Then she took a grip on herself and stood up to the blast of pure charisma that Sintara was radiating at her. “Yes. They are beautiful!” she shouted. “Beautiful and useless! As you are beautiful and useless!” A shudder passed over Thymara. She felt suddenly queasy and then realized what she had done. In a bizarre reaction to Sintara’s display, Thymara had spread her own wings. There were shouts of amazement from the keepers on the boat.
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Sintara was drawing breath. Her jaws were still wide, and Thymara stood rooted before her, watching her poison sacs swell. If the dragon chose to breathe venom on her, there would be no escape. She stood her ground, frozen with terror and fury.
“Sintara!” The bellow came from Mercor. “Close your jaws and fold your wings! Do not harm your keeper for speaking truth to you!”
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” Spit was trumpeting joyously.
“Quiet, pest!” Ranculos roared at him.
“Do not spray here! The drift will burn me! Blast your own keeper if you wish, Sintara, but spray me and I swear I will burn your wings as full of holes as rotting canvas!” This from small green Fente. The dragon reared onto her hind legs and spread her own wings in challenge.
“Stop this madness!” Mercor bellowed again. “Sintara, hurt not your keeper!”
“She is mine, and I’ll do as I wish!” Sintara’s trumpet was a shrill whistle of anger.
Despite herself, Thymara clapped her hands over her ears. Terror made her reckless. “I don’t care what you do to me! Look what you’ve already done! You want to kill me? Go ahead, you stupid lizard. Someone else can clear the sucking insects from your eyes, take the leeches off your useless, beautiful wings. Go ahead, kill me!”
Sintara reared up, her wings spread wide, glorious, and potentially deadly. The gleaming spikes that tipped each rib of her wing could, if the dragon willed it, ooze toxins with which she could slash a rival in sky battle. Thymara had a brief moment in which to wonder how she suddenly knew such a thing. Then Sintara screamed like a storm wind. She swept her wings closed, and then as she opened them again, she turned slightly. The wing struck Thymara and sent her flying.
She hit the hard, hard water on her back, felt the agonizing pain as her new wings absorbed that slap. She sank, breathed water, and then her feet found the bottom. She stood up, choking and gasping, her eyes running with silty water and tears. She heard screams from the barge, and Tats shouting, deep, hoarse, and angry, “Thymara! Thymara! Damn you, dragon! Damn you!”
His words did not stall Sintara. She came stalking toward Thymara, her head low now and weaving. “Is that what you wanted, worthless girl? Shall I make you fly again?”
“I warn you, Sintara!” Mercor was bearing down on her. His golden wings were spread, and the light bouncing from them seemed brighter than the sun. Their false eyes seemed to glare.
Choking and coughing, Thymara was backing up as fast as the deepening water would let her, while the angry dragon came on. Sintara’s eyes spun with relentless fury.
Overhead, a hunting hawk screamed. And screamed again. Every dragon looked skyward. The hawk was diving down at them, blasting through the air.
“Tintaglia?” Mercor spoke the name in wonder.
“It’s red!” someone shouted.
The dragons froze, looking at the sky. Thymara seized her shirt, floating on the water near her. She wiped grit and silt from her eyes and stared upward. A bird had broken free of the clouds. The red hawk was growing larger, larger, larger.
“HEEBY!” she screamed suddenly. “RAPSKAL!”
The scarlet dragon trumpeted a triumphant response. Her folded wings suddenly cracked wide, braking her wild dive. She made three tight, impossible circles over the gawking dragons and the grounded barge. Then, with a beat, beat, beat of her wings, Heeby cut in the other direction, enlarged her orbit, and flew a loop around Tarman and the excited dragons. Her ruby wings seemed as wide as a ship’s sails as she slowed gracefully. She flew low, the tips of her wings stirring the standing reeds and rushes. And on her back, a slender scarlet man laughed joyously.
“I’ve found you!” he shouted, and it was Rapskal’s voice, gone a bit deeper but no less wild with optimism. “I’ve found you, and Heeby found Kelsingra! Come on. Follow us! It’s not far! No more than half a day’s flight east of here. Follow us! Follow us to Kelsingra!”
Day the 10th of the Browning 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 the parents of Erek Dunwarrow, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown, to the parents of Detozi Dushank, sealed in wax and marked with the seal of the Dunwarrow Trader family.
Detozi,
Obliterate this note before you deliver this scroll to your parents. I fear I know what is in it. I have spoken of you perhaps too often to my family, and they have listened to many stories about you from your nephew Reyall, my apprentice. Their proposal may be precipitate, when we have not even met yet, but as Trader for our family, my father still has the authority to act independently in such negotiations. I fear this may offend you and your parents. In truth, I fear even more that it will lead you to refuse an offer that I had hoped to make myself, in person, when perhaps you had had the chance to meet and know me better.
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My travel arrangements have been made. Before the moon turns again, I will finally meet you. Until I have a chance to speak for myself, I beg you: do not refuse my parents’ inopportune offer. Remember, you can always turn me away. At least let me make my own plea before you do so.
Erek
CHAPTER TWENTY
KELSINGRA
So why are you writing it all down?”
In some ways, Alise thought, Rapskal had not changed at all. He fidgeted like the restless boy he had been, anxious to stop sitting still and be off doing things. In other ways, it was difficult to look at the tall, slender scarlet creature he had become and see the keeper boy at all. And getting coherent information out of him was like trying to talk to a dragon. Or a small, impatient child.
She sat on the doorstep of what had most likely been a shepherd’s hut. Below them, a wide rolling green went down to the edge of a rushing river. She was only slowly adapting to the idea that they had finally arrived. To sit on a hillside, to look across a vista of sloping green meadow down to a swiftly flowing river was strange enough. To stare across the wide breadth of that river and study the ancient buildings of Kelsingra in the distance was surreal.
“HALF A DAY’S flight for a dragon” had proved to be over six days of slow travel for the barge. None of it had been easy. For the first day, Heeby had appeared at intervals, looping over the ship and then flying off in the direction they were to follow. Unfortunately, that route led them to even shallower water. The dragons trudged ahead of them, laboriously plodding through standing water and sticky mud. Tarman lurched after them, scraping along with a terrible teetering gait.
On their second day of travel, the rain had returned in relentless sheets. The insistent drops patterned the still surface of the slough with ever-widening circles that negated one another as they overlapped. When the rain stopped, mists rose and cloaked the world in gray. The fog remained until the rain returned to banish it in a deluge. Dragons and ship groped their way forward through a cloud of wet. Life on the barge became more miserable. The keepers crowded into the galley and crew quarters in an attempt to stay dry, but the damp invaded every cranny of the ship. What food they had was eaten cold; they could find no dry fuel for even a small fire in the ship’s stove. Although no outright quarrels broke out, frustration simmered. The sole topic of conversation was Kelsingra, and where Rapskal and Heeby had been, and why they had not come down to the ship and why they had not returned. Speculation chewed all the theories ragged, with no satis
faction for anyone.
“How long can this go on?” Alise had asked Leftrin when they woke to rain for a third morning. He had looked at her oddly.
“Alise, did you never stop to think why this place is called the Rain Wilds? This is our weather for the winter season. It’s come a bit early, and we may yet have another spate of sunny days. But we may not. The good side of it is that the water is rising and lifting the barge. But that’s also the bad side. ”
She had grasped it immediately. “The deeper water may make it easier for Tarman to move. But harder for the dragons. ”
Leftrin had nodded grimly. “The dragons need to get out of the water, but we’ve seen no sign of even a muddy beach. ” He rolled from their bed and went to the small window and stared up at the sky. “And I think this downpour is why we didn’t see Heeby and Rapskal yesterday. Even if they could fly through this storm, I wonder if they could find us down here. ”
It had rained all night and half the next day. Once, she thought she heard Heeby give a cry overhead, a sound like a distant hawk. But by the time she reached the deck, there was nothing to be seen in the swirling mist. The dragons were looming shapes alongside the barge. Tarman crept along, moving in the general direction of where Heeby had flown. It was hard to keep their bearings in the rain and the fog. The water was slowly becoming deeper, for both barge and dragons, but was it the rain or had they found a hidden channel? Alise was not certain if Tarman followed the dragons, or if the dragons lingered near him, following his lead. She thought she would go mad from the endless pattering of the rain and the uncertainty.
On the fourth night, she awakened to find Leftrin gone. She’d risen swiftly and found her Elderling gown by touch in the dark. A shivering sense of urgency and excitement trembled through her, though she could not name a reason for it. She left the cabin and found a single rushlight burning on a saucer on the galley table. Bellin had just lit it and was standing near it, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Do you know what’s going on?” Alise had asked her.
Bellin shook her head. “Tarman woke me up,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure why. ”
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Alise pushed the galley door open against the wind’s resistance. The rain struck her full force, a pelting of icy drops that nearly drove her back inside. But Bellin was on her heels, and she would not lose face in front of her. She folded her arms across her chest, bent her head to the driving rain, and felt her way along the deckhouse until she stood on the bow of the ship. Leftrin was there before her. On the deck by his feet, a lone lantern burned the last of their precious oil. Swarge leaned on the railing beside his captain, peering into black night and rain. The skinny shadow clutching herself and shivering proved to be Skelly. As soon as Alise joined the group, Leftrin put a protective arm around her. It was no shelter from the rain, but it was good to share the warmth of his body.
“What is going on?” she asked. “Why did Tarman wake us?”
He pulled her closer in a happy hug. “There’s a current. A definite current flowing and we’re making our way upriver again. It’s getting deeper and stronger by the moment, but it’s definitely more than the rainfall. This will connect us to another waterway. ”
“And the dragons?”
“They’re moving along with us. ”
“In the dark?”
“We’ve little choice. At the rate at which the water is rising, we need to find where the bank will be and hug it. If we stand still, chances are we’ll all be swept away. ”
She heard what he didn’t say. That if the water rose too rapidly, they might still be swept away. Excitement and tension thrummed through the group. Even before dawn rose, the keepers drifted out to join them. Rain drenched them as they huddled on the bow, peering forward into a future too black to see.
Somewhere, the sun rose. The dragons became silhouettes and then, as the rain lessened and the fog returned, moving shapes. When the rain ceased, Alise realized that she could now hear the moving water. It came from all around them, and that terrified her. What if they could not find the bank? What if they were not venturing toward the side of the flow but toward the middle?
When Leftrin grimly ordered his crew to their poles and told the keepers gruffly to get out of the way, her heart sank. The sun rose higher and more light penetrated the mist. The dragons were silvery shades of their colors as they moved majestically beside and behind the ship. Tarman was clearly leading the way now. Alise retreated to the top of the deckhouse, knowing that however much she wished to be at Leftrin’s side, his ship needed his complete attention now. Some of the keepers had retreated to the galley and crew quarters to be out of the chill, but Thymara sat cross-legged and staring, while a shivering Sylve stared anxiously at her dragon. The dragons were communicating with one another in low rumbles and occasional whuffs of sound.
Slowly the mist began to rise from the river’s face. It was, unmistakably, a river again. The current was visible as dry leaves and broken stalks were borne swiftly away on its flow. As she watched, the water rose higher and then higher on a bank of reeds, and then suddenly the last tips of the plants vanished under the flow. She could hear Thymara breathing next to her, an anxious quaver in each intake. The clouds must have given way overhead, for suddenly a blast of light diffused in the fog. For six breaths, they moved in a world of silver shimmering droplets. The reflected light dazzled her eyes; she could barely make out the dragons.
“TREES!” The cry was a triumphant trumpeting from Mercor. “Bear left! I see trees again. ”
THYMARA STARED, TRYING to make her gaze penetrate the mist. She was cold. She’d wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, but ever since her wings had moved to the outside of her body, she’d felt chilled. She pulled her blanket-cloak tighter, but it only hugged the frigid framework closer to her back. Would she ever become accustomed to them, ever think of them as her own rather than as something Sintara had attached to her body? She wasn’t sure.
She came to her feet at Mercor’s announcement of trees. Silent and yearning, she stared with the others. She felt the barge change course and knew a moment of terror as a strange vibration thrummed through the ship. Her leaping heart identified it; Tarman’s claws were slipping on the bottom as he lost traction. The barge slewed and Swarge yelled, “Doing my best, Cap!” even before Leftrin bellowed his name. There was a spate of loud splashes, and the barge lurched suddenly as Veras brushed past them, scrambling for shallower water. Tarman’s claws caught again and the ship suddenly surged forward so vigorously that Alise sat down hard next to Thymara, who had sunk back down to the top of the deckhouse. The Bingtown woman didn’t make a sound, only grabbed Thymara’s arm in a painful clench to keep from falling off the deckhouse. An instant later, the motion of the ship suddenly steadied.
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The mist burned off as if it had never been. A landscape appeared around them, a place so different that at first Thymara wondered if somehow they’d made a mystical passage to another world. To their right was a river rushing past them, tossing up and carrying off the debris of what had been still swamp but an hour before. The rush of its passage was a loud and joyous noise. To their left, there was a narrower strip of river, rapidly closing as Tarman worked his way closer to the bank. The dragons were moving hastily now, stringing out in a glittering line as they hurried upstream.
But it was the riverbank that Thymara stared at. The land rose. It was not just the trees that towered. The land rose in a way that Thymara had never seen before. She had heard of hills and even mountains and thought she had imagined how they must be. But to stare at land that hummocked upward, higher and higher, was almost more than she could grasp. “Dry land!” Alise breathed beside her. “Tonight we’ll camp on dry land. And build a fire! And walk about without getting muddy! Oh, Thymara, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”
“I’ve never seen anything so strange,” Thymara whisper
ed in awe.
A wild shrill cry startled everyone aboard the ship. Thymara looked up. Heeby’s scarlet wings were stretched wide against a blue crack in the cloudy sky. She swooped lower and ever closer. Rapskal’s thin shout reached them. “This way! This way!”
“I have never seen anything so beautiful as that,” she whispered, and Alise leaned closer to hug her.
“We’re nearly there. We’re nearly home,” she said, and it did not seem at all a strange thing for her to say.
AT LEAST SIX times that day, Rapskal and Heeby flew with them, urging them on and tantalizing them with shouts of “It’s not far now! A pity you can’t fly!” and other useful bits of information.
As they followed, the land to either side became firmer. The reed beds gave way slowly to ferns and grasses, to boggy meadows and then to low, rolling grasslands that met forested foothills in the distance. The river became wider, and stronger, fed by streams and rivulets as the land rose up around it. The young Rain Wilders had looked out in wonder at vistas and hilly horizons they had heard of in old tales but never seen. They had exclaimed over rocky cliffs seen in the distance, and then shores with sand and rock along the edges. A different sort of forest edged closer to the river, one of small deciduous trees with random groves of evergreen. On one sunny day, a row of toothy mountains had appeared in the distance. And that afternoon they had come to the outskirts of Kelsingra.
Leftrin had nosed Tarman up to the sandy bank. The barge crawled, exhausted, to rest half on the shore and half on the water. The dragons had emerged from the shallows, clambering out and looking around as if they could not believe their good fortune. Most of them promptly found sunning spots and stretched out to rest. Mercor had not paused but had left the water behind, climbing ever higher up the grassy slopes. Sylve had run after him, barely keeping pace with her dragon. The other keepers had climbed down from the barge almost hesistantly and stared around at a landscape completely foreign to them. High up the slope behind them, Mercor had suddenly reared up on his hind legs and trumpeted out his triumph. On the riverbanks below him, the other dragons had lifted their heads and wearily returned his challenge. And Alise had stared, torn between triumph and heartbreak, at the towering ruins of Kelsingra…