Nightpool (18 page)

They were very alike, these young, yet each
was its own creature, bold in its own way, clever in its own way.
They named themselves, as is the custom among dragons, with names
chosen from the wealth of the songs. Three were females; two were
males. The males would grow darker later. They were heavier and
broader of head. The males named themselves Starpounder and
Nightraider. The females were Windcaller, Moonsong, and Seastrider.
It was Seastrider who began to yearn first out toward the vast
world of Tirror, to lean out on the winds staring eastward as if
something drew her there, where the sea lay beyond Windthorst. As
the summer grew warm they all began to flap on the edge of the
nest, and then in late summer to soar down to the lower peaks.
Dawncloud was very protective of them, for fear of common dragons
and hydruses, and would not let them fly out over the bays at all,
for fear of the more formidable sea hydrus she knew lurked
somewhere there.

She had sensed the hydrus during all her
long months on the nest, and sometimes an ugly song of him touched
her. It was not a good time on Tirror; the dark was growing bold.
And the young humans who could turn the tide were not many. One
boy, one girl, and if there were others they were distant, and
vague in her mind.

She did not know just where the boy and girl
were, but not far. Surely on, or near to, Windthorst. The wild,
larger scenes that marked Tirror’s history filled her mind now, the
battles and movements of armies, perhaps because of the growing
warfare that scoured this world, and it was harder to touch the
unique, small scenes and thoughts. The boy’s songs touched her
sometimes, though, pleasing her and exciting Seastrider unbearably.
Did the boy sense the young dragon’s yearning? Was he even aware of
her?

Dawncloud herself had begun to know a
yearning, as fragile as mist, so small a feeling that she could
hardly trust it. Was there to be another bonding for her? She had
not heard her own name spoken by a human voice since her tall,
sandy-haired bard, Daban, had leaped to her back for the last time
calling her name and laughing with her and singing. When Daban was
murdered she flew to Tendreth Slew and crawled into the mud and
went to sleep there, heartbroken.

Was there another calling now?

Did someone stand at the doors of the black
palace, perhaps, come from another world? Or was someone meant to
come to those dark doors soon, approaching the vague gauze of
Tirror’s future? From no other place, she thought, would the sense
come, then vanish so elusively. It was a woman, she thought. But
the pale aura of her presence was so very faint, nearly without
substance at all.

Dawncloud was far too busy tending her young
to dwell long on her own needs, for she was driven to hunt ever
harder to feed the rapacious young fledglings, to sing to them long
into the night, and to watch over their still-clumsy flying.
Starpounder still held his tail too low in the wind and grappled at
the nest before launching out in unsteady flight; his three sisters
laughed at him before leaping skyward themselves. Nightraider kept
to himself, diligently strengthening his wings. It took the males
longer to master flight because of their added weight. But summer
was young yet; they would all be skilled by fall.

*

The owl returned to Nightpool after the last
spring blizzard, and then again two days later. When he learned
that Teb was the son of the murdered king of Auric, he flew at once
to Auric’s palace to search for Camery, but within two days was
back, to say she was not in the tower.

“Did you look for her in Bleven?” Teb said,
his heart sinking. “Maybe Garit took her to Bleven.”

“I went to Bleven to the place of brewing,
as you said. Ah, fine brew, such as was left. There wasn’t much, an
open crock, and the brewer himself gone, no sign of anyone, the
place ransacked and the whole town deserted.”

“And Camery was gone?”

“Yes. If she was ever there.”

“And you didn’t see a redheaded man?”

“I saw no one.”

“I must go to look for her.”

“Where will you look that the animals
cannot? Already the foxes search for her up through Mithlan and
Baylentha and over into Ratnisbon. The foxes send you greeting,
Tebriel. Did you know that Luex and Faxel tried to rescue you there
on the battlefield at Baylentha and drove the dying horse off your
leg?”

“No. I don’t remember. . . .
But what happened to them? It must have been their cries that
Charkky and Mikk heard.”

“Chased by jackals clear to the western
ridge, where they went to ground and lost them,” Old Bloody Beak
said, grinning. And then, “Here,” he said, pushing out a small
object that had lain under his feathered posterior where he had
dropped it. “I found this in the house of the brewer, underneath a
girl’s ragged gown and tangled beneath a pile of bedclothes.”

Teb took the small, leather-bound diary
eagerly. It was Camery’s, the spine sewn with linen thread by a
little girl’s hand, the vellum pages covered with her neat,
familiar handwriting. She had been at Bleven!

He turned the pages, hoping they would speak
to him. But he could read no word, only a few scattered letters and
his own name. The writing was very small and crowded, and she had
written on both sides of the paper. The last entry was hastily
written, scrawled angling across the page.

“I can’t read it,” Teb said, ashamed. “Can
you?”

“No owl can read. Our eyes are not suited to
such work. Nor can otters,” he said, anticipating Teb’s thought.
“Owls can see small birds at great distances, and an otter can see
clearly underwater. But letters on a page are altogether a
different matter.”

“I must know what it says. Maybe the last
pages tell what has happened to her.”

He put the diary into his tunic pocket. He
would not look at it again until after the meeting in the great
cave, where Thakkur bid the owl come for prayer.

*

Teb sat at the side of the cave with Charkky
and Mikk and Jukka and Kkelpin, ignoring the sour looks from
Ekkthurian’s friends. More otters than not smiled at him, twitching
their whiskers, and he heard soft hahs across the cave in gentle
greeting. The owl sat up on the dais next to Thakkur, surrounded by
the twelve, Ekkthurian scowling among them, along with Urikk and
Gorkk.

“Old Ekkthurian’s lucky he doesn’t have to
look at himself,” whispered Charkky. “That frown would make a
person sick to his stomach.”

“He doesn’t like having Red Unat up there,”
Mikk said. “He doesn’t think it’s seemly.”

“He doesn’t think anything’s seemly,”
Charkky said. “Except making others miserable. I wish the hydrus
would eat him.”

“
Does
it eat folk?” Teb said,
frowning.

They all stared at him. “Of course it does,”
Kkelpin said. “What else would it be wanting?”

“I don’t know.” But it seemed to Teb it
wanted something else. He could still see in his mind the lure of
those three terrifying faces. “I don’t know what else it could
want.”

His songs had returned to him shortly after
the hydrus attacked them. But there were new songs, too, come into
his head then, ugly songs filled with a sense of the hydrus. And if
it had put them there, why had it?

On the dais, Red Unat fluffed his feathers
and shook his wings, then stood looking down at the mass of otters
crowded into the cave. It was a moonlight meeting, and moonlight
shone across his dark, mottled feathers, silhouetted against
Thakkur’s whiteness and against the pearly gleam of the mosaicked
walls. The crowd of otters covered the floor of the cave in a great
dark mass, and only the gleam of their eyes was clear. Though to
the owl’s sight, Teb thought, every detail of nose and whisker and
claw would be visible. The owl spoke of the wars in the north, and
it was not cheering news, for Quazelzeg was still moving south,
slowly destroying everything in his path, food and shelter and
herds.

“He has conquered the Seven Islands and
enslaved the fishing villages of Thappan and destroyed the fishing
boats—the hydrus did that in one raging night of terror. He has
taken the mines at Neiwan. They are working women and children in
the mines to make coal for Quazelzeg’s forges and driving the men
hitched to plows, instead of oxen. They ate the oxen and
commandeered every horse and pack pony. They are raping the land,
and already the conquered are starving. They will come down into
Windthorst to deal with Ebis the Black soon enough. And,” said the
owl, turning to stare at the council, “once he has conquered the
human world, he will prey on the animals in one way or
another.”

“But there is nothing here for him,” said
Ekkthurian. “Why would he want to come here?”

“He doesn’t need a reason,” said the owl.
“He will invent a reason. Otter hides, maybe,” he said, glaring at
Ekkthurian. “Soft, warm otter hides for winter.”

There was a great hush in the cave.

Charkky turned to look at Mikk, and their
paws touched across Teb. Teb heard Jukka swallow as she pulled her
heavy tail tighter around herself.

“And now the hydrus is returning, too,” said
the owl. “It is a more immediate threat. It moves south from Vaeal,
along in the shallower coastal seas. There are three teams of
little screech owls watching and tracking it, and they will warn
the otters at Rushmarsh when it gets close and send a message to
Ebis the Black.”

“How can it be dangerous to Ebis the Black?”
said Ekkthurian. “That hydrus can’t go on land.”

“It can move up the rivers to the inland
ports, and it can destroy the lowland grain paddies during flooding
cycle. It can move like a salamander over very little water when it
wants to, on its great spread fins. And it will rend and kill
anything that comes near the shore, reaching out with those long
necks and wicked teeth. It is surely a slave of the dark,” said the
owl. “And it will kill for the dark.”

Ekkthurian was quiet. The owl opened his
beak in a soft clicking, as the hunter does before he swoops on his
prey, and glared at Ekkthurian. Then Thakkur said softly, drawing
attention to himself without ever raising his voice:

“Tebriel has brought us knives. They are
effective against the hydrus. We must have more knives. And we must
have swords and learn to use them.”

Ekkthurian stared at Thakkur, his body going
rigid with anger. Then he hissed through bared teeth, “You would
not dare to arm this nation like humans! Such a thing is
blasphemy!” He rose and stood staring out at the silent crowd of
otters. “How would you acquire such weapons? Only by stealing! And
that, too, Thakkur of Nightpool, is against all Ottra
tradition!”

Thakkur spoke softly in the silent cave. His
voice seemed to carry more clearly than Ekkthurian’s. “I do not
call it stealing,” he said evenly, “if we take from the dark. I
call it weakening the enemy.”

There was a long moment of silence. Teb and
Charkky exchanged a look. Then Ekkthurian barked, “What of the
otters who must do such a deed? Do you not think many would be
killed in a stealing raid? The owl is right, the dark raiders would
skin any otter they could catch!”

“We are only a small band,” cried Urikk. “We
are not warriors, to be pitting ourselves against the dark
forces.”

“If the dark forces come here,” said
Thakkur, “we will have no choice. If they come in the form of the
hydrus, and attack you in the sea, you will have no choice.”

Ekkthurian and his friends were silent.

The owl began to fidget, grooming at a patch
of tail feathers.

“Red Unat came here,” Thakkur said, “to
bring us news of the wars, not to listen to our bickering. I
apologize for the entire council.”

Teb thought Ekkthurian had been defeated, at
least into temporary silence, but suddenly the thin otter rose
again and stood at the edge of the dais with Urikk and Gorkk beside
him, staring down at the gathered otters.

“If there is a dark,” said Ekkthurian, “if
the hydrus does return and attack us, you can lay the blame
directly on the human boy, for it is him the hydrus comes seeking.
Him alone! It never attacked any of us or came near Nightpool
before the boy came here.”

“If the boy leaves Nightpool,” growled
Gorkk, “the hydrus will follow him, and leave us unmolested.”

Thakkur stood tall and still, an icy pillar
staring at the three. “Would Nightpool deny sanction, deny safety
and protection to the King of Auric?”

“What has the King of Auric to do with the
boy?” Ekkthurian snapped. “We are speaking of a small,
troublemaking boy.”

“We are speaking of the King of Auric,” said
Thakkur. ‘Tebriel is the son of Everard of Auric, who was murdered
by the dark forces. Tebriel is rightful heir to the throne.”

“You are lying,” shouted Ekkthurian. “He is
only a homeless waif.”

But the tide was turned, and the seated
otters began to grumble at Ekkthurian. They knew Thakkur did not
lie.

‘Tebriel’s memory has returned to him,” said
Thakkur. “He remembers his father’s murder and his own enslavement
at the hands of Sivich, of the dark.”

“He says he’s the king’s son,” said
Ekkthurian. “Does that make it fact?”

“It does. And my visions show the same.”

“And even if he were king,” growled
Ekkthurian, “it would not change the harm he has brought to
Nightpool. King or commoner, he must not be allowed to stay. He
draws the hydrus here. He is a danger to us. He brings new ways
that are a danger. The making of fire is insane; if fire is seen
from the mainland, humans will be over here. The dark forces—if
there are such—will surely be all over Nightpool, then. He is a
danger, I tell you. A danger to all of us.” Ekkthurian seemed to
grow blacker in his rage. “And if the hydrus comes for him again,
here, many of us could die in its jaws.”