The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  She touched them briefly with her mind, a final time. They had not long to live. The female struggled like a beetle in a puddle, floating and flailing against moving water. Reyn Khuprus was where she had left him, mired in mud and squirming like a worm. He struggled in the self-same chamber where she had languished for so many years.

  The brevity of their lives suddenly touched her. In the momentary twinkling of their existence, each of them had tried to aid her. Each had taken time from their mate quest to try to free her. Poor little bugs. It was a small cost to her, these few moments out of the vast store of years to come. She turned a lazy loop in the sweet summer air. Then with strong, steady beats of her wings, she drove herself back towards the buried city.

  ‘I’m coming!’ she called to them both. ‘Don’t fear. I’ll save you.’

  40

  THE MEMORY OF WINGS

  ‘WE KNOW WHERE we are going, and why. Why must we push ourselves so hard, swimming so swiftly and for so much of the day?’ The slender green minstrel was limp in the grasp of the tangle. He lacked even the strength to return the grip of the other serpents. He trusted them to hold him as he swayed in the moving current like seaweed. Shreever pitied him. She lapped another coil of her length around his frail body and held him more securely.

  ‘I think,’ she bugled softly, ‘that Maulkin drives us so hard because he fears that our memories may fade again. We must reach our goal before we lose our purpose. Before we forget where we go, and why we go there.’

  ‘There is more to it than that,’ Sessurea added. He, too, sounded weary. But there was a lilt of pleasure in his voice. There was such comfort in knowing the answer. ‘The seasons are turning. We are nearer the end of summer than the beginning. We should have been there by now.’

  ‘We should even now be wrapped in silt and memories, letting the sun bake our memories into us while we make our change,’ Kelaro added.

  ‘Our cases must be hard and strong before the rains come and the chill of winter. Otherwise, we may perish before we have completed our metamorphosis,’ scarlet Sylic reminded them all.

  The other serpents in the tangle added their voices, speaking low to one another. ‘The water must still be warm for the threads to form best.’

  ‘Sunlight and warmth are needed for the shell to be hard.’

  ‘It must bake through, solid and firm, before the change can begin.’

  Maulkin opened his great eyes. His false-eyes shimmered gold with pleasure. ‘Sleep and rest, little ones,’ he told them blandly, ignoring the fact that several of the serpents were far larger than he was, and many were his equal. ‘Dream well and take comfort in all we know. Speak of it to one another. Sharing the memories Draquius gave us will help us to preserve them.’

  They trumpeted their agreements softly as they wrapped and secured one another. The tangle had grown. In the wake of Draquius’ sacrifice, many of the feral serpents had shown signs of returning memory. Some still did not speak. Nevertheless, from time to time intelligence flashed briefly in their eyes, and they behaved as if they were a true part of the tangle, even to joining the others at rest. There was comfort in greater numbers. When they met other serpents now, the outsiders either avoided Maulkin’s tangle or followed and gradually became a part of them. Maulkin had confided to them the hope that when they reached the river and migrated up to the cocooning grounds, even the most bestial might feel the stir of memories.

  Shreever lidded her eyes and sank down to dream. That was another recovered pleasure. In her dreams, she flew again, as she recalled her forebears had done. In her dreams, she had already changed to a fine dragon, with the freedom of the three realms.

  ‘But do not become overly confident in these memories,’ Maulkin abruptly added. He did not proclaim it loudly. Only she, Sessurea, and a few others closest to him opened their eyes to his voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Shreever asked him in dread. Had not they suffered enough? Now they remembered. What was to stop them from reaching their goal?

  ‘Nothing is quite right,’ Maulkin said quietly. ‘Nothing is as it was, nothing is exactly as it should be. We must swim fast and well, to allow ourselves time to overcome obstacles along the way. Be assured, there will be obstacles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sessurea asked plaintively, but Shreever thought she already knew. She kept silent and listened to the prophet’s reply.

  ‘Look around you,’ he bade them. ‘What do you see?’

  Sessurea spoke for them all. ‘I see the Plenty. I see the remains of old structures tumbled on the seafloor. I see the Arch of Rythos in the distance…’

  ‘And is not the Arch of Rythos, in all your memories, a pleasant place to perch after an afternoon of flying about the Lack. Did not it stand tall and proud at the entrance to Rythos Harbour? Why is it scattered and broken and swallowed by the Plenty?’

  No one replied. All waited for his answer.

  ‘I do not know either,’ Maulkin rumbled softly when the silence had grown long. ‘However, I suspect that these things are what have long confused us. They are why things were almost familiar, why we could nearly recall the way, and yet could not.’

  ‘Is the fault ours alone?’ Tellur demanded. Shreever had thought the slender green minstrel was asleep. His tired voice had an indignant ring to it. ‘The memories that Draquius bequeathed to us tell us that we should look for serpents who remember, ones in whom the memories have remained clean and strong. Not only those ones, but also guides are supposed to assist us. Where are the grown dragons that should have stood guard at the river mouths, to protect us as we swarm? Why have we seen nothing of the generation that went before us?’

  Maulkin’s voice went soft with pity. ‘Have not you grasped it, Tellur? Draquius told us what became of them. Some perished in the rain of smoke and ash. Those few who had a chance at survival were slain and their memories stolen. They are the silver ones we have encountered from time to time. They smell to us like Ones Who Remember, because at one time they were. All that is left is their stolen memories.’

  For a moment, all was silence. Slowly the sick realization settled into Shreever. This tangle was all that was left. They had to survive, on their own, if their species was to continue. They must puzzle out for themselves which river led to the cocooning grounds. They must defy predators to swarm up the river. Somehow, they must create their own cases, without the loving aid of grown dragons. And, once encased and helpless, they would have to trust to luck to survive the winter. There would be no dragons standing watch over them. Her gaze travelled from serpent to serpent. How many of those tangled here would spread their dragon wings next spring? Would there be enough survivors to select suitable mates when the time came? How many would survive to guard the nests until the eggs hatched? When the young serpents wriggled from the beach to the sea, to begin their first cycle of migrating and feeding in the sea, there would be no grown serpents to teach them the ways of the sea. The odds against the survival of her kind suddenly seemed insurmountable. If she survived to become a dragon, she faced a long, long life of watching dragons and sea serpents vanish from the three realms. How could it be endured?

  ‘They belonged to us,’ Tellur declared bluntly.

  ‘What does?’ Shreever asked distantly. The future, she thought to herself. The tomorrows belonged to us. No longer.

  ‘The memories. The memories stored in the silver ones. They are ours, and having them makes us stronger.’ He suddenly broke free of the tangle with a lash of his tail. ‘We should take them back!’

  ‘Tellur.’ Maulkin gently untangled himself from the others. He moved to flank the smaller serpent without challenging him. ‘We do not have time to take vengeance.’

  ‘Not vengeance! I am talking of taking what is rightfully ours, what is greater sustenance to us than the food we eat. The memories were shared amongst us. What one should have possessed was divided amongst many; nevertheless, we became wiser, and each has shared what was learned. How much more would
we benefit from a greater portion of those memories? We should seek them out and take back what is ours.’

  Swifter than a school of herring changes direction, Maulkin wrapped him. He had glided up to the small minstrel so easily and calmly that Tellur had never seen it coming. Maulkin’s golden eyes twined about Tellur’s green coat, and his great head wound up face to face with Tellur’s small one. Maulkin opened wide his jaws, and breathed a fine mist of toxin at the minstrel. Dominated, the smaller serpent became quiescent in his coils. Tellur’s eyes spun in lazy dreams.

  ‘We have no time for that,’ Maulkin asserted quietly to all of them as he towed his lax companion back to the tangle. ‘If the opportunity to take another silver presents itself, we shall have it. That I promise you. But we cannot delay our migration to seek them. Rest well, Maulkin’s tangle, for tomorrow we press on.’

  Tomorrow, Shreever thought to herself as the tangle writhed, coiled and re-anchored itself. There is yet another tomorrow that is ours. She lidded her eyes against silt and let herself dream of wings.

  She was crippled. She would never swim as easily as a dragon riding an updraught. She had been kept too long in confinement and fed too restricted a diet. She could not straighten her body to its full length, stunted though that was. She was heavy and thick where she should have been sleek and muscular. Perhaps it was permanent, perhaps it was hopeless.

  But without doubt she was free.

  And without doubt or regret, she had slain the Abominations who had imprisoned her. Never would they torment another young serpent as they had tormented her. She wished she could kill them over and over again, endlessly, and forever take satisfaction in the act. Even as she desired it, she recognized it as yet another of the deformities they had inflicted on her. She tried to cast it out of herself.

  She had seen the little two-legs taken up in a rowboat, and then followed it protectively until it was taken up by a greater vessel. The scent of the ship troubled her. It smelled like a serpent, and yet it was not. Moreover, it smelled like One Who Remembered, and yet it was a tongueless thing that answered her not. She did not want to consider how that could be. The answers could be hidden in the boy’s knowledge that she had shared so briefly. She considered taking the time to follow the ship and work these things out.

  But a greater urgency beckoned her. After all the seasons of imprisonment, fate had freed her. She was destined to be a guide to her own kind, yet here she was, still close to the beach where she had hatched. She had not migrated with them; she had not fed with them and grown in bulk, as she should have. Yet as twisted and stunted as she might be, she still held that which was most essential to them. In her glands and toxins resided the ancient knowledge of her race. It was to be shared with them, before they swarmed up the river to begin their change. As she humped and writhed through the water, she doubted that she herself could make the arduous journey up the river. Yet she would seek out the others and share with them the stored memories.

  She came briefly up into the Lack, tasting the free salt-wind. On the deck of the silver vessel, men cried out at the sight of her. She dived swiftly again and made her decision. The silver ship was bound back toward the islands. Beyond the islands was the mainland, and in the mainland was the mouth of the river that led to the cocooning grounds. That was her destination. She would stay alongside the silver vessel as long as their paths lay in the same direction. There was something, perhaps, to be learned here. Besides, she was intrigued with the small, thinking animals on the ship. She would study them. When at last she rejoined whatever remained of her own kind, she would have memories of her own to share as well. Let her confined life offer at least that much to her kind. She Who Remembered dived deep and tried to stretch her crippled muscles. As she returned almost to the surface, she found that position where the wake of the ship helped draw her along after it. She settled into it, and continued towards her destiny.

  Copyright

  HarperVoyager

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published in Great Britain by Voyager 1999

  Copyright © Robin Hobb 1999

  The paperback edition 2008 (15)

  Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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  EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780007383474

  Version 2

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  THE SHIP Of DESTINY

  Book III THE LIVESHIP TRADERS

  Robin Hobb

  Dedication:

  This one is for Jane Johnson and Anne Groell. For caring enough to insist that I get it right.

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  SUMMER’S END

  PROLOGUE SHE WHO REMEMBERS

  1 THE RAIN WILDS

  2 TRADERS AND TRAITORS

  3 WINTROW

  4 TINTAGLIA’S FLIGHT

  5 PARAGON AND PIRACY

  6 AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN

  7 DRAGON SHIP

  8 LORDS OF THE THREE REALMS

  9 BATTLE

  10 TRUCES

  11 BODIES AND SOULS

  WINTER

  12 ALLIANCES

  13 SURVIVING

  14 DIVVYTOWN

  15 SERPENT SHIP

  16 TINTAGLIA’S BARGAIN

  17 BINGTOWN NEGOTIATIONS

  18 LOYALTIES

  19 STRATEGIES

  20 PRISONERS

  21 PARAGON OF THE LUDLUCKS

  22 FAMILY REUNION

  23 FLIGHTS

  24 TRADER FOR THE VESTRIT FAMILY

  25 REFITTING

  26 COURTSHIP

  27 KEY ISLAND

  28 DRAGON DREAMS

  29 KENNIT’S WOMEN

  30 CONVER GENCE

  31 BARGAINING CHIPS

  32 AN ULTIMATUM

  33 SHIP OF DESTINY

  34 RESCUES

  35 HARD DECISIONS

  36 SECRETS

  37 A DRAGON’S WILL

  SPRING

  38 JAMAILLIA CITY

  39 BINGTOWN

  40 THE RAIN WILD RIVER

  EPILOGUE METAMORPHOSIS

  PRAISE

  COPYRIGHT

  Map

  SUMMER’S END

  PROLOGUE

  SHE WHO REMEMBERS

  SHE WONDERED WHAT it would have been like to be perfect.

  On the day that she had hatched, she had been captured before she could wriggle over the sand to the cool and salty embrace of the sea. She Who Remembers was doomed to recall every detail of that day with clarity. It was her entire function and the reason for her existence. She was a vessel for memories. Not just her own life, from the moment when she began forming in the egg, but the linked lives of those who had gone before her were nested inside her. From egg to serpent to cocoon to dragon to egg, all memory of her line was hers. Not every serpent was so gifted, or so burdened. Only a relative few were imprinted with the full record of their species, but only a few were needed.

  She had begun perfect. Her tiny, smooth body, lithe and scaled, had been flawless. She had cut her way out of the leathery shell with the egg tooth atop her snout. She was a late hatcher. Th
e others in her clutch had already broken free of their shells and the heaped dry sand. They had left their wallowing trails for her to follow. The sea had beckoned her insistently. Every lap of every wave beguiled her. She had begun her journey, slithering across the dry sand under the beating sun. She had smelled the wet tang of the ocean. The moving light on its dazzling surface had lured her.

  She had never finished her journey.

  The Abominations had found her. They had surrounded her, interposing their heavy bodies between her and the beckoning ocean. Plucked wriggling from the sand, she had been imprisoned in a tide-fed pool inside a cave in the cliffs. There they had kept her, feeding her only dead food and never allowing her to swim free. She had never migrated south with the others to the warm seas where food was plentiful. She had never achieved the bulk and strength that a free life would have granted her. Nevertheless, she grew, until the pool in the cave was little more than a cramped puddle to her, a space barely sufficient to keep her skin and gills wet. Her lungs were pinched always inside her folded coils. The water that surrounded her was constantly befouled with her poisons and wastes. The Abominations had kept her prisoner.

  How long had they confined her there? She could not measure it, but she felt certain that she had been captive for several ordinary lifetimes of her kind. Time and again, she had felt the call of the season of migration. A restless energy would come over her followed by a terrible desire to seek out her own kind. The poison glands in her throat would swell and ache with fullness. There was no rest for her at such times, for the memories permeated her and clamoured to be released. She had shifted restlessly in the torment of her small pool and vowed endless revenge against the Abominations who held her so. At such times, her hatred of them was most savage. When her overflowing glands flavoured the water with her ancestral memories, when the water became so toxic with the past that her gasping gills poisoned her with history, then the Abominations came. They came to her prison, to draw water from her pool and inebriate themselves with it. Drunken, they prophesied to one another, ranting and raving in the light of the full moon. They stole the memories of her kind, and used them to extrapolate the future.