Page 54 of Battle Born
Their mother’s ashes had been scattered high above Vallen, to travel the winds as she had loved to do. But he and Rayna still had the portrait from her workshop, hers and Felix’s augmenters, and a growing collection of other things the dragons had been unearthing and gifting to Drifa’s children.
And, just as importantly, he and Rayna had Hayn.
So, too, did Lisabet; and Sam, Jerro, and Pellarin; and many of the other children who had sheltered at Cloudhaven.
“I’ve missed having a family,” Hayn had said the other day, looking around at all of them ruefully. “I wished I could have one again. I just didn’t imagine it would come true on quite this scale.”
Still, he never seemed to mind for a moment.
Ennar took a close interest in Anders, Rayna, and Lisabet as well—though she was no longer Professor Ennar. After the new trials, she had become the Fyrstulf, and the leader of the wolves.
She and Leif and the mayor were mostly getting along well. She and the mayor thought Leif was far too relaxed. Leif and the mayor thought Ennar was far too intense. Ennar and Leif still occasionally forgot to ask the mayor’s opinion, but he quickly reminded them when that happened.
Ennar’s wife kept cooking everyone dinner and feeding them during negotiations, and, as Sakarias said, “It’s hard to disagree when your mouth’s full of dessert.”
“You’d know,” Viktoria had replied dryly.
But today was special, and Anders wasn’t thinking about any of that. Yesterday, a ship carrying a troupe of stone bears from Allemhäut had arrived. In their humanform they’d looked like an ordinary assortment of people, mostly clad in the brightly colored clothes of their homeland, all reds and blues and greens, small flowers embroidered along their hems.
In their elemental form they were huge, shaggy brown bears with dark eyes and enormous paws. Today the bears had set to work mending the cracks in the ground that divided Holbard into sections, rising onto their back legs and lifting their front paws, moving the rock and stone as easily as the wolves sent an ice spear flying through the air.
It had been a rough voyage from Allemhäut, and a rough entry into the harbor, but soon that would change. A team of designers and dragonsmiths, led by Hayn, Tilda, and a still-grumpy Kaleb, was working on repairing the wind arches that had protected the harbor until recently. Huge sweeps of metal, painstakingly forged and engraved with runes, stretched from one side of the harbor mouth to the other, and soon they would once again ensure that the waters inside were always calm. It was that guaranteed calm harbor in Holbard that had made the city such a mix of people from all over the world—merchant ships came from everywhere, knowing they could safely dock when they arrived.
Anders could pick out Rayna and Ellukka among thedragons wheeling above the city, playing and watching the stone bears’ progress. He knew their other friends would have found perches and places to watch as well.
But some of them would be at the other great construction site, inside the city walls, in the place where the old Ulfar Academy had once been.
Long ago, Lisabet had pointed out that the Ulfar courtyard had been built large enough for a dragon to land. Proof, she had said, that the wolves had once welcomed the dragons. Now, that courtyard would be even larger. The site would be home to the Vallenskól, where wolves, dragons, and humans would study side by side. A second campus was already under construction up in the mountains, at Old Drekhelm, a place for the students to travel in summer, or when their lessons required a little more altitude or space.
Anders and his friends would be among the first pupils of the school. He was one part nervous, one part excited, and one part disbelieving that this was somehow happening.
But before their classes began, they had a break to celebrate the equinox.
It was hard to believe that last equinox he had been desperately making his way toward Drekhelm to rescue Rayna, terrified she was about to be sacrificed by the verydragons who were now his friends.
“This equinox,” Rayna had said, “we’re going to party like dragons, reflect like wolves, and eat like humans.”
“I think we have to,” Mikkel had agreed solemnly.
“It’s our duty to embrace the best of all worlds,” Sam agreed.
With a rumble down below, a huge crack in the ground heaved, shifted, and closed, sealing up as though it had never been there.
“That was amazing,” Lisabet breathed. “Let’s go and watch up close.”
“All right,” Anders agreed, popping his last bite of Kaleb’s cake into his mouth.
Lisabet shifted to wolf form and began trotting down the hill.
Anders watched her go for a moment. Of all the wonderful things that had happened in the last year, his best friend—smart and loyal and strong—might just be the most wonderful of all, he thought.
Stones shifted again down below him in the city, and with the sound of Holbard’s repairs ringing in his ears, he grinned and transformed, then chased her down the hill.
