I hadn’t seen her before, and I came most days.
“Not often. Occasionally I come because I feel compelled to look upon the dragons.” She looked at me and grinned. “I don’t suppose you could understand that. I’ve always felt drawn to them.”
“Really?”
She shook her head. “Not like someone who has the potential to use the dragon power. This is different, though I feel as if it is no less potent. It’s more about a desire to see them. I feel as if we know so little about the dragons.”
There had been a time when I had felt similar to her, a time when I was still living out on the plains, still farming, and perhaps even still dreaming of what it might be like for me to gain an understanding of the dragons.
“I’m Ashan Feranth, by the way.”
She watched me for a moment. It seemed as if a debate waged behind her eyes, as if she didn’t know whether she wanted to tell me who she was. “Natalie,” she said softly.
“I could bring you closer to the dragon if you like.”
She shook her head. “I’m not so sure I should.” She squeezed the bars of the cage for a moment before turning. “I should be going. It was nice to meet you, Ashan.”
She started to move away, and I debated going after her, racing to ask her more questions, to offer to walk with her, to do anything to spend even another moment with her, but I caught sight of Brandel and one of the other students walking toward her.
Rather than dealing with a confrontation, I turned away. I tapped on the bar of the dragon pen, leaning toward the dragon, and whispered, “I really wish I understood how to use your power.”
I made my way along the enormous caged enclosure, dragging my hand over the bars and looking through them as I went, studying the dragons. There was the smaller green scaled one, but there were others here too. Many of them were quite a bit larger, though not nearly as large as the massive black dragon that I had chased through the forest.
I paused for a moment, staring at a dragon with a mixture of red and gold scales curled up on the ground in front of the cage. He looked up, as if knowing I was there, and breathed out heavily.
I tried to open myself to the dragon, but my awareness of the power and my ability to utilize it were separate.
I reached the end of the dragon pen and started to turn back toward the Academy when a figure sitting on a small bench near the end of the pen caught my attention. He was older with gray hair and a thin beard, and slender. He was dressed in the jacket and pants that marked him as an instructor at the Academy, though I had never seen him there before. Strangely, I could feel energy radiating from him, as if he were connecting to the dragons in a way that permitted me to feel just what he was doing.
I found myself drawn to him, watching.
Voices behind me caught my attention, from Brandel and whomever he had with him—I hadn’t stared long enough to know—and I shuffled forward, wanting to be away from them. Hopefully by creeping toward this instructor, I wouldn’t draw nearly as much attention. Brandel could be a pain in the ass, but he didn’t like to antagonize the instructors. It was how he ensured he kept his position within the Academy, such as it was.
I inched closer to the man. As I did, I could still feel the power coming from him. It stretched between him and one of the dragons inside of the dragon pen, though not the nearest, a pale blue dragon that looked as if he rested. This came from a small brown dragon that seemed to sit up on his legs, staring out through the bars, watching.
I could feel the energy coming off of the dragons too. I could feel the heat and the power, and I could feel his connection to them. All of it left me marveling at just how powerful he must be.
He glanced over to me, and I blinked, tempted to pull away, but decided to stay there. If he were an instructor at the Academy, then he would most likely welcome a student.
“Can I help you?” the man snapped.
So much for welcoming.
“I was just noticing your connection to the dragon. Why the brown one?” I asked.
The man sat up slightly and looked at me, frowning for a moment. “The strength of the dragon is not determined by the size of the dragon. Considering your age, you should know that.”
I shrugged. “I think I’ve heard that in some of my classes.” The instructions were not always clear. I always felt as if I were trying to catch up, always a step behind some of the others, and though it didn’t necessarily matter to me, I didn’t remember hearing that the size of the dragon didn’t determine the strength.
“What’s your name?” the man demanded.
I forced a smile. “Ashan Feranth.”
“I’m not familiar with that name. Where are you from?”
There it was. He would likely treat me the same way as everybody else I’d encountered, using my homeland as some sort of measure to determine that I didn’t deserve to be here working with the dragons, understanding their power—as if that mattered. Manuel seemed to think that it didn’t, along with the other instructors who had welcomed me. Maybe he was going to be more like Brandel and some of the other students.
“I’m from a place to the west. A city called Berestal.”
He watched me for a moment, and there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He knew Berestal. “How did you end up here?”
I shrugged, glancing over to the dragons. In the distance, I noticed Brandel and Kane, the other student who had been with them, lingering near the bars of the dragon pen. Either they were trying to listen or they were waiting for me. Possibly both.
“There was a testing near my home.”
I figured that was the best answer, at least given the current circumstances. He didn’t need to know anything more than that.
“Ah. You’re the one Manuel brought to the city.”
I blinked for a moment before nodding. “I am.”
“He said you had potential. That you were raw—though most are raw when they first come to us. Potential is only a part of what matters. Skill matters more than strength.”
First Donathar, and now this man?
How many people had Manuel spoken to about me?
“Thanks, I guess?”
The man grunted. “I meant no slight by it. Everyone needs to learn somehow. The key is putting in the time and the effort to ensure that you gain the connection to the dragons that you should have.” He watched me for a moment, and there was a heat in his eyes. “You said you recognized the connection I shared with the brown dragon.”
I turned, looking into the dragon pen. Nearby, I could practically feel Brandel smirking at me. I ignored it, holding onto the iron bars that held some of the heat within the air—some of it coming from the bright sun shining down, the rest coming from the dragons themselves. I could feel that energy radiating toward me, through me.
Were I not so nervous, I would try to open myself up to the dragons, to see if I might find a way of holding onto that power. Instead, I allowed myself to feel that energy, testing whether there was some aspect of it that would permit me to feel the connection to the dragon.
“I could feel the connection trailing off of you,” I said.
“Interesting,” the man said, getting to his feet and making his way toward the dragon pen. He was a little taller than me, and he moved with a strange sort of liquid grace. Heat radiated from him, and I suspected that came from his connection to the dragons. “What else can you tell me?”
I shook my head. “Probably not much. I can just feel the connection that you had with the dragon. I don’t know what you’re doing with it, if anything. Just that the power that connected you to the dragon is there.”
“What can you feel now?”
Energy shifted from him, no longer radiating in the way that it had before. Now I could feel the way it shimmered, coming from him and through the small, pale blue dragon. It wasn’t nearly as potent as the connection to the brown dragon. Heat filled the man, and as I looked over, watching him, I noticed a faint trailing of flames a
long the dragon pen, streaming from one hand, working up the bars, and connecting to his other hand.
“Other than the way that you’re holding on to the power?”
The man nodded. “Yes. Other than that. What else can you detect?”
“You shifted connection to the dragon here,” I said, motioning to the pale blue dragon. I could feel that connection, that energy, but more than that, I could see the way the dragon seemed to lean forward, perched to hold on to the power. It was difficult for me to know whether or not the dragon minded the way he connected to it.
It was the first time I’d even considered that, though. Most of the time, the dragons didn’t give off any sense they minded what had been done to them. For the most part, the dragons permitted those with the connection to use that power. In this case, I recognized that the dragon gave that energy willingly, almost freely.
“I did,” he said. The flames trailed off of his fingers, working around the bars, then drifted up and back down before fading and disappearing. Energy shifted again, this time surging now from the red-and-yellow-scaled dragon. It was a different surge of energy. This one seemed to forge a hint of power, though it was a different sort of power than what the other had.
I turned my attention to that dragon. He had stirred, getting up slightly, resting his forelegs on the ground as he shifted so that he could pay more attention to the man now connecting to him.
I found myself marveling at the control. I had known that dragon mages, especially those who were incredibly skilled, had a connection to multiple dragons, and could use that power in ways that others could not, but seeing how quickly and easily he shifted his touch from one to another, switching between the different dragons as if it were nothing, left me amazed.
“You detected that as well,” the man said.
I nodded again. “I did. I can feel the way you’re pulling on power.”
He released the connection to the dragons. I felt it when he did, the sudden disappearance of the connection to any of the dragons. He still held some heat within him, and the flames he wrapped around the bars of the dragon pen stretched up and then back down, maintaining a connection for another moment before it faded into nothingness. Heat wasted from him, as if he still held on to some of that buried dragon power—unless he had some magic of his own.
“You will meet me here tomorrow morning. At first light.”
“I have classes in the morning,” I said.
The man shook his head. “No. I will make sure your instructors know I have requested your presence.”
“And who are you?” I asked.
The man watched me for a moment before smiling tightly. “Why, I am Thomas Elaron.”
He started to move away, and it took a moment for his name to sink in.
Thomas Elaron was the king’s mage.
The chief dragon mage.
The dragon mage who had come to Berestal for the selection.
Of course he would know what happened there.
And here I’d been questioning him.
I looked behind me, but Brandel and Kane were gone.
Maybe that was for the best. I didn’t want to deal with either of them right now.
Instead, I turned my attention back to the dragon pens, staring through the bars, focusing on the dragons as I tried to open myself up to that power. There wasn’t much that I could feel. Only a hint of residual energy.
I lingered there for a while, wondering what Thomas would want from me, and whether it was going to be dangerous. At the same time, a hint of excitement filled me. If I were going to learn about how to connect to the dragons, I had to believe Thomas would be able to teach me. Probably better than anyone else I had worked with.
6
Thomas was already outside of the dragon pen when I arrived. I glanced up to the sky. It still wasn’t first light, so I didn’t think I was late, but I worried I might have been further behind than I should have been. Given that he’d offered to work with me, perhaps I should have gotten here plenty early so I wasn’t the one holding up my training.
I found Thomas dressed similarly to how he had been dressed the day before, though it seemed as if he had a metal pin worked into his jacket that wasn’t there. In the darkness, it was difficult for me to tell.
I could feel energy radiating from him, power that drifted off of him, swirling through the bars of the dragon pen toward the nearest of the dragons. I couldn’t tell which dragon he connected to, though there was something about the connection that suggested to me that it was the same brown dragon he had been connecting to when I had come here the day before.
“You came,” Thomas said without looking over.
I nodded, standing a step behind him, watching. I couldn’t necessarily see anything, though there was a pull of power I could feel. It seemed to pull upon something deep within his belly, a way of drawing that power from the dragon to him. I couldn’t tell if he was using that power in any way, or if it was simply meant to fill him.
My father had described the heat as a burning sensation within his belly, and it was something that I felt around the dragons as well, but anything more than that was still beyond my ability—so far, at least.
“You told me to meet you at first light,” I said.
He grunted, and he released his power as he turned to me. “Very good. I wasn’t sure if you would awaken in time to join me.”
“I get up early. I’m accustomed to it.”
“Are you?”
“Years spent on a farm with roosters crowing at first light has trained me to get up early.”
He smiled. “I suppose it would. You were a farmer, then? I thought you said you came from Berestal.”
I nodded. “My family owns a farm outside of Berestal. We farm on the plains.”
I had no idea whether he would even know what that meant, but he watched me for a moment, nodding slowly. “As far as I know, there are few farms out on the plains. It can be difficult with the storms.”
I regarded him for a moment. “It can be. Sometimes the storms are powerful, especially during the wet season.” Even the storms during the dry season could be incredible. We had encountered powerful storms before I had come this way, storms that were unlike most that we had out on the plains.
“Who is tending to your farm in your absence? Your father?”
“My father is gone,” I said softly.
“I’m sorry. What happened?”
I took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “An accident years ago left him addled. He began to worsen and ventured off during a particularly bad storm.”
“You lost your father because of the storms?”
I nodded. “I did. The rains forced him off of the Kings Road, and . . .” I shrugged. I didn’t really know what else happened, only that by the time I had found him, he was mostly gone. Possibly entirely gone.
“Do you have anyone else in your family caring for your farm?”
“They sold the farm now that I came to the city.”
Thomas regarded me for a moment. “And if you don’t succeed?”
The question was almost too harsh, though I honestly appreciated his bluntness. It was better than so many others within the Academy. “If I fail, then I return to my home. I find a new way.”
“That doesn’t worry you?”
“Why worry about things I can’t control?”
Thomas turned away, focusing on the dragons in the distance. “Hmm.”
He fell silent, and I could still feel the heat coming off of him, the connection that he shared with the dragon. “Do you know the plains and Berestal?”
It was a foolish question. Thomas had been in Berestal for the testing. What I should be asking about was Elaine, though since coming to the capital, no one had wanted to speak of it more than what I’d shared with Manuel.
“I am familiar with most parts of the kingdom,” he said. “I’m tasked with ensuring its safety.”
“Because you’re the king’s mag
e?”
Thomas turned to me, watching me for a moment. “I wasn’t sure if you recognized me.”
“I didn’t recognize you,” I admitted. “I recognized your name and only because . . .”
He chuckled. A hint of light started to emerge in the distance as dawn began to break. “You can say it.”
“Because Elaine mentioned it.”
“So you were with her.”
“Not with her,” I said, more quickly than I needed to.
Thomas watched me for another moment. “I suppose you haven’t been in the capital long enough to recognize me by sight.”
“Are you here very often?”
“Not as often as the king would like. Those requests draw me away, though in order for the kingdom to remain safe, there are things that pull me away from the capital. And things that draw me back.”
“Like the Vard.”
He turned and looked at me. “Like the Vard,” he said. “I suppose out on the plains you have some experience with the Vard. Not many do. I am surprised they were so willing to attack a caravan from the capital. Now we have other issues at hand.”
The way he said it suggested it was something other than the Vard.
He didn’t say it, but given my experience in the forest, and seeing Manuel, I worried it was the Djarn. With Joran making his way to the capital, I worried he’d find danger. His father believed he had a connection to the Djarn. So few in the kingdom did, and what was known about them—at least, widely known—wasn’t enough to make anyone feel completely safe in their forest.
“Manuel said Elaine and Barton were after a dragon—that they have been after dragons.” I was careful not to call them Vard. I still didn’t know if they were.
“It would make their assault upon the kingdom more effective,” he said. “If the Vard had dragons to terrorize our outlying territories, it would be easier for them. That is part of the reason the king has his hunters patrolling, trying to ensure any dragons are brought to the kingdom for training.”
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 5