by Hobb, Robin
She took a breath and added, “It would ruin my family socially. Not that we have much stature in Bingtown. And I would have to stand before the Bingtown Council and admit that I had been a fool, not just in marrying Hest but in staying with him all those wasted years . . .”
Her voice trailed away. Sick shame rose up and engulfed her. Every time she thought she had set it all behind her, the issue of how Hest still bound her would bring this back. For years she had wondered why he treated her so poorly. She had humiliated herself trying to gain his attention. All she had won was his contempt for her efforts. It was only when she had left Bingtown to pursue a brief interlude of study of her beloved dragons in the Rain Wilds that she had discovered the truth about her husband. He had never cared for her at all. The marriage had been a ruse to mask his true preferences. Sedric, her childhood friend and her husband’s assistant, had been far more than a secretary and valet to him.
And all Hest’s friends had known.
Her guts tightened and her throat closed up. How could she have been so blind, so stupid? So ignorant, so blissfully naive? How could she have gone for years without questioning his odd behavior in the marital bed, lived with his sharp little gibes and social neglect? She had no answers for those questions except that she had been stupid. Stupid, stupid, stu—
“Stop that!” Leftrin took her arm and gently shook it. He shook his head at her as well. “I hate to see you go off like that. Your eyes narrow and you grit your teeth, and I know just what is running through that head of yours. Stop blaming yourself. Someone deceived you and hurt you. You don’t need to take on the burden of that. That man who committed the offense is at fault, not the person he wronged.”
She sighed, but the weight inside her remained. “You know what they say, Leftrin. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, he fooled me a thousand times, and I don’t doubt that many in his audience enjoyed it. I don’t ever want to go back to Bingtown. Never. I never want to look at anyone I knew there and wonder who knew I was a fool and didn’t tell me.”
“Enough,” Leftrin said abruptly, but his voice was gentle. “The light is going out of the day. And I feel a more serious storm rising. It’s time we went back to our side of the river.”
Alise glanced outside. “I don’t want to be caught on this side after dark,” she agreed. She looked at him directly and waited for him to add something, but he was silent. She said no more. There were times when she realized that as close as they were, he was still a Rain Wilder while she had grown up in Bingtown. There were some things he didn’t talk about. But this was something, she abruptly decided, that could not remain undiscussed. She cleared her throat and said, “The voices seem to get louder as we get closer to night.”
Leftrin met her gaze. “They do.” He went to the door and looked out as if scouting for danger. That simple measure sent a chill up her back. Had he expected to see something? Someone? He spoke quietly. “It’s the same in some parts of Trehaug and Cassarick. The buried ruins, I mean, not the treetop cities. But it’s not the dark that brings them out. I think it’s when you’re alone or feel alone. One becomes more susceptible. It’s stronger in Kelsingra than I’ve ever before sensed it. But it’s not as bad in this part of town where simple folk lived. In the parts of the city where the buildings are grand and the streets so wide, I hear the whispers almost all the time. Not loud, but constant. The best thing to do is ignore them. Don’t let your mind focus on them.”
He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she had the feeling she had learned as much as she wanted to know, for now. There was more he could tell her; she sensed that, but she would save her questions for when they were warming themselves by a cozy fire in a well-lit room. Not here, in a cold city with the shadows gathering.
She gathered her things, including the loose tile from the hearth. She studied the picture again and then handed it to Leftrin. He took a well-worn kerchief from his pocket and wrapped the precious thing. “I’ll take good care of it,” he promised before she could ask. Arm in arm, they left the cottage.
Outside, the overcast day had darkened as the clouds thickened and the sun sank behind the gentle hills and the steeper cliffs that backed them. The shadows of the houses loomed over the winding streets. Alise and Leftrin hurried, the chill wind pushing them along. As they left behind the modest houses Alise had been investigating and entered the main part of the city, the whispers grew stronger. She didn’t hear them with her ears and she could not pick out any individual voice or stream of words: rather, it was a press of thoughts against her mind. She shook her head, refusing them, and hurried on.
She’d never been in a city like this one. Bingtown was a large and grand city, a city built for show, but Kelsingra had been built to a scale that dwarfed humans. The passageways in this part of Kelsingra were wide, wide enough for dragons to pass one another in the streets. The gleaming black buildings, too, were sized to admit dragons. The roofs were higher, and the doorways both wide and tall. Whenever they came to steps, the central sections were always wide and shallow, not sized for a human’s stride at all. Two steps to cross each step and then the hop down. At the edges, flights scaled for humans paralleled the course.
She passed a dry fountain. In the middle, a life-sized dragon reared on his hind legs, clasping a struggling stag in his jaws and forepaws. Around the next corner, she encountered a memorial to an Elderling statesman carrying a scroll in one long slender hand while he pointed aloft with his other. It had been crafted from the same black stone threaded with fine silver lines. It was plain that Elderlings and dragons had both dwelt here, side by side and possibly sharing abodes. She thought of the keepers, and how their dragons were changing them, and wondered if someday this city would shelter such a population again.
They turned onto a wide boulevard, and the wind roared with renewed strength. Alise clutched her poor cloak closer about her and bent her head to the wind’s buffeting. This street led straight down to the river port and the remains of the docks that had once awaited ships there. A few remnant stone pilings jutted from the water. She lifted her gaze and through streaming eyes beheld the gleaming black surface of the river. On the horizon, the sun was foundering behind the wooded hills. “Where is Rapskal?” She half shouted the words to push them through the wind. “He said he’d bring Heeby to the water’s edge at sunset.”
“He’ll be there. The lad may be a bit strange, but in some ways he’s the most responsible keeper when it comes to keeping his word. Over there. There they are.”
She followed Leftrin’s pointing hand and saw them. The dragon lingered at the edge of an elevated stone dais that overlooked the water. The dais adjoined a crumbled ramp. Alise knew from the bas-reliefs that decorated it that once it would have led to a launching platform for dragons. She surmised that perhaps older and heavier dragons needed a height advantage to get their bulk off the ground. Before the blocks of the ramp had given way to decades of winter river floods, it had probably been very high. Now it terminated just beyond the statue’s dais.
Heeby’s keeper had clambered up onto the dais and stood at the base of a many-times-larger-than-life statue of an Elderling couple. The man gestured wide with an outflung arm, while the woman’s pointing finger and gracefully tilted head indicated that her gaze followed something, possibly a dragon in flight. Rapskal’s head was tipped back, and he had stretched up one hand to touch the hip of one Elderling. He stood, staring up at the tall, handsome creature as if entranced.
Heeby, his dragon, shifted restlessly as she waited for him. She was probably hungry again already. All she did of late was hunt and feed and hunt again. The red dragon was twice the size she had been when Alise had first met her. She was no longer the stumpy, blocky creature she used to be: her body and tail had lengthened, and her hide and half-folded wings gleamed crimson, catching the red rays of the setting sun and throwing them back. Muscle rippled in her sinuous neck as she turned to watch their approach. She lowered her
head suddenly and hissed low, a warning. Alise halted in her tracks. “Is something wrong?” she called.
The wind swept away her words, and Rapskal made no reply. The dragon shifted again and half reared on her hind legs. She sniffed at Rapskal and then nudged him. The boy’s body gave to her push, but he made no indication that he was aware of her.
“Oh, no,” Leftrin groaned. “Please, Sa, no. Give the boy another chance.” The captain released her arm and lurched into a run.
The dragon threw back her head and whistled loudly. For a tense moment, Alise expected the creature to charge or spit acid at Leftrin. Instead, she nuzzled Rapskal again, with as little response. Then she dropped onto all fours again and stood staring at them. Her eyes whirled. She was plainly distressed about something, which did nothing to reassure Alise. A distressed dragon was a dangerous dragon.
“Rapskal! Stop daydreaming and tend to Heeby! Rapskal!” Her shout fought the wind.
The young keeper stood as still as the statue he touched, and the dwindling daylight glittered on the scarlet scaling on his bared hands and face. Heeby moved to block Leftrin, but the sailor dodged adroitly around her. “I’m going to help him, dragon. Stay out of my way.”
“Heeby, Heeby, it will be all right. Let him pass, let him pass!” Heedless of her own danger, Alise did her best to distract the anxious dragon as Leftrin set his palms to the chest-high pedestal and then vaulted up onto it. He seized Rapskal around the chest and then spun away from the statue, tearing the boy’s grip from the stone. As he did so, the keeper cried out wordlessly and suddenly went limp in the man’s arms. Leftrin staggered with his sudden weight, and both of them sank down to sit at the statue’s feet.
Heeby shifted restlessly, swinging her head back and forth in agitation. She was the only dragon who had never spoken to Alise. Despite being the only dragon who could both fly and hunt capably now, she had never seemed especially bright, although she had always seemed to share her keeper’s sunny temperament. Now as Leftrin held the youngster in his arms and spoke worriedly to him, the dragon seemed more like an anxious dog than a powerful predator.
Even so, Alise gave her a wide berth as she made her way to the dais. It took her considerably more effort to gain the top of it than it had Leftrin, but she managed. The captain knelt on the cold stone cradling Rapskal. “What’s wrong with him? What’s happened?”
“He was drowning,” Leftrin said in a low voice full of dread.
But as Rapskal’s face lolled toward her, she saw only his idiotically bemused grin and barely open eyes. She frowned. “Drowning? He looks more drunk than drowned! But where did he get spirits?”
“He didn’t.” Leftrin gave him another shake. “He’s not drunk.” But his next actions seemed to belie his statement as he gave Rapskal another shake. “Come out of it, lad. Come back to your own life. There’s a dragon here that needs you, and night is coming on. Storm’s coming in, too. If we’re to get to the other side before it’s dark, we need you to wake up.”
He glanced at Alise and became Captain Leftrin dealing with an emergency.
“Jump down and take his legs when I pass him down,” he commanded, and she obeyed. When had the lad got so tall? she wondered as Leftrin eased the limp Rapskal down into her arms. When she’d first met him, he’d seemed just past boyhood, made younger than his peers by his simplicity. Then he and his dragon had vanished, and all had believed them both dead. Since their return the dragon had proved her competence as a predator, and Rapskal had seemed both older and more ethereal, sometimes a mystical Elderling and sometimes a wondering boy. Like all the keepers, his close contact with his dragon was changing him. His ragged trousers exposed the heavy red scaling on his feet and calves. It reminded Alise of the tough orange skin on a chicken’s legs. And like a bird, he weighed less than she had expected as Leftrin let go of Rapskal and she took his full weight to keep him upright. His eyes were wide open.
“Rapskal?” she said, but he folded laxly over her shoulder.
With a thump and a grunt, Leftrin landed beside her. “Give him to me,” he said gruffly as Heeby pressed her nose against Rapskal’s back, sending Alise staggering back against the statue’s pedestal. “Dragon, stop that!” he commanded Heeby, but as the dragon’s eyes spun swiftly, he added more gently, “I’m trying to help him, Heeby. Give me some space.”
It wasn’t clear she understood him, but she did step back as Leftrin stretched Rapskal out on the cold stone. “Wake up, lad. Come back to us.” He tapped his face with light slaps, then took him by the shoulders, sat him up, and shook him. Rapskal’s head snapped back on his neck, eyes wide, and then, as his head came forward again, life came back to his face. His affable smile, never long absent, blossomed as he looked up at them beatifically. “Dressed for the festival,” he said cheerily. “In a gown made of eel skin dyed pink to match her brow scaling. More delicate than a tiny lizard on an air-blossom, she was, and her lips softer than a rose’s petals.”
“Rapskal!” Leftrin rebuked him severely. “Come back to us now. Here. We are cold and night is coming on, and this city has been dead for Sa knows how long. There is no festival and no woman wearing a gown such as you describe. Come back now!” He seized the youth’s face between his hands and forced the boy to meet his glowering stare.
After a long moment, Rapskal abruptly pulled his knees up to his chest and began to shiver violently. “I’m so cold!” he complained. “We need to get back to the other side and warm ourselves at a fire. Heeby! Heeby, where are you? It’s getting dark! You need to carry us across to the other side!”
At the sound of his voice, the dragon thrust her head into the midst of the huddled group, sending both Leftrin and Alise reeling back. She opened her mouth wide, tasting the air all around Rapskal as he exclaimed, “Of course I’m all right! I’m just cold. Why did we stay here so long? It’s nearly dark.”
“It is dark,” Leftrin retorted gruffly. “And we stayed here so long because you were careless. I can’t believe that you didn’t know better! But for now, we won’t talk about it. We just need to get back to our side of the river.”
The keeper was rapidly coming to his senses. Alise watched him sit up straight and then stagger to his feet, lurching toward his dragon. As soon as he could touch Heeby, they both seemed to calm. The dragon ceased her restless shifting. Rapskal drew a deeper breath and turned toward them. His face had relaxed into its handsome lines. He pushed his dark hair back and spoke almost accusingly. “Poor Heeby will be flying in the dark by the time she makes her third trip. We need to start now.”
Leftrin spoke. “Alise first. Then you. Then me. I want someone on the opposite shore waiting for you. And I don’t want you here alone in the dark, with no one watching you.”
“Watching me?”
“You know what I’m talking about. We’ll discuss it when we’re safe on the other side by a fire.”
Rapskal shot him a wounded look but said only, “Alise goes first, then.”
It was not her first time to ride the dragon, but she thought she would never become accustomed to it. Alise knew that the other dragons did not approve of Heeby allowing mere humans to mount her back and ride her as if she were a beast of burden and dreaded that they might decide to confront her about it. Sintara, the largest female dragon, had been particularly outspoken in that regard. But that concern was the smallest part of the emotions that sent her heart hammering. There was no harness to cling to, not even a piece of twine. “What would you need it for?” Rapskal had asked her incredulously the first time he had asked Heeby to carry her across the river and she had inquired about something to hold on to. “She knows where she’s going. Just sit tight and she’ll get you there.”
Leftrin boosted her up and the dragon crouched considerately, but even so it was a scrabble up the smoothly scaled shoulder. Alise straddled Heeby just in front of where her wings attached to her body. It was not dignified. She had to lean forward and place her hands flat on the sides of the dragon’s
neck, since there was nothing to grip. Heeby had learned to fly by running and leaping into the air. It was how Rapskal had thought a dragon would launch, but the other dragons found fault with it, saying that she should simply leap clear of the ground and beat her way into the sky. Nonetheless, every flight began with Heeby’s lolloping run down the hill toward the river. Then came the lurch of the wild leap, the snap as she opened her wings, and then the heavy and uneven beating of her wide leathery wings. Alise was never absolutely certain that Heeby would gain the air, let alone remain there.
But once aloft, the rhythm of her wings steadied. They ventured higher. The cold wind sliced past Alise, burning her cheeks and penetrating her tattered clothing. She leaned close, clasping sleek, scaled, muscular flesh. If she slipped, she would fall into the frigid river and die. No one could save her. Heeby had had a terror of the water since she had been swept helplessly away in the flood. She would never plunge into the icy water after a fallen rider. Alise pushed the disheartening thoughts from her mind. She wouldn’t fall. That was all.
Through squinted eyes she stared at the small lights on the far side of the river and willed herself to be there soon. There were not many lights. The keepers and the ship’s crew had claimed the few cottages and dwellings that could be made habitable and done their best to make them warm and weatherproof. Even so, there were not enough souls there to form even a village. But more would come, Alise thought sadly, when the news of their discovery leaked out. More would come. And with them, perhaps, the end of Kelsingra.
