Eric was the tallest and strongest of the group. He could cast Shield, a very useful ability that had saved the four of them on several occasions.
And Gerard, no taller than Anna, with white-blonde hair and a mischievous nature, was the joker of the bunch. He was also, in some ways, the most powerful. He could use magic like a blunt instrument. Tamara had seen him knock over trees that were three feet across and smash through a wall once. But he hated that power and used it sparingly. She believed that it frightened him.
We're quite a collection, Tamara thought as she accepted a cup of tea from Sebastian with a smile of thanks. And, except for Simon and that handful of mages sailing on the Defiant, we might be humanity's last hope. God help us.
“Okay everyone,” she spoke up.
The hum of conversation ceased and all heads turned to look at her.
“I'm sorry to get you all out of bed, but we've received some news and I thought that it was important enough to disturb your rest.”
Malcolm yawned and covered his mouth quickly.
“Sorry. Go ahead, Tamara. We're listening.”
She looked pointedly past him at Aiden, who was nodding in his seat.
The big man poked his partner in the ribs and Aiden snorted and looked around blearily.
“Hmm? What? Oh, absolutely. I agree. Who did you want me to kill?”
Several members of the group chuckled and Malcolm rolled his eyes.
“Pay attention,” he chided.
“Always.”
Tamara smiled reluctantly. She could never stay irritated at either of the warriors.
“Okay, if we're all awake now? Good. Simon called me about an hour ago and told me that he'd spoken with Argentium.”
“The dragon?” Anna blurted. “Oh-oh. There's trouble?”
“Yes, but also an opportunity. Let me explain.”
Tamara told them all exactly what Simon had told her. The room remained hushed as she spoke; everyone was focused on what she was saying.
When she had finished and picked up her cup, the mage looked from one person to the next.
“Any questions?”
“Questions? My God, yes,” Aiden said quickly. “Where to begin?”
“Allow me,” Malcolm cut in. He looked troubled.
“If I'm understanding you, Tamara, you're telling us that these necromancers have received direct aid from the lords of Chaos, correct? That they've been given relics or mystic symbols that enhance their powers over the dead?”
“So Simon tells me, because that's what Argentium and Esmiralla told him.”
“Okay, putting aside the fact that we don't even know how many of those bastards are out there, how are we supposed to find them and their relics? I assume that's what you'll be suggesting we do?”
She shook her head.
“I'm just the messenger. I'm not asking any of you to do anything. All I'm doing is passing along the information I was given. Now you know as much as I do. Go ahead and discuss it amongst yourselves.”
They all began doing just that. Sebastian was sitting to Tamara's right and he leaned toward her.
“Shouldn't you get in touch with Simon?” he asked quietly under the general chatter that had filled the room.
“I will. I wanted to share the intel first. And one is them is bound to ask me to do just that in a minute. Let them. It will make them feel more involved.”
Her brother gave her a look that Tamara knew well.
“What?” she whispered irritably. “I'm not their bloody leader. They all have to have a say in things and suggesting I call the wizard helps them feel like I'm not trying to run the show.”
“Humility, Tammy? Really?”
She glared at him but Sebastian just grinned back silently until she gave him a reluctant smile.
“Yes, really. Happy now? I've learned that being the sole leader isn't really my cup of tea.”
She drank her own tea and shuddered.
“Neither is this. It's cold.”
“I'll get you some more,” her brother offered but Tamara shook her head.
“Later. Let's wait and see what comes out of this discussion.”
Tamara turned out to be correct. The group exchanged ideas and rehashed what the mage had told them and eventually Victoria looked up the table at her.
“Tammy? Shouldn't we include Simon in this whole thing? He's the one who spoke with the argent dragon, after all.”
Sebastian gave her a pointed look and Tamara ignored him.
“I agree. I wanted you to talk it out first, that's all.”
As she picked up a hand mirror that lay on the table in front of her, there was a knock on the door. Eric was the closest and he got up to answer it.
“Tell whoever it is that we're busy,” Tamara called out roughly. “Unless there's a dragon knocking on the front gate, we don't want any.”
Gerard chuckled while Eric just nodded. He opened the door and spoke with someone out in the hallway.
“It's not a dragon,” Eric said loudly. “Would you settle for a wizard?”
“What?”
He pushed back the door and Simon stepped into the conference room.
“Simon!” Malcolm bellowed, delighted.
He jumped up, crossed the room in a couple of long strides and slapped the wizard on the back.
“Whoops, sorry,” the big man said as Simon almost collapsed. “I really have to stop doing that.”
“I'd appreciate that,” the wizard wheezed.
He had caught himself on the back of Eric's empty chair and held on until he found his balance.
“Damn it, Malcolm! Why do I keep having to remind you of your own strength?” Aiden barked as he hurried over to Simon to offer him a hand.
“I'm okay, thanks. Just let me catch my breath.”
Everyone greeted him as he took a moment to regain his equilibrium. The wizard smiled and nodded at each of them and then followed Sebastian as he led him across the room to the head of the table.
“You know, I was just about to call you back,” Tamara told him as Simon made his way toward her.
Sebastian brought over a seat and the wizard sat down on his sister's left side, leaning his staff against the back of the chair.
“Yeah, I figured. I decided that this was too important to talk about at a distance.”
“Well, I appreciate it. Our friends here have been brought up to date and have a few questions.”
Simon grinned at all of the familiar faces. He loved living alone and free, but he had to admit that he had missed this group of people.
“I'm sure they do. I'll try to answer them as well as I can.”
“Tea?” Sebastian asked as he offered Simon a steaming cup. “I added honey. I know that you like it that way.”
“Ah, thank you so much.”
He accepted the cup and sipped it gratefully. It helped to keep his fatigue at bay.
“Okay, fire away.”
Almost everyone had a question or two and the wizard answered the ones that he could. He was also frank about the fact that he didn't know a lot more than they did.
“Argentium did not give specifics about how we're supposed to find these magical focusing artifacts and glyphs. He left that up to us. So now I have my own question: does anyone have an idea on how to do that?”
There was no response as everyone looked around at each other. The three mages exchanged glances but none of them offered up anything.
“Um, Simon?”
He looked down the table at the hesitant speaker and Anna blushed as everyone focused on her.
“Yes Anna? You have some thoughts?”
She nodded and tried to speak. Her voice broke and she became even redder. In the candlelight, she looked younger than she was.
Virginia smiled gently and gave her friend's hand a squeeze. It seemed to give Anna a boost of courage and she sat up as tall as she could and met Simon's eyes.
“I do, yes. We,” she indicated herself and her thr
ee friends, “have been working on our magic, trying to refine our powers and techniques. Gerard especially.”
She smiled and wrinkled her nose at the young man and he rolled his eyes in return.
“He doesn't like using his powers for offense, as I think we all know. So he's worked hard to find new ways to channel that energy. Do you want to tell them what you can do now?”
“It's just a parlor trick, Anna,” Gerard protested. “I doubt that it would help in this situation.”
“It might actually, now that I think about it,” Eric contradicted him. “It's just a different target, Ger. Think of it like that.”
The young man looked doubtful and Tamara, who had been frowning at the foursome, spoke up.
“What exactly are you lot talking about? What parlor trick?”
Gerard hesitated and Anna seemed exasperated by his reluctance and answered instead.
“He can find things,” she told them all. “Lost things. For example, a few months ago I lost a locket that was precious to me.”
She put a hand on her chest just below her neck and her expression became sad and lost for a moment. Virginia waited and then gave her arm a little shake and whispered something. Anna nodded and continued.
“It was a gift I received from my daughter, not long before the old world was destroyed. She and her family didn't make it.”
Simon was shaken as if struck by a blow. It was so easy to forget their past lives, but he recalled that Anna had been an older woman with a grown child when she had been Changed. It was a reminder that, once upon a time, they had all been something else.
“Anyway, I lost the locket somehow and I was very upset. Gerard came to me the next day and held out his hand. He had the locket! When I asked him where he'd found it, he said that he had been drawn to the garden just outside the front gate. I'd been weeding there all week.”
“What does that mean, drawn to the garden?” Sebastian asked Gerard. “Drawn how?”
“I have no idea,” he replied frankly. “When Anna told us about her loss and I saw how upset she was about it, I just thought that I'd like to find it for her. I don't like to see her unhappy.”
The diminutive woman smiled at him and it was Gerard's turn to blush.
“After that, a picture of the garden just, I don't know, popped into my head and I wandered over there to poke around. I found the amulet almost immediately.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Since then, for fun really, I've tried to find other things that people have lost or misplaced.”
“He found my favorite dagger,” Malcolm said loudly and slapped the sheathed dagger on his belt. Even when he wasn't wearing armor, he always carried the weapon with him.
“He's found a lot of things for a lot of people,” Anna told them. “And the more he uses this 'trick', the better he gets at it.”
“Gerard, what are the limitations?” Simon asked the young man. “Are you limited by distance or type of object or what?”
“Well, I don't want to sound like I'm showing off...”
“He's not limited by any of that,” Eric interrupted his friend. “Honestly Ger, you have to be more assertive, you know?”
The wizard smiled at them and felt a rush of excitement.
“So if I asked you to focus on, say, a glyph, could you locate it?”
Gerard shrugged.
“I have no idea. Do you have a picture of it?”
Simon glanced across the table at Sebastian, who nodded.
“I'll get some paper and a pencil,” he said as he got up and hurried from the room.
“Can you find people, Gerard?” Tamara asked as they waited for her brother to return.
“People?” He frowned. “Good question. I've never actually tried.”
“Well, keep it in mind. If we could track down these necromancers individually, we could take them out one at a time. Probably the safest way of attacking them.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Aiden cautioned her. “If they are surrounded by their undead armies, 'taking them out' as you put it might not be as easy as you make it sound.”
“I didn't say easy,” she replied, giving him a hard look, “I said safer. None of these battles will be easy.”
Sebastian came back into the room and hurried down the table, offering Simon the writing materials.
“Thanks, Bastian,” he said and began drawing the symbol.
The memory of that glyph on the beach blazed clearly in his mind and he easily replicated it.
“Gerard? Could you take a look at this and see what you think?”
Simon handed the sheet of paper down the table to the pale young man and then sat back and waited to see what would happen.
“Hmm. Odd looking thing, isn't it?”
“Now's not the time to be an art critic,” Eric said to him. “See if you can, I don't know, feel other symbols like that out in the world somewhere.”
Gerard gave him an exasperated look but focused on the drawing.
“If I only knew how the whole thing worked,” he muttered as he studied the glyph. “It would be so much easier than just...waiting for a feeling.”
The room grew quiet and the atmosphere became tense. Simon knew that this might be their only hope of finding those evil symbols quickly. If it didn't work, he'd have to send out Aeris and his people to begin the search, and that could take months.
If they ever found them at all, he thought darkly.
“Anything?” Anna asked Gerard hesitantly after a few minutes.
He was frowning down at the paper and his head was cocked to the side, as if he was hearing a distant sound.
“Maybe,” he said slowly. “There is something. Somethings, actually. Anyone, which way is north?”
Malcolm pointed to the right of where Simon was sitting.
“That way,” he said quickly.
“Okay. Could I have that pencil?”
Sebastian grabbed it and gave it to him and Gerard flipped over the sheet of paper.
“Okay, so north is that way?”
He drew an arrow on the page and marked it with an N.
“Now, I'm sensing three points of attraction. This way, this way and over there.”
He drew three other arrows while Malcolm looked over his shoulder.
“So, to the southwest, the south and almost directly east,” the big man said. “Any idea how far?”
“It's not that precise. But the one to the east is the closest. I'm guessing it's just across the channel. Southwest is next and the southern one is very far away.”
Tamara sighed loudly.
“Well, it's better than nothing. Simon, this is where we'll need your help. Could you send three of your air elementals in those directions to see if they can find those glyphs? I suppose that they will have to travel at night to spot them in the dark.”
“They may not,” Simon told her. “They are magical creatures, after all. I'd hazard a guess that they will be able to spot the markings no matter whether the sun is up or not.”
“Then you'll do it?”
He smiled at Tamara.
“I'll ask. They aren't my servants, after all.”
“Right, right. Sorry.”
“No problem.” He looked around at the group. “You might want to plug your ears.”
“Our ears?” Keiko asked, speaking for the first time. “Why?”
Simon just smiled and looked at the center of the long table.
“Aeris, Brethia, Orriss. I need you.”
He quickly put his fingers in his ears while most of the others just looked at him in confusion.
“He's calling them now?” he heard Anna ask faintly.
The wizard noticed that Malcolm and Aiden didn't hesitate. They blocked their ears immediately.
He'd only summoned three air elementals at the same time once before. And after his ears stopped ringing, even though he'd plugged them, Simon vowed to never do so again.
The triple clap of thunder
stunned everyone in the room and the elementals spent a few minutes floating together above the middle of the table, looking quite embarrassed.
“Didn't you warn them?” Aeris asked Simon as he looked around at the pained expressions on all of their faces.
“Of course I did. I told them to plug their ears.”
“Did you explain why?”
“Well, no. But...”
“And this is the wizard I serve willingly, ladies and gentlemen,” Aeris said sarcastically. “I must be crazy.”
“No argument here,” Simon told him.
“Now wait just a minute!”
“Boys, boys,” Tamara interrupted. She looked both amused and sore, as she rubbed her temples.
“No time for joking around; this is important.”
“Who's joking?” Aeris asked with a long look at Simon.
Both Brethia and Orriss looked scandalized at the way he was speaking and the wizard had a hard time keeping a straight face.
“Tamara is right. She asked me to ask you if you all would do us a favor.”
“Of course we will,” Aeris said quickly while the others hurriedly nodded. “Anything for a friend of the great and powerful...well, this wizard here.”
Malcolm snorted a laugh while Simon just rolled his eyes.
“Fine. Look at this paper. You see the three arrows? We need you each to pick a direction, stay on that course as accurately as you can and follow it until you find a magical glyph that looks like this.”
And Simon flipped the paper over to show them the symbol.
“That's the symbol that has been drawing the dead from the oceans?” Aeris asked seriously, his teasing forgotten.
“That's the one. Gerard here,” Simon nodded at him and the young man smiled wanly at the elementals, “has sensed the glyphs, but the best that he can do is tell us their direction and which one is closest. Finding them is now up to you three, if you want to do it.”
“We will be honored, my lord,” Brianna told him earnestly.
Both she and Orriss bowed to the entire company, while Aeris nodded to everyone.
“Good,” Simon said. “Go ahead and decide who goes where and leave when you're ready.”
The three elementals huddled together. They whispered and examined the symbol again. Then they flipped over the paper, looked at the arrows and nodded in unison. With a triple pop, all of them disappeared.
Tales from the New Earth: Volume Two Page 77