Chapter 7
“You have told me little of the stadium games,” Teb said, watching Accacia. “We have nothing like them in Thedria. There must be huge crowds, visiting dignitaries?” He busied himself breaking bread, served with the first course, of shellfish. “Are such games enjoyed often, or only on special occasions?”
“Oh, special occasions,” Accacia said brightly. “When the leaders of the north come,” she said, delicately forking a river clam from its shell. “When they come, there is gaming at night in the stadium and feasting, and slaves will dance in all the taverns.” Her golden-brown eyes were bright with excitement.
He sipped at the pale wine. “What kind of contests? Men against men, or against animals?”
“All kinds, giant cats battling wolves, or both driven to attack chained prisoners.” Her color rose with lust.
“Prisoners?” he asked casually.
“Enemies of the king, and of Dacia. There are wild horses, too, battling with drugged bulls. Only not any horses like yours, Prince Tebmund. Once,” Accacia said, tossing her chestnut hair, “once there was a unicorn brought from the lands beyond the sea, trussed up, and sold to King Sardira. It fought the king’s brown guard lizards all alone until it bled to death.”
Teb clenched his jaws, watching her, sickened. Unicorns were rare creatures, never seen on these lands anymore, though their pictures were painted on the walls of the ancient sanctuaries. Rare and valued creatures—if one had any sense of value. The king’s guard lizards were as big as horses, with triple rows of razor-sharp teeth and claws, as long as his hand, like sharp curved knives. The king had shown him two, his first day in the palace, pointing them out from a slit window, where the lizards paced in a small inner court.
Accacia’s knee brushed his leg, and the candlelight shone on her hair. Teb wanted to ask more about the prisoners, the enemies of the king. But Abisha across from him heard every word, though the pale, flabby man ate methodically with no change of expression, except an occasional small frown at his fiancée. Teb didn’t dare ask outright how many dark leaders came here, or who they were.
The king was watching him, too, whether because of his questions about the games or because Accacia was leaning too close to him, smiling too much, Teb wasn’t sure.
But it was not only the king’s stare or Accacia’s too warm attention that made Teb edgy. There was something else, something beyond this table, a presence or a force that stirred in him a sharp pang of unease. This was not the first time he had felt it. It touched him like a cold hand, then vanished. A dark threat, telling him to beware.
Roast lamb was being served and trenchers of vegetables and warm, fragrant breads. Teb fell to with enthusiasm. For nearly five years in Nightpool he had lived on nothing but fish and shellfish—raw at first, then cooked inexpertly by his own hand. And before that, there were four years of dry bread and table scraps when he was prisoner in his murdered father’s palace. He wished now he could simply enjoy the wonderful food and not have to try to work information from a woman who, too obviously, had more intimate things in mind, and who drew the eyes of both king and prince to him too critically.
“It is a fine dining hall,” he said, speaking up table to the king, “beautifully appointed, and the food is superior. I would guess there is no grander hall or fare anywhere on Tirror.”
The king smiled. “The carvings are from the eastern mountains of the Reinhollen dwarves, brought by barge when my father ruled. The jewels were dug from our own mines, of course, as jewels are dug, still, by my slaves.”
It surprised Teb that the king’s father would still be mentioned, that any tradition was spoken of here. Wherever the dark insinuated itself into the land, the past was wiped from the memory of men, or at least from their conversation and caring. He studied the hall. Its ornate, crowded, heavily carved panels were more oppressive than beautiful. The mountain’s black stone at the back lost itself in its own shadows, except where water dripped out from underground springs, catching the candlelight. Teb thought of another hall, his home in Auric, with walls of the palest masonry and banks of windows. There, sunlight seemed always to touch his mother’s face, and bright tapestries hung everywhere.
By the time he was twelve the tapestries were gray and tattered, the palace a dismal, smelly camp for Sivich’s soldiers. His mother was gone. His father was dead, and he and his sister, Camery, slaves to Sivich, his father’s killer. He was startled when Accacia leaned over his arm.
“You must see the city for yourself, Prince Tebmund. There will be no entertainment tomorrow, but I can show you Dacia. We can ride out early in the morning if you like, and—”
“A party to view the city,” Prince Abisha interrupted. His look at his fiancée was cold and knowing. “A fine idea. I will arrange it. But not tomorrow. Grain and stores will be shipped tomorrow. The streets will be jammed with carts. The next day, perhaps. We shall see.”
She glared, then retreated into an icy smile. “Directly after breakfast would be best, while it is still cool.”
Abisha didn’t bother to answer her. He signaled for more roast lamb.
Teb thought in the morning he would take his mounted trainees down into the city on the excuse of giving them experience on crowded streets. . . . It would be some action, something different, and he might see something of value. He itched to be away from the supper table and up above the earth looking down between Seastrider’s wings. He hated waiting each night until the whole palace slept.
It was bad luck he had been assigned rooms just below Accacia’s apartments and that she could see the stable from her windows. It was interesting that she had made mention of it this evening as he accompanied her into the dining hall. But there was no law against his going to the stable, or against riding at night.
“Do you not have stone carvers in Thedria?” the king was asking.
“No. No dwarfs of any kind, nor have I ever seen one,” Teb said truthfully. He could answer that kind of question. The history of Tirror’s peoples was a part of all dragon-song lore. It was questions about small new customs that worried him and that could draw wrong answers.
“Then how do you decorate your palaces? And what pastimes, Prince Tebmund, do the folk of Thedria find appealing? Do you not have stadium games?”
Teb laughed. “I’m afraid our two palaces are mostly rough and undecorated, King Sardira. And as for pastimes, I suppose our folk have little time to pass in recreation. They farm and fish, and even those of the palace find common work to do when they are not working with the colts. I’m afraid you would find us a dull lot in Thedria, quite unable to offer such luxuries as this grand banquet, or such entertainment as your stadium games.”
It seemed forever to Teb before he was alone in his chambers. He pulled off his fancy clothes and changed to his leather trousers and tunic, folding the stolen clothes over a silver clothes stand. The red wool was soft, very like a red dress his mother had worn. Red was her favorite color. A picture of her filled his mind; she was dressed in red, her silhouette sharp against a red tapestry as she turned to look out her chamber window, the sun full on her face.
She seemed to him, now, so much more than his mother. He knew only that she traveled in worlds beyond Tirror, searching for her own dragon mate. As a child he had not known, nor would have understood, her need, though he had felt that she yearned for something, something secret and wild that she would not share with him and Camery. It left him puzzled and excited.
He and his mother and Camery were all flung apart now, so they might never see each other again. He hoped it had been Camery whom Nightraider sensed there on that small island. He could see her in memory, a skinny little girl riding pell-mell down the meadows on her fat bay pony, her knees tucked in and her pale hair flying; he could hear her laughter when she beat him in a race, and see her green-eyed scowl when she didn’t.
He paced his chamber, avoiding the heavy furniture, watching the palace wings through his velvet-draped windows. How lon
g it took for all the windows to darken and the palace to sleep. The wind was rising. He could feel Seastrider’s impatience on the dark hills as the white mare snorted and pawed.
He guessed he didn’t take much to court life. He’d lived too long in his simple cave among the otters of Nightpool, and then in the dragon lair. He guessed animals were more open in their dealings than humans, not so impressed with ritual. The animals had ritual, too, but of a simpler kind. The foxes of the caves of Nison-Serth had their family rituals, but they were gentle, loving ones, like bathing together in the household pool.
The otters’ rituals had been more complicated. But they were directly connected with council meetings, not used for vanity, nor as background for mating, which the otter families handled more directly. Teb was not without desire for women, but he didn’t much like complicated flirting, particularly when it concerned Accacia’s meaningful glances.
She had come to his door last night very late because, she said, she heard noises on the stair. He had pointed out to her that if the noises were on the stair, she would have been safer behind her own bolted door. She had flashed him a look of cold anger and left quickly, her blue robe swirling around her ankles.
He wondered if her flirting was a cover, if she might be a contact with the underground, wanting to learn his true mission. She had given no hint of that. She could be just what she seemed, a little tart. He would hold his judgment and see where the flirting led. Seastrider thought her a common trollop. Seastrider had decided opinions. Well, that was the nature of dragons.
Seastrider’s comments about the soldiers who rode her weren’t flattering, either. All four dragons were hard put not to buck off their heavy-handed riders. It was difficult enough, they said, to hold the shape shifting for such long times without having to put up with the Dacian soldiers jerking their halters and kicking them. Teb did not point out to them that it was their idea to come here. He had a hard time convincing the Dacian soldiers, too, that these horses did not need bits in their mouths and would not tolerate spurs.
He thought how Garit would have ridden them, gentle-handed and wise, understanding at once their perceptiveness. Garit had stayed on as horsemaster after Teb’s father was murdered, serving the dark leader, Sivich, and certainly hating him. He had stayed to help Teb and Camery when the chance finally came. When Sivich’s men discovered there was still a singing dragon on Tirror, Sivich decided to capture it, using Teb as bait. It was the small birthmark on Teb’s arm that told Sivich he was a dragonbard.
Sivich had been an ignorant fool to think that a singing dragon would let itself be captured. Teb supposed that in his embarrassment at failure Sivich had kept the fact that there was a dragon again on Tirror a secret. Maybe he still dreamed of trapping her. He was a fool as well as an incredibly evil man. He followed the dark leaders eagerly. It was Sivich’s kind, more than any other, that helped the dark grow strong. Teb intended that Sivich would die painfully and slowly for the murder of his father.
Garit had outsmarted Sivich handily when he freed Teb from Sivich’s army before they reached the site of the dragon trap. Garit fled on horseback to lead Sivich’s soldiers away from Teb, where he hid in the sanctuary of Nison-Serth. Garit didn’t know Teb had been captured a second time and chained in the dragon snare. Surely it was Garit who had returned to Auric much later, to the tower, to free Camery. The great owl, Red Unat, winging across the channel to Nightpool, had brought Teb news that she was gone.
Teb began to pace again, impatient to join the dragons. He wondered—if he could bring folk awake, he and Seastrider, make folk cast off the mind-numbing dark, maybe he could make them sleep, too.
Half amused, he tried a song of peace, singing softly, his voice moving out onto the night breeze too quietly to be consciously heard through open windows. The song came to him easily, and he felt more power than he should; then he realized Seastrider was singing with him, a whisper of dragon song. They wove a subtle ballad filled with stars and soft winds, and pretty soon the palace lights began to be snuffed, one here, two there. The reflections of light from the rooms below him began to die.
At last the night was black, with only the stars for light. Teb slipped out his chamber door, to the shadows of hall and stair.
Chapter 8
The white mares were silhouetted against the night, the two black stallions visible only because they hid the stars. Teb swung onto Seastrider’s back. They headed at a fast trot for the hills. “We made good magic,” he said. “The palace sleeps soundly.”
“It was not our magic alone, Tebriel. There is power around us tonight. There is something in the palace of bright power. Can’t you feel it?”
“What kind of something? I can sense only the dark.”
“I don’t know what it is.” Seastrider tossed her head. “I expect you will be aware of it, given time . . . and a little freedom to breathe, among all the social complications of these humans.”
So she had sensed his frustration at the supper table. “Are you laughing at me?”
She didn’t answer but broke into a gallop, the other three beside her, and they headed for the far hills.
Once out of sight of the palace, they let their horse shapes slide away, and the four dragons burst skyward on the cold west wind. They swept out over the black sea, banking and gliding, spending their pent-up, restless passion in a storm of spinning flight.
When they settled at last, they dove for shark, Teb half-drowned as usual, his ears full of water and his boots full as well. On an outcropping rock the dragons made their meal. When they took to the sky once more, still possessed by wildness, Teb clung, dizzy and laughing. The lands below them were all dark, not a light anywhere. The sea heaved with patches of phosphorescence so it was brighter than the land-world. Against the shores, white waves broke.
They did not touch any country this night. They dove low, observing, sensing the dark. There was strong evil on Liedref: They picked out half a dozen other lands where they would return to battle the dark invaders. As dawn neared, the dragons made for Dacia, swooping low over the small continents that bordered the Sea of Igness. They came down over Dacia to the west, behind the mountain that held the palace. They could see the mountain’s wild western face where trees twisted between giant boulders. They hovered there listening, but there was no sound.
They made for the gentler hills, where the dragons shifted shape and trotted back docilely to the palace stables. Teb’s boots squinched seawater when he dismounted.
It was that morning that Teb, prompted by Accacia’s remarks, thought again of the locked door in the dark palace passage, where an old woman’s cracked voice had complained, “. . . porridge. I’m sick to death of porridge.”
*
Roderica had taken breakfast at the king’s table with her father. The horsemaster, Riconder, a square, silent man with a look of resentment about him, spoke little to Teb. He praised the horses, it seemed, only out of duty. When he rose, his daughter followed him, and Accacia, clinging to Teb’s arm, giggled. “Don’t be late with your ward’s breakfast, Roderica.”
Teb had a quick vision of Roderica going down the dark hall carrying a lamp, unlocking that lonely, heavy door.
“And don’t forget the queen’s porridge,” Accacia said rudely. “She does so love her cold porridge.”
The queen.
Teb hadn’t known there was a queen, had supposed her long dead. He glanced at the king, who had risen, and saw no change of expression. He made an excuse as soon and as deftly as he could and left Accacia. He hurried down the dark passage until he saw Roderica ahead, her lamp casting a swaying light up the dark walls. She approached a passage where brighter lamps burned. He stopped and drew back into blackness as she flung open double doors.
It was the kitchen inside; he could hear the clanging of utensils and smell food and dishwater. She came out, followed by a page boy carrying a breakfast tray. Teb waited until they had rounded a bend, then followed. He waited again while the fo
od was delivered beyond the oak door. When the page had left, he settled against the wall. He had no time to move away when Roderica came out quickly, straight for him, and grabbed his arm.
She was a thin girl, tall, with an angled face, sour and unsmiling. “Why did you follow me? I have no use for spies, even if you are a prince.”
“I would like to visit the queen.”
“Why? No one visits her.”
“That’s why.” He thought the best approach was the direct one. Roderica seemed serious now, without the frivolity she displayed at other times. A strange girl, changeable and confusing.
“I didn’t know there was a queen,” Teb told her. “I thought her long dead. I am curious. Is there any harm in that?”
She looked him over, not speaking, holding the lamp high so her own face fell into angled shadows.
“Isn’t she lonely? Wouldn’t she like a visitor?”
“She has me. I am all she needs. The king would be furious if he knew you were here.”
“Do you mean to tell him?”
At that moment the door flew open and the old woman stood leaning against the sill. “What is it, Roderica? Who are you talking to? Bring him in here.”
She was dressed in a pale pink dressing gown with quantities of ruffles, an old gray sweater pulled over it. Her feet were shod in heavy sheepskin slippers. Her white hair flew wildly around her thin, wrinkled face. She leaned heavily on the doorframe as Roderica reached for her, then nearly fell as the young woman steadied and turned her toward the bed. Teb followed them into the room.
When she was ensconced at last under the tumbled blankets, she fixed her faded blue eyes on Teb. “Well? Who is he, Roderica? Why did you bring him here?”
“I didn’t. He followed me. He is a prince of Thedria, selling horses.”
The old woman’s laugh ended with coughing. “I do not buy horses, young man. I am past that.”
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