“Do you know how long your people have attacked the lands here?”
“No,” I said.
“Centuries,” the Servant said. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Affellah tells us to find the life. Affellah wants us to turn away, but we have not been able to. Your people, and your king, have attacked, and they have attempted to destroy.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I had only been privy to a bit of the fighting over the years, not enough for me to know anything about it, and certainly not enough for me to understand the ways his people had suffered, but in a war, people always suffered.
“You aren’t sorry,” the Servant said. “But you are different from the others. I felt it from the very first moment you came to me.”
I wasn’t exactly sure that I came to him so much as I was brought to him. It was Thomas’s way of showing me the danger the Vard posed, but having seen what I had, recognizing the Servant and his connection to the fire, I still didn’t feel as if I had answers. I had to consider what I had felt all throughout the kingdom, some other threatening force working against the kingdom, against the king, but it was not the Vard. The king seemed to ignore that danger, though, much like Thomas and the other dragon mages ignored it.
Which left me worried about their reasoning.
I turned to him. Having traveled with the Servant, having felt the heat and energy coming off him, I had not seen him as somebody who would even have a family. It was perhaps a strange thing to think about, but he felt almost supernatural.
“Did you have a family?”
“All have a family,” he said. “Mine have suffered, but then they’ve been given the blessing of Affellah.”
“What blessing is that?”
“Why, the blessing of transformation,” he said.
I looked over to him again. It was sometimes difficult for me to take my eyes off him. “That’s what you call it? A transformation?”
“Would you call it something else?”
“I don’t even know what I would call it,” I said. “All I know is that it’s terrifying.”
“Change can be terrifying,” the Servant said.
“Did you expect to be like this?”
“Did I expect that Affellah would alter me?” He smiled and looked down. The firelight reflected off his face, but there was a part of the cracked skin that seemed to move, shifting with the heat beneath it and appearing to glow on its own. “I accepted what Affellah asked of me.”
“Why would you want that?”
“I wanted to know Affellah,” he said.
“Is that all it’s about? In these lands, is it only about knowing your god?”
“These lands are hard, and we must be hard to survive them.”
“You need to be hard so you can survive the dragons, you mean.”
“I know they are merely a part of something greater.”
He knew about the cycle. I was certain he did, but had never asked him directly. “Do your people connect to a cycle of Affellah?”
“Affellah is everything. Affellah provides.” The Servant had his hands resting on his lap, and his eyes seemed to catch the firelight.
“It’s not everything. It’s not the dragons. They have their own connection to fire.”
“Through Affellah. That is what speaks to you.”
“What if I don’t want to speak to Affellah?”
He smiled. “Unfortunately, Affellah will give you no choice.” He turned and held his hands off to the side. The flames crackled brightly before dying back down and turning to a smoldering ruin. “You will come to understand,” he said.
“Because of Affellah,” I said.
“Because you have come to these lands to learn.” He got to his feet and stepped toward the fire. The flames began to crackle again, building for a moment. “Understand your connection, and I will teach you mine.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It will mean what it means. You will understand on your journey.”
The flame surrounded him, and I could only stare. For a moment, I thought he tried to have the flames consume him, but as they crackled, I couldn’t see any sign of that. Despite whatever he’d had done, how he had stepped into the flames, I could feel nothing. Just the strangeness that radiated off him. Heat and flames engulfed him, and he continued to let the power surround him.
He didn’t speak, and he didn’t need to. I could feel it—the energy, the heat, and the fire that flared within him. All I could do was watch. I sensed the power and the rage, sensed how distinct and different they were—unlike anything I had ever seen before. I could not fully understand the power, but it felt strangely familiar, as if it were connected to me.
That was what he was trying to show me. The power he held on to, the power that existed between him and the flame, was similar to that which I connected to with the dragons. Maybe all I was supposed to learn by coming here was that we were not so different. Their magic wasn’t so different.
Distantly, the ground rumbled. The flames died, and the Servant stepped forward.
I noticed the tension within him, and though I tried to ignore it, I felt something within the cycle. It was as if he were pulling on that power, trying to tug upon the magic that existed within that cycle. Maybe he had attempted to invade the cycle, drawing upon fire to do so. Then that sensation faded.
“What was that?” I had felt the ground rumbling periodically in my time here, but never near Affellah. It wasn’t as if the volcano attempted to erupt. The rumbling always occurred away from the volcano, within the broken and cracked landscape that spread outward from it.
“It was nothing,” he said.
“There was something here. We should go take a look.”
He took a seat, then lay down, flames crackling beneath his back, as if creating a fiery bed for him. “Do not fear.”
“It’s not fear. There’s something here.”
He didn’t answer me, which left me troubled. There was a reason the Servant had brought me to these lands. Perhaps it was just tied to my interest in trying to understand, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there had to be some other purpose behind it. Something else he intended for me to find. Not Affellah. I was not one of the Vard, so there was no way I could understand that, but perhaps he wanted something I might be able to offer—that my cycle might be able to offer. I had connected to far more dragons than anyone in the kingdom had, which meant my access to power was deeper than most. He wanted something from me, and I just had to wait to find out what it was.
I watched the Servant, but had a steady gnawing sense deep within me. It took me a moment to realize what it was: dragons.
But when I looked up, I realized my own dragon wasn’t part of the group.
Chapter Two
I got to my feet and looked around, my gaze darting back up to the sky. I could feel the energy of the dragons and focused on my cycle, sending that power flooding through me and to my dragon, trying to detect the source of the energy, but I felt a sense of resistance pushing against me as I did.
It was almost as if the cycle—and increasingly, I was convinced it was a cycle—pushed back against me, trying to sever me from the rest of the connected dragons.
“Dragons are coming,” I said.
The Servant watched me.
“I didn’t call them,” I said, “but I can feel them.”
“I did not think you called them,” he said.
Had they come for me?
I wouldn’t put it past Thomas to have sent dragons after me, thinking the Servant had somehow harmed me, but if he was worried about me, he had only to focus on the cycle. He could use that to help connect to me in order to detect whether there was any danger. I hadn’t felt his presence and didn’t think he had been drawing upon that power. If he was out there, worried about me, he had made no sign to indicate it.
But perhaps I couldn’t feel it.
There was the distinct strangeness around me, a
distinct energy that suggested to me there were dragons, but I also found that the cycle wasn’t nearly as connected as it had been before, almost as if they had somehow withdrawn from me.
And I saw no sign of the dragons.
“You don’t seem concerned,” I said, looking over at the Servant.
“Do you think this is the first time the dragons have entered our lands?”
A flush of shame worked through me, though it shouldn’t have. Our peoples were enemies, or they had been. Had Thomas not attacked the Servant, we could have avoided a Vard attack. Natalie’s father had made it clear that the Vard had not attacked the kingdom in many years.
“I’m sorry about that.”
The Servant watched me, shifting slightly. The flames along his face seemed to contort and heat radiated from him. “You think I’m angry about what they did?”
“I assume that was what it was.”
“I was angry he separated me from Affellah. Such a thing . . .” The Servant inhaled then let out a heavy breath. In that moment, he seemed almost normal. In other moments, there was a strange, calm energy about him that left me feeling as if I should try to understand him better than I had—though I had been trying. I needed to understand the Servant so I could understand what the Vard had been doing, and what they might do in the future. “Come,” he said.
He started off, and I glanced to the sky, but I still couldn’t see any dragons. I could feel my dragon, circling somewhere distantly, though he didn’t come too close. The Servant had wanted to stay away from the dragon, and had wanted me to travel with him without the influence of the dragon. Somehow, he seemed to think that would help me understand Affelah in a way I couldn’t otherwise. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps without the dragon, I might be able to understand the land and the people, and not have to worry about anyone’s eaction to the dragon.
As I chased after the Servant, I saw him practically floating forward. It was strange, but almost peaceful.
Still, I could feel the energy of the dragons.
It was faint, but it was building.
They were coming closer.
I looked over to the Servant, half expecting he would react to their incoming presence, but he simply marched across the land.
I wasn’t going to be caught unawares. I needed to know if these dragons were part of my cycle, or if perhaps they were different dragons. Maybe this was the Djarn, the people who lived in the forest near my home and had a connection to dragons. Maybe Natalie and her father had sent dragons looking for me.
I searched for any evidence of the dragons’ heat and power, trying to connect to it, but I couldn’t detect anything. It was too faint.
Then the dragons pushed back against me. Somehow.
That was unexpected.
I had to push. I borrowed from the green dragon, cycling power through me, and focused on the heat. The Servant continued to make his way forward, but never looked back, as if he were unconcerned about whether I followed him.
Even as I attempted to push through the connection, trying to join my cycle to what I detected out there, I found nothing. Emptiness.
And then I detected heat building.
As that heat surged, I struggled to try to make sense of what it was. I could feel it, though I wasn’t sure where, or why, only that it was dragons.
The Servant began moving more quickly.
As I followed him, I found myself looking up at the sky, waiting and searching for any sign of the dragons, but I didn’t see any. I couldn’t tell where the sense of them was coming from, but I knew they were out there.
I caught up to the Servant. “What is this?”
“This is our experience,” he said, his voice soft but tinged with anger. Throughout the time I had been traveling with him, I had not noticed much in the way of anger.
The ground here was rocky, though there were some dried brown bushes with thick, waxy leaves. I noticed a surge of heat, then another.
The Servant darted forward.
Heat began to build from him.
He was glowing brightly now. Somehow, the heat and energy he’d glowed with didn’t damage his clothing. He must’ve used some of that power of Affellah to connect to the clothing, protecting it.
But as I watched him running, I felt the heat arcing toward the sky, streaking upward—and with it came something else.
An answering surge of power.
It blasted toward us.
I glanced over to the Servant, wondering how much of this he controlled and how much of this was the dragon. I only knew he was calling upon his power, angling it toward the unseen dragon.
I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing on the green dragon and trying to enter my cycle. The green dragon was there, and I thought I could push more energy out, joining with the other cycle, but even as I did, I could not detect anything more, no other sense of power, nothing more than what I had already come up with. It was just my dragon. The rest of the cycle was there, but muted in the back of my mind, as if I were not allowed to reach it. Or perhaps the dragons had simply withdrawn from me, trying to prevent me from getting close to them. I tried to focus on that power, straining to connect to it, wanting to feel it.
Blasts of fiery red exploded in the sky, streaking toward the ground.
The Servant did something with his own power. It spread outward, streaking away from him, a sheet of heat and energy and fire that poured across the ground before rippling upward. I could feel it, even if I couldn’t see it—even if I had no idea what he was doing, or why.
But the more I focused on it, the more certain I was of what I detected.
I looked over to the Servant; his jaw was clenched and the fire seemed to stream down his cheeks, flowing over him in a way I could scarcely understand. That heat and energy continued to build off him, and it worked up and down his face, then began to pour outward and away from him.
The fiery red in the sky crashed into whatever it was the Servant had done, then it dissipated.
“What are you protecting?” I asked.
The Servant said nothing, only moved forward, though far more carefully than he had before. I could see him making his way across the ground, could see the caution, as if he pushed power out from him with each step, trying to connect even more to this power he possessed—the power of Affellah, as he called it.
Another wave of energy built from him.
It was followed by another blast of heat from above.
As I detected that, I glanced up, trying to focus on my dragon, wanting him to see what was going on.
I couldn’t feel anything. He was up there though.
The Servant continued forward.
I had to use the dragon. I pulled on the cycle.
The dragon streaked toward me. I could feel his presence growing closer and closer as the energy of the other dragons started to build within me. I noticed a darkening shadow spreading across the ground, which elicited no reaction from the Servant. It was almost as if he didn’t care that my dragon was coming.
And then he landed.
I hurried over to him. Dark-green scales glittered in the sunlight and heat radiated off him, as well as a sense of unease, which was unusual for me to detect from him; it was as if he wasn’t sure what to make of what took place here.
I scrambled onto his back and could feel the dragon’s energy radiating beneath me. As I focused on his power, I detected more heat and energy building from him, radiating outward and pushing through me, connecting to my cycle. Silent power flowed out through my fingertips, the flames crackling. It was my way of connecting to the cycle, and I thought I needed that right now. The dragon lurched into the sky, and from there, we circled briefly, gaining altitude. The Servant glowed beneath me, and in the distance, I caught sight of a small village.
The Servant had been protecting it, though I didn’t see anybody there.
There were maybe two dozen homes and a small, circular structure with plants around it in the center of the villa
ge.
An empty village?
That was what this was about?
And then I saw a single figure poking a head out of a door.
Not empty.
I frowned, and as I did, I could feel something—energy. I could see it in bands of orange flame. And it was streaking toward us.
Toward the dragon.
I cycled fire, the power, the connection and let that energy flow through me. It seemed to gather the power that was out there, the power that connected, and I latched on to it, letting it flow into me. He angled, banking slightly, and when the blast of fiery energy coming from the other dragon—or dragons, I realized—struck him, the dragon absorbed it.
I looked out. I could feel the dragons, but I hadn’t seen them yet.
Where were our attackers?
They had to be somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t find them.
I tapped on the side of the dragon. “Show me them.”
The dragon surged forward, streaking quickly.
I noticed a speck of red in the distance. Another dragon. This one was large, and as I focused on the heat within him, tempted to try to join him to my cycle, I found there was pressure building against me, pressure coming off the dragon, as if he didn’t want me to do anything, as if I were not meant to connect.
I continued to push, trying to feel that power and connect, but I felt only an emptiness. A resistance.
A blast of flame struck toward us.
The dragon flew back, catching the flame, but I realized something else had happened. Other dragons had gotten past us.
There were at least three. They were a hot awareness in the back of my mind, and they were burning nearby, though the energy that flowed from those dragons wasn’t flowing toward me, but toward the ground.
I looked down.
Somehow, I was distantly aware of the Servant’s power and the way he was connecting to the village, as if trying to radiate enough energy to protect it, but the flames and the dragon magic radiating toward it was more than the Servant could handle.
I tried to cycle power through me, trying to add it to what was radiating down below, and tried to sweep a shielding over the village.
The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4) Page 2
