Kiri’s skin prickled and something cold clutched at her heart as she slipped in among the broken, fallen walls. But the strength of the sanctuary was there, steadying her. She stood for a moment inside, to see that she wasn’t followed, before she moved in to where three large stones tilted up to shelter a black hole in the earth. Here she went down on hands and knees.
She slipped down into a hole that had once been part of a larger grotto. Now it was an animal cave, warm and strong-smelling. Here she would give her report about Prince Tebmund and his wonderful horses.
She had no idea what her meager information would finally add up to. She wondered if she wanted to know. Yet regardless of her own misgivings, she knew she must learn more than this. She must seek Prince Tebmund out, perhaps become useful to him in some way so he would talk to her. Kiri’s gift, the gift she and her father shared, told her Prince Tebmund was important—either as a friend or as a dangerous foe.
Chapter 5
The cave of the great cat was empty. Kiri huddled down inside the door to wait where she could see out across the ruin but remain hidden herself. She could see stars gleaming above the rooftops. She supposed Elmmira was hunting. She had much news for her, for besides the arrival of Prince Tebmund and his horses, there was more frightening information. The dark leaders from the north planned to attack Bukla and Edain very soon, using Dacia as their base. King Sardira would stay in the background as usual, furnishing the dark with troops, horses, food, and weapons forged in his mines. Always seeming neutral, he had recently made a state visit to Edain in the name of friendship. Soon he would destroy Edain.
It had taken Kiri nine long sessions lying on her stomach, pressed into a thin attic space above the king’s private chambers, to gather information about the attack. It came by bits and pieces as runners arrived by barge from the neighboring continents, to stand sweating and uneasy in the purple satin room. The king’s captains took their orders in his chambers, too, before the blazing fire, sipping mithnon from little amethyst goblets, their voices rising clearly up to Kiri’s hiding place.
Kiri sighed with satisfaction, knowing she could tell Elmmira exactly how many troops Quazelzeg expected King Sardira to furnish and how many barges to transport them and the horses across the inlet to Bukla and Edain. She knew where the weapons would be hidden and where grain and fodder had been stored. The most frightening news was that Quazelzeg himself would make his base for the attacks in Sardira’s palace. The thought of the dark overlord there in the palace all winter terrified her.
Some of the dark leaders were human men, turned irredeemably to evil. Quazelzeg was not. He was soulless, manlike in shape only, thriving on human degradation. She had watched him twice as she lay in the alcove above the king’s ceiling, sick with fear of him. His face had the waxy pallor of too-tight skin drawn over heavy bones. It was a face that never smiled or changed expression. His body was like some terrible machine—colorless and evil. The un-men were not native to Tirror, but had come long ago into this world through the Castle of Doors. They were lured here by a darkness that had spread through Tirror, slowly at first, calling to other evil to come to join it. Quazelzeg came, and the terrors of mind slavery began.
Quazelzeg came here to Dacia sometimes with his captains for the bloody stadium gaming and to take the favors of the city. His consorts, like Quazelzeg, were chill succubi sucking at the life of the city, drinking in human pain and lust and the suffering of tortured animals.
It was harder for the speaking animals. They had the ability to anticipate the future, like humans, and so they could also anticipate pain and death, whereas the mute animals could not. The speaking animals feared threats to their kin, to their young, and to their human friends.
It was the speaking animals, the great cats and the wolves, who, too often, were pitted against drug-frenzied human prisoners in the stadium games for the entertainment of Quazelzeg and his kind.
Alone in the cave, Kiri frightened herself so much thinking of the bloodless faces of the unliving that she crawled into Elmmira’s tangled bed of straw and refuse. She huddled there, shaken and desolate, wishing life could be different, wishing there were no dark invaders and that Papa was home. More than anything, she wished no human would cleave to the darkness, for if they would not, the dark leaders could never win.
She was half asleep when Elmmira came. She leaped up, her knife drawn, before she saw the shape of the great cat against the sky. Elmmira padded in looking smug, with a brace of rabbits dangling and a muffled murmur in greeting. She dropped the rabbits, purred, and rubbed against Kiri.
“You are tense and nervy, Kiri wren. You have been thinking troubled thoughts.”
Kiri sheathed her knife, put her arms around Elmmira’s silky neck, and pressed her cheek against the great cat’s muscled shoulder. Elmmira’s warmth was strengthening. Her whiskers scratched Kiri’s face, and her muzzle smelled of blood, from the rabbits. Elmmira’s rumbling purr shook them both.
“There was good hunting tonight, Kiri wren. Take two rabbits home to your Gram.”
“I will,” Kiri said gratefully. “We’ve had no meat in days.” The palace kitchen was freer with bread and beans and boiled vegetables than with the fresh meat that the cooks guarded closely. Sometimes Kiri hunted with a bow among the rubble of the city for rabbits or blackbirds, but so did many others, and game was scarce. The great cats were the only hunters who could generally be sure of a meal. They prowled the night-dark streets fading into shadow away from humankind and roamed the rocky coastal cliffs, denning there, taking seabirds. Elmmira’s own cave led by secret ways to the sea-cliff dens some quarter mile away, and so to the main part of the ancient sanctuary of Gardel-Cloor. The great cats hunted inland, too, taking wheat rats and hares from the gardens and farms. They lived on Dacia as shadows, moving at night unseen, avoiding with care the traps Sardira sometimes set for them.
Only Kiri and those trusted in the underground could find the cats when they stole away to Gardel-Cloor.
The sanctuary had once been busy with travelers, speaking animals and humans resting together in comfort and warmth. But that was in the old times, the times that could never be again, the times of the singing dragons. There were no singing dragons anymore. When Kiri thought of dragons, she felt as if a part of herself was missing. Yet she had never known dragons, and never would. The dragons were gone from Tirror.
The dragons had held, in their magic, the ultimate powers of the natural world, that world of creatures that knew no corruption. Now the only link between humans and those powers was the speaking animals. Kiri studied Elmmira’s gentle bloody paws. Elmmira did not kill for pleasure—no animal did. She killed only for food. There was no evil in the natural world; that was why the dark leaders hated the speaking creatures. Kiri snuggled close to Elmmira’s warm side and began to tell her of the invasion plans.
Kiri thought these plans seemed very complete, as if Quazelzeg had engineered this attack more carefully than previous ones. Earlier battles for which King Sardira had furnished troops and supplies had seemed almost haphazard. “As if,” Kiri said thoughtfully, “as if now, Quazelzeg is almost uncertain of what he is about. Or uncertain of the outcome.”
Elmmira switched her tail and rumbled deep in her throat. “Why should he be uncertain? He will use magic to confuse the peasants of Bukla and Edain. Already he has weakened them, for his disciples have been at work there a long time.” She began to lick blood from her paws.
Kiri sighed. “All the same, the planning seems very careful. Could Quazelzeg fear some new threat?”
“What new thing would the dark be afraid of?”
Kiri shook her head. “I don’t know.” Yet a formless sense of hope touched her. Still, maybe she was only imagining the nervousness and caution that seemed to pervade the dark’s messages to King Sardira. “Sometimes,” she said, stroking Elmmira’s ears, “sometimes I wish I’d been born in ages past, before the dark was so strong. When . . . when there were still drago
ns.”
“Yes,” Elmmira said, licking her. “Yes. My poor Kiri.”
“Papa . . .” Kiri began, then stopped and pushed the thought away. Papa must wish the same.
“I will take the news of the attack tonight,” Elmmira said. She pressed her head against Kiri and placed a heavy, soft paw on her arm. “We do what we can, Kiri wren.” She glanced toward the door, her tufted cheeks silhouetted against the starlight. “But you bring more news than Quazelzeg’s plans. What is it that excites you so?” She rolled onto her back in one liquid motion and laid her head in Kiri’s lap, shaking with purrs as Kiri tickled under her chin.
“There is a prince come to the palace, Elmmira, to sell horses to the king. He brought four by barge from Thedria. And what horses! Think of the difference between a farmer’s stumpy plow horse and the king’s finest charger.”
“Not hard to do.”
“Now imagine another horse so much more beautiful than the charger, that the charger appears as ugly as a plow pony.”
Elmmira’s purr thundered louder as she imagined. She squeezed her eyes closed in concentration, then flashed them open. “Horses like that I would like to see.”
“Oh, you would be impressed. Fast, strong horses— two black stallions and two white mares. So beautiful. The price is two hundred gold pieces for each. And there are fifty more like them, the prince says, if King Sardira desires.”
Elmmira’s purring stopped. She licked her shoulder reflectively.
“Prince Tebmund has agreed to remain here,” Kiri said, “to train Sardira’s troops in the special ways of war the horses have been taught.”
“If they are skilled in war, they will help to defeat Bukla and Edain. Does this prince know that? Does he side with the dark?” Elmmira growled softly. “And why, then, has he not taken his offer of such fine horses directly to Quazelzeg?” She rose and began to pace, her tail lashing.
“I don’t know why. There’s something about him I can’t sort out, a feeling. . . . He is wonderful with horses, Elmmira. These horses will strike an enemy mount and even attack enemy soldiers.”
“The question is,” Elmmira rumbled, “who is the enemy to this young prince of Thedria?” The great cat rasped her tongue across Kiri’s cheek. “Be careful, Kiri wren. This young prince upsets you.”
Kiri shrugged. Elmmira saw her feelings too clearly, just as Gram did. This evening Gram had turned her thin, wrinkled face to Kiri, frowning with the puzzled twist of her mouth and that shrewd look in her eyes. Unlike Elmmira, Gram had said nothing. Gram would bide her time until Kiri felt like talking about it, until Kiri could sort it out in her own mind, whatever the trouble was.
It was late when Kiri made her way back up the twisting, noisy streets carrying the two dead rabbits. Gram was waiting by the hearthfire, worrying as usual. Kiri bolted the door, hugged her, then poked up the fire to warm the cold evening tea. They sat cozily, Gram rocking gently, not talking. Gram’s long, bony hands were busy carding wool from a hank she had traded honey for—Kiri had collected the honey south of the city in the loft of an abandoned barn. The veins of Gram’s hands were even darker in the shadowing candlelight. She watched Kiri crumble her seedcake, and when she spoke her voice was gravelly with the night’s chill. Kiri handed her her scarf to wrap around her throat.
“You’re all atangle. Flighty.” She said it without criticism. “Is Elmmira all right?”
“Oh, yes. Well, maybe she was edgy. She didn’t say anything.” She looked up at Gram. “What is it? What have you heard?” For Gram was edgy, too, her bright blue eyes filled with unease.
“There are more traps out. Along the alleys, in the fields. Sardira wants speaking animals for the stadium games. A rag woman told of it; she saw them setting the traps.”
“If I could have warned her . . .” Kiri said. “You must have heard it after I left.”
Gram nodded. “You’d gone. I was filling the water jugs.” Gram often heard useful bits of information among their neighbors. She talked little and listened carefully, and people told her a good deal.
Kiri made a silent prayer for Elmmira. But Elmmira was wary. She could smell a trap—she said it smelled like Sardira’s soldiers. Kiri shivered all the same. Maybe she could learn where the traps were set, in which alleys, if she soft-talked one of the stable grooms.
Maybe she could spring those hidden snares with a stick. That was what Papa would do.
Where was Papa tonight?
Perhaps in some secret cellar meeting with others of the underground. Or maybe he was in a street tavern, pretending to be drunk, listening to the loose talk of drunken soldiers. Kiri closed her eyes and tried to see in the special way she and her father had. She could imagine his face, his high, angled cheekbones and square jaw, the laugh lines that made deep curves to frame his mouth . . . that silent mouth bereft of speech. She could see his face, but she could bring no real presence of him this night.
Sometimes if their powers were very strong, and the powers of the dark relaxed, she could sense his thoughts and give him of her own. That was next best to really being with him, to riding together or practicing with bow and sword in the privacy of the ruing as they used to do. That was before Sardira branded her father a traitor and imprisoned and tortured him. Sardira set her father free but mute, thinking he would serve as example to others who fought for freedom. Thinking that Colewolf would be useless, with the voice of the bard taken from him.
They had tied him to a table—it had taken seven men to do that—and cut the tongue from his mouth. He had come home to lie white and shaken on his cot, spitting blood into a basin. There was little Gram could do for him; make him broth, grind salves. His mouth had healed eventually, but his spirit had not. It was after this that he told Kiri, with messages he wrote on a slate and with Gram’s help, the truth of her inheritance, that they bore the blood of the dragonbards. He told her with a touching sadness that there were no more dragons and perhaps no more bards than the tiny handful in Dacia. He wrote with great care the meaning that this inheritance had once held, when the dragons lived. With the coming of the dark, then the disappearance of dragons, man’s memory had been nearly destroyed, his experience wiped away. Without memory and experience, one had no free choice, for what was there to choose?
Only a few people, strong enough to resist the spells and drugs of the dark, retained their freedom and fought back. But even their numbers were dwindling.
“One day,” Gram said, “maybe the dragons will return. Then the bards will sing with them; then the sleeping peoples will awaken. Oh, it could happen.” The old woman never lost hope. No evil was so terrible that Gram no longer had hope.
Gram poured out the last of the tea and added a dollop of honey, then put her arm around Kiri. Kiri leaned her head on Gram’s bony shoulder. Gram’s shapeless linen gown smelled of lye soap. Her thin brown-splotched hands were still.
Kiri sighed. “I guess I miss Papa tonight.”
“He misses you. He’s proud of you, Kiri, and of the work you do.” She held Kiri away and looked at her. “The underground needs you, Kiri, just as it needs Colewolf. You are together in this.”
There were other spies, of course. Two in the palace, and a dozen or so in the city.
“Every spy is important, Kiri. But the dragonbards—you and Colewolf are symbols of the power that once linked us all.”
Kiri nodded. Her tears came suddenly, and she felt ashamed. Papa didn’t cry. Why should she?
“War brings forth strange talents,” Gram said softly. “It brings forth strange feelings, too.” The old woman hugged her, hard. “Come, tell me more about the wonderful horses of Prince Tebmund. I would like to see them working on the training field.”
“Oh, Gram, they are wonders.” Kiri wiped away her tears, sniffing. “I’ve never seen such horses. They will rear and strike an enemy on command, will back and kick, and know all kinds of surprising war tricks. If you will wear your warm shawl, I’ll take you to watch them. You’ll laugh
at Sardira’s soldiers trying to keep their seats.”
“You should be riding such horses, not the king’s clumsy troops. Another talent,” Gram said, touching Kiri’s hand, “another talent that will one day know its own.”
It was not until Kiri lay snuggled in bed beneath her thick quilt, leaving Gram nodding beside the fire, that she wondered. What would this war bring forth in herself? What might it force her to discover about herself? Not about the child Kiri, or the woman-to-be Kiri, but about the other, secret Kiri whom she hardly knew—the bard. The one who sang sometimes to the speaking beasts. The Kiri who had such terrible yearnings for a freedom and power that would never be and that she only half understood.
Kiri had made Colewolf smile with pleasure when she sang at the last rebel meeting four months ago in the secret underground cavern of Gardel-Cloor. She had made a small song to bring alive times past—had made whispers echo in the cavern—and the nebulous shadows of people a long time dead.
If she had been paired with a dragon, the shadows would have come to life, blazing into real figures, the voices rung out strongly, the passions and desires of generations become real. But she was only half a power, alone and incomplete. She sighed. She was gifted, yes. Gram forever reminded her that she had special gifts. But what good were they, alone?
There were, in all the world of Tirror as far as Kiri knew, only two other bards besides herself and her father. There was golden-haired Summer, with eyes like the sea. She was a capable spy and had gone as servant in the household of the dark leader Vurbane, on Ekthuma. From there, Summer sent messages home about the movement of the dark armies, about weapons stores and supplies. Summer, too, felt an emptiness because she was dragonbard-born, in a world without dragons.
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