Robin Hobb - Blood of Dragons

Rapskal had paid attention to her cry. He was waiting for her at the top of the well, grabbing her by the shoulders of her tunic and jerking her to safety. ‘Do we run?’ he asked her, and his eyes were his own again, wide in a scared face.

‘Uphill!’ she confirmed, and they retreated to the edge of the plaza. Dimly she recalled a tale of a time when the Silver had overflowed the well and run down the streets to the river. People, fish and birds had died from its touch.

Overpowering curiosity made them pause at the edge of the square to look back. The dragons had not fled. They stood by the well mouth, visibly shivering with excitement. They both had their heads lowered inside the shaft. As they watched, Sintara dropped to her front knees and stretched her neck down further. She looked ridiculous, hunkered down. Her ribs worked as she crouched there and abruptly Heeby followed her example. Were they drinking?

Thymara gasped for breath, her gauntleted hand on Rapskal’s shoulder. Dawn was starting to grey the sky at the eastern edge of the horizon. The dragons still drank. No Silver reached the top and brimmed over. Then Heeby uttered a squeal of protest and lifted her gleaming dripping muzzle. She stared at Rapskal indignantly. His voice was his own as he said, ‘She’s furious. Sintara’s neck is longer and she can still reach the Silver, but Heeby can’t.’ He lifted his voice. ‘Don’t you worry, pretty girl. I’ll fill buckets and buckets for you. I promise.’

Thymara’s mind began to work again. ‘The buckets Tats and the other keepers used to haul rubble away from the well. We need to fill them with Silver and get them to Tintaglia. I’ll lower them down and haul them up. You don’t touch them unless I say it’s safe.’

He nodded and turned to look at the gloved hand that gripped his shoulder. He scowled. ‘What is that made from?’ he demanded.

Thymara didn’t look at him or it as she put the second gauntlet on. Heeby lay as much on her belly as a dragon could, her head down the well, struggling to reach the stuff. She watched her own dragon gulping down the Silver as if her life depended on it. It did. She understood a little of what Sintara had told her about hating dependence of any kind. Dependence forced one to make compromises, ones they would rather not recall. She looked at the glove on her hand, heavy leather with the scale beds still visible.

‘Dragon-hide,’ she said. ‘The only thing impervious to Silver.’ She felt a shadow wash over her and looked up. Dragons were circling and a moment later, their wild trumpeting filled the air. ‘We’d better get those buckets filled now if we’re going to get any,’ she told him, and he nodded.

The baby was squalling, a lusty angry cry. Malta was laughing and crying as she fumbled at the front of her tunic. When she freed her breast, Ephron seized it indignantly; his cries stopped so suddenly that Reyn laughed aloud. Their son was thin, his eyes sunken and his little hand a claw on her breast, but he was alive and fighting to remain so. He suckled so hard that Malta winced, and then laughed again.

‘She heard me,’ she told Reyn. ‘At the last, she heard us. She Changed him.’ Tears ran down her face and followed the curves of her smile. She leaned forward to touch her dragon. The breath from her nostrils barely stirred the fine hair on Ephron’s head. ‘He’s going to live, Tintaglia. He’s going to live, and I will see he remembers all I know about you.’

In another part of the city, a wild trumpeting of dragons suddenly arose. Malta turned to Reyn. ‘I think they know. And soon Kalo will be here to take what is left of her.’

Reyn asked the dreadful question they had both wondered. ‘Will that make him of her lineage, if he takes her memories? Will he know how to help Ephron again if he needs it? Or if we have other children?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied . Other children. A foolish dream, perhaps. They had one, one to cherish, one whose eyes were closed now, his little round belly tight and full. Had they a right to hope for anything more than that?

‘That’s Kalo coming. He’s flying fast. My dear, we have to leave her now. Come. Up and out of the way.’ Reyn stood stiffly and bent to help Malta stand.

Kalo was coming in fast and he pushed them with a wild command. Out of the way!

Malta shot to her feet and scrambled back, clutching the baby that now wailed at being awakened. There were other dragons coming in behind him, gold Mercor and nasty little Veras. ‘I don’t want to watch it,’ Malta wailed, turning her face into Reyn. ‘She’s not even dead yet! How can they?’

‘It’s their way, my dear. It’s their way.’ His arms closed around her and the child. Despite the horror she felt, she turned back to watch the dragons land around the fallen queen.

Kalo flung back his head and then snapped it forward. He darted his head in, jaws wide, and despite herself, Malta screamed.

A thick silvery mist emerged from his mouth. He leaned closer to Tintaglia, breathing it out on her. Then he whipped his head again and once more spewed a fog of Silver onto her. Mercor landed beside him. Kalo trumpeted territorially, but the smaller male ignored him. He copied him, misting Tintaglia with drifting Silver as Veras waited her turn. It settled on the supine dragon, coating her in Silver.

The slight morning breeze was carrying the stuff. ‘Get back!’ Reyn shouted as sleepy keepers began to emerge from the bath hall. They stumbled back, but the mist was heavy. Malta flung her cloak over her baby. They turned and ran, fleeing up the steps of a nearby building. The Silver made a sizzling sound as it settled on the paving stones. Malta looked back. For an instant, tiny silver balls seemed to rattle and dance on the pavement before they darted into the cracks and vanished.

‘Look at her!’ Reyn gasped and Malta turned her eyes back to her dragon.

Tintaglia was shrouded with moving Silver. It slid over her skin as if caressing her. She saw it boiling in the dragon’s wounds and cried out in low horror at the sound and the smell it made. It sank into the dragon where it coated her, vanishing like ink absorbed into a cloth. Like ink, the colour remained on her, a silver haze over her blue scales, like fog on a window. Malta held her breath.

She stared at a slash on Tintaglia’s shoulder. It bubbled at the edges. Slime and bits of dead flesh rose and dribbled down the dragon’s skin. In their wake the gash was closing, filling in with sound flesh and a coating of paler, smaller scales.

Tintaglia made a low rumbling sound, perhaps an expression of discomfort. Malta’s sense of the dragon grew stronger; she shared both her distress at the unfamiliar sensations racing through her and her discomfort as her torn flesh was so quickly rebuilt. Her breath came louder, faster, and then the dragon was panting as if she were flying hard. The thundering of her hearts as her blood raced through her healing body became an audible thumping. Her eyes opened, wide and staring, and she opened her mouth to gasp in deep breaths of air.

‘It’s killing her!’ Reyn voiced their fear.

‘No.’ Mercor’s thought was reassuring. ‘We think she is strong enough to endure this. And if she is not, well, we have done no harm.’

The dragons that had sprayed her stood at a respectful distance, watching. Briefly, Malta was more aware of them. They radiated vitality now. The glamour of their beauty was effortless. So magnificent were they. She could not doubt the wisdom of what they had done to Tintaglia. They were dragons; what right had she to question them in anything?

Hungry. The thought was strong enough to send every keeper staggering back. Tintaglia closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she once more looked out from them. ‘I need to hunt,’ she said. She came slowly to her feet, as if every motion had to be remembered before she could perform it. She was emaciated still, but her scales shimmered with light. She lifted her wings, stretched them and then refolded them. As she did so, a small metal object fell to the paving stones. She looked down at the ejected arrowhead, and then spurned it with her foot. ‘They will pay for that,’ she vowed. And then, ‘I go to hunt.’