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

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I can feel something,” he said softly.

  “What is it you feel?” Gayal asked, joining him on the platform.

  “Power.” He shook his head. “Maybe it’s nothing more than their magic. I don’t even know anymore, only that I can detect something there, some power that seems like it is trying to draw us.” He closed his eyes. As he did, he could feel the energy of the smoke dragon, that faint and faded sort of power that drifted up from deep within him. The more that he focused on it, the easier it was to feel that power coming to him, only he couldn’t do anything with it. Even as he felt it, he could tell the dragon feared the danger of what was coming. He could tell that the dragon knew there was something taking place, and he could tell he refused to do anything more.

  And why should he?

  He recognized the danger to it.

  And it was a danger.

  Ty closed his eyes and tried to call upon the power within him, trying to focus on the smoke and the heat and the energy, but even when he did there wasn’t anything that he could identify. Just the faint power that persisted.

  It came from the dragon, but it also came from Ishantil.

  He frowned to himself.

  Why should he feel that?

  The mountain trembled again. As it did, he recognized a surge of energy.

  He’d been feeling that for a while, feeling the surging of power, the energy that threatened to come up from someplace deep within the lava lake, but each time that the trembling happened, it retreated once again.

  He recognized it, though. As he felt the background energy, he recognized that there was something more to it, and he recognized that was what he needed to understand. He turned to the cooling lava and focused on the smoke dragon.

  “The other dragon is hurt,” he said softly.

  “What was that?” Gayal asked.

  Ty glanced over at her before shaking his head. “I’m not sure, but we have to help the dragon. We have to save it. We need to do something.”

  Only he had no idea what that something was going to be.

  He had to focus on the other dragon. The smoke dragon.

  The rest of the people with them might not be able to help.

  There was the wind, a dragon that could carry the word of their need, and there were the shadows, the dragons meant to conceal the Tecal’s presence. There was the fog or the cold, he realized as he looked over to see Icarn talking still with Dorian. Lightning. Several others, dragons that he didn’t fully understand, but power that was coming up around them.

  The more that he saw, the more that he began to understand.

  All of the dragons had their own purpose. All of the dragons were used in their own way, and all of the dragons were different. Much like the smoke dragon was different. The smoke dragon would call upon his energy in order to offer protection.

  And he needed that now.

  “I need you to protect that dragon,” he whispered.

  As he focused on that, he could feel the energy of the smoke dragon buried within him, some energy that was calling out to him, a power that he knew he needed to find.

  Then it faded.

  “Please,” he said softly.

  When he did, he thought about the dragon that he’d seen before, the power he had felt from the dragon, and he thought about the trembling that he now detected beneath him.

  There came a trembling again. This time, the trembling came from within him. It happened gradually, but the power and energy began to build, the dragon responding to him, seeming to understand what he asked of it.

  Gradually the smoke began to swirl out.

  And then it headed down.

  “Ty!”

  He glanced over at Gayal and shook his head. “This is what we need to do.”

  “The dragon can’t withstand that,” she said.

  Ty focused on the burning in his belly.

  “The dragon is smoke. Smoke is fire. Fire is the Flame.”

  As the smoke dragon drifted down, he could feel something.

  It began to surround the other distant energy. There was heat, and that heat filled him, letting him flow with it, and it mixed with something more.

  A burst of energy. Of pain.

  It was drawing upon him.

  He remembered too late what Gayal had told him. The dragons were connected to the bonded. They couldn’t exist on their own, and they needed something from their bonded.

  Which was why this hurt him as much as it did.

  It was weakening him.

  Ty looked up at Gayal. “I might’ve made a mistake.”

  Then he collapsed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ty felt himself getting lifted. Gayal was there, holding onto him, and somehow the shadow dragon started to probe into him. Something else changed too. Wind started to blow around him, and it flowed into him as well.

  The air rumbled, but it wasn’t from deep within Ishantil like it had been before. This was from the sky, from the storm cloud, from the lightning. That energy began to encompass him as well. All of it did. A burst of cold surged around him, filling him. There was heat. A cloud of fog. A swirl of colors. Something that struck him as grass. Dragon after dragon began to latch onto him, each of them giving him a connection to their power, and within it he felt something more.

  Ty could pull on that power.

  He was connected in some way, but it was not any sort of connection that he really understood. They were unique dragons, dragons that had not been seen in the world before, because they had been hidden, bonded in a way that others wouldn’t understand. They were dragons that were bound to Tecal.

  And Ty could use that. Ty was one of the Tecal.

  And he would use that in order to protect this dragon. It would be how he would serve the kingdom. It was a choice that he would make on his own.

  That seemed like it was important. All this time he had been trying to come up with an understanding of what he wanted, time spent first in Zarinth searching for his parents, and then helping his brother, but this was something that he wanted to do, that he felt that he had to do.

  And he felt like he might be the only one who could do it.

  Not as a thief, but as somebody connected to one of the dragons.

  He got to his feet.

  “What are they doing?”

  Gayal looked over at him. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “You’re not controlling it?”

  “Not at all.”

  The other Tecal had formed a ring around the lava lake, much like the false Order of the Flame had, only this time there were a dozen Tecal, all of them standing with the power of the dragons arcing toward Ty. Gayal held onto him, cradling him, and he wrapped the darkness around him.

  As if to conceal him.

  Hiding him from what the Lothinal magic had done to the lava lake.

  The smoke dragon drew upon his power. He drew upon the connection they had formed, and he drew upon everything within him. With each passing moment, Ty could feel that power beginning to flow, drawing up through him, and it became more than enough.

  The ground started to rumble.

  There came a strange surging, a connection that formed from the smoke dragon, but it also came from something else.

  Heat and energy flared within him.

  He could feel it.

  “You can come back out,” he whispered.

  Gayal watched him, but he didn’t pay any attention to her.

  This was all about the other dragon. This was all about coming back to the smoke dragon, of calling the lava dragon out, of calling to the Flame.

  Pressure began to build in the air.

  Ty had no idea what the pressure was, but it seemed to him that it came from someplace foreign, someplace unpleasant, and it left his skin feeling slick and oily.

  Lothinal magic.

  He had felt that before.

  Ty needed to summon the power quickly. He needed to finish
with what he was doing, and he needed to free the lava dragon so that they could face whatever was happening.

  The lava dragon needed to emerge.

  The Flame had to fly.

  Ty called upon that power. He let it fill him.

  It did so slowly, drifting up from someplace buried deep beneath him, from a place where the false Order of the Flame had attempted to seal the lava dragon, only they had not done so completely.

  The dragon had been there. And he went after it.

  Not only him, but the smoke dragon, and all the other dragons, and working together they began to pull on power, summoning it up from some place deep within the ground, from the energy that formed the dragon.

  Heat began to build.

  Ty could feel the ground shifting, rumbling.

  “We need to get moving,” Gayal said.

  Ty pulled away from her.

  He stood on the platform in the center of the lava lake, unmoving. “I don’t think I can,” he said.

  “Ty, if we don’t get out of here—”

  Ty looked over at her, shaking his head. “You can go. I cannot.”

  “Even if it means you won’t survive this?”

  Ty looked down. The lava lake had started to crack. The solidified surface now had lines working through it, and he knew lava threatened to bubble up from deep within.

  “Even if that’s what it means,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  Ty looked around at the others. “If the dragon doesn’t come, the Tecal are going to need to defeat Lothinal. You’re going to have to take the fight. And I’m not one who can do that.”

  “Ty—”

  “Gayal. Just let me do this.”

  She watched him for a moment, and then she jumped, the shadow guiding her, helping escort her from platform to platform until she reached the shore.

  Ty turned his attention back to the cracking within the lava lake, and he focused on the energy around him. It came from each of the dragons, but it came from him as well, mingling and mixing and sending power down into the lava lake.

  It was a power he had felt before, though the familiarity and recognition came to him slowly.

  He had known Ishantil his whole life. Ishantil was the volcano, but Ishantil was fire. Ishantil was the Flame. Ishantil was now the dragon.

  He could feel that energy within him, and he turned his attention to it, feeling the energy and the power and the heat, and as he focused on it he tried to use what he could feel, and he tried to connect it to the smoke dragon, trying to wrap that energy around so that they could find something more.

  And that energy was there.

  All he had to do was call upon it.

  It flowed through him. The dragon was there, but the dragon was something more. Ty pushed even more power out. And he latched onto Ishantil.

  The ground continued to rumble. The cracks in the solidified lava started to shake. And then something shifted. Heat built.

  It was a heat unlike anything that he had ever felt before.

  He recognized that heat and could feel it swirling around him, the heat and energy building up all around, becoming something more than he had felt before. Now the once-solidified lava began to flow as it melted.

  As it melted, he used its energy, and he started to separate it out.

  The heat started to flow around him in a way that it hadn’t before, and it melted the stone other than the platforms. There was nothing but the emptiness around him.

  He focused on it, and he could feel the energy, but he could feel something else.

  The lava shattered.

  Something began to appear.

  It was massive.

  It was even larger than it had been before, and as he looked it over, watching the dragon as it pulled itself out of the lava, he wanted to back away, though he couldn’t. Now that he was standing on the platform, the lava began to bubble over the previous platforms, making it so that he couldn’t even move closer to them. He remained frozen in place, stuck where he stood, but he noticed something.

  The smoke began to swirl back toward him, joining him once again as if it were trying to protect him. He could feel it swirling around him, and it began to create a buffer around him. No longer was there heat coming off the dragon as there had been. There was still some heat, some energy, but not like it had been at first.

  Ty stared at the dragon.

  All around him, he could feel the energy of the others as they started to pull away, backing away from the lava dragon, as if afraid of it.

  Ty understood that fear. It was one that he shared, at least in part, though he knew he didn’t need to. The dragon had no intention of harming him. He could feel that from within him.

  More than that, he felt a strange stirring.

  Heat built up within him.

  It was almost as if the dragon were connecting to him.

  Strangely, the dragon continued looking at him, watching him, and there came the persistent power that flowed out from it, streaking toward him, and yet he could not do anything else.

  The dragon pulled itself all the way out of the fire, out of the lava, and then began to circle. At first slowly, hovering above the surface of the lava lake, and then gaining altitude.

  As the dragon began to ascend, Ty could feel power flowing between them, a connection between them, and he could feel that power as it surged.

  The lava dragon.

  He looked around at the others.

  Gayal stood on the shore, watching him.

  Ty couldn’t reach her. He was stuck in the middle, the lava blocking him from going anywhere else, but he didn’t feel afraid.

  Perhaps he should have.

  It was dangerous. The heat coming off the dragon was immense, incredible, but strangely it was not separated from him. He could feel it as if there was some link between him and the dragon.

  The lava dragon roared.

  It was a sound unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  It cried out, circling above the mountain, power and flame and heat and energy all pouring from the dragon as it circled, and then fire erupted.

  The flames persisted for a long time, and he stared, feeling the heat and energy as it burned up in the sky, recognizing that heat as it streaked away from the dragon, until it finally stopped.

  It circled, flying higher and higher, crying out with a loud roar one more time, and then it began to descend. As the dragon descended, it headed straight toward the lava lake—and toward Ty.

  He couldn’t move.

  Fear coursed through him and the panic that raced inside him left him trembling.

  He had to turn away, but within that thought he realized that he could not.

  He realized the smoke dragon tried to protect him, though he didn’t know if it would make a difference.

  Ty tried to move, but the dragon disappeared into the lava lake.

  A surge of heat washed through him, and then it was gone.

  Once more, Ty tried to move, trying to figure out where to go, what he had felt, but he could not do anything. There was a whisper of wind, a fluttering of power, and then he heard Dorian, as clear as if he were standing right next to him.

  “The dragon did it.”

  Ty tried to turn, but he couldn’t go anywhere. There was only the central platform now within the lava lake, not any of the others that had been here before.

  He tried to call upon the smoke dragon, but it didn’t respond.

  He’d used too much strength, and he was tired.

  A dark shadow streaked toward him and lifted him, sliding him back to shore. Gayal was there.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Ty could scarcely move. His mouth was dry. Everything within him ached, but he felt as if something important had just happened. He didn’t know what it was, only that he could feel it. He was tied to the dragons. He was certain of that.

  The shadows wrapped around him again and there came a sudden surge
of movement, and it carried them rapidly to the peak of Ishantil.

  Once there, he looked down and saw the movement of the lava lake, a swirling of power that suggested to him that they had succeeded. They had restored the lava lake and undone whatever the false Order of the Flame had done to it. Now they had only to find Roson James and they could be done with all of this.

  Slowly, he turned.

  It wasn’t just him and Gayal on the peak of Ishantil. Dorian was there, and one by one, the other Tecal joined them, and they all looked to the north.

  The ground was scorched, a deep rent in it where the dragon fire had ripped through, and it left a flowing streak of lava, creating a pathway of power that stretched out and away. It began to roll down the mountainside. The mountain itself trembled a few times before falling still.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “The dragon,” Gayal said. “It attacked the Lothinal magic.”

  Dorian turned to him, frowning at him. “Did you know it would do that?”

  Ty shook his head. “I had no idea a dragon could even do that.”

  He started laughing. “That is a powerful creature. If somebody could connect to it—”

  “No,” Gayal said.

  Dorian cocked his head the side. “No?”

  “That dragon should not be connected to anyone.”

  “I suppose not. If the dragon represents the Flame…” He turned, looking out and away. “This isn’t over.”

  “No,” Gayal said.

  “If they were willing to come to the kingdom and attack us—”

  “Not just us. The Flame.”

  Dorian stared into the distance. “We have to take the fight to them. They cannot continue this.”

  “We’re going to need to better understand the Lothinal magic,” Gayal said.

  “Yes. Once we do, then we will bring the fight to them.”

  It wasn’t over. Ty knew that deep within his soul. Roson James would not be satisfied to lose again. James had thought that he had somehow stopped them, that he had managed to overpower them, and the fact that he had failed—again—would be more than he could stomach.

  At least they had thwarted his plan, such as it was. He had no idea if James had another plan he intended to carry out, or if there was anything they would be able to do to stop him.