“How do you know what they want?”
“They tell us,” Cherise said.
“They tell you?”
“That’s not why we’re here,” Henry said.
The others turned toward him, and Cherise held his gaze for a moment before nodding. “We aren’t here for that. You’re right,” she said. She swiveled her seat, turning her attention back to Jason. “We need to know why the Dragon Souls are after you.”
“I’ve told Henry all I know.”
“You have, but I think there is more than what you have told him.”
“I haven’t been keeping anything from him.”
There had been no point in doing so. Jason had no idea who Henry was when they first met, but there wasn’t anything he really knew. The Dragon Souls had chased him down the mountainside, and he’d assumed it was because he’d avoided their capture, but maybe there was another reason to it. If there was, then he had yet to uncover it.
“Perhaps there is and you don’t know it.” Cherise locked eyes with him. “The Dragon Souls have not ventured that far away from Lorach before. We need to know what drew them.”
“I thought they searched for dragons.”
“Perhaps that’s all it is, but there should not be dragons in your lands.”
Jason grunted. “There shouldn’t be, but my people would argue otherwise.”
He bit back saying anything more. It was a mistake, and he knew better than to share. Given the way these people viewed the dragons, telling them his people hunted them, that they had ballistae set up around the village in order to protect themselves against the dragons, probably wasn’t wise.
At the same time, he thought they already knew. He’d shared plenty with Henry during their journey, and the other man likely knew enough.
“There’s a difference between dragons passing by and dragons living. Thriving,” Cherise said.
Jason turned away from her gaze, only to find Sarah watching him.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that my experience with dragons has been different than yours.”
“I understand. You aren’t the first person we brought here who has suffered much.”
“No?”
Cherise glanced toward Henry. “Some have suffered even more.”
Jason looked at Henry and found the other man ignoring him.
“My father was killed by the dragons,” he said.
“That’s what Henry tells us. And yet, our experience is that such a thing is not unique. The way the Dragon Souls demand the dragons serve forces them to behave in such violent ways.”
“Therin said the dragons were trained.”
“Trained in a sense,” Cherise said. “The training is different than what you and I might view as training. They are forced to serve, and they are controlled.”
“If the dragons are so powerful that you serve them, how are they forced to serve?”
“What has your experience with dragons been?” Sarah asked.
Cherise glanced in her direction, but the younger woman ignored her.
“I don’t have much in the way of experience.”
His only experience really was with riding the dragon here. Other than that, his knowledge came from the stories his people told, the celebrations they had. The more he learned about the dragons, the more he wondered how much his people really knew.
“We should show him,” Sarah said.
“I don’t think he’s ready,” Cherise said.
“For him to understand, we need to show him.”
“Show him,” Henry grunted.
Cherise regarded Jason for a long moment, and then she smiled. “It seems as if I have been outvoted.”
She got to her feet and nodded to them. Jason stood, as did William, and they followed her out of the room. They headed into a narrow hallway and then out another door. Once they did, they were outside.
It was the first time Jason ever had been outside without a jacket and gloves and hat and felt comfortable. He stood in his shirt and pants, but still with his boots on, and found himself warm. A breeze gusted through the trees, pleasant and fragrant. It carried with it the scents of the forest, of flowers, and of other spices that he had never smelled before. All of it was overwhelming.
It was so different than what he experienced in the village: the cold, the absence of odors, the fear of stepping outside without warm clothing.
“Come with me,” Sarah said, looking at him.
Cherise watched her daughter, and Jason followed Sarah, wandering with her. They wound through the trees until they reached a clearing. Once there, he stopped.
A low wall surrounded a central grassy plain. Everything was so green.
That wasn’t what caught his attention.
It was filled with dragons.
Not just dragons, but young dragons. They were still large—much larger than any deer or wolf he’d ever seen—but they weren’t nearly as enormous as what he’d experienced flying to this place.
“Go up to them,” Sarah said.
“Are they safe?”
She laughed, and Jason watched her. It was an almost carefree sort of sound, the kind he’d never experienced.
“Safe? They’re dragons.”
William didn’t need any prodding and he hurried forward, reaching the nearest of the dragons, holding his hands out. One of the small dragons—with strangely dark scales, almost as if they shifted with the reflected light—approached him. The dragon leaned toward him, breathing in, and William started to laugh. The dragon spread its wings, trying to flap them, but didn’t take to the air.
It couldn’t fly.
“Why can’t they fly?”
“They are dragonlings. In another year or two, they will be able to fly, but right now they’re not. They’re dependent upon their caretakers.”
“You?” Jason asked, looking from Sarah to Cherise and then to her husband.
Cherise nodded. “Us. We ensure the safety of the dragons as they continue to develop, and we help them in the time that they are growing. That’s our price of service.”
Jason frowned to himself. “You’re their servants.”
“It’s not like that,” Cherise said.
“No? Then what is it like? You serve the dragons. You take care of their young. And you—”
“And we defend the dragons against the Dragon Souls. Much like they defend us,” Henry said.
“How do they defend you?”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
Jason glanced over at William. The other man was still crouching in front of one of the dragons. He was touching the dragon on the head, and he was smiling. It was almost as if he were enthralled by the creature.
“Why show me this?”
“You fear the dragons,” Cherise said. “Like so many have over the years, but you fear them for the wrong reasons. It’s not the dragons who are at fault for what happened to your father. It’s the Dragon Souls.” She crouched down as one of the small dragons approached, and it crawled up into her arms. “What you see as powerful and dangerous, we view as intelligent. They are different than us, but not violent.”
Jason studied the small dragons, and yet he couldn’t shake what he knew of the dragons, the understanding he had of what they had done over the years, and he couldn’t shake the sense that their experience was different. Wrong.
Then again, what did he really know? His experience was tied to the village, and nothing beyond that.
“Why would the Dragon Souls have come to my village?” He looked at Henry, staying at the edge of the forest, almost as if unwilling to get any closer. “Why would Therin have come?”
Cherise took a deep breath, looking around. “They shouldn’t have. The mountains have long served as a line of demarcation. The dragons struggle to cross the snow and the cold, and the Dragon Souls have feared pushing, believing there is nothing beyond the mountains. They have no reason to travel through there. Not only is there not much life to be found, but
there are no further dragons to subjugate.”
Jason turned his head toward the small dragons in the clearing. “This would suggest otherwise.”
“We came here because they would be unlikely to travel this far. They don’t know that we’re here.”
“Are you sure?”
“We often worry about them finding us, but Dragon Haven has been protected for many years.”
Jason looked at the three of them. “How many of you are here?”
“We aren’t as many as we would like. This land is safe, but we haven’t been able to flourish as we should have. Now there are only a few thousand of us here,” Sarah said.
A few thousand was still quite a few, and yet, given the size of the town, it wasn’t nearly as many as he would have expected.
“And how many dragons?”
“Counting these?”
Jason looked over at the small dragons. There were five of them, and they seemed completely uninterested in him. He was thankful for that. He wasn’t sure how he would react if one of the dragons came running at him.
“Sure. Counting these.”
“Barely two dozen,” Cherise said.
“That’s it?”
“Freeing dragons from the Dragon Souls is difficult,” Olar said.
“How many dragons do they have?”
“Hundreds,” Sarah said.
As Jason continued to look at the dragons, he couldn’t help but wonder about them. “Why would Therin have come into the mountains without a dragon, then?”
“Dragons don’t care for the snow and ice,” Sarah said.
He looked over at Henry. “You brought a dragon there.”
“Out of necessity,” Henry said.
“How?”
“How did I bring a dragon?”
Jason nodded.
“It’s not as difficult as you’d think. I called to it.”
“How did you call to it? You were in the village as long as we were.”
Henry held his gaze for a long moment. “I called to it.”
There was more here than what Henry was admitting to, but Jason wasn’t sure that he even cared. All he knew was he was in a place where he didn’t belong, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to get home.
“None of this explains the Dragon Souls and what they were doing there.”
“Perhaps he will.”
A dark shape appeared overhead, and Jason looked up.
An enormous dragon circled, dropping to the ground. At first, Jason thought it was the same dragon that had brought him here, but this one seemed even larger, and there was a purplish hue to its scales. He didn’t remember seeing any purplish hue on the dragon he’d ridden on. This dragon landed and breathed out a streamer of fire that rolled over the small dragons in the center of the clearing.
When the fire calmed, the dragon turned his attention toward them. Yellow eyes locked onto Jason. There came a stirring within his mind, and then it faded.
“What have you brought me?”
It was a deep and rumbling voice, and at first, Jason thought it was Henry or Olar before realizing he heard the dragon.
He stared. “You talk?”
“Don’t mind him,” Henry said. “We’re working on him.”
“Who is it?”
“This is the one we told you about.”
“He’s the one the Dragon Souls chased.” There came another strange stirring in the back of his mind, and the dragon stared at him. “He’s seen it.”
“We think so,” Henry said.
“He has,” the dragon said.
“I have what?”
Henry stepped away from the trees, the first time since they had arrived there that he did. He glanced at the massive dragon before turning his attention to Jason. “The Dragon Souls have long been trying to breed dragons that can live within the mountains. They want to extend their range, and until they’re able to survive in the cold, they can’t do so. They can fly overhead and they can land briefly, but the cold is too much for them.”
Jason looked up at the enormous dragon. “You’ve said that, but it still seems strange to me. I’ve been around people who wear dragonskin—”
The dragon roared.
“I’d be careful talking about that,” Henry warned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He felt foolish talking to the dragon like that, but at the same time, he thought they needed to know what he had experienced.
“Dragonskin coats absorb heat.”
“Your experience has been different,” Henry said. “The skins are different, and the needs of those who wear them are different, but that doesn’t mean dragons themselves can withstand the same temperatures. They can tolerate them, but they are limited to how long they can do so.”
Could that be why they had rarely encountered dragons in the mountains?
His people were protected, set up so that they could defend themselves against the dragons, and yet, in the last two decades, there’d been no dragon.
They’d believed the dragons defeated, and yet, if the truth was something else as Henry claimed, then the dragons simply had no interest in being within the mountains. If that were the case, then his people weren’t in any danger.
“The Dragon Souls were there,” he said.
“They were,” Henry said.
Jason looked up at the enormous dragon, staring at its eyes. Something about them was familiar.
Why was it? It was different than the orange-eyed dragon that had brought him here. Something about the way the dragon looked at him, the stirring in the back of his mind, seemed familiar in a certain way, though he didn’t quite know why that should be. He pieced together what they were telling him. The Dragon Souls had come to his village, but they also were seeking a way to expand their reach, to find dragons that could handle the cold.
“Do you think there’s another dragon out there?” he asked.
Henry stepped forward. “One of the things Therin has long chased is—”
“Free dragons.”
Henry nodded. “There’s something about dragons born free that makes them stronger. Larger. Though the Dragon Souls have many dragons, most of them are born in captivity. They’re not nearly as impressive as those born free.” He turned his gaze toward the enormous dragon. “Those dragons are able to reach a much larger size.”
“Your dragons are larger than theirs?”
“Considerably larger.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“As I said, Therin is after free dragons. He’s using his knowledge to try to encourage dragons to be born free. But not just born free. Born into places where others wouldn’t survive.”
“Like the mountains,” he said, remembering what Therin had said.
“Exactly,” Henry said.
“You think he was trying to breed some sort of dragon?” Not just any dragon, but an ice dragon. That was what Therin had said. Jason remembered it well.
Henry shook his head. “We don’t think that he was trying to breed them. We think he already succeeded.”
20
Jason sat with his legs crossed in front of him and his back pressed against a tree. He breathed in the sense of the forest, the earthy odors, the mixture of dying leaves, the scent of flowers somewhere distant, and felt uncomfortable. None of this was home to him.
Footsteps near him caught his attention and he looked up to see Sarah approaching. She was dressed in a green robe, and she held her hands behind her back, watching him.
“You don’t have to be so nervous,” he said.
“I’m not nervous,” she said, touching her hair.
“You don’t have to hesitate coming toward me,” he said.
She flashed a smile. “What makes you think I am?”
“You’re watching me.”
“That much is true.”
“Why?”
“Because you make me uncertain.”
Jason laughed, almost bitterly. “I make you uncertain? Ever
ything about this place makes me nervous.” He looked up. “The trees. The smells. The sounds. Even the warmth.”
“The warmth?”
“Where I’m from, it’s bitterly cold. You have to wear furs like… Well, like I have back in your building. Without them, you can’t survive very long outside.”
“That sounds awful.”
“We haven’t had a dragon attack in decades. We’re safe.”
“It doesn’t sound like living.”
Jason looked around him. There were a few thousand people here—more than he’d ever known his entire life. Several dozen dragons. Still, they were isolated. Like his village, in a way. “Is this living for you?”
She frowned at him. “Henry thinks you saw the dragon.”
“I know what Henry thinks, but I didn’t.”
“The dragon thinks you saw the dragon. That’s why Therin wanted you.”
Jason shook his head, staring at the ground. A trail of insects led away, heading toward one of the nearby trees. Even in his village, there were no insects. It was a strange thing to see so much life all around him.
“How can it know?”
“Dragons know many things.”
“You think the dragon can read my thoughts?”
“Yes,” she said.
Jason looked up at her, and he started to smile, but he realized that she wasn’t joking. She actually believed the dragon could read his mind.
And who was he to think otherwise? As far as he knew, the dragons could read his thoughts. There had been the strange stirring in the back of his mind when he’d encountered the dragon, and it was possible that it was able to dip into his mind. If so, should he be scared? If the dragon was able to read his mind, it would know how he felt about dragons in general, and how he felt about what he believed they were responsible for doing to his father.
“If the Dragon Souls acquire a dragon that can survive in the mountains, your village won’t be safe.”
“My village hasn’t been completely safe anyway,” he said.
“You just said—”
Jason breathed out, shaking his head. “I know what I just said. And I know that it makes no sense. You’re right. If the Dragon Souls come for my village, the people won’t be safe.”
Ice Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 1) Page 20
