The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4)

by Dan Michaelson

  But I needed to have the dragon, the cycle, the connection. I couldn’t do that without the power I had already learned how to connect to.

  The lessons I had learned within the Academy came back to me again. Focus on the heat burning. Let it fill me. Push it out through me. All of it was supposed to be a cycle.

  But how could I cycle with Affellah?

  Was it even possible?

  “Close your eyes,” the Servant said.

  I turned away and started to focus on the power I’d detected, trying to call upon that energy within me, and turned back to the wall. I closed my eyes and waited.

  “You should feel the power of Affellah. Now, it may take many forms. As you keep your eyes closed, as you embrace the energy within Affellah, and yourself, you may find the connection forming, solidifying between you so that you can draw upon the power of Affellah in a way that will bridge you to it.”

  It felt like he was closer to me, closer than he had been before, and I took a step to the side, brushing up against a wall. Strangely, the room seemed smaller now. I started to open my eyes, but could hear the Servant calling out.

  “Feel the power here. When you open yourself to Affellah, you will feel it here. Let it fill you. Become one with Affellah.”

  Gradually, a burning began to build within me. I had been trying to understand Affellah, but had been fighting it without even meaning to. Now that I was aware of what I had done, I could feel it, the way it was pressing and pulsing through me.

  There was some connection. As I stood there, lingering in place, I couldn’t help but feel as if perhaps there was an answer.

  “Feel for the power of Affellah. It flows within all things,” he said.

  “Like the dragon magic.”

  “No,” he said, his voice harsh and angry. “They steal from what Affellah wants to give. They take and take and take, and they do not . . .” He took a deep breath, then his demeanor shifted. “Close your eyes.”

  “My eyes are closed,” I said.

  “Embrace the energy you feel.” The Servant moved closer to me again, and the heat and power radiating off him started to surge, leaving me uncomfortable. It was an unpleasant, dry kind of heat. “What do you feel now?” he asked.

  I could feel the Servant near me, his heat and energy, but nothing more. “Wouldn’t it be better for me to try to do this at the top of the volcano?” I turned to him. “Wouldn’t I find Affellah more easily there?”

  “You can find Affellah wherever you seek it. Here is where you must find your understanding. Open yourself to Affellah.”

  I was tempted to argue with him, but this was his lesson to teach at this point. I needed to listen so I could understand the Vard and what they served. This would be how we would stop the fighting and the war.

  This would be how we would stop the murtar.

  “When I open myself, how will I know that it works?” I asked.

  “You will feel Affellah.”

  His voice seemed distant, growing farther away from me. I tried to open my eyes, but this time it seemed as if they were forced closed.

  Open myself.

  I thought about how I might be able to do what he had asked. There was the cycle, but the dragons weren’t the key to Affellah. If they had been, the people of the Vard lands would have a greater connection to the dragons. Whatever answer I needed was tied to something else—a different kind of power, perhaps. Besides, I couldn’t even use the dragons if I wanted to.

  The cycle was closed to me.

  After what I had seen in the kingdom and the remains of the cities, along with the influence of murtar, I couldn’t help but feel a measure of concern about losing my own connection to the cycle, along with the dragons. Time spent here was time I was not spending trying to reconnect to the cycle.

  Those thoughts kept intruding upon me. Fear. That was the greatest concern I had, but not the only one. How would others within the kingdom view me? As a traitor. How could they not? Thomas would certainly think that, if he didn’t already. Other instructors within the Academy would probably feel the same way. And Natalie was disappointed. She hadn’t said anything, though she hadn’t needed to.

  Open myself to Affellah.

  Here I was doing this to try to help the kingdom, but perhaps that was a mistake.

  I could return, go to the king, warn him about what I had seen and experienced, and tell him what I knew to be a danger, assuming he would even see me. Given what I had done, it was possible the king wouldn’t welcome me at all and would instead view me as an enemy.

  I had to learn. I had to understand. I had to be ready to truly defend the kingdom. But to do that, I had to find what the Servant attempted to show me now. It meant I had to open myself to this power in the manner he wanted.

  In the back of my mind, I was distantly aware of the dragon lingering. He wasn’t angry. If there was any danger to me, wouldn’t the dragon alert me to it?

  Instead, he simply waited.

  How could I find Affellah? I was aware of the Servant near me, the heat around me—and something different. I had felt it once before.

  “Open yourself to Affellah,” his voice said again, growing still more distant.

  I thought about the charred wall near me, Affellah itself, everything I had seen in these lands.

  Affellah.

  It was like a murmuring in my mind. The Servant talking to me.

  Open myself.

  I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t dare. As I stood there, feeling energy around me, I couldn’t move. After a while, it seemed as if the ground trembled.

  I had felt Affellah trembling during my time within the Vard lands, but never so close to me. What if Affellah were to erupt? Was that how I was to feel it? Was that the power they were trying to get me to recognize?

  I took a deep breath.

  Affellah was fire.

  The dragons were fire.

  My cycle was fire.

  What if all I had to do was try to find some similar connection? The Servant believed it was different, but I did not. To me, that power seemed similar, as if it was connected—as if it was always meant to be connected.

  The answer was here, I believed it was, but it involved me finding some truths I had not yet uncovered, and I wouldn’t be able to find them without the Servant.

  I was going to open myself up to Affellah.

  I was prodded forward by the Servant.

  I tried not to react, but heat began to build around me, different from before, and it stank of smoke and char, leaving my nostrils feeling singed.

  I took small breaths rather than drawing in too much air at once, and I fought against what was happening to me, against the power I could feel.

  If I opened myself up now, what would happen? Would I end up like one of the Servants? If so, I wouldn’t be able to return. I would be changed, forever marked by Affellah. Perhaps that was what the Servant wanted.

  When the Servant spoke again, his voice came from a great distance. It felt like it drifted through my mind. I found myself feeling pulled, almost like I was falling into some sort of trance, but I allowed it.

  Now the heat was all around, squeezing down upon me and trying to work its way through me. It seemed significant, but even now I resisted it.

  When the Servant next spoke, it was soft, a whisper in the back of my mind, like smoke swirling, trying to call to me and tell me what it needed from me.

  What choice did I have? I let the heat and energy press in upon me. I no longer fought.

  Those internal barriers had been up for a long time, even though I hadn’t known it.

  I had erected them when I had still been on the plains, when I’d been near Berestal, after losing my brother and father to their accident, then needing to take up my place on the farm. They were barriers that had formed around my mind, becoming something of a restriction that had allowed me to focus on what I needed to. Barriers I had placed so I could help my sister.

  Then, when I had
gone after her, I had kept those barriers up even after I had gone to the kingdom, after I’d gone to the Academy. They served a purpose—and still did.

  I wasn’t about to release them.

  In the back of my mind, there came another murmuring voice, this one different from the other. It didn’t seem as if it came from the Servant.

  “Open yourself to Affellah.”

  I turned to the sound of that voice, the source of the heat, the source of the fire that burned through me—the source of everything.

  “Affellah?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sunlight streamed in through the window. There was no breeze. There never was in the Vard lands. My body was hot, filled with a strange sort of energy, and I was terrified of it. In the days since I had gone with the Servant, I had done what he had asked of me. I had opened myself to Affellah, but I had no idea what it meant to have done so. It felt as if I had embraced some power, but I wasn’t sure whether that had changed things for me. I hadn’t changed physically. Not yet. I still didn’t know if I would, but suspected that if some change like that were to happen, it would have started by now.

  I sat up. The bed was narrow, little more than an alcove cut into the wall. That was to be expected, as the rest of the home was small too, cut into the stone of the mountainside. I had not spent much time here, only enough to have seen buildings like this, though most of them were unoccupied. The Servant had kept me away from others within the Vard lands along the Affellah mountainside.

  The thought struck me again: I had opened myself to Affellah.

  What had I done?

  Distantly, I could still feel the dragon. I feared that if I lost my connection to him, it meant that I would never regain a real connection to the dragons and my cycle, then . . .

  I had no idea what would happen at that point.

  I stretched, working knots out of muscles from lying on the hard bed, then I got to my feet, keeping my head low. I wasn’t necessarily the tallest person, but the buildings along the side of Affellah were small enough to force me to keep my neck bent as I moved through them.

  I stepped out of the room and into an adjoining one. Many of these buildings were a series of interconnected rooms, all worked along the face of Affellah. This one seemed to be no different from the one I was in, though I had not been here very long to fully explore it. The Servant wanted me to have an opportunity to feel the power of their god, or perhaps simply wanted me in a place where I could be more easily controlled.

  I found the Servant kneeling in front of a crackling flame.

  I paused at a window and looked outside at the bleak gray sky. No sun poked out, which left me feeling disconnected from the world and my dragon for some reason. I could still feel the dragon, but it was muted, as if the Servant was somehow trying to keep me from connecting to him fully.

  As I glanced over to the Servant, I wondered what he might ask of me now. I grabbed a pitcher of water off the counter and poured some into a heavy stone cup. The water was warm and tasted coppery, an unpleasant combination, but I had come to learn I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. There was nothing else here.

  As I drank, some of the strange, unsettled feelings I’d been having began to dissipate. Maybe by connecting to what the Servant wanted of me, I could finally start to find some normalcy.

  I glanced over to the Servant, then turned away.

  A door leading outside was cracked open, and I stepped out, dressed in the black robes I had been in for whatever ceremony they had put me through. The robes brushed against my skin, leaving it feeling rough and raw, which irritated me, but the other choice was to be there naked.

  Once outside, I took a deep breath. The heat of the volcano pressed upon me. I could smell it and feel it. I was all too aware of it. I looked around before settling my gaze on the line of buildings near me.

  There was another person outside, a young woman with reddish hair and dark skin, dressed in the same black robes I wore. She stared up at the mountainside, her hands in front of her, her lips moving quietly. She seemed to notice me watching her, and she turned to me, tipping her head politely.

  “My name is Ashan,” I said, taking a step toward her. I realized I still held the stone cup, and I debated whether I should set it down or finish the water within it first. Water was scarce here, as it was difficult to acquire an adequate amount of it so high up on the volcano.

  “I know you, Ashan.”

  I frowned at her. “Have we met before?”

  “Affellah has shown you to me,” she said.

  I grunted. Throughout the time I’d been staying with the Vard, the Servant had kept me from most others. It was almost as if they feared letting me have any sort of interaction with any of the others, as if I might somehow share word of the outside world.

  “Affellah hasn’t seen fit for us to meet before,” I said.

  A faint trembling rumbled beneath my feet, the sense of the volcano awakening. That was strange. Why would I think Affellah was awakening? I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the ceremony. That was what it had to be.

  Open myself to Affellah.

  That was what the murmuring had said, over and over again, until I finally had complied. When I did, I had found something I had never experienced before.

  Heat and energy had washed over me—then the voice. I knew the voice. I had felt the voice, deep in the back of my mind, calling to me.

  Affellah.

  I shook my head, opening my eyes and looking back to the girl. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  She watched me, a darkness on her face. “I am Asanley.”

  I tried to force a smile, but she seemed disinterested in it, as if she was annoyed by my presence. The Servant had brought me here, but others among the Vard may not be pleased I was here.

  I looked along the mountainside, then to Asanley, and I had a sense of anger and irritation from her. I had done something that offended her. Maybe it was my mere presence here. More and more, I felt she would want nothing more than for me to go elsewhere. It was in the way she looked at me, the way she stared, and the way heat seemed to pulse off her, as if she were a budding Servant, trying to push me away.

  The Servant strode toward both of us, glancing from one to the next. It seemed his gaze lingered on me longer than it did on Asanley. I could feel her gaze upon me too.

  “Today you will continue your journey toward Affellah,” he said, speaking words that sounded more formal than they needed to be. Heat radiated from him, and the glowing of his face seemed like flowing wax. “We will begin.”

  He descended the mountainside, taking stairs carved into the stone. I looked over to Asanley for a moment, finding her watching me, then followed the steps down. There was always a steady sort of heat here, as if it were radiating from the stone itself.

  The buildings along the stone of Affellah looked considerably different from those in the villages the Servant had guided me through. There, I had seen small wood-and-mud huts, wells, and a struggle for life. Along the mountainside, the buildings were made of stone, all built with incredible decoration, and all seeming to celebrate the power of Affellah.

  I followed him down, and we descended even farther, getting closer to the lower portion of the Vard buildings. Higher up on the mountain there were more homes, and at the highest peak was, of course, the temple. That was where the Vard worshipped. The stairs continued up the mountainside, as if to climb toward Affellah itself.

  I knew those stairs extended all the way to the peak of the mountain, and had even climbed some of them, though had avoided making the full trek. When the dragon had been here, we were able to fly to the peak, but without the dragon, and without any other way of reaching the peak, I would have to take the stairs like everybody else.

  The Servant waited for me, watching me.

  “Are you going to tell me how I’m going to have this transformation?”

  “Transformation is part of the journey,” the Servant sa
id. “And it is one you must take for yourself.” He glanced over to Asanley who remained near us, before turning his attention back to me. “You must use that journey as a guide while finding your path.”

  I glanced over and started to smile, though I could see only a serious expression on his face. Asanley watched me, the same irritation that had been there before bubbling in her gaze.

  My journey and my path.

  Did he know I had been questioning those things? Since coming here, and since having seen what the kingdom did to the Vard, how they had targeted villages that were unable to defend themselves, I had begun to have questions I had not had before. I had been taught the Vard were my enemies, but in the time I had been in the kingdom, I had never truly felt that way. The only time the Vard had shown themselves as dangerous had been when Thomas had captured the Servant, instigating a response.

  And now, here, I questioned.

  What was my path?

  Was it simply to gain this power so I could help the kingdom? It was the reason I had come back to the Vard lands and searched for the Servant and his help, after all. But now that I was here, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he had known what I would find when I returned. Maybe all of this was some way for him to coax me into serving his god.

  I continued following the Servant down the mountainside. We took a narrow staircase, and I focused on the dragon in the distance, feeling for that connection. I cycled power through me, through the dragon, and tentatively reached for the rest of the cycle, but felt only an emptiness that shouldn’t be there, which worried me.

  The Servant looked back at me, watching.

  “You will not find answers in that way,” he said.

  I shouldn’t be surprised that he could detect me searching for the cycle, but I still was. It didn’t seem as if he should be able to uncover that, yet every time I tried to reach beyond the single dragon to the cycle itself, I found the Servant looking at me. He claimed the dragons were not connected to Affellah, but how could they not be similar?

  “What else do I have to do?” I asked.

  “You have taken the first step of opening yourself to Affellah, but the rest is up to you.” He looked back at me, and it seemed as if fire burned in his eyes. He smelled strangely of acrid smoke, char, and heat. “For you to accomplish your goal, you must find a different path than what I can lead.”