The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4)

by Dan Michaelson

  I hadn’t felt this nervous coming to the Academy since the very first day I had arrived. Then, I hadn’t even known enough about the Academy to really be afraid of it, but now there was a fear of what I had become—at least, what they would believe I had become. I still knew who I was, and knew I still served the kingdom, but others here would not know.

  “What is this place?” Asanley asked. Heat bloomed within her, so obvious to me now, leaving me wondering how we had never known that the Vard had such a connection to fire.

  “This is the Academy, where those in this land who are capable of learning how to use the dragon magic can do so. I came here later than most, and don’t understand the connection as well as others.”

  That was the way it felt to me, but I wondered if it was true. I had gained a different understanding than others had. My connection to the dragons was unique, or so I had thought.

  “You don’t permit others to know the power of these creatures?”

  Her face looked harder in these lands, or perhaps it was only the faint glow radiating from her, as if she was calling upon Affellah, much like the Servant.

  “The dragons can be seen by anyone who want to see them,” I said, glancing back toward the now empty dragon pens. The dragons that had been there were circling the city. I could cycle power through them, feeling them, and it left me wondering if we might be able to help, from a distance, any other dragons that had been influenced by the murtar, or if that wouldn’t be possible without further intervention. “But the people here don’t celebrate them the way your people celebrate Affellah.”

  “Perhaps that is your mistake, then.”

  I glanced over and shrugged. She wasn’t necessarily wrong.

  I pulled open the door to the Academy.

  Lanterns shaped like dragons adorned the walls, glowing softly. I remembered how I had felt when I had first seen one of them, how impressed I had been by its power; it had left me thinking that the Academy could teach me so much more than I had ever imagined.

  But actually, it wasn’t even the Academy that had taught me what I needed to know about the power I possessed, nor was it the Academy that had instructed me on the magic that was here. Only a few people here taught me that. It wasn’t something I learned in my classes. I turned my attention to the door again, letting a cycle of power flow through me, then closed it.

  I had to seal it off.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I need to make sure nobody else can come in here,” I said.

  “Do you fear others?”

  “I fear the possibility that we might be surprised, but more than that, I fear that somebody might use murtar, get past us, and . . .”

  I had created a weave over the door, adding a complex pattern to it, and bound it to my cycle, but also to Affellah. It was something only I should be able to remove—unless somebody else was connected to the power of Affellah.

  “I don’t understand what you just did. I can feel something,” she admitted.

  Since she was connected to Affellah, that wasn’t surprising, but this was something different . . .

  “Maybe you’re going to have to open yourself up to the dragons,” I said.

  When she frowned at me, I saw the familiar irritation in her eyes. It would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so worried about what we might find. As it was nighttime, the hall was quiet and calm, though I detected an undercurrent of energy.

  The dragon-shaped lanterns glowed softly, illuminating the massive stone hall. Doors led off the hallway on either side, and the smells of the dining hall lingered, leaving my stomach rumbling softly. It had been far too long since I’d eaten well. It seemed to me that water wasn’t the only thing sacred in the Vard lands—their food was sparse as well.

  A sense of energy pulled on me, drawing me forward. I could feel it radiating, working through me.

  It pulled us downward.

  I hesitated for just a moment. Downward. I had been in that space before.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that the energy I detected would pull me that way now. Had I not known there was a danger here before? I was the one to have uncovered the plot within the kingdom. I was the one to have helped prove the Vard were not responsible for the theft of the dragon and the subsequent attacks on the kingdom itself.

  But those attacks had been here. Connected to the Academy.

  Connected to someplace deeper in the Academy.

  I shook my head. “We have to go down the stairs,” I whispered.

  Asanley frowned, and heat bloomed within her once again. “What will we find there?”

  “When I was in the Academy, we used it as a training place, but there was something else that happened here.” I studied the wide staircase stretching down into the darkness. There were no lanterns illuminating it. I suspected, at this time of night, there wouldn’t be any students out in the halls or instructors ready to teach. There would be nothing other than emptiness.

  But I felt the calling of something else. I started down the stairs and focused on the dragons in the distance, the way they circled around the city, and felt the cycling of power within them. As I did, I became aware of something else. The cycle pushed inward, as if they were using that power to try to constrict some energy and keep it bound within the city itself.

  The murtar. I almost stopped.

  “What is it?” Asanley asked.

  “The dragons can feel the murtar here,” I said. “I can feel it too. It seems like it’s all throughout the city. But . . .” I frowned, and though I could feel the murtar all throughout the city, tied to the way the dragons were cycling, calling upon their own magic but drawing upon something even greater than they possessed, I started to feel as if there was a source of it. The murtar flowed through the city somehow.

  I continued down the stairs.

  “There is a darkness here,” Asanley said.

  She didn’t have to say it, but we both knew that whatever darkness she sensed was greater even than what we had detected before. I held on to the power within me—from Affellah, the dragons, and even what radiated off Asanley.

  I wasn’t too far from the training room. I nodded to the massive door, and pressed my hand up against it. Power flowed from me, flames radiating outward. As it did, the door began to glow.

  I pushed it open.

  As soon as I did, I sent a weave of power out from me, lashing outward with a ball of energy that was similar to the one I had used when I had been training here. It was designed to contain, not to destroy. Fueled by my sudden strength from Affellah, it exploded away from me in a way it hadn’t before and radiated through the room.

  There was nothing here though.

  I paused a moment.

  “Is that a trick you learned here?” Asanley asked, seeming more amused than anything.

  “Each of the instructors here have their own techniques that they wanted the students to learn from them. I tended to pick up things a little faster than others because I learned how to connect to more than one dragon.”

  My words sounded muted in the emptiness of the chamber, but it seemed there might be something more here. I created another weave of power, looping it outward, but didn’t feel any resistance.

  “You only ride the one dragon,” Asanley said.

  “I only ride the one, though I suspect I could ride others. It’s just that the dragons are all connected. Or they can be. The people here didn’t know that.” The Djarn did, and I still wasn’t sure why they kept that from the king. Perhaps they wanted to hide the truth about the power within the dragons from him, or maybe there was another reason, one I could learn if I went to the Djarn. Perhaps I would need to go to them the same way I went to the Vard. I needed understanding, didn’t I? “I discovered it by accident. But when I learned about it, it opened me to greater strength than I had otherwise.”

  “That is not surprising,” Asanley said. “All is connected through Affellah.”

  “We don’t
believe that Affellah is the source of power.”

  “You did not believe it then, but what do you believe now?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what to believe. I believed there was power. I felt it—could still feel it. I wasn’t sure if it was due to some supernatural god looking down upon us whom I needed to celebrate, but I couldn’t deny that I had found some greater source of power during my time with the Vard. And I was able to use it to connect to the dragons—and help them—in ways I hadn’t before.

  “There’s nothing here,” I said.

  “Did you think there would be?”

  I could practically close my eyes and still feel that influence, though I wasn’t exactly sure why it was so potent here. And there was some other undercurrent of energy here besides the murtar. It was the familiarity of this place, the memories of my time here, however brief; still, those memories had changed me. I had become someone other than the farmer I had thought I would be.

  “I can still feel the pull of the murtar,” I whispered.

  Asanley closed her eyes, and for a moment, heat flared from her again, then faded.

  “There was a time, not that long ago, when the murtar influenced my land in ways we all understood. It was when we began to accept Affellah as the only way to salvation.” She was staring straight ahead. “My father used to tell me about it, before . . .” She shook her head. “He spoke of cities that once touched the sky, their power, but they were brought down by something unexplainable.”

  I glanced over to her. “Your Servant wanted me to see those places,” I said.

  She nodded. “Most who want to understand Affellah will eventually make that journey. He must have been preparing you even then.”

  “I think he was trying to show me why your people are the way they are, but I didn’t understand it. Not at the time.”

  “It takes time, as well as an interest, to truly understand Affellah.”

  “What did your people celebrate before you celebrated Affellah?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “We have always celebrated Affellah.”

  “But you said you—”

  “I meant we understood that we needed to embrace that power more than we had before. We recognized the need.”

  I couldn’t imagine what the Vard lands had looked like before the murtar had spread, causing destruction. Perhaps that was the point. There was no way of understanding what they had been through.

  “It’s still pulling me down,” I said.

  She glanced over. “Then we must go.”

  If the murtar had settled in these lands the way it had settled in hers, what would happen? Would the city, the forest, everything end up destroyed? Would we need to call the flame, destroy this place the way the Servant had in the Vard lands, through here?

  I returned to the hallway, focusing on the energy I detected, and followed it. I wondered if I would’ve even known about that power had I not experienced the murtar as often as I had. Perhaps I would not have detected it so easily. Or perhaps I would have been compelled by it.

  The hall ended in a flat stone wall.

  I pushed out on my cycle of power, linking it through me, through my fingers, illuminating the hallway. There was nothing here. Still, power pulled me downward. I could feel it. The stone here looked no different than it did anywhere else, though there was a faint scratch along the lower surface with a marking upon it.

  As I leaned toward it, Asanley grabbed me, pulling me back.

  “That is the mark of murtar,” she whispered.

  She crouched, heat flaring within her, causing her skin to glow. She used her connection to Affellah very differently from the way I used my connection to the dragons, even though that power seemed to fill both of us equally. She used it more like the Servant did. It was a thing that seemed to consume him more so than it did me. Would she eventually end up like one of the Servants? Would she find that fire became too much, changing her, altering her in a way that turned her into something different?

  I could feel the same corrupting energy I had learned to detect ever since uncovering the truth about the murtar. It was there, pressing through my hand.

  “How do we remove it?” I didn’t want to touch the mark, not if it was tied to the murtar.

  “Affellah.”

  She was glowing more brightly than she had before. “When we encountered the mark of murtar in my lands, we knew it meant there was something greater happening.” She looked over to me. The first time since I had met her on the mountainside, there was a look in her eyes that made it seem she was afraid. “There should not be this much power here.”

  “Because you believe you stopped it.”

  “My people did stop the murtar.”

  “Unless it managed to escape,” I said. “Or somebody else began to chase that same power.”

  That was the only other explanation that made any sort of sense. Somebody else must have been involved, somebody else who had wanted to control that power and had started to summon it.

  And now it was here.

  Having felt the murtar around the city, and the dragons influenced by it, I knew there had to be something greater here too.

  Based on what I felt from the dragons circling around the city, I knew there was more of a threat than we knew.

  I began to cycle power through those dragons, holding my hand out and forming a weave of power. It looped from one finger to another, and I started to twist it. Asanley leaned forward, watching. Heat built from me, emerging of power. It came from someplace within me, or so it seemed, along with the dragons and the cycle I formed—and from someplace greater.

  And then I pushed that power into the mark.

  It burned, and there was a feeling of resistance, reminding me of how the dragons had resisted.

  I had to draw more power. I could feel the dragons cycling toward me, adding their energy, knowing their influence was needed. And then the mark exploded.

  When it did, the wall shifted. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened, but it seemed as if it opened, then darkness spilled toward us. I pushed out with my cycle, letting the flames streak away from me, and found another staircase.

  “I didn’t know this space was here.”

  “Unless you control murtar, you would not have known,” she said.

  I looked behind me, back toward the training room, toward the rest of the Academy, before turning my attention back here. “I wonder how long the murtar has been here.”

  Long enough for it to have an influence—and for this wall to have been placed.

  It was possible that the murtar had even influenced me.

  I stepped forward, holding on to the weave I had used, toward the staircase.

  Asanley followed.

  When we stepped down, pressure built. It was a distinct sort of pressure, almost overpowering, but as I stepped into it, I could feel that energy—and something more.

  The murtar. It had to be.

  We headed forward, down the stairs. When we reached the bottom, I could still feel that presence. A distant light, almost sickly green, illuminated the space in front of us.

  Everything else was dark, as if the shadows themselves were alive and trying to sneak through us. I continued to hold on to my weave, pushing the flames outward, pushing the darkness back.

  Asanley quietly took my hand. It didn’t disrupt my weave, which surprised me. Power radiated from her, into me, then outward. As we stepped into the ever darkening space, I was aware of something dark and deadly.

  Asanley leaned close. “This is murtar.” She didn’t move away from me, and I wondered if she was afraid to do so. “I have heard stories about places like this. They were formed beneath the cities we lost. Places where the murtar was more powerful than it should have been. Places where it pooled, growing stronger, its influence radiating outward.”

  It was a small chamber, with a low, curved ceiling and a dark energy, which I could feel pressing toward me. I kept looking for a pool of murtar, but per
haps that was not what it was. Perhaps it was a cloud of murtar energy that radiated toward us.

  This was what happened to the dragons.

  And perhaps what happened to the rest of the city.

  Could finding this place have been what those who’d attacked had been up to all this time?

  First, they had wanted a dragon. Why?

  I had believed it was because they wanted to try to control it, but perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Then they had tried to steal dragons, making it look like the Djarn were involved, but perhaps there was another reason. Weaken the Djarn. Influence them. Get the murtar established. Then they had started their real attack. Forcing the kingdom to target the Vard.

  The murtar would have to have been here by then. Already influencing.

  How many dragons had been tainted at that point?

  Not the dragons within my cycle. At least, not to my knowledge. But then, I might not have known. At the time, I didn’t know enough about murtar to know whether it was even here.

  All of it left me trembling.

  “What do we have to do?”

  “We can’t do anything,” she whispered. “This is too powerful. This is too much. This takes a true Servant.”

  Before I had a chance to ask her what that meant, and how we could find a Servant, I heard a soft scraping and the sound of a breath, then realized we weren’t alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I pushed outward, immediately starting to use the cycle, sending power flooding away from me and creating another powerful weave of energy that was bound with the dragons, some part of myself, and even Affellah, if that was such a thing. Asanley added to the energy, though I doubted she did so intentionally.

  I then felt something familiar—a sizzling sort of energy, a presence I had detected before. It was the source of power that had taught me this weave.

  I frowned and faltered. “Thomas?”

  A lean figure strode forward. A black cloak covered them from head to toe, though the hood was pulled back enough to reveal Thomas’s narrow face. His eyes seemed to reflect the darkness. “How did you find this place?” he asked.