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.’
