The Summoned Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 4) Read online

  The Summoned Dragon

  Cycle of Dragons Book 4

  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

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Series by Dan Michaelson

  Similar Series by D.K. Holmberg

  Chapter One

  The Vard lands were harsh and bleak, much as I had feared when first coming here.

  I stared at the dark, cloudless sky; the moon rose high above the horizon, casting a soft glow over the cooling night. While the air never got cold, it did cool off after the daytime’s hot, baking sun.

  I felt most comfortable in the Vard lands during the nighttime.

  I sat on a rock, resting and looking out at the crackling flames the Servant had lit. He hadn’t needed flint or any sort of fire starter. He had magic. There was no doubt in my mind he had used his strange control of the powers he possessed to light the fire, now crackling and glowing with a soft energy—but there was something else to it I could see.

  The flames looked different. There was a translucent, almost shimmering quality to them, and I couldn’t help but feel as if I could find answers within those flames.

  But that was what the Servant wanted from me.

  I turned my attention back to the darkness.

  Distantly, I could feel the energy of the dragon, could feel him up there, circling, flying over the mountain, as if he was trying to remind me of his presence and what we were to do—as if he wanted me to know we needed to keep working together and we needed to find the answers, but there were no answers.

  “You keep looking for it,” the Servant said.

  He sat close to the fire—far closer than I would have. I glanced over to him. He held a strip of meat he’d peeled away from a larger strip of jerky, and he took a bite, chewing it slowly. He had offered me the meat earlier, and I had taken my share, eating what I could. It was his offering from the village we’d come from, and though the meat was tough, chewy, and a bit too salty, my stomach rumbled, and I had no choice but to eat.

  My mouth was now dry though and my lips felt swollen. I felt like everything within me was aching and throbbing, like I had to find some way to ignore that powerful pain, but I didn’t know what that was going to take. It was a strange sort of discomfort, more than I would’ve expected during my time out on these rocky plains.

  “I’m just searching for the dragon,” I said.

  “Do you fear something will happen to it?”

  I almost answered no, but in these lands, I didn’t know. “I hope you won’t do anything to the dragon.”

  “We promised you safe passage,” he said.

  “Safe passage doesn’t mean you allow me to reach the dragon.”

  “No, perhaps it does not,” he said.

  “Then what do you intend for me?” We hadn’t resolved that yet.

  “You fear the dragon,” he said.

  “I don’t fear the dragon,” I said. “I fear for the dragon. It’s different.”

  I closed my eyes and focused on the energy of the dragon, trying to feel for the cycle within me. The last two days had been even harder than usual, and I didn’t know if that was because of how long I had been away from the dragon, not having a sense of the connection between us, or how long I’ve been in these lands. It felt like I was drawn further away from the dragon connection with each day I spent here. I believed I should have more of a connection than I did, yet I couldn’t feel anything more within it, even as I tried to probe for that power and energy. There was an absence, a missing energy I wanted to reach for, something I only needed to grasp, and then . . .

  I closed my eyes, and the dragon was there.

  I called upon the power of our connection, trying to reach for it, focusing on the forest-green dragon. The cycle was still within me. I could feel it, though not with the same strength and ferocity of power I had been able to feel within the kingdom. Having come here with the Servant, I suppose I didn’t expect to have full access to that power, but there had been a part of me that remained concerned I would lose it altogether, and that the Servant would somehow strip away my connection to the cycle.

  We had traveled to the Vard-controlled lands together, but as soon as we reached these lands—and the volcano Affellah in the distance—I had been forced away from the dragon. I had spent the last few days aware of him and the cycle, however distant, but I couldn’t see him other than within my mind.

  It was no different from the connection I had with Natalie and Thomas, who were both a part of my cycle, but were both also separated from me. I feared what would happen if I lost my connection to them.

  Still, this had been my choice. I had come here chasing an understanding of the Vard, believing I had been right about them, though the Servant had not shown me anything to prove me right or wrong yet. While I was gone, I was a traitor to the kingdom.

  We had passed by the remains of a village earlier in the day. It had taken me a moment to process what I was seeing there, why the stone looked as if it had been charred, and I had come to realize it had been burned. Dragon fire. The Servant had said nothing as he led me past the village. He hadn’t needed to. There had been places within the kingdom that had been destroyed by the Vard, but I had not yet seen them. Seeing this village left me wondering what more the Servant intended to show me. How many other places were like this? How many more were destroyed by my people?

  I steeled myself for that possibility. It was war—at least, it had been war. I wasn’t sure what it was any longer.

  Those thoughts stayed with me as I looked up to the Servant, still thinking of the dragon. I could feel him; a part of me suspected the Servant could as well. “You could let him fly freely,” I whispered.

  “He does fly freely,” the Servant said.

  I opened one eye, looking over to him. The Servant was grotesque—all cracked skin and missing flesh, but there was a power to him, one he claimed came from Affellah, and I didn’t know whether he was referring to the volcano, or the god they served.

  “He does not fly freely. He flies within the confines of where you’ve permitted him.”

  “And that is as free as he can fly,” he said.

  “Why do you fear the dragons?”

  In the time we’d been walking together, I hadn’t gotten any further answers about why they didn’t care for the dragons, only that they worshipped the fire, and that they had dozens upon dozens of villages scattered all throughout this land, though none of the people in the villages I had encountered had struck me as dangerous.

  “When you see a candle burning, what do you see?” he asked.

  “Fire, I suppose,” I said.

  “And when you see this fire, what do you see?”

  I turned to the fire and stared at it, focusing on the way the flames crackled and moved, a shifting sort of shimmering energy. This was the reason I was here. I had come to the Vard lands searching for understanding. I wanted to know whether they were
the threat that the king and his dragon mages claimed they were, or whether my belief about there being some other danger was right. With everything I had seen, everything I had felt, I knew I was right. The hard part would be proving it, and it would be even harder to convince others, but first I had to convince myself.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “I see the connection to Affellah,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and it sounded as if he were screaming, though pitched low. “Affellah provides much,” he said. “Answers, and a connection, but Affellah also provides life.”

  Affellah was more than a volcano to the Vard Servant. It was his people’s god, and I could tell he wanted me to understand it. “Fire provides life?”

  “Could you live without the sun?”

  “I suppose not,” I said.

  “Could you live without the heat in your body?”

  “I suppose not,” I repeated.

  “And could you live if it weren’t for the heat in your loins?”

  Hearing the Servant speak about heat in my loins was almost as bad as hearing my mother talk about it. “I’m not talking about that,” I said.

  “It is a part of life, why would you fear it?”

  “I don’t fear it,” I said. “I’m just not going to talk about it with you.”

  “Then you fear me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t fear you. I . . .”

  The dragon energy shifted, and I sat upright. It was the first time I’d felt anything different since separating from him. I had been aware of the cycle and the power that existed between us since stepping away from him, and while the connection was still intact, some part of it seemed to move and shift, leaving me questioning what had taken place.

  I focused on the cycle, even though our connection had been muted while I was here; it hadn’t been separated from me, only diminished, as if some invisible layer had been placed around my connection to the dragon, or perhaps the dragon itself. For his part, he could go nowhere. The Servant had restricted where he could fly. The dragon was committed to this journey, but I knew what he really wanted.

  He wanted to escape, most of all. I didn’t really know what else they might try to do to him, but I knew the Vard used their power to hold the dragon, confining him in place—and so far, the dragon had not found a way beyond it.

  “What did you do to him?” I asked, looking over to him.

  “I did nothing,” the Servant said.

  “Something changed for the dragon.”

  “Would you like to go see?”

  It seemed like it was some sort of a test. Of course I wanted to go see, but at the same time, I wanted to finish this.

  “How much longer will we be traveling?”

  “When you have completed your journey.”

  “And what is my journey?”

  “What have you seen in these lands?”

  I frowned, turning away from the fire, looking over to him. “I’ve seen your people. I’ve seen the villages. I’ve seen the places of Affellah that you wanted to show me.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And I suppose I have seen you.”

  I had plenty of time to look this man over and get an understanding about who the Servants are and what they could do, but even in that time, I hadn’t felt I’d learned anything new.

  He smiled at me. “Have you?”

  “You don’t think I have seen you?”

  “You have seen what I permitted you to see.”

  “Why would you conceal something from me?” I asked, smiling at him tightly. “Didn’t you want me here so I could understand the power you possess?”

  “Of course,” he said. “You have been brought here so you can learn.”

  “That’s why you wanted me here?”

  “Shouldn’t all journeys be about learning?”

  “I’m trying to stop a war. I need to do more than learn.”

  “You don’t think you can stop a war by learning?”

  There were times when talking to him felt like trying to complete a puzzle, like he was trying to create more difficulty for me, though I had no idea why or what he would accomplish by doing so, only that it left me frustrated.

  “I’m trying to get an understanding of your people so I can report back to the king.” After that, I would have to decide what would come next. I thought I knew: convince the king and the dragon mages that the Vard weren’t what they feared. I just didn’t know if they would listen.

  “What if you choose not to report back to your king?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  The Servant turned his attention back to the fire. “Your king has targeted my people.”

  “The king has believed himself targeted by the Vard. We’ve seen attacks in some of our cities. We’ve seen the way the Vard have destroyed our cities. That’s the reason I’m here,” I said, looking over to the Servant. We both knew the reason. I wasn’t sure what his reason was for permitting me to be here, other than that it seemed he intended to get something out of me, much like I intended to get something out of him. When I had first come, I had begun to question whether it was a mistake, and whether I was in danger, but he had done nothing to make me feel unsafe. To the contrary, he seemed far more concerned with what I might be able to understand about Affellah, and proposed philosophical questions on a daily basis.

  There had been no other Vard.

  When I had questioned him about that, he had claimed I wasn’t ready to meet others. It left me questioning whether I would find the other Vard to be just like him, or perhaps worse.

  I thought about those back in Berestal who had followed the Vard, along with my friend and his family who believed they understood the Vard, but they couldn’t. I didn’t think they truly understood what the Vard had done.

  “That is not why you are here. You are here for another reason,” the Servant said.

  “I’m here because I need understanding,” I said.

  The Servant regarded me, and in the light of the fire, I couldn’t see anything reflected in his eyes, though I was fully aware of the Servant’s power, the energy that seemed to linger there. “Are you certain that is all?”

  “What else would I be here for?”

  “Perhaps Affellah brought you here.”

  “The dragon brought me here. You brought me here.”

  “What is the dragon but fire, a part of Affellah? What am I but a Servant of Affellah? You are here for a reason, Ashan.”

  He didn’t use my name often, though I never remembered giving it to him. Somehow he had known it. All I knew him as was Servant. While we spoke, pressure was building against me, threatening to impinge upon the cycle I possessed.

  He watched me, heat radiating off him in a strange way, floating away from him and leaving me feeling as if he were trying to control it, trying to use his connection to the heat and the fire to make me feel something.

  And then there came a resurgence, a burst of power and energy that came from the dragon, as if both of their energies mingled together, creating power I should be able to understand, but somehow, I couldn’t. I recognized something, recognized that energy, but I could feel there was a part of it that wasn’t quite right.

  “Stop,” I whispered.

  “What do you fear?”

  “I fear you entering my cycle,” I said.

  I had to acknowledge that. I had to acknowledge that I didn’t want him to be a part of my cycle, I didn’t want to be powered by that same magic, and I didn’t want to be connected to him.

  “Why would this be a bad thing?”

  “The cycle is mine, and I would prefer to be the one who decides who enters it.”

  “The power belongs to Affellah.”

  I looked up when I could feel the dragon fluttering again in my mind, a hint of energy there, bursting within me. It was that energy I could feel, that energy I recognized. Within it, there was something more, something I should know, something I should be able to reach for.
/>   No.

  That was dangerous. He’d already proven that he could join my cycle. If I used the dragon cycle myself, I risked the Servant fully joining in it, if he hadn’t already.

  He tipped his head, regarding me. “You feel Affellah. There aren’t many who can come to these lands and not feel something of Affellah.” He turned, sweeping his hands away from him. They were shadowed in the darkness of night. “That feeling comes in the way the sun reflects off the stone. It comes in the dryness of the air, then your throat, then finally in your lips as the sun begins to bake them. It comes within the way your skin tightens, then the way the dust settles down your back.”

  “I don’t like any of it,” I said.

  “Affellah is not for you to like. Affellah is for you to understand. And it is for you to serve.”

  I turned my attention to the volcano, and within its faintly glowing outline, I could see and feel the dragon circling.

  He was hunting. At least they allowed him to do that.

  There were a few streams that ran along the base of the volcano, and it was densely forested there, though less so the higher up one went along the side of the volcano. It granted the dragon an opportunity to hunt and search, but he had not been able to travel beyond a specific distance. It was almost as if they had wanted to hold the dragon up against the volcano, linking him to Affellah.

  I looked over. “I don’t want to feel Affellah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am connected to the dragons.”

  “And you don’t think you can connect to the dragons while you are connected to Affellah?”

  “Why did you really want me here?”

  That was the key at this point. That was what I really needed to understand: what they thought they might achieve by bringing me here.