The Dragons of Decay (36 page)

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.

He slipped
his bare feet into winter boots and just stood leaning against the
cabinet, waiting for his body to warm up.

When he
had regained a bit of strength, he moved cautiously across to the
fireplace. Naturally there was nothing there but ashes, but there was
a pile of neatly cut logs waiting on the floor beside it and Simon
knelt down and grabbed one, meaning to set it on top of the ashes.

But he
couldn't.

He stared
in disbelief at his skinny fingers, watching them trying to pick up a
log that any child could lift. But there was simply no strength left
in him. The logs were frozen together and Simon did not have the
power to separate them.

The cold
from the floor was biting into his legs and he slumped back and
stared around hopelessly.

So, is
that it then? Is this how it ends?

He might
have laughed if the whole thing wasn't so sad.

Well, at
least I'll die at home, he thought with a shrug of his slight
shoulders. Could be worse, I suppose.

It would
have been easy to just slip away at this point, but there had always
been a part of the wizard that refused to quit. That small voice
inside of him that gave him a kick in the ass when he really needed
it. And it did so now.

No, I
can't let it end like this, he thought as anger burned away the fog
from his brain. Not like this. Think, Simon! What can you do, even as
weak as you are, to survive right now?

If only I
had someone to help me, came the responding thought.

And that
was the spark.

Of course,
you idiot! Think like a wizard!

He turned
his head away from the cold fireplace and stared at the floor.

“
Kronk,”
he whispered. “I need you.”

The tower
shook from its foundations to its roof, creaking in the cold. The
wooden floor seemed to sag as if made of soft rubber and bounced back
and then a small figure made of jagged pieces of dark rock, stood
there and gaped at him.

“
Hey
buddy,” Simon muttered. “How ya doing?”

“
Master?”

Kronk
reached toward him with his small hand, his red eyes wide and his
mouth hanging open.

“
Master?
Is it really you?”

“
In
the flesh. Well, what's left of it,” Simon said and then he was
wracked with a violent shudder.

The
wizard's obvious distress snapped Kronk out of his state of shock and
he tip-tapped over quickly, looking at Simon closely.