“Is that what you believe?”
“That’s what Therin told me.”
“If that’s what he told you, then he was misleading you.”
“What am I doing, then?”
David stepped forward, crossing his arms in front of him. It was a strange thing to look at the man dressed in Jason’s bearskin, appearing as if he were like anybody from the village. “You’re summoning power from yourself.”
“From myself?”
“Some among the Dragon Souls have innate power. That’s what we use to call upon the power we borrow from the dragon.”
Jason smiled at him. “I don’t have any power.”
“And yet here you are, holding on to dragon pearls and blasting a hole between cells. What do you think that is other than power?”
Jason took a step back, clutching the dragon pearls, looking at the opening that he had formed between the two cells. He did have some power, but he didn’t really know what it meant or what he was supposed to do with it. He’d created the openings between the two cells, and now that he was here, now that he had done so, he didn’t know what he would need to do next.
He looked back toward the doorway. That was where he had to focus his energy. Even if he couldn’t blast his way free, he had to find some way of opening the door. If he went cell to cell, he wasn’t going to be able to escape.
And he needed to focus his energy, his anger, on what had happened, why he was here. Sarah blamed him, and yet by holding him here, by confining him, wasn’t she to blame as well?
Could he draw upon both hot and cold and the iron dragon?
He didn’t know if he was able to summon that much power. He leaned against the wall, holding the different dragon pearls in his hand, staring at them, focusing. It would be a different technique. He could reach the ice dragon and the maroon dragon at the same time, but reaching for the power within the iron dragon took a different type of focus. He strained, trying to come up with what he could in order to find that focus, and struggled to do so. The energy might be there, but he was unable to reach it. The longer he stood there, the more uncertain he was that he could even do anything. He debated releasing the hot and the cold at the doorway again, but he’d done that twice before and failed.
He wasn’t going to be able to do anything. He wasn’t going to be able to get out of here. He was going to remain trapped, no different than David.
“You begin to see the dilemma,” David said.
“I don’t deserve to be trapped like this,” he muttered.
“And I do?”
“You’re an Auran.”
“You say that as if you suddenly understand what that means. You know what it means no better than they do.”
“I know what you are doing to the dragons.”
“You know what they tell you was done to the dragons. We can go around and around with this, and I can continue to share with you what I know, but it won’t change your mind.”
Jason took a seat on the floor and stared at the door to the cell.
He couldn’t shake the sense the dragons needed him. It was more than just the dragons outside; it was the dragons in the other part of the world, the misfits, the dragons that the Dragon Souls would go for. If only he had some way of finding them, of chasing them down, and yet he didn’t even know how to get out of the cell and help them.
He rested his head on the wall. As he did, he held on to the dragon pearls, rolling them in his hands. Regardless of what David said, he didn’t have the power within himself. He might have the ability to draw upon the dragons, and that was a specific type of power, but he didn’t possess anything more than that. It was a wonder he had the magic he did.
“You should get up,” David said.
“And do what?”
“Someone is coming,” he said.
Jason grunted. “How can you tell?”
“Do you think I need a dragon pearl to use my ability?” Jason glanced over at him. David stood rigidly in the opening between the cells. “You saw me in the forest when you were trying to help that dragon. Did I require a dragon pearl?”
“We’d taken the pearls from you,” Jason said.
“You had, but you didn’t eliminate my ability to use power. You might have believed you did, but I’m not completely helpless.”
“If you’re not helpless, then get yourself free.”
“As you have seen, they have protections that prevent that. I can use my own abilities to recognize when something is coming. And as I said, something is coming.”
Jason stared at the door and didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to say anything, and he didn’t want to even look up. Regardless of what David told him, he didn’t have that power, and perhaps he didn’t even care. The longer he was here, the more he was doing, the more uncertain he became.
This was beyond him. All of this was beyond what he could do. He had come thinking he could help the dragons, and though he might have aided the iron dragon, and though he had discovered the forest dragon, he didn’t know enough to be of much use.
“You do need to get up,” David said.
“I’m comfortable here,” Jason said.
“I didn’t take you for the type to abandon hope so easily.”
“I’m not abandoning hope. I’m merely waiting.”
“I’ve seen men like you before. This is abandoning hope.”
“Do you think I should do something different?”
“I think you should be ready. The moment your door opens, you can attack. When you do, then you can find your way to freedom.”
Jason sighed. He doubted he would be able to get to freedom, but then, it was possible he could attack when the door was opened. He thought about using the combination of the powers, drawing upon both the fire and the ice. If he put them together, it was unlikely that anyone would be able to overwhelm that.
Getting to his feet, he watched the two dragon pearls, and then he changed his mind.
The iron dragon pearl instead.
He let his irritation, his anger, the fact that he wasn’t able to help his family, his sister, his mother, and his village, fill him.
Those emotions rolled through him, the boiling rage that began to bubble up within him. It matched the anger within the iron dragon, and he held on to that simmering sort of heat. It flowed into the dragon pearl, leaving the pearl to glow with the heat that he didn’t feel. It was almost as if he were immune to it.
The door opened.
Jason unleashed that anger, the nature of the heat, and it exploded.
It struck the opening and he ran toward the door, prying it open.
On the other side of the door, Henry lay unmoving.
17
Jason hesitated. Now that the door was open, he should escape. He looked along the length of the tunnel, debating what to do, and yet this was Henry. This was someone who had helped him, who had explained to him all that he knew about the dragons, and though Henry was a strange man, he had been responsible for supporting Jason.
He wore his black furs, but the heavy beard covering his jawline seemed to be trimmer than the last time Jason had seen him. The wrinkles along the corners of his eyes appeared more etched than before. He didn’t move.
What had Jason done?
He glanced back. David was trying to crawl into the room.
Holding on to the ice dragon pearl, Jason pushed power outward, letting it flow and slamming into the wall where David crawled through. He yelped and backed up.
Taking a deep breath, Jason turned his focus to the fallen man in front of him. He held on to the dragon pearl and debated. Which dragon pearl should he use? He wanted to help Henry. He wasn’t about to leave the man to suffer. Who knew how long he could lie here until someone found him.