Blood of Dragons

The keepers had gathered at the well plaza to bend their backs to clearing the debris. Alise was there and, for the first time in weeks, she carried her case of paper and pencils. She seemed to take immense satisfaction in the new supplies that Leftrin had brought her. She clambered through the stack of broken timbers and sketched a copy of the lettering on one. The timbers had been amazingly well preserved, and Thymara had heard her speculate to Leftrin that the thick glossy paint that coated them had something to do with it. Leftrin had grudgingly agreed even as he muttered his disappointment that his work crew was here instead of applying their efforts to reinforcing Tarman’s dock.

Thymara stretched her aching back and tried to see the plaza as Alise did. It was not easy to mentally piece it together. A graceful and lavishly decorated roof of carved wood supported on stout wooden pillars had sheltered the walled well at one time. The roof had been pyramidal, and painted green and gold and blue. It had given way to time and possibly violence. Carson had pointed out that some of the timbers were torn while others had rotted. Mixed in with the timbers were chains and pulleys, the remnants of a windlass that had once cranked up a large bucket from the depths. Carson had directed the keepers to pull the metal parts to the side and to preserve every piece they found. ‘We may be able to reassemble at least part of it,’ he said.

Leftrin had looked at the heaped sections of broken chain and whistled low. ‘Can the well have been that deep?’

And to that question Mercor had replied, ‘The level of Silver receded over time. It was, indeed, that deep.’

The dragons had all gathered to watch them in a hopeful shifting circle. They came and went as hunger drove them away to hunt, gorge and sleep, but they always returned to the plaza as evening was shifting into night rather than seeking the baths or the sand wallows. Thymara privately reflected that this was the most time any of the dragons had spent with their Elderlings in weeks.

The palpable anticipation of the dragons had infected all of the keepers. Every one of them, as well as Leftrin’s entire crew, had put aside all other work to labour at clearing the site. Leftrin had insisted that a skeleton crew must remain aboard his beloved liveship, but the crewmen had alternated duties so that each one had spent some time at the well plaza. Big Eider’s incredible strength had been indispensible to moving the larger pieces of timber, while Hennesey and Skelly had sorted usable lengths of chain from short sections. Thymara had marked well how Hennesey grinned as he worked, jesting and good-natured as she had never seen him before. Perhaps it had something to do with how Tillamon, well attired in Elderling dress now, was always the one to bring him water and to stand beside him asking earnest questions as he affably explained all to her. Tillamon was not pretty; her scaling and the wattles along her jaw reminded Thymara more of an armoured toad from the Rain Forest rather than a graceful Elderling. But then, Hennesey with his scars and work-roughened hands was not a gem of masculine beauty. And neither of them seemed to care much what anyone else thought of them so long as they were pleased with one another. Tall, slender Alum looked more out of place as he struggled to find tasks in Skelly’s vicinity while enduring the solemn scrutiny of every other crew member. Bellin in particular watched him with measuring eyes and a flat mouth.

And so the long work day had gone, with Alise scribbling and the others sorting and moving broken things. Before long, a round hole, bigger across than a tall man’s height, gaped up at them from the centre of the simple plaza. The remains of a brick wall encircled it. The well was wedged full of more wreckage. ‘Going to have to rig a hoist to clear that,’ Swarge observed dourly. ‘Almost looks like it was stuffed down there apurpose,’ he opined, and Carson had agreed with several colourful profanities added.

It had not just fallen; debris had been deliberately packed into the well until it lodged there. Even after a tripod of salvaged timbers had been erected over the well mouth, the task of removing it included breaking it free before it could be hauled up out of the mouth. As the level of debris receded, Leftrin insisted that any keeper climbing into the hole must wear a harness and have a tender. ‘No telling when that wreckage could all give way and fall in, Sa knows how deep. Don’t want a keeper or crew-hand going down with it.’