Dragonbards (6 page)

There is an island off the coast of Auric
where the speaking otters live in secrecy. I do not talk of it, or
go there, for I fear some spy within our own palace might find it.
But I am warmed to know of it.

*

Teb held the white otter’s shoulders. “What
else did your vision show, of the danger to Nightpool?”

“I saw armies on the mainland. Soldiers were
looking toward the otter island and sharpening weapons.”

“Has it already happened? Or is it a vision
of the future?”

“I don’t know—I can’t be sure. I felt mostly
their hatred. I—I couldn’t see any more.” Tears threatened again.
The little otter was all worn out. Camery and Kiri fed him more
fish soup, then took him away to tuck him down in one of the
sleeping alcoves, covered with warm blankets. Teb heard them
singing to him.

He knew they must go at once. Perhaps only
they knew of this, through Hanni’s vision. Perhaps only they could
save the otter nation.

But how could they travel? Iceflower was not
strong enough for the journey of a day and a night across the sea.
And they must take Hanni with them, yet Hanni, too, was weak. But
Teb felt strongly that Hanni belonged with Thakkur—if Thakkur was
still alive.

That thought tore at him, sickening and
infuriating him.

Marshy tugged at Teb, staring up, the little
boy’s gray eyes serious. “Iceflower will be strong enough. You
can’t leave us. And I won’t leave her. She flew today, Tebriel. She
is getting well.”

We must go together,
Colewolf said.
It is the very young, Tebriel, who carry the spirit the dark
fears most. We cannot leave them.

“We’ll go together,” Teb said. There was
nothing else to do. It was too dangerous to leave the dragonling
here—the dwarfs could not protect her. They must leave Yoorthed
together.

The dwarfs were already packing food and
filling the bards’ waterskins. The dragons went quickly to make a
meal of shark and returned with a rich catch of salmon for the
dwarf nation. It was the only gift the bards were able to leave,
except for their gratitude and affection.

The bards had a hurried meal. Camery tucked
the sleeping otter into the sling, they thanked Flam and the
dwarfs, and mounted up. They lifted quickly, heading east.
Snowblitz and the three young males moved out fast, but Iceflower
and the older dragons paced themselves against the hard journey
ahead. As they swung over the edge of the land, they watched for
ships. The dragonlings swept up and down the coast looking, but the
sea was empty.

Once they were away from land, the wind blew
so cold, their eyes watered and their faces went numb. The young
dragons flew close around Iceflower, to shelter her. Her stride was
not strong, and near to noon she began to fly unevenly, dropping
toward the waves. The dragons settled onto the sea so she could
rest. It was not good to be still on this sea; they had hunted huge
shark here. Iceflower slept, her wings against the water for
balance, her head tucked down on her shoulder. The other dragons
swam in a circle around her, the sea crashing up their sides. Teb
waited with ill-concealed impatience.

Kiri said, “Maybe she’ll be stronger once
she’s rested.” She studied Teb’s lean face, red from the icy wind.
His urgency to move on unsettled her. “Will you tell me about
Nightpool? Will you tell me what it’s truly like? Not from bard
memory, but—but the way you feel about it.”

He looked back at her, half irritated, half
touched. It was a painful time to think about Nightpool—yet he
couldn’t stop thinking about it, seeing the island empty, seeing
empty caves and blood staining the black stone cliffs.

“Please, Teb, tell me . . . how it
was for you, growing up there.” She watched him, saw him ease.

As the dragons rocked close together in the
sea, Teb took Kiri’s mittened hand and made a song of vision. He
showed her Nightpool’s hidden valley in the center of the island,
with its secret blue lake where the otter babies learned to swim.
He showed her the caves carved by the sea into the black stone rim
of the island, and inside the caves, the otters’ sleeping shelves
and the shelves they had carved to hold their sea treasures. He
showed her his own cave, his gold coins and rare shells that he had
found on the sea bottom, diving with the otters, and the warm
gull-feather quilt that Mitta had woven for him. He showed her
Mitta, as the little pudgy otter doctored him and changed the clay
dressing on his broken leg.

He took her beneath the green-lit sea to
swim through shafts of light and shadow beside sunken mountains,
playing chasing games with Charkky and Mikk. He showed her
Charkky’s mischievous underwater tricks and his own fear,
sometimes, of the huge moving shadows in the deep. He showed the
otters grooming air into their coats to keep warm in the sea, and
how they had learned to use the knives and spears Teb helped them
steal, and how, reluctantly, they had learned to use fire.

“When I was sick with fever, I slept in
Thakkur’s cave. I wasn’t any taller than Thakkur then. He used to
tell me tales at night before I went to sleep, tales of the sea, of
how the whales and porpoises sing, of giant fish deep down, and of
ghostly things hidden in the sea. He told of the sunken cities
where the old lands were flooded, how you could gather oysters from
a palace roof and swim through old, mysterious rooms.”

“You were happy there,” she said. “Now I
know what you were like when you were twelve years old. I wish—I
wish I’d been there with you.”

“I—so do I,” he said quietly. “It was a
perfect place, Kiri—learning to swim deep under the sea, all the
good shellfish I could eat—that was perfect once I found the flint
and a cookpot, so I didn’t have to eat it raw.”

“It was hard for you to leave
Nightpool.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t felt
. . . begun to think about the sky.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes deep and knowing.
“The dreams of dragons—of moving above the world, diving on the
wind . . .”

“Yes.” He looked and looked at her. They had
known the same longings, had stared up at the sky with the same
emptiness.

“But you went from Nightpool, really, to
seek the hydrus and kill it. Was it . . . was it
terrible?”

Surprised at himself, he shared his terror
of the three-headed black hydrus, with its cruel human faces. It
had carried him in its mouth, miles out into the sea. He showed her
his helpless desperation as he climbed away from it up the exposed
wall of the drowned city. He had clung to the top of the wall,
surrounded by endless miles of sea, shivering and sick. He let her
see how he felt as the hydras forced its twisted thoughts into his
mind, willing him to become its slave.

“But you defeated it. You killed it, Teb.”
Her look was deep and admiring.

He was silent, remembering.

“When—when you found that your mother had
been there in the sunken city—that she wasn’t dead after all—how
did you feel?”

Teb shook his head. “Angry at first, that
she had deceived us, that she let us think she was dead. But crazy
with excitement that she was alive. I wanted to go to her, through
the Doors to other worlds to search for her, but her dragon drove
me back.” He showed her the undersea Door, which was linked by a
warping of space into the Castle of Doors. He showed the white
dragon Dawncloud, rearing over him to make him stay back, then
charging through, to search alone, and the Door swinging closed.
Neither Meriden nor Dawncloud had returned.

“Endless worlds,” he said, “worlds filled
with evil.”

“There must be good worlds, too.”

“Yes. But it is the evil worlds that will
watch her as she looks for a way to destroy the dark. How could one
bard and one dragon survive among those worlds?”

“She is strong, Teb. Surely the good powers
among those worlds will help her.” Their look was long and close.
She knew his thoughts at that moment as clearly as her own.

Seastrider and Windcaller rocked quietly on
the sea, glancing at each other, filled with tenderness for the
bards they bore.

When Iceflower woke, they lifted fast,
spraying sheets of water, climbing up into a hard, racing wind that
battered them but carried them with strength. But still, they had
to drop to the sea every few hours so Iceflower could rest. Soon
the sun was falling behind them, and they had not made enough
miles. They rested as the sky turned red, and when they lifted up
through the darkening sky, their flight was even slower. Soon it
was deep night, and they were sweeping through low, tattered rain
clouds that soaked them with fine mist. Teb could not stop thinking
of the danger to Nightpool. And little Hanni was moaning and
thrashing, asleep in the leather sling.

Camery said, “He’s so restless, and he’s
been muttering. Shall I wake him?”

Teb looked through the mist toward Camery
and Nightraider. “No. What good to bring a vision now? We’re moving
as fast as we can. Let him sleep.” Maybe he didn’t want to know. He
was already strung tight, tethered by their slowness.

They rested again when the rain slaked.
Iceflower was weaker. There was danger that the dark would sense
them faltering over the middle of the sea. Teb sent Rockdrumlin and
Bluepiper to scout south for a small island where Iceflower could
rest more easily. It began to rain hard. Only Hanni, in his leather
sling, remained dry. Their minds were filled with thoughts of dark
soldiers galloping toward Nightpool. Iceflower tried as hard as she
could, stumbling through the sky. When Windcaller moved near to
Teb, he could just see the curve of Kiri’s cheek between white
wings.

You mean to go on alone.

I must.

I want to come with you.

They looked at each other in the darkness.
The two dragons swept close, and he reached across space for Kiri’s
hand, their arms freezing in the cold wind.

Alone, you might not stop the dark’s attack.
But two dragons, one from each side—dragon fire driving them
back . . .

She was right. And he wanted her with him.
But he didn’t want to endanger her. Yet that was not fair to a
bard. A sense of battle filled him, of cold urgency, and when the
two dragonlings returned with news of a rocky islet, he looked
across at her and nodded.

Seven dragons headed for the island.
Seastrider and Windcaller banked away, east, beating fast against
the wind, driving themselves on with powerful wings until, ahead in
the gray dawn, shone the first small islands, scattered black on
the reflecting sea. Kiri pushed back her hood and leaned down,
looking. As the sky lightened, the vast mosaic of islands and small
continents lay mottled across the gleaming sea, stretching away to
their left. Windthorst was straight ahead, Teb’s own land of Auric
describing the south quarter. They stayed above cloud, looking.

There was no sign of battle, no movement.
They swept over Auric’s green meadows but saw no figure near the
palace, not even a horse.
So empty,
Kiri said. Teb studied
the palace, and was filled with homesickness. And though the land
might look deserted, they sensed that it was not. The dragons
lifted and headed for Nightpool, a black speck off the eastern
coast.

They circled the little black island. White
breakers licked its seaward cliffs. Nothing stirred on the rocks or
in the sea. They dropped low but saw no otter fishing or gathering
clams or playing in the shallows. Teb and Seastrider settled onto
the water as Windcaller swept away north, along the coast.

Kiri leaned between Windcaller’s wings to
search, but no army moved below them—they saw no sign of battle, no
ships on the sea. The land was as empty as if every living thing
had vanished from Windthorst. Not until they banked inland did they
see the torn field of battle, strewn with dead soldiers. They
dropped low, Windcaller’s wings casting shadows across the
bodies.

How strange,
Kiri said.

More than strange,
said Windcaller.
There was not one dead horse among the hundred or more dead
soldiers—and these were not foot soldiers; they wore the yellow
tunics of the dark warriors, who always went mounted.

The palace of Ebis the Black lies to the
north,
said Windcaller. They circled above the palace, hidden
by cloud, and saw horses in the stable yards, people on the streets
idling, selling goods; and they could hear music. Surely this city
had not been attacked. They headed for Nightpool.

Teb jumped from Seastrider’s back to the
rocks and climbed the steep cliff. As Seastrider rose to circle, he
started along the island’s rim toward Thakkur’s cave, tense with
dread.

The island was so still, the only sound the
pounding of the waves. By dawn the otters should be out of their
caves, fishing and playing. He paused on the ridge above the
entrance to Thakkur’s cave, afraid to go down, afraid of what he
would find.

At last, sword drawn, he moved down the wet,
black cliff, and stood beside the cave door, listening.

The soft, regular huffing of a snoring otter
filled the dim space. He grinned and sheathed his sword, then moved
inside.

He could see the white blur of Thakkur,
sprawled on his sleeping shelf.

“Thakkur.”

Another snore.

“Thakkur!”

The snores became uneven huffing. How many
times had Teb heard that sound. The white otter turned over and
began snoring evenly again.

“Thakkur! Wake up! The shad are
running!”

Thakkur sat up grabbing his sword in one
motion, his teeth bared in a fierce otter challenge.

“The shad are running. Come and fish with
me!”

Thakkur dropped his sword with a shout of
‘Tebriel!” and leaped to meet Teb’s outstretched arms, nearly
smothering him in warm, silky, fishy-smelling fur. ‘Tebriel! When
did you come? What—what has happened to bring you?”