The Dragonbards

Chapter 22

I fear the castle of doors, yet I am drawn to it. Perhaps it is those very conflicts within us that mark the true mystery of our humanity.

*

Teb stood unmoving, seeing nothing but the after-vision of Meriden framed within the black Door. He held Camery close when she clutched at him, white and bleeding and shaken. In both their minds, the vision of their mother burned.

She was alive. They had seen her. She had pulled the vamvipers through. They had heard her voice, stirring a painful childhood longing in them both.

All around them, the battlefield began to come to life. Soldiers rose, horses staggered up. Folk who had stood frozen by the vision began to assess their hurts and to kneel over the sprawling wounded.

Camery touched the lyre. “Do the vamvipers swarm around her now? In that other world? How can she battle them?”

They looked at each other, stricken. “Don’t think that,” Teb said. “She has great power. Perhaps she has trapped them somewhere, away from her.”

“She can’t always have had such power. She would have used it to come home. Or to drive Quazelzeg out.”

“This time, the power of the lyre was with her.” He touched the lyre’s strings.

It was silent, drained of its magic.

“Come,” she said. “The dragons need us.”

The two dragons were very quiet, waiting patiently for their bards, their poor faces streaked with blood. Camery put her arms up to Nightraider and held his great head to her. Both dragons’ eyelids were slashed and bleeding so they could hardly see. She began to sponge Nightraider’s lids with water from her flask as Teb examined Seastrider’s eyes.

The dragons’ eyes seemed undamaged. Their rough-scaled lids had served them well. Teb and Camery cleaned the blood away and stopped the bleeding by applying pressure with damp cloths. It was not long before both dragons felt better, tossing their heads and sweeping into the sky again, filled with fierce relief.

“They were frightened,” Camery said.

“Yes. They’re all right now. Let me see your throat.” He pulled her leather collar away and mopped the blood off her neck.

The blood was from slashes along her jaw, barely missing the arteries. As he sponged her wounds, he was filled with a private, and terrible, thought.

Did Meriden know that he had led the vamvipers here? He had failed her dismally—he had failed them all. Thakkur’s words burned in his thoughts. Do not underestimate Quazelzeg and what he is capable of. Do not let your pride lead you. . . .

But he had. He had done that and more. He had challenged Quazelzeg too soon, before he was ready. His weakness and impatience had almost killed them all.

He did not belong with the bards. He did not belong with dragons. As he watched the dragonlings descend out of the morning sky, he was filled with self-loathing and wanted only to be alone.

He had led the vamvipers to them in an act of sedition as evil as any the pawns of the dark could have accomplished. And, he thought with alarm, he was the dark’s pawn now.

The dragonlings landed in a storm of wings. Marshy and Aven and Darba slid down and grabbed each other in a terrified, shaken hug.

“You did it,” Darba screamed, shaking Aven. “You killed the queen!”

“You were wonderful,” Marshy cried.

“I was scared,” said Aven. They hugged the dragonlings and looked at Teb, waiting for a word of praise.

But Teb had turned away, too sick in spirit to praise anyone. He walked away by himself across the gory battlefield. Seastrider followed him, her eyes blazing with anger.

“Stop it, Tebriel. You are wallowing in self-pity!”

“I am a traitor. I nearly got everyone killed. I could have lost all Tirror. I am not a fit bard.”

“That is stupid! You are not responsible for all of Tirror. You take too much on yourself—you wallow in vanity as well as self-pity!”

He stared at her, shocked and hurt.

“The vamvipers would have found us anyway—regardless of you! Don’t you think Quazelzeg could guess that we would attack Sivich?”

“It would have taken them longer. The battle would have been finished.”

“You don’t know that. You are awash in senseless remorse. You will do more harm by that than by bringing any kind of evil here. Turn around, Tebriel, and look. Everyone is watching us. Do you mean to make a complete fool of yourself?”

Teb turned. The bards stood looking at him. Behind them the dragons stared. He saw Thakkur, standing on a rise, alone, watching him. Suddenly furious, he turned and went back to the bards and stood defiantly waiting for their censure.

We know your pain, Colewolf said. How can we help but know it? Don’t you think, Tebriel, that you do terrible harm by turning away from us? Don’t you think you insult us? We need each other—we need you very much.

“You cannot simply stop being a bard,” Camery said. “You cannot simply stop bearing that responsibility because of Quazelzeg’s poisons.” Her green eyes blazed as fiercely as Seastrider’s. “Any of us would have done the same, filled with his tortures and his drugs.” She stepped close to him and touched his cheek. “But, Teb, neither can you take on more than your share.”

We are with you, Colewolf said, not against you.

‘Together,” Kiri said, “we can drive out the evil.” She took his hand, looking at him deeply. “We freed the children, Teb. We have two new bards—and it was at great cost to you. We will never abandon you. Do not abandon us. Fight beside us, not against us!”

He wanted to shout, I can’t fight. He felt so tired, drained, with nothing left inside but shame and anger.

Yet as he stood there, he was sustained by Kiri’s strength—by Camery’s strength, by the strength of all of them. Kiri clung to him, wiping her fist across her eyes. In a little while she said, “Come, there are stretchers to be made, wounds to bind.” She knelt by her pack, to find bandages. When Teb looked up, he saw Thakkur, still on a knoll, still watching him. Teb wanted to go to him but was too ashamed.

All over the valley animals and men were assessing their wounds and trying to help themselves, or to help others. Hexet woke to lick his wounds, then nudge at other foxes. Three wolves struggled up. Five others lay dead. Elmmira made her way slowly to Teb and Kiri. They examined the vamviper bites deep in her shoulder, and Kiri unstrapped her flask to wash them.

Mitta and Hanni came across the body-strewn meadow, carrying packs filled with bandages and salves. They stopped to touch and whisper, to examine wounds and clean and bandage them. All around them soldiers and animals crouched over the fallen, calling their names, weeping for the dead. Small owls began to appear from the mountain. The big owls, Red Unat among them, had taken their toll of vamvipers, but they were wounded, too. Hanni brought salves to the bards and a flask of Mitta’s soothing draft. Everyone kept glancing toward the mountains, half expecting another attack. Soon Camery sent the three bard children and the dragonlings winging up, to scan the mountains and coasts. Still Thakkur watched Teb. At last, Teb went to him.

“You find me a failure,” Teb said. “I have failed. I did not heed your advice. I underestimated Quazelzeg, and he—”

Thakkur interrupted, holding up one white paw. “I find you a hero for enduring such tortures.”

Teb shook his head. “You told me about pride— about taking too much on myself. I walked into Quazelzeg’s lair and—and . . .” He stared at Thakkur, stricken. “Am I one of them now?”

“That is melodramatic, Tebriel. You are a dragonbard. You are the King of Auric. Perhaps . . .”

Teb stared at him miserably. “Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps . . . you had better start acting like both.”

Teb looked at Thakkur, his look filled with bitterness, then he turned away.

“Neither bard nor king allows himself anger beyond self-discipline, Tebriel. A leader tempers his anger—particularly anger at himself. He controls and uses it.”

Teb turned to look back at Thakkur.

“I have absolute faith in you, Tebriel—in your goodness, in your ultimate good sense.” Thakkur put out a paw.

Teb hesitated. Then he knelt and took Thakkur’s paw. Their eyes held for a long moment, in which Teb remembered much.