Robin Hobb - Blood of Dragons

The table he had devised to support the ancient map that had fallen to the floor was likewise rough, but at least it raised the map out of danger from errant feet. The long-ago fall had cracked it and parts of it had crumbled, but it was correctly oriented to the city and it had been useful to the keepers any number of times. Carson never seemed to tire of studying it, and repeatedly insisted that it was capable of telling them far more than they were capable of asking of it. Thymara had dismissed that possibility. She climbed the endless stairs, not for the map but for the view.

She stared out over the ever-changing terrain. The sere grasses of the wild meadows beyond the city had gone green. The forested hills had taken on new colours as trees leafed out. Even the colour of the river seemed different; it was certainly not the chalky grey of the Rain Wild River that she had known. Here it appeared a silvery brown between verdant banks.

But it was the sky she scanned, looking for signs of returning dragons each evening.

She heard the scuff of feet on the stone steps and turned to see Tats emerge from the stair. ‘See anything?’ he greeted her.

‘Only sky. Coming here is a bit silly, I know. Why would they be coming home at sunset rather than any other time?’ She shook her head at herself. ‘And even if they were, likely I’d see them from the ground almost as soon. Sometimes it seems worrying is something I feel like I have to do, that maybe worrying about them actually keeps them alive and real.’

Tats gave her an odd look. ‘Girls think strangely,’ he observed, without malice, and then stepped to the windows to scan the world outside. ‘No dragons,’ he confirmed needlessly. ‘I wonder if they’ve reached Chalced yet.’ His eyes wandered to the panels between the window-frames. They, too, were decorated to be a continuation of the map on the wall. He studied them idly. ‘They built this room for a reason.’

‘Probably a lot of reasons. But it’s like Carson says. It can’t give us answers until we know what questions to ask.’

Tats nodded. He gazed out over the river as he asked her, ‘You miss him a lot, don’t you?’

She tried to think of how to answer. ‘Rapskal? Yes. Tellator? Not at all.’ She lifted a hand to her chest. Anxiety squeezed her heart. It was becoming too familiar a sensation. ‘Tats. Which of them do you think will come back to us? Rapskal or Tellator?’

He didn’t turn to look at her. ‘I don’t think there’s any separating them any more, Thymara. I think that it’s useless to think of him that way.’

‘I know you are right,’ she said unwillingly. She told herself it wasn’t true, that she would never think of Rapskal and Tellator as one and the same. Then she recognized it for what it was. Like her worrying, a useless belief that by thinking a certain way, she could make it so. Tats said something in a gruff, low voice.

‘What?’

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. ‘I said, I thought you loved Tellator. That he was the love of Amarinda’s life. Lovers never to part in that life or this one.’ He hesitated, refusing to meet her shocked stare, and then muttered, ‘Or so Rapskal explained it to me.’

She bit down on her anger, refusing to give it voice. After a long, tight pause, she said unevenly, ‘Rapskal? Or Tellator?’

‘Does it matter?’The misery in his voice was plain.

‘It does.’ Her voice came out more strongly. ‘Because Tellator is a bully. And perfectly capable of deceiving anyone to get what he wants.’ She walked away from Tats to look out of a different window. ‘The night he asked me to go for a walk and then took me to the Silver well … that’s not something Rapskal would have done. I even think he knew that if Rapskal went down the well, I’d follow him.’ She had not spoken of her last encounter with Rapskal to anyone. Did not ever intend to.

‘Thymara, they’re the same person now.’

‘You’re probably right. But even if Amarinda loved Tellator, I don’t. I am not Amarinda, Tats. I went down that well for Rapskal, not Tellator.’

He didn’t respond. When she looked over her shoulder, he was silently nodding as he stared out of the window. ‘For Rapskal,’ he said, as if that confirmed something.

She reached a decision. ‘Would you come for a walk with me?’

Tats stared at her. The daylight was fading and the city itself did not gleam yet. He squinted at her through the gathering dimness in the tower, his own face an unknowable landscape of lines and shadows. She thought he would ask her where or why. He didn’t. ‘Let’s go, then,’ was all he said.

The coming of evening seemed always to stir the ghosts of the city. As they descended, they walked through three errand boys running up the steps, yellow robes hiked up around their knees. Thymara strode through them, and only afterwards thought how strange it was that it was no longer strange.

The twilight outside was partly of the sky and partly of the city itself. Daylight gave way to stone-light. The insubstantial throngs that milled in the city became less transparent, their music stronger, the smells of their food more alluring. ‘I wonder if this city will ever again swarm with so many Elderlings.’

‘I wonder if it ever did,’ Tats countered.

‘What?’ His words almost startled her out of her determination.

‘Just something I speculate about. All these people … are we passing through one night of Elderling time here, or the overlay of years?’

She pondered his question and sometime later realized that they were walking in silence. She led him away from the heart of the city, into a district of fine homes. The streets grew quieter, with less public memory-stone, and only a few private monuments to haunt them. There an elderly dragon slept near a fountain while a woman played upon a flute nearby. The music followed them and then faded as they reached the cul-de-sac at the top of the hill. She halted for a moment. Thin moonlight poured down. The double row of pillars marched to the front door, one line marked with shining suns, the others with the round-faced moon.

‘I know this place,’ Tats said. A chill had come into his voice.

‘How?’

He didn’t reply and she sighed. She didn’t want to hear him say that he had once followed her and Rapskal here. Had he watched them touch the pillars, hands joined, observed as they sank into sensual dreams of another time, other lives? He had halted as if turned to stone.

‘I’m going inside,’ she told him.

‘Why? Why bring me here?’ There was pain in his voice.

‘Not to rub salt in a wound. Only to have someone with me. While I finish something. I won’t be long. Will you wait here for me?’ She didn’t want to come out alone to the black stone pillars veined with Silver. Even as she stood there, the memories tugged at her mind, beckoning her. She dreaded walking inside alone.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I just … I’ve never been inside their house.’

‘Never?’

‘No.’ She couldn’t explain it and she wouldn’t try. Perhaps it had been that while she didn’t walk where they had lived, she could pretend that their lives were still real, still existing in some ‘now’ that was just around the corner.

‘Why now? Why with me?’

Time for honesty. ‘Because I have to. And to give me courage.’ She turned from him and started the long walk between the pillars. The Silver was strong here, the stone of the finest quality. Only the best for Amarinda the Silver-worker. As Thymara passed each pillar, the memories tugged and snagged at her. By night she glimpsed them, over and over. Tellator in evening dress, leaning on one of his pillars, an insouciant smile on his perfect face. Amarinda, wearing a summer dress of white and yellow. Flowers studded her flowing hair and a breeze that Thymara could not feel stirred her dress. Tellator, grave of mien, standing bold in armour, gripping a scroll of paper. Amarinda in a casual robe, perched on a stool, barefoot and playing a small stringed instrument. Thymara passed incarnation after incarnation of the two lovers until she came to their door.