The goddess's voice faded away and Simon sighed with real regret.
I guess I'm done, he thought. Next stop, who the hell knows? He searched the sky; as always, he was awed by the view of forever. Out there somewhere, that's where I'm going. But to what end? Will I be alone? Will it be wonderful? Or terrible? Damn it, I'm not ready!
“Child, one of my brothers has spoken with me,” the voice said suddenly. From the darkness, the image of the goddess appeared and she walked forward to stand next to Simon.
“He has offered you a chance, a possible way to reenter your world,” she said, looking down at him.
Simon felt a surge of excitement.
“A way? What way?'
“Something that, I admit, had not occurred to me. It is a desperate chance and may not succeed. And if it does, our dark kin will know of it immediately, because we will have to expend our power directly, instead of hiding it away as we have been doing. It will illuminate your renewed presence on Earth like a beacon and may bring their wrath down upon you. It will certainly ignite their fury toward us again. But we will take that risk, if you will.”
“How? Are you saying that there is a way to have me reborn on Earth?”
“Yes. Well, perhaps.” She shook her head in puzzlement. “It is a chance, that is all I can say. Look, and see what I see,” she told him and pointed at the lake.
Simon turned eagerly and watched the surface turn again into a mirror. A vision floated up from the depths and he saw a woman lying alone in a bed. The mattress was simply straw covered with a stained and torn blanket.
She was convulsing in agony, sweat rolling down her face. The room around her was filled with debris and garbage. She was alone.
“This poor woman is a Changling, as you can see. She and her mate, a man whom she knew from before the end of the world, survived alone in a remote village, in a country once known as Brazil. Have you heard of it?”
“I have.”
“The man was killed by a beast when out hunting several weeks ago. Since then, this woman has barely survived on what she could find in the forest; fruits, a few edible plants. Had she not been pregnant, she would have stood a better chance, but it has been hard on her and now, in her last extremity, she is giving birth and is too weak to survive.”
“She's going to die? Alone? Oh, the poor woman,” Simon said, watching her convulsions with a terrible sadness.
“Yes. It is a tragedy. But her only wish is that her child survive. Without her, it will die within hours of its birth. And because of this, because the baby is doomed, no soul has flown to join it. No spirit will embrace it for its last few lonely hours of life.”
Simon listened, aghast, at what he thought the goddess was saying.
“Wait. You mean that you want to send my soul, spirit, whatever, into the newborn child? But why? I will simply die too, won't I?”
“No, young one, you will not. That is what I am trying to tell you. If you infuse this unclaimed child, become its soul, the body will alter and Change to mirror your own. You will become it and it will become you.”
She gave him a stern look.
“It will be hard, and painful. To my knowledge, this has never been done before. All souls born are new beings and grow and learn as their bodies do.”
“What about reincarnation? Doesn't that have the same effect? An old soul in a new body?”
The goddess laughed lightly.
“A charming conceit, but there is no such thing. One soul, one body, one chance. That is all any mortal ever gets. But we will try this once, if you are willing. As I've said, it will be far from pleasant. You will be alone and vulnerable for several hours as your new body grows. In that time, should an animal or creature sent by our evil cousins descend upon you, it will mean your death, again. And this time, it will be permanent.”
He was trying to wrap his head around the concept. Being born again. Taking someone else's body for his own. It just didn't feel right somehow.
“And what if I say no?” he asked carefully, wondering whether the goddess would become angry at the thought of someone rejecting her 'gift'.
“No? And why would you say no, child?”
“I'm not sure. I just don't know if I can take over another person like that.”
She sighed gently and shook her head.
“The child is a blank slate, young one. You would not be 'taking over' anyone. But since you have asked, here is your answer. If you say no, your mortal journey on Earth is at an end and you will move beyond the Veil to whatever destiny awaits you. What that will be I cannot say. That desperate mother will die and her child will die. Eventually the rest of humanity will die.”
She looked up at the crystal stars.
“And one day, we of the Light shall also die. The universe will be plunged into darkness never to rise again.”
She turned away from the sky and stared keenly at Simon.
“That is what will happen if you say no.”
Gees, he thought. No pressure!
“So you are saying that the fate of the entire universe rests on my decision right now? Forgive me, Lady, but I think that you're overestimating my importance.”
She looked at him for a moment and then she smiled lovingly. It was like a bright light pushing back the darkness.
“Perhaps I am, child. But we 'gods' tend to deal in absolutes. Absolute good or absolute evil. We rarely see events in shades of gray. What I have told you is the probable future, yes, but you are correct; it may not come to pass. Who can say?”
She stepped back and her face became remote and expressionless.
“However you choose, the moment of decision has come, Simon O'Toole. Even now, that sad young mother is giving birth. With her last breath, she is pushing her son out into a cruel and unfeeling world, praying that someone, anyone, will save him. Will you be the one to do that, or will she have wasted the last of her strength for nothing?”
“If I say yes, in a way I will become her son, won't I?”
“In a way, yes. Your body will alter to become a mirror of your own before your death, but physically, you will be her son.”
“Then yes, I suppose.” Simon said with a mixture of elation and fear. “To help my people, and to honor that poor woman's sacrifice, I will say...yes.”
“Very well, young one. The choice is made. Prepare yourself. The next few hours will be some of the most dangerous you have ever faced, and the most painful. I wish you well and, for what it is worth, I give you my blessing.”
The goddess reached out and laid her hand gently on Simon's head.
“Thank you, Lady, for this chance. I swear that I won't squander it,” he said, trembling as he felt her divine power descend into him and touch his soul.
The stars began to fade and the goddess went with them. Before they disappeared completely, she smiled and shook her head.
“Do not make promises that you can't keep, child,” she told him.
And then there was nothing but...
Chapter 18
Pain! Red, raw, endless waves of pain. Simon screamed in agony, pain that made all of his previous suffering seem trivial as his body convulsed and twisted.
He screamed for relief and was barely aware that the sound was not an adult's cry for help but a baby's howl.
His vision was tinged with blood and the blurred world around him was painted red. He couldn't seem to focus on anything as he tried to concentrate on a single point, a way to anchor himself and bear down on the pain.
Part of the relentless agony was Simon's inability to breathe properly. His nose and throat felt like they were stuffed with cotton and he couldn't take a full breath. Pushing aside as much of the physical pain as possible, he focused on coughing and sneezing, trying to clear out his lungs and sinuses of whatever was blocking them.
The sounds of his weak coughing were so foreign to him that the wizard was distracted from his body's suffering. He used all of his strength on just his ability to breathe and fi
nally cleared out the mucus that had been blocking his lungs and sucked in a deep, sweet breath of air.
It was such a relief that he actually laughed, a tiny gurgle of child-like amusement.
His vision was still unfocused. The world was shuttered and foreign, nothing was sharply defined and he couldn't tell where he was.
And all around him was a smell that terrified his little body; a reek that his adult mind eventually identified as the scent of death.
Sickly-sweet, cloying, it overwhelmed him and sent a new wave of pain through him as his small body unconsciously panicked, twisting and rolling, trying to get away from this all-pervasive miasma of decay.
This seemed to go on and on and, in the end, all that Simon was able to do was to cling to the remnants of his sanity and let nature take its course.
His body grew and he knew that the pain that was burning through every muscle and joint and length of bone was the result of this accelerated growth. He spared a barely-coherent thought to the words of the goddess.
She was right about the pain, he thought through another convulsion. I just wish I could care about the danger.
But he couldn't. If he had been attacked during the first few hours of his rebirth, the wizard would have been an easy target. But whether it was aid from the gods of Light or sheer dumb luck, he was left to reenter the world on his own with no outside interference.
How much time passed, Simon never knew. All he knew was that eventually the constant aching and grinding along his limbs and in his guts subsided and he found himself lying on a dirt floor, covered in filth and dried blood.
He reached up with shaking hands and wiped the crusted dirt from his eyes, blinking rapidly to clear them as tears streamed down his face. Then he sat up with an exhausted groan and looked around.
He was sitting in the middle of a hut. The walls were held up by a framework of crudely-shaped logs and covered with palm fronds. The roof was circular and a central pole, a few inches away from where he sat, kept the entire structure from collapsing.
Various bits of junk littered the ground around him. Old tin cans, rotting fruit peel, soiled clothing; it was a mess. And the smell was almost overwhelming. On top of the scent of rancid fruit and human waste and blood, was the unmistakable sweet smell of death.
Simon looked around with an effort and saw the small cot that rested against the wall. The woman who had lost her life giving birth to him was staring unseeing at the ceiling, her young face prematurely etched with lines of despair and pain.
Something within him responded to her at an unconscious level and he scrambled to his feet with the help of the central pole and staggered over to her.
Weaving from side to side, tears sprang from his eyes as he looked down at her. She looked peaceful in death and, when he reached down and closed her blank eyes, he thought that she looked like she was only sleeping.
Her one blanket, streaked with blood from his birth, had fallen to the ground and Simon picked it up and covered her twisted body, giving her the respect that she more than deserved.
His body was screaming for moisture in the sweltering heat and he looked away from the woman, seeking some sort of container, desperate for water.
He found a battered canteen that sloshed when he shook it and spent several minutes emptying it. Stale water had never tasted so good. He set it aside when it was empty and Simon took a moment to look down at his newly-grown body.
His skin was brightly pink under the dirt and his naked body was so skinny that he looked emaciated. His ribs were covered with a thin layer of skin and he could see each muscle as they stood out in sharp relief.
He was ravenously hungry but he hadn't seen any food anywhere and remembered that the goddess had said that the woman had been unable to search for food in the final days of her pregnancy.
At that thought, Simon's eyes were drawn back to the body lying quietly under the blanket.
Who was she, he wondered. What had been her name? Where was she from and what had she done, before the Change?
A noise from outside broke through his thoughts and he turned so quickly that he staggered and almost fell. Suddenly his own vulnerable position erased all thoughts of the woman who had been his mother and he moved toward the opening that led out of the crude hut.
Simon peeked out of the doorway and saw that the hut was located in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by thick jungle. Distant screams of monkeys, exotic bird calls and mysterious creaks and groans rose from the thick growth in a cacophony of sound, bruising his young ears and confusing his senses. Whatever sound had caught his attention was lost in the wall of noise and he leaned against the hut, trying to get control of his new body.
This won't do, he thought fearfully. I have got to get out of here before something comes for me. Whether it's a monster sent by the gods of Chaos or just some predator that stalks out of the jungle looking for prey, doesn't matter. I'll be just as dead either way.
His worry was that he might be too weak to cast any spells. The Gate spell blazed in his mind as soon as he thought of it and that was a great relief, but would he be able to find the strength to use it?
He needed food for energy, but there simply wasn't any. He thought of his tower and the supplies that were stuffed in the storerooms in the basement, not to mention the safety it offered, and yearned to go home.
But he couldn't, not yet.
Simon turned back to look at the cot. The woman that lay there had given him life. He couldn't just leave her, bereft, at the mercy of whatever animals would be drawn to her. She deserved more respect than that.
And so, with his strength dwindling by the minute, the newborn wizard buried his mother.
He found a battered spade outside lying next to the hut and dug a narrow, shallow grave in the packed earth of the clearing. Sweat rolled down his body and he shook in a palsy of weakness but somehow he managed to finish the job without collapsing. Then he went inside, wrapped the body in its thin blanket and gently dragged it out and laid it into the grave.
Before he covered it over, Simon knelt by the shallow depression and stared blankly at the covered body, trying to think of something to say.
“I know...”
He cleared his parched throat, swallowed what felt like a handful of gravel, and began again.
“I know that who and what I am is probably not what you wanted for your son,” he whispered. It was as loud as he could speak, and over the sounds of the jungle, he could barely hear himself.
“I'm so sorry that you didn't have a chance at life, but I want you to know that I'm grateful for your sacrifice. Your son lives on in me, and not a day will pass that I won't remember you.” He felt a burning lump in the pit of his stomach and would have wept if he could, but his body was a dried-out husk and tears simply wouldn't come.
“Good bye...mother,” he said finally and then pushed the loose dirt over her remains until the grave was filled again. He smoothed it down, hoping as he did so that it would be enough to keep the scavengers away.
As he stood up, Simon could feel his mind and body starting to shut down. He needed food and water, but he was also almost unconscious from exhaustion. He had to get away before he collapsed.
Somehow he dredged up the Gate spell from his fuzzy brain and slowly began to chant the incantation, pausing after every second word to take a breath.
As he came to the end of the spell, the ground under his feet trembled enough for him to stagger back into the wall of the hut.
What the hell, he thought and looked up at the overhanging trees. Earthquake?
The tremor came again, stronger, and he grabbed one of the wall supports to try and stay on his feet.
Another one, and yet another and then his foggy brain finally cleared enough for him to realize what was happening.
Footsteps, his mind screamed at him, followed immediately by another frantic thought. Move!
He pictured the ground floor of his tower, the fireplace here, the kitchen table
there, trying to lock the image into his mind. He felt a click and knew that he had it and then took a deep breath, ready to invoke the spell.
From the edge of the clearing thirty feet away, a massive horned head, covered with red scales and as long as he was tall, burst out of the jungle and glared at him with yellow eyes.
Dragon!
The maw gaped and the monster roared in fury, sending Simon staggering back in shock. He fell through the door of the hut and collapsed on to the ground as the dragon's jaws snapped together in the space where he'd stood a moment before.
Another roar of rage deafened him and the wizard knew he had only seconds to live. With what he thought was his last breath, he managed to say the word of command.
“Invectis,” he gasped and felt forces grip his body and begin to pull him into the void. His last sight was of the dragon's head tearing through the wall of the hut and descending down upon him.
And then he was gone.
Whether he actually passed out during the Gate spell itself or when he arrived in his tower was something that Simon never knew. What he did know was that it was the shock of the freezing cold floor under his body that woke him up.
He sat up, moaning, and looked around. He was lying in the center of the first floor of the tower. It was dark but light was beginning to glow through the ice-covered windows and he guessed that it was only a few minutes before sunrise.
The tower was bitterly cold and it took Simon some time to remember that there was no one here to keep a fire going. He was lying naked in subzero temperatures and had better do something before he died of exposure.
If he'd had the strength, he might have laughed as something occurred to him.
Out of the frying pan and into the freezer, was his thought.
But there was no time for whimsy. He had only moments before the cold shut down his terribly weak body and he had to get moving.
Simon got to his feet, creaking like an old man, and walked slowly, step by painful step, over to his clothes cabinet. He opened it, grabbed a winter coat and wrapped it around him gratefully. His layers of dirt were unimportant at the moment; survival was all that mattered.
The Dragons of Decay Page 24