“Now you think you’re powerful enough that you can simply deflect an attack by yourself?”
“It’s not that. It’s just…” Jason wasn’t sure how to phrase it, and he didn’t know how to tell his sister that it wasn’t so much of a confidence in his ability, though he had that as well, but it was more about how he knew his powers could be used. The connection to the dragons gave him that confidence, and it was more than just the ice dragon and the iron dragon. There was power in illusion. He could use that to threaten, even if it didn’t cause any real harm.
They reached the tree line, and from here, he focused on the ice dragon. Within a moment, the dragon descended, streaking through the upper clouds, taking in the illusion. For a moment, Jason saw what the ice dragon saw, and he knew the illusion held. And then the dragon parted it and came dropping to the ground with a furious speed.
“We need your help to go to my old home,” Jason said.
“I am aware of your plan.”
“I thought you might be,” he said.
He waited until Kayla seated herself on the dragon, and then with a tap on the ice dragon’s back, they took to the sky.
“I’m not dressed for there,” she said.
“I’ll protect you,” he said.
“It’s strange to return without furs.”
“Would you rather wear them?”
They were taking flight quickly and Jason leaned over, looking down at the illusion as they passed through it. It was strange. For a moment, the city of Dragon Haven spread out beneath them, and then it disappeared, nothing there but the thick canopy of the forest. Then they reached for the clouds, and cold whipped around them.
“No. I like what I’m wearing.”
“Do you feel guilty about it?”
Kayla leaned forward, gripping the icicles on the dragon’s back. Her jaw was clenched, and he could tell that the cold bothered her more than she was letting on. She was trying to put on a brave face, but it seemed to him that she was troubled by far more than she was sharing with him.
“I feel guilty about the fact that I’m not cold anymore. I feel guilty about the fact that I eat when I’m hungry. And I feel guilty about the fact that I enjoy it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think about how little everyone in the village has.”
“Everyone has the opportunity to leave,” he said.
“I know we have the opportunity to leave, but no one does. The journey is too hard, and our people are stubborn. And despite that, they would be better off going somewhere else. I can think of how much less they would suffer if they would even try to come to someplace like Dragon Haven. Or even to William’s home. You told me about that, and you told me just how nice it is, with the mountain in the background, the ground not constantly covered with snow, and people there who could help.” She shook her head, leaning down and hugging the dragon. “They are so stubborn.”
“Which gives them that choice. We can’t take that choice from them.”
“What about Mother?”
“We have to make that choice for Mother.”
“Even though we know that—”
“We don’t know anything about what Mother might deal with. She might not even come back around.”
That might be the hardest part to acknowledge.
As strange as it was, they had lost their mother a long time ago, even though she had been there with them. Everything he had done had been on behalf of his family, trying to offer as much protection as he could for his mother and his sister, knowing that they both still needed him; but as he thought about it, he realized Kayla had truly lost her mother a long time ago. Even though she’d been there with her, even though she had been working with her, she had lost the woman their mother had been. It had made it difficult for Kayla, and it made it so that she could go nowhere.
Jason said nothing as they flew.
He wrapped a bit of heat around Kayla, accessing it from the distant iron dragon. A hint of steam rose off the ice dragon where his connection touched, but it was subtle, and Jason did his best to ensure Kayla wasn’t as cold as she could be otherwise. He held on to that power. As they flew, as they streaked toward the north and toward the village, she finally sighed and settled in.
When the mountain came into view, Jason changed his focus. Rather than trying to have the dragon bring them in lower along the mountain, he had him bring them close. He wrapped an illusion around them, concealing them, making it seem as if they were nothing more than a thick swirling bit of snow. Kayla frowned, glancing over at him, and then they landed.
“We won’t be long,” Jason said.
The ice dragon rumbled. “Would you like me to stay here, or should I go elsewhere?”
“You can stay. You should be concealed.”
“Only to you.”
“What do you mean only to me?”
“You believe I’m concealed, but what happens if you aren’t as successful at holding it as you think?”
Jason smiled. “Now you’re doubting me?”
“If it were her holding it, I might be more impressed.”
“I didn’t realize you would only accept an illusion from her,” he said, smiling.
“I didn’t say that. I just was saying she is far more capable than you.”
“There’s no doubting that.” He laughed, shaking his head. As he started away, he glanced back at the dragon. “Be ready to leave.”
They hurried into the village, and it was strange knowing that only a dozen paces, maybe two dozen, away from the village was the dragon. It was something he never would have believed when he had been here.
Smoke drifted up from chimneys, and it fought against the swirling nature of the snow that Jason formed. He intensified the natural storm, using the illusion to cast that image all around them. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold on to it, but he thought he should be able to maintain it long enough to get to his mother and then back out.
They reached the home and he stepped inside. It was cold, and the warmth from the fire he had started in the hearth had long ago burned out. Jason looked around, a little worried. With cold like this, his mother might not have been able to survive.
Kayla followed him into the home and looked around. “Where did she go?”
She hurried past, heading to the back room, and came back out, shaking her head.
Where had their mother gone?
If she wasn’t here, where would she be?
7
Jason and Kayla shared a look, searching all around the home. There was a sense of warmth, but it came from Jason, not from the hearth. He radiated the heat from the iron dragon, letting it flow away from him, and it filled the inside of the home. He had brought firewood when he had visited before, and it was stacked in one corner on the inside of the home, unusual for anyone in the village. It was his concession to trying to offer their mother something more than what she had before.
“You didn’t tell me you did that,” Kayla said, staring at the stack of firewood.
“I thought it was better than trying to pile up dung in the fire. And with enough wood, I thought…”
What had he thought? He wasn’t even sure anymore, only that he had wanted to try to provide something for their mother that she hadn’t been able to enjoy. Not only was there firewood, but there was meat and cheese and bread, a veritable feast compared to the type of food they had been eating.
All of it had been brought from Dragon Haven, and all of it was unusual here.
“Where do you think she’s gone?”
With the chill to the air—at least the chill that had been here before he started the fire—it was possible she hadn’t been here for the better part of a day or more.
“I don’t know.”
No one else in the village had been checking on her.
Then again, there was a time recently when he had seen her on her feet. She’d prepared her shop, and in that brief flurry of activity, Jason and Kayla
had allowed themselves to believe that their mother was going to return, that they would have some normalcy back in their lives. Even though she had not really come through it, and even though she had retreated once again, there was still the hope that they would regain that sense of normalcy.
“Do you think something happened to her?”
“How would anything happen to her in the village?”
Even though they knew people in the village, no one had checked on them in the time since their father had died. Partly that was because the villagers didn’t know how to react, but partly that was because of what had happened to his mother. The way she’d retreated, the fact she had disappeared within her mind, had made it so that no one wanted anything to do with her.
“We could check her shop.” The tone in Kayla’s voice made it seem like she didn’t believe they would find anything there, but Jason agreed. He thought they needed to go and check her shop, if only to see if there was any evidence of her.
He guided Kayla out, and once in the street, he wrapped an illusion around them. “I’ll keep an illusion around us.”
Kayla frowned at him.
“I think it’s best if no one knows that we’re here.”
“Why? Don’t we belong here?”
“We’ve been gone for long enough that I think it will only raise questions when we return.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” she said. When he arched a brow at her, she shrugged. “Maybe they knew we were gone and someone came looking to help her.”
If only that were the case. It would be marvelous if someone were concerned enough about their mother to do so, but he didn’t think that was so.
They hurried through the village, and as they did, he continued to hold on to the illusion. At one point, a pair of people making their way along the street caught his attention and Jason hesitated, ensuring the illusion wrapped around them.
He worried what might happen if someone tried to step into the illusion. It was possible they could join someone with them, as he had seen it done before. He hoped his control over it was such that he could exclude others from joining them, and the longer he focused on it, the more tightly he wrapped that illusion around them, trying to make them into little more than wisps of wind.
The people moved past.
He caught snippets of their conversation, little more than that, and instead of listening in, he focused on trying to pick up the wind, sending gales of it swirling around them. Snow whipped with it. To others, it would seem as if the storm were picking up intensity, but Jason thought that he needed to do even more. He wondered if he could strengthen it, worried he would get discovered by someone here, but believed he had enough control over the illusion in order to shield himself and Kayla.
They reached the shop on the edge of the town. It was on the far side of the village, opposite of where their home was, and he released the illusion a little bit, allowing some light to filter in.
There was no sign of smoke coming from the chimney. If their mother was there, she was in the cold.
Jason hurried toward the building and tested the door. It was locked, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. His mother had taken to locking the door, and it had kept others out, but in the village, such a lock didn’t really matter. Most people would have left their place alone anyway.
He pressed on the door, pushing on the handle for a moment, testing whether or not he was even going to be able to find some way of getting into it, and the harder he pushed, the more certain he was he wouldn’t be able to unlock it without breaking the door.
Jason borrowed from the power of the iron dragon, sending that magic through himself and into the lock. It broke, opening with a loud crack.
He looked around, concerned that perhaps he was making too much noise and that the illusion he had formed had failed, but there was no sign of it. There was no sign of anyone other than the wind swirling around him, and the snow with it. There was nothing other than the persistent illusion he’d formed.
Jason pushed open the door, and once inside, he paused, looking around.
It looked much like it had the last time he had been here. When he had come last time, his mother had been up and around, moving in a way that she hadn’t for so long. There had been a period where she had been vibrant and alive, almost as if she’d come back to them. And maybe that was nothing more than an illusion as well. With everything he’d gone through, he couldn’t help but think that perhaps all of this was nothing more than an illusion.
He scanned the inside of the hut, but there was no sign of his mother.
Where would she have ended up?
Jason paused at the door. It might be the last time he ever came here, and that saddened him somewhat. There were happy memories of his childhood here. There were memories of when he’d come with his mother, walking alongside her, learning about her herbs and medicines alongside her, though she had always intended to train Kayla and not him. Jason was always destined to be a hunter like his father, and because of that, he had spent some time here, but nothing like Kayla had.
“Can you hold the illusion on me while I look for her?” Kayla asked.
Jason nodded. “I’ll meet you back at our home.”
Back outside, he looked around the village. There was no sign of movement, but that could be from the nature of the wind swirling around and the illusion that he had formed. The longer that he maintained it, the more certain he was it was going to hold. And if it could hold, then perhaps he could ensure that he prevented anyone from knowing he was back.
She should have been in their home. Jason debated where to go next.
There was one place, though he wouldn’t expect his mother to have gone there, especially as they had grown distant—but what if she would’ve gone to visit Keva?
Jason hurried through the village, and when he reached the other woman’s home, he hesitated before knocking.
There was no answer at first.
The wind kicked around, whistling behind him. Within the wind was the steady pounding of the snow, the sharp needles of it slamming into his face and hands. It no longer bothered him as it once did, but he wondered if it ever had really bothered him. When he’d been here as a child, he’d grown accustomed to the cold. With the appropriate clothing, he was able to shield himself from any real danger from it.
He knocked again.
As before, there was no answer, but Jason heard movement on the other side of the door. He waited, and as he did, he thought about what he would say, the way that he would approach it. How would Keva even react to him coming here?
It had been a long time since he had visited with her, but that wasn’t the concern he had. It was more about what he would say about where he was, and why he had been absent.
When the door opened, Keva stood on the other side, dressed in a long fur robe. She frowned at him.
“Jason?”
He flashed a smile. “Keva. I was looking for—”
“Your mother, I imagine.”
He nodded.
“She’s here. I found her wandering, and I brought her here. Where have you and Kayla been?”
Jason took a deep breath, his gaze flicking behind her, looking to see if he could find his mother, but there was no sign of her. At least she was alive.
“We’ve been off hunting,” he said.
That was honest enough, and at least he could explain more.
“Hunting? You’ve been gone for…” She frowned, tilting her head to the side, and her brow wrinkled. “The better part of a week.”
His mother had been gone from their home for a week? He had been gone for a week? He’d made a point of checking on her daily, but could he have gotten so caught up in everything else that he’d forgotten? It had been long enough that she had wandered here.
It was a mistake. He shouldn’t have left her quite so long.
In all the time that he had been working with the dragons, he should have come back to check on her, and even
if he hadn’t been able to do that, he should have asked Kayla to return.
But Kayla hadn’t wanted to come back. She’d been afraid, and Jason understood that fear. She feared the fact that so much was changing for them, she feared who their mother was these days, and she feared she had gained an understanding of the world that didn’t mesh with what she knew about the village. All of those emotions were similar to what he had experienced when he had uncovered the dragon. It had taken Jason time, but he’d worked through them and he knew she would as well.
“I’m sorry. We got stuck. The storms trapped us outside for a while.”
“Trapped outside? You shouldn’t have…” She looked at him and seemed to see him for the first time. When she did, she frowned. “You have dragonskins.”
“I do.”
“Where did you acquire them?”
“In Varmin.” It was a lie he had prepared a long time ago, readying for the possibility that someone would ask about the dragonskin. At least in Varmin, there were others who had dragonskin, though it was equally rare.
“Where would you have gotten a hold of it in Varmin?”
“I managed to bring down several deer, and I traded for it.”
She frowned again. “What about your sister?”
“She’s back at our home.”
“The two of you won’t be abandoning your mother again, will you?”
Jason took a deep breath. This was an opportunity, though it wasn’t one he necessarily wanted to take. If he took advantage of this, he could ask for her to stay with his mother, for her to help her, and yet he didn’t know if that was what he wanted to do. If he left his mother here, they could move onward as they had planned, heading into Lorach. Keva was well connected within the village, and because of that, they didn’t need to worry about his mother having food or drink or even necessary shelter.
But then, when his father had died, Keva hadn’t offered any help. That despite the fact that she and his mother had been friends, and despite the fact that she should have offered some help, but she had not.
“We’ll make sure she’s safe,” Jason said.
Keva stepped back, and Jason entered the room.
Storm Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 4) Page 8