The Dragons of Argent and Silver (Tales from the New Earth #6)

by J. J. Thompson

  Simon watched his friend take a large swallow and grimace at the burning of the cognac in his throat.

  “But, surely there must be some countries, some cities that are doing better than we are?” he asked with some desperation. “London maybe or Beijing?”

  “Why would they be?” Daniel asked without turning away from the fire. “People are people. Even the iron-fisted Chinese government can't control a billion people with police batons and harsh language. No, society as we know it is done for. A new order will rise eventually for the survivors, if there are any, but what it will be is anyone's guess. Feudalism maybe? Now that's a horrible thought. Serfs and nobles? Disgusting.”

  “Whatever. I'm not going to think the worst just yet,” Simon told him, completely ignoring what he'd said a minute before. “Let's get back to our situation here. If you want me to head to the tower, fine. I can travel by night along the river; people are afraid of the gangs that have started roaming after dark, but the idiots always have torches and sound like a herd of buffalo so they're easy to avoid. But why don't you come with me? Why tell me to run if you aren't going to do the same?”

  “Because I still have work to do, that's why,” his friend answered sharply.

  Daniel waved at the books that surrounded them. On the walls between the bookshelves, odd relics and strange paintings hung on display; the fruit of Daniel's labors after he had traveled the world and explored countless dig sites and excavations.

  “My research isn't complete yet. And I'm fairly safe here for the time being. After all, I'm not the one Changing.”

  Simon looked at his friend's lanky frame. Ten years younger than himself with a mane of blond hair, Daniel was strikingly handsome. He was fit and tall and always wore a smoking jacket at home, even though the only thing he smoked was the occasional Cuban cigar.

  “Why should you? You're still young.”

  Daniel frowned at him.

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything? Children are Changing, Simon. You know that. It was on the news on a daily basis before all communication failed. Adults like yourself who are going through the Change were almost ignored by reporters. Not interesting enough, I suppose. My age is irrelevant. And I'll tell you something; I wish I had been chosen to Change. I'd give up anything I owned if I had been so lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  Simon lurched to his feet, his uneven body weight almost causing him to tip over.

  “You call this lucky?” he asked, almost yelling. “Look at me! I'm a goddamned circus freak! A hundred years ago they would have put me on stage right next to the bearded lady!”

  Daniel met his angry gaze calmly.

  “Always so dramatic. Sit down, Simon.”

  Simon fell into his chair with an undignified plop and glared at his friend.

  “Look, you don't understand,” Daniel said with a tired sigh. “You, and the others like you, are the future. Yes, you aren't pretty at the moment. Well, boohoo. Cry me a river. But your body will continue to alter itself until you are whole and young and perfect. Trust me on that. And in the new world that is coming, you Changlings will be the survivors. The ones who aren't Changing, like me? We'll be relics of the past. The New Earth will reject us and we will stumble along very quickly into extinction.”

  Simon's anger faded as he tried to grasp what his friend was saying.

  “What are you talking about? What New Earth? What do you think is going to happen, Daniel?”

  His friend set down his glass on a small table next to his chair and turned to stare darkly at Simon.

  “Something is coming, old friend. Something...terrible. I have spent years chasing prophecies, researching ancient texts, building a case in my own mind about the future. I foresaw all of this, you know. The failure of technology, the fall of civilization into chaos. Oh yes, I saw it coming. But I was absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it. And warn people? How? I would have been just another nut job written up in the tabloids alongside stories of alien abductions. But what I also came to realize is that our race had one hope, one small chance at survival; the Changlings.”

  He chuckled a bit and winked at Simon.

  “Little did I know that my best friend would end up being one of them.”

  “I'm sorry. Maybe I'm just thick but I don't understand.”

  Simon finished his liquor and looked down at the empty glass, watching the crystal reflect the dancing light from the fireplace.

  “You say you foresaw this chaos?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “But then, why stay? Why not create a place of your own, like the tower you helped me design for myself? You could be somewhere safe, away from all of this madness, right now.”

  “I told you, Simon. People who don't Change, and that will be the majority of us, are doomed. All the walls and locks and doors won't keep out what is coming; not for us. I do have a plan to save myself though. Maybe it's cowardly of me to want to live beyond the destruction of my species but I've never been a quitter. After you leave and I'm sure you're safe, I will get out of here; I promise you that.”

  “Then come with me,” Simon said, almost begging. “If you're leaving anyway, leave with me. Why hang around?”

  “I want to finish my research. I have some notes to make and I'd like to complete my journal. Maybe someone in the distant future will stumble upon it and find it interesting. Who knows?”

  He gave Simon an strange, knowing look and then refilled both of their glasses.

  “Tomorrow night, old friend, you begin your journey. Now don't argue with me. Every day that passes brings us one step closer to the inevitable end. And from that end you, and the other Changlings as well, will rise like the phoenix reborn from the ashes of our fallen civilization. So cheer up. It will be a glorious future. Frankly, I envy all of you.”

  Simon plunked another stone into the river.

  Daniel had absolutely saved his life. He hadn't known it then but his friend had indeed escaped, not into the countryside but into another dimension. The elves had become interested in him. They had seers who knew that the old gods, both Good and Evil, were returning. And they had seen Daniel traveling around the world; digging for clues, putting the pieces of ancient prophecy together. They had been intrigued and had finally contacted him in visions. And, as the magic leaking into the mortal realm began to reassert itself, they had opened up a portal into their own world and brought Daniel to them.

  “He should have stayed there, damn it!” Simon exclaimed angrily.

  He threw another stone as far out into the river as he could, stood up and climbed down off of the rock. He brushed off his robe with an impatient hand and began walking east, toward the city.

  Yes, Daniel should have stayed with the elves. But instead he chose to return to Earth, to see his best friend one last time.

  “Stupid, stupid,” Simon muttered as he stumbled along the rocky shore. “What the hell was he thinking?”

  But the answer was self-evident. He knew that Simon was going to face the primal black dragon and he knew that he would need an edge. And that edge had been two-fold. Ethmira and her elven archers had joined in the battle and helped to lure the primal black to a place of Simon's choosing. And Daniel had given the wizard an incantation to summon his first real staff, Bene-Dunn-Gal.

  He looked at the staff that he was using as a walking stick. It was a beautiful creation, all metal and white wood; created by Shandon Ironhand, the king of the dwarves.

  But Bene-Dunn-Gal had been special. It had been a relic of ancient times, semi-sentient and incredibly powerful. If it hadn't been for Daniel returning to the Earth and giving Simon his aid, the wizard was quite sure that the black dragon would have won that day.

  And that's why you feel guilty, he said to himself.

  He rounded a long curve along the shoreline and could suddenly see for miles down the river. There, in the distance, was the very site that he had been thinking of: Aylmer Island, the scene of his first gre
at battle against a dragon.

  Without thinking, Simon pointed his staff at that smudge on the river.

  “Gate,” he said and felt a violent yank forward. He stumbled and almost fell as he appeared instantly on the scrubby bit of land surrounded by the white-capped water.

  Out here the wind was quite high and he had to brace himself against its force. His long hair whipped past his eyes and he pushed it back again and again, wishing he'd thought to bring something to tie it back with.

  The island looked much as it had after the clash with the dragon. Several great swatches of the sandy soil had been fused by dragon-fire, but some of the scrub brush that had been burned away that day had regrown and pushed its way up through the crusty surface.

  Nature always comes back, he thought and then turned to look to the southeast.

  And there it was, shining across the wide river; the silhouette of the Parliament Buildings.

  Well, what's left of them anyway, Simon thought.

  The former seat of Canadian political power had been built on the top of a bluff overlooking the river. And its iconic outline, topped by the Peace Tower, was immediately identifiable.

  The tower had resembled Big Ben in London with clock faces on all four sides. Simon could remember being so jaded by familiarity that he would drive by the tower and only look up at it to make sure his watch was showing the correct time.

  That was impossible now. The top of the structure had been ripped away by the black dragon on the Night of Burning. There was barely a third of the tower left pointing at the sky; its sad, ragged outline a stark reminder of the power of the gods of Chaos.

  “Bastards,” Simon muttered as he squeezed his staff so hard that it squeaked.

  He stood still and looked at the buildings for a long time while the wind whipped his hair in all directions, lost in bitter memories. Gradually though it dawned on him that there was something different about the silhouette that he was staring at.

  Simon frowned as he walked to the very edge of the island and peered as hard as he could across the river.

  “The tower is still ruined. The other buildings are still shapeless piles of rubble. So what's changed?”

  He finally worked out the difference from his last memories of the place.

  “Someone's built something on top of the Peace Tower,” he said to himself. “It's still misshapen and a wreck, but it is definitely higher than it was four years ago.”

  Who would do that? And why?

  Simon found a semi-comfortable spot on the ground clear of glassy residue and sat down to think.

  Why build up a tower? The obvious answer would be to use it as a look-out, a guard post. But when he had retreated from the city, racing to get out of town before the sunset, there had been no organization, no cohesive group of people inhabiting the city. There had just been a small group of Changlings, odd creatures who had begun Changing as children and had powers that he still didn't understand, and their hunters. The hunters, unseen by Simon at the time, had been led by an unpleasant-sounding woman who had called herself Madam.

  Madam. The name still made him shiver. A year after Simon had fled the city, Madam had come calling on his friends in the town of Nottinghill, leading an undead army. It turned out that the creature had been a lich, raised by the dark gods to wipe out any and all people she could find. She had nearly succeeded with the inhabitants of the small settlement.

  Simon's powers had been very limited then. He could only memorize a few spells at a time and the battle had been a near thing.

  “You know, I owe that victory to my first staff,” he said to Mortis de Draconis, holding it across his knees. “It was very clever, for a length of sentient wood, I mean.”

  Madam and her followers had been destroyed, but before that happened the monster claimed to have killed the young Changlings in the city and turned them into her undead slaves. If that was true, then who had built the addition to the Peace Tower?

  She could have been lying, Simon thought as he stared at the misshapen tower. She might have just said that to piss me off. And if that's the case, maybe they still live. They could be thriving. Who knows?

  He remembered the one youngster who had saved his life the day he returned to his home town. Covered from head to toe in rags and as small as a child, she had warned him to run when Madam and her pack had cornered him.

  “Sarah,” he whispered.

  She said her name was Sarah. She and her group of Changlings, all hidden from prying eyes in cast-off rags, had constantly been on the move to stay ahead of the undead. But even though their leader, Bobby, had distrusted Simon, Sarah had given him a warning, and a gift. She had warned him to leave the city before sundown, and she had handed him a pebble. On one side, a weird rune had been etched into its surface.

  Where is that little stone, he wondered. Simon was sure that it was somewhere in his tower. It had been precious to him. Sarah had somehow used it to communicate with him when Madam was closing in, telling him to run. She said that the unseen menace was powerless in the sunlight, and she had been right.

  Unfortunately, once he had left the city his connection to the child had faded away and he'd never seen or heard from her again.

  Simon stood up with a grunt and leaned on his staff. He looked at the tower once again.

  If I just Gate blindly into town, I could be in for an unpleasant surprise. I need to scout with the Magic Mirror spell first, but even that might not be good enough.

  I need to find that pebble, he thought.

  Simon took one last look at the distant tower and held up his staff.

  “Gate.”

  Chapter 16

  An hour later, Simon and the two elementals were tearing up the tower, searching for Sarah's pebble.

  “Damn it,” the wizard said as he groped through his desk in the study. “If I was an enchanted bit of rock, where would I hide?”

  “Does that method actually work?” Aeris asked as he peered into the bookshelves, scanning one row at a time.

  “Not really. What I should say is, if I was a distracted young wizard with very few powers and his head up his ass, where would I drop a pebble? That might work better.”

  Aeris snickered while continuing his search.

  “As amusing as that sounds, my dear wizard, you are being too hard on yourself. Back then you didn't think that you would ever be returning to your old city. You were concerned with survival, mastering your craft, learning all that you could about magic. That pebble must have seemed inconsequential at that time.”

  “I'm still concerned with all of those things,” Simon told him as he knelt down and searched the floor under his desk. “But now that pebble is a hell of a lot more important to me than it was then.”

  “Master!” Kronk shouted from downstairs.

  Simon's head jerked up in surprise and slammed into the underside of the desk. He yelled in pain and then pulled out every curse word he'd ever known as he held his throbbing skull.

  There was a moment of silence in the tower, punctuated by the wizard's continued cursing, and Kronk stuck his head in the room.

  “Master?” he said tentatively.

  “Relax,” Aeris told him as Simon got to his feet, one hand holding the top of his head.

  “Our great leader just smacked himself. He'll live.”

  “Oh master, was that because of me? I am so sorry!”

  “Relax, Kronk,” Simon told him. “Ouch. It's not...ow...your fault. I was just startled, that's all.”

  He held his head a minute longer and then checked his hand for blood. His mass of hair had prevented any real damage and Simon now felt like an idiot.

  A feeling I've become all too familiar with, he thought with pained amusement.

  “Anyway, what's up?” he asked Kronk as he said down gingerly on the chair behind the desk.

  The little guy tip-tapped across the room, jumped up on the desk and stood looking at Simon dubiously.

  “Are you sure you
are okay, master? I could get a poultice or something for your injury.”

  “I'm fine. Really. Now, why did you howl like a banshee?”

  Aeris floated over and stood next to Kronk. The earthen looked at him, puzzled.

  “Did I howl like a banshee? I have heard a banshee's howl and I do not think my voice could ever hit that high a note.”

  “Hmm, good point,” Aeris answered thoughtfully. “Actually I'd say you bellowed like a buffalo. Much lower tone.”

  “A buffalo? Really? I do not know about that. That sounds undignified. Perhaps a rock golem or...”

  Simon sighed in exasperation and tapped on the desk.

  “Guys? We're getting off track here. Let's focus. Kronk, what is going on?”

  “Oh yes. Well master, I've thought of a simpler way to find that bit of stone. I can go down below the root of the tower and merge with it. That way I can feel every bit of rock and stone in the building. If that pebble is here, I will find it.”

  “Wow. You can do that?”

  “Oh yes, master. It is difficult and will take some time but I can certainly do it.”

  Simon leaned forward and stared into the little guy's burning red eyes.

  “Is it painful?”

  Kronk seemed puzzled.

  “Painful? No master, quite the opposite. For one of my kind, it is actually quite liberating. We are one with the stone for a time.”

  The little guy looked around and lowered his voice.

  “Indeed, master, I have heard of some of my people merging with stone and never returning. Whether because they could not or they chose not to is a mystery.”

  “Hang on just a minute,” Aeris interjected. “If that's true, then how do we know if you'll even return from this merging thingy? I don't know about the great and powerful wizard here,” Simon rolled his eyes, “but I for one don't feel like living in a place made partially of your dead body. That's...gross.”