Smoke and Shadow: An Epic Fantasy Progression Series (The Dragon Thief Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “So do I,” Ty said.

  “What happens when you try to focus on it?”

  “I can feel the dragon, but it’s faint.” Even in that, Ty didn’t know if what he felt was really the dragon or if it was his imagination, a hint of power that he only believed he had.

  “You need to keep reaching for that burning, the heat of the dragon, and keep focusing on what it will take to find that smoke and heat within you.”

  “I’ve tried, and…” It was the same lesson that she had given to him recently, ever since she had uncovered his connection to the smoke dragon. She had tried to help him, at least as much as she could, but Ty had not been able to learn anything more about the smoke dragon, nor had he been able to find the connection that she believed he had.

  What if the smoke dragon were escaping from him without his control…

  Control.

  That was the message that she had given to him.

  Control was the key. His. The dragon’s. Both of them.

  And they were linked, but he was the key to it.

  Ty wasn’t exactly sure how, nor was he sure what it meant.

  But from the way she looked at him, he had a distinct sense that his failings were significant.

  “I know you’ve tried.” She motioned for him to follow.

  “What are we doing out here?” Ty asked, deciding that he needed to at least change the topic of conversation. He didn’t want to try to think through anything more and risk angering her.

  “We came out here to see if I couldn’t help with your training. There is only so much that I can do for you, especially with what has been asked of me. It is time that you get the help that you need.” She glanced over to Ty. “Having a dragon is a great honor, but it is also a responsibility. These dragons, especially with the way they connect to the Tecal, require someone with training. And you barely can find the presence of this dragon.”

  He shrugged. “There’ve been times I think that the dragon is there, but I haven’t managed to get the dragon to show himself. And certainly not when I needed him.”

  Gayal frowned at him. “Why would you have needed him?”

  He turned away. He had to be careful with what he said to her, not wanting her to think that he was doing anything that he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Then again, other than reaching the dragon, Ty wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. Maybe that was all it was for him.

  There was a steady dull ache within it, one that suggested that the pain would linger, and the more that he walked on it the more that pain persisted. He didn’t want to keep on his foot any longer than necessary, but at the same time he also didn’t want to tell her why he couldn’t walk.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I still want to take some jobs.”

  Gayal grunted. “You do realize that if you pull any of your old jobs, I won’t be able to protect you.”

  “You could. You’re just not willing to protect me.”

  “That is no different. You are to serve the king.”

  “The ghost king I’ve never met?”

  “You will. In time.”

  He doubted that he would ever get to meet the king. No one did.

  The ghost king was a mystery to him, even more so now that he was within the capital. When he had been in Zarinth, the ghost king was simply that—a ghost. Little more than story and myth. Now that he was in the capital, having seen the palace himself, and working with those who supposedly also worked with the ghost king, he expected to have more information, but there had been none.

  “I will serve the king, but I hope to have answers as I do.”

  Ty needed to be careful with Gayal and comments like that. She might overlook them sometimes, but she still served the king.

  “I have been looking for your answers. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find what happened to your parents. I will keep looking, as I promised, but you must keep working with me and your dragon, as you promised.”

  If he could find his brother, then maybe he would find a different kind of answer. Albion might know something.

  She looked back at the city, tilting her head in the strange way that she had, almost as if breathing in the city. “Anyway, the reason we’re out here is so that you can try to uncover a different connection to the dragon. The last attack has demonstrated that you need to master your connection.”

  She directed her gaze up and down him, almost appraisingly, and had he not known that she was looking for any evidence of the smoke dragon, he would’ve felt as if she were looking for a different reason. Ty wouldn’t have been opposed to it—she had a darkly dangerous quality about her that he found appealing—but in the time he’d been in the city, he hadn’t gotten the sense from her that she was interested in him in that way.

  “Do you feel anything when it comes to the dragon?”

  “Like I said, I don’t feel anything most the time,” he said.

  “Most of the time?”

  “Well, I occasionally feel something.” He shrugged, looking around the rolling landscape. The plains outside Carn were so different than what he knew back in his home. When he’d lived in Zarinth, all he’d known was the jungle and the mountains leading up to the volcano. The city sat at the base of the mountain, and there was always the looming presence of Ishantil, an ever-present sensation, always something that left him aware of the power of the volcano. There had been the threat of the eruption, and when it had finally calmed, he had started to feel as if maybe there was something more to it, something like the priests believed about it. The power of the Flame, were he honest with himself.

  “What have you detected?” Gayal asked.

  He focused again. “It’s just the burning you told me I need to capture.”

  “That is one step in it. You will feel that burning, and from there you need to understand that burning leads to something greater. But first, you must feel that connection.”

  “When I do, it is fleeting.”

  That was what annoyed him the most. It was the fleeting nature of the power, the fact that he could not detect it consistently.

  “Fleeting is a start,” Gayal said. She nodded and pointed for them to head across the ground. “There’s a place that I would like to take you.”

  He watched her and had a sense of the shadow dragon hanging like a cloak from her, as if watching him. “What kind of a place is this?”

  “The kind of place that will help you understand what you need to know as you continue to progress. We understand that Lothinal has been making their desires known, and it is up to us to be ready, to ensure that they do not overwhelm us.” She looked over at him. “And it is up to you to understand what is required to control the dragon that you have now connected to. We need that smoke dragon.”

  Need.

  He understood that the smoke dragon that he was connected to was necessary; it was just that he also had no idea how he was supposed to do anything with it. He rarely even felt the burning of that smoke dragon deep within him the way that he thought he would need to in order for him to have any connection to it. It was there occasionally but not consistently. Certainly not consistently enough for him to feel as if it could benefit the kingdom.

  “You need the dragon to stop Roson James?” He looked over to her. “He wants the dauvern so that he can steal dragons.”

  Or some of them, as the case may be. Ty didn’t know if it was so much about summoning or if it was more about the idea of calling to them.

  At this point, it was difficult for him to know with any certainty.

  “That we know of,” Gayal said. “He has power that’s different than what the kingdom has. He is dangerous.”

  “I know he’s dangerous,” he said.

  Ty knew more than most, he figured. He was one who had faced Roson James the most, and he had been attacked by him more times than he cared to remember. But it was more than that. Roson James had taken a friend from him.

  Eastley had wanted vengeance for what Roson James had do
ne to him and had died for it. Now Ty wanted the same vengeance. Did that mean that he would die for it as well?

  Not if he could understand this dragon. It might protect him. It might connect him.

  It might do nothing.

  He might be in just as much danger as Eastley had been. He was poorly trained so far, and though he might have the potential to use the dragon, there was also the potential that he could do nothing.

  Gayal motioned for him to follow. They crossed the plains, sweeping through the grasses, and he pushed those thoughts out of his mind. They did no good. Maybe it was just Bingham coming back to the city and bringing with him the memories of who he had been, things that he had done.

  Ty was a thief.

  Coming to the capital, training with Gayal, did nothing to change that.

  That was who he had been and what he had become.

  It was a choice he’d intentionally made, the same way Albion had intentionally made a choice to become the Dragon Thief.

  “Would you care to tell me where you’re taking me?”

  “I’m taking you someplace for you to work. To study. And hopefully find a way to connect to the dragon of yours.”

  “Why not you?”

  Gayal glanced over. “How long have the two of us worked together?”

  “Only a few weeks.”

  She smiled tightly. “Only a few weeks. And in that time, neither of us have managed to help you connect to your dragon as effectively as you should. And we still remember the threat of the Order, but you are unable to do anything to oppose them.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. He had the crossbow, but he knew what she meant. “No, but I don’t know if I would’ve expected to have connected to it so quickly.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “But at same time, I wonder if we’re running out of time.” She sighed as she looked at him. For a moment, he had a fleeting feeling that stirred within him, as if she looked at him with an interest in her gaze, but it faded. “Roson James will not linger without making his real move,” she said. “Unfortunately, he now knows about you, and he knows about your connection to the dragon. He will plan something. And unless we are ready for it, he may surprise us. We can’t have him obstructing us.”

  It was more than just that, but he sensed a reluctance from her to say or admit anything more. Maybe it was simply the fact that Gayal had been surprised by Roson James, as well. Maybe it was because Gayal had managed to stop him. Or maybe it was because Gayal had revealed the presence of her dragon to Roson James, all in order to protect Ty.

  “So if you aren’t able to help me, then what are you going to do? Are you going to get a dragon to try to tear the power out of me?”

  She chuckled. “That may not be a bad idea, but no. Unfortunately, I don’t know that we have any dragons that would be capable of pulling power out of somebody. Maybe there once were, but not here, not now.”

  “We could go to the lands where there are dragons,” he said.

  He was only half joking. He didn’t really want to go to other lands where there might be more dragons, mostly because he had no idea what to expect, but he also thought they were likely more powerful than what they had around here. There was another side of him, though, that was curious. He wondered whether or not he could go to some other land and learn about the dragons and whether he could find a connection to them. All he wanted at this point was to find what happened to his parents. If that meant that he had to serve the king, then he thought he was willing to do that. At least for now.

  He wasn’t even sure how to explain why he felt as strongly as he did about finding his parents. He was an adult now, and they had abandoned him years ago, but in a way he remained little more than a child trapped, left alone, scared, and forced to learn to live on his own without their help. It was that part that wanted answers, but it was also that part that wanted closure more than anything else.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have any way of doing that, either,” she said. “Those lands are beyond the borders and beyond our ability to go safely. Dragon Touched and Tecal have tried but failed to find anything beyond.”

  The comment brought him back suddenly. Ty’s thoughts had been wandering, thinking about his parents again, though he probably shouldn’t. These days, those thoughts served no purpose for him. All they did was try to connect him to nothing. He had wasted so much time and energy and his life searching for them. Maybe he would’ve learned about his connection to dragons sooner had he not.

  “You’ve gone looking for dragons?”

  “Not me, but others have. The dragons are gone, other than what we have here.”

  The dragon cloak fluttered a moment before falling still.

  The dragons were gone. The dragons that remained were different than the dragons in stories. Not only the stunted dragons he’d seen in the Hatchery, but the dragons like the shadow dragon and the smoke dragon were different.

  “Let’s keep moving,” she said softly.

  He nodded into the distance and saw a strange grouping of massive boulders situated on the plain. Had he not crossed through the grasses, he wouldn’t have seen them. He wondered if they would even be visible from the Dragon’s Jaw as well. Maybe they wouldn’t. He followed Gayal as they headed straight toward the stones, but when they reached them she paused outside, looking at the rocks. Something in her expression changing.

  “I do wish I would have been able to reach your connection to the dragons—or dragon.”

  She closed her eyes, and it seemed as if her lips moved almost silently, as if she were talking to himself… or talking to her dragon. What troubled her so much that she didn’t want to look over at him? There was some reason, though he had no idea what it was, why she would be looking away from him.

  When he opened his eyes and looked over at her, she nodded.

  “What’s going on?” Ty asked. “What aren’t you telling me, Gayal?”

  “Nothing more than a continuation of your studies.” They stepped between an opening in the rock and stopped, looking around. Shadows circled around the inside of the opening.

  It was as if the bright sunlight that had been shining down overhead suddenly faded. A dark cloud covered him. He looked up, and there was no sky, nothing but darkness.

  “Gayal?”

  “Careful,” she whispered.

  “What is this place?”

  “A training ground for Tecal. It’s a place that will not be observed by outsiders unless they know the secret of it.”

  “And the secret is…”

  “Dragons.”

  She headed forward. Everything around them was dark, dim, and he struggled to try to make out anything more. A figure sat in the middle of a ring of stone, darkness shrouding them.

  For a moment—only a moment, nothing more—Ty believed that maybe it was Bingham. Ty had no reason to believe he had any real connection to the dragons. Bingham had always had an interest in dragon relics. Could he have a connection to dragons that he didn’t know about?

  Still, in that moment, as he looked over at him, he could feel some strangeness, then a familiarity, and he began to wonder.

  “Who is that?” he whispered.

  “His name is Dorian Asar. He is one of the Tecal.”

  There was a hint of concern in her voice, a quavering in the way that she said it that left him feeling apprehensive as well. “Who is Dorian?”

  The figure got to his feet and light began to glow around him, a strange bright light that started at his feet and shone up toward his face. Strangely, it did nothing to illuminate his features. He was still cast in shadows, as if the darkness swirled around him.

  “Is this him?” The voice was deep, dangerous, and tinged with a bit of anger.

  “This is who I’ve been telling you about,” Gayal said. “I have been working with him, and I have—”

  “Failed,” Dorian said, striding toward them. The light shifted as he walked, almost as if it were sliding across the ground with hi
m, but it did nothing to illuminate anything.

  With a start, he realized that Dorian must have some sort of shadow dragon the same way Gayal did, though how could they be so common as that?

  “Are you able to learn?” he asked.

  Ty stared at him. “I don’t know. Gayal’s been trying to work with me, but I haven’t been able to reach a connection to the dragons consistently. I am trying, but—”

  “Are you able to learn?”

  He frowned, glancing over at Gayal before turning his attention back to Dorian. “I was answering, but you didn’t give me a chance to finish.” He needed to be more careful, especially as he didn’t know much about the Tecal other than what he had seen from Gayal. “I don’t need this. I can return to Zarinth if Gayal can’t teach me.”

  “Are you able to learn?” Dorian asked.

  For the first time, Ty felt something different. It seemed to reverberate within him, though it was not to him that the question had been asked.

  He realized almost too late.

  Dorian wasn’t talking to him. He was asking the question, but he was asking it of the smoke dragon.

  Chapter Four

  A stirring started deep in his belly and began to flutter with a bit of heat, and then it worked its way down his legs, up into his chest, and down his arms. Slowly, a hint of smoke began to stream out before it retreated, drawn back inside of him.

  Dorian looked up. Gradually, the darkness began to fade although the light shining upon him did not. He stood in front of him, dressed in a black cloak that was inky dark and blacker than any night, and watched him.

  “An interesting creature.”

  Something in his tone of voice had shifted. It was no longer as dark or dangerous as it had been before. Was that all for show? Could the theatrics have been for the dragon and not for him?

  “I haven’t been able to coax it,” Gayal said.

  “Of course not. You’re dealing with someone untrained, with a dragon that is nontraditional, and you would not be able to coax it into a typical sort of rapport,” Dorian said to Gayal. “But it shows potential. Perhaps it’s weak. Only time will tell.”