Rain Wilds Chronicles by Hobb Robin Read Free Book Online Page A

or perhaps both. She pulled her water skin from her satchel and offered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.
    â€œThey could have killed you.”
    He took his mouth from the bag’s nozzle, capped it, and gave it back to her. “They’re babies still. Clumsy babies. I would have got away. I did get away.”
    â€œThey’re not babies! They weren’t babies when they went into their cocoons and they’re full dragons now. Tintaglia could fly within hours of hatching. Fly, and make a kill.” As she spoke, she pointed up through the foliage to a passing glint of blue and silver. It suddenly plummeted as the dragon dived. The wind of wildly beating wings assaulted both tree and Rain Wilders as the dragon halted her descent. A deer’s carcass fell from her claws to land with a thump on the clay, and without a pause her wings carried her up and away, back to her hunt. Squealing dragon hatchlings immediately scampered toward it. They fell on the food, tearing chunks of meat free and gulping them down.
    â€œThat could have been you,” Thymara pointed out to her father. “They may look like clumsy babies now. But they’re predators. Predators that are just as smart as we are. And bigger than we are, and better at killing.” The charm of the hatching dragons was fading rapidly. Her wonder at them was being replaced with something between fear and hate. That creature would have killed her father.
    â€œNot all of them,” her father observed sadly. “Look down there, Thymara. Tell me what you see.”
    From this higher vantage point, she had a wider view of the hatching grounds. She estimated that a fourth of the wizardwood logs would never release young dragons. The dragons who had hatched were already sniffing at the failed cases. As she watched,one young red dragon hissed at a dull case. A moment later, it began to smoke, thin tendrils of fog rising from it. The red set its teeth to a wizardwood log and tore off a long strip. That surprised Thymara. Wizardwood was hard and fine-grained. Ships were built from it. But now the wood seemed to be decaying into long fibrous strands that the young dragons were tearing free and eating greedily. “They are killing their own kind,” she said, thinking that was what her father wished her to see.
    â€œI doubt it. I think that in those logs, the dragons died before they could break free of their cases. The other dragons know that. They can smell it, probably. I think something in their saliva triggers a reaction to soften the logs and make them edible. Probably the same reaction that makes the logs break down as the youngsters are hatching. Or maybe it’s the sunlight. No, that wasn’t what I was talking about.”
    She looked again. Young dragons wandered unsteadily on the clay beach. Some had ventured down to the water’s edge. Others clustered around the sagging cases of the failed dragons, tearing and eating. Of the deer that Tintaglia had brought and of the dead hatchling, scarcely a smear of blood remained. Thymara watched a dragon with stubby forelegs sniffing at the sand where it had been. “He’s badly formed.” She looked at her father. “Why are so
many
of them badly formed?”
    â€œPerhaps …” her father began, but before he could speak on, Rogon dropped down from a higher branch to join them. Her father’s sometime hunting partner was scowling.
    â€œJerup! You’re unharmed then! What were you thinking? I saw you down there and saw that thing go for you. From where I was, I couldn’t see if you’d made it up the trunk or not! What were you trying to do down there?”
    Her father looked down, half smiling, but perhaps a bit angry as well. “I thought I could help the one that was being attacked. I didn’t realize it was already dead.”
    Rogon shook his head contemptuously. “Even if it wasn’t, there would be no