Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2)

by Robin Hobb

“Eventually, another folk found them. The Rain Wild Traders, an offshoot of the Bingtown Traders, dug into the ancient buried cities, seeking treasure. Much did they find there. Much of what you saw today, offered as gifts to Kettricken, the flame gems, the jidzin, even the fabric, is the trove of those Elderling dwellings. They also found the cocooned dragons. They had no idea that was what they were, of course. They thought … who knows what they thought at first? Perhaps they seemed like massive sections of tree trunks. So they refer to it: wizardwood. They cut them up and used the cases as lumber, discarding the half-formed dragons within. That is the material they made their Liveships from, and those strange vessels have the roots of their vitality in the dragons they would have been. Most of the half-formed dragons were dead, I suspect, long before their cocoons were cut up. But one, at least, was not. And a chain of events that I am not fully privy to exposed that dragon cocoon to sunlight. It hatched. Tintaglia emerged.”