Do you think I should go back to the Rain Wilds and try to find my Elderlings? Malta and Reyn?

The black dragon looked at her for a time. Whatever thoughts he had, he was not sharing with her. When he spoke, it was only to say, I do not think I could trust a human again. Even an Elderling.

I might trust them. If I had to. Malta and Reyn have both served me before; they would serve me again, I think.

Again, he was quiet. Then he said, The silver well of Kelsingra. It was a rare and wondrous thing and to drink from it brought dragons great strength. Sometimes it was used for healing. You could go there, to Kelsingra.

I’ve been to Kelsingra. The well is no more. The city was empty and dead, with dust blowing through the streets. And when I went to the well, the windlass had fallen to ruin. Even if there had been Elderlings there at that moment, they could not have drawn the silver for me. She did not speak of how angry it had made her; of how she had trampled and broken what remained of the windlass and shoved it down the fruitless well.

Kelsingra. Icefyre spoke the word regretfully. It was a place of wonder, once. If, as you say, it is abandoned and empty, then that is a loss. I recall it as a place of poets chanting my praises as Elderlings worked scented oil into my scale-beds. There were baths there. And sunning spots. Fat herds of all sorts of meat creatures: bullocks and sheep and swine. They made many memorials to us, statues and mosaics.

He held his thoughts still, and Tintaglia’s mind wandered. She had her ancestors’ memories of Kelsingra, but they were faded and scentless. Her own perceptions of the abandoned city overlay them and dimmed them even more.

I go to hunt! Icefyre announced abruptly. I hunger still.

I am going to rest. She recognized suddenly a determination that had been forming in her for some days. And then I am going back to the Rain Wilds.

Perhaps later we will go there. The feel of his thought was dismissive of her idea. Perhaps another time, I will go to see Kelsingra for myself. When I decide the time is right to go. He turned away from her and leaped into the air. The wind of his battering wings rushed past her, stirring her injury to a dull ache.

Wearily she settled herself for sleep. It was difficult to find a position that did not irritate her wound. It was getting worse; she could smell it, and the spreading poison from the infection was a throbbing deep in her muscles. It was not healing and she could do nothing to better it. The longer she waited, the weaker she would be. But Icefyre cared nothing for that.