly began to open with a
ear-splitting shriek of rusted metal hinges.

Oh great, he thought. Just announce
yourself to the whole world, why don't you?

He only opened the door wide enough
to squeeze through and then slipped past it into the hall beyond.

“
Whoa,”
he whispered.

The hall was round and about a
hundred feet across. The walls were covered with pale metal, of a
kind that Simon had never seen before. Whatever it was, it must have
been used more for decoration than strength, because over the
centuries, the center of the rounded ceiling had caved in and
collapsed into a heap of rusted metal in the middle of the hall.

It was so quiet. Simon leaned back
against the heavy door as he stared upward and it creaked loudly, the
sound echoing around the room.

He jerked forward skittishly and
watched, wide-eyed, as bits of debris were dislodged from the ceiling
and floated down through the rays of sunlight that penetrated the
hall through its broken roof. The edges of the gaping hole looked
unstable and he carefully moved away from the door, trying not to
make any noise.

The floor was covered with a thick
layer of dust mixed with metallic flakes, old dried leaves and
assorted rubbish. Thankfully it muffled his footsteps and was also
evidence that no one had been in the building for ages.

Simon scanned the room, looking for
any sign of a disturbance. The portal was supposed to appear in the
hall someplace, but where?

He walked forward carefully, little
puffs of dust rising as he moved. What could this room have been used
for? Offices? A soldier's mess hall? A social center? Perhaps all or
none of those. But its age hung heavily in the air and was a powerful
reminder of just how ancient the elven race really was.

“
Come on,”
Simon murmured as he nervously looked around. “Where the hell
are you?”

He was here and the time was now.
Ethmira was out there in the forest somewhere, running for her life
to buy him enough time to cross back to his own world. He spared a
fervent prayer that she would be all right. So where was the damned
portal?

A crackling sound, horrendously loud
in the dead silence, ripped through the air. At the apex of the
central pile of detritus, an oval hole appeared. Its jagged edges
snapped with arcing streaks of light, like small bolts of lightning.

“
Oh crap,”
Simon said in disgust. “Great place to stick it, folks.”

The pile of ruined metal was about
ten feet high and riddled with pointy, rusted pieces of metal. It
looked unstable and dangerous as Simon moved to its base and looked
up at the shimmering portal. It was also the only way to reach the
magical gateway.

With a wince at the thought of
getting lockjaw, he began to try to climb the debris without slashing
his hands and arms to shreds.

It was like trying to climb a pile of
ice pieces. The rubble began to cascade down as soon as he put a foot
down on it and Simon was forced to ignore his fear of injury and dig
into the rubbish to find something to hold on to.

He could feel the old, strange metal
slashing his fingers and the sharp pain of it cutting into his flesh.
In any other circumstances, he would have stopped but the pulsing,
flashing portal kept him climbing. It was translucent and fading in
and out of existence and he knew that it would only remain open for a
few minutes.

Progress was slow and exhausting, not
to mention painful, but Simon was within a couple of feet of the
portal when a spine-tingling howl echoed through the massive hall,
bringing a rain of metal flakes and a few heavier pieces of the roof
tumbling down around the wizard.

“
Oh crap,”
he muttered.

He looked over his shoulder just in
time to see the metal door slam open, smash into the wall and tear
off of its hinges. The kallorian stood there, its horrible head and
heavy torso filling the doorway.

Blood painted its jaws, but whether
it was its own or Ethmira's, Simon couldn't tell. Horribly, the arrow
still stuck out of its ruined eye as it looked around the room,
searching for its prey.

The single glowing red eye locked on
to Simon's and it howled again, a sound of hatred and hunger, and it
leaped forward, maw agape.

“
Crap. Crap,
crap, crap!” the wizard shouted as he scrambled toward the
portal, cuts and slashes be damned.

It was a near thing. His frantic
scrabbling and shoving feet got him to the fading gateway just as the
kallorian made a great bound upward, slashing at him with its
razor-sharp claws.

Simon staggered through the portal at
the same time as a horrific wave of pain shot up his leg. He stumbled
forward and fell on his face, expecting the sharp metal to slash him
to ribbons.

Instead, he landed in thick, sweet
grass and rolled a few times before he came to a stop, staring up at
a clear blue sky.

Waves of pain that pulsed up his
right leg in time with his heartbeat made him sit up and look down,
expecting to see himself bleeding out. But, although he did have a
long cut that had ripped open his pants and ran down from the side of
his leg from knee to ankle, the wound was shallow and the bleeding
was light.

He lay back and closed his eyes,
breathing a long sigh of relief. The smell of crushed grass and rich
earth filled his nostrils and he sucked in the scents, feeling almost
intoxicated by the sweetness.

Home, he thought. I'm home.

It must have been early in the day
because the sun was still rising from the east. Simon eventually felt
strong enough to stand and forced himself to his feet.

His leg had stopped bleeding,
although the cuts on his fingers still dripped a bit. He ignored
them.

The one good thing about having lived
to middle age before he'd Changed, he thought, was that pain wasn't
as scary as it had been when he'd been as young as he looked now.

He had landed in a rolling meadow
filled with long grass and dotted with small trees. A forest
surrounded the glade, but after his time in the elven realm, Simon
thought that it looked small and not very inspiring.

The trees might have grown to heights
of fifty feet or more but he was used to forests that towered
overhead for hundreds of feet. He doubted that most earthen forests
could compete.

He also had absolutely no idea where
he was. He could see a few fir trees as well as elm and maple, but
that told him nothing. If only he could Gate home, but...

Simon caught himself and laughed at
his own stupidity.

“
You're
home, you idiot,” he said out loud. “Your powers should
have returned.”

He raised his hands and looked at
them. Bruised and bloody, cuts scattered across his fingers, they
were still whole and he wiggled them tentatively.

Could he still cast spells? Was he
still a wizard? Surely living in the elven realm hadn't destroyed his
talent. Had it?

“
Only one
way to find out,” he murmured.

Simon searched the grass around him
until he found a small length of wood. It was a dry old branch about
a foot long. The breeze was light and the wizard pushed back his long
mane of hair as he held up the stick and stared at it intently.

Try the simplest form of magic first,
he thought. If it doesn't work...well, one step at a time.

He frowned at the branch, focusing
all of his energy on it.

“
Fire,”
he whispered.

The stick trembled in his nervous
grip as he stared at it. At first, nothing happened. It was merely a
length of pale, dried wood. But as Simon kept his will focused on it
with laser-like intensity, a small wisp of smoke began to curl up
from its tip.

The smoke grew thicker and then, with
a bright flash, the branch burst into flames.

“
Woo-hoo!”
Simon shouted with glee.

He flung the stick straight up and it
burned to ash in a flash of fire. He wrapped his arms around himself
and laughed in joyous relief.

I'm me again, I'm me again, he kept
thinking with almost hysterical relief.

He wasn't sure why, but he'd been
halfway convinced that months of being without magic might have
changed him forever.

Months in the elven realm, he told
himself as the happiness faded, to be replaced with a dose of cold
reality. Years here on Earth.

How many? He didn't know for sure.
Ethmira had said three, but even the elves couldn't be positive. It
might have been more; much more.