by Robin Hobb
The soft-bodied little sacks of seawater that were supposed to tend the dragons now chattered and complained constantly about their simple tasks. They performed those duties so poorly that she and her fellows lived in abject misery. They deceived no one. They took no pleasure in tending the dragons. All the hairless tree monkeys truly thought about was despoiling Cassarick. The remains of the ancient Elderling city were buried nearly under the hatching grounds. They would plunder it as they had the buried city at Trehaug. Not only had they stripped it of its ornaments and carried off objects that they could not possibly comprehend, they had slain all but one of the dragons that the Elderlings had dragged into the dubious safety of their city right before that ancient catastrophe. Anger burned through her afresh as she thought of it.
Even now, some of the “liveships” built from “wizardwood logs” still existed, still served humans as dragon spirits incarnated into ship bodies. Even now, the humans pleaded ignorance as an excuse for the terrible slaughter they had wrought. When Sintara thought of the dragons who had waited so many years to hatch, only to be tumbled half formed from their cases onto the cold stone floor, she swelled with anger. She felt her poison sacs fill and harden in her throat, and agitation swept through her. The humans deserved to die for what they had done, every one of them.
From beside her, Mercor spoke. Despite his size and apparent physical strength, he seldom spoke or asserted himself in any way. A terrible sadness seemed to enervate him, draining him of all ambition and drive. When he did speak, the others found themselves pausing in whatever they were doing to listen to him. Sintara could not know what the others felt, but it annoyed her that she felt both drawn toward him and guilty about his great sadness. His voice made her memory itch, as if when he spoke, she should recall wonderful things but could not. Tonight he said only, in his deep and sonorous voice, “Sintara. Let it go. Your anger is useless without a proper focus.”
It was another thing he did that bothered her. He spoke as if he could know her thoughts. “You know nothing of my anger,” she hissed at him.
“Don’t I?” He shifted miserably in the muddy wallow where they slept. “I can smell your fury, and I know that your sacs swell with poison.”
“I want to sleep!” Kalo rumbled. His words were sharp with irritation, but not even he dared to confront Mercor directly.
On the edge of the huddled group of dragons, one of the small dim-witted ones, probably the green who could barely drag himself around, squeaked in his sleep. “Kelsingra! Kelsingra! There, in the distance!”
Kalo lifted his head on his long neck and roared in the green’s direction, “Be silent! I wish to sleep!”
“You do sleep, already,” Mercor replied, impervious to the big blue’s anger. “You sleep so deeply that you no longer dream.” He lifted his head. He was not bigger than Kalo, but it was still a challenge. “Kelsingra!” he suddenly trumpeted into the night.
All the dragons stirred. “Kelsingra!” he bellowed again, and Sintara’s keen hearing picked up the distant fluting cries of humans disturbed from their evening slumber. “Kelsingra!”
Mercor threw the name of the ancient city up to the distant stars. “Kelsingra, I remember you! We all do, even those who wish we did not! Kelsingra, home of the Elderlings, home of the well of the silver waters and the wide stone plazas baking in the summer heat. The hillsides above the city teemed with game. Do not mock that one who dreams of you still. Kelsingra!”
“I want to go to Kelsingra. I want to lift my wings and fly again.” A voice rose from somewhere in the night.
“Wings. Fly! Fly!” The words were muffled and ill formed, but the longing of the dim-witted dragon who uttered them filled them with feeling.
“Kelsingra,” someone else groaned.
Sintara lowered her head, tucking it in close to her chest. She was shamed for them and shamed for herself. They sounded like penned cattle lowing before the slaughter begins. “Then go there,” she muttered in disgust. “Just leave and go there.”
“Would that we could.” Mercor spoke the words with true longing. “But the way is long, even if we had wings that would bear us. And the path is uncertain. As serpents, we could barely find our way home. How much stranger must the land be now that lies between us and the place where Kelsingra used to be?”
“Used to be,” Kalo repeated. “So much used to be, and no longer is. It is useless to speak or think of any of it. I want to go back to sleep.”
“Useless, perhaps, but nonetheless, we do speak of it. And some of us still dream of it. Just as some of us still dream of flying, and killing our own meat and battling for mates. Some of us still dream of living. You do not want to sleep, Kalo. You want to die.”
Kalo twitched as if struck by an arrow. Sintara felt the big dragon stiffen, sensed how his poison sacs suddenly swelled. A few moments ago, she had thought that resting between the two large males had been a place of safety. Now she perceived that she was in the thick of the danger, trapped between Sestican and Mercor. Kalo lifted his head high and glared down on Mercor. If he spat acid now, Mercor would be helpless to avoid it. And she would also be caught in the spray. She hunched her shoulders uselessly.
But Kalo spoke rather than exhaled poison. “Do not speak to me, Mercor. You know nothing of what I think or feel.”
“Don’t I? I know more of you than you recall yourself, Kalo.” Mercor suddenly threw his head back and bellowed. “I know you all! All of you! And I mourn what you are because I remember what you were and I know what you were meant to be!”
“Quiet! We’re trying to sleep!” This was no bellow of an outraged dragon, but the shrill cry of a frustrated human. Kalo turned his head toward the source of the sound and gave a roar of fury. Sestican, Ranculos, and Mercor suddenly echoed him. When that blast of sound died away, a few of the dimmer dragons on the edge of the herd imitated it.
“You be silent!” Kalo trumpeted up at the human dwellings. “Dragons speak when they wish to speak! You have no control over us!”
“Ah, but they do,” Mercor said quietly. The very softness of his words seemed to bring all attention to him.
Kalo turned his head sharply. “You, perhaps, are controlled by humans. I am not.”
“You do not, then, eat when they feed you? You do not remain here, where they have corralled us? You do not accept the future they plan for us, that we will remain here, dependent upon them, until we slowly die off and stop being a nuisance to them?”
Sintara found that, against her will, she was listening raptly to his words. They were frightening and challenging at the same time. When his voice stopped, the quieter sounds of the evening flowed in. She listened to the river lapping at the muddy shore, to the distant noises of humans and birds settling in the trees for the night, and to the sounds of dragons breathing. “What should we do then?” she heard herself ask.
All heads turned toward her. She did not look at anyone except Mercor. The night had stolen the colors from his scales, but she could make out his gleaming black eyes. “We should leave,” he said quietly. “We should leave here and try to find our way to Kelsingra. Or to anywhere that is better than this.”
“How?” Sestican abruptly demanded. “Shall we knock down the trees that hem us in? Humans can slip between their trunks and find pathways through the swamp. But if you have not noticed, we are slightly larger than humans. Gresok went blundering off, going not where he willed but only where the trees would permit him passage. There is no escape that way, only swamp and dimness and starvation. And poorly fed as we are, at least the humans bring us something to eat each day. If we left here, we’d starve.”
“There’s no need for us to starve at all. We should eat the humans,” someone on the edge of the herd suggested.
“Be quiet if you cannot make sense,” Sestican retorted. “If we eat the humans, once they are gone, we are still trapped here, with no food.”
“They want us to leave.” Kalo spoke suddenly, startling everyone.
“Who does?” Mercor demanded.
“The humans. Their Rain Wild Council sent a man to speak. One of the feeders asked me to talk with him. He told the Council man that I am the biggest of the dragons and therefore the leader. So he spoke to me. He wanted to know if I knew when or even if Tintaglia would return. I told him I did not. Then he said that they were very upset that someone had eaten a corpse out of the river, and that someone else had chased a worker down into the tunnels that go to the buried city. And he said they were running out of ways to feed us. He said that his hunters have hunted out all the large meat for miles around, and that the fish runs are nearly over for the year. He said the Council wishes us to call Tintaglia, to let her know that the Council demands that she return to help them solve this difficulty.”
In the darkness, several of the dragons snorted with contempt for such foolishness.
Mercor spoke with disdain. “Call Tintaglia. As if she would respond to us. Kalo, why did you not speak of this before?”
“They told me nothing that we do not all know already. Why bother repeating it? They are the ones who refuse to accept what they already know. Tintaglia’s not coming back,” Kalo confirmed bitterly. “She has no reason to. She has found a mate. Together they are free to fly and hunt wherever they will. In a decade or two, when her time is ripe, she will lay her eggs and when they hatch, there will be a new generation of serpents growing. She has no need of us any longer. She only helped us stay alive because we were her last resort. And now we are not. If Tintaglia had had a mate at the time we emerged from our cases, she would have despised us. She knows as well as we all do that we are not fit to live.”
“But live we do!” Mercor broke in angrily on Kalo’s rant. “And dragons we are. Not slaves, not pets. Nor are we cattle, for humans to slaughter and butcher and sell off to the highest bidder.”
Sestican flared the diminutive spikes on his neck. “Who even dares think of such a thing!”
“Oh, let us not be fools as well as cripples,” Mercor returned sarcastically. “There are plenty of humans who are unable to comprehend us when we speak to them. And some of them judge us little more than beasts, and unhealthy ones at that. I’ve overheard their words; there are those who would buy our flesh, our scales, our teeth, any parts of our bodies for their elixirs and potions. What do you think happened to that poor fool Gresok? Kalo and Ranculos know, even if Kalo chooses to pretend ignorance. Humans killed him, thinking to butcher him for trophies. They did not know we would be able to sense him dying. How many of them were there, Kalo? Enough humans to make you a good meal even after you’d devoured Gresok?”
“There were three.” Ranculos was the one who spoke. “Three we caught, and one who fled.”
“Were they Rain Wilders?” Mercor demanded.
Ranculos blew out a snort of disdain. “I did not ask them. They were guilty of slaying a dragon, and I saw that they paid for it.”
“A pity we do not know. We might have a better idea of how much we can trust the Rain Wilders if we knew. Because we are going to need their help, much as it distresses me to say so.”
“Their help? Their help is next to worthless. They bring us food that is half rotted or merely the scraps of their kill. And there is never enough of it. What can humans help us with?”
Mercor’s reply was deceptively placid. “They can help us go to Kelsingra.”
A chorus of dragons replied all at once.
“Kelsingra may not even exist anymore.”
“We don’t know where it is. Our memories are of small use in finding our way there. We could not have found our way here to the cocooning grounds unassisted. Everything is changed.”
“Why would humans help us go to Kelsingra?”
“Kelsingra! Kelsingra! Kelsingra!” prattled the depraved dragon at the edge of the huddle.
“Make that fool be silent!” Kalo roared, and there was a sudden yelp of pain as someone did just that. “Why would humans help us go to Kelsingra?” he repeated.
“Because we would make them think it was their own idea. Because we would make them want to take us there.”
“How? Why?”
It was full dark now. Even Sintara’s keen eyes could not see Mercor’s face, but his amusement filled his voice. “We would make them greedy. You have seen how willingly they dig and delve here in the hopes of unearthing Elderling treasure. We would tell them that Kelsingra was three times the size of Cassarick and that the Elderling treasury was there.”
“Elderling treasury?” Kalo asked.
“We would lie to them,” Mercor explained patiently. “To make them want to take us there. We know they want to be rid of us. If we leave it to them, they will let us slowly starve to death or leave us living in our own filth until disease claims us. This way, we offer them the chance to be rid of us, and to profit at the same time. They will be willing to help us, because they will think we are guiding them to riches.”
“But we don’t know the way,” Kalo bellowed in frustration. “And if they knew of an Elderling city to plunder, they would have done so by now. So they don’t know where Kelsingra is either.” He lowered his voice and added dismally, “Everything is changed, Mercor. Kelsingra may be buried under mud and trees just as Trehaug and Cassarick are now. Even if we could find our way back to it, what good would it do us?”
“Kelsingra was at a much higher elevation than either Trehaug or Cassarick. Do not you recall the view from the mountain cliffs behind the city? Perhaps the mud that flowed and buried these cities did not cover Kelsingra. Or perhaps it was upstream of the mudflow. Anything is possible. It is even conceivable that Elderlings survived there. Not dragons, no, for if any of the dragons had lived, we would have heard them by now. But the city may still be there, and the fertile croplands, and the plain beyond teeming with antelope and other herd beasts. It may all be there, just waiting for us to return.”
“Or nothing might be there,” Kalo replied sourly.
“Well, nothing is what we have here, so what do we have to lose?” Mercor demanded stolidly.
“Why do we need the humans’ help at all?” Sintara asked into the quiet. “If we wish to go to Kelsingra, why don’t we just go?”
“As humiliating as it is to admit it, we will require their help. Some of us are barely able to limp about this mudflat. None of us can hunt enough to sustain ourselves. We are dragons, and we are meant to be free to the land and the sky. Without healthy bodies and the use of our wings, we cannot hunt. Some fish we can catch for ourselves, when the runs are thick. But we need humans to hunt for us, and to help those of us who are feeble of body or mind.”
“Why not just leave the weaklings behind?” Kalo asked.
Mercor snorted his disgust for such an idea. “And let the humans butcher them and sell off their parts? Let them discover that, yes, dragon liver does have amazing healing powers when dried and fed to a human? Let them discover the elixir in our blood? Let them discover what wondrous sharp tools they can make from our claws? Let them find that, yes, those myths have a sound basis in reality? And then, in no time at all, they would come after us. No, Kalo. No dragon, no matter how feeble, is prey for a human. And we are too few to discard so casually any of our race. Nor can we afford to abandon them as meat or as a source of memories for the rest of us. On that we must be united. So when we go, we must take every dragon with us. And we must demand that humans accompany us, to help provide meat for us until we reach a place where we can provide for ourselves.”
“And where might that be?” Sestican demanded sourly.
“Kelsingra. At best. A place more congenial to dragons, with better hunting, at worst.”
“We don’t know the way.”
“We know it isn’t here,” Mercor replied tranquilly. “We know Kelsingra was along the river and upstream of Cassarick. So, we begin by going up the river.”
“The river has shifted and changed. Where once it flowed narrow and swift between plains rich with game, now it i
s wide and meanders through a bogland of trees and brush. Humans, light as they are, still cannot move easily through this region. And who knows what has become of the lands between here and the mountains. A score of rivers and streams once fed into this river. Do they still exist? Have they, too, shifted in their courses? It is hopeless. In all the time that these humans have lived here, they haven’t explored the upper reaches of the river. They want to find dry, open land as badly as we do. If humans could travel in that direction, they would have trekked up the river long ago, and if Kelsingra still existed for them to find, they would have discovered it by now. You want us to leave what little safety and food we have, journey through a bogland in the hopes of eventually finding solid land and Kelsingra. It’s a foolish dream, Mercor. We’ll all just die on the way to a mirage.”
“So, Kalo, you would prefer to just die here?”
“Why not?” the big dragon challenged him sarcastically.
“Because I, for one, would prefer to die as a free creature rather than as cattle. I’d like a chance to hunt again, to feel hot sand against my scales again. I’d like to drink deeply of the silvery wells of Kelsingra. If I must die, I’d like to die as a dragon rather than whatever pathetic thing it is that we’ve become.”
“And I’d like to sleep!” Kalo snapped.
“Sleep, then,” Mercor replied quietly. “It’s good practice for death.”
His final words seemed to end all conversation. The dragons shifted and settled and shifted again, each looking, Sintara thought, for a comfortable spot that no longer existed. It was not just that the cold, damp earth was uncomfortable; it was that Mercor’s words had destroyed the small amount of acceptance that the dragons had built for their situation. The anger and her stubborn endurance now seemed more like cowardice and resignation.