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

by D. K. Holmberg

  The ground rumbled again.

  He looked down. “It won’t be long now. I find it intriguing that the way to destroy the Flame is by using the Flame.”

  “What do you mean using?”

  “There are places all around your precious kingdom where the Flame touches more closely. I tested them, wanting to ensure that my plan would be effective, and thankfully…”

  That was what he done at the lava flow. And the steam swamp. All of that had been a test. All of that had been his attempt to ensure that it would work.

  He looked over at the lava lake and realized something.

  Normally the lava bubbled and burbled, but it had darkened, taking on a discoloration, and there was something else off about it. It was thickening.

  Not just thickening. Solidifying.

  “What did you do?” he whispered.

  Roson James looked down, and there was a satisfied look on his face, not smugness, not a smirk, but one of resolve, one of victory.

  What was this about?

  “You won’t be able to stop this. You were never going to be able to stop this.”

  James smiled at him, a dark grin, and then with a wave of his hand the dark energy around him continued to swirl, heading farther and farther out until it became a spiraling pattern of dark energy. The lava continued to solidify and the ground trembled, as if Ishantil wanted nothing more than to erupt, to blast past whatever Roson James did to it, though at the same time it didn’t seem as if there was anything that could be done to stop it.

  The power coming out of him was incredible.

  Worse, the smoke dragon inside him trembled and quivered. It was aware of what was taking place and unable to react in a way that would avoid destruction.

  Roson glanced down at Dorian. “A shame about your dragons, but seeing as how they would be used to destroy more of my lands, I don’t feel much remorse.” He looked up at Ty. “And I will have that dragon of yours.”

  Ty started backing away, but he was on one of the platforms and wouldn’t be able to stay there very long or very safely. He teetered for a moment, wobbling in place, and feared tripping.

  The dragon within him reacted.

  Power bloomed again within the smoke dragon and flowed upward, filling him. He instinctively crossed his arms over his chest, attempting to protect himself, but when he brought them down, Roson James was gone. It was too late.

  Ty jumped forward. “You need to get up, Dorian.” He still hadn’t moved, as if he were unable to move. “Dorian!”

  He slowly looked up at him. There was no dark shadow around him, no evidence of any of the dragons that had surrounded him, not like there had been before.

  “You need to get up!”

  “They’re gone,” he said softly.

  “I understand. And unless we get moving, there will be even more dragons gone. We have to react.”

  He could barely move. “Gone,” he said.

  Ty grabbed him, pulling him up. He didn’t resist. He forced him forward, but he wouldn’t be able to carry him. “You need to jump.”

  Dorian looked over at him. “You have control over the smoke dragon.”

  “I have a better connection to it, but I don’t know if I have control. Not yet.”

  “You will need that,” he said.

  “I know,” Ty snapped. “Now, I need for you to get across here.” He looked down. The lava continued to thicken, darkening, and if they waited too much longer it would solidify into hardened rock.

  With the rumbling beneath him, and a sense of power and energy that quaked underneath the remains of the lava lake, he feared Ishantil might explode. If that happened…

  Ty didn’t want to be anywhere near Ishantil when it exploded.

  He scrambled along the stone and pushed him forward. “You have to jump.”

  “I thought he only wanted to summon dragons,” he said softly.

  “He wanted to destroy the Flame. He used your dragons to do so.”

  “It shouldn’t be possible,” he said.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t, but he seems to think that whatever device he has will help coordinate the power of Lothinal magic.”

  He jumped forward, pulling Dorian with him.

  “I’ve not seen… Lothinal magic.”

  He seemed to be coming around, as if forcing him to move—and to think—helped him. Ty didn’t care if he helped him or not. All he needed was for him to function.

  “Well, this Lothinal magic seemed to affect the lava lake here, and if he gets away with it it’s going to destroy all of Ishantil.”

  Not only that, but it was going to destroy Zarinth.

  An eruption and a full-on explosion would tear through the mountain and level Zarinth in its wake. As he neared one of the last of the steppingstones out of the lava lake, Ty looked down at the lava, noting how it solidified and how there was nothing left remaining of the general flow of it.

  Not only was he destroying the lava lake, but he had truly destroyed the Flame.

  There was a change in energy.

  He had no idea what the change meant, but it was bad.

  Dorian jumped and reached dry land.

  Ty followed. Gayal and Albion were there, with Bingham standing in the trees, as if he didn’t want to get too close.

  “Have you heard of the Lothinal magic?” Ty asked.

  Albion shook his head, his gaze lingering on the lava lake. “I didn’t realize they had their own power.”

  “Apparently what they were intending was to use the power of Lothinal magic to create something worse. They wanted to destroy the power of the Flame. They wanted to destroy Ishantil.”

  “They succeeded,” Albion whispered.

  “I don’t know. What happened to the other Order of the Flame?” He looked over at Gayal, and found her shaking her head.

  “Those who didn’t escape have been destroyed, but…”

  Ty knew the answer without even having her say it. Even though they had stopped them, the others had already accomplished their goal.

  The lava lake was in danger.

  The power of the Flame was destroyed.

  He looked at Dorian. He seemed to be getting a little bit now that he was back on land, and with enough time Ty hoped that he could recover. Ty needed to know how many of Dorian’s dragons remained, though he wondered if he would share that.

  Could they have taken all of his dragons?

  He had known about four dragons, but maybe he had a way to separate them, to prevent Roson from destroying them completely.

  Ishantil rumbled again.

  “I need to get to the temple. The priests might be able to do something,” Albion said.

  Ty looked over to his brother and couldn’t believe his comment. The priests?

  They might have helped with Ishantil, but that had only mattered when they were helping the dragon. This was something else. Did Albion actually think that the priests could stop this now?

  Maybe he did. This was his brother, after all, and he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that his brother believed that much in the power of the priesthood, or perhaps it was in the power of the Flame.

  “I need to find Roson James and undo this.”

  Albion watched him. “The items I collected were powerful, Ty. There is no undoing this. There might be something in the temple within Zarinth that might mitigate some of the disaster that’s to come, but…” He shook his head. “There’s no undoing this.”

  “I will see what I can do with you,” Bingham said.

  “You’re going with him?”

  Bingham glanced from Ty to Gayal and finally to Dorian. “It seems that you have found your place, Tydornen, and I know mine.”

  “Bingham—”

  He shook his head. “Don’t think I’m disappointed,” he said. “Far from it. You have needed to find a place for yourself, a place where you could belong, and this… Well, this makes sense.”

  “How does it make sense?”

  “Your
mother would be proud of you, Tydornen.”

  He cocked his head at Bingham. “What do you know of what my mother wanted for me?”

  “When you finish with whatever you’re doing, we can talk.”

  “Bingham?”

  “You’ve been looking for answers, but unfortunately there are no easy ones,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Bingham glanced over at Albion before looking at Ty. “I don’t want to do this now.”

  “You may not have another chance,” Ty said.

  “I told you that I was tasked with watching over you. It’s because your mother knew that her time was nearing an end. She wanted me to keep an eye on you, to guide you as much as I could, and to keep you safe.” Bingham breathed out, but there was a pained look in his eyes that surprised Ty. “Your father went after her, hoping for a way to save her.”

  “Save her from what?” Ty asked.

  “From her fate.”

  “And what fate is that?”

  Ishantil trembled again, and he knew that he didn’t have time to have this conversation.

  As much as he wanted to, as much as he thought that he needed to, perhaps he wouldn’t get the answers that he wanted.

  “We are going to talk again soon,” he said, looking over to Bingham.

  “We may talk, but I don’t know if I have any more answers for you,” he said.

  “We’re still going to talk.”

  He watched as they descended the mountainside, disappearing quickly. He turned his attention to Gayal and Dorian. “Do either of you know what’s going on here?”

  “Not at all,” Gayal said. She looked at Dorian. “Do you have any control left?”

  “I have only the wind,” Dorian whispered.

  “The others—”

  “They were able to call off the power of the others. They used it to power whatever this device of Lothinal magic is.”

  “He said he intended to destroy the Flame. He blames the Flame on some destruction of his people.”

  “The stories of those who summoned Lothinal magic call out a desire for darkness. It was all to suffer. A dark art, as I said. I have known the Flame for a long time,” Dorian said. “Perhaps not as well as some, but I have known the power of the Flame and the dragons, and I have known that there is a way to understand power that others do not.”

  “And now the dragons are gone. They sacrificed them.”

  He’d been used, but that didn’t change the fact that he was partly responsible for what had taken place, and for the power that had summoned away the dragons.

  He looked over at the lava lake and could see that it was growing increasingly thick, dense, and that there was some part of it that had shifted.

  “Whatever they did was to target Ishantil, and we have to find a way to reawaken it. We have to save the dragon.”

  “There may not be a way,” Gayal said.

  They both stared at the lava, at the thickening, darkening flow.

  Maybe there wouldn’t be anything that they could do.

  The volcano continued to tremble. This time, he felt something up the slope of the mountain.

  “You need to bring us to the peak of Ishantil,” he said.

  “How is that going to help us?”

  “Because at the peak of Ishantil, we can look down and see what’s taking place. It’s high enough that it’s above the tree line, and we can have an unobstructed view. We could hike it, but it would take us another few hours, and I don’t think we have that time.” He looked over at Gayal. “You need to use your dragon magic to carry us there.”

  She nodded. “I will do what I can.”

  The shadows swirled around, connecting them and then wrapping around them. There was a shifting, and then a sense of movement.

  It wasn’t as long-lasting as it had been before. It was something he wished that he could understand and wished he could replicate. Only, he didn’t know if the smoke dragon had the same way of traveling.

  Then it stopped. The shadow spread around them.

  They were atop Ishantil.

  Ty distinctly remembered the very first time that he had come to the top of Ishantil. He’d come with his mother, as he often did when traveling through the jungle around Ishantil. His mother was far more comfortable in the trees and on the slopes of the volcano than his father had been, though as Ty had gotten older his father had improved, as if he had decided that he wouldn’t be beholden to the power of Ishantil scaring him away. His mother had looked out over the vista stretching before him now, and Ty remembered what his mother had said then.

  From here, one can almost feel the Flame.

  Ty had never felt the Flame, not the way that his mother had, but he couldn’t deny that standing atop the volcano left him with an awareness of power that he didn’t have anywhere else.

  Perhaps if he went to other places within the kingdom that were tied close to the Flame like the steam swamp, or the fire fields, he might find a way to feel that power elsewhere, but there was an energy here.

  The peak of the mountain was barren rock. At one point, this had been the lava lake, but it had evolved over time, the mountain erupting, changing the contours of Ishantil, leaving it altered.

  He looked back and could see the rapidly changing lava lake, the cooling of the lava flow, the darkening of it, and strangely he felt something deep within him.

  From here, he stared, looking down upon all of the kingdom, feeling the power and the energy that existed there. From here, he could see all of it.

  But not well.

  He closed his eyes, feeling for the power that was out there, but beyond that, he was unable to detect anything more.

  That energy was there.

  What had he detected, though?

  “Do you see anything?” he asked Gayal, who stood next to him. Gayal shook her head, frowning as she stood in place, her shadow cloak swirling for a moment, before radiating away from her. When it retreated, taking its place back around her again, she shook her head once more.

  He could feel something, though he wasn’t able to identify what he felt, only that there was something that still filled him with an understanding of power. Maybe it was merely the change to Ishantil, the lava lake, and the steady trembling that persisted. He couldn’t tell if that was all it was. If it was, then he feared that it would persist, and when it lingered that it would change everything.

  Perhaps it was already over.

  Strange that Ty would feel bothered by that. There should’ve been no reason for him to feel that way, especially as the Flame was not anything that he truly had believed in. His brother had, though.

  Albion had always believed in the power of the Flame, and having seen what he had and recognizing the power of the Flame through the dragons, Ty thought that maybe he understood. It might not have been the same power that he wanted to understand and use, but there was something there. There was definitely a magic that came from the Flame, and definitely something that existed.

  Perhaps Dorian and Gayal were right.

  The Flame connected them.

  It was the power of life. It was the power that the dragons called upon, and it was the power the Dragon Touched were able to access. More than that, it was the power the Tecal could draw upon. That was the Flame.

  All this time, Ty had denied the energy and magic of the Flame, and he had tried to deny that there was anything to it, anything real, but right now, how could he? Standing here above the kingdom, feeling Ishantil trembling beneath him, recognizing that there was energy scattered all throughout the kingdom, Ty knew that Ishantil and the Flame were out there, and the power was real.

  He needed to help it.

  “Something is off,” Dorian said.

  Ty looked over at the older man. He seemed to have aged a decade in the time since the dragons had been stripped from him. How much had that hurt him? His eyes were drawn, and he looked out to the north, beyond the kingdom.

  Ty had never spent
much time looking out into that distance, never having any real reason to, wondering why he might be doing so now, but as he looked he realized what he stared at. A dark haze hung over everything in the distance.

  He frowned. “Is that smoke? From fire?”

  “It’s not fire,” Gayal said. Her dragon energy swirled out and away from her as if she were using the dragon to probe, sending tendrils of energy out before withdrawing again. They quested, searching for a moment before pulling back, drawing toward them and then easing back and away.

  Ty watched, marveling at her connection and control of the dragon, unable to fathom what it might be like to have such a bond. Within his own connection to the smoke dragon, there was nothing like that, nothing that would connect him quite as well as what it seemed like she had, nothing that would bind him the same way in which she seemed bound to her dragon.

  Still, he watched, feeling the way that she called upon that power. He began to wonder if he might be able to use a similar sort of power, and yet did not think that he could. Wind whipped around them, and he realized that Dorian used his remaining dragon connection as well.

  “What do you detect?”

  He didn’t get an immediate response, though as he stared out into the darkness, he realized something. The haze might be out there, hovering above the ground, but there was something else about it.

  It was moving.

  The longer he watched, the more certain he became.

  He glanced behind, looking at the cooling lava lake and the fading power that was within it, before returning his attention to the dark energy in the north. He could feel something within it, almost as if it were trying to call upon the smoke dragon, threatening it.

  “Gayal?” he asked.

  She just shook her head. “The dragon is afraid,” he said.

  “I can feel that,” Ty said.

  Gayal glanced at him. “The dragon won’t go any further,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t know. The dragon fears what’s out there, and fears the power that exists, and fears that something might happen to it.”

  Ty stared into the distance and the darkness and tried to grasp just what he saw, but even as he looked out into the distance he couldn’t tell anything.

  He could feel it, though.