The Dragons of Ice and Snow (35 page)

To his
surprise, the earthen shook his head.

“
Have
you forgotten, master? I'm supposed to check the wall and drawbridge
while I'm here.”

Simon
slapped a hand to his forehead.

“
Gees,
of course! Sorry about that. Clara, Kronk's going to do an
inspection, just to make sure that there are no problems with your
defenses.” She smiled at the little guy in appreciation. “He'll
return to the tower when he's done.”

They all
rose and left the room, Simon grabbing his staff as he exited.

Kronk waved
as they left the building and then disappeared underground.

Clara gasped
with delight as she saw not only Chief but the two mares as well. All
three were sucking up water from buckets that some helpful
townsperson had brought to them.

“
I
didn't know you had brought all three horses,” the cleric said
happily. “I don't think I've ever seen the mares before.”

“
Well,
in that case, allow me to introduce you.”

He waved
Clara toward the horses and she moved forward tentatively, obviously
nervous around the big animals.

“
Don't
worry, they're quite gentle. This little lady here who blends into
the background is Tammy. Tammy, this is my friend Clara.”

The mare
lifted her head and then dipped it so that the cleric could stroke
her face. She blinked her large brown eyes once and then went back to
her water.

“
And
this slice of gold is Sunshine. She's put on a bit of weight, but we
love her anyway.”

Sunshine
raised her yellow head and snorted at Simon in disgust. He laughed
and reached out to scratch under her chin. She made a show of pulling
back and then closed her eyes with a contented sigh.

Clara smiled
and stroked the mare's flank. Then she stopped abruptly, her hand
resting on the horse's side and looked at Simon in surprise.

“
Putting
on weight? You do realize that Sunshine is pregnant, don't you?”

“
What?”

He stared at
her in complete surprise and then looked at the mare, who seemed to
meet his gaze with a knowing look.

“
Oh
my God,” he exclaimed. “I've been wondering over the last
few years if the horses had been made sterile when they Changed. You
old dog, you,” he said to Chief.

The stallion
raised his head and blew out a breath, spraying Simon with water.

“
Hey!
Watch it!”

Chief
nickered to himself, apparently pleased. He turned his magnificent
horned head toward Sunshine and gave a high-pitched neigh.

The mare
bobbed her head and then began drinking again.

“
Just
how intelligent are your horses, Simon?” Clara asked after
watching the exchange.

“
No
idea, but a lot more than they used to be. I'm pretty sure that they
can understand everything I say to them.”

He stroked
Sunshine's flank and then looked at the cleric.

“
You
can feel the baby inside of her? Awesome. Any idea how far along she
is?”

Clara put
her palm on the mare's large belly and stared off into the distance.
She had a small smile on her face.

“
About
four months, I'd say,” she told Simon after a moment. “How
long is the gestation period for horses?”

“
Around
eleven months. So she'll be due in late autumn. Good. I was afraid it
would be in the middle of winter. Nasty time to give birth.”

He tightened
the girth on Chief's saddle, untied his reins from the post and
mounted smoothly. He moved his staff on his back until it settled
comfortably and then gestured for Ana to join him.

This time
the stallion didn't react to the sensation as the water elemental
slipped up his leg and settled across the front of the saddle.

“
Thanks
for the information about the mare,” Simon said, looking down
at Clara. “It's good to know that the horses will go on. I
think the world would be a poorer place if they died out.”

“
I
agree. Keep me updated on her condition, please. If you need any
help, let me know. And thank you from the bottom of my heart for what
you've done and are doing for Malcolm and Aiden.”

“
Hey,
they're my friends too. I'll call you in a few days, after I scout
out that area in the Rockies and see if I can find some wolf's bane.
If not, we'll have time to find another spot before the next full
moon.”

“
Right.
Talk to you soon.”

Simon waved
and turned Chief toward the gates. The mares followed closely.

When they'd
reached the hill that led into the forest, Simon stopped a moment and
looked back at the town. The ugly enclosure that held his two friends
caught his eye and he scowled at it.

After those
two are safe again, they'd better tear that thing down. If they
don't, I may burn it to the ground myself.

And then he
gave Chief his head and they set off for home.

Simon
spent a day studying maps in his atlas, checking coordinates and
deciding on the best spots to explore in his search for wolf's bane.
It wasn't easy.

The atlas was either very
general when it came to showing proper elevation, or else he was
being a little thick. Whichever it was, finding a point in the Rocky
Mountains that was exactly at four thousand feet was almost
impossible.

He mentioned this to Kronk
after the little guy returned from Nottinghill and, as usual, he had
a practical solution.

“
Use your Magic
Mirror spell, master,” the elemental said with a shrug. He had
been passing the study where Simon was sitting at his desk and had
stopped when he heard the cursing. He had a basket of laundry
balanced on his head and it looked like the basket was moving by
itself.

“
What?”

The wizard looked up and
snorted a laugh at the sight of the animated laundry walking into the
room.

Kronk slipped out from
under the basket and frowned up at him.

“
You are having a
hard time locating this wolf's bane, yes? Well master, simply use the
coordinates in your book there to look at each likely site. Then you
won't have to Gate from place to place and waste time.”

He lifted the laundry
again and left the room.

“
Just a thought,
master,” he said as he disappeared down the stairs.

“
You're brilliant,”
Simon called after him gratefully.

“
Thank you, master,”
came the faint reply.

The wizard grabbed a sheet of paper and
made a list of promising coordinates. Then he hurried down to the
main floor, made some tea, got his hand mirror and returned to his
study to check out the list.

The first location that appeared in his
mirror was out before he even bothered looking around. When the fog
cleared from his view, he was looking at the sheer side of a
mountain. There were ridges of rock as far as the eye could see and
the only thing that was green were patches of lichen clinging to the
mountainside.

Glad I didn't Gate there, he thought
wide-eyed, and nervously swallowed some tea.

The next two spots were flat enough,
but again were basically bare rock and stone. A few stunted pine
trees were struggling to survive in the barren landscape but that was
all.

He hit pay dirt at the fourth location.

The mist-covered surface of the mirror
cleared to reveal a lush meadow, filled with tall grasses blowing in
the wind, mature trees and splashes of color from bunches of flowers
scattered throughout the area.

Simon picked up his book on Canadian
flora that he'd discovered in his library and thanked Daniel once
again for throwing seemingly random reference books at him over the
years. He flipped through it to the page he'd found earlier.

And there it was: Aconitum. Wolf's
bane.

He hadn't really read through its
properties before, so now he took a moment to do so. And whistled in
surprise. Extremely poisonous?

Better be careful with this stuff, he
thought and made a mental note to take gloves with him when it was
time to harvest the flower.

He underlined the site in his notes,
canceled the spell and sat back, breathing a sigh of relief.

He'd found it. Malcolm and Aiden were
going to be all right. Simon felt a little weak as the tension that
he hadn't even known was there seeped out of him. He closed his eyes
and laid his head back on the chair, taking a moment to regroup.

“Master, wake up! You will get a
sore neck sleeping like that.”

Simon sat up with a snort and looked
around wildly.

The study was dark and he had to squint
to see Kronk standing in the dimly-lit doorway.

“Kronk? What happened? What time
is it?”

“Late evening, master,” the
earthen said as he tapped across the room and jumped on to the desk.
“You fell asleep, I suppose. I've been busy with my chores and
didn't check on you. Are you all right?”

Simon rubbed his eyes and glanced at
the two candlesticks on the desk. He lit them with a thought and
looked out of the window.

The little guy was right. The sky was
turning purple and the countless stars had already made an
appearance. He stood up and opened the window behind the desk.

A cool breeze blew in, smelling of
grass and rich earth. He leaned on the ledge for a moment to clear
his head.

“Thanks for waking me up,”
he said over his shoulder. “I think this last week caught up to
me. Between worrying about Malcolm and Aiden, worrying about Aeris
and his scouting trip, worrying about Liliana...”

Kronk hopped down from the desk and
then leaped to the window ledge. For a small animated piece of rock,
he certainly is agile, the wizard thought, not for the first time.

“You can't carry everyone's
burden for them, master,” the earthen said a bit sharply. “You
keep forgetting that all of this casting that you've been doing takes
it toll on you. It drains your energy and if you don't get enough
rest and food, you could collapse.”

He paused to give Simon a hard look.

“Like you did once before,”
he added ominously.

The wizard simply accepted Kronk's
reprimand meekly. He'd learned his lesson once. If he pushed himself
too hard, he could find himself flat on his back and useless. And
that would benefit no one.

“You're right, as usual,”
he said as he watched the starry vista thicken above him. “Sometimes
I feel like it's me against the world. Well, against the world that
the dark gods want to create. What we really need is another wizard,
or ten, to share the load.”

“Perhaps you will find another
one day, master,” Kronk said in a more moderate tone. “But
as I told you before, wizards were not that numerous even in the days
of high magic. Now? Except for your old neighbor Heather, who turned
out to be evil, you may be the only one to live on this New Earth of
yours.”

“There's a cheerful thought,”
Simon said as he leaned his head against the window frame. He
breathed in the evening air and felt more awake and alert.

“Could you do me a favor?”
he asked as he returned to his desk and sat down. “Could you
put the kettle on? I'm going to call Aeris and see how he's doing and
then Clara to let her know that I located some wolf's bane.”

Kronk began to nod and then broke into
a broad smile.

“You found some, master? But
that's wonderful!”

“Thanks,” Simon replied,
feeling a little more cheerful. “Sheer dumb luck, but it's
there. Now we just have to wait for the next full moon. I wonder when
that is, exactly?”

“Eleven days, master,” the
earthen said as he jumped down from the window ledge and started to
cross the room.

“Really? How do you know that?”

“I just do, master. The earthen
can feel the moon's ebb and flow, just like I can feel the distant
echoes of earthquakes. They are a part of what we are.”

“Huh. That's interesting,”
Simon said under his breath as he watched the little guy scurry from
the room. “All this time and he's still full of surprises.”

Aeris responded right away when the
wizard called him. At first though, Simon thought that the spell was
malfunctioning. All he could see was a foggy gray haze in the mirror.
He knew that the area that the air elemental was searching was
approximately twelve hours ahead in time from the tower, which would
make it morning there. So what was he seeing?

“Hello?” he said
tentatively. “Aeris? Are you there?”

“Of course I'm here. Where else
would I be?” the air elemental responded.

“Okay, then why can't I see you?
Why can't I see anything?”

“Probably because I'm traveling
invisibly in the middle of a frozen wasteland. It's a rather grim
place, to be honest.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Or rather
I can't see. Um, anyway...how are you doing? Anything to report?”

“Not really. A whole lot of
frozen nothing, actually. I have seen several dragons, flying very
high. They pass quickly, always north to south and back again. That
at least gives me hope that I'm moving in the right direction.”

“No sign that they detected you?”
Simon asked anxiously.

“None. I'm sure that they
haven't. I've still got many weeks of scouting ahead, I believe. This
area is vast and featureless. The primal white dragon could be
anywhere. And this blasted medallion you gave me is just pulling me
vaguely north. Not much of a help, really.”