The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3)

by Dan Michaelson

  The throne room door came open, and the dragon mage motioned for us to come in.

  We followed him into a massive chamber with an enormous chair at one end. From there we were guided behind the throne. The king sat at a small table, looking at a pile of paper stacked atop it. He watched me as we approached, looking up with a sour expression.

  “I understand that you have some word about the Vard?”

  I glanced over to Natalie before turning my attention to him. “This wasn’t the Vard.” I went on and told him what we had encountered: how we had seen the different pits, all of them bubbling lava, and the way the dragons had been drained of their power, using the dragon magic to redirect the power of Affellah. As I spoke, I couldn’t tell whether the king believed me; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all.

  “And you believe the Servant can end this?”

  I nodded. “I hope so. I don’t know if it will work, but I suspect it will involve trading his assistance for his freedom.”

  “Or we simply force him to help,” the king said, turning his attention back to a stack of papers in front of him.

  “I don’t know if that will work.”

  The king looked up, locking eyes with me. His expression was dark, hard. There was no dragon magic within him, but I still wanted to look away.

  “I’m sure Thomas Elaron has instructed you that we have not captured one of their Servants before. This is an opportunity for us. We can finally leverage it, get the upper hand over the Vard, and perhaps keep them from attacking us again.”

  “Have they attacked us recently?” The king frowned, and I pushed on. “The attack on the caravan wasn’t the Vard. Neither was the last attack here.”

  He was quiet for a moment before looking up at Natalie. “They are a constant threat,” he said. “And now we can put an end to it. We will hold one of their Servants.”

  “What if Affellah destroys the city?”

  “It will not.”

  I frowned, trying to figure out what was going on. “And I wondered why he had kept the Servant in the Vard-controlled lands. He wouldn’t have done so without a reason.” I frowned. “We’d sent Thomas off because of the Servant.” I closed my eyes. He’d been added to the cycle, and so had his dragon. I was aware of both of them, and I hadn’t focused on where they were until now. I’d believed I knew exactly what Thomas was doing—that he was heading across Vard-controlled lands in order to find the Servant to return to the Vard—but he was far closer than I would’ve expected.

  “What will you do with him?”

  “I’m afraid that is not for students like yourself to know,” he said, studying me for a moment.

  “I’ve helped defend the kingdom from attack twice before. I can help now.”

  “You have helped before, but now it feels as if you are little more than a student who is questioning my rule.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to argue with the king, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel as if there were something off here.

  He was willing to let that lava flow in order to keep the Servant?

  Even if the Servant agreed to stop the attack, using whatever magic the Vard possessed, it might not be in time. How many people would suffer?

  I bowed politely and turned, hurrying out of the room. Natalie followed me, locking onto my eyes as we made our way through the palace halls.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to find Thomas. He’ll be nearby. Focus on the cycle. Feel for Thomas and his dragon. They are there within the cycle.”

  As I said the words, I could feel him. They were in the city. They were already here. I had suggested to Thomas to bring the Servant to the city, but that wasn’t necessary.

  He had been trying to bring the Servant to the capital all this time. He had already done it. Which was where he must’ve been. But I couldn’t feel directly where Thomas was. There was a hint of him within the cycle, but not enough for me to fully detect. He had hidden himself, obscured himself from me.

  Which meant he knew I’d be looking for him.

  I shook my head. We hurried forward, and when I reached the dragon, I leaned forward. “I need to find Thomas and his dragon. We need to end this.”

  The dragon looked over to me, and there came a pulse of power through the connection. It seemed that I should understand what he was trying to tell me, but I could not.

  Natalie climbed on her dragon, and we took to the air. We circled above the city, and as I looked down, I focused on the cycle flowing out of me, through Natalie and her dragon, and tried to use that to probe for Thomas and his dragon. I couldn’t find them. The sense of them was there, but it was distant and faded.

  I had to try something different.

  It seemed there should be another way to uncover that power. I continued searching, holding on to as much power as I could, feeling the connection there, but I couldn’t figure out any way to bridge that connection and find where they were.

  “Can you help me?” I asked the dragon.

  There came a surge of energy from the dragon, and it flowed through the cycle. It was a circular drawing of power, one that went from the dragon to me, to Natalie and her dragon, and then outward as it went to each of the others in the cycle. Within that, I could feel what the dragon tried to tell me. He shared the energy of the others with me, and given how many dragons were in the city, I could feel the location of other dragons, and I could feel a proximity.

  Thomas and the dragon had a distinct sense within that cycle.

  What had Natalie’s father said about circles?

  Trust.

  In order to use a circle safely, one had to trust that others would use it safely. Thomas wouldn’t have known that. He wouldn’t have known I’d have a way of tracking through that connection. He might not even understand the full nature of the connection, only that he had gained more than what he had before.

  That was what I had to take advantage of.

  A dark shadow circled over us, and I looked up.

  The Sharath. We joined him in the sky, circling near him, and I focused on him.

  “Father?” Natalie asked.

  Something influenced him. I never seen anything quite like it, other than when the dragons had had their energy drawn from them. Could the same thing have been done to her father?

  I wished I knew ways of using dragon magic to try to heal, but I hadn’t spent that kind of time studying it. I didn’t even know if dragon magic could be used in such a way. Not without the dragon helping.

  And not without being a part of the cycle.

  “We have to get through to him,” I said. There was only one way I knew how to do that—by forming a cycle—but I didn’t know if it was safe to do with the Sharath. “We have to join him to our cycle.”

  I started to push power, but felt Natalie resist. She fought, pulling it toward herself, and I withdrew, not wanting to overpower her.

  “Not that way,” Natalie said. “You aren’t of the people. I have to be the one to do it.”

  Power flowed out from her, and it joined with the white dragon first, but differently than it had in other circumstances. I could feel the way she cycled that power, though it was as if she created a separate circle. There was the one that looped through her, connecting me and the other dragons, and now there was one that connected her to this other dragon. When it formed, she pushed even more, forging a connection, and then went from there to her father.

  It was strange that I was aware of it, and it took me a moment to understand why I should be so aware of it. There was power coming from her, and that power radiated outward, circling in a way that borrowed from this cycle and added it to the other.

  They were interconnected.

  Trust. Her father had said it was about trust. I could feel that. I was aware of that energy and the way it flowed outward—aware of just how much power she now could connect to. She borrowed even more power, and when she did, it surged from our cycle, into her fathe
r, and something shifted.

  He sucked in a breath and turned toward her.

  “Natalie?”

  She smiled. “Father,” she whispered. “There you are.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s not the Vard,” I said, and proceeded to tell him what happened.

  His eyes widened, and Natalie filled him in on more of the details, including what happened with the Servant. I looked down while they were talking and stared. Something was off, wrong, and it took me a moment to understand just what it was that I saw.

  The lava flow had reached the city.

  It seemed as if it had hit a barrier along the outskirts of the city, and as I stared at it, I wondered whether the king was right: perhaps there was no way for the attack to reach here. Perhaps the city truly was as protected as he believed.

  Something else caught my attention.

  Places around the city seemed to glow with bright light.

  Lava.

  There was a glow near the Academy. Behind the Academy, at the back of the garden . . .

  The caves.

  What had Eleanor said? There were places like that scattered around the city.

  The attackers didn’t need to pass through the barrier. They could pass under it. They could use whatever lava they had intended and burst into the city. They had already infiltrated the city well enough, gaining access to places within the Academy, possibly even within the palace itself, that had shown them everything they needed to know about how to target the capital.

  Which meant that we were in far more danger here.

  But it was the kind of danger that very few would believe existed.

  They could attack with Affellah in that way.

  “We have to stop that,” I said.

  Her father pulled on power from his cycles, along with the cycle he was now part of with us, and pushed energy out from him. It was an enormous amount of power, far more than I could have drawn on my own. I could feel that energy, and suddenly the flowing of fire eased. The glowing let up.

  I looked over to him. “What did you do?”

  “I’m holding it, though I don’t know how long I can.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He looked over, shaking his head. “It does not matter. You need to find a way to stop this.”

  It would take getting the Servant. I had to figure out where to find him. I focused, thinking about the cycle. Thomas was a part of the cycle, and I could use the cycle to find him now.

  As I focused on it, I could feel energy pulsing, carrying through.

  It was faint.

  It poured through me, flowing outward and through the dragons.

  By using the cycle, I could figure out where Thomas was within the cycle. I didn’t know entirely where he might have ended up, only that he was still within the city. And the more I pulled on that energy, the more I could detect the sensation of him. He was there, within the cycle, close enough that all I had to do was reach out for him.

  “He’s on the edge of the city,” I said. Strangely, it was a place I had been before. I turned to her father. “See if you can’t get through to the king. Try to convince him that we can’t hold the Servant. I don’t know why, but I believe that if we try to hold him, the Vard will do whatever it takes to get him back. That involves using an awful lot of power to destroy the entire city.”

  He regarded me for a moment. “This might be a mistake.” He sighed. “But my duty is to the people more so than it is to the kingdom.”

  We hurried, racing through the city, and we reached the Academy grounds.

  I ran toward the back of the grounds, and as I suspected, there was a flickering pattern in front of the opening to the cave.

  Eleanor stood in front of it.

  “You’re working with Thomas,” I said, approaching slowly, glancing over to Natalie.

  Eleanor looked at me. She began to weave strands of dragon magic together.

  She was connecting to her dragon that I had already added to the cycle. I pulled that power back, cutting her off. Her eyes widened, and she withdrew the pattern she had placed over the opening.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Thomas is wrong.”

  “You are making a mistake, Ashan. You will never be a dragon mage if you attack the Academy.”

  I could be making more than just a mistake. I could be pitting myself against the king. But I couldn’t let this attack continue to press inward, destroying more and more. I could feel the energy, the way it was rolling here, and I knew if I didn’t do anything, if I waited too long, this attack would overwhelm the city. The sense of power was bubbling underneath the city even now. It was far too potent to let linger.

  “I have to do this. If you feel you need to—"

  Eleanor charged at me.

  Natalie reacted, which surprised me. She laced a quick strand of dragon magic around, little more than a twisting fiber of power that worked from her feet all the way to her head, confining her. It was effective, and for a moment, I feared Natalie would burn her, but she hadn’t used nearly enough power to do that. It merely held her in place. I could feel the way she had borrowed from the dragon cycle, adding that power into her approach.

  Natalie locked eyes with me for a moment, then nodded.

  We crawled forward, into the opening.

  It didn’t take long for us to reach the Djarn space deep beneath the Academy.

  As we reached the branch point, I could feel lava flowing, heat radiating off of it, even if I couldn’t see anything other than a faint glowing.

  And then we reached the opening.

  Thomas was there, as was the Servant.

  He looked over to me, surprised to see me. “You shouldn’t be here,” Thomas said.

  I shook my head. “Do you even know what is going on?”

  “The Vard have attacked.”

  I shook my head. “The Vard haven’t attacked. They were used. Much like the Djarn were used. Much like you have now been used.”

  Thomas eyed me for a moment. “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t intervene. This place can hold him,” Thomas said.

  Given what I’d seen and what Eleanor had said about this space, I knew he was probably right. “All it’s doing is drawing their attack to the city. Is that what you want?”

  “I thought you said the Vard weren’t attacking.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to find a way to get through to him. “They haven’t been, but they will. If we continue this, then they will have no choice.”

  I looked over to the Servant, and I found him watching me. Somehow, I could feel the heat radiating off of him, energy that was drawn through him. I held his gaze, but found it difficult to do so. “But the Vard were not responsible for this, were they?” I looked past Thomas, asking the Servant himself.

  He held my gaze. I could feel the heat in his. “No,” he said, his voice hoarse and painful.

  “The Vard have always been after us,” Thomas said. “And they will continue to descend upon us.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “And if we stop this, if we get him to help us stop this, then we can finally put an end to this.” I looked at the Servant.

  It was going to take more than that. He had been held captive, and I wanted Thomas to reveal how he had captured the Servant, even if he didn’t want to.

  But that was for later.

  “We have to release him. Let him return to his people. And let him call off Affellah.”

  “Agreed,” the Servant said, his voice a rough, awful sound.

  I glanced over to Thomas, and he continued to frown at me. “The king wants me to hold him. There is so much we can learn about the Servants.”

  “Don’t you think we could learn it another way?”

  “They have no way to work with us. We know what the Vard are capable of. We have seen it for years. You are too new to your role, Ashan, but over time, you will come to learn the truth.”

  It had nothing to do with how new
I was to the dragon magic.

  I could see the truth. I had felt the truth.

  “I don’t know what happened with the Vard in the past, but I know what I’ve heard. I know what you have said, what the Djarn have said, what Manuel has said. The Vard have not attacked in years.” I watched the Servant as I said it, and saw him nod his head just once. “They had no reason to attack us. And then you captured the Servant.”

  “You’re blaming me?” Thomas asked.

  “No. Unless you are responsible for those pits along the Southern Reach, but I don’t think you are. That was too similar to what happened before. This is something else.”

  This time, the Servant did react.

  I couldn’t tell anything from his expression, though there was a strange light that shone in his eyes, something that burned, something strange.

  And there was agitation within him.

  An agitation that I couldn’t quite understand.

  “Murtar,” he breathed out.

  I looked at him, wishing I understood what he was saying.

  “What was that? Murder?”

  The Servant seemed to glow hotter. “You don’t know.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.

  “Murtar,” he said again.

  “This wasn’t the Vard. We have to let the Servant go,” I said.

  “I have been a part of protecting this country for a long time. I know what must be done. You have to trust me,” Thomas said.

  I frowned. “With lava flowing toward the city, I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “You can’t trust me, or you can’t serve your king?”

  “If we let that lava flow here, the city will be destroyed.”

  “They won’t be able to destroy the city.”

  “They will. You may not believe it, but I do. I can feel it.”

  I looked past him and saw an opening in the ground with a pattern over the top of it. The Servant was inside. He looked up at me, and I could feel a pulling coming from him, or an attempt to draw upon the cycle. I asserted more power through the cycle, using that to deflect him.

  The Servant watched me.

  “We will return you to your people. In exchange, you need to stop Affellah. I presume you can do that?”