I closed my eyes, focusing. That was how I was going to find the other dragons. I had to open myself up to them, find the distant energy of a dragon within the city where it didn’t belong. When I did, then I could finish this.
The sense of it was faint, but I found one.
I raced around the outer edge of the city. Power coming off of the dragon mixed with something else, which left me a little bit concerned. This one was fading, much like the female dragon I had just encountered. I wondered how long I had to find the remaining three. Perhaps less time than I had believed.
I hurried through the city, racing as quickly as I could, passing shops and homes and the smaller buildings that existed on the outskirts of the city. People glanced in my direction, but none looked for too long. I hurried past them, panic driving me. I soon neared the source of that energy, finding it near a temple.
The temple was three stories tall, with two spires on either end. Vines grew along the sides, and I didn’t see anybody coming in or out of it. Could it be abandoned like the last building?
The temple itself seemed intact, but I had to be cautious. I wasn’t sure if the king’s justice would extend to me violating the sanctity of one of the temples. That may put me in a different sort of trouble.
I approached, walking around the outside of it. The grass was long and untrampled and the ground was fresh, no signs of anybody having come through here recently. I had to take the chance. What choice did I have if I believed the dragon was inside?
Starting forward, I found an open window. I pushed it all the way open and looked behind me before scrambling inside. I landed in a cloud of dust, my feet thundering on the wooden floorboards.
The temple was an enormous open structure. Benches lined the interior, all angled toward an altar at one end. Dust covered everything. I focused on the energy of the dragon, straining to find the source, and detected it near the altar. Strange.
Some aspect of power told me the dragon suffered.
As I neared, I found another chained dragon. This one was pale red and small, much like the female. Shriveled. A metallic vase rested just beyond the dragon’s reach, and power cycled out of the dragon and into it.
How many dragons could I protect this way? There had to be a limit to how much power I could connect to—and how much power the other dragons would be able to restore.
There came a surge from the green dragon, and I knew that he wanted me to help.
I stepped forward, freeing the dragon from the chains around his ankles, and focused on him. His scales were cool, like the female dragon’s. I connected to him and immediately felt the other dragons beginning to add power, buffering him. Power drifted out through him, into the vase, but I used what I had learned from the other dragons and interrupted that flow.
There were still two dragons.
“When you are strong enough, slip off into the forest,” I said to the dragon.
I climbed back out of the window, hurrying along the street, and closed my eyes, focusing on where to find another dragon. The energy had to be there. As I opened myself to that power, I could feel something out in the street, distant from me. It was north. Faint. It suggested to me that whatever dragon was out there would be suffering like the others.
I was surprisingly tired—I didn’t feel that I had exerted myself all that much, but it was not so much a physical tired as it was a magical one. I was acutely aware of how I had separated the dragons’ power from the vase, and it required me to maintain focus.
The source of the next dragon was in yet another abandoned building. It looked similar to the first one I’d found, and I stumbled through it, finding another chained dragon, medium-sized and red. I freed it before connecting to it and severing its connection to the vase, as I had with the others.
When I was done, I took a seat. I needed to rest and recover, but I had to finish this. After sitting for a while, I got to my feet. I rested my hand on the red dragon, feeling the warmth of his scales. There was something about this one that pushed outward, an urgency that joined with the urgency I felt from the green dragon, whom I was most connected to.
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do,” I muttered.
The green dragon was there, adding a hint of power to me, as if to try to reassure me. It did little. Even if I were to find the other dragon, I worried I wouldn’t be strong enough to sever its connection to the vase.
The green dragon surged again.
It was a prompting, an urgency that suggested to me the dragon wanted me to do this. Even if it meant I expended everything within myself, I had to do it.
I got to my feet, wobbling for a moment.
The dragons cycled power through me and something shifted. I grew stronger.
I hadn’t expected the dragons to be able to strengthen me in the same way that they strengthened each other.
I staggered out of the building, standing in the street, looking up at the sky. The sun was starting to set. There was at least one more dragon. I closed my eyes, opening myself up to the power of the dragons. I could feel the four I’d helped. Surprisingly, I realized they were on the perimeter of the city—north, west, east, south.
The fifth one would be somewhere else.
I carried the three vases with me and found them unwieldy, difficult for me to manage. I shifted them in my arms, clutching them up against my chest, straining to feel for the power of the last dragon I needed to help.
I could feel something.
Not the dragons near the dragon pen, and not the dragons that had drifted out of the city, moving off into the forest. I could feel those, which surprised me. There was even an awareness of Thomas’s dragon. He was still distant, though closer than before. Maybe he would come in time. I tried to send a bit more of a connection to that dragon, wanting to signal to Thomas that he was needed, but I didn’t know whether it would be received the way I needed it to be.
I felt the remaining dragon near the center of the city.
My breath caught.
There was only one other place I could think of.
The palace. That had to be the location of the final dragon. That had to be where I felt the pulling of that dragon. And yet if so, it meant that the city—and the kingdom—was in far more trouble than I had realized.
23
Fatigue threatened to overwhelm me as I raced through the streets. I clutched the vases to my chest, feeling the way the energy rolled through them. There was power flowing from the dragons, connecting to me, and out toward these vases. There was not nearly as much of a draw as there had been, though, and as I felt that power flowing through the vases, I thought it had dispersed a little bit. At least enough that I began to feel as if the injured dragons would recover.
Every so often, I focused on the power I detected in the distance. My tiredness made it difficult for me to pay attention to anything as I breezed past buildings, noticing them as little more than a blur. Every so often, there came a pulse of power that came off of the green dragon as if he wanted to fill me with even more energy. It wasn’t enough.
I had poured too much into these other dragons, but more than that, I had linked to these other dragons. That pulled power out of me as much as it did out of them. If I didn’t correct it, and if I didn’t figure out how to disconnect from what had happened, I wasn’t sure I could survive.
Get to the palace. Find the dragon. Free him.
Those thoughts stayed within me, a chant as I ran.
The walls of the palace loomed into view and I started to slow; they looked to be a seamless stone and vines crept along their surface, though it was not the walls nor the vines that drew my attention most of all. It was the energy that I could feel coming off of the palace—something in front of me. It was the power, but more than that, it was the fear of what I must do. I clutched the vases against me, holding on to them as carefully as I could, and regarded the wall. It was late, a growing darkness sweeping over the city making it so that I couldn’t see m
uch other than the shadowed form of the wall’s outline. I didn’t know how I was going to get into the palace.
The faint sense of the dragon started to flicker. It was fading.
I had to get inside and figure out where the dragon was. Then I had to somehow link the dragon to the others to restore it. Finally, I would have to figure out what to do with these vases and what it meant that this power continued to flow out of the dragons and into the vase.
One thing at a time.
I circled around the wall and faced a pair of guards standing there. I didn’t have much in the way of options. They looked at me, watching me with darkened expressions that seemed even darker because of the night’s shadows. I tried to smile, but knew it did nothing to disarm them.
“I just need to get in and see . . .”
Whom?
I wasn’t entirely sure, and I didn’t know who might be able to help me when I did get inside. At this point, it was possible that I couldn’t truly trust anybody. The Sharath had no interest in working with me, given his affinity for the Djarn and my concern that the Djarn were involved. And Thomas wasn’t here—the only other person who had any interest in trying to help.
The king. That was whom I needed to go to. Would he even see me?
I had to try.
“I need to see the king,” I finished.
“The king isn’t accepting any visitors,” the nearest soldier said.
“I’m working with Thomas Elaron—”
That was a mistake. As soon as I said Thomas’s name, the soldiers started to tense and reached for their swords.
I reacted, drawing upon the power of the dragons, using what I could considering how weak and tired I felt, creating a band that swept out. I nearly dropped the vases as I attempted to loop around the two soldiers. I jerked on the band of power, and they went stumbling.
What was I doing?
I raced through the gate. I had to ignore their shouts—there was no point in acknowledging the cries—and now that I had committed to this plan of action, I had to go through with it. I had no idea if they would have other soldiers on the inside of the wall that could come after me, but I had to hurry.
I ran as quickly as I could, racing along the courtyard leading up to the main part of the palace. Once I reached it, I knew there would be dragon mages—powerful ones, given what I had seen of them before.
I focused on the energy of the dragon I detected. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the same dragon I had detected when I had been here before. At that time, I’d been convinced that it was tied to some power that the dragon mages were using.
I neared the entrance to the palace. There was a single dragon mage dressed all in black. I could feel the connection to the dragon, though strangely—and perhaps surprisingly—it was a different connection than what I had expected. This was a connection that felt more like the power coming out of the vase than the power somebody might call from one of the dragons in the dragon pens.
He frowned at me. Heat began to build from him as I approached. His gaze dropped to the vases, and I could swear there was a spark of recognition.
I reacted. I demanded the power of all of the dragons I had connected to and sent it at him in a burst of heat and flame. It struck him and he deflected some, but not all, of it, and was tossed off to the side where he slammed up against the wall.
I staggered forward. I was tired and didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. Just a little bit more. The king needed to know what was taking place. The king needed to know that the Djarn had somehow infiltrated his palace. The king needed to know . . .
I felt something coming behind me.
I hurried forward into the palace.
The light from dozens of lanterns illuminated its entrance, and I looked around, my gaze skimming past marble, sculptures, portraits, and all the other trappings of the kingdom’s wealth. I couldn’t keep my eye on them for too long, knowing that if I were to do so, I would ignore what I came here for.
Find the dragon. Rescue the dragon. Finish this, and then go to the king.
I could feel the pulling of the dragon. As before, it came from deep beneath the palace. Though I had been aware of it when I had come here before, I hadn’t known the source of it. Now that I stood here, feeling that energy rolling through me, I recognized it was below.
I had known before. I had even commented on it to Thomas.
I had to find a way down.
There would be a staircase.
I stopped in the middle of the hall, pressure starting to build against me, and I felt heat that suggested the coming dragon mage—or mages. There was something about the dragon mage I’d encountered outside of the palace that left me uncomfortable. That wasn’t how a dragon mage connected to the power of the dragons.
The dragon continued to fade, and there was a surge of urgency coming from the other dragons I’d connected to. I searched through the inside of the palace, trying to ignore the thundering of my own heart, the quick breathing in my lungs, and everything within me that told me to turn away. What was I thinking?
This was not a fight I could have anything to do with. This was not a fight I should have anything to do with.
This was dangerous.
The sense of a dragon called me forward, though, and I was helpless to ignore it. I didn’t know if I were pushed toward it because of my own desire to help or because of the dragons I was connected to. Either way, there was energy, and that energy filled me, guiding me and flowing from me.
There was a staircase, though it was narrow. I raced over to it and started down. The stairs spiraled around, seeming to squeeze closer together. If this did bring me down to the dragon, I couldn’t help but wonder how the dragon would have ended up down here.
I had to keep going. I had to get as far as I could. I had to find some way. I had to—
There.
The stairs ended. In the distance, I detected the fading energy of a dragon, the heat coming off of it, and the fading energy that seemed to call to me. There were flickering lights up ahead, either from lanterns or the dragon itself. If they were from the dragon, the flickering suggested that whatever power the dragon had would soon be gone.
I stumbled, slipping over something, and looked down to see a body.
It took my tired mind a moment to recognize what I saw.
I stepped back, putting the light behind me, and stared.
“Manuel?”
Manuel had come to warn the king. Why would he be here?
I crouched next to him, then reached out and checked his neck. He was still breathing, and he still had a pulse. When I touched him, he moaned softly, stirring and looking up at me before his eyes closed again.
My heart hammered.
What was I falling into?
I had to keep going.
Not only because of Manuel, but also because of the dragon and what I felt coming from him. He needed my help.
I raced toward him. I could feel a pulling power, but there was the same pause in power that I’d felt before, something that suggested an injury to him. Then I saw the dragon.
The hallway opened into a massive chamber, its wall sloping to a roof that stretched high overhead. How was this place situated beneath the palace? It seemed impossible. It was enormous, as if this would rival the palace itself. There was an energy here, as well, and it did not take long for me to find its source.
Situated in the center of the chamber was a dragon larger than any within the dragon pens. It was an enormous, black-scaled dragon, curled up, his head resting along his side, his tail wrapped around its body. Massive spikes protruded along the length of his torso. As I approached, I didn’t feel any sense of heat or energy coming off of him.
The dragon faded.
A faint scratching sound caught my attention.
I moved closer to the dragon and stumbled again, pressing my hand up against his cool side. As I did, I focused, feeling for the connection of the others, and the powe
r that surged out of them as it flowed to me. The other dragons pushed through me, channeling my connection, and formed a bond to this one. It cycled through no differently than the others had cycled. That power struck the dragon. In this case, I was not in control.
Heat started to build within the dragon. There was another vase. All I had to do was interrupt that flow of power. I found it, though rather than sitting off to the side like it had been with the other dragons, this time the interruption seemed to be directly beneath the dragon.
“You’re going to need to move,” I whispered. There was still the issue of the soft scraping sound I had heard. I had no idea where that had come from, only that it had to be nearby.
The dragon didn’t move.
“I’m going to need you to get up,” I urged. “If you don’t, I’m not sure I can—”
The scraping sound came again.
It was a strange draw of power, though it wasn’t the same kind of power I detected from a dragon mage. This was similar to what I had detected outside of the palace. It was a loop of energy, though surprisingly, it didn’t connect to any dragon.
Not even the dragon directly in front of us.
A figure appeared in front of me and began to glow with energy. I tried to hold on to the power of the dragons, but I didn’t have nearly enough strength.
I was tired—I had been helping the dragons and linking them to my cycle, and the dragons themselves had been pulling upon my own energy. I was just as much a part of that cycle as they were, and because of it, I could no longer fight. I would fail here.
“Look at this,” the voice said. There was a familiar quality to it. I had heard it before. It took me a moment to realize where.
When I did, I started to get to my feet, still clutching the vases against me. It probably didn’t matter. The figure approaching had a vase of his own. The one I had given to Manuel.
“The little apprentice.”
I recognized the voice from the exchange with Jerith, when they were talking about the dragon. At the time, I hadn’t known who it was. Now I did.
Donathar.
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 25
