My travel arrangements have been made. Before the moon turns again, I will finally meet you. Until I have a chance to speak for myself, I beg you: do not refuse my parents’ inopportune offer. Remember, you can always turn me away. At least let me make my own plea before you do so.

Erek

CHAPTER TWENTY

KELSINGRA

So why are you writing it all down?”

In some ways, Alise thought, Rapskal had not changed at all. He fidgeted like the restless boy he had been, anxious to stop sitting still and be off doing things. In other ways, it was difficult to look at the tall, slender scarlet creature he had become and see the keeper boy at all. And getting coherent information out of him was like trying to talk to a dragon. Or a small, impatient child.

She sat on the doorstep of what had most likely been a shepherd’s hut. Below them, a wide rolling green went down to the edge of a rushing river. She was only slowly adapting to the idea that they had finally arrived. To sit on a hillside, to look across a vista of sloping green meadow down to a swiftly flowing river was strange enough. To stare across the wide breadth of that river and study the ancient buildings of Kelsingra in the distance was surreal.

“HALF A DAY’S flight for a dragon” had proved to be over six days of slow travel for the barge. None of it had been easy. For the first day, Heeby had appeared at intervals, looping over the ship and then flying off in the direction they were to follow. Unfortunately, that route led them to even shallower water. The dragons trudged ahead of them, laboriously plodding through standing water and sticky mud. Tarman lurched after them, scraping along with a terrible teetering gait.

On their second day of travel, the rain had returned in relentless sheets. The insistent drops patterned the still surface of the slough with ever-widening circles that negated one another as they overlapped. When the rain stopped, mists rose and cloaked the world in gray. The fog remained until the rain returned to banish it in a deluge. Dragons and ship groped their way forward through a cloud of wet. Life on the barge became more miserable. The keepers crowded into the galley and crew quarters in an attempt to stay dry, but the damp invaded every cranny of the ship. What food they had was eaten cold; they could find no dry fuel for even a small fire in the ship’s stove. Although no outright quarrels broke out, frustration simmered. The sole topic of conversation was Kelsingra, and where Rapskal and Heeby had been, and why they had not come down to the ship and why they had not returned. Speculation chewed all the theories ragged, with no satisfaction for anyone.