Read Online Dragon Wizard by S. Andrew Swann - Free Book Online Page A

across my trembling cheek.
    Did I mention that all she wore was a carved garland of flowers in her hair?
    â€œIs this a dream?” I asked. “Or another vision?”
    She gave a dazzling smile and whispered in my ear, “Are you thinking of the consequences of acting on what you’re feeling right now?”
    â€œUh—” Between the warring feelings of lust and fear I wasn’t able to find any coherent words.
    She placed her finger on my lips and whispered, “If what I say is important, does it matter what I am?”
    She lowered her finger and kissed me on the lips. I probably would have blacked out if I hadn’t already been unconscious.
    â€œYou do know you aren’t mine to claim, don’t you?”
    I shook my head and looked around at the changed landscape. We stood on a ridge now, looking over a vast plain. An army gathered below us, thousands of men and horses preparing a tent city. I saw the banners of a dozen kingdoms.
    â€œIs this happening now?” I asked.
    â€œIs that the important question, Frank?”
    I looked toward the horizon and saw, in the distance, the new dragon-bearing banners of Lendowyn over amuch, much smaller force. No, this wasn’t happening now, the logistics of massing a force this size required weeks . . .
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œAre you understanding now?”
    This went far beyond the provocation caused by events at the banquet. I’m sure, in a few cases right now, angry kings, counts, and dukes were starting to organize their forces. But I knew the noble mind well enough to know that the death of one or two diplomats or members of the court would, in almost all cases, be a simple pretext for some campaign that had already been planned. An excuse to seize some land or treasure that had been coveted beforehand.
    That’s not what Lysea showed me. Below us was a response to a genuine military threat.
    â€œThe dragon,” I whispered. “He’s attacking our neighbors, and it’s a direct attack by the Lendowyn Crown.” I looked down and studied all the banners and saw colors from the north, west, and east. “But how could one creature . . .”
    â€œDo you understand what you presume?”
    â€œIt’s not the dragon?”
    She took my hands. When I looked away from her I saw another army moving through a city of spun-sugar spires. When I turned away from the tall forms in too-elaborate, too-shiny armor to see where they were going, I saw darker siblings wearing leather armor, weaving through the gnarled trunks of an ancient wood.
    â€œOh crap,” I whispered, as two armies’ worth of elves converged on the hillside that demarked the border between the bright city and the dark woods.
    â€œWhat is more dangerous than a love denied?” Lysea asked.
    â€œIs this happening now?”
    â€œDoes time mean what you think it does here?”
    â€œWhy are you—” I was about to ask why she insisted on answering my questions with more questions, when I realized what she meant. Time traveled slower in elf-land, under the hill. The time I’d been there, weeks had sped by for the mortal world while I had only been there for a few hours.
    The hourglass
.
    â€œWe may just have time!” I shouted as I turned to Lysea. “And that would suit the elf-king’s sense of humor, wouldn’t it?”
    She smiled at me and I realized things had gotten way too cold. I looked around, and we stood on a ledge on a barren mountainside. “Where is this?”
    â€œDon’t you see?”
    In dim twilight I saw a crumpled, broken body half hidden in a niche in the rocks. I turned away.
    â€œYou know now?”
    I nodded, because I knew with the certainty of dreams that the corpse I looked at was my own. “How do I stop this?”
    She reached down and lifted my chin so I looked up into her face.
    â€œAbove all else, what does any god