nothing to do. Nothing he could do.
It was an ongoing draw of power, but it connected to something greater, some other aspect Jason no longer understood. Finally, he turned.
“What just happened?” Janeya asked.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Look,” she said, pointing behind him.
Jason turned.
There was a part of him that suspected that he would find a dragon, and given the way that he had fed power out to it, using the energy of the north, part of him suspected he might find an ice dragon, but instead of a dragon, there was a gleaming white egg.
A dragon egg.
More than that, the bones were gone.
“How?” she asked.
Jason could only shake his head. “I… I think Lorren was right.”
14
Jason maintained his connection to the north, feeling that energy bubbling through him. He held onto that power and turned it to the egg. The energy of the north was familiar to him. Even without standing atop a mountainside, he knew the gusting icy wind, the pain of sharp needles of snow falling, the occasional rumble of the threat of an avalanche. All of that poured through him. Even as he did, he didn’t feel anything from within the egg that seemed to summon power, not the way that the night dragon egg had called upon power. Jason continued to push, letting as much energy flow out from him as he could, and then he started to draw upon the power of the other dragons. Even as he did, he could tell there wasn’t anything more within the other dragons that he needed to add to.
Jason trapped that power within the egg, trying to hold it there.
The egg had already fed, drawing upon the power he had provided it. Jason leaned down, holding his hand above the egg, feeling the power within it.
“What is it?” Janeya asked.
“I feel something within it,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what it is, only that there is a distinct sense of power within it.”
He continued to hold his hand above the surface of the egg, and as he did, he could feel something more, some aspect of it that left him questioning whether or not it was tied to the other dragons, or whether this power was simply connected to the north, the same way the ice dragon had been.
Jason leaned down next to her, holding his hand up against the egg, feeling the power flowing out from it. “Why would this egg have formed?” he asked aloud.
“You’re asking me?”
“You knew Lorren,” Jason said.
“I knew him, but he didn’t tell me what he had been doing with the bones.”
“What did he tell you?”
It seemed to Jason that was the key. For them to better understand just what they were dealing with, and the reason behind everything he’d encountered so far, he thought he needed to understand more about what Lorren had been after.
He knew Lorren had been the one who had taught Therin about dragon eggs and how they could change, how the eggs were tied to the land. As he focused on that sense of power around him, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Lorren had been after this place in particular.
“Did Lorren send you looking for this?”
“He thought the dragons had a place of significance,” she said softly, “but he didn’t know what it was. Or where.”
Power. It came from this place, and it came from everything all around him.
Was this what Lorach had come after?
He got to his feet, leaving the egg alone. He turned to Janeya. “When I first came for you, I felt a summons from the dragons, and I felt as if I needed to come to you. The earth dragon had shown me other places. He had shown me places of Therin.” Jason reached into his pocket, pulling out the fragments of bone that he had carried with him. “He had shown me what Therin was after, but I didn’t understand.” He looked over to Janeya. “I think the earth dragon knew that I needed to.”
Maybe it was more than just the earth dragon that had needed him to find this.
There had been an urging that had come from someplace deep within himself when the earth dragon had appeared.
Had it been him, or had it come from the dragons directing him in some way?
And then there was his friend.
The blue dragon had wanted him to come here.
He had died in a sacrifice so that Jason could know about it.
He turned to the other bones. The one that had drawn upon the