Free The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) by Tony Daniel Page A

elfling.

    Hidden in the dragon clutch an ancient evil spirit lurks.
    Made of emptiness, it stays wherever dragon life is slain.
    It would steal the dragon thunder,
    it would kill them as they slumber.

    Frustrating not to understand why they sang this.
    But then there was the calm moon, splashing her light to the Earth.

    Planets, comets, Sun and Moon,
    keep the dragons’ world in tune.

    Standing in the shower of moonlight, Saeunn thought about her future.
    There was the Plan. The hundred-year plan that every elf child of Amberstone was supposed to follow. Visit the other elf-kin in the Old Countries. Learn their skills. Healing. Mind-speaking. Spend days, even years, talking with your star. Listen to the Dragon Song and try and try to understand how it holds the world together. Then, when you are ready, truly ready, return home and stare into the giant eye of your dragon, the Drake of Amberstone.
    You were supposed to find your purpose in life there.
    So far, she had followed the Plan exactly. She’d spent years learning healing in the Old Countries. She’d lived with the Smoke Elves and studied their mind-speak and tree-talk. Now she was in the Mark of Shenandoah on a diplomatic mission. Her family had trusted her to carry it out.
    She wanted to. She liked doing things well. She wasn’t particularly proud of that fact, because most things came naturally to her and you couldn’t really be proud of just having a talent. She did feel like she was doing a good thing when she was using the talents that the stars gave her in the best way she could.
    And so far she had done what she was supposed to here in Raukenrose. She’d been a true elfling when she’d first come. She’d had the appearance of a human child of perhaps six. The following years had been time for inner growth as well as outer—the elven version of puberty. Using the healing skills and bodily understanding she’d picked up from the Old Country elves, over the past ten years she had let herself mature into a teenager in appearance to match her changing personality.
    She’d also studied the ways of men. She’d learned how human children behaved, and what humans thought of elves. She’d gotten to know the country and the people very well.
    Why was she feeling uneasy tonight?
    Her window faced southwest, and this morning the moon was setting to the south, so that Saeunn had a full view of it. Saeunn closed her eyes and felt the last moonbeams reach her before it sank under the horizon. As soon as the half moon disappeared, its spell on her was broken.
    Saeunn sighed. She would sleep now. She didn’t absolutely have to, because being in a moon trance was almost as good as sleep. But she had a full day ahead of her.
    Soon it would be time for her to leave Raukenrose. She did want to get back to Amberstone Valley, her birthplace. It was a place where parts of the living, dreaming dragon stuck out through the surface of the Earth. In Amberstone Valley, the ground itself churned with dragon heat. Muddy fountains there seethed with sulfurous dragon breath. Boiling water touched by dragon fire erupted in geysers into the sky. Even the river that formed the valley steamed.
    In Amberstone Valley, you could gaze into the half-open eye of a dreaming dragon.

    Dragons sang the Earth alive,
    and all that breathes beneath the skies.
    Every soul born slave or queen
    comes from the stuff of dragon dreams.

    At the same time, she didn’t want to leave Shenandoah.
    She had friends here—good friends, for the first time in her life. She cared deeply about her Raukenrose family. She had brothers and sisters of her own, but they were much older. Her nearest sister, Bealle, was one hundred fifty years Saeunn’s senior. She loved Bealle, but the two of them didn’t really have very much in common other than being related.
    But the von Dunstigs were human, and they would all be dead in a hundred years. She would live on. Her parents had warned her to stay away from