The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume One Read Online Free PDF Page B

to his own offspring, keeping the destruction going for generation after generation. All the while she would have kept her promise to the elves.
    All the naiads laughed at the great joke as the song ended.

Chapter 8
     
    After they finished the Epic of Perry and the Red Dragon , the shaman led Michael away from the palm grove where the rest of the naiads had resumed their attempts to make baby naiads. They walked north along the black sand in the direction of the city of Northport.
    “Elf-Blood, what did you think of our epic-comic song?”
    “I believe it’s true, but it left me with lots of unanswered questions. For example what happened to Perry? I’m sure he didn’t really ascend to his heavenly throne where he punishes us for not paying tithes to his church.”
    “That sorry story was never made into song. It’s not one naiads would be willing to sing. After returning to his cave, Perry immolated every man who had been on the hunting party. He killed every boy without fire manna because they were not his true sons. He made the rest of his tribesmen slaves in the coalfield except that he took every comely woman as his wife. The following spring he took the nearby village of Min Hollow and again enslaved all the men, killed all the male children, and took every comely woman as his wife. Four years later, he was trying to fornicate with a woman who was nine months with child. He pursued her to the village well where he tripped on a stone and she pushed him in.
    “Fire blasted from the well for two days as he struggled to get out. After he finally drowned, the villagers filled in the well and dug a new one. By the time he died, Perry had forty-three sons who became the first priests of Perry Ascendant.”
    “You always refer to me as Elf-Blood. What’s behind that? My parents were just farmers in a small village of Riverton in Hearthshire Provence.”
    “After Perry was given fire magic, the Red Dragon flew to the Forest of Many Lakes in the far north to see the elf shaman Gripton and explain his actions. They reached an agreement to do nothing.
    “The elves knew something the dragon did not. Gripton understood that his human children had twenty generations for each generation of naiads or dwarves. Because of their short lives and the myriad of their offspring, humans would change and develop faster than the other children of the elves. Dragons and elves had not changed much for millions of years. In even one million years, humans might be a completely different race.”
    Obert explained, “Gripton realized that someday the seed and egg of two humans would combine in a way that an elf-blood would evolve. This is how the first elves arose on the world of terra before the beginning of their great journey to fill the star cloud. A human would be born with all the manna and power of an elf but the physical form of a human. Of course, the change would occur by chance. Not even Gripton could say if it would be a thousand years or ten thousand, but to the elves and dragons, a thousand years is like a summer afternoon to a short-lived human.
    “Gripton knew that a human with elf-blood would have the power to remove the Red Dragon’s curse on mankind. You must begin the great quest; you must produce the next epic song and remove the Perry’s curse from your kind. You’ll destroy the Church of Perry Ascendant and restore healing magic to the place it should have among your kind. We naiads are proud to be part of the beginning of your epic song.”
    They walked along the beach without talking for half an hour as Michael thought about what he had heard.
    He broke the silence. “Obert, I appreciate the help you’ve already given. Those knight protectors would have killed me without Arianna hiding my manna, but I’m sorry, there’s no new epic song. I’m just a scared apprentice healer hiding from the terrifying power of Perry’s church.”
    Obert laughed. “Epic heroes never realize who they are until their story