The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2), Dan Michaelson [best books to read all time .txt] 📗

way that Jerith and other instructors had taught me. I felt another burst of energy. Then I was thrown back.

Getting onto my feet, I looked around.

The Djarn were gone.

3

Sweeping my gaze around the forest, I didn’t see any further evidence of the Djarn. I hurried over to where I had been certain that the two who had spears pointed at me were standing, looking to see if there was anything on the ground, even footprints, but there were none.

Not that I really expected there to be. The Djarn were known to move incredibly silently, and rarely left any tracks behind. They lived within the forest, though very few people had ever seen them. I had found an empty city on my journey to the capital before my time in the Academy. Before that, I had not known anything about them other than how they could disappear completely into the forest, making them a mystery, something more of a myth than a reality, even though they had lived just beyond the plains when I was growing up.

I made a circuit around the area where they had pointed their spears at me, continuing to look for signs of them, but still came up empty. Whatever had been here was gone. I focused on the dragon again, feeling for energy, but even as I did, I couldn’t find anything.

That was gone, too.

I started to focus on the energy within me again, steadying my breathing, then working on connecting to the heat within me before trying the relaxation technique one more time. I didn’t feel any trail of power to a dragon this time. I had to believe it was still out there, and must be close, especially since I had felt it before, but the sense of it was gone.

How could I have lost the dragon?

It had been there but had suddenly disappeared—unless it had flown away at the first sign of the Djarn.

Which meant that I had to find another way back out of the forest.

Maybe Jerith really was trying to test me, wanting me to get drawn into the forest and find my way back. The other tests I’d had since coming to the Academy had been a matter of trying to prove that I could connect to the dragon, and given what I’d learned on my journey to the city, I had known that I had a connection to the dragons to begin with, so those tests weren’t terribly difficult.

This might be.

I had no idea where I was. If I had some way of finding one of the Djarn paths, I might be able to navigate out of here, but that wasn’t a given. The only other option was trying to latch onto the energy within the dragons back in the city to see if I could find a way of tracking them and using that power to draw me back. It would be faint. I knew that it would be difficult for me to reach, but perhaps that was what I was going to have to do.

I stopped and closed my eyes, focusing. As I did, there came a faint sense of heat within me. It was vague, but enough that I thought I could use it.

I started toward it.

Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the sense of the dragon that I thought I felt came from the opposite direction than I believed I needed to be going. As I trailed after it, I let it call to me.

At one point, I thought I felt another tug of dragon energy, but it was faint and it flickered quickly before disappearing altogether. I stopped, looked around, and realized I was in a small clearing. The stream I thought I’d passed before ran through here; the water rushed past some rocks and caused it to burble. I took a drink. If I were able to make my way back to the city, it was still going to be a long walk.

I might be able to follow this stream. It was possible it would lead me back, though I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t recall any stream within the city. More likely, I would end up wandering aimlessly, getting lost deeper into the forest. Right now, I had the awareness of the dragons that I could hold onto, and I could use that to guide me back to where I needed to go. If I held onto that awareness, it should guide me to the city.

I followed it.

It seemed as if every thirty minutes or so, a different flicker of power came, typically behind me—and with each one, I could feel the draw of the dragon power. Maybe there were other dragons out in the forest, and perhaps that was part of the test. I could imagine Jerith placing other dragons out there, using them to see if it would be possible for me to find my way back.

The sense of those other dragons didn’t last very long, flickering for only a few moments before disappearing altogether. I had to believe that mattered.

I continued walking toward the power I felt.

It was faint and vague, but I used that to guide me. It was starting to grow dark by the time I heard a sound in the trees. It was a soft rustling, little more than that, but it was near to me.

I froze, looking around to see if it was something that might pose a danger. There were wolves within the forest, maybe even the native camin, small catlike creatures that hunted in the treetops, and though it was uncommon for the wolves to attack people, I had to believe that I might seem a particularly easy target. I was unarmed. I had to change that.

Perhaps I should’ve changed that after the Djarn had surrounded me. Not attacked. But I don’t think I did attack. Whatever had happened to me and thrown me back had been my own fault. It had come when I had tried to harness the power from the