The Dragonbards

Chapter 21

Sometimes I dream that I can speak between worlds, that I can create a vision that would touch Tirror even after I’ve gone through the doors. But surely that is only a dream, a wish to be close to those I love.

*

The black cloud dove at the battlefield, filling the wind with its stink, and a thousand black wings beat at the faces of dragons and bards, blinding them. Five hundred wrinkled bat faces searched, red mouths screaming; claws and teeth tore at living flesh as little red eyes sought for tender throats.

Your throat—cover your throat, a bard shouted. They want blood. Whose voice? Colewolf s? A voice that tore Teb from confusion and slapped him back into truth—to the horror that was swamping them, the horror of his own treachery.

I did this, I led them here. . . .

No!

He swung his blade at the stinking black creatures, mad with shame and fury.

Across the battlefield, the creatures blinded Windcaller and forced her down, nearly smothering Kiri. Camery held her leather tunic tight around her throat as sharp claws tore at it. Beyond her, Colewolf fought the clinging bats with his knife. Small teeth found his throat. He stabbed the creature and jerked it away. A thousand wings battered, five hundred mouths tried to suck.

Blood ran down Camery’s neck as Nightraider floundered on the wind—then Teb’s thought exploded in her mind, pulling her back. The lyre! Use the lyre! By the Graven Light, use it now. . . . The vamvipers downed their victims, then left them for others. Human throats were quickly wrapped in leather, but the animals had no protection. The lyre, Camery! Use the lyre!

Camery clutched at the harness, dizzy, as Nightraider plunged on the wind. The blackness of his thrashing wings and of hovering vamvipers smeared into one blackness. She pulled the sucking bats from Nightraider’s wings, and from her own face, but there were so many. She felt so dizzy, terrified for her dragon, and terrified for herself.

“The lyre! Use the lyre!” Teb’s voice cried, so far away. She pawed at the lyre, but its chain pulled across her, and the little lyre dangled dangerously on the wind. She jerked it back, cold with panic.

Suddenly Seastrider was above her.

The white dragon hovered beside Nightraider in a tangle of wings. Teb reached out for the lyre. Camery tried to swing it free and nearly fell. A cloud of vamvipers hit them. Nightraider twisted under their pummeling force and dropped, crashing through trees.

High above, the dragonlings bellowed with fury at the black cloud of vamvipers that broke apart in dizzying sweeps below them. They heard Teb shout, “The lyre! Use the lyre!” and they wondered where Camery was. The vamvipers wheeled and dove below them, in killing waves.

“Dive on them!” Bluepiper roared. “Dive!”

“Burn them!” Firemont screamed. “Dive!”

“Wait,” Marshy shouted. Something yellow was flapping and darting above the black cloud, screaming with a commanding voice that cut and stabbed. . . .

“A queen!” he yelled. “They have a queen!”

“Kill her!” screamed Iceflower.

The dragonlings dove, but the queen slipped between them and was gone. They separated and dove again. She dodged and fled. Below them the battlefield was a melee of falling horses and riders. The darting vamviper queen shivered as the dragonlings came at her again. When they had the queen trapped between them, she sped straight for Aven’s throat. Bluepiper twisted and bit at her, but the yellow vamviper darted beneath him, out of sight.

Suddenly Aven dove into space.

He grabbed the queen, dropping through wind. He clutched the squirming, leathery bat queen, amazed that he had actually caught her. When he squeezed her throat, she twisted and fought. Falling on the wind, he choked the vamviper queen until her bloody mouth gaped and she went limp. He was falling, falling. . . .

Bluepiper rose beneath him, a mountain of dragon. Aven sprawled onto Bluepiper’s back, Bluepiper’s sheltering wings blocking out the terror of empty space. Aven was still squeezing the vamviper queen. Below them, five hundred vamvipers faltered and wheeled, screaming at the death of their queen.

*

By the time Teb reached Nightraider, Camery lay unconscious across the black dragon’s neck, her face and hands a mass of blood, the lyre beneath her shoulder. Teb pulled the lyre free. When he sounded the first silver note, the vamvipers exploded away from him. He brought out the lyre’s voice with all the power he knew—and all across the battlefield the vamvipers swept up away, hissing. The remaining dark soldiers turned their shivering horses and fled. High up, the black cloud of vamvipers waited, faltering and shifting, confused by the loss of their queen. But as they swung in a black wave across the wind, a vision touched them and spoke to them.

On the battlefield, a Door had appeared, opening into darkness.

A woman stood within, beside a white dragon, a woman who seemed covered with light, her gown and tawny hair shining and the golden sphere at her throat burning like fire.

She was beckoning. Teb tried to cry out to her but could only swallow. She was beckoning to the black cloud above him. It trembled and shifted as the leaderless, panicked vamvipers darted and flew at one another.

Come through, she cried.

In Teb’s hands, the lyre’s song formed into words: Go through. Go through the Door. . . .

The vamvipers swept back and forth, stirring a stinking wind.

Go through, the lyre cried. Go back to your own world. Go through the Door. Go back. . . .

But the shifting cloud fled away toward the mountain and hovered above it like restless black smoke.

Meriden cried, Come through! Come through the Door! Come through to me!

The vamvipers returned, fluttering and tumbling across the wind.

Come through. . . .

The cloud shivered and paused. Then the Door sucked them through into blackness, as if sucking up blowing soot.

Time hung still in white emptiness.

When it began again, Meriden was gone. The Door was gone.