by Robin Hobb
He heard the patter of feet on his deck and a few moments later, she joined him on top of the deckhouse. “Where? Where is he?” she demanded breathlessly.
“There. ” He pointed. “Paddling the second boat. ”
“Sedric paddling a boat?” she said doubtfully, but a moment later she said, “Yes, that’s him. I recognize the color of his shirt. I can’t believe it! He’s alive!”
“He is,” Leftrin said. Unobtrusively, he took her hand. He didn’t want to ask her in words, but he had to know. Did Sedric’s survival change things between them?
She squeezed his hand. Then she let go of it. His heart sank.
ALISE WATCHED THE two boats approach and tried to separate her emotions. She rejoiced that her friend Sedric had survived. She dreaded the return of her husband’s witness. She was angry at him that he had withheld Hest’s token from her and amazed to see him engaged in such a physical endeavor as paddling a boat.
The dragons were trumpeting to the copper, and Relpda was responding joyously. At such times, Alise heard their sounds only as sounds. She felt that she understood the dragons only when they intended that humans should hear and understand them. She was not positive that was so, but she suspected that there were some communications they kept to themselves. She should make a note of that idea in her journal, she thought, and instantly felt guilty. It had been days since she had updated her journal or added any new observations about the dragons. She’d been too busy surviving and discovering herself, she decided. Of her time in the water and how the dragon had saved her, she would write. But of last night? That would remain hers and hers alone, forever.
She and Leftrin had not spoken of it. Today, when they had met at the galley table, and later as she strolled the deck with him, they had maintained their decorum. She had tried not to blush, tried not to stare meaningfully into his eyes. Their silences had spoken more than their words. She did not intend to become a figure of speculation and gossip among the keepers, and she suspected that Leftrin would just as soon keep his privacy from his crew intact. Now she wondered if she would ever again have the opportunity to be alone with him, to speak of what it had meant to her.
Sedric returning was like all her Bingtown past coming back to envelope her. Once he stepped onto the deck again, she was no longer simply Alise. She was Alise Finbok, wife to Hest Finbok, who would some day be Trader Finbok and control the Finbok vote on the Bingtown Traders’ Council. By virtue of their marriage, she owed him not just fidelity but the hope of an heir, and beyond that, she owed him and his family and her own family the decorum and propriety that was necessary for everyone’s social survival.
She didn’t want Sedric to come back. She didn’t want him to be dead, but if by a wish she could have safely transported him back to Bingtown, she would have done so in a breath.
Day the 26th of the Prayer Moon
Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
A message from Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown, to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug. In a sealed case, the travel arrangements for Apprentice Reyall to return home to his family to observe a period of mourning, at the expense of the bird keepers. A shipment of twenty-five swift pigeons and six kings has been entrusted to his care on the way. With our deepest sympathy and warmest regards.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE LOCKET
I ate a man! I ate the hunter!” Relpda was triumphant. She blasted the news to all of them, trumpeting it out before she even reached them. She waded out of the shallows and onto the mucky beach to greet them. “He threatened my keeper! We fought him and we ate him!” Her next words unsettled the disrupted dragons even more. “My keeper has proven himself worthy. He drank my blood to speak to me, and now he is mine. I shall make him an Elderling, the first of a new kind. ”
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“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. ”
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“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?
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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.
