Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following a brief missive that warns of illness among the cotes, “Dragon Dreams” opens with Sintara dreaming of easy flight and a full belly as she returns to Kelsingra. The dream consists of ancestral memories, tantalizingly incomplete, from which she wakes amid a storm, cramped and cold and hungry. Grousing about Thymara and the other keepers, and the arrangements they have made, she reviews the current situation and stalks out into a nearby meadow. There, she reflects further, and she begrudgingly attempts to practice flight in the pre-dawn dark.

Meanwhile, Alise huddles against the inclement weather, reflecting on her situation (taken regularly to Kelsingra by Heeby) and the likely whereabouts of Leftrin (aboard the Tarman, nearing Cassarick), mourning for the changes she know will come. She determines to wander and take in all she can of the city, and her progress through it is described. Exploring, she finds a room carved in figures of jesters and performers, which she accidentally activates with a touch upon a vein of magic in the stone. It startles her momentarily, and she soon mourns for what she knows will be lost.

Alise leaves the room, finding the weather cleared and herself recalling Leftrin’s words to her upon his parting a month previously. She settles in to eat lunch, forcing herself away from thoughts of material comforts that intrude upon her, and her continued survey of Kelsingra is detailed. Proceeding further, Alise finds herself surrounded by the memories embedded in the stones of the city, losing some time amid them. As she goes yet further, though, she finds a room that seems to have been despoiled already, which revelation angers her, and she blames Rapskal for it. She does realize, however, that the room in which she finds herself shows a map of Kelsingra, which revelation brings her hope, and she makes her way out to where Heeby awaits her.

The present chapter reflects at some length on the likelihood of destruction in the interest of moneymaking. I cannot help but see a number of parallels at work, both to the early United States (to which I have long held the Traders are akin) and to contemporary events. Alise’s lament that the statues of Kelsingra will be pillaged, the worked materials separated from their contexts and auctioned off a piece at a time, is one that echoes comments about older (and still too-current) museum and antiquary practices, such things as have led to bits and pieces of grave offerings and monuments being taken across countries and continents, displayed as showcases for passers-by to gawk at them or hoarded in collections so that dragon-like collectors can gaze upon them in greedy delight, taking them as evidence of their superiority. And they also seem to ring to me of the kind of comment I hear from folks who’ve lived in the Hill Country longer or more continuously than I have, that people coming in and building up what had previously been rolling hills of oak and cedar and mesquite that echoed flatly in the still heat of summer air ruins the very thing that they seek who come here.

It is a mark of good artwork in any medium that it speaks both to contexts of composition and contexts of reception clearly.

It is of some interest to me that, for all the work that the Rain Wilders did to harvest the leavings of the Elderlings’s other settlements, they seem to have little understanding of what those things harvested do. Admittedly, the Skill seems to be largely a thing of the Six Duchies, but, given broader contexts, it does seem bound up with the Elderlings, and it is strange that the calling-ritual conducted in the Six Duchies would have found no respondents among the Rain Wilders and Bingtowners, especially given that those touched by the Rain Wilds are suggested to have some sensitivity to the Skill. It’s another instance, to my eye, of problems attendant upon canon-welding, but, while I might note that a thing is there and causes some issue, I acknowledge that I have not the insight or ability to offer any advice. And it would be presumptuous as all hell to think that I ought to, anyway.

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