The Dragon Keeper

  The sun must have reached the unseen horizon. The stars were beginning to show in the narrow stripe of sky over the river. She looked up at the band of night and thought it a good metaphor for her truncated and restricted existence. This muddy beach by the river bounded by the immense forest behind her was the only existence she had known since she hatched into this life. The dragons could not retreat into the forest. The picket trees fenced them onto the shore as effectively as their namesake. Although the immense trees had been well spaced out by nature, their supplementary roots and all manner of underbrush, vines, and plants grew in the swampy spaces between them. Not even the much smaller humans could travel easily on the rain forest floor. Paths pushed through the brush soon became sodden trails and eventually swampy fingers of mud. No. The only way out of this forest for a dragon was up. She flapped her useless wings again and then folded them onto her back. Then she lowered her head from her stargazing and looked around her. The others were huddled together beneath the trees. She despised them. They were stunted and misshapen things, sickly, quarrelsome, weak, and unworthy.

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  Just as she was.

  She plodded through the mud to join them. She was hungry, but she scarcely noticed that anymore. She had been constantly hungry since the day she hatched from her case. Today she’d been fed seven fish, large if not fresh, and one bird. The bird had been stiff. Sometimes she dreamed of meat that was warm and limp with the blood still running. It was only a dream now. The hunters were seldom able to find large game close by; when they did get a marsh elk or a riverpig, the creatures had to be chopped into pieces before they could be transported back to the dragons. And the dragons seldom got the best parts of the beasts. Bones and guts and hide, tough shanks and horned heads, but seldom the hump from a riverpig’s back or the meat-rich hind haunch of a marsh elk. Those parts went to the humans’ tables. The dragons were left with the scraps and offal like stray dogs begging outside a city’s gate.

  The boggy ground sucked at her feet each time she lifted them and her tail seemed permanently caked with mud. The land here suffered as much as the dragons did; it never had a chance to harden and heal. All the trees that bordered the clearing were showing the effects of the dragons’ residence. The lower trunks were scarred and scraped. Dragons scratching vermin from their skin had eroded bark from some of the trees, and the roots of others had been exposed by the traffic of clawed feet. She had overheard the humans worrying that even trees with trunks the size of towers would eventually die from such treatment. And what would happen when such a tree fell? The humans had somewhat wisely moved their homes out of the treetops of the affected trees. But didn’t they realize that if one of the trees fell, it would doubtless crash through the branches of neighboring trees? Humans were stupider than squirrels in that regard.

  Only in the summer months did the muddy beach approach a level of firmness that made walking less strenuous. In winter, the smaller dragons struggled to lift their feet high enough to walk. At least they had struggled. Most of them had died off last winter. She thought of that with regret. She had anticipated each of the weaklings dying and had been swift enough, twice, to fill her belly with their meat and her mind with their memories. But they were all gone now, and barring accidents or disease, her mates looked as if they would survive the summer.

  She approached the huddled mass of dragons. That was not right. Serpents slept so, tangled and knotted together beneath the waves lest the currents of the ocean sweep them apart and scatter them. Most of her serpent memories now were dimmed, as was appropriate. She had no need of them in this incarnation. She had been Sisarqua in that life. But that was not who she was now. Now she was Sintara, a dragon, and dragons did not sleep huddled together like prey.

  Not unless they were crippled, useless, weakling things, little better than moving meat. She approached the sleeping creatures and shouldered her way into them. She stepped on Fente’s tale, and the little green wretch snapped at her. At her, but not scoring her skin. Fente was vicious, but not stupidly so. She knew that the first time she actually bit Sintara was the last time she’d bite anything. “You’re in my spot,” Sintara warned her, and Fente clapped her tail close to her side.

  “You’re clumsy. Or blind,” Fente retorted, but quietly, as if she hadn’t meant Sintara to hear her. In casual vengeance, Sintara shouldered Fente into Ranculos. The red had already been asleep. Without so much as opening his silver eyes, he kicked Fente in rebuke and resettled his bulk.

  “What were you doing?” Sestican, the second-largest blue male asked her as she settled against him. It was her place. She always slept between him and the dour Mercor. It did not indicate friendliness or any sort of alliance. She had chosen the place because they were two of the largest males, and sheltering between them was the wisest place to sleep.

  She didn’t mind his question. He was one of the few she considered capable of intelligent conversation. “Looking at the sky. ”

  “Dreaming,” he surmised.

  “Hating,” she corrected him.

  “Dreaming and hating are the same for us, in this life. ”

  “If this is to be the last life, if all my memories must die with me, why must it be so dreary?”

  “If you keep up your useless talk and disturb my sleep, I might make your last life end much faster than you expected. ” This from Kalo. His blue-black scaling made him nearly invisible in the dark. Sintara felt the small venom sacs in her throat swell with her hatred of him, but she kept her silence. He was the largest of them all. And the meanest. If she had been capable of producing enough venom to damage him, she would probably have spit it at him, regardless of the consequences. But even on days when she had fed well, her sacs produced barely enough venom to stun a large fish. If she spat at Kalo, he would kill her with his teeth and eat her. Useless. Useless anger from an impotent dragon. She wrapped her tail around herself and folded her stumpy wings on her back. She closed her eyes.

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  There were only fifteen of them left now. She cast her mind back. More than one hundred serpents had massed at the mouth of the river and migrated up it. How many had actually cocooned? Fewer than eighty. She didn’t know how many had initially emerged, nor how many had survived the first day. It scarcely mattered now. Disease had taken some, and a few had fallen prey to a flash flood. The disease had been the most terrifying to her. She could not recall anything similar, and those others who were capable of intelligent speech had likewise been baffled by it. It had begun with a dry barking cough at night, one that disturbed the whole gathering of dragons. It had continued and spread until almost all of the dragons suffered from it to various degrees.

  Then one of the smaller dragons had awakened them all by squawking hoarsely. It had been a small orange dragon with stumpy legs and wings that were only stubs. If he had ever had a name, Sintara couldn’t recall it now. He had been trying to paw at his eyes that were crusted shut with mucus. His truncated front legs would not reach. With every distressed squawk he gave, he sprayed thick tendrils of phlegm. All the dragons had moved aside from him in disgust. By midmorning he was dead, and a few moments later, all that remained of him was a smear of blood on the damp earth and a couple of fellow dragons with full bellies. By then, two of the others were wheezing and drooling mucus from their mouths and nostrils.

  Drier weather brought an end to the malaise. All had suffered from it to some degree. Sintara suspected that the constantly wet riverbank and the mud they had to live in, combined with the dense population, had caused the sickness. If any of them had been able to fly, they would have left and, she suspected, in doing so outflown the contagion.

  One dragon actually had left. Gresok had been the largest red, a male who was physically among the healthiest but mentally among the dullest. One afternoon, he had simply announced that he was leaving to find a better place, a city he’d seen in his dreams. Then he wa
lked away, crashing through underbrush until they could no longer hear his passage. They’d let him go. Why not? He seemed to know what he wanted, and it would mean slightly more food for the rest of them when the human hunters meted out what they’d killed.

  But no more than half a day had passed before they’d felt his dying thoughts. He cried out, not to them, but simply shouting his fury to himself. Humans had attacked him. That much was clear. And as they felt him die, two of the other dragons, Kalo and Ranculos, had charged off to follow his trail. They went, not to assist or avenge him, but only to claim his carcass as their rightful food. That night, they had returned to the riverbank. Neither had spoken of what they had done, but Sintara had her suspicions. Both had smelled of human blood as well as Gresok’s flesh. She suspected they’d come upon humans butchering the fallen Gresok, and included them in their feasting. She saw nothing wrong in that. Any human who dared to attack a dragon deserved to die himself. And dead, of what use was he, unless someone ate him? She didn’t see why leaving a human to be eaten by worms was more acceptable.

  All of the dragons were well aware that it was better to cover all traces of such encounters. The humans were very poor at concealing their thoughts. The dragons were well aware of the anger and resentment that some felt toward them. Illogical as it was, it seemed that they preferred to have their dead eaten by fish rather than let a dragon have the use of the meat. Only a few afternoons ago, a group of humans had been putting the body of a dead relative into the river. She had waded out into the water and followed the weighted canvas packet as the current carried it until it sank under the water. She had retrieved it and dragged it ashore, well away from human eyes. She had eaten it, canvas covering and all. When she returned and realized how distressed the humans were, she had sought to save their feelings by denying she had eaten the corpse. They hadn’t believed her.

  Their reaction made no sense to her. If the body had sunk to the bottom, fish and worms would have devoured it, tearing it to insignificant pieces. But because she had eaten the body, the human’s tiny store of memories had been preserved in her. True, most of the memories made little sense to her, and the woman had lived but a breath of time, only some fifty turnings of the seasons. Even so, something of her would go on. Did humans think it better that the woman’s body do no more than nourish another generation of sucker fish? Humans were so stupid.

  Her dragon memories included a few scattered recollections of Elderlings. She wished they were clearer; they slipped and slid through her mind like a fish seen through murky water. The flavor of those memories offered tolerance, even fondness of such beings. They were useful and respectful creatures, willing to groom and greet dragons, to build their cities to accommodate them; they acknowledged the intelligence of dragons. How could sophisticated creatures such as Elderlings possibly be related to humans?

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  The soft-bodied little sacks of seawater that were supposed to tend the dragons now chattered and complained constantly about their simple tasks. They performed those duties so poorly that she and her fellows lived in abject misery. They deceived no one. They took no pleasure in tending the dragons. All the hairless tree monkeys truly thought about was despoiling Cassarick. The remains of the ancient Elderling city were buried nearly under the hatching grounds. They would plunder it as they had the buried city at Trehaug. Not only had they stripped it of its ornaments and carried off objects that they could not possibly comprehend, they had slain all but one of the dragons that the Elderlings had dragged into the dubious safety of their city right before that ancient catastrophe. Anger burned through her afresh as she thought of it.

  Even now, some of the “liveships” built from “wizardwood logs” still existed, still served humans as dragon spirits incarnated into ship bodies. Even now, the humans pleaded ignorance as an excuse for the terrible slaughter they had wrought. When Sintara thought of the dragons who had waited so many years to hatch, only to be tumbled half formed from their cases onto the cold stone floor, she swelled with anger. She felt her poison sacs fill and harden in her throat, and agitation swept through her. The humans deserved to die for what they had done, every one of them.

  From beside her, Mercor spoke. Despite his size and apparent physical strength, he seldom spoke or asserted himself in any way. A terrible sadness seemed to enervate him, draining him of all ambition and drive. When he did speak, the others found themselves pausing in whatever they were doing to listen to him. Sintara could not know what the others felt, but it annoyed her that she felt both drawn toward him and guilty about his great sadness. His voice made her memory itch, as if when he spoke, she should recall wonderful things but could not. Tonight he said only, in his deep and sonorous voice, “Sintara. Let it go. Your anger is useless without a proper focus. ”

  It was another thing he did that bothered her. He spoke as if he could know her thoughts. “You know nothing of my anger,” she hissed at him.

  “Don’t I?” He shifted miserably in the muddy wallow where they slept. “I can smell your fury, and I know that your sacs swell with poison. ”

  “I want to sleep!” Kalo rumbled. His words were sharp with irritation, but not even he dared to confront Mercor directly.

  On the edge of the huddled group of dragons, one of the small dim-witted ones, probably the green who could barely drag himself around, squeaked in his sleep. “Kelsingra! Kelsingra! There, in the distance!”

  Kalo lifted his head on his long neck and roared in the green’s direction, “Be silent! I wish to sleep!”

  “You do sleep, already,” Mercor replied, impervious to the big blue’s anger. “You sleep so deeply that you no longer dream. ” He lifted his head. He was not bigger than Kalo, but it was still a challenge. “Kelsingra!” he suddenly trumpeted into the night.

  All the dragons stirred. “Kelsingra!” he bellowed again, and Sintara’s keen hearing picked up the distant fluting cries of humans disturbed from their evening slumber. “Kelsingra!”

  Mercor threw the name of the ancient city up to the distant stars. “Kelsingra, I remember you! We all do, even those who wish we did not! Kelsingra, home of the Elderlings, home of the well of the silver waters and the wide stone plazas baking in the summer heat. The hillsides above the city teemed with game. Do not mock that one who dreams of you still. Kelsingra!”

  “I want to go to Kelsingra. I want to lift my wings and fly again. ” A voice rose from somewhere in the night.

  “Wings. Fly! Fly!” The words were muffled and ill formed, but the longing of the dim-witted dragon who uttered them filled them with feeling.

  “Kelsingra,” someone else groaned.

  Sintara lowered her head, tucking it in close to her chest. She was shamed for them and shamed for herself. They sounded like penned cattle lowing before the slaughter begins. “Then go there,” she muttered in disgust. “Just leave and go there. ”

  “Would that we could. ” Mercor spoke the words with true longing. “But the way is long, even if we had wings that would bear us. And the path is uncertain. As serpents, we could barely find our way home. How much stranger must the land be now that lies between us and the place where Kelsingra used to be?”

  “Used to be,” Kalo repeated. “So much used to be, and no longer is. It is useless to speak or think of any of it. I want to go back to sleep. ”

  “Useless, perhaps, but nonetheless, we do speak of it. And some of us still dream of it. Just as some of us still dream of flying, and killing our own meat and battling for mates. Some of us still dream of living. You do not want to sleep, Kalo. You want to die. ”

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  Kalo twitched as if struck by an arrow. Sintara felt the big dragon stiffen, sensed how his poison sacs suddenly swelled. A few moments ago, she had thought that resting between the two large males had been a place of safety. Now she perceived that she was in the thick of the danger, trapped between Sestican and Mercor.
Kalo lifted his head high and glared down on Mercor. If he spat acid now, Mercor would be helpless to avoid it. And she would also be caught in the spray. She hunched her shoulders uselessly.

  But Kalo spoke rather than exhaled poison. “Do not speak to me, Mercor. You know nothing of what I think or feel. ”

  “Don’t I? I know more of you than you recall yourself, Kalo. ” Mercor suddenly threw his head back and bellowed. “I know you all! All of you! And I mourn what you are because I remember what you were and I know what you were meant to be!”

  “Quiet! We’re trying to sleep!” This was no bellow of an outraged dragon, but the shrill cry of a frustrated human. Kalo turned his head toward the source of the sound and gave a roar of fury. Sestican, Ranculos, and Mercor suddenly echoed him. When that blast of sound died away, a few of the dimmer dragons on the edge of the herd imitated it.

  “You be silent!” Kalo trumpeted up at the human dwellings. “Dragons speak when they wish to speak! You have no control over us!”

  “Ah, but they do,” Mercor said quietly. The very softness of his words seemed to bring all attention to him.

  Kalo turned his head sharply. “You, perhaps, are controlled by humans. I am not. ”

  “You do not, then, eat when they feed you? You do not remain here, where they have corralled us? You do not accept the future they plan for us, that we will remain here, dependent upon them, until we slowly die off and stop being a nuisance to them?”