Read Prophecy, Child of Earth for Free Online

without her. The sun was bright, and you must have been overcome with the heat .

    Ashe turned on his side and groaned, overcome with heat now. The fire in the small grate twisted and pulsed, casting its warmth over him in waves. The image of Rhapsody rose up in his mind again. It was never far from the edge of his consciousness anyway; the dragon's obsession with her was strong. His fingertips and lips still stung with the unspent desire to touch her that had pooled like acid there since he first beheld her, the consequences of the dragon's unsatisfied longing. Bitterly he struggled to put her out of his mind, reaching back blindly to the sweetness of the memory he had been reliving only a moment before.
    'Emily," he called brokenly, but the dream eluded him, dissipating at the edge of the room beyond his reach.
    In his sleep he fumbled in a small pocket of the mist cloak until his fingers brushed it, tiny and hard in its pouch of velvet, worn thin from years of serving as his touchstone. A tiny silver button, heart-shaped, of modest manufacture, given to him by the one woman he had ever loved. It was the only thing he had left of her, that and his memories, each one cherished with the ferocity of a dragon guarding its greatest treasure.
    Touching the button worked; it brought her near to him again, if only for a moment. He could still feel the ripping of the lace as he inadvertently tore it from her bodice, his hand trembling with fear and excitement. He could still see the smile in her eyes.
    Keep it, Sam, as a memento of the night when 1 gave you my heart . He had complied, had carried the tiny button heart next to his own scarred one, clinging to the memory of what he had lost.
    He had searched for her endlessly, in the museums and the history vaults, in the House of Remembrance, in the face of every woman, young and old, that had hair the color of pale flax on a summer's day, as Emily's hair had seemed in the dark.
    He had carefully examined any female wrist, looking for the tiny scar that was burned into his memory. Of course he had never found her; the Seer of the Past had assured him that she had not come on any of the ships that escaped Serendair before it was consumed in volcanic fire.
    Well, child, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no one by that name or description was among those to leave on the ships from the Island before its destruction. She did not land; she did not come.
    The Seer was his grandmother, and would never have lied to him, both for that reason and because she was unable to do so at the risk of losing her powers.
    Anwyn would never have hazarded such a loss.
    Nor would Rhonwyn, Anwyn's sister, the Seer of the Present. He had begged her to use the compass, one of three ancient artifacts with which Mer-ithyn, her Cymrian explorer father, had first found this land. His hand had trembled as he gave her the copper threepenny piece, a valueless, thirteen-sided coin, which was the mate to the one he had given Emily. These coins are unique in all the world , he had told the Seer, his then-young voice wavering, betraying his agony. If you can find the one that matches this one, you'll have found her .
    The Seer of the Present had held the compass in her fragile hands. He recalled how it had begun to glow, then resonate in a humming echo that stung behind his eyes. Finally Rhonwyn had shaken her head sadly.
    Tour coin is unlike any in the wide world, child; I am sorry. None other like it exists, except perhaps beneath the waves of the sea. Even I cannot see what treasures are held in the Ocean-Father's vaults . Ashe could not possibly have known that the Seer's powers also did not reach into the Earth itself, where Time had no dominion.
    He had given up then, had come to almost believe the awful truth, though he still sought her in the face of anyone he came across who could have even possibly been Emily. She had lingered in his every thought, smiled at him in his dreams, had fulfilled the promise he had