The Dragons Revenge (Tales from the New Earth #2) (53 page)

“
Whew.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay.”

Simon
straightened slowly, a crease of strain cutting the skin between his
eyebrows.

“
That
was a little more...intense than I thought it would be.”

The
elemental's eyes widened a bit.

“
You
have another streak of white in your hair, my dear wizard,” he
said gently.

“
Not
surprising, I suppose. I'll be an old man before this body gets
through puberty.”

The
smell of ozone still hung over the roof and Aeris looked around in
confusion.

“
What
just happened? The wind has faded and I can't hear the sounds of the
forest anymore.”

Simon
looked up at the green dragon as it slowly swam through the night
sky. A blast of green poison shot ahead of it as it roared,
apparently in response to the tightening of the wards. But neither
the wizard nor Aeris could hear it.

“
I've
sealed the tower completely. A fly couldn't get in here now. Not even
a microbe could slip in, I'd say.”

“
But
Simon, that's crazy! Kronk and I don't need to breathe, except when
we speak, but you'll run out of oxygen in minutes.”

The
wizard pushed back his hair and nodded as he watched the green.

“
I
know. Now, here is what you need to do. Go down to the stable and
tell Kronk to get the horses ready. Move them to the back gate and
wait. In five minutes, I'm going to drop the shield around the tower.
That will be your cue to get them and yourselves out of here.”

He
turned and gazed levelly at Aeris.

“
Do
you understand?”

The
air elemental scowled.

“
Of
course I don't understand. Do you really want to die? The dragon will
know instantly when the shield drops and it will attack at once. You
won't stand a chance.”

Simon
shrugged.

“
I
know,” he said. “You have five minutes starting now. Go!”

“
But...”

“
Go!
Or do you want me to order you?”

Aeris
shook his head in surrender.

“
No,
I don't. All right, you crazy wizard. I'm going.”

He
began to turn away, stopped and shook a finger at Simon.

“
But
remember, retreating to fight another day is not cowardice. Sometimes
it's just wise.”

And
with a pop, the air elemental disappeared.

Simon
closed his eyes wearily and nodded once to himself.

“
And
sometimes it isn't an option,” he said quietly.

Slipping
Bene-Dunn-Gal over his shoulder, Simon crossed the roof, opened the
trapdoor and slipped inside.

He
hurried down the stairs, pausing once to pat the sturdy stone wall of
the tower.

“
Built
by men, reinforced by earth elementals. I hope you survive this. I'm
rather fond of my home.”

He
gave the wall a final affectionate pat and then headed down the
stairs to the first floor.

Simon
left the tower and closed the door firmly behind him. He tapped it
with his staff and heard the bolts lock behind him. Then he went down
the steps and moved to stand in the middle of the yard between the
tower and the gates.

Faintly,
from the rear of the building, he heard a loud whinny.

Good,
he thought. The horses are in place.

He
wiped his sweaty palms on his robe, slipped the staff off his
shoulder and rested it on the ground.

The
air was becoming stale and dry. He coughed a bit and cleared his
throat and then, from memory, chanted an incantation and left it
hanging in the air, uninvoked. It felt like prickles of static
electricity against his skin.

“
Here
we go,” he said to no one in particular and, raising his staff,
dropped the ward's shield around the tower.

A
slap of wind, held back and feeling almost resentful, blew across the
yard and over his body. The smell of the night and the sounds of the
surrounding forest returned instantly and Simon felt a measure of
gratitude for their familiar presence.

But
then the sound of reality got his attention. A roar of triumph and
spite shivered down from above and he looked up to see a green arrow
of terror dropping out of the sky, straight at him.

“
Shield,”
he said quickly and ran around the corner of the tower to escape from
the dragon's sight.

A
rush of green-tinged wind followed by a earth-shaking shudder
rippling through the ground announced the dragon's arrival. Simon
fell against the wall of the tower as the convulsion under his feet
sent him reeling. The Shield spell bounced him, unhurt, off of the
wall and he finally found his balance and then stood quietly,
waiting.

“
So,
this is how the great wizard greets his nemesis? By cowering in the
shadows?”

The
dragon had lowered the volume of his voice, but the air still rang
and throbbed in Simon's ears from the sound.

“
Come
now, your magic has failed you, little wizard. You cannot run and you
cannot hide. If I must, I shall tear down this puny hovel of yours to
find you. But let us face each other with some dignity, as least.
Come out, and your end will have a touch of nobility to it.”

Oh,
the monster is loving this, Simon thought angrily. He bit his lip so
that he wouldn't begin flinging insults at it. Not yet, he told
himself. Not yet.

With
a deep breath, and the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, the
wizard threw back his shoulders and stepped around the corner of the
tower to face the dragon one last time.

The green dragon's bulk
was stuffed into the space between the front of the tower and the
outer wall. It had writhed itself into a heap like the snakes it
resembled and its head reared up higher than the top of the tower.

As Simon stepped into
view, a high-pitched hiss, not unlike the sound of a steam whistle,
came from the creature's throat and its blazing yellow eyes widened
in anticipation.

“
And here you are,”
it said in a voice that could have been wrapped in honey, it was so
sweetly satisfied. “Found your courage at last, have you? Good,
good. I have wasted too much time with you already. I grow tired of
our game of, what do you humans call it, cat and mouse? Yes.”

The massive head dipped
toward the wizard and he stumbled backwards as it overwhelmed his
senses. Six feet over his head, it stopped and he saw his skinny
little body reflected in eyes that were as large as he was.

They blinked once, slowly,
and contemplated him with obvious contempt.

“
All of this trouble
for one tiny ape. Do you know, your ancestors were giants compared to
you. Their power almost rivaled our own. Can you imagine it? It was
wise of the dark ones to retreat into the Void and take the magic
with them. It destroyed the elder wizards and now the way is almost
clear for the gods to return. What a triumph it will be.”

A small cloud of greenish
gas had begun to gather around Simon's shield and he knew that it was
the only reason that he wasn't choking on his last breath. Strangely,
the thick gas dribbled like heavy fog from the dragon's jagged maw
and the beast kept its head high above the poisonous cloud.

“
Retreat from the
world?” Simon found his voice at last. “They didn't
retreat from the world. They ran away! They flew in terror from the
gods of Light before they were destroyed. It wasn't a retreat, it was
a rout!”

The head pulled back and
the green hissed even louder than before. Its eyes narrowed and
burned brightly, like the sun at midday. Chlorine dripped like saliva
from its lips.

“
Have a care,
insect! Have a care. Your insults mean nothing, but your death is in
my claws. I can make it as quick or as agonizing as I choose. Do not
incur my wrath.”

Two minutes, Simon
thought. My shield will fail in two minutes. Time to take a leap of
faith.

He hesitated and thought:
I sure hope this works.

“
Incur your wrath?
What wrath?,” he shouted. “I killed the primal black
dragon, watched it disintegrate into small pieces in the deep waters
of the river. Where was your wrath then? I slaughtered your own
drakes like I was stepping on insects while you watched and did
nothing. You have no wrath, no fire! Like your black sibling, you are
nothing but a tool in the hands of twisted, perverse gods. Where is
this vaunted power of the dragons? You drool like a mindless beast
and expect me to be afraid?”

The dragon reared back,
its sinewy body uncoiling as its head lifted higher and higher above
the wizard.

“
You dare! You dare
bait
me
?
Very well. Taste my power. Your puny shield will not stand against
the full force of my breath. Die, human!”

The
dragon sucked in an enormous lungful of air. Simon was almost lifted
from his feet by the vacuum created as it inhaled and inhaled.

And
then the enormous jaws opened and the head shot down toward him
exactly like a striking cobra about to sink its fangs into its prey.
The jaws gaped even wider and a blast of dense chlorine, so thick
that it was almost black, billowed toward him.

“
Invectis
!”
Simon yelled frantically, finally invoking his prepared spell. As the
world dissolved, he raised Bene-Dunn-Gal and activated the tower's
wards.

And
then he was falling head over heels, thick grass grabbing at his body
as he spun and flopped.

Bad
landing, he thought as he came to rest with one arm curled around his
staff and the other in the warm waters of the lake.

“
Master!
Master!” Kronk yelled.

Simon
could hear the little guy's feet skittering across the grass but his
vision was blurred with flashes of red and yellow and he had to close
them for a minute to stop himself from throwing up.

“
By
the Four Winds, what's going on?” Aeris exclaimed, somewhere to
Simon's right.

“
Hi
guys,” he said, eyes still closed. “If I'm here then I
guess I'm still alive. Huh, that's a surprise.”

He
forced himself to open his eyes and sit up. He was sitting on the
sandy shore of the small lake behind the tower. Both Aeris and Kronk
waited a few feet away, identical expressions of surprise on their
faces.

Simon
almost grinned but an ear-splitting scream of rage and pain cut
through the air and suddenly nothing was very funny at all.

He
used Bene-Dunn-Gal to push himself to his feet and turned to look at
the tower.

The
strengthened shield created by the wards glowed dully against the
night sky with its bright, clean stars, but within the shield, the
air had turned thick and green.

Clouds
of pure chlorine gas roiled and bubbled, as thick as heavy smoke, but
much more deadly.

As
Simon watched, he saw the green dragon's head rear up to smash
against the shield. It answered by bursting into light and another
agonized scream shivered the night air.

The
wizard slowly began to walk toward the tower, watching and listening
as the green dragon's attempts to escape became weaker, its cries
more feeble.

“
Simon?
What did you do?” Aeris asked plaintively. “What is
happening?”

The
wizard stopped and leaned on his staff. He felt almost detached from
the entire event that was happening inside the shield and replied to
the air elemental in a dreamy kind of voice.

“
A
long time ago, when I was the old Simon O'Toole, and I had started
training for iron-man competitions, I read this book. It was called
The Way of the Warrior, I think. Written by a Chinese warrior, or
something. A line in the book always stuck in my mind. Something
about using an enemy's own strength against them. Well, that's what I
did here.”

He
waved at the tower. The dragon couldn't be seen anymore, but its
roars still rang out, only now they were tinged with fear.

“
One
of my fantasy books claimed that while a green dragon's main weapon
was poisonous gas, it couldn't actually breathe the gas itself.
Personally I always thought that was a load of horse-sh...well, I
thought that it was absurd. But a little while ago, I saw the primal
green lift its head high enough to stay out of its own cloud of
chlorine gas. It was avoiding breathing the poison.”

He
looked at Aeris, hovering next to his shoulder and then down at
Kronk, who was watching him in open admiration.