Jason turned his attention to the man. “Why today? What is it that you know?”
“The dragon recognized the Dragon Souls.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the Dragon Souls are getting close. If we wait until morning, it will be too late.”
Jason looked around. He didn’t feel any heat, nothing that suggested the Dragon Souls approached, but he didn’t want to get caught here by them. Even though Henry—and Sarah—might be able to use the dragon pearl and Henry might be able to call the dragon, the idea of getting trapped by the Dragon Souls on the mountainside troubled him.
“You knew this, didn’t you?”
“I knew we had limited time. Therin wouldn’t wait if he thought something was here.”
“And he was able to reach here this quickly?”
“Much like us, he would be able to call to a dragon.”
Jason shivered. It had nothing to do with the cold. He needed to find the stream, but how?
Making up his mind, he wound along the side of the mountain. Rather than climbing, he followed the level they were on. If nothing else, he would run into the stream. He lost track of how long they walked, the wind whipping around him, tearing through his bearskin, leaving him shivering.
In a break in the wind, he heard a burbling.
It was to his left and he trudged through the snow, racing toward what he had heard. The stream swept around the mountainside, eventually dipping and cascading far down the mountain.
“This is it,” he said.
Henry pulled his gloves off, dipped his hands in the water, and brought it to his face. “It’s the same.”
“I told you,” he said.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“Nothing.” He straightened, putting his gloves back on, and looked around. “You said there was a small shelter nearby?”
Jason nodded. It was where the stream came out. He followed the stream, climbing a little while, and in the distance, the darkened shape of the mouth of the stream greeted him.
He approached carefully, listening for anything strange, wondering if perhaps Henry was right. Maybe there was some creature there. When he had been here last, he had thought he’d heard something, but he hadn’t seen anything. In this part of the world, the only time he wasn’t able to see a person with his dragon sight was when they were wearing dragonskin, and no creatures wore dragonskin—other than dragons.
Surprisingly, the dragons hadn’t been concealed from his dragon sight. That seemed strange. Given everything else, he was expecting he should have had a harder time seeing them.
“It’s just up here.”
As they approached the mouth of the small cave, he felt something. Jason turned slowly, looking at Henry before turning his attention down below.
It was heat. He was certain of it.
“We need to work quickly,” Henry said.
“They aren’t that far away,” Jason said.
“Like I said, quickly.”
He locked eyes with Henry, and a flutter of fear worked through him. The Dragon Souls were coming.
They weren’t far from the village. From here, it was only about two hours’ climb, close enough that the Dragon Souls could harm his people. The stream itself was difficult enough to reach, but it was only difficult because it wasn’t always easy to find, which was why his father had always valued it. Jason approached the cave and ducked down, staying close to the edge. A small shelf allowed him to climb inside, and he glanced at the others.
“Stay close to the wall,” he said to William.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Then you fall in. You don’t want to get wet out here.”
William pressed himself against the wall of the cave.
“How long do we have to go like this?”
“Not long,” Jason said.
The cave opened up, and he backed onto a wider shelf and peered around. He didn’t see anything with his dragon sight that would suggest there would be anything here.
“That is a unique challenge,” William said. “Have you ever fallen in?”
Jason shook his head. “My father always warned me that if I fell in, I probably wouldn’t make it back to the village to warm up.”
“Why risk it, then?” he asked as Henry and Sarah joined them.
“Because of this.” He motioned overhead. In the fading light, there was a crystalline appearance to the top of the cave. It glittered, reflecting the light.
“I don’t see anything,” William said.
“Try this,” Sarah said.
Light began to glow in her hand, and it reflected off the ceiling of the cave.
Any question that she had Dragon Soul ability was removed. There was no other way she would be able to do that.
The light reflected overhead, and Jason swept his gaze across it.
“What’s in here?” William asked.
“Occasionally, we will find animals. Sometimes larger ones.” He motioned to his jacket. “It’s where we found the bear that made my coat.”
“You caught that?”
“We didn’t so much catch it as we hunted it. The meat served us for several months.”
“Is that all you worry about?”
“We focus on survival in the mountains.” He looked around the inside of the cave. It was the first time he’d been here when there was so much light. Most the time when he was here, there was nothing to see. With the dragon pearl glowing in Sarah’s hand, he was able to make out the contours in the cave roof far better than he could otherwise. Some were made by icicles, but not all of it. Others were some sort of glittering stone.
“Do you know how much those would be worth?” William asked.
“Why?”
“They’re all gems.”
“Not to us.”
William chuckled. “Maybe not to you, but to anyone else who doesn’t live in such a terrible place.”
Jason forced a smile. “It wasn’t always terrible.” It had been recently, but before his father had died, Jason had enjoyed living here. His father had always taught him well, showing him how to hunt, to find tracks in fresh snow, to survive. And before his father was lost, the village had been a different place. It hadn’t been nearly as cold to them.
So much had changed since he was gone.
He turned his attention to the inside of the cave. “This is the only place I could imagine a dragon having been.”
“There’s no sign of a dragon.” Sarah wandered around, scanning the ground, and looked up at him. “There are no scraps. No bones. No droppings.”
“Droppings?” William asked.
“Even dragons have to relieve themselves,” she said.
“Dragons poop?”
Jason grunted. They had burned quite a bit of dung in the village. What would dragon dung have done? He could imagine drying it and trying to find some way to burn it, and could imagine it would give off more heat than other kinds of dung.
“Like I said, even dragons have to void. But there’s no sign of anything here.”
“Over here,” Henry said.
Jason followed him, looking, and as he did, he noticed a strange scraping along the stone.
“What is that?” William asked.
“Claws,” Jason said. He traced his fingers through the marks. They were too large for a bear.
“Dragon claws,” Henry said.
The other man stood, straightening, looking around the inside of the cave. Jason followed the direction of his gaze, looking for any other signs of markings like that.
There had been quite a few animals here. In the time he’d hunted with his father, they’d found anything from the bear to other smaller animals, creatures that would come in here for shelter from the weather. This was oftentimes the demarcation point where he would find other animals. Occasionally he would come across rabbits closer to the village, but most of the time, anything he encountered was farther downslope.
“If the dragon egg was placed here, there would be a shell,” Sarah said.
“Unless it wasn’t placed here,” Jason said.
She met his eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe the dragon egg was somewhere else and the dragon came here.”
“I don’t see any signs of the shell,” Henry said.
Jason looked at the ground, thinking about the last time he’d been inside the cave.
It had been a while. Long enough that he wouldn’t be surprised there could be some creature here that he’d overlooked. Most of the time, he searched for tracks outside the cave, and if there were none, he didn’t bother venturing inside. The danger of falling into the stream was too great.
It was easier to watch, to wait and see if there was any sign that something had come in here, but in this case, he hadn’t seen anything for months and months.
“How long do you think the egg would have been here?”
“It can take as much as a year for an egg to gestate,” Sarah said.
“A year?”
She nodded, looking up at him. “The dragons will lay an egg once every ten years or so.”
“How is it that there are so many of them?”
“There should be more,” Henry said. “It’s because of the Dragon Souls. They destroy those they can’t control.”
“That’s why there are dragonskins?”
“That and people like in your village,” Henry said.
“My village suffered under dragon attacks.”
“As you say.”
Jason ignored him, continuing to scan the inside of the cave. Sarah stayed close to him, holding out the glowing dragon pearl, and it gave him an opportunity to look at the ground, but he didn’t see anything.
“If we don’t find something soon, we’re going to have to leave the cave,” he said.
The Dragon Souls would be getting close, and he didn’t want to get caught in here when they appeared. Henry might be able to withstand an attack, and Sarah might be able to help, but how many Dragon Souls would Therin bring with him?
If it involved a dragon, he might bring quite a few.
“Keep looking.” Sarah leaned down, holding the dragon pearl above the surface of the ground. She swept it in a circle, and as she spun, Jason followed her, not saying anything.
“I’m not…”
Something caught his eye.
When Sarah swept the dragon pearl in one direction, it seemed almost more reflective than other parts of the cave.
He pointed, and she followed him, crouching down on the ground.
She ran her fingers across the surface of the cave floor.
“I don’t know. It could be an egg, but I’m not sure what an egg would look like in this place. The landscape will influence it. Changing it.”
Jason had no idea what an egg would look like in this place, either. For that matter, he had no idea what a dragon egg would look like in general. The only thing he knew was there wasn’t anything here that didn’t fit with what he expected.
He searched the floor of the cave, heading over to the stream, and paused to take a drink. The water had the familiar mineral taste to it, the same as he remembered when Henry had brought him the water skin. As he leaned over the stream, taking a small sip, he stared into the water.
“Sarah?”
She swept the glowing light closer to him. As she did, he saw what he thought he’d noticed in the bottom of the stream more clearly.
“Do you see anything here?”
She crouched down next to him, and he was aware of her warmth, aware of the way she smelled, and of her pressing up against him.
“There’s something here,” she said.
Jason glanced up at her, meeting her crystal blue eyes. “That’s not all that helpful.”
There was one thing they could do, and he decided to try.
It involved submerging part of him in the stream. Knowing what he did about water in this kind of place, the way it could freeze, he hesitated, but at the same time, he had two people with him who had control over the dragon pearls, and who might have some way of helping him if it were to come down to it.
He focused on what he saw. It was an irregularity in the stream. It was almost the way the water seemed to flow, as if it were disrupted. He couldn’t tell if there was something in the bottom of the stream or whether it was simply reflections from the top of the cave.
Jason pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and dipped his hand in the water.
It was icy cold, and everything within him hurt immediately, but he swept his hand from side to side. At first, he didn’t find anything, but he felt something on the bottom of the stream, so he grabbed it, pulling it free.
Sarah was there, the dragon pearl resting next to her, heat radiating off it. He was appreciative of that and worried what would have happened if she hadn’t brought that heat to him. Warmth rolled over his hand, his arm.
William crouched next to them. “What is it?”
Jason glanced up. “I don’t know. I can’t really tell what this is.”
It was a curved fragment of what appeared to be rock, and it had a crystalline appearance, almost as if it had fragmented off the ceiling of the cave. Then again, as Jason studied it, it didn’t look anything quite like the cave. It was different.
Sarah held the dragon pearl down toward it, and the fragment began to glow.
Her breath caught.
“It’s the egg,” she said.
“How certain are you?”
“There’s no other way that this would do this. It has to be the egg.”
Jason lifted the fragment of the egg up, holding it to the light, twisting it from side to side. As he did, he wasn’t sure if he was able to detect anything else about it.
“Where would the rest be?”
“I don’t know. I thought I saw part of it over there, but…” She leaned over the water, and this time, Sarah dipped her hand in. She cried out, her eyes widening, and she swept her hand around before pulling it back out and resting it near the dragon pearl. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Tolerate the stream?”
“I have some experience with cold,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“It can’t be that bad,” William said. He stuffed his hand into the water, and as he did, he shouted.
“Quiet,” Henry said.
“Gods! That is cold.” He glanced over at Jason. “And you drank it?”
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“I didn’t find anything more,” Sarah said.
“Is there any reason you need to find more?” Jason asked.
“The more pieces of the shell we find, the easier it will be for us to track the dragon.”
Jason crawled along the stream, looking into the water, searching for anything that might be unusual. He crawled along the side but didn’t come up with anything. The far side of the stream was a narrower ledge, but it would allow him an easier search. Jason got to his feet and jumped. He teetered on the edge for a moment before catching himself, and then dropped down to his knees, crawling along that side of the stream.
When he found something, he dipped his hand in, pulling it out.
This time, he had found a larger section. As before, it was curved and had a crystalline appearance. It reminded him of the ceiling, and he held it up, keeping it in place as he looked upward.
“They look quite a bit alike,” he said.
“I—”
Sarah didn’t have a chance to finish. An explosion of heat thundered near them.
Jason staggered and nearly fell into the stream, but managed to push himself back against the wall of the cave, anchoring his heels, keeping himself out of the water. Even though Sarah and Henry both had dragon pearls, he wasn’t sure they would be able to dry him out quickly enough.
“What was that?” William asked.
“The Dragon Souls,” Sarah whispered.
“Dragon Sou
ls are here?”
“They are, and…” She cocked her head to the side. She took a deep breath, holding the section of the dragon egg up, and the dragon pearl began to glow. “I think… I think the dragon is, too.”
22
Henry waited at the mouth of the cave, looking outward. Heat radiated from him and he gripped the dragon pearl, holding on to it tightly, staring into the distance. Snow swirled around the entrance of the cave, nothing but a white blanket of emptiness. The cold billowed into the cave, parting around Henry, but Jason knew it would continue to creep forward, painfully slipping into the cavern.
“I don’t see anything out there,” Sarah said as she approached Henry.
The other man hovered on the lip of rock that led into the cave. He glanced over his shoulder at Sarah before shaking his head. “I don’t see anything, either, but in a landscape like this, I’m not sure I would be able to see anything at all.” He turned his attention back out to the swirling snow, focusing outward, and the heat radiating off him continued to build.
“What are you trying to do?” William asked.
“He’s probably trying to see beyond the entrance to the cave,” Sarah said.
“Will his magic allow that?”
“It’s not his magic,” she said.
“He has that pearl. How can it be anything else?”
“The magic, as you call it, is borrowed power from the dragon.”
Two types of magic…
Why did those thoughts keep coming back to him? Maybe because he didn’t know how his father would have known about two types of magic. What reason would he have for knowing anything about magic in the first place?
He’d never left the mountain. He’d hunted outside of the village, and had travelled as far as Varmin, but not below that as far as Jason knew.
“That’s what Therin said, too,” Jason said.
She cocked an eyebrow at him, watching him. “How much did you talk to Therin?”
“I traveled with him for an evening.” It seemed like it had been longer, but then it also seemed like it had happened long ago rather than just days earlier.
“Most who spend any time with Therin end up dead,” Sarah said.
“I guess I’m lucky, then.”
“You are lucky. Therin is…” She shook her head and her face clouded. “Awful, I suppose. He would do anything to reach Dragon Haven, and anything to destroy the dragons.”
Ice Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 1) Page 22
