by N. M. Howell
Return of the Dragonborn Trilogy
A prequel short story
N.M. Howell
Contents
Prequel
Book 1 Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Boxed Set
About the Author
Also By N.M. Howell
Acknowledgments
Prequel
Taline City. A sprawling, crowded, breathtaking city of great renown and influence. For decades it had been among the leading cities of the world—wealthy, storied, and populated by some of the greatest magical minds of the age. The city sat in the middle of Gordric’s Pain; an ageless fjord said to have been created by the tears of Gordric, the last and most loved of the Dragon Lords, and of his one hundred sons and daughters. Gordric’s Pain was sixteen hundred kilometers long, lined on either side by silver cliffs that rise half a kilometer above the surface of the water. The tallest buildings of Taline rose hundreds of feet in the air—made of only glass and gossamer iron—some so terrifyingly tall they peeked above the cliffs. The tallest building was The Light of Man, twice as high as the silver cliffs and built entirely of white marble. It was one of the oldest structures in Taline, far older than the modern city, and its ruins had been reinforced with iron and very carefully selected spells. When the late morning sun drifted over Gordric’s Pain, it drenched the brilliant cliffs with its striking rays, which reflected off the silver cliffs in shimmering waves of beauty that showered Taline City in white light, like the candle of a dreamer. The water, whether tears or no, was a blue so deep and pure it seemed colored with the living blood of the darkest, bluest hydrangeas. At the top of the silver cliffs, the verdant edges of the forest spilled over, cresting the glowing cliffs with lush flora. Men and children, old and young, learned and common all came to this place—this city of devastating genius and unbelievable surroundings—to learn of beauty and power and the terrific might that is born when man and nature unite.
Eric Rogers was just leaving the university. Another five years had gone by since his last license renewal, and so, like hundreds of others, he came to Taline to update his magical texts and “sustain,” meaning the incorporation of almost all of the new magical discoveries. Eric was on his way home, tired and his mind practically numb from the sheer cornucopia of knowledge he’d been flooded with over the last week, but smiling at the thought of holding his wife in his arms. Taline was warm that day, and Eric pulled at the top of his mandarin collar robe—the universal white with black trim—the standard dress for those with sorcerer’s magic.
As he made his way through the city, he clutched the book a bit tighter. The book was inside of his satchel, and he’d spelled the bag so that only the most skilled sorcerers could see through if they looked, but still he was cautious. He had to be. It’s no great crime to read this book, but because of his status the last thing he should’ve done is draw attention to himself, and even though it was not illegal, this book was, in a phrase, frowned upon. He had to check several pawn stores before he found it. He was so preoccupied thinking of his loving wife and this nearly-banned book that he stepped on a kid’s droma, a toy made of loveglass whose spinning speed rests on the user’s ability to maintain focus. Eric’s foot smashed it to bits, but with a deft wave of his hand, he reconstructed it before the kid could even release the tears that had welled in his eyes.
“Sorry,” Eric said.
He pressed on, moving through the thousands of inhabitants who were walking and running the streets. Vendors were selling every dessert known to man, as well as merchandise for the annual Glass Games that would begin the next week. The stunning city was alive with noise and life and bodies. Eric loved it there. Everybody did. He made it to the station just in time; the Sud was just preparing to pull off for its voyage south. Eric purchased his ticket, presented it to the conductor, and boarded the train.
The train was a new model, sleek and gold. It was the thinnest train the city had ever built, and passengers sat in single file, one behind the other, with an ample walkway next to them. Eric placed the satchel under his seat out of habit but pulled it back into his lap when he remembered what it held. All the windows of the train were made of loveglass and could be manipulated according to the will of the passenger, so Eric created a lattice work that allowed some air to come in and that showered him in a diamond display of light. From this position, the southern side of Taline, the train would have to cover six hundred kilometers of Gordric’s Pain. It would take about three hours on the Sud. Eric relaxed in his seat, finally free of the worry of being caught and raising suspicion. At least for now. The sun was setting toward the northern side of the city, and the white light of the cliffs had turned to a soft, magenta glow. The train moved away from Taline at an incredible speed, and Eric began to doze as the engine hummed, a mere foot above the deep blue water.
The three hours passed swiftly, and Eric found himself being shaken awake by the conductor.
“I’ve got you home, Mr. Rogers.”
“Early or late, Ric?”
“Same time to the second. I don’t think you’ll ever catch us out.”
“No, I don’t think so. Goodnight, Ric.”
Eric had been riding the train his entire life, and it had always arrived and left at the precise, exact time. Always. Eric descended and found his car—automobiles had been nothing but trouble since it was decided they should float, not roll, and that their engines be powered by crystals instead of fuel. He started the ignition and headed for home.
Eric and his wife lived in Michaelson, a small farming village and the closest inhabited place to the southern end of Gordric’s Pain. Michaelson was brief, quaint, and full of the kindness and generosity of which only farmers seemed capable. Eric’s family was the only one in the village with magical blood. Eric liked that fact.
It was not a long drive, and soon Eric parked in front of his elegant home. If it was modest in size, it was certainly not so in worth. As he gathered the satchel, he could see his wife’s silhouette against the blinds in the kitchen.
“That’ll be one denarius,” Jane said as Eric entered the kitchen. She didn’t even turn around.
“You didn’t even ask,” Eric said, grinning.
“The Sud has been running for decades and--”
“Not once has it ever been off by even a millisecond. I know.”
Eric walked over to the five-foot-tall drum in the back corner in the kitchen and dropped the denarius. It clinked in among hundreds of others. He always lost that bet. But it didn’t bother him, not when he had Jane in his arms. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her cheek and neck. He spun her around and kissed her, just like he’d been waiting to do all day. She formed herself to him, almost fused with him, and they were lost in each other by the time Andie ran in.
“Daddy!” she yelled, running up and latching onto one of Eric’s legs and one of Jane’s.
Eric looked down at her, his heart full. Andie was six years old, eager, curious, and, even at that young age, a powerful sorceress. Her magic seeped out of her even when she wasn’t consciously trying. She was as strong as she was beautiful, and it was the happiest day of Eric’s life when he and Jane discovered that Andie had his sorcerer’s magic. In the old days, when a person with magical blood had a child, even if their spouse was non-magical, the child was certain to possess magic. Yet the modern day descendant bloodlines had become so diluted—and in some cases inbred—that it was no longer a sure thing that a child would be born with their parents’ magic. Eric’s heart nearly broke to think his daughter wouldn’t carry his sorcerer’s gene. Yet his relief was short-lived. It wasn’t l
ong after Andie’s powers manifested that the other truth came out as well. She also had Jane’s dragon magic, which was punishable by death.
They knew it when Andie fell. She was up on the roof—how she got up there and what she was doing, they still don’t know—and something happened. She slipped. She fell off the roof and broke three bones in her arm. They were out of their minds with worry, but just as Eric was about to cast a healing spell, the bones mended of their own will. Dragon magic gives its possessors incredible healing abilities. But it wasn’t until Andie turned five that her eyes changed color, from a pretty, if dull, brown to a stunning purple. Andie looked up at them with those eyes, those captivating circles of byzantium, so loving and magnetic that the whole world seemed to be centered around that one girl, and they began to suspect the life that lay ahead of her.
“Any luck today?” Jane asked, still in her husband’s arms.
“Maybe. Christopher is no fool, never has been, and he has agreed to second my motion to present the case before the council.”
“That’s wonderful! I was beginning to think Taline was losing its mind.”
“It still may. It seems impossible that they would even consider this: getting rid of the city’s hospitals? It’s insane.”
“They’ve grown too arrogant,” Jane said, turning back to cooking. “They think because there are so many people with magic and that the collective knowledge has grown so vast, professional healers are no longer necessary. But there are spells and herbs that even someone who has practiced magic all their life won’t know without any specialized knowledge.”
“Exactly, but I fear the real reason may be even worse. There’s talk of economic trouble. Corruption. Misappropriation of funds or money gone missing entirely. Someone is diverting the silver from the mines toward something. First, the hospitals were threatened, and now there’s even talk of shutting down farms and closing the borders.”
“What?” Jane exclaimed, turning from the pots to gape at Eric.
“Something’s coming,” he said.
For a moment they just stared at each other, silently worrying about the direction of the city. But Eric remembered Andie, who had busied herself with the pattern of the tile. Jane looked down at her.
“No matter what happens what do you do?” she asked.
“Stand in the light,” Andie said.
“And that means?”
“I can’t be afraid.”
“Good girl.”
Suddenly, Jane pounced on Andie, tickling her and chasing her around the house. Eric wouldn’t be left out, and for a while, they existed like that, happy, whole, laughing and laughing. When it was time for dinner, Andie helped set the table, and Jane switched from electricity to candlelight; it was an old tradition of those with dragon blood magic. Fire soothes them, cannot hurt them, and with the future looming more and more uncertain Jane needed that. Eric watched his family as he ate—his grinning, byzantium-eyed daughter, and his gorgeous, brunette wife. They were why he worked so hard for so long to become the youngest council member in the history of Taline. He knew it might come in handy one day. Though people with regular sorcerer’s magic had to follow a mandatory academic routine and then maintain that education every five years, they were perfectly safe. They were looked upon as small kings and queens of the city. Even the ones who managed to escape training, though viewed as degenerates, were still safe – although, outcasts. But people with dragon’s blood, and the powerful magic that accompanies it, were hunted like rats and executed without mercy or restraint. These people had been systematically eliminated—purebloods and mixed-bloods alike—until the whole region believed they were extinct. For all Eric knew, Andie was the only dragon-blooded sorceress on earth.
After dinner, Eric carried a half asleep Andie up to her room. Jane soon followed up to tuck their daughter in. Eric also brought it, the book he went through so much trouble to obtain for Andie. From Dragons to Men. A history of dragon-blooded people and their magic.
“We’ll have to keep that hidden,” Jane said. “I don’t know that our family can survive the questions it would raise.”
“I have a feeling that there are more things threatening us than this book, but at least this is something we can control. We’ll read to her, together, in the mornings. Blood raids have been known to come at night, but never the morning.”
He stroked Andie’s sleeping face.
“There’s so much she needs to know.”
“Times are changing, Eric. Fear is creeping up on the people, so slowly that they can’t even see it. That city of grandeur and light is beginning to rip in its very soul. Uncertain days are ahead. I don’t mean to pressure you, but Taline’s spirit may rest on you swaying the council.”
“God help us if it all falls to me.”
And his words still echoed in his mind when he returned to the shimmering city of Taline the next morning. He was wearing the same robe as yesterday, though when he got off of the Sud, he changed the color of his attire with a wave of his hand. Now he was cloaked in the yellow and gray of the council. It was a longer walk than usual through the white-glowing streets of Taline. There seemed to be even more tourists that usual, riding the trains along the glass of the skyscrapers and buying pounds upon pounds of the rare and powerful herbs of Taline—roots so old and mysterious that their use resulted in death more often than anything. Along the way, Eric passed The Letter, the largest hospital in the entire region and named for the brief missive its builder sent to his father asking for the gold to afford to build it. This hospital had stood strong and proud for generations and might have been mere days away from its end.
Eric reached Owl’s Line, the main boulevard of Taline which lead straight to a traffic rotary. In the middle of that rotary was Bane, so named for the swift and dreadful punishments the very first councilmen dealt out in an effort to tame the city’s tumultuous beginnings. Bane was two thousand feet tall and designed to absorb the energy of the sun and convert it to magic. Indeed, Bane was a living structure capable of defending itself. Additionally, it was built entirely of loveglass and its shape could be changed at will—though only the councilmembers could alter it and only after a unanimous decision.Eric reached the rotary and then Bane. He entered and presented his credentials to the desk. He then walked over to the wall and formed the loveglass into an extended platform. He stepped on it and with his mind he raised himself up to the top-most floor. As he rose, he passed hundreds of sorcerers, sorceresses, and non-magical people performing the daily duties of their offices, busy and complacent in their stations. Eric had gone through phases that morning, from calm to anxious to confident to unsure and back again. He didn’t know where to begin. When he left his home and his family that morning, it was a simple matter of presenting the council with an argument about why the hospitals should be saved, but then he began to think. All it would take would have been one councilmember upset by Eric’s presentation to begin to doubt him. And that, of course, would lead to questions. And that would lead to Andie.
It was a miracle Jane had not been discovered, but they have been careful. She only entered the city at night and never came anywhere near Bane. Blood raids never reveal her because as a member of the council Eric’s home was off-limits to searches, though there had been talk of subjecting council members to the blood raids in an effort to improve public opinion. Jane had lived her life pretending that she had no magic. Her greatest tool has been her unfailing kindness. It was easier to deceive people when they adore you.
Eric reached the top floor of Bane, and his mind flooded with emotion and uncertainty. His paranoia seemed out of place here in this room of dazzling, heartbreaking light, whiter than the sand on the far sea shore. Red Ravens passed overhead, like tricks of light in the morning sky, blatant contrasts to the purity of the silver cliffs. The rest of the council were already seated. They all turn when they hear the sound of Eric’s approach, and they all regard him amiably. Whatever their disagreements, they’ve almost
always been fair to one another. Christopher is the only one to greet Eric with an outright smile, but he seems more on edge than the others. More unsure of himself. Eric approaches the raised platform, and with a spiraling gesture of his hand he levitates himself up to his seat.
“Good morning, brothers,” Eric said. “The Red Ravens are out today. Might we uncover our heads?”
A unanimous “Aye” rose from the members and then they all looked toward the ceiling. Eric raised his fist and slowly opened it and as he did so Bane’s roof folded back on itself in small triangles, over and over again until there was nothing between the council and the sky. Eric faced his colleagues.
“Now. Are we ready?”
“Quite,” said Raymond. “I now call to order the seventeenth meeting of the Twentieth Cycle of the Third Age. I don’t believe there’s much on the docket for today, other than the finishing regulations for this year’s Glass Games.”
“Another year of this banality?” asked Ian, exasperated. “We’ve evolved from hunting and gathering to farming to iron to electricity to magic only to waste our time and talents on Glass Games? Young adults showing off their skill by toying with loveglass?”
“Ian, you know well enough that the games are more than that. They bring the world together. For one month, the majority of the magical world gathers here in Taline for a celebration of marvelous feats, food, dancing, and fellowship. As decreed--”
“As decreed in the bloody truce. Yes, I know.”
“The city and the world are full of our wasted potential,” said another voice. “The games alone are not to blame.”
It was Stefan. He was the oldest member of the council, well over two-hundred, but he still had the appearance of a man in his thirties. He was the most uncompromising, the most ruthless, and the most powerful. If there was a single man in all of Taline and the surrounding country that Eric did not wish to cross or to make suspicious, it was Stefan. There were stories about this man; things it had been hinted he had done or facilitated. The memories of the world and its chroniclers is long, but much of what was said about him was uncertain.