The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4)

by Dan Michaelson

  When we had been attacked, when it had appeared as if the Southern Reach had been targeted by the Vard, there had been a similar feeling here. At the time, it seemed as if it had been the Vard calling upon the power of Affellah, but what if it hadn’t been?

  The murtar was here, but it felt different from how it had felt in the Vard lands.

  Could it be that the presence of Affellah and the Servants’ actions protected the Vard lands?

  What would happen to the kingdom if this spread?

  Where were the other dragons in my cycle?

  I looked to the dragon, wondering if perhaps he might have some insight.

  “Where are the others?” I asked him.

  The dragon cycled power back to me, but did not answer. There were so many times I wished I could communicate to the dragon in a clearer way than simply exchanging emotions, but that was all we had. Maybe the Djarn knew some other way, but if so, they hadn’t shared it with me.

  As soon as I climbed onto the dragon’s back, we took to the air.

  We circled over the Southern Reach, all of it unpopulated, though it was a place that looked as if it should be lived in. Even though it was barren, it looked vibrant from above, filled with green grass, an occasional tree, and fields of flowing flowers.

  I had assumed no one had lived here because of the Vard presence, but that wasn’t it.

  From above, I could feel something different—emptiness, a void.

  The murtar had to be there, however subtle.

  And as we circled, I noted other piles of debris, much like the one I had seen when we landed. I couldn’t tell what they were, and found myself sending power cycling outward, toward them, testing for an explanation.

  Could they have been cities?

  The Servant had shown me the remains of cities in his land. Maybe there was something similar here. Maybe there had once been life, cities, people, but they had fallen as murtar had spread.

  I looked off into the rest of the kingdom, into the forest that separated the Southern Reach from the Vard.

  As we flew, nearing the forest, the sense of my cycle started to tickle in the back of my mind. It was faint, but grew stronger. I still expected to have detected it much more strongly than I did now.

  I needed to find some way to bring others to the Southern Reach, show them the influence of the murtar, and explain what happened. Before I did, though, curiosity came to me. Would I be able to detect murtar in those places the Vard had attacked? Maybe there was some remnant of it even now.

  I tapped on the dragon, and he seemed to know where I wanted to go.

  We were moving at a rapid speed, flying quickly, then I saw it.

  Thalar was once one of the southernmost cities in the kingdom. It had been a place of power, though it was a place I didn’t know. Still, I’d heard Manuel and Thomas speak about the power within it, what the Vard had done, and what the king had done in response. He had destroyed the city because of the Vard—but the Vard had attempted to destroy the city as well.

  We circled around it, the massive scar on the land. It had become a blight that caused the forest to retreat, creating a half circle around, leaving it partly in the Southern Reach, and partly in the remains of the forest. The trees looked as if they were crawling back from whatever had happened here.

  Within the half circle of trees, I felt something more pronounced.

  I started to descend, but the dragon hesitated, refusing to get any closer to the ground. I tried to pat his side, to urge him to keep going, but he refused.

  “I need to get down there,” I said.

  I wished there were some way for me to get the dragon to fully understand what was going on and why it troubled me. I focused on my memory of the murtar, the way that power had irritated me, thinking maybe I could share that with the dragon. If I could, he might be able to understand my concern.

  There was a faint pressure in response, as if he seemed to understand. Then it faded.

  Was he ignoring me?

  “Please,” I whispered, talking to the dragon, trying to prod him.

  He circled, taking a tight spiraling approach as he descended lower and lower, yet he never got all the way down to the ground. He stayed hovering just above the surface, his wings tipped slightly, as if he was afraid of getting too close.

  I scrambled toward the dragon’s side, then jumped down. I looked up at him, circling above me, his hesitancy surprising, but perhaps not. The dragon had felt the effect of the murtar, and would know the danger of allowing himself to get too close to it again. If he did, there was the real possibility of that power consuming him.

  He continued to circle just above the ground, but made a point of cycling power to me. I couldn’t feel anything from the rest of my cycle, not distinctly, though I knew it had to be there. We were once again in the kingdom, once again where that power should be prominent, but it was still not nearly as pronounced as I had expected.

  I climbed onto the mound. If I was right, if this was some remnant of a fallen city, there might be something within this mound that I could feel.

  I pressed downward with the cycle of power, looping energy from me, from the dragon, down through the ground. There was once again more resistance, stronger than what I had felt in the Southern Reach.

  Suddenly, that resistance started to push against me, almost as if it were awakening, much like the power had awoken in the Vard lands. If this was the same thing, if I was dealing with the same sort of power, then I was in more trouble than I realized.

  The dragon energy surged. “No,” I said, looking up at the dragon, and another burst of power started to build, pulling away.

  The ground started to separate. I scrambled, darting back. When I did, the ground rippled even more. Some of the rippling came from the dragon sending more and more power through the cycle and into me.

  Then an opening formed.

  Dragon bones.

  Not just dragon bones—blackened dragon bones.

  Bones that had been touched by murtar.

  Chapter Eight

  I was nearly glowing with the heat and energy cycling through me. There was a distant part of me that sensed alarm bells, warning me that if I were to continue with what I was doing, some part of me would change, evolving to be more like the Servant.

  I sat atop the dragon, looking down at the ground, at the bones, worried about the presence of the murtar.

  As the cycle flowed this time, it seemed as if the dragon was pushing, not so much me. He wanted to ensure I was protected, so he continued to let power cycle into me, as we had once cycled power through the other dragons to protect them.

  As he did, I was aware of something—a faint sense of energy touching upon me.

  This was a place the king had destroyed. He had blamed the Vard for it, but what if the story I had heard, the rumors that Manuel and Thomas had shared with me, had been inaccurate?

  The Vard had attacked for a reason.

  They had known the murtar was here. Had the king?

  Or had he simply demolished the city out of fear of the Vard?

  There was another city beyond Thalar. Oranash was even farther to the east, but it was another place the Vard had supposedly destroyed, another place Natalie had visited in her travels, and it was near enough to explore. I had heard the stories about what had happened in these places, but I wondered about their accuracy. Manuel wouldn’t have lied to me, but I wasn’t exactly sure about Thomas. I had a feeling he had his own motivation. He served the king, and I didn’t question that, but I did question his truthfulness otherwise.

  The dragon covered the distance quickly as we flew, staying low above the forest. We would be visible, but my memory of the maps of this part of the world suggested there wouldn’t be much down there. Only one of the king’s Hunters would be likely to see us. There would be no cities or villages there. Perhaps the Djarn, but we hadn’t even seen them.

  I feared what I would find. I feared there would be more evidenc
e of the murtar. I had gone to the Vard lands to try to understand, and now I had nothing but questions.

  It troubled me that I still couldn’t feel the full strength of the cycle of dragons, and I had a vague sensation from the dragon that it troubled him as well.

  We flew toward Oranash—or, at least, where I believed Oranash to be. When I saw it, I sat upright on the dragon, clutching his back.

  The dragon slowed almost unintentionally.

  I had known Oranash was situated within the forest, on a road much like the King’s Road that had led to Berestal and my home. Where it had been was like a massive gash in the forest, trees all around it, creating an irregular border; the road that led outward, back toward the capital, was still visible, though it seemed overgrown.

  From the air, everything about this was unsettling.

  “This is Oranash?” I whispered.

  We started circling around it, staying above the ground. I could feel something unusual, a strange power radiating from the ground, leaving me with a feeling of disconnectedness. I held on to the cycle through the green dragon, wishing I had greater access to my own cycle, but this was all I could feel.

  Much like before, the dragon did not want to land.

  Unlike in Thalar, where the ground had a single mound that had revealed the dragon bones, here in Oranash there were three discrete mounds. One was in the center, and maybe nothing more than the debris and rubble of the city itself, but there were two on the north and south parts of what had once been the city—at least, what I believed to have once been the city.

  The ground looked scorched all the way up to the edge of the forest. That could be the Vard and Affellah, or it could have been what the king had done to attack the Vard. The dragon continued to seem hesitant to get any closer.

  As we circled, the tingling in the back of my mind persisted—that cycle lingered there, intensifying, as if it was trying to reach me.

  I looked down at the dragon. “Can you feel it?”

  He roared softly. That had to mean yes.

  A troubling fear filled me. The murtar was not gone from here. There might be something more than just a memory. What if somebody wanted that power? Worse, what if somebody had been here during the attack, been influenced by the murtar, and rejoined the kingdom?

  There had already been other betrayals to the king. Elaine. Jerith. Donathar. How many of them had been out here? How many remained serving the kingdom?

  Something tickled in the back of my mind again.

  It was more power, more of the connection to the cycle. It seemed the dragons were out there, trying to reach to me. I could feel the power around me raging, but it was different from what I detected from the dragon. This was coming at me.

  A hint of energy started to build in the distance, coming from an unusual source.

  The cycle. We had to reconnect to the cycle. I tried to push, and as I did, I could feel something different—a familiar sense of heat and energy.

  If I was going to withstand the danger of murtar, I was going to need my cycle. But I wasn’t going to be able to do it easily, or perhaps even at all here. I needed to get closer.

  I could feel the power within me, drawing from the dragon and connecting to the others.

  The dragon. That was what I needed to latch on to.

  I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him as I tried to tap into that power.

  Energy continued to come toward me as we circled.

  Beneath me, the strange pressure of the murtar remained. I hadn’t considered it before, but maybe the murtar was separating me from the cycle. Having seen and sensed its power in the Vard lands, and now here in the kingdom, there was the possibility that was the source of my difficulty. If so, there might not be anything I could do to withstand it. I might not have enough strength to do so.

  Not unless I got closer to the rest of my cycle.

  We started to circle higher, getting above the ground. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel something—then I began to feel the distinct sense of a dragon coming toward me.

  It was clear, and from above, as I looked down, I noticed the darkened outline of a dragon circling. We descended, moving carefully. I could feel hesitancy within the green dragon, the same sort of hesitancy I had, but could not tell if the dragon coming was influenced.

  As I began to see him more clearly—a darkened shape, almost gray—I realized this was not a dragon I remembered seeing within the kingdom. There was a rider atop him, with dark hair streaming down and whipping in the wind. A cloak hung from their shoulders, and I knew immediately who it was.

  Natalie.

  I should have detected something from her. I should have been able to feel her, especially with the cycle.

  I tried to cycle energy out from my dragon, thinking I could flow to hers and reach her, but I felt nothing.

  “Natalie,” I said, calling across the distance between us. My voice drifted into the wind, dissipating quickly.

  “Who are . . . Ashan?”

  We circled alongside each other, her looking over at me and me looking over at her.

  Natalie had always been lovely, and with her black hair catching the wind, I couldn’t help but feel the same way I had when I had first seen her.

  Some of the attraction I had was tied to her appearance, but much of it was tied to her personality. Natalie had a curiosity, a playfulness, and had helped me learn about and understand my connection to the dragons in new ways. If not for her, I might never have truly come to understand the depths of the connection; she had helped me understand how to reach for it and do something more with it than what I was learning at the Academy.

  I appreciated her mind and the fact she cared about the dragons, in some ways more than I did. She had hidden that from me when we had first met, but she had always fought on behalf of them.

  “What are you doing here?” Natalie flicked her gaze toward the Vard lands in the distance before turning her attention back to me. “I thought you went to understand.”

  I looked down. “I found something when I was there.”

  “And that brought you here? You know what this is, don’t you?”

  “I know. You said you were here for some of it.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “Long enough ago that I don’t even know if I can remember everything that happened.”

  “But you remember the way the city was destroyed.”

  Darkness clouded her features for just a moment. “I remember.” She glanced in either direction before finally looking down. “Do we have to stay up here? I haven’t seen you in weeks, and I would rather have a conversation on the ground, where I don’t have to yell,” she went on and flashed a hint of a smile.

  She motioned for me to follow, and the dragons chased each other, but it seemed like the green-scaled dragon gave her dragon a bit of a wide berth, as if he was afraid of getting too close. I tried to push power through my dragon to connect to hers, but was met with resistance, like the green dragon fought against me, trying to keep me from pressing too much across the cycle.

  We landed in a small clearing, a hilly section of the forest, from which the trees seemed to back away. I headed toward the small stream that ran through here when the dragon wrapped his tail around me, trying to pull me back, which was strange.

  Natalie scrambled down from her dragon, raced over, and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her back. She stayed close to me, as if she didn’t want to let go of me. I hadn’t been gone that long, but it was long enough to no longer feel her as a part of the cycle. Had someone in the cycle—Thomas or Natalie—severed me from it? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t think that such a thing was even possible, but the Djarn had a better understanding of the cycle than I did, and it was possible.

  “We didn’t know what happened to you. None of us really understood why you would agree to go with him, even if it was for some understanding. It was too dangerous.”

  At least that answered some of my q
uestions about the dragons circling over the Vard lands, but not about the most recent attack.

  “I tried to convince my father to send others to search for you.”

  It was probably for the best that she hadn’t. I wasn’t sure what would’ve happened had she succeeded.

  I remembered the uncertainty I had felt when I had gone with the Servant—and beyond that, the fear. I had been terrified to go with him, and even more terrified when I had felt his power building—power that suggested he had a connection to the dragon, much like I did.

  “I needed to understand why they attacked. Why others wanted to make it look like they continue to attack. And I have some answers.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain it to her. I felt she needed to know the truth, and she needed to know what I had experienced, but I didn’t know how to tell her. If I could show her . . .

  I smiled at her. “I’m glad to be back.”

  “So what were you doing down here?”

  I turned, looking behind me. “I remembered the stories I heard about Thalar and Oranash. I wanted to know what happened to those cities.”

  “The Vard attacked,” she said softly.

  I wasn’t able to disagree with that. When I had first come to the Academy, I had tried to disagree with the idea that the Vard had attacked, though everything I had seen had told me otherwise. Now I knew the truth. The Vard truly had attacked.

  But it was hard to explain why—hard to share what had happened, what I had experienced, and to put words to the truth I now knew. The Vard may have attacked, but perhaps they had needed to.

  “They shouldn’t have,” I said. She looked up, and I wondered why I couldn’t feel the cycle flowing the way I thought it should. “When I was there, they acknowledged what they had done.”

  “Did they?”

  “You say that like I’m helping them.”

  “You went with them,” she said.

  “To understand. Isn’t that why you were in the kingdom in the first place? Your father?” The Djarn wanted to understand the kingdom, as well. I figured she, of all people, would understand that. “You were here,” I began. I was trying to figure out how to approach this issue with her, trying to come up with some way of getting through to her, but I wasn’t sure if I knew any effective way of doing so. “You would have seen what they did.”