This is actually in response to a posted request by Kuchibue and Cheloya over at the Robin Hobb Newsgroup at sff.net. It can be seen here if you are curious. Basically, they wanted to know if they could see an early draft of some of my writing compared to a later one.
Rough drafts as I used to know them don't really exist for me any more. I tend to 'save' over the top of documents. At one time, when I used a typewriter, every version of the book would exist in a hard copy. That is no longer the case. So what I'll post here will actually be the sixth draft of my prologue for my work in progress, Dragon Keeper, as compared to the seventh draft, completed today.
The changes you will see are mostly clarifications of setting and event. I tried to read the prologue as if I had never seen any of the related tales, and then inserted information that I had previously assumed the reader would already have. I think I improved it. I hope I did. But even now, it occurs to me that I need to give at least a hint of what an Elderling is. So. At least one more re-write!
This prologue will probably change several more times before the book is finally sent off to the editors, so please don't regard it as the final version. It's just a sample of how a passage changes during the creation of the book.
* I see that to post the full prologue would run over the allottment of space for this. So I'm going to post a chunk of version six, and the rough equivalent of version seven.
Version Six: Prologue
Serpents' End
They had come so far, yet now that she was here, the years of journeying were already fading in her mind, giving way to the desperate needs of the present. Sisarqua opened her jaws and bent her neck. The air was too cold and her gills were drying out too quickly. There was nothing she could do about that except to work more swiftly. She scooped her jaws into the immense trough and came up with her mouth full of a slurry of silver-streaked clay and water. She threw her great head back and gulped it down. It was gritty and cold and strangely delicious. Another mouthful, another swallow. And again.
She had lost count of how many gulps of the grainy soup she had taken down when finally she felt the ancient reflex trigger. She worked the muscles in her throat, and felt her poison sacs swell. Her fleshy mane stood out all around her throat in a toxic quivering ruff. She shuddered down her full length and then opened her jaws wide. She strained, gagging, and then met with success. She clamped and locked her jaws to contain the liquid, releasing it only as a thin, powerful stream.
She regurgitated a fine liquid thread of clay, bile and saliva tinged with her venom. With difficulty, she turned her head and then coiled her tail closer to her body. The extrusion was like a silvery grey thread, thick and heavy. Her head wove as she layered the wet winding over herself.
She felt a heavy tread nearby and then the shadow of the walking dragon passed over her. Tintaglia paused and spoke to her. "Good. Good, that's right. A nice even layer to begin with, one with no gaps. That's right."
Sisarqua could not spare a glance for the blue and silver queen who praised her. Creating the cocoon that would shelter her during the remaining months of winter took all her attention. She focused on it with a desperation born of weariness. She needed sleep. She longed to sleep. She knew that if she slept now, she would never wake again in any form. "Finish it," she thought to herself. "Finish it, and then I can rest."
All around her on the mucky river bank, other serpents labored at the same task, with varying degrees of success. Between and amongst them, humans toiled. Some carried buckets of water from the river. Others trundled barrows of heavy silver-streaked clay to a hastily constructed log enclosure. Water and clay were dumped into the immense trough; other workers used shovels and paddles to break up the lumps of clay and render the water and clay into a loose porridge. It was this slurry that Sisarqua had consumed as the major ingredients for manufacturing her case. The lesser ingredients were just as essential. Her body added the toxins that would plunge her into a sleep half a breath above death. Her saliva contributed her memories to the keeping of the cocoon. Not just her own memories of her time as a serpent, but all the memories of those who had gone before her spooled around her as she wove her case.
Missing were the memories she should have received from watchful dragons tending the serpents as they made their cocoons. She had enough memories to recall that there should have been at least a score of dragons present, encouraging them, chewing the memory sand and clay and contributing their own regurgitated saliva and memories to the process. But there weren't, and she was too tired to wonder how that lack might affect her.
A great weariness washed over her as she reached the point of making the neck of her case. It had to be constructed in a way that would eventually allow her to draw her head in and then seal it behind her. It came to her, slowly, that in previous generations, the dragons that had tended the serpents had sometimes helped them seal their cases. But Sisarqua knew better than to hope for that help. Only one hundred and twenty-nine serpents had massed at the mouth of the Serpent River to begin the desperate up-river migration to the traditional cocooning grounds. Maulkin, their leader, had been gravely concerned that so few of them were female. Less than a third, he had said. In any cocooning year, there should have been hundreds of serpents, and at least as many females as males.
The difficulties of the journey had substantially reduced the number of the survivors. She was not certain how many had reached the cocooning beach. About ninety, she thought, but the graver news was that less than twenty of the survivors were female. And serpents continued to die. Even as she thought of it, she heard Tintaglia speak to a human worker. "He is dead. Bring your hammers and break up his cast. Work it back into the troughs of memory clay. Let the others keep alive the memories of his ancestors." She could not see, but she heard the sounds of Tintaglia dragging the dead serpent from his unfinished cocoon. She smelled his flesh and blood as the dragon devoured his carcass. Hunger and weariness cramped her.
Even so, there was but one dragon to shepherd all of them through this process. A single dragon aided them, where once there would have been scores of them. Tintaglia could offer them little more than encouragement. What could one dragon do when faced with the needs of so many sea serpents?
Like the gossamer recollection of a dream, an ancestral memory wafted briefly through her mind. "Not right," she thought to herself. "None of this is right, none of it is as it should be." This was the river, but where were the broad meadows and the oak forests that had once edged it? The lands that bounded the river were swamp and marsh, bog and meadow, with scarcely a bit of firm ground to be seen. If the humans had not labored to reinforce the bank of this beach with stone before the serpents arrived, they would have churned it to muck. Her ancestral serpent memories told her of broad sunny meadows and a rich bank of clay. Dragons should have been clawing chunks of clay free and churning the clay and water to slurry, dragons should have been putting the final seals on their cases. And all of this should have been happening under a bright summer sun in the heat of the day.
She gave a shudder of weariness, and the ancestral memory faded beyond her recall. She was only a single serpent, struggling to weave the case that would protect her from winter's cold while her body underwent its transformation. A single serpent, cold and weary, finally come home after an eternity of roaming. Her mind drifted back over the last few months.
The final leg of her journey had been an endless battle against the river current and the rocky shallows that the tangle of sea serpents had to negotiate. She was a newcomer to Maulkin's tangle and astonished by it. Never had she seen so many serpents traveling together. Some, it was true, were degenerated to little more than animals, and others were more than half-mad with confusion and fear. Forgetfulness had settled a shroud over far too many of them. Yet as they had followed the prophet-serpent with the gleaming gold false-eyes in a long row down his flanks, she had almost recalled the ancient migration route. All around her, both spirits and intelligence had rallied in the embattled serpents. This arduous journey had felt right, more right than anything had for a very long time.
Yet even so, she had known moments of doubt. Her ancestral memories of the river told her that the waterway they sought flowed steady and deep, and teemed with fish. This river had a deep channel that a ship could thread, but it threaded a wandering way inland and nothing about it spoke to her vague ancestral memories. It could not be the way to their ancient cocooning grounds. Yet Maulkin had doggedly insisted that it was.
Her doubt had been so strong that she had nearly turned back. She had almost fled the icy river of milky water, nearly fled back to the warmer waters of the oceans to the south. But though she might doubt Maulkin's visions, Tintaglia's authority she had never questioned. The blue and silver dragon had recognized the immense serpent, and assisted the strange vessel that guided his tangle. Hourly, she had flown above them, trumpeting her encouragement, as she shepherded the tangle of serpents north, and then up this river. The swimming had been good as far as the two-legs city of Trehaug. Wearily but without difficulty, they had followed the ship that led the way.
But past that city comprised of dwellings slung in the trees, the river had changed. It spread and widened. Wide belts of gravel and sand invaded it, and dangling vines and reaching roots choked the edges of it. This river became shallow and meandering, toothed with rocks in some places and then choked with reeds in the next stretch. Sisarqua had wanted to turn back, but like the other serpents, she had allowed herself to be bullied and driven by the dragon. Up the river they had gone. With over one hundred of her kind, she had flopped and floundered through the inadequate ladder of log corrals that the humans had built in an attempt to provide deeper water for their progress through the final, killing shallows.
Many had died on that part of their journey. Small injuries that would have healed quickly in the caressing salt water of the sea became festering ulcers in the river's harsh flow. After their long banishment at sea, many of the great serpents were feeble both in mind and spirit. So many things were wrong. Too many years had passed since they had hatched. They should have made this journey decades ago, as healthy young serpents, and they should have migrated up the river in the warmth of summer, when their bodies were sleek with fat. Dragons by the dozen should have guided them and aided them. Instead they came in the rains and misery of winter, thin and battered and old, far older than any serpents had ever been before.
Version Seven: Prologue
Serpents' End
They had come so far, yet now that she was here, the years of journeying were already fading in her mind, giving way to the desperate needs of the present. Sisarqua opened her jaws and bent her neck. It was hard for the sea serpent to focus her thoughts. It had been years since she had been completely out of the water; not since she had hatched on Other's Island had she felt dry land under her body. She was far from Other's Island hot dry sand and balmy waters now. Winter was closing in on this forested land beside the chill river. The mud bank under her coiled length was hard and abrasive. The air was too cold and her gills were drying out too quickly. There was nothing she could do about that except to work more swiftly. She scooped her jaws into the immense trough and came up with her mouth full of a slurry of silver-streaked clay mixed with river water. She threw her great head back and gulped it down. It was gritty and cold and strangely delicious. Another mouthful, another swallow. And again.
She had lost count of how many gulps of the grainy soup she had taken down when finally she felt the ancient reflex trigger. She worked the muscles in her throat, and felt her poison sacs swell. Her fleshy mane stood out all around her throat in a toxic quivering ruff. She shuddered down her full length and then opened her jaws wide. She strained, gagging, and then met with success. She clamped and locked her jaws to contain the liquid, releasing it only as a thin, powerful stream.
She regurgitated a fine liquid thread of clay, bile and saliva tinged with her venom. With difficulty, she turned her head and then coiled her tail closer to her body. The extrusion was like a silvery grey thread, thick and heavy. Her head wove as she layered the wet winding over herself.
She felt a heavy tread nearby and then the shadow of the walking dragon passed over her. Tintaglia paused and spoke to her. "Good. Good, that's right. A nice even layer to begin with, one with no gaps. That's right."
Sisarqua could not spare a glance for the blue and silver queen who praised her. Creating the cocoon that would shelter her during the remaining months of winter took all her attention. She focused on it with a desperation born of weariness. She needed sleep. She longed to sleep. She knew that if she slept now, she would never wake again in any form. "Finish it," she thought to herself. "Finish it, and then I can rest."
All around her on the mucky river bank, other serpents labored at the same task, with varying degrees of success. Between and amongst them, humans toiled. Some carried buckets of water from the river. Others mined chunks of silvery clay from a nearby much bank and loaded into barrows. Youngsters trundled the barrows to a hastily constructed log enclosure. Water and clay were dumped into the immense trough; other workers used shovels and paddles to break up the lumps of clay and render the water and clay into a loose porridge. It was this slurry that Sisarqua had consumed as the major ingredients for manufacturing her case. The lesser ingredients were just as essential. Her body added the toxins that would plunge her into a sleep half a breath above death. Her saliva contributed her memories to the keeping of the cocoon. Not just her own memories of her time as a serpent, but all the memories of those who had gone before her spooled around her as she wove her case.
Missing were the memories she should have received from watchful dragons tending the serpents as they made their cocoons. She had enough memories to recall that there should have been at least a score of dragons present, encouraging them, chewing the memory sand and clay and contributing their own regurgitated saliva and history to the process. But there weren't, and she was too tired to wonder how that lack might affect her.
A great weariness washed over her as she reached the point of making the neck of her case. It had to be constructed in a way that would eventually allow her to draw her head in and then seal it behind her. It came to her, slowly, that in previous generations, the dragons that had tended the serpents had sometimes helped them seal their cases. But Sisarqua knew better than to hope for that help. Only one hundred and twenty-nine serpents had massed at the mouth of the Serpent River to begin the desperate up-river migration to the traditional cocooning grounds. Maulkin, their leader, had been gravely concerned that so few of them were female. Less than a third, he had said. In any cocooning year, there should have been hundreds of serpents, and at least as many females as males. They had waited so long in the seas, and then come so far, hoping to restore their species. It was hard to hear that they might be too few and too late.
The difficulties of the journey had substantially reduced the number of the survivors. She was not certain how many had reached the cocooning beach. About ninety, she thought, but the graver news was that less than twenty of the survivors were female. And serpents continued to die. Even as she thought of it, she heard Tintaglia speak to a human worker. "He is dead. Bring your hammers and break up his cast. Work it back into the troughs of memory clay. Let the others keep alive the memories of his ancestors." She could not see, but she heard the sounds of Tintaglia dragging the dead serpent from his unfinished cocoon. She smelled his flesh and blood as the dragon devoured his carcass. Hunger and weariness cramped her. She wished she could share Tintaglia's meal but knew that it was too late for eating now. The clay was in her gut and must be processed.
And Tintaglia needed the food. She was the sole dragon left alive to shepherd all of them through this process. A single dragon aided them, where once there would have been scores of them. Sisarqua did not know where she got her strength. She had been flying near non-stop for days to bring them here, and had shepherded them up the river, so unfamiliar to them after decades of change. She could not have much reserves left. Tintaglia could offer them little more than encouragement. What could one dragon do when faced with the needs of so many sea serpents?
Like the gossamer recollection of a dream, an ancestral memory wafted briefly through her mind. "Not right," she thought to herself. "None of this is right, none of it is as it should be." This was the river, but where were the broad meadows and the oak forests that had once edged it? The lands that bounded the river now were swamp and boggy forest, with scarcely a bit of firm ground to be seen. If the humans had not labored to reinforce the bank of this beach with stone before the serpents arrived, they would have churned it to muck. Her ancestral serpent memories told her of broad sunny meadows and a rich bank of clay. Dragons should have been clawing chunks of clay free and churning the clay and water to slurry, dragons should have been putting the final seals on their cases. And all of this should have been happening under a bright summer sun in the heat of the day.
She gave a shudder of weariness, and the ancestral memory faded beyond her recall. She was only a single serpent, struggling to weave the case that would protect her from winter's cold while her body underwent its transformation. A single serpent, cold and weary, finally come home after an eternity of roaming. Her mind drifted back over the last few months.
The final leg of her journey had seemed an endless battle against the river current and the rocky shallows. She was a newcomer to Maulkin's tangle and astonished by it. Usually a tangle numbered twenty to forty serpents. But Maulkin had gathered every serpent he could find and led them north. It had made foraging for food along the way far more difficult, but he had deemed it necessary. Never had she seen so many serpents traveling together. Some, it was true, were degenerated to little more than animals, and others were more than half-mad with confusion and fear. Forgetfulness had settled a shroud over far too many of them. Yet as they had followed the prophet-serpent with the gleaming gold false-eyes in a long row down his flanks, she had almost recalled the ancient migration route. All around her, both spirits and intelligence had rallied in the embattled serpents. This arduous journey had felt right, more right than anything had for a very long time.
Yet even so, she had known moments of doubt. Her ancestral memories of the river told her that the waterway they sought flowed steady and deep, and teemed with fish. Her ancient dreams told her of rolling hills and meadows edged with open forest. This river had a deep channel that a ship could thread, but it threaded a wandering way inland and nothing about it spoke to her vague ancestral memories. Towering forest thick with creepers and brush edged this waterway. It could not be the way to their ancient cocooning grounds. Yet Maulkin had doggedly insisted that it was.
Her doubt had been so strong that she had nearly turned back. She had almost fled the icy river of milky water, nearly fled back to the warmer waters of the oceans to the south. Dimly, she recalled that perhaps she might have done that before, not once, but often. But this time, when she lagged or started to turn aside from the path, others of the serpents came after her and drove her back into the tangle. She had had to follow.
But though she might doubt Maulkin's visions, Tintaglia's authority she had never questioned. The blue and silver dragon had recognized Maulkin as their leader and assisted the strange vessel that guided his tangle. The dragon had flown above them, trumpeting her encouragement, as she shepherded the tangle of serpents north, and then up this river. The swimming had been good as far as the two-legs city of Trehaug. Wearily but without excessive difficulty, they had followed the ship that led the way.
But past that city comprised of dwellings slung in the trees, the river had changed. The guiding ship had halted there, unable to enter the shallows beyond the city. Past Trehaug, the river spread and widened, and splintered into tributaries. Wide belts of gravel and sand invaded it, and dangling vines and reaching roots choked the edges of it. The river they followed became shallow and meandering, toothed with rocks in some places and then choked with reeds in the next stretch. Sisarqua had wanted to turn back, but like the other serpents, she had allowed herself to be bullied and driven by the dragon. Up the river they had gone. With over one hundred of her kind, she had flopped and floundered through the inadequate ladder of log corrals that the humans had built in an attempt to provide deeper water for their progress through the final, killing shallows.
Many had died on that part of their journey. Small injuries that would have healed quickly in the caressing salt water of the sea became festering ulcers in the river's harsh flow. After their long banishment at sea, many of the great serpents were feeble both in mind and spirit. So many things were wrong. Too many years had passed since they had hatched. They should have made this journey decades ago, as healthy young serpents, and they should have migrated up the river in the warmth of summer, when their bodies were sleek with fat. Dragons by the dozen should have guided them and aided them. Instead they came in the rains and misery of winter, thin and battered and speckled with barnacles, but mostly old, far older than any serpents had ever been before.
The single dragon that watched over them was less than a year's turning out of her own cocoon. Instead of a horde of dragons celebrating their return to the cocooning beaches near Cassarick, lone Tintaglia flew overhead, glinting silver whenever the winter sunlight broke through the clouds to touch her. She flew above and before them, and circled back often to trumpet encouragement to them. "Not far!" she kept calling down to them. "Keep struggling. Beyond the ladder, the waters deepen again and you can once more swim freely. Keep moving."
And most of them did. Some did not. Some were simply too battered, too weary, too thin for such a journey. One big orange one died draped across the log wall of the penned water, unable to drag himself any farther. Sisarqua was close to him when his great wedge shaped head dropped suddenly beneath the water. Impatiently, she waited for him to move on. Then his spiky mane of tendrils suddenly spasmed and released a final rush of toxins. They were faint and feeble, the last reflexive defenses of his body, yet they clearly signaled to any serpents within their range that he was dead. The smell and taste of them in the water summoned her to the feast.
Sisarqua did not hesitate. She was the first to tear into his body. She filled her mouth with his flesh, gulped it down and had torn another chunk free before the rest of the tangle even realized the opportunity. The sudden nourishment dizzied her almost as much as the rush of his memories did. This was the way of her kind, not to waste the bodies of the dead but to take from them both nourishment and knowledge. Just as every dragon carried within him the memories of his entire line, so did every serpent retain the memories of those who had gone before him. Or was supposed to. Sisarqua and every other serpent wallowing dismally along beside her had remained in serpent form too long. Memories had faded and with them, intelligence. Even some of those who now strove to complete the migration and become dragons were reduced to brutish shadows of what they should have been.
Her head had darted in, mane abristle, and she seized another sizeable chunk of the orange serpent's flesh. Her brain whirled with memories of rich fishing and of nights spent singing with his tangle under the jewel bright skies. That memory was very old. She suspected it had been years if not scores of years since any tangle had risen from the Plenty to the Lack to lift their voices in praise of the star speckled sky above them.
Others had crowded her then, hissing and lifting manes in threat to one another as they strove to share the feast. Acting like animals. She tore a final chunk of his flesh free and then wallowed over the log that had stopped the orange. She gulped the hunk of warm meat down whole and felt it distend her gullet pleasantly. The sky, she thought, and in response, she felt a brief stir of the orange serpent's dim dragon memories. The sky, open and wide as the sea. Soon she would sail it again. Not much farther, Tintaglia had promised.