He leaned across the table to set his long cool hand atop mine. ‘It’s a foolish game, Fitz,’ he said softly. ‘And you attribute too much power to yourself, and too little to the sweep of events. And to Molly. If you could go back and erase those decisions, who knows what others would take their places? Give it over, Fitz. Let it go. What Hap does now is not a punishment for what you did in the past. You didn’t cause him to make this choice. But that doesn’t free you from your duties as a father, to try to turn him aside from that path. Do you think because you made that same decision it disqualifies you from telling him it was a mistake?’ He took a breath, then asked, ‘Have you ever considered telling him about Molly and Nettle?’
‘I … no. I can’t.’
‘Oh, Fitz. Secrets and things held back …’ His voice trailed away sorrowfully.
‘Such as Bingtown’s dragons,’ I said levelly.
He lifted his hand from mine. ‘What?’
‘We were drinking that night, and you told me a story. About serpents that went into butterfly cocoons and came out as dragons. But for some reason they came out small and sickly. You thought somehow it was your fault.’
He leaned back in his chair. He looked more sallow than golden. ‘We had been drinking. A lot.’
‘Yes. We had. You were drunk enough to talk. But I was still sober enough to listen.’ I waited, but he just sat quietly looking at me. ‘Well?’ I demanded at last.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘Tell me about Bingtown’s dragons. Are they real?’
I sat and watched him reach some decision. Then he sat up and poured more brandy for us both. He drank. ‘Yes. As real as the Six Duchies dragons were, but in a different way.’
‘How?’
He took a breath. ‘Long, long ago, we argued this. Remember? I said that at one time there had to have been dragons of flesh and bone, to inspire Skill-coteries to create dragons of stone and memory.’
‘That was years ago. I barely recall the conversation.’
‘You don’t need to. All you need to know is that I was right.’ A smile flickered across his face. ‘Once, Fitz, there were real dragons. The dragons that inspired the Elderlings.’
‘The dragons were the Elderlings,’ I contradicted him.
He smiled. ‘You are right, Fitz, but not in the way you think you mean those words. I think. It is a shattered mirror I am still reassembling. The dragons you and I awoke, the Six Duchies dragons … they were created things. Carved by coteries or Elderlings, the memory-stone took on the shapes they gave it, and came to life. As dragons. Or as winged boars. Or flying stags. Or as a Girl-On-A-Dragon.’
He was putting it together almost too swiftly for me to follow. I nodded nonetheless. ‘Go on.’
‘Why did Elderlings make those stone dragons and store their lives in them? Because they were inspired by real dragons. Dragons that, like butterflies, have two stages to their lives. They hatch from eggs into sea serpents. They roam the seas, growing to a vast size. And when the time is right, when enough years have passed that they have attained dragon size, they migrate back to the home of their ancestors. The adult dragons would welcome them and escort them up the rivers. There, they spin their cocoons of sand – sand that is ground memory-stone – and their own saliva. In times past, adult dragons helped them spin those cases. And with the saliva of the adult dragons went their memories, to aid in the formation of the young dragons. For a full winter, they slumbered and changed, as the grown dragons watched over them to protect them from predators. In the hot sunlight of summer, they hatched, absorbing much of their cocoon casing as they did so. Absorbing, too, the memories stored in it. Young dragons emerged, full-formed and strong, ready to fend for themselves, to eat and hunt and fight for mates. And eventually to lay eggs on a distant island. The island of the Others. Eggs that would hatch into serpents.’
As he spoke, I could almost see it. Perhaps my dreams had primed me to it. How often in my sleep had I imagined what it would be to be a dragon as Verity had become, to fly the skies, to hunt and to feed? Something in his words reached those dreams, and they suddenly seemed true memories of my own rather than the imaginings of sleep. He had fallen silent.
‘Tell the rest,’ I prodded him.
He leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Something killed them. Long ago. I don’t know exactly what. Some great cataclysm of the earth, that buried whole cities in a matter of days. It sank the coast, drowning harbour towns, and changed the courses of rivers. It wiped out the dragons, and I think it killed the Elderlings as well. All of that is a surmise, Fitz. Not just from what I have seen and heard, but from what you have told me and from what I have read in your journals. That empty, riven city you visited, your own vision there of a dragon landing in the river, and of a strangely-formed folk who greeted it. Once, those people and dragons lived alongside one another. When the disaster came that ended them both, the folk tried to save some of the cocooned dragons. They dragged them into their buildings. The dragon cocoons and the people were buried alive together. The people perished. But inside the cocoons, untouched by the light and warmth that would signal a time of awakening, the half-formed dragons lingered on.’
Rapt as a child, I listened to his wild tale.
‘Eventually, another folk found them. The Rain Wild Traders, an offshoot of the Bingtown Traders, dug into the ancient buried cities, seeking treasure. Much did they find there. Much of what you saw today, offered as gifts to Kettricken, the flame-gems, the jidzin, even the fabric, is the trove of those Elderling dwellings. They also found the cocooned dragons. They had no idea that was what they were, of course. They thought … who knows what they thought at first? Perhaps they seemed like massive sections of tree trunks. So they refer to it: wizardwood. They cut them up and used the cases as lumber, discarding the half-formed dragons within. That is the material they made their liveships from, and those strange vessels have the roots of their vitality in the dragons they would have been. Most of the half-formed dragons were dead, I suspect, long before their cocoons were cut up. But one, at least, was not. And a chain of events that I am not fully privy to exposed that dragon cocoon to sunlight. It hatched. Tintaglia emerged.’
‘Weak and badly formed.’ I was trying to connect this tale with what he had told me previously.
‘No. Hale and hearty, and as arrogant a creature as you would ever wish to encounter. She went searching for others of her own kind. Eventually she gave up looking for dragons. Instead, she found serpents. They were old and immense, for – and again, I speculate, Fitz – for whatever cataclysm that had destroyed the adult dragons had changed the world enough to prevent the serpents from returning to their cocooning grounds. Decade after decade, perhaps century after century, they had made periodic attempts to return, only to have many of their number perish. But this time, with Tintaglia to guide them, and the folk of Bingtown to dredge the rivers so they could pass, some of the serpents survived their migration. In the midst of winter, they made their cases. They were old and weakened and sickly, and had but one dragon to shepherd them and help them spin their cases. Many perished on their journey up the river; others sank into dormancy in their cases, never to revive. When summer came, those that hatched in the strength of the sunlight emerged as weaklings. Perhaps the serpents were too old, perhaps they did not spend enough time in their cocoons, perhaps they were not in good enough condition when they began their time of change. They are pitiable creatures. They cannot fly, nor hunt for themselves. They drive Tintaglia to distraction, for the dragon way is to despise weakness, to let perish those not strong enough to survive. But if she lets them die, then she will be completely alone, forever, the last of her kind, with no hope of rekindling her race. So Tintaglia spends all her time and energy in hunting for them and bringing kills back to them. She believes that if she can feed them sufficiently, they may yet mature to full dragons. She wishes, nay, she demands that the Rain Wild Traders aid her in this.