He opened his eyes, looking over to me. “This is calling the heat to you. You can do this when you learn to latch onto the energy you detect.”
“I can’t call it into myself and concentrate it,” I told him.
“There are some who take months to master that,” Jerith said. “Others take years. Unfortunately, it’s unpredictable how long one will take. Some of the most powerful of the dragon mages have taken the longest to reach their power. You are at a disadvantage in that you came to us later in life. Had you come when you were younger, we might have taught you to focus your power much sooner, and it would be easier for you to control it.”
It wasn’t the first time that I had heard that from the men and women instructing me. Quite a few of the other students within the Dragon Academy had come here when they were much younger and at a testing similar to what I’d observed in Berestal. I was one of the oldest, and though that didn’t bother me, I had a sense it did bother some of the younger students. Especially those who were already far more skilled.
“I can feel the power,” I said, focusing on the distant dragon. I breathed in slowly and steadily, feeling the heat and the energy that was there, letting that power drift to me. When I did, I could smell the heat in the air. To me, that seemed to be the most important factor, though I wasn’t entirely sure what I might use that power for. “I can’t call it to me.”
“The first key is just knowing it’s there. Why else do you think we’ve worked with you over the last few months to open yourself up to that power?” Jerith turned to me, smiling tightly. His face distorted even more, the scar on his forehead becoming twisted, the burn looking grotesque, the skin tight. “What you need to do is to find your own connection. Perhaps what you need to do is spend time with the dragon away from the others.” He offered a hint of a smile, grinning at me slightly. “I don’t think the other instructors will mind, not if it works. If it doesn’t, then there is no harm done.”
“Which dragon?”
“The black one that’s out here now. Azithran, we call him. He will work with you.”
I nodded, though there was a part of me that wished I were able to work with the small dragon that had come to the city with me in the first place. For whatever reason, I felt a connection to him, even if I didn’t know if there was anything to it.
I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, using what I could to strain into the distance and see if I could feel for even more power. Even as I did, I couldn’t detect anything more than what I had before.
“I will leave you here,” Jerith said. “Find the dragon. That is the test. Nothing more.”
I nodded, then frowned. “How do I get the dragon back?” That was assuming I found it, which wasn’t a guarantee, but if I did, I wanted to make sure I had some way of getting it back to the pen.
Jerith chuckled softly. He tapped on a chain hanging from his side—a cuff he had that linked to the dragon. This led the dragon away from the barracks where they were kept, toward the edge of the forest where Jerith had released him. The dragons were generally allowed to wander within the forest, though as far as I knew, the dragon riders had some way of controlling them to ensure they didn’t go too far.
“Don’t worry. He won’t go anywhere. If you can’t find the dragon . . .”
He didn’t need to finish.
I’d started to suspect what would happen anyway. If I failed to find the dragon, I’d soon find my time training in the Academy come at an end.
I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet, and not when I thought I could learn to reach for the dragon power. I just had to figure out how.
“I’ll find him.”
“I hope so,” Jerith said, regarding me before turning away.
He reached the road heading back into the main part of the city, leaving me standing by myself. As I stood there for a moment, I focused on the energy of the dragon. There was probably some way of controlling the dragon from a distance I didn’t know about.
In the time since I had come to the city, most of my days had been fairly regimented. Much of them were spent training and studying, trying to understand how to open myself up to the power of the dragons. That was the key, much like Jerith reminded me now. Recognizing the energy of the dragons had been fairly easy, but opening myself to it had been much more complicated.
I had begun to learn how to focus on the heat within myself, to try to find that connection that I shared with the dragons, mostly so that I could learn how to tap into something more. Once I did, then came the more complicated steps. There were patterns, ways of twisting fire, but generating fire was something that was beyond me so far.
I could feel the dragons. Within Dragon Academy, I was almost always aware of their presence. Power seemed to simmer everywhere around me, filling me, and even though I couldn’t necessarily grab a hold of that power, I knew that it was there. The challenge was holding it, funneling it, and doing something as simple as creating flames with
