Free Asher: Dragon's Savior by Kathi S. Barton Page B

came closer to the body but didn’t touch her. “She’s laying over the first egg. It’s as if she were covering it with her wing when she died. I would imagine that when you were born, you had difficulty getting out from under her. She would have been a dragon still.”
    “She would have been. Her form wouldn’t have gone back to human until much later.” Asher said nothing as Kiaran continued. “My father and she thought that they were the last of their kind, I think. They must have been a sight to see flying together over the fields and mountains.”
    “You said that she told you to bring us here.” Essie nodded at Asher, who still had not come completely into the room. “Do you know why? Or is seeing where she lay what we needed to understand? My father just told me of how Kiaran came to me. I can tell him now why it took him a week. He had to…it must have been hard to come from under her.”
    “I don’t remember.” Kiaran stood up and moved to where his mother’s hand was over his long forgotten shell. “She was marking me, I think. Putting this on my arm so that you could find me.”
    “I don’t know.” Essie stood up and moved to the other side of the room. “But this is what I need to show you. I haven’t seen it myself, but I know that something is here.”
    The key was just where Eve had told her it would be. Lifting the stone up was easier than she’d thought it would be, and she picked the large key out of the broken stone. Before she put it in the opening that was hidden behind another stone, she turned and looked at Asher.
    “She had a message for you as well.” Asher nodded and finally moved into the room. “The riches beyond are yours to use. Use them, she asks, to rebuild what was once theirs, what was once yours.”
    “She wants me to rebuild the castle?” Essie told him she didn’t know. But she had a feeling that that was what she wanted. “I can do that now, Essie. I don’t need whatever is on the other side of the wall. Whatever is in there is Kiaran’s and the other dragons’, not mine.”
    “Maybe so, but she said it is yours.” She twisted the key in the lock. It turned easily, the clicking of the lock loud in the chamber that was so large. When the door started to move, sliding back on unseen hinges, she took a step back and bumped into Asher. He held her to him as the door opened completely.
    “Oh my God.” Asher held her as Kiaran walked around her. Even as the room brightened little by little, the stones on the walls capturing as much light as they could, she could see that the room was filled with more than just monetary riches, but things that would mean so much more to all of them.

Chapter 5
     
    Helena was standing over her book when she stilled. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong, and she had to sit down or fall as the wrongness of it took her breath away. The word Esmerelda touched her mind, and she felt the hatred of her daughter’s blood as if she were standing before her right now.
    The book she’d been working in was forgotten as she tried to concentrate on what had disturbed her. At one time she’d been able to reach into the earth, ask it for information, but since those people had come, she’d not had any luck with it. Not that she was ever going to give back what she took from them, but they were too stupid to know that. Now she knew that the man and his servant were the cause of her crisis.
    Nothing answered her—not the stones on the ground or beneath it—nor did the trees sing their information to her. It was as if she’d been cut off from everything she needed. Going out of her home, she stood still, listening for anything that might help her. It wasn’t until she stood there for several minutes that she realized that there were no sounds; not even the crickets were chirping.
    The shadow that covered the ground seemed to grow as it came toward her. Backing up, she hit the wall behind her rather than going into the house as she’d