Dragonbards (17 page)

Bluepiper rose beneath him, a mountain of
dragon. Aven sprawled onto Bluepiper’s back, Bluepiper’s sheltering
wings blocking out the terror of empty space. Aven was still
squeezing the vamviper queen. Below them, five hundred vamvipers
faltered and wheeled, screaming at the death of their queen.

*

By the time Teb reached Nightraider, Camery
lay unconscious across the black dragon’s neck, her face and hands
a mass of blood, the lyre beneath her shoulder. Teb pulled the lyre
free. When he sounded the first silver note, the vamvipers exploded
away from him. He brought out the lyre’s voice with all the power
he knew—and all across the battlefield the vamvipers swept up away,
hissing. The remaining dark soldiers turned their shivering horses
and fled. High up, the black cloud of vamvipers waited, faltering
and shifting, confused by the loss of their queen. But as they
swung in a black wave across the wind, a vision touched them and
spoke to them.

On the battlefield, a Door had appeared,
opening into darkness.

A woman stood within, beside a white dragon,
a woman who seemed covered with light, her gown and tawny hair
shining and the golden sphere at her throat burning like fire.

She was beckoning. Teb tried to cry out to
her but could only swallow. She was beckoning to the black cloud
above him. It trembled and shifted as the leaderless, panicked
vamvipers darted and flew at one another.

Come through,
she cried.

In Teb’s hands, the lyre’s song formed into
words:
Go through. Go through the
Door. . . .

The vamvipers swept back and forth, stirring
a stinking wind.

Go through,
the lyre cried.
Go
back to your own world. Go through the Door. Go
back. . . .

But the shifting cloud fled away toward the
mountain and hovered above it like restless black smoke.

Meriden cried,
Come through! Come through
the Door! Come through to me!

The vamvipers returned, fluttering and
tumbling across the wind.

Come through. . . .

The cloud shivered and paused. Then the Door
sucked them through into blackness, as if sucking up blowing
soot.

Time hung still in white emptiness.

When it began again, Meriden was gone. The
Door was gone.

I fear the castle of doors, yet I am drawn
to it. Perhaps it is those very conflicts within us that mark the
true mystery of our humanity.

*

Teb stood unmoving, seeing nothing but the
after-vision of Meriden framed within the black Door. He held
Camery close when she clutched at him, white and bleeding and
shaken. In both their minds, the vision of their mother burned.

She was alive. They had seen her. She had
pulled the vamvipers through. They had heard her voice, stirring a
painful childhood longing in them both.

All around them, the battlefield began to
come to life. Soldiers rose, horses staggered up. Folk who had
stood frozen by the vision began to assess their hurts and to kneel
over the sprawling wounded.

Camery touched the lyre. “Do the vamvipers
swarm around her now? In that other world? How can she battle
them?”

They looked at each other, stricken. “Don’t
think that,” Teb said. “She has great power. Perhaps she has
trapped them somewhere, away from her.”

“She can’t always have had such power. She
would have used it to come home. Or to drive Quazelzeg out.”

“This time, the power of the lyre was with
her.” He touched the lyre’s strings.

It was silent, drained of its magic.

“Come,” she said. “The dragons need us.”

The two dragons were very quiet, waiting
patiently for their bards, their poor faces streaked with blood.
Camery put her arms up to Nightraider and held his great head to
her. Both dragons’ eyelids were slashed and bleeding so they could
hardly see. She began to sponge Nightraider’s lids with water from
her flask as Teb examined Seastrider’s eyes.

The dragons’ eyes seemed undamaged. Their
rough-scaled lids had served them well. Teb and Camery cleaned the
blood away and stopped the bleeding by applying pressure with damp
cloths. It was not long before both dragons felt better, tossing
their heads and sweeping into the sky again, filled with fierce
relief.

“They were frightened,” Camery said.

“Yes. They’re all right now. Let me see your
throat.” He pulled her leather collar away and mopped the blood off
her neck.

The blood was from slashes along her jaw,
barely missing the arteries. As he sponged her wounds, he was
filled with a private, and terrible, thought.

Did Meriden know that he had led the
vamvipers here? He had failed her dismally—he had failed them all.
Thakkur’s words burned in his thoughts.
Do not underestimate
Quazelzeg and what he is capable of. Do not let your pride lead
you. . . .

But he had. He had done that and more. He
had challenged Quazelzeg too soon, before he was ready. His
weakness and impatience had almost killed them all.

He did not belong with the bards. He did not
belong with dragons. As he watched the dragonlings descend out of
the morning sky, he was filled with self-loathing and wanted only
to be alone.

He had led the vamvipers to them in an act
of sedition as evil as any the pawns of the dark could have
accomplished. And, he thought with alarm, he
was
the dark’s
pawn now.

The dragonlings landed in a storm of wings.
Marshy and Aven and Darba slid down and grabbed each other in a
terrified, shaken hug.

“You did it,” Darba screamed, shaking Aven.
“You killed the queen!”

“You were wonderful,” Marshy cried.

“I was scared,” said Aven. They hugged the
dragonlings and looked at Teb, waiting for a word of praise.

But Teb had turned away, too sick in spirit
to praise anyone. He walked away by himself across the gory
battlefield. Seastrider followed him, her eyes blazing with
anger.

“Stop it, Tebriel. You are wallowing in
self-pity!”

“I am a traitor. I nearly got everyone
killed. I could have lost all Tirror. I am not a fit bard.”

“That is stupid! You are not responsible for
all of Tirror. You take too much on yourself—you wallow in vanity
as well as self-pity!”

He stared at her, shocked and hurt.

“The vamvipers would have found us
anyway—regardless of you! Don’t you think Quazelzeg could guess
that we would attack Sivich?”

“It would have taken them longer. The battle
would have been finished.”

“You don’t know that. You are awash in
senseless remorse. You will do more harm by that than by bringing
any kind of evil here. Turn around, Tebriel, and look. Everyone is
watching us. Do you mean to make a complete fool of yourself?”

Teb turned. The bards stood looking at him.
Behind them the dragons stared. He saw Thakkur, standing on a rise,
alone, watching him. Suddenly furious, he turned and went back to
the bards and stood defiantly waiting for their censure.

We know your pain,
Colewolf said.
How can we help but know it? Don’t you think, Tebriel, that you
do terrible harm by turning away from us? Don’t you think you
insult us? We need each other—we need you very much.

“You cannot simply stop being a bard,”
Camery said. “You cannot simply stop bearing that responsibility
because of Quazelzeg’s poisons.” Her green eyes blazed as fiercely
as Seastrider’s. “Any of us would have done the same, filled with
his tortures and his drugs.” She stepped close to him and touched
his cheek. “But, Teb, neither can you take on more than your
share.”

We are with you,
Colewolf said,
not against you.

‘Together,” Kiri said, “we can drive out the
evil.” She took his hand, looking at him deeply. “We freed the
children, Teb. We have two new bards—and it was at great cost to
you. We will never abandon you. Do not abandon us. Fight beside us,
not against us!”

He wanted to shout, I can’t fight. He felt
so tired, drained, with nothing left inside but shame and
anger.

Yet as he stood there, he was sustained by
Kiri’s strength—by Camery’s strength, by the strength of all of
them. Kiri clung to him, wiping her fist across her eyes. In a
little while she said, “Come, there are stretchers to be made,
wounds to bind.” She knelt by her pack, to find bandages. When Teb
looked up, he saw Thakkur, still on a knoll, still watching him.
Teb wanted to go to him but was too ashamed.

All over the valley animals and men were
assessing their wounds and trying to help themselves, or to help
others. Hexet woke to lick his wounds, then nudge at other foxes.
Three wolves struggled up. Five others lay dead. Elmmira made her
way slowly to Teb and Kiri. They examined the vamviper bites deep
in her shoulder, and Kiri unstrapped her flask to wash them.

Mitta and Hanni came across the body-strewn
meadow, carrying packs filled with bandages and salves. They
stopped to touch and whisper, to examine wounds and clean and
bandage them. All around them soldiers and animals crouched over
the fallen, calling their names, weeping for the dead. Small owls
began to appear from the mountain. The big owls, Red Unat among
them, had taken their toll of vamvipers, but they were wounded,
too. Hanni brought salves to the bards and a flask of Mitta’s
soothing draft. Everyone kept glancing toward the mountains, half
expecting another attack. Soon Camery sent the three bard children
and the dragonlings winging up, to scan the mountains and coasts.
Still Thakkur watched Teb. At last, Teb went to him.

“You find me a failure,” Teb said. “I have
failed. I did not heed your advice. I underestimated Quazelzeg, and
he—”

Thakkur interrupted, holding up one white
paw. “I find you a hero for enduring such tortures.”

Teb shook his head. “You told me about
pride— about taking too much on myself. I walked into Quazelzeg’s
lair and—and . . .” He stared at Thakkur, stricken.
“Am I one of them now?”

“That is melodramatic, Tebriel. You are a
dragonbard. You are the King of Auric. Perhaps . . .”

Teb stared at him miserably. “Perhaps
what?”

“Perhaps . . . you had better
start acting like both.”

Teb looked at Thakkur, his look filled with
bitterness, then he turned away.

“Neither bard nor king allows himself anger
beyond self-discipline, Tebriel. A leader tempers his
anger—particularly anger at himself. He controls and uses it.”

Teb turned to look back at Thakkur.

“I have absolute faith in you, Tebriel—in
your goodness, in your ultimate good sense.” Thakkur put out a
paw.

Teb hesitated. Then he knelt and took
Thakkur’s paw. Their eyes held for a long moment, in which Teb
remembered much.

We
must
confront the dark
invaders. We must choose the horrors of war, or we will lose the
freedom to choose. Perhaps too many of us have already lost that
freedom.

*

From across the battlefield, the rebel
leaders began to gather. Ebis the Black came galloping up
surrounded by his officers, sporting a bandage around his forehead
and another on his arm. His black beard was matted with blood, and
there were wounds across his face. He shouted to see the bards
alive, leaped from the saddle, and hugged them nearly hard enough
to break bones.

“Cursed, blood-sucking bats. We lost twenty
men.” He glanced toward the ridge as if he expected another
attack.

“Camery has sent a patrol,” Teb said.

“Very good,” Ebis said, giving Camery a look
of approval. He joined the soldiers and otters in improvising
stretchers. “I can take the worst wounded to Ratnisbon Palace,” he
said, “those who can be carried that far. My folk will care for
them skillfully.”

While Ebis’s soldiers dug out a huge common
grave for the human soldiers, the bards buried the animals with
solemn ceremony. They marked their grave with stones laid in a
circle to signify the endless sphere of life. The bards and dragons
wove a song for them, and the living animals bowed down and
grieved.

The dragonlings and children returned to say
there were no troops beyond the mountains, no ships on the sea, no
disturbance around Nightpool. There was a moment of powerful
feelings as they said farewell to Ebis and those who had fought
beside them, then the bards mounted up, the dragons lifted fast,
and they headed for Auric Palace.

They sped across a light wind, the dragons
stretching in wide, free sweeps, filled with the joy of freedom and
with the healing silence after the shouting and screams of war. The
bards looked at each other between glinting wings. This was
freedom, this weightless lifting on the wind. They winged through a
mass of heavy cloud and broke out into sunlight above Auric’s broad
green meadows, skirted by the sea beyond. Rising from the meadows
alone stood Auric palace, its slate roof reflecting the sun.

Smoke rose beyond the north wall; when they
were close, they could see that troops were burning trash.

The palace gardens were dry and weedy, the
orchard trees dead. They could see broken windows, and some of the
roof slates were gone. But no neglect could mar the symmetry of the
five wings built of pale stone, the angled courtyard wall, the wide
expanses of windows, the twenty chimneys.

Of all the gardens, only their mother’s
private walled garden was alive and green. Fed by a sunken spring,
it was a tangle of branches and vines. It looked as if no one had
entered it in years.

Four years, Camery thought. Four years since
they had seen their home—twice that since anyone had cared for the
grounds or the palace.

A crowd had gathered on the meadow outside
the open gates, their shouts and cheers filling the wind. The
dragons glided to the meadow in a ceremony of sweeping wings, and
the bards slid down into welcoming arms—all but Teb. He remained
astride.