The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Robin Hobb
on me?’
On the dragon’s long neck, the ‘frills’ of scaled plates were lifting. Thymara hadn’t understood their use before, but from all she knew of animals, such a display would indicate aggression. A brilliant yellow underlay was revealed as the scaled flaps rose like the opening petals of a reptilian flower. The dragon’s large copper eyes were fixed on her and as Thymara met that gaze, the eyes appeared to slowly spin. It was like watching twin whirlpools of molten copper. The sight was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was terrifying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized hopelessly. ‘I didn’t know it was rude. I thought you wanted me to go away.’
Something was wrong, and Sintara didn’t know what. By now, the girl should have been completely infatuated with her, on her knees, begging for the dragon’s attention. Instead, she had turned her back on her and started to wander off. Humans were notoriously easy prey for a dragon’s glamour. She opened her ruff more widely and gave her head a shake to disperse a mist of charm. ‘Do not you wish to serve me?’ she prompted the girl. ‘Do not you find me beautiful?’
‘Of course you are beautiful!’ the human exclaimed, but her stance and the rank scent of fear she gave betrayed that she was frightened, not entranced. ‘When first I saw you today, I chose you as the dragon that I most wished to care for. But our conversation has been …’ The girl’s words trickled away.
Sintara reached for her thoughts but found only fog. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the girl was too stupid to be charmed by her. She searched her dragon memories and found evidence of such humans. Some were so dense that they could not even understand a dragon’s speech. This girl seemed to grasp her words clearly enough. So what ailed her? Sintara decided on a small test of her powers, to see if the girl was susceptible to her at all. ‘What is your name, small human?’
‘Thymara,’ she replied instantly. But as Sintara began to gloat at her leverage, the girl asked her, ‘And what is your name?’
‘I don’t think you’ve earned the right to my name yet!’ Sintara rebuked her, and saw her cower. But Thymara stank of true fear with no traces of the despair that such a refusal should have wakened in her. When the human said nothing, did not beg again for the favour of her name, Sintara asked her directly, ‘Don’t you wish you knew my name?’
‘It would make it much easier for me to talk to you, yes,’ the girl said hesitantly.
Sintara chuckled. ‘But you don’t seek it in order to have power over me?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘What power would your name give me?’
Sintara stared down at her. Could she truly be ignorant of the power of a dragon’s name? One who knew a dragon’s true name could, if she employed it correctly, compel the dragon to speak truth, to keep a promise, even to grant a favour. If this Thymara was ignorant of such things, Sintara certainly wasn’t going to enlighten her. Instead she asked her, ‘What would you like to call me, if you were choosing a name to know me by?’
The girl looked more intrigued than frightened now. Sintara spun her eyes more slowly, and Thymara actually came a step closer to her. There. That was better. ‘Well?’ she prompted her again. ‘What name would you give me?’
The girl bit her upper lip for a moment, than said, ‘You are such a lovely blue. High in the canopy, there is a twining vine that roots in the clefts of trees. It has flowers that are deep blue with bright yellow centres. It has a wonderful fragrance that entrances insects and small birds and little lizards. Even it is not as beautiful as you are, but you remind me of it. We call the flowers skymaws.’
‘So you would name me after a flower? Skymaw?’ Sintara was not pleased. It seemed a silly, fragile name to her, but she had asked the girl. Perhaps in this one thing, she could humour the human. But still, she asked her, ‘Do you not think I deserve a name that has more teeth to it?’
The girl looked down at her feet as if the dragon had caught her in a lie. Quietly, she admitted, ‘Skymaws are dangerous to touch. They are beautiful and the fragrance is alluring, but the nectar inside will dissolve a butterfly instantly and devour a hummingbird in less than a hour.’
Sintara stretched her jaws wide in pleasure and concluded, ‘Then it is not just the colour of the flower that makes you think of me? It is the danger it poses?’
‘I suppose. Yes.’
‘Then you may call me Skymaw. Do you see what the boy over there is doing to the runty red dragon?’
The girl followed Sintara’s glance. Rapskal had pulled an armful of needled branches from a tree and was energetically scrubbing his dragon’s back. Cleansed of mud and dust, even that stumpy little dragon sparkled like a ruby in the sunlight. ‘I don’t think he means any harm. I think he’s trying to get some of the parasites off her.’
‘Exactly. And the wax from the needles is good for the skin.’ Graciously, Sintara told her, ‘You are allowed to perform that service for me.’
As the Tarman slowly nosed its way onto the muddy bank, Alise looked over the fantastic scene before her and felt rankest envy. Sun and heat baked the bare riverbank as the final hours of afternoon dwindled away. Scattered about on the bank were at least a dozen dragons in every imaginable colour tended by young Rain Wilders. Some of the dragons were stretched out in peaceful sleep. Two stood by the water, waiting impatiently as a couple of boys holding spears walked slowly up and down the riverbank, looking for fish. On the ebbing edge of a sun-washed mudbank, a long gold dragon sprawled, his blue-white underbelly turned toward the last kiss of the sun. Lying against him slept a little girl, her pink-scaled scalp glittering as brightly as the dragon she tended. At one end of the long bank of mud stood the largest dragon of all, tall and black. The sun struck glittering dark blue sparks from his outstretched wings. A bare-chested young man, almost as heavily scaled as a dragon himself, was grooming the creature’s wings. At the opposite end of the beach, as if in counterpoint, a girl with a broom made of cedar boughs was diligently sweeping a sprawled blue dragon. The girl’s black braids danced against the back of her neck as she worked. The dragon shifted as Alise watched, stretching out a hind leg so that the girl might groom it.
‘I didn’t realize the dragons had human tenders. I mean, I knew that they had hunters helping provide for them, but I didn’t realize that—’
‘They don’t. Or they didn’t.’ Leftrin had a knack for interrupting her in a way that was friendly rather than rude. ‘They’re all newcomers. Those are the keepers you heard about, the ones that are going to move the dragons upriver. They can’t have been here much longer than a day, at most two.’
‘But some of them are only children!’ Alise protested. It was not her concern for them that sharpened her voice. It was, she thought to herself, simple jealousy. There they were, mere youngsters, doing exactly what she had imagined herself doing. Somehow, she had visualized herself as being the first to befriend a dragon, to touch it with kindness and win its confidence. The way Althea and Brashen had described the dragons, she had thought they would be like reptilian half-wits, awaiting, perhaps, her understanding and patience to unlock their innate intelligence. What she saw on the beach was another broken pane in the dream window; she was not to be the dragons’ saviour, the only one who understood them.
Leftrin shrugged a heavy shoulder to her comment, mistaking it for concern. ‘Youngsters don’t get to be children long in the Rain Wilds, and especially not children like those. Look at them. It’s a wonder their parents kept them. You can’t tell me those youngsters are all late-changers. You don’t get claws unless you were born with them. And that young man there? I’ll wager he was born with scales on his head and has never had a bit of hair anywhere on his body. No, they’re all mistakes, the lot of them. And that’s why they were chosen.’
His blunt and cold appraisal of the dragons’ attendants shocked Alise into silence.
‘And are you and the Tarman a mistake? Is that why you were chosen for the expedition?’ Sedric’s voice was as acidic as the river.
But if Leftrin noticed the intended