I waited again before finally knocking one more time.
There was still no answer.
I turned, looking along the hallway.
I hurried through the Academy, wanting to find Jerith—and find answers—but I also wanted to avoid others in the hall. I didn’t need questions. Especially now that I knew how the king viewed Thomas.
It added an element of danger.
Maybe Donathar would have returned to the Academy. I had questions for him. I needed to ask him about his time with the Djarn. He wouldn’t have embedded with them if he weren’t willing to understand and work with them. He would have to have a different insight.
Instead, I turned to the forest and heard a soft howl as I reached its edge.
It was faint, though strong enough that I recognized it.
Mesahn.
That sound was distinct. It was a mournful sort of cry, edged with a bit of violence.
As I started to turn back, I heard a shout.
I froze.
When the shout came again, I decided.
I moved through the trees. It was getting darker, and it was difficult for me to see much of anything. I could feel the trunks of the trees on either side of me, and the air was a little bit cooler. Thomas was still out there. He would have to be. Searching for the dragons. Maybe even for the Djarn. I didn’t know if doing either was safe for me, or if that put me in any greater danger.
Unsurprisingly, I could still feel the dragons back in their pen, and they offered me a hint of guidance, showing me where to return. At least I didn’t have to fear getting lost in the forest, as I would have otherwise.
I drifted farther along, moving carefully, until I heard the mesahn howl again. There was no further shout. This time the mesahn was softer and fainter, though it seemed to be deeper into the forest.
Could the mesahn have uncovered one of the missing dragons?
I closed my eyes. There was something out there. It was faint, much like the mesahn, which left me wondering if perhaps the mesahn really was chasing after a dragon.
That was where I needed to go.
Distantly, I focused on the energy and power of the dragon. I wandered as quickly as I could, moving through the forest, picking my way across fallen logs, trying to avoid vines that grabbed at my legs, and suddenly found a pathway through the trees.
It was one of the Djarn paths. Surprisingly close to the edge of the city.
Not that it was easy to find. I’d come across it more by chance than anything, but it was definitely one of the Djarn paths—and more than that, the draw of the dragon seemed to pull me along it.
Could I have heard one of the Djarn shouting? If so, maybe I could find answers.
I moved quickly, still focusing on the dragon, and now that I was on the Djarn path, it was easier for me to see where I was going. I drew upon the green dragon, cycling some of that power through me, using it to create a band of glowing flames along my arms. At least I could use that to illuminate the path so I could navigate a little bit easier.
The calling of the power was far easier than I thought. It was almost as if I were using it instinctively. Had something changed for me? Maybe the connection to the dragon had opened something up for me.
The howl of the mesahn came again.
This time it was closer.
The air sizzled with a strange energy. I called upon more power. Strangely, there was a soft tension deep within me as I cycled that power, drawing upon me.
The mesahn howled yet again.
I jogged forward, hurrying through the forest, and saw a flash of fur. The mesahn didn’t turn toward me—if that was indeed what it was. The mesahn would know I was there, which meant that if nothing else, he either ignored me or somehow didn’t detect me.
Another shout came.
This time it was close.
The mesahn suddenly growled.
There came a surge of energy. The dragon.
I raced forward.
I could feel the dragon in the distance, and yet I could feel something else building. It was some strange pressure, almost as if it were trying to work against me.
Light bloomed in the distance. When I neared, I realized what it came from.
The dragon.
It was a large, golden-scaled dragon. He was situated in a small clearing, and heat radiated off of him, heat that exploded outward, surging toward me, but also surging toward something approaching the dragon.
The mesahn.
Strange. Why would the mesahn be approaching the dragon like that?
A Hunter.
They would be here, somewhere. Likely searching for the missing dragons.
Who had been shouting?
I looked, but I didn’t see any sign of them.
“Easy,” I said to the dragon.
The dragon turned toward me and started to rumble, the deep-throated sound I knew would precede a streamer of shooting flames.
I had to connect to this dragon.
Doing so meant I was going to have to ignore my connection to the green dragon, but if I did, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to regain that connection if I needed to. It was a risk I would have to take.
I released my hold on the green dragon, then I turned to the golden-scaled one, focusing. I went back to the earliest lessons, the first ones I’d learned, and I started to think about what it would take, and how that power might come to me. All I wanted was to find some way to summon enough energy to connect to the dragon.
I breathed in and out, focused on the heat within myself, and then relaxed.
There came a fluttering deep within me, the same place where I felt heat when I trapped the other dragon’s power as it cycled through me.
Heat surged from the dragon. I stretched out my hand again, trying to connect.
Each time I stepped closer to the dragon, I could feel the heat radiating off of him.
As the heat surged, I realized that it was more about pulling some of that heat and power inside of me—the same way I had when I held on to the green dragon’s energy as it cycled—and less about trying to connect to the dragon in the same way.
The energy was radiating, building around me; the heat and power coming off of the dragon flared in my belly. It burned, and I could feel the burning and radiating, almost as if the dragon were trying to demonstrate something to me.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered to the dragon. “I’m not here to harm you. I just want to help.” The dragon rumbled, though it was a faint sound, one that came slowly. “I can help,” I said. The dragon rumbled again. “Is it the mesahn?”
I focused on the energy of the mesahn that I detected out in the distance. I could feel power and wondered if perhaps that was it—or not. Every so often, the dragon would start to push pressure through me, and I pulled on its heat. Some of that pressure started to ease, the dragon growing calmer.
A howl echoed in the distance.
The mesahn.
Suddenly, heat flared within the dragon again, a burst of energy that radiated outward.
The mesahn must have been out hunting for dragons, and its howl clearly irritated this one.
Strangely, it was almost as if the energy of the dragon itself was locked, unable to move. I feel it as an interruption in the way the connection flowed. There was some hiccup, hesitation as the power cycled from the dragon to me and then back to the dragon. That hiccup was what I had to deal with. It was part of the cycle.
What if I pushed?
It was strange to try to push the dragon’s power back to him, but that was what it felt like I needed to do. Heat burned within me from some place deep. It was stored power.
I hadn’t quite let go of the energy of the green dragon.
It was almost as if I had held on to some of my own power, so that I didn’t even need to connect to the dragon.
Could I use that? Better yet, could I use the green dragon to help this dragon? The idea of it seemed impossible, but so did the idea that I might
find a dragon that needed my help to override whatever was happening. I latched on to the energy of the green dragon, and could feel it building, sliding through me, and then I created a chain, connecting to this yellow-scaled dragon, flowing that power out. I felt the resistance, that strange hiccup, and then blasted through it.
When it happened, I made sure to force that power back to the green dragon, creating a strange cycle. I had never linked to more than one dragon, though now that I had, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was exactly what Thomas had been doing when he was touching upon multiple dragons within the dragon pen.
The dragon lunged toward me.
I was too startled to react.
Instead, I braced myself, holding on to the power within me, and then the dragon roared, shooting flames past me and out into the forest. With a surge of wind, the dragon took to the air, circling and then disappearing into the night.
I could still feel him though.
I stood motionless, still too startled to even move. I had no idea what had just happened.
The sense of the dragon began to grow increasingly distant, though I felt that his injury had been healed. Whatever else happened, at least the dragon would recover.
I turned, making my way into the trees, when I saw the effect of the dragon’s flames.
There was a charred form on the ground. I approached carefully, holding my hands out, still pulling some power through the green dragon. I moved slowly, carefully, but even still, I already thought I knew what I was going to see.
When I neared it, the enormity of the creature startled me most.
Mesahn.
The dragon had killed one of the mesahn.
18
I reached the edge of the forest late. I was tired, and had focused only on the energy of the dragons near me, trying to get to the edge of the forest as quickly as I could, unable to shake the feeling that something strange had just taken place. It was something beyond my ability to understand. I needed to know why the dragon would attack the mesahn. The Hunter with that mesahn had never appeared, though I’d waited.
Now, even more than understanding the mesahn, I needed to better understand what happened to the dragon and what I had done to it.
I could still feel the vague sense of that dragon, and was surprised it hadn’t gone all that far. It was connected to the green dragon still—and that surprised me more than anything. There was a faint stirring, as if some part of the green dragon continued to cycle out, connecting from me to itself to the golden-scaled dragon.
That mattered, though I didn’t know why or what it was, and I didn’t know what it might do. The only thing that I knew was that I could feel that power.
I couldn’t feel Thomas’s dragon, which worried me. He was out there, chasing the Djarn and the missing dragons, and I had no idea what he was going to do. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it. It wasn’t my responsibility. Maybe none of this was.
I was a student. I shouldn’t be out here chasing a vague sense of dragons.
I trudged through the edge of the forest, making my way to the dragon pen, and then stopped, startled. There was a darkened form there.
They were dressed in a long, black cloak, the hood pulled up; they weren’t tall enough to be Thomas, though given what I had seen from earlier in the day, I wouldn’t have been surprised to know that it was Thomas hanging out by the dragon pen after having hunted for the other dragons.
I approached slowly, carefully, and still I think I made too much noise.
The figure turned toward me.
Moonlight reflected off of pale skin, and I frowned. “Natalie?”
“Ashan,” she said softly. “What are you doing out so late?” She flicked her gaze past me, looking into the forest.
“Well . . .” I regarded Natalie for a long moment, debating how much I should share with her. Considering what we’d been through already, I might as well tell her what happened. “I thought I could try to uncover what happened to the dragons that went missing.”
The strangeness I’d detected in the forest lingered with me. An irritant I couldn’t shake. It felt like it burned along with my sense of the dragons.
“Did you?” She took a step toward me and watched me. “Did you find them?”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “No. I did not.”
She breathed in slowly, tilting her head back as if she were sniffing at the air. “I always enjoy crisp nights like this,” she said.
The sudden change in the conversation was jarring, but Natalie just leaned back, still sniffing at the air. She breathed in and out slowly, and it seemed to me that she was relaxed in a way that I wasn’t.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked. Could she be responsible for what happened with the dragons?
“I told you. I came out here because I wanted to enjoy the cool night air.”
“It’s getting late,” I said. I looked over to the Academy building, and saw lights glowing in the windows. I needed to get rest, and given what I had gone through, and what I suspected I would continue to go through, I worried that even when I did rest, I still wouldn’t have enough sleep. “Unless you intended to go to the festival again?”
Natalie looked over to me, smiling slightly. “The festival is over. We could follow it, if you wanted. It travels, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“They moved on to Negler, though they won’t be there for long. I suspect an Academy student wouldn’t really have the opportunity to travel and find out though.”
“I don’t think I should go,” I said.
“No. I probably shouldn’t either.” She looked behind me, her gaze heading toward the Academy, and then toward the city itself. “I suspect my father would be concerned if I suddenly disappeared.”
“Where is your father?”
Natalie turned back to me. “Is that your way of trying to find out where I live? If you want to know, all you have to do is ask.”
I smiled at her. “Where do you live?”
“I’m on the far side of the city,” she said. “Just beyond the temple.”
I looked out into the city, ignoring that strange irritation that pressed upon my awareness. “That has to be at least an hour walk for you to get over here.”
“It is. That doesn’t mean I mind the walk. Sometimes it’s nice to get out and stroll through the city.”
“Even at night?”
For a city the size of the capital, it was relatively safe, but it didn’t mean that there weren’t dangers inherent in any large city. I didn’t like the idea of Natalie wandering back home under the cloak of darkness. There were any number of thieves and cut-purses who might be active in the city, and though there were soldiers who patrolled the streets, along with the occasional dragon mage—though I doubt if they were active at this time of night—I still didn’t think it was a good idea for her to wander the streets by herself. For that matter, it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to wander the streets by myself. I could use my own dragon magic, and I could keep myself safe, but I couldn’t look behind me. A knife in my back would bring me down no differently than it would any other person in the city.
“I’m not helpless,” she said.
“I’m not trying to say that you are,” I told her. “It’s just—”
Natalie chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve lived in the city long enough to know my way around the streets. I know which parts of the city are dangerous, and which parts need to be avoided, especially at night.”
I looked over at the Academy. I was tired and wanted to sleep, but at the same time, I also wanted to have another moment or two with Natalie. “I could walk with you.”
She regarded me for a moment. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I do. Besides, I want to.”
She chuckled. “Are all men from the plains like you?”
I smiled. At least she didn’t accuse me of coming from the Wilds. Too often, the people
in the city had a belief about the makeup of the kingdom, and too many people thought that the Wilds were synonymous with every other part beyond the forest.
“I don’t know. I think most men from the plains would want to walk with a beautiful woman.”
She laughed softly. “Flattery.”
“I’m not necessarily trying to escort you home. I just want to—”
“I’m not saying flattery won’t work,” she said. “You can walk with me.”
We started forward, moving toward the street, and Natalie cast a glance behind her, looking over her shoulder and toward the forest. I wonder what she saw there, but she turned back to me, smiling brightly. “It’s nice to walk at night. It’s not something to fear. The city is quiet, and you can almost feel the latent energy of it.” Natalie closed her eyes as we made our way along the street. “I just feel as if there is an energy here. You don’t feel it?”
The only thing that I could feel was the irritated connection to the green dragon, and now the golden dragon. I didn’t say anything to her about that, so instead I just shook my head. “I don’t feel anything quite like that.”
“Maybe it’s just me. It might just be my time in the city. I feel like I have an understanding of it in a way that I didn’t when I first came here.” She looked over to me. “Perhaps in time you will come to know the same feeling. You haven’t been here long enough to detect the energy of the city yet.”
“Maybe that’s all it is,” I said.
She took me down a side street, weaving away from the central thoroughfare that led straight toward the palace. I was distantly aware of the dragons within, or beneath, the palace, and those near the Academy. Every so often, I could feel a surge of energy, something that flared up within me and called to me, letting me know that the energy of the dragons was there. I recognized how that filled me and stayed with me.
I tried not to focus on it, but I couldn’t help it. The surge of power continued intermittently. It was almost as if there were dragon mages up near the palace using that energy.
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 20
