Return of the Dragonborn: The Complete Trilogy

by N. M. Howell

  “Water,” she whispered. “Water is in the plants.”

  She reached out toward the plants on either side of her and flexed her fingers. She focused on the sorcerer’s magic inside of her, and did everything in her power to push away her dragon blood instinct. Every stem and bloom stood straight up. She made fists of her hands and all the plants leaned over toward her, releasing every ounce of moisture they had and turned brown, then black in the process. When all the water had been collected in floating pools above her, she used her powers to magnify it and then made it rain inside the garden. Within moments, the fire had been extinguished.

  “Very impressive,” Tarven said, smiling at her. “And look, you saved the rose hip.”

  For a moment, Andie couldn’t focus. She was reeling a bit from the loss of the flames. All their comfort, promise, and power had fled with them. Her hands stayed in the air beside her for a moment.

  “Andie. Andie, are you okay?” Tarven asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  She snapped back into the moment, the garden, the circumstance.

  She stood still, silent for a long while, and then reeled. “What kind of twisted games are you playing here?” she shouted, rounding on Tarven and locking eyes with him. “You could have burned me to death. I could’ve died! I’m a first-year Academy student who hasn’t even taken one class. I don’t even have control of my magic, yet. What if I’d lost control? Do you have any idea what could have happened?” She thought of all the weird, pathetic excuses that a first-year student could possible use, and spewed them out at him as angrily as she could manage. She hoped it was enough to cover up any evidence of her dragon blood magic that might have seeped out during the exercise.

  Andie’s heart pounded in her chest as her mind raced with the thought of what would have happened had she actually lost control and hurt herself. Her dragon magic would have healed her, of course, and had she been at home or somewhere isolated, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But in front of another person, especially in the University, that was the most dangerous thing she could possibly think of happening. She swallowed and cleared her throat, all the while glaring at Tarven in front of her.

  She hoped he had bought her distress as being caused by fear of being hurt, rather than what she was truly hiding.

  Tarven held up his hands to calm her, but he took a few steps back. He claimed to be able to sense her power. He surely must’ve known to treat her carefully in that moment.

  “Okay, easy now. I’m not allowed to interfere as long as the situation is controllable and it looks like you still have a chance to complete the task. Rest assured, no one was going to burn alive today and I would’ve been right here if something had gone wrong with your magic. Also, your icon measures your distress levels and if it had gotten too high, the entire school board would have teleported in. There was never any real danger, Andie. I promise.”

  Andie rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands as she inhaled a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She hadn’t even been to her first class yet, and she had nearly revealed herself. What was she doing here? She was in way over her head. “You just pushed it too far, okay?”

  “It wasn’t like—”

  “Just… Don’t do anything like that to me again. Please. I wasn’t ready.”

  “I’m sorry, Andie. It was just a test. From the moment you walked in, I knew you would have been able to handle it just fine.”

  Andie felt stupid and angry, not so much with him as with herself. She would need to prepare herself for surprises like this. She couldn’t afford to slip up. Her life depended on this. “Well, you were wrong.”

  She cursed herself for sounding like such a snarky brat, but better that he thinks of her as a whiney first-year than as someone with dragon blood. The first, she could deal with, although the situation wasn’t exactly ideal. The second, would end up getting her killed.

  Tarven was silent then. He kept opening his mouth to respond, but something told Andie that he hadn’t even fully considered the circumstances, which was even worse because he went along with the plan without thinking for himself. Andie shook her head.

  “Well, I’ll say one thing for my first day at the Academy,” she said. “At least, it hasn’t been dull.” She managed a half laugh at that, and Tarven nearly smiled in return. His smile quickly turned to a frown when her expression turned back to one of utter seriousness.

  “Well, goodbye then.” With that, she turned to leave, mumbling a few awkward parting words about going to the library to prepare for her next class.

  Chapter Six

  Andie took the long way around, relishing in the cool fresh air that calmed her as she walked. She shook her head at how stupid and ill prepared she had been. Next time, she would be more confident. She would need to learn how to handle surprises and stressful situations without the risk of drawing on her dragon blood magic. She didn’t have a choice. When she reached the end of the path, she turned and headed back towards the building.

  She’d barely made it back inside when she realized she had no idea where to find her class. This place was massive and going on an exploratory walk would waste time she didn’t have. She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration and rubbed her temples with her fingers, doing her best to think of a plan. She couldn’t be late. Her eyes flashed open when an idea struck her. She held up her palm and used the opposite hand to press down on the light where the icon was. She closed her eyes and thought of the library. Sure enough, within seconds she could hear the siren’s call. She opened her eyes and began to walk.

  It took a while to find it, what with dodging the Mountain Faeries, weaving through the seemingly endless crowds, and listening in on other student’s siren’s call out of curiosity. When she finally found it, there was no mistaking it. The doors had to be at least fifty feet tall, made of what looked like Bleak Oak—wood as black as the night sky—inlaid with gold. The gold had been laid in fractal patterns of exploding curves, and, as Andie neared the doors, she could see the patterns were moving. She couldn’t help smiling as she pushed open the door, which, even with its great size, was as easy to open as a regular-sized door.

  She couldn’t believe it. She was finally there. Leabherlann. The largest and best of the world’s repositories. There was no library, no archive, no collection anywhere on the face of the earth that could rival that one. Leabherlann wasn’t even half as old as most of the other libraries, yet, it was the greatest. Unparalleled. Andie had been desperate to get there. Inside were rows upon rows of gold and granite desks lined up straight down the center of the room and going back so far that Andie couldn’t see the end. Above them were many, many more floors, all with the same incredibly long rows. At first, she thought the other floors were floating, but then she remembered that those were the famous invisible floors of the library.

  To the right and left of the desks were the collections themselves. Stone cases that were so tall it was believed they rose hundreds of feet up into the mountain. It had been said that there was no subject, no personage, no branch of magic or its study that could not be found within those great walls. If it wasn’t there, it probably didn’t exist. Andie took several minutes to absorb the majesty of the place and then she headed for the main desk, a grandiose gold and silver dais whose powerful and beautiful turning gears were as much for function as embellishment. The entire thing was placed in a sunken area in the center of the space.

  “Hi,” she said, to which she received no answer. “I’m here to do some research.”

  The woman behind the desk looked at Andie as if what she’d said was the dumbest phrase ever uttered. Andie realized that hundreds of thousands of students came here to do research every single day.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I want to know where to find the collections. I’d like to read on the dra-”

  She stopped herself, knowing it was better to keep her subject to herself.

  “I’d like to read on extinct bloodlines.”

  “Show me y
our icon access,” the woman said, monotone and uninterested.

  “My what?”

  “I-con ac-cess,” she said as condescendingly as possible.

  “She’s new, doesn’t have it yet. I have clearance to let her use mine for the time being.”

  Andie turned to the sound of the voice and saw Carmen grinning. She walked up to the desk and turned her palm toward the woman, who, reluctantly, swiped her own palm in front of Carmen’s.

  “Go on,” the woman said, returning her attention to whatever was below the silver barrier that Andie couldn’t see. Carmen took her by the arm and led her off.

  “Good old Murakami,” she said. “Never smiled or said a nice thing a day in her life. But she’s pureblooded Raeynese.”

  “You’re kidding. The Raeynese Empire was destroyed soon after Hightowyr. I didn’t think there were any left.”

  “Very few, and they’ve been reduced to intermarriage, with terrifying results.”

  “Don’t you have class right now?” Andie asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  Carmen led her to the elevator and it carried them up to the hundred and first floor. They got out and Andie had to catch her breath. She had thought they were falling, but it was just the invisible floor. She looked down between her feet at the many levels and students beneath her.

  “Cool,” she said.

  Carmen took her back a few cases and pointed her to a particular case.

  “This is it?” Andie asked, a bit disillusioned.

  “Sure. If by ‘this’ you mean the entire floor. You can start wherever you want.”

  And just like that she turned to leave.

  “Carmen, wait. Thank you for helping me get in and for bringing me up here. How did you get me in, anyway?”

  “I do some work as amanuensis for my bloodlines professor. He’s always having me pull a book on some long dead ethnicity or culture. Gives me special access.”

  “Nice.”

  She was about to leave again when she turned back. She watched Andie for a moment.

  “Be careful who sees you reading up here, Andie. An interest in bloodlines isn’t really something people will understand. Even my professor is sort of a pariah. Don’t talk about this with anyone.”

  And she left.

  Andie was a bit shaken by Carmen’s warning, but she went on anyway. She searched and searched, but even after half an hour she hadn’t been able to find a single book on dragons, dragon blood, or the dragonborn. She went back and forth, from case to case to case, and even triple checked the floor’s catalogue. There wasn’t a single book on anything having to do with dragons. It was like the University was purposely keeping secrets, which was probably the truth. Eventually, tired of searching and thoroughly disappointed, she resigned herself to reading something for class.

  Not too long after that, Carmen came back. She brought a friend with her. Yara. Yara was a rather plain girl, but her personality was as magnetic as Carmen’s and she was as bookish as Andie wanted to be. Carmen kept looking at Andie when she thought no one was watching, and Andie got the impression that Carmen had come back because she was genuinely worried. Yara kept them both engaged with her stories and endless knowledge of all sorts of things.

  “Yara, how do you know so much about Goulstnach?” Andie asked.

  “Are you kidding? Those things freak me out. The sadder they get, the bigger they get and it’s notoriously difficult to comfort them. Once they reached their limit, they explode and send poisonous pieces of their spine in every direction. Are you telling me that doesn’t freak you out?”

  “Well, they do now. I’m never going up the mountain.”

  “Good girl. Also, I couldn’t help but notice the book you’re reading. I’m pretty sure there’s an older version of that that has a professor’s note in it. Could be helpful.” Yara winked.

  “Thanks, Yara.”

  Just then, Andie heard her siren’s call. It was time for her next class.

  “I hear my call. It was great talking with you. I hope I can catch up with you again soon.”

  “You, too,” Yara said. “And good luck with the rest of your day.”

  “Thanks. Thank you, too, Carmen.”

  “My pleasure. See you later, haybale.”

  Andie got in the elevator and took it back down to the ground floor. When she stepped out, she couldn’t tell which direction the call was coming from. She’d heard there were at least a hundred different entrances to Leabherlann, and so she figured the call must be leading her to another one. But the farther she walked, the more unsure she became. Sometimes she thought she was following the voice, other times it seemed to be coming from behind or to the side of her. Eventually, she found herself down another floor in the archives. The air was thick with dust, the lighting ample but odd, and there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. She started reading every plaque, searching for any way out.

  Soon, she came across things like Most Educated and Illustrious Serpents and Poisons that Attack only the Soul and even Great Magical Shifts of the Third and Fourth Cycles. She had inadvertently come upon the special and rare collections, and she was fascinated. There were all kinds of unimaginable subjects. Things she’d heard of only in legend. All that made her wonder if she should even be down there.

  At the end of an inordinately long path, a bridge of sorts, she came upon another door, Bleak Oak with a gold inlay just like the much larger one upstairs. She was standing in front of it, debating whether or not to knock when she heard voices. She dropped everything in her hands. It was the same voices that had been haunting her dreams.

  “What are you doing?”

  The sound of a voice behind her nearly made Andie jump through the ceiling. It took her a moment to get her heart out of her throat. She turned around to see Tarven. With her head full of the siren’s call and the voices, she hadn’t heard him approach.

  “Are you seriously dead-set on freaking me out every time you see me?” she snapped. “Honestly, I’m starting to think your sole purpose here is to make me lose my cool. And why do I keep seeing the same people everywhere?”

  “Heh, sorry. Calm down. I wasn’t up to anything nefarious. I just saw you over here. Students aren’t allowed to be here.”

  Andie took a moment to breathe and to return her heart rate to normal. She stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “I figured that. I just got lost.”

  “Well, follow me. I’ll get you back.” He smiled at her and picked up a book that had fallen nearest to him.

  Andie bent down to pick up her books and snatched the book out of Tarven’s hands as she eyed him suspiciously. “I’ll take that, thanks.”

  Tarven shrugged and led her back the way she’d come and then locked the door behind them.

  Chapter Seven

  The rest of the day passed without incident. Andie enjoyed the rest of her classes—or, at least, as much as she could, considering she was convinced that the same voices from her nightmares were circulating the underground archives at the University—and met some really interesting fellow students.

  She made it home that afternoon and settled in for a couple hours of studying, during which time she mostly worried and didn’t study. After two hours, the only information she’d managed to absorb was the first sentence of the first paragraph of one of her critical texts. She’d have to finish later, though. She’d promised to have dinner with Raesh and Carmen downstairs.

  When she went down, she was a bit early, which gave her some time to talk with Marvo about his family and hers. He told her some stories about her parents and the times they’d had so many years before. He remembered her mom as beautiful, kind, and one of the most generous people he’d ever met. As much as it hurt, she always loved hearing stories about her mother.

  Somewhere along sharing his memories, Andie stopped him. Thinking about everything she’d lost wouldn’t do. Especially, not every single day. She’d come to the city and to school with the intention of making sure
the past didn’t repeat itself and building a new kind of life for herself and her father. She had to learn to let go at some point. Besides, Raesh and Carmen would be there soon and she didn’t want to be depressed when they showed up. Marvo kissed her cheek and left, looking a bit embarrassed, but understanding.

  Carmen came first. She’d been just a couple of neighborhoods over, hanging out with some friends. She had no idea where Raesh was.

  “So, what’s the deal? You gonna wire my cousin or what?”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I think the answer’s going to be no.”

  “Wire. It means hook up with.”

  “What? No. I barely even know him. I’m not gonna sleep with him.”

  “Whoa, whoa, easy, haybale. I meant date, not sleep with. Thanks for that image, though. Bleh.”

  “Anyway, what about you? Who do you... wire with?”

  “My professor.”

  Andie paused, completely taken aback.

  “Your professor? Are you serious?”

  “Possibly.”

  Carmen grinned. Andie couldn’t help herself and she smiled, too.

  “Tell you what,” Carmen said. “Be nice to me and I’ll show you how to turn off your icon.”

  Andie paused. “Wait, what? We can do that?”

  “Well, obviously, we’re not supposed to, and we can get into serious trouble if they find out, but how are they supposed to manage each and every one of their hundreds of thousands of icons? Not to mention, thousands of students graduate or transfer all the time and thousands more come in. The trick is not to turn it off completely. We’ll just kind of dampen it.”

  “That is so cool.”

  The bell over the door rang and in walked Raesh, as handsome and magnetic and awkward as ever. He waved to his dad and came to sit with them.

  “What’s up, my two favorite ladies?”

  “There’s a secret door in the underground archives that’s holding voices from my nightmares.”