Dragon Keeper Read online

  There came a moment when he stopped suddenly. Some sensory clue he could not pin down, some scent on the air or some glimpse he had not consciously registered told him he was near. He stood very still and slowly scanned the area all around him. His eyes went past it, and then the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he swiveled his gaze back suddenly. There. Mud-laden vegetation draped over it, and the river’s raging flood had coated it in muck, but a single streak of gray showed through. A wizardwood log.

  It was not a huge one, not as big as he had heard that they could be. Its diameter was perhaps two-thirds of his height, and he was not a tall man. But it was big enough, he thought. Big enough to make him very wealthy. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the undergrowth that blocked his view of the river and his moored barge would also shield him from spying eyes. He doubted that any of his crew would be curious enough to follow him. They’d been asleep when he left, and no doubt were still abed. The secret trove was his alone.

  He pushed his way through the vegetation until he could touch the log. It was dead. He had known that even before he had touched it. When he was a boy, he’d been down to the Crowned Rooster chamber. He’d seen Tintaglia’s log before she had hatched from it, and he had known the crawly sensation it had wakened in him. The dragon in this log had died and would never hatch. It didn’t much matter to him if it had died while the log still rested on the banks of the cocooning beach, or if the tumbling it had taken in the flood had killed it. The dragon inside it was dead, the wizardwood was salvageable, and he was the only one who knew where it was. And by his great good fortune, he was one of the few who knew how best to use it.

  Back in the days when the Khuprus family had made part of its vast fortune from working wizardwood, back before anyone had ever known or admitted what the “wood” really was, his mother’s brothers had been wizardwood workers. He’d been just a lad, wandering in and out of the low building where his uncles’ saws bit slowly through the iron-hard stuff. He’d been nine when his father had decided he was old enough to come and work on the barge with him. He’d taken up his rightful trade as a bargeman, and he learned his trade from the deck up. And then, when he had just turned twenty-two, his father had died and the barge had come to him. He’d been a riverman for most of his life. But from his mother’s side, he had the tools of the wizardwood trade, and the knowledge of how to use them.

  He made a circuit of the log. It was heavy going. The floodwaters had wedged it between two trees. One end of it had been jammed deep into mud while the other pointed up at an angle and was wreathed in forest-flood debris. He thought of tearing the stuff clear so he could have a good look at it and then decided to leave it camouflaged. He made a quick trip back to the barge, moving stealthily as he took a coil of line from the locker, and then returned hastily to secure his find. It was dirty work but when he had finished he was satisfied that even if the river rose again, his treasure would stay put.

  As he slogged back to his barge, he noticed the heavy felt sock inside his boot becoming damp. His foot began to sting. He increased his pace, cursing to himself. He’d have to buy new boots at the next stop. Parroton was one of the smallest and newest settlements on the Rain Wild River. Everything there was expensive, and bullhide boots imported from Chalced would be difficult to find. He’d be at the mercy of whoever had a pair to sell. A moment later, a sour smile twisted his mouth. Here he had discovered a log worth more than ten years of barge work, and he was quibbling with himself over how much he was going to have to pay for a new pair of boots. Once the log was sawn into lengths and discreetly sold off, he’d never have to worry about money again.

  His mind was busy with logistics. Sooner or later, he’d have to decide who he would trust to share his secret. He’d need someone else on the other end of the crosscut saw, and men to help carry the heavy planks from the log to the barge. His cousins? Probably. Blood was thicker than water, even the silty water of the Rain Wild River.

  Could they be that discreet? He thought so. They’d have to be careful. There was no mistaking fresh-cut wizardwood; it had a silvery sheen to it, and an unmistakable scent. When the Rain Wild Traders had first discovered it, they had valued it solely for its ability to resist the acid water of the river. His own vessel, the Tarman, had been one of the first wizardwood ships built, its hull sheathed with wizardwood planks. Little had the Rain Wild builders suspected the magical properties the wood possessed. They had merely been using what seemed to be a trove of well-aged timber from the buried city they had discovered.

  It was only when they had built large and elaborate ships, ships that could ply not just the river but the salt waters of the coast, that they had discovered the full powers of the stuff. The figureheads of those ships had startled everyone when, generations after the ships had been built, they had begun to come to life. The speaking and moving figureheads were a wonder to all. There were not many liveships, and they were jealously guarded possessions. None of them was ever sold outside the Traders’ alliance. Only a Bingtown Trader could buy a liveship, and only liveships could travel safely up the Rain Wild River. The hulls of ordinary ships gave way quickly to the acid waters of the river. What better way could exist to protect the secret cities of the Rain Wilds and their inhabitants?

  Then had come the far more recent discovery of exactly what wizardwood was. The immense logs in the Crowned Rooster chamber had not been wood; rather, they had been the protective cocoons of dragons, dragged into the shelter of the city to preserve them during an ancient volcanic eruption. No one liked to speak of what that really meant. Tintaglia the dragon had emerged alive from her cocoon. Of those other “logs” that had been sawed into timber for ships, how many had contained viable dragons? No one spoke of that. Not even the liveships willingly discussed the dragons that they might have been. On that topic, even the dragon Tintaglia had been silent. Nonetheless, Leftrin suspected that if anyone learned of the log he had found, it would be confiscated. He couldn’t allow it to become common knowledge in Trehaug or Bingtown, and Sa save him if the dragon herself heard of it. So, he would do all that he could to keep the discovery private.

  It galled him that a treasure that he once could have auctioned to the highest bidder must now be disposed of quietly and privately. But there would be markets for it. Good markets. In a place as competitive as Bingtown, there were always Traders who were willing to buy goods quietly without being too curious about the source, an aspiring Trader willing to barter in illegal goods for the chance to win favor with the Satrap of Jamaillia.

  But the real money, the best offers, would come from Chalcedean traders. The uneasy peace between Bingtown and Chalced was still very young. Small treaties had been signed, but major decisions regarding boundaries and trades and tariffs and rights of passage were still being negotiated. The health of the ruler of Chalced, it was rumored, was failing. Chalcedean emissaries had already attempted to book passage up the Rain Wild River. They had been turned back, but everyone knew what their mission had been: they wished to buy dragon parts—dragon blood for elixirs, dragon flesh for rejuvenation, dragon teeth for daggers, dragon scales for light and flexible armor, dragon’s pizzle for virility. Every old wives’ tale about the medicinal and magical powers of dragon parts seemed to have reached the ears of the Chalcedean nobility. And each noble seemed more eager than the last to win his duke’s favor by supplying him with an antidote to whatever debilitating disease was slowly whittling him away. They had no way of knowing that Tintaglia had hatched from the last wizardwood log the Rain Wilders possessed; there were no embryonic dragons to be slaughtered and shipped off to Chalced. Just as well. Personally, Leftrin shared the opinion of most Traders: that the sooner the Duke of Chalced was in his grave, the better for trade and humanity. But he also shared the pragmatic view that, until then, one might as well make a profit off the diseased old warmonger.

  If Leftrin chose that path, he need do no more than find a way to get the ponderously heavy log intact to Chalce
d. Surely the remains of the half-formed dragon inside it would fetch an amazing price there. Just get the cocoon to Chalced. If he said it quickly, it almost sounded simple, as if it would not involve hoists and pulleys just to move it from where it was wedged and load it on his barge. To say nothing of keeping such a cargo hidden, and also arranging secret transport from the mouth of the Rain Wild River north to Chalced. His river barge could never make such a trip. But if he could arrange it, and if he was neither robbed nor murdered on the trip north or on his way home, then he could emerge from his adventure as a very wealthy man.

  He limped faster. The stinging inside his boot had become a burning. A few blisters he could live with; an open wound would quickly ulcerate and hobble him for weeks.

  As he emerged from the undergrowth into the relatively open space alongside the river, he smelled the smoke of the galley stove and heard the voices of his crew. He could smell flatcakes cooking and coffee brewing. Time to be aboard and away before any of them wondered what their captain had been up to on his morning stroll. Some thoughtful soul had tossed a rope ladder down the bow for him. Probably Swarge. The tillerman always was two thoughts ahead of the rest of the crew. On the bow, silent, hulking Eider was perched on the railing, smoking his morning pipe. He nodded to his captain and blew a smoke ring by way of greeting. If he was curious as to where Leftrin had been or why, he gave no sign of it.

  Leftrin was still pondering the best way to convert the wizardwood log into wealth as he set his muddy foot on the first rung of the ladder. The painted gaze of Tarman’s gleaming black eyes met his own, and he froze. A radical new thought was born in his mind. Keep it. Keep it, and use it for myself and my ship. For several long moments, as he paused on the ladder, the possibilities unfolded in his mind like flowers opening to the early dawn light.

  He patted the side of his barge. “I might, old man. I just might.” Then he climbed the rest of the way up to his deck, pulled off his leaking boot, and flung it back into the river for it to devour.

  Day the 15th of the Fish Moon

  Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

  Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

  From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

  To Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

  Within the sealed scroll, a message of Great Importance from the Rain Wild Traders’ Council at Trehaug to the Bingtown Traders’ Council. You are invited to send whatever representatives you wish to be present on the occasion of the Rain Wild dragons emerging from their cases. At the direction of the most exalted and queenly dragon Tintaglia, the cases will be exposed to sunlight on the 15th day of the Greening Moon, forty-five days hence. The Rain Wild Traders’ Council looks forward with pleasure to your attendance as our dragons emerge.

  Erek!

  Clean your nesting boxes and paint the walls of your coop with fresh limewash. The last two birds I received from you were infested with lice and spread it to one of my coops.

  Detozi

  Chapter Two

  The Hatch

  Luck brought Thymara to the right place at the right time. It was the best good luck that had ever favored her, she thought, as she clung to the lowest branch of a tree at the edge of the serpents’ beach. She did not usually accompany her father down to the lower levels of Trehaug, let alone make the journey to Cassarick. Yet here she was, and on the very day that Tintaglia had decreed that the dragon cocoons be uncovered. She glanced at her father, and he grinned at her. No. Not luck, she suddenly knew. He had known how much she would enjoy being here, and he scheduled their jaunt accordingly. She grinned back at her father with all the confidence of her eleven years and then returned her gaze to the scene below her. Her father’s cautioning voice reached her from where he perched like a bird on a thicker branch closer to the trunk of the immense tree that they shared.

  “Thymara. Be careful. They’re newly hatched. And hungry. If you fell down there, they might mistake you for just another piece of meat.”

  The scrawny girl dug her black claws deeper into the bark. She knew he was only half teasing. “Don’t worry, Da. I was made for the canopy. I won’t fall.” She was stretched out along a drooping branch that no other experienced limbsman would have trusted. But she knew it would hold her. Her belly was pressed to it as if she were one of the slender brown tree lizards that shared her perch. And like them, she clung with the full length of her body, fingers and toes dug into the wide cracks in the bark, thighs hugging the limb. Her glossy black hair was confined to a dozen tight braids that were knotted at the back of her neck. Her head was much lower than her feet. Her cheek was pressed tight to the rough skin of the tree as her gaze devoured the drama unfolding below her.

  Thymara’s tree was one of uncounted thousands that made up the Rain Wild Forest. For days and days in all directions, the forest spread out on either side of the wide gray Rain Wild River. Close to Cassarick and for several days upriver, picket trees predominated. The wide-spread horizontal branches were excellent for home building. Mature picket trees dropped questing roots from their branches down to the earth far below, so that each tree established its own “picket fence” around its root structure, anchoring the tree securely in the muddy soil. The forest that surrounded Cassarick was much denser than that around Trehaug. The horizontal branches of the picket trees were far more stable than those Thymara was accustomed to. They made climbing and moving from tree to tree almost ridiculously easy. Today she had ventured out onto the unsupported end branch of one, to gain an unobstructed view of the spectacle below her.

  Before her, on the other side of the mudflats, the panorama of moving water stretched flat and milky. She had a foggy glimpse of the distant, dense forest on the opposite side of the river. Summer had awakened a million shades of green there. The sound of the river’s rush, of gravel churning beneath its opaque waters, was the constant music of her life. Closer to the shore, on Thymara’s side of the river, the waters were shallow, and strips of exposed gravel and clay broke up the current’s access to the flat clay banks below her tree. Last winter, this section of the riverbank had been hastily reinforced with timber bulkheads; the floods of winter had not been kind to them, but most of the logs remained.

  For several acres, the bare riverbank was littered with serpent cases like drift logs. Once the area had been covered with tufts of coarse grass and prickly brush, but all that had been destroyed with the wave of sea serpents that had arrived last winter. She had not seen that migration, but she had heard about it. No one who lived in the tree cities of the Rain Wilds had escaped the telling of that tale. A herd, a tangle of more than one hundred immense serpents, had come up the Rain Wild River, escorted by a liveship and shepherded by a glorious blue-and-silver dragon. The young Elderling Selden Vestrit had been there to greet the serpents and welcome them back to their ancestral home. He had supervised the ranks of Rain Wilders who had turned out to assist the serpents in forming their cases. For most of that winter, he had remained in Cassarick, checking on the dormant serpents, seeing that the cases were kept well covered with leaves and mud to insulate them from cold and rain and even sunlight. And today, she had heard, he was here again, to witness the hatch.

  She hadn’t seen him, much as she would have liked to. Chances were good that he was over at the central part of the hatching grounds, on the raised dais that had been set up for the Rain Wild Council members and other important dignitaries. It was crowded over there, with robed Traders mobbed around the dais, and many of the general population festooning the trees like a flock of migratory birds. She was glad her father had brought her here, to the far end of the hatching area, where there might be fewer cases but also fewer people to block her view. Still, it would have been nice to be close enough to the dais to hear the music and hear the speeches, and to see a real Elderling.

  Just to think of Selden Vestrit swelled her heart with pride. He was Bingtown stock, of Trader descent, just like her, but the drag
on Tintaglia had touched him and he had begun to change into an Elderling, the first Elderling that any living person had ever seen. There were two other Elderlings now, Selden’s sister Malta and Reyn Khuprus, himself of the Rain Wilds. She sighed. It was all like a fairy tale, come true. Sea serpents and dragons and Elderlings had returned to the Cursed Shores. And in her lifetime, she would see the first hatch of dragons within anyone’s memory. By this afternoon, the young dragons would have emerged and taken flight.

  The dull gray cases that now littered the riverbank for as far as Thymara could see each held what had been a serpent. The layers of leaves, twigs, and mulch that had covered them all winter and spring had been cleared away from them. Some of the cases were immense, as long as a river barge. Others were smaller, like log sections. Some of the cases gleamed fat and silvery. Others, however, had collapsed or sagged in on themselves. They were a dull gray color and to Thymara’s sensitive nose, they stank of dead reptile. The serpents that had entered those cases would never emerge as young dragons.

  As the Rain Wild Traders had promised Tintaglia, they had done their best to tend the cocooned serpents under Selden’s supervision. Additional layers of clay had been smoothed over any case that seemed thin, and then leaves and branches had been heaped protectively over them. Tintaglia had decreed that the cases had to be protected not just from winter storms, but from the early spring sunlight, too. The dragons had cocooned late in the year. Light and warmth would stimulate them to hatch, and so she had wished them to remain covered until high summer, to give the dragons more time to develop. The Rain Wild guardians and the Tattooed—former Jamaillian slaves, now freed—had done their best. That had been part of the bargain the Rain Wild Traders had struck with the dragon Tintaglia. She had agreed to guard the mouth of the Rain Wild River against incursions by the Chalcedeans; in return, the Traders had promised to help the serpents reach their old cocooning grounds and tend them while they matured inside the cases. Both sides had kept their bargains. Today would see the fruit of that agreement as a new generation of dragons, dragons allied with Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, rose in their first flight.