Nightpool (17 page)

“Did it die there?” asked Thakkur.

“It is still alive. It thrashed in agony,
but it lived. I watched and patrolled the coast, very hard work in
the icy weather. When it emerged again in dead winter, I followed
it.

“It went north. It has been attacking the
harbors along the Benaynne Archipelago, where Quazelzeg’s armies
are raiding. It prevents escape by water, and Quazelzeg has taken
many slaves and murdered hundreds.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Thakkur.
“Though it is not unexpected.”

“If the dark raiders are not stopped,” said
Red Unat, “no one will be safe from them. They are not men, and are
much more dangerous than humans. Quazelzeg and those closest to him
are, in truth, the unliving, dedicated to anything that negates
life, that defiles and destroys the strength of life.”

Teb stood tense. All of this was so very
familiar, and yet still the dark emptiness lay in his mind.

“At some point,” said Red Unat, “the animals
must join against Quazelzeg. It is inevitable. The great cats and
wolves, and the foxes, perhaps even unicorns, though they have
disappeared from this hemisphere into the elfin lands. But mark
you, the animals must join forces. Already there is talk of such
things.” He settled more comfortably on his perch and fluffed his
feathers. Thakkur sat up straighter on his sleeping bench, his
broad white tail stretched along it, his front paws together, his
whiskers stiff as he stared up at Red Unat.

“There is a resistance army growing among
the humans,” the owl said. “But Quazelzeg is powerful, more
powerful than many understand.

“He took five hundred hostages at Mevidin
and is forcing them to serve as soldiers and camp slaves, even the
small girls. He has divided his forces into three bands to drive
wedges down into the Nasden Confederacy, and he strips the fields
of food for his own forces, leaving the cities and villages to
starve.”

Teb listened for a long time, sick at the
talk and agitated with his own inner turmoil as memories tried to
push out. That night his dreams were filled with wings. With the
owl’s swooping wings, and with the fluttering wings of a tiny owl
as it flew to his shoulder and whispered some message to him. He
also dreamt of the heavy, dark wings of slavering jackals, as the
creatures snarled and flapped around his face.

Then came wings so huge, so bright and
glowing, that they were like pearl-tinted clouds descending. He
reached out to them laughing, and the dragon looked down at him,
her long green eyes lit with some wonderful message. Then fires
came in his dreams. The hearth fire in a tapestried room, a
cookfire surrounded by soldiers. Fires and wings twisted together,
and there were faces. A red-haired man and an old graying man, and
the face of a girl, golden and smiling.

He woke.

And he remembered.

Dawn had barely come, the sky and sea deep
gray. He lay looking at the pale lines of waves, remembering it
all, his father’s murder before his eyes in the hall, his mother’s
drowning, his own enslavement, and Blaggen and the stinking
jackals. His journey tied to the horse like a sack of meal, his
escape with Garit and Pakkna. Nison-Serth and the foxes, the dear
foxes.

The cage, and the dragon tearing at his
chains, pulling them free, and searing them from his legs with her
hot breath. He remembered running and dodging between racing
horsemen, being snatched up by a horseman on a white mount, then
falling. . . .

Then nothing, until he woke bobbing on the
sea, soaking from the waves, the pain in his leg terrible. And
Charkky’s and Mikk’s wet, concerned frowns.

He sat thinking for a long time, and then
went along the cliff to Thakkur’s cave. He found the white otter
making a meal of periwinkles and sea urchin roe that one of the
cubs had brought him. He sat down quietly.

The white otter’s dark eyes looked him over.
Teb looked back, filled with news. And with questions.

Thakkur finished the roe and rose to toss
the shells into the sea; then he turned again to Teb. “You
remember,” he said simply. “I see it in your face. You remember.”
His dark eyes were filled with kindness and with wisdom.

“Yes, I remember. I dreamt, then woke
remembering. So strange. How could I have forgotten it all? Even my
sister?” The cool sea wind touched him as it circled Thakkur’s
cave. He stared at Thakkur’s dark, caring eyes. “I am Tebriel, son
of the murdered King of Auric. My father was killed by Sivich of
the dark raiders. My mother drowned in the Bay of Dubla.”

They talked for a long time. Teb told
Thakkur all that had happened on the journey to Baylentha, and much
that happened before. He told a great deal about his mother, and
once he felt tears start, but he choked them back. He told about
the little owl carrying messages to Camery. And that Sivich
intended to use Camery for breeding. Thakkur listened. But he
offered no answers.

“I must leave Nightpool now. I must help
Camery; somehow I must get her away from Sivich.”

Thakkur said nothing for a long time. He
moved about the cave, looking out at the sea, rearing up to touch
objects along the shelves. Then he dropped to all fours, and flowed
up into his sleeping shelf, his movements liquid and graceful, from
his broad white tail to his black nose and eyes.

“I expect the owl will return very soon,” he
said, rearing up on his sleeping shelf to stare at Teb. “You would
do better to wait for him. He will have more news of Auric, for he
goes to seek out the underground armies that are said to be based
at Bleven.”

“Bleven is where Garit sent me.”

“Yes. It is possible your friend Garit has
already rescued Camery. The owl could learn whether she is still in
the tower and save you possible capture. It would be no trick for
him to drop down into the tower at night and never wake the
jackals.”

Teb knew that Thakkur was right, though all
his anger at Sivich, all his instincts, tried to drive him out at
once to attack the palace at Auric. But alone? What could he do
alone?

“If you go now and are killed or taken
captive again,” Thakkur said reasonably, “what good will that do
your sister? And what help will that be to Auric, or to the forces
that fight the dark?”

“What is the dark? I know what the foxes
told me, that it is the unliving, that it—” Teb stopped abruptly,
staring at Thakkur. “That it takes your memory away,” he said
slowly. “Gone—they showed me, Renata showed me. It was like what I
felt. Exactly.”

Thakkur looked back at him.

“Did the dark do that to me?”

The white otter shook his head. “I cannot
tell, Tebriel. There are other things that make one’s memory fail.
Injury, severe sickness. You cannot be certain it was the
dark.”

The white otter moved, gliding across the
cave and back restlessly. They could hear the laughter of a band of
young otters playing in the waves. When Thakkur spoke again, it was
sadly.

“You cannot know for certain. You cannot
know precisely what the dark is, either, Tebriel, until you can
know the turnings of Tirror’s past. Few on Tirror remember, yet
only through understanding how Tirror was born can one understand
the dark.”

“Tell me, then. Will you tell me?”

Thakkur settled onto his shelf and folded
one paw over the other. And as he began the tale of Tirror,
pictures came in Teb’s mind of all Thakkur told him, and of more,
as if Thakkur’s words unlocked stores of knowledge in his own mind,
hidden and surprising.

“Tirror was born a spinning ball of gases,”
Thakkur said, “a ball of gases formed by a hand of such power that
no creature can know its true nature, the power of the Graven
Light. The ball spun and cooled to molten fire, then over centuries
it turned to barren stone. All by design, Tebriel. It warped and
twisted into mountains and valleys, but there was no tree or plant,
no animal, no water to nurture life. Then the power of the Graven
Light covered the barren, cooling world with clouds, and the clouds
gave down water, and then life came. Small at first, then richer,
more varied, until all Tirror knew creatures and plants and
abundance.

“But from the very beginning, the fire and
bareness and the promise of life lured the dark that always exists
in black space, and that luring was not by design. The dark crept
through crevices into the molten stone, and it lay dormant through
all the changes, and even the power that made Tirror could not rout
it. It insinuated itself into each new form the land took. And it
waited. It is the opposite to the force of light that created
Tirror, and perhaps for this reason it could not be routed. It is
malevolent, it is thirsty, and it lay accumulating self-knowledge
and earth-knowledge.”

Teb shivered. “And the light couldn’t drive
it out?”

“The light did nothing.”

“But. . .”

“Perhaps it is a part of the pattern, that
the dark be here. That it works its own forces and its own tests
upon Tirror’s life. I don’t know, Tebriel. I know a soul can find
true life or fall dying, according to whether it embraces the
dark.” The white otter took up a small round stone and held it
quietly, as if it soothed him. “Humans don’t remember, as they once
did, the long-shadowed tale of this world, or even that there was a
time before the small island countries existed. They don’t remember
the five huge continents that once were the only land on
Tirror.”

Teb tried to imagine huge continents, and no
island nations, but could not. “How could that be? What happened to
them?”

“Those five continents were drowned. The
small island continents are the highest mountains of those vast
lands; they are all that remains above water.

“Once there were great ice caps on Tirror,
but then the weather grew warmer. The ice began to melt and flood
the seas. The seas rose and flooded the land, and drowned the
lowlands and the valleys and all the cities there. It did not
happen quickly; the shores crept up and up, and folk moved slowly
back. But many starved when the crop lands and pastures were
covered.”

“How could people forget such a thing? How
long ago?”

“Perhaps twenty generations. Humans have
forgotten because the source of their world memory is all but
gone.

“Once this knowledge was relived in every
village, in every place where men and animals met, in ceremonies in
the old temple sanctuaries. The past was brought alive by the skill
of the singing dragons and the dragonbards, by the wonder of the
dragon song. . . .”

A strange feeling gripped Teb, a sense of
power that puzzled him, and he saw his hands were shaking and
clasped them tight.

“But the force of the dark grew stronger,
until at last it drove the dragons out, and captured or killed the
bards. And the dark spread tales about the dragon song until soon
folk no longer believed in it. And then, at last, it seemed there
were no more dragons, not anywhere on Tirror. Memory died. And with
its death, each person was separated from the rich multitude of the
past, and was alone. Without memory, Tebriel, we cannot know what
the present means. We cannot understand evil, or goodness. Our
world is caught in despair. Perhaps it was the scent of despair
that drew a more powerful dark to us, that drew the unliving into
Tirror from far worlds.

“In the far north,” Thakkur said, “lies a
black palace that once was hidden beneath the ice. Where it came
from, no one knows. When the ice melted, it stood alone there, and
it is girded with uncounted doors, and each door leads to a world
beyond this world.

“It is believed that Quazelzeg came from
there and brought the sea hydrus, and brought a terrible lust to
join with the dark of Tirror. And that is when the dark began to
rise and create forces to crush all world memory, bringing despair,
and so in the end crushing all life except that which it will
enslave.”

“He brought the sea hydrus,” Teb said. And
he could feel again the creature’s dark evil. “It made a blackness
in my mind. It destroyed . . . something I did remember.
I thought, when I looked at it, that it. . . wanted to
possess me.”

There was a long silence between them, in
which, it seemed to Teb, questions and answers and knowledge passed
back and forth, things Thakkur was unwilling to speak of, things
subtle and secret and not to be spoken of, yet.

“It may well have wanted to possess you,
Tebriel.” They stared at each other.

After a long time, Thakkur said, “It is told
that, once, the dark leaders trained the hydrus to drive out and
kill the singing dragons. Dark soldiers used to capture the baby
singing dragons when they flew tame and gentle into the cities, and
they put them into a pit with a hydrus. The babies would stand up
on their hind legs and try to sing—until the hydrus tore out their
throats.”

It takes ten months to hatch a dragon. The
eggs were cream colored and rubbery. By the time the dragonlings
hatched in late spring, the shells were stained dark by the rotted
carcasses. Dawncloud would lay her head close to each egg and
listen to the new little creature inside, wriggling and changing
position. When the first hatchling began to scratch on the egg,
during a screaming storm that nearly tore the nest from the stony
peak, Dawncloud hunkered down over it and cocked her great head,
and smiled, filled with wonder and joy, then raised her face to the
raging skies and screamed her pleasure out onto the storm.

By the time spring had raged its final storm
and turned gentle, all five young were out of the egg and curling
and twisting about the nest, raising their little heads up blindly
into the warm spring light. In another ten days their eyes were
open and they had begun to perch out on the edge of the nest
flapping their young wings, and to cluster around Dawncloud,
slithering up her sides and listening intently to the songs she
sang to them. She had sung to the eggs, too, all during the
incubation, and now the dragonlings pushed at her with demanding
little horns to hear the songs again, and to hear others. Without
the songs, a dragonling is nothing; the songs were as much a part
of them as their brand-new fangs and their fiery breath.