Her father frowned, pressing his hands together, and he regarded me, then Natalie, before finally getting to his feet. “Come along. This might be something more than what we have anticipated.”
“What do you think it is, exactly?”
“This might be something dangerous. And the dragon mages and dragon riders whom we have sent away from here might be in far more danger than we expected.”
Which meant the king might use the dragon mages to truly destroy Berestal.
16
I waited outside of the throne room, sitting on a bench with Natalie sitting alongside me. Her father had gone ahead of us, and he was inside the room with the dragon mages assigned to the palace. No one had come out for us, though he had made it seem as if they would.
“The king is going to destroy my home,” I said.
She shook her head. “My father won’t let him.”
“Can he stop the king?”
She didn’t say anything.
“What do you think they’re talking about in there?” I asked her.
“Probably deciding whether or not they should rely upon what we have seen and done.”
“The king knows I’ve helped him in the past.”
“Hopefully that’s enough for him to trust what you have to say,” she said.
I frowned, but she was right. I didn’t know if that was going to be enough to get the king to trust me, to believe what I had to say, but it felt like it needed to be, somehow. Maybe having the Sharath here would make a difference—having him know what we were dealing with and the threat we’d reported to him—though I wasn’t sure if it would matter. It was possible that the king wouldn’t know how to react, even if the Sharath expressed his concern.
There was another possibility, though—one that left me a little more troubled than the others. I hadn’t given much thought to it, and I hadn’t shared it with Natalie, but it was the one that would be the most troublesome if it were true. There was the possibility the king knew about Thomas having captured one of the Servants. If he knew, then the king either didn’t care, or he supported what had happened.
I tried not to think that the king would do that, but at the same time, why should he not? The Vard had been our enemies for a long time, certainly long enough that we had no reason to treat them with any sort of kindness. The Vard had proven they were willing to harm our people, and because of that, we had no reason to treat them with anything but the same measure of violence with which they had treated us.
I looked over to Natalie. “I feel like we’ve been sitting here a long time,” I said. “I need to get to Berestal.”
“Don’t go. It only means my father is getting through to them.”
I wasn’t quite as convinced. It left me worried that perhaps he’d not gotten through to them, and if that were the case, then we might have to deal with this on our own. I wasn’t sure what I might be able to do, if anything. I had felt the power of the Vard: what they were able to do when they had attacked us before, the energy they had drawn from me, the way they could use their power in their magic, and the way they had influenced us. If they continued to use that power, drawing upon us, then what would we be able to do to stop them?
Nothing.
Not without the power of additional cycles and enough people with a connection to the dragons.
I fidgeted.
I couldn’t feel anything through the cycle, but I felt as if I needed to keep moving.
Get to the dragon.
Get to Berestal.
Keep the king from destroying the city.
After a while, I finally got to my feet and began to look around us. The dragon mages who had gone inside the throne room with the Sharath had left us alone.
“You look upset,” Natalie said softly.
“I don’t like how long this is taking.”
There was also the issue of the dragons that had gone off. A dozen riders, along with three dragon mages, were enough power the Vard shouldn’t have stopped.
They had brought enough power that the king could raze Berestal, like he had other places.
“I can’t keep waiting here,” I said.
“We have to,” she said.
“We have to because your father says that, but I fear if we stay here too much longer, the Vard are going to keep moving, and we’re going to be too late.”
She smiled at me. “Just give my father a chance.”
“I have been giving him a chance,” I said. “And it hasn’t changed anything.”
“We don’t know that now though,” she said.
This was a different side of Natalie, one I hadn’t seen before. When I first met her, she had come across as mysterious, yet completely in control. Perhaps she still was, but this had her scared, just as it had me scared.
“You feared the Vard when we got out there, didn’t you?” I asked, pacing in front of her. “Because you aren’t part of a circle.”
She breathed out slowly before nodding. “If I had been a part of the circle, I’d have been less concerned. We have long known that the Servants have a way of connecting that we cannot withstand. We can by joining in a circle, but without it, and without having a way to share the influence, we might not be enough.”
“That’s why you wanted to investigate, but you also didn’t want to get too close.”
“I knew I couldn’t get too close,” she said. “I knew if I were to do so, it would potentially put the dragon in danger.”
Considering what I had gone through, and how I had barely managed to escape with the dragons, I understood, and I thought she was right to be concerned. The dragons had been in danger, and unless we had help, we might have even more danger than we realized.
I needed to give this a little more time.
I could plea my case to the king. Save my home.
I continued pacing, glancing every so often over to the doors leading into the throne room. Her father had been inside for quite a while, and there had been no movement one way or the other. I could hear nothing from inside, and that troubled me just a little bit.
“You need to relax,” Natalie said.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then looked around the halls. The marble gleamed, light from the lanterns reflecting off of it, illuminating the inside of the palace. At one end of the hall, a pair of soldiers waited, just as they did at the other end of the hall. Neither of them moved toward us. I focused on the connection to the dragons, feeling for the energy that flowed through them and to me, and could feel something in it. I thought I could use that energy and that connection to call even more power.
The door suddenly opened, and the Sharath strode out. He came alone.
“Well?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, the king feels we cannot release the Servant.”
I flicked my gaze past him, looking into the throne room. “That’s what you approached him to do?”
The Sharath turned to me, crossing his arms over his chest. “We cannot hold him.”
“We aren’t holding him. Thomas is holding him. I just want to make sure my home is—”
“If the chief dragon mage has one of their Servants held, the Vard will view it as an act of war.”
I watched him for a long moment, deciding that I should pick my words carefully. I didn’t want to anger him, knowing that anything I said to him was truly directed at the king as well. “Others have acted as if we were at war for a long time. Even the Vard have, considering their attacks on the eastern part of the kingdom.”
The Sharath studied me. “You don’t understand, Ashan. The Vard have not been at war with us up until this point. They have sent their people to try to influence us, but they have not been at war with us.”
In my experience within Berestal, it had been more a war of influence than a war of actual aggression. Then there was another that had been meant to look like the Djarn.
It was meant to put the kingdom on the offensive.
But I had heard of t
he king fighting the Vard.
There had been violence.
And now Berestal would be caught in the middle.
“Why would that change now?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t seen the full force of the Vard attack before.”
I took a deep breath and looked all around before turning my attention back to the Sharath.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
The Sharath held my gaze for a long moment. “There is nothing that can be done. He intends to remove the threat.”
“We can’t let him.”
The Sharath studied me. “Anything we do would go against the wishes of the king. I’m sorry. We have to trust that the riders and the dragon mages were successful.”
“Trust?” I shook my head, looking from Natalie over to her father. “I know what I detected when I was there. There was enough power that the Vard would be able to draw off the energy of the dragon mages, draining them. The dragon mages wouldn’t be able to withstand that.”
It was enough power that the king could raze Berestal, like he had other places
“Father,” Natalie said, looking from her father to me, “you have to help us with this.”
He sighed. “We should not get involved,” he said, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. “I’m the Sharath, and I serve the people, but I don’t serve the kingdom.”
“Father,” she said again, “serving the kingdom serves the people. We can’t let another place be destroyed out of fear.”
He glanced behind him, then again sighed deeply before motioning for us to follow. “Meet me at the edge of the city,” he said softly.
She nodded, and he strode off, heading back toward his office.
Natalie motioned for me to come with her. “Come on. You heard him.”
Outside of the palace, the dragon mages waited for us, but did nothing to stop us. I hesitated there for a moment before moving on and heading toward the dragons.
Natalie climbed onto her dragon quickly and waited for me to get on the other. Once we were both on, we took to the air, flying over the city and coming to land at the edge of it. I started to climb off of the dragon when Natalie waved her hand, motioning for me to stop.
“He won’t be long,” she said softly.
“Even if he comes, not exactly sure what that’s going to do for us,” I said. “I know he doesn’t want to get too involved in what’s taking place.”
“He will do what’s necessary,” she said.
She had more faith in her father than I did.
Still, I sat there, at the edge of the forest, focusing on the cycle of the dragons. Every so often, I felt a bit of a resistance, something that surged against me. It was from the Vard, I was certain, though I could feel nothing else coming off of it.
A flutter of movement in the trees caught my attention, and before Natalie could stop me, I scrambled off the dragon and headed toward it. There shouldn’t be any movement out here, unless it was students from the Academy, but given that it was still fairly early in the day, that would be unusual. There weren’t many in the Academy who got up as early as I did. I moved into the forest, thinking maybe it was a dragon that had come, but I didn’t feel any evidence of that within the cycle.
There had been activity out in the forest, and now that I thought about it, I started to question whether that had been tied to what was taking place now. It certainly hadn’t been the Vard. I had detected it long before Thomas had managed to capture one of the Servants. It suggested that whatever was taking place here, whatever attack we now faced and if so, then I couldn’t help but question if perhaps there was something else going on.
What if this were another attempt to make it look like the Vard had attacked when it really was someone else?
I looked around.
I had dealt with that already once before, and had seen just how far these attackers were willing to go to make it look as if the Vard were responsible. If the same thing was happening again, we couldn’t be drawn into it, regardless of how it appeared.
“Ashan?”
Natalie called after me, and I glanced back, waving my hand.
I headed into the trees again, breathing in, trying to get a feel for the smells within the air and the energy here. Then I focused on what else might be here.
As I did, I recognized a familiar, musky kind of odor.
Mesahn.
There weren’t that many mesahn that prowled at the edge of the forest, though there were some. I was usually careful with them, not knowing who they were tied to. Each mesahn had a singular bond, much like I had believed the dragons did.
I followed a small path through the trees, winding along as I searched for the mesahn, but found nothing. As I started to turn back, a dark shadow emerged from the forest.
“Manuel,” I said.
He chuckled as he stepped toward me. He was dressed in a dappled gray and green jacket and pants that allowed him to blend into the shadows of the forest. “You’re getting better at picking up on me,” he said.
“Maybe you need to do a better job of hiding, then,” I said.
He chuckled again. “You’re up early.” He glanced past me, toward the edge of the forest. “And with the dragon.”
“There’s been an attack on the kingdom. The Vard,” I said. “I came across them last night at the southern edge of the forest—”
“They shouldn’t have been able to penetrate so far,” he said.
“I know. And I think the king sent riders and dragon mages. To Berestal.”
“He would not.”
I regarded Manuel. “You’re the one who told me what he’s done before. How can you say he wouldn’t?” When he didn’t answer, I shook my head. “The king wants to protect the Servant of Affellah that Thomas captured—”
“Where did you hear that term?” he asked, stepping forward.
A shaft of sunlight streamed down through the trees, illuminating his face, making him look scarred. For a moment, he reminded me of the Servants of Affellah and the way that lava seemed to flow along their features.
“From Thomas, and then from the Sharath.”
Manuel frowned. “Dangerous,” he whispered. “I’ve been trying to understand why the Vard have been agitated. The mesahn have followed more Vard than usual, though none have attacked. They’ve just been… searching.”
Manuel must have been tracking Vard when I’d seen him in the forest. For the first time, it actually was the Vard responsible—but there might be some other reason behind it. “You know about the Servant?”
“The king has Hunters tracking the Servants. Many have been lost over the years. Including many of the mesahn. The Servants of Affellah are powerful, Ashan.”
“I understand that.”
He shook his head, glancing toward the edge of the forest again. “I don’t think you do. There have been rumors of one of the Servants having been abducted, but it wasn’t Thomas who did it. I would’ve known,” Manuel said.
I watched him, and I could see the concern in his eyes. He was one of the Hunters, and with his mesahn, with whatever power they possessed, I would’ve expected that he would have known.
“Did the mesahn tell you?”
Manuel regarded me for a moment. “The mesahn are part of the hunt,” he said carefully.
“And they hunt the dragons?”
“They might hunt the dragons, but they have no reason.”
I couldn’t tell him what I knew about the dragons and the mesahn.
Not now.
I didn’t know if telling him would reveal something that shouldn’t be revealed, or if it would only lead to more questions. I had been there when the mesahn had been killed under the dragon’s fire. And now that dragon was a part of my cycle.
I wished I could ask the dragon about it, wished I could gain some insight, but doubted that there would be anything I might learn.
Instead, I chose not to say anything about the mesahn.
“The Servants have some way of calling upon fire,” I said. “And the king will make sure he destroys the Vard to keep them from doing that in Berestal. Even if it means destroying Berestal.”
“He won’t attack Berestal if he can keep them from the border. I know you want to protect your people, but he’ll focus on the Southern Reach first. If they have decided to try to infiltrate our southern border, they won’t get very far. With a dozen dragons and mages, they will find that the Vard will scatter.”
“What if they take the dragon’s power?” I asked.
“That’s not even possible,” Manuel said
“But what if they can?”
Then the king would have no choice but to destroy the Vard.
Regardless of where they were.
“I know you think you have an understanding of the dragons, and I know you have been involved in many things throughout the kingdom in your time here, but what you’re saying is not possible.”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I looked over to Manuel. “I don’t know what’s possible. I think that’s part of the problem. I have no idea anymore. And that worries me. I don’t know what the Vard might do. If this is something else, the same way the attack in Berestal was meant to look like the Vard, then we need to understand what they’re really after.”
“Ashan—”
“Help me,” I said. “Maybe you don’t believe me, and maybe you don’t think this is the same threat, but I know what I have experienced. I know the danger we are in. It’s possible this is the Vard, but it’s also possible there’s something else taking place here that we don’t know about. Wouldn’t you rather dig into it, look for all of the possible angles, and know the truth?”
I didn’t know what this other threat might do, only that they would find it all too easy to overthrow the kingdom. I thought about the Servant, the strangeness I had felt from him, and the way I feared him and what he represented. If the Vard did come, what might the Servants do? What might they expect of us?
The problem was I simply didn’t know.
Manuel sighed, then whistled, and there came a flurry of movement from somewhere in the distant forest before he turned. He whistled again.
The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) Page 22
