Dragon Blessed

by D. K. Holmberg

  They had seen no sign of any others along the path since leaving the slaughter.

  “What do you intend to do if you find her?” Jayell asked.

  “I’m going to find some way of rescuing her.”

  Now it was no longer about agreeing to the job with Carter. Now it was about separating Indra from the other two and rescuing her. When he did, then it would be time to figure out how else he could keep her safe. He still wasn’t sure what that would entail, but he suspected it would involve something dangerous.

  And he was willing to bring her all the way to Toulen. If that was what it took, that was what he intended to do.

  Another hour passed, and the horses began to slow, growing tired under the effort of the speed that they were pushed to sustain. Fes called for a halt, pausing near a stream to let the horses drink, and when they had their fill, they hurried onward once again.

  As night began to fall, Fes felt a growing heat building.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what he was picking up on, but the longer that they rode, the more distinct that sense was. There was no question that he was feeling the power of a fire mage.

  He glanced over to Jayell to see if it was her, but she wore the same introspective look that she’d been wearing for the better part of the day. Whatever was happening was not from her.

  “Do you feel anything?” Fes asked.

  She blinked and glanced over at him. “What should I be feeling?”

  “There has been a growing heat in the air over the last hour or so. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was detecting, but the longer that we ride, the more certain I am that I feel it.”

  Jayell frowned and her brow furrowed in concentration. After a few moments, she shook her head. “I don’t feel anything.”

  Was it his Deshazl connection that made him so sensitive to fire magic? If that meant he was connected to the dragons, then what other abilities might he have?

  “I think there’s a fire mage nearby,” he said.

  The sun dipped toward the horizon, sending streaks of orange and red that made the heavy clouds on the horizon appear as though on fire. As he stared at the sky, a strange thought came to him. What must it have been like when the dragons flew across the sky? What had they been like, soaring through the sky, piercing the air with their screams, their flames burning swatches of land?

  And if Azithan was telling him the truth—and considering the relationship he and Azithan shared, Fes had no reason to doubt that he had been—the Deshazl had once commanded these dragons.

  Would his ancestors have been among them?

  With his parents gone, Fes doubted that he would ever learn enough about his ancestors to know those answers. And even if he learned that they would have, the dragons were gone, destroyed by the empire. The only thing that was left was the memory of that power.

  “I feel it,” Jayell said suddenly.

  Fes slowed his horse and Jayell followed suit. They sat in their saddles, looking around, and he surveyed the landscape, seeing nothing. No sign of anything that would indicate the fire mage. “What do you detect?”

  “The heat. I had to draw on the strength of a relic, but as I did, I could detect it.”

  “Wait… you had to draw on a relic to pick up on the heat?” The heat was even more potent now than it had been before. There was no questioning what he detected. It was the same power he always felt when confronting a fire mage.

  Could Azithan have followed him?

  He hadn’t seen where he’d gone, only that he had disappeared. He could use his fire mage magic to obscure himself and hide, which meant that he could be anywhere. Even following them.

  “The relic allows me to increase my sensitivity to the magic used. Whoever is doing this is powerful.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because the effect is spread over an enormous area. It’s large enough that I can now feel it, and if what you said about picking up on it before is true, then it was even larger. That indicates an incredibly powerful fire mage.”

  “Like Azithan.”

  She looked over at him. He had told her what happened, but she didn’t believe that Azithan wouldn’t hurt Griffin. She seemed to think that Azithan wanted only to destroy him as a threat to the empire, and Fes wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t true. Why wouldn’t the empire destroy him if the emperor believed that the Deshazl could command the dragons?

  For that matter, why hadn’t Azithan destroyed Fes once he discovered who—and what—he was?

  Unless he still intended to do so. Fes wouldn’t put it past Azithan to let him think that he was getting the better of him, only to prepare for when Fes might return to the capital. After what had happened, could he return?

  He wasn’t sure. Not anymore.

  “I can’t tell whether it’s Azithan. I don’t have enough experience with him to know whether or not he would be the one to have this kind of power.”

  Fes thought about what he had seen of Azithan when he had first appeared with the soldiers. Azithan had been incredibly strong, using enough heat and force to resist Fes’s ability to cut through the magic. Then again, Fes didn’t know how hard it was for someone to resist his ability. He didn’t have a great understanding of the extent of his ability and what that meant.

  “I don’t either.”

  “If it’s him, then we need to be cautious,” Jayell said.

  “I don’t think Azithan was coming in the same direction as us,” Fes said. Wherever he was going, Azithan was taking the boy somewhere that he believed would keep him safe. But where could that be? Did Azithan intend to bring him to Anuhr? If he did, there wouldn’t be anything that Fes could do to reach him, and he doubted that there was anything that he could do that would make a difference.

  They continued riding, and the heat continued to build. It pressed against Fes, a steady building energy that was unmistakable. Every so often, Fes glanced over at Jayell, and he saw the concerned expression on her face. She could feel it, but for her to do so, she had to exert her control over a dragon relic. He knew how the priests felt about utilizing the dragon relics in such a way.

  “We need to go faster,” Fes said.

  “I don’t know that we can.”

  “Why?”

  Jayell looked around her. “Can’t you feel it? I don’t think that we are meant to go any faster. Whatever is happening is intentionally slowing us.”

  Fes couldn’t tell whether that was the case. As far as he could tell, the horses were making steady time, but maybe it was only his perception.

  He unsheathed one of his daggers and began to slash at the air. It was doubtful that it would make a difference, but if there was anything that could happen, then he was willing to give it a try.

  At first, Fes felt nothing. It was almost as if every attempt that he made failed.

  Gradually, far too slowly for his liking, he began to feel the dagger part through the heat barrier.

  It was almost as if he were cutting through something incredibly thick, as if the spell created a density that he could barely separate.

  “What are you doing?” Jayell asked.

  “There’s something with my daggers that allows me to pierce a fire mage’s spell.”

  Jayell glanced over at his daggers before shaking her head. “There’s nothing about your daggers that allows that,” she said.

  Fes shrugged. “From what I can tell, there is.”

  “A dragon relic wouldn’t allow you to cut through a spell. Others have tried.”

  “Even others who have a connection to the relics?” After what he’d learned, he wondered if maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was tied to those ancient dragons somehow. Maybe a Settler would have been able to use the daggers in such a way.

  “No fire mage I know of has that ability.”

  Fes frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Only that in the time that I trained with the fire mages, there was none there who could cut through a spel
l. Even if they held another relic, they weren’t able to do that.”

  Fes glanced at his dagger. “Maybe these are different daggers,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Jayell said.

  But why should that be? Why should he have some other connection with his daggers than someone else who had more control over their abilities?

  He shouldn’t.

  Which meant it was something about him.

  Did he even need the daggers?

  “What was it like when you trained with the fire mages?” The movement in the distance seemed no closer, but at least it seemed no farther, either.

  “It was… amazing,” she said. Her eyes took on a faraway expression. “I remember when I was first discovered. The idea that I had the potential to reach for the power within the dragon relics seemed impossible.”

  “Were you in the capital?”

  She shook her head. “There aren’t many fire mages who are discovered within the capital.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’m not entirely certain, though maybe it has something to do with the fact that many people within the capital come from other places.”

  Fes frowned. Could it be that the fire mages had a connection to the ancient dragon lands as well as the Settlers and the Deshazl? It was an idea that made sense, and it was one that he would have to ask Azithan about, if the fire mage intended to be honest with him. Fes wasn’t entirely confident that he would. Considering what had happened, it was possible that Azithan would try to conceal things from him.

  “I was discovered by an older fire mage, a woman by the name of Bethara. As far as I could tell, she was known to be quite powerful. When she came for me, she brought me from my homeland to study with the rest of the potentials.”

  “Potentials?”

  Jayell nodded. “That is what those with the ability to handle the relics are referred to. They have the potential to become a fire mage, but not all are able to do so. Not all reach the point where they can use that power. Most do nothing more than gain the ability to safely handle the relics. Many will stay within the fire mage temple, serving the rest of the fire mages. Others will go on and move beyond the potential stage and gain the first level.”

  Fes leaned forward in his saddle, trying to see if he could glimpse anything in the distance. It was still difficult to do so. Whatever was out there was either moving very quickly or they were moving so slowly as to make little difference.

  “What are those who move beyond the potential stage called?” It was interesting to hear about the different levels of the fire mage. It was something that Fes would never have given much thought to.

  “Those in the stage beyond are called embers.”

  Fes smiled to himself. “And what happens after you become an ember?”

  “There is a great amount of training involved,” she said. “It’s it is difficult and trying, and many people don’t pass beyond the ember phase.”

  “What about you? Did you make it past ember?”

  Fes had a hard time thinking that she didn’t considering how skilled she managed to be with utilizing the dragon relic. That spoke of some level of knowledge.

  “I had reached the ember stage and was beginning to test for first-degree flame.”

  Again, the title amused him and he smiled. “First-degree flame?”

  She nodded. “There are three degrees of flames. Only the greatest ever progress to reach the level of third-degree flame.”

  “What about Azithan?”

  “I was only an ember. I don’t know what levels other fire mages might be. Given the way that he was able to completely incapacitate me, and the power that you describe, it’s likely that he was a third flame.”

  Fes thought that likely as well. Azithan served the empire, and the emperor, in particular. His proximity to the emperor meant that he would have to be incredibly powerful and that if he were not, it would make it much more difficult to be of much use.

  “What does the difference in levels mean?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to learn the intricacies. When you are studying with the fire mages, you only learn what is needed to pass to the next stage in your training.”

  “You had to have some idea.”

  “The only thing that I could say with any certainty is that the farther you go, the more that you progress in your training, the more intricate the spells one is able to create.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with the amount of power that can be pulled from a dragon relic?” He thought about the different sizes of dragon pearls, along with some of the other relics that Azithan had asked him to collect. He imagined that had some bearing. It seemed like it would have to. Then again, even if it did, maybe the power that was available within the relics had little to do with the type of spell that was used.

  “When we were training as embers, we were only able to get access to some of the weakest relics.”

  Fes glanced over to her pocket, where she had stored the dragon pearls. “The relics that you have don’t seem terribly weak.”

  “It is different when you train with the priests,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “The priests have no interest in preventing access to the relics. The entire purpose of having them is to protect them. If someone has the potential to draw from them, to use the power stored within them, they are given access.”

  Fes wasn’t certain which method was better. He considered that the way the priests operated meant that there was a greater likelihood that anyone could have access to the dragon relics, but was that for the best? Some of the priests might not be ready for the power that would be found within the dragon relics. If they managed to get a hold of them too soon, it could be that they would sacrifice the power within those relics, wasting them in their practice as they attempted to gain experience.

  Maybe the way that the fire mages trained made more sense.

  He glanced over at Jayell and chose not to say that.

  “Are there the same levels of distinction for the priests?” he asked.

  “There are various levels within the priesthood as well. It is a little hazier, and it has more to do with affiliation than anything else.”

  “Affiliation?”

  “Not all relics can be used by all priests.”

  Fes had seen that firsthand, hadn’t he? There was something about the type of relic that mattered, and he suspected that it made a difference for the fire mages, though as far as he’d been able to tell, Azithan hadn’t seemed to care about the type of relic that he sent Fes after. All he cared about was whether the relic was effective.

  Could it have to do with the color trapped within the relic? Fes didn’t know enough about the various relics or about the power stored within them, but it seemed as if not many people could see the color trapped within them. Part of him wondered whether it was only imagined, but he was confident that it was there, a part of the relic no different than the striations. And when the relic was inert, the power used up, those colors faded.

  “Why do you think that is?”

  Jayell shrugged. “There are theories about that. Even in the temple when we studied with the fire mages, there were some who believed that some relics could be used by only particular people.”

  “And what do the theories suggest?”

  “There are different theories, and they all have different ideas about why the relics would work for certain people. The one that seems the most credible to me is that there were different types of dragons, and because of that, there were different types of relics.”

  That was the first that Fes heard about that. “What different types of dragons were there?”

  “Those who study the dragon relics suggest some were larger than others, and that the different types of dragon gave rise to different types of power.”

  “How many different kinds of dragons?”

  Jayell shrugged again. “I was focused more on understanding what I could do, rather than on un
derstanding the difference between the dragons.”

  It was another question that he needed to ask of Azithan. The more that he learned, the more it seemed Azithan was the one who could provide the answers he sought.

  Fes had opened his mouth to say something when he caught sight of movement.

  This time, the movement was more apparent.

  He motioned to it, and he and Jayell veered off the path they had been following and headed across the land. In the distance, there was a large city. It spread out in front of them, sprawling along the bank of a river that cut through the landscape.

  “What city do you think that is?”

  “That is Idaris.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That was where we were heading.”

  “Why there?”

  “When we were traveling alone, Donathon wanted us to focus on places that would offer protection throughout our travels. He thought that in doing so, we could find others who might be partial to our plight, and they might be inclined to assist us.”

  “I thought that there were plenty of people who would help the priests.”

  “Not as many as you might think. The priesthood doesn’t have the same cachet that it once did.”

  “I’m not sure that the priesthood has ever had that much cachet,” Fes said.

  “Perhaps not in the empire, but there are other places where it does.”

  “Is the city safe for us?” Fes asked.

  “It should be safe enough.”

  “What I should be asking is whether the city is safe for you.”

  Jayell glanced over at him, meeting his gaze for a long moment. “The city is safe enough.”

  Fes stared into the distance. There was nothing remarkable about the city, at least from where he stood. As far as he could tell, it was a typical city sprawling along the river. Most of the buildings were simple square structures, though a few taller buildings rose up, and near the south end of the city, a massive complex rested near the river itself. From the hillside, he could see a forest to the south and wondered whether or not it might contain a sawmill. It would be strange, considering that most of the buildings were built out of stone rather than wood, nothing like those in the capital.