by Hobb, Robin
Leftrin watched the scarlet dragon dwindle in darkness and distance. “Sa watch over her,” he prayed under his breath and then twisted his mouth in wry wonder at himself. He’d never been a praying man before Alise came into his life. Now he caught himself at it every time she insisted on taking chances. Exploring abandoned cities, attempting to hunt, riding on flying dragons . . . He shook his head as he watched Alise vanish into the darkness. As much as he feared for her, it was her adventurous nature that had first attracted him. That first time she’d appeared on the docks, in her hat and veil and flouncy skirts, he’d been dumbstruck. Such a fine lady to be chancing herself on the dangerous Rain Wild River and his barge.
Now her hands were roughened and her hair bundled back, and the veils and ribbons long gone. But she was still the fine lady, as elegant as ever, in the same way a fine tool, no matter how battered, retained its integrity. She was one of a kind, his Alise. Tough as wizardwood and fine as lace.
Now he could no longer see her or the dragon. The darkness had swallowed them. He stared anyway, willing that Heeby would make the flight safely, willing that Alise be safe on the other side.
“They’re on the ground,” Rapskal said quietly.
Leftrin turned to him in surprise. “You can see that far?”
Rapskal grinned merrily. His eyes gleamed blue in the dimness. “My dragon told me. She’s on her way back to us already.”
“Of course,” Leftrin replied. He sighed to himself. Sometimes it was easy to forget Rapskal’s bond with the dragon. Easy to forget the boyish side of the young Elderling. Like all growing boys, Rapskal toyed with danger. He had been reckless tonight. Even his dragon had sensed that. He couldn’t be permitted to risk himself like that again.
Leftrin cleared his throat. “What you were doing when we found you? There’s no excuse for that. You’re Rain Wild bred. Don’t tell me you didn’t know the danger. What were you thinking? Do you want to drown yourself in memories? To be lost to us forever?”
Rapskal met his gaze squarely. His eyes gleamed blue in the darkness, as brightly as if he were an old man with years of change on him. His smile grew wider as he admitted cheerfully, “Yes, actually, I do.”
Leftrin stared at him. His words were shocking. But he did not speak them cheekily but with sincerity. “What are you saying? That you want to become a drooling idiot? Wander forever in Elderling memories while your body loses control of itself? Become a senile burden to everyone who loves you, or starve to death in your own filth when everyone abandons you to your selfishness? It will happen, you know.”
He painted the death of a man who drowned in memories as harshly as he could. The boy had to be dissuaded from engulfing his mind in the pleasure of a past that was not his. “Drowning in memories” was the Rain Wild euphemism for it. It was not as common a fate as it had been when the Elderling cities had first been discovered, but it still happened and most often to youngsters like Rapskal. The temptation to linger in contact with certain stone walls and statues was great. Life in the Rain Wilds was not as harsh as it once had been, but no Rain Wilder enjoyed the life of opulence and luxury that was recorded in the stones of the city. Once a lad had explored one of those memories, the temptation to return over and over to a dream of remembered feasts and music and romance and indulgences would prove too great for some to resist. Left to themselves, they literally drowned in the memories, forgetting their own lives and the needs of their real bodies to indulge in the pleasures of a city and a civilization that no longer existed.
Leftrin understood the pull of it. Almost every adventurous Rain Wild lad had sampled memory diving at least once. The secrets of where the best and most intense memories were stored were passed on privately by generation after generation. His mind darted back to certain stone carvings in a little-used hallway of the Elderling city buried under Trehaug. With a touch of the hand, one could experience a lavish banquet followed by a lovely concert of Elderling music. There were rumors of another carving that had held records of one powerful Elderling’s sexual conquests. Years ago, the Rain Wild Traders’ Council had ordered it destroyed, saying that enough young men had perished due to its attraction. Yet the tales of it persisted.
Looking at Rapskal now, Leftrin wondered what he had discovered when he had touched the statue. What sort of memories did it hold and how strong would its attraction be once the word spread to the other keepers? He imagined having to tell Alise it must be destroyed, and then considered the intense physical labor of breaking it to pieces. The Elderlings had built for the ages. Nothing they had created gave way easily to nature or man. Destroying the statue would take days, possibly weeks. And it would be hazardous work. To those who were vulnerable to it, memory stone was dangerous even to casual touch. Even breathing the dust could have serious consequences.
“What did you find in the statue, boy? Is it worth giving up your true life for it?”
Rapskal’s grin flashed. “Captain, you needn’t worry so much. I know what I’m doing. And it’s what I’m supposed to do. What Elderlings have always done. It’s why the memories were stored. They won’t hurt me. They will make me what I’m supposed to be.”
Leftrin’s heart sank deeper with each of the boy’s confident assertions. Already, he sounded like a stranger, not like impetuous, random Rapskal at all. How could he have fallen so far so fast? Leftrin spoke sternly. “So it may seem to you now, keeper. So it has seemed to many others, and when they plunged deep and lost the way, it was too late for them to think again about it. I know the attraction, Rapskal. I was a lad, once. I’ve set my hand to a memory stone and been swept up in it.”
“Have you?” Rapskal tilted his head as he regarded Leftrin. In the tattering sunset, he could not read the look in the boy’s steady gaze. Was it skepticism? Even, perhaps, condescension? “Perhaps you have,” Rapskal went on in a gentler voice. “But it would not have meant the same thing to you at all. It would be like reading someone else’s diary.” He lifted his eyes suddenly and smiled his generous smile. “And here she comes, my beauty, my darling, my scarlet wonder!”
The red dragon, wings wide and flapping as she slowed herself, skittered to a halt a score of paces from them as she landed. Her gleaming eyes whirled with pleasure at the boy’s praise.
“Your turn,” he said to Leftrin, smiling.
Leftrin didn’t return the smile. “No. You go. Send your dragon back for me. I don’t want to leave you here alone with the statue.”
Rapskal gazed at him for a long time and then shrugged one narrow shoulder. “As you wish, Captain. But, you know, I am less alone in this city than anywhere else I have ever been in my life.” Arms wide as if to embrace her, he strode toward his dragon. The little scarlet queen reared up on her hind legs and then came down. She snaked her head toward him and made a sound between a snarl and a purr as he reached her and clambered up onto her shoulder.
“I’ll send her back for you!” he promised, and then the dragon spun about on her hind legs and began her race down the hill.
Day the 5th of the Change Moon
Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
Contents, a notice from Trader family Meldar and Trader family Kincarron, renewing the offer of a substantial reward for any information about the location and well-being of Sedric Meldar and Alise Kincarron Finbok, with the request that all posted notices be renewed in both Trehaug and Cassarick, and an announcement of the rewards be made at any convening of the Traders at either Trader concourse, all fees having been paid in advance for these services.
Detozi, a small note appended here. Thank you for your advice and please thank Erek as well. With difficulty, I have held my tongue and made no complaint about Kim’s message to me. Now several complaints have been lodged about the condition of messages received from Cassarick. I will stand quietly, as befits my youth, and let others consider if
the mails are being tampered with at that location.
Chapter Five
A BINGTOWN TRADER
The door swung open into dimness. Hest advanced into the room cautiously, wrinkling his nose at the smell of faded perfume and disuse. Whoever had tidied the room last had done a poor job. The cinders of a long-dead fire lay in the small hearth, contributing a stink of old ashes. Several strides of his long legs carried him to the window. He pushed the curtains back, letting thin gray winter light into the room. Unlatching the window, he let it swing wide to the wintry day.
This small chamber had been intended to be Alise’s sewing room. His mother had taken a great deal of pleasure in arranging it for his bride-to-be; she had selected the chairs by the hearth, the little tables, the deep blue draperies, and the rug with the floral pattern. But his inconvenient wife had no interest in sewing or embroidery. Not Alise, oh no. While other men’s wives were happily occupied with decorating new hats for themselves or stitching mottoes, his woman was out wandering the markets, finding old scrolls at exorbitant prices to buy and drag home. The shelves of the room, painted gilt and white and intended for trinkets, sagged under their burdens of scrolls and books and stacks of notes. The top of the large wooden desk that had replaced the dainty sewing table was bare; he’d give Alise that: at least she’d tidied away her mess before she went.
Then he realized that her desk was completely bare. NO! She couldn’t have taken it with her! Not even Alise was so obsessed as to risk the Elderling scroll he’d given her as an engagement gift. It had been ridiculously expensive. Knowing its value and fragility, she’d put the damned thing in a special case to preserve it from dust and curious touches. Alise would not take such a rare, such an irreplaceable, such an exceedingly valuable item on a boat ride up the Rain Wild River. Would she?
Sedric had been the one to track the scroll down for him, back in the days when Hest had been courting Alise. It was one of only a handful of intact Elderling documents recovered from Cassarick. Sedric had assured him that it was priceless and that even the exorbitant sum he was paying for it was a bargain. Not only would he acquire a unique Elderling artifact, but in the process, he’d win Alise’s marriage consent. It was a Trader’s dream, a consummate bargain in which he gave something away, only to immediately regain it and the woman as well. They had laughed about it the evening before he had gone to present it to the dowdy little creature.
Hest scowled disdainfully as he recalled that night. Well, he had laughed about the bargain. Sedric had sat quiet, biting his lip and then dared to ask him, “Are you sure you want to go through with this? It’s the perfect gift. I’m sure that this, if nothing else, will win Alise’s regard for you. It will open the door for you to court her and make her your wife. But are you sure, really sure, that’s what you want?”
“Well, of course it isn’t!” They’d been drinking in Hest’s study, comfortably watching a gnarled apple wood log burn down to ash. The house had been quiet and calm, the curtains drawn to close out the night. The war with Chalced was over, trade was resuming, and the world was coming back to normality. Good wine and fine brandy, song and entertainment had returned to Bingtown. Inns and taverns and playhouses were being rebuilt, rising from the ashes to even greater splendor than old Bingtown had possessed before it was burned and pillaged. There were fortunes to be made. It was a wonderful time to be young and unattached and wealthy.
Then Hest’s misguided father had to ruin it all by insisting that Hest must get a wife and make an heir for the family or forfeit his right to be the sole inheritor of the Finbok family fortune. “If it were left to me, I’d live my life exactly as I am. I have my friends and my occupations, my business affairs prosper, and I have you in my bed when I want you. The last thing I need is a busy little woman cluttering up my house and demanding my time and attention. Even less do I desire squalling babies and messy little children.”
“But while your father lives and wears the Trader robe and controls not only the vote but the purse strings of the estates, you’ll have to do what pleases him.”
Sedric’s words had made him scowl, then and now. “Wrong. I’ll have to appear to do what pleases him. I have no intention of ceasing my ongoing efforts to please myself.”
“Well, then.” Sedric had pointed, a bit drunkenly, at the scroll in its ancient decorated case. “Then that’s exactly the item you want, Hest. I’ve known Alise for years. Her fascination with the ancient Elderlings and dragons consumes her. A gift such as that will win her to your side.”
And it had. At the time, the ridiculous price that he’d paid for the damn thing had seemed worth it. She’d agreed to marry him. After that, his courtship of her had simply followed the customs of Bingtown, as easily as following a road on a map. They’d married, his family had provided a comfortable new home and a larger allowance to him, and they’d settled in. Oh, from time to time, his father or mother would moan or complain that Alise’s belly didn’t swell with a child, but that was scarcely Hest’s fault. Even if women had appealed to him, he doubted he would have chosen one who looked like Alise. Unruly red hair, freckles thick as pox marks on her face and forearms and shoulders. She was a sturdy little woman who should have conceived easily and given him a brat right away. But she hadn’t even done that right.
And then, years after he thought she’d settled in her place, she’d had the wild impulse to take herself off to the Rain Wilds to study dragons. And damned if Sedric hadn’t supported her in the idea. They’d both had the gall to remind him that he’d agreed to such a journey as one of the terms of the marriage contract. Perhaps he had, but no proper wife would ever have insisted on such a ridiculous thing. Thoroughly incensed with both of them, he’d sent them off together. Let Sedric see just how much he’d enjoy his “old friend’s” endless whining and wearisome ways. Let Sedric remember what it was like to live peasant-poor on a smelly ship on a reeking river. The ungrateful wretch. Both of them were ungrateful, stupid, selfish, common idiots. And now to find that they’d stolen from him, that they’d taken the most valuable scroll in the whole expensive collection that the stupid red cow had assembled, was more than any man could tolerate.
He strode back to the door of the chamber and thrust his head out. “Ched! Ched, attend me this moment.”
“Coming, sir!” The voice of his steward was distant, perhaps from the wine cellar. Lazy bastard. He was never to hand when Hest wanted him.
Hest paced impatiently around the room, seeking but not finding the scroll. The bitch had stolen it! He clenched his fists. Well, she’d find out soon enough that he’d cut her off without a copper shard. And faithless Sedric as well! When he had returned from his own trading voyage to discover that neither his wife nor his secretary had returned from their ill-advised trip to the Rain Wilds, he’d been furious. Even so, he’d held back his hand until the ugly rumors that they had run off together had begun to poison his social standing. The inner circle of his friends knew that it couldn’t be true, since Sedric would no more run off with a woman than he’d develop a spine and assert himself. But there had been others in Bingtown society who had believed it and had dared to pity Hest, dared to see him as the cuckolded husband. They sympathized with him and, believing his heart was broken, had dared to advise him on how best to win her back if she did return. Worse had been the ambitious matrons who had privately encouraged him to evoke the dissolution clause in his marriage contract and find a “more suitable, fertile wife”; inevitably, they had a daughter, niece, or granddaughter who would fill the bill admirably. One widow had even dared to offer herself. Such importunings were humiliating, but the pity others offered was the worst. They seemed to think his lack of reaction to Alise’s absence indicated that he was pining mournfully for his red cow!
That was when he had sent the notices to be published in every significant town on the Rain Wild River. He’d made it known clear and plain that anyone so foolish as to extend credit to the runaways had best not expect to be paid back
out of Hest’s pockets. Alise and Sedric wanted to be away from him? Fine! Let them see how well they could manage when cut off from his fortune. And it was a plain signal to all of just how little he cared what became of either of them.
Where was his damn steward? He leaned out of the door again. “Ched!” he bellowed, furious this time, and his anger was not soothed when the man startled him by saying, “I’m here, sir,” from the corridor behind him.
“Where were you? When I call you, it means I need you immediately.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I was admitting a guest and settling him in your visiting room. He came very finely dressed, sir, with a hired carriage and team of the finest quality. He says he has come all the way from Chalced on a ship that arrived just this morning and that you were expecting him.”
“What’s his name?” Hest demanded. He racked his brain but could recall no scheduled meetings
“He was most adamant, sir, that he would not share his name. He said it was a matter of great delicacy and that he bore gifts and messages not only for you but for someone named Begasti Cored. And he spoke of Sedric Meldar as having arranged all this months ago, and how expected shipments had not arrived and someone must pay for the delay . . .”
“Enough!” Damned Sedric again! He was tired of thinking of the man. Had Sedric run off and left the threads of a business agreement to unravel? That was unlike him. He was keener on details and arrangements than anyone Hest had ever known. But then it was also unlike the sucking little tick to stay away so long from comfort and wealth. Unless this was part of some other, unknown plot against Hest. That was a very disturbing thought. Sedric and Alise had been friends since childhood. Had the two of them collaborated in some plot to steal trade business from Hest? Was that why they had vanished and not returned? What could the two trade in? Abruptly he recalled why he had summoned Ched. “Turn your mind to this. There was a scroll on that table, a very valuable one, in a wooden case with a glass lid. It was there, and now it’s gone. I want it found.”