by Robin Hobb
On the other side of the swift-flowing river.
“I’M WRITING IT down for posterity. Just as we know from the journals and letters of the time how Trehaug was founded, so will my journal one day tell our descendants how Kelsingra was rediscovered. By you and Heeby. You want your descendants to know that, don’t you?”
She’d had a night and part of a day to recover from her initial disappointment. The city was not that far away. As soon as he could, Leftrin would find a way to get her there. In the meanwhile, he had other duties to his ship, his crew, and the keepers. And so did she. She’d practically had to strong-arm Rapskal to pull him away from the other keepers, but she had insisted. “It has to be recorded, while it is still fresh in your mind. There are so many things that we think we’ll remember clearly, or we think that everyone will ‘always’ know. It won’t take long, Rapskal, I promise. And then whoever comes after us will always know the tale about what you did. ”
Now she waited while the boy shifted restlessly and tried to order his thoughts. He had changed so much, and yet so little. His skin was scarlet, scaled fine as a brook trout, and he seemed to have grown. He was leaner and more muscled and completely unaware of how his tattered clothes scarcely covered his flesh.
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Rapskal’s uplifted eyes followed Heeby’s flight. The dragon was hunting the hills and cliffs across the river. Alise followed his gaze with longing. It was all there, just as she had seen it in the Elderling tapestry on the walls of the Traders’ Concourse. The sun touched the glittering stone of the map tower and glinted off the domes of the majestic buildings. She longed to be there, to walk the wide streets, to ascend the steps and see what wondrous artifacts the Elderlings had left for them to discover. Leftrin had explained to her a dozen times that the current swept deep and wild along that shore. On this side of the river, it had been easy to nose Tarman ashore. Over there, the current ran swift and deep, and there was nothing to tie the barge to. They’d found the remains of the stone piers that had once run out into the river, but time had worn them and the river had eaten them. Tarman did not trust them, and Leftrin would not ignore his ship’s uneasiness. He had promised Alise that once the ancient docks of Kelsingra had been restored, it would be a fine place to tie up a boat. But for now, for a short time, she was doomed to look on the Elderlings’ side of Kelsingra with longing.
“Well, I guess I’ve told you everything, right?” Rapskal was standing up again. He was looking down the hillside now to where the other keepers were walking along the shore or exploring the stony, skeletal remains of the town. Hundreds of foundations were scattered along the shore; a few standing structures remained, enough for the keepers to take shelter in by night. Leftrin had climbed up the hill and discovered the intact shepherd’s hut and insisted it was perfect for them. She tended to agree with him. It was the most privacy they had ever had. The first night, he’d built a crackling fire in the old hearth and discovered that, once he removed an old bird’s nest from it, the chimney drew as well as ever. Golden firelight had filled the single room of the cottage. They’d spread their bedding on the floor in front of it and hung a blanket where once a wooden door had swung. She’d felt, for the first time in her life, that she was truly mistress of this tiny home. The very next morning, she’d brought her journals and notes up from the barge. Now she sat on the stone doorstep of the little house and surveyed her domain. From here, she had a wide view of the sweep of the river’s bend and Leftrin’s ship. She had the vista of all of old Kelsingra to tempt and taunt her.
She called her thoughts back to the moment at hand. Her four remaining sheets of good paper rested on her battered lap desk. “You haven’t really told me anything, Rapskal. ”
He took a breath that lifted his narrow shoulders. He smiled at her, his white teeth showing strangely in his red-scaled face. “Well. Here’s how it was. I was talking to Tats and he was mad at me for telling Thymara that I’d like to do to her what Jerd had taught me to do with her…Why aren’t you writing?”
“Because, well, that’s not the important part,” Alise replied and heard her Bingtown primness come to the fore as a blush heated her face.
“Well, after that, then. Then that wave hit. And I got washed away by it. ”
“Yes. ”
“And then, I was trying to swim and I felt that Heeby was near, so I shouted for her, and she came to me. And we swam together for a while. Then a really big tangle of wood floated by. Maybe it had been part of the bonfire, I don’t know. But it hit us and we sort of got tangled in it. Well, I didn’t. I climbed up on top, but Heeby got tangled. She wasn’t drowning, but she couldn’t break free. So I told her, ‘Don’t fight it, let’s just ride it out. ’ And we did, all that night, and the next morning we found we were way out in the middle of the river and could hardly see the shores. I didn’t think we could swim to the shore so I thought, well, just stay with the floating wood tangle until we can see the shore. And that was a bad time for both of us, because she was stuck and we just got pushed on and on by the river. No food or water for either of us. ”
“How long was that?”
“Don’t remember. More than two days, anyway. ” His claws were black. He scratched under his chin, gave a happy wriggle, and then settled again. “By and by, anyway, the river washed us up on the place where there was a big low meadow. Must have been on the other side of the river from the side we kept to when we were following the Tarman, because it didn’t look to me like anywhere we had passed. And the river was on the wrong side of us, if you get what I mean. Well, there I could help Heeby get untangled and we went ashore. And we didn’t have much, but I still had my fire-starting stuff, because I always keep it in this pouch. See?”
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“I see,” she replied. Her pen flew, but she glanced up briefly as he held up the pouch he wore on a string around his neck.
“So I built a fire to warm up my dragon and waited for someone to see it and find us. But no one did. But there was pretty good hunting in the meadow place. There were these animals, maybe goats, maybe sheep I think, from what my dad used to tell me. They weren’t deer or riverpig, anyway. They weren’t very fast, and at first they weren’t very scared of us. By the second or third day, they started to be scared because they figured out that Heeby liked to kill them and eat them. So we were eating those, and then we found this place back near some trees. It had a get-warm place for Heeby that she knew how to make work. And a stone building, mostly fallen down, but two rooms of it had good roofs, so that was plenty big enough for us. And Heeby hunted a lot and ate a lot, and so did I. And sometimes we slept on the get-warm place, and sometimes we slept in the old building. Heeby started to grow and get brighter colors, and her wings were growing, and her tail, and even her teeth! And we kept doing her flying lessons, you know what I mean. You used to see us doing them, right?”
“Yes. I used to see you trying to get her to fly. ”
“Yes. Well, her wings just got bigger and stronger, and one day she flew, just a little bit. And the next day, she could fly more, and then more. But she couldn’t fly for a long time then, not for a whole day. But she could fly long enough that it got so she could hunt really good. And that girl of mine, all she wanted to do was hunt and eat and sleep on the get-warm place and hunt and sleep some more, and she just kept getting bigger and stronger all the time. ”
He shook his head, smiling indulgently. Then he stood up again and looked longingly down at the riverbank. Some of the keepers and their dragons were splashing one another and shouting and laughing. Tats had Fente on the bank and seemed to be scratching her with sand. The dragon looked stupefied with pleasure. Alise looked at her wet letters. She sprinkled sand over her page to dry the ink, waited a breath, and shook it clean. She set out a fresh page. “And then?”
He paced a turn, restless as a tethered dog. “Oh, you know. Ate more, slept more, and got even bigger. W
e both got lonely, and Heeby said one day, ‘So, let’s go to Kelsingra. ’ And I said, ‘Can you find it?’ and she said she thought she could. And I said, ‘Can you fly that far?’ and she said she thought she could, as long as she could find places to land and rest at night. And no landing in the river because she knows she can’t fly up from water, and after being stuck in the tangle of wood and in water for days, she hates it now. So I said, ‘Well, then, let’s go,’ and we did. And we found Kelsingra, but no one was here. And I was really sad thinking you all must be dead, but she said, ‘No, I can feel some of the dragons, but they don’t or can’t hear me. ’ So we just started flying around every day, looking and looking and calling and calling. And then one day we heard dragons trumpeting, and it sounded like a big fight starting. So we went to see and found out it was just Sintara having a fuss. But we found you all up in that slough and told you to come here and here we are. ”
He was silent until her pen stopped moving. Then he asked with a trace of impatience, “So. It’s done now, right? Posterity will know. ”
“It will indeed, Rapskal. And your name and Heeby’s name will be remembered, generation after generation after generation. ”
That seemed, finally, to give him pause. He looked at her and smiled. “Good, then. That’s nice. Heeby will like that. She wasn’t sure about her name at first. And maybe I should have thought of something longer and grander, but I’d never named a dragon before. ” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “She got used to it. She likes her name, now. ”
“Well, she will be remembered by many, many people as the dragon who gave Kelsingra and its history back to us. ” Alise once more stared at the gleaming city on the other side of the swiftly flowing river. “It’s a torment to see it and not be able to get over there. I cannot wait until the day I can walk those streets and enter those buildings and find what is left to us of them. I dare to hope for their city records, for scrolls and perhaps even a library…”
“Not much there, really. ” Rapskal dismissed her dreams with a shrug. “Most of the wood is gone rotten. I didn’t see any scrolls or books in the places where I slept. Heeby and I walked around over there for a couple of days. Just an empty city. ”
“You’ve been over there!” Why had it never occurred to her before? He and his dragon would not be inconvenienced by a dangerous current. Of course they had gone first to the main part of the ancient Elderling city. “Rapskal, wait, come back. Sit down. I need to know what you’ve seen. ”
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He turned and gave an impatient wriggle that made him a boy again. “Please, Alise, ma’am, not now! Later today, after Heeby hunts and kills and eats and sleeps, when she wakes up, I’ll ask her to take you over there. Then you can see it for yourself and write it down and draw it or whatever. But it’s been so long since I had time with my friends, and I’ve been lonely. ”
“What?”
“I’ve been by myself for so long! I really missed having people to talk to and…”
“No. No, not that! Heeby would take me across to Kelsingra? She would fly me there?”
He cocked his head at her. “Well, yes. She doesn’t swim that good, you know, so she’d have to fly you there. She doesn’t like to swim at all anymore. Doesn’t even like to wade out in the water since we got stuck in the river like that. ”
“No, no, of course she doesn’t! Who could blame her? But—but she’d let me ride on her back? I could fly on a dragon’s back?”
“Yes, fly you to Kelsingra. And then you could see it all yourself and write it down as much as you want. I’m going to go down there now, with my friends. If you don’t mind, please, ma’am. ”
“Oh, of course I don’t mind. Thank you, Rapskal. Thank you so much. ”
“You’re welcome, ma’am, I’m sure. ”
Then, as if fearing she would delay him again, he spun and ran. She watched him go, watched his long red-scaled legs flash in the sunlight. His clothing looked ridiculous on him now; the ragged trousers were too short for his Elderling legs, and the tattered shirt that had long ago lost its buttons flapped as he ran. His stride ate up the distance, and he shouted to his friends as he went. They turned and called to him in return, motioning to him to hurry and join them.
“Well, he has changed,” Leftrin observed, watching Rapskal run down the grassy hillside toward the river.
“NOT AS MUCH as you might think,” Alise replied as she turned to him. She was smiling, unaware of the ink smear by the side of her nose. He went to her, turned her face up to his and kissed her, and then tried to thumb the smear away but only succeeded in spreading it across her cheek. He laughed and showed her his inky thumb.
“Oh, no!” she cried and pulled a tattered kerchief from her pocket. She dabbed at her face. “Is it gone now?”
“Most of it,” he told her, taking her hand. Still such a fine lady she was, to worry about something as trivial as a bit of ink smeared on her face. He loved it. “I see you’ve added some more pages to your stack. Did you get his entire story, then?”
“I got a summary of what happened to him, and how they found us again. ” She smiled and shook her head in wonder. “These youngsters take so much in stride. He sees nothing extraordinary in that he found a place where sheep or goats were running wild, near what had to have been an ancient Elderling dwelling. He doesn’t even consider what it means that he found land, dry land suitable for pasturing livestock, right there on the Rain Wild River. Do you know what that would mean to Trehaug or Cassarick? The possibility of raising meat! Perhaps even sheep for wool. And he shrugs it off as an interesting spot with a ‘get-warm’ place for his dragon. ”
“Well. I’ll agree that is a big discovery, one that is likely to remain undiscovered again for almost as long as it has been. ”
“Not when the dragons start flying,” she said, and then, to his shock, sprang at him and trapped him in a hug. “Leftrin, you’ll never guess what Rapskal told me! He said he’d ask Heeby to carry me across to the main part of Kelsingra, so I can walk the streets there as long as I want!”
He felt almost hurt at her excitement. “But I told you I’d get you there! There’s just no safe place for Tarman to put in along the bank right now. But maybe tomorrow, the barge could take us most of the way across, and then we could cover the rest of the distance in a small boat. And Tarman could come fetch us back in the afternoon. There’s just no way for him to stay there. Water’s too deep for the poles, and while he can move the barge against a slow current in shallow water, deep swift water is too hard for him. ”
“Tomorrow! We could do that tomorrow? Together?”
Had she heard a word he’d said? “Yes, my dear. Of course we could. It’s only the barge that can’t safely put in on that shore. And in the future, when the docks there are restored, that won’t be a problem. ”
She looked down at her remaining sheets of paper, and then lifted her last bottle of ink to the light. “Oh, Leftrin, what a fool I was! I documented every little thing all along the way, and now that we are here, on the outskirts of a major intact Elderling city, I’m down to a few sheets of paper and a few drops of ink!”
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He shook his head at her fondly. “Well, when we get back to Trehaug, I shall have to buy you a crate of paper and a hogs-head of ink. ” He reached over and playfully twitched the abused handkerchief from her fingertips. “And perhaps a few of these, too. ”
“What?” she asked him. All life, all merriment faded suddenly from her face. “Trehaug? Go back to Trehaug?”
He cocked his head at her. “Well, I think we’ll have to before winter, or we’re going to have keepers running around here in the cold in next to nothing. And while meat and fish and wild greens are fine things, I for one am starting to miss even such bread as ship’s biscuit. And a dozen other things we’ve been doing without. ” He grinned at the prospect.
She just stared at
him. “Go back to Trehaug?”
“Well, of course. You must have known that we’d have to go back eventually. ”
“I, well, no. I hadn’t thought about it. I never want to go back, not to Trehaug, not to Bingtown. ”
He looked at the distress in her face and then carefully folded her into his arms. “Alise, Alise. You don’t think I’d let you get away from me? Yes, we’ll go back to Trehaug. We’ll go back together, just as we came here. Tarman will show you what he can do, downriver in the current, when we know where we’re going, without a herd of slogging dragons setting the pace for us. We’ll go down to Cassarick and put in our order for provisions. You’ll report to the Council there, and I’ll collect my money. Yes, and you’ll report to Malta the Elderling, too. ”
She was looking up at him, and the life had come back to her face. Her eyes had begun to shine. He had to continue the tale for her.
“And then we’ll go down to Trehaug, pick up our cargo, and be back here before the worst of winter, with blankets and knives and tea and coffee and bread and whatnot. Now I’ve never so much as seen a herd of sheep or an apple tree, but from what I’ve heard tell, I think they’d go here. So we’ll make that an order, too, and next spring, we’ll make another run, and we’ll pick up whatever it was we sent for. Seeds and animals and such things from Bingtown and beyond. Look around us, Alise. You see that old city over there, and it’s a very fine thing, I’m sure. But I see the one thing that the Rain Wilds has never had, and that’s arable land. What if, after all these generations, the Rain Wilders could feed themselves without having to dig for Elderling artifacts to do it?
