Nightpool (21 page)

When it did reach, it was gently, the middle
head thrusting out, and its great thick lips mumbled over his face
so he wanted to retch. He could not move. He knew it would carry
him away, and his fear was so terrible it would be almost a relief
to have it over with; then suddenly it lurched away as the otters
attacked, thrusting and slashing: the otter guards from the cliff
battled it back toward the sea. Teb was fighting beside them now.
Otters leaped to its neck, and Teb leaped; they attacked the three
heads until it bellowed with rage and twisted, flinging them off,
and thrashed back into the deep sea. They stood looking after it,
panting.

“Did we kill it?” Charkky said at last.

“I don’t know,” Teb said. “We hurt it,
though. I think we hurt it badly.”

Several otters were being helped up the
cliff trailing blood, Ekkthurian and Gorkk among them. Teb could
see Mitta hurrying along the high ledge, with half a dozen others,
to tend the wounded. He stared out at the sea where the waters
still showed pink, then turned away from the group of otter
warriors.

He walked for a long time along the edge of
the water, rounding the island but seeing, in his mind, the wounded
otters. Seeing Perkketh dead.

These things should never have happened.
They must not happen again. He knew, now, that he must go away.
That this one time, Thakkur was wrong. He must lead the hydrus, not
here to the island again, but away from it. When he had circled the
island, and come to where otters were gathered outside Thakkur’s
cave, he learned there had been two deaths more. Gorkk, and a
strapping otter named Tekket, who left behind him a wife and four
cubs. Teb went to Thakkur, then, and found him alone. He sat in the
cave in silence as the white otter puttered about, his paws busy
for the first time Teb could remember. When at last he turned, Teb
could see his grief.

“I am going away,” Teb said. “I will lead
the hydrus away.”

“No. We will kill the hydrus, Tebriel. Given
time, we can. If you go now, every otter will feel that he has
failed, will know that you led it away because we have failed to
kill it.”

“I will say that I go to search for my
sister. That is true. And I feel—I would search for the dragon,
Thakkur. The singing dragon.”

Thakkur nodded, and again there was a long
silence between them, as understanding grew. Then he said softly,
“Yes. But first you mean to seek the hydrus.”

“I must.”

Thakkur turned away, to stare out at the
sea. When he faced Teb again, the sadness robed him heavily. He
studied Teb; and saw in Teb’s face the resolve that would not be
swayed. He said at last, “Give us, then, this night for ceremony,
Tebriel. A feast of good-bye. Such a gathering would ease the pain
of leave-taking for all of us. Will you allow us that?”

And so there was a feast, and gift giving,
and Thakkur’s quiet predictions beforehand, which now came so
clearly in the clamshell, as if Teb’s own increased power helped to
bring them. For Teb
did
feel a power that excited him with
its promise. And when, late in the evening, he sang the Song of the
Creatures, he held the gathered otters silent and transfixed as he
spun out living scenes of the speaking animals, amazing himself as
well as them with the power of his conjuring. He felt his strength
surging, felt forces within himself that he could not put shape to,
felt skills begin to rise, filled with wonder and power. For long
moments after the song was finished, the otters sat in awe; it was
Ekkthurian who broke the stillness by rising to stomp away. Teb
hardly noticed, for the sense of promise that filled him. Promise
of a wonder he could not even name. A wonder that, now, gave added
meaning to Thakkur’s predictions, which the old otter had spoken
quietly while they sat alone.

“You will ride the winds of Tirror, Tebriel.
And you will touch humankind and change it. You will see more than
any creature or human sees, save those of your own special
kind.

“I see mountains far to the north, and you
will go there among wonderful creatures and speak to them, and know
them.”

Thakkur predicted threat as well as wonder.
“I see a street in Sharden’s city narrow and mean. There is danger
there and it reeks of pain. Take care, Tebriel, when you journey
into Sharden.”

The ceremony had made bright new songs
tumble into Teb’s head, verses that captured, for all time, those
moments of pleasure as the otters presented him with gold and
pearls and polished shells and corals, verses that would bring
their voices back years hence, and their gentle, bright expressions
and funny grins.

There was feasting, the special lighted
torches Charkky and Mikk had made, the great fire to roast the fish
and shellfish in his honor. They laughed, and played the otter
games of three-shell and clap, and it was late indeed when all
found their ways to cave and bed. Teb lay on his stone shelf
staring out at the stars and hearing the sea. He did not sleep.

He rose at first light and dove far out and
swam for a long time in the cold sea, trying to lose the terrible
homesickness that gripped him. Trying to lose the fear with which
he began this journey to confront the hydrus; trying to understand
better the sense of power that was now a part of himself, to
understand how to deal with it. When he returned to his cave, there
was Thakkur, coming to say a private good-bye.

“You will return, I have no doubt of it.”
The white otter’s eyes were as deep and fathomless as the sea
itself. “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. As quickly as that he settled all his own past behind
him, all his years on Nightpool, as one would settle a cape around
his shoulders like a strong protection. He faced ahead into the
unknown and the fearsome, letting the challenge touch him and draw
him on.

Teb remained on the meadows above the sea
cliff only long enough to feel out of place and exposed. The band
of horses he had startled as he climbed the cliff had disappeared
beyond the hills. No one was in sight, but soldiers could appear
from the hills; it was foolish to be traveling so openly across
this land in the daytime. Even when he kept to the small stands of
woods and the low valleys, he felt exposed. When he had passed the
point of Jade Beach, he made his way down the cliff and walked
along the rocks beside the sea, where he was safer from humans.

In midafternoon he gathered clams and
mussels, built a small fire, and made a meal. He passed the cave of
the ghost, and stopped to stare in as the hundreds of birds swept
screaming on their own wind low above his head. The rocks were
slippery as he crossed past the cave. He kept watching the sea,
foolishly, for the sight of familiar otter faces and knew he would
see none. He camped well before dark, away from the edge of the
cliff, in a small stand of almond trees that grew nestled between
two hills. He could hear the sea’s pounding close by, and the smell
of the salt wind was comfortable, but he was too far from the edge
of the cliff to be reached by those three giant heads, if the
hydrus should come in the night. He felt it would come; he felt a
sense of it almost as if he could smell it.

Maybe he only imagined that it wanted him.
Maybe he only imagined the power he thought he could touch and that
it seemed to want. Why would
he
have some mysterious power?
Maybe he was just a homeless boy trying to become a man by
imagining powers that did not exist.

But the songs had power. He had felt that
power touch him, from his mother’s songs. And he had seen his own
songs touch the otters. The power of the songs, he thought
. . .

And he slept.

*

The hydrus was there when he woke. He didn’t
know it was. He yawned and stretched and went down to the sea to
wash, as he had done every day for four years, hardly looking,
wanting that salty bath.

He swam, staying in close in a shallow bay,
watching the sea now, wishing he could feel vibrations as the
otters did; but feeling certain, too, that this new power he felt
within himself would tell him if the hydrus was close. He came out
and, as he dried in the early-rising sun, gathered his breakfast
from the rocks.

Behind him the sea lapped gently. The early
sun was warm on his back, its light reflected in flashes of his
blade as he pried the mussels loose. The young ones were the most
tender. He heard the cry of a passing gull; then suddenly the
hydrus was over him, snatching him up, its teeth across his middle,
his feet inside its mouth, his arms pinioned. All he could see was
lips and face, those huge muddy eyes, and the land receding fast.
And each time he moved, it bit tighter. His fist was clamped on his
knife, but its teeth pressed on his arm. And though the hydrus said
no word, he felt that it would speak. He hung rigid in its mouth
watching the waves crest before its swimming feet. Then the other
two heads came around to look at him, and the four muddy eyes saw
everything about him. He didn’t want to look anymore, yet couldn’t
help but look, and he felt his mind go empty. He was so afraid that
at last terror left him, and he fell into a cold, emotionless
state, where every detail was magnified. He watched its black,
finned feet breaking the water. He watched the sea flash below. He
studied the black pitted skin of its body, torn with bleeding
wounds, and he smelled the creature’s blood. He saw every detail of
the two faces, the elongated muzzles and wide mouths, the pale skin
of the faces contrasted with the black wrinkled hide of the body,
the coarse, bristling hair and muddy eyes: human faces warped into
terrible parodies.

It traveled for a long way out into the sea.
Teb lost track of time, but the sun came up high overhead and
burned him, and then dropped behind the hydrus as the creature
swept on. There was no hint of land, not even a jutting rock. The
sea was the dark color that speaks of terrible depths. Fish swerved
away from its swimming wake, fish that live only in the vast open
sea. The sun dropped low in the sky on the watery horizon behind
them. And then at last and suddenly, the hydrus dove; Teb gulped
air once, then water closed over him and the hydrus was speeding
down and down through water as dark as night. He would die now. Why
was it diving? Why didn’t it just crush him in its jaws? Down and
down in the darkness—or had it begun to rise again? It didn’t
matter—he was drowning; his ears rang and his lungs were tight; he
had to breathe in water, couldn’t hold any longer.

The hydrus broke out of water into a pocket
of air; Teb gulped breath, panting. And then it dropped him back
into the water; and as he floundered, he saw that stone walls
surrounded the pool of sea where he struggled to keep afloat. He
stared up at the stone walls and at a small smear of sky far above.
Was he at the bottom of an immense stone chimney, somehow flooded
by the sea? Or in a flooded tower perhaps? The hydrus was gone.
Turning, he discovered the opening through which it had vanished,
and saw the huge slab of stone blocking it, the water still rocking
where the hydrus had pulled the rock across. His fear made him
panic; he thrashed uselessly in the rolling water and gulped a
mouthful and choked. He tried to calm himself, then began to study
the rock wall, searching for handholds, for a way to climb.

*

Teb’s capture did not go unheeded. In
Nightpool, Thakkur was shocked awake from a short nap, sat up in
his cave confused, then, gathering his mind into clarity, went
immediately to the big meeting cave, to the sacred shell. He stood
letting the smoky surface dim and glow as he repeated and repeated
Teb’s name; and Thakkur saw, and watched for a long time that
terrible swimming voyage with Teb grasped in the mouth of the
hydrus; but the visions faded and vanished before ever the hydrus
dove.

Others knew of Teb’s capture, too. Though
not so soon as Thakkur knew. At first Dawncloud knew only that
something dark came seeking into her mind, wanting the songs she
sang, something that coupled with her thoughts and tried to suck
the words from her and distort them. As Thakkur strained to retain
the dim vision in the foggy depths of the clamshell, as he saw at
last the figure of Tebriel trapped among drowned stone, Dawncloud
keened in bewilderment, then rocked in growing anger on her nest.
The five dragonlings hissed with fury and stared north, and
Seastrider rose up on the edge of the nest and keened out in
fire-breathing confusion, knowing something was wrong but not able
to understand what.

In the drowned, ruined tower of the castle
Braudel, of the drowned city of Cophillon of the great drowned
continent of Ancotas, a very long way from Nightpool, Tebriel at
last found footholds sufficient to climb the height of the stone
wall. It wasn’t easy climbing, for the mason had set the stones as
tightly and evenly as he knew how, and only where a bit of mortar
had washed away by high seas could Teb find any foothold. Seven
times he climbed partway, then fell back, until it grew too dark to
try. The night seemed endless as he hung in the chill, dark water
clinging to one small niche in the stone, kicking to keep afloat
and terrified he would fall asleep and lose his grip on the stone
and drown. He began again to climb at first light. The hydrus had
not returned, but he could hear it sometimes thrashing and heaving
outside the wall. He thought of its wounds and hoped it was dying.
He climbed again and again, weaker now, and his thirst was
terrible. And then at last, bleeding and clutching, he gained the
top of the wall and lay along it, panting and shivering, then fell
into a druglike doze, waking sometimes to hear the sea pound below
and to lie listening helplessly for the hydrus’s return. He hadn’t
the strength or the courage to drop over the outside of the wall
into the heaving sea. His head swam with blackness, and soon he was
sweating and burning with the sun’s heat. He didn’t see until much
later, when he woke fully, the three cupped niches along the wall’s
top, where stones had broken away. They were filled with rainwater,
and when he did see, he edged along the wall to them and drank them
dry, unwilling to leave any for later. Who knew what would happen
later?