Rain Wilds Chronicles

by Robin Hobb

  Did it matter what she experienced as a memory walker? If the food she ate there did not nourish her, did the sex she enjoyed in that world matter in this one? She was of two minds. Certainly, it had changed her attitude toward many things that people could do in a cozy bed on a winter’s eve or in a meadow under a summer sky. Could she claim she was not being intimate with Rapskal when she knew that he wore Tellator’s skin? Certainly, she assured herself. Sometimes. For he could change nothing that Tellator did or felt, just as she had no control over Amarinda. She could not prevent their lovers’ quarrels, and she could not sidetrack their sensuous reunions. It was as if they watched the same play or heard the same story told. That was all.

  Sometimes she could almost believe that. Certainly, that puppetry of intimacy did not seem to completely satisfy Rapskal. Often, as they walked back to their lodgings he would drop hints or outright beg her to come with him to some private place where they could reenact what they had just experienced. She always refused. Over and over, she had told him that she did not want to risk a pregnancy. Yet she could not deny that she longed for the excitement of being the woman in control of the situation. Or a woman being loved by a man.

  And today, as she strolled with Tats down to the riverside to visit the dock construction, the same thoughts were still on her mind. What would it be like to have Tats as a lover? She had experienced Tellator any number of times now and shared one long night with Rapskal. Would Tats be as different from both of them as Rapskal had been from Tellator? It was an unsettling thing to wonder and she tried to push the thoughts aside. She gave the young man beside her a sideways glance. His face was grave and thoughtful. A question popped out of her mouth before she considered the wisdom of asking it.

  “Have you dream-walked in any of the memory stones yet?”

  He squinted at her as if she were a bit odd. “Of course I have. We all have. Boxter and Kase go to a whorehouse and linger with the sampling they offer there. Some of the others join them there from time to time. Don’t look at me like that! What else would you expect them to do? Neither Kase nor Boxter have any hope of finding a mate unless other women move to Kelsingra, and that certainly won’t be any time soon. Alum, Harrikin, and Sylve found a place where some of the famous Elderling minstrels immortalized their performances. And you yourself lingered with us when we watched the puppet show and the juggler and then the acrobats that night the Long Street was remembering a festival there. So, yes, we’ve all memory-walked in the stones. Hard to avoid it when we live here.”

  That wasn’t what she had meant, but she was relieved he had taken her question that way.

  “I know. How can you walk down one of the broad streets at night and not share the memories there?” She snorted. “Sylve told me that when Jerd finds a street memory of a festival night, she follows the richly dressed women home and then searches their dwellings for any jewelry or garments that have survived. She has amassed quite a wardrobe.” She shook her head, wondering if she thought Jerd was greedy or envied her expert looting. Then in a low voice, she admitted, “That isn’t the kind of memory walking I was talking about.”

  Tats gave her a long level look. “Do I ask you questions like that?”

  She looked away. After a time had passed when she did not respond, he added, “There are a lot of reasons to memory-walk that have nothing to do with sex or eating or listening to music. Carson tries to discover how the city works. He asked me to see what I could find out about the original docks. Not that we can replicate them, lacking the sort of magic the old Elderlings had. But to see what sort of things they considered when they were building them, as people who had known this stretch of river for a long time.” He sighed and shook his head. “I went to places where I thought they would have kept records of things like that. That big building with the map tower, and then that one with all the faces carved above the doors. We thought maybe that was an important place. But nothing. Or actually, much too much. I learned things that I still don’t understand. Do you know why so much of this city is still standing? Why grass hasn’t grown in the streets, or cracks started in the fountains? It’s because stone remembers here. It remembers that it’s a building façade, or a street, or the bowl of a fountain. It remembers, and it can repair itself, on some level. It can’t fix itself if a quake makes a gigantic crack. But tiny cracks and crumbles just don’t happen. The stone holds on to itself. It remembers.”

  He shook his head in wonder at the thought and then added, “And they could do more than that, it seems. You know how some of the keepers swear they have seen a statue move? The Elderlings knew how to do that. They breathed life into the stone, and the stone keeps a part of them and can move. Sometimes. When it’s awakened by . . . something. Something that I could not understand, even though an old man was remembering it clearly. It made me realize that Alise was right, is right. We need to know what she knows about the history of this city, and then we need to apply it. You know what she told me a few days ago? That when Rapskal confronted her that day and said she wasn’t an Elderling and that the city didn’t belong to her, she was so discouraged that she nearly burned all her work! Can you imagine it? I knew I felt angry at him that day, but I’d no idea how badly he had hurt Alise.”

  He paused, and she sensed he hoped she would share his anger. He waited for her to say something, and she knew that if she did, it would be saying much more than that she thought Rapskal had been thoughtlessly cruel. Tats watched her stillness. But she could not find a way out of her silence. Rapskal hadn’t said it to hurt Alise; he’d said it to assert his right to the city. A silly thought danced in her brain. Alise is a grown-up. Can grown-ups really have their feelings so badly hurt? So hurt they think of burning all their work or killing themselves? But by the time she realized how childish her reaction was, Tats had shaken his head at her silence and moved on.

  “We need to map this city. Not just the streets, but where the springhouses are, and the drains. And we need to make maps that show what information is stored where. Right now, it’s like a huge treasure house, full of thousands of boxes of treasures, and we have thousands of different keys. The wealth is here, right under our feet, but we can’t make sense of it. Like that silver well that Sylve was talking about the other day.”

  She looked at him, surprised. He mistook it for confusion.

  “I guess your mind was elsewhere. She says she keeps having dreams about a silver well. She’s wandered through the city looking for it, but hasn’t seen anything like what she dreamed. She thinks she’s remembering something that Mercor knows about. She says he mentioned something about the silver wells of Kelsingra, a long time ago when we first began our journey here. She wants to talk to him, but she’s like the rest of us. Since her dragon took flight, he doesn’t have a lot of time for her. And she said another odd thing. She says it feels like he avoids the topic, as if it makes him uncomfortable.”

  “Sintara spoke to me once of a silver well. It seemed very important to her. But she said her memories of it were fragmented.” She put the words out casually.

  “The well isn’t silver,” Tats said slowly. He gave her a sideways glance as if he expected her to mock him. “I dreamed of it last night. The structure around it was old and very fancy. As much wood as stone, as if it had been built at the very beginning of the city. Inside there was this mechanism . . . I couldn’t see it well. But when you cranked up the bucket from the depths, it was full of silver stuff. Thicker than water. Dragons can drink it and love it. But I had the feeling it was dangerous to humans.”

  “Humans? Or Elderlings?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I’m not sure. In the dream I knew I had to be very careful of it. But was I dreaming it as if I were a human or an Elderling?”

  It was her turn to sigh. “Sometimes I don’t like what this place is doing to me. Even without touching memory stones, I have dreams that don’t quite belong to me. I turn a corner and just for an instant I feel like I’m someone els
e, with a whole lifetime of memories and friends and expectations for the day. I pass a house and want to visit a friend, one I’ve never had.”

  Tats was nodding. “Those standing stones, the big ones in the circle in that plaza, they remind me of different cities when I pass them. You know, the other Elderling cities . . .”

  She shook her head at him. “No. But I walk through a memory of a market and suddenly I want a fish cake spiced with that hot red oil. And then, just as abruptly, I’m me again and I know that I’m sick of fish, with or without red oil.”

  “The memories tug at me, too. I don’t like it—” Tats halted suddenly. He took her arm, pulling her to a stop.

  Down by the river, work progressed under Carson’s supervision. A crude wooden dock made of logs had been roped to some of the old support columns. The river tugged at it and gray water bulged and flowed over the end of it. Harrikin, stripped to worn trousers and securely roped against the current, was in the water, trying to force one log into alignment with another. Carson was shouting directions to him as he kept tension on a line tied to the opposite end of the timber. Lecter, muscles bunching with effort, crouched over a log on the shore, slowly turning a drill to put a hole through it. Not far away, Alum was smoothing straight pieces of sapling into dowel. The sound rode thin on the spring wind. Nortel, ribs bandaged from a log-setting mishap earlier in the week, crouched on the dock with a mallet and pegs, waiting to fasten the log. It was cold, wet, dangerous work. And it was Tats’s assignment for the afternoon. He tugged at her hand and she met his gaze. “I’ve heard what Rapskal says. That we have to plunge ourselves into the city’s memories if we are to learn how to live here as Elderlings. But I also remember all the warnings I heard in Trehaug. What Leftrin told us before he left, that lingering too long near memory stone can drown you. That you can lose your own life in remembering someone else’s.”

  Thymara was silent for a moment. Tats had put a precise finger on her own fear, the one that she didn’t like to admit. “But we are Elderlings. It’s different for us.”

  “Is it? I know Rapskal says that, but is it? Did the Elderlings prize having their own lives, or did they grow up so saturated in other people’s experiences that they didn’t realize what was theirs and what they’d absorbed? I like being me, Thymara. I want to still be Tats, no matter how long I live and tend my dragon. And I want to share those years with Thymara. I don’t need to soak you in someone else’s life when I’m with you.” He paused, letting her feel the sting of that little barb. Then he added, “My turn for a question. Are you living your life, Thymara? Or avoiding it by living someone else’s?”

  He knew. She hadn’t confided in him about the memory columns and her visits there with Rapskal. But somehow he knew. A deep blush heated her face. As her silence became longer, the hurt in his eyes deepened. She tried to tell herself that she’d done nothing wrong, that his hurt was not her fault. He spoke while she struggled to find words.

  “It’s pretending, Thymara.” His voice was low but not gentle. “It’s not plunging into this life in Kelsingra. It’s letting go of now, and living the past, a past that will never return. It’s not even really living. You don’t make decisions there, and if the consequences become too dark, you can run away. You take on a style of thinking, and when you come back to this world, it sways you. But worst of all is, while you are swimming in memories, what are you not doing here? What experiences are you missing, what chances pass you by? A year from now, what will you say about these seasons, what will you remember?”

  She was moving from embarrassed to angry. Tats had no right to rebuke her. He might think she was doing something foolish, but she hadn’t hurt anyone with it. Well, only him, and only his feelings. And wasn’t that partially his own fault, for caring about such things?

  He knew she was getting angry. She saw how he tightened his shoulders and heard his voice deepen a notch. “When you’re with me, Thymara . . . if you ever decide to be with me . . . I won’t be thinking of anyone else except you. I won’t call you by someone else’s name, or do something to you because it’s what someone else liked a long, long time ago. When you finally decide to let me touch you, I’ll be touching you. Only you. Can Rapskal say that to you?”

  Her mind swirled with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Then, from the riverbank, Carson shouted, “Dragon fight! Keepers, get down here!”

  She spun away from Tats and ran, as much toward danger as away from it.

  “Why do you hate me?”

  She gave two final snips with her shears before she spoke, then ran her slender fingers through his hair, loosening it as she checked for any more mats or tangles. It sent a shiver up his back and he shuddered to cast it off. Another woman might have smiled at his reaction. Chassim’s eyes remained cold and distant. She replied with a question of her own. “Why do you suppose I hate you, dragon man? Have I treated you with anything less than respect? Been less than attentive and subservient to you in any way?”

  “Your hatred shimmers around you like heat from a fire,” he replied honestly. She stepped away from him to fling handfuls of his damp hair out of a barred window. That task done, she closed the window and then folded down the elaborate wooden cover. Even though the cover was painted white and bore images of birds and flowers, it still plunged the room into gloom. Selden sighed at the loss of sunlight: his body craved it after the long months of deprivation.

  The woman halted, her hand on the screen. “I have displeased you and now you will tell my father.” It was not a question.

  He was startled. “No. I just miss the daylight. I was kept for months inside a heavy tent and journeyed here in the hold of a ship. I’ve missed fresh air and daylight.”

  She moved away from the window without opening the cover. “Why look on what you cannot have?”

  He wondered if that was why she had draped herself, head to foot, in a shapeless white shroud. Only the square of her face was visible; he had never seen a woman attired so and suspected it was her own invention. All Rain Wild folk went veiled when they visited other places. Even when they went to Bingtown, where folk should have known better, their scales and wattles drew the curious eyes and invited fear or mockery. But a Rain Wild woman would have veiled her face as well, and her gloves and robes would have been rich with embroidery and beading. Her garments would have displayed her wealth and power. This woman was swathed as plainly as if her body had been wrapped for a pauper’s grave. Her bared face, though fair, was a window into the anger and resentment she felt. Almost he wished she had hidden those eyes from him.

  Yet the fury in her eyes had not reached the gentleness of her touch. He lifted his hands to his hair and ran his fingers through it. She had left it to his shoulders. It felt light and soft, and for the first time in months his fingers moved freely through it. Such a wonder to be entirely clean and warm. She had trimmed his nails, hands and feet, and scrubbed his back and legs and arms with a soft brush until his skin blushed pink and his scaling shone. His wounds had been cleaned and bandaged with salves and clean linen. It had felt odd and uncomfortable to be groomed as if he were a prize animal, but he had neither the strength nor the will to resist her. Even now, wrapped in soft blankets and enthroned before a fire, he felt it took all his strength just to hold his head upright. He gave up and let it loll back on the cushions. He could feel the drag of his eyelids. He struggled to stay awake: he needed to think, to put together the pieces of information they had given him.

  The chancellor had brought him here, apparently at great expense, and presented him to the Duke. The Duke had spoken kindly to him and had placed him here with this woman who tended him with both gentleness and disdain. What did they want of him? Why had his presentation to the Duke seemed so formal and portentous? Questions, but no clear answers. Life was suspended, his existence dependent on the whims of others. He had to decipher the mystery. In this woman’s care, he had the chance to regain his health. Could he manipulate that into a chance to regain his fr
eedom?

  Stay awake. Ask questions. Make plans. He fixed a smile on his face and inquired casually, “So. Chancellor Ellik is your father?”

  She turned back to him, startled. Her upper lip was lifted like a cat’s that smelled something bad. He could not tell if she were pretty or even how old she was. He saw her pale blue eyes and sandy lashes, a face sprinkled with faded freckles, a small mouth and a pointed chin. All else was hidden. “My father? No. My suitor. He wishes to marry me, to gather power to himself, so that as my father fails, he may assume it.”

  “Your father is failing?”

  “My father is dying and has been for a long time. I wish he would accept that and do it. My father is the Duke of Chalced. Antonicus Kent.”

  Selden was doubly startled. “Your father is the Duke of Chalced? That is his name? I’ve never heard it.”

  She turned away from him again, hiding her face from his honest stare. “No one speaks it anymore. When he made himself duke, years before I was born, he declared that was all he would ever be, for the rest of his life. Even as I child, I did not refer to him as ‘Father’ or ‘Papa.’ No. He is always ‘the Duke.’ ”

  Selden sighed, all hopes of an alliance fled. “So. Your father, the Duke, is my captor.”

  The woman gave him an odd look. “Captor. That is a kind word for someone who intends to devour you in hopes of prolonging his own life.”

  He stared at her without comprehension. She met his gaze. Perhaps she had intended to jab him with her words, but as he looked at her, her face changed slowly. Finally she said, “You don’t know, do you?”

  His mouth had gone dry at the look on her face. She didn’t like him, so how could she feel so much horror and pity at his fate? He drew an uncertain breath. “Will you tell me?”