The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Read online

  The Betrayed Dragon

  Cycle of Dragons Book 2

  Dan Michaelson

  D.K. Holmberg

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  Series by Dan Michaelson

  Similar Series by D.K. Holmberg

  1

  A dragon roared overhead. I looked up briefly.

  It was massive. All black scales with thick leathery wings that caught the wind, spread on either side. Spikes protruded from its sides, and a long tail seemed to guide it like a rudder on a boat in a stream. Heat radiated from it, something I could feel even from this distance. It circled a moment before disappearing into the heavy clouds.

  I turned my attention back to the Academy.

  It was an enormous stone building situated at the edge of the capital city Carlath near the forest. A green lawn spread out before it, leading up to the massive dragon pens containing the dragons that the Academy trained people like myself, among others, to connect to magic. The building itself was rectangular, with a central portion that rose higher, so it looked as if it wanted to peer out over the rest of the capital, though it wasn’t so high that it could tower over the palace itself.

  I had only been up into the higher levels in the Academy a few times, mostly because doing so was not for lower-level students like myself. Moss grew along the surface of the Academy, giving it a greenish contour, helping it blend in somewhat to the forest nearby.

  Another dragon roared before launching itself into the sky.

  I smiled, staring at them as I had often done since coming to the capital.

  There had been a time when I had wanted to simply see a dragon.

  Now I was surrounded by them, and eventually would learn to ride them.

  As far as I knew, not everyone in the Academy would learn to connect to the dragons. Most could learn to detect them, and those who could—those like myself, something that I still struggled with—would end up being dragon riders.

  A figure at the far end of the dragon pen held her hands out, flames streaking from finger to finger as they swept away from her. Her dark hair fluttered in the breeze, contrasting with the orange flames of the dragon magic.

  That magic was what I wanted, if I dared to dream.

  Since coming here, I’d thought about what it would be like if I could connect to the power of the dragons themselves—if I could use that power in a way that would allow me to perform fantastical, magical feats. A dragon mage.

  There were not nearly as many dragon mages within the kingdom as there were dragon riders. The dragon riders had helped defend the kingdom from attack over the years, from the Vard and other enemies, but it was the dragon mages who truly posed the real barrier between the dangers of the Vard and those outside.

  I shifted on the bench I sat on outside of the dragon pen, every bit the outsider I had been ever since coming here months before. I had learned to open myself up to the dragons. That had been one of the earliest and easiest lessons, though not one that I had fully mastered. If I couldn’t even do that . . .

  Then I would train to ride the dragons.

  The thought still made me smile.

  The air was cool, the day early, and I waited for my next testing. Watching the dragons always brought me a measure of solitude and comfort, regardless of what others in the Academy would say to me.

  “Are you ready, Ashan?”

  I looked over to Jerith. He was one of the instructors I had trained with the most at the Academy. He had experience with students of all ages, and had been here for many years. He was dressed in the dark cloak of the Academy, its symbol—a dragon head surrounded by a flowery crest—marked on his chest.

  “I didn’t think I had much choice,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “Only if you want to continue your training to become a dragon mage.” He smiled at me tightly. “You have potential. Myself and others who are connected to that power believe you do. You just have to reach it.”

  He clasped his hands behind him; with his gray jacket and pants, he looked every bit the dragon mage I had always imagined. My gaze lingered on his crest. I was still learning rank, and knew that Jerith was incredibly gifted, but didn’t know where he fit in within the dragon mages of the kingdom.

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “There’s no shame in failing. There are many who are thought to have potential but never manifest it. Reaching for the connection to the dragons is difficult. It’s not something all can do. It’s not something all want to do.”

  “I’ve been trying,” I said.

  “I know you have. I have seen it. Others have as well. Now, you just need to find it.” He motioned for me to follow, and we walked through the grassy courtyard, past the dragon pen and toward the forest. “What you need is to feel your connection to the dragon. Succeed, and you will continue in your studies.”

  It sounded so simple when he said it, but at the same time, I knew it was anything but simple. It was anything but easy with what he expected of me. I had to find a way to connect, and if I failed . . .

  If I failed, then I would become a dragon rider.

  That was what I reminded myself each time I thought about failure.

  A dragon rider, something I once would only have dared to dream of becoming, was now what awaited me in the event of my failure.

  Alison would laugh at the suggestion.

  I had thought of my sister and my family often in my time within the Academy. After the attack, Alison had returned home, and the word I’d gotten from her, sent by caravan out of Berestal, had told me that she had convinced our mother to sell the farm. It had allowed Alison to mentor with one of the master weavers within Berestal. Mother was provided for, as well, along with my brother Thenis.

  A breeze kicked up out of the distance, carrying with it the scent of the forest, along with a hint of heat that streamered within it. I stood at the tree line, staring into the depths of the forest—I couldn’t see anything, though I could feel it.

  I focused on the heat. That was the part of the energy that I needed to grasp, the power I needed to master, but the problem was in detecting more than just that fire. The problem was in recognizing how that fire connected to some deep part of me—a part I hadn’t known about until I felt like I was too old to do anything about it.

  “What do you feel?”

  I glanced over at Jerith. He watched me, his dark expression frowning almost disapprovingly, as he often had seemed in the months I’d been within the capital. Training here had offered me understanding and a chance to learn about the connection I shared with the dragons, even if I hadn’t yet mastered it. It was that failure of mastery that led to the disappointment my instructors shared. Supposedly, I had potential but couldn’t reach it.

  “I can feel the heat. I can smell it, too.”

  Jerith arched a brow. Doing so gave him a distorted look. He had a long scar on his forehead that I suspected came from a fight with the Vard, though he never spoke of it.
A burn on his other cheek most likely came from dragons, but again that was something else he didn’t speak of.

  “You can smell it?”

  I shrugged, nodding to him. “I can smell something in the air. Heat, or perhaps it’s merely the energy coming off of the dragon.”

  Jerith grunted, turning to look out of the forest. “Smelling the heat of the dragon is not what most would describe it as,” Jerith said.

  “Maybe that’s wrong then,” I said quickly.

  I was careful with how I reacted to the instructors I worked with—Jerith possibly less than some of them. He’d been the most accommodating to me, and had never really seemed to mind my questions, though I still didn’t know whether I needed to be more careful.

  “Nothing is wrong, unless you choose to say it is,” Jerith said. “You feel what you feel. And you smell what you smell. I cannot be the one to tell you how to describe it. All I’m looking for is for you to recognize there is something out there.”

  I couldn’t see the dragon, though I knew the details of the test and that there was one in the distance. I had to find it by my connection to it.

  “I don’t entirely know what it is I feel,” I said. “All I can tell you is that I can smell a little bit of heat—smoke mixed with the edge of oak, almost a faint char that simmers in the air.” As I described it, I flushed slightly. It was most ridiculous to describe magic quite like that, though there was something about that smell that brought back memories of the farm I’d left behind.

  “Your experience is your own. As I said, I’m not here to tell you what to detect. All I’m here to do is to help ensure you recognize there’s something here. Once you do, then you can borrow that, and you can stretch beyond yourself, using what you detect in order to find the connection—and the power within yourself.”

  It was part of what they had been working on with me ever since reaching the capital. On my journey here, Manuel had promised me I would work with others who had similar power as me, claiming that I’d proven I had potential to be more than even a dragon rider. A dragon mage.

  Other than the dragon I’d traveled to the city with, I had failed to connect to them. Even with that dragon, I found it more difficult than I would have thought. Power always seemed to be at the edge of my ability to reach.

  I had found the instructors to be willing to teach, even eager. Apparently, it was not terribly common for them to find students who had an ability to work with the dragons the way I did. Dragon riders themselves were not all that rare. There were plenty of dragon riders, especially in this part of the kingdom—men and women who were willing to risk themselves in the skies, but far too few dragons to ride.

  The idea that I might be able to use the power of the dragons, summon it and turn it into something external, the kind of power I’d only seen a few times prior to coming to the city itself, had left me doubting myself. It was a far cry from the farmer I had been. I kept wondering if perhaps all of this were a dream.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the connection that I felt to the dragons from time to time. Power emanated from them, which Jerith tried to convey to me through his instruction. All I needed was to find a way to latch onto that power, to connect to it, and to use it so I could find some other way of summoning it.

  “What happens when I detect the power?” I asked.

  “All I’m trying to get you to do right now is to focus on what you can detect. Once you master that, the next step is going to be pulling that energy into yourself. The key here is grasping for heat, and then letting it flow through you.”

  Jerith set his hands off to either side of him. He positioned himself in a way that I had seen the other dragon mages do. I could feel heat bubbling up from him, much like I could feel the heat from out in the forest. There was almost a direct line between him and the dragon; through that line, I could feel the energy coursing from the dragon into Jerith. It flowed outward, and a soft flame arced from one hand to the other, rippling in the air, leaving streamers of steam and flame.

  He opened his eyes, looking over to me. “This is calling the heat to you. You can do this when you learn to latch onto the energy you detect.”

  “I can’t call it into myself and concentrate it,” I told him.

  “There are some who take months to master that,” Jerith said. “Others take years. Unfortunately, it’s unpredictable how long one will take. Some of the most powerful of the dragon mages have taken the longest to reach their power. You are at a disadvantage in that you came to us later in life. Had you come when you were younger, we might have taught you to focus your power much sooner, and it would be easier for you to control it.”

  It wasn’t the first time that I had heard that from the men and women instructing me. Quite a few of the other students within the Dragon Academy had come here when they were much younger and at a testing similar to what I’d observed in Berestal. I was one of the oldest, and though that didn’t bother me, I had a sense it did bother some of the younger students. Especially those who were already far more skilled.

  “I can feel the power,” I said, focusing on the distant dragon. I breathed in slowly and steadily, feeling the heat and the energy that was there, letting that power drift to me. When I did, I could smell the heat in the air. To me, that seemed to be the most important factor, though I wasn’t entirely sure what I might use that power for. “I can’t call it to me.”

  “The first key is just knowing it’s there. Why else do you think we’ve worked with you over the last few months to open yourself up to that power?” Jerith turned to me, smiling tightly. His face distorted even more, the scar on his forehead becoming twisted, the burn looking grotesque, the skin tight. “What you need to do is to find your own connection. Perhaps what you need to do is spend time with the dragon away from the others.” He offered a hint of a smile, grinning at me slightly. “I don’t think the other instructors will mind, not if it works. If it doesn’t, then there is no harm done.”

  “Which dragon?”

  “The black one that’s out here now. Azithran, we call him. He will work with you.”

  I nodded, though there was a part of me that wished I were able to work with the small dragon that had come to the city with me in the first place. For whatever reason, I felt a connection to him, even if I didn’t know if there was anything to it.

  I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, using what I could to strain into the distance and see if I could feel for even more power. Even as I did, I couldn’t detect anything more than what I had before.

  “I will leave you here,” Jerith said. “Find the dragon. That is the test. Nothing more.”

  I nodded, then frowned. “How do I get the dragon back?” That was assuming I found it, which wasn’t a guarantee, but if I did, I wanted to make sure I had some way of getting it back to the pen.

  Jerith chuckled softly. He tapped on a chain hanging from his side—a cuff he had that linked to the dragon. This led the dragon away from the barracks where they were kept, toward the edge of the forest where Jerith had released him. The dragons were generally allowed to wander within the forest, though as far as I knew, the dragon riders had some way of controlling them to ensure they didn’t go too far.

  “Don’t worry. He won’t go anywhere. If you can’t find the dragon . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish.

  I’d started to suspect what would happen anyway. If I failed to find the dragon, I’d soon find my time training in the Academy come at an end.

  I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet, and not when I thought I could learn to reach for the dragon power. I just had to figure out how.

  “I’ll find him.”

  “I hope so,” Jerith said, regarding me before turning away.

  He reached the road heading back into the main part of the city, leaving me standing by myself. As I stood there for a moment, I focused on the energy of the dragon. There was probably some way of controlling the dragon from a distance I didn’t know about. />
  In the time since I had come to the city, most of my days had been fairly regimented. Much of them were spent training and studying, trying to understand how to open myself up to the power of the dragons. That was the key, much like Jerith reminded me now. Recognizing the energy of the dragons had been fairly easy, but opening myself to it had been much more complicated.

  I had begun to learn how to focus on the heat within myself, to try to find that connection that I shared with the dragons, mostly so that I could learn how to tap into something more. Once I did, then came the more complicated steps. There were patterns, ways of twisting fire, but generating fire was something that was beyond me so far.

  I could feel the dragons. Within Dragon Academy, I was almost always aware of their presence. Power seemed to simmer everywhere around me, filling me, and even though I couldn’t necessarily grab a hold of that power, I knew that it was there. The challenge was holding it, funneling it, and doing something as simple as creating flames with it the way Jerith had.

  I couldn’t fail.

  I focused on the heat, trailing after the awareness of the energy I felt deep within the forest. I followed it, weaving between the trees. The forest, at least the outskirts of it, wasn’t all that dense. A trail made its way through the trees. Even if there weren’t the trail, I wouldn’t need it for me to know where I was going. I could follow the energy within the forest, use that to guide me to the dragon. Strangely, it felt as if the dragon were moving.

  If the dragon were to run, I wouldn’t be able to slow him, or even catch him.

  Instead, I focused on the power I felt, the energy that radiated from inside of the forest, tracking that as I trailed after the dragon. I breathed in slowly and steadily, letting that energy come to me as I focused upon it.