Wizard's Blood [Part Two] (94 page)

Jolan shook his head. “I don’t know. There is nothing close that could conceal him. I can’t see how he could have escaped.”

As Jolan searched for any sign of the elusive wizard, Asari turned and walked toward the staff that lay on the ground. As he reached for it, Jolan started to yell out a warning, knowing how his own staff had reacted to anyone other than its owner. He was too late, and Asari’s hand closed around the shaft. Nothing happened, and his friend returned carrying the jeweled staff.

“
Maybe this can help us,” Asari said.

Jolan heaved a sigh of relief that nothing had happened when Asari had picked up the staff. He was about to explain his concern when Iach-Iss’ voice suddenly came through their communicator.

“
We must leave now,” he said, his voice strained.

“
Cheurt escaped,” Jolan said.

“
That is unfortunate, but we must leave.”

“
Okay. We will head for the southern retrieval point,” Jolan said.

“
No,” Iach-Iss replied. “I see where you are. Stay put, but be ready to move quickly. I will retrieve you there.”

Jolan wanted to complain that this was too risky for the scout, but the communicator was silent. Then, he saw the scout dropping rapidly as it came in from the west. The vehicle pulled up a few feet away, the doorway open and the vehicle hovering just above the ground. They ran and dove through the door, the vehicle already moving as several blasts of magic slammed against the outer hull. The door started closing as they rose, the ship moving rapidly away from the Academy before they found their way to their seats.

“
We left the weapon,” Asari said as they scrambled forward.

“
We can’t help it now,” was all Jolan could say. He was focused on the large burned hole that had been blasted into the lower deck and which had significantly damaged the overhead as well. As he scrambled into his chair he realized the ship wasn’t all that had been hurt.

Iach-Iss sagged in his seat, his right arm mostly blasted away and a large wound in his side. He had slapped some kind of seal over the wound to minimize the loss of his pinkish blood, but it was clear the dragon was in a bad way.

“
We’ve got to get you to the base and into the medi-table,” Asari said when he realized the extent of the dragon’s injuries.

Iach-Iss grinned weakly, but shook his head. “This time it is too late. There is little the table can do for me, and past experience has shown your healing ring would have no effect either. I’m sorry, but it looks like we overestimated our ability. I have told the ship to take us home. I don’t think I will survive the trip.”

Asari looked at the dragon in horror. He had already lost Den-Orok, and now it seemed the last of the dragons was dying. It couldn’t be.

Iach-Iss coughed, a grimace passing across his face. “You say that Cheurt got away once again.”

“
I think so, we shot his triad and they went down. The others are dead, but he seemed to survive the weapon. I also shot him with my pistol, but only got his arm.”

“
That is indeed unfortunate. Is that his staff?” Iach-Iss asked looking at the staff Asari had thrown into the corner.

Asari nodded.

“
Bring it too me.”

Asari retrieved the staff and brought it to Iach-Iss. The dragon indicated that Jolan should take it. When Jolan hesitated, the dragon grinned weakly. “Only the staffs you and Shyar hold were designed to protect their owner. It is safe enough, even for another with the power.”

Hesitantly, Jolan took the staff from Asari. It seemed dead and inert in his hand.

“
Describe what you feel to me,” the dragon insisted.

After Jolan did, the dragon told him to try and bond with the staff.

“
I sense nothing from it,” Jolan said after a minute.

“
Cheurt is alive,” the dragon said with a sigh. If he were dead, the staff would seek a new owner. As long as he lives, the staff is bonded to him and will not work for any other. It is a way you can know if the man dies from his wounds.”

“
How did he survive when the others all died?” Asari asked.

“
I suspect it is the device he took from your friend. I told you the device had surprises, and it must be linking him to enough power to fight the impulse’s effects. It will fester inside of him, and he will grow much weaker, and might yet die. If he survives, however, he will be immune to further attacks from our weapon. Here is what must be done. I am sorry you will have to do this alone.”

They called the skimmers and told them to head for home. Then, for the next half hour, as he grew steadily weaker Iach-Iss explained to Jolan and Asari what options remained open to them. By the time the scout landed back in Cobalo, there were no more living dragons on Gaea.

They cremated Iach-Iss’ body per his stated wishes in a mostly private ceremony the next day. Only a double handful of those closest to the dragons were there. After centuries of being “lost”, the dragons barely had a chance to become known once again. Now they were gone, and this time there would be no more.

“
We might have been able to save him if we’d got him back to the base,” Asari said sadly as they walked away from the rest of the group. “There were a couple of portals not too far away. We should have made directly for those and got him back.”

“
Iach-Iss obviously didn’t think so,” Jolan countered. “Besides, I don’t think he wanted to survive. He would have been completely alone, the very last of his kind. When they checked at the Nexus, it was clear that after a thousand more years of waiting there were still no messages indicating their kind were coming for them. Once his last friend was killed, there was nothing for him.”

“
Cheurt surprised them, didn’t he?” Asari said.

“
Ale’ald obviously has uncovered some items the dragons thought long lost. It’s clear the degree of resistance was far greater then the dragons anticipated. They had hoped to eliminate Cheurt. Without him, the Ale’ald forces would be far less effective.”

“
The staff seems to believe he is still alive.”

Jolan nodded. They had checked this morning. They didn’t know where the wizard might be, but it seemed he continued to hang on. Jolan wished he knew how badly Cheurt had been hurt. Iach-Iss had told him what to expect, but he would like to know the man’s current condition.

The previous day’s battle had been costly. Not only had they lost their two friends, but also a pair of the dragon’s special weapons. One had gone up with Den-Orok, and the other they had left behind when they fled unexpectedly. One of the scouts was destroyed, and without a dragon to control it, the other was now grounded forever. At least the four skimmers still worked, and would be useful in the efforts that remained. They also had a number of other dragon tools, and at some point Jolan would have to go back to the Dragon’s Nest and make use of the special crystal that Iach-Iss had given him a while back. That could wait. He didn’t think he would find anything there that would help with the remaining battles.

Shyar was, of course, pissed at him. Only the fact he and Asari had made it out unharmed, and the fact they had lost their two friends had held her tongue in check. He knew he would hear about the matter at some point, but for the moment she settled for giving him some scathing looks.

The three of them headed down to the portal room. Jolan wasn’t positive this was going to work, but he thought it would and he didn’t know how long the window of opportunity would last. Wylan had been monitoring the Academy since yesterday, and Morin and Buris the portals, and there hadn’t been any indication of a mass exodus from the area. It seemed the wizards felt they had won the round, and for the moment were staying put. It couldn’t last. They had left the troops in the field virtually undefended, and they would have to return to support them against possible attack. He was surprised they hadn’t started returning already.

“
You’re sure you want to go there?” Morin asked when they entered the portal room a few minutes later.

Jolan nodded. “If anything goes wrong, there are skimmers not too far away. They can come and get us if needed. We have one of the communicators.”

Morin nodded unhappily, but had his team activate the portal Jolan had identified to him the previous night. He watched as the three stepped into the opening and disappeared from sight. He closed the portal after they were gone. If they chose to return that way, they could open it locally.

* * * *

Jolan looked across the wide valley to the small dark cluster of structures so far away. They had found this portal when they were exploring Ale’ald in hopes of rescuing Shyar. It was almost forty miles across the valley to the Academy he could barely make out. This portal was in the middle of nowhere, without even a dirt path that passed through the area. He’d been sure it would be deserted, although they had been prepared to deal with anyone who had been assigned to guard it. Finding it as deserted as expected, Asari laid down the heavy weapon he and Jolan had been supporting, and Shyar relaxed the strong shields she had been maintaining.

“
It’s a long way,” Shyar said uncertainly.

“
I don’t know why, but it isn’t supposed to matter. Actually, I don’t know why I am supposed to be able to use the spell at all. It’s a bit like the Mage’s Box. I simply know I can.”

“
What do you want me to do?”

“
Once I release the spell, build your strongest shields around the three of us and anchor us to the ground. Make sure that you make the shield dark. Make it like we practiced last night.”

“
We won’t be able to see anything?” she said.

“
Perhaps not,” Jolan said, but he knew otherwise.

Moments later there was no reason to delay any longer. Jolan didn’t want to do this, but the war had gone on long enough. This wouldn’t end it completely, but it would be just a matter of time if this worked. They would have to search down the random triads and deal with the troops Ale’ald had scattered across Kimlelm, but that could be done. They had five years or so before the dragon technology would shut down. Iach-Iss had warned them that he’d put a time limit on the equipment. Gaea needed to develop on its own. By then the war should have been over, or the wrong side would have won.

Sadly, he nodded at Shyar and reached into the hidden corner of his mind where he’d stuffed the spell he was so reluctant to use. Then, focusing on the building of the Academy across the valley he triggered the spell of destruction.

He’d run some calculations the previous night and sought the equivalent of a fifty megaton explosion. Vaen had given him permission to go back into the sealed book room and review what he’d seen there when they’d been looking for something else so long ago. He knew where to look, and once again he’d been certain he could execute the spell. Fifty megatons would be so far above what any of the wizard’s shields could handle, triad or not, that all would be destroyed. The Academy and whatever shield protected it would fail, and the area for several miles around would be consumed by the sun-like temperatures that would be created.

It only took the smallest fraction of a second. This time the energies were from the source that powered magic and not from the fusion of atomic particles. There would be no residual radiation to plague the people of the land in future years. In most other ways, the explosion was identical to the movies he had seen of nuclear blasts.

Shyar had, of course, been wrong. They had no trouble seeing the blinding light that suddenly lit the morning sky across the valley. It flared and overpowered every other source of illumination. After a few moments, the light from the explosion began to die. He had Shyar reduce the darkening characteristic of her shields so they could see, while maintaining the protection her shields provided. They watched as the massive mushroom cloud grew in the distance. Jolan wondered if this was the first that had ever existed on Gaea, or whether the existence of the spell indicated such magic had been used to cause some of the massive destruction in the time of the War of Mages. Shyar was silent, disbelieving the magnitude of the blast Jolan had triggered.

Asari’s eyes were wide as he watched the base of the mushroom cloud grow to a size that was wider than the whole of the Academy and surrounding city. Nothing would have survived in that. Wylan would be watching remotely via the satellites, and they would see the damage in the following days, but Jolan knew. He didn’t know how far the fireball and blast would reach. Perhaps at forty miles they would be outside the perimeter of the damage. They could probably leave by the portal now before the winds and blast could reach them, but he’d triggered this thing and he’d see it through. For some reason he wondered if the portals, which seemed immune to everything else, would survive the explosion. Maybe they could check afterwards.

The dragon’s satellite monitoring system revealed the truth. Where the Academy and the small village that had become a rooming area for Cheurt’s wizards had once stood, now a massive crater that extended miles beyond the region of interest was all that could be seen. Wylan had thought they were looking at the wrong spot for a minute, and had the operators call up the coordinates that had been stored for key locations. The dragons had had to help create these stored files, since no one else had learned to read their numbering system, but after several attempts he was convinced. There was total destruction for more than thirty miles from ground zero, and it was quite clear that no one could have survived the blast that caused such damage.