Meriden cried, Come through! Come through the Door! Come through to me!
The vamvipers returned, fluttering and tumbling across the wind.
Come through. . . .
The cloud shivered and paused. Then the Door sucked them through into blackness, as if sucking up blowing soot.
Time hung still in white emptiness.
When it began again, Meriden was gone. The Door was gone.
Chapter 22
I fear the castle of doors, yet I am drawn to it. Perhaps it is those very conflicts within us that mark the true mystery of our humanity.
*
Teb stood unmoving, seeing nothing but the after-vision of Meriden framed within the black Door. He held Camery close when she clutched at him, white and bleeding and shaken. In both their minds, the vision of their mother burned.
She was alive. They had seen her. She had pulled the vamvipers through. They had heard her voice, stirring a painful childhood longing in them both.
All around them, the battlefield began to come to life. Soldiers rose, horses staggered up. Folk who had stood frozen by the vision began to assess their hurts and to kneel over the sprawling wounded.
Camery touched the lyre. “Do the vamvipers swarm around her now? In that other world? How can she battle them?”
They looked at each other, stricken. “Don’t think that,” Teb said. “She has great power. Perhaps she has trapped them somewhere, away from her.”
“She can’t always have had such power. She would have used it to come home. Or to drive Quazelzeg out.”
“This time, the power of the lyre was with her.” He touched the lyre’s strings.
It was silent, drained of its magic.
“Come,” she said. “The dragons need us.”
The two dragons were very quiet, waiting patiently for their bards, their poor faces streaked with blood. Camery put her arms up to Nightraider and held his great head to her. Both dragons’ eyelids were slashed and bleeding so they could hardly see. She began to sponge Nightraider’s lids with water from her flask as Teb examined Seastrider’s eyes.
The dragons’ eyes seemed undamaged. Their rough-scaled lids had served them well. Teb and Camery cleaned the blood away and stopped the bleeding by applying pressure with damp cloths. It was not long before both dragons felt better, tossing their heads and sweeping into the sky again, filled with fierce relief.
“They were frightened,” Camery said.
“Yes. They’re all right now. Let me see your throat.” He pulled her leather collar away and mopped the blood off her neck.
The blood was from slashes along her jaw, barely missing the arteries. As he sponged her wounds, he was filled with a private, and terrible, thought.
Did Meriden know that he had led the vamvipers here? He had failed her dismally—he had failed them all. Thakkur’s words burned in his thoughts. Do not underestimate Quazelzeg and what he is capable of. Do not let your pride lead you. . . .
But he had. He had done that and more. He had challenged Quazelzeg too soon, before he was ready. His weakness and impatience had almost killed them all.
He did not belong with the bards. He did not belong with dragons. As he watched the dragonlings descend out of the morning sky, he was filled with self-loathing and wanted only to be alone.
He had led the vamvipers to them in an act of sedition as evil as any the pawns of the dark could have accomplished. And, he thought with alarm, he was the dark’s pawn now.
The dragonlings landed in a storm of wings. Marshy and Aven and Darba slid down and grabbed each other in a terrified, shaken hug.
“You did it,” Darba screamed, shaking Aven. “You killed the queen!”
“You were wonderful,” Marshy cried.
“I was scared,” said Aven. They hugged the dragonlings and looked at Teb, waiting for a word of praise.
But Teb had turned away, too sick in spirit to praise anyone. He walked away by himself across the gory battlefield. Seastrider followed him, her eyes blazing with anger.
“Stop it, Tebriel. You are wallowing in self-pity!”
“I am a traitor. I nearly got everyone killed. I could have lost all Tirror. I am not a fit bard.”
“That is stupid! You are not responsible for all of Tirror. You take too much on yourself—you wallow in vanity as well as self-pity!”
He stared at her, shocked and hurt.
“The vamvipers would have found us anyway—regardless of you! Don’t you think Quazelzeg could guess that we would attack Sivich?”
“It would have taken them longer. The battle would have been finished.”
“You don’t know that. You are awash in senseless remorse. You will do more harm by that than by bringing any kind of evil here. Turn around, Tebriel, and look. Everyone is watching us. Do you mean to make a complete fool of yourself?”
Teb turned. The bards stood looking at him. Behind them the dragons stared. He saw Thakkur, standing on a rise, alone, watching him. Suddenly furious, he turned and went back to the bards and stood defiantly waiting for their censure.
We know your pain, Colewolf said. How can we help but know it? Don’t you think, Tebriel, that you do terrible harm by turning away from us? Don’t you think you insult us? We need each other—we need you very much.
“You cannot simply stop being a bard,” Camery said. “You cannot simply stop bearing that responsibility because of Quazelzeg’s poisons.” Her green eyes blazed as fiercely as Seastrider’s. “Any of us would have done the same, filled with his tortures and his drugs.” She stepped close to him and touched his cheek. “But, Teb, neither can you take on more than your share.”
We are with you, Colewolf said, not against you.
‘Together,” Kiri said, “we can drive out the evil.” She took his hand, looking at him deeply. “We freed the children, Teb. We have two new bards—and it was at great cost to you. We will never abandon you. Do not abandon us. Fight beside us, not against us!”
He wanted to shout, I can’t fight. He felt so tired, drained, with nothing left inside but shame and anger.
Yet as he stood there, he was sustained by Kiri’s strength—by Camery’s strength, by the strength of all of them. Kiri clung to him, wiping her fist across her eyes. In a little while she said, “Come, there are stretchers to be made, wounds to bind.” She knelt by her pack, to find bandages. When Teb looked up, he saw Thakkur, still on a knoll, still watching him. Teb wanted to go to him but was too ashamed.
All over the valley animals and men were assessing their wounds and trying to help themselves, or to help others. Hexet woke to lick his wounds, then nudge at other foxes. Three wolves struggled up. Five others lay dead. Elmmira made her way slowly to Teb and Kiri. They examined the vamviper bites deep in her shoulder, and Kiri unstrapped her flask to wash them.
Mitta and Hanni came across the body-strewn meadow, carrying packs filled with bandages and salves. They stopped to touch and whisper, to examine wounds and clean and bandage them. All around them soldiers and animals crouched over the fallen, calling their names, weeping for the dead. Small owls began to appear from the mountain. The big owls, Red Unat among them, had taken their toll of vamvipers, but they were wounded, too. Hanni brought salves to the bards and a flask of Mitta’s soothing draft. Everyone kept glancing toward the mountains, half expecting another attack. Soon Camery sent the three bard children and the dragonlings winging up, to scan the mountains and coasts. Still Thakkur watched Teb. At last, Teb went to him.
“You find me a failure,” Teb said. “I have failed. I did not heed your advice. I underestimated Quazelzeg, and he—”
Thakkur interrupted, holding up one white paw. “I find you a hero for enduring such tortures.”
Teb shook his head. “You told me about pride— about taking too much on myself. I walked into Quazelzeg’s lair and—and . . .” He stared at Thakkur, stricken. “Am I one of them now?”
“That is melodramatic, Tebriel. You are a dragonbard. You are the K
ing of Auric. Perhaps . . .”
Teb stared at him miserably. “Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps . . . you had better start acting like both.”
Teb looked at Thakkur, his look filled with bitterness, then he turned away.
“Neither bard nor king allows himself anger beyond self-discipline, Tebriel. A leader tempers his anger—particularly anger at himself. He controls and uses it.”
Teb turned to look back at Thakkur.
“I have absolute faith in you, Tebriel—in your goodness, in your ultimate good sense.” Thakkur put out a paw.
Teb hesitated. Then he knelt and took Thakkur’s paw. Their eyes held for a long moment, in which Teb remembered much.
Chapter 23
We must confront the dark invaders. We must choose the horrors of war, or we will lose the freedom to choose. Perhaps too many of us have already lost that freedom.
*
From across the battlefield, the rebel leaders began to gather. Ebis the Black came galloping up surrounded by his officers, sporting a bandage around his forehead and another on his arm. His black beard was matted with blood, and there were wounds across his face. He shouted to see the bards alive, leaped from the saddle, and hugged them nearly hard enough to break bones.
“Cursed, blood-sucking bats. We lost twenty men.” He glanced toward the ridge as if he expected another attack.
“Camery has sent a patrol,” Teb said.
“Very good,” Ebis said, giving Camery a look of approval. He joined the soldiers and otters in improvising stretchers. “I can take the worst wounded to Ratnisbon Palace,” he said, “those who can be carried that far. My folk will care for them skillfully.”
While Ebis’s soldiers dug out a huge common grave for the human soldiers, the bards buried the animals with solemn ceremony. They marked their grave with stones laid in a circle to signify the endless sphere of life. The bards and dragons wove a song for them, and the living animals bowed down and grieved.
The dragonlings and children returned to say there were no troops beyond the mountains, no ships on the sea, no disturbance around Nightpool. There was a moment of powerful feelings as they said farewell to Ebis and those who had fought beside them, then the bards mounted up, the dragons lifted fast, and they headed for Auric Palace.
They sped across a light wind, the dragons stretching in wide, free sweeps, filled with the joy of freedom and with the healing silence after the shouting and screams of war. The bards looked at each other between glinting wings. This was freedom, this weightless lifting on the wind. They winged through a mass of heavy cloud and broke out into sunlight above Auric’s broad green meadows, skirted by the sea beyond. Rising from the meadows alone stood Auric palace, its slate roof reflecting the sun.
Smoke rose beyond the north wall; when they were close, they could see that troops were burning trash.
The palace gardens were dry and weedy, the orchard trees dead. They could see broken windows, and some of the roof slates were gone. But no neglect could mar the symmetry of the five wings built of pale stone, the angled courtyard wall, the wide expanses of windows, the twenty chimneys.
Of all the gardens, only their mother’s private walled garden was alive and green. Fed by a sunken spring, it was a tangle of branches and vines. It looked as if no one had entered it in years.
Four years, Camery thought. Four years since they had seen their home—twice that since anyone had cared for the grounds or the palace.
A crowd had gathered on the meadow outside the open gates, their shouts and cheers filling the wind. The dragons glided to the meadow in a ceremony of sweeping wings, and the bards slid down into welcoming arms—all but Teb. He remained astride.
Go on, Tebriel, they wait for you, they wait for their king, Seastrider said, bowing her neck to stare at him.
He remained on her back, not speaking, watching Camery embraced and exclaimed over, watching Kiri and Colewolf and the children made welcome. Soon Camery disappeared inside, surrounded by old friends. But when Teb’s friends looked up at him and saw his expression, they turned away.
Go on, Seastrider repeated angrily.
But it was a shout from the tower that got his attention. “Hah, Tebriel! Hah, Teb!” Charkky and Mikk hung out over the stone rail, waving crazily at him.
He looked up at them and couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his depression off like a dirty cloak and waved to them and shouted. The crowd turned back to watch him, and when he slid down off Seastrider’s back, he was surrounded at once, by friends he hadn’t seen since he was a little boy. He was hugged and kissed and swept into the palace by the laughing crowd.
Inside, Camery was standing alone in the center of the great hall, looking. All the others had gone back to their tasks, giving her space and time for a private homecoming. She stood quite still, the sunlight from the windows touching her face. It was in that moment, watching her, that Teb knew how hard it had been for her to enter the palace again.
She had remembered her home as bright and filled with beauty, the rooms clean and sunny, their mother’s rich tapestries covering the walls, the touch of their mother everywhere. She had come in, just now, wishing it could be like that, but expecting it to be filthy and decayed from the mistreatment of Sivich’s soldiers.
It was neither filthy nor as they remembered from childhood.
The big, high-ceilinged hall was bare of furniture. It smelled of lye soap and plaster. Folk were hard at work everywhere, on ladders and on their hands and knees, scrubbing walls and floor and repairing holes in the white plaster and in the stone. Teb watched Camery until she turned and put her hand out; then he went to her.
She said, “I can see Mama here. And Papa—when we were little, and so happy.” They stood remembering the perfect time of childhood. But he soon grew cross and restless again—moody; he kept having such changeable moods. He seemed to have no control over them. But shame at his weakness only drew evil closer. He soon wandered away from Camery, with Quazelzeg’s whispers close around him as he paced the empty corridors and abandoned rooms, driven by an impotent need for escape.
*
Kiri climbed one flight and another, looking into chambers, seeing the palace as it was now, but also as she had envisioned it from Teb’s thoughts, the warm comfort it had once held. In two wings, the rooms had been swept clean, the windows washed. Beds stood without mattresses, and there wasn’t much furniture left. Three wings hadn’t yet been cleaned; the rooms were littered with garbage and bones. At the top of the third flight was a room that rose alone above all the rest. It was so sunny, so inviting, that she went
It smelled of soap, and the floor was still damp from scrubbing. There was no furniture. The room was five-sided. Each side had a deep bay of windows that looked down over one wing of the roof. A stone fireplace stood between two bays, laid with logs and kindling. The windows were open to let in fresh air and sunshine. A new mattress, still smelling of fresh straw, lay on the floor in one bay. This would be Tebriel’s room—the room of the King of Auric.
“No, it will be kept for Meriden,” Teb said behind her. She swung around, startled. She hadn’t heard him come in or sensed him there.
“Meriden is still the queen,” Teb said, coming to stand beside her. She took his hand. She could see a deep, irritable unrest in his eyes.
“She must have been happy here, Teb.”
“I’m afraid for her. I keep seeing her standing in the blackness of those far worlds.”
“Your mother is a brave warrior—a strong woman.”
“For nine years she’s been wandering among those worlds—among impossible terrors, impossible evil. Nine years, Kiri!”
“Maybe time is not the same there—not the same for her. And there must be good there, Teb, as well as evil. The light must have touched those worlds.”
His dark eyes searched hers.
“She is strong, Teb. You must not lose hope for her. She was strong enough to pull the vamvipers through.”
“What else does she plan? How can we help her? She—she will despise me, now, for calling the vamvipers to us.”
“Any of us could have—”
“Save me that. I’m tired of being told that anyone could have turned traitor. I’m the one who nearly killed us all. Not one among you would have done what I did.”
Kiri moved away and stood with her back to the stone wall, watching him. This was not the Tebriel she knew. She looked and looked at him, and he looked back, remorseful and defiant.
“You can’t do this to yourself,” she said softly. “You are caught in Quazelzeg’s thoughts—not your own thoughts.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Try to make sense, Kiri.”
“You are wallowing in self-pity!”
His eyes blazed with anger.
“Self-pity!” she shouted, losing control. “You are filled with it!”
“What do you know about self-pity? What do you know about being drugged and beaten? What do you—”
“That’s self-pity! You are speaking Quazelzeg’s words!”
They stood facing each other, furious and hurting.
“Listen to me,” Kiri said evenly. “Maybe . . . maybe something positive has come from this.”
He started to speak, but she stopped him. “Just listen. If the vamvipers hadn’t found us, you would not have seen your mother. You wouldn’t know she’s alive.”
“That’s—”
“Listen! It took a terrible threat for your mother to reach out to you—for her to summon the power to reach out. Maybe . . . maybe the effort she made helped her. Maybe it increased the power she can command.”
He stared at her, a spark of hope touching him. Then he shook his head and turned away. She went to him and touched his cheek. He looked so uncertain and lonely, locked in his private darkness. She tried to keep her voice soft, to keep the anger out of it. “Quazelzeg wants to make you doubt, Teb. He wants to make you hate and turn away from us.”
He looked deeply at her, his eyes filled with resentment and anger—but with need for her. She put her arms around him, and suddenly he drew her close. Suddenly he let himself hold her tight, burying his face against her hair. They stood for a long time in the warm sunlight, saying nothing.
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