The events in this novel begin approximately one year
after the end of DragonSon II: The Dead
The children – most of them lanky adolescents, now – had just finished a snack break after morning chores and they were milling around. They sounded like a flock of gulls contending over a dead horker. "All right, settle down!" Francois Lanya commanded, and they quickly took their seats and pulled out their books.
The nursery at Dragonspring House had been converted into a schoolroom, like nothing that the Whiterun area had ever seen before. Gerard Bouchard and his fellow workers at Arngeld and Sons Woodworking had crafted 10 good-sized, freestanding wooden desks. Each had an inkwell and pen rack mounted above a hinged lid, giving access to storage space for books and writing paper, with a chair permanently attached to the desk.
For the first time in living memory, kids in Whiterun who were interested in an education that went beyond the basics of reading, writing, and shopkeeper math had someplace they could go without leaving town. Classes were held three hours per day, five days a week, and covered everything from history and literature to foreign languages and higher mathematics.
Places for students were few, as eight of them were already taken by the Dragonspring children themselves. Vari and five of his dragon siblings, now all human more often than not, were joined by Sigi and Meri. At 13, she was the eldest of the students and sometimes the guest lecturer, as there was much she could teach about the history and cultures of the Falmer.
Francois smiled at the way the kids had quieted at his command. They were a good lot, he thought, and they seemed to be a little in awe of him. Only Meri, Vari, and Sigi had known him when he was old and feeble, for he owed yet another debt to his daughter-in-law. Once again, she had given him a new lease on life – regressing his age to what he might have been at 55 had not a series of strokes before that time begun to erode both his mind and his physical strength. At 81, he looked a more appropriate age to be the father of Anders – who appeared to be in his early 30s.
Katja had of course brought his wife Christine along for the ride, and the two of them had (to the astonished delight of both of them) become lovers again after more than 50 years of marriage. The couple continued to live in the small house in Whiterun they'd bought a decade before, and Francois happily made the walk to Dragonspring Farm each school day – both for the exercise and for the sheer joy of being able to do so.
"Everyone has of course now read The Rise and Fall of the Blades," Francois began. "Who can tell me what significance the Blades had regarding the destiny of the Dragonborn?" Feykrokrein raised her hand. Darkest of the dragonlings, an intense and tomboyish girl, she was a fierce competitor at everything she set her hand to – including scholarship. Her siblings – along with a girl and a boy from Whiterun – gave her a Look that she was oblivious to. "I know, M. Lanya!" she crowed, and he nodded at her to continue. He felt torn between pleasure at having a bright, enthusiastic student and concern over the resentment she generated in others.
"Delphine of the Blades stole the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller so that she could find Mama and direct her in the way that she thought the Dragonborn should go. Because of that, she and Papa Wyll found Esbern, and it was he that eventually figured out how to get Father to help them find and destroy Alduin." These kids had a strange, personal take on history, since so much of it over the past generation had been created by their own family.
"That's right, he did help them!" came a familiar voice from the direction of the hall. The door had opened, and an enormously tall, slim and muscular man with dark red hair and deep green, amber-flecked eyes came into the room. Behind him was a tallish young woman with dark blonde hair, lushly pretty, holding a red-haired infant in her arms.
The classroom broke back into chaos in an instant, as most of the students surged to their feet. Francois sighed, and accepted the inevitable. "Father! Father!" came a chorus of voices, as six of the adolescents clustered around the tall man for hugs. Then they converged on the woman and the baby. "Divines, Gilda!" Britlokziil exclaimed, "Ursula is getting so big! And she's so cute!"
Odahviing beamed down at them. When he had begun his relationship with Gilda it had been mostly out of curiosity, and an undeniable physical attraction. But their love had blossomed, and the birth of their child had been the most amazing experience of his very long life, somehow even eclipsing the soul-shaking bond he had formed with Britmonah. This human thing of having only one helpless child at a time, and needing decades in which to raise them, demanded so much more of you and gave you so much more in return.
His link with Katja would never be broken – after all, they had 18 living children together – and all of those children were now, as he was, capable of becoming human. They were all going to live a long time, barring mishaps, and he was looking forward to some sensational family reunions in the decades to come. But he had finally accepted that Katja was not, and never would be, his. And he had moved on. He was, literally, a new man. Instead of a dragon masquerading as a human being, Odahviing was coming to feel as if he were a human being who often became a dragon.
Indeed, being a dragon was how he made his living. He'd been launched full-fledged into human society without any of the education an adult usually had, and it had left him wondering how he was to support a wife and family. But Jarl Balgruuf had been happy to give them quarters in Dragonsreach, and gold in plenty, in exchange for Odahviing becoming his personal air force. He flew reconnaissance, provided air travel for up to three adults, and carried messages faster than any human courier could travel – even with a magic map.
Gilda smiled in genuine affection as her husband's children gathered around to admire and coo at their half-sister. That he had been a powerful dragon since long before her ancestors had been born thrilled her to the core. That he had all these kids with another woman, one he was still friends with, was less wonderful – but she liked them, and their mother as well.
At least not all of them were around Whiterun at once. Currently six of them were studying at High Hrothgar while another five were engaged in the same campaign of improving dragon-human relations the entire brood had started several years before. Now that any friendly dragon could obtain the ability to become human, the human-dragon alliance was becoming stronger than ever. Gilda wondered how long they would have to wait to learn whether Ursula was dragonborn. It was Odahviing's theory that any human child born of the union between a woman and a transformed dragon would carry the blood.
Francois' patience was reaching its end. The majority of his students were related to him, if not by blood then by a strong family connection. In the Dragonspring family, it was not so much who had provided the genetic material for your birth as who you loved, and where your loyalty lay. It was possible young Sigi might be his actual grandchild, but he had come to care for Katja's other children nearly as much. Still, it was time to get back to work. It wasn't as if they had all day! After lunch it would be crafts, farm chores, weapons practice, cooking, and other human arts – while the students who were not resident at Dragonspring Farm would be dismissed for the day.
"Odahviing, Gilda, good to see you," Francois said somewhat peremptorily. "But I'm afraid my students and I have much material yet to cover this morning." Odahviing smiled. After having been human a good deal of the time for more than a year, his mastery of social skills was vastly superior than it had been on the day of his first transformation, when he'd attempted to seize Katja as if she were merely a stag that had wandered into his draconic hunting range. He winced at the memory of that day, and how utterly clueless he had been.
"Couldn't resist stopping in," Odahviing said by way of apology. "If anyone wants to come and visit us at Dragonsreach when you have some free time, we'd love to see you." He and his little family let themselves out the way they'd come in, going to visit with Katja and Wyll for a little while longer before returning home.