The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy TraderвЂ™s wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragonsвЂ™ uncertain ancestral memories. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage-or die along the riverвЂ™s acidic muddy banks. But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons.

But these are not the dragons of the past. The disrupted lifecycle of dragons is being restored, with the first dragon eggs for centuries hatching on the banks of the Rain Wild River. The few who survive cannot use their wings earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh. The Dragon Keeper picks up where The Liveship Traders left off. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea-to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species.

But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans.

Dragon keeper the rain wild chronicles