The Caged Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 1)

by Dan Michaelson

  The barn was closed, which was reassuring, but who was in the house?

  I guided Adela up to the front of the home, climbed down, and carefully pulled my father down. I looped Adela’s reins around the post near the door. He hadn’t moved the entire time we’d been riding and hadn’t made any noise either. I tried not to think about it, only focusing on getting him inside, to give him a chance to warm up and hopefully recover. As I pushed the door open, I almost dropped him.

  “Joran?”

  He was pacing in front of the hearth, as he looked over to me. He saw me carrying my father, and he hurried over , helping to take the burden as we carried him to one of the back bedrooms.

  “What happened?” Joran asked.

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “He wandered off. It’s not the first time he’s done it, and not even the first time he’s done it this week. ”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Toward the forest,” I said.

  “You were all the way over there?”

  I nodded. “I chased him there earlier this week as well.”

  I set him down on the bed, not mindful of the fact that he was still drenched, and raced out to grab a towel to dry him off. When I returned to the room, I found Joran’s face pale. He looked over to me with an unreadable expression on his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Ashan,” he started, nodding briefly to my father, “I don’t think he’s…” He took a deep breath and straightened. “I don’t think he made it.”

  I carried the towel over to my father and used it to wipe the rainwater off his face, before patting his arms, and then finally checked his neck for a pulse.

  There was none.

  His body was frigid.

  I watched him, waiting for him to take a breath. In the race back to the house, I hadn’t bothered to assess whether or not he still breathed, knowing I had felt a pulse at one point, and thought if I was fast enough, I could warm him up and he would recover.

  Sadness and hopelessness welled up inside of me.

  My father had been so different the last few years, but I’d always hoped that he’d recover. That the medicines would work. That I could have my father back.

  Now he was gone.

  Truly gone.

  My hands shook uncontrollably.

  If I had managed to get to him in time, I might have saved him.

  Had I not argued with my mother, maybe he wouldn’t have wandered off.

  I touched his hand, not sure what to say, not trusting myself to speak.

  The last few years had been hard. Incredibly hard.

  It hadn’t always been that way. He had been a good man. Kind. Funny. He had taught me everything I knew about life on the farm and the world. With the accident, we’d all changed, but seeing him like this brought me back to when I’d been younger. Back to when he had still been that man, the one who had taught me how to shoot a bow and how to ride a horse.

  I swallowed back the lump in my throat, struggling with it as I managed to speak. “I saw him on Adela, so I chased after them. When I reached her, I found him on the ground.”

  “Do you know what might’ve happened?”

  “He’s been sick for a while,” I said. “But not so sick that I would’ve expected him to succumb so easily.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joran said.

  I stared for a long moment, looking at my father, a part of me half expecting that he would take another breath. I knew so little about what had actually happened that day. I had followed my father and brother, trying to get to them before they got too deep into the forest, the only other time that I had attempted to head into the forest. They had disappeared, and when I heard the scream…

  I hadn’t managed to get to them in time. I found my father first. He was injured, bloodied, and then I found my brother. Something was obviously wrong, though I couldn’t tell what it was. My father had been in a daze, as if he wasn’t really there. I looked over to Joran. “What are you doing here?”

  He took a deep breath, studying my father for a moment before tearing his gaze away and looking up at me. “I found your horse.”

  “ Flop?”

  He nodded. “He ended up at our house. I was going to come to find you, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  He studied me for a long moment. “There’s something you need to see.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure how to explain it.” Joran took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “My father saw something. He didn’t know what it was, but he went after it. When he caught up to it, he realized it was a fire.”

  “A fire?” I said.

  “Right. It reminded me of what we’d found along the road before.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Not at first. I didn’t think anything of it until he started describing it. It was north of the King’s Road, basically just east of my farm, and far enough away that it didn’t really matter, but it was along the edge of the forest.”

  I shrugged. “Why does that matter to me?”

  Joran held something up.

  It was a scrap of fabric. Not just any fabric, but a pattern I recognized.

  It was the same one Alison had been wearing when we had left for the city.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. When I went with my father, I came across the fire. This one was different, though. The one we saw had nothing remaining, but this one had metal and wood and… well, this.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, something must have happened to the caravan,” he told me.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked down at my father.

  I hated that I was forced to be this practical rather than have the chance to mourn my father, but I had no choice. If something had really happened to Alison, then I needed to know. The others were beyond my help. Thenis needed healing I couldn’t provide, and I didn’t know about my mother. Alison was not beyond me.

  “Can you show me?”

  “In this weather?” Joran asked. I shot him an angry look, and he raised his hands as he backed away. “I guess I can. But it’s far from here.”

  I need to see for myself.”

  I worried that Joran would argue with me, and that he would debate whether or not he needed to take me there, but thankfully he didn’t. “You might need to gather some supplies. I don’t know how long we’re going to be gone.”

  “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “There were signs of a struggle,” Joran said.

  “What sort of a struggle?”

  “ We saw blood. Arrows..”

  I frowned. If it wasn’t for my sister, I would want nothing to do with any of this. It wasn’t the kind of thing that I needed to get involved in.

  “There’s something else,” Joran said.

  “What else could there be?”

  “Wagon tracks.” He held my gaze for a moment. “We think there was another wagon caravan.”

  “And you think that caravan took my sister.”

  “I don’t know. But it worries me.”

  When she’d been selected by the Academy, I could have understood. Now I had no choice but to go after her.

  11

  We rode quickly. I ignored the storm raging around us. I could hear the thunder, but no longer felt it like I had earlier. The lightning flickered in the clouds, not streaks of it descending to the ground the way I feared.

  I started to question whether or not my father had been attacked by a lightning bolt, which wouldn’t be altogether surprising with the nature of the storm, though I would’ve expected to have seen burn marks on him. In this part of the world, lightning strikes were not uncommon, and most people knew someone who had unfortunately been struck by lightning.

  Joran looked over to me, saying nothing. He rode Wind, so was faster than me. Adela was tired, though she seemed de
termined to keep at it, plunging ahead as we raced along the muddy ground. We had to go over the loose dirt, off the King’s Road, no longer taking the easier path.

  “It might be better if we waited until morning,” Joran shouted against the storm.

  “If we wait until morning, then we might lose her,” I said.

  “You can’t expect to catch up to a caravan in a storm like this,” he said.

  I shook my head. “If the storm slows us, it’s going to slow the caravan as well. I think that if nothing else, we have an opportunity to catch up to them.”

  I didn’t know whether or not we would be able to reach the caravan, and didn’t even know if we were heading in the right direction, I only knew what Joran had shared with me. In my mind, I envisioned the Vard attacked the caravan. Perhaps they had even made it look like dragons had attacked to gain sympathizers. It was the only explanation that made any sort of sense. After seeing those men attack that soldier in the city, it was easy to imagine some of the Vard following the caravan and ambushing it. Which meant that my sister was no longer safe. I feared the Vard would turn her into a slave.

  Joran didn’t say anything more as we continued riding against the storm. At one point lightning illuminated everything, and I realized we were riding along the edge of the forest. It couldn’t be too far from us.

  We’d been riding for a while when I saw the wagon tracks.

  I motioned to Joran and he nodded. “This is what we saw before,” he said.

  “They were heading toward the forest,” I said.

  Joran sat up, looking at the trees. “There’s nothing there.”

  I frowned, starting to think whether there was anything that would explain what we could do, whether we could navigate through here, but I didn’t have that answer. The only thing that came to me was that I had already gone into the forest before, following the Djarn path.

  That had to be what they had used.

  “What if the Vard have the help of the Djarn?”

  Joran looked over , watching me. “My father hasn’t mentioned that before.”

  “Has your father asked?”

  Joran shook his head slowly. “I don’t think he has,” he said softly.

  “Which means you don’t know. None of us really know. Not without knowing any of the Djarn.” I motioned for Joran to follow. We headed into the trees and as soon as we were inside, the wagon tracks vanished.

  “The tracks disappear here.” I looked up at him. “How do you think they managed to hide an entire wagon caravan?”

  “ Magic?”

  I wanted to dismiss the idea, but I couldn’t shake the fact that he might be right. Given what we knew about the Vard and what I had seen from the dragon mage, it was entirely possible they were equipped with someone who had magic powers. We hadn’t found the remains of the caravan, though it didn’t really matter. What mattered was following these tracks and finding any survivors.

  “If they disappeared, then we don’t have any way of following them into the forest,” Joran said.

  An idea began to form.

  “Follow me,” I said to Joran. He frowned at me as I turned and veered toward the north. “We aren’t moving fast enough,” I said.

  “And you think we can move faster in the forest? We can’t even ride the horses in there. Even if we find a way , we won’t be able to move quickly. We aren’t the Djarn.”

  I suspected we could, especially along the Djarn path. It was open enough that I thought the horses could navigate it. Besides, the canopy would protect us from the storm, and would make it easier for us to find our way.

  “We know the wagons were heading north,” I said.

  “Until now,” he said. “We aren’t going to catch the caravan this way. You’re right. We can’t outrun them with this storm raging , but what if they went into the forest for safety? What if they know the Djarn and can use their paths?”

  “I don’t like this,” he said.

  I shrugged, shaking my head. “Does it matter? If we can catch up to them, then we can—”

  “Do what?” Joran asked. “I want to save Alison just as much as you.” When I arched a brow at him, he shrugged. “Maybe not the same , but I want to help her as well. I don’t want the Vard to do anything to her either.”

  “So you think it’s the Vard as well.”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work through it and come up with anything that would make sense, but I can’t. As far as I can tell, there isn’t anything else to explain who attacked.”

  “Assume this is the Vard,” Joran said. “If we do catch up to them, what do you plan to do?”

  I didn’t have the answer. “Rescue my sister.”

  “By what means? Do you intend to attack them?”

  I looked at him, feeling conflicted.

  “I think we need to go back to Berestal. That’s why I came to you in the first place. I thought we could go to the marshal, gather support, and then go after the caravan. If we know they went into the forest, they’ll be limited on how fast they can go.”

  I felt the same way about that as I had felt about going into Berestal to bring the healer out to my brother. It would be too slow. Taking that detour would involve too much time. At this point, time was the one thing that we didn’t have. I needed to keep moving, and to stay ahead of whatever else was happening, if only so we could reach Alison.

  “You could go,” I said to Joran. “If they know about the Djarn path, they’ll be able to move through the forest quickly.”

  “You’re going to send me away?”

  “I don’t want to. I think it’s better if I have you with me, but it might make more sense for one of us to go to the marshal and get help.”

  Joran just shook his head. “I’m not leaving you to do this by yourself. Gods, you’re just as likely to end up dead as you are to rescue Alison.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “It’s not an insult. It’s just…”

  I stared at him in silence.

  “It’s just you’re rushing this, and we don’t even know if this is the right thing for us to do.”

  “It probably isn’t,” I said. “But again, we’ve already decided I’m not leaving my sister to be carted off by the Vard. Don’t you care about her?” I arched a brow at him. “After everything you’ve said about her…”

  Joran looked as if he wanted to argue with me, but I could see him considering it a bit longer before finally shutting his mouth and following me. “If we go into the forest, how do you expect to find the caravan?”

  That was a good question. It was one I didn’t have an answer to. Why here?

  That was what kept bothering me.

  The wagon caravan was north of the King’s Road.

  There had to be a reason for that, but then they went into the forest. Once we got into the trees, we had to decide which way they would go. Were they going to follow the path deeper into the forest, or would they head south? The real power of the Vard lived in the south, beyond the Southern Reach. Very few people had any experience with the Vard anymore.

  The storm picked up , and the rain began to pour around us, thunder rumbling with violent intensity, lightning flashing everywhere. It was almost as if the storm was choosing for us.

  “We can’t wait much longer,” I said.

  He sighed and shook his head. We followed along the trees, and I looked for where I’d entered before. I wasn’t even sure if I could find it again, but I had marked the trees. There was another way I’d marked the outside of the forest, though it was not nearly as easy for me to tell in the night. I had stacked a few stones.

  I slowed Adela as we made our way along , and began to give up hope that I would find the stones. But then I saw them. Three rocks I’d stacked, though they had tumbled.

  “Here,” I said, motioning to Joran. “I marked the entrance.”

  “What do you think we’ll find once we
’re in there?”

  “Hopefully just the path and the caravan.”

  Joran followed me into the trees. I paused at each tree, looking for my marking. I had scratched it deeply into the trunk, and was a bit surprised to see that most of the markings had faded. Once we were several trees in, I began to carve out the bark of the trees again, marking them once more. It was slow going trying to find our way , but eventually we reached the Djarn path, and the rain around us eased a little bit. The air took on a different quality, the dampness of the earth no longer quite as prominent, now filled with the scent of the forest. The air was humid, not quite as cool as it had been out on the plain.

  Joran nudged up behind me. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

  “You thought I was making it up?”

  “I didn’t think you were making it up, but… I can’t believe it. I never expected to see one of the Djarn paths.”

  “I didn’t get very far ,” I said.

  “No, but if we can find any evidence of the wagon caravan coming through here, then maybe we can find your sister.”

  I look back at him. From the way he said it, he hadn’t expected us to be successful.

  Of course he wouldn’t. How could he have expected us to have succeeded in this? The idea of chasing after the Vard to rescue my sister was laughable, almost impossible to contemplate.

  “You don’t have to do this ,” I said. “This is my sister, after all. I don’t want to take you away from your family, not when we don’t really know what we might encounter in here.”

  “That’s exactly why I have to come along with you,” he said. “ You may need help.”

  “But if something were to happen to me…”

  “If something were to happen to you, then you’ll need somebody with you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about what I’d gone through so far today. I’d lost my father. My brother was sick. My sister had been chosen for the Academy, and now I was dealing with the possibility that she was in danger.

  All of this was too much for me to fathom.

  I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I opened my eyes. “Here I was trying to be happy for Alison. ,” I said. “She wanted nothing more than to have a chance to do something else.”