Hobb, Robin - Liveship 3 - Ship of Destiny

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Ship of Destiny
by Robin Hobb
Book Three of the Liveship Traders Trilogy
A Bantam Book / August 2000
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2000 by Robin Hobb
Jacket illustration © Stephen Youll
Jacket design by Jamie S. Warren Youll
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hobb, Robin.
Ship of destiny / Robin Hobb.
p. cm. - (The liveship traders ; bk. 3)
ISBN 0-553-10323-7
Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
Visit Bantam's website at www.bantam.com/spectra
Description:
Robin Hobb has established herself as one of the masters of fantasy
fiction. And nowhere is that more apparent than in this powerful, poignant,
swashbuckling epic of treachery, heroism, and humanity. The rousing conclusion
to the Liveship Traders trilogy, Ship of Destiny is the spellbinding story of
a once-thriving city now reduced to a shambles by raging war and rampant
greed; of a glorious and mythic species on the brutal edge of extinction; and
of the Vestrits, the clan whose destiny is intertwined with both.
Ship of Destiny
Bingtown is a city under fire from forces within and without. While
accusations of conspiracy fly between the Old Bingtown Traders and the New,
invaders attack the harbor, trying to take the city for their own. Matriarch
Ronica Vestrit bears witness to the destruction, but she is not the type of
woman to simply surrender. Even as she finds herself branded a traitor, she
searches for a way to bring all the city's inhabitants together to stand
against the Chalcedean threat. But there is someone who cannot allow Ronica to
succeed, no matter what the cost.... Far out on the stormy seas, Althea
Vestrit, ignorant of all that has befallen Bingtown, continues her mission to
track down and recover her liveship Vivacia from the ruthless pirate Kennit.
Serving as the Paragon's second mate under Captain Brashen, she faces peril
beyond imagining...not just from her growing love for Brashen or their
reckless scheme to regain the Vivacia, but from the unpredictable vessel
Paragon himself, as he wrestles with his madness and plots his own deadly
brand of revenge.
Yet Althea's bold scheme may be in vain. For her beloved Vivacia will face
the most terrible confrontation of all as the secret of the liveships is
finally revealed. This is a truth so horrifying, so shattering, it may destroy
the Vivacia and all who love her, including the boy-priest Wintrow Vestrit,
whose life already hangs in the balance....
A triumph of imagination and masterful storytelling, Ship of Destiny is an
enthralling blend of intrigue and magic, drama and high fantasy. It is the
fitting conclusion to a tale that is bound to become a classic- by a beguiling
author who is already deservedly revered.
This one is for
Jane Johnson and Anne Groell.
For caring enough to insist that I get it right.
SUMMER'S END
PROLOGUE - She Who Remembers
SHE WONDERED WHAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE TO BE PERFECT.
On the day that she had hatched, she had been captured before she could
wriggle over the sand to the cool and salty embrace of the sea. She Who
Remembers was doomed to recall every detail of that day with clarity. It was
her entire function and the reason for her existence. She was a vessel for
memories. Not just her own life, from the moment when she began forming in the
egg, but the linked lives of those who had gone before her were nested inside
her. From egg to serpent to cocoon to dragon to egg, all memory of her line
was hers. Not every serpent was so gifted, or so burdened. Only a relative few
were imprinted with the full record of their species, but only a few were
needed.
She had begun perfect. Her tiny, smooth body, lithe and scaled, had been
flawless. She had cut her way out of the leathery shell with the egg tooth
atop her snout. She was a late hatcher. The others in her clutch had already
broken free of their shells and the heaped dry sand. They had left their
wallowing trails for her to follow. The sea had beckoned her insistently.
Every lap of every wave beguiled her. She had begun her journey, slithering
across the dry sand under the beating sun. She had smelled the wet tang of the
ocean. The moving light on its dazzling surface had lured her.
She had never finished her journey.
The Abominations had found her. They had surrounded her, interposing their
heavy bodies between her and the beckoning ocean. Plucked wriggling from the
sand, she had been imprisoned in a tide-fed pool inside a cave in the cliffs.
There they had kept her, feeding her only dead food and never allowing her to
swim free. She had never migrated south with the others to the warm seas where
food was plentiful. She had never achieved the bulk and strength that a free
life would have granted her. Nevertheless, she grew, until the pool in the
cave was little more than a cramped puddle to her, a space barely sufficient
to keep her skin and gills wet. Her lungs were pinched always inside her
folded coils. The water that surrounded her was constantly befouled with her
poisons and wastes. The Abominations had kept her prisoner.
How long had they confined her there? She could not measure it, but she
felt certain that she had been captive for several ordinary lifetimes of her
kind. Time and again, she had felt the call of the season of migration. A
restless energy would come over her, followed by a terrible desire to seek out
her own kind. The poison glands in her throat would swell and ache with
fullness. There was no rest for her at such times, for the memories permeated
her and clamored to be released. She had shifted restlessly in the torment of
her small pool and vowed endless revenge against the Abominations who held her
so. At such times, her hatred of them was most savage. When her overflowing
glands flavored the water with her ancestral memories, when the water became
so toxic with the past that her gasping gills poisoned her with history, then
the Abominations came. They came to her prison, to draw water from her pool
and inebriate themselves with it. Drunken, they prophesied to one another,
ranting and raving in the light of the full moon. They stole the memories of
her kind, and used them to extrapolate the future.
Then the two-legs, Wintrow Vestrit, had freed her. He had come to the
island of the Abominations, to gather for them the treasures the sea left on
the shore. In exchange, he had expected them to prophesy his future for him.
Even now, that thought made her mane grow turgid with poison. The Abominations
prophesied only what they sensed of the future from stealing her pasts! They
had no true gifts of Seeing. If they had, she reflected, they would have known
that the two-legs brought their doom. They would have stopped Wintrow Vestrit.
Instead, he had discovered her and freed her.
Although she had touched skins with him, although their memories had
mingled through her toxins, she did not understand what had motivated the two-
legs to free her. He was such a short-lived creature that most of his memories
could not even leave an imprint on her. She had sensed his worry and pain. She
had known that he risked his brief existence to free her. The courage of such
a brief spasm of life had moved her. She had slain the Abominations when they
would have recaptured both of them. Then, when the two-legs would have died in
the mothering sea, she had aided him to return to his ship.
She Who Remembers opened wide her gills once more. She tasted a mystery in
the waves. She had restored the two-legs to his ship, but the ship both
frightened and attracted her. The silvery gray hull of the vessel flavored the
water ahead of her. She followed it, drinking in the elusive tang of memories.
The ship smelled, not like a ship, but like one of her own kind. She had
followed it now for twelve tides, and was no closer to understanding how such
a thing could be. She knew well what ships were; the Elderlings had had ships,
though not such as this one. Her dragon memories told her that her kind had
often flown over such vessels, and playfully set them to rocking wildly with a
gust from wide wings. Ships were no mystery, but this one was. How could a
ship give off the scent of a serpent? Moreover, it smelled like no ordinary
serpent. It smelled like One Who Remembers.
Again, her duty tugged at her: it was an instinct stronger than the drive
to feed or mate. It was time, and past time. She should have been among her
own kind by now, leading them in the migration path that her memories knew so
well. She should be nourishing their own lesser recall with her potent toxins
that would sting their dormant memories to wakefulness. The biological
imperative clamored in her blood. Time to change. She cursed again her crooked
green-gold body that wallowed and lashed through the water so awkwardly. She
had no endurance to call upon. It was easier to swim in the wall of the ship's
wake, and allow its motion to help draw her through the water.
She compromised with herself. As long as the silver ship's course aligned
with her own, she would follow it. She would use its momentum to help her move
as she gained strength and endurance of her own. She would ponder its mystery
and solve it if she could. Yet, she would not let this puzzle distract her
from her primary goal. When they drew closer to shore, she would leave the
ship and seek out her own kind. She would find tangles of serpents and guide
them up the great river to the cocooning grounds. By this time next year,
young dragons would try their wings on the summer winds.
So she had promised herself for the first twelve tides that she followed
the ship. Midway through the swelling of the thirteenth tide, a sound at once
foreign and heart-wrenchingly familiar vibrated her skin. It was the
trumpeting of a serpent. Immediately she broke free of the ship's wake and
dove down, away from the distractions of the surface waves. She Who Remembers
sounded a reply, then held herself in absolute stillness, waiting. No answer
came.
Disappointment weighted her. Had she deceived herself? During her
captivity, there had been periods when in her anguish she had cried out over
and over again, trumpeting until the walls of the cavern rang with her misery.
Recalling that bitterness, she lidded her eyes briefly. She would not torment
herself. She opened her eyes to her solitude. Resolutely she turned to pursue
the ship that represented the only pallid hint of companionship she had known.
The brief pause had only made her more aware of her hampered body's
weariness. It took all of her will to make her push on. An instant later, all
weariness fled as a white serpent flashed by her. He did not seem to notice
her in his single-minded pursuit of the ship. The odd scent of the vessel must
have confused him. Her hearts thundered wildly. "Here I am!" she called after
him. "Here. I am She Who Remembers. I have come to you at last!"
The white swam on in effortless undulations of his thick, pale body. He
did not even turn his head to her call. She stared in shock, then hastened
after him, her weariness temporarily forgotten. She dragged herself after him,
gasping with the effort.
She found him shadowing the ship. He slipped about in the dimness beneath
it, muttering and mewling incomprehensibly at the planks of the ship's hull.
His mane of poisonous tendrils was semierect; a faint stream of bitter toxins
tainted the water around him. A slow horror grew in She Who Remembers as she
watched his senseless actions. From the depths of her soul every instinct she
had warned against him. Such strange behavior hinted of disease or madness.
But he was the first of her own kind that she had seen since the day she
had hatched. The drawing of chat kinship was more powerful than any revulsion
and so she eased closer to him. "Greetings," she ventured timidly. "Do you
seek One Who Remembers? I am She."
In reply, his great red eyes spun antagonistically, and he darted a
warning snap at her. "Mine!" he trumpeted hoarsely. "Mine. My food." He
pressed his erect mane against the ship, leaking toxins against her hull.
"Feed me," he demanded of the ship. "Give food."
She retreated hastily. The white serpent continued his nuzzling quest
along the ship's hull. She Who Remembers caught a faint scent of anxiety from
the ship. Peculiar. The whole situation was as odd as a dream, and like a
dream, it teased her with possible meanings and almost understandings. Could
the ship actually be reacting to the white serpent's toxins and calls? No,
that was ridiculous. The mysterious scent of the vessel was confusing both of
them.
She Who Remembers shook out her own mane and felt it grow turgid with her
potent poisons. The act gave her a sense of power. She matched herself against
the white serpent. He was larger than she was, and more muscled, his body fit
and knowledgeable. But that did not matter. She could kill him. Despite her
stunted body and inexperience, she could paralyze him and send him drifting to
the bottom. In the next moment, despite the powerful intoxication of her own
body's secretions, she knew she was even stronger than that. She could
enlighten him and let him live.
"White serpent!" she trumpeted. "Heed me! I have memories to share with
you, memories of all our race has been, memories to sharpen your own
recollections. Prepare to receive them."
He paid no heed to her words. He did not make himself ready, but she did
not care. This was her destiny. For this, she had been hatched. He would be
the first recipient of her gift, whether he welcomed it or not. Awkwardly,
hampered by her stunted body, she launched herself toward him. He turned to
her supposed attack, mane erect, but she ignored his petty toxins. With an
ungainly thrust, she wrapped him. At the same moment, she shook her mane,
releasing the most powerful intoxicant of them all, the deep poisons that
would momentarily subdue his own mind and let the hidden mind behind his life
open itself once more. He struggled frantically, then suddenly grew stiff as a
log in her grip. His whirling ruby eyes grew still but unlidded, bulging from
their sockets in shock. He made one abortive effort to gulp a final breath.
It was all she could do to hold him. She wrapped his length in hers and
kept him moving through the water. The ship began to pull away from them, but
she let it go, almost without reluctance. This single serpent was more
important to her than all the mysteries the ship concealed. She held him,
twisting her neck to look into his face. She watched his eyes spin, then grow
still again. Through a thousand lifetimes, she held him, as the past of his
entire race caught up with him. For a time, she let him steep in that history.
Then she eased him out of it, releasing the lesser toxins that quieted his
deeper mind and let his own brief life come back to the forefront of his
thoughts.
"Remember." She breathed out the word softly, charging him with the
responsibilities of all his ancestors. "Remember and be." He was quiescent in
her coils. She felt his own life suddenly repossess him as a tremor shimmered
down his length. His eyes suddenly spun and then focused on hers. He reared
his head back from hers. She waited for his worshipful thanks.
The gaze that met hers was accusing.
"Why?" he demanded suddenly. "Why now? When it is too late for all of us?
Why couldn't I die ignorant of all that I could have been? Why could not you
have left me a beast?"
His words shocked her so that she laxed her grip on him. He whipped
himself disdainfully free of her embrace and shot away from her through the
water. She was not sure if he fled, or if he abandoned her. Either thought was
intolerable. The awakening of his memories should have filled him with joy and
purpose, not despair and anger.
"Wait!" she cried after him, but the dim depths swallowed him. She
wallowed clumsily after him, knowing she could never match his swiftness. "It
can't be too late! No matter what, we must try!" She trumpeted the futile
words to the empty Plenty.
He had left her behind. Alone again. She refused to accept it. Her stunted
body floundered through the water in pursuit, her mouth open wide to taste the
dispersing scent he had left behind. Faint, fainter, and then gone. He was too
swift; she was too deformed. Disappointment welled in her, near stunning as
her own poisons. She tasted the water again. Nothing of serpent tinged it now.
She cut wider and wider arcs through the water in a desperate search for
his scent trail. When she finally found it, both her hearts leapt with
determination. She lashed her tail to catch up with him. "Wait!" she
trumpeted. "Please. You and I, we are the only hope for our kind! You must
listen to me!"
The taste of serpent grew suddenly stronger. The only hope for our kind.
The thought seemed to waft to her on the water, as if the words had been
breathed to the air rather than trumpeted in the depths. It was the only
encouragement she needed.
"I come to you!" she promised, and drove herself on doggedly. But when she
reached the source of the serpent scent, she saw no creature save for a silver
hull cutting the waves above her.
CHAPTER ONE - The Rain Wilds
MALTA DUG HER MAKESHIFT PADDLE INTO THE GLEAMING WATER AND PUSHED hard. The
little boat edged forward through the water. Swiftly she transferred the cedar
plank to the other side of the craft, frowning at the beads of water that
dripped from it into the boat when she did so. It couldn't be helped. The
plank was all she had for an oar, and rowing on one side of the boat would
only spin them in circles. She refused to imagine that the acid drops were
even now eating into the planking underfoot. Surely, a tiny bit of Rain Wild
River water could not do much damage. She trusted that the powdery white metal
on the outside of the boat would keep the river from devouring it, but there
was no guarantee of that, either. She pushed the thought from her mind. They
had not far to go.
She ached in every limb. She had worked the night through, trying to make
their way back to Trehaug. Her exhausted muscles trembled with every effort
she demanded of them. Not far to go, she told herself yet again. Their
progress had been agonizingly slow. Her head ached abominably but worst was
the itching of the healing injury on her forehead. Why must it always itch the
worst when she could not spare a hand to scratch?
She maneuvered the tiny rowboat among the immense trunks and spidering
roots of the trees that banked the Rain Wild River. Here, beneath the canopy
of rain forest, the night sky and its stars were a myth rarely glimpsed; yet a
fitful twinkling beckoned her in between the trunks and branches. The lights
of the tree-borne city of Trehaug guided her to warmth, safety, and most of
all, rest. Shadows were still thick all around her, yet the calls of birds in
the high treetops told her that in the east, dawn was lightening the sky.
Sunlight would not pierce the thick canopy until later, and when it came, it
would be as shafts of light amidst a watery green mockery of sunshine. Where
the river sliced a path through the thick trees, day would glitter silver on
the milky water of the wide channel.
The nose of the rowboat snagged suddenly on top of a hidden root. Again.
Malta bit her tongue to keep from screaming her frustration. Making her way
through the forested shallows was like threading the craft through a sunken
maze. Time and time again, drifts of debris or concealed roots had turned her
aside from her intended path. The fading lights ahead seemed little closer
than when they had set out. Malta shifted her weight and leaned over the side
to probe the offending obstacle with her plank. With a grunt, she pushed the
boat free. She dipped her paddle again and the boat moved around the hidden
barrier.
"Why don't you paddle us over there, where the trees are thinner?"
demanded the Satrap. The erstwhile ruler of all Jamaillia sat in the stern,
his knees drawn nearly to his chin, while his Companion Kekki huddled
fearfully in the bow. Malta didn't turn her head. She spoke in a cold voice.
"When you're willing to pick up a plank and help with the paddling or
steering, you can have a say in where we go. Until then, shut up." She was
sick of the boy-Satrap's imperious posturing and total uselessness for any
practical task.
"Any fool can see that there are fewer obstacles there. We could go much
faster."
"Oh, much faster," Malta agreed sarcastically. "Especially if the current
catches us and sweeps us out into the main part of the river."
The Satrap took an exasperated breath. "As we are upriver of the city, it
seems to me that the current is with us. We could take advantage of it and let
it carry us where I want to go, and arrive much more swiftly."
"We could also lose control of the boat completely, and shoot right past
the city."
"Is it much farther?" Kekki whined pathetically.
"You can see as well as I can," Malta retorted. A drop of the river water
fell on her knee as she shifted the paddle to the other side. It tickled, then
itched and stung. She took a moment to dab at it with the ragged hem of her
robe. The fabric left grit in its wake. It was filthy from her long struggle
through the halls and corridors of the buried Elderling city the previous
night. So much had happened since then, it seemed more like a thousand nights.
When she tried to recall it, the events jumbled in her mind. She had gone into
the tunnels to confront the dragon, to make her leave Reyn in peace. But there
had been the earthquake, and then when she had found the dragon... The threads
of her recall snarled hopelessly at that point. The cocooned dragon had opened
Malta's mind to all the memories stored in that chamber of the city. She had
been inundated with the lives of those who had dwelt there, drowned in their
recollections. From that point until the time when she had led the Satrap and
his Companion out of the buried labyrinth, all was misty and dreamlike. Only
now was she piecing together that the Rain Wild Traders had hid the Satrap and
Kekki away for their own protection.
Or had they? Her gaze flicked briefly to Kekki cowering in the bow. Had
they been protected guests, or hostages? Perhaps a little of both. She found
that her own sympathies were entirely with the Rain Wilders. The sooner she
returned Satrap Cosgo and Kekki to their custody, the better. They were
valuable commodities, to be employed against the Jamaillian nobles, the New
Traders and the Chalcedeans. When she had first met the Satrap at the ball,
she had been briefly dazzled by the illusion of his power. Now she knew his
elegant garb and aristocratic manners were only a veneer over a useless, venal
boy. The sooner she was rid of him, the better.
She focused her eyes on the lights ahead. When she had led the Satrap and
his Companion out of the buried Elderling city, they had found themselves far
from where Malta had originally entered the underground ruins. A large stretch
of quagmire and marshy river shallows separated them from the city. Malta had
waited for dark and the guiding lights of the city before they set out in
their ancient salvaged boat. Now dawn threatened and she still poled toward
the beckoning lanterns of Trehaug. She fervently hoped that her ill-conceived
adventure was close to an end.
The city of Trehaug was located amongst the branches of the huge-boled
trees. Smaller chambers dangled and swung in the uppermost branches, while the
grander family halls spanned trunk to trunk. Great staircases wound up the
trunks, and their landings provided space for merchants, minstrels and
beggars. The earth beneath the city was doubly cursed with marshiness and the
instability of this quake-prone region. The few completely dry pieces of land
were mostly small islands around the bases of trees.
Steering her little boat amongst the towering trees toward the city was
like maneuvering around the immense columns in a forgotten god's temple. The
boat again fetched up against something and lodged. Water lapped against it.
It did not feel like a root. "What are we snagged against?" Malta asked,
peering forward.
Kekki did not even turn to look, but remained hunched over her folded
knees. She seemed afraid to put her feet on the boat's floorboards. Malta
sighed. She was beginning to think something was wrong with the Companion's
mind. Either the experiences of the past day had turned her senses or, Malta
reflected wryly, she had always been stupid and it took only adversity to
manifest it. Malta set her plank down and, crouching low, moved forward in the
boat. The rocking this created caused both the Satrap and Kekki to cry out in
alarm. She ignored them. At close range, she was able to see that the boat had
nosed into a dense mat of twigs, branches and other river debris, but in the
gloom, it was hard to see the extent of it. She supposed some trick of the
current had carried it here and packed it into this floating morass. It was
too thick to force the small boat through it. "We'll have to go around it,"
she announced to the others. She bit her lip. That meant venturing closer to
the main flow of the river. Well, as the Satrap had said, any current they
encountered would carry them downriver to Trehaug, not away from it. It might
even make her thankless task easier. She pushed aside her fears. Awkwardly she
turned their rowboat away from the raft of debris and toward the main channel.
"This is intolerable!" Satrap Cosgo suddenly exclaimed. "I am dirty,
bitten by insects, hungry and thirsty. And it is all the fault of these
miserable Rain Wild settlers. They pretended that they brought me here to
protect me. But since they have had me in their power, I have suffered nothing
but abuse. They have affronted my dignity, compromised my health, and
endangered my very life. No doubt they intend to break me, but I shall not
give way to their mistreatment of me. The full weight of my wrath will descend
upon these Rain Wild Traders. Who, it occurs to me, have settled here with no
official recognition of their status at all! They have no legal claims to the
treasures they have been digging up and selling. They are no better than the
pirates that infest the Inside Passage and should be dealt with accordingly."
Malta found breath to snort derisively. "You are scarcely in a position to
bark at anyone. In reality, you are relying on their goodwill far more than
they are relying on yours. How easy it would be for them to sell you off to
the highest bidder, regardless of whether the buyer would assassinate you,
hold you hostage or restore you to your throne! As for their claim to these
lands, that came directly from the hand of Satrap Esclepius, your ancestor.
The original charter for the Bingtown Traders specified only how many leffers
of land each settler could claim, not where. The Rain Wild Traders staked
their claims here; the Bingtown Traders took theirs by Bingtown Bay. Their
claims are both ancient and honorable, and well documented under Jamaillian
law. Unlike those of the New Traders you have foisted off on us."
For a moment, shocked silence greeted her words. Then the Satrap forced a
brittle laugh. "How amusing to hear you defend them! Such a benighted little
bumpkin you are. Look at yourself, dressed in rags and covered with filth,
your face forever disfigured by these renegades! Yet you defend them. Why? Ah,
let me guess. It is because you know that no whole man would ever want you
now. Your only hope is to marry into a family in which your kin are as mis-
shapen as yourself, where you can hide behind a veil and no one will stare at
your frightfulness. Pathetic! But for the actions of these rebels, I might
have chosen you as a Companion. Davad Restart had spoken out on your behalf,
and I found your clumsy attempts at dancing and conversation endearingly
provincial. But now? Faugh!" The boat rocked minutely with the disdainful flip
of his hand. "There is nothing more freakish than a beautiful woman whose face
has been spoiled. The finer families of Jamaillia would not even take you as a
household slave. Such disharmony has no place in an aristocratic household."
Malta refused to look back at him, but she could imagine how his lips
curled with contempt. She tried to be angry at his arrogance; she told herself
he was an ignorant prig of a boy. But she had not seen her own face since the
night she had nearly been killed in the overturning coach. When she had been
convalescing in Trehaug, they had not permitted her a mirror. Her mother and
even Reyn had seemed to dismiss the injuries to her face. But they would, her
traitor heart told her. They would have to, her mother because she was her
mother, and Reyn because he felt responsible for the coach accident. How bad
was the scar? The cut down her forehead had felt long and jagged to her
questing fingers. Now she wondered: did it pucker, did it pull her face to one
side? She gripped the plank tightly in both her hands as she dug into the
water with it. She would not set it down; she would not give him the
satisfaction of seeing her fingers grope over her scar. She set her teeth
grimly and paddled on.
A dozen more strokes and suddenly the little vessel picked up speed. It
gave a small sideways lurch in the water, and then spun once as Malta dug her
plank into the water in a desperate effort to steer back into the shallows.
She shipped her makeshift oar, and seized the extra plank from the bottom of
the rowboat. "You'll have to steer while I paddle," she told the Satrap
breathlessly. "Otherwise we'll be swept out into the middle of the river."
He looked at the plank she thrust toward him. "Steer?" he asked her,
taking the board reluctantly.
Malta tried to keep her voice calm. "Stick that plank into the water
behind us. Hold onto one end of it and use it as a drag to turn us back toward
the shallows while I paddle in that direction."
The Satrap held the board in his fine-boned hands as if he had never seen
a piece of wood before. Malta seized her own plank, thrust it back into the
water, and was amazed at the sudden strength of the current. She clutched the
end awkwardly as she tried to oppose the flow of water that was sweeping them
away from the shore. Morning light touched them as they emerged from the
shelter of the overhanging trees. Suddenly the sunlight illuminated the water,
making it unbearably bright after the dimness. Behind her, an annoyed
exclamation coincided with a splash. She swiveled her head to see what had
happened. The Satrap was empty-handed.
"The river snatched it right out of my hands!" he complained.
"You fool!" Malta cried out. "How can we steer now?"
The Satrap's face darkened with fury. "How dare you speak to me so! You
are the fool, to think it could have done us any good in the first place. It
wasn't even shaped like an oar. Besides, even if it would have worked, we do
not need it. Use your eyes, wench. We've nothing to fear. There's the city
now! The river will carry us right to it."
"Or past it!" Malta spat at him. She turned from him in disgust, to focus
all her strength and thoughts on her single-handed battle with the river. She
lifted her eyes briefly to the impressive site of Trehaug. Seen from below,
the city floated in the great trees like a many-turreted castle. On the water
level, a long dock was tethered to a succession of trees. The Kendry was tied
up there, but the liveship's bow was turned away from them. She could not even
see the sentient figurehead. She paddled frantically.
"When we get closer," she panted between strokes, "call out for help. The
ship may hear us, or people on the docks. Even if we are swept past, they can
send rescue after us."
"I see no one on the docks," the Satrap informed her snidely. "In fact, I
see no one anywhere. A lazy folk, to be still abed."
"No one?" Malta gasped the question. She simply had no strength left for
this final effort. The board she wielded skipped and jumped across the top of
the water. With every passing moment, they were carried farther out into the
river. She lifted her eyes to the city. It was close, much closer than it had
been a moment ago. And the Satrap was right. Smoke rose from a few chimneys,
but other than that, Trehaug looked deserted. A profound sense of wrongness
welled up in her. Where was everyone? What had become of the normal lively
bustle along the catwalks and on the stairways?
"Kendry!" she cried out, but her breathless call was thin. The rushing
water carried her voice away with it.
Companion Kekki seemed suddenly to understand what was happening. "Help!
Help!" she cried in a childish shriek. She stood up recklessly in the small
boat, waving her hands. "Help us! Save me!" The Satrap swore as the boat
rocked wildly. Malta lunged at the woman and pulled her down into the boat
again, nearly losing her plank in the process. A glance around her showed her
that the plank was of no real use now. The little boat was well and truly into
the river's current and rapidly being swept past Trehaug.
"Kendry! Help! Help us! Out here, in the river! Send rescue! Kendry!
Kendry!" Her shouts trailed away as hopelessness dragged at her.
The liveship gave no sign of hearing. Another moment, and Malta was
looking back at him. Apparently lost in deep thought, the figurehead was
turned toward the city. Malta saw a lone figure on one of the catwalks, but he
was hurrying somewhere and never turned his head. "Help! Help!" She continued
to shout and wave her plank while she could see the city, but it was not for
long. The trees that leaned out over the river soon curtained it from her
eyes. The current rushed them on. She sat still and defeated.
Malta took in her surroundings. Here, the Rain Wild River was wide and
deep, the opposite shore near lost in permanent mist. The water was gray and
chalky when she looked over the side. Overhead the sky was blue, bordered on
both sides by the towering rain forest. There was nothing else to be seen, no
other vessels on the water, no signs of human habitation along the banks. As
the clutching current bore them inexorably away from the marshy shores, hopes
of rescue receded. Even if she succeeded in steering their little boat to the
shore, they would be hopelessly lost downriver of the city. The shores of the
Rain Wild River were swamp and morass. Traveling overland back to Trehaug was
impossible. Her nerveless fingers dropped the plank into the bottom of the
boat. "I think we're going to die," she told the others quietly.
KEFFRIA'S HAND ACHED ABOMINABLY. SHE GRITTED HER TEETH AND FORCED herself to
seize again the handles of the barrow the diggers had just finished loading.
When she lifted the handles and began to trundle her load up the corridor, the
pain in her healing fingers doubled. She welcomed it. She deserved it. The
bright edges of it could almost distract her from the burning in her heart.
She had lost them, both her younger children gone in one night. She was as
completely alone in the world as she had ever been.
She had clung to doubt for as long as she could. Malta and Selden were not
in Trehaug. No one had seen them since yesterday. A tearful playmate of Selden
had sobbingly admitted that he had shown the boy a way into the ancient city,
a way the grown-ups had thought securely locked. Jani Khuprus had not minced
words with Keffria. White-faced, lips pinched, she had told Keffria that the
particular passage had been abandoned because Reyn himself had judged it
dangerously unstable. If Selden had gone into the buried corridors, if he had
taken Malta with him, then they had gone into the area most likely to collapse
in an earthquake. There had been at least two large tremors since dawn.
Keffria had lost track of how many lesser tremblings she had felt. When she
had begged that diggers be sent that way, they had found the entire corridor
collapsed just a few steps inside the entry. She could only pray to Sa that
her children had reached some stronger section of the buried city before the
quake, that somewhere they huddled together awaiting rescue.
Reyn Khuprus had not returned. Before noon, he had left the diggers,
refusing to wait until the corridors could be cleared and shored up. He had
gone ahead of the work crews, wriggling off through a mostly collapsed tunnel
and disappearing. Not long ago, the work crews had reached the end of the line
he had left to mark his way. They had found several chalk marks, including the
notation he had left on the door of the Satrap's chamber. Hopeless, Reyn had
marked. Thick muck oozed from under the blocked door; most likely the entire
room had filled with it. Not far past that door, the corridor had collapsed
completely. If Reyn had passed that way, he either had been crushed in the
downfall, or was trapped beyond it.
Keffria started when she felt a touch on her arm. She turned to face a
haggard Jani Khuprus. "Have you found anything?" Keffria asked reflexively.
"No." Jani spoke the terrible word softly. Her fear that her son was dead
lived in her eyes. "The corridor is mucking in as fast as we try to clear it.
We've decided to abandon it. The Elder ones did not build this city as we
build ours, with houses standing apart from each other. The ancients built
their city like one great hive. It is a labyrinth of intersecting corridors.
We will try to come at that section of corridor from a different approach. The
crews are already being shifted."
Keffria looked at her laden barrow, then back down the excavated corridor.
Work had stopped. The laborers were returning to the surface. As Keffria
stared, a flow of dirty and tired men and women parted to go around her. Their
faces were gray with dirt and discouragement, their footsteps dragged. The
lanterns and torches they carried guttered and smoked. Behind them, the
excavation had gone dark. Had all of this work been useless, then? She took a
breath. "Where shall we dig now?" she asked quietly.
Jani gave her a haunted look. "It has been decided we should rest for a
few hours. Hot food and a few hours of sleep will do us all good."
Keffria looked at her incredulously. "Eat? Sleep? How can we do either
when our children are missing still?"
The Rain Wild woman matter-of-factly took Keffria's place between the
barrow handles. She lifted it and began to push it forward. Keffria trailed
reluctantly after her. She did not answer Keffria's question, except to say,
"We sent birds out to some of the closer settlements. The foragers and
摘要：

ShipofDestinybyRobinHobbBookThreeoftheLiveshipTradersTrilogyABantamBook/August2000Allrightsreserved.Copyright©2000byRobinHobbJacketillustration©StephenYoullJacketdesignbyJamieS.WarrenYoullLibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationDataHobb,Robin.Shipofdestiny/RobinHobb.p.cm.-(Theliveshiptraders;bk.3)...

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