Blood of Dragons (29 page)

‘There!' Sedric said suddenly, and pointed.

‘What is it?' Carson asked. Recognition tickled at the back of his mind but he could not summon the memory.

‘I don't know,' Sedric admitted. ‘I only know it's important.'

Carson shivered suddenly but not with a chill. Something else. Danger? Anticipation? He lifted his head and sniffed the air, wondering if the scent of a predator had triggered it. Nothing. But an almost sexual excitement infused him suddenly, and as it tingled through his body, he recognized it was not his own. Spit, never far from him in thought, knew something about this place. Or almost did. Somewhere, the little silver dragon had tipped his wings, ignoring the dozing deer below him. He was winging back to the city as fast as he could. Carson stared around him, trying to see what his dragon had glimpsed through his eyes.

‘It' was an open plaza, not as wide nor as grand as many in the newer part of the city. In the centre of it was a tumble of rubble. The destruction looked both deliberate and recent; or at least much more recent than the other quake damage to the city. A length of black chain coiled like a dead snake. Timbers of green and gold and red had been rendered to kindling. They approached the collapsed structure slowly, and Sedric was the first to speak. ‘It's sticking out of a hole there. See the low wall around it, or what is left of it? It looks like a well, for drawing water, but much wider. But with a river so close by, why would they dig a well here?'

‘It wasn't for water,' Carson said quietly. He listened to his own words as if someone else were speaking them, then fell silent, chasing an elusive idea. At last he spoke a single word. ‘Silver,' he said aloud, echoing his dragon's thought, and then shook his head in denial. ‘It makes no sense.'

But Sedric seemed to grow taller, as if he were a puppet and someone had just drawn his head string up. His eyes opened wider. ‘Silver? SILVER!' He shouted the word. ‘This is it, Carson. From my dreams. The Silver place. Sweet Sa, you're right. This is the Silver well, the whole reason Kelsingra was first built. Remember, a long time ago, you wondered why they'd built such a grand city here. What was the reason for it, what trade, what industry, what port anchored it? Why build a city for dragons in a place so chill and damp in the winters? Why did the Elderlings stay here? And here's our answer. The Silver well. The secret heart of Kelsingra.'

Carson blinked. Sedric's words had filled his ears, flooding his mind with vague memories, linking half-thoughts and hints into an almost recognizable network. ‘Secret, indeed. Knowledge kept from outsiders. Only Elderlings were allowed to come here, to this part of the city.' He breathed deeply and it was as if he inhaled information. He frowned as another thought drifted into his mind. ‘And not all Elderlings. Only a few had the privilege of this duty. It was a closely kept secret, not just from the outside world, but even within the city. Memories of it were never preserved in the stone, at least not intentionally. It was passed down, from one generation of well-tenders to the next. Silver was so rare, so precious, that the well sites could not be mapped nor recorded in memory-stone. Like a guild secret that only masters could know. A secret so precious that even the dragons did not speak of it to dragons from other hatching grounds.' His gaze went sad and distant. ‘A resource so precious, it was probably the only thing dragons would war over with one another.'

‘How do you know?' Sedric demanded curiously.

Carson lifted his shoulders and let them fall in a slow shrug. ‘Some of it comes from Spit, but even he didn't have enough to puzzle it out. I've been deliberately seeking out the places where people stored memories of how the city worked. The water system, the heated buildings, how the stones were fitted so well to one another. I like to know how things are done, how things were done. I have found a lot of information about what they did, but little about how. I think those same people who left stone memories of what they did tended this well, and … did something else here. It's not clear to me. But I think that, without intending to, they stored bits of those memories with the other ones. Enough for me to puzzle it together and get a feeling for it. Like following a game trail with no tracks. A bent stick, a torn leaf …'

For a moment, his vision dimmed. He blinked and shook his head, and then realized he hadn't imagined it. The day was darker. He glanced up to find the reason. Overhead, the dragons were gathering in a gyre that spiralled up to block the sun's thin rays. They circled overhead, coming lower. Spit led the way. In the distance, golden Mercor was coming fast, growing larger. He trumpeted and the others answered. Wordlessly, they were summoning all the keepers to converge here. Carson looked at Sedric; his friend was smiling. ‘I think they heard me.'

But as Carson looked up at the circling creatures, he felt a premonition. It became a flood of sensation, jubilation and anticipation making his heart hammer. He knew he felt only an echo of the emotions of the dragons. ‘Sedric. What is the “Silver well”? What is it about the stuff that comes out of it?'

‘I'm not sure exactly. Mercor said to Malta that all dragons have some Silver naturally, in their blood, that it helps them change us to Elderlings. There has to be more to it than that, given how anxious they are to find it. I think we'll soon find out just why it's so important.'

Thymara jerked as if jabbed with a needle. An instant later, Tats followed her example. She had been dozing in the crook of his arm. They had fallen asleep in the glass-roofed atrium of a building that had once been devoted to flowers. The bas-reliefs on the walls depicted flower blossoms of a kind she had never seen before, and of a size that seemed completely impossible, until Tats had gently suggested to her that the images were made so large in order to show detail. The room they were in was at the top of the building. A flat section of the roof would have allowed dragons to alight and enter through an archway. A maze of large pots and vessels of earth surrounded benches where once Elderlings had sat and discussed the plants. She had tried to imagine having the leisure hours in her life to spend a whole day just looking at flowers, and could not. ‘Did they eat them?' she had wondered aloud. ‘Did they work here, growing them for food?'

By way of response, Tats wandered over to a statue of a woman holding a basket of flowers and set his fingertips to her hand. His face grew bemused, his gaze distant. She watched his awareness recede from her, slipping into the memories of the woman with the flowers. His eyelids drooped and the muscles of his face loosened as he wandered through her life. His expression became vacant and slack, almost idiotic. She found she didn't like how he looked, but knew it was useless to speak to him. He'd come back to her when he willed it, and not before.

Almost as soon as she had the thought, she saw his eyes twitch, and then he blinked. Tats came back into his face and then smiled at her. ‘No. The flowers were cultivated simply for their beauty and fragrance. They came from far away, from a land much warmer than here, and only inside this room could they flourish. This Elderling wrote seven books about them, describing them in detail and giving directions for their care, and telling how one might force larger blossoms or subtly change the colours and fragrances by using different types of soil and adding things to the water.'

Thymara drew her knees up to her chin. The benches were like the bed in her room; they appeared to be stone, until one had been seated for a time. Then they softened, slightly. She shook her head in wonder. ‘And she devoted months of her life to this work.'

‘No. Years. And was well respected for it.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I'm starting to. I think it has to do with how long one expects to live.' He paused and then cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘When I think about how long we may have to live, how many years I may be able to spend with you, it lets me think about things differently.'

She shot him a strange look and he came over to sit on the wide bench next to her. He met her gaze for a time, and then lay back on the bench and stared up at the sky through the dust-streaked glass. ‘Rapskal and I had a talk. About you.'

Thymara stiffened. ‘Did you?' She heard the chill in her own voice.

A small smile tweaked Tats's mouth. ‘We did. Would you be more pleased if I'd said we'd had a fist fight? I think we both knew it might come to that. Rapskal is changing as he takes on the memories of that Elderling. He's becoming more …' He paused, seeking a word. ‘Assertive,' he said, and she sensed it was not quite the word he wanted.

‘And he was the one who was wise enough to come to me and say he didn't want us to end up fighting. That we'd been friends too long to end it for any reason, but especially over jealousy over you.'

She sat stiffly beside him, trying to decipher not only what she felt but why she felt it. Hurt. Angry. Why? Because she felt they had gone past her, perhaps decided between themselves something that should have been discussed with her. She imposed calm on her voice. ‘And what did the two of you decide?'

He didn't look at her but he reached over and took her hand. She let him hold it but did not return the pressure of his fingers. ‘We didn't decide anything, Thymara. It wasn't that kind of a conversation. Neither one of us is Greft, thinking that we can force you to make a decision. You've proven your point to both of us. When or even if you want to be with one of us, you will. And until then …' He gave a small sigh and then finally looked at her.

‘Until then you wait,' she said, and felt a small thrill of satisfaction at his understanding that she controlled the situation.

‘I do. Or I don't.'

Startled, she met his gaze. It was strange to look at his face now and recall the smooth-skinned boy he had been. His dragon had incorporated his slave tattoo into his scaling, but the horse on his cheek looked more dragonish now. She almost lifted a hand to touch it but held herself back. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Only that I'm as free as you are. I could walk away. I could find someone else—'

‘Jerd,' she growled.

‘She's made it plain, yes.' He rolled onto his side and tugged at her hand. Reluctantly, she lay down beside him. After a time, the bench adapted to her wings, cradling her. She looked into his eyes, her gaze cold. He smiled. ‘But I could also be by myself. Or wait for others to come and join us here. Or go looking for someone else. I have time. That's what Rapskal and I talked about. That if, as seems likely, we may live two or even three hundred years, then we all have time. Nothing has to be rushed. We don't have to live as if we were children squabbling over toys.'

Toys. Her, a toy? She tried to pull away from him.

‘No, listen to me, Thymara. I felt the same way when Rapskal first spoke to me. Like he was making what I feel a trivial thing. Like he was telling me to wait and that when he was finished with you, I could have you. But that wasn't it at all. I thought it was stupid of him, at first, all the time he spent with memory-stone. But I think he's learned something. He said that the longer life is, the more important it is to keep your friends, to not have quarrels that can be avoided.' His smile faded a bit and for a time he looked troubled. ‘He said that, as a soldier, he had learned that a man's deep friendships were the most important thing he could possess. Things can be broken, or lost. All a man can keep for certain are the things in his mind and heart.'

He lifted his free hand and traced the line of her jaw. ‘He said that no matter what you decided, he wanted to stay friends with me. And he asked me if I could do the same. If I could resolve that what you decided was your decision, not something we should blame on the other fellow.'

‘I think that's what I've been trying to tell you,' Thymara said quietly, but in her heart she wondered if that were so.

‘He said something else, something I've been thinking about. He said that from what he's remembered from the stones, some of the Elderlings had the same sort of problem. And they solved it by not being jealous. By not limiting each woman to one man. Or each man to one woman.' He turned to look up at the sky again. She wondered what he didn't want her to read in his eyes. Did he fear (or hope) that she would agree to that? It was not the first time she had heard such an idea. Jerd had made it plain of late that she would share her favours where she willed, and that none of the male keepers should think she was his simply because she'd shared one night with him. Or a month of nights. Three or four of the keepers had seemed to accept this relationship with her. Thymara had heard a few disparaging remarks from them about her, but she seemed to be gaining a genuine partnership with several of them, one in which her partners seemed as bonded to each other as they were to her. Thymara was sceptical that it would work long term but had resolved to ignore the situation.

But if that was what Tats was broaching as a solution … She spoke stiffly: ‘If that's what you're hoping for, I'm sorry, Tats. I can't be with both you and Rapskal, and be glad of it. Nor can I share you with another, even if she weren't Jerd. My heart doesn't work that way.'

He heaved a sudden sigh of relief. ‘Neither does mine.' He rolled to face her and she let him take her hands. ‘I was willing to compromise if it was the only future you saw. But I didn't want to. I want you all to myself, Thymara. Even if it means waiting.'

The depth of feeling in his words took her by surprise. He read it on her face. ‘Thymara, it's no accident I'm here in Kelsingra. I came here because of you. I told you and your father that I just wanted the adventure, but I was lying. I was following you, even then. Not just because there was no real future for me in Trehaug, but because I knew that there was no future for me anywhere if you weren't there. It's not because you just happen to be here, and I just happen to be here. It's not because you're a good hunter, nor even because of how beautiful you've become. It's you. I came here for you.'