Holding his breath, he stepped inside.
It was a paneled office. A man sat behind a desk, and his head was bowed. A bald patch in the back was the only thing visible.
When he looked up, two silver eyes looked back at Jason. He glanced from Jason to Sarah. “They’re wearing dragonskin,” he said.
“They tell us that they were near Gilroy when they were discovered.”
“We did have a regiment near Gilroy. I haven’t heard anything about them in quite some time.”
“Which was why I believed them,” the first man said.
“Well?”
“Here,” the other man said. He shoved the yellow dragon pearl back into Sarah’s hand. She held on to it, and a small flame began to glow in the palm of her hand, twisting for a moment before flickering out.
Sarah handed the dragon pearl over to Jason, who took the pearl, and he focused on the heat within it, the heat within himself, and as he summoned it, he created a tiny flame. It gradually grew larger before he extinguished it.
“Interesting,” Charlie said.
“Isn’t it?”
The other man nodded.
Charlie got to his feet, and Jason realized he was wearing a dragonskin cloak that draped down to the floor. A short sword sheathed at his side reminded Jason of the one he had left behind in Dragon Haven. And a pin on the cloak was familiar.
An Auran.
His breath caught. Would that mean that an Auran was here?
Would David be here? It might be chance they’d not encountered him.
“Come with me,” he said.
He spun, heading out of the office, and Jason and Sarah were forced to follow.
The other man, the one they had first encountered, followed them. He said nothing.
Jason still held on to the dragon pearl. He kept waiting for one of them to ask for it back, and yet neither of them did. There was something about this that left him unsettled. Were they making a mistake coming here?
The man stepped outside, back into the sunlight, and near another courtyard. There were three figures out there, all holding dragon pearls, and all of them with power surging away from them.
“These three will take care of you,” Charlie said.
He turned away, heading back into the building.
The man who had brought them out stood, watching.
The other three turned toward Jason and Sarah.
“What is this about?” she asked under her breath.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re bringing us to them to train?”
“Does it look like they’re bringing them to train?”
The other three approached. Power began to build from them, heat radiating away from them, and as it did, Jason had a strange sense.
It was swirling around the three Dragon Souls.
Not just around them, but it was looping around Jason and Sarah.
There was something familiar about it. He’d been held in a similar way when he’d been with Therin. The other man had looped power around him, trapping him, and with it, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to do something more.
Maybe this was all part of the testing.
That was the challenge he had. He had no idea how much of this was testing and how much of this was unusual. The longer he was here, the more uncertain he was, and the more he worried that they were getting in well over their heads.
Henry should be here to watch.
Henry hadn’t given them enough information about what they needed to do.
The other three stepped even closer.
That power swirled around them, whirling around Jason. It swirled around Sarah. He could feel the tension within her.
He held on to the yellow dragon pearl, pushing power through it, letting a hint of light glow from it.
Was that what they wanted? Did they want to know whether or not he had the ability to summon power when under stress?
Or maybe it was nothing to do with that.
It was possible he’d made a mistake when he’d pushed on the dragon as they had first come to town. It was possible the Dragon Souls already knew that he was here.
And if so, then this was merely their way of catching him.
If they held on to him, he didn’t know what he would be able to do.
The power continued to lash around them.
Jason started to push, and he caught a slight shake of Sarah’s head. Nothing more than that.
He released his hold.
Palming the dragon pearl, he squeezed it tightly.
One of the men approached, and Jason wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
He was not expecting to be struck from behind.
As he crumpled, he saw Sarah fall next to him.
11
When he came around, Jason’s head throbbed. He reached for the back of his head, but his hands were bound. The dragon pearl was gone.
Where was he?
He tried to roll over, to look around, but there wasn’t any sign of anything here.
“Sarah?”
Even as he whispered her name, he didn’t think that she would be here. He was separated from her. Trapped. And they were isolated.
What had they done wrong?
The only thing he could think he had done wrong was in demonstrating his ability with the dragon, but even in doing that, he hadn’t thought he’d been too open about it. The only one who had really known what he had done was Sarah, and he hadn’t pushed that much power out toward the dragons. He’d released it before it had a chance of doing anything that would reveal his presence.
Then again, maybe he had pushed far more than he should have. Maybe he had revealed himself.
Jason tried to roll over, but his head continued to throb.
What about the leaf dragon pearl? If they’d stolen his gift from the forest dragon, Jason didn’t know if he would ever be able to find it.
And then there were his illusions.
All of this was supposed to have been easy.
Maybe not easy, but a matter of infiltrating, getting close to the Dragon Souls, and using that knowledge in order to find what happened to his villagers. It wasn’t supposed to be a matter of them getting caught the moment they came to the city. It would’ve been easier to have come in revealing his true self, not trying to mask his eyes. If he would’ve done that, then he would have been brought to the pens, perhaps enslaved, but at least he would have been with the others.
Jason rolled over, trying to find out if there was some way to break the binding. There was one dragon pearl they wouldn’t have been able to take from him, and he focused on the heat within the glove. His hand began to glow softly, and he used that, sending more and more power through it, and burst through whatever was holding him.
A chain broke off, and he pried his hands out from underneath him, separating them. Sitting up, he found he wasn’t alone.
His gaze darted down to his hand, but the glowing in the iron dragon glove had already begun to fade.
“An interesting trick,” the woman sitting across from him said. She sat on a chair, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “How is it you were able to break through the chain?”
“I don’t think it was locked,” Jason said.
He rubbed his wrists, trying to think through his options. He had no idea what he needed to do, but if he said the wrong thing, he would be lost.
More than himself, he worried about Sarah. He had no idea what they had done to her and with her. It was bad enough he had been captured.
“I think it was locked. Seeing as how I was the one to have locked it.”
“Who are you?”
“I would prefer to do the questioning here. Do you care to tell me how you managed to break out of that chain?”