“Doubtful. They might know the dragon is here, but the creatures don’t have any way of speaking from a distance.”
I frowned. I had felt something that called me down here.
And the aching irritation.
Could they be connected?
What if the dragons did have some way of speaking to each other from a distance?
There was a time when I would’ve said the idea was laughable, but the more I’d been around the dragons, the more I began to question just what was possible with them. I had no idea what they were capable of, only that the dragons I’d been around suggested a connection and power far more than anything I would’ve believed possible. Especially after recognizing the way the golden-scaled dragon had connected to the green dragon. There was something about that connection, some aspect of that power, that told me that there was more to it.
“This is just about completed. That’s why I brought you here.”
“You brought me here because I warned you we were running out of time. With Thomas out of the city, now is our chance. We don’t know how much longer we will have.”
I frowned, leaning close to the dragon, wondering just what it was that he meant.
“We don’t have much time. We managed to hold only five of them. The others have escaped.”
“Because they helped.”
They?
Who else was involved?
Could this be the Djarn or was this the Vard?
Or better yet, was it somebody else working with Elaine?
They started toward me, and I focused on the dragon, feeling for the energy within him, wondering if there was something to what they intended that I needed to be prepared for, but I couldn’t tell. The only thing I could be certain of was that they were doing something to the dragon. The more I thought about it—the more I could feel energy and power—the more I was aware of just what it was that they were doing. It involved some connection to the dragon’s power.
That was the strange surge I had detected before. I could feel the way it flowed through the dragon, bursting from the creature, and though it held on to some aspect of the green dragon and the other dragon that I had found in the forest, there was something else about it.
It had a hiccup.
It was the same feeling I’d felt before. That couldn’t be a coincidence—and the fact that I felt something similar a second time left me troubled.
I had no idea what it meant or whether there was something that happened to the dragon, only that I could feel the energy. There was some aspect to it that I recognized, some burst of power that left me feeling like there was a danger to the dragon.
That power built, and once again, there came another surge of energy blasting outward, as if the dragon were trying to either fight what happened or possibly to communicate with others. I couldn’t tell which.
Surprisingly, it seemed like the green dragon was trying to coordinate with this dragon, using some connection to it to overpower the strange pause in the flow of energy. The green dragon poured power out, and as it did, some of it came through me. A communication.
“It has very nearly finished storing everything we need. Once this is done, we will have enough to capture the others.”
“I don’t need ‘very nearly.’ We need this done. We need the weapons.”
“We will have the weapons. You have to have patience.”
“We don’t have time for patience.”
Whatever was happening would take place soon.
The dragon thrashed. I was close enough that I felt the kicking of the dragon, the source of energy coming off of him—I needed to try to move out of the way, but I couldn’t. The dragon’s body slammed into me, sending me crashing backward. I stumbled, biting back a shout, wanting to keep from saying anything that might reveal my presence. The dragon backed into me then turned toward the other two, heat radiating from him as he attempted to breathe out heat and fire.
Nothing happened.
I’d been around the dragons enough over the last few months that I recognized when they were agitated. Some of that came from my ability to open myself to them, recognizing the heat coming from them, but some of it came simply from a familiarity with dragons in general, along with a familiarity with livestock, having grown up on a farm. What happened now was dangerous to this dragon. I could feel his agitation, his rage, and the way he struggled, and I wanted nothing more than to react. Power flowed from the dragon and he attempted to cry out, wanting to roar, but something seemed to constrict him.
I touched the dragon’s side, holding on to the connection that flowed between us, and tried to use that connection to soothe the dragon. I wasn’t sure if it worked, only that I could feel something coming from him, something that told me the dragon seemed to understand. I pulled upon the power within the dragon, sending it flowing through in a large cycle of energy that circled between me and the other two dragons, and I noticed that the strange pause of power seemed to ease. It was faint, but when it held, power began to surge with even more strength.
I had no idea what I was doing, only that it was now the second time I had connected to another dragon, cycling that power. I also had no idea whether it made a difference or not, only that I could feel something change. The dragon in front of me seemed to swell, as if power began to fill it.
“The others are in similar places, all difficult to find.”
“How much longer will he be out of the city?”
“Hopefully long enough so that we can finish this.”
“There is no ‘hopefully.’” The voices were both so familiar, but I couldn’t move around the dragon to make anything out.
Whatever was happening would take place soon.
Maybe that was why I felt the dragon pull so strongly today.
It had to have been here before though.
“We will succeed.”
“The other attempt did not.”
Somebody grunted. “The other attempt was foolish. Poorly planned. This, on the other hand, is exactly what I told you it would be. I didn’t spend all my time there to come back empty-handed.”
“If it succeeds, you will be given this territory to oversee.”
The voices became more distant, and I moved, trying to slip around so that I could see where they were going and what they had done, but I still couldn’t make anything out. Just the steady murmuring of their voices. The door closed, sealing me inside with the dragon.
They were talking about draining the dragon.
I moved to the dragon’s side and realized there were chains around his ankles. The dragon moved, following me.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I want to help.”
The dragon leaned toward me, and I could feel the heat radiating off of him, but I didn’t know if he understood what I was saying.
There was something here that allowed them to store the power of the dragon.
And they were going to use that to attack the kingdom.
More than that—whoever had come here obviously was comfortable with the Academy. They didn’t fear coming through the halls.
If power flowed from the dragons, and if somehow these two were siphoning that power off, doing something to harm the dragon, then maybe I could interrupt it.
I closed my eyes, focusing on where I had felt that strange pause in the flow.
I stayed with the energy, feeling the way that it flowed out from me, the connection it formed, and recognized there was some aspect of it I could hold. I could feel that steady simmering energy—how it was going out from me, working away and then back to the dragon. The strange hiccup was there.
Where though?
I followed that power, letting the energy flow through me. It was somewhere in the room. Drawing upon the green dragon, I sent more power flowing through me, and suppressed it down deep, using it to create a band of light that I spread out from me, sweeping around the room in a coil to illuminate everything.
I
could feel something.
I headed toward it.
It looked like a small metallic vase with strange writing along its sides. I had seen something like that before, but where? The same writing had been on the item Joran had carried with him.
Could they have been involved?
No. I couldn’t believe Joran and his father would have been involved in this.
But who was?
Still, I had less and less doubt that the Djarn were involved now. I had no idea why. They had never made an attempt on the kingdom before, at least as far as I knew. If only Joran and his father were still here, I would have someone to ask.
Maybe Donathar.
I took a deep breath, frowning.
Could he be involved?
He had spent time with the Djarn.
And there was something else. Something that struck me as uncomfortably familiar.
I had seen a vase like this before.
Could Jerith actually be involved?
20
The vase seemed to hold on to the dragon energy, sequestering it away from the dragon, and diminishing it in some manner. It had to be destroyed. If I could do that, I believed that I could release the dragon's power, and if so, then perhaps I could help this dragon.
Every attempt I made to destroy the vase failed. I tried everything that I could think of, attempting something new each time—lashings of power, looping dragon energy around it and constricting it, attempting weave after weave in order to find some way to overwhelm it—but I continued to fail.
Regardless of what I did, the metallic vase held more power. It was almost overwhelming—the way it flowed into the metal was more than I could hold—and though I attempted to withdraw power, I found I couldn’t stop the metallic vase from holding on to it. Which meant that I wouldn’t be able to prevent it from continuing to drain the dragon.
That was what it did. As I crouched down next to the dragon, next to the metallic vase, I could feel the flow. It reminded me of the way I felt the connection to the dragons as it flowed through me, but rather than some part of me holding on to that energy, the way I did when I looped power through me, this power flowed through the metallic vase and trickled back to the dragon, but the majority of it remained contained.
That trickle meant the dragon was drained of any additional power. Over time, more and more of it would stay within the vase, and less would remain within the dragon. I attempted to call even more power into me, away from the vase, but it didn’t work; during my attempt, I could feel the power gradually replenish within the vase.
This truly did store the power of the dragons.
I sat in front of the vase, holding on to it, feeling the power flow through it. Here I had thought to defend the Djarn, but there was no doubt in my mind this was Djarn writing. I had seen it before. It just didn’t fit with what I knew of them. Why would the Djarn want to steal dragon power?
The answer came to me easily. The Djarn wanted to defend themselves against the might of the kingdom.
More than that, why wouldn’t they take this risk to avoid the same fate as the Vard?
I didn’t think I could leave the vase here. I didn’t want to run the risk of Jerith and whoever was with him finding it again. That had to have been Jerith whose voice I’d recognized, though it didn’t sound quite right.
It wasn’t only the vase I needed to move.
The dragon.
They’d gone missing. Thomas had gone after them.
Now I’d found one.
Given that it was early in the morning, I wondered if the easiest solution would be to bring the dragon straight through the Academy. I could explain that I’d found it, or felt it, or I could somehow alert somebody else so that they would know the dragon was here. I certainly couldn’t leave the dragon alone. Not if Jerith intended to drain him completely.
There might be another way though. He had said there were tunnels.
“I’m going to try to free you from these shackles,” I said. “Do you understand?”
The dragon looked at me, and for a moment, I felt a surge of power, large enough to make me believe that the dragon did understand what I was saying. I focused on the first shackle around one of the dragon’s legs, and pushed power out through me, probing into the shackle. I tried to create a looping of flame around it, using what I could to circle it.
I continued holding on to that energy and looping, surging outward.
I could feel something.
There was power within the shackle.
For a moment, I worried the shackle would hold, but as I continued circling power, cycling it around the band surrounding the dragon’s leg, I could feel the power expanding.
I pulled.
It snapped.
I breathed out a sigh of relief.
Now to move on to the next one.
The dragon started to roar and I held my hand up, cycling a hint of power through the other two dragons and into this one, hoping to calm him, if nothing else.
“You have to be relaxed,” I said. “We can’t let them know you’re free.”
The dragon roared again.
“I need to get you out of here, but you have to leave the way that you came in. Do you remember how you came in?”
The dragon leaned forward, pressing his long snout up against my hand, and heat radiated from it. At first, I worried that he might react, but gradually he began to settle.
“There you go,” I said. It felt as if I were trying to tame a horse or a stubborn bull; the effect was the same, either way. I had to be calm and confident, and I had to be careful not to make any rapid or sudden movements.
I grabbed the metal vase containing the dragon power. It was large enough that I had to hold on to it, as I wasn’t able to store it in a pocket, but I had to think that once I got out of here, I would figure out some way of destroying it.
I headed to the door, pausing a moment, and worried that it might be locked and that I would have to fight my way out, but it came open easily.
Relief swept through me as it did.
I pulled on the door, leaning on it for a moment, and then waited. I didn’t see anything along the hallway, but I continued to wait anyway. I wasn’t sure whether Jerith and whomever he had been with would return, but I wanted to be ready in case they did.
The dragon moved across the floor, heading toward me.
I turned toward him, raising my hand and trying to connect to him to push him back, but he had none of it.
“You have to wait until it’s safe to come through here,” I said. “Just give me a chance to ensure that it is,” I added.
The dragon looked at me, snorting briefly, and then waited.
I breathed out a moment, thankful that he hadn’t pushed any farther toward me. I didn’t want to have to deal with a wild and violent dragon. There was no other movement.
I turned to the dragon and again asked, “Do you know how you came through here?” There came a soft rumbling. “If you do, then can you find your way out?”
The dragon rumbled again. Hopefully that meant yes, though it was difficult for me to know anything for certain when it came to him.
“I am going to let you through here, but we need to work together to find a way out,” I said to him.
He seemed larger than he had been before. The energy that flowed through him, flowing from me to the other dragons, seemed to be even more potent now. Power rolled through the other two dragons, providing something extra for this one.
The dragon pushed past, into the hall, and started toward the stairs leading up into the main part of the Academy. I chased after him, then raced in front.
“Wait,” I said, glancing over my shoulder as I realized just how loud my voice was. I pushed power out from me, and tried to keep the dragon from moving, though I didn’t know if it would even make a difference.
Surprisingly, it worked.
The dragon waited, no longer trying to push past me.
“We need to go t
he way you came in.”
The dragon surged with a hint of power—his way of responding to me. I had no idea what it meant. He sniffed, and the strange surge of energy continued. Within it came something more, something unexpected. The flow started to cycle, yet I detected a directionality to it this time. Almost as if the dragon tried to guide himself a certain way.
The dragon turned and slithered along the hallway. He didn’t move the way I would’ve expected, but within the confines of the hall, he had to keep his wings folded into his body and he wobbled as he walked, almost slamming off of the walls. Were he any larger, he wouldn’t have been able to come through here.
The hall narrowed around us, and the ground seemed even damper than it had before. We were sloping gradually down, and surprisingly, the doors along the hall ended, leaving nothing in their place.
We had reached a dead end.
The dragon pressed up against the wall. It was the end of the tunnel, which meant that it was as far as we could go. He rumbled softly, a faint roar, and looked over to me as if I were going to have some answer.
“Here?” I asked the dragon. “This is where you came in?”
The dragon roared again.
“There isn’t anything here but a wall. I don’t know how to get you out of here.”
The dragon pushed a hint of power through me. I could feel it cycling, sending a stirring of energy up from the buried place within me. It was as if the dragon wanted me to know something, and it was the only way he had of communicating that with me.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
The dragon pushed out again, another surge of energy flowing.
Within that surge of power, I could feel an urgency within the dragon.
A voice came from behind me. It was muted and quiet, but close enough that I knew if I stood here for too much longer, I’d end up getting caught by whomever it was. Maybe it was Jerith, or perhaps his co-conspirator. Either way, I didn’t want to remain here and be trapped by them; I wanted to get away somehow, before they caught up to me.
I pushed out on the connection to the dragon, hoping for some understanding as the energy flowed between us, but there was no understanding. There was only the power that flowed outward. It stretched from this dragon, to the green dragon, to the golden-scaled dragon—a circle of power.
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 22