Dragon Haven by Hobb Robin Read Free Book Online Page A

a cheery fire on a cold and stormy night. She clung to the dragon’s gaze, refusing to believe her dragon might wish her to leave.
    “I’m hungry,” Sintara said softly. “Won’t you go and find food for me?”
    “Of course,” Thymara responded promptly, overcome by Sintara’s will.
    Sintara’s voice grew very soft, as if it were no more than a breath blowing past Thymara’s ear. “Greft and Jerd went into the forest not so long ago. Perhaps they know where the hunting is good. Perhaps you should follow them.”
    That stung. “I am a better hunter than Greft will ever be,” she told her dragon. “I’ve no need to follow him.”
    “Nonetheless, I think you should,” Sintara insisted, and suddenly it did not seem like a bad idea. A thought teased at the edge of Thymara’s mind;if Greft had already made a kill, perhaps she could help herself to a share, just as he had with hers. She still had not paid him back for that trespass.
    “Go on,” Sintara urged her, and she went.
     
    E ACH OF THE keepers had formed the habit of keeping their gear in their boats. Dealing with Rapskal’s untidiness was a daily trial for Thymara. When she thought about it, it seemed unfair that a random choice on the first day had doomed her to be his partner. The others regularly rotated partners, but Rapskal had no interest in such swaps. And she doubted she would find anyone willing to take him on, even if she could persuade him to try it. His strangeness was too great. Yet he was handsome, and adept on the river. And always optimistic. She tried to recall him speaking crossly, and could not. She smiled to herself. So he was strange. It was a strangeness that she could get used to. She pushed his gear bag to one side and rummaged in her own for her hunting items.
    Away from Sintara’s gaze, it was easier to think about what she was doing and why. She recognized that the dragon had exerted some sort of glamour over her. Yet even being aware of it did not disperse it entirely. She had nothing more pressing to do, and certainly they could use the meat;they could always use the meat. The copper would benefit from a meal after they’d cleared the snakes off her, and certainly Mercor could do with some meat. But as she slung her bag over her shoulder, she wonderedif she were merely trying to find a more acceptable reason to let herself follow the dragon’s suggestion. She shrugged at the uselessness of wondering about it and set off for the forest eaves.
    The shores of the Rain Wild River were never the same and never different. Some days, they passed ranks of needled and lacy fronded evergreens. The next day those dark green ranks might give way gradually to endless columns of white-trunked trees with reaching pale-green leaves, and all their branches festooned with dangling vines and creepers heavy with late blossoms and ripening fruit. Today there was a wide and reedy bank, with ranks of rushes topped with tufts of fluffy seedheads. The bank was only silt and sand, temporary land that might vanish in the next flood. Beyond it and only slightly elevated above it a forest of gray-barked giants with wide spreading branches chilled the earth with their eternal shade. Vines as thick as her waist dropped down from those spreading branches, creating an undergrowth as restrictive as the bars of a cage.
    It was easy enough to follow Greft’s trail through the marsh grasses. Water was already welling up in some places to fill his boot tracks. The prints of Jerd’s bare feet were less visible. Thymara scarcely gave her mind to her tracking, thinking instead of the dragon. The more time and distance she acquired from Sintara, the clearer became her own thoughts. Why Sintara had sent her hunting was an easy question to answer;the dragon was always hungry. Thymara had intended to hunt today anyway;she did not mind her errand. More puzzling was why the dragon had suddenly decided to make the effort to charm her. She never had before. Did that