City of Dragons

City. So this was what that word really meant. It wasn’t like the tree city of Trehaug where she had been born. This was a city built on solid earth. As far as she could see, in all directions, there were no trees. No open meadows; virtually no plant life at all. Here, all was worked stone. Straight lines and hard surfaces, broken by the occasional arch or dome, but even those were precisely shaped geometric figures. All around her loomed the work of human hands.

“Go hunt, Heeby. That’s my pretty girl. Go kill something big and have a nice meal. But don’t sleep too long afterward! Come back for us, my lovely red darling! We’ll be waiting for you down by the river like always.”

Dimly she was aware of the scarlet dragon lurching into a run down the street toward the river. In moments, she heard the slapping of her wings and then the sound faded. She didn’t turn to watch the dragon go. The city held her enthralled. All of this was made. None of it had grown. The huge buildings. The immense blocks that fit so squarely, one atop another, without a gap or a variation from perfectly straight lines. The interlocking stones that paved the street. All created by hands, all flawlessly shaped. But who could ever cut such large stones, let alone lift them into place?

She turned her head slowly, trying to take it all in. Statues in fountains. Carved stone decorating building fronts. All precise. Even the statues were perfect images of perfect creatures, caught and frozen in the stone. I don’t belong here, she thought. She was not perfect like these carvings, not precisely formed like the fitted paving stones and squared doors. She was lesser, deformed, unfit. As she had always been.

“Don’t be stupid. Of course you belong here!” Rapskal sounded impatient.

Had she spoken the words out loud?

“This is an Elderling city, built by Elderlings, especially for Elderlings. Just as Trehaug and Cassarick were . . . well, the true Elderling parts, the buried parts, were. That’s what I’ve discovered in my time here. And I want to show it to you because I think you can explain it to Alise. And make the others understand it, too. We, all of us, dragons and keepers, need to get across to this side of the river. That side over there, all those huts and things, those were built for the humans. The ones who didn’t want to change or couldn’t change. This side, all of this, this is for us. It’s what we need. And so we all need to get over here and make the city work. Because once we get the city working, then the dragons will be better, too.”

She stared at him, and then back to the city again. Dead and lifeless. Nothing to eat, no game, no growing food. “I don’t understand, Rapskal. Why would we want to be here? We’d have to go so far to get firewood or meat that we’d be exhausted just by those tasks. And the dragons? What is here for the dragons?”

“Everything!” he said urgently. “It’s all here, everything we need to know about being Elderlings. Because being an Elderling is a lot like being a dragon. And once we know more about being Elderlings, I think we can help the dragons. There was some special . . .” He knit his brow as if trying to recall something. “Maybe. Well, I haven’t found anything yet that would help with dragons who can’t fly, but there might be something here, and it would be a lot easier to find if I weren’t the only one looking for it, and if Alise wasn’t telling us all that we shouldn’t bother the city, we should just let it sleep. We only just started being Elderlings, so we don’t have the memories we need to make all the magic work. But the memories are here, stored in the city, waiting for us. We just need to come here and get them and start being Elderlings. Then we can make the city work again. Then everything will get better. Once we have the magic, I mean.”

The cold wind swept through the silent city, and she stared at him for a long time.

“Thymara!” he exclaimed at last in annoyance. “Stop making that face at me. You said we didn’t have much time, that you’d have to get back before dark to feed Sintara again. So we can’t just stand around like this.”

She gave her head a quick shake. Tried to find sense in his words, tried to make them apply to her. Elderlings. Yes, she had known that’s what their changes meant. The dragons had said so, and there was no reason to assume they would lie. Well, Sintara might lie to her, but she doubted that all the dragons would lie to their keepers. Not about something like that. And she knew that some of them had begun to resemble the images of Elderlings that she had seen in Trehaug. Not that she had seen many of them. Most of the tapestries and scrolls that had survived were things of great value, sold off through Bingtown generations before she had been born. But she knew what people said, that Elderlings were tall and slender, and that their eyes were unusual colors, and that the portrayals of them seemed to indicate their skins had been different also. So she had known, yes, that she was becoming an Elderling.