I wasn’t sure I understood what that meant, but I suspected it had something to do with the fact that she couldn’t be a part of the circle with the Djarn if she were a part of my cycle.
And if that were the case, then what I had done had somehow limited her possibilities. I didn’t like having had done that, but what choice did I have?
A dark shadow moved overhead, and I looked up.
For a moment, I thought it was her father and his dragon, but there was another dragon. And Thomas.
“We have to get to him,” I said.
Even before we started moving, I could see the dragon descending. Thomas wasn’t going to be fast enough.
I motioned to the green dragon. “Can we help him?” I whispered.
There came a pulse of power through the connection.
Natalie looked over to me, frowning. “I felt that.”
“I think the dragon tries to communicate with me, though I don’t know what it means.”
“Perhaps it’s a way of telling you that he approves of what you’re doing.”
I had to act quickly. I could help Thomas’s dragon, but it meant that Thomas would lose his connection. Another part of the cycle.
I pulled on power, cycling it through the dragons, and I added it to Thomas’s dragon. In doing so, I forced increasingly more power into the cycle, feeling that energy as it flowed outward and radiated. It continued to burst outward, then the dragon was sealed within the cycle. From there, I had to funnel even more power into it, continuing to feel the way that energy flowed, and feeling the explosion as it struck the dragon.
Thomas looked at me. “Ashan? What are you doing here?”
“I know you believe it’s the Vard, but that’s not what this is. It’s the same kind of attack we dealt with in the city before. It’s the same kind of magic, even, only on a different scale altogether.”
“I saw the Vard moving. You were there,” Thomas said. “They were moving north. Across the reach. They were trying to join with the others.”
“It’s not the Vard. Not like you think.” I had to get him to see that before he convinced the king and they destroyed Berestal.
It might be somewhat tied to the Vard—there was no doubt that Thomas’s capturing of the Servant had probably changed things, maybe even influenced things in a way that had created an increased challenge for us—but it wasn’t the only explanation. There was something else taking place here.
“I don’t know what this is, all I know is that they have started to target the dragons.”
Thomas frowned before turning to me. “What happened to the dragon? Why can’t I reach his power?”
I could help Thomas, but it meant I’d be adding him to the cycle, as well. Is that what I wanted? He served the king. I was certain of it. And I served the king.
“I had to help the dragon. There was only one way I could do that.”
“By stealing power from me?”
“I didn’t steal power from you. I was connecting the dragon to the cycle so he would be protected.”
“The cycle?”
I nodded. “I can explain, but—”
The lava down below suddenly spouted from the ground, shooting upward, and then it began to run through the forest.
That was what they were after.
That power came from the dragons. I could feel the sudden surge, the way they were pulling on that power, almost as if they were trying to draw upon Affellah by using it.
Trying to make it look like the Vard had attacked.
“They’ve redirected Affellah,” Natalie said.
“They shouldn’t be able to do that,” Thomas said.
“We have heard stories about Affellah suddenly appearing in places it should not. It has been tied to the Vard and places they have overthrown,” Natalie said.
My breath caught. I thought about what Manuel had told me, the way he had described the power appearing in cities, and how that resulted in a need to destroy those cities.
Now I understood why the king had felt so certain that he needed to destroy the cities. It wasn’t about the people serving there. It was about destroying the lava, and the connection the Vard might have to Affellah.
It was also the reason the Vard couldn’t have attacked. If they had been responsible for it, then we would not have seen an attack like this. This was the first time there had been anything like this in ages.
But now . . .
Now it would be difficult to convince the king and others that it wasn’t the Vard.
Despite what I had felt, and despite what I knew.
It looked bad.
It looked like the Vard.
And then the king would destroy it like he had before.
“That’s what you were telling me,” I said to Thomas, remembering how lava had appeared in places. That was why the king had aggressively destroyed the Vard.
To stop this.
“You didn’t need to know,” he said.
“How many know this?”
“Only a few. The king. The Sharath. The chief dragon mage.”
I watched the flames continuing to burst from the lava spout—Affellah redirected. The lava would continue to flow. Down below, trees caught fire. The lava traveled north—almost directly north.
I had a sense of where it was going.
“The capital,” I whispered.
On the ground below, the flow of lava traveled straight toward the dragons.
“We have to stop this,” I said. “We have to figure out some way to redirect Affellah.” We might not know how, but Thomas knew somebody who did. “We need to get to the Servant. If there’s anybody who can stop this, it’s going to be one of the Vard.”
“We can’t release him,” Thomas said. “You don’t understand, Ashan, but it has been almost impossible to even come across one of the Servants. Capturing one . . .”
I looked at him. “How did you capture it?”
“What?”
That troubled me. “How did you capture the Servant?”
“We can talk about that another time.”
I felt that
