Nightpool (19 page)

Teb stared across the heads of the gathered
otters. Not one otter turned to look at him. He watched the three
dark council members standing so fierce and still on the dais, and
suddenly he had had enough. He was tight with fury as he stood up.
All heads turned to look then.

“I am going,” he said evenly. “I am going
now. You can expect that by the time you leave this cave I will be
away from Nightpool.”

He walked out quietly, then ran the ledge to
his cave, grabbed the knives and flint from the shelf, the cookpot,
and shoved them into the pack, pulled Camery’s diary from his tunic
pocket and pushed it in, too, grabbed his flippers, and made his
way in the moonlight around the stone rim of the island, and down
the cliff to the little beach. The path of the moon lay white
across the water. I will find Camery and Garit, he thought. And I
will retake Auric. I should never have stayed at Nightpool once I
got well and could walk. He knelt to pull on his flippers and was
thankful he had them as he stared out at the black, moon-washed
sea.

As he knelt to pull on his flippers, he
heard Charkky shout, and Charkky and Mikk were plunging down the
cliff. A crowd of otters streamed down after them, Jukka and Hokki
and Litta and Kkelpin and dozens more. The owl soared overhead, and
even Mitta climbed down, giving him such a soft, gentle look that
it wrenched his heart.

“You can’t go,” Charkky said. “Thakkur
. . .”

“I am going. It’s time I went,” Teb said
coldly. And then the two otters were hugging him, fishy breath,
stiff whiskers tickling him, and they weakened his resolve so, he
had to push them away. “I have to,” he said roughly. “I won’t
forget you. Not ever.”

“But you can’t go,” Mikk said. “Thakkur told
us . . .”

“I must. I am. I’ve had enough of
Ekkthurian. I’m only causing trouble here. And . . .”

“And what?” said Mikk.

“And maybe Ekkthurian’s right. Maybe I do
draw the hydrus.”

“That’s what we’re trying to tell you,”
Charkky interrupted. “Thakkur says if you do draw it, then you must
stay.”

Teb stared at him. “You’re not making
sense.”

“Thakkur thinks that you—”

“That you would protect us best by staying,”
said the white otter, coming unseen from behind them. He gave Teb a
level, loving look. But the kind of look that made Teb be
still.

“If you do indeed draw the hydrus, Tebriel,
then you must stay here with us. If you would help Nightpool at
all, you will stay and draw the hydrus here.”

Teb stared at Thakkur.

“The hydrus is of the dark, Tebriel. It will
help to lay waste to all the coastal waters. Nightpool cannot stop
Quazelzeg, but we might stop the hydrus. If it is drawn here, if it
comes to seek us out . . .”

“To seek me out.”

“Yes, to seek you out. You would be putting
yourself in danger. But if you could lure it here, and we could
kill it, you would not only help Nightpool, but you would also
weaken the dark.”

Teb looked for a long time at Thakkur. He
thought about it; and he knew the white otter was right.

He shouldered his pack at last and picked up
his fins and started back up the cliff toward the caves. Thakkur
climbed beside him, and Charkky and Mikk, and all the otters
followed.

Then at the crest he turned away from them,
with a quiet word to Thakkur, and went to his cave alone.

He put away his possessions and stood
looking out at the waves. Their white foam shone bright in the
moonlight. He was very tired suddenly. He pulled off his tunic and
lay down beneath Mitta’s soft, warm blanket, clutching Camery’s
diary to him. Was he doing the right thing? Or should he be
searching for Camery and leading the hydrus away from
Nightpool?

He woke in the morning still clutching the
little book and, hardly thinking, he opened it and began to flip
through the pages. He found his name over and over, even in the
last hasty messages. It did not appear, though, on the pages where
the lines were shorter so they didn’t fill the page. There was a
rhythm to the length of these lines, and he began to study
them.

He had printed out the words he had
memorized in the great cave, “fox,” “otter,” “cape wolf,” “owl,”
and “great cat,” onto the back of Garit’s message, with a sharp bit
of charcoal. He looked at the words now. Yes, they were repeated
several times in one of the short, rhythmic entries. It looked
like—like his mother’s Song of the Creatures. . . .
He began to say the words, counting them off with his finger.

Yes, the names of the animals fell in the
right places, all of them. He knew the song! He knew the words to
this writing! Here was the key, to unlock the sounds and meanings
of the strings of letters.

He sat down on his sleeping ledge, pulled
the blanket around his legs, and began to study the song. Word for
word he spoke it, studying the letters, seeing the sounds they
made. Word for word he repeated the sounds, memorizing the shapes
of the letters that made them. His stomach rumbled with hunger.
Morning turned to noon, and the afternoon light settled to a golden
depth before he stirred himself. He read the Song of the Creatures,
and then, filled with excitement, and with fear that it might not
work after all, he turned to another of the short, rhythmic
entries. And he found he could read that, too, the Song of the
Sacking of Perlayne. And he read another, and another. He was
reading! The forms of all the letters made sounds for him now. He
reread every song. He knew them all, of course, and the sense of
power it gave him to be recognizing their words, written down, was
wonderful. And then at last, afraid to try but knowing he must,
knowing he could, he began to read the words he did not know by
heart. He started to read the other entries in Camery’s diary,
beginning with the last, urgent passages. His efforts were slow and
halting, as he sounded out the words, but the messages were
clear.

*

Sivich came to the tower this morning to
look me over, the way a horse trader looks at a colt. I don’t like
it. If he takes me from this place, I will leave the diary for you,
Teb. It’s all we have left of being together, and maybe you will
find it.

*

The palace has been silent all day. They
rode out for the coast at dawn, heavily armed. I am feeling very
lonely. If I had a weapon I would go down among the jackals and try
to get out. And die there if I failed, and maybe be happier. What
is the good of staying in this tower and growing old and dying here
and never living at all?

*

I feel better today. If he takes me out of
here, no matter what he does to me, it will be better than the
tower.

*

Something is happening in the courtyard. It
is night, the servants are asleep. I can hardly see to write. There
is some kind of movement down there, but the jackals are not
growling.

*

And then the last lines, hastily
written:

*

Someone has opened the door at the base of
the tower, someone is coming up. I love you, Teb.

It’s all right, Teb. I’m going away, but I
won’t write any name. I love you.

*

He sat for a long time, staring out at the
brightening sea. Otters appeared, cascading off the cliff down by
Thakkur’s, but he did not join them.

Surely it was Garit who had taken her away.
If it had been Sivich, she wouldn’t have had time to write those
last words after he appeared at the top of the stair. Besides, that
entry had been written in the tower, and the owl had found the
diary in the brewer’s house at Bleven.

She had carried it with her. But she hadn’t
written in it anymore.

He put the little book on the shelf, and
took down Garit’s crumpled note. And now he read it easily:

Do you give Tebriel into the care of the
Graven Light and make him safe and teach him until the lion gathers
its brood and the dove comes from the cage like an eagle. And until
the dragon screams.

He sat thinking about the message. Surely
Garit was the lion; it was an old family joke that he could be as
fierce and as kind as the great speaking cats of the north, and his
beard was as red as theirs. And the lion’s brood would be the army
Garit had promised Teb, to win back Auric. And surely the dove was
Camery. Had she come from her cage like an eagle? To fight beside
Garit, perhaps?

“And until the dragon screams,” Teb thought.
Those words gave him goose bumps, and he sat frowning and puzzled,
almost grasping something, feeling a rising elation and a power
within himself that was heady and frightening. And impossible.
Until the dragon screams . . . Until the dragon
sings,
he thought.
Until
I
sing. . . .
He felt the strength within
himself and did not know what to make of it.

Across the sea the bright gold sky was
drowning in a heavy layer of mountainous cloud, and the sea had
turned leaden and looked cold. The crowd of otters swimming out
there didn’t seem to mind; they floated on their backs laughing and
eating sea urchins.

Would the hydrus return to Nightpool? Was it
looking for him?

Why?

What might it want with him? Did it have to
do with this power he felt? With the impossible wonder he felt? The
dark wanted him. . . . Because he touched a power he
could not understand?

Who am I? What am I? He felt as uncertain,
as lost to his own true identity, as he had felt when he had had no
memory at all.

He put on his fins at last, sighted the
deep, calmer pool below, and dove far out and straight and swam
with strong strokes out toward the feeding otters. He sped along
and was strong enough now with the flippers’ power to outmaneuver
the waves. His flippers were like an otter’s webbed feet, driving
him through the sea.

He doesn’t even have webs between his
toes
, Litta had said once, laughing. He looked back toward the
cliff to see a line of sentries standing watch for the sea hydrus,
and he thought Thakkur was right, stolen weapons would be a comfort
when the creature came.

He reached the feeding otters, and Mikk
started a game of catch with a small sea urchin. Later he gave Teb
a lesson in diving and holding his breath, and Teb was pleased that
he was growing more skilled. He had managed to pry three abalones
loose and was taking them home to his cave to cook when Thakkur
sent for him. He dropped the abalone on his sleeping shelf, slipped
on his leather tunic, though it was very tight for him now, and
went along to Thakkur’s cave.

The owl was there, and soon Charkky and Mikk
and a good many others, too, came to join them, to plan a stealing
raid for weapons to use against the hydrus.

“Sivich’s men are rounding up stray horses
on the meadows,” the owl said. “If they camp on the eastern meadows
near Nightpool, I will come to alert you. You can slip weapons away
in the darkness, move off quickly again to the sea.”

“There is an underwater cave at the
mainland, near our south shore,” Thakkur said. “We can hide the
weapons there, hide ourselves there if need be.”

“But not you, of course,” said the owl.
“Your white coat would show far too brightly; and Nightpool cannot
risk losing its leader.”

“I mean to cover my coat with mud,” said
Thakkur.

“Do you think I would send otters into a
danger I won’t face?”

“We will vote on it in council,” said
Shekken. “We do not want to risk losing you.”

“You will not vote in council. This is my
decision, not Nightpool’s.”

*

But it was not to come so quickly, this
stealing of weapons. Sivich called in his troops to make a series
of raids north of Branthen, where attacks by the growing
underground had fouled Quazelzeg’s plans, and no more soldiers were
seen gathering horses until late in the fall as the sea took on an
early phosphorescent gleam like fires under the water. Then the
phosphorescence washed away and the water turned chill and gray,
and the owl came winging down over Nightpool on a blustery
afternoon to say that a band of Sivich’s men was working toward the
coast, gathering strays. He went back to watch them, circling so
high he was only a speck, and returned at dusk to report they had
camped conveniently close to the south cliffs that fell down to the
sea.

The moon was at half, and still too bright,
but the wind was so high that it would hide any sound of their
approach. They were a band of nine as they slipped down the south
cliff and into the sea, Charkky and Mikk and Teb, Kkelpin and Jukka
and Hokki, Thakkur and Shekken and Berthekk. And the owl, of
course, circling overhead silent and invisible. Teb carried one
knife in the pocket of his breechcloth. Thakkur carried the other.
Berthekk carried a coil of twine Mitta had braided for them, to
secure the weapons to logs, to drag them home. The only thing that
could be seen clearly during that swim was Thakkur’s white head,
and the paler oval of Teb’s own face. The moment they came up out
of the water at the foot of the mainland cliff, Thakkur found a
patch of mud and smeared himself with it, and Teb did the same,
covering all his bare skin, until soon the two of them looked
little different from the others. Except that Teb was a good deal
taller.

They climbed the cliff in silence, and as
they came out onto the grassy plain they could smell the horses, a
hearty, sweet smell that stirred a powerful longing in Teb. They
could see the camp in the distance, where the campfire still
smoldered. It was late, and they hoped the camp was asleep, hoped
the shadows passing back and forth in front of the red embers were
only the legs of grazing horses. The little band crept forward as
the owl circled overhead in the heaving wind. The horses would be
nervous, restless in the wind, ready to run if Teb could free them.
That would cripple their pursuers and be a setback for Sivich. A
very small thing, in this war. But he supposed every small thing
counted for something.