by N. M. Howell
“You, girl,” Murakami said, slowly and with a dense suspicion in her voice. “You need medical attention.”
“No. No, no, I’m fine.”
“I see you, girl,” Murakami said, advancing. “Something is not right. You are... not as you should be. You need to see someone.”
“I- I- I’m fine.”
“Medical attention, girl.”
Without waiting to finish the exchange, Andie turned to run. It was all she could think to do.
Chapter Nineteen
Andie felt as if she were losing her mind. She’d somehow made it out of the University and had run all the way off campus before her legs gave out. Fortunately, there was no one else at the train station, only a few staff members. She could hardly breathe, and it wasn’t just from the desperate sprint she’d made without stopping. It was the fear.
The world around her was an undulating blur, the buildings and signs and trees melting into a giant, unsteady mirage driven by her pounding heart. Her mind was hardly a mind at all, torn in too many directions and trying to regain control over a body that clearly couldn’t resist the panic welling inside. Her eyes were either swimming or darting back and forth, trying to focus on something, anything. Her hands were trembling as if they’d been set to vibrate and her stomach was doing something very odd.
She felt not merely empty, but as if something had been drained from her chest, her blood, her very spirit. The fear was overwhelming, blinding. She’d been afraid before; in the nineteen years of her life she’d been scared many times, but only once before had she ever been scared like this. The night her mother was taken.
That was the last time Andie had to truly fear what she was, who she was by blood. The night the Searchers came and took her mother, Andie was terrified that they would take her, too, because she was a dragonborn. Dragon magic flowed in her veins. She was an outcast, a pariah, unwanted. That was the last time the world had ever come close to discovering the truth. And she would not have been able to deny it; how could she run from her own ancestry, her genetics?
Being in Leabherlann—not knowing how much of her magic had failed or for how long, with so many eyes watching her, and the look on Yara’s face—was like being six years old again, kneeling in the grass while her house burned and her mother was taken from her. The world was peeking behind the curtain again, searching for her.
On top of that, she’d had a momentous afternoon. Learning Raesh had magic, learning he had so many other secrets, learning the true extent of the slaughter, the confirmation of the University’s iniquity, Tarven’s life-threatening danger, finally finding books, the poorly remembered dream that somehow still managed to haunt her, her magic failing. It had simply been too much.
When SKY 6 finally arrived, she shakily climbed aboard. Something about the staged gravity calmed her stomach, but not her mind. She’d never seen Yara look like that before, not even when she first woke up screaming on the floor. Or had she? Her mind was so clouded, so baffled by circumstance that she was beginning to forget what she remembered. Maybe Yara hadn’t been looking at her at all or maybe it wasn’t Andie’s hair she’d seen. But what could it have been? Murakami didn’t seem phased, but the words that came out of her mouth had shaken Andie to her core. What had happened? Had anybody seen what she was reading? What had she been screaming while she dreamed? What did she dream?
As her eyes struggled, she turned to gaze out of the window. She finally began to focus on the sight of the mountain, enormous and jagged, sliding away into the night as the train slithered down its side. She’d never realized what incredible speed the train had. If she listened closely, she could hear the low whistle of the wind being cut. The view calmed her some. Some of the weight was lifted from her shoulders as she watched the city of Arvall rise toward her with all its lights and glass monsters. From a perpendicular angle the city looked like a beautiful, convoluted starry night, planets and galaxy crashing together in a tumult of light, innovation, and time.
When the train reached the city, Andie thought of taking a cab home, but decided to walk. She was flustered and scared, and she needed to clear her head. She’d calmed some on the train, but she’d been so full of emotion that settling down merely a little wasn’t enough. At last she decided that if someone had seen her true appearance and reported it, she’d just have to deal with it. There was nothing she could do about it now. Instead, she turned her attention to the dream. She seemed to remember a high point. A cliff, maybe. And a large cloud or mist. There seemed to be a woman. A woman with a mission. Andie worked hard to put the pieces together because she was starting to suspect that her dreams were something more. She wanted to figure out what they meant and what puzzle they fit together to make.
Nearing the apartment, she suddenly realized that she might not have the chance to be alone if she went inside. Raesh had no doubt told Carmen all about the day and of course Marvo would want to sit and chat. Andie just didn’t have the stomach for company just then. Even more, for all she knew Yara had called Carmen about the episode in the library and everyone inside was waiting to comfort Andie the moment she came home. Raesh would be waiting.
Not ready to see anyone she knew, especially those who cared about her, she ducked into a tavern on the way home, hoping for privacy and a place to read. She’d passed the place every day on her way home from the Academy and it seemed perpetually empty or scarce—perfect for her needs. It looked rather ominous at first glance. No windows, black paint, crossed axes on a thick, heavy door.
The tavern was dimly lit and sunken into the lower level of what seemed a fairly old building. The outside was painted with salt paint and it was hard to tell what it was made of, but from the inside she could see it was stone. She was confident no one would find her there, in a small, bleak tavern located in the narrowest bend of a winding road. On the rare occasions she was out with friends, they always stopped at bright and open bars with nice views and dance floors. No one would be looking for her there.
She walked in, careful to avoid what looked like an unnaturally large glob of spit, and was met with the smell of grindleward—a nasty and addictive herb that was bought and sold on the black market. Grindleward usually meant you were probably among the worst possible crowd. There were also Glycerinnds, mountain pirates that also indicated horrible company.
“’Ave a drink teeny lass, if ‘at be what you’re a wantin’.”
Andie turned to face the voice and found that she was being spoken to from behind the bar. The man could only be described as a wrinkled sack, with eyes as blue and as sad as Gordric’s Pain, the famous fjord.
“Yes. Thank you,” she said.
Before she could say what she wanted, the barman pulled down a glass the size of her head and filled it with beer as red as blood. She hesitantly accepted and then moved to an empty table near the fire. She pulled out her books, sipped her ridiculously large beer, which turned out to be delicious, and set to work reading again. All the spells she’d cast had worn off while she was sleeping, but now she had time to read at her own pace.
Not long after she’d settled in, the barman came over with a plate of food. It looked as if it could feed her entire Extinct Beasts of the Northern Lands class.
“Ask me, ye look right close to faintin’ or tearin’ asunder. I’ll ‘ve no expirin’ of such a base thang as ‘unger in this ‘ere tav’rn.”
“I’m actually... Thank you very much,” she said, deciding against a further lecture.
But he wasn’t listening. His eyes were going over the books she had so carelessly spread over the table. Her hands leapt up, but she put them back in her lap; it was too late to cover them then.
“Curious about the dragonborn, are ye?”
“It’s... It’s just research. For school.”
“Then why be ye sweatin’ ‘n shakin’ like a demon’s got ahold of ye?”
She stared at him, totally lost as to what to say. Finally, he nodded and began to move away. Then he turned ba
ck.
“Ye best take care who sees ye wi’ those,” he said, his warmth replaced by a chilling gravity. “It ain’t never been safe to look into such things. ‘specially not in the last thousand years. This ‘ere is a city what sees everythin’. Ye can’t be so naïve as to think ye can get away wi’ it.”
He turned and left, but what he’d said had given her pause. Of course, he was right and she was being stupid. She’d never even been in this place before, had no idea who might frequent the establishment. But who was the barman? What did he know of the dragonborn? What she’d learned from the books so far was harrowing. It turned out that the seven books were journals; she’d only made it through three so far, but they were the journals of the families of the seven men and women who began Arvall’s birth and commissioned the University. They told of the hatred and bloodlust the families held for the dragons and for the dragonborn. There were very few dragons left in Noelle by their time, but they hated them unrelentingly. The journals told the tale of how the families set about spreading that hatred across Noelle and once they succeeded, they assembled an army of sorcerers and sorceresses that numbered in the hundreds of thousands; all across Noelle the dragons were hunted and slaughtered, their vital organs sold for crates of gold and other various parts of their bodies preserved for use in powerful spells. From its earliest beginnings, the University had been a poisonous institution.
As the final dragons were murdered senselessly, the seven leading families of the newly established Arvall city used their influence to turn the evil against the dragonborn. They feared retaliation for the slaughter of the dragons, which the dragonborn had fought to protect, and they also feared that the blood of the dragonborn might hold the secrets to bringing the dragons back. The second slaughter was even worse than the first. It took at least a hundred strong sorcerers to kill a dragon, but only one stealthy man to kill a dragonborn. They were decimated in every way imaginable. The journals told of the streets literally running with blood. And with every death, the University grew in power and stature, its black marble hiding horrors galore.
Andie continued reading the journals, feeling sick more often than not. The barman visited her often, asking if she wanted more food, more beer, or more logs in the fire. He was kind, but she wasn’t in the mood for company. Then he came and stood for a moment until she was forced to look up at him.
“Ye be in the University, and by the looks of ye, first year at the ‘cademy. Tell me, ole Harrock still strutin’ about wi’ his theories of magic across time?”
Andie’s face expressed her shock. He chuckled.
“Don’t look so worried, dearie. I taught ‘ere once. In another lifetime. They still holdin’ ‘at wretched winter ball?”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
“It is a pretty ridiculous tradition. All that dancing and formality,” she said, trying to quiet the voice inside of her still wondering if Tarven was going to ask her.
In the hours that followed, Andie read avariciously, asking the barman questions whenever something didn’t make sense. He formally introduced himself as Lymir. He was extremely knowledgeable about the dragonborn, about history in general, but he was always careful to speak softly, even after all the guests had left. It was nearly midnight when she finally came across what she was looking for. She turned the page of the fourth journal and gasped.
It showed an ancient portal, somewhere deep in the recesses of the University.
Chapter Twenty
For a moment, she was breathless. For months, she had been searching for information on perhaps a hundred different things and of the few subjects she actually thought she had a chance of locating, the portal was nowhere near the top. This was a hope beyond hope. Instinctively, her head leapt up and she looked around her, lest someone should be looking over her shoulder or peering over from the counter. The bar was totally empty and Lymir had gone in the back to do whatever closing tasks he needed done. She was alone. She gazed back down into the pages in front of her, still not fully believing she’d found it. She felt like smiling, but not much of her body was moving at the time.
“What a day,” she managed out loud.
Her search for the portal had been a complicated one; originally, it wasn’t even part of her mission. Roughly a month before, she’d still been wholly obsessed with all things dragon—including the dragonborn, dragon magic, the great slaughter, the spread of anti-dragon sentiment across Noelle, and even Amanna Deireadh, the mythical end of days event when the remnants of the dragonborn discovered the means to restore the dragons and wreak hellish revenge.
She’d tried everything: sneaking into restricted sections, asking professors, attempting to get into the archives, and even used and antique bookstores, which is where her father found From Dragons to Men. She’d had absolutely no luck and that was including the use of virtually every ounce of her considerable magical prowess. Then one day, during her failed research she remembered something. It was some legend she faintly recalled from childhood: a portal. Since then she’d been trying to find information on that as well, but she could barely even remember the legend.
When she finally returned to the present and her seat in the bar, it seemed several minutes had passed, but she couldn’t be sure. She turned back to the page and began reading. The journal described a series of portals, most lost to history, that magically connected realms through time. The founding families had used the one portal they could find and control. It was how they’d acquired so much knowledge when they’d been cut off from the rest of civilization for all those years.
The writer of the journal, Jacobi of House Clio, wrote of how they’d studied the entire history of Shaeyara from its birth. They’d gone back as far as three Life Ages of the Earth and seen a world of pure darkness and void, a time when life was fleeting and hard and perilous. It mentioned that they’d made one—and only one—voyage to the future, but it did not say what they saw there, only that it affected them greatly and caused them to vow to never look forward again.
Jacobi wrote that the portal eventually proved dangerous when some members found they could use the portal as more than simply a looking glass. Their better senses prevailed and the unanimous decision was the portal should be magically sealed and remain so for all time. Apparently, many battles had been fought in a bloody war for the power of the portal; that war soon destroyed the portal.
At the bottom of the page, several blank lines after Jacobi finishes telling of the war, she wrote a single statement.
It is believed by all that the portal of Scáthán Ama was destroyed in that great and wasteful war of avarice, and perhaps it is so—but I believe this doorway may still exist.
As if he knew she was thinking about him, Lymir emerged from the back of the room and traveled around the bar, coming out to stand just near the table. He was still wiping one of his giant beer glasses and smiling like he was rather self-satisfied. She held up Jacobi’s drawing of the portal.
“Lymir, do you know anything about this portal? Have you ever heard of it before?”
“’At be the portal of Scáthán Ama,” he said, the color draining from his face. “A most wicked thing ‘at is. All the legends be of grand times ‘n gold ‘n terrific adventures through history ‘n space, but ‘at ain’t the whole story. Not by a half.”
Lymir looked genuinely perturbed. Andie almost regretted asking as she watched the drawing’s effect on Lymir. He obviously knew something, had maybe even experienced something. She had a moment of hesitation, but she had to know.
“Lymir, please,” she said.
“When I be much younger, younger than you now, girl, I was a student at the University. In them days we knew what was underneath the mountain. They even let students go down to look at it. We’d write out our lessons in the shadow of the thing. Wasn’t supposed to be no hanging ‘round under it, but there was never anyone ‘round to enforce ‘at rule. We’d spend whole afternoons down ‘ere wi’ it. Then one day, three of
the boys what was down ‘ere wi’ us decided to go up to touch it. Understand, ‘at was somethin’ we never dared afore. Soon as they laid their fingers on it, the bloody thing lit up like a star breakin’ free and took the three boys. ‘N it sucked all the air from the room, too. What of us was left almost suffocated to death.
“It turned out ‘at it had happened afore. The bloody University had covered it up. Didn’t want anyone deciding to skip this school because ‘ere was a deadly... thing in the basement. A bunch of boys and girls had been sucked up over the years. Magic seal or no, the blasted thing couldn’t be touched. Of course, the parents put up such a fuss ‘at the University ‘ad to either close down or put the thing somewhere else.”
“I see they’re still open,” Andie said.
“And how.”
For a moment, he simply stared down at the drawing, clearly reliving the sight of seeing those boys sucked up.
“Aye, it was sealed up. But don’t believe everything you read. I don’t trust them at that school. You seem like a curious girl, dearie,” he said, looking down at Andie as if she were some fragile thing he’d been charged to protect. “You be careful not to mettle. People ‘ave been hurt for far less things than what you’re lookin’ into. Don’t pry.”
He said the last part with a point and wave of his finger that was so emphatic she inadvertently promised out loud. Though from the look on his face, they both knew she couldn’t be expected to keep her word.