Rain Wilds Chronicles

by Robin Hobb

  “Done. And done soon.” Ellik smiled. “You should command your servants to prepare the wedding feast.”

  The Duke cocked his head at him. “What is it you know that I do not?”

  Ellik’s smile widened. “I’ve bought a prisoner, my lord. He is being shipped to me as we speak. He is not a dragon. But in his veins runs the blood of a dragon. And you shall have his blood.”

  The Duke stared at him skeptically. Ellik’s smile grew broader. “A proof of my loyalty,” he said quietly. “Offered with no conditions attached.” He rose as gracefully as a maiden and returned to the wine cupboard. This time he returned with a small paper packet tied with string. He squatted before the Duke and pulled the string from its knot. As he unfolded the oiled paper, a once-familiar smell rose to the Duke’s nostrils.

  “Jerky?” he asked, torn between incredulity and offense. “You offer me jerky? A foot soldier’s rations?”

  “The only way to preserve it for the journey was to salt and smoke it.” Ellik held the opened paper like a blown blossom in the palm of his hand. In the center of it was a small square of blue scaled flesh, smoked to a dark red. “The meat of an Elderling. Not a dragon. I could not obtain that for you . . . yet. But I offer you what I am told is the smoked meat of a creature that is part dragon. In the hopes that it may restore you to health.”

  The Duke looked at it silently for a time.

  Ellik spoke softly. “Command me to eat it, and I will. It is not poisoned.”

  The thought had been in his mind. He thought of commanding his chancellor to divide it and eat his portion first. But it was not a large piece of meat, and his infirmities were many. If he ate it and it poisoned him, he would die. But if he commanded Ellik to eat half of it first, and then discovered that it had the efficacious power he hoped for, there might not be enough left to do him any good. He reached for the meat, his bony fingers trembling like the feelers of an ant. He lifted it up and sniffed it. Ellik’s gaze was steady on him.

  He put the smoked flesh in his mouth. The flavor of the smoke and salt, the texture of the dried meat carried him back to his days as a young warrior. He closed his eyes. He had not been the Duke then. He had been Rolenbled the swordsman, the fourth son of the Duke of Chalced. With his sword he had proven himself to the enemies of Chalced and to his father. And when his elder brothers had risen against his father, plotting to kill him and divide the rule of Chalced among themselves, he had denounced them to his father and stood at his side as the Duke slew his other sons. In blood he had risen, on proven loyalty.

  He opened his eyes. The room seemed brighter than it had. He looked down at the crumpled paper clutched in his hand. Only paper, not the hilt of a sword. A trifling ability, being able to crumple paper into a wad with one hand. Also one that he had not had for some time. He took a deeper breath and sat a little straighter. Ellik was regarding him with a smile.

  “Bring me your dragon man, and you will have my daughter.”

  Ellik took a deep breath and abruptly bowed low, touching his forehead to the floor.

  The Duke nodded to himself. The man was as good as a son to him. And like a son, if his loyalty proved false, he could kill him. His smile deepened.

  Epilogue

  HOMEWARD BOUND

  Icefyre liked hunting the rough hills that bordered the desert. He was adept at following the contours of the land in flight. He glided close to the ground, sometimes barely skimming the pungent gray-green brush that cloaked the rocky foothills. When his black wings moved, it was in deceptively lazy, powerful downstrokes. He was as silent as the shadow that floated over the uneven terrain below him.

  His was an excellent hunting technique. The two dragons had been here since spring, and the large game animals that had once had no fear of the sky had learned to keep a wary watch overhead now. Icefyre’s tactic carried him soundlessly over low rises. He fell on creatures basking in noon sunlight in the sheltered canyons before they knew he was there.

  It did not work as well for Tintaglia. She was smaller and still practicing the sort of flight skills that Icefyre had mastered hundreds of years ago. Even before he had been trapped in ice for an extended hibernation, he had been an old dragon. Now he was ancient beyond belief, the sole surviving creature who could recall the time of the Elderlings and the civilization the two races had built together. He recalled, too, the cataclysmic eruptions and the wild disorder that had ended those days. Humans and Elderlings had died or fled. He’d seen the scattered fragments of the dragon population dwindle and die off.

  To Tintaglia’s frustration, the black dragon spoke little of those days. She herself had only shadowy memories of her serpent-self creating a case before her metamorphosis into dragon. But she recalled too well how she had stirred to awareness inside her cocoon, trapped in a buried city, denied the sunlight she needed to hatch. Elderlings had put her there, she suspected. They had dragged her case and others of her generation into a solarium to shelter them from falling ash. That rescue attempt had become her doom when falling ash buried the city. She had no idea how long she had been imprisoned in her case in lonely darkness. When the humans had first discovered the room where she and her fellows were trapped, their only thought had been to salvage the dragon cases as “wizardwood” for the building of ships that would be impervious to the Rain Wild River’s acid floods. It was not until first Reyn and then Selden had come to her that she had been freed to light and life.

  Selden. She missed her little singer. How he could flatter and praise, his clear voice as pleasing as his tickling words that glorified her. But she had sent him away, impressing on him that he should travel in search of tidings of other dragon populations. At the time, she had been hopeful that the late hatch of elderly serpents could yield viable dragons. She had not been willing to believe that all dragons everywhere had died out. So she had sent Selden off, and he had gone with a willing heart, to do not just her bidding but to also seek allies for Bingtown in their never-ending war with Chalced.

  In the years since then her time with Icefyre had cured her of any optimism. They were the only true dragons left in the world, and thus he was her mate, no matter how unsuitable she found him. She wondered again what had become of Selden. Was he dead, or just beyond the reach of her thoughts? Not that it really mattered. Humans, even humans transformed by dragons into Elderlings, did not live all that long. It was scarcely worth the effort to befriend them.

  She caught a whiff of the antelope as Icefyre dived on them. They were a small herd, only five or six beasts, dozing in the trapped warmth of the winter sun. As Icefyre fell on them, they scattered. He crushed two beneath his outstretched talons, leaving Tintaglia to pursue the others.

  It was harder than it should have been. The festering arrow just under her left wing made every flap of her wings a torment. The narrow arroyos of the rocky hillside offered the game beasts shelter in spaces too narrow for a dragon to navigate. But one foolish creature broke free of the others and fled uphill and onto the ridgeline. She pursued him and in a frantic dive knocked him to the earth before he could reach the next gully. Her front talons tore him as she seized him and clutched him to the keel of her chest. He struggled briefly, spattering her with his warm blood before going limp in her clutches. She did not delay but tore into the warm meat. It was her first kill of the day and she was famished.

  The antelope was not a large creature, and it was winter lean. Soon there was nothing left of it, not a skull or the hooves; only sticky blood on the rocky earth. It did not fill her, but nonetheless she felt herself sinking into somnolence as soon as she had finished eating.

  Tintaglia stretched out and closed her eyes. Then she shifted and tried a different position. It was worse. It was not the stony ground that discomforted her, but the broken shaft and the arrow head and the infection that surrounded it. She lifted her wing and craned her neck to sniff at it, then snorted. Bad. Rotting meat smell. The claws on her forepaws were too large to be of any use; clawing at it only
made it hurt more. And the end of the broken arrow shaft was no longer even visible. She feared that instead of being pushed out of her body by the infection, the missile was actually digging in deeper.

  Icefyre landed nearby in a rush of dust from the braking beat of his wings. We should hunt more.

  I want to sleep.

  He lifted his head and snuffed the air. That arrow festers. You should pull it out.

  I’ve tried. I can’t.

  He leaned closer, snuffing at her injury, and she allowed it, but not graciously. Of old, sometimes humans used poisoned weapons against us. They would dip the heads of their lances in filth before they tried to stab us. They knew that they could seldom kill us outright but that a lingering infection might kill a dragon.

  She flinched away from his scrutiny and immediately craned her neck to inspect the wound. Do you think this arrow was poisoned?

  Impossible to tell. He seemed very calm about it. Do you wish to hunt again?

  What did they do, the dragons with poisoned injuries?

  They died. Some of them. Sometimes they went to the Elderling healers for aid. Little human hands can sometimes be useful in cleaning a wound. The silver water could cure many ills. I am going hunting. Are you coming?

  Do you think I should go back to the Rain Wilds and try to find my Elderlings? Malta and Reyn?

  The black dragon looked at her for a time. Whatever thoughts he had, he was not sharing with her. When he spoke, it was only to say, I do not think I could trust a human again. Even an Elderling.

  I might trust them. If I had to. Malta and Reyn have both served me before; they would serve me again, I think.

  Again, he was quiet. Then he said, The silver well of Kelsingra. It was a rare and wondrous thing and to drink from it brought dragons great strength. Sometimes it was used for healing. You could go there, to Kelsingra.

  I’ve been to Kelsingra. The well is no more. The city was empty and dead, with dust blowing through the streets. And when I went to the well, the windlass had fallen to ruin. Even if there had been Elderlings there at that moment, they could not have drawn the silver for me. She did not speak of how angry it had made her; of how she had trampled and broken what remained of the windlass and shoved it down the fruitless well.

  Kelsingra. Icefyre spoke the word regretfully. It was a place of wonder, once. If, as you say, it is abandoned and empty, then that is a loss. I recall it as a place of poets chanting my praises as Elderlings worked scented oil into my scale-beds. There were baths there. And sunning spots. Fat herds of all sorts of meat creatures: bullocks and sheep and swine. They made many memorials to us, statues and mosaics.

  He held his thoughts still, and Tintaglia’s mind wandered. She had her ancestors’ memories of Kelsingra, but they were faded and scentless. Her own perceptions of the abandoned city overlay them and dimmed them even more.

  I go to hunt! Icefyre announced abruptly. I hunger still.

  I am going to rest. She recognized suddenly a determination that had been forming in her for some days. And then I am going back to the Rain Wilds.

  Perhaps later we will go there. The feel of his thought was dismissive of her idea. Perhaps another time, I will go to see Kelsingra for myself. When I decide the time is right to go. He turned away from her and leaped into the air. The wind of his battering wings rushed past her, stirring her injury to a dull ache.

  Wearily she settled herself for sleep. It was difficult to find a position that did not irritate her wound. It was getting worse; she could smell it, and the spreading poison from the infection was a throbbing deep in her muscles. It was not healing and she could do nothing to better it. The longer she waited, the weaker she would be. But Icefyre cared nothing for that.

  And abruptly she knew that when she awoke, she would not wait for him to return or for his decision. She needed the services of her Elderlings, Reyn with his strong hands and Malta’s clever little mind. It was time to go home.

  Back to the Rain Wilds.

  Credits

  Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

  Cover illustration © by Jackie Morris

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CITY OF DRAGONS. Copyright © 2012 by Robin Hobb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-156163-4

  EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062101068

  12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication

  I miss you, Ralph.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  PROLOGUE

  Changes

  ONE

  Ending a Life

  TWO

  Flight

  THREE

  Hunters and Prey

  FOUR

  Opening Negotiations

  FIVE

  Taking the Leap

  SIX

  Dragon Blood

  SEVEN

  City Dwellers

  EIGHT

  City of Elderlings

  NINE

  Passing Ships

  TEN

  Tintaglia’s Touch

  ELEVEN

  Silver

  TWELVE

  Dragon Warrior

  THIRTEEN

  Final Chances

  FOURTEEN

  Blood Price

  FIFTEEN

  Hostages

  SIXTEEN

  Expectations

  SEVENTEEN

  The Well

  EIGHTEEN

  Seductions

  NINETEEN

  Icefyre

  TWENTY

  Dragon Decisions

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chalced

  TWENTY-TWO

  Summer

  EPILOGUE

  Generation

  Credits

  Copyright

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES

  THE KEEPERS AND THEIR DRAGONS

  ALUM: A pale-skinned keeper with silvery gray eyes, very small ears, and an almost flattened nose. Enamored of Skelly. His dragon is Arbuc, a silver-green drake.

  BOXTER: This short, copper-eyed, stoutly built keeper is cousin to Kase. The orange drake SKRIM is his to tend.

  HARRIKIN: Tall and slim, at twenty he is older than the other keepers. Lecter is his foster brother, and they are very close. He is a protector of Sylve, and their bond is a strong one. His dragon is Ranculos, a scarlet drake with silver eyes.

  ICEFYRE: This ancient black drake was entrapped in ice and still bears the signs of that long encasement. Freed from the ice by human intervention (Fool’s Fate), he has become Tintaglia’s default mate. He bears no love for humanity.

  JERD: This blond female keeper is heavily marked by the Rain Wilds. She is as aggressive and assertive in getting what she wants as her dragon, Veras, a dark green queen with gold stippling.

  KASE: Boxter’s cousin has copper eyes and, like him, is short, stout, and heavily muscled. His dragon is the orange drake Dortean.

  LECTER: Orphaned at seven, he was raised by Harrikin’s family, and the two remain close. His dragon is Sestican, a large blue drake with orange scaling and small spikes on his neck. He has an uneasy partnership with Davvie.

  NORTEL: This competent and ambitious keeper has clashed
in the past with Tats over Thymara. His dragon is the lavender drake Tinder.

  RAPSKAL: Heavily marked by the Rain Wilds since birth, he seems as changed in his mind as his body. His peculiarities are offset by his sincere, boyish charm and handsome features. He is absolutely certain that Thymara will be his. His dragon is the small red queen Heeby, who may be slow-witted but was the first of the dragons to take flight.

  SYLVE: Youngest of the keepers, but more mature and thoughtful than many of the male keepers. She is slight, blond with pink and gold scaling. Harrikin is her protector and partner. Her dragon is golden MERCOR. He is not the largest of the drakes but is the most thoughtful and often asserts a quiet leadership.

  THYMARA: Sixteen years old, Thymara was born with black claws instead of nails and was exposed at birth. Rescued by her father and resented by her mother, she has grown up with a deep awareness of the restrictive rules imposed on those changed by the Rain Wilds. A competent hunter, she struggles to determine what her role will be in the new society in Kelsingra. She has an uneasy bond with azure Sintara, the largest and most dominant of the queens.

  TATS: He is the only keeper not born in the Rain Wilds. Son of a slave, he still bears the facial tattoos of that status. His attraction to Thymara threatens his friendship with Rapskal. Small and feisty green Fente is his queen.

  TINTAGLIA: The sole dragon to hatch from the ancient wizardwood cases, she emerged a true queen capable of flight immediately. Initially she assisted the serpents to migrate up the Rain Wild River in the hopes of seeing a new generation of dragons emerge (the Liveship Traders trilogy), but has apparently since abandoned the crippled creatures. She created the Elderlings Malta and Reyn and took young Selden Vestrit as her poet.