Rapskal’s uplifted eyes followed Heeby’s flight. The dragon was hunting the hills and cliffs across the river. Alise followed his gaze with longing. It was all there, just as she had seen it in the Elderling tapestry on the walls of the Traders’ Concourse. The sun touched the glittering stone of the map tower and glinted off the domes of the majestic buildings. She longed to be there, to walk the wide streets, to ascend the steps and see what wondrous artifacts the Elderlings had left for them to discover. Leftrin had explained to her a dozen times that the current swept deep and wild along that shore. On this side of the river, it had been easy to nose Tarman ashore. Over there, the current ran swift and deep, and there was nothing to tie the barge to. They’d found the remains of the stone piers that had once run out into the river, but time had worn them and the river had eaten them. Tarman did not trust them, and Leftrin would not ignore his ship’s uneasiness. He had promised Alise that once the ancient docks of Kelsingra had been restored, it would be a fine place to tie up a boat. But for now, for a short time, she was doomed to look on the Elderlings’ side of Kelsingra with longing.
“Well, I guess I’ve told you everything, right?” Rapskal was standing up again. He was looking down the hillside now to where the other keepers were walking along the shore or exploring the stony, skeletal remains of the town. Hundreds of foundations were scattered along the shore; a few standing structures remained, enough for the keepers to take shelter in by night. Leftrin had climbed up the hill and discovered the intact shepherd’s hut and insisted it was perfect for them. She tended to agree with him. It was the most privacy they had ever had. The first night, he’d built a crackling fire in the old hearth and discovered that, once he removed an old bird’s nest from it, the chimney drew as well as ever. Golden firelight had filled the single room of the cottage. They’d spread their bedding on the floor in front of it and hung a blanket where once a wooden door had swung. She’d felt, for the first time in her life, that she was truly mistress of this tiny home. The very next morning, she’d brought her journals and notes up from the barge. Now she sat on the stone doorstep of the little house and surveyed her domain. From here, she had a wide view of the sweep of the river’s bend and Leftrin’s ship. She had the vista of all of old Kelsingra to tempt and taunt her.
She called her thoughts back to the moment at hand. Her four remaining sheets of good paper rested on her battered lap desk. “You haven’t really told me anything, Rapskal.”
He took a breath that lifted his narrow shoulders. He smiled at her, his white teeth showing strangely in his red-scaled face. “Well. Here’s how it was. I was talking to Tats and he was mad at me for telling Thymara that I’d like to do to her what Jerd had taught me to do with her…Why aren’t you writing?”
“Because, well, that’s not the important part,” Alise replied and heard her Bingtown primness come to the fore as a blush heated her face.
“Well, after that, then. Then that wave hit. And I got washed away by it.”
“Yes.”
“And then, I was trying to swim and I felt that Heeby was near, so I shouted for her, and she came to me. And we swam together for a while. Then a really big tangle of wood floated by. Maybe it had been part of the bonfire, I don’t know. But it hit us and we sort of got tangled in it. Well, I didn’t. I climbed up on top, but Heeby got tangled. She wasn’t drowning, but she couldn’t break free. So I told her, ‘Don’t fight it, let’s just ride it out.’ And we did, all that night, and the next morning we found we were way out in the middle of the river and could hardly see the shores. I didn’t think we could swim to the shore so I thought, well, just stay with the floating wood tangle until we can see the shore. And that was a bad time for both of us, because she was stuck and we just got pushed on and on by the river. No food or water for either of us.”
“How long was that?”
“Don’t remember. More than two days, anyway.” His claws were black. He scratched under his chin, gave a happy wriggle, and then settled again. “By and by, anyway, the river washed us up on the place where there was a big low meadow. Must have been on the other side of the river from the side we kept to when we were following the Tarman, because it didn’t look to me like anywhere we had passed. And the river was on the wrong side of us, if you get what I mean. Well, there I could help Heeby get untangled and we went ashore. And we didn’t have much, but I still had my fire-starting stuff, because I always keep it in this pouch. See?”
