The Dragon Keeper

Page 51

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.”