Return of the Dragonborn: The Complete Trilogy

by N. M. Howell

  She stood and looked over at Lymir, waiting for him to speak. He returned her glance, then went back to staring into the middle distance. She turned back to Raesh.

  “Well,” she said. “Besides shelter I think we’ve got everything covered. We’re as stocked as we can be with food and supplies, and the captain’s also bringing the next loads of weapons and armor from the True Isles. I’ll head back up to the summit and help with the training. It’s just a waiting game now.”

  Sarinda left, touching Raesh on the shoulder as she went. Raesh stayed a while longer, hoping to get a conversation going with Lymir, but that effort bore no fruit. Soon enough he left, hoping sometime soon Lymir would be ready to return to his role. They might not have much time left.

  Raesh went up to his apartment to pack a bag. When he was ready he took SKY1, then SKY 6, then the city shuttle train, then the crossland train, then the Sud, and then finally a cab, which dropped him off in front of the largest hospital in Taline. On the seventy-seventh floor, he had to go through a security checkpoint, an added measure to protect one of the most important people to him in the world. When he finally reached the room, Alecia was just finishing changing the drip.

  “Raesh, hi,” she said.

  “Hey, Alecia. Any change today?”

  “Well, for a moment earlier we thought so. There was a spike in brain activity and heart rate increased unusually, but she went back down. It was probably just a reaction to the drip. The doctor changed the medicine and dosing recently. Sorry, sweetheart.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, sitting in a chair beside the bed. “But I guess I have to ask: are you sure it was just a reaction?”

  “Oh, I wish it were something more. You know, for a moment there I almost thought she was going to wake up. Her eyes. I could have sworn they were fluttering. Never mind. I’ll leave you two alone. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Raesh settled in next to Carmen and changed her old flowers for the new ones he’d brought. He couldn’t help thinking she looked so peaceful, so calm. It almost seemed like waking would be the real punishment. A part of him hoped that she wouldn’t open her eyes for a while yet. He wanted her to wake to a new world, one where the war was over and everything that had been ruined had been rebuilt.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked her as he pulled a book from his bag. “This is one of my books. You’ve been begging me to let you read them forever. But I want you to know I didn’t keep them from you because I didn’t trust you. I just didn’t think they were any good. But I’ll let you decide for yourself. Before we get started, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Andie and I are together. Together together. I know, it took us long enough. You can stop laughing now. She’s not here tonight. She’s off... being Andie. Sometimes I want to be mad her, but how can I? Her courage, her drive, her selflessness are all reasons why I love her. No, I haven’t told her. Yes, I plan to as soon as I see her again. No one asked for your opinion, thank you very much.

  “I love you, you know. And I miss you. You and your inappropriate, embarrassing jokes. We all miss you. But don’t wake up yet. Not tonight. Wait a little while longer until Andie and I can fix this world for you, make it safe and beautiful for you again. You’ve been through so much, we all have. I just want to protect you. One more thing: we found more portals. Seriously. Yeah, I know... those things freak me out, too...”

  Raesh began to read from his book. There were fifteen council fighters in the hall outside, but they didn’t make a single sound, and, as he read, Raesh began to forget the world. For as long as he read it was just him and Carmen. He read until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. He closed the book and placed it back in his bag. He leaned forward and lay his head on top of his arms, right next to Carmen and fell asleep.

  Sometime later, a hand moved through his hair. At first, he didn’t respond.

  “Raesh?”

  The hand continued to move through his hair. Raesh began to stir.

  “Raesh? Is that you?”

  The voice and the hand combined finally brought him to the point of waking. Raesh yawned and looked around, blinking his eyes to bat away the blurriness. Finally, he looked at the face, the smile that was weak but familiar, the hand resting on his face. He couldn’t believe it, even as he looked at her.

  “Carmen?”

  Back in the University, the portal was still open. Though Professor Iceubes now knew how to operate it, he’d been asked not to. No one wanted to do anything to it until Saeryn and Andie returned.

  Just then the surface of the portal began to move, but the captain hadn’t pulled into the dock yet and Marcus was still on SKY 6 on the mountainside. From the pretty, frictionless face of this device rose a man in robes. Five more followed him. In a perfect, slow-moving line the men walked forward from the Archives into the gargantuan space of Leabharlann.

  They wandered, looking about them and examining books, but always moving steadily and deliberately toward the door. Without warning, those doors opened and all of the men stopped in their tracks. Two professors stood in the doorway, looking at the men in total bafflement. One of the robed men glided gracefully forward to just within a few feet of the professors. The professors took the stances they learned while training on the summit. But they were new recruits and had only had a couple classes. They came from money and privilege, and had never fought before. The robed man raised his hands beside him and held still. The professors were just about to attack when a great cloud of red sand bursts from his robe and engulfed the two professors. They didn’t even have time to scream.

  Once they were dead, the robed man, the priest, returned to his fellows, who gathered in the middle of the great library. They formed their line and moved just as slowly and deliberately back down to the portal. They leaned forward over the surface.

  “It...”

  “Seems...”

  “The...”

  “Way...”

  “Is...

  “Clear.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was the next morning when Andie woke. She was lying in a room she didn’t recognize. Outside the window, she saw they were still in New Carthage, though now they were on the other side of the city. She sat up slowly, her head was clear and at the same time heavy. She still didn’t understand how dragonborn can be self-healing, but still faint.

  “Be easy, princess. We’re all safe.”

  At the sound of Saeryn’s voice Andie turned to see her sitting on the next bed, smiling.

  “I have to thank you for your fainting spell. If it hadn’t been for that, I might never have had the experience of staying in a hotel. It’s quite lovely.

  “Was she real?”

  “Yes. She is very real, Andie.”

  “Where is she?”

  “You mean me?”

  Just after her voice came around the corner, so did she. Andie needed a moment to make sure she wasn’t dreaming and then she’d rush toward the girl she’s missed so much. They threw their arms around each other.

  “Yara,” Andie whispered.

  Andie hugged Yara as tight as Yara was hugging her. Saeryn watched from the bed.

  “I thought you were dead,” Andie said. “I saw you... I saw you...”

  “You saw me carried away by a dragon. In its teeth, admittedly, but not dead. Although it did hurt. A lot.”

  “Wait, but then…” Andie paused, trying to remember her facts correctly. “When I learned the truth far later, Oren said he sent you through a time curse. Through the portal back to his time.”

  Yara smiled. “And he did, only it didn’t work. He sent me back to a time somewhere between his own and ours, if I’m not mistaken. Only, something happened as soon as I arrived. The magic reversed and I was pulled back into our own world. I don’t think anyone noticed, so I ran.”

  “I don’t understand.” Andie ran her hands through her hair, staring at her friend.

  “Andie, it was the most beautiful place. And I
suspect it might come in handy. I don’t know how, or when. But just in case it helps…” Yara cast a strange and beautiful spell before the others, lifting her hands before her and chanting a short incantation. A shimmering image appeared before her and Andie and Saeryn both gasped in wonder. “This is what the spell in the portal looked like when Oren sent me through. If you can match this, we might be able to retrace my steps.”

  “Why would we ever do that?” Andie was incredulous, unable to take her eyes off the shimmering magic before her.

  Yara dropped her hands and the image disappeared. “I don’t know Andie, I hope we never will.”

  Andie sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, that’s something. But back to what’s important, Yara. Everyone thought you were a traitor. I thought you were a traitor. They were going to execute you.”

  “And they probably would have. They’d only been on the mountain for a little while. They hadn’t even built a real prison yet, so I just waited until I was alone. Then I ran. I ran for days, as far as I could go. I didn’t stop until I reached the mine cities in the north. I collapsed next to a mountain of coal and I didn’t think I’d ever wake up again. But a family found me there and took me in. They cleaned me up, fed me, nursed me, and let me stay with them as long as I wanted. I spent the next few days trying to figure out what I should do. I knew I couldn’t go back to the Hot Salts or even to Arvall because all of you thought I was a traitor and the minute I showed my face I’d be dead.”

  “But why didn’t you say something? When we were there on the beach and all of us accused you... when I accused you. You could’ve convinced us—”

  “No, I couldn’t have. The setup was pretty convincing and if I hadn’t been in this body I would’ve thought I’d done it, too. And to be honest, I felt that I deserved punishment. I knew something was off about Marvo. You and Raesh had known him longer and had more of a connection with him, but you were blinded because you both loved him. I was working side by side with him those last few days and I knew, I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t say anything because I had no tangible proof and tensions were high enough as it was. I could see in your eyes every time you came around me you were growing more and more suspicious, and I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine myself. I should’ve just knocked him out, hexed him, anything. I might’ve saved his life. All their lives. By the time we were standing there on that beach I was ready to die for having let things go on and turn the way they did.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “When they dropped me on the precipice, I started thinking. If the Chancellor had tapped into that kind of power, he had to be working with someone even more dangerous than he was. Myamar Mharú was cruel, but he was never that clever. But almost overnight he’d become a master manipulator and the leader of a vast battalion. It just didn’t add up. I knew that you were focused on saving the dragonborn and taking down the University, and you didn’t have the time or peace to notice that the Chancellor was a puppet master who had strings himself. That’s when I knew I had to live.

  “After the family got me on my feet again and I’d made up my mind to figure out who was behind the Chancellor’s rise to power, I headed east. I tried to visit the village where I was born, but it was gone. Disease killed most of them, and the rest just left. It was totally abandoned. My journey also led me to the city I lived in when I ran away from home. It was a disaster, too, writhing with crime and corruption. A cesspool of evil. Finally, I ended up on the eastern coast of Noelle staring into the Divided Ocean. I had no leads, no allies, and no resources. So, I did the thing I swore I’d never do again. I stole. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I still had the skillset and it save my life. Within two weeks I’d accumulated some considerable assets and disguised myself. Another week and I was having lunch with the affluent and leveraging the police. By the end of a month I achieved my goal and was invited.”

  “Invited to what?” Andie asked.

  “To a ball given by House Polyhymnia,” Saeryn said.

  “How did you know?” asked Yara.

  “When you were unpacking your bag, I saw a Braided Bangle, a common gift to those who get in close with the family. You must have quite the skillset, indeed.”

  “Admittedly. At the ball, I managed to ingratiate myself. It seems as long as you have money and a pretty face no one’s interested in how you got where you are. Of course, the host family wasn’t concerned with my past because they already assume they’re better than everyone. I flattered, complimented, and lied. Before long I was sitting beside a group of the most recent generation of descendants. I plied them with champagne, no difficult task, and guided the conversation where I wanted it to go.

  “It was incredibly disappointing at first. They were just complaining about how their family had fallen in stature and how they hoped the dragonborn would be hunted and killed before the year was out. I was about to leave when I decided to see what more they had to say on the dragonborn. That was the key. Soon they were telling me all about the horrors their family had committed against the dragonborn, bragging about it. They said the dragonborn were a cursed people even before the University began hunting them. They said their parents used to tell them stories about another group who were descended from the dragons and how that other group hated the dragonborn so much that they wanted to capture them and drink their blood. They said these other dragon descendants had helped the University in its hunt for dragonborn. I thought maybe they were just myths at first, but then one of them, Bonhaus, told me he’d been interested enough to do some digging around. He found out that the stories were more than just bedtime tales. They were actual history. That other group was known as—”

  “The Beautiful Dead,” Andie finished.

  “So then it’s true,” Saeryn said. “We always suspected that they had a hand in helping the University destroy us. The University had never been anything but arrogant and incompetent. There was no possibility of them figuring out our weaknesses and being able to track us across the land on their own. It was the Dead helping them all along.”

  “So you’ve heard of them?” Yara asked.

  “More than that,” Andie said. “They’re marching on Arvall and the University right now. They’ll be there in less than two weeks. And Ash’s battalion is coming, too.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Bonhaus also told me his family and all the other founding families had recently been contacted by the battalion. He said that soldiers were stashed across Noelle and they were all coming together. The battalion wanted the support of the founding families and they got it. After that night, I started following the battalion.”

  “How did you catch their trail? We’ve been trying to find them for months.”

  “I didn’t do it on my own. Bonhaus put me in touch with them. I followed them, picked a few of them off as I went, but I mostly just gathered information. I had enough money to afford a network of spies and there is hardly a police organization on the east coast of Noelle that can’t be bought for the right price. It wasn’t long before I realized the battalion were trying to contact the Dead. I knew that if they joined forces it would be catastrophic. I tried to stop it, but I could never figure out where the meeting was supposed to take place.

  “But, like any sprawling and completely depraved organization, the Dead couldn’t keep as lowkey and they wanted. There are only so many cookie jars a hand can reach into before people start asking questions and keeping track. I checked in with Bonhaus and he’d heard the same rumors. Someone was looking for something that belonged to his family, something House Polyhymnia wasn’t supposed to have. Within a week there was a break-in at their mansion by a man and woman stronger and faster than was humanly possible. They tore the place apart, but didn’t find what they were looking for. Because I already had it.”

  “What was it?

  “A portal. The ancestors of House Polyhymnia hid one for themselves, right underneath their mansion. Bonhaus told me his grandfather had
always filled them with stories about how they had a magical device more powerful than all the sorcerers of the world combined and that it was buried right under their feet. Assuming that story was as true as the others turned out to be, I got there first. It was too big for me to move by myself so I spelled it, just like I did Saeryn last night.”

  “So, it’s still there,” Andie said, impressed. “It’s just invisible. The Dead must have been standing right on top of it and not even noticed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait, I understand now. We were under the impression that the families had forgotten about the portals and the secrets of their ancestors, but they haven’t. At least not entirely. They keep the secrets and histories alive in oral tradition, telling the story to generation after generation, only they don’t know the stories are real. I can’t believe it... these people are sitting on the biggest secrets in all of Noelle and they don’t even know it!”

  “I figured the same thing. I used Bonhaus and his family to get in with House Erato, but by the time I finally fell into their secrets and tracked their portal to Raven Deep, the Dead had already beat me there. But that didn’t stop me. There was only one more house within range of where I was. House Clio in east central Noelle. But even Bonhaus couldn’t get me in with them. House Clio has become sequestered from the other founding families and won’t have anything to do with them. I had to go there and try to charm them on my own, but that failed miserably. So, I broke in.

  “After fighting side by side with you and the council fighters against the University, a little personal security was no problem for me. I made my way inside, but I had no way of knowing where the portal was or if it was even on the property. I snuck into the master bedroom and spelled the wife so that she wouldn’t wake. Then I sound proofed the room. I’ll spare you the distasteful details, but let’s just say the husband and I had a very frank conversation that he didn’t like very much. He told me all the stories he’d been told as a child, one in particular about a magic doorway that was supposedly buried on the family’s forest estate two hundred kilometers north.