Robin Hobb - Blood of Dragons

‘I don’t know anything about Silver or about this well. I’m not Amarinda and I don’t know. And I’m not going down that well. Not now, not ever. I hate places like that, dark and small. Go down there in the night, alone? That’s crazy.’ Her heart was pounding at the mere thought of it. She crossed her arms, hugging herself. Tats. Why hadn’t she wakened Tats and made him come, too? No one knew they’d gone out walking.

He insisted relentlessly, in such a gentle voice. ‘Tintaglia is dying. Now is all we have. Thymara or Amarinda, it doesn’t matter. You have to go down the well. I’ll go with you. You won’t be alone.’

She tried to fight her way back to her own reality. He was just Rapskal, just strange Rapskal, and she didn’t have to let him bully her. ‘I won’t! I’m tired of this, Rapskal. And I’m tired of trying to help you. I’m going back to the hall to get some sleep. You are being too strange, even for me.’

She turned to go but he seized her arm in a grip of iron. ‘You have to go down the well. Tonight.’

She slapped at his hands and tried to twist free of his grip. Could not. When had he become so strong? He did not even appear to be making an effort to hold her as she fought his grip on her. She could not bear the gaze of the stranger looking out of his eyes at her. ‘Let me go!’

Wings flapped and a gust of air washed over her. The paving stones of the square shook as the dragon’s claws met them and skidded to a halt. Sintara! Thymara knew her scent as well as she knew her mind’s touch on hers . Be calm, Thymara. I am here. All will be fine.

Relief washed through her, bringing icy anger with it. She met Tellator’s stare coldly and stopped struggling. ‘Let go of me now.’ She suggested it calmly. ‘Or my dragon may do you harm.’

Heeby had advanced on them as she spoke, the spikes on her neck rising at the perceived threat to Rapskal. Thymara caught her breath. This could be bad. She had no desire to see the two dragons fight one another, especially not with her in the middle of it.

Neither did he. His hand dropped away from her arm. ‘You’re right. It’s better this way.’ He turned away from both of them.

Hurt choked her voice as she rubbed her bruised arm. ‘Rapskal. I loved you. Now I don’t think I ever want to see you again. You’re not my friend any more. I don’t know who or what you are now, but I don’t like it.’

She turned to go.

‘Thymara,’ Sintara said gently. ‘It will be all right. We have not always trusted one another. But now you must.’

Thymara walked slowly to the well’s mouth and looked down. An unnameable dread rose in her, a horror of confined dark places. She shuddered. Rapskal had followed her. He did not try to touch her but knelt on the other side of the well. He seized the fastened chain, pulled a length free, and dropped it in the hole. It clanked against the side. He pushed another loop after it, and then another, and suddenly the links were rattling over the stone lip as the chain paid out and down into the darkness. It stopped, taut against the pole, and Rapskal said to himself, ‘Not long enough.’ He stood up and walked off into the darkness.

Thymara remained by the well, staring down into it. An eternity of blackness. And she would go down into it.

She lifted her eyes to her dragon. ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t.’

Sintara only looked at her. Thymara felt the compulsion building in her. But this was not the dragon pushing her to go hunting when she wanted to sleep, or encouraging her to groom every single scale on her face. This was different.

‘If you force me, it will never be the same between us,’ she warned the dragon.

‘No,’ Sintara agreed. ‘It won’t. Just as I haven’t been the same since you left me hungry, with no choice but to face my fear and try to fly.’

‘That was different!’ Thymara protested.

‘Only from your point of view,’ the dragon replied. ‘Thymara. Go down the well.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ But she walked stiffly around to the other side of the well and knelt by the chain. She put a hand on it. It was cold. The links of it were big, big enough to slip a hand into. Or the toe of her boot.

‘I’ll go first.’ Did Tellator or Rapskal make that offer? He stood next to her, a coil of line over his shoulder.

‘You can do no good down there,’ Sintara objected and Heeby whiffled nervously.

‘I won’t send her alone,’ he said. He looked at Thymara, his eyes unreadable. ‘Like this. It won’t be easy, but you’re strong.’ He cocked his head at her and for an instant he was Rapskal again, telling her that one day she would fly. ‘You can do it. Just follow me.’

She moved out of his way as he knelt beside her. He clambered over the lip of the well, his hands snugged tight to the chain. She saw him grope with his feet, find a toehold in the chain for one and then reach for another. He gave her a strained smile. ‘I’m scared, too,’ he admitted. He moved his hands and slowly he walked down the chain and away from her. She watched until his upturned face had vanished in the darkness.

She glanced at her dragon and made a final plea. ‘Don’t make me.’

‘You have to go down there. You are the only one who might be able to find the Silver. You knew how the well worked, you knew how to touch Silver and not die. It has to be you, Thymara-Amarinda.’

She wet her lips, felt them dry and then crack in the chill. She could hear the chain working against the lip of the well. He was still going down. She was furious with Tellator and possibly hated him, but she would not let Rapskal go alone. ‘I’ll do it,’ she conceded. ‘But let me be the one to do it. Please.’

‘Do you think you can make yourself?’

‘I can make myself do it,’ she said.

She felt Sintara lift the glamour from her mind. It peeled away, making her skin stand up in goose-bumps and leaving the night darker around her. She blinked, becoming accustomed to her lesser human vision and then the gleam of the locket she wore. She did not speak and did not let herself think. She inserted her hands into the links of the chain and positioned herself on the edge of the well. The chain vibrated with Rapskal’s weight. He was still moving down it.

She closed her eyes and remembered her childhood days in the treetops of Trehaug. Climbing had been far more familiar to her than running. She took a breath and stripped her Elderling boots from her feet. She levered her body around and groped for the links of the chain. Her clawed toes found them. She began her descent.

Darkness swallowed her as she went down and then the gleam of the moon medallion seemed to grow stronger. Her eyes adjusted. The walls of the well were not as blank as they appeared from up above. When the gleam of the medallion met the black, there were markings engraved into the smooth face. There were not many and it took time for her to realize they were dates and levels. The Elderling system of measuring time meant nothing to her. But Amarinda recalled that the Silver had risen and fallen, sometimes seasonally and also over the years. Sometimes the Silver was scant; sometimes it flowed so strongly that the well had to be capped, lest Silver flow through the streets. She passed a notation scribed by Amarinda’s hand, for those who could work the Silver tended the wells also.

And regulated them.

The deeper she went, the less she felt like Thymara. She was no stranger to the inside of this well, though climbing a chain down was not how she usually descended. There had been levers and chains and gears. A carefully fitted platform with a hatch once travelled up and down in the shaft, just for visits such as this. She could recall the tediously slow process of turning the crank to travel down or up the shaft, and the loud clanking of the chain as it had moved through the mechanism.