Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  The Rain Wild girl spoke again. She had a husky voice, a surprisingly rich contralto. Her silver gaze was both unsettling and compelling. “Skymaw agrees with the Bingtown woman. Whether you’re my elder or not, she says you should leave the dragon grounds. Now.”

  Sedric felt even more affronted. “I don’t think that you have the right to tell me what to do at all,” he told the girl.

  But Alise spoke over his words. “Skymaw? That’s her name?”

  “It’s what I call her.” The girl amended. She seemed embarrassed to have to admit it. “She told me that a dragon’s true name is a thing to be earned, not given.”

  “I understand completely,” Alise replied. “The true name of a dragon is a very special thing to know. No dragon tells her true name lightly.” She treated the dragon’s keeper as if she were a charming child who had interrupted an important adult conversation. The “child” did not enjoy that, Sedric noted.

  Alise turned back to the hulking reptile. The creature had ventured so close that it now towered over them. Her eyes were like burnished copper, glittering in the sunlight. Her gaze was fixed steadily on him. Alise spoke to the creature. “Great and gracious one, your true name is an honor that I hope one day to win. But in the mean time, I am pleased to give you mine. I am Alise Kincarron Finbok.” And she actually curtsied to the creature, bobbing down almost into the mud.

  “I have come all the way from Bingtown to see you, and to hear you speak. I hope that we shall have long conversations, and that I shall be able to learn a great deal about you and the wisdom of your kind. Long has it been since humanity was favored with the company of dragons. What little we knew of your kind has, I fear, been forgotten. I would like to remedy that lack.” She gestured toward Sedric. “I brought him with me, to be our scribe and record any wisdom you wished to share with me. I am sorry that he cannot hear you, for I am certain that if he could, he would quickly perceive both your intelligence and your wisdom.”

  The dragon rumbled again. The young keeper looked at Sedric and said, “Skymaw says that even if you could understand her words, she thinks it likely you would be unable to comprehend either her intelligence or wisdom, for plainly you lack both.”

  Her “translation” was obviously intended to insult. The girl’s eyes, silvery gray, darted toward Alise when she spoke. If Alise was aware of her animosity, she ignored it. Instead Alise turned to him and said quietly but firmly, “I’ll see you when I return to the ship, Sedric. If you don’t mind, would you leave your lap desk with me? I may try to write down some of what we discuss.”

  “Of course,” he said, and managed to keep the bitterness and the resentment from his voice. Long ago, he thought, he’d had to learn to speak civilly even after Hest had publicly flayed him with words. It was not so hard. All he had to do was discard every bit of his pride. He’d never thought that he would have to employ that talent with Alise. He thrust the lap desk at her, and as she took it was almost pleased to see her surprise at how heavy it was. Let her deal with carrying it about, he thought vengefully. Let her see the sort of work he’d been willing to do for her. Perhaps she might appreciate him a bit more. He turned away from her.

  Then, with a sudden lurch of heart, he realized there were things inside that lap desk that he emphatically did not wish to share with Alise. He turned hastily back to her. “The entire secretarial desk will be too heavy for you to use easily. Perhaps I could just leave you some blank paper, and a pen and ink?”

  She looked startled at this sudden kindness, and he suddenly knew that she knew he’d intended to be rude when he’d burdened her with the whole desk. She looked pathetically grateful as he took it from her and opened it. The raised lid kept her from peering inside, but she didn’t seem to have any curiosity about it. As he rummaged inside it for the required items, she said quietly, “Thank you for your understanding, Sedric. I know this must be hard for you, to come so far on such a great adventure, and then to find that fortune has excluded you from the best part of it. I want you to know that I think no less of you; such a lack could afflict anyone.”

  “It’s fine, Alise,” he said, and he tried not to sound brusque. She thought his feelings were hurt because he couldn’t communicate with the animal. And she felt sorry for him. The thought almost made him smile, and his heart softened toward her. How many years had he felt sorry for her? It was odd to be on the receiving end of her pity. Odd and strangely touching that she’d care if his feelings were hurt.

  “I’ve plenty of work to do back on the boat. I trust you’ll be back for the evening meal?”

  “Oh, likely much before then. I shan’t stand here in the dark and quiz her, I assure you. Today I’ll be happy if we just get to know each other well enough to be comfortable. Thank you. I’ll try not to waste your ink.”

  “You’re welcome. Really you are. I’ll see you later.”

  THYMARA WATCHED THE exchange between the well-dressed man and the Bingtown woman and wondered. They seemed very familiar with each other; perhaps they were married. She was reminded of her parents, and how they had always seemed connected and yet distant to each other. These two seemed to get along about as well as her parents did.

  She already disliked both of them. The man because he had no respect for Skymaw and was too stupid to understand her, and the woman, because she had seen the dragon and now she coveted her. And she would probably win the dragon, for she seemed to know how to charm her. Couldn’t Skymaw see that the Bingtown woman was just trying to flatter her with her flowery phrases and overdone courtesy? She would have thought that the dragon would be angered by such a blatant attempt to win favor with her. Instead, Skymaw seemed delighted with the extravagant compliments the woman showered on her. She fawned on her, openly begging for more.

  And in turn, the woman seemed completely infatuated with the dragon. From the first moment they had seen each other, Thymara had almost felt the mutual draw between them. It irritated her.

  No. It was more than irritation. It made her seethe with jealousy, she admitted, because it excluded her. She was supposed to be Skymaw’s keeper, not this ridiculous city woman. This Alise would not be able to feed the dragon or tend her. Would this woman with her soft body and pale skin walk beside the dragon as they wended their way upriver through the shallows and the encroaching forest? Would she kill to feed the dragon and perform the tedious grooming that Skymaw so obviously needed? She thought not! Thymara had spent most of the day scrubbing at Skymaw’s hide until every scale gleamed. She’d dug caked mud out of her claws and claw sheaths, picked a legion of nasty little bloodsucking beetles from the edges of the dragon’s eyes and nostrils, and even cleared an area of reeking fresh dragon dung so that Skymaw could stretch out for her grooming without becoming soiled again.

  But the moment this Bingtown woman threw her a compliment or two, the dragon focused entirely on her as if Thymara had never existed. Would the woman have thought her so “gleamingly beautiful” if she’d seen the dragon five hours ago? Not likely. The dragon was using all Thymara’s hard work to attract a better keeper for herself. She’d soon find she’d made a poor choice.

  Just like Tats.

  The thought ambushed her, and she felt the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. She pushed all thoughts of Tats and Jerd aside. That night when Tats had left the fireside and Jerd had followed, she’d thought nothing of it. Tats, she thought, had needed time to be alone. But then, when they came back to the fire together, it was obvious to Thymara that he had been anything but alone. He seemed completely recovered from his exchange of comments with Greft. Jerd had been laughing at something he said. At the fire’s edge, they’d sat down side by side. She’d overheard Jerd quizzing him about his life, asking the sort of personal questions that Thymara had always avoided for fear of Tats thinking she was too nosy. Jerd had asked them, smiling and tipping her head to look up into his face, and Tats had replied in his deep soft voice. Thymara had sat by the fire and Rapskal supplied an unwelcome distraction
as he pelted her with his speculations about the journey and what they would have for breakfast tomorrow and if it was possible to kill a gallator with a sling. Greft had glared at her, Tats, and Rapskal and then had gone stalking off into the forest on his own. Nortel and Boxter had both seemed out of sorts as well, exchanging small barbed comments. Harrikin had suddenly seemed sullen and sulky. None of it made sense to her; she only knew that her earlier sensation of goodwill and friendliness had been more fleeting than the smoke from their campfire.

  And that night, Tats had spread out his bedding and gone to sleep near Jerd without even speaking to Thymara to say good night. She’d thought they were friends, good friends. She’d even been stupid enough to think that he’d only signed up as a dragon keeper because he knew that she’d be going, too. Worse, Rapskal had tossed his blankets right down beside hers after she had made her bed for the evening. She couldn’t very well get up and move away from him, much as she wished to. He’d slept next to her every night since they left Trehaug. He talked and laughed even in his sleep, and her dreams, when she did find them that night, were uneasy ones of her father looking for her in a mist.

  In vain, she tried to recall her mind to the present and focus on the conversation next to her. The Bingtown woman was speaking to Skymaw. “Do you recall, lovely one, your immediate ancestor’s experience, your glorious mother’s life? Do you know what happened to the world to cause dragons to become nearly extinct and leave humans to mourn in loneliness for so long?” She stood awaiting an answer, her pen poised over her paper. It was sickening.

  Worse, Skymaw was wallowing in the praise and answering the woman in dragon riddles while telling her nothing at all. “My ‘mother’? Were she here, you would not insult her so lightly! A dragon is never a mother as you know it, little milk-making creature. We never fuss about squealing babies or waste our days in tending to the wants of helpless young. We are never as helpless and stupid as humans are when they are first born, knowing nothing of what or who they are. It is irony, is it not, that you live so short a time, and waste so much of it being stupid? While we live for dozens of your lives, aware every instant of what we are and who our ancestors were. You can see that it is hopeless for a human to try to understand dragonkind at all.”

  Thymara turned away abruptly from the dragon and the Bingtown woman. “I’d best go see if I can kill some food for you,” she announced, not caring that she broke into the midst of their conversation. It was disgusting anyway. The woman kept asking Skymaw stupid questions, phrased in groveling, honeyed compliments. And the dragon kept evading the questions, refusing her any real answers. Was that just what any dragon would do? Or was Skymaw trying to conceal her own ignorance?

  Now there was an idea that was almost more disturbing than the thought that Tats suddenly found Jerd more interesting than she was. And nearly as upsetting that neither the dragon nor the Bingtown woman seemed to take any notice of her leaving.

  She strode across the mud-baked shore toward their small boats. She’d left her belongings bundled up with her pack in one of the boats. She cast a casual glance at the big black scow at the edge of the shore. The Tarman. It was a strange craft, far more blunt and square than any other boat she’d ever seen. It had eyes painted on its prow; she’d heard that was an old custom, older than the Rain Wild settlements. It was supposed to encourage the boat to look out for itself and avoid dangers in the river. She liked the boat’s eyes. They looked old and wise, like the eyes of a kindly old man over his sympathetic smile. She hoped they would actually help guide the ship as they tried to find a way up the Rain Wild River. They were going to need all the help they could get to carry out their mission.

  She found her fishing spear and decided to try her luck, even though it looked as if the others keepers were already patrolling the shallow bank for any unwary fish. Rapskal had had a small success. He’d speared a fish the size of his hand. He did a victory dance with the flopping creature still stuck on the end of his spear, and then turned to his little red dragon. She had been toddling along behind Rapskal like a child��s pull toy. “Open up, Heeby!” Rapskal demanded, and the dragon obediently gaped at him. Rapskal tugged the fish off the spear and tossed it into the dragon’s maw. The creature just stood there. “Well, eat it! There’s food in your mouth; shut your mouth and eat it!” Rapskal advised her. After a moment the dragon complied. Thymara wondered if the creature were too stupid even to eat food put in its mouth, or if the fish had been so small the dragon hadn’t noticed it.

  She shook her head at them. She doubted that any large river fish would linger there in the sluggish warm water under the open sky. She turned her back on the dragons and her friends and headed toward the far edge of the clearing, where the trees tangled their worn roots right out into the river. Coarse sword-grass grew there, and gray reeds and spearman-grass. The rising and falling of the water level had left fallen branches and dead leaves tangled and dangling from the clawing tree roots that reached out into the river. If she were a fish, that would be where she would take shelter from the sunlight and predators. She’d try her luck there.

  Clambering out on the twisting roots was both like and unlike her travels through the canopy. Up there, a fall could mean death, but the layers of branches also offered a hundred chances to grip a limb or liana and regain her life. Down here, there were gaps in the matted tangle of roots under her feet. Below, the river flowed, gray and stinging, at best threatening to give her a rash, at worst eating through skin and flesh down to the bone. There was also the chance of crashing through completely into water over her head, and worse, coming back up under the tangled roots. The trees were still under her feet, as they had always been, but the dangers were different. Somehow that made it hard to remember that she was sure-footed and made for the Rain Wilds.

  The third time her booted foot slipped on the roots, she stopped and thought. Then she sat down and carefully unlaced both boots. She knotted the laces together and slung the boots around her neck and went on, digging the claws of her toes into the bark. She found a likely place. The foliage overhead cast a dappling shade over her. A thick twist of root gave sheltering debris a place to cling even as it provided her an opening over the river. The grass and fallen branches filtered the silt-laden river water here, so it was almost translucent. She sat down where her shadow would not fall on the water, poised her fish spear, and waited.

  It took time for her eyes to learn to read the water. She could not see fish, but after a time she could see shadows, and then swirls in the sediment that showed a fish had passed. Her shoulder began to ache from holding her spear at the ready; the spear itself seemed to weigh as much as a tree trunk. She pushed the ache out of her mind and focused her whole being on reading the swirls in the sediment. That would be the tail, so the head would be there, no, too late, it’s back under the root. Here it comes, here it comes, here it—no, back under the root. There he is, he’s a big one, wait, wait, and—

  She jabbed down with the spear rather than throwing it. She felt it hit the fish and pushed hard and strong to pin it to the riverbed. But the water was deeper than she had thought, and suddenly she had to catch herself on the root to keep from tumbling in while the fish, a very large one, wriggled and jerked on the end of her spear, trying to free itself. She fought to keep her balance while keeping the fish on the spear.

  Someone grabbed her from behind.

  “Let go!” she roared and pushed the butt of the spear back hard, thudding it solidly into whoever had seized her. She heard a whoosh of exhaled breath and then a faint curse. She didn’t turn, for the thud had nearly dislodged her fish. She flipped up the spear end, bracing the butt against her hip and was astounded at the size of the fish she levered out of the river. Thrashing wildly, the fish actually drove the spear deeper and then through its own body. Her prey was nearly half the length of her body and it came sliding down the spear shaft toward her.

  “Don’t lose him. Keep hold of your spear!” Tats shouted from b
ehind her.

  “I’ve got him,” she snarled, irritated that he would think she needed his help. Despite her words, he reached past her shoulder and seized the other end of the spear. Between them, they held it horizontally while the fish struggled wildly. Then Tats produced a knife in his free hand and whacked the fish soundly on the head with the back of the blade. Abruptly it was still. She breathed a sigh of relief. It felt as if her shoulder had nearly been jolted from its socket.

  Still gripping her end of the spear, she turned to thank him, and was astonished to find they were not alone. The Bingtown woman’s friend was sitting on a hummock of root, his hands clasped over his midsection. His face was red save for where his mouth was pinched tight and white. He gazed at her with narrowed eyes and then spoke in a tight voice. “I was trying to help you. I thought you were going to fall in.”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I saw him going into the forest where you had gone and thought he was following you. So I came to see what he was up to.” Tats was the one who answered her question.

  “I’m able to take care of myself,” she pointed out to him.

  Tats refused to take offense. “I know that. I didn’t interfere when you thumped him. I only helped you with the fish because I didn’t want to see it get away.”

  She made an impatient noise and focused on the stranger. “Why did you follow me?” Tats gripped the spear to either side of the fish, grinning. She let him take the weight of it but watched closely as he set her catch down on the matted roots.

  “You knocked the wind out of me,” the stranger complained, and then managed to take a fuller, deeper breath. He uncurled slightly and some of the redness went out of his face. “I only followed you because I wanted to talk to you. I’d seen you with the dragon, the one that Alise is interested in. I wanted to ask you a few things.”