The Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  Perhaps some of the others were swayed by Greft’s assumption of leadership. Thymara wasn’t. She’d already seen the dragon she wanted to care for. The female was a gleaming blue with glittering silver markings on her dwarfed wings. Consecutive scaled frills draped her neck like ruffles on a rich woman’s dress. She was one of the better-formed dragons, despite her diminutive wings. A survivor, Thymara had judged her, and she had been so bold as to approach the dragon immediately. Now she wondered if she’d made a poor choice. The blue dragon didn’t seem especially friendly, and she was large. If the way she’d devoured the barrow of meat was any indication, keeping up with her appetite was going to be a challenge. No, an impossibility, she realized with dawning dismay. What she had seen as feasible back at Trehaug was now revealed to her as a hopeless task. If she was going to be any dragon’s sole feeder, that dragon was going to be hungry a good part of the time.

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  This dragon’s temperament didn’t seem very kindly even with a belly full of meat. What would she be like when she was hungry and tired after a day’s journey? Thymara reluctantly scanned the other dragons, seeking a better prospect for herself. This one obviously didn’t like her at all.

  But the other dragon keepers had found their courage and were already fanning out through the herd of dragons. Kase and Boxter were approaching two orange dragons. She wondered briefly if the two cousins always made similar choices. Sylve, hands clasped shyly behind her and head bowed, was talking quietly to a gold male. As Thymara watched, he lifted his head, revealing a blue-white throat. Jerd stood close to a green female with gold stippling. As the other keepers spread out through the herd, Thymara did a quick count. There weren’t enough keepers. There would be two extra dragons. That could be trouble.

  “Why are you here? What is this invasion about?”

  There was irritation in the dragon’s tone, as if Thymara had insulted her. The girl was startled. “What? Didn’t they tell you we’d be coming?”

  “Didn’t who tell us?”

  “The committee. There was a Rain Wild committee to look into solving the dragon problem. They decided it would be best for all if the dragons were moved upriver to a better place. Somewhere with open meadows, dry ground, and plentiful game for you. ”

  “No. ” A flat denial by the dragon.

  “But—”

  “That was not what they decided. No humans decided anything about us. We told the humans who tend us that we are leaving this place, and that we required their ser vices. We told them to supply us with hunters and tenders for our journey. We told them that we intend to return to Kelsingra. Have you heard of it, little creature? It was an Elderling city, a place of sunlight and open fields and sandy shores. The Elderlings who lived there were creatures of culture and learning who appreciated dragons. The buildings there were created to accommodate us. The plains teemed with cattle and wild game. That is where we intend to go. ”

  “I have never heard of such a place. ” She spoke hesitantly, not wishing to offend.

  “What you have heard or not heard is of little interest to me. ” The dragon turned away from her. “That is where we shall be going. ”

  This wasn’t going to work. Thymara cast about hopelessly. Two dragons remained unclaimed. They were mud-streaked and dulleyed creatures, nosing stupidly at the empty barrows. The silver one had a festering infection on his tail. The other one might have had a coppery hide but was so filthy he looked dun colored. He was thin in a bony way; she suspected he suffered from worms. In her cold evaluation, neither would survive the trek up the river. But perhaps that didn’t matter. It was apparent to her that her girlish fancy of befriending the dragon that she escorted was little more than that. What a silly dream that had been, of friendship with a powerful and noble creature. She was already revising her estimate of what the expedition would be, and her heart was sinking with the burden of that reality. She’d be feeding and caring for creatures that found her irritating and were large enough to kill her with a casual blow. At least her mother had been slightly shorter than she was. The thought that she might prefer her mother’s company to that of an irritable dragon twisted her mouth in a sour smile.

  The dragon exhaled a blast of air by her ear. “Well?”

  “I didn’t say anything. ” She spoke quietly. She wanted to edge away, but not while the dragon was eyeing her.

  “I’m aware of that. So you haven’t heard of Kelsingra. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that we are as likely to find it as we are to find your ‘open meadows, dry ground, and plentiful game. ’ For it seems likely to me that if any Rain Wilder had ever heard of such a place, there would already be a Rain Wild settlement there. ”

  “That’s true,” Thymara agreed reluctantly, and she wondered why she hadn’t previously thought about it in such terms. Because the committee, of supposedly older and wiser Rain Wild Traders, had told her that was what she would find. But what did they know? Not a one of them had looked like a hunter or a harvester. Most looked as if they’d never even ventured up to the canopy, let alone explored along the riverbanks. What if there was no such place? What if it was all just a ploy to get the dragons and their tenders to leave Cassarick?

  She pushed that thought aside. It frightened her, not just because it might be true but because she suddenly knew that the people she had signed a contract with were perfectly capable of banishing both the dragons and their keepers to an endless trek up the boggy riverbank. “Why are you dragons so certain that Kerlinger exists?” she demanded of the big blue female.

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  “If you are trying to talk about Kelsingra, then at least name it correctly. You are very careless with your language. I suspect that creatures with brains as small as yours must have a hard time recalling information. As to why we know it exists, we remember it. ”

  “But you’ve never been away from this beach. ”

  “We have our ancestral memories. Well, at least some of us have some of them. And it is one that several of us do recall. The city on the wide and sunny riverbank. The sweet silver water from the well there. The plazas and the buildings created to accommodate the alliance of Elderlings and dragons. The fine fields full of fat grazing cattle. ” The dragon’s voice had gone dreamy, and for a moment, Thymara almost felt the creature’s hunger for fat cows full of warm blood and hot moist meat. And afterward, a wash and then a long nap on the white sandy riverbank. Thymara shook her head to clear it of her imaginings.

  “What?” the dragon demanded.

  “The only Elderling cities we have ever discovered are buried in mud. The folk who lived there are long dead. The tapestries and paintings they left behind show us a place that is so different from what is here now that our scholars have long argued that they depict an Elderling homeland far to the south rather than being representations of their cities as they once were here. ”

  “Then your scholars are wrong. ” The dragon spoke decisively. “Our memories may be incomplete, but I can tell you that the Cassarick I recall bordered on a deep, swift flowing river that had a gentler backwater and a wide beach of silver-streaked clay. The river was deep enough for serpents to migrate up it easily. The Elderling ships also could come right up the river to Cassarick and go beyond as well, to other cities that bordered the river. Cassarick itself was not a large city, though it had its share of wonders. It was famed mostly as a secondary place for serpents to come to spin our cocoons, if the beaches at what you call Trehaug were full. That did not happen every migrating year, but some years it did. And so Cassarick had chambers capable of welcoming the dragons who came to tend the cases. There was the Star Chamber, roofed with glass panels. From there the Elderlings were wont to study the night sky. The walls of the long entry hall to the Star Chamber were decorated with a mosaic of jewels that held a light of their own. No windows were built in that hall so that visitors might more easily view t
he vista that the jewel artists had painted with their tiny dots of light. I recall there was an amusement that the Elderlings had built for themselves, a maze with crystal walls. Time’s Labyrinth, they called it. It was all trickery and foolishness, of course, but they seemed fond of it. ”

  “If any room like one of those chambers has been found, I have not heard of it,” Thymara said regretfully.

  “It little matters,” the dragon replied, her voice suddenly harsh. “They are not the only wonders that have vanished. You humans go digging through the wreckage of that time like tunneling dung beetles. You don’t understand what you find, and you have no appreciation for it. ”

  “I think I should go,” Thymara said quietly. Her disappointment as she turned away gnawed upward in her from her belly. She looked at the other two unclaimed dragons and tried to muster pity for them. But their eyes were vapid and almost unseeing. They were not even watching the other dragons as they began to interact with their keepers. The muddy brown one was absently chewing on the bloody edge of the barrow that had held his food. Still. She hadn’t signed a contract that promised her the companionship of an amazing and intelligent creature. She had signed a contract that said she would do her best to accompany a dragon on this doomed expedition and do her best to care for it. Perhaps she’d be wiser to start with one that had no expectations. Perhaps she would have been wisest of all not to have had expectations herself.

  All of the other keepers seemed to have met with at least moderate success with their choices. Rapskal and his red seemed happiest with each other. He had led the stumpy little creature over to the forest edge and was cleaning her scales with handfuls of evergreen needles. The small red dragon wriggled happily at his touch. Jerd seemed to have won the trust of her speckled green dragon. The creature had lifted one front foot and was allowing Jerd to examine her claws. Greft kept a respectful distance from the black dragon, but seemed to be deep in conversation with it. Sylve and the golden male had found a sunny place and were sitting peacefully together on the cracked mud plates of the riverbank.

  She looked around for Tats and the slender green dragon he’d approached. She didn’t see either of them at first, and then spotted them at the water’s edge. Tats had his fish spear out and was walking along the bank while the green dragon watched with avid interest. Thymara doubted that he’d find anything large enough to spear if he saw any fish at all, but he’d obviously won his dragon’s attention. Unlike her. The dragon hadn’t even responded to her last comment.

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  “Thank you for speaking with me,” Thymara replied hopelessly. She turned and walked quietly away. The silver, she decided. The injury on its tail needed to be cleaned and bandaged. Thymara suspected they’d be traveling in or near the river water, and untreated, the acid waters would enlarge and ulcerate the injury. As for the skinny copper dragon, if she could find some ruskin leaves and catch a fish, she’d try worming him. She wondered if ruskin leaves worked to cleanse a dragon’s system. Studying him as she walked toward him, she decided that they couldn’t hurt. There was no one she could ask for advice for physicking a dragon. If he got any thinner, he’d die soon anyway.

  Abruptly she realized there was someone she could ask. She turned back to the blue dragon who was regarding Thymara with ill-concealed hostility. Thymara steeled her courage. “May I ask you a question about dragons and parasites?”

  “Where did you learn your manners?” The question was followed with a hiss. None of her breath reached Thymara, but the mist of weak venom that rode her breath was faintly visible.

  Thymara was jolted. Cautiously she asked, “Is it rude to ask such a question?” She wanted to take a step back but dared not move.

  “How dare you turn your back on me. ”

  On the dragon’s long neck, the “frills” of scaled plates were lifting. Thymara hadn’t understood their use before, but from all she knew of animals, such a display would indicate aggression. A brilliant yellow underlay was revealed as the scaled flaps rose like the opening petals of a reptilian flower. The dragon’s large copper eyes were fixed on her, and as Thymara met that gaze, the eyes appeared to slowly spin. It was like watching twin whirlpools of molten copper. The sight was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was terrifying. “I’m sorry,” she apologized hopelessly. “I didn’t know it was rude. I thought you wanted me to go away. ”

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG, and Sintara didn’t know what. By now, the girl should have been completely infatuated with her, on her knees, begging for the dragon’s attention. Instead, she had turned her back on her and started to wander off. Humans were notoriously easy prey for a dragon’s glamour. She opened her ruff more widely and gave her head a shake to disperse a mist of charm. “Do you not wish to serve me?” she prompted the girl. “Do you not find me beautiful?”

  “Of course you are beautiful!” the human exclaimed, but her stance and the rank scent of fear she gave betrayed that she was frightened, not entranced. “When first I saw you today, I chose you as the dragon that I most wished to care for. But our conversation has been . . . ” The girl’s words trickled away.

  Sintara reached for her thoughts but found only fog. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the girl was too stupid to be charmed by her. She searched her dragon memories and found evidence of such humans. Some were so dense that they could not even understand a dragon’s speech. This girl seemed to grasp her words clearly enough. So what ailed her? Sintara decided on a small test of her powers, to see if the girl was susceptible to her at all. “What is your name, small human?”

  “Thymara,” she replied instantly. But as Sintara began to gloat at her leverage, the girl asked her, “And what is your name?”

  “I don’t think you’ve earned the right to my name yet!” Sintara rebuked her and saw her cower. But Thymara stank of true fear with no traces of the despair that such a refusal should have wakened in her. When the human said nothing, did not beg again for the favor of her name, Sintara asked her directly, “Don’t you wish you knew my name?”

  “It would make it much easier for me to talk to you, yes,” the girl said hesitantly.

  Sintara chuckled. “But you don’t seek it in order to have power over me?” she asked sarcastically.

  “What power would your name give me?”

  Sintara stared down at her. Could she truly be ignorant of the power of a dragon’s name? One who knew a dragon’s true name could, if she employed it correctly, compel the dragon to speak truth, to keep a promise, even to grant a favor. If this Thymara was ignorant of such things, Sintara certainly wasn’t going to enlighten her. Instead she asked her, “What would you like to call me, if you were choosing a name to know me by?”

  The girl looked more intrigued than frightened now. Sintara spun her eyes more slowly, and Thymara actually came a step closer to her. There. That was better. “Well?” she prompted her again. “What name would you give me?”

  The girl bit her upper lip for a moment, then said, “You are such a lovely blue. High in the canopy, there is a twining vine that roots in the clefts of trees. It has flowers that are deep blue with bright yellow centers. It has a wonderful fragrance that entrances insects and small birds and little lizards. Even it is not as beautiful as you are, but you remind me of it. We call the flowers skymaws. ”

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  “So you would name me after a flower? Skymaw?” Sintara was not pleased. It seemed a silly, fragile name to her, but she had asked the girl. Perhaps in this one thing, she could humor the human. But still, she asked her, “Do you not think I deserve a name that has more teeth to it?”

  The girl looked down at her feet as if the dragon had caught her in a lie. Quietly, she admitted, “Skymaws are dangerous to touch. They are beautiful and the fragrance is alluring, but the nectar inside will dissolve a butterfly instantly and devour a hummingbird in less than an hour. ”

  Sintara stretched her jaws wide
in pleasure and concluded, “Then it is not just the color of the flower that makes you think of me? It is the danger it poses?”

  “I suppose. Yes. ”

  “Then you may call me Skymaw. Do you see what the boy over there is doing to the runty red dragon?”

  The girl followed Sintara’s glance. Rapskal had pulled an armful of needled branches from a tree and was energetically scrubbing his dragon’s back. Cleansed of mud and dust, even that stumpy little dragon sparkled like a ruby in the sunlight. “I don’t think he means any harm. I think he’s trying to get some of the parasites off her. ”

  “Exactly. And the wax from the needles is good for the skin. ” Graciously, Sintara told her, “You are allowed to perform that service for me. ”

  AS THE TARMAN slowly nosed its way onto the muddy bank, Alise looked over the fantastic scene before her and felt rankest envy. Sun and heat baked the bare riverbank as the final hours of afternoon dwindled away. Scattered about on the bank were at least a dozen dragons in every imaginable color tended by young Rain Wilders. Some of the dragons were stretched out in peaceful sleep. Two stood by the water, waiting impatiently as a couple of boys holding spears walked slowly up and down the riverbank, looking for fish. On the ebbing edge of a sun-washed mudbank, a long gold dragon sprawled, his blue-white underbelly turned toward the last kiss of the sun. Lying against him slept a little girl, her pink-scaled scalp glittering as brightly as the dragon she tended. At one end of the long bank of mud stood the largest dragon of all, tall and black. The sun struck glittering dark blue sparks from his outstretched wings. A bare-chested young man, almost as heavily scaled as a dragon himself, was grooming the creature’s wings. At the opposite end of the beach, as if in counterpoint, a girl with a broom made of cedar boughs was diligently sweeping a sprawled blue dragon. The girl’s black braids danced against the back of her neck as she worked. The dragon shifted as Alise watched, stretching out a hind leg so that the girl might groom it.

  “I didn’t realize the dragons had human tenders. I mean, I knew that they had hunters helping provide for them, but I didn’t realize that—”