The Dragons of Ice and Snow (48 page)

“
Simon?”

He sat up with a jerk and
turned to see Aeris floating above the ground a few feet away.

“
Sorry, I didn't
mean to startle you.”

The wizard lay back on his
elbows and looked out over the lake again.

“
No problem,”
he said as the elemental moved forward until he hovered next to him.
“I was just lost in thought.”

“
I'm not surprised.
And since you saw what I saw, what do you think?”

“
Think? Besides the
fact that that scene was something out of a nightmare? I don't know.
I'm just trying to put the pieces together. I mean, I never dreamed
that there was a way to...fuse dragons and people together like that.
It's truly monstrous. But even worse is that gigantic dragonoid. What
is it? Where did it come from? Is it something new or have we just
not run into it until now?”

He sighed and stared at
the ripples dancing across the lake.

“
Did you happen to
notice the people that were being held there?” Aeris asked
hesitantly.

Simon looked at him in
surprise.

“
Of course I did.
Didn't I just say...”

“
No,” the
elemental interrupted. “I meant, did you actually look at them
closely?”

“
Well, no. I mean
the vision lasted what? A minute, maybe two? They looked dispirited
and broken, the poor bastards. And there were some that were so
young. Changlings, of course. Horrible.”

“
Look, my dear
wizard, I don't want to upset you any more than you are already, but
perhaps we focused on different things while sharing a single vision.
Because I did look at the captives. And I recognized at least two of
them.”

“
What? From where?”
Simon asked, sitting up again.

“
From Moscow. When
you spied on Liliana after we were ambushed, she had a half-dozen
people with her, remember?”

“
Vaguely.”

“
Well, I do. And I
saw two of them today, on that mesa. We all assumed that they were
eaten by the drakes who attacked them. But apparently they were
caught and transported to the north, to be used in this horrible
transformation.”

“
Oh damn, this just
keeps getting worse,” Simon said. He closed his eyes, trying to
remember the faces of the captives, but he couldn't. All he
remembered was their total misery. They had to know what was going to
happen to them and they obviously held out no hope of a rescue. It
was heart-breaking.

“
It gets worse than
that,” Aeris said, his voice shaking.

The wizard had never heard
the little guy sound so frightened and he looked at him closely.

“
How could this get
any worse?” he asked, not sure that he really wanted an answer.

“
Simon, drakes
answer to only one master; their primal dragon. And only one kind of
dragon can open a Gate, like the one we saw today; a primal dragon.
Now, add those two things together, wizard, and answer your own
question about who and what that abomination we saw was.”

The wizard stared at him
in horror.

“
You're saying
that...thing was the primal white dragon?” he whispered as he
felt the blood drain from his face and his belly go cold.

“
That is exactly
what I am saying,” Aeris replied. “The coloring alone
gave it away. The purest color of any type of dragon can only be
found on the primal of the species. That beast was as white as
pristine snow. It commanded the lesser dragons, even those not of its
own kind, with sure authority. Yes, that was the primal white dragon.
Why it allowed itself to be changed is a mystery, but it has.”
He paused and added, “And it has to be stopped.”

When Simon entered the
tower again, followed by Aeris, he spotted Kronk adding a few sticks
of wood to the fire. As he sat down, the little guy jumped up on to
the table to join the air elemental and looked at him gravely.

“
Are you all right,
master?” he asked with some concern.

“
No, I don't think
so,” Simon said. “I think things are about to start
moving very quickly and I have no idea what the outcome will be.”

He gave himself a shake
and then tapped the back of the mirror on the table in front of him.

“
But we have to get
started. Okay, you guys, I need some help here. I need at least two
more mirrors, maybe more, about the size of this one, and I need them
quickly. Any suggestions?”

The elementals exchanged a
puzzled look and Aeris shook his head.

“
I'm afraid not. I
mean, you could use that long one in your bedroom, the one in your
clothes cupboard. Break it into several pieces maybe?”

“
Uh, I don't think
we need any more bad luck right now, do you?”

Aeris only shrugged and
Simon looked at the earthen, who was frowning in concentration.

“
Kronk?”

“
You need something
with a highly reflective surface, do you not, master? It does not
have to be an actual mirror, correct?”

“
No, that's true. As
long as it can act as a mirror, I don't really care what it is.”

“
Then give me
perhaps fifteen minutes, master, and I will have something for you.”

The little guy jumped off
of the table and tip-tapped toward the door.

“
Hey, wait a
second,” Aeris called after him. “Where are you going?”

“
Deep,” Kronk
answered cryptically over his shoulder and skittered out of the door.

“
Typical,” the
air elemental muttered. He looked at Simon curiously. “Why do
you need so many mirrors anyway?”

“
I want to speak to
some of our allies about what we saw today. And I don't want to have
to repeat the story over and over again. So I figured I could cast
Magic Mirror on several mirrors at once and they could not only speak
to me, but to each other as well.”

Aeris looked at him in
admiration, a look the wizard couldn't remember seeing on his opaque
little face before.

“
Clever, my dear
wizard. Very clever.”

“
If it works. First
though, I need those mirrors.”

He stood up and pumped
water into the kettle. As he was hanging it over the fire, he stopped
and looked at Aeris.

“
You've been away a
long time and you've been through a lot. Do you need to rest or have
some quiet time or anything?”

The little figure snorted
with clear disgust.

“
You know better
than that, my dear wizard. What I want is an end to that twisted
alchemy up north. What will make me feel better is seeing the body of
that grotesque white dragon lying broken in the snow. That will cure
any exhaustion I may be feeling.”

Simon hung up the kettle
and then crossed his arms and leaned back on the counter, staring at
Aeris.

“
Bit blood-thirsty
there, aren't we?” he asked, trying to make it sound lighter
than it was.

“
Yes, Simon. I am.
Who knows how many innocents that the white dragon has already used
for its own foul purposes. How many more will suffer and die in the
days and weeks to come? That creature is more powerful than the black
and green primals you destroyed. Worse still, it is now an entirely
new being, with powers that we cannot begin to understand. It has to
die and it has to die soon.”

Simon puttered around the
counter as he listened to Aeris and he nodded as he got his tea
ready.

“
I agree. But that's
a hell of a lot easier said than done. The only weapon that we know
for sure will hurt white dragons is the Blizzard spell. And I'm the
only one who can cast it. Kind of limits our options, don't you
think?”

He poured boiling water
into his cup and sat down at the table again.

Aeris was shaking his
head.

“
Simon, you are
making these creatures sound invincible and they're not. If they
were, the dwarven capital would have fallen by now. But the dwarves
are holding them back, and that means that they are killing at least
some of them, right?”

“
Huh. Good point.
How?”

“
Intense heat will
still hurt them. Yes, they all breathe fire. But a hot enough flame
will damage them. Well, perhaps not the red dragons, but definitely
the white ones. Sharp weapons used with sufficient force will cut
through dragon scale.”

He looked a little
exasperated as he stared at Simon.

“
Good grief, my dear
wizard, you've killed dragons yourself! Don't fall into the trap of
making them even more dangerous in your mind than they actually are.”

“
I'm not making that
primal white more dangerous than it is,” Simon replied grimly.
“What I am trying to do is understand why. Why alter that
dragon? Okay, the others have been transformed into dragonoids
because it's easier for them to attack underground. That makes sense.
But there was no need for the primal white dragon to be changed as
well, so why do it?”

Aeris started to speak and
then just shook his head.

“
I am baffled by
that as well. Dragons hate humans. Well, they hate everything really,
including each other, but the mortal races are especially loathed.
For that creature to allow itself to be changed into the shape of
something so anathema to its species is...inexplicable to me.”

“
Yeah, me too.”

Both of them fell into a
brooding silence, lost in their thoughts.

A few minutes passed and
then they looked up at the familiar sound of Kronk's feet tapping as
he jumped up the outside steps.

“
I'm back, master,”
he announced as he hurried into the room.

“
What a revelation,”
Aeris mumbled.

Simon looked at him with a
raised eyebrow and the elemental twitched his shoulders and smiled.

The earthen was holding up
what appeared to be a bundle of stiff black sheets over his head. He
leapt up on to the table and carefully set them down in front of the
wizard.

“
There you are,
master,” he said proudly. “These should do the trick.”

“
Trick? What trick?”
Aeris asked, looking baffled. “What is it?”

“
Mica. I wasn't sure
how many you would need, master, so I peeled off about a dozen
sheets. Pick them up carefully; they are a little fragile.”

Simon used a fingernail to
separate the thin sheets of mineral and held one up carefully at the
edges.

His reflection stared back
at him darkly. There were little swirls of gold and red, like veins,
interlaced in the mica, but the surface reflected just like a mirror.

“
Will they do,
master?” the little guy asked anxiously.

The wizard grinned at him.

“
Kronk, they are
perfect. Once again, you've come through.”

“
Oh, I am glad,
master. And now, I must attend to the garden.”

He waved and jumped to the
floor. He headed for the door, talking to himself under his breath.

“
Honestly, how those
weeds sneak in when I'm not looking, I will never know,” was
the last thing they heard as he left the tower.

Simon chuckled fondly and
then got up and checked the cupboards over his kitchen counter.

“
What are you
looking for?” Aeris asked.

“”
I need
something to hold up those sheets of mica so that I can see them all
at once. Ah, this should work.”

He grabbed several cups
and lined them up on the table so that the mica sheets could lean
against them, standing up almost vertically. He angled them so that
each one was facing the others to some degree.

“
Four of them?”

“
Yeah. I'm going to
try to contact Clara, Liliana, Daniel and Tamara at the same time.
Well, almost the same time anyway.”

“
Tamara? Who is
she?”

“
The co-leader of
the Changlings in London. She and her brother are mages. I must have
mentioned her before.”

“
Ah yes, of course.
I don't remember hearing her name though. But why call her?”

“
She's powerful.”
Simon said with a shrug. “And she and her brother are closer to
the territory of the white dragons than any other group except for
Liliana. I think she deserves to know what's going on.”

“
As you say,”
Aeris said, sounding almost indifferent. But he looked more worried
than anything else.

When things were arranged
to his satisfaction, Simon took a deep breath and glanced at the
elemental.

“
Here we go,”
he said nervously.

Aeris only nodded and then
moved to stand by the wizard's right shoulder so that he could see
all of the mirrors at once.

“
Okay, Daniel
first.”

One after another, Simon
cast his Magic Mirror spell to contact the four people. He asked each
one to find a quiet place where they could talk undisturbed and
explained that it was going to be a group meeting. They all appeared
intrigued.