The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Robin Hobb

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СКАЧАТЬ possible to kill a gallator with a sling. Greft had glared at her, Tats and Rapskal and then had gone stalking off into the forest on his own. Nortel and Boxter had both seemed out of sorts as well, exchanging small barbed comments. Harrikin had suddenly seemed sullen and sulky. None of it made sense to her; she only knew that her earlier sensation of goodwill and friendliness had been more fleeting than the smoke from their campfire.

      And that night, Tats had spread out his bedding and gone to sleep near Jerd, without even speaking to Thymara to say good night. She’d thought they were friends, good friends. She’d even been stupid enough to think that he’d only signed up as a dragon keeper because he knew that she’d be going, too. Worse, Rapskal had tossed his blankets right down beside hers after she had made her bed for the evening. She couldn’t very well get up and move away from him, much as she wished to. He’d slept next to her every night since they left Trehaug. He talked and laughed even in his sleep, and her dreams, when she did find them that night, were uneasy ones of her father looking for her in a mist.

      In vain, she tried to recall her mind to the present and focus on the conversation next to her. The Bingtown woman was speaking to Skymaw. ‘Do you recall, lovely one, your immediate ancestor’s experience, your glorious mother’s life? Do you know what happened to the world to cause dragons to become nearly extinct and leave humans to mourn in loneliness for so long?’ She stood awaiting an answer, her pen poised over her paper. It was sickening.

      Worse, Skymaw was wallowing in the praise and answering the woman in dragon riddles while telling her nothing at all. ‘My “mother”? Were she here, you would not insult her so lightly! A dragon is never a mother as you know it, little milk-making creature. We never fuss about squealing babies or waste our days in tending to the wants of helpless young. We are never as helpless and stupid as humans are when they are first born, knowing nothing of what or who they are. It is irony, is it not, that you live so short a time, and waste so much of it being stupid? While we live for dozens of your lives, aware every instant of what we are and who our ancestors were. You can see that it is hopeless for a human to try to understand dragonkind at all.’

      Thymara turned away abruptly from the dragon and the Bingtown woman. ‘I’d best go see if I can kill some food for you,’ she announced, not caring that she broke into the midst of their conversation. It was disgusting anyway. The woman kept asking Skymaw stupid questions, phrased in grovelling, honeyed compliments. And the dragon kept evading the questions, refusing her any real answers. Was that just what any dragon would do? Or was Skymaw trying to conceal her own ignorance?

      Now there was an idea that was almost more disturbing than the thought that Tats suddenly found Jerd more interesting than she was. And nearly as upsetting that neither the dragon nor the Bingtown woman seemed to take any notice of her leaving.

      She strode across the mud-baked shore toward their small boats. She’d left her belongings bundled up with her pack in one of the boats. She cast a casual glance at the big black scow at the edge of the shore. The Tarman. It was a strange craft, far more blunt and square than any other boat she’d ever seen. It had eyes painted on its prow; she’d heard that was an old custom, older than the Rain Wilds settlements. It was supposed to encourage the boat to look out for itself and avoid dangers in the river. She liked the boat’s eyes. They looked old and wise, like the eyes of a kindly old man over his sympathetic smile. She hoped they would actually help guide the ship as they tried to find a way up the Rain Wild River. They were going to need all the help they could get to carry out their mission.

      She found her fishing spear and decided to try her luck, even though it looked as if the other keepers were already patrolling the shallow bank for any unwary fish. Rapskal had had a small success. He’d speared a fish the size of his hand. He did a victory dance with the flopping creature still stuck on the end of his spear, and then turned to his little red dragon. She had been toddling along behind Rapskal like a child’s pull toy. ‘Open up, Heeby!’ Rapskal demanded, and the dragon obediently gaped at him. Rapskal tugged the fish off the spear and tossed it into the dragon’s maw. The creature just stood there. ‘Well, eat it! There’s food in your mouth, shut your mouth and eat it!’ Rapskal advised her. After a moment the dragon complied. Thymara wondered if the creature were too stupid even to eat food put in its mouth, or if the fish had been so small the dragon hadn’t noticed it.

      She shook her head at them. She doubted that any large river fish would linger there in the sluggish warm water under the open sky. She turned her back on the dragons and her friends and headed toward the far edge of the clearing, where the trees tangled their worn roots right out into the river. Coarse sword-grass grew there, and grey reeds and spearman-grass. The rising and falling of the water level had left fallen branches and dead leaves tangled and dangling from the clawing tree roots that reached out into the river. If she were a fish, that would be where she would take shelter from the sunlight and predators. She’d try her luck there.

      Clambering out on the twisting roots was both like and unlike her travels through the canopy. Up there, a fall could mean death, but the layers of branches also offered a hundred chances to grip a limb or liana and regain her life. Down here, there were gaps in the matted tangle of roots under her feet. Below, the river flowed, grey and stinging, at best threatening to give her a rash, at worst eating through skin and flesh down to the bone. There was also the chance of crashing through completely into water over her head, and worse, coming back up under the tangled roots. The trees were still under her feet, as they had always been, but the dangers were different. Somehow that made it hard to remember that she was sure-footed and made for the Rain Wilds.

      The third time her booted foot slipped on the roots, she stopped and thought. Then she sat down and carefully unlaced both boots. She knotted the laces together and slung them around her neck and went on, digging the claws of her toes into the bark. She found a likely place. The foliage overhead cast a dappling shade over her. A thick twist of root gave sheltering debris a place to cling even as it provided her an opening over the river. The grass and fallen branches filtered the silt-laden river water here, so it was almost translucent. She sat down where her shadow would not fall on the water, poised her fish spear and waited.

      It took time for her eyes to learn to read the water. She could not see fish, but after a time she could see shadows, and then swirls in the sediment that showed a fish had passed. Her shoulder began to ache from holding her spear at the ready; the spear itself seemed to weigh as much as a tree trunk. She pushed the ache out of her mind and focused her whole being on reading the swirls in the sediment. That would be the tail, so the head would be there, no, too late, it’s back under the root. Here it comes, here it comes, here it – no, back under the root. There he is, he’s a big one, wait, wait, and—

      She jabbed down with the spear rather than throwing it. She felt it hit the fish and pushed hard and strong to pin it to the river bed. But the water was deeper than she had thought and suddenly she had to catch herself on the root to keep from tumbling in while the fish, a very large one, wriggled and jerked on the end of her spear, trying to free itself. She fought to keep her balance while keeping the fish on the spear.

      Someone grabbed her from behind.

      ‘Let go!’ she roared and pushed the butt of the spear back hard, thudding it solidly into whoever had seized her. She heard a whoosh of exhaled breath and then a faint curse. She didn’t turn, for the thud had nearly dislodged her fish. She flipped up the spear end, bracing the butt against her hip and was astounded at the size of the fish she levered out of the river. Thrashing wildly, the fish actually drove the spear deeper and then through its own body. Her prey was nearly half the length of her body and it came sliding down the spear shaft toward her.

      ‘Don’t lose him. Keep hold of your spear!’ Tats shouted from behind her.

      ‘I’ve got him,’ she snarled, irritated that he would think she needed his help. Despite her words, he reached past her shoulder and seized the other СКАЧАТЬ