The Second Prophecy (Part 1 of the Dragdani Prophecies) (3 page)

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

“
The
y’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 pointed 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

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.

“
The
re’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.

“
The
re’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 great 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.

The Wizards
and Witches that remained needed a new sovereign. Thoucil was next
in line, but she refused and took the position of Grand Wizard
instead. Dragdani, as her son and heir, accepted the throne and his
coronation happened almost immediately.

When the
Wizards had rebuilt their order, Dragdani then helped the withes do
the same, and in their turn, also helped the Dragons find a new
home. It is said that he went to the cleft of Lavoul and raised an
island from the very sea itself, that he moved it away from the
coast and further out to sea to make sure that the Dragons would be
left to live in pace.

“
I see that
it’s happened already,” said Delsani.

“
What’s
happened?” asked Helen.