There was irritation in the dragon’s tone, as if Thymara had insulted her. The girl was startled. “What? Didn’t they tell you we’d be coming?”
“Didn’t who tell us?”
“The committee. There was a Rain Wilds committee to look into solving the dragon problem. They decided it would be best for all if the dragons were moved upriver to a better place. Somewhere with open meadows, dry ground and plentiful game for you.”
“No.” A flat denial by the dragon.
“But—”
“That was not what they decided. No humans decided anything about us. We told the humans that tend us that we are leaving this place, and that we required their services. We told them to supply us with hunters and tenders for our journey. We told them that we intend to return to Kelsingra.
Have you heard of it, little creature? It was an Elderling city, a place of sunlight and open fields and sandy shores. The Elderlings who lived there were creatures of culture and learning who appreciated dragons. The buildings there were created to accommodate us. The plains teemed with cattle and wild game. That is where we intend to go.”
“I have never heard of such a place.” She spoke hesitantly, not wishing to offend.
“What you have heard or not heard is of little interest to me.” The dragon turned away from her. “That is where we shall be going.”
This wasn’t going to work. Thymara cast about hopelessly. Two dragons remained unclaimed. They were mud-streaked and dull-eyed creatures, nosing stupidly at the empty barrows. The silver one had a festering infection on his tail. The other one might have had a coppery hide but was so filthy he looked dun coloured. He was thin in a bony way; she suspected he suffered from worms. In her cold evaluation, neither would survive the trek up the river. But perhaps that didn’t matter. It was apparent to her that her girlish fancy of befriending the dragon that she escorted was little more than that. What a silly dream that had been, of friendship with a powerful and noble creature. She was already revising her estimate of what the expedition would be, and her heart was sinking with the burden of that reality. She’d be feeding and caring for creatures that found her irritating and were large enough to kill her with a casual blow. At least her mother had been slightly shorter than she was. The thought that she might prefer her mother’s company to that of an irritable dragon twisted her mouth in a sour smile.
The dragon exhaled a blast of air by her ear. “Well?”
“I didn’t say anything.” She spoke quietly. She wanted to edge away, but not while the dragon was eyeing her.
“I’m aware of that. So you haven’t heard of Kelsingra. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that we are as likely to find it as we are to find your ‘open meadows, dry ground and plentiful game’. For it seems likely to me that if any Rain Wilder had ever heard of such a place, there would already be a Rain Wilds settlement there.”
“That’s true,” Thymara agreed reluctantly, and wondered why she hadn’t previously thought about it in such terms. Because the committee, of supposedly older and wiser Rain Wild Traders, had told her that was what she would find. But what did they know? Not a one of them had looked like a hunter or a harvester. Most looked as if they’d never even ventured up to the canopy, let alone explored along the riverbanks. What if there were no such place? What if it was all just a ploy to get the dragons and their tenders to leave Cassarick?
She pushed that thought aside. It frightened her, not just because it might be true but because she suddenly knew that the people she had signed a contract with were perfectly capable of banishing both the dragons and their keepers to an endless trek up the boggy riverbank. “Why are you dragons so certain that Kerlinger exists?” she demanded of the big blue female.
“If you are trying to talk about Kelsingra, then at least name it correctly. You are very careless with your language. I suspect that creatures with brains as small as yours must have a hard time recalling information. As to why we know it exists, we remember it.”
“But you’ve never been away from this beach.”
“We have our ancestral memories. Well, at least some of us have some of them. And it is one that several of us do recall. The city on the wide and sunny riverbank. The sweet silver water from the well there. The plazas and the buildings created to accommodate the alliance of Elderlings and dragons. The fine fields full of fat grazing cattle.” The dragon’s voice had gone dreamy and for a moment, Thymara almost felt the creature’s hunger for fat cows full of warm blood and hot moist meat. And afterward, a wash and then a long nap on the white sandy riverbank. Thymara shook her head to clear it of her imaginings.
“What?” the dragon demanded.
“The only Elderling cities we have ever discovered are buried in mud. The folk who lived there are long dead. The tapestries and paintings they left behind show us a place that is so different from what is here now that our scholars have long argued that they depict an Elderling homeland far to the south rather than being representations of their cities as they once were here.”
“Then your scholars are wrong.” The dragon spoke decisively. “Our memories may be incomplete, but I can tell you that the Cassarick I recall bordered on a deep, swift flowing river that had a gentler backwater and a wide beach of silver-streaked clay. The river was deep enough for serpents to migrate up it easily. The Elderling ships also could come right up the river to Cassarick and go beyond as well, to other cities that bordered the river. Cassarick itself was not a large city, though it had its share of wonders. It was famed mostly as a secondary place for serpents to come to spin our cocoons, if the beaches at what you call Trehaug were full. That did not happen every migrating year, but some years it did. And so Cassarick had chambers capable of welcoming the dragons that came to tend the cases. There was the Star Chamber, roofed with glass panels. From there the Elderlings were wont to study the night sky. The walls of the long entry hall to the Star Chamber were decorated with a mosaic of jewels that held a light of their own. No windows were built in that hall so that visitors might more easily view the vista that the jewel artists had painted with their tiny dots of light. I recall there was an amusement that the humans had built for themselves, a maze with crystal walls. Time’s Labyrinth, they called it. It was all trickery and foolishness, of course, but they seemed fond of it.”
“If any room like one of those chambers has been found, I have not heard of it,” Thymara said regretfully.
“It little matters,” the dragon replied, her voice suddenly harsh. “They are not the only wonders that have vanished. You humans go digging through the wreckage of that time like tunnelling dung beetles. You don’t understand what you find, and you have no appreciation for it.”
“I think I should go,” Thymara said quietly. Her disappointment as she turned away gnawed upward in her from her belly. She looked at the other two unclaimed dragons and tried to muster pity for them. But their eyes were vapid and almost unseeing. They were not even watching the other dragons as they began to interact with their keepers. The muddy brown one was absently chewing on the bloody edge of the barrow that had held his food. Still. She hadn’t signed a contract that promised her the companionship of an amazing and intelligent creature. She had signed a contract that said she would do her best to accompany a dragon on this doomed expedition and do her best to care for it. Perhaps she’d be wiser to start with one that had no expectations. Perhaps she would have been wisest of all not to have had expectations herself.
All of the other keepers seemed to have met with at least moderate success with their choices. Rapskal and his red seemed happiest with one another. He had led the stumpy little creature over to the forest edge and was cleaning her scales with liandfuls of evergreen needles. The small red dragon wriggled happily at his touch. Jerd seemed to have won the trust of her speckled green dragon. The creature had lifted one front foot and was allowing Jerd to examine her claws. Greft kept a respectful distance from the black dragon, but seemed to be deep in conversation with it. Sylve and the golden male had found a sunny place and were sitting peacefully together on the cracked mud plates of the riverbank.
She looked around for Tats and the slender green dragon he’d approached. She didn’t see either of them at first, and then spotted them at the water’s edge. Tats had his fish spear out and was walking along the bank while the green dragon watched with avid interest. Thymara doubted that he’d find anything large enough to spear if he saw any fish at all, but he’d obviously won his dragon’s attention. Unlike her. The dragon hadn’t even responded to her last comment.
“Thank you for speaking with me,” Thymara replied hopelessly. She turned and walked quietly away. The
