“But I don’t really feel anything.”
“You’re aware of the power you can draw from me.”
Jason reached for the dragon pearl. He held on to the dragon with one arm, squeezing his legs, and found the pearl within his pocket. He pulled on the energy within it, drawing it through himself, using the cold as a focus.
“Like that,” the dragon said.
“I can feel it,” Jason said. “The only difference is I don’t know whether it’s coming from you or from something else.”
“The power you’re drawing now is from me.”
“Are all dragon pearls connected to the dragon in the same way?”
“I don’t know.”
“How don’t you know?”
“How many dragons do you know?”
“I’ve met you, and one other.” That wasn’t completely true. There were some other smaller dragons that he had encountered, but they weren’t very large, and he didn’t have as much experience with them. Certainly not enough to discern whether there was anything to their powers. He barely knew about the power Henry was able to draw from the dragons.
“You know more than I know.”
“How many other dragons do you know?”
“None.”
They angled north. They followed the line of the mountaintops, soaring above peaks, traveling farther and faster than Jason could ever have imagined doing. After a while, he lay back, resting, but he had to wonder. If the hatchlings were out there, he didn’t think Therin would have scattered them too far. They might have been within a certain radius of where this dragon was.
“We could go after the Dragon Souls,” he suggested. It wasn’t something he was eager to do, and if he did, he ran the risk of encountering danger. The Dragon Souls knew far more about their magic than he did, and anything he might attempt would be fraught with that danger. It was better to search for the hatchlings with this dragon, but if anyone would know where to find the other hatch mates, then he thought it might be the Dragon Souls, and Therin in particular.
Ever since they’d defeated Therin, there’d been no sign of the man. The first few weeks after defeating Therin had been the hardest. Jason had kept vigilant, worried Therin would come after the village, the dragon, and that Jason alone would know enough to withstand him. With each passing day when there had been no sign of Therin, Jason managed to relax further, though he still wasn’t completely convinced Therin was gone. Maybe he hadn’t survived the journey down the stream. With as cold as the water was, it was possible he had not. Even with a dragon pearl to draw energy from, to keep himself warm, it might not have been enough to overpower the natural cold.
In Jason’s mind, it was better if Therin had not survived. They didn’t need the Dragon Souls’ attention upon the village. The fact that they had come there once had been enough, and if they believed there was a dragon, then it was dangerous for not only the dragon, but for Jason and the others he cared about—and cared about protecting. There would be no way to protect them if the Dragon Souls returned.
“What if we’re searching too far away?” Jason asked.
“I’ve searched closer,” the dragon said.
“If you can reach through me and detect something, maybe I can reach through you and detect something.”
The dragon rumbled again. It seemed to be his way of agreeing with Jason, but even if the dragon agreed, Jason still wasn’t sure what it would take to detect anything. More than that, it was possible he would never learn. It was possible there was no way for him to detect anything. He didn’t understand the connection between himself and the dragon. Only that he had some way of using the dragon pearl.
Could he draw through that connection?
If he couldn’t, there had to be some other way to see if he could help the dragon. What did he know about power and the Dragon Souls?
He thought about what Therin had said to him. There were other eggs that they had placed, and as far as Therin knew, none of them had hatched.
And maybe that was true, but Jason trusted the dragon. He trusted that the dragon would be aware of his hatch mates and would be able to detect the others.
But there was an advantage Jason had that the dragon did not.
Therin had revealed something to him.
Could he use that?
Understanding what Therin had done required knowing the man.
More than that, it might involve going someplace that Jason didn’t want to go.
“We need to head back,” he said.
“You have abandoned the search already?”
“No. I think we need to approach it differently.”
“How so?”
He inhaled deeply, letting it out. “When my father was killed”—his voice caught, the same way it did each time he spoke of his father—“there had to have been other eggs involved. The man who was responsible for moving them would have done so there.”
“You no longer blame the dragons for what happened to him.”
“I don’t. I understand the dragons aren’t responsible for what happened to my father.” He swallowed. “I want to do whatever I can to help you.”
He forced down the pain of thinking about his father. It had been easier in the days since learning what had really happened. Living with the belief that the dragons had been responsible for his father’s death had been hard, and for some reason he found it easier knowing his father had died for a different reason. Seeing this dragon, getting to ride him, and knowing the cave his father had once shown him was the reason the dragon had survived made it all the more bearable.
It still wasn’t easy. Losing his father was never going to be easy, but he had to think that his father would have appreciated what had happened. He had to believe that his father would have wanted the dragons to thrive, even without knowing them himself.
“Where was this?”
Jason wondered how much the dragon was aware of what he was thinking. It was possible that he could connect to all of it and know everything Jason was thinking about, but it was equally possible that he didn’t understand the emotion. He might know the language, but he might not comprehend the reasons that Jason suffered as he did.
“There’s a village on the back slope of the mountain.”
“Back slope?”
“The side with less snow.”
“That will be more difficult for me to reach.”
“I understand.”
“I will bring you as close as I can. And you will search.”
“I will do what I can,” Jason agreed.
“When you find something, you will summon me.”
“I’m not sure I know how to summon you.”
“You will summon me the same way that you did before. You will call upon my power.”
Jason reached for the dragon pearl, squeezing it in his hand. “That summons you?” He thought about the way that Henry had called the dragon.
“Drawing upon my power alerts me of your need.”
“And you can find me?”
“I can.”
They began to descend, and as they did, the snow shifted. Wind was whipping around, obscuring them, and there was something else, something Jason had realized when they were flying. The dragon had changed course, heading back toward his home mountain. From here, they would be able to reach the village, but they had descended down the back face of the mountain. Snow stretched through here, though it wasn’t nearly as treacherous as the snow on the front face.
The dragon dropped, reaching the snow, and then began to glide, skiing above the surface of the snow. Jason remained on the dragon’s back and said nothing as they glided farther and farther down the mountain.
There were parts of this mountain that were more heavily traversed. There were sections of it where roads had been built, easier ways of traveling between the villages dotting the back side of the mountain. His village was the highest point on the mountain, and it had been the most difficult to protect, but at the same time, it held a certain level of prestige among the villages because of its role in defending against the dragons—along with their access to tellum. He wondered what the people of the village would think if they knew that such protections were unnecessary. They probably wouldn’t believe it. Had he not experienced the dragons the way he had, and had he not seen what the Dragon Souls were willing to do, he would never have believed that the dragons were not interested in harming their people.