brought up, and another, until the vessel of polished stone brimmed with silver. In her dreams Sintara drank of it, the silver running through her veins, filling her heart with song and her mind with poetry. She allowed herself to float on the exhilarating memories leaving the reality of her present life behind.
In this other remembered life, she was a queen dragon who preened herself, her silver-dripping muzzle spreading the fine sheen over her feathery scales. The green-and-gold robed woman rejoiced in letting her drink her fill of the silvery stuff. Together they left the well and strolled through the bright sunlit streets of the city. They passed lavish squares where fountains leapt and played, and brightly-robed denizens of the city greeted her with bows and curtsies. The market was in full voice, filled with the songs of minstrels and the dickering of merchants and customers. Scents of cooking meat and sacks of spices, rare perfumes and pungent herbs filled her nostrils. When she and her companion reached the river’s edge, they bid each other the fond farewells that old friends share. And then the queen dragon spread and limbered her gleaming scarlet wings. She crouched low on her powerful hindquarters and then sprang effortlessly into the air. Three, four, five beats of her wings and the wind off the river captured her and flung her aloft. She caught the current of warm summer air and soared on it.
The crimson queen blinked transparent lids over her whirling gold eyes. The wind slapped her, but the blow changed to a caress as she banked into it and rode it ever higher. Warm summer sunlight kissed her back, and the wide world spread out below her. It was a golden land, a wide river valley that gave, on both sides, to rolling hills dotted with oak groves and then to steeper cliffs and finally craggy mountains. On the flat lands along the river, cultivated fields of grain alternated with pastures where kine and sheep grazed. A fine road of smooth black stone bordered one side of the river, with tributary paths and by-ways wandering out to the more rural districts. Beyond the settlements of humanity, in the foothills and the narrow valleys that threaded back into the mountains, game was plentiful.
On the updraughts over the hills, other dragons soared, their glistening hides winking like jewels in the summer sunlight. One, a pale-green dragon with gold mottling on his haunches and shoulders, trumpeted to her. A thrill ran through her as she recognized her most recent mate. She answered his greeting, and saw him bank to meet her. As soon as he had committed to his turn, she mocked him with a shrill call and beat her own wings powerfully to gain altitude. He gave a deep cry of challenge to her in response and came after her.
Rain. Cold sleeting rain suddenly spattered on her back with the force of a shower of pebbles. Sintara’s eyes flew open, the dream and the respite it had brought her shattered. In the next moment, the cold water was coursing down her flanks and sides. All around her in the darkness, dragons shifted and reluctantly huddled closer to one another. Sorrow vied with fury in her. “Kelsingra,” she promised herself aloud. “Kelsingra.”
In the darkness, the voices of the other dragons echoed hers.
Day the 17th of the Greening Moon
Year the 5th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
In the sealed scroll case, a letter from the Bingtown Traders’ Council to the Rain Wilds Traders’ Councils of Trehaug and Cassarick, suggesting that the Elderling Selden might go on a journey to discover the whereabouts of Tintaglia and persuade her to return and once more engage in the care of the young dragons.
CHAPTER SIX
Thymara’s Decision
It was unusual for her mother to greet them with a smile on their return from their daily gathering. Even more unusual was for her to be fairly bursting with enthusiasm to speak to them. Thymara and her father were scarcely inside the door with their baskets before her mother spoke. Her eyes were bright with hope. “We’ve had an offer for Thymara.”
For an instant, both the young woman and her father froze as they were. Thymara could barely make sense of the words. An offer? For her? At sixteen years of age, she was long past the age when most Rain Wild girls were engaged. She knew that in some places in the world she would still be considered little more than a child. In others, she would be seen as just ripening for marriage. But in the Rain Wilds, folk did not live as long as other people. They knew that if a family bloodline was to continue, they’d best have their offspring spoken for as children, wed young as soon as they were fecund, and with child within the year. Even if a girl came from a poor family, if her looks were passable, she’d be spoken for by ten. Even the ugly girls had prospects by twelve.
Unless they were like Thymara, never meant to survive at all, let alone wed and produce children. Invisible to some folk, barely tolerated by others. Yet, here was her mother, eyes shining, saying there had been an offer for her. It was too strange. To accept a marriage offer when children were forbidden to her? It made no sense. Who would make such an offer and why would her mother even consider it?
“A marriage offer for Thymara? From whom?” Her father’s voice was thick with disbelief. Foreboding grew in Thymara’s heart as she studied her mother’s face. Her smile was thin. She did not look at either of them as she crouched by the baskets and began to select which items in them would become their evening meal. She spoke to the food they had gathered. “I said we’d had an offer for Thymara, Jerup. Not a marriage offer.”
“What sort of an offer, then? From whom?” her father demanded. A storm cloud of anger threatened in his words.
Her mother kept her aplomb. She didn’t look up from her task. “An offer of useful employment and a life of her own, apart from us in our declining years. As for ‘from whom’, it comes directly from the Rain Wild Traders’ Council. So it’s nothing to sniff at, Jerup. It’s a wonderful opportunity for Thymara.”
Her father shifted his glance to her, and waited for her to speak. It was no secret in their little family that her mother worried constantly about her “declining years”. Plainly she believed that if they could shed responsibility for Thymara’s upkeep, they could save more for their old age. Thymara wasn’t certain that were so; she toiled every day alongside her father. Much of what he carried home, Thymara had harvested from the highest reaches of the tallest branches, sunny places where no one else dared climb. Would her mother think it such a relief when her father’s baskets were lighter each day? And if she were gone, who would do the day-to-day chores for them as their bodies aged and grew feeble?
Thymara didn’t voice any of that. “What sort of ‘useful employment’ did they offer?” she asked quietly. Thymara kept her voice unaccusing, or tried to. She dreaded what her mother might answer. There were all sorts of “useful employment” in Trehaug. There was always the most hazardous digging in the buried Elderling city. It was back-breaking labour, shovel- and barrow-work, often done in near-darkness, and always with the possibility that a door or wall in the ancient buried city might suddenly give way and release an avalanche of mud. Usually, they chose boys for that task because they were stronger. “Unproductive” girls like her were most often given the task of maintaining the bridges that traversed the highest and lightest branches. There had been recent talk of a
