The Dragons Return

by J. J. Thompson

  The elvish maiden glared at him silently for a minute and then turned to her people and had a hurried discussion.

  Simon watched and waited, his fingers crossed.

  Finally, Ethmira looked back at him and nodded once.

  “Very well. We cannot fault the dwarves for their willingness to engage a dragon. And, since we are not sharing common ground during the fight, we will put our quarrel behind us, for today.”

  She paused and added grudgingly, “They do have some impressive machines, I will admit. They may be of some use.”

  Simon sagged with relief.

  “Thanks for that. I really appreciate your open-mindedness.”

  “Necessity makes strange bedfellows, Simon,” she called back to him and managed a small smile.

  He grinned and waved and then returned to Clara and the others.

  “What was that all about?” the cleric asked.

  “Race relations, I guess,” he replied. “I think it'll be fine, at least for now. We'll worry about an elven-dwarven war tomorrow.”

  She looked at him sharply and then chuckled.

  “Good. Look, the arbalest is almost ready.”

  Simon stared at the machine in wonder.

  It looked like a gigantic crossbow. The body was about ten feet long and the cross-piece was almost as wide. Four metal pegs had been pounded into the ground to stabilize the thing and, as they watched, Shandon bent over and turned a crank that slowly drew back the thick metal bowstring until it clunked into place.

  “Load it,” he told the dwarves and one of them grabbed a spike and slid it into place.

  All in all a lethal looking weapon, Simon thought hopefully. Let's hope its as dangerous as it looks.

  With a little pop, Aeris appeared a foot from Simon's face and he jumped back in surprise.

  “Gees, Aeris! A little warning would have been...”

  “It's coming.” the elemental said excitedly, cutting him off. “I saw it far off in the west, flapping lazily up along the river. You should be able to see it for yourself in a few minutes.”

  Simon's surprise turned into a cold ball of ice in his stomach and he looked around for a minute, unsure of what to do first.

  Everyone seemed to be watching him and Aeris finally flew up to his shoulder and whispered to him.

  “Move your ass, Simon. It's show-time.”

  He stared at the wispy little face so close to his own and Aeris winked.

  Simon smiled weakly and suddenly everything clicked in his mind.

  “Okay, everyone,” he shouted. The dwarves turned to watch him and the elves on the nearest raft stared in his direction.

  “Aeris has seen the dragon. It's close.”

  As he spoke, the sun gave out one last flicker of light and disappeared below the horizon. Dusk had set in and the sky was deepening to purple.

  “Get ready. When we see the damned thing, I'm going to set fire to the lighthouse and Ethmira will drop the glamor that's been cloaking her people. Let's see if we can't get that cursed beast's attention.”

  The dwarves gave out a deep, guttural cry and the elves on the raft called out to their neighbors, passing the word along.

  Simon turned and gestured for Clara and the four Changlings to follow him.

  They ran back to the lighthouse and stood near it. Everyone was watching the western sky shining dimly in the fading pink glow of sunset.

  Simon checked once with Ethmira, glancing at her raft. She raised a hand and signaled that she was ready. He waved back and then scanned the skies with everyone else.

  “There! I think I see something!”

  It was Anna.

  They all squinted in the direction that she was pointing.

  “You twit,” Gerald scoffed. “It's just a bloody seagull.”

  “It is? Oh, sorry, guys. I thought...”

  “That's no seagull,” Simon said quietly, his eyes fixed on the smudge on the horizon.

  He saw tiny wings flapping slowly and knew how massive they really were. Nothing small flew like that. Only a huge body swam though the air with that kind of indolence.

  “It's the dragon.”

  Chapter 26

  “Okay guys,” Simon said to the group around him. “Clara, I need you to stay close to Eric and the others. If they're wounded, please do your best to heal them.”

  “I will,” the cleric said grimly.

  “Eric, Virginia, Anna and Gerard. I'm going to be asking a lot of you today. What I want you to do is to shield me, if the dragon attacks with fire or lightning.”

  “Lightning?” Virginia stared at him in shock. “It casts lightning?”

  “Apparently. Look, I know it's a daunting task and I hate to sound self-important, but if I go down, our chances of killing that monster are probably zero.”

  He stared at the four sets of eyes watching him with various degrees of fear.

  “If that happens, you get yourselves and Clara into the river, understand?”

  They began to object and Simon cut them off.

  “Listen! There's no time for debate. I fall, you run. That's an order. You hear me?”

  Good grief, now I'm giving orders, he thought. But we're running out of time.

  They all nodded reluctantly.

  “Good. Now stand back. I have to set the lighthouse on fire.”

  They scurried back toward the shore and Simon raised the staff, mentally sorting through his spells until he found a little one that would do the job. The bite from the staff was barely noticeable.

  The base of the dried-out lighthouse burst into flames. In the descending darkness it was almost shockingly bright. At the same time as the fire began to consume the tinder-dry building, Simon heard Ethmira's voice carrying over the water and knew that she was dropping the glamor.

  Well, he thought. We're in it now.

  It was now so dark that Simon couldn't see that distant, soaring silhouette. He had no way of knowing whether the dragon was going to take the bait or ignore them completely.

  Wouldn't it be a real joke on us if the damned thing simply flew by, oblivious. Then what? They could try something else at a later date, but he doubted that the elves and dwarves would put aside their old feud a second time. But what if...

  A burst of flame suddenly lit up the sky to the north and across the water echoed a deep bass roar of rage.

  Anna let of a little shriek and Simon moved back from the blazing lighthouse several steps.

  “It's coming,” he called out.

  “Yes, we noticed,” Clara answered dryly.

  He looked over his shoulder and gave her a quick grin, and then the dragon was upon them.

  It shot across the river trailing fire.

  The size of a jumbo jet? Simon realized how wrong he'd been. Aeris had it right. The monster was easily at least twice that big.

  In the early evening, it was hard to make out details, but as the creature approached, it grew bigger. And bigger still. He saw the small jagged bolts of electrical discharges flicker along its wings and body and felt an odd sense of relief.

  At least we can see the thing in the dark, was the quick thought that skittered through his mind.

  It barreled toward them with the speed of an eagle. The massive wings still flapped slowly and Simon realized that it was so huge that it didn't need to stroke through the air any faster to move at high speed.

  “Archers, stand ready,” he heard Ethmira yell from her raft. He looked around but the elves and the two groups of human archers were barely visible from where they floated offshore. He could only hope that they did their jobs.

  “Okay, Bene-Dunn-Gal. We're going into battle,” he muttered to the staff. A quick glance reassured him that Kronk was standing nearby. Aeris was still following Simon at shoulder level. Both were keeping an intense eye on him.

  “My friends are watching, so behave yourself.”

  The staff flexed and rolled a bit in his hand. Simon hoped that meant it understood.

  A
wind, pushed ahead of the dragon as it sped toward the island, whipped sand and small rocks through the air. Simon blinked furiously to clear his vision. It was hard to tell because of the massive scale of the thing, but he thought that the dragon was flying about a hundred feet up. A smell of burnt metal and ozone choked him and made him cough.

  Another scream of fury, a challenge, shook the air and sent little waves crashing along the shore. Simon could feel his knees shaking and the hand holding up his staff was trembling.

  Not exactly the brave figure of an old-time wizard, eh Simon, his inner voice said mockingly.

  He ignored it and waited for the dragon to strike.

  Except that it didn't. Its head-long rush toward the island slowed, and then slowed some more.

  “Simon,” Clara called over the wind that was being whipped up from those huge wings. “It's stopped! It's just hovering. What's going on?”

  He didn't take his eyes off of the behemoth as he answered loudly.

  “I have no idea. Maybe it's checking out the area. You know, sizing us up or something. This is probably the first time the thing's been challenged in, I don't know, forever.”

  They all stared as the dragon hung in the sky, its outline clearly visible as it dribbled flames and emitted its electrical discharges.

  A minute passed, then two.

  “Damn it,” he said out loud, his voice lost in the wind. “Get on with it already.”

  As if that was a signal, the dragon suddenly rushed forward. But it didn't dive to attack. It's massive bulk blotted out the stars above the island and Simon stared straight up at it, his mouth hanging open in shock and something like wonder.

  “Archers, take aim!” Ethmira shouted.

  Take aim? Take aim at what?

  The underside of the dragon was just blackness, unbroken and stifling. No electrical current flowed there. At one end he could see its head still illuminated by flames that dripped like saliva from its gaping maw.

  Oh God, he thought. It's looking straight down at us. At me.

  And then he heard a crash as something landed heavily on the island. A second loud bang, followed quickly by two more.

  “What's going on?” he heard Eric ask Clara.

  Simon peered through the dark frantically. Was the damned wyrm bombing them?

  The lighthouse still blazed and then Simon saw something move against its bright red flames. It was the height of a man and maybe twice as long. It was...

  “Watch out!” he yelled and backed up quickly toward the water. “It's dropping drakes on to the island!”

  “Drakes?” Virginia said, sounding panicky. “But you said there would be no drakes! That they couldn't reach the island!”

  “Yeah, I know what I said,” Simon shouted over the battering winds of the dragon above. “But I didn't know they'd be hitching a ride on their master.”

  He turned to look in the direction of Ethmira's raft.

  “Ethmira, start shooting! Try to drive it back from the island or we'll be swarmed by those damned drakes!”

  “Archers,” he heard her cry, “Fire at will! Aim for the beast's head!”

  Simon heard the twang of bows coming from all directions along the island's shoreline. In the middle of those high-pitched sounds, he heard the deeper thrum of the dwarven arbalest.

  A scream of outrage beat down on them from the dragon and Simon risked a quick glance upward and saw the monster back ponderously away from the island. As it moved, he could hear loud splashes as the drakes hit, not land, but open water. Their cries, higher-pitched than their master's, filled the air as they thrashed about and then sank like stones beneath the river.

  A chorus of cheers broke out from the rafts and the dwarves, but Simon ignored them. There were still at least a half-dozen drakes stalking the island and they had to be dealt with before he could turn his attention back to the dragon.

  He squinted at the still burning lighthouse, marveling that the old structure hadn't collapsed yet. And grateful, because, against its light, he could see the drakes milling about in confusion.

  Maybe they're blinded by the bright flames, he thought. Or drawn to it. They did all seemed to be facing toward the building. Either way, this was his chance.

  “Stay behind me,” he said to Clara and the others. “And get that Shield ready, just in case.”

  Simon summoned the Ice Storm spell from his memory. Let's see if this makes an impression, he thought grimly.

  Bene-Dunn-Gal bit deeply as he raised it but Simon didn't care. He spoke the incantation, focusing on the space above the mesmerized group of drakes and released the spell.

  His arm shook as power was drawn from his body and sucked out through the staff. A large white cloud, luminescent and spinning with fury, appeared a dozen yards above the drakes. He saw all the those reptilian heads swing up in unison. He wondered briefly if they were puzzled by the phenomena. And then the Ice Storm was unleashed.

  Simon had expected something like the icy rain that had destroyed the tree near his tower, the last time he cast the spell. What he got was something much different.

  Silver bolts, like jagged copies of the lightning around the retreating dragon, lanced down from the cloud and a torrent of spears, as long as a man but made of razor-sharp ice, slammed into the drakes below.

  The sound was horrendous. The spears struck and exploded on the ground and the drakes shrieked in agony as they were literally torn to pieces.

  Simon stared, aghast at the fury of the spell.

  “Good job,” he muttered to Bene-Dunn-Gal. The staff shuddered with seeming pleasure.

  The drakes, screaming and writhing, were buried as sheet after sheet of icy spears covered them in frozen layers.

  A bellow of insane rage wiped the smile from Simon's face and he looked up at the back-winging dragon.

  It turned its muzzle to the blackening sky and a blast of fire lit the air around it. Then it turned its vengeful gaze back at the island and the wizard imagined he could see its blazing eyes glaring down at him.

  There had been a cheer from the villagers, elves and dwarves as the drakes were destroyed, but their happiness turned to silence as they realized that the battle had barely begun.

  “Well done, Simon,” Aeris said from somewhere close behind him.

  He nodded in acknowledgment but kept his eyes on the now circling monster.

  “How's the staff, master?” Kronk asked from below him.

  “Doing its job,” Simon answered tersely. “Bit busy here, guys. When I start babbling and foaming at the mouth, feel free to jump in.”

  “Sarcastic, isn't he?” Aeris said in an audible whisper.

  “Leave the master be. He's busy.”

  “Bah.”

  The dragon circled the island once and then again, staring at the land below and trailing fire.

  Finally Clara came up and stood beside Simon. They both watched the beast for a moment.

  “What do you think it's doing?” she asked him tensely.

  “Planning its attack, if I had to guess,” he answered as he slowly spun in a circle. “But who knows? How do creatures like that think? Is it angry at the loss of its servants? Raging because of the elves? Or maybe it just wants a late night snack. But I'm going to go out on a limb and make a rather bold statement.”

  “Which is?” Clara stopped turning and stared at him.

  “It's a lot smarter than we think it is. It's more than just an animal.”

  Clara looked up at the dragon and nodded once.

  “Yes, I think you're right.”

  She walked back to the four Changlings who were all watching the circling menace with varying degrees of trepidation.

  They seem steady though, Simon thought. I hope they stay that way when the attack begins.

  The dragon was circling perhaps a hundred yards out from the shoreline, far beyond the range of bows or the dwarven arbalest. And beyond Simon's spells. He actually had no idea what kind of spell to use when it did decide t
o avenge its drakes.

  Fire obviously wouldn't work. Nor would electricity. He had a list of earth and water spells flitting through his head but he wasn't sure that any of them would be effective against something so immense.

  I may have bitten off more than I, and the others, can chew. Well, there was always his ace in the hole. His last ally. God, I hope I won't need to use it.

  While the dragon continued its circular flight, Simon turned and hurried to the shore. The lighthouse fire had burned out, but the sky was clear and a three-quarter moon was rising. In the dim light, he could just make out Ethmira's raft bobbing in the waves stirring up by the dragon's wings.

  “Ethmira?”

  “Yes, Simon. I'm here,” she called out.

  “Do you think you and your people did any damage with your arrows?”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “To be honest, no. I don't. I think we surprised it, perhaps stung it a bit. But that's all. Although I hate to admit it, I think the dwarven weapon did inflict a wound or two. But still, to something that size, a six foot bolt would be like a pinprick, don't you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed reluctantly. “Thanks. Stay alert. The next move is the dragon's.”

  “We're ready,” she said confidently and Simon waved vaguely in the elf's direction and walked back toward the wrecked lighthouse.

  “What now?” Aeris asked.

  Simon turned and saw his two small friends following him closely. Strangely, Aeris was floating just above the ground next to Kronk. Simon had never seen them moving together like that before. He felt a stab of raw emotion. It was obvious that they had banded together over concern for him.

  “Honestly, I don't know,” he said as he squatted down to speak to them quietly. “Everyone's as ready as they can be, but what can they do, really? I may have to take the initiative and do something really stupid.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aeris asked and jerked forward slightly. “Don't become impatient, Simon. Wait and see what the beast will do first.”

  “He's right, master.” Kronk followed behind the air elemental. “Wait for your opportunity. It will come, I just know it.”

  Simon looked from one to the other and he had to smile. It was nice to have someone rooting for you.