Robin Hobb - Dragon Keeper

ROBIN HOBB

Dragon Keeper

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2009

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2009

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016. Illustration © Jackie Morris.

Calligraphy by Stephen Raw. Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (background)

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007342594

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007290253

Version: 2015-12-01

Cover

Title Page ROBIN HOBB Dragon Keeper

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Serpents’ End

Chapter One: The Riverman

Chapter Two: The Hatch

Chapter Three: An Advantageous Offer

Chapter Four: Vows

Chapter Five: Blackmail and Lies

Chapter Six: Thymara’s Decision

Chapter Seven: Promises and Threats

Chapter Eight: Interviews

Chapter Nine: Journey

Chapter Ten: Cassarick

Chapter Eleven: Encounters

Chapter Twelve: Among Dragons

Chapter Thirteen: Suspicions

Chapter Fourteen: Scales

Chapter Fifteen: Currents

Chapter Sixteen: Community

Chapter Seventeen: Decisions

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

To the memory of Spot and Smokey,

Brownie-butt and Rainbow, Rag-Bag and Sinbad.

Fine pigeons, one and all.

Day the 2nd of the Plough Moon

Year the 6th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

This night have dispatched to you four birds, bearing in two parts our agreement with the Dragon Tintaglia, to be ratified by the Rain Wild Council. Trader Devouchet, leader of the Bingtown Traders’ Council, suggested that duplicates be sent. They sum up the formal agreement between the Traders and the Dragon. We are to aid her serpents in travelling up the Rain Wild River in exchange for her assistance with defending the Trader cities and waterways against the Chalcedean invaders.

Please dispatch a bird as soon as possible to confirm receipt of this message.

Detozi,

A brief message of my own, penned in haste in a very small space. All is chaos here. My bird coop scorched in the fires the invaders set, many of my birds dead from smoke. I’m sending Kingsly as one of the messenger birds tonight. You know I raised him from a squab by hand after his parents died. Please keep him safe there and do not return him until we know that all is well. If Bingtown falls, treat him well and keep him as your own. Pray for us here. I do not know that Bingtown will survive this invasion, dragon or no.

Erek

They had come so far, yet now that she was here, the years of journeying were already fading in her mind, giving way to the desperate needs of the present. Sisarqua opened her jaws and bent her neck. It was hard for the sea serpent to focus her thoughts. It had been years since she had been completely out of the water. She had not felt dry land under her body since she had hatched on Other’s Island. She was far from Other’s Island’s hot dry sand and balmy waters now. Winter was closing in on this densely forested land beside the chill river. The mudbank under her coiled length was hard and abrasive. The air was too cold and her gills were drying out too quickly. There was nothing she could do about that except to work more swiftly. She scooped her jaws into the immense trough and came up with a mouthful of silver-streaked clay and river water. She threw her great head back and gulped it down. It was gritty and cold and strangely delicious. Another mouthful, another swallow. And again.

She had lost count of how many gulps of the grainy soup she had ingested when finally she felt the ancient reflex trigger. Working the muscles in her throat, she felt her poison sacs swell. Her fleshy mane stood out all around her throat in a toxic, quivering ruff. Shuddering down her full length, she opened her jaws wide, strained, gagged, and then met with success. She clamped and locked her jaws to contain the liquid, releasing it only as a thin, powerful stream of clay, bile and saliva tinged with venom. With difficulty, she turned her head and then coiled her tail closer to her body. The extrusion was like a silvery thread, thick and heavy. Her head wove as she layered the wet winding over herself.

She felt a heavy tread nearby and then the shadow of the walking dragon passed over her. Tintaglia paused and spoke to her. ‘Good. Good, that’s right. A nice even layer to begin with, one with no gaps. That’s right.’

Sisarqua could not spare a glance for the blue-and-silver queen who praised her. Creating the case that would shelter her during the remaining months of winter took all her attention. She focused on it with a desperation born of weariness. She needed sleep. She longed to sleep; but she knew that if she slept now, she would never wake again in any form. ‘Finish it,’ she thought to herself. ‘Finish it, and then I can rest.’

All around her on the riverbank other serpents laboured at the same task, with varying degrees of success. Between and amongst them, humans toiled. Some carried buckets of water from the river. Others mined chunks of silvery clay from a nearby bank and loaded it into barrows. Youngsters trundled the barrows to a hastily constructed log enclosure. Water and clay were dumped into the immense trough; other workers used shovels and paddles to break up the lumps of clay and render the water and clay into a loose porridge. It was this slurry that Sisarqua had consumed as the major ingredients for manufacturing her case. The lesser ingredients were just as essential. Her body added the toxins that would plunge her into a sleep half a breath above death. Her saliva contributed her memories to the keeping of her case. Not just her own memories of her time as a serpent, but all the memories of those of her bloodline spooled around her as she wove her case.