Nightpool (11 page)

The old male died soon after breeding. The
female mourned him briefly, then left him on the stony ridge. She
moved high above clouds, south toward Lair Island, toward the peak
on which she herself had been hatched, toward that jutting tangle
of bare mountains that rises between Dubla and Fendreth-Teching.
She sensed other creatures there, but they would soon be gone, for
she would allow no threat to her eggs.

*

In Rushmarsh the crowd of otters exclaimed
over Teb. Their leader, Feskken of the pale tan coat and dark
muzzle, escorted the raft to shore, scowling at the few who
complained and sending them on other business. ‘The boy will die
without rest. He needs food and quiet until morning.”

Charkky and Mikk looked at Feskken
gratefully and pushed the raft in among the grasses of Rushmarsh,
where they would be safe for the night. There they fed Teb again
with chewed seafood and told their tale to Feskken and the
gathering of otters in the great meeting holt in the center of
Rushmarsh, a holt woven of the living green grasses of the marsh
and so quite invisible from any distance, as were all the holts in
Rushmarsh. Feskken sent two otters to pack Teb’s wounds with damp
moss and to feed him horserush tea to ease the pain. Teb hardly
knew he ate or drank, and kept falling in and out of consciousness.
The horserush tea made him sleep, and he knew nothing more until he
woke the next morning on the raft again when the first wave hit
him. He was sweating with pain again and shivering, and the otters
were afraid for him. They gave him more of the tea, carefully
stored in a clamshell, and again the pain eased, and Teb lay
watching the sea roll and heave, and drowsing.

“Mitta will help him,” Charkky said. “She’ll
know what to do.” He splashed more cold salty water over the
seaweed that packed Teb’s leg and touched the boy’s cheek with a
hesitant paw. Teb only blinked at him. “I wish he could tell us his
name,” said Charkky. But Teb couldn’t, he couldn’t dredge any name
up out of the darkness.

“He’s weary with pain,” Mikk said. “He’s
half gone in shock and sickness.”

The journey took half the day, the two
otters pushing and pulling the raft, a slow cumbersome way to
travel for those who could flip through the sea like hawking
swallows, weightless and free. By the time they sighted Nightpool,
both were weary indeed of the slow, willful raft that bucked and
halted at every wave. Teb had thrown up twice and was so white they
were sure he would die.

“We shouldn’t have brought him,” said Mikk.
“We should have left him on the battlefield.”

“You know you couldn’t have.”

“What is Thakkur going to say?”

“What is Ekkthurian going to say is more the
question.”

“Who cares what Ekkthurian says. He’s
nothing but a troublemaker.”

“Well, whatever anyone says, it’ll come soon
enough. Look, they’re gathered on the cliff, and there’s
Thakkur.”

*

The dragon took one meal after the breeding,
dropping down onto a mountain pasture to snatch up sheep and goats.
She ate only the aged and crippled, hunting the domestic mammals as
the wolf hunts, for food only, and selectively. She had seen other
dragons below her as she traveled, common dragons lairing in the
mountains over which she flew, but there were none like herself.
None frightened her, though if they came for her eggs, she would
kill them.

At midmorning she took possession of the
entire tangle of peaks that made up the Lair, driving out two
common dragons, several king lizards, and a black python, and
eating their eggs and newborn so they would not return to their
nests. Then she began to uproot trees from the countryside below
and, on the highest peak of the Lair, to weave her nest from the
trunks, curving the smaller branches and twigs inward to make a
soft bed. She sensed the five young within her with a terrible joy
of love and possession.

When she was ready to lay, she killed two
angora goats and three sheep, and laid them around the nest in a
circle, then ripped their bellies open. These would receive her
five eggs, to warm and nurture them. When all was ready, she
crouched, bellowed again to shake the sky, and began to lay.

*

Teb’s first view of Nightpool was a towering
black rock jutting up out of the pounding sea. Then of a crowd of
otters silhouetted along the high cliff looking down at him; then,
like birds swooping, they dove into the sea and came up bobbing all
around him, chattering and sending the raft rocking. Pretty soon he
was being carried up the steep cliff, biting his lip against the
pain of movement. It was all like a disjointed dream—some parts
fuzzy, or filled only with physical pain, then a scene coming
suddenly clear. Then he was in a cave, lying on a low stone shelf,
and otters stood looking down at him. One, a plump female, began to
examine his leg, feeling the broken bones with fingers so gentle
they were like the touch of a moth. She felt Teb’s fevered face,
then began barking directions in a sharp, keening voice that sent
young otters flying out the door. “I want wood for splints. Get
straight driftwood. I want horserush, crush it well and make the
tea with it, stir it and stir it until it is all brown. I want moss
dampened in the sea, and braided eelgrass for binding the splints.
And I want fresh clay in the biggest clamshell, well
moistened.”

When she had sent the young otters away, she
sat with her paw on Teb’s forehead, studying his face, her big dark
eyes very gentle. He could hear voices outside the cave, and some
of them were angry. Arguments flew in and out of his consciousness
as he dozed and woke.

Once he felt his head lifted, and then he
tasted the familiar horserush brew. And then later he felt a tug at
his clothes and saw that the female otter was cutting away his
trousers with a sharp clamshell. His boots were already gone. She
undid his tunic, lifted him again, and slid it off, then covered
him with a thick moss blanket. The chain was gone from his leg. It
had been on his left leg. It was his right leg that was so filled
with pain. He thought he remembered something like flame searing
off the chain, but nothing would come clear. There were voices
somewhere nearby, still arguing, but there was no one in the cave
save the small, pudgy female. He could hear the argument
clearly.

“The boy can’t be kept here; such a thing is
impossible.”

“Of course we’ll keep him. He needs
help.”

“He won’t even tell us his name. I call that
suspicious.”

“He
can’t
tell us his name. Can’t you
see how sick he is?”

“It’s far too dangerous to have a human
here. It’s never been done,” said the querulous voice. Teb tried to
shut the voices out. The pain was coming back, and he felt
sick.

“Hah! Thakkur can’t let him stay. The
council will vote him down.” And then the voices grew silent
suddenly.

Teb saw a white otter enter the cave,
rearing tall, his coat like snow against the dark stone wall. He
stood looking down at Teb, searching his face with great dark
eyes.

“I am Thakkur,” he said quietly. Then,
“Come, Mitta, let’s look at the leg.” He pulled the moss cover
back, then scowled, touching Teb’s leg delicately. “It’s twice the
size of the other leg and purple as sea urchins. Can we heal
it?”

“We will try.”

“And what are those scars on his ankles? Old
scars—as if chains had been wrapped around them.”

“Slaves are chained,” she said. She covered
Teb to the waist with the moss blanket. “The ribs are hurt, too.
And there are old, healed scars on his back. As from lashings with
a whip.”

Thakkur lifted Teb’s shoulders gently, to
look. The smell of him, as of all the otters, was a fishy breath.
He laid Teb down again, and his dark eyes were expanding pools into
which Teb in his half consciousness seemed to be falling.

“Can you tell us your name, child? Who are
you?”

But Teb couldn’t dredge it up. He shook his
head feebly. The pain was too great to think, the throbbing in his
leg and ribs like a drum beating, sucking him down. Mitta gave him
more tea, and soon again he was dropping away into darkness, in and
out of consciousness.

Then he woke a little more, for they were
doing something to his leg. He lay watching them, the white otter
and the smaller, rounder brown Mitta. He studied her squarish,
furred face and her round dark eyes, which looked at him so gently,
and her spiky, drooping whiskers. She hadn’t any chin, and when she
spoke, her dark nose twitched and her whiskers trembled.

“We must set the leg, Thakkur and I. We will
do it as gently as we can. But there will be pain again when we
pull and the bones pop into place. It cannot be helped.”

He felt their paws on his leg, felt them
grip and knew a surge of fear at new pain. Their paws touched his
leg, investigating, searching, as he lay trying to put down the
fear.

“Is the splint ready?” said the white
otter.

“Yes, here. And the clay.”

“All right, then. Steady now, boy. It won’t
take long.”

And then the pain struck him so his whole
body was afire and tears spurting from his eyes, and he heard a
crunching of bone. Then it was over.

He felt himself covered again, felt the
gentle paws, felt at last the sweet coolness as the wet clay pack
was worked around his splinted leg. Then, exhausted, he slept, only
vaguely aware of Mitta laying her head on his chest to listen, and
then the two otters sitting nearby, talking softly.

“I’m afraid for him,” Mitta said. “The clay
will help soak infection from the leg, but it’s more than
that.”

“The ribs are broken, too. We will bind
them,” Thakkur said.

“But look how old the cuts on his arm are.
He has had a long time of being hurt, perhaps being cold and
without proper food. There is a sickness there in his chest, as a
creature will get when it is harried and cold and without
rest.”

“We can only do our best for him.”

“We must get food down him. Charkky and Mikk
were right to chew shellfish for him, and I will do the same.”

“We can all do that, if needed. I will
choose half a dozen to help tend him, so you can return to your
cubs when you wish. We can only do our best,” he repeated. “And
make a prayer at meeting.”

“And keep Ekkthurian away from him.” She
raised her eyes to Thakkur. “I’m glad he is in your cave, where he
will know added protection. Who is this boy? Mikk said there was a
terrible battle where they found him. The dark ones, I suppose,
raging and making trouble. I do wish humans could be content with
the land, and with the riches we all have.”

“Some humans can,” said Thakkur shortly.
“It’s the dark ones—Quazelzeg and his kind.”

“If they keep on, nothing will be safe.
Nothing will be left.”

Thakkur nodded. “Not even Nightpool.” He
patted Mitta’s forepaw. “The boy will tell us more when he is well
again.”

Mitta looked at him doubtfully.

“He will get well, Mitta. He must. I feel it
is important—that the boy is important somehow.” Thakkur turned and
left his cave, and Mitta settled down on a stone bench near Teb and
took up her weaving again. Her paws were never idle, those busy
otter paws mending and weaving and shucking shellfish, cleaning and
grooming herself, changing Teb’s bandages and gently feeding
him.

And so began a strange, disjointed,
dreamlike time for Teb, when he would wake and see daylight outside
the cave, or darkness and stars, sometimes a moon, but with no idea
of passing days. He was vaguely aware sometimes of being waked and
his head held up, and food spooned into his mouth on a shell, of
being told to swallow though he felt too tired to swallow. Aware of
things done to his leg, of covers pulled over him or removed. Aware
of the furred paws tending him and of the softness of otter voices,
of their soft “Hah” of greeting. Strangely aware sometimes of
dreams that tangled into senselessness when he tried to remember
them.

Often he woke moaning with terror and
visions of men with knives bending over him, and then Mitta would
come and hold him like her own child and nuzzle his neck until he
felt comforted.

But the terror of not knowing who he was, of
not even knowing his name, could not be comforted.

Summer grew hot, but the sea wind helped to
calm Teb’s fever. The otters bathed him with cool water and fed him
pulverized shellfish and roots and strange fish juices. He drifted
in and out of dreams and fragmented scenes and made little sense of
anything until one morning, late into the fall of the year, with
the sea running warm and green and gulls screaming out over the
waves, he woke at last with a clear, eager curiosity and stared
around the cave where he lay, and frowned at the white otter who
stood tall, looking down at him.

He tried to remember where he was, and why
he was here. He tried to put together the dreams of fighting and of
dragons, with the otters coming and going and the constant pounding
of the sea, the pounding that filled his ears now as he gazed at a
patch of sunlight across the white otter’s shoulder, and then at
the smaller, dark, round otter who moved beside him carrying a
clamshell.

“Mitta,” Teb said, “Mitta.”

They helped him to sit up and placed the
clamshell in his lap. He felt starved, but he stared down at the
mess of raw shellfish, then looked back at them helplessly. “It’s
raw. It’s—”

“You have been eating raw fish all summer,”
said the white otter. “I am Thakkur. You are in the otter colony of
Nightpool.”

Teb stared at Thakkur and back at the food,
and almost retched. “If you could make a fire, maybe I could cook
it,” he said helplessly.

Mitta frowned at him. He felt tender toward
her, knew she had tended him, only now she looked more angry than
gentle. “We do not have fire at Nightpool. This is good food. You
have been eating it all along. You need the strength it will give
you.” She stood glaring at Teb until he managed to down a piece of
the stuff, and found it was not so bad. He ate another—an oyster,
he guessed—and soon grinned up at them and finished the lot. And
then he felt sleepy again, his eyes so heavy, and he dropped off,
watching Mitta tuck the moss cover around him.