The Caged Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 1) Read online

  Some sections were darker than others, and the ash and soot that coated the road was denser in those sections. I found nothing else. No evidence of what had been here.

  It was possible that what we were looking at was nothing more than the remains of someone trying to make it look like a dragon had been through here. The only people who would want to make it look that way would be the Vard.

  Before Berestal had been claimed by the king, the city had had a heavy Vard connection. They lived in the lands far to the south, beyond an uninhabitable stretch of land known as the Southern Reach, and had warred with the kingdom for decades over territory. Berestal had remained out of the fighting, until the king had claimed these lands in order to gain access to the Wilds and the trade route beyond. There were rumors that the Vard had made it look like dragons had attacked to gain sympathizers. Especially in places like Berestal that were already on the edge of the kingdom.

  An object in the forest caught my eye, and I turned away from the road, heading toward it. It was just off the road, near the tree line. The trees were narrow here, and always seemed slick with moisture, somehow damp despite there not having been rain in the last two days. As I approached, I frowned.

  “What do you see?” Joran called.

  It was something metallic. I was unsure if it was still burning so I kicked it, but it didn’t smoke or steam or give off anything that would make me think that it was still hot. I held my hand above it for a moment before picking it up.

  I turned back to Joran. “What do you think this is?”

  It was a hunk of silver metal, a little larger than my hand, though it had been blackened by whatever had burned it.

  Joran took it from me, shaking it. “It’s pretty heavy,” he said. “And strangely shaped. Maybe a metalsmith got caught up with the dragons, and they decided to attack him.”

  I arched a brow at him, shaking my head. “I think that’s reaching a little bit.”

  “Maybe the king wanted a prize and—”

  I headed back toward Adela, ignoring him.

  It was just like Joran to come up with some fanciful explanation.

  Joran grunted. “Can I hang on to this?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Thunder rumbled loudly again. I glanced up to the sky, looking at the storm clouds. They were close. We weren’t going to be able to make it back to the farm site before the storm hit. Which meant that we were probably going to get soaked.

  I had a sense that Joran didn’t really care. He turned the metallic object in his hand, tapping on it, scraping it with his thumb before pulling a short belt knife out and stabbing it.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to figure out what we have here,” he said.

  “By carving through it?”

  He looked over, shrugging. “Do you have any better ideas?”

  I just shook my head, laughing at him. “Come on.”

  “You don’t want to look at this any more closely?”

  “Whatever was here is gone. There’s no evidence of anything—”

  “Other than this,” he said, holding out the object. “What if there are other things here?”

  “Did you see anything else?” I asked.

  “No, but we haven’t looked closely enough to know.”

  “I’ve looked close enough,” I said. “And I think it’s time for us to…”

  A flash of movement raced through my periphery. I paused, slowly looking in the direction it came from so as not to alert whatever it was that I was aware of its presence.

  “You’re probably right that we should get back.”

  I raised my hand, silencing Joran.

  As I turned back to the forest, I tried to peer through the darkness, but couldn’t make out anything. I was sure that I had seen something move.

  “Ashan?” Joran called after me as I walked toward the forest.

  I raised my hand again, trying to silence him.

  “Did you see something else?”

  I nodded my head slightly.

  The shadowy figure had shifted. As I got closer, I was certain that there was something within the trees, though I still couldn’t make out what it was.

  I doubted that it was a wolf or camin, a fierce black cat that prowled through the forest, though it was possible. Every so often they would be sighted at the edge of the woods. But, usually, having two men nearby would scare them away. It would be unlikely for them to linger so close to the forest with us here.

  What was it, then?

  Joran joined me, he stood alongside my shoulder, peering into the forest. “What did you see?” he whispered.

  “Probably nothing,” I said.

  “You’re looking into the forest. You think it’s one of the Djarn?”

  I shook my head slowly. “The Djarn don’t show themselves to us.”

  They were the people indigenous to the forest, and rarely seen. In all the years that I’d lived on the farm , I had never seen one of the Djarn. My father claimed that he had, but he claimed many things that few people believed. The only one who reliably claimed to have seen them was Joran’s father, and that was infrequent.

  “Then what is it? If it’s a camin, I don’t want to get close.”

  I started laughing. “You don’t want to get close if it’s a camin, but you had no difficulty walking over here when you were thought it might be a dragon?”

  “The ashes of a dragon. It’s different. I wouldn’t want to get too close to a dragon either.” Joran shrugged. “Well, maybe that’s not true. If I were given the opportunity, I might want to get close just so I could see if the stories about them are true. You know that some people say that if you touch a dragon’s side, you’ll be blessed with his strength?”

  I glanced over to him, keeping one eye on the forest. “Who says that?”

  “People. You don’t listen to the stories anymore, so you don’t know.”

  “I know enough to know that touching a dragon isn’t going to make you stronger. Just like it’s not going to give you magic, or allow you to breathe fire, or develop impenetrable skin, or…” I shook my head. “All of those things are just stories.”

  “Stories have to come from somewhere,” Joran said.

  “They’re for children.”

  “I seem to remember you once believed some of those stories. Now you’re just a boring adult.”

  I glanced over to him, frowning. “I have my family to look after, Joran. I don’t really have time for chasing after childhood stories.”

  Joran looked away, guilt written on his face. “I’m sorry.”

  It caught me off guard, so I turned my attention back to the forest. There had been something there, even though I no longer saw what it might’ve been. Maybe it was just my imagination. Either way, whatever I had seen was gone now. Nothing remained.

  “Come on,” I urged. “We should get back before the rain comes.”

  Joran backed up, going toward the center of the King’s Road. He still gripped the metallic object that we found as he stuffed it into one of the saddlebags strapped to Wind. “I’m ready when you are.”

  I started to turn, but as I did, I could have sworn that I saw a face. I jerked my head back around, staring through the trees. There was nothing there. No sign of anyone.

  The Djarn didn’t come to the edge of the forest. There would be no reason. Unless they had come for the same reason that we had…

  Thunder rumbled again, and I looked up at the sky.

  Lightning crackled, illuminating the dark clouds. For a brief moment, I could have sworn that I saw a shape swirling within , but then the lightning faded, and it was gone.

  Just my imagination.

  I pushed the thought away, knowing better than to allow myself to get caught up in thoughts like that. As we headed back to the farm, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had seen a dragon flying in the clouds. If it had been a dragon, and if it had been responsible for burning whatever
was on the road, then what had it attacked?

  2

  A fire crackled in the hearth. I stood in front of it, warming my back while looking out the window. Two chairs angled near the hearth, and other than a small table in the sitting room, there was no other decoration. The inside of the home was simple, little having changed over the last decade, and certainly not in the last few years since the accident. My father and brother had ventured into the forest while tracking a wolf or camin that had attacked the livestock. They were found just inside the edge of the forest by Joran’s father.

  We never learned what really happened. I had my suspicions. They’d been different since the accident. Changed. Not just physically, but mentally. Neither Thenis—during his good days, at least—or my father had ever been able to share what had happened.

  It probably had something to do with the magic of the forest. Maybe even the Djarn, though for them to have survived whatever accident they’d suffered, the Djarn must have helped. But as far as we knew, the Djarn never helped.

  Several chairs were angled toward the fire, and a blanket was rolled out on the floor. I wondered if my sister or my brother had slept there. Maybe even my father.

  The rain hammered down, thunder and lightning pounding outside. We had beaten the storm back, and Joran had raced home, wanting to get back before the worst of the storm hit. Given how long the rains had lasted lately, that was probably for the best. Otherwise, he might have been trapped here for the better part of a day or more.

  The smell of baking bread and roasting meat filled the inside of the home, mixing with the smoke drifting from the hearth. I rested my hand on the stone mantel, taking a deep breath before turning and heading to the back of the house.

  I paused at the second bedroom, looking at my brother. He sat on a wooden chair next to the narrow bed, looking out the window. His thin face looked even more gaunt than it had before. His shaggy black hair— once so vibrant and thick— seemed even thinner and wispier than it had before. There had been a time when people said that we looked alike. We had the same dark hair, but his hair had always been fuller and wavier than mine. We both had the same jawline, too. Now I was the one who looked hearty and well, and Thenis was the one who appeared thinning and gaunt, the life fading from him with each day.

  I cleared my throat, and Thenis glanced over to me. “Do you want me to help you get to the table?” I asked.

  Thenis turned back to the window. “The storms have been coming more frequently,” he said. Rain danced along the glass of the window. He kept his face pressed up against it, almost as if he wanted to feel the rain. Perhaps he did. It had been a while since Thenis had been out in a storm. It had been a while since Thenis had done much of anything. Or said much of anything, for that matter. Like our father, his mind came and went. Some days were better than others, but occasionally there were glimpses of the person he’d been. Like today.

  “They haven’t been coming any more frequently,” I said.

  “I’ve been counting,” Thenis said. “I don’t have much else to do, so I count the storms. I tried to count the raindrops, but there are too many.”

  I shook my head, moving around the bed to take a seat next to him. His room was small. A table rested next to the bed, and a washbasin sat upon it. He had a chamber pot alongside the bed, though our mom usually took care of that.

  “Why would you count the raindrops?” I asked.

  “I have the time,” he said.

  “There are other things you could do,” I said softly.

  He turned away from the window, locking eyes with me. For a moment, there was a hint of the person he’d once had, a reminder of the burgeoning man he was becoming before the accident, like when he’d lifted a hog that had pinned our father’s leg before it could crush it. “What else can I do?” He glanced down. “My legs don’t work. The rest of me doesn’t seem to work much better. So I sit here, watching the storm. I count the raindrops. Or, I try.”

  He turned his attention back to the window. I sat with him, the silence almost overwhelming. The steady hammering of the raindrops on the window was overwhelming. I could practically feel the thunder , the burst of lightning, the overwhelming nature of the storm as it moved through.

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” I said carefully. “I can help you get to the table now, or I could… ”

  “I would prefer to eat in here,” Thenis said.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If that's what you want,” I said, and sighed.

  Most nights he took his meal in his room. It was rare when he would join the rest of us at the table. Not that I didn’t try. Whenever I was finished with my chores for the day, I would always try to get Thenis to join the rest of us. But he preferred his room, as if he enjoyed being walled up inside here rather than the comfort of being surrounded by his family.

  I sat with him for a few more moments, but he never turned his attention away from the window and didn’t say anything else. After a while, I got to my feet, heading back out into the kitchen.

  I found Alison working alone. That wasn’t uncommon. She had become a skilled cook, and an even better baker. She glanced up as I entered, offering me a hint of a smile, dusting her hands on her apron before she turned back to the pot. “Is Joran gone?”

  “He wanted to get home before the storm hit,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought…” She shook her head. “I suppose that’s probably better. I don’t have enough food for him if he stayed, anyways.”

  “What are you making?” The savory aromas drifted from the pot as she stirred. I leaned over her shoulder to see carrots and onions piled around a hunk of meat at the center, the water nearly boiling over.

  “The Holstons brought over some venison,” she said.

  They were a neighboring family that had been good to us since my father and brother had gotten sick. I glanced back toward the hearth. I hadn’t seen our father when I came home. “Do you need any help?”

  As I reached for the spoon, Alison smacked my hand. “I think I can manage.”

  “You had better.”

  I turned to see my mother standing behind me. With her rounded face and full lips, she was an older version of Alison. Her golden hair had started to gray, and the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes had deepened over the last few years. She didn't smile as much as she used to, though the creases around her mouth were a reminder of a time when she could laugh easily.

  “Your brother is getting restless. Why don’t you go check on him—”

  “I just did,” I said to her.

  She frowned, her gaze flicking to Alison. “Did you check to see if his bedsheets need changing?”

  “Well—”

  “I didn’t think so.” She tapped me on the arm, shoving me off to the side. “And I think that you should get out of the kitchen. The two of us can manage just fine.”

  Alison pressed her lips in a frown as she started back toward Thenis’s room. “See?” she said to me.

  I sighed, getting out of their way. I knew better than to stay underfoot, and to cause problems for the two of them.

  I took a seat on the wooden rocking chair near the hearth, picking up the book next to it and thumbing through the pages. It was something Alison had been reading, a volume filled with children’s stories. It surprised me that she would be reading something like this. I paused when I reached the story of Nan and Her Dragon. It was an old tale, a fable that I remembered being told when I was a child. I skimmed the pages, reading about Nan and her adventures, as she hunted and helped defend her village alongside her dragon.

  “You didn’t finish the fence,” my father said.

  I looked up, setting the book down on my lap, so that I could turn to him. “No. Joran came to help, but we got distracted toward the end of the day.”

  He made a disappointed click in the back of his throat, and took a seat opposite me, looking at the fire. He rubbed his knee, fingering the brace that was strapped t
o his leg. “It’s a wonder you managed to get that boy to work at all.”

  “Joran helps out quite a bit,” I said softly.

  “He should,” my father said.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to get into an argument with my father about this. “I saw something burning near the forest, so we went to investigate.”

  “A storm fire?”

  It seemed to be one of his clear days. I should be thankful. They were better than the alternative. He would ramble on and on about monsters prowling the forest or dragons attacking. “That’s what I thought as well, but it was before the storm came through,” I said.

  “What did you think it was?”

  “I’m not really sure. A section of the road was scorched. Probably sixty-paces long. We didn’t see anything.” I didn’t want to get him riled up. We didn’t need that. It happened often enough as it was .

  He looked over at me. “It sounds like you might’ve seen something.”

  I shrugged, realizing I might have been too careful with how I’d clipped my words and ended up drawing his attention anyway. “Maybe , I’m not exactly sure what it was. It was hidden in the trees. But I could have sworn that it was one of the Djarn.”

  That had to have been what I’d caught sight of. If it wasn’t one of the Djarn, then I didn’t know what it was.

  “They saved me, you know.”

  He said it so casually that I didn’t know how to react. “When we got hurt, the Djarn brought us back.”

  “You’ve never told me that.” Even now I didn’t think I could believe it. Not with the way he acted. “Besides, the Djarn wouldn’t get close enough for people to see them .”

  “You sound like your sister.”

  I waited for him to tell me more about why I sounded like my sister, but he had turned his attention back to his hands.

  “It was probably just a wolf.”

  I nodded. “Maybe.”

  I knew better than to argue with my father. Ever since the accident, he’d been practically normal at times and confused at others.