They were close. Maybe thirty or forty paces away. It was close enough that Fes could hear soft murmuring from the Damhur. Their voices were quiet, but power touched the air as they spoke.
More than anything, his attention was fixed on the dragon pearls.
They were glowing, pulsating, and there was something almost hypnotic in that.
The power coming from the pearls was different than what he had ever detected from fire mages, and yet, at the same time, it was the same. It had to be the same, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to detect it. It washed over him, even though Elorayne held her shield.
“Not much longer,” she said softly, her teeth clenched.
They were barely twenty paces away now. Twenty paces until they reached the nearest dragon pearl. Twenty paces until he could make an attempt to disrupt their spell. Twenty paces until he risked dealing with their magic flowing over him.
Fes didn’t know if he would be able to withstand it.
“Fes?” Nick asked.
He glanced over before realizing that he was watching Elorayne. She staggered, and Fes grabbed her, propping her up.
“Hold it a little longer,” he said.
“I…”
Nick shoved his sword at Fes, who grabbed it while Nick lifted Elorayne and held her up. He was strong, and whether that was from who he had been before Fes had met him or whether it was because of their Deshazl connections, he hoisted Elorayne without much difficulty and simply held her up.
“I have her,” he said.
Fes breathed out, squeezing the hilt of his sword. He didn’t dare do anything more than squeeze it. If it moved, he ran the risk of slicing through the spell Elorayne held. Now that he held two swords, there was a strange tingling within him, almost a vibration. Holding on to these blades felt right, though he didn’t know why it should. They weren’t his any more than they were Jaken’s. The daggers… those were his.
Ten more paces.
The heat began to be unbearable. It took Fes a moment to realize that what he felt was heat seeping through her spell. She had prevented them from feeling it before, protecting them, and now that they neared, even the power of her spell wasn’t enough to withstand the magic the Damhur were throwing off.
“Fezarn…”
Elorayne whispered his name, and something within him responded.
It seemed almost like a Calling, almost as if she sent a summons through him, demanding that he help.
This time, there was no sense of a need to please. It was merely a task, and it was the same task that he had planned.
A few more steps.
Nick grunted, and Fes realized that the effort of holding Elorayne was more than her weight. It was the effort required of pushing through the spell.
“I can take her,” Fes said.
Nick looked over and shook his head. “No. I have her. Just be ready.”
How had he ever worried about Nick? He was strong, and the fact that he was able and willing to fight, to push back, to carry Elorayne, told Fes everything that he needed to know about how strong he was.
Five paces. That was all they had. They approached from the middle, no one standing too close to the dragon pearl, and he wondered for a moment why, before deciding that it likely had to do with the heat that was radiating off the pearl. It was immense.
“Fes?”
Nick staggered.
Fes glanced over and saw a look of determination on Nick’s face.
As Nick staggered, he lunged.
Elorayne’s spell crumbled even more. Maybe it was the jarring of the spell, or maybe it was simply fatigue finally overwhelming her, but as Nick lunged forward, the spell collapsed.
Fes leaped with it, and then the spell failed.
Heat washed over him unlike anything he had ever experienced. It felt as if he were standing on the sun, as if he were living inside of a volcano, and his skin felt as if it wanted to burn free from his body.
Did he scream?
He couldn’t tell. If he did, it was involuntary, but if he did, there was a good reason for it. Pain scorched him, and although he tried to ignore it, it became almost too much.
Fezarn.
It was almost as if he heard Elorayne’s voice in the back of his head.
He had worried about a Calling washing over him, and perhaps there was an attempt at a Calling, or maybe it was the heat of their magical spell preventing him from doing anything.
The murmur of voices became a shout, and Fes knew that he had been detected.
He looked over, wishing for the ability to take one more step, but the pain in his body seemed to rebel.
Fezarn.
The voice was clear, and with it came a sense of urgency.
Fes felt his mind begin to clear and he shook away the sense that tried to press in on him. He managed to ignore it, and with it, he ignored the pain exploding through him, the heat surging as the spell washed over him.
He blinked.
The others were approaching.
He could feel them as much as he could see them. They pushed upon his consciousness, pushing in with their spell, trying to force him back, and he brought up his swords, only now realizing that they had dropped, the tip of the blades dipping to the ground.
Fes cried out, crossing the dragonglass blades in front of him. When he did, the blades began to glow, reminding him of when they had been in the forest. That magic started to wash around him, and he took another step.
He was close. The dragon pearl was within reach.
All he had to do was jump. Lunge much like Nick had lunged. Fes could do that, couldn’t he? He could do it, and he needed to, much the same way as Nick had felt he needed to lunge.
His body didn’t want to respond, and this time, Fes was aware that it was the effect of the Calling.
Fezarn.
It was Elorayne in his head, Fes was certain of it. Did she know what she had done? Or was this some trick? Had she performed a spell on him, trying to lock the Damhur out of his mind?
He was nearly there. All he had to do was take another step.
The others didn’t seem limited in the same way Fes was, and they came close. He would have to fight, he knew it, but would he be able to?
The power within the dragon pearl swelled again.
As it did, he realized there was something more within that spell than what he had first believed. In that moment, Fes understood. He had thought the spell had been designed to destroy the fire mage temple. And perhaps that was part of it, but there was something else within it. It was a building energy, the kind of heat that would destroy. The kind of heat that the dragons once had known.
In that moment, Fes remembered his visions of the dragons. He could see them in his mind. It was almost as if the dragons that he had seen wanted him to feel their presence, to know that they were still there, however deeply buried within him. And if he was Deshazl as he believed, that part of him that was connected to the dragons was still there.
He had only to reach it.
But how?
Another step.
Everything seemed frozen. This time, it wasn’t only Fes who was frozen. The others were frozen, not taking another step toward him, and he felt a moment where he thought that he would be victorious, and that he could finally reach the dragon pearl.
The power continued to swell from it.
It wasn’t that they were trying to push in on the temple. Whatever they were doing was focused, but the focus was different than what he had known. Heat built, enough heat to boil his flesh. Enough heat to destroy everyone in the city.
Enough heat to raise a dragon.
Fes lunged, the twin dragonglass swords slashing, but he was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The spell exploded.
It washed over Fes. There were no protections on him, nothing like what Elorayne had been able to do before, and he felt the full brunt of it as it released. With a flash, the dragon pearl went cold, all color drainin
g from it, and he knew that he had been wrong all along. The spell was meant for something else—something much more.
The blast hit him, striking him in the chest and throwing him back. He shuddered and felt as if his body were baking from the inside. There was no way that he could survive it. There was too much power in that magic, and he would perish here.
And if what he suddenly feared were right, the Damhur would have exactly what they wanted.
Fezarn.
He lifted his head. Could it be that Elorayne still Called to him? Maybe the Call wasn’t to him at all. Maybe the Calling was to something else.
As he climbed to his knees, he saw the line of others staring toward the fire mage temple. All eyes were lifted toward the sky.
Fes turned slowly, trepidation and fear rising within him, and saw the top of the temple glowing softly.
He scrambled forward to Elorayne. She was unconscious, but Nick had somehow managed to survive.
“Can you get up?” Fes asked.
Nick blinked slowly. “What happened?”
“Their spell is done,” Fes said.
“What spell? I thought you said they wanted to destroy the temple.”
Fes nodded. “I thought they did, but their desire to destroy the temple was not exactly what I thought.”
He sheathed his sword and handed the other to Nick, who took it in shaky arms, and looked down at Elorayne. “Is she…”
Fes shook his head. “I don’t think so. We need to get back to the city.”
“Why back to the city?”
Fes looked up at the Damhur. They had ignored him for now, the blast having thrown them twenty paces or more down the side of the hill leading toward the city. It was lucky that it had, for if he had been any closer, they would have simply been able to fall upon him and attack.
“Can you walk?”
Nick nodded.
Fes grabbed Elorayne and scooped her up, starting toward the city. His legs were wobbly and weak, and each time he tried to take another step, he felt as if his body didn’t want to respond.
“Fes?” Nick asked.
Fes looked over and realized what had caught his attention. There was a steady movement toward the city from the Damhur. They had seemed to leave the dragon pearls behind. The power within them had been spent, leaving them cold.
Other items with them glowed.
“What is that?” Nick asked.
Fes shook his head. “I have no idea.”
They ran, Fes ignoring the fatigue and weakness in his legs as he raced toward the city. He should probably have gone a different way, but he could think of nothing else than getting to the city and reaching the safety of the fire mages, even though he knew there would be little that they could do to protect him. How could they protect him when they had been overpowered by the Damhur?
When they neared the city, he saw Dragon Guards watching him. Standing at the forefront of the Dragon Guard was Jaken.
Fes groaned. “I don’t know what we’ll deal with here,” he said.
He slowed as they neared the Dragon Guard. There would be no outrunning them. There would be no fighting them, even if he wanted to—and he didn’t, especially as the city would need their assistance. Fes wasn’t about to remove any others who might be able to protect the city from these others.
“You made a mistake in returning,” Jaken said. Fes was unsurprised to see that he had somehow procured another dragonglass sword. He rested his hand on the hilt of the blade casually, a threat of attack. At this point, Fes doubted that he could do anything if Jaken decided to attack him. But he wasn’t willing to be taken into custody. Doing so would only place him into the kind of danger that he wanted to avoid.
“I’m not a part of what just happened,” Fes said.
“It looks as if you are. You come racing off the hillside after their explosion washes over the city?”
“I was trying to stop it,” Fes said.
He hazarded a glance over his shoulder. The others were approaching slowly. There was something intentional about the way they did, and Fes glanced back toward the center of the city and the top of the temple. It still glowed, the light shining brightly, now steadily rising. If it continued on the current path, it would become incredibly bright, almost brighter than the sun.
If it was what he thought it was, then the Damhur could not get a hold of it.
“You attacked this temple once, and then you return, bringing a band of others like you into the city. And now you want me to believe that you aren’t responsible for what just happened?”
Elorayne began to stir. She blinked her eyes open, looking up at Fes.
“You live,” Elorayne said.
Fes nodded. “I was too slow.”
“Too slow for what?”
“They didn’t attempt to destroy your temple.”
He felt the Dragon Guard pressing close and shifted Elorayne, putting her in front of him. She moved and nodded to him. When he set her down, she clasped her hands in front of her. He imagined it took a great strength of will to remain standing. If she felt anything like he imagined that she would, it was amazing that she managed to stand. Everything that she had been through would tax her strength, stealing energy from her.
“Leave him, Captain.”
Jaken studied Fes for a moment. “This man has—”
“This man has my permission to be here,” Elorayne said.
Jaken watched Fes for a moment, giving him a dark gaze that promised that more would come from this. He wouldn’t leave Fes, and Fes didn’t blame him.
Jaken made a motion, and the Dragon Guard began to spread out, taking positions around the edge of the city.
“There’s an egg in the temple, isn’t there?”
She frowned at him. “There is nothing.”
“There is. I wondered what it was that I felt when I was here before. There was power that radiated from the temple that was nothing like anything I’d ever experienced before. Is it a dragon egg?”
Elorayne shook her head. “There have been no eggs for a long time. We have searched, but we have found nothing.”
Fes pointed to the top of the tower. “Then what is that?”
Her eyes widened. “Dragon’s breath,” she breathed out.
Fes glanced over at Nick. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she used the same term as the description of the forest. “What is it?”
“There was a relic found, but we didn’t know what it was,” she said.
“What kind of relic?” Fes asked.
They backed into the city, taking steps deeper into it and away from the Damhur. There was a part of Fes that worried that they were retreating when they should be advancing. A part of him feared that they needed to be ready to attack, but there was only so much that he would be able to do. He was exhausted, his body weakened, and he no longer knew if he would be able to withstand another attack.
It might be that he had used every ounce of energy and that he wouldn’t be able to do anything more.
“What was the relic?”
“A dragon heart,” she said.
She turned away from him and marched through the streets, guiding him off.
Fes frowned after her. “The dragon heart?”
She nodded. “We came across a dragon heart, and it was the first one that has been discovered in centuries.”
“I know. I was there. I was the one who brought the dragon heart out.”
She paused and looked over at him. “You brought the dragon heart from the plains?”
He nodded.
“How is it that I wasn’t aware of that before now?”
“How is it that you managed to acquire the dragon heart?” When Fes had last left it, it had been with the rebellion. Now that he worried about the rebellion, he wasn’t sure that they should have acquired it, but it still didn’t make sense that the fire mages would have managed to get it. Unless… Could the rebellion have sold it?
“How did you get it?” he ask
ed again.
“We have our ways of finding relics that many think are lost.”
“This was more than a relic that most thought were lost,” Fes said. “This was a relic that I placed with others.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes. The rebellion.”
“You knew?”
“I didn’t know that it was you, but we knew that the rebellion had acquired the dragon heart. Azithan had a replica. It was quite a good replica, but there are certain features that are distinct when it comes to true dragon relics. We identified that the one he believed was real was not, and searched, for everything he’d gone through had been to claim that dragon relic.”
He had worried about Azithan discovering his deception, and he had, but despite that, Fes had attempted to keep the dragon heart from the empire, allowing the rebellion to have it.
“How?”
“Do you think that you are the only one who has managed to penetrate the rebellion?”
“I didn’t manage to penetrate the rebellion. I was hired for a task, nothing more. I don’t work for the rebellion.”
Elorayne watched him for a moment before turning away. Fes was forced to hurry to keep up. Despite her recent injury and the effort that she had exerted, she managed to move quickly and hurried away from him.
“What is the dragon heart?” Fes asked.
Elorayne shook her head. “We don’t know what exactly a dragon heart is, only that it’s tied to power.”
His gaze turned to the top of the temple again, watching it glow steadily. It was brighter than it had been, now almost too bright to look at. He couldn’t see the Damhur when he looked back, but he imagined that they continued to stalk toward the city, and as they did, what would they do?
He had little doubt about their intention. If they had managed to release a dragon, then they would do the same as they once had. They would try to control the dragon, and a war that had been over for a thousand years would be renewed.
Fes trembled.
“What if they wanted you to get that dragon heart?”
Dragon Rise Page 24