The dragon roared again, but more softly this time, and power flowed between us; we had an understanding, and beyond that, an agreement.
I reached for the dragon, touching his scaled side. “You don’t have to fear for me.”
The dragon rumbled, just a little, then disappeared into the forest.
Asanley had turned to the dragon pen, approaching the bars cautiously. I could feel heat radiating off her. I was no longer sure if what I felt came from some connection that had formed between us or if it was simply her connection to Affellah that I detected. Regardless, I noticed a tracing of fire around her. It was significant, creating somewhat of a buffer.
“You hold them here?”
“They aren’t held,” I said, approaching carefully. “This is where they sleep. I think it’s more to protect the dragons from the people of the city.” She looked over to me, and I shrugged. “I never really understood it either. The dragons are powerful, intelligent, and they aren’t really held here.”
I stepped forward, tracing my hand over the bars, remembering what it had been like when I had first connected to the dragons, learning from Thomas, then from Natalie, and gradually gaining my own insight.
Now I used what the dragon himself showed me so I could understand.
“Where are you taking me?” Asanley asked softly.
I had given it some thought, trying to decide where I would begin. If I believed the presence of the murtar was here, I needed to come up with some way to overpower it, but doing so was dangerous.
I stayed near the dragon pen, drawing upon the heat that flowed deep within me, something I suspected was bound to a greater source of power, Affellah or something else, and let it flow from me to the dragon I wanted and back. Using Affellah made it a different sort of cycle.
The dragon turned to me.
Waiting.
“How long will you linger here?” Asanley asked.
I shook my head, turning my attention to the Academy, and realized suddenly how I would look. I was dressed in Vard clothing. If anyone saw me, they would assume the Vard had come to attack.
We’d have to work quickly.
“The dragons,” I said to her. “I have to do it, but I’m not exactly sure how.”
Asanley arched a brow as she looked at me. “You were better in my lands.” She snorted. “Here you seem tentative. In my lands, you were confident, even if you were ignorant. You aren’t sure how, but you came here to remove the threat of murtar. Is that not what you should do?”
I turned away from her. That was what I needed to do. Save the dragons. The concern I had was how many of them were connected together. They weren’t in my cycle. Then again, my cycle was quite different now, though I wondered if I even had a cycle any longer.
I focused on the dragons.
This was what I had come here to do, wasn’t it? And faintly, I could feel my dragon prodding me, pushing me to do something. It was time.
I had to open myself to Affellah somehow.
It should be easier standing next to Asanley, especially given how she was holding on to power. I could feel energy radiating from her—and I could feel that distant sense of something greater than what I possessed, greater than what even a dragon possessed.
Asanley had grabbed the bars of the dragon pen. She seemed unsettled, uncertain, as did I.
But I had to do this.
The cycle of Affellah, of what I was calling upon, flowed within me.
The dragon prodded.
“This is where I start.”
“If that is your journey,” she said.
“I’m not even sure what my journey is anymore.”
“When I was young, I was told that sometimes the journey is one we choose, and sometimes the journey is one chosen for us.”
“I wish I had more of a choice,” I said.
“Even when a journey is chosen for you, you can choose your path. You can choose how you take it.”
“I’m not sure I can,” I said.
“If you do not believe it, then you cannot achieve it.”
The comment struck me as surprisingly optimistic for someone from the Vard lands, especially for Asanley, who had always seemed more practical than anything else. “I didn’t take you for someone so optimistic.”
“What is optimistic?”
“It means you’re trying to convince me I can do something when I think I cannot. It means . . .” I shook my head. At this point, there was no point in going through all of that with her, no point in debating. She was right.
I had done far more than I would ever have believed I was capable of doing. In the time I was here, I had proven I could connect to the dragons, that I could become a dragon mage, and I could even ride on a dragon, something I had wanted to do since I was a child. I had come to learn I was more than what I had ever believed myself to be. Wasn’t that enough? I thought so.
Cycle the dragons.
I had to start there.
As I focused on the energy within them, I started to pour power out, borrowing from Affellah now that I had opened myself to that power.
I soon felt a distinct energy, as if Affellah was there warning me.
The power of the dragons was there as well.
When I began to build my connection to the dragon, thinking about the cycle I had formed when I had been here before, I knew what it would take. I knew what I needed to do.
It was the doing that was difficult.
I used that deep power within me, Affellah or something else, and began to let it flow toward the dragon.
Power pushed against me—foreign, strange power, not only the dragon’s power.
It had to be the murtar.
It was resistance, but not the kind I had felt from the dragon before. There were dragons I could not connect to because the cycle did not want me to, but this was not the sense I had. This was almost as if a physical barricade had been erected within the dragon, but it also tried to chew away at the power I summoned.
Asanley’s connection to Affellah, the heat within her, flowed from her to me, joining with what I did. There was a struggle within the dragon, and something squirmed inside it, almost as if it were alive. It was both unusual and terrifying.
If it came toward me . . .
I remembered what happened to the Servant, how he had been so easily consumed by that power.
I pushed.
There was no technique here. It was almost as if I were trying to join the dragon to the cycle, but I knew I couldn’t. Not this way. There was, however, something I could do. Fire. Heat flared within me, and some distant, muted part of the dragon reverberated with it.
I latched on to that, linked the fire within me, that distant sense of Affellah, to it, and sent it flaring through the dragon. It burned. I could feel a flash of heat surging.
The dragon started to glow, his scales briefly taking on a bright-yellowish hue as he turned to me, then joined our cycle.
It was distinct. Different. Not the same as what I had already connected to. But there was still power to the dragon. And now, with the dragon present, connected to us, I felt a greater strength building.
“Something changed,” Asanley said.
“I think I freed the dragon from the influence of murtar.”
She sent a sweeping of heat through me, reminding me of what I had done to the Servant. Was it her way of testing whether I was influenced? Perhaps she felt the need to do so.
Maybe that was why she had come. She was to ensure the murtar did not spread back to the Vard lands.
“Then you must free the others. That must be your journey.”
There were a dozen dragons in the dragon pen. All of them would be powerful. Could all of them be connected to the murtar?
Perhaps she was right. This might be my journey.
And with the power of this dragon now added to my cycle, I felt a renewed sense of strength, but it was more than that—it was hope.
Saving this dragon let both the
green dragon and me know we could overwhelm the murtar. It might be challenging, but we could do this.
What was more, once we did, then we could find a different set of answers. We would have more power with each dragon we freed, then we could figure out what was happening and how the murtar had come to infiltrate the kingdom.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I had finished with the second dragon in the pen when I started to feel something shifting. At first, I thought it was simply that I had been adding dragons to my cycle, and that was what I detected, but it started to feel different from that. There was the power of the cycle, but there was something else within me, as if I was growing more connected to another energy.
Asanley had continued to hold on to the heat and power she possessed through Affellah. She had said nothing as I worked from dragon to dragon, trying to burn off the influence of the murtar. With the dragons added to my cycle, they were protected, almost as if doing so connected them to Affellah, or whatever this greater power I felt within me might be.
When I shifted my focus to another dragon, one of the dragons roared suddenly.
“Get back,” I said.
“Get back where?”
“To the green dragon,” I said.
I darted toward him, and his head lowered as he waited.
I jumped onto his back, and Asanley hurried toward me, joining me. Heat flared from her as she wrapped her arms around my waist, and everything within me sent up a warning.
“What is it?”
“The dragons know what I’m doing,” I said.
The other dragons had started to take to the air.
The city was strangely quiet, though it was late enough that I suspected very few people were awake. I saw no soldiers, no sign of dragon mages, and no activity even within the Academy. It was almost as if a blanket of suppression had quieted everybody within the capital.
Maybe I was too late to help here. What if the murtar had already spread?
I turned, looking at the nearest of the dragons, yellow scaled with glowing eyes, and I hurriedly began to push, using the same technique I had used before to try to burn through the influence of the murtar. As I did, I could feel some pressure and resistance pushing against me, but it wasn’t so great that I didn’t feel as if I wouldn’t be able to overwhelm it.
The more I pushed, the more I felt that resistance building. I had to draw upon something more. The other two dragons I had saved seemed to add to what I was doing, as if they knew what was needed. The power of the murtar pushed against us, but Affellah opposed it.
I flooded that dragon with heat, and as it exploded from me into him, it burned through the influence.
The dragon roared, then joined our cycle.
But there were still other dragons.
And they had also taken to the air.
I patted the green dragon on the side, and he lurched into the sky.
As we flew, I focused on the dragon nearest us, vibrant and red scaled, filled with heat but also some muted energy I could detect—murtar.
I had to draw upon the power I had, but thankfully, now that I had connected to some other dragons, I could feel more heat flowing within me, as if I was bridged more solidly to Affellah. Could it be that the dragons helped me form a better connection to it?
I focused and pushed, feeling the energy flaring within me and the way it surged into the dragon. It was easier now, and as I burned through the murtar, it stripped away.
The dragon roared, suddenly joined into our cycle.
The others had started to circle, flying high overhead, their cries a sharp roar in the darkness. The longer this took, the more likely that others would know.
How long would it take before somebody came to find out what happened?
How long before they started to think I was with the Vard?
Even I was left questioning if I was. I wanted to help the dragons, to defeat the murtar, and I was using the technique of the Vard to do so. What did that mean for me? What did that make me?
I no longer knew.
I surged heat through the green dragon, and we blasted toward another dark-blue dragon.
I felt the influence again and began to push, trying to squeeze it off, resist everything I could feel, but worried I wasn’t going to be fast enough.
The other dragons were going to escape. Heat built from me, radiated off Asanley, and came from the dragons within my growing cycle, then I blasted that collective heat toward the murtar.
Another dragon joined the cycle. When it did, I felt a strange connection with him. I hadn’t noticed, but now the connection I detected with the dragons seemed more potent than it had before. It was there, filling me with an awareness, rising up within me. That power bloomed, carrying with it the energy of the cycle, but also of Affellah, and it echoed with what I felt coming off Asanley. The dragons of the cycle swarmed outward, trying to keep the other dragons from escaping.
“There are still several that are influenced,” I said.
“What is that?” Asanley asked, looking off into the distance.
I frowned. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was pointing at, as it seemed too dark to truly see. The night had grown overwhelming.
We neared another of the contaminated dragons, and I hurriedly began to form my connection to it, pushing through it, all while trying to see what Asanley had observed. As I pushed against the influence of the murtar, I realized there was something out there.
A dragon. It flew low, far lower than I expected, and as it descended, I saw the direction it was heading.
Toward the Academy.
It didn’t turn toward me, though I suspected it was aware of me. It had to be aware of the other dragons as well. I could feel that strange, cold resistance that suggested murtar flowed within it. More than that, I could feel something pushing outward.
Whoever rode atop that dragon knew how to control the murtar.
And they were heading toward the Academy.
But not toward us.
At least I had time . . .
The dragons still influenced by the murtar suddenly surged, circling toward us.
They converged, five of them streaking toward me, Asanley, and my green dragon.
The rest of the dragons in the cycle reacted, shrieking, their cries filling the darkness. It was only going to draw attention to what was happening here, but perhaps there was no getting around that.
I tried to push outward, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I couldn’t target one dragon while leaving the others. Any time I tried to do so, I could feel the others surging toward us. I was going to have to attack all of them at one time.
We had to get down to that dragon below so I could see who was involved. Somebody had to be connected to the murtar here.
I tried to guide the green dragon, but as we attempted to do so, the other influenced dragons surrounding us prevented us from navigating toward the dragon heading toward the Academy. We were going to have to deal with these dragons. The other dragons I had added to the cycle continued to circle around us, as if trying to defend us, but it still wasn’t enough.
With the murtar influencing them, they were more than what we could withstand.
Could I link them all at once?
The idea that I could combine the dragons at one time, all of them simultaneously joining the cycle, seemed to be too much. And I didn’t know if it was going to be possible.
I focused, straining with the energy I connected to, thinking that if nothing else, I might be able to link to the dragons. I could feel the other dragons now within my cycle, and there came a surge of something greater within that power, the dragons forcing their strength upon me. I latched on, jumping from one dragon to the next, and felt a deeper, more consequential warmth.
Affellah. It had to be.
It reflected within me, reminding me of the power that flowed out of Asanley. I linked it to all of the dragons in my cycle, then found that a pattern formed by that fire, could press in
ward—toward the influenced dragons.
There was some resistance, but with the dragons able to call upon their own flame, connected to that greater source of power—Affellah, or whatever it was—I no longer felt as much pressure against me as I had before.
And it burned off.
The murtar was gone.
The dragons faltered for a moment, and I hurriedly pushed again, linking them to the cycle. Then they were there, sharing the strength of the other dragons in the cycle.
The Djarn already knew how to protect their dragons by placing them within their cycles. I had wondered why they had not revealed the truth of the dragon cycle to the kingdom before, but if these dragons had been a part of a cycle, the fact they had been influenced suggested that someone who was a part of the cycle knew how to force murtar through it. It was possible that, despite offering a measure of protection, the cycle weakened the dragons in some way, exposing them to a danger.
Power bloomed within me in a way it hadn’t in quite some time. Not because I hadn’t felt the energy of the dragons—though that was a part of it—but because the cycle had been distant, missing, and now there was another cycle. A renewed one.
I still didn’t know exactly what had happened to my previous cycle, but perhaps it didn’t matter. I was now connected to these dragons, and perhaps that was the only thing that mattered.
And that was enough.
I turned, looking toward the ground.
I knew what needed to happen now.
Learn who was down there. Learn the source of the murtar.
And uncover why it was headed toward the Academy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When we landed, I made a point of sending the other dragons away, letting them circle around the city. I was distinctly aware of them—the power within them and their connection to what I had to refer to as Affellah. The greater power.
Asanley stayed with me as I approached the Academy.
The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4) Page 20