Rain Wilds Chronicles

by Robin Hobb

  “This has not been discussed!” Mercor objected.

  “You gave him your blood?”

  “How will you make him an Elderling?”

  “What is she talking about?”

  “SILENCE!” Ranculos blasted them with a roar. And when the other dragons fell into a stunned quiet, he rounded on the little copper female. “What have you done?” he demanded of her. “You, with less than half the proper wits of a dragon, you have given blood to a human? You have begun to change him? It is bad enough that so many have begun to change, simply from proximity to us. Do you not recall what was decided, ages ago? Have you forgotten the Abominations? Would you bring more of them into existence?”

  “What are you talking about?” Sintara exploded. “Stop speaking in riddles! Is there a danger here for us? What has she done?”

  “She’s eaten a hunter, for one thing. A hunter who was supposed to help provide food for us!” Ranculos sounded outraged.

  Spit snorted. “Feed myself now. Don’t need hunter or keeper.”

  “No human has brought us food of any kind for several days now,” Veras pointed out quietly.

  “They haven’t needed to. There has been plenty of dead fish for us,” Sestican said.

  As the long afternoon had approached evening, the dragons had returned to the vicinity of the barge. The river had continued to drop. Mud-laden bushes and clumps of grass were reappearing as the water continued to retreat. Tonight, at least, Sintara was looking forward to sleeping in a relatively dry spot. And tomorrow, they would resume their upriver journey. Life had almost seemed to be returning to normal before the copper reappeared.

  “One of us should speak to her, not all of us, or we will get no sense at all out of her.” Sintara left the other dragons to approach the copper. She regarded her closely. Relpda had changed. She moved her body with more certainty, and she communicated more clearly. Something had happened to her. She focused herself on the little copper dragon. “Relpda. Why did you eat the hunter? Was he dead already?” she asked the smaller female.

  Relpda considered the question as she waded out of the water and up the mud beach toward the gathered dragons. “No. But he wanted to kill me. And so my keeper attacked him. And then, when I saw that my keeper was trying to kill him, I took him for meat. It was a good kill for me.” The copper looked around. “There was fish?”

  “The fish is eaten. Tomorrow we will have to move on.” Sintara tried to bring her back to the topic. She noticed that the other dragons had quietened to listen. “What do you mean, your keeper drank blood? And who do you claim as your keeper?”

  Relpda bent her head to rub her muzzle against her front leg. It put more mud on her face than it cleaned off. “Sedric,” she said. “Sedric is my keeper now. He came to me and took my blood and drank it, to be closer to me. We think together now. All is clearer to me than it was. I shall make him my Elderling. That is my right to do.”

  “You will make an Elderling?” Sestican was confused.

  “I am trying to get sense out of her! Be quiet!” Sintara hissed.

  “We cannot change humans unless we are willing to be changed by them.” Mercor spoke wearily, ignoring her request. His words stilled her. There was something there, something to be remembered.

  “Cannot or should not?” Sestican demanded.

  “I do not understand!” Fente lashed her tail.

  “Then be quiet and listen!” Sintara opened her jaws on the smaller female, a threat that venom might follow. Fente slunk aside from her, then spun and hissed at her.

  “Stop it!” Ranculos roared. “Both of you!”

  Mercor looked around at them sadly. His eyes, black on black, whirled slowly. “So much has been lost. Even as we grow stronger and move closer to becoming true dragons, I am frightened every day by the holes in our memories. I know I should not assume that each of you remembers what I do, but I continue to make that mistake. It appears, Fente, that Relpda recalls that which some of the rest of you have forgotten. Elderlings can be created by dragons, deliberately. Sometimes, as is happening with our keepers, humans undergo changes simply by virtue of extensive contact with us. In the days when Elderlings and dragons shared cities and lives, Elderlings were shaped by the dragons who favored them, much as a human gardener might prune a tree. Deliberately and carefully, choosing well what they began with, a dragon created an Elderling. In the lifetimes that our kinds have been apart, many of the Rain Wilders have taken on some of the lesser aspects of Elderlings, with few of the benefits.”

  “How?” Sintara demanded. “With no dragons about, why should they change?”

  “It served them right,” Ranculos said in a low voice. “Those who killed dragons in their cases, those who handled and carved what should have become dragons, those who stole and used the artifacts and magics of the Elderlings, they are the ones who have suffered the consequences most deeply. It is fitting. They took what was not theirs to take. They meddled in the stuff of dragons. The changes came upon them, and upon their offspring. They suffered shorter lives and stillborn children. They deserved it.”

  “You speculate,” Mercor cautioned him.

  “I speculate with reason. It is no coincidence. In their heart of hearts, the humans know what is true. Look whom they chose to give us as our ‘keepers.’ They gave us the ones so deeply changed that they scarce can live among the other humans. They have scales and claws, it is hard for them to breed, and their life spans are shortened. That is what befalls humans who meddle in a magic that has not been freely given to them. They used the stuff of dragons, our blood and bones, and they changed. But with no dragons to guide the change, they became monstrous.”

  “And the Abominations,” Mercor asked in his deep, rolling voice. “What of them? Are they, too, a punishment well deserved?”

  “Perhaps,” Ranculos replied recklessly. “For it is as you said. Dragons cannot change humans without risk that they will change us. It was long suspected that dragons who associated too much with Elderlings and humans would harm themselves or their offspring. An egg hatches and it is not what it should be…”

  “Must we speak of obscenities? Is there no decency left among us?” Their words had wakened memories in Sintara, memories long dormant. Once, one of her ancestors had chosen a human and shaped an Elderling for herself. The physical changes in such a creature were less than half of it. Properly prepared, an Elderling gained a life span that, while not even close to that of a dragon, was sufficient to allow at least some wisdom and sophistication to accrue. It was amusing, even comforting, to have such an Elderling. It was pleasant to be flattered, to be “immortalized” in verse and paintings and poetry. Elderlings became companions for dragons in a way that other dragons could not be. With an Elderling, there was no competition, only the comfort of their admiration, the pleasures of grooming, and, yes, the stimulation of conversations.

  But in every pleasure there is a danger, and some dragons spent too much time with their Elderlings and were, in turn, changed by them. It was not something that was lightly spoken of. No dragon wished to accuse another of such an obscenity, but it was undeniable. Dragons who spent too much time in the company of humans changed. The changes were not as obvious as what befell humans who spent too much time in the company of dragons, but the evidence was there, all the same. And in the next generation, when eggs hatched from, it was suspected, two such dragons, the offspring were not serpents but Abominations.

  It was not a thing for dragons to admit to outsiders. It was not even a thing for dragons to discuss among themselves. Sintara turned aside from them all, affronted by the coarseness of the conversation. Mercor ignored her disdain as he spoke severely to Relpda.

  “I think you have done a foolish thing, Relpda. I am not sure you are capable of guiding a human to an Elderling state. If you are careless, or unskilled, or even forgetful, the consequences for the human can be dire, even fatal. This is a human who had not even begun on a path of change. What entered your mind to
make you choose him for such an honor?”

  “He could not even hear us speak when first he walked among us,” Sintara interjected. “He thought us beasts, like cows. He was very arrogant, and extremely ignorant. I cannot think of a human less deserving of such an honor.”

  Relpda lashed her tail warningly. “It was my decision. It is my right. He came to me, seeking the contact. When I felt his mind brush mine, I chose him. And now he is chosen by me. That is all any of you need to know. I do not recall that the decision to create an Elderling was ever a shared decision. It is not one now.”

  “In your anger, your words and thoughts come clear,” Mercor observed mildly.

  “I use his mind. It is nothing to you.”

  “It is something to you, something you may regret depending upon. What if he should decide he does not wish to be bound to you? What if he should decide to leave and return to his Bingtown?”

  “He will not.” Relpda spoke with finality.

  Sintara, disturbed, moved away. It was not the first time she had been forced to confront the idea that her memories were incomplete. She tried to focus her mind on the floating fragments of recall the talk had stirred in her. One of her ancestors had willingly and consciously created an Elderling. Could she recall how it was done?

  Only in fragments. Blood had been involved, she knew that. Had there been more, the giving of a physical token? A scale? There was something back there, an elusive memory that swam at the very edges of her recall.

  “Sintara.”

  She had been thinking too deeply. She had not even noticed Mercor’s quiet approach. She tried to appear unsurprised as she turned to him. “What is it?”

  “Are you aware of the changes your keeper is going through?”

  She stared at him for a moment and then asked distantly, “Which keeper?”

  He was unruffled. “The one who is what the humans would say ‘heavily touched by the Rain Wilds.’ Thymara.”

  “I have not paid a great deal of attention to her changes, though she is more scaled than she was when we began our journey.”

  “So her other changes are not deliberate? They are not gifts from you?”

  What other changes? “She is scarcely worthy of any gifts from me. She is both arrogant and disobedient. She fails to praise me or to be grateful for my attentions. Why would I choose her for a gift?”

  “It is a question I am asking of any dragon whose keeper seems to be undergoing obvious changes. Although Relpda has announced her intention, I would not have been surprised if others had quietly chosen such a path.”

  “And have they?” She was suddenly curious.

  “Only Relpda has offered a blood change to her keeper.”

  She considered his words for a time, then said, as if merely confirming a thought rather than asking a question, “Of course, there are other paths to creating an Elderling.”

  “Yes. They are more time-consuming and in most cases, less radical. They are no less dangerous if one is careless with the human.”

  “She was careless, not I. When she removed the rasp snake from me, some of my blood spattered on her face. Perhaps in her mouth or eyes.”

  Mercor was silent for a time. “She changes then, a blood change. If you do not guide it, it could be very dangerous for her.”

  She turned away from him again. “It seems strange to me that a dragon should care about what is dangerous for a human.”

  “It is strange,” he admitted. “Yet it is as I told you all, and as Relpda’s new abilities show. One cannot change a human without being changed by her. Or him.”

  He waited for a time, but when she neither looked at him nor made any response, he moved quietly away.

  SIMPLE PLEASURES. SIMPLE human pleasures. Hot food and drink. Warm water to wash in. Soothing oil for his abused skin. Clean clothing. He hadn’t even had to talk much. Carson had handled all the questions and told their story in a much abbreviated yet embellished form to an appreciative audience while Sedric had focused his entire attention on the platter of steaming stew and the mug of hot tea placed before him. Even the rock-hard ship’s biscuit had, when soaked in stew gravy, seemed almost delicious.

  Leftrin had been there, and Alise, looking guilty and remorseful. She had sat down at the table with him, saying little after her initial embrace at their reunion, but watching him intently as he ate. She had been the one to measure out water and put it to warm for him, even bringing the steaming bucket to the door of the room for him. When she had tapped, he had opened the door for her and let her bring it in.

  “I’m sorry there’s so little water to spare for bathing. When the river goes down more, we should be able to dig sand wells again. For now, it’s so murky still that all we get is mud soup.”

  “It’s fine, Alise. It’s more than enough. All I want to do is sponge myself off and get some salve on my scalds. I’m glad to see that you’re safe. But I’m so weary right now.” His words skipped across the top of their relationship, refusing to engage her any more deeply than if he were speaking to Davvie. Not now. He needed to be apart from all of them for a time, but especially her.

  She did not miss the distance he set between them. Her words were full of courtesy, but she still tried to reach him. “Of course, of course. I won’t bother you just now. Make yourself comfortable first. But afterward…I know you are tired, Sedric, but I need to talk to you. Just a few words before you rest.”

  “If you must,” he said in his weariest voice. “Later.”

  “As you wish, then. I am so glad you are alive and found again.”

  And then she was gone. He’d sat down on his bunk and let himself relax. Strange, how his little musty, fusty room could seem almost cozy after all he had recently experienced. Even the rumpled pallet looked inviting.

  He’d let his filthy ragged clothing fall to the floor as he disrobed. He took his time washing himself. His skin was too tender to hurry. Even as he dreamed of a tub full of hot, sudsy water, he was grateful for this small mercy. The water had cooled and turned a nasty shade of brown by the time he was finished. He found a clean nightshirt and donned it. It was an incredible pleasure to have something soft next to his abused skin. Washing had shown him that the large bruise on his face was merely the most obvious of the injuries that Jess had dealt him. There were bruises on his back and on his legs that he scarcely remembered getting.

  After he was as clean as he could get with such limited water, he smoothed scented oil on the worst of his scalds, frowning over how little he had left. Someone had laundered some of his clothing. He dressed himself, looked at his discarded clothing, and realized it was little more than rags now. With his foot, he pushed it toward the door.

  That was when he heard the faint jingle of metal against the floor. He lifted his candle and peered closer, wondering what he could have dropped. There, on the floor, was his locket. Habit made him open it. And there, in the candle’s dim light, Hest looked out at him.

  He’d commissioned the tiny portrait from one of the best painters of miniatures in Bingtown. The man had to be good; Hest had sat for him only twice and was very ungracious about both appointments, acceding to the request only because Sedric had pleaded for it as a birthday gift. Hest had thought it overly sentimental, as well as dangerous. “I warn you, if anyone catches a glimpse of you wearing it, I shall deny all knowledge and leave you to their mockery.”

  “As I expect,” Sedric had replied. Even then, he now saw, he had begun to accept that perhaps his feelings for Hest were deeper than any Hest had for him. Now he looked down into the supercilious smile and recognized the slight curl of his lip that the artist had caught so accurately. Not even for a portrait could Hest think of him with respect, let alone love.

  “Did I make you up?” he asked the tiny picture. “Did you ever exist as the person I longed for you to be?” He snapped the locket shut, coiled the chain into his palm and closed his hand around it, then sat on the edge of his flat, hard bunk, his loosely clenched hands
to his temples. He closed his eyes and commanded his memories. One kiss that Hest had initiated in gentleness rather than as demand. One openhanded touch that was pure affection and nothing else. One word of praise or affection, unhinged by sarcasm. He was certain there had been such moments, but he could not call one to the forefront of his mind.

  Unbidden, the thought of Carson’s hand brushing his injured face came to him. Strange, that the calloused hand of the hunter had been gentler than any touch he had ever received from the gentlemanly Hest.

  He’d never met anyone like Carson. He hadn’t asked him to conceal his role in Jess’s death, yet when he had been recounting his rescue of Sedric, the hunter’s name hadn’t come into it. He hadn’t mentioned the boat, letting all the others assume whatever they wished about it. Before they had left the debris raft, Carson had insisted on cleaning out the boat, scrubbing away the bloodstains and bailing out the stinking bilgewater. He’d cleaned the hatchet and restored it to its sheath. Not once during that operation had he mentioned that he was obscuring all traces of the murder.

  Carson had simply done it and shielded him since then from the questions. He imagined that sooner or later, it would come out. Relpda was too proud of what she had done to keep quiet forever. But he was grateful it wasn’t just now. His own secret was too tightly tied to Jess’s death. He didn’t want anyone picking at one thread to discover where it might lead. For although Carson doubted that Leftrin had been involved with Jess, Sedric was not too sure. It would explain so many things: why he had set out on such a ridiculous and unprofitable errand, why he had cozied up to Alise, and how Jess had become a member of the party so easily. Yes. He was certain there were secrets that Leftrin wasn’t sharing with anyone. And he feared that if Leftrin thought those secrets were threatened, he might take action. The captain, he felt, was capable of anything. Discovering his secret had only confirmed the opinion Sedric had had of him since the beginning.