Nightpool (4 page)

But their father had died. Their mother had
died—neither had wanted to die or had gone to death willingly.

What would become of Camery?

He felt so sick for her. He could only look
at her and look as she stared down at him. It started to rain again
in hard little needles, as the warriors began to mount up.

Blaggen jerked Teb around, took him by his
collar and the seat of his pants, and flung him into the saddle of
a big bay gelding, then tied Teb’s hands behind him and laced his
feet together under the horse’s belly.

The gelding’s halter was tied to the horn of
Blaggen’s saddle. Blaggen mounted, and his horse snorted and
lunged, jerking Teb’s mount and sending him humping along behind
the black’s rump, nearly unseating Teb. He felt clumsy with his
hands tied behind him and no reins to hold to help him know the
horse’s intentions and communicate his own.

All around him jackals began to crowd in
among the horses and mounting men, and some of the horses snorted
at them and reared. The hump-shouldered, low-bellied jackals paid
no attention to the soldiers’ commands, but only snarled
insolently. Teb began to watch the frightened horses, for they were
new and young, and unused to the winged jackals. New horses—where
had they come from? He stared around at the mounted men until he
spied a thatch of red beard and red hair all running together in a
great mane. Garit! Garit was back. He had brought the trained colts
from the coast, two- and three-year-olds, still young and skittish,
but ready to be ridden. Teb watched Garit dismount in fury and lash
at the jackals with a heavy strap.

Sivich shouted with anger and spurred his
horse at Garit. “Put down your strap.
I
command the
jackals.”

“Get them away, then. They’re frightening
the colts.”

“Settle your colts! What kind of training
are they getting if they can’t abide the palace guard?”

Garit took two rearing young horses by the
reins, ignoring the efforts of their riders, and held them gently
and firmly as he stared up at Sivich. “They are young and afraid. I
will not have them ruined. They need to get used to the jackals
slowly, not have the stinking things crowding them at first sight.
The smell alone is enough to drive a horse mad. Get them away or I
will have every colt back in the stables, and you can ride the
damned jackals.”

Sivich looked as if he would come right off
his horse and take sword to Garit. Teb held his breath. There was a
long silence as the two stared at each other. Then Sivich backed
off, glowering, and motioned to Blaggen. “Send the jackals across
the courtyard. Bring only three with us, to guard the boy. And keep
them away from the precious babies.” His voice was clipped with
fury, and Teb was amazed that he had let Garit boss him.

Well, but there was no one else in Tirror
who could serve as horsemaster with half the skill and knowledge of
Garit. Sivich knew quite well that if he wanted reliable mounts, he
could not afford to lose Garit. Sivich spat, kicked his horse
around savagely as an insult to Garit, and galloped to the head of
the troops. As he started out through the gate, the rain softened
to a fine mist, dimming the courtyard and clinging to the horses’
manes. Teb turned to look back at the tower. Camery had not moved.
He wished with all his soul he could speak to her.

He wished he could have left a written
message with Desma, to be hidden in Camery’s food tray, but even
had he had the chance, he could not read or write, could put little
more than his own name to paper.

His mother had started to teach him, before
she went away. He supposed she had thought Camery would continue
the teaching, but neither had felt much like lessons. And then
suddenly it was too late.

Had his mother meant to return to them? Her
last words to them were so strange. She had talked, not about
herself and her journey or if she meant to come back, but only
about how it would be to be grown up one day and have to make
decisions they didn’t like. She had shown them a small sphere the
size of a plum, made of gold threads that wound through it crossing
and recrossing in an endless and complicated trail. She had said
that was what life was like, all paths crossing and linked. Teb
didn’t understand. She had said the sphere stood for the old
civilization that once had reigned on Tirror, when all creatures,
human and speaking animal, all individual beings, trod paths linked
to other lives in a harmony that did not exist anymore. Teb didn’t
understand her words with any kind of reason, though he felt a deep
sense of something true in them. She had said the sphere stood for
something more, too, but did not tell them what. She said they
would know one day. She had worn it on a golden chain when she went
away.

As the horses moved up the hills in the
rain, Teb looked back once more at the receding palace, then
hunched down, shivering, and lost himself in a dream of the old
days, that time his mother called the age of brightness. There had
been many small busy cities then—most lay in ruins now. They had
been rich with little shops and small industries. All manner of
craftsmen and husbandrymen and farmers had worked happily side by
side, trading back and forth in a rich and complicated bartering.
His mother said it was a time when all humans and speaking animals
were filled with the joy of being alive, of being themselves in
some special way that Teb could grasp only as a feeling of
excitement.

In that time, because of the harmony she
spoke of, children could often gather the strains of a simple magic
together in their crafting—to create, for instance, sails made of
butterfly wings to carry a feather-light boat along the rough
rivers. Or to create special places—a bedchamber woven of spider
gauze and dew of new leaves. Children apprenticed as they chose, to
craftsman or hunter or farmer. And if the finest in the craft was a
speaking animal—which was often the case with hunting—then, of
course, the child would apprentice to him and go to live among the
foxes or wolves or great cats. In the mountains, the dwarfs and
animals mined together for silver and gold. In the valleys of snow,
the unicorns worked side by side with men to find and gather the
candlemaking berries and to harvest the skeins of silk from giant
snow spiders, the unicorns winding the silk on their horns so the
men could spin and weave cloth.

There had been more traveling in the old
times, happy journeys when craftsmen of all kinds made long,
leisurely trips to exchange goods and ideas with those in other
countries. Many children went on such journeys, groups of them
stopping at night at the temples that stood on all the traveled
routes welcoming animal and human, giving shelter.

Governing had been done by council in all
the small city-nations, these coming together in larger groups when
there was need to vote on issues that affected many countries. The
few wars that occurred had been with the far northern peoples, wars
fought bravely—speaking animals and humans side by side. His mother
had said it was the northern tribes of Habek and Zembethen that had
brought evil into the land, turning their good magic awry with
their own greed until it produced only evil. They had changed the
weather so the crops would not grow in the south; they had taken
children into slavery and the speaking animals to perform in
circuses. It was their greed and growing evil that had at last rent
a hole in the fabric of the world, and had allowed the dark to
enter. Because of the changes they had wrought, the small,
individual freeholds had vanished, and many of the bigger,
impersonal kingdoms were ruled by jealous despots. Now, more folk
worked for others or in the service of kings, doing as they were
bid rather than as they themselves chose. His mother seemed filled
with anger for the loss of that earlier time and would pace
sometimes when she talked of it, as if by her very energy, she
could bring back some of its magic.

He remembered his mother best in the walled
garden, for it was there the children could be alone with her away
from her duties in the palace. She wore red often, and he could see
her in his mind sitting before the bright flowers of the flame
tree. They often had tea there, with seedcakes and fruit. It was
here she would sometimes sing to them songs that filled them with
wonder, songs that seemed more than songs, that made scenes from
the past come vividly alive. After she sang, though, she was
quieter and seemed sad. Sometimes she seemed to Teb as if she did
not quite belong—to the palace, or even to them as a family. Her
other great pleasure was when she rode out across the hills on one
of Garit’s new skittish colts, a pleasure she looked forward to
eagerly when training began in the spring. At those times, the
children’s own ponies would trail behind her snorting mount as she
directed, and she would seem gone in a wildness and freedom where
they could never follow. Something seemed to call to her then, and
when they returned to the palace, Teb’s father would kiss her as if
she had been away a long time, as if he saw something wild in her
that was reluctant to return at all.

It had been a fall morning, very cold, when
their mother rode out for the last time on her bay mare, leading a
provisioned packhorse. The children had stood amazed and silent,
filled with her brief good-bye. They had waited for a long, long
time there at the palace gate, but she did not turn back. Then
their father came to get them, locking the great iron gates in
silence.

Had their mother and father quarreled? Was
that what made her go away? They hadn’t quarreled often, or
severely. But before she left, Teb and Camery had heard the rise
and fall of their voices late into the night. Whether in argument
or only in grown-up talk, they could not tell.

After she went, their father was preoccupied
and restless. Then months later the sheep farmer came, telling of
her drowning and bringing her cape and her boot. Somehow her death
seemed a twin horror now, with the threat of war increasing
violently as new fighting broke out in many countries. An even
greater evil seemed to take hold across Tirror, too, for returning
soldiers spoke of dark warriors without expression on their faces,
with only darkness reflected in their eyes, warriors they called
the unliving. It was with the coming of the unliving that the last
traces of magic, the small, bright remains of a once-great power,
began to vanish from Tirror. The soldiers spoke of simple pleasures
turning to evil, simple folk embracing evil ways. The unliving took
great numbers of slaves, and their treatment of the slaves was
terrifying.

The tapestries in the palace showed scenes
of past wars and enslavements. The tapestries hung in the hall and
private chambers, intricate pictures made of embroidered silk, once
as brilliant as color could be.

They were filled with other scenes, too,
besides war, scenes of the speaking animals and of places the
children could only dream of. The tapestries had been their
mother’s dowry when she married their father. They warmed the
palace both by holding real warmth against the stone walls and by
warming, with their rich and intricate pictures, the mind and
spirit of all who looked upon them.

After Sivich had killed Teb’s father and
brought new troops from the northern countries to mingle with those
of the old palace guard, Sivich’s warriors had defiled the
tapestries, stained and torn them, knocking one another against
them, spilling ale against them as they jostled, and even urinating
on them. Palace windows were left unshuttered, so rain came to soak
them and wind to lash them until now they were dull and ragged.
This hurt Teb, because there was something of his mother there,
something secret and touched with wonder.

A horse nickered, Teb’s mount answered, and
ahead of the troops, grazing sheep moved away at their approach.
The three jackals rose, flapping, to lunge at them, but Blaggen
called them back. A colt shied at the heavy flying creatures, and
Blaggen sent the jackals to the rear of the troops with a shout and
a lash of his whip. His horse pressed against Teb’s, bruising Teb’s
leg. Teb turned in the saddle to look behind him, clumsy with his
hands and feet tied. He watched the pack horses and servants that
made up the rear of the long line. There were ten great draft
horses, led by grooms and loaded with bundles of chain from the
river barges, for the dragon trap. Two horses carried crosscut saws
and building tools, axes and sledges and spikes.

Down the hills on his left, to the south and
west of Auric Palace, lay the roofs of the fishing and commercial
towns of Bleven and Cursty and Rye, brown thatched roofs dotted
between green garden patches, the harbors thick with little fishing
boats and with the barges that plied the two rivers and the inland
sea. Teb thought, No one there knows I am to be killed. Would
anyone even care? They are all slaves to Sivich now. Sivich’s
warriors walk their streets and give them orders, and take the
riches of trade they earn, and kill them if they don’t do as
they’re told. They haven’t any king anymore. He felt within himself
a betrayal of Auric’s people. His father had loved Auric’s families
as equals, and had always felt a duty to them, to keep the land
safe, to keep it free of men like Sivich. Teb knew that if he died,
he would betray that heritage. A heavy sadness rode with him, and
anger stirred him as well as fear.

He listened to the
slop, slop
of
hooves in the mud and shivered in his wet clothes. The trail was
rising steeply, the horses moving up the highest slope of Auric’s
stony hills. Above rose the bare spine of raw granite that marked
the border between Auric and Mithlan.

Beyond this spine they would ford two
rivers—two rivers where men and horses would be floundering across,
lines broken, the colts balking amid shouting and confusion. Could
he find a way to escape there?