Kiri watched them, choked with joy. She looked at Teb and swallowed back tears. Starpounder circled the mountain bugling as if his strident voice was plenty to speak for both of them, bard and dragon.
Much later, when the dragons and their bards filled the sky, Gram rode behind Kiri, excited as a child. They circled Dacia, swept over Edain and Bukla and the small islands of the archipelago, then dropped down to the sea cliffs that guarded the gate of Gardel-Cloor. The moment the dragons settled, the gate flung open and a little boy ran out, limping hardly at all, and climbed the cliff to them. Teb reached down from Seastrider’s back and pulled Marshy up before him, tucking the child’s legs into the white harness, and Seastrider swept aloft.
Out over the sea, Marshy sang alone, his voice given power by the dragons and by the bards who, in silence, joined him. Marshy touched each child in the war-ravaged city, made each know special things. He brought the last of the children out of hiding, many who knew nothing but darkness. They came running now, the child-slaves dragging their chains, swarming into Gardel-Cloor, following for the first time not cruel masters but a far greater power.
Chapter 21
The minute he was on the ground Teb grabbed Camery and squeezed her so hard she yelped. Then he held her away, and they really looked at each other for the first time. She was as tall as he. Her face was smeared with dirt and her bright hair tangled, but her grin was the same, that green-eyed devilish smile. The little girl was still there beneath the strength of a woman and soldier, and the awakened power of a bard. She looked him over and touched the scar on his arm.
“What did that? The scar has twisted your birthmark—the dragon’s mark.”
“Sivich’s soldiers cut me when they took me captive.”
“Garit helped you escape from them, he told me.”
“They caught me again outside a fox den at the back of Nison-Serth.”
“Then how did you get away?”
“The dragons’ mother released me from the dragon trap Sivich built to catch her. I was the bait. The otters found me with a broken leg and unconscious, and dragged me onto a raft and took me to Nightpool.”
She touched his face where a scar marked his chin. “And that? I want to know everything that has happened to you.”
He grinned. “I was climbing the sea cliff. A wave made me slip—the sea hydrus was chasing me.”
Her eyes widened. She looked down the sea cliff where they stood, at the crashing waves. “So much to learn about you, Teb. So much to tell each other.”
Above them on the cliff the dragons had settled among the rocks, twined around one another. The gate of Gardel-Cloor stood ajar. They could hear the tangle of voices inside and the laughter of children who had not laughed for a very long time.
“Camery, I think Mama is alive.”
Her eyes widened, not in surprise but in recognition. “I have believed that for a long time. I thought I only wanted to believe it. Tell me . . .”
“She is a bard, did you guess that? She went to search for her own dragon—her second, for the one she paired with originally was killed.”
“Where is she?”
“Do you know the Castle of Doors?”
“Oh . . . yes.” Camery swallowed, and pressed her fist to her mouth. “She went. . . through? Into . . .”
“Into other worlds. She went searching for Dawncloud, but Dawncloud was here all the time, was fast asleep in Tendreth Slew, so they didn’t sense each other. It was Dawncloud who saved me, who is mother of our four.”
“But where is Dawncloud now?”
“She went after Mama. But it’s a long story; let’s save some for later. Garit is down there. I caught a glimpse of him.”
They went along the cliff, then down and across stones wet with sea spray, and in through the carved stone gates of Gardel-Cloor. Garit grabbed Teb in a great hug, nearly crushing him, and Camery swept up little Marshy, who ran shouting to her, and whirled him around the great cave, in and out among the shouting children. Teb was surprised to find himself as tall as Garit; Garit had always seemed as huge as the red-maned bull that gave him his nickname. He smelled of horses and leather, and his smile was just as comforting as always. He pummeled Teb and shook him.
“So our Kiri was right. Prince Tebmund of Thedria was to be trusted, in spite of consorting with the king.”
“Did she say that?”
“She knew she shouldn’t trust you so soon, in spite of her feelings. Your strange, perceptive horses upset her.”
They looked toward Kiri and Colewolf sitting quietly together, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. They might have been quite alone, even though dozens of children crowded the cave and bands of rebel fighters kept arriving.
Men and women had begun to remove the children’s chains and tend their wounds, and a bathing tub of seawater was heating over a fire, the smoke rising up through a smoke hole. At the back of the fire several haunches were roasting, the smell of crisp meat filling Gardel-Cloor. The great cats wandered among the children, some licking wounds and some curled down among the napping little ones, couching small heads and warming their thin little bodies. And there were foxes. Teb stood staring. Five pale foxes gathered with the great cats, and one old otter.
“Yes, foxes.” Garit laughed. “And does the otter make you feel at home? The big fox is Hexet of Kipa. Go and greet them while I help tend to the children; then we’ll catch up, have a good talk. I have a thousand questions.”
Teb went to sit on a low stone before the animals; he wanted to gather them all in a big hug but wouldn’t embarrass them. Just to see foxes again and to see the dark, laughing face of an otter was wonderful. It was only a moment until they were all introduced, and Hexet was telling him that Brux, of the fox colony at Nison-Serth, was his cousin. Brux had helped to save Teb when he escaped the first time from Sivich. And the old otter, Lebekk, knew many at Nightpool, for he had traveled five times to that island.
“I know Thakkur well, and know what he has done for the resistance. Ever since you left Nightpool, Tebriel, he has sent cadres of young armed and trained otters up the coast to help the human rebels in any way they could. At Baylentha, when Ebis the Black put down a second uprising, it was the otters, working in team with Ebis’s agents, who discovered the source of the infiltrators and trapped them in their own fishing boats and sank them.”
Teb felt a surge of pride in Thakkur so strong he had to swallow several times and could not speak. Thakkur had done it, had made the Nightpool otters into an effective army. He had trained the otters for battle, had taught them to use weapons—despite the loud complaining by Nightpool’s handful of troublemakers.
“And it was Thakkur’s otters at Vouchen Vek,” Hexet said, “who trained the otter colony there and helped them steal weapons. You were one of them, Lebekk. You were there.”
“Yes,” Lebekk said, his dark, sleek coat catching the firelight. “With the human rebels, we laid siege to Fekthen and Thiondor, sank their supply boats, and starved the dark troops. We fed the captives secretly and freed them, and they killed their dark masters. Though I think they had other incentives as well. I believe the dragon song touched them there, that visions came to them.”
Teb stayed with Lebekk and the foxes a long time, taking pleasure in their eager talk and simple well-being. Then when two great cats challenged them to a game, he left them. The meat was nearly cooked, the cave redolent of the smoky juices, and his stomach rumbled with hunger. He saw more soldiers arriving bloody and torn, having tended first to their tired horses. Now their own wounds were treated and they were fed and made comfortable. Teb found Camery, and they filled their plates with the good roasted meat and roots and flat bread, then found a little alcove where they could sit alone. Here he told her all that had happened to him, from the morning he was led away from the palace tied on his horse. Garit had told her part of it, how he and young Lervey and the old cook, Pakkna, and Hibben of the twisted hand had slipped out of Sivich’s camp
at midnight, stealing Teb away.
“Pakkna and Lervey are with the troops in Branthen,” she said. “Hibben travels across Akemada secretly rallying troops. But tell me again how Sivich captured you.”
“As the foxes helped me escape Nison-Serth out a small back entrance, the winged jackals discovered us and attacked. Then Sivich’s soldiers were on us. They threw me across a horse—I think that’s when my ribs were broken—then rode all night for Baylentha. There they put me in a huge cage made of whole felled trees and barge chain, meaning to capture Dawncloud.” He smiled. “But it was Dawncloud who freed me.”
He told her how, after four years in the otter colony, he had gone to search for the black hydrus, knowing he must kill it, or it would destroy him. It had captured him and taken him to the drowned city across the open sea. It tried to twist his mind so he would use his bard powers for the dark. “It meant for me to force Seastrider to do the same. But I stabbed it at last, and then the dragons came and finished it.
“All the rooms above water in that place were filled only with barnacles and sea moss. But there was one apartment in a tall tower that had furnishings—a bed, a chair, clothes, Mama’s red dress, and her diary. Merlther Brish’s sailboat was tied below waiting for her. But it was her diary that led Dawncloud there and, because she sensed what was in it, led her to the Castle of Doors.”
“And you saw Dawncloud go through,” she said, studying his face, “into . . . who knows what kind of world. And Mama is there . . . somewhere.”
He took her hand. “She will come back. They both will. Now tell me how Garit rescued you. I know he took you to the house of the brewer, where you left your diary for me to find.”
She told him the details of her escape, and how she and Garit came to Dacia to the underground, then about her years as servant in the house of Vurbane. Teb could tell she left much unsaid.
“They weren’t pleasant years. I didn’t think at first I could do such a thing, spy as a servant, be obedient to that dark household. Vurbane is—” She shook her head, her eyes filled with pain. “But I found I could do it. And if I was miserable in some ways, I felt strong inside and . . . well, smug, maybe,” she said, laughing, “when I got the information out.” She smiled and shook her head. “You won’t guess what creature helped me, came to the palace at night to take my messages.”
“An owl,” he said, laughing. “Was it Red Unat?”
She stared at him. “How did you know his name? Yes, old cranky Red Unat. How . . . ?”
“He came to Nightpool. I asked him to search for you. He went to the tower, then to the house of the brewer. But you had already gone. He brought me your diary. But if he was helping you in Ekthuma, why didn’t he tell you about me? Or bring the news to me that you were safe? He knew your name, he . . . Well,” Teb said, “but he had never seen you. Still . . .”
“I was called Summer, there. He had no reason to connect me with you. Oh, if he had, if we’d found each other sooner . . .”
“Yes. Well, but it turned out all right.”
“It was Red Unat who warned me when Vurbane’s troops came to the marketplace to arrest me.”
“Yes. I took supper with Vurbane and the dark leaders in Sardira’s palace. Vurbane spoke of a great owl, and I guessed it might be Red Unat.” Teb took her hand. “I don’t like to think about your years with Vurbane. He is . . .”
“Yes. But it’s over.” She looked at him squarely. “Vurbane is dead.” Her words said all that was needed. They looked at each other, each seeing something of the person the other had become.
When they left their private corner, they joined the others, gathered to tell tales of personal victories and defeats that brought them all closer. Everyone had a tale, and evening came on with the entire company still lost in stories. But it was the last tale that filled the bards with excitement. It was this bard vision that would map their days to come and could mean the beginning of final victory over the dark invaders.
Teb had stood the Ivory Lyre of Bayzun on a stone shelf high enough for all to see, the glancing light from the waves through the open gate playing over it. When Colewolf rose from where he sat among the bards, all voices hushed. He went to the lyre and laid his hand on it. No one stirred. As he stood looking at the gathered crowd of humans and animals, a tale began to spin out in silence, making pictures as the dragon song had done. The power of the lyre gave him the power of vision, where for so long he had been mute.
He told a tale of other dragons, of a clutch of new, young dragons somewhere across the western sea.
The tale had been told to Colewolf by a rebel recruit out of Birrig. He had come recently across the vast ocean from the other side of Tirror. There he had sailed beside a tall island peak and stared up to see a dragon lair. He had tied his boat and climbed, to find a lair made of heavy oak trees, with the remains of freshly killed sheep and a shark, and the shells of dragon eggs still caught among the logs.
Teb saw Kiri’s eyes alight with excitement, saw Marshy’s face transformed, and knew that the same dream gripped them both. Maybe their dragonmates were among the newly hatched clutch. He caught Camery’s glance and saw her nod, saw the eager look between Colewolf and Kiri, felt the sense of excitement that gripped the four dragons on the cliff above. They would go there, to the coast of frozen Yoorthed.
That night Teb tried to sleep in a small cave off the large one and could not. He rose at last and left the caves, to find Seastrider sleeping soundly, dreaming, stretched out between boulders. She woke and moved around to make a place for him, and he settled down with his back against her, the sea wind cool in his face. He was just dozing off when he saw Camery come up, silhouetted against the thin moonlight, and go to settle down beside Nightraider. The big dragon blew a warm breath against her back with a huffing sound. Teb heard Camery sigh as if very contented.
“Colewolf sleeps beside Starpounder,” Seastrider told him. “And Kiri and Marshy are curled together, there, between Windcaller’s forefeet. We are all here, Tebriel. Rest now, for soon we search for dragons—baby dragons.”
“Yes. And for Quazelzeg, on the dark continent.”
“Do you remember once, Tebriel, you told me of predictions that the white otter of Nightpool made, the night before you left there?”
“That I would ride the winds of Tirror. We’ve done that, all right. That I would . . . travel to mountains far to the north, and go among wonderful creatures there.”
“And what else?”
“That I would know pain. That there was a street in Sharden’s city narrow and mean, that there is danger there, and it reeks of pain. Thakkur had said, ‘Take care, Tebriel, when you journey into Sharden.”
“Sharden lies at the center of the dark continent, Tebriel. But I am with you now. We are all together now.”
He slept at last, restlessly, dreaming not of the dark continent but of baby dragons, of a cadre of dragons and bards so large and powerful it could drown the dark with its song. He woke at first light to see Kiri standing out on the edge of the cliff staring down at the sea. He went out to her. They stood watching as the four dragons fished far out over the waves, diving with folded wings, then leaping into the sky carrying shark that, this morning, they ate on the wing, their spirits too high even to come ashore. He saw the yearning in Kiri’s face, for a dragon to whom to belong.
“If there is another clutch of dragons,” he said, “your mate could be among them.”
“But how long will it take to find them? I won’t be with you, I won’t know . . .”
“Of course you’ll be with us.”
“But—”
“Do you think we’d leave a bard behind? Do you think your father would leave you?”
“It’s his job, to be where he’s needed.”
“Not without you, not anymore. It’s your job to be with us.”
She didn’t say anything. After a while he turned her chin to him and saw her tears. He wiped them from her cheeks. She looked at him, so
deep into his eyes. Then she smiled. They turned together to stare out at the sea. The dragons were returning, sweeping so low to the water that their wind beat the sea into waves.
“We will need harness,” he said.
“There is soft leather among the supplies.” She licked a last tear from her upper lip and turned to race down the cliff.
He found Camery and they went down into the caves to prepare for their journey. He hated good-byes. He wished he would not soon have to say them, that there never had to be a good-bye.
Garit said, “We will move into the castle, Tebriel. We will open the windows and whitewash the walls, take down all that velvet. It can be our garrison, a meeting place for a new Dacian council, a fine stable for young riders, room enough for every child who cares to come. And a room for you, Tebriel, kept for your use alone.”
“Then I have two rooms of my own to come back to, for there is my cave at Nightpool. One day there’ll be a third, when we win back the Palace of Auric.”
“When you win back the Palace of Auric . . . I would like to be with you on that mission.”
“Then so you shall,” he said, and could imagine that palace whole again, clean, filled with color and sunlight, with his mother there and with dragons in Auric’s skies and on the meadows.
It took two days to make harness, sharpen weapons, and prepare themselves. On the morning of the third day they were ready, and all along the shore above Gardel-Cloor and in the city streets folk gathered, cheering as the dragons leaped skyward.
They banked on the wind. The shadows of their wings washed across upturned faces. The war in Dacia was finished, the un-men gone from this island continent. It was time to touch other shores where the dark still ruled. Seastrider climbed straight up with powerful wings. Teb touched the strings of the lyre. Its voice rang out alone, powerful and true. Nothing was impossible; all dreams could be made real if they strove fiercely enough. Seastrider lifted fast into cloud, and Teb saw Kiri and Marshy laughing up at him from between Windcaller’s pale wings. Then the two black dragons sped by him racing, Camery and Colewolf leaning flat to their necks.
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