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TH E MA RK OF THE D RAGONF LY
Jaleigh Johnson
d e l ac o rt e p r e s s
ATTENTION, READER:
THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED ADVANCE EXCERPT.
John_9780385376488_2p_all_r1.indd 4
7/8/15 12:39 PM
ONE
pprentices, quiet! The excited chatter in the classroom almost drowned out Tolwins exasperated
shout. Youd think that none of you had ever seen a
simple box before.
From her seat near the back of the classroom, Lina
Winterbock snorted in amusement. An archivist, even a
junior apprentice like her, knew there was no such thing
as a simple box. Not when that box had been shipped
from the meteor fields up north.
The classroom for Archival Studies was an amphitheater, the desks arranged in a semicircle on stone tiers
carved out of the caverns natural rock formations. At
the bottom, in the teaching pit, there was a scarred
oak table and a podium beside it for the teacher. The
box that had caused the pandemonium sat in the middle of the table. Linas teacher, the archivist Tolwin,
stood behind the podium. His apprentice and assistant, Simon, stood at Tolwins side, scowling at all the
noise. Though to be fair, the sour expression could
just be Simons version of a smile. With him, it was
hard to tell.
As Tolwin swept his gaze over the fifty-odd students
assembled in the classroom, Lina turned her attention
away from the box and sank as low in her seat as she
could manage without actually falling to the floor. It
didnt matter. The teachers sharp eyes found her anyway and narrowed as his lips pressed into a thin line
of displeasure. Lina forced herself to stare back at him
without flinching, but it wasnt easy. Tolwins glare felt
like a spider skittering down her spine. A large, hairy
spider with fangs.
Given the incident last year, Tolwins reaction to
her wasnt that surprising, but Lina kept hoping maybe
he would fall and hit his head and somehow forget the
whole unpleasant business. Normally, she would never
wish a head injury on anyone, but it might make her
days in Archival Studies a bit easier.
Lina released a tense breath as Tolwin finally looked
away from her, and she eagerly refocused her attention
on the mysterious box. What was Tolwin hiding in there?
Some new bit of technology? A painting? Or maybe even
a manuscript? Mystery poured from the depths of the
box, filling Linas mind and quickening her heart.
Where do you come from? How far have you traveled? What secrets do you hold?
Lina had never been to the meteor fields or the scrap
towns where all these strange objects were gathered.
They were located far to the north of the archivists
strongholds, in the Merrow Kingdom. But shed heard
plenty of stories of the violent meteor storms that ravaged the land up there. For reasons that even the wisest
of the archivists hadnt been able to discover, the boundary between their world of Solace and other lands was
thin in the meteor fields, and on the night of each full
moon, it dissolved completely. With no barrier, objects
from other worlds tumbled from the sky in clouds of
poisonous green dust. It was the poorest people in the
north, the scrappers, who bravely took on the task of
harvesting these meteorites. They cleaned up whatever
objects were still intact and sold them at local trade markets to make money to live on.
The scrappers best customers were the archivists,
who bought up as many of these otherworldly artifacts
as they could. They paid special attention to any object
that might reveal hints of what life was like in unknown
worlds. It was the archivists mission to preserve the
artifacts and record whatever knowledge they gleaned
from them, both for its own sake and because they believed that the more people learned about these other
worlds, the more they would come to understand their
own. It was a unique calling, one that, even as an apprentice, made Linas life very different from the lives of
people living in other lands.
I said quiet! Tolwin barked, shaking Lina from her
thoughts. Anger deepened the crisscrossing lines on
her instructors face. His bushy brown-gray hair even
seemed unhappy. As he glared at the students, the noise
level in the room gradually dropped to a quiet murmur.
Today Im going to conduct a hands-on experiment, the
purpose of which is to test your understanding of the
archivist principles youve been taught so far. Tolwin
gestured to the box on the table. Youre all wondering
what Ive got in here, yes? I hear you whispering about it,
trying to guess which division it came from.
Naturally, Lina thought. It was the first thing any archivist would wonder. The six general divisionsFlora,
Fauna, Technology, Language/Literature, Cultural Artifacts, and Medicineformed the basis for all the archivists work. At the end of their long years of study and
apprenticeship, each of the students in this room would
end up working in one of those divisions.
Tolwin rubbed his hands together as if to build suspense. All I will tell you, to start, is that there is an
object inside the box that was discovered in the meteor
fields only two weeks ago.
An astonished hush fell over the classroom at this
announcement, and Lina sat up straighter in her seat.
determine whether or not its composite materials are native to our world of Solace.
Excellent, Tolwin said, though his tone was anything but warm. He turned to the class. Would any of
you care to guess what this object is made of?
Five hands shot up in the air. Tolwin nodded to a
girl whod been sitting next to Lina. Pewter, with gold
bands, she guessed.
Good eye, Tolwin said, smiling thinly at the girl.
He turned his attention back to Lina. So far, we have
identified an inorganic object made of materials native to
Solace. If we were conducting a true examination, laboratory tests would need to be done to confirm this, but
for now, well move on with the demonstration. I assume
you know the next step, Miss Winterbock?
Lina met Tolwins eyes and saw the look of challenge
there. Of course she knew the next step, as did everyone
else in the room: classify the object according to one of
the six divisions of archivist studies. But that involved
examining the chest more closelyat the very least, lifting the lid.
And thats where Tolwin would spring his trap. Lina
could see it in his eyes. There was something in the box.
Something meant just for her, and it wasnt going to be
pleasant.
Lina clutched her hands in front of her to keep them
from shaking. She cast about for anything that could
help her and spied a ruler on a little shelf behind Tolwins podium. Before he could protest, she walked over
and grabbed it. Returning to the chest, she fitted the
edge of the ruler beneath the lid and gently lifted it.
Creaking hinges echoed in the amphitheater as the
chest opened, and a faint moldy smell tickled Linas nose.
Half the class leaned forward in their seats to get a better
look at what was in the chest, while the other half craned
away. It seemed they were all expecting something grand
or dangerous to pop out.
And then Lina realized with a jolt that the chest was
empty. A water-spotted lining of red velvet covered the
bottom of it, but otherwise there was nothing, no waiting horror inside. Lina laid the ruler on the table and let
out the breath shed been holding. Tolwin had just been
messing with her, trying to build suspense and make her
afraid. She hated to admit that it had worked. Behind
her, Simon chuckled, and Linas cheeks flamed.
Very good, Miss Winterbock. Now that youve so
bravely conquered the obstacle of opening the chest,
Tolwin said, amid titters of laughter from the class, perhaps you could continue with your analysis?
Lina gritted her teeth and nodded, determined not
to let Tolwin get into her head. She thought the box belonged to the Cultural Artifacts division, but it didnt
hurt to check to see if there were any mechanical components that might designate it as Technology. Sometimes
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But Zara was busy with her work on the council and
might not be in her office if Lina went to see her. Ever
since the Iron War broke out, Lina rarely had more than a
few minutes alone with her teacher. Instead, she received
written messages and assignments. And when they did
see each other, more often than not, their conversations
tended to end in arguments and shouting matches. So
she didnt have what shed call the best relationship with
Zara at the moment. The thought made Linas spirits
sink even lower.
But if she wasnt going to tell Zara what had happened, that meant she would have to endure the rest of
the afternoon classes with her clumsy, swollen hands.
She imagined more students giggling at her as she fumbled with her books and papers, trying to work.
No, Lina decided with a fierce shake of her head.
That wasnt going to happen. There were better ways and
places to spend her time.
Her workshop, for instance. And the secret that was
waiting there.
Excitement hummed in Linas veins at the prospect
of a whole day alone with her project. She might not accomplish much without the use of her hands, but what
better way to lift her spirits than to go to the place that
felt most like home?
Her decision made, she turned and followed the
twisting stone corridors that led away from the class-
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made her way through the passage, which sloped gradually downward. This was the longest part of her journey.
Shed never actually measured how far the passage descended into the mountain, but Lina suspected that it
emptied out a quarter of a mile below the museum. The
air grew colder as she walked, and her breath formed
thick clouds in front of her face.
She knew from studying old maps of Ortana that
these chambers had once been used by the archivists as
deep storage. Artifacts that were too broken to be salvaged or technologies that appeared to have no useful
purpose had been consigned here. Things that had been
on display for a time in the public museum had also
been rotated out and stored down here to make room
for more recent finds. Unfortunately, many of the oldest
rooms and the tunnels leading to them had been buried
long ago by a series of cave-ins. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of artifacts had been lost forever. The chambers
and passages that remained intact were theoretically
stable, except for a few tremors now and then, but the
archivists hadnt wanted to take the chance of losing any
more of their artifacts. Theyd moved the storage areas
to the workshops above and abandoned these tunnels
for good.
Lina had reclaimed them the day shed discovered the
hole behind the curtain of deepa ivy. Her best guess was
that it had been made sometime during the excavations
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for the museum expansion two years ago. The area had
been a torn-up mess at the time, so it wasnt surprising
that the workers had overlooked the hole, and the ivy
had grown in later to cover it.
She knew she was getting close to her destination
when the passage began to level out. The corridor narrowed again but not nearly as much as at the beginning
of her journey. She skirted around the forest of stalactites until finally the passage emptied into a much larger
cavern. The lumatites glow couldnt reach the fifty-foothigh ceiling, and Lina estimated that the whole of the
chamber was over two hundred feet in diameter.
To her left, in a tiny corner of the cavern, was her
workshop. Shed fashioned a table by throwing two thin
oak planks over a pair of sawhorses that shed made herself. Eventually, she built a stool to go with it, although
her first couple of attempts had collapsed under her when
she tried to sit on them. Her carpentry skills had improved since then, and a good thing too. Everything she
brought down here had to either fit through the passage
or be in pieces that shed later assemble. On the table,
she had a pair of small lanterns and her tools spread out
on a towel, along with her bigger maps of the stronghold
and her secret tunnels.
Lina went to the table and draped her work apron
over her head, though she had no hope of being able to
tie the strings yet. Using both hands, she lifted a box of
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matches out of her apron pocket, all the while wondering if she could actually manage to strike one. No choice
but to try, she supposed. She needed more light than her
dozen lumatites could offer. And now that no one else
was around to see her, she didnt mind looking a little
ridiculous.
Ten excruciating minutes later, hands trembling and
sweat dripping down her forehead, Lina heard a satisfying crackle as her tenth match scraped across the stone
floor and brought forth flame.
She lit the lanterns and then moved carefully to the
cluster of stalagmites surrounding her worktable. On
their tips, Lina had stuck dozens of candle stubs, which
she also lit, until the room was awash in warm golden
light. She muffled the lumatites with her hand until their
light dimmed and went out, wanting to give them a rest.
Thanks for the help, she murmured.
Now that she had more light, the workshop felt almost cozy. Lina loved to take naps down here when she
forgot about the time and needed a rest, but shed had
to dig a fire pit in order to keep from freezing in the cavern. Shed also collected a pile of thick quilts and one of
her lumpy old pillows, arranging them among the stalagmites like a nest.
Lina shivered and stuffed her hands in her pockets.
Her fingers werent up to making a fire yet. For now, the
coat would have to be enough.
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