by Robin Hobb
She looked flatly at Tats. “And what else?” she demanded.
“The silver dragon isn’t here. And neither is Relpda, the little copper queen.”
Thymara sighed. “I wondered if they would survive. Neither was very smart, and the copper was always sickly. Perhaps it was a mercy that they went so quickly.” She looked at Tats, wondering if he would agree with her. But he didn’t seem to hear her words. “Who else?” she asked flatly.
A small stillness followed her question, as if the world paused to prepare itself to grieve. “Heeby. And Rapskal. They aren’t here, and no one saw anything of either of them after the wave hit.”
“But I left him with you!” she protested, as if somehow that meant it were Tats’s fault. She saw him wince and knew he felt the same.
“I know. One moment we were standing there arguing. The next, the water slapped us down. I never saw him again.”
Thymara crouched down on the tree branch and waited for pain and tears to come. They didn’t. Instead a strange numbness flowed up from her belly. She had killed him. She had killed him by getting so angry at him that she’d stopped caring about him. “I was so angry at him,” she confessed to Tats. “What he told me ruined my idea of him, and I thought I’d just have to stop knowing him, stop letting him be near me. And now he’s gone.”
“Ruined your idea of him?” Tats asked cautiously.
“I just never thought he’d do a thing like that. I’d thought he was better than that,” she said awkwardly.
Too late she saw that Tats accepted that judgment upon himself as well. “Maybe none of us are quite what the others think we are,” he observed shortly and stood. He walked back toward the trunk, and she could not think of any words to call him back.
Alise called after him, “No one can know that he and Heeby are dead. He might have made it to the Tarman. Maybe Captain Leftrin will bring him back to us.”
Tats glanced back at them. His voice was flat as he said, “I’m going to tell Jerd that you saw Veras. It might give her a little comfort. Greft has been trying to encourage her, but she hasn’t been listening to him.”
“That’s a good idea,” Alise agreed. “Tell her that when we saw her dragon, she was afloat and swimming strongly.”
Thymara let him go. Let him go to comfort Jerd. It didn’t matter to her. She had let go of him when she had let go of Rapskal. She hadn’t really known either of them. It was much better to keep her heart to herself. She wondered if she were being stupid. Did she have to hold on to her hurt and anger? Could she just let it go and forgive him and have him back as her friend? For a moment, it seemed as if it were purely her decision; she could make what he had done an important matter or she could let it go as just something that had happened. Holding on to it was hurting both of them. Before she had known what he had done with Jerd, he’d been her friend. All that had changed was that now she knew.
“But I can’t unknow it,” she whispered to herself. “And knowing that he could do something like that does show me that he’s a different person from what I believed.”
“Are you all right?” Alise asked her. “Did you say something?”
“No, just talking to myself.” Thymara lifted her hands and covered her eyes. She was safe and her clothing was starting to dry out. She was hungry, but the hunger was beyond her tiredness and hurt. She could wait to deal with it. “I think I’m going to find a place to sleep for a bit.”
“Oh.” Alise sounded disappointed. “I was hoping we’d go and talk with the others. Find out what they saw and what happened to them.”
“You go ahead. I don’t mind being alone.”
“But—” Alise began, and Thymara suddenly saw her problem. She’d probably never climbed a tree before, let alone clambered around through a network of trees. Alise needed her help but didn’t want to ask. Thymara suddenly longed for simple sleep and time alone. Her head was starting to pound, and she wished there were a private place where she could go to weep until she could sleep. Rapskal wandered through her thoughts with his insouciant grin and good humor. Gone. Gone from her twice now, in less than one night. Gone, most likely, forever.
Her chin quivered suddenly, and she might have given way right in front of Alise had Sylve not saved her. The girl came clambering up the trunk like a squirrel, with Harrikin close behind her. He climbed like a lizard, belly to the trunk, as Thymara did. Once they had gained the branch, he folded up his long lean body and perched with his back to the trunk. Sylve dusted her hands on her stained breeches and informed them, “We’ve got Sintara afloat and resting. Harrikin helped me and we got a couple of logs under her chest. We’ve jammed the logs against trees and the current should hold them there, but we roped them with vines just in case. She’s not comfortable, but she’s not going to drown. And the water has already begun to drop. We can tell from the water mark on the trees that it’s going down.”
“Thank you.” The words seemed inadequate, but she didn’t have anything better to offer her.
“It was nothing,” she replied. “Harrikin and I are actually getting good at it. I never expected to learn how to float a dragon.” She smiled, glanced at Thymara with red-rimmed eyes, and then away.
“Mercor and Ranculos?” Thymara asked. She would not mention Rapskal’s name. Sharing the pain didn’t help it.
“Mercor is weary but otherwise fine. I’ve asked him if he ever recalled anything like this happening before. Once, he said, one of his ancestors was foolish enough to fly around a mountain that he knew was about to explode. It was a tall one, covered with glaciers and snow, and he wanted to see what would happen when the fire met the ice. When it did erupt, the ice and snow melted instantly and flowed down the mountain, taking stone and muck with it in a thick soup. He said it flowed swift and far, almost out of sight. He wonders if that is what happened, somewhere far away from us, and the wave of it only reached us now.”
Thymara was silent, trying to imagine such a thing. She shook her head. What Sylve was suggesting was on a scale far beyond anything she could imagine. A whole mountain melting and flowing away, clear out of sight? Was such a thing possible?
“And your dragon, Ranculos?” she asked Harrikin.
“Ranculos was clipped by a log in the first tumble of the wave. He’s bruised badly, but at least his skin isn’t broken so the water isn’t eating into him.” Sylve answered for him. Harrikin nodded slowly to her words. He’d become very still, and in repose he reminded Thymara even more of a lizard, right down to his jeweled unblinking eyes.
“You found a boat and rescued Tats?”
“It was random luck. I’d left my dish in the boat. The fish was nearly cooked, and I went back to get it. I climbed in and was sorting through my stuff when the wave hit. I held tight to the boat and eventually it came out on top of the water and upright. All I had to do was bail. But it snatched all my gear out. I don’t have a thing except what I’m wearing.”
Slowly it came to Thymara that the same was true for her. She had not thought her spirits could sink lower, but they did.
“Does anyone have anything left?” she asked, thinking desolately of her hunting gear, her blanket, even her dry pair of socks. All gone.
“We recovered three boats, but I don’t think anything was in any of them. Not even oars. We’ll have to make something that works. Greft has his fire pouch still, but it’s of small use right now. Where would we set a fire? I dread tonight when the mosquitoes come. We’re going to be miserable until the water goes down. And even then, well, my friends, we’ve hard times to face.”
Alise spoke. “Captain Leftrin will come and find us. And once he does, and the water goes down, we’ll go on.”
“Go on?” Harrikin spoke softly, slowly, as if he could not believe his ears.
The Bingtown woman looked around at her small circle of startled listeners and gave a tiny laugh. “Don’t you know your history? It’s what Traders do. We go on. Besides”—and she shrugged—“there’s nothing else we can
do.”
Day the 19th of the Prayer Moon
Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
To Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
Enclosed, a report from the Cassarick Rain Wild Traders’ Council as sent to the Trehaug Rain Wild Traders’ Council, concerning the earthquake, black rain, and white flood, and the likely demise of the members of the Kelsingra expedition, the crew of the Tarman, and all dragons.
Erek,
We have never seen such a flash flood as we have just endured. Lives were lost in both excavation sites, the new docks that were just built at Cassarick are gone, and a score of trees that fronted the river were torn loose. It is only good fortune that so few houses were lost. Damage to the bridges and to the Trader Hall here is substantial. I doubt we will ever hear what has become of the dragons and their keepers. I only received your bird message about visiting the Rain Wilds a day ago. I hope you were not on the river. If you are well, please, send me a bird to say so as soon as you receive this.
Detozi
CHAPTER SIX
PARTNERS
Water splashed against his face, startling him awake from his nightmare. He coughed and spat. “Stop it!” he choked and tried to put a threat in his voice. “Get out of my room. I’m getting up. I won’t be late.”
Despite his plea, water slopped against his face again. His stupid sister was going to get it now!
He opened his eyes to a new nightmare. He dangled face-down from the jaws of a dragon. The dragon was swimming in a white river. The sky had the uncertain light of dawn. Sedric’s head was barely above the water. He could feel the dragon’s teeth pressed lightly against the skin of his back and chest. His arms and legs were outside the dragon’s mouth, dragging through the water. The water pushed against the swimming dragon, shoving them steadily downstream. And the dragon was tired. She swam with a dogged one-two, one-two stroke of her front legs. He turned his head and saw that only the dragon’s front shoulders and head were still above water. The copper was sinking. And when her strength gave out and she went down, Sedric would go with her.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice a croak.
Big water. She gurgled her response, but the words formed in his mind. She pressed an image at him, a crashing wave of white filled with rocks and logs and dead animals. Even now, the moving face of the river was littered with flotsam. She swam downstream beside a tangled mat of creepers and small bits of driftwood. A dead animal’s hoofed feet were partially visible in it. The river caught the tangle and spun it, and it dispersed.
“What happened to everyone else?” The dragon gave him no response. He was so close to the water’s surface that he had no perspective. Nothing but water everywhere. Could that be so? He turned his head slowly from side to side. No Tarman. No boat. No keepers, no other dragons. Just himself, the copper dragon, the wide white river, and the forest in the distance.
He tried to recall what had come before. He’d left the boat. He’d spoken to Thymara. He’d gone looking for the dragon. He’d intended to resolve his situation. Somehow. And there his recall of events ended. He shifted in the dragon’s mouth. That woke points of pain where the dragon’s teeth pressed against him. His dangling legs were cold and nearly numb. The skin of his face stung. He tried to move his arms and found he could, but even that small shift made the dragon’s head wobble. She caught herself and swam on, but now he was barely out of the water. The river threatened to start sloshing into her gullet.
He looked to see how far away the shore was, but could not find any shore. To one side of them, he saw a line of trees sticking out of the water. When he turned his eyes the other way, he saw only more river. When had it become so wide? He blinked, trying to make his eyes focus. Day was growing stronger around them, and light bounced off the white surface of the river. There was no shore under the trees; the river was in a flood stage.
And the dragon was swimming downriver with the current.
“Copper,” he said, trying to get her attention. She paddled doggedly onward.
He searched his mind and came up with her name. “Relpda. Swim toward the shore. Not down the river. Swim toward the trees. Over there.” He started to lift an arm to point, but moving hurt and when he shifted, the dragon turned her head, nearly putting his face in the water. She kept paddling steadily downstream.
“Curse you, listen to me! Turn toward the shore! It’s our only hope. Carry me over there, by the trees, and then you can do what you wish. I don’t want to die in this river.”
If she even noticed he was speaking to her, he could not tell. One-two, one-two. He rocked with the dogged rhythm of her paddling.
He wondered if he could swim to the trees on his own. He’d never been a strong swimmer, but the fear of drowning might lend him a bit of strength. He flexed his legs experimentally, earning himself another dunk in the river and the knowledge that he was chilled to the bone. If the dragon didn’t carry him to shore, he wasn’t going to get there. And the way she was swimming now made him doubt that even she could make it. But she was his only chance, if he could get her to listen to him.
He thought of Alise and Sintara. He lifted a hand to touch Relpda’s jaw, flesh to scale. His hands were tender, the skin deeply wrinkled from immersion in the river. They were red, too, and he suspected that if he warmed them up, they’d burn. He couldn’t think about that now.
“Beauteous one,” he began, feeling foolish. Almost immediately, he felt a warm spark of attention in his mind. “Lovely copper queen, gleaming like a freshly minted coin. You of the swirling eyes and glistening scales, please hear me.”
Hear you.
“Yes, hear me. Turn your head. Do you see the trees there, sticking up from the water? Lovely one, if you carried me there, we could both rest. I could groom you and perhaps find you some food. I know you are hungry. I feel it.” That, he realized, was disconcertingly true. And if he let his mind wander there, he felt her increasing weariness, too. Back away from that! “Let us go there so you can take the rest you so richly deserve, and I can have the pleasure of cleaning your face of mud.”
He was not very good at it. Other than telling her she was pretty, he had no idea of what compliments would please a dragon. After he had spoken, he waited for a response from her. She turned her head, looked at the trees and kept paddling. They were not headed straight for the shore, but at least now, at some point, they’d connect with it.
“You are so wise, lovely copper one. So pretty and beautiful and shining and copper. Swim toward the trees, clever, pretty dragon.”
He sensed again that warm touch and felt oddly moved by it. The aches in his body seemed to lessen as well. It didn’t seem to matter that his words were simple and ungraceful. He fed her praise, and she responded by turning more sharply toward the river’s edge and swimming more strongly. For an instant, he felt what that extra effort cost her. He felt almost shamed that he asked it of her. “But if I do not, neither of us will survive,” he muttered, and felt a shadow of agreement from her.
As they got closer to the trees, his heart sank. The river had expanded its flow; there was no shore under the eaves of the forest, not even a muddy one. There was only the impenetrable line of trees, their trunks like the bars of a cage that would hold Relpda out in the river. In the shadow of the canopy, the pale water was a quiet lake without shores that spread off into the darkness.
Only one section of shore offered him hope. In an alcove of the surrounding trees, limbs and logs and branches had been packed together by a back current. All sorts of broken tree limbs and bits of driftwood and even substantial timbers had piled up there in a floating logjam. It didn’t look promising. But once he was there, he could climb out of the water and perhaps dry off before nightfall.
That was as much as he could offer himself. No hot food and comforting drink, no dry, clean change of clothing, not even a rude pallet on which to lie down; nothing awaited hi
m there but the bare edge of survival.
And even less for the dragon, he suspected. Whereas the wedged logs and matted driftwood might offer him a place to stand, she had no such hope. She swam with all her energy now, but it would avail her nothing. No hope for her and very little for him.
Not save me?
“We’ll try. I don’t know how, but we’ll try.”
For an extended moment, he felt her absence from his mind. He became aware of how his skin stung, how her teeth dug into him. His aching muscles shrieked at him, and cold both numbed and burned him. Then she came back, bringing her warmth and pushing his misery aside.
Can save you, she announced.
Affection he could feel enfolded him. Why? he wondered. Why did she care about him?
Less lonely. You make sense of world. Talk to me. Her warmth wrapped him.
Sedric drew breath. All his life, he’d been aware that people loved him. His parents loved him. Hest had loved him, he thought. Alise did. He’d known of love and accepted that it existed for him. But never before had he actually felt love as a physical sensation that emanated from another creature and warmed and comforted him. It was incredible. A slow thought came to him.
Can you feel it when I care about you?
Sometimes. Her reply was guarded. I know it’s not real, sometimes. But kind words, pretty words, feel good even if not real. Like remembering food when hungry.
Sudden shame flooded him. He took a slow breath and opened his gratitude to her. He let his thanks flow out of him, that she forgave him for taking her blood, that she had saved him, that she would continue to struggle on his behalf when he could not offer her definite hope of sanctuary.
As if he had poured oil on a fire, her warmth and regard for him grew. He actually felt his body physically warm, and suddenly her dogged one-two, one-two paddling grew stronger. Together they just might survive. Both of them.
For the first time in many years, he closed his eyes and breathed a heartfelt prayer to Sa.