Ship of Destiny

"Wiser than you know," said his own voice in small. "A pact for greatness, even."

"Is it?" muttered Ke

"Trust me," suggested the charm. "Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"Trust you, and trust a dragon," Ke

An instant of silence, more telling than any words. "And if I am?" the charm asked smoothly. "Do I not still bear your own face? Ask yourself this. Do you conceal the dragon, or does the dragon conceal you?"

Ke

"You make no sense," he muttered to the charm. He lowered his hand and gripped his crutch firmly. As he moved through his ship, toward his own bunk and rest, he ignored the minute snickering of the thing bound to his wrist.

HER VOICE WAS RUSTY. SHE HAD SUNG BEFORE, TO HERSELF, IN THE MADDENING confinement of the cave and pool. Shrill and cracked had her voice been, crashing her defiance against the stone walls and iron bars that bound her.

But this was different. Now she lifted her voice in the night and sang out an ancient song of summoning. "Come," it said, to any who might hear. "Come, for the time of gathering is nigh. Come to share memories, come to journey together, back to the place of begi

It was a simple song, meant to be joyous. It was meant to be shared by a score of voices. Sung alone, it sounded weak and pathetic. When she moved from the Plenty up to the Lack and sang it out under the night sky, it sounded even thi

"Come, join your kin and lend strength to the weaker ones. Together, together, we journey, back to our begi

The last piping notes of the song faded, carried away by the wind. She Who Remembers waited for an answer. Nothing came. Yet, as she sank disconsolately beneath the waves once more, it seemed to her that the toxins that trailed elusively from the ship ahead of her took on more substance and flavor.

I mock and tease myself, she chided herself. Perhaps she was truly mad. Perhaps she had returned to freedom only to witness the end of all her kind. Desolation wrapped her and tried to bear her down. Instead, she fell back into her position behind the ship, to follow where it would lead her.

CHAPTER EIGHT — Lords of the Three Realms

TINTAGLIA'S SECOND KILL WAS A BEAR. SHE MEASURED HERSELF AGAINST HIM, predator against predator, the beat of her wings against the swipe of his immense clawed paws. She won, of course, and tore open his belly to feast on his liver and heart. The struggle satiated something in her soul. It was a proof that she was no longer a helpless, pleading creature trapped in a coffin of her own body. She had left behind the humans who had stupidly cut up the bodies of her siblings. It had not been their doing that had imprisoned her. They had acted in ignorance, mostly, when they slew her kin. Eventually, two of them had been willing to sacrifice all to free her. She did not have to decide if the debts of murder were balanced by the acts of rescue. She had left them behind, for all time. As sweet as vengeance could have been, it would not save those of her kind who might still have survived. Her first duty was to them.

She had slept for a time athwart her kill. The honey sunshine of autumn had baked into her through the long afternoon. When she had awakened, she was ready to move on. While she slept, her next actions had become clear in her mind. If any of her folk survived, they would be at their old hunting grounds. She would seek them there first.

So she had arisen from the bear's carcass, its rank meat already abuzz with hundreds of glistening blue flies. She had tested her wings, feeling the new strength she had gained from this kill. It would have been far more natural for her to emerge in early spring, with all the summer to grow and mature before winter fell. She knew that she must kill and feed as often as she could in these dwindling harvest days, building her body's strength against the winter to come. Well, she would, for her own survival was paramount to her, but she would seek her folk at the same time. She launched from the su

She rose to where the wind flowed stronger and hung there on the currents, spiraling slowly over the lands below. As she circled, she sought for some sign of her kin. The muddy riverbanks and shallows should have borne the trampled marks of dragon wallows, yet there were none. She soared past lofty rock ledges, ideal for sun basking and mating, but all of them were i

She flew a wide, lazy circle, studying the land below for familiar landmarks. All had vanished. In the years that had passed, the river had shifted in its wide bed. Flooding and earthquakes had re-formed the land numerous times; her ancestral memories recalled many changes in the topography of this area. Yet, the changes she saw now seemed more radical than any her folk had ever seen. She felt that the whole countryside had sunk. The river seemed wider and shallower and less defined. Where once the Serpent River had raced strongly to the sea, the Rain Wild River now twined in a lazy sprawl of swamp and marsh.

The human city of Trehaug was built beside the sunken ruins of old Frengong of the Elderlings. The Elderlings had chosen that site for the city so that they might be close to the dragons' cocooning grounds. Once, there had been a wide shallows there in the bend of the Serpent River. There the memory stone had shone as silvery-black sand on a gleaming beach. In long-ago autumns, serpents had wallowed out of the river onto the sheltered beaches there. With the aid of the adult dragons, the serpents had formed their cocoons of long strands of saliva mixed with the rich memory sand. Every autumn, the cocoons had littered the beach like immense seed pods awaiting the spring. Both dragons and Elderlings had guarded the hardened cases that protected the metamorphosing creatures all through the long winter. Summer light and heat would eventually come, to touch the cases and awaken the creatures inside.