Some were flying, some were resting, and a few were simply awake, waiting.
It was almost as if some of the dragons were trying to decide what I was going to do.
At this point, I didn’t even know.
I turned to the forest.
I saw a figure moving in the trees.
And I followed it.
2
There was a certain smell to the edge of the forest where I stood, a mixture of the damp earth, decay, and a hint of heat that radiated through me and poured out into the forest. I breathed it all in, feeling a hint of unease as I stood there, focusing on the darkness beneath the trees.
The canopy arched high overhead, filling the dense forest with broad leaves from a variety of strange trees that were only found deep within the forest. The massive trunks towered high into the air, large branches sweeping up and over me, swaying in the hint of breeze. An occasional oak or elm managed to grow in between the other trees, but not many, and they weren’t nearly as tall as they would be in other parts of the forest.
Energy connected me to a dragon deeper in the city. As I focused on that connection, cycling the power through me, I couldn’t help but notice that it felt almost drawn away from me, carried out from the city and the dragon pens and then beyond, toward someplace distant.
It was from mesahn, animals that seemed part wolf and part forest cat who prowled with the king’s Hunters. I was sure of it. The dragons had sent me enough of a connection for me to know it was there. The mesahn weren’t rare, though the dragons had an uneasy relationship with them. I doubted the Hunters like Manuel even knew the extent of their uneasiness with each other.
That feeling pulled me.
Into the forest. Toward the Djarn.
I could feel their power, and I was fully aware of the presence of it, even though I still didn’t quite know what it meant. In the weeks since we had stopped an attack on the kingdom, I’d not uncovered anything more to help me fully understand just what role the Djarn played in the kingdom, but it certainly was more than I’d ever known.
Here I had thought the Djarn were a simple people, indigenous to the forest, but they were not. They were something more.
Much more.
Taking a deep breath, I turned away, looking out into the clearing behind me. There was movement, though I wasn’t able to make out the details of it. I could only tell there was something there. I waited and continued cycling the power through me, holding on to the energy as I did, letting that power continue to flow and roll outward.
Maybe the mesahn were hunting for evidence of additional infiltration within the kingdom, the way I was.
I would have to ask Manuel.
For now, there was something peaceful about holding on to the power of the dragons, yet I never took for granted how unusual it was for me to have this ability. How could I when it seems so fantastical, even now?
Had I not left my homeland, I would’ve still been a farmer, never having learned about my connection to the dragons, and never having learned about the cycle that existed and how I could connect to it. I would’ve lived my life always longing for something more, feeling unfulfilled. In that way, it was a blessing that I had come to learn about the cycle of dragons and my role within it.
My family likely would’ve been unfulfilled, as well. My sister would have remained on the farm until she eventually met someone and married, never doing what she wanted, and certainly never being given the opportunity to find what she valued. I had no idea what happened to my brother since I left, other than hearing that he had gone to a healer, and there was some promising change for him. I had to hope he could get what he needed. Perhaps the longer I spent within the capital, and the more I earned the king’s favor, the more likely it was I might be able to get help for him. I could imagine a time in the future when the king would send his healers to help my brother. Flying by dragon, I could probably get there quickly. Only a day or two.
There came a fluttering of power that rolled through me.
Were the mesahn moving?
If they found something, I wanted to know what it was.
Ignoring the better sense that suggested I should stay out of it if the mesahn were involved, I focused on the earliest techniques I learned to help me control that power, thinking first about my breathing, then about how to tamp down the heat within me, and finally focusing on relaxing, cycling the power in a way that would allow me to use it most effectively.
As I did, I could feel something within that power shifting, some aspect to it that granted me a greater connection than I would’ve had otherwise. It started to tremble. I let the energy flow. Flames jumped from hand to hand, completing the cycle. It was a simple thing for me to send the flames arcing from one hand to the next, and I could even twist them, splitting them so that they separated out through my fingers, creating several strands of flame that could each be manipulated. I could feel the energy roaring through me, a connection to some other great power that existed within the dragons. That connection was powerful, vast, and filled with energy—and within the cycle, it seemed almost limitless.
Movement in the forest caught my attention.
That had to be mesahn.
I lost control, and a burst of energy exploded out from my hands, pouring into the trees. It took everything in my concentration to prevent that explosion from destroying a swath of forest.
I pulled power back to me, holding on to it, but couldn’t trap it nearly as well as I wanted. Another surge of shadowy movement near me caught my attention.
Getting to my feet, I headed to the trees, moving quickly.
I didn’t want to attack the mesahn. One of the dragons in my cycle had already done that once, a fact I had not shared with anyone. I wouldn’t be the one to pit the dragons and riders against the Hunters.
Heat rolled up through my legs, through my belly, and out through my hands. I had learned how to control the flow of power, to maintain it and hold on to it as it flowed and cycled, but I still wasn’t completely in control of it, not the way I wished I could be.
I needed more training, but unfortunately there hadn’t been time for that. I had been focused instead on everything else that was taking place, like the attack on the city and trying to learn whether there was anything more I might be able to do to help so that I could offer my service on behalf of the king.
We had stopped two attacks now, but I struggled afterward. I still remained unconvinced that the Vard were responsible for them, despite what others thought.
But if it wasn’t the Vard, then what was it?
I didn’t have that answer either.
Most within the city were comfortable believing the Vard responsible. Even the king and his Sharath advisor. It was easier that way. I understood that. Many of the dragon mages had faced the Vard over the years, and they had experienced the dangers that they posed, but what we had encountered was something different. I was sure of it.
I tried to push those thoughts away.
There was more movement ahead of me.
I tracked a little farther, still holding on to the connection to the dragon.
Another flicker of movement, this one farther from me.
It wasn’t a dragon, and it wasn’t anybody connected to the dragons. If it had been, I would have known about it.
I called on even more power, trying to cycle through more of the dragons. The advantage I had was that I could cycle through many of the dragons at one time, expanding my power. I had linked them. It had been done originally to save several dragons, but it had also done something to me, binding me to them and their power, and permitted me the ability to let power flow far more greatly than I had when I was cycling through a single dragon.
I could feel the movement, as if the dragons wanted me to know.
It was a strange pressure against me. Something uncomfortable.
Almost an irritant, as if it were burning against the cycle.
It had to be mesahn. If it wasn’t,
then I had to wonder if maybe it was one of these others who’d attacked the kingdom.
I would do my part to stop the attacks. The dragons would help.
Strangely, as I had continued to work with the dragons, I had a feeling from them that they wanted me to expand that power, the connection, and it had given me something I hadn’t been able to achieve before.
A connection. A feeling of belonging. Something I needed to have. It was odd to feel like I was lost despite having been surrounded by so many within the city. It was massive—a sprawling, immense city set within the forest, as if space had been carved out by the trees themselves to allow the city to thrive. Despite thousands of people crowding its streets, I didn’t always feel as if I were comfortable there.
I didn’t have a family here. I didn’t always feel as if I belonged within the Academy.
But the dragons . . . the dragons gave me a place that I belonged.
I moved farther forward, staying in the shadows around me.
It might be nothing more than one of the mesahn. I knew some of them prowled through the forest, hunting for evidence of the Vard influence around the kingdom, though this close would be far less likely.
I caught sight of another bit of movement and raced forward. Without meaning to, I called upon dragon energy, and it propelled me.
Then I came to a stop. A hooded figure remained near a tree, hand resting on his side, enormous wolflike creature prowling behind him. The mesahn was massive, almost the size of a horse, with a broad head, ears that perked up and seemed to swivel as if listening to everything, and a blunted snout that sniffed at the air. Its brown fur looked coarse, though Manuel spoke of its incredible softness.
“Manuel.” It had been a mesahn, but one I knew. “Have you been hunting me?”
“Consider it practice,” the other man said, stepping forward and pulling his hood back. He had a lean face and dark eyes that seemed to blend into the shadows of the forest. There was something about him that always seemed mysterious, ever since the first time I’d met him passing through our lands. “I hadn’t expected you to be able to reach us quite so easily,” he said.
“I was just out here . . .” I shook my head, frowning to myself. “To be honest, I’m not really sure what I was out here doing.”
“Practicing?” Manuel asked, glancing at my hands.
I looked down, noticing that I held fire between them. It had been instinctive, a bonding of fire that jumped from one hand to the next. The power had stayed with me. I hadn’t even been aware I’d maintained a connection like that. I released it, tapping and forcing that power down where it rejoined the other cycle that flowed out from me.
“Perhaps practice,” I said. “Mostly to relax.” I didn’t want to reveal the real reason I’d come out here. I wasn’t sure how he’d take it.
“Relax?” Manuel glanced around the forest. There was something in his gaze that suggested danger. The mesahn pushed up against his hand for a moment before racing off into the trees, disappearing altogether.
The only reason I’d seen the mesahn was because Manuel had wanted me to. Otherwise, the mesahn would have disappeared, and I wouldn’t have been aware of it at all.
“I find the forest relaxing. There’s something about the canopy of the trees, the darkness around me, the feel of the forest itself.”
It was strange to think like that, especially as I had never really been a forest person before having connected to the dragons. Before I had always felt comfortable out in the open, out on the plains, regardless of how dangerous they could be with the frequent storms we had in my part of the world.
Manuel turned his gaze back to me and smiled slightly. “There are others who would make very different claims,” he said.
“They don’t find the forest peaceful?”
“They find the forest terrifying,” Manuel said. He shrugged. “Can’t say I understand that. I’ve always found it the same as you do. There’s just something about wandering through here, knowing you have this emptiness before you.”
I looked up to the trees. “I wouldn’t call it emptiness.”
“Not emptiness, but it is a void of others, and little more than a place where you can . . .” Manuel tilted his head to the side, as if he were sniffing the air the way his mesahn companion would. “Perhaps I’m sharing too much.”
I shook my head, chuckling. “You aren’t sharing enough. Has there been any word of another attack?” I almost said Vard, but cut myself off. I wasn’t going to be the one spreading that rumor, even if the king himself believed the Vard responsible.
Manuel glanced behind me, toward the city. “I’ve been looking, chasing a few leads, but haven’t found anything of substance like we faced before, and certainly nothing that would pose a danger,” he said. “Of course, not that the king wants to hear that.”
“What do you mean?”
Manuel glanced back to me, frowning and shaking his head. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Manuel—”
“You’re still a student at the Academy, Ashan. I can’t forget that. Even though you’ve been instrumental in stopping several attacks already. More than most.”
“I suppose that’s because I’m older than most, too.”
“Older than most who come to the Academy, but not older than most who serve the king. I think you’ve done a service here.”
I focused on the forest around me, feeling for the dragons. There was one deep in the forest that I could feel, but I hadn’t seen that dragon since saving it.
“I wonder how much longer I should stay,” I said.
“What was that?” Manuel positioned against a different tree, looking back to me. He traced his hand along the trunk, as if he had detected something. I joined him, studying the tree, though I didn’t see what he had seen.
“I was just saying that I wondered how long I should stay.”
“You can’t be that far from independence as a dragon mage with the level of control you’ve shown. Just keep learning.”
“I have been learning,” I said. “But I also need to see my sister. She’s back in Berestal, and—”
Manuel started laughing. “Your sister is fine, Ashan.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve kept tabs on her.”
I frowned. “You have?”
“I figured you’d want to know about her. And more than that, I figured that if anything were to happen to her, I should keep an eye on the situation, especially given what she went through before.”
I regarded Manuel for a moment. “It’s more than just that though.”
He studied me. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you wouldn’t have done it for that reason alone.”
He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and turned back to the tree, crouching down to it and tracing his finger along its base. “The Vard remain active in Berestal.”
I didn’t really worry about that. If it were a real issue there, I suspected Joran would have found a way to get word to me.
“The Vard have always been somewhat restless there,” I said.
Manuel glanced back at me, shaking his head. “This is little bit different than being restless. This is . . .”
“What is it?”
“I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that everything coming out of the Vard suggests a resurgence of attacks.”
“Why would they attack when they don’t have any way to counter the dragons?”
That was the reason these attackers had been defeated in the first place. They didn’t have any way of defeating the dragons, and without that, they couldn’t prevent the kingdom from expanding its reach and influence. The king and his dragon riders kept peace and stability. Even out in Berestal, the outskirts of the kingdom, out where there was no sign of anybody else, I’d been aware of the influence of the king and his riders, and had known the dragons offered a measure of stability from warfare.
I might not have lived it, bu
t I’d heard stories when I was younger, stories that had come from my father and others who lived around us that suggested the war with the Vard had been deadly. So many people had been lost, and it wasn’t until the king had exerted his influence and provided a calming effect that we finally managed to have a bit of peace.
But what had sabotaged the kingdom recently had been something else.
The attackers had wanted it to look like the Vard.
I didn’t know why though.
“Understanding how they intend to neutralize the dragons is the real question, isn’t it? They tried using the Djarn, but those attackers failed. We will ensure they fail with further attempts.”
“That wasn’t the Vard,” I said.
Manuel watched me. “You’ve said that before, but everything Thomas has found proves otherwise.”
“What about when they captured you?”
“I’ve been looking into that,” Manuel said.
“That wasn’t Vard either.”
We knew it wasn’t. At least, I had believed that Manuel believed it wasn’t.
“As I said, I’ve been looking into it.”
I frowned, looking around the forest. Somewhere distantly, one of the dragons felt startled and took to the air. I found myself thinking about the connection to the dragon, the way that I could feel that power, and the awareness I suddenly had of it launching into the air. It was unusual I’d be so acutely aware of that.
What had startled the dragon?
“Those who attacked us have some way of dealing with the dragons,” I said.
Manuel stood, wiping his hands on his pants before shaking his head. “If that were all this was about, I wouldn’t be nearly as concerned.”
“What is it then?”
“I’m more concerned about whether the Vard have some way of dealing with the dragon mages.”
Not Vard. I kept telling myself that. I trusted Manuel. He knew of my concern and had brought it to the king.
The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) Page 2
