The Dragons of Argent and Silver (Tales from the New Earth #6) (6 page)

Aethos held the grizzly trophy up by
one twisted horn and looked around the edge of the clearing, seeing
dozen of glowing sets of eyes watching him with evil intent.

“They're all yours,” he
said loudly as he waved a hand at the two bodies. “I just need
this. Enjoy.”

And he disappeared with loud crack like
thunder while the forest came alive around the meadow and the
monsters came out to fight over the remains.

The deserts of the former country of
Australia were not all barren and lifeless. Scrub brush, hummock
grasses and stunted trees managed to survive in one of the driest,
hottest areas on Earth. It was the perfect place to find red dragon
nests.

At least that was what Incendus was
telling himself as he searched the broken landscape. Truth be told,
the fire elemental was bored. He had reluctantly agreed to retrieve a
dragon egg for the wizard, Simon O'Toole, and was now regretting his
own eagerness.

Not that he didn't want to help the man
with his rather unusual problem, Incendus told himself. He had huge
respect for the wizard. But those born of fire, by their very nature,
were in constant need of stimulation and this country was extremely
dull.

When fire elementals traveled long
distances, they assumed a form of pure flame. If anyone had spotted
Incendus flying high over the arid country, they might have mistaken
his blazing form for a meteorite. He moved with incredible speed, as
fast as his air elemental cousins, and scanned the ground below for
signs of a nesting dragon.

Damn that primal for giving his lesser
dragons the ability to mate, Incendus cursed to himself. It was an
unbelievable abomination. The world would be buried under the wings
of thousands of those twisted monsters.

It was bad enough that their insane
queen still lived, although she at least was witless and only a vague
threat at the moment. But to allow dragons to mate? It was beyond his
comprehension.

But enough of that, the elemental told
himself irritably. The battle against the dragons was a task for the
future; one he relished. Right now, he had to find an egg for the
ritual to tear the wizard and the silver dragon apart.

What had Simon O'Toole been thinking
when he'd made that agreement? What was the dragon's thinking?
Incendus wondered briefly if the two of them weren't as mad as the
dragon queen in their own way.

A movement ahead and below him pulled
the elemental out of his gloomy reverie and he halted abruptly and
floated on the wind, a crackling, shifting ball of fire hundreds of
feet above the ground.

He focused his attention on a patch of
sunken ground surrounded by stunted brown trees and what looked like
heaps of displaced dirt. Was that a flash of red in the otherwise
colorless landscape?

It was, the elemental thought
gleefully. It was a dragon, wings spread out, brooding on a crude
nest.

The question was, were there eggs down
there?

He watched intently, waiting for the
creature to move.

“Come on. Come on, you stupid
beast,” he muttered, willing her to fold her wings so that he
could see the nest beneath her.

After a moment, the nesting mother
finally did shift and close her wings slightly and Incendus smiled to
himself.

“Got you,” he said with a
satisfied chuckle as he saw a handful of shiny pale ovules resting
beneath her.

Incendus could perhaps be forgiven for
what happened next. He was, after all, seeing a dragon's nest for the
first time ever and his attention was focused entirely on it. But for
whatever reason, he was caught completely by surprise.

From the blazing sky above him, a red
dragon arrowed out of the sun and slammed into the distracted fire
elemental. Over fifty feet in length and weighing a dozen tons, the
monster bellowed its rage as it attacked its target, obviously
defending its mate and offspring.

Incendus was stunned by the attack and
tumbled downward, confused and out of control. The magical nature of
the dragon allowed it to harm an elemental creature like him and he
was wounded by its talons; a sharp lance of pain that he hadn't felt
in millennia.

As he fell, Incendus saw the dragon
below look up from her eggs, screech in rage and leap into the air to
ascend directly at him with her fangs bared.

Well, this isn't going as well as I'd
hoped, the elemental thought as he tried to ignore his pain and
collect himself.

It took a few seconds, but Incendus was
both ancient and powerful, and the veteran of many a battle. He
gathered his wits and shot off at right angles before either dragon
could reach him to attack again.

All I want is one stupid egg, he felt
like shouting at the enraged pair as he raced away with the dragons
in hot pursuit. You'll have plenty more, I'm sure.

He doubted that the monsters were in
any mood to be reasonable though, so he would have to do things the
hard way.

The problem was, red dragons were
mostly immune to fire attacks. Incendus could certainly hurt them by
slamming into them at high speed, but attacking one would leave him
vulnerable to the other. As his aching body reminded him, the dragons
could most definitely harm him in return.

He looked back and saw the dragons
slowly falling behind. They couldn't match his speed and would
probably give up the pursuit fairly quickly to return to protecting
their eggs.

Incendus slowed down enough to allow
them to get closer; but not too close. If he couldn't win his prize
in battle, he'd use his wits instead.

And the other elementals say my people
are flighty, he thought with some amusement. Well, perhaps we are,
but we can be shrewd when the need arises.

He let the pair of angry dragons close
to within a hundred feet or so and then increased his speed to stay
just ahead of them. He started to rise, leading them upward into the
pale afternoon sky.

“Come on,” he muttered.
“Come on. Stay with me.”

The dragons followed him with
single-minded ferocity, bent on destroying this perceived threat to
their eggs, and this pleased Incendus immensely.

As stupid as they are dangerous, he
thought. Without their primal to direct their actions, these lesser
dragons were just beasts. Perhaps the war to come wouldn't be quite
as hard as he had feared.

Below him, one of the monsters drew
back its head and breathed a stream of dragon-fire at him. He dodged
effortlessly, unconcerned by the attack, but chastened nonetheless.
The dragons could still be formidable opponents, whether they were
clever or not. He would have to remember that.

Minutes passed and Incendus estimated
that they were several thousand feet above the ground. The dragons
were slowing a bit, showing the first signs of fatigue, and he
decided that it was time to act.

The elemental switched his direction
abruptly and shot straight back at the pursuing dragons, catching
them completely off guard. He flew between them and they
instinctively turned as well, trying to attack him. What happened
instead was that the beasts slammed into each other, tangling up
their wings and necks in a mid-air collision.

They roared and screamed in rage and
confusion as they immediately began to fall like stones. They tumbled
and twisted, trying to disentangle themselves and Incendus laughed to
himself as he shot off at full speed back toward the nest.

Dangerous or not, they really were
quite stupid, he thought merrily.

The pair would recover quickly and be
back in hot pursuit, but the elemental should be long gone by then.

He streaked downward, blazing like a
falling star. He spotted the nest and was soon hovering above it,
staring at the mottled, leathery eggs.

There were six of them, each as large a
human baby. Heat waves rose out of the sand around them and the
ovoids baked in the intense desert sun.

Incendus assumed a man-like body of
flame, reached down and stroked one of the eggs. He frowned and
tapped on it, hearing a dull thud as if he was tapping on some hard
mineral.

Damn it, he thought angrily.

He had wanted to destroy the eggs that
he didn't need but now he doubted that he would have the time.

A distant scream told him that he was
right. The dragons would be on him before he could do much damage to
the thick-shelled spheres.

He sighed and shrugged. Oh well, we
will meet some other time, he thought as he looked at the eggs. In
battle perhaps.

He scooped up the smallest one, held it
under one arm and looked up.

The pair of dragons was shooting
straight down at him, maws gaping wide and eyes red with fury.
Incendus chuckled, gave them a final, cocky wave and vanished like an
extinguished flame.

Simon was sitting on his
front steps, moodily staring across the courtyard. His knees were
drawn up to his chest and he was resting his chin on them.

He hadn't heard any
internal rumblings from Esmiralla for a while and was taking the
opportunity to think quietly without interruption. It was a rare,
peaceful moment.

Why had he agreed to merge
with the silver dragon, he wondered for what seemed like the
millionth time. What would make him do something so out of character?

One thing Simon had always
prided himself on was his independence. Yes, he liked having the
elementals around to help him and keep him company. But if he had to
live alone in his tower, he could quite happily do so as long as he
had the occasional visit with friends. He liked people but he didn't
need them.

And yet, when Esmiralla
had proposed this merging, he had practically jumped at the chance.
Why? It was so unlike him.

“
Your face is all
twisted, master.”

Simon looked down at
Kronk, who was standing at the bottom of the steps, and smiled wanly.

“
Is it? I wonder
why?” he replied faintly, feeling as weary as he ever had in
his life.

“
You are worried,
are you not? Master, you should not worry about things you cannot
change.”

The little earthen hopped
up the stairs and sat down on the step to Simon's right. He looked up
at the wizard with a quizzical expression on his rocky face.

“
What worries you
today, master?”

Simon sighed and rubbed
his temples.

“
I'm that obvious,
am I?”

Kronk only shrugged and
waited patiently.

“
It's this whole
situation,” Simon said as he leaned back and stretched his legs
for a moment. Then he pulled them up tight to his chest again and
stared blankly across the front yard to the surrounding wall.

“
It just wasn't like
me to agree so easily to Esmiralla's proposal that we combine bodies
to take on the primal red dragon. I was like, I don't know, a kid
being offered candy; I couldn't say yes fast enough.”

He turned to look down at
Kronk.

“
Does that sound
like me?”

“
No master, it does
not,” Kronk said with a frown. “You can, forgive me, be
impulsive occasionally, but to commit to something so momentous
without so much as a second thought? No, that is not like you at
all.”

“
Exactly.”

Simon stood up abruptly,
walked down the steps and began pacing back and forth. His drab brown
robe swirled around his ankles and he kept pushing his long hair off
of his face.

After a few minutes of
deep thought, he stopped abruptly and stared at Kronk.

“
I think she
influenced me somehow,” he said in a hushed voice.

“
How, master?”

“
How should I know?
Esmiralla is ancient. She has powers that I can't even imagine. She
could exert her will over me and I doubt that I would even be aware
of it.”

Kronk stood up and watched
Simon as he began pacing once more.

“
Master, why are you
whispering? The silver dragon is inside of you, is she not? She can
hear everything you are saying.”

Simon stopped again and
frowned at the little guy. He slowly shook his head and lowered his
voice even more.

“
I don't think so.
There are times when she seems to be...out. How she does that I don't
know, but I can feel her when she's in residence.”

“
Interesting,”
Kronk said. “I do not understand this merging, master, but I do
not see how the silver dragon could just,” he gestured vaguely,
“come and go at will.”

“
Me neither. Add
that to the list of things I don't understand about this whole
situation.”

He began pacing yet again,
lost in thought.

“
Master, if I am
understanding you correctly, you think that Esmiralla may have subtly
coerced you into allowing this connection?”

“
She might have,
yes.”

“
Then the most
important question has to be...why? What could she possibly hope to
gain from this merging?”

Simon stopped again,
walked back up the steps and sat down heavily next to Kronk.

“
That is the one
thing that keeps stopping me from completely accepting that she might
have tricked me. What could she gain from being trapped inside this,”
he slapped his narrow chest, “skinny, adolescent body? Wouldn't
she rather remain as herself? I'll tell you, her draconian body was
awesome and powerful. So what has she gotten out of this merging with
me?”