Nightpool (2 page)

Teb stood up and turned away into the cave,
embarrassed, and busied himself readying his pack, then pulling on
his tunic.

“You have grown so tall, Tebriel. It was not
long ago that I was taller than you.” The look between them was
easy, a look of love and of sadness. “I have come to say a last
farewell. Not good-bye, for I know you will return to
Nightpool.”

“No prophesy is absolute.”

“This vision is strong. You will return, I
have no doubt of it.” The white otter’s dark eyes were as deep and
fathomless as the sea itself. “But now the time has come, now you
must go, and from this moment you belong not only to Nightpool, but
to all of Tirror. Your fate lies upon Tirror now. Both Tirror’s
fate, and our own fate, travels with you.”

They embraced, the white otter’s fur
infinitely soft against Teb’s face, and smelling of sea and of
sun.

“Go in joy, Tebriel. Go with the blessing of
The Maker. Go in the care of the Graven Light.”

Teb took up his pack at last and lashed it
to his waist. He gave Thakkur a long, steady look, then stepped to
the edge of the cliff and dove far out and deep, cutting the water
cleanly and striking out at once against the incoming swells. As
quickly as that he left Nightpool, and his tears mixed with the
salty sea.

At a safe distance from the cliffs he turned
north, and glancing up between strokes, he caught a glimpse of
Thakkur’s white form on the black island; then the vision vanished
in a shattering of green water as he made his way with strong,
pulling strokes crosswise to the force of the sea, up toward the
north end of the island.

He could have walked across Nightpool and
swum the channel from the mainland side, but not this morning, not
this last time. As he passed the lower caves at the far end of the
island, he could hear water slapping into the cave doors. At the
far end, beside Shark Rock, he turned again, toward land this time,
and set out in an easier rhythm with the tide, to cross the deep
green channel. And it was here that suddenly two brown heads popped
up beside him, and two grinning faces. Mikk and Charkky rolled and
dove beside him, escorting him in toward the shore.

They leaped and splashed and pushed at him,
rocked him on their own waves and dove between his feet and under
him, and Charkky tickled his toes. Teb was not wearing the precious
sharkskin flippers; he had left them safe in his cave. Charkky came
up on his other side, dove again, was gone a long time, and came up
ahead of Teb and Mikk with a sea urchin in each dark paw, busily
stripping off the spines with his teeth. He tossed one to Mikk and
one to Teb, and they were into a fast, complicated game of catch.
Then when the game grew old, the two otters rolled onto their
backs, cracked the urchins open with small stones they carried on
cords around their necks, and ate them live and raw. Teb tried to
outdistance them, but without the flippers he hadn’t a chance, even
when they only floated idly kicking and eating.

They left him before the sea shallowed onto
rising shore, embracing him in quick, strong, fishy-smelling hugs
and dragging their rough whiskers hard across his cheek, their eyes
great dark-brown pools of longing and of missing him, and of love,
and of silly otter humor all at once.

“Fly high, brother,” Mikk said hoarsely.
“Know clouds, brother, as you know the sea.” They studied one
another with love and concern.

Charkky just touched his cheek, softly, with
a wet, gentle paw. Then they were gone, diving down along the
bottom, dropping deeper, Teb knew, as the shore dropped, swimming
deep toward home.

Teb stood up in the shallow water and walked
up the shore. The beach was narrow, steep, and rocky. Above him
rose the tall cliff, and against the sky lay the lip of the rich
high pastures of Auric, a green thatch hanging over the edge. His
father’s pastures, he thought with sudden emotion. His father’s
land—his own land these four years since his father was murdered,
though he had no way to claim it. I am King of Auric, he thought
bitterly. And I stand on Auric’s shore naked and alone, and the
dark warriors would try to kill me if they knew. If Sivich and his
soldiers knew I was here, they would ride down from the castle to
kill me. He smiled and felt his sword, and almost wished they would
try.

Then he shook himself, stood a moment to dry
in the wind, and began to climb the cliff.

It was steep, but the outcropping stones and
tough hanks of dry grass helped him. As he pulled himself over the
edge, something snorted, and a band of horses shied and wheeled
nearly on top of him, and pounded away across the hills.

Why hadn’t he been more careful? Why hadn’t
he looked before he let himself be seen? He might have had himself
a mount now if he’d used his head. And what if it had been
soldiers? It was not a good beginning. As he swung up over the lip
of the cliff, he resolved to take more care.

He stood looking out across the rolling
green hills and at the little villages far distant along the west
turning of the coast. Inland to the west, between two familiar
hills and a grove of almond trees, stood the towers of home, stood
the Palace of Auric. His memories crowded back, sweeping him away
into scenes that were, each, a stabbing pain. It all flooded back,
the beatings and the leg chains from which he still wore scars, the
cruelty of Sivich and his guards. He stood brooding and angry,
filled with the pain of his father’s murder, with the helpless fury
holding him now as if no time had passed, as if he and Camery were
still prisoners in their dead father’s palace. He remembered it all
in every detail, the pain, the stink of the unkempt palace,
remembered as if he were twelve again, chained in the cold stone
cellar. Remembered . . .

He had been barely twelve years old, a
small, thin boy sleeping on the stone floor of a prison cell so
deep in the cellars of the palace you could not tell night from
day. It was near midnight when the guard’s boot nudged his ribs.
His eyes flew open; then he squeezed them closed in the bright
lantern light and curled tighter beneath the thin blanket he had
doubled and tucked around himself. When the boot nudged harder,
insistently, he scowled up into the light again and into Blaggen’s
sleep-puffy face, lit from beneath by the swinging flame. Blaggen
smelled of liquor, as usual, and of leather wet from his own urine,
for he had dirty ways. The two guard jackals pushed closer to Teb,
mixing their own rank smell, like spoiled meat, with Blaggen’s,
their little mean eyes red in the light and wings dragging the
floor with a dusty dry sound. They were heavier than Teb, and
pushy. They slept in his cell and followed him in all his serving
duties, their slavering grins eager for him to try escape.

Blaggen kicked him again, so hard it took
his breath. Teb squirmed out of the tangle of blanket, confused and
clumsy, but could not tear himself fully from sleep.

“Get up, son of pigs. Sivich wants you in
the hall. There are soldiers to serve, thirsty from a long ride.”
He emphasized
thirsty
with another nudge. Teb wanted to hit
him, but knew better. The welts on his back still pained him from
his last outburst of fury. Blaggen belched into his yellow beard
and, tired of watching the boy squirm under his boot, jerked him up
by the collar, jerked the cell door open with an echoing clang, and
shoved Teb before him down the narrow black passage. Up three
flights, Teb stumbling in darkness on the stone steps, the jackals
crowding close.

In the hall the torches were all ablaze, and
a great fire burned on the hearth. The room was filled with
warriors, shouting and arguing and laughing. Sivich paced before
the fire, his broad, black-bearded head jutting like a
mean-tempered bull’s. Weapons were piled beside the outer door that
led down to the courtyard: heavy swords; long, curved bows and
leather quivers filled with arrows; and the oak-shafted spears.

Teb crossed to the scullery at once. Old
Desma was there, yawning and pushing back her gray hair, doubtless
dragged from sleep in the servants’ quarters just as he had been
dragged from sleep in his cell. The deep window behind her was
black with night, but a wash of light shone from the courtyard
below, and he heard hooves clattering on stone and bridles jingling
as the warriors’ horses were tended, then the echo of a man
swearing; then a horse screamed. Desma glanced toward Blaggen and
saw he had turned away. She put her arm around Teb and drew him to
her comfortingly. Her old eyes were puffy from sleep. “I don’t like
this midnight riding, I don’t like their
talk. . . .” Then she broke off and pushed him away,
because Blaggen had turned to look. She shoved a tray into Teb’s
hands and began to pile on silver mugs, two and three to a stack,
and a heavy clay jug of mithnon. As she turned Teb toward the door,
she whispered, “Get away from the palace. Get away tonight if you
can.”

“But how? How can I? Will you
. . . ?”

She touched his face gently, her look was
sad and closed. “I don’t know how. There’s no way I can help; they
watch me too closely. He’s looking—pretend I’m scolding you.”

Teb left the pantry scowling and stumbling
as if the old lady had been chiding him, and moved out among the
elbowing men to serve up the dark, strong liquor.

He shuffled about holding the tray up to
whoever shouted for it, and no one paid him much more attention,
except to snatch up mugs and pour liquor, and berate him when the
jug was empty. It shamed him to serve his father’s murderers.
Before they had killed his father, these men had treated him with
oily, smiling deference. He wished it were poison he carried
instead of mithnon, and he promised himself for the hundredth time
that when he was grown, these men would die by his hand. Each of
them would die, and Sivich would die slowly, with great pain.

When at last the men settled around Sivich
before the fire, the edge of their thirst dulled and their mugs
refilled, Blaggen motioned Teb away to his corner. Teb’s arms ached
from the heavy trays. He crouched against the stone wall on a bit
of torn rug, the hump-shouldered jackals crowding close, and stared
up through the small, barred window. A few stars shone in the black
sky, and faint moonlight touched the tower, but he could see no
movement within, and he imagined his sister asleep, curled up with
her stuffed cloth owl. Once there had been a real owl, small and
fat and filled with owlish humor. But Sivich had had the jackals
kill it.

Now the two jackals began to bicker between
themselves with low, menacing growls, pacing and hunching around
Teb, their lips drawn back over long yellow teeth, the mottled,
greasy hair along their spines rising in anger. They always pressed
against Teb when they quarreled, and sometimes, snapping at one
another, they bit him as well. He pulled away from them and huddled
against the cold stone wall. The warriors were all talking at once,
trying to tell Sivich something, shouting and swearing. What was
the wonder they kept boasting about?
What
had flown over
them? Teb had heard only snatches of talk as he served the liquor,
a few words, questions broken by shouts for more drink. Now at
last, one man at a time began to speak out under Sivich’s
questioning, Sivich’s own voice sharp with excitement as the dark
leader moved back and forth before the flicking tongues of
flame.

“
Where
on the coast?
Exactly
where?” Sivich growled. “Are you sure it wasn’t a hydrus?
What. . . ?”

“East of the crossing. It was almost
daylight. We saw . . .”

“It flew, I tell you. Can’t no hydrus fly
through the air. And there ain’t no common dragon
that
big.
Nor that color. Never.”

Teb shivered, straining to hear.

“Not a common dragon. Big. Bright. It—”
Pischen’s voice broke as if the thin, wiry man were overcome with
emotion. “Pearl colored, its scales all pearl and silver, and it
reflected the firelight when it came down at us, all red and
spitting flame, too. . . .”

“Horns as long as a man’s arm,” someone
shouted.

Teb’s heart raced. They were describing a
singing dragon. No other creature would be that color, and so big.
But were there any singing dragons left in Tirror? He could imagine
it there in the sky, yes, huge, a dragon as luminous and iridescent
as the sea opal, its great delicate head finely carved, its
luminous horns flashing in the firelight. Was it really a singing
dragon they saw? Or only a common dragon, wet from the sea,
reflecting the light of their campfire?

Even before the five wars began, no one knew
whether a singing dragon still lived anywhere in Tirror. Yet Teb
had dreamed that one might lurk, hidden and secret, in the tallest,
wildest mountains far to the north. He and Camery had stopped
talking about dragons, though, after their mother died. Their
father didn’t like such talk, particularly in front of others, his
soldiers or the palace staff. He would hush them with an abrupt
turn of the conversation, or send them on an errand.

Well, Teb was used to his father’s anger,
after his mother died. First she had gone away, and his father had
let
her go, had not gone after her, which Teb could never
understand. Then his mother had drowned all alone, in the tide of
the Bay of Fendreth, when her boat capsized. Though what she was
doing there in a boat Teb had never known. And how she could have
drowned, when she was such a strong swimmer, was always a puzzle to
him. Except, that afternoon had been one of terrible storm and gale
winds.

It was a sheep farmer who saw her struggling
and, in his little skiff, tried to reach her. He searched the sea
for her body, finding only her cloak and one boot. He brought the
cloak and boot to the gate just at dusk, his old eyes filled with
tears.