“I’ve never seen dragonskin like that,” Jason said.
It was better to call attention to it rather than have Angus be the one to do so.
“It was my father’s,” Angus said.
“It must have taken all the heat coming out of you,” Jason said.
Angus took a deep breath.
“What happened?” Jason asked.
“We were exploring the stream. We came across a cave. Reltash claimed there was some animal in the cave, and so we were trying to explore it.”
“And you slipped in?”
Angus nodded. “There wasn’t much to work with.”
Jason got to his feet. He stretched a hand out, offering it to Angus, and Angus took it. He looked up the slope, his gaze following the contour of the mountain. From here, it would take the better part of half a day to hike back to the village. The slide had only taken him a moment, but it had carried him quite a ways from the village itself.
With the coming storm, returning would be even more difficult.
“Thanks,” Angus said.
“We still have to get back.”
Angus grunted and started up the slope.
Jason looked around. There wasn’t anything here, and even in the time that he’d grabbed Angus from the water, there was no evidence of his passing. The wind and the coming snow had already begun to drift, shifting so that it covered any sign of him. He supposed he should be thankful for that, but with snow being what it was, it was difficult to trudge through it. There were ways to glide above the snow using the dragon pearl, but even if he had the knowledge of how to do that, he wasn’t sure that attempting it around Angus was safe. Angus would notice what was happening, and that wasn’t the kind of thing Jason wanted. He already had enough attention in the village and didn’t need anyone else paying any mind to him.
“What were you doing out here?” Angus asked.
“Hunting,” he said.
“Hunting?” Angus glanced over, and his eyes widened.
Jason glanced down before cursing to himself. His jacket was unbuttoned, and he had barely felt any of the cold.
He should have thought of that before reviving Angus.
“Don’t you usually hunt with a bow?”
He checked his shoulder where he normally carried the bow, and realized he must have thrown it down when he had gone running after Angus.
What was he thinking?
Now if anyone would go into the cave, they would find the bow, maybe his quiver, and they would know he’d been there. Then again, reaching the bow would be difficult. Getting inside the cave was challenging enough, and he would have to go back for it.
“I must’ve dropped it when I went running after you.”
Angus’s face clouded. “I’m sorry about that.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Angus trudged through the snow for a few more steps before nodding slowly. “I’m alive.”
They worked their way up the side of the mountain, and Jason hurriedly buttoned his coat, staying behind Angus as he did. The wind swirled around them, picking up force, the cold biting. Jason searched for any sign of movement around them, anything that would suggest Reltash had come downstream to look for Angus, but there was no sign of him. By the time they reached the upper section of the stream, he doubted they would find him.
Which meant Reltash had abandoned Angus.
And why not? The stream moved rapidly enough, and if they weren’t able to race down the side of the mountain, the likelihood of being able to save Angus was slim. Their people were pragmatic, and Reltash would’ve understood there would’ve been nothing he could do to rescue Angus. Still, it troubled Jason that he would have abandoned his friend.
“I think we were near here,” Angus said, breaking the silence between them. Neither of them had spoken much in the time that they’d climbed.
Jason didn’t mind. He preferred the silence and tried to ignore the way Angus would glance over at him, avoiding the question that lingered in his gaze, the way he would let it hover on the buttons of his coat, a question remaining unasked on his lips.
“You said there was a cave?”
“Somewhere, but I don’t think anyone can reach it. Unless they want to swim like I did.” He smiled, and Jason smiled back.
“Who else were you with?”
“Other than Reltash and Hames?”
At least that explained who the other person was. In a village the size of theirs, everyone knew everyone, and yet, Jason didn’t know Hames well enough.
“I can’t believe they’d leave me,” Angus said.
“They probably tried to get you, but you know how fast the stream’s current is.”
He leaned down, grabbing a chunk of ice and throwing it into the stream. The current carried it quickly, though it melted as it flowed downstream.
“Still,” Angus said.
Angus jumped across the stream. There was a part of Jason that worried he would slip, but he cleared it with a single leap. Jason would have to try more carefully. Jumping the stream could be dangerous, and normally he would wander around it, staying on the edge of the stream itself, not wanting to risk it, but that meant a considerable walk out of their way.
“Can you make the jump?”
Jason nodded, staring at the water.
He’d done it before. When he had gone after Angus, he’d needed to jump the water, and so he knew he could do it, but it didn’t make it any easier now. When he’d run after Angus, he’d been in a panic, worried about someone else surviving. Now he was less unsettled, and it wasn’t quite as easy.
When he’d jumped it earlier today, he had been heading downslope. This was heading upslope. The difference was enough that it would make it difficult, and yet Jason was determined to prove himself.
He took a few steps back, and jumped.
He knew he wasn’t going to clear the distance.
Angus grabbed his arm, pulling him. His boot caught the water, splashing, but he was thrown into the snow.
He rolled over onto his back, looking up at the sky. Snowflakes swirled around overhead. The wind twisted them, sending some of them spiraling, while others came down with more force, tearing at his exposed skin.
“Thanks,” he said when Angus loomed over him.
Angus stared and Jason sat up, looking around. From here, they still had a few hours to go. He was getting tired and hungry, and yet, he also didn’t want to get stranded in the night. It was bad enough to get caught out in the dark like this, to risk the nature of the storm, but it was even worse to do so with someone else whom he didn’t know all that well.
Angus helped him to his feet and they started up the slope.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find your bow,” he said after they’d gone a little while.
“That’s not your fault.”
“Maybe the wind will reveal it for you.”
If Jason didn’t know where he’d dropped his bow, he would have been far more concerned. The wind would cover anything, and with the nature of the snow in this part of the world, it would disappear, getting lost to time. Eventually, the snow might swirl and uncover the weapon, though anticipating that and being present when it happened would be unlikely.
“I’m sure I can—”
A strange sound caught his attention and he tipped his head to the side, listening. It had come from his left, toward the cave. It was slightly downslope, and it sounded something like a strangled cry.
Or it could be nothing more than the wind. Jason didn’t know if he was hearing anything correctly or not, and if it was just the wind, then anything else could be his imagination adding to it, twisting it so that it made it seem as if he were hearing something else.
Angus didn’t seem to notice.
“Why don’t you keep going. I’m going to see if I can’t find my bow.”
“You’re going to what?”
“I know where I might’ve left it.”
“Dreshen, you’re not
going to find anything like this at night.”
“I have to look before the storm rolls through.”
“At least let me come with you.”
“There’s no point in both of us getting caught out in the night.”
Angus regarded him and finally shrugged. “Good luck.”
He headed upslope, pulling his cloak around him.
Were the situation any different, Jason might find it strange that Angus would abandon him within the storm, and yet he didn’t owe him anything, and more than that, Jason wasn’t risking himself by staying out in the storm.
As he stood there, the strange sound came again.
He didn’t know if he was imagining it, but against the night and with the wind being what it was, it was difficult to let it go.
He hurried back down the slope, veering off toward where he thought the cave entrance would be. If nothing else, he wanted to grab his bow and quiver so that when he did return to the village, he would have some way of explaining his absence. It took much less time to make his way downslope. Every so often, he would drop and slide before catching himself and getting back to his feet, scrambling along the snow. He found that he didn’t plunge nearly as deeply as he had before, though he wasn’t really trying to float along the surface of the snow.
Reaching the cave, he hesitated. The strange cry had not come again, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been something. He frowned before heading into the cave. He did so carefully, pushing his back along the wall, gliding his feet on the lip of ground. He slid forward, and then once inside, he staggered free before collapsing on the ground.
His quiver and bow were where he’d left them.
As he grabbed them, he realized there was something else in the cave with him.
Jason reached for the dragon pearl, pushing a hint of power into it, just enough for the pearl to start glowing and illuminate everything within the cave. The light caught the crystal surface of the cave, reflecting it like a lantern, and he came face-to-face with the dragon.
Jason dropped the pearl, and the light in the cave blinked out.
2
He scrambled for the pearl, sweeping his hands along the floor of the cave, trying to find where it had fallen. As he did, the only thing that filled his mind was the memory of the dragon’s icy blue eyes and the way the creature had looked at him. It had been weeks since he’d seen the dragon, and in that time, the creature seemed considerably larger than before. Large enough that he worried it would soon outgrow the cave. Then where would it go?
It surprised Jason that he would feel any sense of sadness at the idea of losing the dragon, but there was some part of him that wanted to keep the dragon around, if only so he could better understand the creature and whether he was at all connected to it.
He found the dragon pearl and raised it in his hand, pushing power through it. It began to glow, reflecting light off the top of the cave once again. When it did, it seemed almost as if the dragon were watching him, amusement flashing in the creature’s eyes.
This time, Jason held on to the pearl, clutching it tightly, watching the dragon. The creature sat back on its hind legs, resting on its wings. It was easily three times his size, large enough that it filled the inside of the cave, and yet he’d seen it glide through the stream, folding itself up to become small enough to fit within that space.
He swallowed. This close to the dragon, some ancient part of his brain felt fear of facing it and yet, he knew the dragon didn’t want to harm him. If it did, it would’ve done so other times. There had been ample opportunities for the dragon to have killed him or to have simply allowed him to die, yet it had not.
“You’re getting big,” he said.
It felt like the wrong thing to open with, but he wasn’t exactly sure what he should say to the dragon. He hadn’t seen it in long enough that he didn’t know.
The dragon rumbled, folding its wings in, wrapping them around its body. “And you remain the same size.”
Its voice was a strange scream, like ice shearing.
“I think I’m mostly done growing,” Jason said.
“And I am not.”
The dragon backed away from him.
“Was that your cry I heard?”
He flicked his gaze toward the entrance to the cave, but there was no sign of any other movement. After he’d reached the cave, he hadn’t heard anything else, though it was possible he wouldn’t.
“I was hunting,” the dragon said.
“Hunting what?”
“Hunting.”
“Where do you go to hunt?”
“Down.”
The hunting would be better down the slope. The trees were thicker, and there were other animals farther down the mountain. Rabbits and squirrels were more plentiful, and even the deer that occasionally wandered this high up the mountainside would be easier to find.
“What did you catch?”
“Food,” the dragon said.
Jason smiled to himself. “How do you make sure no one sees you?”
“No one hunts at night but me.”
It was an easy way for the dragon to be safe. People in his village stayed inside during the night, or at least within the village itself. Heading out of the village at night and risking one of the usual storms was typically a death sentence.
“Where were you earlier today?”
“Hunting,” the dragon said.
“You were hunting during the day then?”
The dragon rumbled. “I was hungry.”
He looked around the cave. If the dragon was leaving that often—and he knew it had to be—it would explain why there was little evidence of the creature. It would be gone, and much like anything else that happened outside with the snow and the swirling wind, any remains it might leave would be carried away.
“I could help you,” Jason said.
“Help me hunt? You’re so little.”
“Little, but I have my uses.”
He watched the dragon, thinking of the way Henry had ridden the other dragon. If he could do the same with the ice dragon, how much more would he be able to find?
It was possible he’d be able to travel to places he wouldn’t otherwise be able to approach.
It was likely to raise questions if he were to do so.
“Where would you go?” the dragon asked.
“Elsewhere,” Jason said.
The dragon rumbled. “That is not an answer.”
It lowered itself to the ground, curling up, resting its back along the wall. Within the glowing light of the dragon pearl, it seemed as if the dragon itself glistened, catching that reflected light, and it sighed softly. Strangely, there was a warmth within the cave that seemed to radiate off the dragon, though as far as Jason had been able to tell, the dragon was tied to snow and ice, not to heat, as the other dragons were.
“I thought I wanted to be home,” Jason said. “I returned to my village because of my mother and my sister.” It wasn’t the only reason he’d returned, and after uncovering what happened to his father, he had thought he might be able to have answers and bring some sense of peace to his mother, but how could he when she still suffered? She wasn’t able to move past what had happened to his father and wasn’t able to heal herself, let alone anyone else. She’d been caught up in her own trauma and had not been able to overcome it.
The people of their village had been through enough over the years that most people were far heartier than his mother. That troubled Jason, though he never said anything to her. It was better for him to hunt, to bring the food she needed, and then wander out of the village.
“I don’t know who my hatch mates are.”
“Hatch mates?”
The dragon breathed out. It seemed as if steam and ice showered out of his nostrils with it. “There are others like me. I can feel them.”
Jason scooted forward, wanting to get closer to the dragon. “I could help with that, too.”
“How?”
“If you can feel them, we can search for them.” It wasn’t altogether surprising that Therin would have hidden other dragon eggs, but from what Jason understood, it was rare enough for dragons to lay an egg, so how could there be so many hatch mates?
The dragon likely wouldn’t know. The other dragons—if they even survived—would be elsewhere. Jason doubted they would be on the same mountain, and without knowing where Therin had traveled, he wouldn’t be able to determine where Therin had left the other eggs.
“I feel they survived, but nothing more than that,” the dragon said.
“Can we follow what you can feel?”
Any move he would make would carry him out of the village, and he should know better than to do that, and yet, he thought it would be beneficial to go with the dragon, to search for these other dragons. If he could find them before the Dragon Souls, if they were aware they existed, he wanted to do that.
The dragon rumbled, and Jason didn’t know whether that indicated that he could follow or not. He continued watching the dragon, but the dragon seemed to settle into a slumber.
For his part, Jason was tired. He’d been up for most of the day, and having chased after Angus, rescuing him, and then heading back up the mountain, he was exhausted. What would it hurt to rest?
He might be able to make it back to the village tonight, but doing so meant he would brave the wind and the storm. He might not struggle nearly as much as he once had against either of those, but he didn’t want to face the weather if he didn’t have to.
It was better to stay here.
And if the dragon wanted to be quiet, then there was no point in trying to force the creature to talk.
He settled down, resting his head on his arm, and he drifted. Dreams came to him, though they were little more than stirrings of memories. In them, he caught images, those of his father, of times in the village, but other times as well. In one image, he was riding on a dragon, and rather than the warmth of the dragon Henry traveled with, it was cold, almost painfully so. When he stirred awake, he looked over, expecting to find himself sitting on the ice dragon, but the dragon was gone.
He sat up and looked toward the entrance of the cave.
There was no sign of the dragon. It was almost as if he’d had a dream, and in that dream, he had experienced the dragon. Light drifted in the entrance of the cave. How long had he slept? It didn’t feel as if it was restive, and yet he thought that he been out for quite some time.
Iron Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 2) Page 2