The Dragons Revenge (Tales from the New Earth #2) (6 page)

“
Yes, of course,”
Simon said as he scrambled to his feet. He put down his cup and
walked to the door. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“
Have patience, my
friend,” Clara told him with some amusement. “This isn't
like an old-time phone call. They may take their time answering me,
or they may not answer at all. Relax as best you can and I'll see you
in a while.”

He nodded, grabbed his
coat from the hook beside the door, and went out into the hall.

Simon made his way to a
bench that was close to the fire pit, sat down and tried to be
patient, as Clara had suggested. It could take hours, he supposed
and, important or not, you couldn't rush something like this.

But patience was in short
supply and, after half an hour or so, Simon put on his coat and
stepped outside.

It was only around two
o'clock and the clear icy-blue sky blazed with sunlight. The wizard
went over to Chief, removed his bridle and put on a halter that he'd
brought along in his saddlebags. The horse whuffled into his neck as
he worked and Simon had to laugh. It was as if Chief thought of
himself as a lapdog instead of a stallion.

When he was done, Simon
headed toward the main gate. The narrow cobble-stoned street was
swept clean of snow and he was grateful in the intense cold that the
footing wasn't slippery.

Halfway there he saw a
woman coming from the opposite direction. It was Virginia. She smiled
and waved as she recognized him.

“
Simon!” she
called. “How are you?”

When she got closer, she
gave him a warm hug. Wrapped in thick, fur-lined hide the way she
was, Simon felt like he was being hugged by a rather short bear.

“
The gatekeeper said
that you were in town when I passed by.”

“
Passed by? Where
are you going in this freezing weather?” he asked curiously.

Virginia chuckled. She was
quite pretty and Simon found the way her nose scrunched up when she
laughed very endearing.

“
You can't stay
huddled inside all the time, even in the winter. I like to get out
every day for a walk and some fresh air. Anyway, he said that you
were meeting with Clara, so I thought I'd drop in and say hello.
Looks like you saved me the trouble.”

“
Happy to help,”
he responded with a grin of his own. “Actually I was going down
to ask the guard if I could get a bucket of water for my horse, and
if there's a store of hay somewhere.”

“
Aha!”
Virginia exclaimed with obvious pleasure. “Now I've saved you
some trouble. As one of the poor peasants who helped to harvest the
hay in the fall for the sheep, goats and assorted other livestock,
I'm intimately familiar with where we store the stuff. Come along and
I'll show you.”

“
Hey, thanks. I
appreciate that.”

Simon followed the young
woman to a large building set against the wall on the other side of
town. Inside, he grabbed an armful of hay and Virginia found a wooden
bucket and they walked back toward the town center to use the
community water pump.

All the while, Virginia
chatted about the various goings-on in town, getting Simon caught up
on all the news.

There had been two more
births among the population. That brought the total number of
children born since the Night of Burning, when the dragons had
decimated the human race, to three.

Well, it's a start, he
thought.

All of the population of
the village were Changlings and some had feared that the newborns
might actually be monsters or some type of mutants.

“
They're all just
normal kids though,” Virginia said as she filled the bucket.

She looked at Simon with
an impish expression.

“
But the last one
born, Amy, was born with two different colored eyes. You wouldn't
know anything about that, would you?”

Simon, with one brown eye
and one blue since he Changed, felt himself blushing.

“
Of course not! I
certainly haven't been involved with...”

He stopped protesting as
he realized that Virginia was teasing.

“
Funny girl,”
he grumbled as they walked back to the hall. “Actually, I'm
pleased that that's the only evidence of the Change in them. Some
kids did mutate into monstrous forms back before the end. I'm not
sure what happened to them, considering the anarchy that society
descended into. It's quite possible that they didn't survive.”

His friend stopped walking
abruptly, the water in the bucket slopping over the edge a bit.

“
You don't mean you
think they were killed?” Virginia asked, horrified. “Children?”

Simon nodded once, his
expression bleak.

“
Some people were
blaming the Changlings for the loss of technology. Remember how it
was? No power meant no water, no heat, no refrigeration, no
communications. It all fell apart so quickly.”

He laughed humorlessly.

“
We never realized
just how fragile our 'advanced' society really was. My buddy Daniel
actually hid me at his place in the last few weeks, as my Change
became fairly obvious. And I was an adult. Imagine defenseless
children in those circumstances.”

They began walking again.

“
Well, I don't need
to tell you,” he said gently. “You and Eric and the
others experienced the brutality of humanity firsthand when you were
kept as slaves by that group of mundane humans for almost three
years.”

“
Yeah. True that.”

Conversation died at that
point as both of them became lost in their own memories.

When they reached the
hall, Virginia put down the bucket in front of Chief and Simon let
him drink his fill before scattering the hay for him. The big horse
rubbed his head affectionately against the young woman and she
giggled as she was almost knocked over by his enthusiasm. Their
gloomy mood evaporated.

“
So why did you ride
here in this cold, Simon?” she asked as they watched Chief
munching the hay contentedly.

The wizard was torn. On
the one hand, Virginia was a friend and he was tempted to tell her
everything. But until he knew if his condition was permanent, he
found that he didn't really want anyone else to know about his loss
of magic.

It's as if I have a nasty
disease and am embarrassed to tell anyone, he thought wryly.

“
Well, the big guy
needed some exercise,” he said, stretching the truth a long
way. “And I wanted to see how the village was doing. Besides,”
he glanced up at the cold blue sky, “we could be looking at a
long period of frigid weather. It might be my last chance to ride
down for quite some time.”

She nodded, accepting the
flimsy explanation equably.

“
Well, it was great
to see you again. I'm sure you and Clara have a lot to talk about.”

She picked up the now
empty bucket.

“
I'll take this back
to the storage shed,” Virginia said and gave Simon a one-armed
hug.

“
Thanks for your
help,” he told her with a warm smile. “Say hi to the
others for me, will you?”

“
Of course I will.
If you decide to stay over, come by and see us.”

“
We can't stay,”
Simon said with real regret. He nodded at the stallion. “Chief
gets nervous if he's away from his harem for too long.”

Virginia's guffaw of
laughter rang through the cold, still air.

“
Lucky guy,”
she said, chortling, and patted the munching horse, who whickered at
her as he ate steadily.

They parted company then
with mutual waves and Simon entered the hall again.

His visit with Virginia
had cheered him up immeasurably and had, at least for a short time,
made him forget his own problems. But walking back toward Clara's
quarters, his loss of magic and the chance that he might no longer be
a wizard slammed back into his consciousness. By the time he reached
her door and knocked on it softly, his depression had settled back in
again.

“
Come in, Simon,”
he heard Clara call out and he opened the door and walked inside.

The cleric was sitting on
the couch again and smiled at him tiredly as he entered. She patted
the sofa next to her and Simon hung up his coat and walked over to
sit beside her.

He was reluctant to hear
any bad news but braced himself to learn the truth.

“
So, any luck?”
he asked quietly.

Clara had dark circles
under her eyes and her face was pinched with exhaustion. Whatever had
happened, it had taken a lot out of her.

She shrugged at his
question.

“
It depends on your
definition of luck, I suppose. The news is good and bad. I did have
a...visitation, I suppose you could call it. Our gods of Order are
distressed by the attack on you. For one human to be singled out by
their opponents is extraordinary.”

She smiled a bit.

“
You angered the
dark ones by destroying one of their most powerful servants. The
black may have been the weakest of the primal dragons, but it was
still one of only five. Now they are lessened. So at least we can
celebrate that victory.”

She settled herself more
comfortably into the couch and looked at him closely.

“
I have some
questions, my friend, about the dragons that attacked your tower.”

Simon crossed his legs and
leaned back.

“
Sure. What did you
want to know?”

“
You told me about
the attack, but you didn't give me many details. I'd like to know
exactly how those creatures attacked. Did they try to tear down your
home or..?”

The wizard went through
the assault in his mind.

“
Now that you
mention it, I actually remember thinking how odd it was that they
didn't do exactly that. So in answer to your question, no they
didn't. They circled the tower, blasting it with fire and brushing it
with their wings, but they didn't actually hit the building
directly.”

Clara nodded.

“
Yes. That's
interesting.”

“
Is it? Why?”

She looked at the window,
seeming to watch as several dust motes floated lazily through the
beaming sunlight that lit the room.

“
Because of what the
gods believe has happened to your powers.”

Simon's stomach clenched.
Here it comes, he thought.

Clara looked at him and
then smiled compassionately. She took his hand in both of hers and
squeezed it reassuringly.

“
It's not as bad as
you believe it is, my friend. At least, I don't think it is.”

She dropped his hand and
sat back, speaking slowly and carefully.

“
The nature of the
dragons' attack is the key. Those two reds were sent to your home,
not to kill you, but to render you powerless.”

“
What?”

Simon sat up abruptly.

The cleric nodded again.

“
Yes. You see, they
circled your tower and set up a barrier between you and the magic
that the gods have been channeling to you. And then they absorbed it.
You aren't powerless, Simon. Instead, your magic had been drained
away by these dragons.”

Simon blinked rapidly,
thinking through Clara's explanation.

“
But if that's true,
then why didn't the power return when the dragons died?”

“
Ah, now here is
where we have to take the gods' explanation on faith, I suppose. Once
the magic was consumed, it was gone. All of it. Including your
knowledge of those spells that the divine ones passed on to you.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“
When the dragons
died, did you examine the remains?”

“
The remains?”
Simon was confused. “There were no remains. The beasts burned
up to nothing when they were destroyed.”

“
No Simon, they did
not.” Clara sounded firm as she said this. “The gods tell
me that you must search the spot where each dragon fell. Find their
hearts. That is the reservoir of their power. If you can find those
objects, and destroy them, your magic will be restored.”

“
What, just like
that?” he asked skeptically.

She chuckled at his
expression.

“
Yes, my friend.
Just like that.” She held up a warning hand. “But,
unfortunately, the spells that were imparted to you by the gods are
gone for good. If and when you regain your magic, you will be back to
being that young wizard who struggled along to discover spells
through research and trial and error. The gift cannot be given twice,
so you will have to relearn all that you need to learn on your own.”

Simon was disappointed to
hear that he would be back almost to square one with his
spell-casting, but his excitement at the thought that he at least
wouldn't be powerless for the rest of his life smothered that
feeling.

“
I can deal with
that, Clara. To be honest, the idea of being useless in this new
world of ours was, well, devastating.”