Within the Dragon's Jaw (The Dragon Thief Book 2) Read online

  Perhaps it was nothing more than his imagination.

  Ty slipped along the path again, though he did so with much more caution than before. He didn’t want to be caught out here by one of the rogue priests, though even if he were, he figured he could lose them in the trees.

  Eastley stayed behind him, which Ty appreciated. Given Eastley’s size, if one of the rogue priests decided to attack, he would be better positioned to protect them than Ty would be. He was too noisy, though, which made Ty concerned that they might draw attention that he didn’t want. They needed to get through here without making too much noise. Both to avoid attracting the attention of any priest, as well as avoiding the velum.

  He was nearly to the lava lake when another hint of shuffling came behind him.

  Ty backed away, heading into the trees again and dragging Eastley with him.

  “You heard it again.”

  Eastley nodded. “I’m not sure what it was. Let’s just loop around and see,” he suggested.

  The sound didn’t return. It might’ve only been wind gusting through, though if that were the case, he would’ve expected to have felt a bit of that wind, not just heard it, and what he had detected was not at all typical for the winds that came through here.

  Ty moved slowly, creeping through the trees as he made him way out and around the path. Eastley followed, more silently than he would’ve expected of him. He did well navigating through the jungle. He would have to tell him that later.

  There was still no movement, but now he at least ought to have a chance to see something. He swept along the path, moving quickly until he neared a small clearing by the trees. A long vine trailed down toward the ground, and it swayed softly.

  “Why would that have been moving?” Eastley asked.

  “Velum, most likely.”

  Eastley looked over to him, his eyes slightly widened. Ty smiled, amused by the reaction. He understood people’s reaction when it came to the velum. Having seen them wielding knives, though, Ty had a different appreciation for them. He couldn’t help but question whether they were much more intelligent than he had ever given him credit for. He whistled softly under his breath, mimicking the sound that his mother and brother had long ago taught him and that he had only recently remembered how to replicate.

  He looked up into the treetops. He could barely see more than twenty feet overhead. The canopy was simply too dense otherwise. As he stared, looking into the trees, he searched for the furry faces that would reveal the presence of the velum but saw nothing. Shadows, maybe, but even in that Ty wasn’t entirely sure that he saw what he feared.

  I’m just being jumpy.

  Of course he was. The last time that he’d been here, he had seen something in the lava lake that had changed everything.

  It was the reason he returned.

  “Come on,” he muttered. “They aren’t going to bother the two of us.”

  “I heard what happened to the priests,” Eastley said.

  “I think that was because Ishantil was so unsettled. You don’t have to worry about them. Besides, as long as you aren’t trying to hunt and trap them, I don’t think you have to fear them.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “They aren’t going to attack.”

  “What happens if they do? Listen, Ty, I’m happy to come with you to make sure the priests don’t follow you, but I’m not at all interested in having one of these damn velum grab me and carry me through the treetops to eat me.”

  He arched a brow at him. “Eat you?”

  “You know what I mean. We don’t know what they will do to us.”

  Ty started to smile. “I am quite certain the velum have no interest in feasting on you, Eastley.”

  “You don’t know how tasty I might be to them,” he muttered.

  “They prefer fruit, leaves, and insects,” Ty said, waving to the jungle around him. “Not people. And certainly not you.”

  Eastley looked around him, as if trying to decide whether he was in any danger, before finally letting out a long, steady sigh. “Maybe I should just go back.”

  “Would you come on?” he said.

  As they returned to the path, Ty stared for a moment, looking all along it to see whether there was any further sound or any sign of movement, but he came across nothing. Just his imagination. That and the worry that came from what he was after.

  They hurried along the path, and as he neared the outskirts of the lava lake, he finally breathed out, relaxing just a little bit.

  “I’ve never come all the way up here before,” Eastley said, his eyes wide as he stared out at the lava lake.

  “I’ve come a few times,” Ty said. He stepped forward, feeling the heat wafting off the lava lake and seeing the air shimmering around it. “My mother brought me here when I was young, and I’ve come up quite a few times since then, though I’ve never really appreciated it before.”

  “Appreciated it?” Eastley asked, arching a brow at him.

  “You know, the way that the Priests of the Flame appreciate it.” He should be careful. Thinking of the priests left him wondering what they were doing in the city—and why they might want him.

  “You have to admit that there is something quite compelling here,” Eastley said. “You get up here, you feel the heat, you feel the enormity of it and how it’s all connected to Ishantil…”

  Eastley wasn’t wrong. Coming up here did make Ty feel a connection to something greater, though it was what that something greater was that he still didn’t know. Perhaps it was only the dragon that was here, or perhaps it was something else. Either way, Ty remained determined to dig and see if he couldn’t reach the power he’d felt here before—whether or not it was a real dragon—and figure out more about what Albion had done here. Albion had placed the egg and the sculptures in the lake to calm it—but why?

  “I never got caught up in the Path of the Flame,” Eastley said. He stared through the jungle. His face had gone more solemn than it normally was. “But when the damn volcano threatened to erupt, it left me starting to question things, you know?”

  “It left most people questioning some things,” Ty said. “Mostly about whether or not we should remain within the city.”

  “I’m not talking just about that,” Eastley said. “Oh, forget it.”

  “No. I’m going to forget it. What do you mean?”

  Eastley looked over. “It’s just that when I was held in the palace, questioned the way that I was, it gave me a chance to look back on a few things.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I thought I was going to die, Ty.”

  “I can’t imagine what that might have been like.” And he meant it. Ty had been able to search for the egg, wanting to get Eastley out, but he would’ve been captured within the palace, thinking the entire time that the volcano would erupt and he would be trapped. How horrifying must that have been? “If this is too difficult for you, you don’t have to do it. You can go back to the city, and I’m not going to think less of you.”

  Eastley clenched his jaw. “If it means getting revenge on that bastard that held me, then I’m going to do it.”

  “I’m not exactly sure that it means we can get revenge on him,” Ty said.

  “He has your brother, right?”

  “He does,” Ty said.

  “And you don’t know what he did to him.”

  “Prison, I suspect.”

  Eastley’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Prison. Like what I went through.”

  Ty nodded. He didn’t want to tell Eastley that he suspected Albion was subjected to a much more dangerous prison than any that Eastley would have been. Albion was the Dragon Thief, after all.

  “If we can help him, then we need to do it. Let’s go get you the answers that you need.”

  “I’m not exactly sure the answers I need are going to be up here. I just need to better understand what was going on then. I didn’t want to come up here after my brother was taken, and maybe I should have
.”

  “What now?” Eastley asked.

  “Now I’m just going to walk around the lake. You can wait over by the path.”

  “I think I’ll stay with you here.”

  Ty headed to the edge of the lava. Heat radiated off the lake, an enormous burst of warmth and fire and steam, all of that mixing unpleasantly, carrying with it the strange sulfuric odors of this place.

  It was a place the Priests of the Flame celebrated, though Ty had never really appreciated that before recently. He weaved his way along the outer edge of the lake, picking his way carefully along the rough rock, not wanting to get too close to the actual lava. One slip…

  That’s all it would take.

  He made his way along the edge of the lava lake. There was the heat radiating from it, and an occasional burble of fire would bubble to the surface, but it didn’t splash out, and Ishantil didn’t have the same rumbling that it had before. As he walked, his gaze glanced to the scorched trees lining the lava lake. That would’ve been Zarinth’s fate. Had they not stopped the eruption, the entire city would’ve burned.

  “Where are you guiding me?”

  Ty nodded, pointing up ahead. “That’s where he was. That’s where the velum attacked Roson James,” Ty motioned. “You would have appreciated that.”

  Eastley chuckled. “I don’t know. If it means that I had to see them, maybe I wouldn’t have.”

  “But you would have seen him screaming when they attacked.”

  “Well, there might have been something beneficial in there,” he said, smiling. “But what was your brother doing up here?”

  “That’s where he dropped the egg into the lava. And several relics.”

  “Was he trying to hatch it?”

  “I don’t really know. I don’t know if it’s just the residual power of the egg and the relics that were used to help calm Ishantil or if there was something else here.”

  Ty stared over the lava lake. When he had been here the last time, he had sworn there was a face, something out there that would have told him that there was something, but now he was no longer sure. There was no sign of the dragon face that he had seen, which might have only been his imagination, anyway. He had been up here dealing with the Dragon Thief, trying to understand what his brother intended, and hoping to ensure Ishantil didn’t fully erupt and destroy all of Zarinth.

  “If these rogue priests, or whatever they are, were after something that my brother left behind, it has to be about more than just the egg, doesn’t it?” He looked back to Eastley. “They seem to think he left something here.”

  “What if he did?”

  “Then I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know why he would’ve left it.” More than that, Ty didn’t even know if his brother had left anything for him.

  As far as he knew, there was nothing.

  But then, he kept coming back to the possibility that Albion had come to the city for another purpose initially. It was only after Ishantil had begun to rumble that he had come for another reason. What was it, then?

  There was a shadowy movement in the trees along the outskirts of the lava lake, though this time he could make out the velum. It was a single velum, thankfully not an entire pack of them. It seemed to be watching him, so he made a shooing motion, trying to scare the creature away. He didn’t need one of the velum jumping on his shoulders just as he was trying to land on the platform, though he had never seen any of them get too close to the lava lake. It was as if they feared it.

  They were the only ones with sense, then.

  Ty continued making his way around the lava lake. Eastley followed him, staying close by but distant enough that he wouldn’t run the risk of falling into the lava. It left Ty smiling at his massive friend. When he reached the alcove where Albion had dropped the relics into the lava, and where Ty had ultimately dropped the egg into the lava, he crouched down, getting too close to the lava so that the heat began to build, working its way down his throat, making his skin and mouth dry. Ever since the fire, though, he had felt much the same way.

  “You really think it makes sense for you to get so close?”

  Ty leaned back. He looked out across the lava, noticing the platforms where the priests had stood, performing their ceremony to try to calm Ishantil. “When the volcano nearly erupted, the priests came up here to try to soothe it,” he said, nodding toward the platforms that rose up out of the lava. It seemed impossible to him that such things could even exist, but he supposed it was no more impossible than the idea that certain dragon relics and an egg had somehow calmed the volcano. “I can’t even imagine going out on those platforms.”

  “Not while the volcano was trembling the way that it was,” he said, shaking his head. “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that.” Eastley started to smile. “That’s not true. I suppose you could pay me enough, but I doubt anybody would want to.”

  Ty chuckled. “I still don’t exactly know what was going on here.” He looked to the alcove where his brother had been and could practically remember the way that he had looked, the surprise Ty had felt at his brother’s presence and the shock he had upon learning that his brother was the Dragon Thief. “He was using the relics for some reason,” Ty said. “He believed that it would save Zarinth. I’ve never had that kind of belief.”

  “I don’t think anybody has that kind of belief,” Eastley muttered. He turned, looking toward the trees. “There’s a reason I’ve never come up here.”

  “And how long have you lived in the city?”

  “My whole life. But that doesn’t mean that everybody needs to make this journey, Ty. I am perfectly content staying down in the city. By the Flame, I don’t need to see Ishantil to know that it’s here. I can see it well enough at night, glowing against the darkness.”

  Ty noted that there was an edge of reverence in his words that he hadn’t realized Eastley had before. It was almost as if Eastley were far more devoted to the Flame than Ty had given him credit for. Perhaps he was.

  He took a deep breath, and once again the flames seemed to burn at his nostrils. He leaned back. “I don’t really know what I was hoping to see here. My brother brought the egg up here.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to destroy it to keep the king from hatching it,” Eastley said.

  “Maybe,” Ty said. “If that’s all it was, it seems that there would be other ways for him to do it, though. Why would he have needed to come up here to destroy the egg?”

  “Because you saw it in the temple, Ty. The Flame the priests use wasn’t enough to destroy it.”

  Maybe that was what it was.

  He tried to think like his brother. How would Albion have acted?

  Out of a sense of faith.

  Unlike Eastley, Ty had come up to the lava lake when he was younger, visiting it with his mother, his brother, and occasionally even his father, though he had always kept a respectful distance, standing along the tree line, looking out upon the lava with a hint of what Ty could only imagine was reverence. Maybe that was where Albion had gained his reverence for the Flame.

  But Albion had to have that. It was what had driven him to the priesthood.

  It was what made Ty believe that any reason he had come up here would have to be tied to it.

  He straightened up, looking out over the rippling surface of the lava. Toward the center of the lake, it bubbled, sending some of the lava burbling to the surface. He motioned for Eastley to follow him, and they made a slow and steady circuit around the outside of the lake. As they went, he kept looking toward the center of it, wondering if he might find anything there that would give him an idea of what his brother had intended. There had to have been some purpose.

  Could he have thought to hatch the egg?

  Even if he had, what kind of creature could survive inside of the lava lake? Could a dragon? The idea of it seemed impossible for him to even believe. But then, there were other things that seemed impossible to believe. There was the idea that he would somehow use dragon relics to calm
a volcano.

  He looked over at Eastley, who had stayed near the trees. “You don’t think my brother thought to hatch the eggs, do you?”

  Eastley frowned. “In that?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine anything surviving in there. Besides, if the volcano was key to hatching the eggs, I would have imagined that the king would have done it by now.”

  Eastley wasn’t wrong. Maybe that was the key, after all. If there was something more to what his brother had done than just trying to calm the volcano, it would’ve been done before.

  “Maybe we should get back.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  Ty reached into his pocket, fingering the note that he had there. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. His brother had left him something, and it had nearly gotten him killed.

  At this point, the logical answer was trying to understand what Albion had left him so that he could find it and keep his attackers from harming him when they inevitably came again.

  He started to turn, motioning for Eastley to follow, when he heard a soft crack.

  It was the sound of a branch breaking.

  His gaze immediately went to the trees, looking for one of the velum, but there were none there.

  Ty motioned for Eastley to follow him back to the trees and raised a finger to his lips, silencing him.

  He looked all around, searching for signs of where he had heard the sound. Eastley scanned the jungle around them, his gaze darting from tree to tree, but Ty didn’t notice any swinging of the branches that he normally would attribute to the velum.

  Which meant that it wasn’t in the trees.

  He shifted his gaze, looking along the paths leading up to the lava lake, and his breath caught.

  A figure stalked along the perimeter of the lake, stopping at the stepping-stone platforms leading out into the center of the lava lake. The individual stood motionlessly for a long moment.

  Ty remained frozen, but it wasn’t the fact that there was a figure standing in front of him that caught his attention. Rather, it was who was standing there. He moved back into the trees, but not quickly enough so that Ty couldn’t tell who it was.