by N. M. Howell
“Stay out. This is a dangerous place.”
Chapter Seventeen
By the time she reached Leabherlann, Andie realized it was very late. Still, she couldn’t go home then, not without at least checking a few rows for information. Some book somewhere inside that place had to have at least a partial history or tangential information about the persecution of the dragonborn descendants. All the professor ever taught in his tirades was that the dragons were tyrants and the dragonborn were evil, dark. That’s all anybody ever said about them, and even that was rare because nobody really talked about them or what happened. Ever.
All she’d ever known of them was that they “must be destroyed.” It had been drilled into her by everyone except her father. He’d always told her stories of warmth and compassion. He’d painted the dragons and dragonborn as kind, loyal, good. And while her mother was alive, she’d only ever given Andie love and safety. Her mother was pure dragonborn, could trace her ancestry all the way back to Gordric, one of the greatest dragons that ever roamed Noelle, and she had never, even for a moment, been cruel to Andie. Andie had grown up hearing one thing about the dragonborn, but her personal experience had been very different. And Andie certainly didn’t feel evil herself. She needed to know more.
She slowed to a walk as she neared the giant doors of Leabherlann. At five steps, she glanced around her, making sure no one saw her coming. At four steps, she emitted a magenta wave of magic, concealing herself from sight. At three steps, she cast a charm to eradicate all sound—her breathing, footfalls, even her ponytail swinging against her back. At two steps, she sped up her central nervous system so that if she did find a book, she’d be able to read and comprehend it in a matter of moments. At the final step, she cast one last incantation.
“Spiorad.”
She passed straight through the wood of the door like a soundless ghost. Inside, she moved like nothing, like time itself, through and around the few students trying to get in their last-minute studying. Soundless, swift, and unseen. She moved straight for the archives, that old enemy that refused to share its secrets-if it even had any-hope that tonight of all nights would be different. As she approached the entrance, she found herself in the exact spot where she’d heard the voices before.
The feel of the place was different, thicker. There was something magical about the space now and it made Andie uneasy. She lifted her hand and let it rest in the air for several moments, just feeling the energy and the weight of the atmosphere. Then her eyes snapped open. Security spells. Her first instinct was to wonder if after all this time, someone had finally started paying attention, finally started noticing the goings-on of the dank and dusty archives.
She could try to enter anyway; after all, she recognized that she was an incredibly powerful sorceress. She’d excelled in her studies so far and she’d been studying spells for years. Her only problem had been control. However, she decided against it because if she tried to enter and overestimated her ability, there would be no going back. Her life and her father’s would be over in an instant.
One good thing came out of that now barred entrance. Andie knew, without a doubt, that there was something important in the archives. Something worth hiding. Something maybe even worth killing for. She couldn’t be sure if those precautions had been taken against her specifically, but she knew that there was something back there and that, come sorrow or destruction, she would find it.
She journeyed up and over to the restricted section of the main area of Leabherlann, flipping through the old books just as something to do. Book after book after book, just as she had done a hundred times or more over the last few months. And, of course, she found nothing. Absolutely nothing. She threw the book into a corner and held her head, uncertain if she would explode from the sheer weight of her frustration. But then an idea came to her, one she should have had months ago.
She whipped around to make sure she was alone. Once certain of that, she closed her eyes and opened her palms toward the ceiling; she released herself, her magic, the dragon essence inside of her and it seeped out into Leabherlann like a million waves of violet light. The magic passed through shelves, slipped between books, moved to levels above and below her. She hadn’t meant for it to go so far, but only a dragonborn would have been able to see it anyway. And it felt good. Unbelievably good. It wasn’t often that she had an opportunity to release that side of herself, to truly give in to everything that she was and, even then, she wasn’t realizing the full potential of her might.
Still, the magic felt like life surging in her bones and power running through her blood. Soon, the seepage began to pool in a corner not far from where she was standing. She turned to follow it, her eyes still closed, simply moving her feet to the direction from which the magic called. When she reached the corner, she opened her eyes.
The magic had worked flawlessly. In her Soul Matter and Para-Corporeal Explorations class, they’d covered variants of astral projection stemming from the earliest Cycles of the new Age. Needless to say, Andie had excelled in that section of study. She’d sent out part of her spirit to search for books on her kind, the dragonborn, and it had worked.
She stood there—half relishing long-awaited success and half cursing herself for not thinking of it sooner—looking down on a small heap of aged and dusty books. They looked practically discarded and had been thrown there quite some time ago, with no apparent concern for how they landed. She grabbed all of them and placed them in her bag; she didn’t even check their titles, as her instinct told her they’d be of some use. Her magic may have been beyond her control, but it was never wrong.
She made it back to the main level of the Leabherlann and found the most secluded table in sight. She laid the books out in front of her. Seven dusty and average looking volumes, probably as old as Leabherlann itself. She began flipping through the pages hungrily, madly, her increased central nervous response allowing her to consume the words on the page at a superhuman rate. But it wasn’t just reading that she could do better; the spell had improved all her senses and just then she heard him. Tarven. Judging from the sound, she figured he was just entering the library, whispering excitedly with someone, roughly three hundred yards from where she was sitting. She stopped reading and started listening.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Tarven asked.
“There is no ‘we,’ not yet. Not until you’ve proven yourself.”
“What have you asked me to do that I haven’t done? I’ve been to hell and back for you people and still you all treat me like some kind of child or outsider.”
“I’m sorry, are those labels not applicable to you?”
“I understand that there’s a plan in place and I even understand how small my role in it is. All I’m asking is for the potential to grow in the organization. Give me a chance to give you the proof you need. I won’t fail you.”
“It would seem you already have. Do you understand what’s happening? Do you have any idea how close certain people are to our secrets? You’ve taken your eye from the target and it’s nearly cost us the fruition of a plan that’s been in play since before you were born, boy. At this very moment, amendments are being made because you left this organization open to assault. And you think you’ve earned a place at the table? You want to be involved in the conversations of big, scary men when you can’t even clean your own mess. Hear me now, Tarven Stirmliir, you have failed on such a monumental scale that it’s a wonder I haven’t been ordered to permanently remove you from the equation. But be certain of this: should you continue to fail, should you fall short of our expectations, we will rain down a wrath upon you that will burn even your ancestors in their graves. You now walk the thinnest of lines and, speaking for the entire organization, I sincerely hope you fall. I savor the thought of your demise.”
Andie heard them stop moving. Even at over a hundred yards, she could hear Tarven’s heartbeat increasing. She could hear his skin tightening as he made fists of his hands. She grew tense. What
was Tarven involved in? Who was the other voice? What kind of trouble was Tarven in? How great was the danger? Would she lose him? Could she help him? Whoever Tarven was with started walking again. Tarven waited a moment and then he started walking, too.
“As it is,” the mysterious man continued, “You’re uniquely placed to solve the problem you’ve allowed to develop. This will be your last chance. Will you rise to the occasion or will you fall too deep to recover?”
“We won’t need to have this conversation again,” Tarven said.
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“Yes. I’ll rise.”
Andie grabbed the books and then hid under the table. She cursed herself for waiting so long; even though most of the lights had been turned off already, she shouldn’t have waited so long to conceal herself. It was stupid and arrogant, and she’d very nearly been caught. She continued listening as Tarven and the mysterious figure passed where she’d been sitting. The way she was hiding under the table prevented her from getting a look at the man’s face, but his voice sounded familiar. Maybe. The two of them continued forward without a word and then went down to the archives. Andie stopped being able to hear them and she guessed it was due to whatever magical charms had been placed on the entrance to protect it.
She spread her books out on the table again, now worried about Tarven and the people he seemed to be in bed with. And for the first time since she’d taken off running, she thought back on Raesh in the ruins. It had not been a truly successful day. Yet, all she could do at that point was try to read through the material she’d found for the truth about her ancestry.
She made it pretty far before the day caught up with her and she was unable to keep her eyes open or her head up.
Chapter Eighteen
The spell has already been cast and as she stands there, high upon the mountain top with her people covering the cliffs and precipices around her, she knows there is no turning back. She and her people are standing still, stoic against the wind and the beating wings of their impending doom. She does not know how high they are; too high to see the ground and yet surely it must be somewhere below them. Grass. Land. Safety. Up here on the mountain they have no space to run, no place to hide, no safety or shelter to hope for. All they can do is wait for the purple storm of the incantation to wash over them, kill them where they stand.
They can see it in the distance—purple, as wide as the horizon and as tall as the space between earth and sky. The spell. They don’t know who cast it, or maybe they do and it just doesn’t matter because they know that there is nothing in their power they can do to stop it. On and on it rolls, closer by the second, as loud as the cries of a million dying souls. It is like fire and ice and wind and silence and roar and death and beauty and all the seasons of the year. It is stunning, in its own deadly way. They are all there, on that impossibly large mountain, staring at the thing they know is coming to kill them.
Silently, yet collectively, they wonder who could be so powerful. Who could have the might and the sheer hatred to cast such a spell? Such an irreversible and destructive spell? There are many millions of them there upon the mountain, gazing out across the vast expanse of nothing before them as the violet storm of the future rolls in to raze them. As it nears them, it begins to change color and where the space between the earth and sky had once been purple, it is now a dark, ominous gray. It is a gray that must’ve come straight from the grave, straight from all the worst of failure and suffering. Nobody will say it. Nobody will even dare to think it. But they all know, they all feel it somewhere within themselves and somewhere in the spaces between them. If the spell reaches them, their entire race will be wiped out.
The people—every soul upon the mountain—begin to panic. Before, there was silence, a kind of peace about them as if they had some time in the past decided on grace in defeat. But now, they are louder than the storm of the spell itself, screaming, crying, wanting to flee or even dive off the mountainside. They know they’re all going to die.
Saeryn, who is the only one to have remained quiet amidst the pandemonium, looks at the storm in full, not flinching or even blinking. She has decided. If this is her last day, her final hour, she will not spend it in tears. She will not give over to fear or break herself with suffering. There is no fate that could find her that could steal her poise, her strength. “It is only death” she thinks to herself.
She takes a deep breath and prepares to make a final effort to save her people. She will try to call for help. She stretches out her arms to both sides of herself, reaching for the magic, all of it, all the power and spirit of her doomed race. She knows that if she can pull enough magic to herself, she can send a distress signal of sorts, though it is hard work with her people so afraid, so disoriented. Their magic is fueled in part by their emotion, which makes it stronger, but it is also fueled by their concentration, and that seems to be a difficult task for them right now. And who could be calm watching their own death approach?
She senses her bones and her blood filling with magic, brimming with the ability of her entire race. She lifts her head and opens her mouth, allowing a light brighter than anything on earth to fly up and out into the sky and beyond. A plea for mercy, aid, and protection. If no one answers...
“Help!” she screams, releasing the sound as a further emission of light racing toward the cosmos.
“Perhaps it is too late” she thinks as she looks out across her people, terrified and screaming themselves hoarse. She quiets her spirit, calms her mind. “I will not lose my peace today” she thinks, “Even if I lose my life.” There is something strong about her then, some new and brilliant felicity charging through her bones. The behemoth spell looms nearer.
“If there is a single willing force in all creation, help us now.”
Andie woke to find a hand on her shoulder. Someone had shaken her awake. The first thing she saw was the library floor, much closer than it should have been. She must’ve fallen asleep and slipped from her chair. She wondered why the fall didn’t wake her. She’d known she was tired, but not enough to fall asleep and knock her head on the floor without even stirring. Just as she was thinking of falling, her head and hip began to ache. She touched her throbbing temple but the hand came away without blood. Her hip felt like it had a bent nail in it. She rubbed her head and tried to regain her sense of self, her presence of mind. It wasn’t until she tried to calm herself that she noticed she was panting and terrified. The dream she’d had was half remembered; it was like her mind had been invaded by a heavy and unrelenting fog.
“Bad dream?”
Andie turned her eyes up. The hand belonged to Yara, who was smiling down at Andie in the way people smile when they want to comfort someone. Behind Yara was Professor Harrock and a group of students and staff all staring down at her. She hadn’t even realized that many people were still in the library. So many eyes looking at her, wondering about her condition and probably her sanity.
“Why are all these people here?” Andie asked Yara, trying her best not to sound rude.
“I don’t think they really had a choice,” Yara said, looking at Andie even harder. “We all came running when we heard you.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You called for help, Andie. You screamed for it. I heard you seventeen floors up. It made my blood run cold the way you screamed. It’s like you thought you were dying. Was it just a dream? Do you need help?”
Andie was confused. How could she have been screaming? And now she saw the true expression on every face: they thought she was some kind of helpless thing, some child who had no other recourse to action than to scream for help. They gawked at her like some kind of specimen in a jar.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened,” Andie said, shaking her head as if to illustrate her bafflement. “I don’t remember any dream.”
“But you’re not hurt?” Yara asked.
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, in that
case,” Yara said, her expression suddenly turning amused, “I think we can send all the would-be heroes away. Alright everyone, calamity evaded. Go home, go back, go away.”
The crowd dispersed, though not without some parting glances at Andie. Yara turned back and reached her hands out to Andie. She helped pull her to her feet and then hugged her.
“Sorry,” she said. “You just looked like you needed it. But if nothing else, you’ve given me one heck of an anecdote for the holidays.”
“Thanks for getting rid of everyone. I hope I didn’t scare you too bad.”
“No worries. It’s good for me to practice my heart attacks and nervous breakdowns. That way they won’t take me by surprise in thirty years.”
Andie was laughing before she could stop herself. Yara was always good for that. She realized her books were scattered all over the floor and she and Yara bent down to pick them up. It was a moment before she remembered that she was reading restricted books; perhaps Yara could be trusted, but some of the spectators had yet to leave and some had even come back for a last hopeful look. She gathered the books as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, Yara didn’t seem to have paid attention. However, the librarian hadn’t left yet and she was peering down at Andie’s bag incredibly hard as if she knew something or had intentions of finding out. Murakami had made it back to work. Andie met her eyes and tried to stare her down, but Murakami wasn’t so easily fought off and it was Andie who looked away first.
“Andie, your arm!” Yara said, her expression one of total shock.
Andie looked down to find the hairs on her arm had changed color to a light purple. Even her veins under her skin, though difficult to see, had returned to their natural purple state. Andie quickly jerked her sleeves down to cover the evidence and could only pray that her eyes and hair hadn’t changed, too. There’d be no explanation for that. Yara continued to stare at her as if she’d never seen her before and Andie continued to stare back in utter fear. Could Yara be trusted? After all, didn’t everyone hate the dragonborn? Andie looked around at the bystanders still hanging around. None of them had Yara’s expression, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t seen. For all Andie knew, they were staring at her purple hair and byzantium eyes at that very moment.
