Marked by Dragon's Blood (Return of the Dragonborn Book 1) Read online

  Marked by Dragon’s Blood

  Return of the Dragonborn - Book 1

  N. M. Howell

  Dungeon Media Corp.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Afterword

  Also by N. M. Howell

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Hightowyr. It was once the greatest city in the western-most reaches of the land of Noelle and was ruled by a powerful royal lineage. The streets of that ancient city were bursting with sorcerers and sorceresses, all dedicating their lives and resources to innovation, knowledge, and the perpetual ascension of magical might. But the city fell. And all the great magical minds who survived fled to the far side of the continent. All but a few. That magnificent royal lineage became a byword and a whisper. For centuries, the city languished in ruin and darkness.

  As the land lay wasted and devastated, collapsing on itself, the rest of Noelle flourished. Great cities like Taline to the north and Thabes in the True Isles rose up from the earth and became beacons of knowledge, power, and beauty. Eventually the few sorcerers who had remained in Hightowyr grew jealous and angry, and in the five hundred years they had managed to stay alive in the ruins of the city only that envy and hatred was powerful enough to cause them to shed their weariness. They began searching for ways to bring the people back, to encourage the greatest magical beings to return to the city and help rebuild, but the sins and the destruction of the past had not been forgotten. No one would come.

  Riddled by their own failure and their endless rage, these seven men and women made a pact and a sacrifice. They each tasked their families to build a University—for these seven had been among the most brilliant of that lost time and had passed all their knowledge to their families. It was mean to be the greatest University in Noelle. No matter what happened, regardless of forces acting upon the city or time ravaging the earth, their descendants were to watch over that institution and seek, above all, to be the most prestigious and powerful.

  As for the seven themselves, they vowed to use every ounce of their considerable magic to rebuild as much of the city as they could. And for one year they did. For one year, they worked tirelessly to clear the rubble and strengthen the foundation. For one year, they touched the ground, drawing the stains of dark magic from the earth. For one year, they pulled on every bit of magic in their bodies, even the paoums of their souls. It was too much. By the end of the year they each fell sick and shortly after wasted away.

  True to their word, their families established the University. They created it in the gargantuan black marble husk of the ancient mint and the many annexes once used by the royal government. They began to invite new students. At first only the poor came, as the wealthy and the truly brilliant went to the beautiful, inveterate universities across Noelle. But as the years passed and word spread of the potential of the Hightowyr University, more people came. Hundreds. Then thousands. The University gained wealth, prestige, and professors who were known the world over. The time came when the past was too distant to have its name in the present, and so the city and the University were renamed.

  Arvall City began.

  Today, one thousand years after the fall of Hightowyr, Arvall City is the greatest urban center in all of Noelle. Taline is the closest rival, but that wonderful city has been plagued by terrorist attacks for eighteen years. Arvall City built itself on the ruins of Hightowyr, its infrastructure rising in tandem with the ruins in some places and covering the old stone completely in others; while Hightowyr was stone and mortar, Arvall City is made of glass and steel, its buildings rising hundreds of feet in the air and catching the sun to make it a city of light and promise and might. At the south end of the city, the buildings have been built right into the mountainside. The mountain is Brie and even after its hard trials and the Great Erosion of the Third Cycle, it is still the tallest mountain in the world. No one knows for sure how tall it is, but it’s peak pierces the atmosphere. The University sits high upon the mountainside, even higher than the buildings, and sprawls across the vast bowl that was made in the mountain in a time before memory. From the other side of the city, the University looks like some great, dark specter menacing Arvall from its perch. Bordering the city to the east is the beginning of the String Fields and to the west is Spider Sea. To the north are a smattering of small towns and hamlets, one of which is Michaelson, where a powerful sorceress named Andie was riding the train, heading to Arvall City.

  It was the two hundred eleventh day of the Ninth Cycle of the First Age. So it began.

  Chapter One

  She was flying. No, not just flying, but soaring high above the gold and rolling fields of Michaelson. Not too slow or too fast, but at that perfect speed that allowed her to feel exhilarated while still giving her the presence of mind to see and feel and need her surroundings. Soon she was leaving Michaelson behind and was so high that she couldn’t follow her shadow on the ground. The farther she was from home, the higher she flew until she was nearing the edge of Arvall city and the clouds were nearing overhead. She felt so good, so unlimited that she thought her heart would burst as she soared in the soft, iridescent glow of the evening sun. There was no wind, no friction on her skin and nothing whipping or rolling in the breeze, and even though she knew this was odd, she liked it: the feeling of flying and being still at the same time. It felt like belonging. She was only just nearing Brie when she was swallowed by darkness. Then there was no wind, no light, no sound, no sensation or movement at all. There was only a nameless, formless pain—an anguish so vast and terrible that it wasn’t just in the darkness. It was the darkness. She couldn’t tell if it was coming from some source or from herself, but it was crushing. Maddening. But then she heard it. It was even worse than the anguish. Screaming.

  * * *

  “Ma’am?”

  Andie woke with a jolt, her books slipping from her lap. She turned toward the voice. It was a stewardess.

  “Ma’am, are you okay? Bad dream?”

  “I’m... I’m fine. Yeah, bad dream. I’m sorry, was I too loud?”

  “No, not at all,” the stewardess said, suddenly smiling. “You never made a sound. It’s just that... well, the spellglass.”

  She pointed toward the window and Andie followed her finger. Spellglass looked like regular glass, yet anyone with magic in their blood could control its shape and density with only a thought. Andie looked at the window, the spellglass totally transformed: it had become opaque and in some places it was protruding like knife points, while in others it was flowing like liquid. It was like a tesseract that could feel, that kept collapsing on itself and rebuilding in the same instant. With just one thought, Andie calmed the spellglass. It returned to its normal state.

 
“Is there anything I can get for you ma’am?

  “No, I’m fine,” Andie said, embarrassed and not wanting to seem like a charity case. “I’ll try to stay awake.”

  The stewardess smiled and walked away. Andie took a deep breath and looked out of the window. Most of her life was passing her by: the mayor’s fields, the coal mine, the Forest of the Orange Pines where the poorest farmers lived, and the little twin creeks snaking their wet bodies through the fields with impunity. She had lived in Michaelson her entire life and though she had been in Arvall City almost regularly since she and her father stopped going into Taline years ago, it still felt as if she was doing something adventurous and new. She bent forward to pick up her books, still shaken by that beautiful and terrible dream. All of them were there, everything she needed for her first semester of classes at the Academy. But there was one she couldn’t find. It wasn’t for school and in fact she shouldn’t have even been reading it on the train. She was never supposed to take it from the house, let alone be seen with it in public. As she told herself not to panic and started to panic anyway, she tried not to think of what her father would say if she couldn’t find it. He’d be furious, or worse, disappointed. Suddenly a blonde head peeped around the seat in front of her.

  “Lose something?”

  “Oh, yes,” Andie said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just that I lost one of my books and I thought it might have slid under your seat.”

  “I think you mean... this!” she exclaimed, flourishing the book like the end of some corny magician’s routine. She clearly didn’t care if anyone saw the title of the book. From Dragons to Men.

  “Oh... um...” Andie fumbled, anxious and baffled.

  “This is pretty heavy. Someone has a lot to say about... er... dragons and men. Ooh, sounds exciting! Here.”

  She handed the book to Andie as if it were just a thing, maybe a leaflet from the Church of Stone and Sea. Andie took it, thanked the girl, and quickly tucked the book away into the bottom of her bag, where she planned to keep it until she was in her apartment. She gave the girl another smile and then gazed out of the window, turning the spellglass into a double-paned latticework that transformed the early morning light as it streaming in. The girl was still peeping around the chair. Andie didn’t want to be rude, but she wasn’t in the mood for talking and definitely didn’t want to encourage the very thing the girl did next. The trains in Noelle were golden, sleek, and narrow. The seats were arranged in single file, with a moderate walkway running parallel. If someone wanted to talk to a friend behind them, they’d have to press a button to swivel the chair around, which is exactly what the blonde girl did, nearly tripping a steward in the process.

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry. I’m such a cub sometimes. So,” she said, turning her attention to Andie, oblivious, “I’m Tristtle.”

  “Andie,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Wow, super old-fashioned. So cute. Totally blue. I didn’t know people still shook hands. I’m not a germ-phobic or a stranger-phobic or even phobic at all, but it’s really... vintage. Blue, you know? Anyway, so I’m totally on my way to see my uncle. He’s a total boss. I’m come to see him eternally and I’m not sure why because I don’t really like him, but I’m here like flow. Between us girls, it’s really his money I’m after. I’m not a bum or anything—and I’m completely not bum-phobic—but he’s got money on top of money. I should probably keep things like that to myself. I’m such a cub. But he’s this really big architect who designs all kinds of buildings and stuff and now he’s working on the tallest tower in Vall and he—”

  “I’m sorry, where?” Andie said, not wanting the answer so much as a break for silence.

  “Vall. Arvall City? They’re saying this thing is going to be a monster, which is okay I guess, even though I thought it was going to be a little baby business building, super cool, super blue...”

  Andie had her mother’s unfailing kindness and so she listened to Tristtle talk and even made a genuine effort to focus on the conversation. Yet her mind wandered to Arvall City and all the things waiting for her there. Towers that touched the sky, standing closer together than dogs in the field. Cars floating through the city in dense, angry waves with the mist from their crystals trailing in soft pastel clouds. Trains that ran vertical up the sides of buildings. Red Ravens, which had been given civil liberties in Arvall City just as they had been in Taline. And, of course, the Academy. She’d seen all these things before, but never as a student. Never as someone who belonged there.

  The Academy was the department of the University that instructed students in their first year. It was the second most rigorous year of the program, the most demanding being the last year. First year students went to classes year-round, with only ten breaks of ten days each. That meant that for 300 of the 400 days of the year Andie would be in class. To her it was as daunting as it was thrilling. She longed to learn, to discover, to grow. And more than anything she desired greater control over her dragon magic before it got her killed.

  After almost an hour, the train finally pulled into the station.

  “So, promise to look me up sometime?” Tristtle asked.

  “I’d love to,” Andie said, thinking that Tristtle was kind of sweet in her own way.

  “Super blue. And I’ve totally been eyeing your books the whole ride. Are you going to the University?”

  “Yeah. I start at the Academy today.”

  Tristtle was silent for a moment; Andie didn’t think anything of it until Tristtle looked like she’d stopped breathing.

  “Are you... still alive?” Andie asked.

  “Yes. Yes!” Tristtle said, suddenly full of life. “I just can’t believe I’ve been sitting here with a sorceress this whole time. Hey,” she said, leaning closer, “Ever used your magic at home?”

  “Of course not,” Andie lied. “It’s illegal unless you’ve graduated the University.”

  “Of course. I’m such a cub. Anyway, I hope I see you again soon.”

  When she was gone, Andie breathed a sigh of relief and packed up the rest of her books, making sure Dragons was on the bottom. She left the train and before long was heading down Avenue 204. The whole city was laid out in a perfect grid: numerical avenues running from north to south and magical herb names running from east to west. She was still seeing the city through new eyes. The air here was thinner, cooler. In fact, Arvall itself was on the mountain, only much lower than the University. Truth be told Brie started some one hundred kilometers before the incline became noticeable. The city was vast and Andie knew the avenues went up to at least 1,000.

  She shook herself and tried to focus. She was a couple days later than she’d intended to be, but what had delayed her was unavoidable. For some time, she’d been caring for her dad—his illness was part physical, but more than anything was the result of broken heart and spirit. The tragedy that had hit their family had fractured him and he would never recover. Andie knew that. Now that she was starting school she’d decided to hire a healer to live with him; it didn’t feel right and it wasn’t what she wanted, but it was paramount that she learn to control her magic. Just days ago the healer had disappeared, totally unreachable.

  The woman Andie eventually hired was a nonagenarian with her hair wrapped so tight it was a wonder it didn’t cut off all circulation above the neck. Her voice was oddly musical and strident at the same time. She wasn’t a great fit, but in honesty Andie didn’t really trust anyone other than herself to take care of her father.

  “It’s only until I finish school,” she thought out loud. “And then I’ll be all his again.”

  Even so, the guilt was crushing her as she reached the Financial District. Even necessity can’t assuage guilt. Her father had wanted this even more than Andie and it was he who had convinced her to go.

  * * *

  “You need to learn control,” he’d said.

  “Teach me. You used to be on the council. I know you can do it.”

 
“That was the council in Taline and you know how it ended. I don’t want you anywhere near those people, but you need to be able to protect yourself. I can’t risk someone catching us practicing here. And even if I wanted to...”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, but held up his hands as they trembled uncontrollably.

  “Dad. I won’t forgive myself for leaving you.”

  “Andie, this is for your life. Go. We’ll find someone who can stay with me. You’re my daughter. It should’ve been me taking care of you. Go.”

  * * *

  He was right. She’d already been putting off the Academy for years and if she did it again, she would lose her eligibility. More than that, it was time Andie began to live, truly live. She couldn’t spend her entire life hiding behind her father and wanting her mother.

  She boarded SKY 6 and thought of her past, present, and future as the train sped through the seemingly endless city. She watched as they passed hundreds of other trains going up and down and turning all over the city and its buildings. Up ahead was the University, claiming most of the mountain side and looming like the powerful and dangerous place it was. She loved that she’d gotten her magic from her mother, but sometimes she wished more than anything that she didn’t have dragonblood or the powerful and unpredictable magic that came with it. Dragonblood had brought her family nothing but trouble. The train reached the base of the next and steepest incline and Andie watched the world from almost a 90-degree angle as the train climbed the mountain side. It was a quick ride and she was soon standing on campus, taking a few deep breaths to acclimate herself to the atmosphere.

  She’d only taken a few steps when she saw it. She didn’t even know they still had these signs. There weren’t even enough dragonblooded people left to warrant this kind of hate. It was unbelievable, but there it was: a sign with a young girl whose hands were softly glowing purple. There was a black crossed circle over her torso and it sent a clear, terrible message. Andie didn’t know which was more disturbing—the sign’s existence, the girl’s age, or the fact that the sign looked brand new.