Darkness and silence followed the violent reaction of the wizard and both elementals collected themselves slowly. Aeris flew down to stand next to Kronk and they caught each others eyes.
“Did it work?” Aeris wondered.
Before the earthen could answer, the bed creaked and Simon groaned.
“Why the hell am I soaking wet?” he mumbled in confusion.
“Master! You're awake.”
A spark of white appeared in the gloom and a magical light grew out of it and rose up to hover near the ceiling.
“Kronk?”
The wizard was sitting up in bed, his long hair plastered to his face and head. His skin glittered with beads of water and he was shaking with cold.
“What happened?” he asked through chattering teeth. “Is this some sort of a joke?”
“You are chilled, master. One moment and I will get you a towel.”
While the little guy rummaged around in the chest of drawers, Simon rolled out of bed and stood up, his skinny legs shaking.
“My bed is soaked. Aeris? Was this your idea?”
“You're welcome,” the air elemental replied dryly. “You were in the grip of a nightmare, my dear wizard.”
He gestured at the room around them.
“In your sleep, you were actually damaging the tower. It seemed prudent to wake you up.”
“You couldn't just yell or shake me?”
“You didn't hear us yelling. And frankly, the magical energy you were emitting looked a tad too dangerous to touch, so I decided that cold water might be the best option.”
“Aha!” Kronk said and pulled a thick white towel out of a drawer.
He hurried over and handed it to Simon, who took it gratefully and began drying off.
“Thanks Kronk. Wow, I was using magic in my sleep? That's something new.”
“Stress perhaps,” Aeris said as he surveyed the room. “Kronk, you'll have to check the walls when you get a chance. I think I see a few new cracks.”
“Yes I will, as soon as master has recovered.”
Simon finished drying himself off and hurried to his wardrobe to grab the thickest robe he could find. He slipped it over his head, tightened the belt and began searching in his drawers for some socks.
“What time is it anyway?” he asked as he slipped them on quickly.
“Almost dawn,” Aeris told him. “The clouds are thick this morning, so it's darker than usual at this time of day. I feel rain in the air.”
“Lovely.”
Simon padded over to the bed and stripped the sheets off of it. He sighed tiredly and looked at Aeris.
“They're soaked.”
“Well, what of it? Would you rather I had let you bring down the tower on your head? You have clean sheets to replace them after the mattress dries out.”
He flew over and patted the bed.
“And it's barely damp. It should be dry in a few hours. Here, give me those, oh whiny one.”
“Hey, be nice,” Simon said as he handed over the sheets. “It's a bit of a shock to be woken up by a bucket of cold water, you know.”
“It was a pot actually, but I'm sure it is. Could you hand me that blanket too? I'll hang it down in the cellar. It will just get wet again if I use the clothesline outside.”
Simon picked up the blanket, folded it and gave it to Aeris.
The elemental winked at him and left the room, so small compared to the bundle of bedclothes that they looked like they were flying by themselves.
The wizard felt a little better knowing that Aeris had been teasing him, but he was still muddled.
“Master, perhaps some coffee and something to eat?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I won't be getting any more sleep for a while. Lead the way, Kronk.”
Downstairs, while the earthen stoked the fire, Simon readied his coffee and tried to remember what exactly he'd been dreaming about that had make him react the way that he did.
“It's weird,” he said to Kronk as he sliced some bread. The baker at the castle was amazing and he'd picked up two loaves while he was there.
“All I can recall from my dream, nightmare, whatever, are weird flashes. I think there was a dragon, maybe more than one. And there was a battle of some kind. But the worst thing was this feeling of...suffocating. It was like I was drowning in deep water.”
He shivered and pulled his robe tightly around him.
“Horrible.”
“It sounds very frightening, master,” Kronk agreed. “But surely you have had bad dreams before? Why would this one affect you so much that you used your magic?”
“You got me,” Simon replied. “But I don't like it. I don't believe in predictions and stuff, but I have this terrible feeling of menace, of someone or something approaching in the distance, creeping toward us.”
“Well, the walls are manned, master. Nothing will be able to sneak up on us before we are warned of its presence.”
“Let's hope you're right.”
Simon toasted his bread over the fire, smothered it with blueberry jam, the last of his preserves from the previous year, and began to eat. As he was chewing and thinking, there was a sound of pattering against the windows.
“Here comes the rain,” he said absently. “Perfectly suited to my mood.”
Aeris flew up from the basement and across the room to the kitchen table.
“The wet bedclothes are hung up,” he announced rather proudly.
“Wonderful.”
The air elemental looked over at Kronk as he added a log to the fire and moved it around until he was satisfied with its positioning.
“Sarcasm? From you?” Aeris asked, a little surprised.
“Me? Hardly. But it is something that you would say to me, is it not?”
“Guys? Please, no arguing. I'm just not in the mood,” Simon said irritably.
“Who's arguing? I'm not arguing. Kronk, are we arguing?”
The earthen tapped over to the table and jumped up.
“No, we are not arguing. Did you think we were arguing, master?”
Simon swallowed the last of his toast and put his hands over his ears.
“All right! Stop that.”
The elementals both grinned at him and he smiled grudgingly in return.
“You two are going to drive me nuts one day, I swear.”
“How will we know?” Aeris asked innocently.
Simon threw a crust of bread at him and the elemental dodged it with ease.
There was a brilliant flash of light from outside that lit up the room for a second.
“Oh great. Not just rain but a storm,” the wizard moaned.
His next sentence was drowned out by a clap of thunder.
“What did you say?” Aeris asked him.
“It doesn't matter. Anyway, now that I'm fully awake, or close enough, let's talk about our most pressing problem.”
He picked up his cup, walked over to the comfy chair in front of the fireplace and sat down heavily. He tucked his feet underneath him and began sipping his coffee.
“Which one?” Aeris wondered as he flew over to sit down on an arm of the chair. “We do have a list of problems, you know.”
“Tell me about it. I'm talking about the missing necromancers. Do you still think that I should send out a bunch of air elementals to do a wide-ranging search?”
Aeris crossed his legs and rose to float an inch above the chair. He watched pensively as Kronk jumped from the table to the floor and then tip-tapped over to the fireplace.
“I don't really see another alternative, do you?” he asked Simon soberly. “If any of those evil wizards were spotted out in the world, then we would at least have a place to start searching, but they haven't been. What else can we do?”
“Well, there is Kronk's idea.”
“To call upon the argent dragon for help?” Aeris scoffed. “Really? Oh please. We've learned to our sorrow that the silver dragon can't be trusted. Why should Argentium be any different?”
&nb
sp; Kronk sat down in front of the fire with a gentle thump, facing Simon, and stared speculatively at the air elemental.
“Are you still so bitter over your disillusionment with Esmiralla that you have closed your mind entirely? We do not know that the argent dragon is as treacherous as she was.”
“We don't know that he isn't, do we? Are you willing to take that chance?”
The little guy nodded toward Simon.
“It is not my decision. It is our master's.”
Aeris looked at the wizard.
“And? What do you think?”
“Don't look at me like that,” Simon replied.
He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms over his head, groaning a bit.
“I have to go with my gut on this one, guys. We've used your people to scout before, Aeris. They did a great job, but they also missed so much.”
“Well, come now. It's a big world,” Aeris protested. “If you'd given them another six months or so, or summoned more of them, they would have had more success.”
“I can't have more than ten elementals from each realm working for me at a time,” Simon reminded him. “And I'm not blaming you or your people for making any mistakes. I'm just saying that we are in a different situation now. We simply don't have the time to do a global search for these necromancers. I need to know...”
He stopped in mid-sentence and stared at Kronk with wide eyes.
“Master? What is it?”
“Oh my God,” Simon whispered. “I think I just remembered what I was dreaming about last night.”
Aeris stood up and watch him intently.
“What was it?” he asked carefully.
“I think...I think it was the end of the world.”
Simon put his hands over his face and shook his head in denial.
“It was horrible,” he said, his voice muffled. “They were crawling out of every hole, every grave, every stinking crypt. Thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, covering the Earth like ants or locusts. But that can't happen, can it? I mean, something like that isn't possible, right?”
He dropped his hands and gave Aeris a look of desperation.
“Easy there, my dear wizard,” the air elemental said calmly. “What are you talking about? Who are they?”
“Undead,” Simon said, his voice straining. “Undead everywhere. And not just those pathetic skeletons. There were hulking revenants twice the size of a man, hideous wraiths that throbbed with unholy power. And other things even worse. My God, they were terrifying.”
“It was a dream, master. Only a dream.”
“Was it, Kronk? How do we know that? What if the lords of Light were sending me a warning?”
“And what if their black-hearted cousins were messing with your head?” Aeris countered. “You can't know, can you?”
Simon stared at him, blank-faced.
“I...no, you're right. I can't know. But either way, what do we do? How do we prepare, if it was a warning or even if it wasn't?”
The elementals exchanged looks and Aeris reluctantly nodded at Kronk.
“As much as it pains me to say this, maybe our rock-headed friend is right, just this once. Perhaps you should speak with Argentium. After all, you don't actually have to agree to anything he says, do you? Just tell him what your concerns are and see what he thinks.”
The look of surprise on Kronk's face as Aeris agreed with him broke through Simon's momentary sense of panic and he had to smile. It was weak and fleeting but better than fear.
“He got you that time, didn't he?”
“Yes master, he most certainly did.”
“Okay guys, if that's the consensus, I'll speak with the argent dragon.”
Simon frowned and looked at Aeris in confusion.
“How exactly do I get in touch with him anyway?” he asked.
“Find the tallest point of land that you can and call his name,” the air elemental replied matter-of-factly. “How else?”
“Yeah, right. Of course. How stupid of me. Aeris, in case you haven't noticed, there aren't exactly a lot of mountains in this part of the world. The highest point would probably be one of the Gatineau Hills, and they're only a few hundred feet tall.”
“Ah, right. That's a problem. I don't understand the process, but you definitely need to be up quite high to summon Argentium.”
Simon finished his coffee and set down his cup.
Where could he go to get the dragon's attention?
“Master? If I may?”
“Hmm?”
The little guy kicked a cinder back into the fire and looked up at Simon.
“You have recently visited mountains, have you not? Why not just return there, pick out a high point and Gate to it?”
Simon looked at Aeris and then pointed at Kronk.
“See? That's why I've always said that he's the smart one.”
“I don't remember you ever saying that.”
“All the time,” the wizard replied as he stood up. “I say it all the time.”
“Nope, never heard that before.”
Simon grabbed his cup, walked over to the counter and left it in the sink.
“Okay, I'm going to get dressed properly and get going before I lose my nerve,” he told the elementals. “So who's coming along?”
It was cloudy and the wind had a bite to it when Simon appeared in the high meadow where he had left the Haladanin. He looked around but there was no sign of the bear people.
“Huh. I wonder where they went?”
“Possibly the forests, master.”
Kronk was staring down the slopes at the thick growths of trees far below.
“They left their hives up here though,” Aeris pointed out.
He had risen up about twenty feet and was turning in a slow circle.
Simon saw the pyramid-like shapes of the hives and felt some relief. If the bees were being tended to, that meant that Galder and his people were okay. He hoped.
“Good to know. Now,” he looked up at the looming mountains stretching into the leaden sky. “Which one should I choose?”
Kronk swished through the long grass and jumped up and down to get a better look. The wizard knew better than to pick him up or even offer to; the earthen would definitely be offended.
“Whichever one you decide on, master, will be fine. But all of them are windy and capped with snow. Do not forget to cast a shield spell before you go up there. Oh and Diamond Skin, so that you will not freeze.”
“Don't you ever get tired of mothering?” Aeris asked him as he descended to hover near Simon's right shoulder.
“Don't you ever get tired of criticizing others?” Kronk retorted.
“Not especially, no. Keeps you on your toes.”
“I do not have toes. Now hush and let master decide.”
Simon tuned them out as he looked from one peak to the next. None looked very welcoming. He could see streamers of snow blowing from all of them.
Must be freezing up there, he thought with a shiver.
He sighed and shook his hair out of his eyes. He slipped Mortis de Draconis off of his back and planted it firmly on the ground.
“That one,” Simon said and pointed at the mountaintop that rose up almost directly in front of them.
“Ugh. Oh well, if that's your choice, we might as well get on with it.”
The wizard looked at Aeris and raised an eyebrow.
“Why does it matter to you? You don't feel the cold.”
The elemental put his hands on his hips and stared up past the steep mountain slopes to the distant peak.
“I don't know. It just looks formidable, doesn't it? Uninviting.”
“I think it looks lovely,” Kronk said with an almost affectionate tone to his voice.
“Earthen,” Aeris said with a roll of his eyes.
Simon tried to fix the shape of the peak in his mind, focusing on its jagged top and the way the snow blew away in long ribbons.
“Grab on, guys, before I lose my nerve.”
The elementals moved to their usual positions and Simon raised his staff.
“Diamond Skin,” he said, and felt his skin stiffen as the spell took hold. He suddenly looked like a crystalline statue of himself.
“Shield.”
An opaque globe of energy popped up around him and the elementals.
He narrowed his eyes in anticipation and stared up into the heights.
“Gate.”
Chapter 27
The conditions on the top of the mountain were even worse than Simon imagined. The west wind howled as it tore the snow off of the peak and he knew that if it wasn't for his spells, he might have frozen to death in minutes.
The clouds were so low at this height that he could barely see a hundred feet in any direction and, when he looked down at the green slopes below, he couldn't see anything but swaths of green in the far distance.
“Tell me again why this was a good idea?” he asked, almost yelling at the elementals over the screaming winds.
Aeris carefully let go of the wizard's robe. He'd apparently forgotten that the shield spell blocked the wind as well as much of the cold and he seemed worried that he'd blow away.
Kronk, on the other hand, looked delighted. His craggy little face lit up as he stared at the rugged and broken rock around them and Simon actually heard him laugh a bit as he tapped his feet on the ground.
Well, at least one of us is having a good time, he thought sourly.
“It's not a good idea,” Aeris replied loudly. “It's an act of desperation. And we don't even know if it will work.”
“What? But you said that this was how to contact him!”
“Look, I know what I learned ages ago; if you want to summon a lawful dragon, you climb to the top of a mountain and call them by name. But they aren't pets, my dear wizard. If Argentium chooses to ignore your summons, then that is that.”
Simon shivered. He wasn't cold, although even with the hardened diamond skin coating his body he imagined that he could feel an icy chill. But the atmosphere up here was oppressive. It truly felt like some sort of alien landscape.
The Dragons of Argent and Silver (Tales from the New Earth #6) Page 33