Robin Hobb - The Dragon Keeper

“Challenge me?” Leftrin was shocked.

Sedric spoke quickly. “That’s not what I’m doing, of course. I don’t think I need to. Now that I’ve come to you and explained the situation in civil terms, I’m sure you’ll see that there is only one solution.”

He paused, as if he expected Leftrin to fill in his silence. He tried. Despite his efforts at control, his voice went deep with fury and despair. “You want me to stop speaking to her, don’t you?”

Sedric tucked his chin and widened his eyes, surprised that Leftrin didn’t see the obvious. “I’m afraid that, at this stage and in these close quarters, that would be inadequate. You need to order one of your hunters to take one of the keepers’ small boats, and transport Alise and me back down the river to Trehaug.”

“We are three days upriver of Cassarick,” Leftrin pointed out. “And one of those small boats wouldn’t hold half your luggage, let alone you and Alise and all your trappings.”

“I’m aware of both those things,” Sedric replied briskly. Leftrin was watching his face. He thought the corner of his mouth almost twitched into a smile. “Travelling downriver, with the current, the little boats go much faster. I heard the hunters talking about it yesterday. I suspect that at most Alise and I would spend one night camping out before we reached Cassarick. From there, we could make proper travel arrangements to reach Trehaug and then home. As for our belongings, well, they’ll have to remain on board for now. We’d travel light, and rely on you to ship our things to us in Bingtown when you finally return to Trehaug. I’m sure we could trust you to do that.”

Leftrin just stared at him.

“You know it’s the right thing to do,” Sedric urged him quietly, and then added, like a twist of the knife, “For Alise’s sake.”

A long wailing cry of anguish from the shore rose to crack the sky.

“He was better last night!” Sylve insisted. Red-tinged tears were streaming down her cheeks. Thymara winced at the sight of them, knowing well how much such tears hurt. Perhaps the fear of that pain was the only thing keeping her own eyes dry. She knelt by the little copper dragon. He had eaten last night, the first really large meal he’d taken since they’d fed him the elk meat a couple of nights ago. But unlike the other dragons, who had put on flesh and gained muscle since their trek began, the copper one had remained thin. His belly still bulged from what he had eaten last night, but Thymara could have counted his ribs. At the top of his shoulders and along his spine, some of his scales looked as if they were slipping loose from his hide.

Tats stood up from examining the dragon’s muzzle. He put a comforting arm across Sylve’s shoulders. “He’s not dead,” he told her, laying her fear to rest. But in the next breath, he took that comfort from her. “But I think he will be dead before the day is out. It’s not your fault!” he added hastily as Sylve drew in a sobbing breath. “I think you just came into his life too late. Sylve, he didn’t have much of a chance from the start. Look how disproportionate his legs are to the rest of him! And I caught him eating rocks and mud the other night. I think he has worms in his gut; look how swollen his belly is while the rest of him is skinny. Parasites will do that to an animal.”

Sylve made a choking noise. She shrugged off Tats’ touch and walked away from the group. Other keepers were coming to join them, forming a circle around the downed dragon. Thymara bit her lips tight to keep from speaking. Some callous part of her wanted to ask Tats where Jerd was. After all, she was the one who had volunteered to help him with this dragon. Sylve had promised to help with the silver, but the soft-hearted girl had ended up involved with both the failing dragons. And if this copper died, it would devastate her.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lecter asked as he hurried up.

“Parasites,” Rapskal responded wisely. “Eating him up from the inside, so he gets no good from his food.”

Thymara was a bit surprised by the coherency of his remark. Rapskal saw her looking at him and came to stand beside her. “What are we going to do?” he asked her, as if it were up to her.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “What can we do?”

“I think we should make the best of it, and go on,” Greft said. His voice was not loud but his words carried to everyone. Thymara glared at him. She still had not forgiven him for the elk. She hadn’t raised a public fuss about it, but she had avoided speaking to him or Kase or Boxter. She watched them, watched how Greft assumed leadership and tended to push the other keepers around, but hadn’t said anything openly. Now she lifted her head and squared her shoulders, preparing to take him on.

Sylve abruptly turned back to face them all. Her tears had stopped but they’d left red tracks down her face. “The best of it?” she said thickly. “What is that supposed to mean? What can be ‘best’ about this?”

Silence thick as a blanket had fallen over the gathering. Sylve stood, her shoulders lifted and her small fists knotted. All waited to hear what Greft would say. For the first time since Thymara had met him, she saw him hesitant. He surveyed his listeners. It was strange to see his pink human tongue dart out to lick his narrow scaled lips. What was he looking for? Thymara wondered. Acceptance of his leadership? Willingness to follow him as he made “new rules” for them?

“He’s going to die,” he said quietly. Thymara saw a scream gather on Sylve’s face; she held it in.

“And when he dies, his body shouldn’t go to waste.”

“Course not,” said Rapskal, breaking the silence that the others held by tacit consent. His matter of fact boyish voice in contrast to Greft’s controlled and mature speech made him sound foolish as he voiced what everyone else was thinking. “The dragons will eat him to get his memories. And for food. Everyone knows that.” Rapskal looked around at the other keepers, nodding and smiling. Slowly the smile faded from his face; he seemed puzzled at their stillness. Thymara concentrated her attention on Greft again; he had an exasperated look on his face, as if what Rapskal proposed should seem obviously foolish to all of them. But when he spoke, there was a note of caution to his words, as if he hoped someone else would speak for him.

“There may be a better use for his body,” he said, and waited. Thymara held her breath. What was he talking about? He looked around at all of them, daring himself to speak. “There has been talk of offers for—”

“Dragon flesh belongs to dragons.” It was not a human who spoke. Despite his great size, the golden dragon could move quietly. He towered above them, his head lifted high to look down on Greft. The keepers were parting to let him advance as if they were reeds giving way to the river’s flow. Mercor strode majestically past them. He looked, Thymara thought, magnificent. Since their journey had begun, he had put on weight and muscle. He was beginning to look the way a dragon was supposed to look. With the muscling, his legs looked more proportionate. His tail seemed to have grown. Only his broken-kite wings betrayed him. They were still too small and frail-looking to lift even a part of him.

He bent his long neck to sniff at the copper dragon’s body. Then he swivelled his head to stare at Greft. “She’s not dead,” he told him coldly. “It’s a bit early to plan to sell her flesh.”

“She?” Tats asked in consternation.

“Sell her flesh?” Rapskal sounded horrified.

But Mercor didn’t reply to either comment or the murmur of words among the keepers that followed them. He had lowered his head to sniff again at the copper. He nudged her hard. She did not respond. As the dragon slowly swung his head to study all the keepers, his scales flashed in the sun. His eyes, gleaming black, were unreadable to Thymara. “Sylve. Stay beside me. The rest of you, go away. This does not concern you. It does not concern humans at all.”