Rain Wilds Chronicles (195 page)

His words were nearly drowned in the wild trumpeting as the dragons took up his call. A moment later, the meaning of it all permeated her brain. Somewhere, a dragon was dying, killed by humans. A queen dragon. Tintaglia! Tintaglia, she who had guided them all up the river as serpents, Tintaglia was falling to human treachery! She summoned them to avenge her!

“Tintaglia, Tintaglia!” Malta's anguished shriek was a higher note among the dragon's trumpeting. “If you and your offspring die, so do mine! Blue queen, wonder of the skies, do not die! Do not allow yourself to be taken!” She turned suddenly and spoke to the other keepers. She stood tall in the night and the force of her plea was something they all felt. “Elderlings, rise! Go to her aid, I beg you! For the sake of my child, yes, but for the sake of all our dragons! For if you let this happen to sapphire Tintaglia, what safety is there for any of you?”

Malta gleamed in the yellow light of the torches and lanterns, and with a strange thrill, Thymara recognized the queen of the Elderlings. No wonder all of Jamaillia had seen her so, commanding with words as compelling as the glamour of the dragon. Thymara was suddenly certain that if Tintaglia could feel Malta's words, she would take heart from them.

“We fly!” Rapskal roared in response. His voice had gone husky and wild. His eyes glared with fury, and the set of his mouth made him a stranger to Thymara. He paced among the churning Elderlings and dragons, seeming suddenly taller. “My armor! My spear!” he cried aloud. “Where are my servants? Send them for my armor. We must fly tonight. We cannot wait for light, for by then she may have gone into eternal darkness. Rise up and seize your arms. Ready the dragon baskets! Bring forth the battle harnesses!”

Thymara stared at him, openmouthed. She felt caught alone in a vortex of whirling times. Tellator. Tellator spoke in that tone of command, Tellator strode like that. All around her, dragons were rearing and trumpeting furiously. Keepers darted among them, some imploring their dragons to stay safely here, to not try to fly in darkness, while some of the keepers had moved clear of a horde of dragons shaking out their wings and snapping their necks to fill their poison glands. Rapskal's peculiar behavior seemed to have gone unnoticed.

He strode toward her, a clenched-teeth smile on his face. She froze as he took her in his arms and held her to his heart. “Have no fear, my darling. A hundred times have I gone into battle, and always I have returned to you, have I not? This time will be no exception! Have faith in me, Amarinda. I will safely return to you, both honor and life intact. We will turn back any that dare to enter our territory uninvited!”

“Rapskal!” She shouted his name and broke free of his embrace. Seizing him by the shoulders, she shook him as hard as she could. “You are Rapskal and I am Thymara. And you are not a warrior!”

He stared at her oddly as he drew himself up taller. “Maybe not, Thymara, but someone must fight, and I am the only one who has a dragon willing to carry me. I have to go. Those cruel murderers have attacked a queen dragon, seeking to butcher her like a cow! It cannot be tolerated.”

The voice was Rapskal's and his very earnest stare, but the cadence of his voice and the words he used were Tellator's. She tried again. “Rapskal, you are not him. And I am not Amarinda. I am Thymara.”

His eyes seemed to focus on her again. “Of course you are Thymara. And I know who I am. But I also bear Tellator's memories. The price of his memories is a small one, and that is to honor the life of the man who gave them to me. To continue his duties and work.” He leaned closer to her and peered into her eyes as if looking for something. “As you should honor Amarinda's memories by continuing her tasks. Someone must, Thymara, and that someone is you.”

She looked at him and shook her head. She became dimly aware of Tats standing beside them, watching them both intently. She could take no time for him now, regardless of what he thought. She held tight to Rapskal and spoke earnestly. “Rapskal, I don't want you to be Tellator. I don't want to be Amarinda. I want us to be us, and whatever we do, I want it to be our own decision, not some continuation of someone else's life.”

He gave a small sigh and shifted his gaze to Tats. “Watch over her, my friend. And if I do not return, think well of me.” His eyes met Thymara's again. “Someday you will understand. And sooner, I think, would be better than later. For the sake of my honor and my word. Heeby! Heeby, to me!”

He turned away from her. Some other woman from another time exclaimed, “Your sword! Your armor!” She very nearly ran after him.

But Tats was at her side, holding firmly to her arm. He spoke by her ear in the milling chaos of dragons and keepers. “He has neither, and never has had them. Thymara. Come back to me. You cannot stop him. You know that.”

“I know.” She wondered if Tats spoke of Rapskal charging off to fight a battle weaponless, or of his assumption of another man's life and duties. She looked at the man beside her. Tears welled painfully in her eyes. “We're losing him. We're losing our friend.”

“I fear you may be right.” He pulled her into his arms and held her head against his chest to shield her as all around them, dragons trumpeted and then leaped from the ground to take flight. The wind of their beating wings battered them, and their war cries buffeted her ears. In moments, they were high above them.

Thymara lifted her eyes to watch them go, but the overcast sky had swallowed them all, and only rain fell on her uplifted face.

Day the 6th of the Plough Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick

To Trader Finbok of the Bingtown Traders, Bingtown

 

Dear Trader Finbok,

I am in possession of a message from you that, I must admit, confuses me greatly. Either you have sent this message to me in error and are unaware of the great damage such a missive could do to my reputation, or you are a villain and a scoundrel who deliberately seeks to disgrace me. Perhaps you are deceived by some evil person who has slandered my name by pretending to be me. I choose to hope that you are not truly the malicious sort of person who would risk both our reputations.

The letter I received claims that I have not only been sending you information stolen from other Traders' messages but also shows that you have been paying me a great deal of money for such information. And it declares that unless I surrender certain information about your son, of whom I assure you I have never heard, you will betray me to the Guild masters in Bingtown!

I am astonished and shocked to receive such a letter. It has occurred to me that perhaps it is actually from an enemy of yours who seeks to cause you financial and social disaster! For surely if I took this to the Guild masters, protesting my innocence, they would present it to the Bingtown Traders' Council, and leave it to them to determine if you have been a party to the theft of secrets of other Traders and profited by such knowledge.

Please immediately reply to this missive so that we may clear up this whole matter.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Final Chances

D
ead things float.”

The Chalcedean spoke the words firmly, as if ordering someone or something to comply
with them. The weary men gathered on the deck shuffled their feet, but no one replied. It was all
too obvious to them that perhaps dead dragons did not float. In last night's uproarious battle, they
had slain the blue monster and seen her sink beneath the water. Many of the men had cried out in
dismay as the lifeless hulk had sunk. The others had counseled them to wait: she would rise.

The sun had passed its zenith. No carcass had bobbed to the surface yet. No one had
slept. All hands had kept watch on the water, fearing at first that the dragon was not dead and
might venture another attack. Then, as the night wore on and she did not rise, they watched, fearing
that their long-sought prize, the foundation of all their dreams, was on the bottom of the river,
forever out of their reach.

They had probed the area between the moored ships with their longest poles and felt
only water or river bottom. One hapless oar slave, secured by a rope about his ankle, had been
thrown overboard and commanded to dive as deep as he could and see what he might see. He had not
wished to go; he had cried out in protest as his fellows had obediently lifted him and then flung
him over the side. No swimmer he; he had sunk, risen to the surface to splash and beg for help. The
shouted commands for him to dive and look for the dragon carcass had not, in Hest's opinion, moved
him.

Rather, his own ineptitude had sunk him again. The second time, they had dragged him
from the water by the line about his ankle. He had lain on the deck like a dead thing, his skin
kissed red by the river, puffing air into his lungs, his eyes filmed with gray from the acid water.
They shouted at him, demanding to know what he had seen. “Nothing! I saw nothing, I see nothing!”
The man's terror at being blind had robbed him of his fear of his master.

The Chalcedean had kicked him disdainfully, proclaimed him useless, and would have
discarded him over the side if one of the others had not insisted that a blind man on an oar was
better than an empty bench. Hest had noted that none of the Chalcedeans had volunteered to dive
overboard.

Now as the rising sun granted them enough light that they could see under the trees,
they scanned the nearby banks to see if the dragon's carcass had washed ashore. There was nothing.
Then the Chalcedean had announced that perhaps the current had carried their prize downstream. His
haggard men stared at him with sick doubt in their eyes. The dragon was gone and they knew it.

Their leader did not share their gloom. “Oh, come!” Lord Dargen cajoled them. “Will
you rest now and let our fortune slip away from us? The current has carried our prize downstream. We
will seek her there, and know that every stroke of the oar carries us closer to home as well as
closer to a golden future!”

It sounded like chicanery to Hest, a mother's lie to make a child open his mouth for
the bitter medicine. But the crews accepted it and began to make ready for a day's travel. What
choice did they have? Odd, how living as a slave was showing him how little choice most men had in
their lives. His existence had always been shaped by his father's authority. Last night when his
stolen rags and chill hold had begun to seem like a cozy refuge from standing on the deck holding a
lantern aloft for the searchers, he had reconsidered Sedric's fantasy of the two of them running off
to a distant country. Sedric had voiced it only once, toward the end of their time together in
Bingtown. Hest had scoffed at it back then and forbidden him to speak again of his idiotic
dream.

Hest had recalled the quarrel in detail as he had stood on the darkened deck,
spending hours of his life functioning as a lamp stand as he held the lantern high. It was Sedric's
fault he had come to this, he had decided. His lover had dreamed of gaining a fortune and moving far
from Bingtown, to dwell together in luxury where they did not have to hide their relationship from
Hest's wife or Bingtown society. Hest had told him not be ridiculous, that they were fine as they
were. Hest had had no wish to gamble his comfortable life. But, whether he willed it or not, Sedric
had cast the dice for them. And instead of a fortune and a life of freedom in some exotic location,
he had won slavery for Hest and whatever peculiar exile Sedric now endured.

He had heard the dreams of the Chalcedean dragon hunters. Sedric had not imagined
the vast value of dragon parts. For the first time, he wondered if Sedric had gained his ambition,
had harvested blood or scales, sold them, and gone off to live alone the dream that Hest had mocked.
No. He had not. For if Sedric had taken such plunder to the Duke of Chalced or to any of the trade
contacts they knew, these others would have known of it. Perhaps they would even have been able to
go home, knowing that someone else had finished their terrible quest for them. And if Sedric had
acquired a fortune, he would have come back to Hest and pleaded with him to go with him. Of that
Hest was certain. Sedric would always come back to him.

So. What had become of Sedric and Alise? He did not much care why his frumpy little
wife had not returned to him, but what had kept Sedric from his side? Being so deeply infatuated
with Hest in his juvenile and romantic way, surely if Sedric could have come home, he would have,
with or without dragon's blood to trade. And Captain Leftrin had claimed that both Alise and Sedric
were alive. So much he had gleaned during his time in Trehaug and Cassarick.

“What is that?” A man's cry, full of wonder and perhaps fear, sent everyone
scrambling to the rails to peer over the side. Had the dragon returned? But a glance at the lookout
showed him pointing, not at the river but at the sky.

“Parrots,” someone exclaimed in disgust. “Just a flock of blue and green
parrots.”

“And gold and silver and scarlet and blue,” another man cried.

“They're a bit big for parrots . . .”

It was not a flock of birds startled from their canopy home. These creatures came on
swift, wide wings, more batlike in motion than birdlike. They flew in formation like geese, and even
the powerful downstrokes of their wings were orchestrated, as if someone called cadence for them.
Hest stared with the others and felt blood drain from his face. His hands and feet tingled, and he
could not voice what someone finally shouted, his voice still tinged with disbelief.

“Dragons! A flock of dragons!”

“Fortune favors us! Ready your bows!” Lord Dargen shouted joyously. “Attack as they
fly over us. Let us bring down one or two of them, and return home with our holds full of dragon
parts!”

For the first time, Hest realized that the man was mad. Insane with fear for his
family, believing that somehow he could get the magical items that would bring them safely to him
when he returned home. Hest suddenly knew with terrible certainty that they were no longer alive,
that they had died terribly, probably months ago, possibly screaming the Chalcedean's name as they
perished.

This quest was all the man had left. It was only a fantasy. Even if he filled the
ship with chunks of bloody meat and kegs of blood, there was no grand life for him to reclaim. To
fulfill his mad goal would be as disastrous for him as to fail. But this was his life now, and he
was trapped in it as surely as he had imprisoned Hest in his madman's mission. Whatever doom he had
brought upon himself, Hest would share. Weaponless he stood and watched them come. Creatures of
legend, glittering like gemstones against the endless gray sky, in the distance they looked more
like adornments to a lady's elegant music box than vengeful flying predators. All around him on the
decks of both ships, men were running and shouting, stringing bows, demanding arrows of their
fellows, limbering their arms with their throwing spears.
They have no
idea,
Hest thought to himself. He had seen the blue dragon of Bingtown, Tintaglia, once. It
had been in the distance, as he returned to Bingtown after she had driven off the Chalcedean
warriors. He had thought her pretty then.

But on his return to the city, he had seen what a dragon's wrath could do. She had
not intended to pock paving stone with acid holes, nor fill the harbor basin with sunken ships. That
damage had been incidental. He had seen the harm that one dragon, fighting on behalf of a city,
could do.

He stood on the deck and tried to count the oncoming dragons. He stopped at ten. Ten
times dead was very dead indeed. The slaves chained to their oars were praying. He was tempted to
join them.

T
he dragons had flown through the night,
ignoring cold and fitful rainfall. Sintara had expected to be exhausted by dawn, but they were not.
They had flown on, as the sun rose, and on as it climbed into the sky. They had flown as if they had
but one mind, reverting to the animals that perhaps dragons once had been. Mercor led their
formation, and Sintara had been proud to fly to his right. Blue-black Kalo had taken his left, and
then Sestican and Baliper. Those three, she knew somehow, had been a long time with the golden
dragon, perhaps swimming with him as serpents once. Quarrel they might among themselves, but now
there was a common enemy to fight and vanquish. All differences among them were gone. Even their
thirst for Silver had been suppressed. Fifteen strong, they had risen to Tintaglia's cry for
vengeance.

Silver Spit lumbered along at the tail of the line. Copper Relpda flew strongly, her
early awkwardness scarcely a memory for her now. And ridiculous red Heeby flew wherever she would,
now part of the formation, now trailing it, now flying to one side. Her slender scarlet rider sang
as they flew, a song of anger and vengeance, but also one that praised the beauty of angry dragons
in flight and painted a glorious victory for them. Ridiculous, and ridiculous that she and the
others enjoyed it so. Thymara had complained more than once about how freely the dragons used their
glamour to compel their keepers to tend them. Yet not once had she ever admitted the power that
human flattery and praise in song could exert over dragons. She was not the only dragon who flew
with her mind full of Rapskal's glorious images of exotically beautiful dragons triumphing over
every obstacle.

They had flown straight, not following the river's meandering course. Dawn had come
earlier for them than it had for the ships on the river's surface. The tall trees that surrounded
this section of the Rain Wild River also blocked the earliest rays of the sun. The dragons had flown
over the treetops, feeling the warmth of the sun limber their weary wings, and then, as the trees
gave way to the open space of the river, they had seen their enemies in the distance.

“Vengeance, my beautiful ones, jewels of the day! We will visit death on them, a
death so glorious they will die praising you!”

“Destroy them all! Sink their ships!” Kalo's trumpet call of fury rang against the
dead gray sky.

Rapskal laughed aloud. “Oh, no, my mighty one! There is no need to destroy such
useful vessels. Only the killers must die. Leave enough crew to row our prizes home! Some we may
allow to live, as servants, to tend our kine and flocks for us. Others we may ransom! But for now,
blaze terror into their hearts!”

The young Elderling glittered scarlet in the morning light, his garments of blue and
gold like a battle banner in the wind. He broke into a deep-throated song in an ancient tongue, and
Sintara discovered she recalled it of old. When Rapskal paused at the end of a stanza to draw
breath, the dragons trumpeted in unison. Her hearts swelled with fury and joy at her own mightiness.
They neared the hapless boats and swept low over them.

T
he ships rocked in the wild wind of
their passage. Those few crew members who remembered to release their arrows saw their puny missiles
wobble and spin in the dragon tempest. Leaves and twigs from the nearby trees showered down with a
shushing
sound and even the river surged up in wavelets. The force sent
Hest staggering to the wall of the ship's house.

“We're going to die here!” he shouted, for he suddenly saw it all clearly. The
dragons would circle back and fly over them even lower. But no wind need they fear, for the danger
of the acid they would spew down on them would make the wind seem like a friendly pat. Even a
falling drop of the stuff would kill a man, eating through clothes and flesh and bone until it
emerged from a stumbling corpse and buried itself in the earth. If the dragons breathed it out as a
blanketing mist, only sodden wreckage and sizzling bones would remain of them.

Hest screamed wordlessly as the images fully penetrated his mind.

“Get off the ships! Hide in the trees!” Someone shouted the order, and a wave of men
scrambled to obey. From beneath the closed hatches, screams of terror rose, but there was no time
for Hest to think of anyone except himself.
Get off the ship.
It was his
only possible chance to survive. He rushed to the railing and jumped amid a fountaining wave of
other men doing likewise. He was fortunate that his ship was closest to the bank. The water, cold
and stinging, closed over his head. He had shut his eyes tightly as he jumped and as he came up he
floundered blindly, scarcely daring to open his eyes until he felt the slimy river bottom under his
boots. Then he blinked rapidly, feeling the river water sting and haze his eyes for a moment before
he scrabbled out onto the muddy, reed-choked bank.