Blood of Dragons - Страница 59

Or so they claimed. Not all of the dragons had returned yet. Of the ships and Rapskal and Heeby there was no sign, nor of Kalo, Mercor and Baliper. They are coming, very slowly, Fente had explained to him. And then she demanded that he clean very carefully around her eyes, for she feared she had picked up water ticks from hunting in the river.

He had just finished that task when he heard more trumpeting from the river. The others have returned, she told him. He followed Fente out to the square where she launched into the air without a word of farewell. She was off to the hunt. She had no interest in ships or homecomings, not while her stomach was empty. He watched her depart and then followed the other keepers down toward the city docks.

That area had changed substantially since Tarman’s return. Leftrin and his crew had made a dozen small changes to Carson’s handiwork and had expanded it in other ways. Tarman was now tied securely within a slip, his lines run to stout shore anchors as well as to an anchor set in the river to keep him from being driven against the shore. It looked to Tats as if the ship could not possibly be torn free, but Leftrin insisted that two hands be aboard him at all times, and none of the crew seemed to think that odd.

When the dragons had arrived and told them that they could expect two more vessels to dock soon, the first reaction had been disbelief. It had been followed by activity that reminded Tats of a stirred-up wasps’ nest as keepers and crew frantically tried to make space for two more boats at their ramshackle dock while dealing with the demands of the dragons.

Mercor had been the first of the dragons to land. He came in gracefully, landing against the river’s current and sending a plume of water rooster-tailing behind him. He had calculated his speed precisely and emerged quickly from the water, to Sylve’s shouts of admiration.

But his first words had not been a greeting but a query. ‘Have you found Silver yet? Is the well cleared?’ As the other dragons landed and made their way to shore, he listened gravely as he was told that only a small quantity of the precious stuff had been pulled up from the well, and that efforts to reach the bottom of the well had been suspended by news of the dragons returning with two ships.

‘And the Silver you did find?’ he asked avidly.

The small quantity of the precious stuff had been carefully poured into an Elderling flask made of heavy glass and placed in the centre of the table where the keepers dined. There it sat and shimmered, casting an unearthly glow of its own into the room. Tats had been certain that Malta and Reyn would try to apply it directly to the child, but they had not. Perhaps Kase’s small mishap had persuaded them of its danger. In the transfer from the large bucket to the much smaller flask, a single drop of Silver had fallen onto the back of his forearm. He had exclaimed in fear, and then as the others drew near, he bent his head over his arm and stared at the Silver as it shimmered.

‘Wipe it off!’ Tats had exclaimed, tossing him a rag.

He had dabbed at it, to no effect. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he had told them. ‘But it feels very wrong, all the same.’ They had all watched in silent fear as the Silver spread on his skin, outlining the scales on his arm and then almost disappearing.

‘Nothing happened,’ Sylve said hopefully.

Kase had shaken his head. ‘Something’s happening there. It doesn’t hurt, but something is happening.’ He’d swallowed uneasily and then added, ‘I hope Dortean comes back soon. He’ll know what to do about this.’

In the day since then, he had shed all his scaling where the Silver touched him, and the skin beneath it looked raw and angry. And remained a dull, silvery grey.

Mercor had listened attentively to their tale. ‘Yes. Dortean will be able to deal with that much Silver, if Kase goes to his dragon promptly.’ The golden dragon’s eyes had whirled slowly. ‘And that was all the Silver you were able to bring up?’ he had asked again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sylve had told him, and her dragon had wheeled away from her in silent disappointment.

The other dragons soon knew the full tale, and had unhappily conceded that until all the dragons had returned, the vial of Silver would remain untouched. They had accepted the news that the well was all but dry and that the Elderlings would have to work on a device that would lower one of them down to harvest what little Silver there might be. They had not seemed very excited at the news and he guessed the reason. The well was already incredibly deep. They surmised, as he did, that the Silver was all gone.

‘Tats!’ Thymara called, and he glanced back to see her running toward him. The back of her Elderling tunic stirred as her wings struggled to open. She had confided to him that sometimes that happened when she hurried, as if some part of her thought she should take flight. Now as she came toward him, smiling, the wind lifting her hair, he saw how much the wings were changing her. She carried them, a weight on her back, and even folded, their angles projected up higher than her ears. Lovely as they were, he suddenly wished she did not have them, for they forced him to recognize that all of them were changed as much as she was, just as far from the humans they had once been. All of them had changed, and all were just as much at risk from the lack of Silver as the dragons were. He thought of Greft, dying of his changes on the journey to Kelsingra. Did such an end await all of them?

‘You look so solemn,’ Thymara said as she caught up with him.

‘I’m a bit worried about Rapskal,’ he said, and it was not a lie even if it was not the immediate truth.

They crested the last hill and looked down at the docks. Sintara and Baliper were wheeling overhead and Spit had flown up to join them. Rapskal circled them on his scarlet dragon. His shouted victory song reached them as a thin whisper on the wind.

Oars powered the two ships that were coming in to dock. They were long and lean, low to the water. Their masts were stripped of sail and folded down to the deck. The oars rose and fell in an uncertain rhythm that spoke either of weariness or clumsy oarsmen. ‘Catch a line!’ Big Eider’s cry rang out as he threw a coiled line to them, and the men who scrambled to catch it were certainly not sailors. They caught it, and then stood staring at it until one of the oarsmen leapt up to take it from their hands.

The rest of the docking proceeded with similar awkwardness. Some of the men on the ships were doing nothing to help, only standing and shouting that they were innocent men, honest Traders from Bingtown, and that they had done nothing to hurt a dragon or to deserve to have their ship stolen from them. Tats and Thymara halted where they stood to watch the spectacle. As the second ship ran into the first, tangling oars and breaking several, the shouts and curses rose in a storm. Other lines were thrown, and a man stood on the raised deck of one of the ships screaming orders that either his crew ignored or did not know how to obey. On the other, a reasonably competent crew ran about frantically trying to protect their vessel.

‘This is bad,’ Tats said in a low voice. ‘Fente told me the dragons conquered evil warriors. They don’t look like warriors. They look like merchants.’

‘Trouble will come of this,’ Thymara agreed.

Slowly they moved down the hill to see what the river had brought them.

‘Like a courting bird,’ Big Eider said, and Leftrin growled in agreement. It had driven him nearly mad to see ships handled so. They might not be alive, but they were gracious, well-built craft and they did not deserve to be run into pilings nor each other in the course of a simple docking. As they were finally being secured to the dock that he did not completely trust for one ship, let alone three, Heeby landed Rapskal nearby. The young Elderling slid down from the scarlet dragon’s shoulder, patted her, and suggested she ‘Go take a long soak, my lovely, and I’ll be along to scrub you down soon.’ As his darling lumbered off, Rapskal promenaded down to the tethered ships. He stood, looking at his prizes and nodding to himself, prompting Big Eider’s remark.

As his fellow keepers began to close in around him, he lifted up his hands and his voice. ‘Hostages! Disembark and show yourselves.’

‘Hostages?’ Skelly asked in disbelief.

‘That’s what he said,’ Leftrin growled at her, and then went forward to be certain the captured ships were not left completely unmanned. Hennesey followed him, and with a shrug and a jerk of her head, Skelly motioned to Big Eider. They trailed their captain while Swarge looked on from Tarman’s deck, smoking a pipe and shaking his head in disapproval.

Leftrin glanced back once at his own vessel. Alise, still looking pale, had come out of their stateroom and onto the deck. She was freshly attired in a long, pale-green tunic over leggings and boots of darker green. Her long red hair, freshly plaited, hung in loops to her shoulder and was secured with rows of bright pins. He knew that style. He had seen it portrayed in mosaics in the city. It worried him that she had unthinkingly adopted it, as did the preoccupied look on her face. He wished she had stayed in bed. Since her excursion into the memory-stones of Kelsingra, she had seemed distracted and weary. He had begged her to stay out of the city for a few days, to rest on Tarman and be away from the stone. She had complied, but even so, she didn’t seem quite herself yet.

‘All of you! Right now!’ Rapskal’s shouted order rang in the air. Leftrin was astounded to see how quickly his captives scrambled to obey him. He had heard scattered talk of the ‘battle’ and most of it had seemed rather incredible to him. He had resolved to hear from a human exactly what had happened, but as he watched Rapskal, he wondered if his account would be any more coherent than those of the dragons had been. The youngster stood, fists on his hips, watching the men disembark. Leftrin mentally sorted them. Here were two merchants, from Bingtown or beyond, and there was a fellow he recognized from Trehaug. Tattooed faces and ragged clothes and their limping gaits proclaimed those bewildered men as slaves, and there, to Leftrin’s astonishment, was Trader Candral from the Cassarick Traders’ Council. He looked a bit the worse for wear, and the bruises on his face appeared to be recently acquired.