by N. M. Howell
“Have you ever seen a pearl? The way the colors on the surface of it are beautiful, but come in and out as you turn the pearl, dancing or skipping like a creek? Pearl-bloods can harness magic, but it’s incredibly temperamental and even unstable. It’s unreliable. Dangerous. It might lift a stone or it might lift a village, it’s never consistent enough to tell, as we don’t have the natural-born ability to control it.”
Andie took a minute to let this in, a minute more to truly bask in the revelation. Could she have heard this right? Then she smiled.
“Raesh, you’re a sorcerer,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “This is incredible.”
“Yeah,” Raesh said hesitantly, warming to the excitement by watching Andie. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“It’s amazing.”
“Well, actually,” Raesh paused. “Not a sorcerer. Not really. I wasn’t born into the magic, so it’s not really something I can go around flaunting, you know? It’s not exactly viewed as favorable, if you know what I mean. The University would never let me in knowingly. They don’t consider us to be true magic wielders.”
Andie shook her head. “Incredible. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. Magical nomags. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t already know you were incapable of lying…”
A red blush crept up on Raesh’s cheeks as he ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah. Incredible, I guess is the word.”
“You’re a jerk for lying to me, though,” she said, punching him in the arm. “I’ve kind of been feeling sorry for you, for no reason at all, it turns out. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, I can’t believe Carmen didn’t tell me!”
“She doesn’t know. Nobody knows, not even my dad. Pearl magic is unpredictable Andie. I don’t deny that my mother gave me a gift, but this is a hard thing.”
“No one else knows? How have you managed to keep this a secret this whole time, Raesh?”
Raesh shrugged. “Self-preservation, I guess.”
Okay. I get that. But how did she do it?”
“Well, she was dying anyway. She just wanted to keep watching over me. The Kyrian Bloom only works on a person who has no magic but direct magical ancestry through the mother or father.”
“That’s incredible, Raesh. It must be hard.”
“There are worse things, I suppose.”
“Yeah. Well, you say it’s too bad I can’t go to the University, but now you can see it’s pretty complicated. But maybe I should show you.”
He grabbed her hand and rushed toward the front doors. They entered the University and went down the long entrance hall. When they reached the heart of the mountain, Raesh took Andie down the hallway to the far left, the one Carmen had shown her, but avoided. Above them, the Mountain Faeries were moving slower, finishing their deliveries for the day and drifting up and off into the mountain in small droves. On and on Raesh went, pulling Andie along behind him, until they were suddenly in a very old part of the University. Judging by the size and shape of the buildings there, it was the old faculty dormitories from the school’s first opening. It didn’t seem as if it had been updated in centuries. No one seemed to even be cleaning it.
“Raesh,” Andie gasped, when he finally stopped, “How do you know the University so well? I thought you’d never been here before?”
“That was lie number two. Sorry. I actually went here, a few years back. It wasn’t for long, though.”
“What? You were a student here. I don’t…”
“Shh,” Raesh interrupted her. “Keep your voice down.”
“No one’s here, Raesh. Your secret’s safe with me.” Andie put her arm around him and gave him a squeeze. “Why’d you leave? Were you afraid of what your magic could do? Would do?”
“That was definitely one of the reasons.”
“What were the others?”
Raesh started to answer and then stopped. He just stood there, quietly looking at his shoes like he’d done outside. Then he grabbed her hand and was off again, this time leading her through the maze of abandoned buildings, around and across and through, back and seemingly down, down, down into the depths of the University. Andie found herself among gargantuan, stunning ruins, brittle and broken structures in every direction as far as her eye could see, like some great field of fallen things. They stumbled across the foundations of ancient buildings, hurried under arches that by then must have been friends of time, jumped over piles of jagged and glittering stones. Andie realized what it was. Hightowyr.
The world down there was ancient, fallen, and forgotten. Dying, yet alive. A startling and mystifying contrast to the modern majesty of the skyscrapers of Arvall.
Out of nowhere, voices rang in around them and Raesh ducked down, pulling Andie with him. They were lucky because where they were, they were hidden on three sides with the open side facing away from the voices. Andie was nervous, knowing they probably weren’t allowed back there. She took a chance and peeked around the top of the pile of rubble. She could see Tarven and some of his friends she met before. They were laughing and walking around as if they owned the world. They cast spells at each other as they went, having fun. Andie exhaled in relief.
“It’s just Tarven,” she said to Raesh. “Come on. We can come out.”
But as she tried to rise, Raesh pulled her down again. She turned to him, shocked and a little angry.
“Be quiet,” Raesh said.
Andie wanted to argue, but the look on Raesh’s face frightened her a little, as if he knew something—truly knew something. She sat back down next to him, wondering if it was simple jealousy that was making Raesh act this way. She rolled her eyes in frustration, but when she looked at Raesh again, he had gone completely pale. Immediately, she went from irritated to concerned. Yet it wasn’t long before Tarven and his friends were leaving and Raesh began to relax, regaining his color. When she was sure they were all gone, she helped Raesh to his feet and waited for an explanation. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to get one, she started in.
“Raesh, what happened? What was wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you’re fine now. What about a couple of minutes ago?”
“I don’t want to... you wouldn’t understand.”
“Raesh, you’ve told me a lot tonight and I appreciate it, I truly do. But you’ve given me even more questions and no answers. Now I’ve known you to not like Tarven, be critical of him, even jealous, but never scared.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“Raesh, I’ve never seen you like that before. Just be honest with me. I tell you everything, why can’t you open up?” That last bit made her pause a moment, but she shook away her worry about not actually being truly honest with him. She was as honest as she could be, without outing her true heritage. If anyone understood Raesh’s explanation of self-preservation, it was Andie.
“Some things are too much, Andie.”
He watched her, probably trying to figure out what questions she would ask next and how he could deflect them. He seemed much calmer and now it was Andie who was going pale. It had shaken her to her bones to see Raesh like that. Raesh, who was always so strong and so true. Raesh, who was honest, direct, and fearless.
What had happened between him and Tarven? He hadn’t seemed afraid the last time he saw Tarven, and Andie couldn’t think of anything about where they were that could be to blame. Was it Tarven’s friends? It couldn’t have been, because Raesh had seen them that night at the bar. Had something happened in the time since? Andie instinctively held her head at her temples, unnerved. Raesh simply watched and waited like a dog outside of a window, like he knew Andie could come to the right conclusion by herself.
Some moments passed. Andie decided not to press the issue. Honestly, she was afraid to know.
Chapter Sixteen
Raesh turned and continued leading Andie down through the ruins, only this time he didn’t bother taking her hand. Something had just changed between them and even if neither of t
hem could admit it out loud, they both knew it inside. Farther and farther they went, the mystical light above them beginning to dim some. Soon they came to a gargantuan tunnel entrance, and, though there did seem to be some light inside, it was significantly darker than where they were coming from.
Andie still couldn’t believe that she’d had no idea this place even existed. All these months she had been going to this school and exploring with both Carmen and Tarven, and she had never even come close to these spaces. She wondered how Raesh could possibly know all this. He clearly knew more about the University than she did. And what was even more obvious—and what was doubtless to blame for this growing rift between them—was that he was hiding something and whatever it was must have been enormous.
Once inside the tunnel, Andie realized that it was actually a corridor, a grand corridor fashioned in the style of the earliest of ancient architecture. The corridor must have been at least as old as Hightowyr. It was dusty, dark, and the air wasn’t quite clear; Andie had a sneaking suspicion that it was probably damp down there. They went a bit farther before Raesh stopped and turned to her. He smiled, seemingly not sure if it would work so soon after the episode, but Andie found herself smiling in return. It wasn’t that she wanted to, but it was as if some impulse in her relationship to him had overridden her new mistrust of him.
“Look around you,” Raesh said.
Andie turned and looked up and the walls of the corridor. She could see now that the walls weren’t blank, and, in fact, there were colors there. The colors were incredibly old, to be sure—flaking, faded, with whole sections missing where the stone had fallen out of the foundation—but still there. She peered hard through the dimness, but couldn’t make out whatever it was the walls were depicting. She raised her hand.
“Solas,” she whispered, waving her fingers as she did so.
Instantly, the light around them was amplified and the corridor went from bleak outline to golden lit majesty. Andie could see now that the colors were massive murals. Hundreds upon hundreds of murals running the long, long length of the walls and the ceiling. Now that the light had improved, Andie could see that there was not just one corridor, but many. They were standing next to the entrance to another corridor, as grand and abandoned as that one. She could see multiple other entrances down the corridor. There must have been miles of them down there.
“I know I should have shown this to you before,” Raesh said, looking everywhere except at Andie. “But I just didn’t know how. And I hoped that maybe you’d find the information you were after in some other place. Some other way. This was just so... gruesome. I didn’t want this to be the only source you had for your questions and your research. You deserve better, Andie.”
Just as she was beginning to wonder what Raesh was talking about, she finally began to fully comprehend what it was she was seeing. The murals were beautiful, masterfully crafted, but they were violent and, in some instances, even grotesque. They depicted blood, carnage, murder, magic, and mayhem. It was the dragons and the dragonborn. It was their slaughter.
Their blood was the intermittent flash of burgundy among the characters, their heads the oblong shapes at the foot of certain helmeted figures. And the so-called pure sorcerers and sorceresses were present as well, clothed in gold and surrounded by iridescent rays of power as they towered over the fragile, dying bodies of the dragonborn. It was meant to show the glory and might of “pure” magic, but all Andie could see was unadulterated hate and a totally one-sided history. In some sections, the dragonborn were placed in vertical lines, with small branches of people shooting out in wider and wider reaches as the lines went down; it was trying to convey the systematic extermination of the descendants of the dragonborn. Genocide. There are men being impaled. One woman with blue hair and eyes tied to a post and burned alive. Children being thrown into snake pits. Andie was so shocked that she was almost choking on her terror. She’d had no idea just how involved in the purge the University had been.
“Some time ago, I don’t exactly know when, the council of Arvall intervened to keep the politics against the dragonborn more neutral,” Raesh began. “Or at least, that was what they told everyone. There have been rumors and whispers that they still conduct raids, even today. Whenever they hear of a dragonborn or think there may be an incidence of dragon magic, they swarm. They say that the only reason they’ve never been caught is because the Searchers are taught a special variant of the obliviating spell. Whole communities wiped clean of any knowledge the University was ever there or ever murdered and erased a loved one, a neighbor, a friend.”
Raesh paused and looked over at Andie, likely waiting for a reaction, but she was still taking in all of the horrible stories on the wall, all the destruction. The ruined lives. Tears began falling from her eyes. Raesh continued.
“I don’t know. Maybe the rumors are just rumors. Maybe the University stopped all that a long time ago. Maybe I’m paranoid. All I know is that I couldn’t stand to be associated with this University or with anyone or anything that could do something so terrible. Unstable magic or not, I had to get out, Andie. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in this place, like I was the one who’d done all those things and hurt all those people. I don’t even remember what I was doing down here when I found these,” he said, indicating the murals. “But when I saw these walls, these crimes against everything good... it was my last day as a student here. They butchered an entire race.”
“Two races,” Andie said, barely above a whisper. “The dragons and the dragonborn.”
She turned to Raesh, tears running down her cheeks as fresh as the new hurt breaking open inside her.
“I had no idea you were such an... that you felt so strongly about it,” she said.
“How could I not? I can never forget these corridors. This pain that they smeared across the walls as some sort of celebration.”
Andie then became conflicted. Here was a boy who’d become her best friend, who cared for her in so many ways on so many levels. He had been there for her every day, had made her laugh, had helped her practice her magic, had introduced her to Carmen, her other best friend. He’d brought her down here and shown her a whole new world. He’d even shared his darkest secret with her. And she wanted to do the same. She had longed for so many years to tell someone about herself, about who she was and what she could do. But Raesh was also proving how many secrets he’d kept. He’d kept his magic a secret. He’d kept these corridors from her when he knew how much she struggled to find even a hint of truth. He’d refused to tell her what had happened between him and Tarven and was probably doing so out of sheer jealousy. Yes, he’d shared a lot with her that day, but it had ultimately served to prove that she didn’t really know who he was. She couldn’t share anything with him, not yet, no matter how desperately she wanted to.
Not only that, but sharing her secret could put her life in danger. And her father’s. Carmen. Marvo. Anyone she’d ever known and cared about. She couldn’t do it. She’d have to keep waiting for that freedom, that paradise of a life when she wouldn’t have to constantly emit magic just to hide her appearance every single hour of every single day. That time hadn’t come yet.
Finally, she simply said, “Show me more.”
Raesh took her another five or ten minutes down the corridor and then they turned right onto a different one. This corridor was much more modern and of all the spaces they’d seen, this one had unquestionably had the most upkeep. In fact, it was so recent that it showed a beautiful and sprawling glass city. Arvall. The mural couldn’t possibly be too old and perhaps the entire area wasn’t as old and abandoned as she’d thought. The mural went on to show a large group of dragonborn descendants. Their faces were blurred and smudged, obviously done by the artist to ensure that even as abstract representations in an underground mural they would have no autonomy, no grace in defeat. The color of their hair varied, as did the color of the smudges of their eyes. They were being publicly executed, like the vilest criminals. She di
dn’t want to know, but she couldn’t help asking.
“How long ago was this?”
She knew her mother had been taken eighteen years ago. This mural looked recent enough to have been done around that time.
“The University only agreed—which I use skeptically—to stop the persecution about ten years ago. But the whole city knows it was only because they believed they’d already killed the last of the dragonborn.”
“I have to leave,” Andie said.
Andie turned to leave and before she knew it she was running. She was running as hard and as fast as she’d ever run in her life. She ran desperately, angrily. All those murals had brought back her mother’s disappearance in vivid and excruciating detail. It wasn’t as if Andie could ever forget, but seeing all that senseless murder and chaos, all that wanton bloodshed, had made that night appear before Andie’s eyes as if it were happening again. Her parents fighting off the strangers. The guns. The matrices. The fear and confusion. The Searchers. Her mother being dragged away. Her father lying face down in the grass. The Searchers erasing her mother from every picture in the house. The screams. They’d never known for certain that it had been the University; the raids had always been merely rumors, unproven and unfounded. But now she knew. It was the University who’d kidnapped and probably killed her mother. This place she was in, that she came to every day, was responsible for the fact that Andie could never see or hold her mother again.
She found herself heading for Leabherlann, desperate to learn something, anything. There must be something in there. She swatted at low-flying Faeries as she raced through the halls.
Why did they kill all the descendants? What could the race possibly have done? Why were her people killed?
Raesh had yelled something at her as she began to run. It hadn’t stuck at first and only then, with the distance between them and her blood pounding in her ears and her mind crystal clear from rage and pain, could she comprehend what he’d said.