She nodded. He tried not to think about how difficult that might be. If it was even possible.
“Okay, I think I see a path up,” Caden said as he surveyed the mountain in front of them.
“You really think we’re going to fly up there? I don’t know if I can do the Jedi mind trick of believing I can actually do that,” Landry admitted with a frown.
“Yeah, I’m not sure either. I wasn’t very good at flying at first even when I was in Dragon form,” he said. “But there looks to be a path that curves upwards and then there are ledges going all the way up. I think we jump from one to the next.”
Landry gave him one of those famous looks that indicated she was more than a little skeptical.
“No bodies here, Landry. We can do whatever we imagine we can do,” he reminded her.
“Right. Okay, you go first,” she said and gestured towards the mountain path.
Caden nodded and he started jogging up it. The path was a switchback as it threaded its way up the mountain’s side. Landry and her brothers followed him with Jasper in the rear. With every roar from Raziel, stones tumbled down the side of the mountain and he felt the vibration of those cries.
Will Iolaire be with Raziel? It should be, but I don’t think Iolaire is, Caden thought.
It wasn’t just that he couldn’t picture the lair in his mind with the two Dragon Spirits intertwined, he couldn’t feel them. And the timber of the roars from Raziel was terrible to hear. It was the deepest mourning. Anguish. Loss. Confusion. Caden set his jaw and moved faster.
The path thinned out and it was time to jump or fly. Caden looked up. About twenty feet above him was a ledge. If he could catch the lip of it, he could easily pull himself up on top of it. It looked deep enough for him to stand and jump for yet another ledge above it.
“Twenty feet,” Jasper remarked.
The Humans First leader had slipped around Landry and her brothers to stand next to him.
“You don’t have to come, Jasper,” Caden remarked. “If you can’t do it.”
“Can you?” Jasper asked evenly.
Caden went back to looking up at the ledge. He imagined flexing his legs and flying up there. He’d catch the edge and… Jasper jumped. He grabbed hold of the edge and pulled himself up. He was looking over it at Caden, grinning.
“Coming?” Jasper asked.
“I can’t believe he did that,” Landry growled. “He shouldn’t have been able to.”
“He’s got a good imagination, Landry,” Ross said.
“He believes anything is possible,” Harvey pointed out as Jasper jumped to the second ledge.
“Well, if Raziel sees him first, he’ll be turned into a charcoal briquet,” Caden remarked.
He drew in a deep breath, flexed his legs and jumped! He soared past the first ledge. His arms pinwheeled as he frantically sought something to grab hold of. He saw the second ledge where Jasper was standing. He reached for the ledge and missed. But an arm shot out and grasped him. Caden grabbed hold of it tightly. He had stopped falling. He looked up in Jasper Hawes’ face.
“If you die, we all die,” Jasper said and reached down with his other hand to help haul Caden up.
Caden couldn’t hide that his legs were trembling underneath him when he was finally safely up on the second ledge. He sank down onto the stony ground with his back against the mountain. Jasper didn’t comment on that.
“Is everything okay?” Landry called up, her voice echoing.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Jasper said back. “Just give us a minute.”
Caden frowned. “I don’t get…”
“Don’t get what?” Jasper asked when Caden had stopped and simply shook his head.
“I don’t get you,” Caden finished. “You’re acting like your ego’s been crushed and I’m the enemy just a little while ago and now you jump up a mountain and save my life like you’ve got all the confidence in the world.”
Jasper shrugged. “Can’t a man be and feel all those things?”
