Legacy of Dragons- Emergence

by T D Raufson

  “They have a lot to talk about, and getting that many male dragons to agree is a task only Valdiest would undertake. Nethliast could never do it. So, there is time, but not much. Even after the decision is made, dragons do not move quickly against a foe. They plan and think before they strike.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Very comforting, mother, thank you.” She looked back at the books and felt overwhelmed again.

  Charles returned with a glass of wine for Kaliastrid and a bottle in case it was not enough. She accepted the glass, nodding to the bottle, and drank as if it contained a cure for the pain in her head. She held out the glass, and he filled it again and sat the bottle beside her.

  “The gate buzzed. You have a visitor,” Charles said with the frown that usually meant he was concerned.

  Melissa frowned too.

  “Who?”

  “They don’t know, but she has a letter with your grandmother’s crest on it, and she says it’s an invitation to come see you—by name.”

  “Where is she?”

  “On her way up now. I wanted you to know before I went to greet her.”

  “Is the parlor repaired?”

  Charles smiled at her and nodded.

  Melissa looked around at the stack of things she had to read and looked at her mother and rolled her eyes. The new understanding between them felt more reassuring than the comforting squeeze of her hand.

  “I’m going to sit here and enjoy my wine. I may even read a book or two to help you two out of your hole.” Dismissed, they turned to deal with the new visitor.

  Charles looked over his shoulder at Melissa as they left the books and their study for the first time in several days. They walked to the first floor together. In the foyer, she walked to the parlor to wait as he went to the front door.

  “Can you tell if she’s a dragon?”

  “I don’t sense one, but our human form conceals even very subtle signs.”

  She sniffed at the air and sensed nothing. A thought crossed her mind, and she tapped into the magic at her dragon core. Without an incantation or gesture, she simply focused on the her desire, and she felt the air around her turn warm. She walked to the front door, pulled back the small curtain that covered the windows on either side and looked out at an old car that had just stopped in the circular drive. The door opened, and a young woman stepped out of it. She was younger than Melissa by a couple of years. Her red hair was pulled back from her face in a cruel knot, and she was dressed in khaki pants that had not been pressed.

  “She’s no dragon.”

  Melissa answered his question and watched her walk toward them. Three steps from the car she put on her sunglasses, squared her shoulders and walked toward the porch as if she belonged there. Just before the steps, she tripped over the low brick border around the circular drive, defeating the feigned confidence. The barely visible aura around her, benefit of the spell Melissa had cast, told her more than she would ever know by watching her.

  “There’s something about her, though. She’s enchanted somehow.”

  Melissa grinned as the visitor straightened up from her trip and looked around to see if anyone was watching. Four years ago, and a dragon’s life now, she had been that age. Melissa abandoned her observations so the young woman wouldn’t catch her staring at her through the side windows and stood up next to Charles.

  He watched her walk up the steps and paused before he opened the door.

  Hand placed to use the knocker on the door, the young woman stood in the open doorway with her mouth open trying to react to the sudden realization that someone had been watching her. Relaxing her hand, she adjusted the waist of her tan pants and tugged at the tucked in edges of her peach Henley. In her final attempts to recover, she smiled at them with a brief smile that vanished when she really took in Charles who was blocking her view of anything past the door.

  She pulled the sunglasses off her face and backed up a couple of steps. Her fragile composure, momentarily recovered, collapsed. She looked back at her car and started to turn toward it.

  “The gate indicated you had a letter?” Melissa asked.

  Her words struck her, stopping her retreat. She looked at Charles again as if for permission and, when she moved, her eyes never left his. She pulled her backpack off, reached into the main chamber and pulled out a small letter in a plastic bag. Melissa recognized her grandmother’s seal before the letter fully left the pack.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The girl looked from Charles to Melissa and then back to Charles. He stepped aside and gave Melissa a long frown.

  “I’m sorry, Miss, your name is?” he asked attempting to maintain some control of his responsibility.

  “Oh, yes. I’m Elaine. Elaine Ambrosius.”

  Melissa recognized the antiquity of the last name. “Please join us in the parlor, Elaine.”

  Elaine followed Melissa into the parlor. Melissa motioned toward the facing set of wingback chairs that had hosted her conference with Nicklaus the night all of this had started. Elaine settled herself daintily into the offered seat across from the one Melissa was sitting in. The backpack slipped from her shoulder to her waist and then next to her feet, never far away and always touching. The furry head of a stuffed bear sticking out of the backpack looked up at Elaine, lending her strength by being near her.

  “So, what brings you here, Miss Ambrosius?” Melissa jumped right to the point, skipping the entire introductory dance. The girl across from her either didn’t notice or didn’t mind.

  “First, I was very sad to hear about Mrs. Schwendemann’s death. She was an amazing author. She and I had become... kinda… pen pals over the last year, until she became sick and I was so busy with school.”

  Melissa could see that there was real pain in her eyes, and she was avoiding tears when she spoke of Helena. She nodded and straightened her pants. The girl apparently expected more and adjusted a little in the chair before going on.

  “I received the letter today. I never expected to hear more from her, but there it was. I opened it and, I must admit, I’m confused.” She lifted the letter again to show she had it and then laid it in her lap gently.

  Melissa looked from the letter up to Elaine’s face. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what that letter is about.”

  “Oh, I thought—I thought someone would be expecting me. I’m sorry. I should have called.” She reached for her backpack and started putting the letter away while looking up at Charles, who was still towering behind Melissa.

  “Wait.” Melissa realized how difficult this had to be for the girl and tried to repair the awkwardness. “I’m not saying you can’t stay. In fact, I want you to stay. I’d like to know more about why you’re here. I just wasn’t prepared for this. I’m Melissa, by the way. Helena was my grandmother. She told me nothing about you.” She tried to remember if there was anything in the journal about Elaine, but could not recover anything specific. She had actually avoided reading the book ever since she had failed to cast the spell from it.

  Elaine sat back in the chair and looked between Melissa and Charles again.

  “Charles, why don’t you relax a little and join us. I think you should hear this as well. Charles, is—was—my butler. He’s a representative of the estate and is helping me with some research.”

  Elaine’s eyes brightened at her comment about research. “Are you continuing Helena’s work? Are you going to finish the last manuscript?” The mostly useless facade of a controlled professional vanished instantly, and the star struck fan bubbled out of the young woman, but that did nothing to change the surprise Melissa felt upon hearing, for the first time, about a new manuscript.

  Melissa sat back and looked at Charles, who was taking a seat next to her. He shrugged when he looked up at her.

  “Last manuscript? What last manuscript?”

  Elaine looked at both of them as if they were imposters. “The next novel she was working on. It was supposed to be the last one in the series. Renard’s Payment is the
expected title. At least that was what was leaked to the forums. We’re all on edge about it because it’s supposed to reveal Renard’s plan and what he’s done with Heliantra.”

  The names and memories that her words released exploded in Melissa’s mind. She leaned forward and trapped her skull between her hands until the pain passed. When she had mastered her own mind again, she looked up through her fingers at the girl who was staring at her. Charles was on the edge of his seat, reaching for her. She raised a hand to him to indicate she was alright before continuing.

  “Listen, Elaine, there is no last manuscript. She talked to me about them a lot, and in the last year, she hasn’t worked on anything for a novel. I haven’t found anything new that she wrote other than the journal she left me.”

  Elaine seemed confused. Again, her hand dove into the backpack that seemed to hold more than it really could and she pulled out a leather bound box. The tooling gave away its age. “Then, why am I here, and what is this?” She handed the letter and the box to Melissa and looked at her, waiting for an explanation.

  Melissa opened the letter and read it. It was in her Grandmother’s hand, and it had obviously been written in the weeks before she died. It was vague about what she had intended, but Helena had been so paranoid in the last weeks that she had not trusted anyone all that much. Melissa understood all about having something to do and not knowing how to get started.

  She put the letter down on the table between them and started to open the box. As soon as the letter was on the table, Elaine recovered it and stored it in a small plastic bag in her backpack.

  The leather box was filled with pristine white paper crowded with lines of text. The title on the first page was Renard’s Payment, exactly as Elaine had said.

  “Did you open this?”

  “No,” she answered nervously again, “not yet. Actually, I came straight here from home when I received the package. I took a moment to pack a few things.” She looked down at the comforting eyes of the little bear in the backpack and then back up at Melissa. “I hoped it was her manuscript and you needed my help to finish it. I’d love to be a writer instead of an engineer like my mother wants, and I was just so afraid it was something else and not the manuscript that I couldn’t open it. So what is it? Why am I here?”

  “It’s the manuscript you were just talking about.”

  Elaine’s eyes widened. The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees, and instantly she jumped up from her chair. The backpack was at her hip, and her eyes were searching the room.

  “Excuse me. I need to—Um… I, Uh left something in the car… I need—Uh…”

  Melissa nodded and the girl left the room and nearly ran out the door into the front drive of the house. Melissa set the book on the table and watched the young woman stand next to her car. She never opened the door or even tried to get into it. She simply stood in the driveway looking around wringing her hands.

  “She’s enchanted.” Kaliastrid’s voice came from the top of the stairs where the upstairs hall joined the library to the foyer.

  “I thought you were drinking your wine,” Melissa answered.

  “I was, until she made the house uncomfortable.”

  “You felt it?”

  “Of course. Like I said, she’s enchanted. Worse, I don’t think she knows it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s an enchantress,” she said as she entered the foyer and watched the girl through the small window beside the door. “How do you not know?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Well, that sounds confident.”

  Suddenly Melissa understood. “The temperature drop! She was excited—agitated even—and made the temperature drop. She emerged when we did, just like the half-dragons. She has to be terrified.”

  “If she even knows. She may not have any idea.”

  “What are you saying? She’s a witch?” Charles asked.

  “In the simplest terms you can accept, yes,” Kaliastrid answered. “That’s not what we would call her, but that’s the most common term you will know, inaccurate as it is.”

  Charles frowned at her and seemed hurt by the way Kaliastrid answered him.

  “So what do we do with her?” Melissa asked the room

  “Keep her from getting excited until someone can help her.”

  Melissa tilted her head toward her mother and gave her a be-helpful look.

  “I can help her with the magic when it’s time. But, why is she here?”

  “Heliantra invited her here to help us and sent this with her.”

  “What is it?”

  “Her last book.”

  Kaliastrid instinctively put her hand to her head and looked away from the book on the table. After a moment’s thought she looked out the window again.

  “Then I suggest we let her help us. Neither of us is going to be able to read it and make any sense of it.”

  Melissa had no idea what to do, but she was not going to argue with her dead grandmother. She needed to find out why she had cast the spell centuries before, while keeping her dragon mate from starting a war with the entire world. The only answers she had found were in her grandmother’s novels. Books that she couldn’t read without severe pain. Now she had a new novel no one had ever seen before that her grandmother had mailed to a fan who was enchanted.

  “Charles, would you please go get her? Don’t scare her any more than she already is, for your own sake. Find her a room. Let her know we need her help with the timeline and the new novel. Maybe we can make some progress in finding a few answers.”

  “Maybe she can help us find the talisman,” Kaliastrid said as if everyone would understand.

  “What?”

  “That’s what’s missing,” she answered as if she had just realized it was the truth.

  “Mother, you’re not making sense.”

  “The talisman is missing. It’s how you can speak to all of the dragons. It may be why we can’t think and remember. Maybe she can help us find it.”

  Melissa wanted to sink further into the chair.

  “You’re sharing this for the first time now, because?”

  “Your mind is as messed up as mine, and you ask that question. It just came to me. Maybe it was the wine. I don’t know.”

  Melissa shook her head at the deepening challenge her grandmother had left them. Now she had to find a talisman she never knew she needed. She wished that her grandmother was still around. Melissa dropped her face into her hands and, not for the first time, wished she had just finished the spell.

  July 16 – 2100 CEST – Munich, Germany

  Nethliast disengaged from the conversation that was circling around him by leaning back into his chair and shifting himself around to get the blood flowing again. He rubbed at his tired eyes and looked at his watch. The day was ending, and they were no further along than when they started. After Wy Li left and the other males had joined them, the conversation had become a tedious exercise, but it had kept the South American delegation at the tables. He had surrendered control to Valdiest, and had fed him occasional hints from the invisible witch that still floated about the room gathering intelligence for him. They still had the delegations in place, but Nethliast was beginning to wonder how they ever accomplished anything with this ancient exercise in futility.

  Without Lung, the South Americans had been harder and harder to convince, but they didn’t matter to Nethliast anymore. He had decided, as the day had grown longer, that he could not rely on cooperation alone. It would never work, as this conclave proved. Coercion was the only way to get the commitment he needed.

  Nethliast looked over at Bida, who shook his head and nodded at his watch. All he needed was Nethliast’s approval and larger, more complex wheels would start rolling, but once those were set in motion, there was no turning back. There was too much to do, and this prattle was a waste of time.

  Nethliast looked at Valdiest. He looked like he was enjoying the talks. He really believed this w
as getting them somewhere. No wonder they had lost their land. No wonder humans were able to trap them. The old man would have to be handled; it was time to move on. The old ways were not working.

  It was time to discuss how they were going to make the humans submit to their new rule. He was sitting in the middle of his legacy pretending to be a human executive. Some day he would shed the embarrassing disguise and expose himself to the world as the dragon he was. They would regret what they had done to dragons. He bent the hotel pen in his hands as he thought about how, a month after he had emerged from his captivity, the humans were still trapping him. Bida raised his hands to either side with a questioning look.

  “They’re lost.” A whisper at the back of his head brought him back to the table and made up his mind.

  He lunged to his feet, sending the uncomfortable chair sliding across the floor into the wall behind him with a crash. The room became suddenly silent.

  “Choose!” He shouted and slammed his fist into the conference table splintering the veneer.

  “You either stand with, or you are against us. Make your choice. I will wait no longer. We must take action.”

  He didn’t pause to see what happened at the table around him. He could see Valdiest shaking his head out of the corner of his eye.

  “Tomorrow is a different day. Tomorrow we discuss how we will deal with the humans. I will see where you all stand in the morning.”

  He threw the mangled pen onto the table and looked at a young male sitting at the table next to him. They shared a prearranged signal no one else witnessed before he turned away from the table and walked the length of the room without looking back. As he yanked the door open and burst into the cooler air of the hallway, the room exploded in emotional arguments. He could hear Valdiest struggling to manage what he had created. That was the right chore for the old king. Everything would look different in the morning.

  The space next to him suddenly filled with the blonde witch. She was smiling at him and working hard to keep pace. He found himself sharing her contagious grin. He didn’t slow his pace.