Smoke and Shadow: An Epic Fantasy Progression Series (The Dragon Thief Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “They’re almost here,” Gayal said.

  “I know. I’m ready.”

  She frowned at him and Ty took a deep breath, calling that smoke back into him, and then set his hands down at his sides. The smoke energy, the heat and warmth that flowed through him, worked all the way through his body.

  It covered him like a layer of power.

  He could feel it.

  “You must control it,” Gayal whispered.

  Ty couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure that there was anything for him to do if he were to move.

  “How?”

  “There are ways of using what you have summoned, but I’m not sure that control is the key for you at this point. What you must find is how to release it.” She nodded to him, and he looked over, noticing the way that she had her arms pressed up against her body. She brought them down, as if demonstrating the movement for him.

  Ty did the same.

  As the darkness neared, he brought his arms up, holding them there. It felt as if some layer of power pooled around him.

  “Now,” Gayal said.

  Ty brought his arms down.

  With a massive plume of smoke, power exploded from him.

  And then it was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ty stood in the middle the street, sweeping his gaze around him. He could still feel a bit of fluttering, but the power had dissipated. It was still there if he were to call upon it, though as he stood there a wave of weakness washed over him. The street was quiet, empty, but there was something here that he could feel. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was. The shadows that had been there had started to dissipate, leaving some of the lanterns glowing in the windows yet again.

  “Easy,” Gayal said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You used quite a bit of energy just then.”

  Ty blinked, his eyes getting heavy.

  Gayal reached into her pouch, pulled out a strip of meat, and handed it to him. Ty chewed on it slowly, looking up at her, feeling his mind struggling to keep up with what had just happened.

  “I controlled something,” he said, “but I don’t know how I did it. Or what I did.”

  She chuckled. “You controlled your power. I could feel it. Couldn’t you?” She looked at him. The shadows swirled around her, that of her dragon, but even that wasn’t necessary for him to see.

  “I could feel it, but I didn’t feel any sense of control. I just felt like it was there.”

  “That is progress for you. Have you felt anything like that before?”

  She knew that he hadn’t.

  He took a step, felt the weakness wash through him, and glanced over at her, shaking his head. “I know that something isn’t quite right. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel that we need to keep moving.”

  The item that Zara had given him continued to vibrate in his hand, and the longer it did the more certain he was that they needed to reach the others.

  He looked along the street. The light around him was still there, still prominent from the streetlamps, along with the light glowing in the windows of the homes, but there was also something else. It was almost like the moonlight shimmered off a film hanging in the air.

  Not only the moonlight, but the power of the Flame burning on top of the temple. All of that radiated to him, and all of that provided a sense of energy and power that flowed.

  Ty looked over at Gayal and found her watching him. “We can’t wait here too long,” he said.

  “We can wait long enough for you to recover.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t need to recover. I just need to keep moving.” The item vibrated. “Where did they go?” he asked. There was no sign of the false Order of the Flame that he had struck with the power of the smoke dragon.

  “I don’t know. They are still out there, somewhere, but perhaps having felt your attack…”

  Maybe it would give them pause, which he suspected should make him happy, but at the same time, Ty worried. He wanted to use his power, and strangely now that he had used it once—intentionally—he wanted to know how to use it again, but he was tired.

  He followed Gayal while the vibration in the dragon bone persisted, shifting as they followed the street. He motioned for her to take a side street, one that would lead them to the edge of the city.

  Toward Ishantil.

  “Why am I so tired?”

  “It will pass. I told you the two of you are bonded. The dragon feeds on you, and you feed on the dragon. You pull on that power, the dragon pulls on you. It is all connected.”

  “I see,” he said, though he didn’t.

  He tried to focus, and as they passed one of the smaller, older temples, he watched it, looking for evidence of the Flame. That was where the false Order of the Flame had attacked him before, though now there was no sign of them or anything else that threatened him. Every place that he went to in the city was reminder of what he had been, where he had come from, almost as if the city itself were out to torment him about who he had been. Maybe it was best that he had left Zarinth.

  “How long will it last?” he asked.

  “It depends. Normally, when I use the energy, I do so in a controlled fashion because I have experience in doing so. With you, and with what you just did, I suspect there was no control and there wasn’t anything that you did other than unleash energy.”

  “The dragon could’ve controlled it,” he said.

  They continued forward, the vibration in the dragon bone guiding him. It seemed to him that Gayal had stopped trying to take the lead and now followed him, though as they neared the outskirts of the city, there was no reason for her to take the lead. This was where he knew how to move and maneuver. This was his home, after all.

  Or had been.

  Could Zarinth even be his home anymore?

  Now that he had used the power of the smoke dragon and had done so intentionally, he finally felt as if he deserved that energy, as if there was some part of him that had finally passed a test, though now it was a matter of holding onto it and ensuring that he could maintain it.

  “So you’re saying it might take a while for me to recover?”

  “It might,” she said simply.

  They stopped at the outskirts of the jungle.

  In the darkness, the canopy of trees overhead was even darker and denser than it seemed in the daylight. There was something imposing about it, some feeling that left him unsettled when he had never been before.

  Having lived in the jungle, having grown up around these trees, Ty didn’t usually feel unsettled by it at night, though knowing that there was a threat, something more than just the velum up in the trees, made him hesitate in a way that he wouldn’t naturally.

  He looked into the forest, staring into the distance. “Can you take us with your shadows?” he asked.

  Gayal shook her head. “I could, but I wouldn’t have the same guidance as I would otherwise. It’s not necessarily going to be safe to travel in that way.”

  “I see.” Which was too bad. He wished that it would be easier and that there would be some safe way to do so. Which meant that they were going to have to follow the jungle, take the trail, and risk the velum. He looked up into the trees. “Let’s get going.”

  There was a strange sensation for Ty. At first, he thought that maybe there was a burning feeling that was tied to his dragon, but the further that they started up the slope, the less that he believed that it was just his dragon that he detected. He didn’t know what it was, nor did he know why he should feel it, only that there was some sense there buried within him that he could detect. Perhaps it was his dragon, or perhaps it was something else. Either way, there was definitely something out in the distance.

  Maybe Dorian.

  He looked over to see Gayal staring straight ahead, the shadow dragon swirling around her, holding onto the cloak.

  “I still haven’t learned why you hold onto the dragon like you do.”

  “It allows a more immediate reaction,” Gayal said. “An
d some dragons are not quite like the smoke dragon and can hide within you. I’m sure you saw Dorian and the stone dragon.”

  “I didn’t see how he hides it.”

  “He doesn’t. If you’ll notice, everything around him sort of shifts with it. He brings the dragon along and masks it with the shadow dragon, but then he also levels it out, creating something around him.” Gayal’s cloak fluttered for a moment, before falling still again. “I don’t know if I can fully explain it, and I don’t know how to answer it as anything more than that, because I don’t understand it.”

  “And your shadow dragon?” He looked over at her. The shadow cloak hung motionless, and it seemed to him that it should be able to hide more easily than the smoke dragon. “Why can’t you hide the shadow dragon more easily?”

  “I suppose it would be possible over time to hide him, though I haven’t managed to come up with a way to hold him inside myself, and I don’t even know if he would be willing to let me.” The cloak fluttered a moment. “There’s a part of the dragon that’s proud of himself, as he should be, and he wants to be displayed.”

  “Displayed as a decoration around your neck?”

  A rustling in the trees caused him to look up. They hadn’t climbed very far, so it would be fairly early for the velum to start chasing them, though he had a feeling that was what it was.

  “Something like that,” Gayal whispered.

  They moved more cautiously now, making their way up the mountainside.

  In the darkness, it was difficult to pick their way along, though the trail that they had chosen was wide enough for them to do so.

  Still, he couldn’t tell where the mountain would twist and turn, and though he had taken this path many times over his life there was still uncertainty about it. He slid his foot forward, picking his way forward as he attempted to avoid tripping over a root or anything else that might get in his way.

  He was tempted to take the Path of the Flame, though it would be steep and a challenging climb. Whatever way they took, he didn’t worry about the velum, but he knew that Roson James no longer feared them, either. Ty whistled softly and found Gayal watching him. He pointed to the trees.

  “Does that keep them away, or does it summon them?” Gayal asked him.

  “It depends upon the whistle. I’m hoping to send them up ahead. Roson learned how to command them, but maybe with enough velum, he could still be overwhelmed.”

  There came an occasional call from the velum in the trees in response, though it was faint.

  “It would be better to have some way to illuminate the way, wouldn’t it?” Gayal asked. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a small circular item. It took Ty a moment to realize what it was, but as soon as it started to glow, he recognized it.

  “Dragon light,” he said.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “Should I? Wait. Is that the same dragon light that I took?”

  She nodded. “I thought that might be useful. I have not found the opportunity before now, but I’m not surprised that I would find the need here with you.”

  “I always thought that it was interesting that we had things like dragon light, something that was not necessarily a remnant or a relic.”

  “Made by scholars, not Dragon Touched. Though to be honest, I suspect that the scholars who have the ability to make dragon light are touched, whether or not they want to acknowledge it.”

  “Why wouldn’t they want to acknowledge it?”

  “Why wouldn’t those within the priesthood want to acknowledge that they are touched?”

  “Because they want to follow the Flame.”

  “Exactly. And I suspect that scholars want to follow their passions as well, and not be asked to serve the king in this way. It gives them deniability.”

  “How does it even work?” Ty asked.

  “They are basically stored potential. What you need to do is pull some of that potential out. Eventually the dragon relics will be spent, their power wasted, and then they are little more than bones, no different than your dagger.”

  “How do you know my dagger has been spent?”

  “Because no dragon-bone dagger still exists that hasn’t been spent. That’s not to say that you couldn’t fashion a new one, but it would take the assistance of power that you would have to control far better than you do.”

  He focused on the bone and used his connection to the smoke, trying to withdraw some of that energy from it. It worked, but it did so slowly, strangely, and as he pulled the energy off he could feel something shifting.

  Power shifted. The light started to dim.

  He smiled to himself. “That’s impressive. I like how it—”

  One of the velum screamed.

  It was farther up in the forest, and its shriek split the silence around them and left him trembling for a moment. Ty froze, staring up into the trees, trying to see if it would be along the path.

  Ty whistled, hoping that he might send them scurrying along the road.

  “Maybe that means that my whistle is working,” Ty said.

  Gayal nodded slowly.

  They continued climbing the mountain. The hike went slowly, and though he hadn’t climbed in over a month, he found that it was relaxing in a certain way, almost as if it were the familiarity of the climb that relaxed him a little bit.

  “I still am troubled by what they were after. Why would they be going to places of the Flame?”

  “The better question is why they were bringing the king’s dragons to those places. Until we know those answers, I’m afraid that we cannot rest, unfortunately.”

  And it was more than just that, he knew. It was more than just following that path, searching for those answers. It was stopping Roson James.

  “And if they went to the lava flow and to the steam swamp, and…” Ty tried to remember other places that were supposedly powerful with the Flame in the kingdom, and the only other place that he could come up with was within the Dragon’s Jaw itself, though he didn’t know if it was. “Any other place that would bring them proximity to the Flame. There has to be some reason behind it.”

  “You might be right,” Gayal said.

  “If it’s about strengthening the dragons, then none of it makes complete sense. Why bring the dragons someplace where they would suffer?”

  Gayal didn’t answer.

  They climbed for a little while longer, Ty lost in his thoughts. Another velum shrieked, though it was distant enough that he didn’t fear that they were getting close enough to the creature, even though he worried that they might be closer than he wanted to be.

  Gayal tensed when the velum shrieked again.

  “What if it’s not about strengthening the dragons?” Ty asked.

  “You’re still stuck on that,” Gayal said.

  Ty shrugged, glancing back at her.

  The upward hike was not necessarily easy, though Gayal made it look so. Maybe she was calling upon the energy of her shadow dragon, or perhaps she was just fit enough that this wasn’t a problem for her.

  “What if this isn’t about celebrating the Flame the way my brother believed?”

  “Then I don’t have the answer,” he said.

  Ty turned, heading back upslope. It didn’t make complete sense to him, though maybe it didn’t have to. Maybe none of it was meant to make sense. All he knew was that something was happening with the dragons and with these places that the dragons had been.

  If they sacrificed another dragon here, he would have to understand what reason they had behind it. And then there was still the matter of the vibration coming from the dragon-bone relic Zara had given him.

  His brother was up here.

  He’d been chasing the false Order of the Flame because they’d stolen from him.

  What had been stolen, though?

  He had felt that the items that he’d found and recovered were valuable and had been following something that he’d been given, instructions that he had been using, only…

 
Ty didn’t have any answers.

  Another velum screamed, and once again Ty and Gayal paused, taking a moment to look up the slope, trying to see what was taking place, but there was no obvious answer.

  The heat had started to build.

  The higher they climbed up the mountainside, the more he started to feel the heat and energy of the lava lake. It wouldn’t be long before they got near enough to be able to make out the glowing light of the lava lake.

  If the false Order of the Flame was going to be anywhere, he suspected that was where they were headed. And he suspected that was tied to the dragons.

  Maybe they were sacrificing the dragons or using some sort of power in order to call the power of the lava dragon. He had no idea how something like that would even work, but it would fit with what he’d seen from them.

  A little bit further, another velum cried out.

  He started to slow.

  “We don’t have very much further to get to the lava like. Beyond that, it would be a short climb to the peak of Ishantil, but I doubt that he’s gone there. It’s always been about the lava lake.” Ty squeezed the item that Zara had given him. He could feel it vibrating. He frowned. “Why would the Order have attacked us in the city?” He looked over to Gayal. “Why target us there?”

  “Perhaps we have something they need.”

  “I wondered that, as well, but…” Ty traced his finger over the dragon-bone dagger, feeling a hint of heat in it. Bingham had warned him that the dagger was hot, but he had never been aware of that before. “And I have been trying to figure out why they would have attacked Esme’s tavern. What were they after?”

  Gayal looked over at him, frowning. “I don’t know.”

  “What if they’ve just been trying to delay us?”

  “I’m not sure it matters.”

  “Maybe it does, though. Maybe they’re concerned about you.”

  Or it could be himself.

  As strange as that seemed to admit, the idea that the Order of the Flame was concerned about him was a real one. He had evaded them. He’d stopped them. And he had gotten to the dauvern before them.

  Not only that, but he had outed Roson James. If there was anybody who intended to cause trouble for him, why wouldn’t it be them?