by Robin Hobb
My speculation was silent. Whose memories would guide Paragon back to Clerres? Igrot’s, I decided. Did the thoughts and deeds of that nefarious old pirate lurk deep in the ship’s wizardwood bones? How deep did the memories of his human family and crew soak into his dragon’s wood?
And I wondered how Althea had felt captaining a ship that would always harbour the memories of her rapist. How much of the pirate still lurked in the ship that wanted to be two dragons?
Useless questions.
Per won the game and Clef stood up from the table. He looked weary and sad and much older than he had when we first had come aboard. He looked around at the faces and then lifted his mug of fresh water. ‘Shipmates to the end,’ he said, and the others nodded and drank with him. It was a strange toast that fanned my guilt to white-hot coals. ‘I’m taking the anchor watch,’ he announced, and I knew it was not his usual duty. I suspected he would spend it near the figurehead. The spy in me wondered if I could manage to witness whatever words they traded. When Per proposed another game, I shook my head. ‘I need to walk a bit after that meal,’ I told him, and left him to tidy our game away.
I leaned on the railing and watched the pirate town as the summer night descended. The sky darkened from azure to the blue that precedes black, and still Amber and the others did not return. Per joined me on the deck to watch the lights of Divvytown come out. It was a lively place; music carried to us across the water, and the angry shouts of a street fight came later.
‘They’ll probably stay the night in the town,’ I told Per, and he nodded as if he did not care or worry.
We retired to Amber’s cabin. ‘Do you miss Withywoods?’ he asked me abruptly.
‘I don’t think of it much,’ I told him. But I did. Not so much the house as the people and the life that had been there. Such a life, and for too few years.
‘I do,’ Per said quietly. ‘Sometimes. I miss being so sure of what my life would be. I was going to grow taller than my father and be Tallestman, and step up to his job in the stables when he got old.’
‘That might still be,’ I said, but he shook his head. For a time, he was quiet. Then he told me a long, wandering tale about the first time he’d had to groom a horse much taller than he could reach. I noted that he could now speak of his father without weeping. When he fell silent, I stared out of the window at the stars over the town. I dozed off for a time. When I woke, the cabin was dark save for a smudge of light from an almost full moon. Per was sound asleep and I was perfectly awake. With no real idea of what had wakened me, I found the boots I had kicked off, donned them and left the cabin.
On the deck, the moon and the still burning lights of Divvytown made the night a place of deep greys. I heard voices and walked softly toward the bow.
‘You’re dragging anchor.’ Clef made his accusation factually.
‘The tide is running and the bottom is soft. It’s scarcely my fault that the anchor isn’t holding.’ Paragon sounded as petulant as a boy.
‘I’m going to have to roust every crew member I still have aboard to hold you in place, lift anchor and drop it again.’
‘Perhaps not. It feels to me as if it’s holding now. Perhaps it was just a bit of slippage.’
I stood still, breathing softly. I looked at the town and tried to decide if the ship had moved. I couldn’t decide. When I looked at Vivacia, I became certain that he had. The distance between the two liveships had closed.
‘Oh, dear. Slipping again.’ The liveship’s words were apologetic but his tone was merry. We edged closer to Vivacia. She seemed unaware of us, her head drooped forward. Was she asleep? Would a ship made of wizardwood need to sleep?
‘Paragon!’ Clef warned him.
‘Slipping again,’ the ship announced, and our progress toward the other liveship was now unmistakable.
‘All hands!’ Clef roared abruptly. His whistle pierced the peaceful night. ‘All hands on deck!’
I heard shouts and the thudding of feet hitting the floor below decks and then Paragon saying, ‘Vivacia! I’m dragging anchor. Catch hold of me!’ Vivacia jerked to awareness, her head coming up and her eyes flashing wide. Paragon held out his arms to her in a plea and, after a moment, she reached toward him.
‘Mind my bowsprit!’ she cried, and narrowly they avoided that disaster. Paragon caught one of her hands and with an impressive display of strength pulled himself close to her. It set both ships rocking wildly and I heard cries of alarm from Vivacia’s crew. In a moment, Paragon embraced her with one arm despite her efforts to fend him off.
‘Be still!’ he warned her, ‘or you will tangle us hopelessly. I want to speak to you. And I want to touch you while I do so.’
‘Fend him off!’ she shouted to her crew who came running as she pushed futilely against his carved chest. Clef was shouting commands to his crew and someone was angrily cursing at him from Vivacia’s deck, demanding to know what sort of an idiot he was. Clef tried to shout an explanation while barking orders at his crew.
Paragon’s laugh boomed out over the cacophony, silencing them all. Except Vivacia. ‘Get him away from me!’ Vivacia barked her command. But Paragon only shifted his grip to the curls on the back of her head and bent her head backwards so that her bare breasts thrust up toward him. To my astonishment, he leaned down and kissed one. As she shrieked her outrage and seized his face in her nailed hands, he increased his grip upon her hair. With his free hand, he reached up and seized a handful of the lines that festooned her bowsprit. He paid no attention to her battering.
‘Don’t try to fend me off!’ he warned her crew. ‘Get away from the foredeck. All of you! Clef, order everyone back. And you, Vivacia’s crew, go back to your bunks. Unless Boy-O is among you. Send him to me if he’s there. If not, leave us alone!’ He bent his head again and tried to kiss Vivacia’s face, but she seized handfuls of his hair and tried to tear it from his scalp. He let her sink her hands into it, then abruptly made it harden into carved wood under her touch. ‘Do you think this wood feels pain?’ he demanded of her. ‘Not unless I will it to. But what do you feel when I kiss you? Do you recall Althea’s outrage when Kennit forced himself upon her? Did you keep that memory, or is it solely mine, her pain absorbed by me that she might heal? As I took Kennit’s pain at all Igrot did to him. Have you only human memories left to you? What do you feel, wooden ship? Or does a dragon still lurk in you? Once, you named yourself Bolt. Do you recall that? Do you recall the fury of a queen dragon when she rises in flight and defies all drakes to master her? What are you right now, Vivacia? A woman struggling against a man, or a queen dragon challenging her mate to master her?’
Abruptly she ceased her struggling, her features set into an aristocratic look of frozen disdain. Then, heedless of his grip on her hair, she rocked her head forward and stared at him with eyes that blazed with the true light of hatred. ‘Mad ship!’ she called him. ‘Pariah! What insanity is this? Will you sink yourself right here in Divvytown harbour? You are no fit mate for me, were I woman or dragon.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a boat lowered from the Vivacia and four men rowing furiously toward Divvytown, doubtless to alert someone and demand aid. If Paragon saw it go, he paid no attention to it.
‘Are you certain of that?’ As he spoke the words, I felt the change ripple through the ship.
‘I am certain,’ Vivacia said disdainfully. She turned her face away from him. ‘What do you want of me?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘I want you to recall that you are a dragon. Not a ship, not a servant to the humans who sail you, not a sexless being trapped in a woman’s form. A dragon. As am I.’ As he spoke, he was changing, resuming his semi-dragon form. I found I had crossed my arms tightly across my chest and raised my walls. Skill and Wit, I tried to contain myself, as prey does when a predator threatens. I saw the dark curling hair on his skull become a dragon’s scaled crest, watched as his neck grew longer and sinuous.
But most astonishing of all, I watched Vivacia’s face. H
er expression became stone. The light that shone from her eyes grew bright and harsh as she witnessed his transformation. She did not wince from him at all.
When his transformation was complete, when I felt the magic grow still, she spoke at last. ‘What makes you think I have ever forgotten that I am a dragon? But what of it? Would you have me cast aside the life I have yearning for what is lost? What life would I gain? That of a mad ship, chained to a beach, isolated and avoided?’ She ran her eyes over the transformed figurehead. ‘Or play at being a dragon? Pathetic.’
He did not flinch at her scorn. ‘You can be a dragon. As you were meant to be.’
Silence. Then, in a low voice that might have held hatred or been full of pity, she said, ‘You are mad.’
‘No, I am not. Set your human memories aside, set your time of being a ship aside. Reach back, past the long imprisonment in your case, past your time as a serpent. Can you recall being a dragon? At all?’
I thought I felt the magic moving again. Perhaps it flowed from ship to ship, from Paragon to Vivacia. I caught the edges of floating memories, as if I scented foreign food. I flew with wings over the forest; the wind filled my sails and I cut through the waves. I flew over valleys thick with green foliage but my eyes were keen and I could sense every waft of warmth from living flesh, flesh that I could feed on. I moved through water, cold and deep, but beneath me I could sense shadowy pulses of being, other creatures, scaled as I once had been, free as I once had been. I found I was edging forward, drawn into that world of wings and wonder. Stay out of his reach, I thought faintly and almost wondered if Nighteyes still lurked within me to give me that wolfish warning. But I had moved to where I could see the Vivacia’s face and a partial profile of Paragon. So human and so foreign were those faces.
‘No,’ Paragon said. ‘Go back farther. As far as you can reach. Here. This. Remember this!’
Again, I felt that surge of magic, Wit and Skill seamed into a tool sharper than any sword.
Once, during the battle of Antler Island, a man had hit me on the side of my head with the hilt of his sword. It had not stopped me, and my axe had already descended between the point of his shoulder and his head as he struck. The blow did not have a great deal of force, yet it made my ears ring and for a time the world wavered before me in odd colours. I knew it had happened, yet never had I recalled it. But as I was plunged into a dragon-memory it was as if Nettle had pulled me into a Skill-dream. The sensation was so similar that it awoke that old memory. I felt I reeled as from a blow, and I saw a pool of sparkling silver edged with black and silver sand, and beyond its edges, a meadow of black and silver grasses, and white-trunked trees with black leaves beyond that. I blinked my human eyes, trying to resolve it into familiar colours. Instead I saw a dragon, green as only gemstones are green, and as sparkling.
He came from the horizon, small at first and then looming larger and larger until he was the largest creature I’d ever seen—larger than Tintaglia or even IceFyre. He landed in the silver pond, sending up plumes of silver liquid that lapped and splashed against the black sand and rocks, coating them briefly with a layer of silver. The dragon plunged his head and serpentine neck into the stuff, wallowing and washing himself in it as if he were a swan. His scales seemed to absorb it, and the green grew dazzling. Groomed with it, he then lowered his muzzle to the water and drank and drank.
As he waded from the pool and composed himself for rest on the grassy bank, I had one long moment of looking into his whirling eyes. I saw age there. And wisdom. And a sort of glory I’d never seen in the eyes of a man. For a humbling instant, I knew that I looked upon a creature that was better than I would or could ever be.
‘Sir? Prince FitzChivalry?’
I started from my dream, feeling resentful. It was Per, tugging at my sleeve, his eyes wide and dark in the dimness. ‘What is it, boy?’ I wanted him to be gone. I wanted to plunge back into that world, to know that dragon and be the better for knowing him.
‘I thought you’d want to know. Our boat is coming, as fast as it can move, with Captains Althea and Brashen, and Amber and Spark and Lant. And someone from the other ship is coming, too.’
‘Thank you, lad.’ I turned away from him and tried to find an entry back into that magical dream. But either it was over or I had lost my way. I sensed the magic still streaming between the two liveships, but I could not enter to share it. Instead I saw only the two figureheads. Despite their bowsprits, they embraced as closely as they could, as if they were lovers denied intimacy for too long. Vivacia’s head rested on Paragon’s scaled chest, her eyes wide but unseeing. His longer neck had twined around her like a scarf and his dragon’s head rested on her shoulder. Her graceful hands rested on his shoulders. No enmity or uncertainty showed in her face. I could not read Paragon’s dragon visage to glimpse what he was feeling, but as I watched he changed. It was like watching the melting of river-ice when water swiftly erodes it. Slowly his features slipped back into his human configuration. His expression was tender as he embraced Althea. No, it was Vivacia he embraced so warmly. And suddenly I saw myself holding Molly, knowing a rare moment of peace and feeling loved and a terrible loss and longing welled in me.
I was caught up in this strange tableau until I heard Brashen’s voice. ‘What happened?’ he demanded. ‘How did Paragon get over here?’
‘He dragged anchor, sir.’ Clef’s reply was formal, mate to captain.
‘This was no trick of the tide or a bad anchor set,’ Althea said. ‘Paragon did this. For a reason.’ Her tone said she doubted the reason had any good purpose.
Brashen and Althea stood well clear of the figurehead’s reach, watching the stillness. It was Amber who moved past them, slipping free of Spark and Lant as if she too were a ship dragging anchor.
‘Amber. No, please,’ Althea pleaded but Amber did not pause. She stood well within Paragon’s reach and waited.
Vivacia lifted her head from Paragon’s shoulder and breathed a great sigh. ‘What we were. What we might have become. It’s lost to us, now. The young dragons, the serpents who hatched in Trehaug and live now in Kelsingra, they may become that again, a century hence. But not us. Never us.’
‘You are wrong.’ Paragon’s voice was an inhuman rumble. ‘Amber can help us get Silver. And with it, I believe we can gather enough of what we were to make ourselves what we ought to have been.’
The ships moved slightly apart, breaking their embrace to look at Amber. ‘It is not certain,’ she said. ‘And I will not make promises I may not be able to keep. The Silver, yes, I promise I will do all I can to obtain it for you. But will it be enough to transform you into dragons? I don’t know.’
‘And?’ Vivacia asked abruptly.
‘And what?’ Amber asked, startled.
Vivacia’s face resumed a more human cast. ‘And what do you ask of me in return? Traders made me what I am. Their blood and their thoughts have soaked into my deck and permeated every fibre of what I am. Nothing is free when you deal with humans. What do you want of me?’
‘Nothi—’ But Amber’s response vanished in Paragon’s heartfelt cry.
‘Boy-O! I want Boy-O on my decks for my last voyage.’ He wore my face again. Heart-struck, I wondered if I looked like that when I thought of regaining my child. Now, when he spoke, it was with a human heart. ‘Give me back what is truly mine. And Paragon Kennitsson! I want him as well. He was promised to me so often when Kennit was a lad on my decks. He said he would have a son and name him for me! So much I endured for his family, so much pain! Without me, he would never have existed! I want him. I want him to see me and know me as the ship of his family. Before I become dragons and leave him forever.’
‘Forever …’ I heard that forlorn whisper from Althea and knew that until now she had dared to hope that Paragon might change his mind, or at least keep some link to her and Brashen after he transformed.
‘Paragon!’ A shout from Vivacia’s deck, a welcoming cry in a man’s deep voice.
I sa
w a young man in his mid-twenties with a dense mop of curly dark hair and a ready grin. He was tanned to mahogany and his shirt strained at his wide shoulders. Anyone who had seen Brashen and Althea would know he was their son. He held a lantern aloft, and clearly he had not an inkling of what was going on. He regarded his home ship with joy.
‘Trellvestrit!’ someone shouted behind him, but Boy-O had already set down the lantern and scrambled up to Vivacia’s bowsprit. He ran lightly along it and then without hesitation threw himself toward Paragon. Paragon released Vivacia immediately. He caught and lofted the young man as I had once lifted Dutiful’s small sons; and, as I had then, feigned tossing him into the air before catching him securely once more. Agile as a tumbler, the man accepted this treatment and laughed aloud at being caught. Freeing himself of the ship’s grip, he climbed onto Paragon’s hands and then launched himself backwards, flipping in the air and landing again nimbly on the ship’s outstretched hands. Plainly it was a game from his childhood, one they both recalled with pleasure. Seldom had I seen that level of trust between any two creatures. Paragon could have torn Boy-O in half with his big wooden hands, but instead he held him at arm’s length and the two studied one another, the man grinning as he looked up at the ship’s face.
Unnoticed by me and perhaps also by Paragon, lines had been thrown to men in small rowing boats, and they were hauling Paragon in one direction and Vivacia in the other, swinging both on their anchor chains as they separated the two ships to a safe distance. I wondered if Boy-O had been aware of the plan, and then I wondered if Paragon cared. He had made his plea to Vivacia and had half of what he had requested, and the look on Boy-O’s face was one of fearless love for his ship. No wonder Paragon had missed him.