Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Dawn of Yangchen (Chronicles of the Avatar Book 3) , livre ebook

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171 pages

English

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi and Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Shadow of Kyoshi comes a thrilling new chapter in the Chronicles of the Avatar series Yangchen's inexperience may prove to be her greatest asset . . . Plagued by the voices of Avatars before her for as long as she can remember, Yangchen has not yet earned the respect felt for Avatar Szeto, her predecessor. In an era where loyalty is bought rather than earned, she has little reason to trust her counsel. When Yangchen travels to Bin-Er in the Earth Kingdom on political business, a chance encounter with an informant named Kavik leads to a wary partnership. Bin-Er is a city ruled by corrupt shang merchants who have become resentful of the mercurial Earth King and his whims. To extract themselves from his influence, the shangs have one solution in mind: a mysterious weapon of mass destruction that would place power squarely in their hands. As Yangchen and Kavik seek to thwart the shangs' plan, their unlikely friendship deepens. But for Yangchen to chart her course as a singularly powerful Avatar, she must learn to rely on her own wisdom above all else. This propulsive third installment in the Chronicles of the Avatar series illuminates Avatar Yangchen's journey from uncertain young woman to revered leader.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	19 juillet 2022
Nombre de lectures	36
EAN13	9781647004064
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0777€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Special thanks to Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko of Avatar Studios
PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-5677-1 eISBN 978-1-64700-406-4
ISBN (B N/Indigo edition) 978-1-4197-6464-6
2022 Viacom International Inc. All Rights Reserved. Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon Avatar: The Last Airbender, and all related titles, logos, and characters are trademarks of Viacom International Inc.
Cover illustrations by JungShan Chang
Book design by Brenda E. Angelilli and Deena Fleming
Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com

VOICES OF THE PAST
Jetsun paced down the hallway, trying to stay ahead of the screams.
The high ceilings of the Western Air Temple tended to make echoes of whispers and explosions of dropped teacups. Though the girl was back in the infirmary being watched by the elders, her cries of pain sprang from every surface, bouncing off the hard stone.
Jetsun couldn t take it anymore and broke into a full run. Ignoring decorum, she sped past her sisters, ruffling robes, upsetting inkpots, prematurely ruining colorful sand paintings that were meant to be ruined only once they were finished. No one scolded her or gave her sharp looks in passing. They understood.
When she ran out of floor, she jumped. The upside-down construction of the temple meant that despite its overall size, there was very little space to stand on, nothing connecting the spires but thin air and a three-thousand-foot drop. She didn t have her glider. Eminently dangerous, but she could make the leap without it.
Air at her back and air against her robes gave her enough loft to land on the next tower, the one containing the Great Library. Tsering, chief caretaker of the books, waited in front of the tall shelves. The older woman s kind eyes were edged with worry. I saw you coming. Is it happening again?
Jetsun nodded. Mesose, she said.
Tsering blew out a breath, a silent whistle of frustration. That could be Mesose, famous scholar of the Ru Ming era. There s a Mesose village in Hu Xin; it might have been named after a founder. Or it could just be someone called Mesose, in which case we re stuck.
Avatars tended to run in exalted circles. Or they elevated the people around them to fame. It has to be the first one, Jetsun said.
Another wail turned both their heads. The child was suffering. Help me and it ll go faster, Tsering said. Northwest corner, start with the poetry shelves, Ru with the three drops of water radical.
They split up to search different sections of the ancient vault. Jetsun ran her eyes over labels and titles as fast as she could. Not every book fit on a shelf. Many of the tomes kept at the Western Temple were so old they were written on bamboo slips instead of paper. She passed rolled bales of text wider around than some of the pillars connecting the ceilings to the floors.
Five minutes later she emerged from the library s depths, clutching a treatise on she didn t know exactly what. What mattered was the author s name.
Tsering met her by the door. I couldn t find any leads. You re holding our best shot.
Thank you. Jetsun sprinted back in the direction she came, the book tucked under her arm.
Use your glider next time! Tsering yelled.

Jetsun burst back into the infirmary. The huddle of elders parted to let her through. The girl s thrashing had settled into dry, cavernous sobs. She pounded her fist on her pillow over and over, not the involuntary shaking of a fever but rather the deliberate motion born of a steady, all-consuming anguish that should have been beyond her eight years.
We ll leave you two alone, Abbess Dagmola said. She and the rest of the nuns filed out. Too many people sometimes ruined the effect. Jetsun opened the book to a random page and began to read.
The level of risk can be determined by elevation, nearness to the source of water, vulnerability to rapid flows, and potential economic damage, she said. Confused, she briefly turned the volume to look at the cover. A Discourse on Floodplain Management.
Why in the world do we have this book? Jetsun shook her head. It didn t matter. Understanding previous measures taken to mitigate the damage from flooding is essential, for they might compile danger instead of reducing it.
The girl took a shuddering gasp of air and relaxed. Half a year and that s as far as you ve gotten? she said, smiling at no one. You have to stop taking on so many projects at once, Se-Se.
It worked. Thank the spirits, it worked. Jetsun kept reading, plowing through the unfamiliar concepts mechanically. On the subject of silt deposits . . .
The first time the child went through this, they had no clue as to what was happening. The healers did their best to cool her fever and keep her as comfortable as they could. As the incidents reoccurred, her babbling, incoherent at first, started to coalesce into sentences, names, slices of conversations. The words meant nothing to her caregivers until one day they heard her talking to His Majesty the Earth King Zhoulai. A man she d never met, who d died three centuries ago.
Thankfully, the abbess had thought to take notes. She d written down every intelligible scrap, and in scouring her pages she pieced together a pattern. The names. Angilirq, Praew, Yotogawa. Names from every nation.
Names of past Avatar companions.
Not every phantom the child spoke to had made it into the annals of history, and some that had were never acknowledged as having close ties to an Avatar. Jetsun could only imagine the stories lost to time, filtering through the girl, merest fragments sticking in her throat.
And the conversations were pleasant, frequently enough. She would laugh with her friends in towns that had been renamed, provinces that no longer existed. Jetsun had watched her leap from her bed and bellow at the success of legendary winter hunts, sit on the floor and meditate with someone else s inner peace.
But occasionally she would have waking nightmares. Bouts of sorrow and rage that threatened to tear her apart. She wouldn t mutter names but scream them as if she d been betrayed by the universe itself.
By accident, they discovered she could sometimes be calmed by figuring out the past figure she was talking to, when it was possible, and speaking back to her from that perspective. The deeper they could dive into the role the better, like parents reading a bedtime story, doing voices and parts. Familiarity was the best balm they had, and they acted their hearts out for her.
The girl nodded off by the time Jetsun reached a chapter on the proper construction of seawalls. Tsering entered the room. No glider, Jetsun noticed. She probably wanted to see if she could still make the jump too.
How is she? the librarian asked.
Better, Jetsun said. Who was Mesose?
A companion of Avatar Gun, Tsering said, coming over to the bedside. Skilled poet and engineer, who died in Ha an when Gun failed to hold back a tsunami.
Jetsun found a sour taste rising in her mouth. Failed? Not the choice of words she would have used for someone, Avatar or not, bravely confronting a force of nature. Ha an still stood today as a port when it sounded like it could have been wiped off the map along with everyone who d lived there at the time.
It s what s written. After Mesose drowned, Gun disappeared for quite a while before returning to duty.
You were grieving. If the waters that Gun fought were the same ones that killed Mesose, then both the girl and the past life raging through her might have personally witnessed their friend take their last breath before plunging below the waves. They would have searched for a body in the wreckage.
And worst of all, Jetsun thought, they would have had to struggle with the terrible question of what if I d done things differently? What if, what if, what if? Perhaps Gun was the one who d demanded the label of failure.
It was simply unjust. To remember the events of a single life was painful enough. Reliving dozens of lives would be . . . well, it would be like getting caught by a tsunami. Swept away by forces beyond your control.
She s a smart kid, Jetsun said. If she keeps having these visions, she ll figure out who she is long before she turns sixteen.
Tsering sighed. She reached out and stroked the sleeping girl s hair, now matted with sweat.
Oh, little Yangchen, she said. What are we going to do with you?
THE FIRST STEP
At the age of eleven, Yangchen had known who she was for a while on an intellectual level, and treated her Avatarhood with a child s seriousness at the behest of her elders. This is a very important secret, all right? Like Tsering s custard recipe. Best not to talk about it until we figure a few more things out.
The involuntary bouts of vivid memories still occurred. The ease with which past Avatars slipped into Yangchen s speech troubled the leaders of the Western Temple. She would eavesdrop on their discussions about her, air spouting herself under windowsills, hiding behind