Robin Hobb: Ship of Destiny

"Inevitable," Keffria conceded. She picked up her spoon and began to eat. A few mouthfuls later, she set it down.

Across from her, Jani set down her coffee mug. "What is it?" she asked quietly.

Keffria held herself very still. "If my children are dead, who am I?" she asked. Cold calmness welled up in her as she spoke. "My husband and eldest son are gone, taken by pirates, perhaps already dead. My only sister has gone after them. My mother remained behind in Bingtown when I fled; I know not what has become of her. I only came here for the sake of my children. Now they are missing, and perhaps already dead. If I alone survive She halted, unable to frame a thought to deal with that possibility. The immensity of it overwhelmed her.

Jani gave her a strange smile. "Keffria Vestrit. But the turning of a day ago, you were volunteering to leave your children in my care, and return to Bingtown, to spy on the New Traders for us. It seems to me that you then had a very good sense of who you were, independent of your role as mother or daughter."

Keffria propped her elbows on the table and leaned her face into her hands. "And this now feels like a punishment for that. If Sa thought I undervalued my children, might he not take them from me?"

"Perhaps. If Sa had but a male aspect. But recall the old, true worship of Sa. Male and female, bird, beast and plant, earth, fire, air and water, all are honored in Sa and Sa manifests in all of them. If the divine is also female, and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel."

The old saying, once so comforting, now rang hollow in her ears. But Keffria's thoughts did not linger on it long. A great commotion at the entrance to the hall turned both their heads. "Sit still and rest," Jani advised her. "I'll see what it's about."

But Keffria could not obey her. How could she sit still and wonder if the disruption were caused by news of Reyn or Malta or Selden? She pushed back from the table and followed the Rain Wild Trader.

Weary and bedraggled diggers clustered around four youngsters who had just slung their buckets of fresh water to the floor. "A dragon! A great silver dragon, I tell you! It flew right over us." The tallest boy spoke the words as if challenging his listeners. Some of the laborers looked bemused, others disgusted by this wild tale.

"He's not lying! It did! It was real, so bright I could hardly look at it! But it was blue, a sparkly blue," amended a younger boy.

"Silver-blue!" a third boy chimed in. "And bigger than a ship!" The lone girl in the group was silent, but her eyes shone with excitement.

Keffria glanced at Jani, expecting to meet her annoyed glance. How could these youngsters allow themselves to bring such a frivolous tale at a time when lives weighed in the balance? Instead, the Rain Wild woman's face had gone pale. It made the fine scaling around her eyes and lips stand out against her face. "A dragon?" she faltered. "You saw a dragon?"

Sensing a sympathetic ear, the tall boy pushed through the crowd toward Jani. "It was a dragon, such as some of the frescoes showed. I'm not making it up, Trader Khuprus. Something made me look up, and there it was. I couldn't believe my eyes. It flew like a falcon! No, no, like a shooting star! It was so beautiful!"

"A dragon," Jani repeated dazedly.

"Mother!" Bendir was so dirty that Keffria scarcely recognized him as he pushed through the crowd. He glanced at the boy standing before Jani, and then to his mother's shocked face. "So you've heard. A woman who was tending the babies up above sent a boy running to tell us what she had seen. A blue dragon."

"Could it be?" Jani asked him brokenly. "Could Reyn have been right all along? What does it mean?"

"Two things," Bendir replied tersely. "I've sent searchers overland, to where I think the creature must have broken out of the city. From the description, it is too large to have moved through the tunnels. It must have burst out from the Crowned Rooster chamber. We have an approximate idea of where that was. There may be some sign of Reyn there. At the least, there may be another way we can enter the city and search for survivors." A mutter of voices rose at his words. Some were expressing disbelief, others wonder. He raised his voice to be heard above them. "And the other thing is that we must remember that this beast may be our enemy." As the boy near him began to protest, Bendir cautioned him, "No matter how beautiful it may seem, it may bear us ill will. We know next to nothing of the true nature of dragons. Do nothing to anger it, but do not assume it is the benign creature we see in the frescoes and mosaics. Do not call its attention to you."

A roar of conversation rose in the chamber. Keffria caught at Jani's sleeve desperately. She spoke through the noise. "If you find Reyn there… do you think Malta may be with him?"

Jani met her eyes squarely. "It is what he feared," she said. "That Malta had gone to the Crowned Rooster chamber. And to the dragon that slept there."

"I've never seen anything so beautiful. Do you think she will come back?" Weakness as well as awe made the boy whisper.

Reyn turned to regard him. Selden crouched on an island of rubble atop the mud. He stared up at the light above them, his face transfigured by what he had just witnessed. The newly released dragon was gone, already far beyond sight, but still the boy stared after her.

"I don't think we should count on her to return and save us. I think that is up to us," Reyn said pragmatically.

Selden shook his head. "Oh, I did not mean that. I would not expect her to notice us that much. I expect we'll have to get ourselves out of here. But I should like to see her, just once more. Such a marvel she was. Such a joy." He lifted his eyes once more to the punctured ceiling. Despite the dirt and muck that streaked his face and burdened his clothes, the boy's expression was luminous.

Sun spilled into the ruined chamber, bringing weak light but little additional warmth. Reyn could no longer recall what it felt like to be dry, let alone warm. Hunger and thirst tormented him. It was hard to force himself to move. But he smiled. Selden was right. A marvel. A joy.

The dome of the buried Crowned Rooster chamber was cracked like the top of a soft-boiled egg. He stood atop some of the fallen debris and looked up at dangling tree roots and the small window of sky. The dragon had escaped that way, but he doubted that he and Selden would. The chamber was filling rapidly with muck as the swamp trickled in to claim the city that had defied it for so long. The flow of chill mud and water would engulf them both long before they could find a way to reach the egress above them.

Yet bleak as his situation was, he still marveled at the memory of the dragon that had emerged from her centuries of waiting. The frescoes and mosaics that he had seen all his life had not prepared him for the reality of the dragon. The word «blue» had gained a new meaning in the brilliance of her scales. He would never forget how her lax wings had taken on strength and color as she pumped them. The snake-stench of her transformation still hung heavy in the moist air. He could see no remnants of the wizardwood log that had encased her. She appeared to have absorbed it all as she metamorphosed into a mature dragon.

But now she was gone. And the problem of survival remained for Reyn and the boy. The earthquakes of the night before had finally breached the walls and ceilings of the sunken city. The swamps outside were bleeding into this chamber. The only means of escape was high overhead, a tantalizing window of blue sky.

Mud bubbled wetly at the edge of the piece of fallen dome Reyn stood on. Then it triumphed, swallowing the edges of the crystal and slipping toward his bare feet.