It was there.
The heat was close—not only the pressure of the heat, the warmth I detected, but also the smell of it. I could breathe it in, and was aware of that energy as it existed around me. I waited, letting that sense continue to flow outward.
Gradually, it did.
It was different than what I had detected when I was within the Academy, where I was surrounded by different dragons, along with different people who were connected to the dragons. I had learned that there were dozens of different dragons within the city, all of them with their own unique power. Here, out in the forest, surrounded by trees and emptiness, I felt some aspect of magic different from what I had detected before.
The next step beyond opening myself up to the power was filling myself with it.
I haven’t spent enough time to work with the power to know whether I could fill myself with the energy, but there was something about it I thought I could feel. I breathed in slowly, drawing in the heat and the energy around me.
Power built.
I could see the dragon.
Had he come toward me?
Maybe I wouldn’t fail this test.
He was only a few dozen paces away, hiding within the trees, though not so hidden I couldn’t make out the details. The black dragon I’d seen flying off—I should have known that was the one Jerith would use. He had an affinity for it.
I reached a hand out the way I would with a wild horse.
I watched the dragon. His orange eyes glowed brightly, and a strange surge formed between us. For a moment, that surged intensified, but then it blasted me, throwing me back.
When I got to my feet, the dragon was missing.
“Where are you?” I muttered.
This had to be another part of the test.
Find the dragon. Follow it.
I looked around, feeling for that power and energy, focusing on what I could detect.
That had been real. The dragon had filled me with power, and I had drawn it to me.
I hadn’t controlled it yet, but the fact that I’d been able to use it at all was enough.
Distantly, I could feel the energy coming off of the dragon, heat radiating somewhere deeper in the forest. I followed it, making my way through the trees, heading after that energy.
The air around me began to feel more humid, much more like my home. It reminded me of the forest just outside of the plains, and the time that I had spent wandering through the trees. This one wasn’t nearly as dense, and I thought I could follow the trail . . .
I looked behind me. Where was the trail?
I’d been following the sense of the dragon, and using that to guide me deeper into the forest, focusing on the heat and the energy that I felt, but hadn’t paid nearly as much attention to my surroundings as I should have.
Now that I was here, deeper into the forest and the trees, I realized I had no idea where I was, and no idea what I would need to do to get back out. If I didn’t have the dragon to follow, how was I going to get out?
I stopped. I could still feel the dragon as it drew me deeper into the forest. It was almost as if it were trying to call to me, wanting me to be aware of the heat and energy coming off of it. I could turn around now and follow what I thought was the path that I’d taken in here, but what if I were wrong? It might mean I would end up trapped here.
Jerith knew I was out here, but how many others would?
I’d be lost.
There wouldn’t be anyone in the Academy to come for me.
Distantly, a dragon roared.
That had to be the black dragon, but why would he be so deep into the forest?
The strange sensation drawing upon me continued to pull, and I decided to follow it. If Jerith wanted me to understand my connection to the dragons, it involved me following what I could feel of them. Even if it meant going deeper into the forest and risking myself, I would do that. I needed to succeed. I had wandered through forests enough times to know that I would eventually find my way out.
If I couldn’t, then I had to hope that the Dragon Academy would send riders out after me. If they didn’t . . .
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if they didn’t send anybody after me. I’d known people who’d gotten trapped in the forest before, ending up wandering. At least here the rains wouldn’t come in a deluge like they did on the plains.
I turned, focusing on the energy of the dragon, and resigned myself to following it. I would not fail this test—even if it meant getting lost in the forest.
2
I ‘d been wandering for the better part of several hours, and had felt the ongoing sense of the dragon pulling me deeper into the forest. All of this was a mistake. I knew it probably was, but for whatever reason, I continued heading deeper into the forest. The trees grew closer together the farther I went, and I never felt as if I got any closer to the dragon, though I could still feel his energy as it pulled upon me. Every so often, I would hear the dragon’s roar, but then it would fade.
I lost track of which way I was traveling. The heat of the dragon burned within me, a heat that I connected to, something that bubbled up from deep within my core and sent my stomach roiling. It was a sensation that my father had once described to me.
Thinking of my father now brought a pang of sadness. If only he could have known what I had learned about myself. If only he had been given the opportunity to see what I might have become.
If only I had a chance to learn what my father knew of dragons.
I had thought his comments the ramblings of a delusional man, but now I wasn’t so sure. None in the Academy had heard of him, but my father had known the heat of dragons.
Those thoughts stayed with me as I followed the heat of this dragon.
This is what Jerith wanted from me. He wanted me to follow this energy, to see if there was anything I might learn from the dragon, and to discover how to open myself up to them. It still pulled upon me, drawing me deeper into the forest.
Could Jerith have wanted me to follow this far?
I had my doubts. I didn’t think this was part of the test, though maybe it was. Maybe this was all part of how they wanted me to prove that I deserved to stay within the Academy. I could feel the energy of the dragon, but they needed to know whether I was connected the way that I claimed.
Distantly, I heard another rumble. This came as a roar, a burst of the dragon crying out to me. I had stopped near a small stream, leaning down and taking a drink, and when the roar came, I paused, looking up and around me. I didn’t see anything, though the roar seemed as if the dragon were closer than he had been before.
That was strange.
Not only had the dragon roared, but it had seemed almost pained.
I probably wasn’t accurate in my interpretation of its sound, but the roar certainly had a feel to it. I took another step, going over the stream, and realized something.
The air had gone cooler.
That was odd, as well. Only a few paces away, the air within the forest had been humid, almost unpleasantly so, but the farther I came into the forest, the more everything had started to change, getting not only cooler, but also smelling differently.
I suspected that the change was more gradual than I had known, but could it be that I had traveled the wrong way? When I followed the dragon, I wondered how much of the heat had come off of the dragon himself and how much of it had come from something within the forest.
The energy of the dragon was out there, but it was far enough away that I felt as if I should just turn back. I wanted to prove myself within the Academy. I wanted to prove I could do what was asked of me. And I wanted to prove to myself that I belonged.
Something about the dragon continued to trouble and pull upon me. Why had it changed?
I didn’t think it was injured, at least I hoped not, but as I felt for the changing energy in the air, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps something had happened to it.
The sense of the dragon had shift
ed, no longer drawing upon me the way it had. A sharp crack caught my attention. I turned and looked toward the sound.
That had been close.
I moved near one of the tree trunks to hide. It might be nothing more than a deer, or possibly something even smaller, but I had enough experience to know that I needed to be careful, especially if it were something else.
I waited, but no other sounds came.
Distantly, I noticed the energy of the dragon, and it seemed as if it were farther from me than before. I opened myself to that power, thinking of the exercises I had learned within the Academy. One of them involved breathing slowly, in and out through my nose, to help center myself so that I could feel for the heat within the air and focus on the way the dragon power existed. As I did that now, I felt a faint surge of heat. It flickered within me, and then a surge of warmth worked along my skin, leaving me sweating. I wiped a hand across my brow for a moment before realizing the sudden movement might have been too much.
Freezing in place, I continue to focus on my breathing, then shift to another technique that they taught at the Academy to help open up to the dragons.
If I were to be a dragon mage, I would need to ensure I could stay open to that power. I had to find some way of connecting to it, drawing it through myself. There was a connection to the heat of my body, some part deep within me that roiled with that energy, connecting with the dragon. The sense of the dragon flared within me. It was closer now.
The dragon shouldn’t suddenly be that much closer to me than it had been before.
I relaxed everything within myself. That was the third lesson I was taught. The first was breathing, then the next was recognizing the heat within myself in order to connect to the dragon heat. The third was relaxation, opening myself to the connection of the dragons, so that once that connection was formed it would draw through me, give me a burst of power and energy, and flare up within me.
I felt it surge again.
Everything felt off. There should be no reason for that surge to come, no reason for it to feel as if the connection to the dragon jumped from place to place.
A scrape came across the ground.
I tensed.
I don’t know if I would’ve been aware of it had I not been so focused. Now that I heard that scraping, I knew there was something here.
I tried to ignore the sense of the dragon.
I heard another scraping.
I readied myself, and instinct forced me to reach for a belt knife that wasn’t there.
I cursed myself.
I wasn’t dressed for the exploration the way I should be. Had I still been at home, I would have been carrying a knife, possibly a bow, and I would have been prepared for anything that might be out in the forest. It wasn’t as if I were incapable of handling myself.
I shifted, sliding one foot around the tree, creeping outward.
As I did, I paid attention to the sounds around me. My breathing sounded loud in my ears. I had to focus, steadying my breathing, steadying everything within myself, preparing.
Perhaps this was all part of Jerith’s plan. He wanted to know whether I was capable of finding my way back. An idea came to me that I hadn’t considered before. I’d followed the dragon in the forest, getting increasingly lost the farther in I went, but I didn’t necessarily have to follow that dragon back. I could follow others.
I had been so focused on the black dragon, knowing that he had been the one to guide me deeper into the forest, that I hadn’t paid any attention to the other dragons to help me find my way back.
The black dragon could find its own way back.
Another soft shuffling sound came.
This one was louder than before, and I followed it, moving carefully as I tiptoed through the forest. I didn’t know if I was hunting or if I was the hunted.
If I didn’t have any connection to the dragon power, I was going to have to use my own brute strength. Growing up on a farm and learning to handle livestock had given me a certain physical strength that I could use.
I saw a flicker of movement off to my left. I didn’t turn, just watched.
It blended into the green of the forest. Not an animal, at least no animal I’d known. Maybe the green dragon, but I would have been aware of it and would’ve felt the dragon by now. This was something else.
I took another step toward it, moving slowly and trying not to draw too much attention. Once again, there came a flicker of green. This time it was even clearer to me that it was somebody dressed in green fabric.
I’d seen something like this before. Only once, but the color was too similar to be anything but that.
Which meant I’d somehow come across the Djarn.
I spun in place, looking around me. If there was one of the Djarn, then there would be others. More likely than not, there would be their own paths leading to the forest. I could use them to navigate back. As I turned carefully, I realized that were at least two other Djarn around me, even though I had only seen one. There might have been even more, though I couldn’t see them.
The ones I could see had spears pointed at me.
I held my hands out, sweeping my gaze around me, trying to search for more while also trying to open myself to the dragon again, searching for some way of connecting to the power within me. I knew that it was there, that the dragon energy existed; it just needed to come out. I needed to reach it.
Were I closer to my homeland, I wouldn’t have thought that the Djarn would attack, but out here, this close to the capital, I didn’t know. It was possible they were a different tribe. And if that were the case, then considering how I’d entered their territory, it was possible they might have decided to target anyone who would disrupt their sovereignty. My saving grace, at least as I saw it, was that I wore the emblem of the Dragon Academy on my gray jacket.
“I’m unarmed,” I said, turning in place. I could still feel the energy of the dragon. Every so often, it seemed to me that the dragon flickered, as if the power that was out there came closer to me, surging within me.
Why would there be such a surging of power?
Was there something that the Djarn were doing?
There had always been rumors about the Djarn, suggestions of power. My parents had never spoken of it, but my closest friend Joran’s parents had. His father had some experience with the Djarn, and he had known them better than anybody that I had ever known, going so far as to trade with them, something that very few outsiders were ever permitted to do.
“I’m just trying to find my way back to the capital.”
None of the Djarn moved.
I could see three spears. Had there been three from the beginning?
I knew about two of them, but anything more than that might have been hidden. I had to believe that all of the Djarn in the forest around me were aiming spears at me.
I stared.
I wasn’t about to move, and I wasn’t about to do anything that would be perceived as a threat. Not with spears pointed at me.
Instead, I took a deep breath, focusing on the faint connection to the dragon. If it came down to it, and if the Djarn decided to attack me, I was going to need some way of reaching for that power.
I steadied my breathing, going through the steps I learned in the Academy—hurriedly moving on to feeling for the heat within myself, then to the relaxation stage. Gradually, the energy of the dragon flickered within me, bursting in an almost overwhelming way.
I had done it.
I’d connected to the dragon.
Now I needed to borrow that power.
I tried to summon that power the way that Jerith and other instructors had taught me. I felt another burst of energy. Then I was thrown back.
Getting onto my feet, I looked around.
The Djarn were gone.
3
Sweeping my gaze around the forest, I didn’t see any further evidence of the Djarn. I hurried over to where I had been certain that the two who had spears pointed at me were standing
, looking to see if there was anything on the ground, even footprints, but there were none.
Not that I really expected there to be. The Djarn were known to move incredibly silently, and rarely left any tracks behind. They lived within the forest, though very few people had ever seen them. I had found an empty city on my journey to the capital before my time in the Academy. Before that, I had not known anything about them other than how they could disappear completely into the forest, making them a mystery, something more of a myth than a reality, even though they had lived just beyond the plains when I was growing up.
I made a circuit around the area where they had pointed their spears at me, continuing to look for signs of them, but still came up empty. Whatever had been here was gone. I focused on the dragon again, feeling for energy, but even as I did, I couldn’t find anything.
That was gone, too.
I started to focus on the energy within me again, steadying my breathing, then working on connecting to the heat within me before trying the relaxation technique one more time. I didn’t feel any trail of power to a dragon this time. I had to believe it was still out there, and must be close, especially since I had felt it before, but the sense of it was gone.
How could I have lost the dragon?
It had been there but had suddenly disappeared—unless it had flown away at the first sign of the Djarn.
Which meant that I had to find another way back out of the forest.
Maybe Jerith really was trying to test me, wanting me to get drawn into the forest and find my way back. The other tests I’d had since coming to the Academy had been a matter of trying to prove that I could connect to the dragon, and given what I’d learned on my journey to the city, I had known that I had a connection to the dragons to begin with, so those tests weren’t terribly difficult.
This might be.
I had no idea where I was. If I had some way of finding one of the Djarn paths, I might be able to navigate out of here, but that wasn’t a given. The only other option was trying to latch onto the energy within the dragons back in the city to see if I could find a way of tracking them and using that power to draw me back. It would be faint. I knew that it would be difficult for me to reach, but perhaps that was what I was going to have to do.
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 2
