The Second Prophecy (Part 1 of the Dragdani Prophecies)

by R. Alan Ferguson

  “However, if this Wizard-Elf could not be found then evil would reign in Dorminya forever,” finished Delsani.

  “What is so different about this Wizard-Elf?” asked John.

  “Dragdani foretold that he would be the most powerful yet, and he would be descended from Dragdani’s own family line. And as you, John are his last descendent, you must be the one of which he spoke.”

  John now looked astonished. “If you knew that I’m the one in the Second Prophecy, why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “Because we didn’t find out until today.”

  “Why?” John asked with even more interest than ever.

  “There was a blank piece of parchment rolled up with the prophecies, and as Dragdani left instructions not to discard anything in the scroll, it was kept as well.

  “We’ve been studying the Second Prophecy for any clues too who it might be referring to. Then early this morning the blank parchment was no longer blank. It had a name on it. Your name. And even stranger than that, it wasn’t your Wizard name, but your Normal name,” said Delsani informatively. “That’s why you must come with me now.”

  A long silence filled the room.

  “John I want to talk to you in private,” said Helen anxiously, as if she thought they were about to disappear in the blink of an eye.

  “Then I shall wait here, but please do hurry,” said the old Wizard.

  John and Helen went into the living room and shut the door behind them, while Delsani remained beside the dining table.

  As soon as they sat down, Helen not only sounded worried, now she looked it.

  “I don’t want you to go. It’s too dangerous, and you said that you never wanted to go back to Dorminya.”

  “Yes, I did, because –” John paused.

  “Because...” prompted Helen.

  “I was exiled, but this changes everything. If Delsani is right and I don’t go back. Then my world will be destroyed.”

  “Those people threw you out of your home and destroyed your life. They haven’t shown the slightest interest in you for seven years. Now that they need you, they have the cheek to come here and ask for your help. They’re just using you. Don’t let them.” Helen’s anger was starting to show.

  “You’re right. The Council did throw me out, but not everyone thought what they did was right. They’re the ones I’m thinking of. How can I let those people pay for the Council’s arrogance? And besides, I’m glad they threw me out. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you,” added John carefully. The last thing he wanted was to make his wife angry. She was no tyrant, but she did have an awful temper. John knew that if it flared he would most certainly lose the argument. Not that it would stop him from doing what he thought he must.

  After John spoke, Helen thought that it did not matter what her view in this was. John felt too strongly about it. Besides, she also knew he was right. Why let the innocent pay for the stupid decision those idiots made? Furthermore, John was right about them not meeting if it hadn’t have happened. She frowned and said, “I understand, and I’m going too, and you can’t talk me out of it.”

  “What makes you think that I would want to talk you out of it?” asked John who looked quite happy with Helen’s decision.

  They got up together. John opened the door, and there was Delsani standing in the same spot.

  “Well, what do you say? Are you coming?” he asked eagerly.

  “Yes,” John answered. “We’re both going.”

  “I think that would be for the best. It may not be safe for Helen to stay on her own,” admitted Delsani, “in case one of Ulicoth’s spies were to find out that you are married. He could try to use it against you. She should be safe in the towers.”

  “Ulicoth,” spat John; his face suddenly losing its color. All Wizards knew that name. Ulicoth once sat at the right hand of Lord Salith.

  “Yes, the Dark Wizard-Elf. He was the one who brought back the shadow of Salith. He is the one that we must stop before he brings the red mist back as well,” said Delsani hastily. “There is one other thing that you must know about Ulicoth. We still don’t know who he really is or even where he came from. All we know is that Salith taught him over six hundred years ago.”

  “Do you think he could really have so much power?” asked John.

  “Yes, I am afraid he has become as evil, ruthless and almost as powerful as his master, and he will do whatever it takes to finish Salith’s work.”

  John said nothing at first. Then he asked, “What does the red mist do?”

  John had already heard about it, as he had heard of almost everything that the Wizard had said up to this point, but he wanted to be sure. It had been a long time since he had heard the stories, and he wanted to be absolutely sure of what he was walking into.

  “You must have heard the stories, but the truth of the matter is, we’re not entirely sure,” said Delsani, “for it only ever claimed two victims, and it affected them both differently. The first was Alavil; she was the Elven maiden that Salith forced to bare him a child, a Wizard-Elf. When Salith exposed her to the mist, it killed her, which is why some call it the death mist. The second victim was Queen Thoucil Dragdani’s mother. It turned her mad,” said the old Wizard. “You should gather whatever you need; we must leave as soon as possible.”

  “Not until I call Joan and Harry,” said Helen. “We can’t leave without telling them. Besides they’ll cover for us while were gone.”

  “There’s no need to worry about that. We will send some of our people to take your places while we’re away.”

  “But how will that help? Our friends do know what we look like,” said Helen.

  “I am offended by your lack of faith, young lady,” Delsani joked. “You forget who you’re dealing with here. Our agents will not only assume your identities. They shall also take your appearances as well.”

  “But still, we should tell Joan and Harry.”

  “Quickly,” urged John.

  “How long will we be away?” Helen swiftly asked.

  “In truth, I can’t really say, though I would guess at least five years in Dorminya. Then you could return to see to your lives here, if that is what you want,” replied Delsani. “That would be two years and six months in this world.”

  “Right, okay two years and six months,” Helen repeated while rushing into the living room to call their friends. She had always had a terrible memory when it came to anything that was not connected to her books.

  “Who are Joan and Harry?” asked Delsani when Helen was gone.

  “They’re two of our closest friends. And the only other Normals who know what I really am,” replied John.

  Helen came back into the room and stood between Delsani and John.

  “So are you both ready?” asked Delsani.

  “Yes,” they answered together.

  “Now are you sure that there’s nothing you wish to take with you?”

  “Perhaps some clothes,” said Helen.

  “No,” said John. “We better leave now. We can get what we want sent to us later.”

  Helen nodded in agreement.

  Delsani reached into the inside pocket of his robes and took out his wand. The wand would have looked like an old ridged, dried up twig if not for the handle, which was metal and had strange letters engraved on it. The letters were of the Wizard language. For when Wizards graduate, their wands are given names. Usually one of the trainers, those Wizards who teach and train the young ones in the ways of magic, would name their pupils’ wands. In the rare instance when a wand rejects the name it is first given, it may be renamed by whoever the owner of the wand may chose. After they are named, their names appear engraved into the handle. The name of Delsani’s wand was Ruvkel; the name of John’s wand was Fasruol.

  As the three stood on the tiled Kitchen floor ready to leave, Delsani and John thought of the place they were going. And both held onto Helen. Then with Ruvkel in his hand, Delsani said, “Plias thi Dorminya.” He point
ed the wand at the floor, and a continuous stream of smoke darted from its tip. The smoke rose from the floor very quickly, surrounding them, and all that could be seen were shadows. The next instant, they were gone.

  Chapter Two

  Dragdani’s Dragon

  As the smoke cleared, the three travelers found they were in a stone grey room. It looked and felt cold and was very dimly lit. Helen could smell strong unavoidable odors which she could not even remotely identify. Most were nice, but others, well, perhaps one can guess.

  There was a wide wooden door to the right of them, which was the front entrance and exit. The door was like oak, only stronger. It was eight foot high and four inches thick. It had three hinges that were made of what looked like steel. Both sides of the hinges were square, and they were attached to the door and stone frame by thick steel rivets. These were at least five inches in length. The door was barred with a long thick strip of very sturdy looking wood. The very same wood from which the door itself was made.

  Helen couldn’t help thinking it looked like a door that a fortress would have.

  There were also double doors to left. It was those doors they walked to. They were a dark navy blue and had Wizard runes spread across them, some of which were as big as Helen’s hands. The symbols suddenly moved and changed into plain English letters that said, WELCOME.

  Delsani opened the right-hand door by pulling it outward and walked on through. John stopped for Helen and held the door open as she walked past. As she went through the doorway, she saw that it led out into the middle of the main hall of the Towers of Telian. She knew this, as she was an author and had written of it in a few of her books after John described it to her. The hall was lengthy and tall, and along the walls on both sides hung torches with tall and very bright silver flames. The flames were so bright that the only shadows that could be seen were theirs. Not even any of the artifacts lining the walls or filling the main hall had a shadow between them.

  The display of old relics was so large that it went from one end of the hall to the other on both sides. They were separated like in a museum, with a different arrangement for each time or race. The artifacts ranged from suits of armor and helmets to swords, bows, arrows and crossbows with bolts. There were other weapons, small and large. There were clothes, too, and pieces of old parchment with all sorts of writing on them. Most of the ink was faded, and some were so old that the writing on them could hardly be seen at all. Those mostly belonged to the likes of famous Men, Elves, and Dwarves.

  There were also old wands, staffs, parchment with spells on them, cauldrons, broomsticks, and hats that belonged to famous Wizards and Witches. Each artifact had a small plaque to explain what it was, who owned it, and in what time. And there were wooden doors here and there along the walls which gave access to the main building, which sat between the three towers.

  The floor of the hall was dark and finely polished; it was so glossy that the reflections of the hall could plainly be seen in it, as though it was a sort of giant black mirror. But it was not a mirror, and those were not reflections in it. The floor was a dimensional window, and so it was called, for it gave a view of other dimensions. In it, Helen saw a woman sitting upside down only a few feet away. She had her head in her hands and looked as though she were crying. She lifted her head, and Helen saw that the woman was a double of herself. The double saw her too and quickly got up and started to walk her way. She stopped short of Helen and looked at John. Tears filled her eyes again. She looked unsteady, as though she would fall. Then she looked at Helen and began to talk to her, but Helen could not hear her words. The floor gave only sight and no sound. Helen believed she could read the woman’s lips, though. “No trust, John is dead.”

  At first Helen thought that she had it wrong, but in some way it made sense. That would explain the anguish Helen had seen in her double. The view of the woman and hall faded, and the floor turned grey.

  Delsani had seen what Helen had seen. “Keep in mind that she lives in an alternate universe. Things can be different there? These differences may be big or small. And sometimes there are none,” he said.

  Delsani’s words caught John’s attention. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing wrong, John,” Helen lied.

  John looked at Delsani. “I know something is wrong. What is it?”

  Helen stood there silent and then said weakly, “I saw myself in the floor, and I told myself not to trust any Wizard, and that you’re dead.”

  John paused for a moment, and then reflected, “I know what that’s like. One time I saw a double that said, ‘Mum will die.’ The only thing was both my parents had died when I was very young.”

  “Er ...right,” said Helen, still feeling uneasy.

  “Just because I’m dead in that dimension, doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to keel over any time soon,” said John sarcastically.

  “Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Helen asked, not at all amused.

  “No, it means Delsani is right; there’s probably nothing to worry about.”

  “Probably,” the young woman repeated, sounding quite concerned.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Helen, believe me,” replied her husband reassuringly.

  Helen continued to feel anxious about the whole thing.

  Then as quickly as the dimensional reflection had faded, it came back. All three were now looking, but Helen’s double was not there, because the floor looked into different dimensions. Now they could see a man. He was tall and neat except for his short messy hair, which would have been completely blond if not for streaks here and there of dark brown. He looked young, at most in his early twenties, and was wearing a beige shirt, black trousers, and a belt that was black with a silver clip-in buckle with an engraved Dragon’s claw holding an orb. He was wearing light brown shoes, and in his right hand he held a sword. In his other hand he held a piece of cloth, which he used to wipe down the blade of his sword.

  On the blade were Elven runes, which seemed to shine with a small echoing light; a light that made the silver blade look exquisite and flawless. He stopped wiping the blade then put the sword gently and carefully into its sheath, which was blue with the same letters. They also had a shine to them, but unlike the light on the blade, it was not an echoing light, but more like a sparkle, as if diamonds or some other valuable stones were set in.

  The guard of the sword looked like two long fangs running up beside the blade. They were four inches in length, and both the guard and the butt of the hilt were the same color of blue as the sheath. The handle’s grip was royal blue with a thin blue chain winding round it.

  The man turned slightly, and it was then that John saw something silver glimmer in the torchlight. It was the centerpiece of a necklace that was held around his neck by a thin black rope. It looked tiny from where they stood and hard to see because of the light shining on it.

  John was trying to see what the silver piece was when he saw his eyes unexpectedly change in his refection in one of the glass cases, from hazel brown to green. Not only did they change in color. They changed in appearance as well. The pupils had stretched from top to bottom; they now looked like little Dragon eyes.

  Like his eyes, his view was now also green. He could see light green ripples moving from his pupils to the edges of his irises. His sight was better, the detail of everything around him grown clearer than ever. The ripples seemed to have their own function. For every time they passed, he could see the dust particles moving in the air. When he looked at the doors at the far end of the room, he could see a draft coming through a gap at the bottom of one of them.

  Then at the side of his right eye, John could see two thin wafts of air that were getting bigger and diminishing as they floated away. When he turned round, he saw that it was the very breath of Helen and Delsani. It seemed that he could also see any movement no matter how small it was. This is like some kind of radar, he thought.

  “We are privileged to be able to see the g
reat Wizard-Elf Dragdani,” said Delsani, “It’s not every day you see a living legend.”

  “Dragdani,” said John. He knew he had seen the man before, but he had been away from Dorminya for so long that he could not even recognize one of the most famous people to ever walk that world. He turned his gaze back to Dragdani, looked at the sheath of his sword and to the Elven symbols, and then to his eyes alone they changed and appeared now as English letters. They spelt Yeluilat, the name of one of the most radiant stars in the Elven night sky. It was also the name given to the Sword of Light, which was forged by the Wizards and Witches of Cayer-Huld and the Elves of Haludon then given to Dragdani as a gift when he assumed the throne. It was called the Sword of Light because when its name was spoken aloud, it would emit a blinding light that would drive back any darkness and reveal anything that might be hiding within it. But the sword would only allow its true bearer to perform this act. Anyone else foolish enough to try it would be swallowed by the light and destroyed within its radiance.

  John turned his attention back to the necklace around Dragdani’s neck. His eyes, to his own surprise, zoomed in on the silver piece, and he saw that it was in the shape of a Dragon. It was looking to Dragdani’s right, its wings half open, its front claws holding a multicolored orb, and suspended on the rope at either side of the Dragon’s head were two silver metal beads. As every Wizard knows, the silver Dragon was the personal seal of King Dragdani. Wizard’s and Witches young and old call it Dragdani’s Dragon, for the silver Dragon was modeled on the Dragon Lanisic. He and Dragdani were the best of friends, and some of the Wizards even called Lanisic Dragdani’s Dragon.

  Lanisic was the leader of the Jemonac Dragon Colony. Salith destroyed the colony for siding with the King. He also destroyed the Wizard Order of Thyeron, named for the largest of Dorminya’s moons, and the old Coven Wiannta, which took the name of the first Witch to recruit for the coven. After the Order, Coven and Colony lay in ruins. They were slowly restored and renamed, though it took many long years to rebuild what Salith had taken.