If it was real, then the answer would be difficult.
He breathed out heavily and looked at the ice dragon. If the dragon was only in his mind, and if he wasn’t real, then he had to search, straining to see how much was real and how much was not, and he had to find a way of looking beyond what he had experienced.
Maybe he had to go back home.
First, they would have to get out of here. They would have to break free of the illusion the slaves held over him, and they would have to break free of everything that Lorach and the Dragon Souls were doing to him.
Jason turned to Sarah, taking her hands. When he did, he shifted the illusion.
It was easier to do. This time, he shifted it back, forcing them into the building with the other slaves.
He pulled on that power, drawing it through him, through the iron dragon glove, and burned off the illusion. He focused on it for a moment, waiting, and when he had a better sense of it, he tore free the next layer of the illusion. He worked layer by layer, tearing it free, ripping away all that he could.
The more he worked, the subtler it became, and Jason couldn’t help but wonder if he needed to work differently. It was possible they had some way of knowing what he was doing, but maybe it didn’t even matter. He was able to tear away the illusion, and if he was able to rip free what they were doing and pull that power out, then he could free both himself and Sarah.
Gradually, the illusions shimmered. Everything shifted around them. Layers disappeared. One after the other until he was back within the small warehouse, but then, even that was an illusion. Jason tore at it, letting that power flow through him, through the iron dragon glove, and when he ripped it free, he felt another sensation overwhelm him.
It was a surge of power, and it was painful, but it was familiar as well.
He held on to that connection.
In front of him was something unexpected.
The leaf.
Jason stared at it and tried to look around, but it was all that he saw. There was nothing but that leaf, nothing other than the deep green with colors of shimmering through it. There was nothing other than that sense of power that rolled through it.
And with a certainty, he understood what had taken place.
Jason pulled on that power as well, tearing it free, and found himself in a darkened room. A leaf rested on a table in front of him. It glowed softly.
15
Jason panted, breathing heavily as he tried to understand everything that had worked around him. How much of this had been real and how much of it had been within his mind? The leaf was the key. It had been the key from the moment he had seen it, and it had been the key from the moment he’d taken it from the forest dragon.
All of this was illusion.
Sarah was there with him.
She stared at the glowing leaf resting on the table. There was nothing else around them other than a darkened room.
“What is this?” she asked.
“This is the forest dragon,” he said.
“I don’t understand?”
“I think the forest dragon is responsible for what happened to us.”
When he had first encountered her, he’d believed that she had been protected and they had saved her, but that hadn’t been it at all.
She had been tainted. Touched by one of the others.
“I think the forest dragon is responsible for all of this,” he said again.
“How?”
“It hasn’t made sense. We’ve been chasing information, but nothing has really made sense. Not only was the attack on the village difficult, and though I think Therin would have done something like that, it didn’t make as much sense as some other possibilities. Why would he risk that?”
He looked at the leaf, watching it glow.
As he looked at it, something else within it called him. It was a strange sense of understanding, and he wondered how much of that he was supposed to have been able to remove. He had gone through layers of information, and in those layers, in those illusions, he had peeled them away, one after another, until he had reached this place.
It was possible that all of this was still an illusion. The more that he thought about it, the harder it was to know whether or not what he was experiencing was even real anymore. He’d spent so much time focusing on what he was seeing, and less time on what he was feeling, that he didn’t even know.
Perhaps that was the key.
If the dragon had such control over illusion, he needed to understand it.
“I thought Therin attacked your village because he wanted to force your hand,” Sarah said.
“I think he did, but he also did something else.”
When he had found his village destroyed, he’d gone to Dragon Haven.
“That’s what he wanted,” he whispered.
“What did he want?”
Jason looked over at Sarah, panic setting in. “He wanted me to go to Dragon Haven.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wanted me to go get help. Because my village was gone, it would drive me to do something. He would’ve known that.”
“Then how would he have known you left?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said.
“Why would he even care?”
There was only one reason why Therin would care if Jason left. Not only did he want to know how to find Dragon Haven, but he wanted to remove the one person who had proven he had the ability to heal and free the dragons. In doing so, he wanted to remove a threat to Lorach and the Dragon Souls.
Jason was that threat.
“We have to get out of here.” He got up, looking toward the leaf, and he debated for a moment before lifting it. It was warm, but no different than it had felt before. He could feel the veins running through it, and he traced his finger across the surface.
All of this was the key, but if he believed the forest dragon had been used, and if he believed the forest dragon was responsible for what had happened to him, then why would the forest dragon have shown him the leaf?
Jason was certain that was what had happened.
Not only had the dragon shown him the leaf, but she had allowed him to take one.
Something wasn’t quite fitting, which meant he had to keep digging.
“How would they have been able to do all of this?”
“If they began to use the forest dragon, they would know she has the ability to control illusion.”
“I thought she could only camouflage herself.”
“What else is camouflage but an illusion?”
Jason held on to the leaf, and he wondered if he might be able to connect to it.
When he thought about the way the leaf allowed for everything to change around him, he didn’t know if there was anything he could even do to understand that power. Yet it seemed to him he had used the power of the illusion, that he had drawn through that leaf. In doing so, he had changed something, but what?
That power was in him.
He had used it. He had drawn the illusion before. He had connected to both the ice dragon and the iron dragon. The misfits were like him.
And he could use those.
“What about the people we saw?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how many of them are real.”
“Then where are we?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“But we rode with Henry and the iron dragon, and we…”
“We rode with them, and we came to what we thought was Lorach, but what if it wasn’t?”
That, more than anything else, left him troubled.