The Dragonbards

Chapter 9

There is an island off the coast of Auric where the speaking otters live in secrecy. I do not talk of it, or go there, for I fear some spy within our own palace might find it. But I am warmed to know of it.

*

Teb held the white otter’s shoulders. “What else did your vision show, of the danger to Nightpool?”

“I saw armies on the mainland. Soldiers were looking toward the otter island and sharpening weapons.”

“Has it already happened? Or is it a vision of the future?”

“I don’t know—I can’t be sure. I felt mostly their hatred. I—I couldn’t see any more.” Tears threatened again. The little otter was all worn out. Camery and Kiri fed him more fish soup, then took him away to tuck him down in one of the sleeping alcoves, covered with warm blankets. Teb heard them singing to him.

He knew they must go at once. Perhaps only they knew of this, through Hanni’s vision. Perhaps only they could save the otter nation.

But how could they travel? Iceflower was not strong enough for the journey of a day and a night across the sea. And they must take Hanni with them, yet Hanni, too, was weak. But Teb felt strongly that Hanni belonged with Thakkur—if Thakkur was still alive.

That thought tore at him, sickening and infuriating him.

Marshy tugged at Teb, staring up, the little boy’s gray eyes serious. “Iceflower will be strong enough. You can’t leave us. And I won’t leave her. She flew today, Tebriel. She is getting well.”

We must go together, Colewolf said. It is the very young, Tebriel, who carry the spirit the dark fears most. We cannot leave them.

“We’ll go together,” Teb said. There was nothing else to do. It was too dangerous to leave the dragonling here—the dwarfs could not protect her. They must leave Yoorthed together.

The dwarfs were already packing food and filling the bards’ waterskins. The dragons went quickly to make a meal of shark and returned with a rich catch of salmon for the dwarf nation. It was the only gift the bards were able to leave, except for their gratitude and affection.

The bards had a hurried meal. Camery tucked the sleeping otter into the sling, they thanked Flam and the dwarfs, and mounted up. They lifted quickly, heading east. Snowblitz and the three young males moved out fast, but Iceflower and the older dragons paced themselves against the hard journey ahead. As they swung over the edge of the land, they watched for ships. The dragonlings swept up and down the coast looking, but the sea was empty.

Once they were away from land, the wind blew so cold, their eyes watered and their faces went numb. The young dragons flew close around Iceflower, to shelter her. Her stride was not strong, and near to noon she began to fly unevenly, dropping toward the waves. The dragons settled onto the sea so she could rest. It was not good to be still on this sea; they had hunted huge shark here. Iceflower slept, her wings against the water for balance, her head tucked down on her shoulder. The other dragons swam in a circle around her, the sea crashing up their sides. Teb waited with ill-concealed impatience.

Kiri said, “Maybe she’ll be stronger once she’s rested.” She studied Teb’s lean face, red from the icy wind. His urgency to move on unsettled her. “Will you tell me about Nightpool? Will you tell me what it’s truly like? Not from bard memory, but—but the way you feel about it.”

He looked back at her, half irritated, half touched. It was a painful time to think about Nightpool—yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it, seeing the island empty, seeing empty caves and blood staining the black stone cliffs.

“Please, Teb, tell me . . . how it was for you, growing up there.” She watched him, saw him ease.

As the dragons rocked close together in the sea, Teb took Kiri’s mittened hand and made a song of vision. He showed her Nightpool’s hidden valley in the center of the island, with its secret blue lake where the otter babies learned to swim. He showed her the caves carved by the sea into the black stone rim of the island, and inside the caves, the otters’ sleeping shelves and the shelves they had carved to hold their sea treasures. He showed her his own cave, his gold coins and rare shells that he had found on the sea bottom, diving with the otters, and the warm gull-feather quilt that Mitta had woven for him. He showed her Mitta, as the little pudgy otter doctored him and changed the clay dressing on his broken leg.

He took her beneath the green-lit sea to swim through shafts of light and shadow beside sunken mountains, playing chasing games with Charkky and Mikk. He showed her Charkky’s mischievous underwater tricks and his own fear, sometimes, of the huge moving shadows in the deep. He showed the otters grooming air into their coats to keep warm in the sea, and how they had learned to use the knives and spears Teb helped them steal, and how, reluctantly, they had learned to use fire.

“When I was sick with fever, I slept in Thakkur’s cave. I wasn’t any taller than Thakkur then. He used to tell me tales at night before I went to sleep, tales of the sea, of how the whales and porpoises sing, of giant fish deep down, and of ghostly things hidden in the sea. He told of the sunken cities where the old lands were flooded, how you could gather oysters from a palace roof and swim through old, mysterious rooms.”

“You were happy there,” she said. “Now I know what you were like when you were twelve years old. I wish—I wish I’d been there with you.”

“I—so do I,” he said quietly. “It was a perfect place, Kiri—learning to swim deep under the sea, all the good shellfish I could eat—that was perfect once I found the flint and a cookpot, so I didn’t have to eat it raw.”

“It was hard for you to leave Nightpool.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t felt . . . begun to think about the sky.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes deep and knowing. “The dreams of dragons—of moving above the world, diving on the wind . . .”

“Yes.” He looked and looked at her. They had known the same longings, had stared up at the sky with the same emptiness.

“But you went from Nightpool, really, to seek the hydrus and kill it. Was it . . . was it terrible?”

Surprised at himself, he shared his terror of the three-headed black hydrus, with its cruel human faces. It had carried him in its mouth, miles out into the sea. He showed her his helpless desperation as he climbed away from it up the exposed wall of the drowned city. He had clung to the top of the wall, surrounded by endless miles of sea, shivering and sick. He let her see how he felt as the hydras forced its twisted thoughts into his mind, willing him to become its slave.

“But you defeated it. You killed it, Teb.” Her look was deep and admiring.

He was silent, remembering.

“When—when you found that your mother had been there in the sunken city—that she wasn’t dead after all—how did you feel?”

Teb shook his head. “Angry at first, that she had deceived us, that she let us think she was dead. But crazy with excitement that she was alive. I wanted to go to her, through the Doors to other worlds to search for her, but her dragon drove me back.” He showed her the undersea Door, which was linked by a warping of space into the Castle of Doors. He showed the white dragon Dawncloud, rearing over him to make him stay back, then charging through, to search alone, and the Door swinging closed. Neither Meriden nor Dawncloud had returned.

“Endless worlds,” he said, “worlds filled with evil.”

“There must be good worlds, too.”

“Yes. But it is the evil worlds that will watch her as she looks for a way to destroy the dark. How could one bard and one dragon survive among those worlds?”

“She is strong, Teb. Surely the good powers among those worlds will help her.” Their look was long and close. She knew his thoughts at that moment as clearly as her own.

Seastrider and Windcaller rocked quietly on the sea, glancing at each other, filled with tenderness for the bards they bore.

When Iceflower woke, they lifted fast, spraying sheets of water, climbing up into a hard, racing wind that battered them but carried them with strength. But still, they had to drop to the sea every few hours so Iceflower could rest. Soon the sun was falling behind them, and they had not made enough miles. They rested as the sky turned red, and when they lifted up through the darkening sky, their flight was even slower. Soon it was deep night, and they were sweeping through low, tattered rain clouds that soaked them with fine mist. Teb could not stop thinking of the danger to Nightpool. And little Hanni was moaning and thrashing, asleep in the leather sling.

Camery said, “He’s so restless, and he’s been muttering. Shall I wake him?”

Teb looked through the mist toward Camery and Nightraider. “No. What good to bring a vision now? We’re moving as fast as we can. Let him sleep.” Maybe he didn’t want to know. He was already strung tight, tethered by their slowness.

They rested again when the rain slaked. Iceflower was weaker. There was danger that the dark would sense them faltering over the middle of the sea. Teb sent Rockdrumlin and Bluepiper to scout south for a small island where Iceflower could rest more easily. It began to rain hard. Only Hanni, in his leather sling, remained dry. Their minds were filled with thoughts of dark soldiers galloping toward Nightpool. Iceflower tried as hard as she could, stumbling through the sky. When Windcaller moved near to Teb, he could just see the curve of Kiri’s cheek between white wings.

You mean to go on alone.

I must.

I want to come with you.

They looked at each other in the darkness. The two dragons swept close, and he reached across space for Kiri’s hand, their arms freezing in the cold wind.

Alone, you might not stop the dark’s attack. But two dragons, one from each side—dragon fire driving them back . . .

She was right. And he wanted her with him. But he didn’t want to endanger her. Yet that was not fair to a bard. A sense of battle filled him, of cold urgency, and when the two dragonlings returned with news of a rocky islet, he looked across at her and nodded.

Seven dragons headed for the island. Seastrider and Windcaller banked away, east, beating fast against the wind, driving themselves on with powerful wings until, ahead in the gray dawn, shone the first small islands, scattered black on the reflecting sea. Kiri pushed back her hood and leaned down, looking. As the sky lightened, the vast mosaic of islands and small continents lay mottled across the gleaming sea, stretching away to their left. Windthorst was straight ahead, Teb’s own land of Auric describing the south quarter. They stayed above cloud, looking.

There was no sign of battle, no movement. They swept over Auric’s green meadows but saw no figure near the palace, not even a horse. So empty, Kiri said. Teb studied the palace, and was filled with homesickness. And though the land might look deserted, they sensed that it was not. The dragons lifted and headed for Nightpool, a black speck off the eastern coast.

They circled the little black island. White breakers licked its seaward cliffs. Nothing stirred on the rocks or in the sea. They dropped low but saw no otter fishing or gathering clams or playing in the shallows. Teb and Seastrider settled onto the water as Windcaller swept away north, along the coast.

Kiri leaned between Windcaller’s wings to search, but no army moved below them—they saw no sign of battle, no ships on the sea. The land was as empty as if every living thing had vanished from Windthorst. Not until they banked inland did they see the torn field of battle, strewn with dead soldiers. They dropped low, Windcaller’s wings casting shadows across the bodies.

How strange, Kiri said.

More than strange, said Windcaller. There was not one dead horse among the hundred or more dead soldiers—and these were not foot soldiers; they wore the yellow tunics of the dark warriors, who always went mounted.

The palace of Ebis the Black lies to the north, said Windcaller. They circled above the palace, hidden by cloud, and saw horses in the stable yards, people on the streets idling, selling goods; and they could hear music. Surely this city had not been attacked. They headed for Nightpool.

Teb jumped from Seastrider’s back to the rocks and climbed the steep cliff. As Seastrider rose to circle, he started along the island’s rim toward Thakkur’s cave, tense with dread.

The island was so still, the only sound the pounding of the waves. By dawn the otters should be out of their caves, fishing and playing. He paused on the ridge above the entrance to Thakkur’s cave, afraid to go down, afraid of what he would find.

At last, sword drawn, he moved down the wet, black cliff, and stood beside the cave door, listening.

The soft, regular huffing of a snoring otter filled the dim space. He grinned and sheathed his sword, then moved inside.

He could see the white blur of Thakkur, sprawled on his sleeping shelf.

“Thakkur.”

Another snore.

“Thakkur!”

The snores became uneven huffing. How many times had Teb heard that sound. The white otter turned over and began snoring evenly again.

“Thakkur! Wake up! The shad are running!”

Thakkur sat up grabbing his sword in one motion, his teeth bared in a fierce otter challenge.

“The shad are running. Come and fish with me!”

Thakkur dropped his sword with a shout of ‘Tebriel!” and leaped to meet Teb’s outstretched arms, nearly smothering him in warm, silky, fishy-smelling fur. ‘Tebriel! When did you come? What—what has happened to bring you?”

“Must something happen? Can’t I just visit?”

“You’ve been busy winning wars. There’s no time for pleasure. What brought you?”

“A vision,” Teb said. “A battle—dark raiders. But . . .”

The white otter smiled. “It has already happened. Sivich marched for Nightpool last night. We survived it nicely, thanks to Charkky and Mikk.”

Teb sat down on the stone sleeping shelf. “Tell me. I thought you would be—”

“We are not dead, Tebriel. Charkky and Mikk returned around midnight with a band of our best young otters. They tricked Sivich nicely. They alerted Ebis the Black, then stole all of Sivich’s horses. They guessed Sivich would attack Nightpool anyway, furious at the loss of the horses. We have badgered him constantly, and he has seen our scouts.”

“Well? What happened?”

“Oh, he marched for Nightpool, all right—all those horse soldiers having to go on foot.” Thakkur smiled, his white whiskers twitching, his dark eyes deep with sweet revenge. “When Sivich’s armies were halfway to Nightpool, Ebis the Black’s best horse soldiers surrounded them and killed them.”

Teb smiled. “We thought . . .” A commotion in the sea stopped him. Thakkur stepped to the door, sword drawn.

The white otter stood watching uncertainly as, beneath the cliff, the water roiled and heaved. Suddenly a huge white head burst out. Thakkur stared, then said, “Hah!” He stood his ground, looking, and Seastrider stared back at him, her green eyes laughing. A tuna dangled from her fangs. A second later, Windcaller crashed onto the sea from the sky, nearly drenching the island, certainly drenching her rider.

Teb had never seen Thakkur speechless. The white otter’s eyes were eager. His whiskers worked with excitement. He seemed to absorb every shining line of the dragons, every reflected color, every curve of their spreading wings. These were the creatures he had seen only in vision, had only dreamed about.

Seastrider thrust her head at the white otter, pushed her nose at his face, and nuzzled his whiskers. Thakkur stroked her nose, his dark eyes bright with wonder.

“You are Thakkur,” she said. “You are the Seer of Nightpool.”

“I am Thakkur.”

“Come on my back, great white otter. I will show you the sky.”

Teb had to laugh at Thakkur; the white otter’s eagerness made him shiver like a cub. Seastrider swam close to the cliff, holding steady in the waves. Thakkur leaped from the cliff to her back as if he did it every day, then tucked his paws into the white leather harness.

As Seastrider lifted into the silvered sky, bearing the white otter, a shout behind Teb made him turn.

“Hah! Dragons! There are dragons!”

“Thakkur—on a dragon! Oh, my!”