The other bard was seven-year-old Marshy. Garit and a handful of resistance soldiers had found him as a baby, abandoned in a muddy slew. Little crippled Marshy would not believe there were no more dragons. He insisted on singing his clear-voiced songs that made hazy images of children long vanished, and tore at Kiri’s heart. He spoke of the singing dragons as if one day they would come and lift Tirror out of war. But Marshy was only a little boy and still a terrible dreamer.
What good did it do that there were four bards, when there were no dragons?
Her singing had pleased the troops, though. Maybe it had lightened their spirits. But her powers could wane so quickly. They seemed strongest in the grotto of Gardel-Cloor. Elsewhere on Dacia, the murky confusion the dark laid down was too powerful for her. Then she had only her own eyes and ears and quick feet to help her. She had not even the dimpled smile and naughty eyes of Accacia with which to win people’s confidence. If she had Accacia’s looks, she could be the cleverest spy in all Tirror. And what did Accacia do with her beauty? Nothing of value, only that which brought favors, diamonds, velvet gowns, and the most luxurious apartments in the west tower. Kiri sighed. If she had half Accacia’s looks, she could learn quickly enough all about Prince Tebmund.
Well, the first thing to do was take Gram to watch his horses. If he saw her and Gram admiring them, it would be easier to get acquainted.
*
Kiri and Gram woke to a foggy morning, the rooftops and streets below them smothered in white, the black towers above half hidden. They made their way through the back halls of the palace and behind the stables, beneath the windows of the horsemaster’s apartments, then into the dim almond grove. Across the gaming field, the black stone pergola that housed the king’s viewing box was filled with soldiers and palace guards and ladies. Kiri could see the black-robed king seated in his tall carved chair. All along the stone wall that divided the field from the stables, grooms and pages stood watching. The horsemaster watched from the gate. Kiri made Gram comfortable with the blanket.
The old woman sat entranced as Prince Tebmund galloped the white mare in circles, then with a touch made her run backward. They watched her rear on command and strike out, wheel and kick, duck and drop down crouching as if evading a sword. Kiri longed to have one chance at such a horse and knew Gram felt the same.
When the three mounted soldiers began to try war maneuvers, Gram shook her head. The horses out-turned them and outthought them, yet these men were powerful horse soldiers. Kiri took fine delight in their awkwardness. Gram stared at them with scorn, but her eyes filled with pleasure at the horses and her old hands twitched, yearning to hold the reins. She had been a fine horsewoman in her day. Kiri had brought an image of her once, in a small song sung in privacy and easier to do than bringing a whole city alive. It was of Gram as a young girl, riding a great piebald stallion over hurdles.
They walked home slowly, Kiri awash with regret that the eager old woman was now trapped in that frail, aging body. She wished she could give Gram one wonderful ride on those magical horses. The high road was crowded now, with folk herding sheep and goats, some begging, a few driving loaded carts to the palace kitchens. At home, she settled Gram by the wood stove and heated soup for her, then went out again to tend to Accacia. But when she started up the high road she saw Prince Tebmund on the white mare coming toward her between carts, the foot traffic making way for him.
She ducked in behind some cottages, then wondered at her own timidity. She peered out, unnerved, as he wheeled the mare lightly and trotted back toward the palace. She had botched the perfect opportunity.
She watched him ride through the palace gate, furious at herself. She could not have found a better way to meet Prince Tebmund than here among crowds where it would seem an accident. She had ruined it with her unaccountable, gawking shyness.
Chapter 6
Sour, Seastrider said, staring at the faces they passed along the road. Don’t they know how to smile?
They haven’t much to smile about, Teb said as they turned in through the palace gate. The girl was smiling, the page. She went between the cottages back there, the girl who was watching us from the almond, grove, the one you find so interesting.
The one you find interesting, Tebriel. The girl we just followed down the high road because you wanted to speak to her. Seastrider switched her tail. You already know her name is Kiri. She and that old woman know how to admire a horse, all right. But you have learned little else about her.
Only that she is cousin to Accacia, and that her father was once horsemaster in this palace. Perhaps that is what we see in her, a sympathy and knowledge of fine mounts.
Perhaps, Tebriel.
But what else? Could she be one for whom we search?
I do not know, Tebriel. She bears watching. And what of last night’s venture? Didn’t you see her then?
If you know my thoughts, why do you ask me?
They are not clear. Nothing comes clear in this dark-ridden place.
I learned little in the city. Twice I fought off drugged gangs. People were closemouthed, or too drugged to make sense. As I was coming back up the hill I saw candlelight suddenly where the cottage door opened, saw a girl’s figure. It was very dim, but was in the place where her cottage stands. It might have been Kiri. It was near midnight—strange for a young woman to be about so late in this cursed city. You are right, as usual. She interests me. I mean to find out why.
They turned into the stable yard and Teb slid down, waving a groom away. He stripped off the saddle and halter, gave Seastrider a quick rubdown and fresh water, then slapped her on the rump. Go and play; go eat grass. She twitched her ears at him, then wheeled away through the side gate and sped for the far hills, where her brothers and sister were grazing. The groom stared after her unbelieving. But he’d had his instructions. Teb stood watching them, thinking idly that the horsemaster, Riconder, had been somewhat reserved in his admiration. Jealous, Seastrider had said, and didn’t like the man. This could pose a problem they hadn’t counted on. Well, no matter; the king was impressed enough. Teb turned reluctantly back to the palace, where the king awaited him.
There seemed to be a lot of social ritual—state breakfasts and morning tea with the king, a lot of dressing up. It was difficult to slip away into the city. He had expected ritual, but not so early in the day. He yawned, and thought of stealing up to his chambers for a short nap. He’d had little sleep the night before, returning from the taverns of the city to toss restlessly. He had gone well armed and was glad of that, had changed some of his gold into the local silver reppets stamped with Sardira’s profile. He had learned little of importance, but there was a candle shop open quite late, with an unusual amount of traffic, and that would bear watching. The night before that, his first night in Dacia, he had escaped to the horses, then to the sky, as soon as the palace darkened. He had clung to Seastrider’s back, shouting into the wind with pent-up frustration at fancy palace ceremonies.
They had invaded the island of Felwen with their song and had caused three dark leaders to be hanged from the manor house belfry. Teb smiled. It wouldn’t be a bad stay in Dacia if they could escape every few nights to some action. He didn’t think he was cut out to play the part of a palace dandy.
Well, but he must. He must be courtly and smile and try to remember his manners.
That night, when palace windows darkened, they were off again, this time over Wintrel, where the dragons could sense an evil sabbath in progress long before they sighted the island.
It was a dance of hate. A circle of fires burned, and within danced twenty young girls, chained and naked, forced to dance, prodded by pokers when they faltered. Teb could feel the dark leader’s elation and knew he took strength from the girls’ fear and pain. Yesod had dressed himself in the skin of a goat, the horns bound to his forehead. His ugly laugh was cruel and cold, his eyes flashing with hungry lust.
There were no woods on Wintrel. The dragons wove themselves in among the boul
ders that lined its western shore. Teb climbed the rocks and stared off north to the ring of ritual fires. The music was pagan and invasive and made evil thoughts come in him, so he welcomed Seastrider’s nudge and moved close to her great flat cheek as they began to sing.
Slowly Teb and the dragons countered the pagan music, weakened its force. Yesod and his four consorts began to fidget. Teb watched the girls’ faces, saw them brighten. They began to fight their chains.
But then Yesod’s power increased. The girls cowered, and knelt in worship of Yesod. The dark leader smiled, a leer as cold as winter. Teb and the dragons tried to bring their powers stronger, but their images of freedom and dignity shattered. They watched Wintrel’s people drop back into lethargy. The power of this dark leader was too great. Teb was riven with fear of what Yesod could do—of what he would do to Tirror, now that he knew there were dragons.
Now, they must make sure that he died.
We must bring Yesod here to us, Seastrider said. It is the only way to destroy him. We must call him to us with twisted images.
It was not easy to use their powers to call forth evil. Teb sang of a dark time, of dark creatures, for all history was a part of the dragon song. Yesod listened to that song. He began to approach the dark images, moving mechanically. The tangle of sirens and lamias and snake-tailed basilisks drew him to them. He held out his hands to the twisting shadows but looked beyond them at Teb and the dragons.
He knew they were singing, knew they were luring him, yet he came on, embracing the dark mimicries that flowed around him, wanting them with a lust for evil that drugged reason. Teb’s blood went cold with fear of him.
Yesod approached the cliff, fondled by the evil creatures. They led him with lurid gestures, with thoughts so bloody he didn’t care that they were only shades. He reached toward the cliff, thirsting for the dark songs, sucking on them. His disciples followed him. The dark images moved over the crest of the cliff and down it toward the sea, spinning titillating sensations like steel scarves to draw the dark leaders.
The dark masters stepped out into air. They fell. Yesod screamed once.
They lay below, twisted on the sharp stone, dying. The sea’s tides would take them, then the sharks. Teb thanked the Graven Light that the un-men, evil as they were, still could die. They were the dark side of mortal, he guessed—the black mirror image of what mankind should be.
The killing sickened Teb, but there was no alternative. Each night, as more folk were freed, Teb could only hope they would remain so and take up arms to join with the resistance.
But that was their decision. Teb and the dragons could win their freedom for them but could not choose what they would do with it.
He must find a way to the underground soon. Maybe he could help bring the newly freed peoples into it, if they wanted to fight the dark. No one in the palace had given any sign that they worked with the rebels. There had been no plying questions to try to find out Teb’s own sympathies. Accacia’s coy questions added up to nothing yet. He followed her the next night—or thought he did—a dark, full-skirted shadow slipping deep into the palace passages. He discovered when she lit a lamp that it was not Accacia, but her friend Roderica, the thin, graceless horsemaster’s daughter. Teb followed her on through dark, twisting ways to an ironclad door.
He watched her unlock it and slip inside, leaving the door ajar, the soft light of the room spilling into the passage. He could see the end of a bed with rumpled blankets but could not tell if someone was in it. He was about to move closer when Roderica reappeared carrying a tray and set it down on the floor of the passage as if meaning for servants to retrieve it. It contained a bowl and mug. The bowl was half full of something pasty like cold porridge, half a small meat pie, and a peach seed. Roderica retreated and closed the door, leaving him in darkness. He waited for perhaps an hour before light spilled out again. He had pressed against the door to listen but could hear only the blurred hum of two women’s voices. When Roderica came out, he was back in the shadows. As she paused, the raspy woman’s voice from inside complained.
“. . . porridge. I’m sick to death of porridge.”
“I’ll tell them,” Roderica said. “Stewed chicken and gravy, and no porridge.” She locked the door and pocketed the key.
Teb followed her lantern light back through the dark passages, committing the way to memory, remembering his glimpse of the locked room, remembering the old, cracked voice of the woman. The service on the tray had been of gold, with embroidered linen. The bed frame had been ornate, the carpet rich. But the door was kept locked.
He began to listen more carefully at the interminable state meals and functions for mention of the prisoner. He gleaned no information. He took himself down into the city, among the taverns and brothels late at night, to listen to gossip. He had found that if he dined with the king and lingered politely afterward, he was soon released to spend the rest of the evening as he chose.
Seastrider would not let him go alone this time. She took the shape of a great gray wolf with some difficulty, not a speaking wolf but a wild, roving wolf such as she sensed in a small band on the black mountain. Teb went among the city flanked by a natural killer. Though they were watched and followed, no one came close to him. He asked oblique questions, lounging at tables dressed in his old, stained leathers, and drank too much mithnon, for which he was sorry the next day. He learned little of real interest and felt stifled and shamed by the sick townsfolk stinking of drugs. The white powdered cadacus was easy to come by, and he was stared at strangely when he refused it.
No man would speak against the king, or against the dark leaders from the north, though one old man said, glancing around him with caution, “They aren’t afraid of the dark ones. They hide things from them. . . .” But when Teb tried to learn who they were, the old leather-faced man took panic and fled the tavern. Teb dared not follow; too many eyes were watching.
He learned nothing about the palace page, Kiri, on these night visits. He saw little of her until the morning she stood watching him from an alley that led off the main palace courtyard.
He had been talking with Prince Abisha. He left him as quickly as he could to follow her, but she had disappeared. He saw her again two days later as he left his chambers, her face dull and without expression; but her dark eyes were alive before she turned away quickly through a side door. The door seemed a private one. He didn’t follow her. Then one afternoon he saw her in the city, trading for candles at the shop he had been watching.
It was a tiny building made of rough boards set against two walls of a stone ruin. It sold only candles, yet its customers seemed many for such a place, and most of them strong young people. Kiri went in carrying a string bag. He could see her bartering a clay crock for candles. He stayed in the tavern across the way, beside its small open window. When she came out, a mob of roving boys no more than twelve were lounging around a small horse corral attached to the tavern. They saw Kiri alone and, moving quickly, were around her, striking at the heavy string bag with sticks, and then at her legs and arms. Teb left through the window. He gathered four of them by their dirty collars. The other three fled up the muddy lane. Kiri stood gawking at him.
She was not in her page’s tunic but in dirty rags, her face smeared with dirt, her feet bare. The two crocks in the string bag, those she had not traded, were broken. Thick globs of golden honey ran down through the mesh to puddle in the muddy street. Teb saw the knife in her hand and knew without her saying that she had been loath to use it on such children. She saw him looking at it and, with no false modesty, lifted her skirt and slipped it into the sheath tied against her leg.
“Children,” he said. “But they meant to hurt you.”
She nodded. “Thank you. I would have had to hurt them.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the string bag, then emptied it into the gutter, retrieving a dozen stubby candles first, staring with regret at the pieces of broken crock scattered in the honey and mud. “Gram’s
good crocks. She had them a long time.”
“Are you going back to the palace? I will walk with you.”
Above them, as they climbed, the rising hills with their crowded houses and stone ruins were all in shadow. The high ridge of the mountain above the black castle flared red with the setting sun. The smell of a hundred suppers cooking mixed with the smell of soggy animal pens.
Teb said, “He does quite a business, that candle-maker.”
“He makes the best candles in Dacia.”
Teb studied her. “It seems strange that his customers are all so . . . they’re all healthy young people.”
Her brown eyes were steady, her face lean and alert. She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s strange. That shop is the only one in Dacia where you can get candles that aren’t tallow. These candles are beeswax. Tallow candles make people cough.” She smiled at him. “I bring the candlemaker beeswax, along with my honey.”
He looked at her closely. “All you get for your wax and honey are a few candles in trade?”
“Oh, no.” She dug in her pocket and brought out a handful of small silver reppets with the face of Sardira on each. Teb looked at the coins and studied her solemn, innocent face. His good sense told him the candle shop was a meeting place. He wished he knew Kiri better. He would go back there. If the shop was such a place, and if Garit was in Dacia, then Garit might appear there sooner or later.
Teb got no real information out of Kiri. She was clever at fencing his questions. He was increasingly interested in that skill.
He left her at her door, meaning to talk with her again soon. Meantime there were other answers he wanted. He wanted to know more about the ugly games in the stadium, and whether captured rebel soldiers were tortured as a part of the entertainment. He wanted to know how many dark leaders came to Dacia for the games.
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