Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  It was not time for them to be fed. There was a general lifting of heads followed by dragons wallowing and lurching to their feet, trying to see past one another for a view of what was arriving on the beach.

  “Is it food?” Fente demanded angrily.

  “Depends on how hungry you are,” Veras replied. “Small boats full of people. They’re pulling their boats up onto the bank now.”

  “I smell meat!” Kalo announced, and before he had even voiced it, the swarm was moving. Sintara shouldered Veras aside. The nasty green female snapped at her. Sintara gave her a lash of her tail in passing but didn’t bother with any further retaliation. Being the first to the food was much more important than any vengeance right now. Sintara gathered her strength and made a springing leap over Fente. Her withered wings opened reflexively but uselessly. Sintara snapped them back close to her sides and continued her lumbering gallop down to the riverbank.

  The cluster of young humans on the shore huddled together in fear. One yelled and ran back toward the beached boats. As the dragons advanced, three others joined him. Other people were emerging from the narrow beaten trail that led back into the forest and to the ladders that went up to their tree nests. Sintara caught the familiar scent of one of their hunters. The man raised his voice and shouted at the boat humans. “It’s all right. They smell the food, that’s all. Stand your ground and meet them. It’s why you’re here. We’ve got meat for all of them. Let us feed them first, and then you should move among them and let them greet you. Stand your ground!”

  Sintara could smell the fear on them. She noted in passing that the humans from the boats were mostly youngsters. Their voices were raised to one another, piping questions and squeaking warnings. Then the other hunters emerged from the path, pushing their barrows. Each wooden barrow was heaped high with meat and fish, a generous pile surpassing what they usually held. Sintara chose the third barrow as hers and pushed Ranculos aside to claim it. He roared, but swiftly chose the fourth barrow instead. As they always did, the barrow pushers quickly left the area to stand well back in the trees. They’d reclaim their barrows and trundle them away when every dragon had finished eating.

  Sintara sank her muzzle into the heaped carrion. The meat was still, the blood dried and the muscles stiffened. The deer in it had probably been killed yesterday or even the day before. The smell of the offal was rank, but she didn’t care. She seized and gulped, seized and gulped, eating as swiftly as she could. Even though there was a barrow for each dragon, it wasn’t uncommon to have to fight for the last pieces of her carrion if some other dragon had already finished his share.

  She overturned her barrow in her haste, spilling the final pieces of meat. The last piece of river carp was covered in dust: it stuck in her throat and she had to shake her head to get it down. It still stuck. Ignoring the others, she went to the drinking hole. The water that seeped in from the sides and filled it was less acidic than that in the river itself. She sank her muzzle into it and drew up a long draft. She lifted her head skyward, pointed her nose up, and swallowed. The fish was still caught in her throat. Another long drink and it finally slid down. She belched in relief. She was startled when someone asked her, “Are you all right now? You looked as if you were choking.”

  Sintara slowly turned her gaze downward. Standing at her shoulder was a thin Rain Wild girl. The faint trace of scales on her cheekbones glinted silvery in the sunlight. Sintara said nothing to the human, but rotated her head to look over the mud plain by the river. Some of the humans still clustered near their small boats, but several of them had ventured away from the group to mingle with the dragons. She gave her attention back to the girl who had spoken to her. The human barely came to her shoulder. She smelled of wood smoke and fear. Sintara opened her mouth and breathed in deeply, taking in the girl’s full scent. Then she breathed out and saw the girl flinch as her breath streamed past her. “Why do you ask?” she demanded.

  The girl didn’t answer the question. Instead, she pointed toward the forest and said, “The day you hatched, I was there. Up in that tree. Watching.”

  “I didn’t ‘hatch’ here. I emerged from my case. Are you too ignorant of dragon ways to know the difference?”

  The skin of the girl’s face changed temperature and color as her blood beat more strongly there. “I’m not ignorant. I know that dragons begin their lives as serpents, hatched on a beach far from here. To say that you hatched here was just a manner of speaking.”

  “A careless use of words,” Sintara corrected her.

  “I’m sorry,” the girl apologized.

  “I’M SORRY,” THYMARA said hastily. This dragon seemed very testy. Perhaps she had made an error in choosing her. She glanced over at Tats. He was trying to approach a small green female. She didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him, other than to hiss threateningly when he stepped too close to her barrow of meat. Rapskal already had his arm around a runty little red dragon. He began scratching her head near her neck fringe and the dragon leaned into him, thrumming with pleasure. An instant later, Thymara realized he was dislodging an entire colony of parasites from her. Leggy little insects were falling in a shower from the dragon as he diligently scratched at her scales.

  Most of the other dragon keepers still huddled by the boats, watching them. Greft had announced his claim as soon as the boat touched shore. “The big black one is mine. Everyone stay back and give me a chance to talk to him before you approach the others.”

  Perhaps some of the others were swayed by Greft’s assumption of leadership. Thymara wasn’t. She’d already seen the dragon she wanted to care for. The female was a gleaming blue with glittering silver markings on her dwarfed wings. Consecutive scaled frills draped her neck like ruffles on a rich woman’s dress. She was one of the better-formed dragons, despite her diminutive wings. A survivor, Thymara had judged her, and she had been so bold as to approach the dragon immediately. Now she wondered if she’d made a poor choice. The blue dragon didn’t seem especially friendly, and she was large. If the way she’d devoured the barrow of meat was any indication, keeping up with her appetite was going to be a challenge. No, an impossibility, she realized with dawning dismay. What she had seen as feasible back at Trehaug was now revealed to her as a hopeless task. If she was going to be any dragon’s sole feeder, that dragon was going to be hungry a good part of the time.

  This dragon’s temperament didn’t seem very kindly even with a belly full of meat. What would she be like when she was hungry and tired after a day’s journey? Thymara reluctantly scanned the other dragons, seeking a better prospect for herself. This one obviously didn’t like her at all.

  But the other dragon keepers had found their courage and were already fanning out through the herd of dragons. Kase and Boxter were approaching two orange dragons. She wondered briefly if the two cousins always made similar choices. Sylve, hands clasped shyly behind her and head bowed, was talking quietly to a gold male. As Thymara watched, he lifted his head, revealing a blue-white throat. Jerd stood close to a green female with gold stippling. As the other keepers spread out through the herd, Thymara did a quick count. There weren’t enough keepers. There would be two extra dragons. That could be trouble.

  “Why are you here? What is this invasion about?”

  There was irritation in the dragon’s tone, as if Thymara had insulted her. The girl was startled. “What? Didn’t they tell you we’d be coming?”

  “Didn’t who tell us?”

  “The committee. There was a Rain Wild committee to look into solving the dragon problem. They decided it would be best for all if the dragons were moved upriver to a better place. Somewhere with open meadows, dry ground, and plentiful game for you.”

  “No.” A flat denial by the dragon.

  “But—”

  “That was not what they decided. No humans decided anything about us. We told the humans who tend us that we are leaving this place, and that we required their ser vices. We told them to supply us with hunters and te
nders for our journey. We told them that we intend to return to Kelsingra. Have you heard of it, little creature? It was an Elderling city, a place of sunlight and open fields and sandy shores. The Elderlings who lived there were creatures of culture and learning who appreciated dragons. The buildings there were created to accommodate us. The plains teemed with cattle and wild game. That is where we intend to go.”

  “I have never heard of such a place.” She spoke hesitantly, not wishing to offend.

  “What you have heard or not heard is of little interest to me.” The dragon turned away from her. “That is where we shall be going.”

  This wasn’t going to work. Thymara cast about hopelessly. Two dragons remained unclaimed. They were mud-streaked and dulleyed creatures, nosing stupidly at the empty barrows. The silver one had a festering infection on his tail. The other one might have had a coppery hide but was so filthy he looked dun colored. He was thin in a bony way; she suspected he suffered from worms. In her cold evaluation, neither would survive the trek up the river. But perhaps that didn’t matter. It was apparent to her that her girlish fancy of befriending the dragon that she escorted was little more than that. What a silly dream that had been, of friendship with a powerful and noble creature. She was already revising her estimate of what the expedition would be, and her heart was sinking with the burden of that reality. She’d be feeding and caring for creatures that found her irritating and were large enough to kill her with a casual blow. At least her mother had been slightly shorter than she was. The thought that she might prefer her mother’s company to that of an irritable dragon twisted her mouth in a sour smile.

  The dragon exhaled a blast of air by her ear. “Well?”

  “I didn’t say anything.” She spoke quietly. She wanted to edge away, but not while the dragon was eyeing her.

  “I’m aware of that. So you haven’t heard of Kelsingra. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that we are as likely to find it as we are to find your ‘open meadows, dry ground, and plentiful game.’ For it seems likely to me that if any Rain Wilder had ever heard of such a place, there would already be a Rain Wild settlement there.”

  “That’s true,” Thymara agreed reluctantly, and she wondered why she hadn’t previously thought about it in such terms. Because the committee, of supposedly older and wiser Rain Wild Traders, had told her that was what she would find. But what did they know? Not a one of them had looked like a hunter or a harvester. Most looked as if they’d never even ventured up to the canopy, let alone explored along the riverbanks. What if there was no such place? What if it was all just a ploy to get the dragons and their tenders to leave Cassarick?

  She pushed that thought aside. It frightened her, not just because it might be true but because she suddenly knew that the people she had signed a contract with were perfectly capable of banishing both the dragons and their keepers to an endless trek up the boggy riverbank. “Why are you dragons so certain that Kerlinger exists?” she demanded of the big blue female.

  “If you are trying to talk about Kelsingra, then at least name it correctly. You are very careless with your language. I suspect that creatures with brains as small as yours must have a hard time recalling information. As to why we know it exists, we remember it.”

  “But you’ve never been away from this beach.”

  “We have our ancestral memories. Well, at least some of us have some of them. And it is one that several of us do recall. The city on the wide and sunny riverbank. The sweet silver water from the well there. The plazas and the buildings created to accommodate the alliance of Elderlings and dragons. The fine fields full of fat grazing cattle.” The dragon’s voice had gone dreamy, and for a moment, Thymara almost felt the creature’s hunger for fat cows full of warm blood and hot moist meat. And afterward, a wash and then a long nap on the white sandy riverbank. Thymara shook her head to clear it of her imaginings.

  “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 who 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 Elderlings 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 tunneling 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 each other. He had led the stumpy little creature over to the forest edge and was cleaning her scales with handfuls 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 traveling 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 you not wish to serve me?” she prompted the girl. “Do you not find me beautiful?”