Relpda bent her head to rub her muzzle against her front leg. It put more mud on her face than it cleaned off. ‘Sedric,’ she said. ‘Sedric is my keeper now. He came to me and took my blood and drank it, to be closer to me. We think together now. All is clearer to me than it was. I shall make him my Elderling. That is my right to do.’

‘You will make an Elderling?’ Sestican was confused.

‘I am trying to get sense out of her! Be quiet!’ Sintara hissed.

‘We cannot change humans unless we are willing to be changed by them.’ Mercor spoke wearily, ignoring her request. His words stilled her. There was something there, something to be remembered.

‘Cannot or should not?’ Sestican demanded.

‘I do not understand!’ Fente lashed her tail.

‘Then be quiet and listen!’ Sintara opened her jaws on the smaller female, a threat that venom might follow. Fente slunk aside from her, then spun and hissed at her.

‘Stop it!’ Ranculos roared. ‘Both of you!’

Mercor looked around at them sadly. His eyes, black on black, whirled slowly. ‘So much has been lost. Even as we grow stronger and move closer to becoming true dragons, I am frightened every day by the holes in our memories. I know I should not assume that each of you remembers what I do, but I continue to make that mistake. It appears, Fente, that Relpda recalls that which some of the rest of you have forgotten. Elderlings can be created by dragons, deliberately. Sometimes, as is happening with our keepers, humans undergo changes simply by virtue of extensive contact with us. In the days when Elderlings and dragons shared cities and lives, Elderlings were shaped by the dragons that favoured them, much as a human gardener might prune a tree. Deliberately and carefully, choosing well what they began with, a dragon created an Elderling. In the lifetimes that our kinds have been apart, many of the Rain Wilds have taken on some of the lesser aspects of Elderlings, with few of the benefits.’

‘How?’ Sintara demanded. ‘With no dragons about, why should they change?’

‘It served them right,’ Ranculos said in a low voice. ‘Those who killed dragons in their cases, those who handled and carved what should have become dragons, those who stole and used the artefacts and magics of the Elderlings, they are the ones who have suffered the consequences most deeply. It is fitting. They took what was not theirs to take. They meddled in the stuff of dragons. The changes came upon them, and upon their offspring. They suffered shorter lives and stillborn children. They deserved it.’

‘You speculate,’ Mercor cautioned him.

‘I speculate with reason. It is no coincidence. In their heart of hearts, the humans know what is true. Look who they chose to give us as our “keepers”. They gave us the ones so deeply changed that they scarce can live among the other humans. They have scales and claws, it is hard for them to breed, and their live spans are shortened. That is what befalls humans who meddle in a magic that has not been freely given to them. They used the stuff of dragons, our blood and bones, and they changed. But with no dragons to guide the change, they became monstrous.’

‘And the Abominations,’ Mercor asked in his deep, rolling voice. ‘What of them? Are they, too, a punishment well deserved?’

‘Perhaps,’ Ranculos replied recklessly. ‘For it is as you said. Dragons cannot change humans without risk that they will change us. It was long suspected that dragons who associated too much with Elderlings and humans would harm themselves or their offspring. An egg hatches and it is not what it should be…’

‘Must we speak of obscenities? Is there no decency left among us?’ Their words had wakened memories in Sintara, memories long dormant. Once, one of her ancestors had chosen a human and shaped an Elderling for herself. The physical changes in such a creature were less than half of it. Properly prepared, an Elderling gained a life span that, while not even close to that of a dragon, was sufficient to allow at least some wisdom and sophistication to accrue. It was amusing, even comforting, to have such an Elderling. It was pleasant to be flattered, to be ‘immortalized’ in verse and paintings and poetry. Elderlings became companions for dragons in a way that other dragons could not be. With an Elderling, there was no competition, only the comfort of their admiration, the pleasures of grooming, and yes, the stimulation of conversations.

But in every pleasure there is a danger, and some dragons spent too much time with their Elderlings and were, in turn, changed by them. It was not something that was lightly spoken of. No dragon wished to accuse another of such an obscenity, but it was undeniable. Dragons who spent too much time in the company of humans changed. The changes were not as obvious as what befell humans who spent too much time in the company of dragons, but the evidence was there, all the same. And in the next generation, when eggs hatched from, it was suspected, two such dragons, the offspring were not serpents but Abominations.

It was not a thing for dragons to admit to outsiders. It was not even a thing for dragons to discuss among themselves. She turned aside from them all, affronted by the coarseness of the conversation. Mercor ignored her disdain as he spoke severely to Relpda.

‘I think you have done a foolish thing, Relpda. I am not sure you are capable of guiding a human to an Elderling state. If you are careless, or unskilled, or even forgetful, the consequences for the human can be dire, even fatal. This is a human who had not even begun on a path of change. What entered your mind to make you choose him for such an honour?’

‘He could not even hear us speak when first he walked among us,’ Sintara interjected. ‘He thought us beasts, like cows. He was very arrogant, and extremely ignorant. I cannot think of a human less deserving of such an honour.’

Relpda lashed her tail warningly. ‘It was my decision. It is my right. He came to me, seeking the contact. When I felt his mind brush mine, I chose him. And now he is chosen by me. That is all any of you need to know. I do not recall that the decision to create an Elderling was ever a shared decision. It is not one now.’

‘In your anger, your words and thoughts come clear,’ Mercor observed mildly.

‘I use his mind. It is nothing to you.’

‘It is something to you, something you may regret depending upon. What if he should decide he does not wish to be bound to you? What if he should decide to leave and return to his Bingtown?’

‘He will not.’ Relpda spoke with finality.

Sintara moved away, disturbed. It was not the first time she had been forced to confront the idea that her memories were incomplete. She tried to focus her mind on the floating fragments of recall the talk had stirred in her. One of her ancestors had willingly and consciously created an Elderling. Could she recall how it was done?

Only in fragments. Blood had been involved, she knew that. Had there been more, the giving of a physical token? A scale? There was something back there, an elusive memory that swam at the very edges of her recall.

‘Sintara.’

She had been thinking too deeply. She had not even noticed Mercor’s quiet approach. She tried to appear unsurprised as she turned to him. ‘What is it?’

‘Are you aware of the changes your keeper is going through?’

She stared at him for a moment and then asked distantly, ‘Which keeper?’

He was unruffled. ‘The one who is what the humans would say “heavily touched by the Rain Wilds”. Thymara.’

‘I have not paid a great deal of attention to her changes, though she is more scaled than she was when we began our journey.’

‘So her other changes are not deliberate? They are not gifts from you?’

What other changes? ‘She is scarcely worthy of any gifts from me. She is both arrogant and disobedient. She fails to praise me or to be grateful for my attentions. Why would I choose her for a gift?’