Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) (43 page)

Wordlessly, Toman held out a piece of paper towards the mage. Arguing was no use, and the explanation could wait until Iskin was sure he was authorized to interrupt the mage, much less ask anything of him. Iskin squinted at the paper, then snatched it away from Toman and placed a pair of wire-framed spectacles upon his nose. He held the paper at an arm’s length and read it in its entirety.

“Very well then,” he harrumphed, holding the paper back out towards Toman. “But I’m not standing in some drafty corridor all day. Find us a place to sit and you can explain all this before we get to work.”

Toman agreed so as not to antagonize the old man and led them to a small sitting room only a short ways down the hall. There he explained everything as efficiently as possible, from who Moloch was and what he’d done, to what he was doing now and why.

“Well, it’s nice to see you do your homework now, even if you never did as a child,” Iskin said. It seemed he did remember Toman after all. Unsurprisingly, Toman hadn’t been all that studious back then.

“So what do you want us to do?” Lors asked.

“I have my animations spread across the kingdom, but I want you to use your magic to try to seek out any trace of Moloch. Just reacting isn’t good enough—we need to get ahead of him if we want to save lives. And once we find him, I was hoping one or both of you would have a spell to get us there fast,” Toman said.

“Transportation spells are magically expensive,” Iskin cautioned. “If we had to cast one, you would effectively be short a mage. Are you sure that’s the best use of resources?”

“It depends how far away the location is,” Toman said. “I can fly us somewhere quickly, but time is the resource we have the least of. If Moloch is on the other side of the kingdom, he could be gone by the time I could get us there. If a transportation spell could get us there in time, even if it costs me a mage for a day, then it’s worth it.”

“Fair enough then,” Iskin acceded.

“Where do you want us to start?” Lors asked.

They were interrupted by a tap on the window. They all looked over to see a stone crow sitting on the sill. Toman immediately rose and let it in.

Using his animations as scouts could be difficult, since communicating with them was tricky. With the exception of Arxus, who had been made with magics other than pure animation, none of them could talk. The animations weren’t very intelligent either, no matter how lifelike they were. Fortunately, Toman had had plenty of practice in working around their limitations.

Toman unslung the map tube from his back and spread his map on the table. The stone bird hopped atop it and placed the tip of his beak onto a point on the map. Meanwhile, Toman opened a small compartment on the bottom of the map tube and dumped the contents beside the map. They were map-markers with small pictures on them. The crow hopped over, flicked through the pile, and pulled one out with the image of a wolf on it. It dropped the marker atop the place it had placed its beak earlier, then flapped up onto Toman’s shoulder. The marker had been placed in an outlying area of Symria.

“Well, it looks like I don’t need your help seeking him. I just need you to take me here,” Toman said, pointing at the marker. He was already directing some of his more battle-oriented animations in that direction.

“Very well then, pack up your things,” Iskin said. “Lors, let me do this spell. I can build this spell more efficiently, and efficiency is everything with transportation spells.”

“Yes, sir,” Lors replied automatically. Toman hurriedly packed up his map and markers, recognizing from the somewhat unfocused expressions on their faces that the two mages had already begun the spell. Even so, Toman was surprised by how soon the spell activated; transportation spells were notoriously difficult to perform. He didn’t pause to compliment them when they reappeared, however—they were materializing into unknown territory where they knew an enemy was nearby. There was no time for pretty compliments.

Iskin sagged when they appeared atop a low hill, and Lors supported him so he wouldn’t collapse. As the mages had warned, the spell had taken a large toll. Lors immediately raised a shield upon landing, so at least they wouldn’t be caught unaware. Despite the precaution, however, there didn’t seem to be anything in the area. They scanned their surroundings, but there was nothing but boring hills, a few bushes, and lots of tall, brown grass. Over the next hill there was a faint trace of smoke.

“Well, that’s the direction the town is in,” Toman finally said. “So we landed in the right place.” That was another potential risk of transportation spells. The stone crow on his shoulder dipped its head to confirm that this was the right spot, for all that there was no sign of the enemy.

“Let’s go there, then. If anything has happened in the area, they might know about it,” Lors suggested.

It only took them fifteen minutes to get to the town. They were greeted with caution, then enthusiasm when their purpose was learned. What they didn’t have was news. Toman’s animations began arriving by then, so he sent them to scour the area. Another ten minutes passed before Toman grew too restless to stand it.

“Iskin, do you mind staying here awhile? I’m going to take Lors and see if we can’t find something; useful as my creatures are, they’re no replacement for human eyes when the need calls for it. We’ll pick you up before we head back to Symria,” Toman said to the older mage. Iskin just nodded, enjoying the food and drink he was being fed by the villagers. The villagers clearly didn’t want them to leave; there was something out there and they were terrified of it, for all that they didn’t know what it was.

Lors and Toman went to the edge of town, and by the time they got there, one of Toman’s massive stone dragons was waiting for them.

“We’re riding
that
?” Lors nearly choked.

“Yep,” Toman replied, grinning. Lors found himself grinning back.

“Awesome,” the young mage said.

Once they were airborne, Toman kept them fairly close to the ground so they wouldn’t miss anything. He already had other animations doing a thorough grid-search, so he decided to try a more intuitive approach. He backtracked to where they’d originally landed, and where the stone crow had originally seen the enemy. From there he guessed that the creature had most likely been heading to town and given that, tried to infer where he would have come from. They ended up backtracking in a relatively straight line until they met the curve of a cliff wall closer to the mountains.

“You could hide an army in here,” Lors said in his ear after they’d passed several snaking gullies and rocky outcroppings.

“That’s what concerns me,” Toman admitted. “It’s impossible to tell where that thing could have come from. Even so, do you mind looking a bit longer?”

“Go right ahead,” Lors agreed.

Toman varied the height of their flight as they navigated the virtual maze of hills and valleys, sometimes going higher so they could see further, other times dipping lower so nothing could hide from them amid trees or under overhanging rocks. He was just about ready to give up when Lors leaned in towards his ear again.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing past Toman’s ear. At first Toman didn’t see anything, but then something tall and oddly shaped caught his eye up ahead, nestled among a large pile of rocks. He directed their stone mount lower so that they could get a better look at whatever-it-was. They were concentrating on the object ahead that they failed to pay attention to the rest of their surroundings.

Too late, Toman saw something move out of the corner of his eye. It leapt from the ground to the wing of the stone dragon. Even though Toman’s animations used magic to fly, there was still
some
physics involved, or at least similar rules that had to be followed according to the animation magic. Having something large land on the outspread wing of a flying animation violated those rules. The stone dragon’s wing caved to the unexpected force and plowed into the side of the hill.

Lors was flung into a thick bush, but Toman saw the hard ground rushing up to meet him a second before a clawed stone hand snatched the back of his coat, jerking him to the stop before impact. Then the hand dropped him barely a moment later as the dragon righted itself.

“Lors!” Toman called, hoping the mage was okay as he frantically scanned their surroundings for the thing that had attacked them. He was already calling his other animations towards them to help. He had no idea what they were up against.

“Mmf fine,” came Lors’s muffled reply as the mage struggled with the bush and climbed out of the tangled mass of twigs and leaves. Toman headed over to help and bade his stone dragon to cover their one side. Lors struggled out of the bush just as Toman got to him and began brushing his twisted robes straight. Toman looked past him and froze.

Several paces away, amid the trees, stood a creature. It was roughly wolf-like in shape, but there would be no mistaking the creature for a wolf. It was revolting to look at; its flesh, what there was of it, was yellow-grey and rotting. Its skin crawled with maggots, worms, and insects, so that even when the creature stood still, as it did now, it seemed to writhe with motion. Any skin that wasn’t rotting or broken was as bad as the rest; it was covered in hives and rashes, lesions and sores. Pus leaked from angry boils and from one of the beast’s otherwise empty eye sockets.

Toman realized he could smell it from where he stood—the stench of sickness, rot, and death. The stench caught in his throat and tried to gag him. The creature was plague incarnate; Toman was certain that the beast didn’t need the rotting teeth in its mouth to deal damage. A single touch would surely be enough to contract every plague the world had ever known and die a horrible, screaming death.

Behind him, Toman heard a crunch, and he risked a glance towards the sound. The stone dragon had another plague beast pinned beneath its foot, and as Toman watched, the dragon tore its head off with its jaws; the moment the plague beast died, it vanished, leaving nothing but a greasy smear on the dragon’s foot and jaws. Toman looked back, but the first plague beast he’d seen was gone.

“Toman,” Lors said quietly. Toman looked over his shoulder just as another plague beast vanished into the underbrush.

“I think we found what’s been killing people,” Lors said.

“Yeah,” Toman agreed. Now they just had to get out of this alive. Not that their odds were bad—Toman had a giant stone dragon and more help coming, and Lors was a mage. Toman scanned the forest again, and then he started to worry—there was movement in the shadows of the trees. The creatures seemed to come into view one at a time, until there were at least a dozen of them, then twice that number and more. It was impossible to count them amid the trees.

“Lors, stick close,” Toman said, but Lors was already right behind him.

“What do you think our odds are of getting away on your dragon?” Lors asked.

“Not good,” Toman replied, thinking of how the first plague beast had leapt on the dragon’s wing. Besides, they’d been thrown into the trees, which meant they’d have to move towards a more open area before they could take off.

“This is a bad spot. We should head towards that rock pile you saw. It was more open there—we’d have a better shot at getting away,” Toman said. Lors nodded and together with the stone dragon, they began to edge closer to the trees to get to the clearing on the other side. They didn’t make it far.

Toman grabbed the neck of Lors’s robes and yanked him aside, throwing himself back towards the dragon at the same time. The dragon snapped at the plague beast that had leapt at them, but it was already gone.

“
Shields,
Lors,” Toman hissed at the mage. Clearly his old friend wasn’t used to combat situations. He’d have to learn fast.

“Right, right,” Lors muttered behind him, and a transparent, shimmering dome sprang up around them.

“Good, keep it up. I’ll see if the dragon can clear us a path,” Toman said. “But we’ve got to keep up.” The stone dragon barreled past them, and three plague beasts leapt out at it. The dragon shunted one aside with a wing and met the other two with eager claws and stone fangs. One was lamed, but it didn’t seem to feel pain, just inconvenience as its foreleg was mangled into uselessness. The other, however, was crushed under the dragon’s foot and vanished like the other had.

Just like Esset’s summons,
Toman thought, and he recalled what Erizen had said about Moloch’s obsession to not just best everyone around him, but to best them at their own games. It seemed that Moloch had found something powerful to summon. But that was only a theory—after all, how was Moloch summoning them when he didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby? He didn’t have time to puzzle it out.

The plague beasts pressed their attacks, and Toman and Lors were forced to a standstill. Lors’s shields kept them back, but only just, and the dragon was being swarmed with so many beasts that it couldn’t break their way for them. Toman urged his other animations to hurry, even though he knew it was useless—they were already coming as fast as they could. In the meantime, Lors poured all of his energy into his shields, leaving him unable to counterattack while Toman’s dragon thrashed around, crushing plague beasts only to have two more leap in to replace each one.

Lors swayed.

“Come on, Lors, hang in there,” Toman urged him, knowing that if the mage collapsed, they were doomed. As much as Toman disliked Erizen, they’d been spoiled working with him. Difficult thought he was, Erizen was a very powerful mage.