“How can it be dangerous to Ebis the Black?” said Ekkthurian. “That hydrus can’t go on land.”
“It can move up the rivers to the inland ports, and it can destroy the lowland grain paddies during flooding cycle. It can move like a salamander over very little water when it wants to, on its great spread fins. And it will rend and kill anything that comes near the shore, reaching out with those long necks and wicked teeth. It is surely a slave of the dark,” said the owl. “And it will kill for the dark.”
Ekkthurian was quiet. The owl opened his beak in a soft clicking, as the hunter does before he swoops on his prey, and glared at Ekkthurian. Then Thakkur said softly, drawing attention to himself without ever raising his voice:
“Tebriel has brought us knives. They are effective against the hydrus. We must have more knives. And we must have swords and learn to use them.”
Ekkthurian stared at Thakkur, his body going rigid with anger. Then he hissed through bared teeth, “You would not dare to arm this nation like humans! Such a thing is blasphemy!” He rose and stood staring out at the silent crowd of otters. “How would you acquire such weapons? Only by stealing! And that, too, Thakkur of Nightpool, is against all Ottra tradition!”
Thakkur spoke softly in the silent cave. His voice seemed to carry more clearly than Ekkthurian’s. “I do not call it stealing,” he said evenly, “if we take from the dark. I call it weakening the enemy.”
There was a long moment of silence. Teb and Charkky exchanged a look. Then Ekkthurian barked, “What of the otters who must do such a deed? Do you not think many would be killed in a stealing raid? The owl is right, the dark raiders would skin any otter they could catch!”
“We are only a small band,” cried Urikk. “We are not warriors, to be pitting ourselves against the dark forces.”
“If the dark forces come here,” said Thakkur, “we will have no choice. If they come in the form of the hydrus, and attack you in the sea, you will have no choice.”
Ekkthurian and his friends were silent.
The owl began to fidget, grooming at a patch of tail feathers.
“Red Unat came here,” Thakkur said, “to bring us news of the wars, not to listen to our bickering. I apologize for the entire council.”
Teb thought Ekkthurian had been defeated, at least into temporary silence, but suddenly the thin otter rose again and stood at the edge of the dais with Urikk and Gorkk beside him, staring down at the gathered otters.
“If there is a dark,” said Ekkthurian, “if the hydrus does return and attack us, you can lay the blame directly on the human boy, for it is him the hydrus comes seeking. Him alone! It never attacked any of us or came near Nightpool before the boy came here.”
“If the boy leaves Nightpool,” growled Gorkk, “the hydrus will follow him, and leave us unmolested.”
Thakkur stood tall and still, an icy pillar staring at the three. “Would Nightpool deny sanction, deny safety and protection to the King of Auric?”
“What has the King of Auric to do with the boy?” Ekkthurian snapped. “We are speaking of a small, troublemaking boy.”
“We are speaking of the King of Auric,” said Thakkur. ‘Tebriel is the son of Everard of Auric, who was murdered by the dark forces. Tebriel is rightful heir to the throne.”
“You are lying,” shouted Ekkthurian. “He is only a homeless waif.”
But the tide was turned, and the seated otters began to grumble at Ekkthurian. They knew Thakkur did not lie.
‘Tebriel’s memory has returned to him,” said Thakkur. “He remembers his father’s murder and his own enslavement at the hands of Sivich, of the dark.”
“He says he’s the king’s son,” said Ekkthurian. “Does that make it fact?”
“It does. And my visions show the same.”
“And even if he were king,” growled Ekkthurian, “it would not change the harm he has brought to Nightpool. King or commoner, he must not be allowed to stay. He draws the hydrus here. He is a danger to us. He brings new ways that are a danger. The making of fire is insane; if fire is seen from the mainland, humans will be over here. The dark forces—if there are such—will surely be all over Nightpool, then. He is a danger, I tell you. A danger to all of us.” Ekkthurian seemed to grow blacker in his rage. “And if the hydrus comes for him again, here, many of us could die in its jaws.”
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.
Chapter 15
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 shou
ld 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 aft
ernoon 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.
As they drew near, the horses began to stir. Teb heard one snort and knew they were watching the dark shadows creeping toward them. He tensed to run, or to fight. He could see the way the horses moved that they were tied to a common tether rope, each on its own short rope that he would have to jerk free.
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