The Dragonbards

Chapter 8

My heart breaks for the little animals who suffer at the hands of the unliving. Of all that we cherish, perhaps tenderness is most detested by the dark. Oh, Camery, Teb—you must escape this terror somehow.

*

The cry came from a locker. Teb jerked the bolt free and swung the door open. The little otter stared up at him with terror. It was wrapped in chains so tight it couldn’t move. Its white fur was matted and bloody. A white otter—a rare white otter.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said softly, taking it up in his arms. When he turned, a dark soldier blocked his way. Seastrider reared, knocked the un-man over the side, and struck out with fury at two leaping warriors. Give the otter to me, Tebriel.

He shoved the little otter into her open mouth. She lifted away fast, her wings shattering a mast. Fire cut along the rail and into the deck as Teb spun around, to fight beside Colewolf.

They killed five more soldiers. When the fire leaped like a wall around them, they fled to Starpounder’s back. “Kiri!” Teb shouted as the black dragon lifted. “Camery . . . Kiri . . .”

“Here,” Kiri shouted, “I’m here.”

“Camery! Where is Camery?”

Below them, the ship was a raging fire.

“In the swamp,” Kiri cried. “There . . .”

Nightraider flashed by them, breaking trees as he sought to reach Camery. She was high in a tree climbing away from three dark soldiers, her sword flashing as she turned to strike at them. She felled one, but the sword of the second plunged inches from her head. Nightraider snatched him off and crushed him. Camery slashed at the third. He fell. She leaped for Nightraider’s back, and he rose straight up, winging through leaping fire. The three dragons sped south over the marsh and beyond it.

Seastrider stood on an icy hill. The young otter lay between her front feet, nearly hidden by her big head as she breathed warm air over him. Teb slid down from Starpounder and knelt beside the small, battered creature. He touched it gently, whispering to it, sickened by the chain that cut and deformed its small body. He examined the lock, trying to force it with his knife.

“They put me in a leather bag,” the young otter told him. “I ripped it open, so they chained me.” The left side of the otter’s face was so swollen, his eye was only a slit. His white fur was the color of dirty rags, matted with dried blood.

Kiri and Camery found mud at the edge of the field and brought it in handfuls, to pack around the chain. When the otter’s body was protected, Seastrider cut the metal lock off with a small, quick spurt of flame. As Teb unwrapped the chain, fresh blood started to flow. Camery felt the little otter’s legs carefully for broken bones. When she felt his left thigh, he jerked and cried out.

She examined it carefully. “I can’t tell whether it’s broken. Oh, how could they hurt a little creature so?”

But they all knew how the dark could. The dark partook greedily of such suffering. The little otter had closed its eyes tight against the pain. Its paws were clutched together against its belly. Teb could imagine what plans the dark had for the little white Seer.

“So small,” Kiri said.

Camery looked up at Teb. “It was a white otter who took care of you at Nightpool.”

“Yes,” Teb said, stroking the little otter’s ears. “A fine otter, who taught me much.”

“What is your name?” Kiri said.

“Hanni. I am Hanni.”

“Are you of the nation of Cekus?” Teb asked him.

Tears started in the little otter’s eyes. He turned away and wouldn’t answer.

When Camery took him in her arms, he snuggled against her and laid his bloody, swollen head beneath her chin against the warmth of her throat.

Colewolf took off his heavy coat, buttoned it up, and tied the neck shut with rawhide cord. He tied the arms together to make a sling around Camery’s neck, and they settled Hanni carefully in the warm pouch. Camery’s pale hair fell down around him, but when she brushed it back, Hanni grabbed a handful and pressed it against his nose.

“Gold—so gold. Like the chain of my worry stone.” He stared at Camery. “They took my worry stone— that was why they wanted me. They tried to make me tell where it came from.”

Camery cuddled him close and stroked him.

“What worry stone?” Teb said. “What was it made of?”

“They tried to make me tell. They hurt me. I didn’t tell them.” He closed his eyes.

Teb said patiently, “What was your worry stone, to make the dark want it?” Most otters’ worry stones were only smooth rocks from the sea floor, hung on cords around their necks to keep their paws busy and to crack clams and mussels with.

“It was a special shell. It brought visions.”

“I see.” Teb studied Hanni’s blood-streaked white face and intense brown eyes. He was a very young otter to have survived the dark’s torture. “Let’s get you back to Stilvoke Cave, where you can have rest and doctoring and a hot meal. You can tell us the rest of the story there.”

As they rose on the cold wind, the sun’s light glanced up from the ice fields in blinding flashes. Camery held Hanni close to her, snuggling his face under her chin. He was silent, sniffing the wind, staring around him with excitement at the sky full of beating wings.

When they dropped toward Stilvoke Cave, Marshy and Iceflower rose struggling on the wind to meet them. The sick dragonling’s wings seemed too heavy for her weak body. “She’s mending,” Marshy shouted, “she’s stronger!” He clung with his arms tight around her neck as she landed stumbling beside the big dragons—but she was trying. For Marshy, she was trying.

In the cave, Kiri and Camery cleaned Hanni’s wounds and spread on the dwarfs’ special salve, made from moss and oak bark. King Flam brought the little otter a rich soup of dried fish, which Hanni devoured greedily, between yawns.

“You are of the nation of Cekus,” King Flam said.

Tears began again, and the little body shook. Hanni tried to speak and could not.

At last he said, “There is no more nation of Cekus.”

They watched him in chilled silence.

“The dark raiders came in their ship. Ev-everyone was fishing in the sea.” He choked and swallowed, and there was a long pause before he could go on.

“The dark soldiers killed my family. They killed everyone. With arrows, with spears.” Hanni turned his face away. “I wasn’t there. I was the only one. . . .”

He collapsed into sobs again, all the pain of his loss and of his long torture shaking him. Camery and Kiri held him between them, murmuring to him.

The young white otter cried uncontrollably for a long time, in a storm of grief. When at last he could continue, he told them how he had been alone at the back of the big meeting cave, engrossed with the small conch shell he wore as a worry stone.

“The conch held a vision,” Hanni said. “I was seeing so strong a vision, I didn’t hear anything. I heard a little rustling noise once, as if someone was there. I didn’t pay any attention.

“When I came out of the cave, the bay was so silent. I didn’t hear the voices of my family. There was no laughter, no shouts about what fine fish folk had caught. They—” Tears flowed. Hanni pressed his face into Kiri’s shoulder.

“There was blood in the sea. Dead bodies everywhere. The dark ship was just disappearing around the end of Sitha. I stood looking. I knew I must go out there to see if anyone was alive. I went toward the water. They—the dark unliving—had not all gone. One of the dark creatures grabbed me. . . .”

The rest of Hanni’s tale was of torture. Small tortures, Hanni called them, because they didn’t want him too injured.

“They wanted me to take them where I had gotten my worry shell. They thought there were more like it. They didn’t want me all broken; they wanted me to lead them there and to dive for the conch.” He looked up at Teb. “The dark unliving want visions; they want the power of visions.

“They tried to make me bring a vision in my shell. They knew I could. I wouldn’t,” he said stubbornly. “They tried to make me use it to tell where the dragons were.” Hanni stared at them. “That was why they came to Cekus, to find the young dragons. When—when no otter would admit they knew dragons, the un-men killed them. Then they thought the shell could tell them.

“When one of them touched my shell, he backed away. None of the others would touch it. One lifted it from me with the tip of his sword while they held me down. They tried to make me tell how much of the vision-making was my power and how much came from the shell. I don’t know which is which. I wouldn’t tell if I did.”

“Maybe it’s all your power,” Teb said.

Hanni shook his head.

“Have you ever brought visions with another shell?”

“Yes. But not as clear as with the conch. It was a rare one, a golden conch. My uncle brought it up from the sea bottom before I was born. He found the chain in the sea. He threaded it through the conch. When I was born white, he knew the conch was for me. When I was big enough, he put it around my neck.

“Now,” Hanni said, “now it’s at the bottom of the marsh, all burned.”

“Are there other ships?” Teb said. “Did they mention other ships traveling with them?”

Hanni shook his head. “They seemed to be all alone.” He began to shake again. Kiri cradled the small otter in her arms, and the dwarfs made murmuring noises. King Flam reached to stroke the little creature.

“You can stay here,” the dwarf king said. “You can live with us, and you will be our own child.”

Hanni cried all the harder.

“That is kind,” Teb said. “Or perhaps Hanni will decide to join the otter nation at Nightpool. There is a white Seer there. Thakkur could be his teacher.”

Hanni stiffened.

Flam said, “Yes, perhaps he should be among his own people. If he has skills that can be used against—”

“It was Thakkur!” Hanni cried. “His name—the white otter I saw in vision when . . . before they captured me. It was Thakkur. He is in danger—his whole island is in danger.”