The Return of the Dragon Lord

By Melanie Ifield

It has all been leading to this. The return of the stolen Sceptre to Rishana, Heir of Novarmere; finding Poe in the midst of a secret enemy base within the Kingdom; Daniel’s newfound magical abilities after he swallowed Glass Seawater; and the march to war with a foe harbouring dark designs on the Kingdom and all within it. Find out how the Dark Wizard Series ends – out now!

WAR
Novarmere can’t survive a direct confrontation with its neighbour Bauhinia. For one thing, Bauhinia has a much larger army. For another, Bauhinia is home to the evil wizard Rullin, and his Master, who hunger for the magic within the very soil of Novarmere. They have raised an ancient evil in their quest for domination; the dreaded Skeletal Morphs, ferocious and deadly warriors who appear to be unstoppable.

INTO THE FIRE
The dragons will not lend their aid in this fight having vowed never again to intervene in the wars of men. Only the Dragon Lord could get them to break this oath, but the Dragon Lords vanished hundreds of years ago. The only way to aid Novarmere is to strike at the very heart of Bauhinia. So the companions form a daring plan, but need the one thing they are forbidden to take to make it work – the Sceptre. Are they prepared to betray the Royal Blood of Novarmere and take what they need to survive?

FAINT HOPE
Nilofar is just across the border and is being used to help control the magic Bauhinia is set to unleash. There is also hope. In Daniel’s fevered dreams when the magic inside him was burning bright, he saw a young girl with Nilofar. Who is this girl who resembles the Princess of Novarmere? Is she the Bond-mate the dragons speak of?

THE DRAGON LORD
The dragons have sworn never to meddle in human affairs again. Who is strong enough to call them to war? Will the dragons leave their Lair to aid Novarmere in its darkest hour?
Who is the Dragon Lord?

Before you read the conclusion to the Chronicles of Novarmere Dark Wizard Series, go back to where it all began by getting the first book in the series FREE as an instant download and discover the wonders of Novarmere from the very beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melanie Ifield
• Release date: Sep 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994419866

Melanie Ifield

Melanie Ifield writes novels for all ages. After years exploring the written word from a young age, culminating in a degree in journalism, Melanie now writes full time. Melanie loves the idea of loosing yourself in new worlds or new experiences through books and hopes her stories will provoke that love in others.She has been self publishing since 2013 with a fantasy series for everyone over the age of eleven called the ‘Chronicles of Novarmere’ where Daniel and the little dragon Nilofar set out to save a Kingdom; a children’s adventure story where the determination and strength of the eleven year old protagonist saves the lives of mistreated chickens in ‘The Chicken Liberation Army’; and a romantic thriller with action and adventure for adults called ‘The Age of Corruption’.Melanie has taken some time out due to long term chronic illness. However, for now and forever, her passion is writing. Her dream is for her books to find their audiences and to write as often, and as much, as she can while she can. She’ll change tone, voice and genre. She’ll write in novels, in journals, on her blog, in notebooks and on post-it-notes if she has to.Then one day, one very fine day, all her dreams will come true. She hopes yours do too.

Book preview

A Melanie Ifield book

First published by Melanie Ifield in 2016

www.melanieifield.com

PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-0-9944198-3-5

EPUB ISBN: 978-0-9944198-6-6

Cover illustration: Kevin Burgemeestre

Typeset & formatting: Thomas White

All rights reserved

Copyright © Melanie Ifield 2016

No part of this book may be reproduced in any way, in any form, mechanical, electronic or otherwise, without expressed permission from the author.

All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Author: Ifield, Melanie

Title: The Return of the Dragon Lord / Melanie Ifield

Series: Ifield, Melanie ‘Chronicles of Novarmere: Dark Wizard Quartet’

Target audience: Middle grade

Books by Melanie Ifield

Children

Chronicles of Novarmere: Dark Wizard Quartet

The Candlestick Dragon (Book One)

Hunt for the Last Wizard (Book Two)

Dragon Magic (Book Three)

The Return of the Dragon Lord (Book Four)

Bellamante Productions

The Chicken Liberation Army (Book One)

Adults

Fiona Page Novels

The Age of Corruption (Book One)

Acknowledgements

This is the final book in my first completed series! It’s a very exciting moment and one I share with loads of people who have made this whole thing possible.

Firstly, let me say, these books wouldn’t have come about if my family hadn’t encouraged me – every day. My sister has gone above and beyond, with countless hours editing and if there remains errors, then I have to own up – they are completely mine (sadly)!

Then there is the ‘team’ who helps put them together, with marvellous covers, internal layout and whole emergency rafts of computer help because I need it so very often. Thank you so much, I simply couldn’t function in this digital playpen without you. This includes Thomas, Kevin, Elaine, Shane, Brendan and Dell – you are all my technical, magical Wizards.

And yes, there are huge thanks also to everyone who reads all about Nilofar and Daniel. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed their journey.

Magicks released

The bonfire was the largest Daniel had ever seen. The fact that three dragons had gone and uprooted a large dead tree each, bringing them back to stack them neatly in a pile as though putting together kindling, might have had something to do with it.

The dragons had also flown deep into the snow, down into the gullies of the Spine, looking for Larck’s body. This was in spite of the fact that they hated the cold, Arkell explained, which made it even more generous. They had found his body and brought it back. Daniel was grateful. So were Rishana, Laningrin and Tru. But there was something forlorn about the ranger’s body, looking tiny and defenceless atop a wooden platform, perched in the dead tree canopy.

It wasn’t how Daniel had pictured their first few days in the Lair. It was such a short time ago that they had all sat together in the castle and plotted how they were going to save Novarmere.

There, Daniel had discovered that the knights leading the Bauhinian army were skeletal-morphs; ancient arcane magicks banned long ago after the Great Wizard War. They had also formed a pact to find Nilofar and destroy Lord Boan, the First Priest of Bauhinia. Somewhere along the way, it had gone pear-shaped. The dragon magic in Daniel, swirling through his blood since he’d drunk the Glass Sea water, had started to burn his life energy. They had discovered that Nilofar had been taken into enemy territory. It also appeared that Lord Boan himself was powering the skeletal-morphs that were threatening the borders of Novarmere.

To save them all, Poe had gone to warn the Queen of the imminent danger and hold the front line as long as he could against the morphs. Rishana, Daniel, Laningrin, and the ranger Larck, had gone north, to find the dragons to see if they would assist them with their cause. The herbal magician, Tru and her companion, Ouse the ruarc, had joined them along the way. In their final push to make it to the Dragon’s Lair, Larck had been blown off their icy shelf and into the snowy gully far below.

Daniel’s heart contracted. Larck may have saved the Princess in his heroic attempt to keep her with the companions, but the cost had been his own life. The Dragon’s Jaw had swallowed him whole.

Daniel’s sad musings were interrupted as Rishana stepped forward. They’d apparently said all that was needed whilst he had been buried in his thoughts. The formal funeral rites of Novarmere were done. Now it was time to sing the traditional songs of passing. This time, however, they had an unusual choir of fifty dragons backing them.

Also at the funeral was Antares, Rishana’s long lost ancestor who had lived with the dragons for most of his life. He stood nearby, leaning ever so slightly on the Staff of Power, which had continued to hum throughout the preparations and the service. The Staff of Power was in fact a long staff, with the sceptre at its head. It was almost as though it was overjoyed at being united with all its parts. Daniel could understand that. The promise the dragons had made of returning him to his pre-magic state was also making him delirious. Well, that could actually be the magic itself having that effect, but he wasn’t quibbling.

Rishana started to sing, her voice clear and high. Laningrin and Tru joined her, Laningrin’s deep baritone a nice counterpoint to the two girls’ higher pitches. Daniel wished he could join in. There was something compelling about the songs of Novarmere. They were plaintive, but also moving, and he longed to add his voice to the mix. But while the crossover between Fadden, his home town on Earth, and Novarmere had somehow allowed him to understand their everyday language, this ancient language they were now using was beyond his comprehension. Funerals rites were sung in the most ancient of tongues. A language dedicated to the Gods.

So he stood there, feeling awkward with his grief for a friend he hadn’t known long, but who had given his life in the quest for Daniel to make it to the dragons in time to save his life.

Which, Daniel thought to himself, they hadn’t yet done.

Oh, big promises had been made when they arrived in the Dragon’s Lair. Arkell, the Lord of the Skies as he was styled, had been so impressed that they had brought the sceptre, which had turned out to be the missing top of the Staff of Power, he had agreed to save Daniel’s life.

After their initial introductions, they had eaten and then slept, having been so exhausted from having come through the Dragon’s Spine in the freezing cold. They had woken to discover the dragon hunting party had found Larck’s body where he’d been swept off the path in the storm they had encountered as they had crossed the Dragon’s Spine mountain range.

Rishana had been moved by this example of dragon peace and goodwill. She had ordered a funeral service to be put together straight away. Daniel had to be fair. The Princess not only took her responsibilities for her rangers very seriously, she had asked him if he felt up to it. The fact that she had then completely ignored him since, Daniel hoped, was due to her strong sense of responsibility. She could also be incredibly high handed about things, so it was a toss-up. Laningrin told him that it came from knowing all her life that she was the Heir to the Novarmerian Throne and that everyone had indulged her shamelessly.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t put out, as he really had hoped that the dragons would have attended to his slight problem of possibly dying from the magicks roaming his body - or maybe turning into a dragon. He’d liked Larck, he really had. But the magic in him had been so excited about coming to the Dragon’s Lair. Now it was humming along in his veins in tune with the Staff and he felt the urgent need to curl his lips back and roar at the sky like all the other dragons.

It was kind of amazing to be standing in front of an enormous funeral pyre, with fifty dragons lifting their spiked heads to the sky and singing in their ancient tongue. Then Arkell came forward, lowered his head and breathed fire over the pyre.

It went up with a massive whoosh and Rishana was forced to retreat. The heat was almost unbearable.

Laningrin grabbed Daniel.

‘I think we should get back too. We don’t want to peel your skin off.’

Daniel gave a little start. He hadn’t realised it, as he had been so far away with his thoughts, but he’d actually stepped forward, heading straight towards the blaze. He hadn’t felt the rising heat, or the sizzling of his skin, as it tried desperately to cool itself.

‘I’ll be fine, Lan. Don’t worry.’ He tried to reassure the ranger, even as he managed to dodge his hand and move closer. The magic in him burned for release and the heat was allowing it to steam inside and out.

‘Look at that, would you?’ Daniel heard his own voice, as if from far away.

He held up his arms. The magic inside was coming out of his skin. Coloured bands of magic, like steam from a kettle, rose up until he was completely encircled in layers of colour. Arkell’s massive head was suddenly beside Daniel. The dragon lord drew in a deep breath and the magic vapour swirled into his nostrils.

Daniel wondered at the fact that they had never tried to ‘heal’ him this way back at the castle. The idea of almost par-boiling him hadn’t entered anyone’s head, especially not Poe’s. The dragon kept inhaling, his lungs expanding till his sides strained and his scales stretched, showing glossy blue against the shades of red from the fire.

Eventually, both the colour and the breath ended. Arkell raised his head and expelled the air. Daniel covered his ears. Standing that close to that much power, his eardrums threatened to rupture. Arkell roared and out flew the magicks, high into the air, ribbons of colour floating, floating and turning the heavens a multi-coloured hue.

Daniel hadn’t expected the actual funeral rites to also be the start of Arkell’s promise to remove from him the dragon magic he had swallowed in the Glass Sea. But if heat was needed, then he could see the reason. There was no way any one of the companions would have allowed Arkell to breathe that much fire and heat directly on Daniel. It would have fried him alive. This way, at least, the heat was second hand.

Rishana, Tru and the dragons were still singing. As was Rishana’s Great Great Uncle Antares. They were all watching what was happening. While Rishana may have considered trying to help Daniel in the middle of a funeral ‘not exactly good manners’, she wasn’t going to stop a dragon from doing whatever he could to prevent Daniel from dying of magical burnout.

Laningrin was so preoccupied with making sure Daniel didn’t go up in smoke, he had stopped singing and now hauled Daniel back so it didn’t feel as though their clothes were about to melt off their backs. Arkell stayed by the fire, his sides going in and out like a bellows, the air around him dazzling the companions with its colours, as the dragon continued to inhale and then expel it.

The singing came to a halt. All the dragons were watching Arkell with intensely gleaming and whirling green eyes. They appeared to be able to change their eye colour at will, but ever since the Staff of Power had revealed itself, stripping the black off the crystal from the top and turning it emerald green, most of the dragons had kept their eyes the same colour. It was homage to the power of the staff, Antares had informed the companions, when they’d asked about it.

Arkell seemed to be juggling the colours and the magic, using his breath as the means of control. Daniel peered closer. With every breath out, a smaller amount of colour was released. The dragon was absorbing it! Bit by bit, the magic was being taken into the dragon lord’s body. His scales, already a magnificent deep blue, blazed with shimmering hues in a display of magicks Daniel had never thought to see. They swelled with magic, expanding, bloating and deepening their colour as Arkell converted Daniel’s borrowed power into something he could easily absorb.

The deep red of the underside of Arkell’s wings gleamed like blood.

Rishana moved up beside Daniel, her face trickling with sweat.

‘Do you feel any better?’ she asked.

Daniel took back every uncharitable thought he’d ever had about the Princess. He enjoyed the fact that her first thought was to ask after his health.

‘Silly as it may sound, standing next to a fire, I feel a lot cooler than I have in days. Though still a bit weird, you know?’

‘Not really, but I’m hoping that Arkell will. They’re very obliging, aren’t they?’ Rishana smiled.

Daniel grinned on the inside. Only someone brought up to be noble and polite in all circles could call fifty dragons, who sometimes looked as though the humans were about to be main course in a feast they were yet to have, ‘obliging’.

‘I mean, they went out of their way to fetch Larck’s body,’ here she paused, a tear sliding down her cheek. ‘Even when we know they can’t stand the cold. It must have taken them all night because of the snow, which was probably metres deep after that storm. Oh, and Arkell using the fire to help drag all that magic out of you and them feeding us ...’

She trailed off, as though expecting Daniel to take up the litany of how marvellous the dragons really were, but Daniel didn’t feel able to do so. It was not that he didn’t agree with Rishana, but he’d been talking to Laningrin earlier that morning and the ranger had cautioned Daniel.

‘Dragons are legendary in expecting a trade. While they may help us, they may just turn around and expect us to offer them something in return. We need to keep our wits about us, or someone might end up stuck here like Antares. Who knows what they offered him to stay for the rest of his unnaturally long life.’

So Daniel bit his tongue and allowed Rishana to rave about the dragons, keeping his thoughts to himself.

He did feel better. The heat in the marrow of his bones and the extraordinary desire to rip things apart with his bare hands, or roar his anger into the night sky, had vanished. For that he would be eternally grateful.

But he could feel things weren’t back to normal. His sense of Rullin, for example, so faint now as to be merely an irritation, was still there and that couldn’t be natural for a human boy. Having a magical link with an evil wizard bent on the destruction of everything he loved, made his head spin sometimes.

The massive dragon stepped back from the fire. He’d swallowed all of the colours now and his scales were glowing. Almost, Daniel thought creatively, as though they were radioactive.

‘A pyre this large will burn for days. Let us retire back to the glade and we can discuss your future,’ growled Arkell in his rich, deep voice.

That didn’t sound so bad. Daniel guessed that so long as he had a future, everything would turn out okay in the end - unless the dragons decided to keep him.

The companions trailed along behind Arkell, back from the edge of the desert, into the cooler tree-covered hills surrounding the dragons’ watering hole. The enormous lake, which was fed from the Spine Mountains, served the dragons as bath and water. It also provided much needed relief from the desert sands for all manner of creatures upon which the dragons fed.

Daniel was still getting over how dignified the dragons were on their feet. In the air, he could well understand why they were so graceful. But unlike the gargon, Dagma, the half gargoyle-half dragon who worked with the evil wizard Rullin, who’d lumbered with incredible difficulty on the ground, the dragons stalked the sands of their homeland with powerful ease. They had no difficulty in mastering balance and to hear them all moving at once, was a symphony of thunder.

They were also sensitive as to where they put their feet. At no time did the companions feel like they were about to be squished. For which Daniel was grateful, because looking up at something which towered like a colossal demon overhead, with horns and spines and wicked talons and fangs, was only bearable when knowing you weren’t in any way threatened.

Yet...

They hurried along behind Arkell, for no matter how slow the dragon paced in an attempt to walk with them, he took much larger steps, leaving the humans and the ruarc to follow along behind as best they could. The legs of a dragon were taller than even Laningrin, so the companions found that they had to jog to keep up.

Antares kept pace with them.

‘Most of the time, I would be allowed to ride Arkell. But with visitors present, I doubt he would be open to the idea. Sometimes he says he feels like a beast of burden when I do so.’ Rishana’s Great Great Uncle smiled at them.

‘You ride upon Arkell?’ Rishana turned her head to look at the dragon lord.

While dragons weren’t as spiky as the fire hatchlings, they still had an impressive array of spines and horns plating their body like armour. Riding him, even situated between his shoulder blades behind his wings, would have been a fairly uncomfortable option, Daniel thought.

‘If he’s in a good enough mood, I do. However, I can’t push these things. Dragons can be a bit touchy about their dignity and none more so than the Lord of the Skies himself. How are you feeling, Daniel?’ Antares said, changing the subject abruptly and turning his smiling eyes to Daniel.

Now that he was away from the fire, it was easier to feel the difference.

‘The heat has gone from my bones ... so I think the danger is gone, but I just can’t tell. Tru? Do I look all right to you?’

The herbal magician shrugged.

‘If you want to know if your life energy is back to normal, the answer is – sort of! It’s a bit stronger than the average person. Your heart beats a bit slower, more in time with, say, Arkell’s over there. But I don’t get the sense that you’re dying. You don’t radiate heat anymore, so that’s a good sign and to be honest, you no longer ‘feel’ scaly.’

‘See? That has to be good. I told you they’d help you.’ Rishana breathed a sigh of relief.

Daniel shared a look with Laningrin. Then he glanced at Antares, who was watching him with intense interest, which was disturbing.

‘What do you see, Master Antares?’ Daniel wanted to know.

‘Oh, this and that. I think it’s time we all sat down and shared stories, don’t you? So much appears to have happened in Novarmere since I was there and you’re sure to have more questions. Arkell will have more to do to help you, too, Daniel. You’ll have to decide just how much you wish to be rid of the magic.’

Daniel thought about it, as they entered the glade and made their way down to the lake.

Ever since he’d grown three inches in an amazingly quick burst and left his glasses behind, he’d been wondering what he’d do if they could take the magic completely away. He didn’t think he’d shrink, but there were other reasons to keep some of the magic.

The dreams, while disturbing, were a link with the others and what was happening far away. He hadn’t gone into any depth about them with his travelling companions, but now was the time, he supposed. He needed to know if the dreams were real or not. Then there was the link with Rullin. That was something which made his skin crawl but at the same time was pretty useful, especially now that Rullin had Nilofar with him. It was easier to track someone when you could point to them no matter where they were in the world.

And deep inside, Daniel had to acknowledge, a part of him didn’t want to lose all the magic, because then he’d just be ‘Daniel’ again - plain, boring and smart, but not exactly super special. He would be less than useless when it came time to compare him with the skills of his companions. Even the Princess had had sword and self defence instruction since she was old enough to walk. Without the magic, Daniel was afraid they wouldn’t need him anymore and they’d send him back to his mother, to sit out the war worrying that one of them might be killed.

Removing all of the magic, Arkell explained, might just kill him, but on the plus side if it didn’t, he’d be himself again. On the other hand, any residue of magic left in his body, which was not designed to carry anything so powerful, might lead to other side effects in the future. He didn’t know what he’d choose. Either way, there