Rain Wilds Chronicles (181 page)

But such luxuries did not mean that daily life was all leisure. There was no game in the city, and few green growing plants and no dry wood for cooking fuel. Gathering those demanded daily hikes to the outskirts of the sprawling city. Carson had suggested that they needed to create some sort of a dock for Tarman. The liveship would need a safe place to tie up when he returned, and they needed a place for unloading the supplies they hoped he would bring. “We will need docks and wharves, too, for our own vessels. We can't always assume Tarman and Captain Leftrin will ferry our supplies for free.”

That comment had drawn startled looks from the gathered keepers. Carson had grinned. “What? Do you think we are reclaiming this city for only five years, or ten? Talk to Alise, my friends. You may well live a hundred years or more. So what we build now, we had best build well.” With that, Carson had begun to sketch out the tasks before them. Hunting and gathering for their daily needs, building a dock for the city, and, to Thymara's surprise, sampling the memories stored in stone to try to understand the workings of the city.

Thymara had volunteered to bring in food and hunted almost daily. As early spring claimed the land, the forested hills behind the city yielded greens and some roots, but their diet was still mostly flesh. Thymara was heartily weary of it. She did not relish the long hike to the edge of the city, nor the return journey burdened with firewood or bloody meat. But her days in the hills with her bow or gathering basket were now the only simple times in her life.

On the days when she remained in the city, she contended with both Tats and Rapskal. Their rivalry for her attention had eclipsed the friendship they once had shared. They had never come to blows, but when they could not avoid each other, the awkwardness between them froze any hope of normal conversation. Several times she had been trapped between them, besieged by Rapskal's endless chattering from one side as Tats sought to win her attention with small articles he had made for her or stories of his discoveries in the city. The intensity of the attention they focused on her made it impossible for her to speak to anyone else, and she winced whenever she thought of how it must appear to the others, as if she deliberately provoked their rivalry. If Tats had noticed something about the city and wondered about it, Rapskal was sure to claim knowledge of what it was and explain it endlessly while Tats glowered. As the keepers still gathered for most of their meals, it had begun to cause a rift in the group. Sylve sided with Thymara, sitting with her no matter which of her suitors claimed the spot on her other side. Harrikin made no effort to disguise his support for Tats, while Kase and Boxter were firmly in Rapskal's camp. A few of the others expressed no preference and some, such as Nortel and Jerd, resolutely ignored the whole issue when they were not making snide comments on it.

If one had work duty, the other took advantage of his absence to woo her. When Tats worked on the docks, Rapskal would insist on going hunting with her, even if Harrikin was her assigned partner for the day. Worse were the days when both she and Rapskal were free. He would lurk outside her chamber door. The moment she appeared, he would beg her to accompany him back to the villa and the memory columns, to join him in learning more of their Elderling forebears.

She felt a trace of shame when she thought how often she surrendered and joined him there. It was an escape to a gloriously elegant time. In that dream world she danced gracefully, partook of extravagant feasts, and attended plays, living a life such as she had never imagined. But Amarinda's passing observations of life allowed Thymara to gain an understanding through the eyes of an Elderling of old about how the city had once worked. Conservatories had furnished fruits and greens year-round, while the humans in outlying settlements and across the river had traded what they manufactured, raised, and grew with the Elderlings for their magical items. With Carson and Alise she had visited several of the immense greenhouses. They were sized for a dragon to stroll through, with chest-high beds for soil and gigantic pots for trees. Yet whatever had once flourished there had perished long ago, leaving only a shadowy tracery of long-vanished leaves on the floor and hollow stumps in the soil. The earth in the containers looked usable, and water still spilled from leaks in the system of pipes that had once heated and irrigated the plant beds.

“But without seeds or plant stock, we cannot start anything here,” Alise observed sadly.

“Perhaps in spring,” Carson had said. “We might move wild plants here and tend them.”

Alise had nodded slowly. “If we can find seeds or take cuttings from plants we know, then the new Elderlings could begin to farm for themselves again. Or if Leftrin could bring seeds and plant starts to us.”

In other memory walks, Thymara glimpsed gauntleted Elderlings at work. They stroked sculpture from stone, imbued wood with mobility, and persuaded metal to gleam, sing, and heat or cool water. Their shops lined some of the narrow streets and they called greetings to Amarinda as she passed. Thymara felt an odd kinship with them, an almost recall of what they did but not how. Amarinda merely strolled past amazing feats with scarcely a glance, accepting them as part of her everyday world. But there were other places and times when Amarinda focused her attention intently and relentlessly, drowning Thymara in her emotions and sensations. The Elderling woman's infatuation with Tellator continued, deepened, and became a lifelong passion. In the space of a single afternoon of memory walking, Thymara experienced months of her life. She would emerge from those hours with dimmed eyes and dulled senses, her hand clasping Rapskal's as he sprawled on the steps beside her. She would turn her head and see him wearing Tellator's smile, and the thumb that rubbed sensuously against the palm of her hand was not Rapskal's at all. Only slowly would his gaze become Rapskal's again, and she wondered who he saw when he looked at her, which parts he remembered as they rose, stiff and chilled. Rapskal always wanted to speak of the shared memories afterward. And she always refused. After all, they were only memories. Dreams.

Did it matter what she experienced as a memory walker? If the food she ate there did not nourish her, did the sex she enjoyed in that world matter in this one? She was of two minds. Certainly, it had changed her attitude toward many things that people could do in a cozy bed on a winter's eve or in a meadow under a summer sky. Could she claim she was not being intimate with Rapskal when she knew that he wore Tellator's skin? Certainly, she assured herself. Sometimes. For he could change nothing that Tellator did or felt, just as she had no control over Amarinda. She could not prevent their lovers' quarrels, and she could not sidetrack their sensuous reunions. It was as if they watched the same play or heard the same story told. That was all.

Sometimes she could almost believe that. Certainly, that puppetry of intimacy did not seem to completely satisfy Rapskal. Often, as they walked back to their lodgings he would drop hints or outright beg her to come with him to some private place where they could reenact what they had just experienced. She always refused. Over and over, she had told him that she did not want to risk a pregnancy. Yet she could not deny that she longed for the excitement of being the woman in control of the situation. Or a woman being loved by a man.

And today, as she strolled with Tats down to the riverside to visit the dock construction, the same thoughts were still on her mind. What would it be like to have Tats as a lover? She had experienced Tellator any number of times now and shared one long night with Rapskal. Would Tats be as different from both of them as Rapskal had been from Tellator? It was an unsettling thing to wonder and she tried to push the thoughts aside. She gave the young man beside her a sideways glance. His face was grave and thoughtful. A question popped out of her mouth before she considered the wisdom of asking it.

“Have you dream-walked in any of the memory stones yet?”

He squinted at her as if she were a bit odd. “Of course I have. We all have. Boxter and Kase go to a whorehouse and linger with the sampling they offer there. Some of the others join them there from time to time. Don't look at me like that! What else would you expect them to do? Neither Kase nor Boxter have any hope of finding a mate unless other women move to Kelsingra, and that certainly won't be any time soon. Alum, Harrikin, and Sylve found a place where some of the famous Elderling minstrels immortalized their performances. And you yourself lingered with us when we watched the puppet show and the juggler and then the acrobats that night the Long Street was remembering a festival there. So, yes, we've all memory-walked in the stones. Hard to avoid it when we live here.”

That wasn't what she had meant, but she was relieved he had taken her question that way.

“I know. How can you walk down one of the broad streets at night and not share the memories there?” She snorted. “Sylve told me that when Jerd finds a street memory of a festival night, she follows the richly dressed women home and then searches their dwellings for any jewelry or garments that have survived. She has amassed quite a wardrobe.” She shook her head, wondering if she thought Jerd was greedy or envied her expert looting. Then in a low voice, she admitted, “That isn't the kind of memory walking I was talking about.”

Tats gave her a long level look. “Do I ask you questions like that?”

She looked away. After a time had passed when she did not respond, he added, “There are a lot of reasons to memory-walk that have nothing to do with sex or eating or listening to music. Carson tries to discover how the city works. He asked me to see what I could find out about the original docks. Not that we can replicate them, lacking the sort of magic the old Elderlings had. But to see what sort of things they considered when they were building them, as people who had known this stretch of river for a long time.” He sighed and shook his head. “I went to places where I thought they would have kept records of things like that. That big building with the map tower, and then that one with all the faces carved above the doors. We thought maybe that was an important place. But nothing. Or actually, much too much. I learned things that I still don't understand. Do you know why so much of this city is still standing? Why grass hasn't grown in the streets, or cracks started in the fountains? It's because stone remembers here. It remembers that it's a building façade, or a street, or the bowl of a fountain. It remembers, and it can repair itself, on some level. It can't fix itself if a quake makes a gigantic crack. But tiny cracks and crumbles just don't happen. The stone holds on to itself. It remembers.”

He shook his head in wonder at the thought and then added, “And they could do more than that, it seems. You know how some of the keepers swear they have seen a statue move? The Elderlings knew how to do that. They breathed life into the stone, and the stone keeps a part of them and can move. Sometimes. When it's awakened by . . . something. Something that I could not understand, even though an old man was remembering it clearly. It made me realize that Alise was right,
is
right. We need to know what she knows about the history of this city, and then we need to apply it. You know what she told me a few days ago? That when Rapskal confronted her that day and said she wasn't an Elderling and that the city didn't belong to her, she was so discouraged that she nearly burned all her work! Can you imagine it? I knew I felt angry at him that day, but I'd no idea how badly he had hurt Alise.”

He paused, and she sensed he hoped she would share his anger. He waited for her to say something, and she knew that if she did, it would be saying much more than that she thought Rapskal had been thoughtlessly cruel. Tats watched her stillness. But she could not find a way out of her silence. Rapskal hadn't said it to hurt Alise; he'd said it to assert his right to the city. A silly thought danced in her brain.
Alise is a grown-up. Can grown-ups really have their feelings so badly hurt?
So hurt they think of burning all their work or killing themselves?
But by the time she realized how childish her reaction was, Tats had shaken his head at her silence and moved on.

“We need to map this city. Not just the streets, but where the springhouses are, and the drains. And we need to make maps that show what information is stored where. Right now, it's like a huge treasure house, full of thousands of boxes of treasures, and we have thousands of different keys. The wealth is here, right under our feet, but we can't make sense of it. Like that silver well that Sylve was talking about the other day.”

She looked at him, surprised. He mistook it for confusion.

“I guess your mind was elsewhere. She says she keeps having dreams about a silver well. She's wandered through the city looking for it, but hasn't seen anything like what she dreamed. She thinks she's remembering something that Mercor knows about. She says he mentioned something about the silver wells of Kelsingra, a long time ago when we first began our journey here. She wants to talk to him, but she's like the rest of us. Since her dragon took flight, he doesn't have a lot of time for her. And she said another odd thing. She says it feels like he avoids the topic, as if it makes him uncomfortable.”

“Sintara spoke to me once of a silver well. It seemed very important to her. But she said her memories of it were fragmented.” She put the words out casually.

“The well isn't silver,” Tats said slowly. He gave her a sideways glance as if he expected her to mock him. “I dreamed of it last night. The structure around it was old and very fancy. As much wood as stone, as if it had been built at the very beginning of the city. Inside there was this mechanism . . . I couldn't see it well. But when you cranked up the bucket from the depths, it was full of silver stuff. Thicker than water. Dragons can drink it and love it. But I had the feeling it was dangerous to humans.”