But I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough.
That power struck, hitting the village. It was a three-pronged approach. Three dragon mages. It had to be. The power that exploded was a mixture of fireballs, tightly bound weaves of energy, and flames, which consumed it faster than I could even imagine.
Within moments, the village was gone.
I turned on the dragon’s back, trying to look around me to see what had happened and wanting to make a connection to those dragons, wanting to understand why they had targeted the village, but I still didn’t see them. The dragons had already retreated, making their way back to the kingdom.
Was there another danger in that village?
Perhaps Thomas, or other dragon mages, had uncovered something. If so, then I needed to understand.
And I needed to be careful. I had no idea what would happen here. Would the Servant blame me?
We circled, heading down to the ground, and I found the Servant standing away from the burned and ruined remains of the village. I scrambled off the dragon’s back carefully while holding my hand on his back, connecting to him. I felt the cycle, the flames building, yet I couldn’t detect anything else.
“What happened here?” I asked the question softly. I didn’t expect the Servant to have any answers.
“Your people attacked.”
“Why?”
He turned to me, and for a moment, there was a rage that flared in his eyes, flames crackling, but then he seemed to tamp it down and took a long, steady breath.
“It was not the first time. I doubt it will be the last.”
I looked at the village. “Who was here?”
“Does it matter?”
“There had to have been a reason for my people to attack here.”
The Servant watched me, and I could feel the heat radiating from him, the energy building, yet he tamped it down once again.
“You still have not come to understand. You will.”
“Understand what?”
“Why you needed to be here.”
The heat radiating from the Servant pressed toward the dragon, much like I had felt when the Servant had first wanted me to come to him. It was almost as if the Servant were entering my cycle, but then it faded.
He didn’t join in the cycle.
I appreciated that. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fight him off, especially given the power I knew he possessed.
“Do you intend to stay?” he asked.
“I need to understand,” I said, glancing up at the sky. More than ever, I thought that to be true. If I could call the dragon mages back, find out what they had done, why they had attacked this village, then perhaps I could understand.
The Servant watched me, and it seemed as if he wanted to say something, but did not.
“If you want to understand, then you will come. Otherwise . . .” His gaze went back to the green-scaled dragon.
My eyes followed his. “You can fly,” I said to the dragon, releasing him from staying with me. I had agreed to come. The dragon didn’t have to remain.
More than ever, I needed answers.
I wasn’t sure what to make of what I had just seen, and I wasn’t sure if I would get an answer easily. As I watched the Servant, he continued walking, making his way toward the distant volcano.
Affellah loomed in the distance, as it did everywhere in these lands. I noticed the glowing of light, the power that seemed to emanate from it, and could feel the strange connection that seemed to build from the Servant to the distant sense of Affellah.
Even that power had not been enough to protect the village from the kingdom.
But why had the kingdom attacked that village?
The Servant wasn’t telling me something.
For that reason alone, I needed to stay with him. I needed to understand.
Chapter Three
Dawn had barely broken by the time we started walking. I had been traveling with the Servant for the better part of two days, traveling by foot away from the base of Affellah, heading across the Vard lands. They were nothing like I had known. I had flown over them, at least at night, and had a sense of the heat and fire and power that existed within them, but I had never seen them up close or for such a sustained period of time.
Everything felt dead.
There were dried grasses, many of them growing almost to knee height, and rustled as we passed them, as if we disturbed them with each step we took across them. I expected to trample them down, but they sprang back up, as if still clinging to some semblance of life. There were a few trees dotting the landscape, many of them twisted and spindly, with thick, waxy, pale leaves that tried to draw non-existent moisture out of the air. It was as if everything in this land was trying to survive and was equipped to handle the heat and limited resources.
We came upon a small village about midmorning, little more than a series of a dozen or so stone buildings, maintained far better than I would’ve expected, and situated in the middle of what felt like nowhere.
The Servant strode forward, hands set off to either side, and as we reached the village, the people suddenly came running over to him.
It was almost disconcerting. They grabbed for him, and I noticed that the Servant would touch each person, lean forward, and whisper something. I detected a hint of heat in each exchange. He was a priest of sorts, I suspected, though he would not say anything to me about that.
We reached the center of the village, and one of the older members, a gray-haired man with sun-dried skin, a pale-brown wrap covering him, bowed politely to the Servant before turning to a stone circle set into the ground.
A well.
The man dropped a bucket into the well, and when he pulled it up, he passed it around to everyone, the Servant taking it last.
He handed it to me before he took a drink.
“I’m not sure that I should,” I whispered.
“It is their gift to you.”
“I don’t want to take from them.”
He smiled tightly, his heat and energy radiating outward, as if he were using some sort of connection to it to link me to him in some way, to bridge the two of us.
“Take the gift,” he whispered.
I tipped the bucket back and took a long drink. My mouth had been dry from the walk. I had waterskins, and the Servant had known how to find small, naturally occurring places to refill them, but we had been limited—and the water had tasted terrible. This water, however, was crisp and cold and clean.
When I finished, I handed the bucket back to the Servant, who took it and gave it to the village leader, then turned to one of the women and started talking to them.
I looked around at the rest of the villagers. Most had given the Servant space, but none had departed. This was an important day for them.
These people didn’t look like the Servant. They looked like . . . people. Hardened, sun darkened, and dirty. I turned my attention back to the Servant, and listened for just a moment.
“You will find your connection to Affellah,” he whispered to a young woman sitting next to the well.
“And what if I do not?” she asked, her voice low.
He smiled. “Do not fear. You will find what you need.”
“But if I do not?” she asked again.
He patted her on the hand, causing heat to flare within her.
I recognized it—a cycle. Which was both strange and unexpected.
I had felt the Servant touching upon my cycle, and had suspected he had a way of cycling in the same with his own power, but had not seen him use it. I wondered if he would even acknowledge what he was doing. Power flowed, and heat and energy went from him to the girl, then back.
The girl walked away, and I watched him. “You have your own sort of cycle.”
“There is no cycle, only Affellah.”
He touched one of the other villagers, a dark-haired woman with a scarf wrapped around her face, carrying a half-naked child pressed up against her. When he touched her on the
shoulder, I felt—and could practically see—another bloom of heat that danced from her to the child to him, rotating through them. When it was done, she stepped away, seeming more relaxed than she had been before.
“It’s the same cycle I have with the dragons,” I said. “That’s how I connect to them. It provides me with a way of understanding them. A way of trying to connect to their power.” I looked off into the distance, and though I could see Affellah—it was visible everywhere we had traveled so far, and I imagined one would have to be quite a ways out into the Vard lands to lose sight of it—I could not see the dragon. I could feel him though.
“Only, when I felt it with you, I couldn’t tell whether it was a connection to the dragons, or whether it was just you connecting to something else.”
“What else do you think it might be?”
I didn’t know, but there was something here. Maybe it was simply his way of connecting to the others so he could offer whatever ceremony he did for them. If he was a priest to them, then having some way to connect, for them to feel the power of Affellah that they served, seemed to make sense. In this case, maybe it was their way of staying connected.
The Servant turned back to the well. The villager who had been responsible for holding on to the bucket was gone, leaving the Servant alone in front of the well. I suspected this place was important to their people, and it was a measure of respect to the Servant that they would trust him to be here alone.
What did it mean that I was here?
The stones around the well, shaped into a ring, were old, cracked from the heat and the sun, and there were carvings placed upon them—some were letters, symbols that were little more than words etched into the stone, but others were something else.
“What have you written here?”
“We describe the journey of those within these villages. The villages share an offering with their connection to Affellah,” he said.
I chuckled, shaking my head. “It seems so strange.”
“As strange as connecting to a creature like you do?”
He brought the bucket up and offered it to me. I took another drink, the water splashing against my lips and filling my throat.
“What did you want for me to see here?”
I reluctantly handed him back the bucket. I didn’t know how long it would be before we stopped and had access to water like this again. I was tempted to fill up my waterskins, though wondered what the Servant would say if I did that.
I pulled one out of my pocket, and he nodded, so I dipped it into the bucket, filling it. When I pulled the other out, he shook his head.
“We must take only what we need.”
“How long will it be before we find more water?”
“Until Affellah decides we should.”
I snorted. “You realize you can be infuriating.”
“The power of fire can be that way,” he said.
“I think the Vard can be that way,” I said.
He lowered the bucket back down into the well. “Each of these villages is unique, as you can imagine. Each of them was founded long ago, in places where water could be found. Water is sacred, though not quite as sacred as Affellah,” he said.
“Because you wouldn’t be able to survive without it?”
He smiled. “Because none can survive without the life-giving water, but none can survive without the life-giving Affellah either. Perhaps both are equally sacred.” He looped the bucket down, dropping it into the water. He held on to the rope. “If I were to release this rope, it would drown.”
“I think you’re giving too much credit to the rope,” I said.
“But if I claim it, if I bring it back up, then the rope can become something more. It’s much like that with Affellah. If you get too close to Affellah, some may burn, but not all—as some may touch water and not drown.” He turned back to me, a hint of a smile on his face, as if he had given me some great truth.
Was this his purpose in having me here? To offer me Vard philosophy?
I didn’t think so. There had to be something more. He had a purpose in bringing me to this village, as he had a purpose in bringing me to his land. I had only to try to figure out what it was.
“I think it’s time you tell me what you expect me to learn here. Otherwise, why are you keeping me here?”
“Because you offered to learn about Affellah.”
I nodded slowly, looking around the village. Most of the people had dispersed, though a few stayed, and I couldn’t tell if the furtive glances were cast more at me or at the Servant. “I offered to understand Affellah, but what is that going to take?”
“Each person must find their own journey.” He pulled the bucket out of the well again and set it down next to the ring of stones, watching me. “How did your journey begin?”
“Which part of it?” I shrugged. “I wasn’t always a dragon mage,” I admitted. It was a strange thing to even acknowledge that I am a dragon mage, but that was what I had become. Despite being aware of the cycle within me and the power that connected me to the dragons, I still didn’t always feel like a mage, but more like an imposter playing at one.
“What were you before? You mentioned a home . . .”
“I mentioned it because that was where I started. I was raised on the plains outside of the kingdom, near enough to the Wilds, living as a farmer.”
“And how did you come to know the dragons?”
I looked up, glancing toward the distant volcano, a tic I had when I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to be doing, which was a frequent occurrence lately. “My sister was taken. I thought the Vard had attacked,” I said, and seeing the expression on his face, one of irritation mixed with a flare of heat coming off him, I hurriedly added, “though I came to realize it wasn’t the Vard, but others who wanted the king to believe they had attacked. I realized I had a connection to the dragons, so I went to the Academy in the capital to try to learn more about it. I wanted to use that connection—”
“You would use it rather than celebrating it?”
“Doesn’t using it count as celebrating it?”
“Using Affellah would not be considered celebrating it.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t follow Affellah, then.” He looked over to me, an unreadable expression crackling on his face. “While I was there, I learned about dragons, a cycle that connected us, and began to understand them in a way that others within the Academy did not. I thought they did, it’s just . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t really understand it, actually.”
I fell silent, thinking it strange I was having a deeper conversation with the Servant of the Vard than I had with most people within the Academy. Most of the instructors didn’t really care where I had come from or why I had gone there. They only cared about what I could do with the dragons.
“What would you have done had you not gained this understanding of the dragons?” he asked.
“I would’ve stayed a farmer,” I said softly. I stared at the water, looking at the bucket, and a wave of emotions worked through me.
I hadn’t thought too much of my homeland lately. I had visited, and I had stayed with Joran and his family briefly, seen his sisters and come to know about their connection to the Vard, but I knew they didn’t know the truth of the Vard. No one did.
I looked over to the Servant and found him running his hand along the stones surrounding the well. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a dragon rider,” I said.
“Is that a dream of young people in your world?”
“Some,” I admitted. “At the time, I wasn’t even sure what to make of it. I knew it was probably impossible, and I thought it would be unlikely to ever even meet a dragon.”
“The dragons are not rare,” the Servant said.
“Not necessarily rare, but rare enough,” I said. “And for somebody like me, somebody who was only trying to understand their place in the world, having an opportunity to work with the dragons seemed a dream, nothing more than that. Uncovering th
e ability to be more than just a dragon rider seemed impossible.”
It still seemed impossible. I focused on the dragon, and it seemed the connection between the two of us flowed more than it had in quite a while, almost as if the dragon were aware of me talking about the cycle. “I feel a deep connection to them, and I feel I need to respect that connection.”
I took a deep breath, then let it out and looked over to the Servant, finding him still staring at the stones, running his hands along their surface. There was a bit of heat radiating out from his hand, almost as if he were trying to press power into the stones.
“What are you doing?”
“These stones can change over time,” the Servant said. “They provide a ring of protection around the well, but with enough touch, and a binding to Affellah, there is the opportunity for them to become something more.”
“Is that your way of trying to say that your people can become something more?” I asked.
He glanced over. “With enough time and attention, everything can change.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling he was trying to give me a message, to use his power upon me. But what he said wasn’t wrong. “When I was younger, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was content.”
“Are you not content anymore?”
“When I went to the kingdom, I suppose I was.”
“They welcomed you?”
“Well, no.”
“Then how were you content?”
“Because I got to know and experience the power of the dragons,” I said.
“That is all you ever wanted?”
“Not at first. When I learned I had a connection to the dragons, I would’ve been happy just to be able to ride them, but once I felt the power the dragons possessed, and how I might be able to draw upon it, I suppose I started to feel like I wanted to understand it. Then I learned how the dragons could connect, one to another, and I started to see there was a much greater implication to what I could do than I had understood.” Greater than what most within the Academy had understood, I didn’t add. The only ones who seemed to have known about the cycle were the Djarn, and they weren’t sharing the truth.
The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4) Page 3