The dragons were still. Kalo closed his jaws, but the spiny ruffs on his throat still stood out. He spoke slowly. “I do not recall all that a dragon should. And I recall much that a dragon should not. Kelaro I was, of Maulkin’s Tangle. And I followed Maulkin, a great golden serpent, without question. ” His silvery gaze suddenly fixed on Mercor. The golden dragon looked puzzled for a moment, then bowed his head in assent. “Kelaro I was, and Sessurea was a companion to me. ” He looked now at Tarman. “I was the stronger, but sometimes he was the wiser. ” His gaze moved over the gathered dragons. “If we tear that wisdom to pieces and share it amongst us, will any of us have the whole of it? Will any of us know what Tarman seems to know? Open your mouths and your nostrils, dragons. There is more than one way for a dragon to communicate. Or a serpent. ”
Thymara was shocked to discover that she had taken Sedric’s arm and was holding it firmly. Something was happening here, something that frightened her. There were shrieks and shouts from the barge as he once more heaved himself high. For an instant, she clearly saw the squat powerful front legs and had a glimpse of the folded and flippered hind legs. A waft of stench, not unlike the smell she recalled from the day the dragons had emerged from their cases, enveloped her. Her eyes stung and she put her shirtsleeve over her mouth and nose, gasping for breath. Then, the barge wheeled, and Tarman’s bow slapped down onto the river. As his powerful hind legs pushed him away from the delta of river mud, a wave of dirty water washed up onto the beach.
The barge moved out into the river. It nosed, not toward the swift-flowing acid river with the wide open channel but toward the long green tunnel of the fresh water that she had explored yesterday. She realized what was happening at the same moment Sedric did.
“Tarman is leaving without us!”
“Wait!” This came in a wild shriek from Sylve. Thymara glanced in her direction, but she could not tell if Sylve called to the ship or Mercor, for the dragons were in motion, moving to follow the barge. Tarman had wallowed out into deeper water. None of the polemen was at their posts, but he was moving determinedly against the current. Thymara saw a disturbance in the water behind him and guessed at the presence of a tail.
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“We’re being left behind. Come on!” She had been the one clutching at Sedric. But now he shrugged free of her hold on his arm, caught her by the hand. Her free hand snagged the still-staring Sylve. “Run!” he told them. “Come on!”
They pelted down the beach toward the shore. Shouts of both anger and dismay from Tarman’s deck told her that there was nothing that the crew or keepers could do to detain the barge. She wondered briefly about the hunters. As was their wont, they had set out before dawn to look for meat, and they had doubtless headed up the other tributary of the river. How long would it take them to realize that the barge and the dragons had gone off in a different direction?
They were not the only keepers left onshore. All of them were converging on the three small boats that remained onshore. Kase and Boxter had claimed Greft’s boat, but they stood by to see if they’d have to make room for another keeper. Alum was in one of the other boats, and as she watched, Harrikin spoke with him. The third boat was empty. “Go!” Thymara shouted at them. “We’ll take the other boat. ”
“Right!” Alum shouted back to her, and in moments they were launched. The barge was moving with swift certainty up the waterway. The dragons split and went around the small boats, waded out into the water, and followed. They would soon pass the barge. Kase and Boxter had taken up their paddles and were moving out into the river.
By the time Thymara, Sylve, and Sedric reached the final boat, they were alone on the shore. Thymara glanced back at the campsite. No, nothing left behind. A fire smoldered on the wet muddy flat. Nothing remained to show they had been there but trampled ground and the rising smoke.
“Will it hold three?” Sedric asked worriedly.
“It won’t be comfortable, but we’ll be fine. Besides, there’s no choice. You can turn your bucket upside down and perch on that. I suspect we’ll come alongside Tarman before too long, and we can ask them to take you up then, if you’d like. ” She turned to a strangely quiet Sylve. The girl looked stricken. “What’s the matter?”
Sylve shook her head slowly. “He just went with the others. Mercor didn’t even wait to see if I had a way to follow. He just left. ” She blinked her eyes and one pink-tinged tear trickled down her cheek.
“Oh, Sylve. ” Thymara felt sorry for her, but also impatient. Now was not the time for indulging in emotion. They had to catch up with the ship.
“MERCOR’S NO FOOL. He knew there were boats on the shore, and that you’ve taken care of yourself in the past. He had to get the dragons moving before any of them had second thoughts. He hasn’t abandoned you; he just thinks you’re capable. Let’s prove he’s right. ” Sedric spoke hastily, smoothing the quarrel before it could start. He was tired of conflict.
He upended his bucket to make a seat for himself in the middle of the boat, and it gave him a slightly higher perch and a different view of the river. Thymara pushed them off, and Sylve dug in her paddle with a will, and they devoted themselves to creating as much speed as they could. There was no discussion; all knew they’d make better time with the girls at the oars.
This was Sedric’s first opportunity to observe the river and the surrounding jungle from this perspective. The last time he’d been in one of the small boats, he’d been so busy trying to keep up with Carson that he hadn’t had time to look around. Now he stared at the lushest forest he’d ever seen. Trees, both deciduous and evergreen, leaned out over the water. Vines draped some of them. Undergrowth was thick, and reeds and rushes populated the mossy banks of the river.
“It’s so alive,” Sylve said in a voice full of wonder.
So he hadn’t been imagining the difference.
“It even smells different. Just, well, green. Alise and I walked a short way up here yesterday, and we both noticed it. There’s no acid in the water, no whiteness to it at all. And there’s a lot more life. I saw frogs swimming in the water yesterday. Right in the water. ”
“Frogs usually swim in the water,” Sedric suggested.
“Maybe near Bingtown they do. But in the Rain Wilds, we find frogs up in the trees. Not in the river. ”
He thought about that for a bit. Every time he thought he had grasped how much his life had changed, some new awareness doused him. He nodded quietly.
This tributary was completely unlike the main channel. It wound gently through the forest, and the trees leaned in over the water, seeking sunlight and blocking the view upstream. For a time, they pursued the dragons and the barge, but then the river rounded a gentle bend and they lost sight of everything except the other two small boats. They were at the tail end of the procession. If they capsized now, or if they came upon a pod of gallators on the riverbank…for a moment, tension tightened his gut. Then a peculiar thought came to him.
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If anything befell him, Carson would come looking for him.
Carson.
A smile relaxed his face. It was true and he knew it. Carson would come for him.
He was still trying to reconcile the man with his concept of life. He’d never met a man like Carson, never known anyone who schooled his strength to such gentleness. He was not educated or cultured. He knew nothing of wines, had never traveled beyond the Rain Wilds, and had read fewer than a dozen books in his life. The framework that supported Sedric’s self-respect was missing from Carson’s life. Without an appreciation for such things, how could he appreciate who and what Sedric was? Why did the hunter like him? It mystified him.
Carson’s life was framed by this forest-and-water world. He knew the ways of animals and spoke of them with great fondness and respect. But he killed them, too. Sedric had watched him butcher, seen his strength as he cut into an animal’s hip joint and t
hen used his hands to lever the bone out of the socket. “Once you know how an animal is put together, it’s a lot easier to take it apart,” Carson had explained to Sedric as he finished his bloody chore and made the meat ready for cooking.
Sedric had watched his hands, the blood on his wrists, the bits of flesh caught under his nails as he worked, and thought of those strong hands on his own body. It had put a shiver up his spine, a thrill of erotic dread. Yet Carson was gentle, almost tentative in his moments with Sedric, and several times Sedric had found himself moving into the role of aggressor. The sensation of being in control had been heady and in some ways freeing. He had watched Carson’s eyes and mouth in the dim light of his small room and seen no fear in his face, no resentment that, for that time, Sedric was in charge. He contrasted it sometimes to how Hest would react to such a thing. “Don’t try to tell me what you want,” Hest had once commanded him disdainfully. “I’ll tell you what you’re getting. ”
He thought of Hest less frequently than he once had, and in the last few days when he had contrasted his old lover to Carson, Hest seemed like a fading ghost. Thoughts of him triggered regret, but not in the way they once had. Sedric regretted not that he had lost Hest, but that he had ever found him.
The two girls had fallen into a rhythm in their paddling, one that sped them along but was not closing the gap between them and the dragons, barge, and other keepers’ boats. As they passed a low-hanging tree, an explosion of orange parrots startled them. The birds burst from the branches, shrieking and squawking before the flock re-formed and abruptly landed in a taller tree. All three of them startled, and then laughed. It broke a tension of silence that Sedric hadn’t been aware of. Suddenly he didn’t want to be alone and lost in his thoughts.
“I’ll be happy to take a turn paddling,” he offered.
“I’m fine,” Sylve said, turning her head to shoot him a smile. The light caught briefly in her eyes as she did so, showing him a pale blue gleam. As she turned back, he could not help but note how the sunlight also moved on the pink scaling of her scalp. She had less hair than when they had started out. Her worn shirt was torn slightly at the shoulder seam and scaling flashed on the flesh that was revealed there with every stroke of her paddle.
“I may take you up on that, in a little while,” Thymara admitted. That surprised him. He had thought her the tougher of the two girls.
Sylve spoke over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on the river. “Is your back still bothering you? Where you hurt it in the river that day?”
Thymara was quiet for a time and then admitted grudgingly, “Yes. It’s never healed up all the way. The second dunking I got in that wave only made it worse. ”
The boat traveled on. They passed a backwater spattered with huge flat leaves and floating orange flowers. The fragrance, rich to the point of rottenness, reached Sedric.
Sylve spoke. “Have you ever asked your dragon about that?” Her voice was hesitant and yet determined.
“About what?” Thymara replied, equally determined.
“Your back. And the way your scaling is getting heavier. ”
Silence like a block of stone fell on the boat and filled it perfectly. Sedric felt as if he was unable to breathe for the heaviness of it.
When Thymara spoke, she could not hide the lie in her words. “I don’t think my back has anything to do with my scaling. ”
Sylve kept on paddling. She didn’t turn back to look at the other girl. She might have been speaking to the river when she said, “You forget. I saw it. I know what it is now. ”
“Because you are changing in the same way. ” Thymara flung the words back at her.
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Sedric felt trapped between them. Why on earth would Sylve bring up such a topic, so private and specific to the keepers, while he was in the boat?
Then dread dropped the bottom out of his stomach.
Thymara wasn’t the target of her words. He was. His hand shot up to the back of his neck and covered the line of scales that had started down his spine. Carson had assured him that they were barely noticeable yet. He’d said they didn’t even seem to have a color yet, unlike the pink of Sylve’s and the silvery glints on Carson’s own scaling. Sedric didn’t say a word.
“I am changing,” Sylve admitted. “But I was given the choice, and I chose this. And I trust Mercor. ”
“But he left you today,” Thymara pointed out. Sedric wondered if she were relentless or just tactless.
“I’ve thought it over, and what Sedric said, too. If, tonight, I were not there when we gathered, then Mercor would go back for me. I know that. But I will be there, and I will have got myself there. It is what he expects of me. I am neither a pet nor a child. He believes I am not only capable of taking care of myself, but that I am worthy of the attention of a dragon, and that I can survive without him. ”
When Thymara asked her question, she sounded half strangled. “Why does he believe that of you? How did you convince him?”
Sylve glanced back at them, and an otherworldly smile flitted across her face. “I am not sure. But he offered me a chance and I took it. I am not an Elderling yet. But I will be. ”
“What?” Thymara and Sedric chorused the word together.
Then Thymara added another one. “How?”
“A little bit of blood,” Sylve said in a near whisper, and Sedric went cold. A little bit? How much was a little bit? He tried to remember how much blood he’d taken in that night, and wondered how much it took.
“Mercor gave you some of his blood?” Thymara was incredulous. “What did you do with it?”
Sylve’s voice was very quiet, as if she spoke of something sacred. Or horrifying. “He told me to pull a small scale from his face. I did. A drop or two of blood welled out. He told me to catch it on the scale. And then to eat it. ” Her breath caught, and the rhythm of her paddling broke. “It was…delicious. No. It wasn’t a taste. It was a feeling. It was magical. It changed me. ”
With two strong strokes of her paddle, Thymara drove them out of the current and into the shallows. She reached up and caught a branch and held them all in place.
“Why?” The question exploded out of her. It sounded as if she asked it of the universe in general, as if it were almost a cry of despair at an unfair fate, but it was Sylve who answered her.
“You know what we are, Thymara. You know why some of us are discarded at birth. Why those of us who change too much too soon are denied mates and children. If they discover us when we are born, we are denied any future at all. It’s because we change in ways that make us monstrous. And make us die, sooner rather than later, after giving birth to monsters who cannot live. Mercor believes those changes happen to any humans who are around dragons for any length of time. ”
“That makes no sense! Rain Wilders were changing from the very first generation who settled here. Long before dragons came back into this world, children were developing scales, and pregnant women were giving birth to monsters!”
“Long before dragons came back, we were living where they had lived, and digging into the places where the Elderlings had dwelt. We were plundering their treasures, wearing their jewelry, making timber out of dragon cases. There may not have been dragons walking among us, but we were walking among them. ”
A silence held as Thymara digested those words. The water rushed past their canoe. Sedric felt cold and still inside. Blood. Blood from a dragon was changing Sylve. Two drops and one small scale was all it had taken. How much had he taken in? What changes had he triggered in himself? Monsters, they had said. Monsters who didn’t live long, monsters denied any future. Something in the middle of him had gone tight and was twisting, twisting so hard it hurt. He bent forward slightly over his belly. Neither of them appeared to notice.
“But the blood he gave you will change you more?”
“It was his blood. He says he will shape my change. He warned me that it doesn
’t always work, and that he does not remember all of what a dragon should do to facilitate such a change. But he said the Elderlings did not just happen. Every Elderling who existed was once the companion of a dragon. Well, almost everyone. Sometimes humans started to change and even unguided, the changes didn’t kill them. They noticed it in the humans who tended the dragons while they were in their cases and the ones who were present at the hatchings. Some became beautiful and lived a long time, but most didn’t. But the ones the dragons chose as worthy and guided carefully, they became extraordinary and some lived for generations. ”
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She ran out of words for a moment.
“I don’t understand. ”
“Art, Thymara. Elderlings were a form of art for the dragons of that time. They found humans they thought had potential and developed them. That was why they cherished them. Everyone cherishes what they create. Even dragons. ”
“And my changes? I was born with the sort of changes one usually sees only in very old women. And since we left Trehaug, I’ve continued to change. The changes are progressing faster than they ever have before. ”
“I’ve noticed. That’s why I asked Mercor if Sintara was changing you. He said he would ask her. ”
“I asked her already,” Thymara admitted. “I suspected she had something to do with it. From something I heard Harrikin say. Is his dragon changing him, too?”
“Yes. And Sintara is changing you. ”
A silence. Then Thymara admitted. “No. She said she wasn’t, and Mercor said that if she didn’t take charge of my changes, he would. ”
“What?”
What was in that incredulous question from Sylve? A touch of jealousy? Disbelief?
Thymara seemed to hear it, too. Her reply was glum. “Don’t worry. He won’t. Sintara said she would never allow anyone to take over her keeper. I’m doomed to belong to her, even if she doesn’t want me. And doomed to change however I change, for better or worse. ” She took a deep breath. “We’d better get moving. I can’t even see the other boats now. ”
“You want me to paddle for a while?” Sedric offered.