Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  It did not come out well. She had not taken a deep enough breath, perhaps. She threw her head back again, drew the wind into her lungs. “Sintara!” she trumpeted again, and as she did, she reared onto her hind legs and then sprang upward, stretching her wings.

  A dragon carries within her the memories of all her dragon lineage. They are not always in the forefront of her mind, but they are there to draw on, sometimes deliberately when seeking information, sometimes welling up unobtrusively in times of need. Perhaps that was why what happened next was so terrible. She lifted unevenly from the ground; one of her hind legs was stronger than the other. That was bad enough. But when she tried to correct it with her wings, only one opened. The other clung to itself, tangled and feeble, and unable to catch herself, she crashed to the muddy riverbank and lay there, bewildered, on her side. The physical impact was debilitating, but she was just as stunned by the certainty that, for as far back as her memories could reach, nothing like this had ever happened to any dragon in her lineage. She could not assimilate the experience at first; she had no guide to tell her what to expect next. She pushed with her stronger wing, but only succeeded in rolling onto her back, a most uncomfortable position for a dragon. Within moments, she felt the discomfort in the greater effort it took to breathe. She was also aware in a panicky way that she was extremely vulnerable in such a posture. Her long throat and her finely scaled belly were exposed. She had to get back on her feet.

  She kicked her hind feet experimentally, but felt no contact. Her smaller forelegs scrabbled uselessly at air. Her folded wing was partially pinned under her. She struggled, trying to use her wing to roll herself over, but the muscles did not answer her. Finally it was her lashing tail that propelled her onto her belly. She scrabbled to get her hind legs under her and then to surge upright. Sticky clay covered half her body. Anger fought with shame that any of her fellows had seen her in such a distressing position. She shuddered her hide, trying to rid it of the clinging mud as she glared all around herself.

  Only two other dragons had looked her way. As she recovered her footing and stared menacingly at them, they lost interest in her and diverted to another sprawled figure on the ground. That dragon had ceased moving. For a brief time the twain regarded him quizzically and then, comfortable that he was dead, they bent their heads to the feast. Sintara took two steps toward them and then halted, confused. Her instincts bade her go and feed. There was meat there, meat that could make her stronger, and in the meat there were memories. If she devoured him, she would gain strength for her body and the priceless experiences of a different dragon’s lineage. She could not be dissuaded because she herself had come so close to being that meat. All the more reason to feed and grow stronger.

  It was the right of the strong to feed on the weaker.

  But which was she?

  She lurched a step on her unevenly muscled legs, and then halted. She willed her wings to open. Only the good one unfurled. She felt the other twitch. She turned her head on her long neck, thinking to groom her wing into a better position. She stared. That was her wing, that stunted thing? It looked like a hairless deer hide draped over a winter-kill’s bones. It was not a dragon’s wing. It would never take her weight, never lift her in flight. She nudged at it with her nose, scarcely believing it could be part of her body. Her warm breath touched the flimsy, useless thing. She drew her nose back from it, horrified at the wrongness of it. Her mind spun, trying to make sense of it. She was Sintara, a dragon, a queen dragon, born to rule the skies. This deformity could not be a part of her. She riffled through her memories, pushing back and back, trying to find some thought, some recall of an ancestor who had had to deal with a disaster such as this. There were none.

  She looked again at the two feasters. Little was left of the weakling who had died. Some red glazed ribs, a sodden pile of entrails, and a section of tail. The weak had gone to sustain the strong. One of the feeding dragons became aware of her. He lifted his bloody red muzzle to bare his teeth and arch his crimson neck. “Ranculos!” he named himself, and with his name, he threatened her. His silver eyes seemed to shoot sparks at her.

  She should have withdrawn. She was crippled, a weakling. But the way he bared his teeth at her woke something in her. He had no right to challenge her. None at all. “Sintara!” she hissed back at him. “Sintara!”

  She took a step toward him and the remains of the carcass, and then a gust of wind slapped against her back. She spun about, lowering her head defensively, but it was Tintaglia returning, laden with new meat. The doe she dropped landed almost at Sintara’s feet. It was a very fresh kill, its eyes still clear and brown, and the blood still running from the deep wounds on its back. Sintara forgot Ranculos and the pitiful remains he guarded. She sprang toward the fallen doe.

  She had once more forgotten her uneven strength. She landed badly, but this time she caught herself in a crouch before she fell. With a lunge, she spread her forelegs over the kill. “Sintara!” she hissed. She hunched over the dead doe and roared a warning to any who would challenge her. It came out shrill and squawkish. Another humiliation. No matter. She had the meat, she and no other. She bent her head and savaged the doe, tearing angrily at its soft belly. Blood, meat, and intestines filled her jaws, comforting her. She clamped down on the carcass and worried it, as if to kill it again. When the flesh tore free, she threw her head back and gulped the mouthful down. Meat and blood. She lowered her head and tore another mouthful free. She fed. She would live.

  Day the 1st of the Greening Moon

  Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

  Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

  From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

  To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

  Detozi,

  Please release a flock of at least twenty-five of my birds even if you currently have no messages for them to carry. Message traffic to Trehaug was so heavy with Traders anxious to say they would attend the dragon hatch that my flocks are sorely depleted of carriers.

  Erek

  Chapter Three

  An Advantageous Offer

  Alise. You have a guest.”

  Alise lifted her eyes slowly. Her sketching charcoal hovered over the heavy paper on her desk. “Now?” she asked reluctantly.

  Her mother sighed. “Yes. Now. As in the ‘now’ that I have been telling you to expect all day. You knew that Hest Finbok was coming. You have known it since his last visit, last week at this same hour. Alise, his courtship honors you and our family. You should always receive him graciously. Yet whenever he calls, I have to come and ferret you out of hiding. I wish you would remember that when a young man comes to call on you, it is only polite to treat him respectfully.”

  Alise set down her charcoal. Her mother winced as Alise wiped her smudged fingers clean on a dainty kerchief embroidered with Sevian lace. It was a tiny act of vindictiveness. The kerchief had been a gift from Hest. “Not to mention that we must all remember that he is my only suitor, and therefore my only chance of wedding.” Her comment was almost too soft for her mother to hear. With a sigh, she added, “I’m coming, Mother. And I will be gracious.”

  Her mother was silent for a moment. “That is wise of you,” she said finally, adding in a voice that was cool but still gentle. “I am relieved to see that you have finally stopped sulking.”

  Alise could not tell if her mother was stating something she believed was true or was demanding that she accede to a dictation of deportment. She closed her eyes for an instant. Today, to the north, in the depths of the Rain Wilds, the dragons were emerging from their cases. Well, she amended to herself, today was the day appointed by Tintaglia for the leaves and debris to be swept away from them, so that the sunlight might touch them and stir them to wakefulness. Perhaps even now, as she sat at her tidy little desk in her pale room, surrounded by her tattered scrolls and feeble efforts at notes and sketching, dragons were tearing and shouldering their way out of
the cocoons.

  For a moment, she could imagine the whole scene: the verdant riverbank warmed by summer sunshine, the brilliantly hued dragons trumpeting joyously as they emerged into daylight. The Rain Wild Traders were probably heralding the hatching with all sorts of festivities. She imagined a dais decorated with garlands of exotic flowers. There would be speeches of welcome to the emerging dragons, song, and feasting. No doubt each dragon would parade before the dais, be joyously introduced, and then would open wide its glittering wings and lift off into the sky. These would be the first dragons to hatch in Sa knew how many years. Dragons had come back into the world . . . and here she was, trapped in Bingtown, shackled to a docile existence and subject to a courtship that baffled and annoyed her.

  Disappointment suddenly smothered her. She had dreamed of making the trip to witness the dragons’ hatching since she had first heard of the serpents encasing themselves. Alise had begged it of her father, and when he had said it might be improper for her to travel on her own, she had flattered and bribed her younger brother’s wife until she had persuaded Alise’s younger brother to promise to accompany her. She had secretly sold off items from her hope chest to amass the passage money she needed and pretended to her parents that she had been saving from the small monthly allowance they gave her. The precious billet for the trip was still wedged in the corner of her vanity mirror. For weeks, she had seen it every day, a stiff rectangle of cream-colored paper scribbled over with a clerk’s spidery handwriting attesting that she had paid full price for two round-trips. That bit of paper had represented a promise to herself. It had meant that she would see what she had read of; she would witness an event that would, that must change the course of history. She would sketch the scene and she would write of it authoritatively, tying all she witnessed to her years of scholarly research. Then everyone would have to recognize her knowledge and ability and concede that although she might be self-educated on the matter, she was certainly far more than an eccentric old maid obsessed with dragons and their Elderling companions. She was a scholar.

  She would have something that belonged to her, something salvaged out of the miserable existence that life in Bingtown had become. Even before war had descended, her family’s fortune had been scraping bottom. They lived simply, in a modest manor house on the unfashionable edges of Bingtown. No grand park surrounded their home, only a humble rose garden tended by her sisters. Her father made his living by expediting trades between wealthier families. When war came and trading faltered, there was little profit for a go-between. She was, she knew, a plain, solid girl, from a plain, solid family ensconced firmly toward the lower end of the Bingtown Traders’ social ladder. She had never been anyone’s idea of a “good catch.” It had not brightened her forecast when her mother had delayed her debut into society until her eighteenth year. She’d understood the reasons: her family had been arranging and financing her older sister’s wedding. They’d had nothing to spare to launch yet another daughter. When, finally, she had been presented to Trader society three years ago, no man had raced to claim her from the butterfly mob of young girls. Three crops of Bingtown femininity had been released into the pool of eligible maidens since then, and with every passing year, her prospects of courtship and marriage had dimmed.

  The war with Chalced had obscured them entirely. Her mind shied from recalling those nights of fire and smoke and screams. Chalcedean vessels had invaded the harbor and burned the warehouses and half the market square to the ground. Bingtown, the fabled and fabulous trade town where “if a man could imagine it, he could find it for sale,” had become a city of stinking ruins and sodden ash. If the dragon Tintaglia had not come to their aid, like as not, Alise and her entire family would be tattooed slaves somewhere in Chalced by now. As it was, the invaders had been repelled, and the Traders had formed a rough alliance with the Pirate Isles. Jamaillia, their motherland, had come to its senses and seen that Chalced was not an ally but a plundering nation of thieves. Today, Bingtown Harbor was clear of invaders, the city had begun to rebuild, and life had begun a hesitant return to routine. She knew she should have been grateful that her family’s home had escaped burning, and that their holdings, several farms that grew mostly root crops, were now producing food that was greatly in demand.

  But the truth was, she wasn’t. Oh, not that she wished to be living in a half-burned hovel or sleeping in a ditch. No. But for a few frightening, exhilarating weeks, she had thought she might escape from her role as the third daughter in a lesser Bingtown family. The night Tintaglia had landed outside the burned shell of the Traders’ Concourse and struck her bargain with the Traders, offering her protection of their city in exchange for the Traders’ pledge to aid the serpents and the young dragons when they hatched, Alise’s heart had soared. She had been there. She had stood, shawl clutched about her shoulders, shivering in the dark, and listened to the dragon’s words. She had seen the great creature’s gleaming hide, her spinning eyes, and yes, she had fallen under the spell of Tintaglia’s voice and glamour. She had fallen gladly. She loved the dragon and all that she stood for. Alise could think of no higher calling than to spend the rest of her life chronicling the history of dragons and Elderlings. She would combine what she knew of their history with her recording of their glorious return to the world. On that night, in that moment, Alise had suddenly perceived she had a place and a mission in the world. In that time of flames and strife, anything had seemed possible, even that someday the dragon Tintaglia would look at her and address her directly and, perhaps, even thank her for dedicating herself to such a work.

  Even in the weeks that followed, as Bingtown pieced itself back together and struggled to find a new normalcy, Alise had continued to believe that the horizons of her life had widened. The Tattooed, the freed slaves, had begun to mingle with the Three Ships folk and with the Traders as all united to rebuild Bingtown’s economy and physical structures. People—even women—had left their usual safe orbits and pitched in, doing whatever they must to rebuild. She knew that war was a terrible, destructive thing and that she should hate it, but the war had been the only really exciting thing that had ever happened in her life.

  She should have known her dreams would come to naught. As homes and businesses were rebuilt, as trade took on a new shape despite war and piracy, everyone else had tried desperately to make things go back as they were before. Everyone except Alise. Having glimpsed a possible future for herself, she had struggled wildly to escape from the suffocating destiny that sought to reclaim her.

  Even when Hest Finbok had first begun to insinuate himself into her life, she had kept her focus on her dream. Her mother’s enthusiasm and her father’s quiet pride that the family’s wallflower had finally attracted not only a suitor but such a rare prize of a suitor had not distracted her from her plan. Let her mother flutter and her father beam. She knew Hest’s interest in her would come to nothing, and thus she had paid little mind to it. She was past pinning her hopes on such silly, girlish dreams.

  The Traders’ Summer Ball was only two days away now. It would be the first event to be held in the newly rebuilt Traders’ Concourse. All of Bingtown was in a stir about it. Representatives and guests from the Tattooed and the Three Ships folk would join the Bingtown Traders in commemorating the rejuvenation of their city. Despite the ongoing war, it was expected to be a celebration beyond anything Bingtown had ever experienced, the first time that the general population of Bingtown had been invited to the traditional event. Alise had given it little thought, for she had not expected to attend it. She had her ticket for her trip to the Rain Wilds. While other eligible women fluttered their fans and spun gaily on the dance floor, she would be in Cassarick, watching a new generation of dragons emerge from their cocoons.

  But two weeks ago Hest Finbok had asked her father’s permission to escort her to the ball. Her father had given it. “And having given it, my girl, I can scarcely withdraw it! How could I imagine that you would want to go up the Rain Wild River to see some
big lizards hatch rather than go to the Summer Ball on the arm of one of Bingtown’s most eligible bachelors?” He had smiled proudly the day he had dashed her dream to pieces, so sure he had known what was truly in her heart. Her mother had said that she had never even imagined that her father should consult her on such a matter. Didn’t she trust her parents to do what was in her best interest?

  If she had not been strangling on her dismay and disappointment, Alise might have given her father and her mother a response to that. Instead she had turned and fled the room. For days afterward she had mourned the lost opportunity. Sulked, as her mother put it. It hadn’t deterred her mother from calling in seamstresses, and buying up every measure of rose silk and pink ribbon that remained in Bingtown. No expense would be spared for her dress. What did it matter that Alise’s dream had died in the egg, if they had theirs of finally marrying off their useless and eccentric second younger daughter? Even in this time of war and tightened budgets, they would spend feverishly in hopes of being not only rid of her but also gaining an important trade alliance. Alise had been sick with disappointment. Sulking, her mother called it. Was she finished with it?