The Dragon Keeper trwc-1

by Robin Hobb

  'What?' the dragon demanded.

  'The only Elderling cities we have ever discovered are buried in mud. The folk who lived there are long dead. The tapestries and paintings they left behind show us a place that is so different from what is here now that our scholars have long argued that they depict an Elderling homeland far to the south rather than being representations of their cities as they once were here.'

  'Then your scholars are wrong.' The dragon spoke decisively. 'Our memories may be incomplete, but I can tell you that the Cassarick I recall bordered on a deep, swift flowing river that had a gentler backwater and a wide beach of silver-streaked clay. The river was deep enough for serpents to migrate up it easily. The Elderling ships also could come right up the river to Cassarick and go beyond as well, to other cities that bordered the river. Cassarick itself was not a large city, though it had its share of wonders. It was famed mostly as a secondary place for serpents to come to spin our cocoons, if the beaches at what you call Trehaug were full. That did not happen every migrating year, but some years it did. And so Cassarick had chambers capable of welcoming the dragons that came to tend the cases. There was the Star Chamber, roofed with glass panels. From there the Elderlings were wont to study the night sky. The walls of the long entry hall to the Star Chamber were decorated with a mosaic of jewels that held a light of their own. No windows were built in that hall so that visitors might more easily view the vista that the jewel artists had painted with their tiny dots of light. I recall there was an amusement that the humans had built for themselves, a maze with crystal walls. Time's Labyrinth, they called it. It was all trickery and foolishness, of course, but they seemed fond of it.'

  'If any room like one of those chambers has been found, I have not heard of it,' Thymara said regretfully.

  'It little matters,' the dragon replied, her voice suddenly harsh. 'They are not the only wonders that have vanished. You humans go digging through the wreckage of that time like tunnelling dung beetles. You don't understand what you find, and you have no appreciation for it.'

  'I think I should go,' Thymara said quietly. Her disappointment as she turned away gnawed upward in her from her belly. She looked at the other two unclaimed dragons and tried to muster pity for them. But their eyes were vapid and almost unseeing. They were not even watching the other dragons as they began to interact with their keepers. The muddy brown one was absently chewing on the bloody edge of the barrow that had held his food. Still. She hadn't signed a contract that promised her the companionship of an amazing and intelligent creature. She had signed a contract that said she would do her best to accompany a dragon on this doomed expedition and do her best to care for it. Perhaps she'd be wiser to start with one that had no expectations. Perhaps she would have been wisest of all not to have had expectations herself.

  All of the other keepers seemed to have met with at least moderate success with their choices. Rapskal and his red seemed happiest with one another. He had led the stumpy little creature over to the forest edge and was cleaning her scales with liandfuls of evergreen needles. The small red dragon wriggled happily at his touch. Jerd seemed to have won the trust of her speckled green dragon. The creature had lifted one front foot and was allowing Jerd to examine her claws. Greft kept a respectful distance from the black dragon, but seemed to be deep in conversation with it. Sylve and the golden male had found a sunny place and were sitting peacefully together on the cracked mud plates of the riverbank.

  She looked around for Tats and the slender green dragon he'd approached. She didn't see either of them at first, and then spotted them at the water's edge. Tats had his fish spear out and was walking along the bank while the green dragon watched with avid interest. Thymara doubted that he'd find anything large enough to spear if he saw any fish at all, but he'd obviously won his dragon's attention. Unlike her. The dragon hadn't even responded to her last comment.

  'Thank you for speaking with me,' Thymara replied hopelessly. She turned and walked quietly away. The silver, she decided. The injury on its tail needed to be cleaned and bandaged. Thymara suspected they'd be travelling in or near the river water, and untreated, the acid waters would enlarge and ulcerate the injury. As for the skinny copper dragon, if she could find some ruskin leaves and catch a fish, she'd try worming him. She wondered if ruskin leaves worked to cleanse a dragon's system. Studying him as she walked toward him, she decided that they couldn't hurt. There was no one she could ask for advice for physicking a dragon. If he got any thinner, he'd die soon anyway.

  Abruptly she realized there was someone she could ask. She turned back to the blue dragon who was regarding Thymara with ill-concealed hostility. Thymara steeled her courage. 'May I ask you a question about dragons and parasites?'

  'Where did you learn your manners?' The question was followed with a hiss. None of her breath reached Thymara, but the mist of weak venom that rode her breath was faintly visible.

  Thymara was jolted. Cautiously she asked, 'Is it rude to ask such a question?' She wanted to take a step back but dared not move.

  'How dare you turn your back on me?'

  On the dragon's long neck, the 'frills' of scaled plates were lifting. Thymara hadn't understood their use before, but from all she knew of animals, such a display would indicate aggression. A brilliant yellow underlay was revealed as the scaled flaps rose like the opening petals of a reptilian flower. The dragon's large copper eyes were fixed on her and as Thymara met that gaze, the eyes appeared to slowly spin. It was like watching twin whirlpools of molten copper. The sight was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was terrifying. 'I'm sorry,' she apologized hopelessly. 'I didn't know it was rude. I thought you wanted me to go away.'

  Something was wrong, and Sintara didn't know what. By now, the girl should have been completely infatuated with her, on her knees, begging for the dragon's attention. Instead, she had turned her back on her and started to wander off. Humans were notoriously easy prey for a dragon's glamour. She opened her ruff more widely and gave her head a shake to disperse a mist of charm. 'Do not you wish to serve me?' she prompted the girl. 'Do not you find me beautiful?'

  'Of course you are beautiful!' the human exclaimed, but her stance and the rank scent of fear she gave betrayed that she was frightened, not entranced. 'When first I saw you today, I chose you as the dragon that I most wished to care for. But our conversation has been…' The girl's words trickled away.

  Sintara reached for her thoughts but found only fog. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the girl was too stupid to be charmed by her. She searched her dragon memories and found evidence of such humans. Some were so dense that they could not even understand a dragon's speech. This girl seemed to grasp her words clearly enough. So what ailed her? Sintara decided on a small test of her powers, to see if the girl was susceptible to her at all. 'What is your name, small human?'

  'Thymara,' she replied instantly. But as Sintara began to gloat at her leverage, the girl asked her, 'And what is your name?'

  'I don't think you've earned the right to my name yet!' Sintara rebuked her, and saw her cower. But Thymara stank of true fear with no traces of the despair that such a refusal should have wakened in her. When the human said nothing, did not beg again for the favour of her name, Sintara asked her directly, 'Don't you wish you knew my name?'

  'It would make it much easier for me to talk to you, yes,' the girl said hesitantly.

  Sintara chuckled. 'But you don't seek it in order to have power over me?' she asked sarcastically.

  'What power would your name give me?'

  Sintara stared down at her. Could she truly be ignorant of the power of a dragon's name? One who knew a dragon's true name could, if she employed it correctly, compel the dragon to speak truth, to keep a promise, even to grant a favour. If this Thymara was ignorant of such things, Sintara certainly wasn't going to enlighten her. Instead she asked her, 'What would you like to call me, if you were choosing a name to know me by?'

  The girl looked more intrigued than frightene
d now. Sintara spun her eyes more slowly, and Thymara actually came a step closer to her. There. That was better. 'Well?' she prompted her again. 'What name would you give me?'

  The girl bit her upper lip for a moment, than said, 'You are such a lovely blue. High in the canopy, there is a twining vine that roots in the clefts of trees. It has flowers that are deep blue with bright yellow centres. It has a wonderful fragrance that entrances insects and small birds and little lizards. Even it is not as beautiful as you are, but you remind me of it. We call the flowers skymaws.'

  'So you would name me after a flower? Skymaw?' Sintara was not pleased. It seemed a silly, fragile name to her, but she had asked the girl. Perhaps in this one thing, she could humour the human. But still, she asked her, 'Do you not think I deserve a name that has more teeth to it?'

  The girl looked down at her feet as if the dragon had caught her in a lie. Quietly, she admitted, 'Skymaws are dangerous to touch. They are beautiful and the fragrance is alluring, but the nectar inside will dissolve a butterfly instantly and devour a hummingbird in less than a hour.'

  Sintara stretched her jaws wide in pleasure and concluded, 'Then it is not just the colour of the flower that makes you think of me? It is the danger it poses?'

  'I suppose. Yes.'

  'Then you may call me Skymaw. Do you see what the boy over there is doing to the runty red dragon?'

  The girl followed Sintara's glance. Rapskal had pulled an armful of needled branches from a tree and was energetically scrubbing his dragon's back. Cleansed of mud and dust, even that stumpy little dragon sparkled like a ruby in the sunlight. 'I don't think he means any harm. I think he's trying to get some of the parasites off her.'

  'Exactly. And the wax from the needles is good for the skin.' Graciously, Sintara told her, 'You are allowed to perform that service for me.'

  As the Tarman slowly nosed its way onto the muddy bank, Alise looked over the fantastic scene before her and felt rankest envy. Sun and heat baked the bare riverbank as the final hours of afternoon dwindled away. Scattered about on the bank were at least a dozen dragons in every imaginable colour tended by young Rain Wilders. Some of the dragons were stretched out in peaceful sleep. Two stood by the water, waiting impatiently as a couple of boys holding spears walked slowly up and down the riverbank, looking for fish. On the ebbing edge of a sun-washed mudbank, a long gold dragon sprawled, his blue-white underbelly turned toward the last kiss of the sun. Lying against him slept a little girl, her pink-scaled scalp glittering as brightly as the dragon she tended. At one end of the long bank of mud stood the largest dragon of all, tall and black. The sun struck glittering dark blue sparks from his outstretched wings. A bare-chested young man, almost as heavily scaled as a dragon himself, was grooming the creature's wings. At the opposite end of the beach, as if in counterpoint, a girl with a broom made of cedar boughs was diligently sweeping a sprawled blue dragon. The girl's black braids danced against the back of her neck as she worked. The dragon shifted as Alise watched, stretching out a hind leg so that the girl might groom it.

  'I didn't realize the dragons had human tenders. I mean, I knew that they had hunters helping provide for them, but I didn't realize that—'

  'They don't. Or they didn't.' Leftrin had a knack for interrupting her in a way that was friendly rather than rude. 'They're all newcomers. Those are the keepers you heard about, the ones that are going to move the dragons upriver. They can't have been here much longer than a day, at most two.'

  'But some of them are only children!' Alise protested. It was not her concern for them that sharpened her voice. It was, she thought to herself, simple jealousy. There they were, mere youngsters, doing exactly what she had imagined herself doing. Somehow, she had visualized herself as being the first to befriend a dragon, to touch it with kindness and win its confidence. The way Althea and Brashen had described the dragons, she had thought they would be like reptilian half-wits, awaiting, perhaps, her understanding and patience to unlock their innate intelligence. What she saw on the beach was another broken pane in the dream window; she was not to be the dragons' saviour, the only one who understood them.

  Leftrin shrugged a heavy shoulder to her comment, mistaking it for concern. 'Youngsters don't get to be children long in the Rain Wilds, and especially not children like those. Look at them. It's a wonder their parents kept them. You can't tell me those youngsters are all late-changers. You don't get claws unless you were born with them. And that young man there? I'll wager he was born with scales on his head and has never had a bit of hair anywhere on his body. No, they're all mistakes, the lot of them. And that's why they were chosen.'

  His blunt and cold appraisal of the dragons' attendants shocked Alise into silence.

  'And are you and the Tarman a mistake? Is that why you were chosen for the expedition?' Sedric's voice was as acidic as the river.

  But if Leftrin noticed the intended unpleasantness in his tone, he didn't react to it. 'No, me and Tarman are hired. And the contract's a good one, tight as a contract can be written. And the terms are good, for Tarman and me.' Here he tipped Alise a broad wink, and she almost blushed. He spoke on as if Sedric could not have noticed it. 'Not just because no one else would take it, but because the Rain Wilds Council knows that no one else can do this job. Tarman and I have been farther up the river than any other large vessel. There may be a few who have gone farther, game scouts in canoes and such. But you can't do what the Council wants done from a canoe.'

  'And what the Council wants done is the dragons driven away from Cassarick.'

  'Well, that's putting it a bit harshly, Sedric. But look for yourself. They're obviously not in a good place. They're not healthy, there's no game they can hunt for themselves, and they're killing the trees all around the beach.'

  'And they're impeding a profitable excavation of the old city'

  'Yes, that's true also,' Leftrin replied implacably.

  Alise gave Sedric a sideways look. His last little remark had been barbed. He was still upset, and she supposed he had every right to be. Her session at the Traders' Hall in Cassarick had gone on much longer than she had expected. Thrashing out the details of Leftrin's contract with the committee had taken most of those hours. Malta the Elderling had remained for the long discussion, but with every passing hour, she looked more like a weary and pregnant woman and less like an elegant and powerful Elderling. Alise had observed her unobtrusively but avariciously.

  When Alise had first encountered the idea that humans became Elderlings, it had cracked her sense of reality. Elderlings had been the stuff of legend for her when she was a girl. Shadowy, powerful creatures at the edge of tales and myths; those were the Elderlings. Legends spoke of their elegance and beauty, of power sometimes wielded with wisdom and sometimes with casual cruelty. When the original Rain Wild settlers had discovered traces of ancient settlements and then connected those ruins to the near-mythical Elderlings, many had been sceptical. Over the years it had become accepted that they had been real and that perhaps the magical and arcane treasures unearthed in the Rain Wilds were the last remaining traces of their passage on this world. They had been a glorious magical race and now they were vanished forever.

  No one had connected the unfortunate and sometimes grotesque disfigurements of the Rain Wild settlers with the ethereal beauty of the Elderings depicted in scrolls, tapestries and legends. Scaled skin and glowing eyes were not always lovely to look upon, and in the cases of the Rain Wilds offspring afflicted with them, their life-spans were greatly shortened, not the near immortals that legend decreed the Elderlings were. Vultures and peacocks might both have feathers and beaks, but one did not confuse the two creatures. Yet Malta and Selden Vestrit of Bingtown and Reyn Khuprus of the Rain Wilds had changed, just as those touched by the Rain Wilds changed, not toward the monstrous but toward the fantastic. Dragon-touched, some now called them to distinguish them from the others. Somehow, she suspected, their being present during the emergence of Tintaglia from her case and spending so m
uch time with her afterward had caused their metamorphoses to proceed in a different pattern.

  Watching Malta Khuprus had given her much to think about during the long and tedious hours of Leftrin's haggling. He had not seemed to find the delay boring, but had settled into his deal-making with the enthusiasm of a pit-dog trying to pull down a bull. While he discussed who would pay for food and how much the Tarman could carry and if the small boats for the keepers would be his responsibility and who would pay if a dragon did any damage to his vessel and a hundred other variables, Alise covertly studied the Elderling woman and wondered. It was too obvious to ignore that the physical changes a human underwent were that their body acquired some of the characteristics of a dragon. Or a reptile, she judiciously added. The scales, the unusual growths, Malta's crest on her brow all spoke of some connection to the dragons.

  But other parts of the puzzle did not fit. The strange elongation of her bones, for instance.

  If the Elderlings had known exactly what precipitated the changes that took them from human to Elderling, they had not written it down, at least not in any scrolls that Alise had ever seen. Then she wondered if Elderlings had ever been a completely separate race from humans. Had humans always changed to become Elderlings, or had Elderlings existed separately but perhaps interbred with humanity? Alise had become so enmeshed in her pondering that when Leftrin abruptly announced, 'Well, it's all settled then. I'll depart as soon as you've managed to ferry the supplies down to the dock,' she felt jolted out of a dream. She looked around her to see the Council members rising from their chairs and coming to shake Leftrin's hand. A document, evidently written as they settled each term, and signed by all, was being sanded to set and dry the ink. Malta, looking frailer than ever, had signed in her turn and was now gazing at Alise. The Bingtown woman gathered all her courage and went to present herself.