The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) by Dan Michaelson (good summer reads .txt) 📗

king keeps hidden for a reason. We protect others. We protect those who could not be protected otherwise. And it is better for them not to know just how dangerous the Vard are.”

“Why?”

“You fear us,” the Vard said, grunting as Thomas constricted the band of power around him once again.

“Tell me about your plans,” Thomas said.

The Vard laughed, a painful, raw sound that echoed into the darkness of night. “My plan? Affellah does not need for you to know the plan.”

“We control the dragons,” Thomas said.

I looked over at him. Control? That wasn’t how I’d describe it at all.

“You can never control fire. It burns regardless,” said the Vard.

Strangely, I found myself agreeing with the Vard, though I didn’t think I could share that with Thomas. We didn’t control fire. We didn’t control the dragons. We didn’t control anything when it came to them. The only thing we controlled was our reaction to the dragons, and our connection to them. Through the dragons, we were able to draw upon more power, but nothing would give us the ability to hold on to them.

“You will fail,” Thomas said. “Tell us what you plan.”

“I serve Affellah.” He turned his attention to me, and there was something in the strange brightness of his eyes that left me trembling, though I didn’t reveal that to him. It was almost as if he could see into me, as if he knew something about me. Worse, it felt as if I could detect him within the cycle of the dragons.

That shouldn’t be the case at all. There should be no additional connection to anything else, nothing other than the dragons, yet strangely, the more I was aware of him, the more I wanted to understand him.

“How many are like this?”

“Not many,” Thomas said. “They are held up and celebrated by those within the Vard. Priests of a sort.”

“Priests?” The Vard cackled, his raw voice carrying out into the darkness of the night. It seemed as if it hissed and steamed, almost as if he were trying to call to others. “I am a Servant of Affellah.”

He was trying to call to others. I could feel it in the way he tried to talk, the way he connected, and I could feel it in the use of flames. How could I feel it though?

“Can you tell what he’s doing?” I whispered to Thomas.

“What is he doing?”

“I . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“You can tell something?”

“I can feel something,” I said.

The Vard watched me, and the darkness flared in his eyes again. “We are Servants of Affellah. You could serve Affellah as well.”

The heat built from him again, surging even more, as if he intended to overpower the loop of flame Thomas held around him, though I didn’t know if he could. Was there any way he would manage to free himself from Thomas’s hold?

If so, we had to put him back into the pit.

When he flared power again and I felt it surging, I recognized that it seemed to drew upon something I could feel that reminded me of the dragons.

“I think we need to put him back into the pit,” I said.

“You don’t have to fear him,” Thomas said. “We are far enough away from the rest of the Vard that there is no reason to fear him.”

“You fear,” he said, laughing again. “You should not fear Affellah, but serve.”

“We don’t fear you,” Thomas told him.

I wasn’t so sure. The fact that Thomas kept him this far out here, so far removed from anything else, and certainly far enough away from the rest of the kingdom suggested he did fear him.

I certainly did.

The Vard continued to watch, but he seemed to be watching me. I wanted nothing more than to turn away and ignore him, but I also knew we needed to understand. This was the reason Thomas had brought me here. He wanted me to understand the Vard and what they were capable of doing.

“How many Servants are there?” I asked.

The Vard laughed again. Heat built from him, the same way it did before. “More than you can ever know.”

“As far as we can tell, there are a dozen like this,” Thomas said.

“Only a dozen?” I asked.

“Only? Look at him. Think about what would happen if there were more than that. What might we have to do if there were?”

I understood his concern, but at the same time, the fact that there were only a dozen meant they would be fully aware that this one was missing.

“What do you think they’re doing about his absence?”

“Probably nothing,” Thomas said. “They’ll look for him but won’t find him here. And it’s about time we hold one of them. They think they can intimidate us. There have been enough dragon mages who have come through here to know the true dangers of the Vard.”

The Vard laughed again. “Because you fear us.” Heat built from him again, as sudden as it had before. Each time the heat built, it left me worried. Somehow, I had a feeling that the heat would summon the other Vard. If they knew about this priest, and knew that we had him trapped, then what might they do?

Come for him.

I focused on the dragon, on the cycling of power through me, and I thought there had to be some way to try to use that cycle, but I hadn’t any idea whether it would be effective.

“This was what I wanted you to see. I wanted you to know about the dangers. I wanted you to recognize there is more to the Vard than you have known. This is why we fight, Ashan.”

He pushed on the Vard, and he fell toward the pit.

The Vard dropped down into the darkness, then it started to glow again with the strange light that came off of him. I couldn’t help myself, but I felt a bit of sadness. He stood there, deep in the bottom of the pit, looking up at us.

Thomas released the