The Dragonbards

Chapter 23

We must confront the dark invaders. We must choose the horrors of war, or we will lose the freedom to choose. Perhaps too many of us have already lost that freedom.

*

From across the battlefield, the rebel leaders began to gather. Ebis the Black came galloping up surrounded by his officers, sporting a bandage around his forehead and another on his arm. His black beard was matted with blood, and there were wounds across his face. He shouted to see the bards alive, leaped from the saddle, and hugged them nearly hard enough to break bones.

“Cursed, blood-sucking bats. We lost twenty men.” He glanced toward the ridge as if he expected another attack.

“Camery has sent a patrol,” Teb said.

“Very good,” Ebis said, giving Camery a look of approval. He joined the soldiers and otters in improvising stretchers. “I can take the worst wounded to Ratnisbon Palace,” he said, “those who can be carried that far. My folk will care for them skillfully.”

While Ebis’s soldiers dug out a huge common grave for the human soldiers, the bards buried the animals with solemn ceremony. They marked their grave with stones laid in a circle to signify the endless sphere of life. The bards and dragons wove a song for them, and the living animals bowed down and grieved.

The dragonlings and children returned to say there were no troops beyond the mountains, no ships on the sea, no disturbance around Nightpool. There was a moment of powerful feelings as they said farewell to Ebis and those who had fought beside them, then the bards mounted up, the dragons lifted fast, and they headed for Auric Palace.

They sped across a light wind, the dragons stretching in wide, free sweeps, filled with the joy of freedom and with the healing silence after the shouting and screams of war. The bards looked at each other between glinting wings. This was freedom, this weightless lifting on the wind. They winged through a mass of heavy cloud and broke out into sunlight above Auric’s broad green meadows, skirted by the sea beyond. Rising from the meadows alone stood Auric palace, its slate roof reflecting the sun.

Smoke rose beyond the north wall; when they were close, they could see that troops were burning trash.

The palace gardens were dry and weedy, the orchard trees dead. They could see broken windows, and some of the roof slates were gone. But no neglect could mar the symmetry of the five wings built of pale stone, the angled courtyard wall, the wide expanses of windows, the twenty chimneys.

Of all the gardens, only their mother’s private walled garden was alive and green. Fed by a sunken spring, it was a tangle of branches and vines. It looked as if no one had entered it in years.

Four years, Camery thought. Four years since they had seen their home—twice that since anyone had cared for the grounds or the palace.

A crowd had gathered on the meadow outside the open gates, their shouts and cheers filling the wind. The dragons glided to the meadow in a ceremony of sweeping wings, and the bards slid down into welcoming arms—all but Teb. He remained astride.

Go on, Tebriel, they wait for you, they wait for their king, Seastrider said, bowing her neck to stare at him.

He remained on her back, not speaking, watching Camery embraced and exclaimed over, watching Kiri and Colewolf and the children made welcome. Soon Camery disappeared inside, surrounded by old friends. But when Teb’s friends looked up at him and saw his expression, they turned away.

Go on, Seastrider repeated angrily.

But it was a shout from the tower that got his attention. “Hah, Tebriel! Hah, Teb!” Charkky and Mikk hung out over the stone rail, waving crazily at him.

He looked up at them and couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his depression off like a dirty cloak and waved to them and shouted. The crowd turned back to watch him, and when he slid down off Seastrider’s back, he was surrounded at once, by friends he hadn’t seen since he was a little boy. He was hugged and kissed and swept into the palace by the laughing crowd.

Inside, Camery was standing alone in the center of the great hall, looking. All the others had gone back to their tasks, giving her space and time for a private homecoming. She stood quite still, the sunlight from the windows touching her face. It was in that moment, watching her, that Teb knew how hard it had been for her to enter the palace again.

She had remembered her home as bright and filled with beauty, the rooms clean and sunny, their mother’s rich tapestries covering the walls, the touch of their mother everywhere. She had come in, just now, wishing it could be like that, but expecting it to be filthy and decayed from the mistreatment of Sivich’s soldiers.

It was neither filthy nor as they remembered from childhood.

The big, high-ceilinged hall was bare of furniture. It smelled of lye soap and plaster. Folk were hard at work everywhere, on ladders and on their hands and knees, scrubbing walls and floor and repairing holes in the white plaster and in the stone. Teb watched Camery until she turned and put her hand out; then he went to her.

She said, “I can see Mama here. And Papa—when we were little, and so happy.” They stood remembering the perfect time of childhood. But he soon grew cross and restless again—moody; he kept having such changeable moods. He seemed to have no control over them. But shame at his weakness only drew evil closer. He soon wandered away from Camery, with Quazelzeg’s whispers close around him as he paced the empty corridors and abandoned rooms, driven by an impotent need for escape.

*

Kiri climbed one flight and another, looking into chambers, seeing the palace as it was now, but also as she had envisioned it from Teb’s thoughts, the warm comfort it had once held. In two wings, the rooms had been swept clean, the windows washed. Beds stood without mattresses, and there wasn’t much furniture left. Three wings hadn’t yet been cleaned; the rooms were littered with garbage and bones. At the top of the third flight was a room that rose alone above all the rest. It was so sunny, so inviting, that she went

It smelled of soap, and the floor was still damp from scrubbing. There was no furniture. The room was five-sided. Each side had a deep bay of windows that looked down over one wing of the roof. A stone fireplace stood between two bays, laid with logs and kindling. The windows were open to let in fresh air and sunshine. A new mattress, still smelling of fresh straw, lay on the floor in one bay. This would be Tebriel’s room—the room of the King of Auric.

“No, it will be kept for Meriden,” Teb said behind her. She swung around, startled. She hadn’t heard him come in or sensed him there.

“Meriden is still the queen,” Teb said, coming to stand beside her. She took his hand. She could see a deep, irritable unrest in his eyes.

“She must have been happy here, Teb.”

“I’m afraid for her. I keep seeing her standing in the blackness of those far worlds.”

“Your mother is a brave warrior—a strong woman.”

“For nine years she’s been wandering among those worlds—among impossible terrors, impossible evil. Nine years, Kiri!”

“Maybe time is not the same there—not the same for her. And there must be good there, Teb, as well as evil. The light must have touched those worlds.”

His dark eyes searched hers.

“She is strong, Teb. You must not lose hope for her. She was strong enough to pull the vamvipers through.”

“What else does she plan? How can we help her? She—she will despise me, now, for calling the vamvipers to us.”

“Any of us could have—”

“Save me that. I’m tired of being told that anyone could have turned traitor. I’m the one who nearly killed us all. Not one among you would have done what I did.”

Kiri moved away and stood with her back to the stone wall, watching him. This was not the Tebriel she knew. She looked and looked at him, and he looked back, remorseful and defiant.

“You can’t do this to yourself,” she said softly. “You are caught in Quazelzeg’s thoughts—not your own thoughts.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Try to make sense, Kiri.”

“You are wallowing in self-pity!”

His eyes blazed with anger.

“Self-pity!” she shouted, losing control. “You are filled with it!”

“What do you know about self-pity? What do you know about being drugged and beaten? What do you—”

“That’s self-pity! You are speaking Quazelzeg’s words!”

They stood facing each other, furious and hurting.

“Listen to me,” Kiri said evenly. “Maybe . . . maybe something positive has come from this.”

He started to speak, but she stopped him. “Just listen. If the vamvipers hadn’t found us, you would not have seen your mother. You wouldn’t know she’s alive.”

“That’s—”

“Listen! It took a terrible threat for your mother to reach out to you—for her to summon the power to reach out. Maybe . . . maybe the effort she made helped her. Maybe it increased the power she can command.”

He stared at her, a spark of hope touching him. Then he shook his head and turned away. She went to him and touched his cheek. He looked so uncertain and lonely, locked in his private darkness. She tried to keep her voice soft, to keep the anger out of it. “Quazelzeg wants to make you doubt, Teb. He wants to make you hate and turn away from us.”

He looked deeply at her, his eyes filled with resentment and anger—but with need for her. She put her arms around him, and suddenly he drew her close. Suddenly he let himself hold her tight, burying his face against her hair. They stood for a long time in the warm sunlight, saying nothing.

When the sun moved and put them in shadow, he stirred and held her away to look at her. “Maybe . . . maybe you’re right. Maybe I should listen more to where my anger comes from.”

“Just . . . just don’t turn away from us.”

“I want . . . suddenly I want to go down to Mama’s garden. It’s . . . where I remember her best.”

He led her out of the bright room and down a back way and out to a high wall. The gate in it was stuck or locked. He climbed it finally by the crossbars and opened it from inside.

It was the tangled, wild garden she had seen from the sky. Rosebushes and one giant flame tree grew up the walls, so thick she could hardly see the bricks.

There were small fruit trees let run wild, smothered in grass and flowers. A stone bench before the flame tree was grown over with low branches of its red blooms. Teb pushed them away and drew her down beside him.

He showed her Meriden sitting on the stone bench with the two small children—himself and Camery. The vision of Teb was fuzzy, a feeling more than a figure. He showed Meriden tucking him into bed, singing a strange little song to him, showed her holding court with their father, surrounded by officials. He made a vision of a family supper alone in the high chamber, and of court suppers in the great hall. He showed Meriden galloping her mare across the meadows playing tag with the children, laughing when their ponies caught her. Kiri felt undone by the visions, so private and warm, and important to him. Scenes tumbled one atop the other as the children grew older, until the morning they stood at the gate watching their mother ride away, not to return to them. When the last scene faded, Teb’s arms were around her. She held him, shaken with the loss that seven-year-old Teb had felt.

He put her away from him at last, and took Meriden’s diary from his pack. He leafed through it, and began to read to her from scattered passages. He read until the sun left the garden, and he had reached the last written page, with just one short entry at the top.

“This is the last entry I will make. I am in the sunken city, and I leave the diary here. I will go through the Door now, into other worlds—to find the dragon,and to seek the source of the dark, and perhaps learn how to defeat it. I love you, my children. I love you, my dear king.”

As they stared at each other, Kiri knew the supple forming of his thoughts, felt feelings and images unfolding in a pattern that suddenly shocked her. Suddenly she knew the decision he had made—it struck across her mind sharply. She looked at him, terrified.

“I must go, Kiri. I must search for her—I’ve known that for a long time. She means to draw Quazelzeg to her through the Doors; she calls him to her. She . . . perhaps she cannot fight him alone.”

“But you must not go there alone. I—”

“No! This I must do alone—not out of pride, believe me. Only one bard must go there. You—the rest—must remain . . . to battle Quazelzeg with all the strength you have among you. To . . . to battle for me, from this side.”

They held each other, their minds joined, the urgency of his commitment filling them. But her fear for him—and his own fear—blew like a dark curtain between them.

“Yes, I’m afraid,” he said softly. “But it’s time—to face Quazelzeg. I must do this, Kiri.”

When they drew apart, and he reached to close Meriden’s diary, his face went white. A new entry shone where, moments before, the page had been half blank.

It was in the same bold black stroke. It was Meriden’s writing.

The Castle of Doors is carved into the mountains of Aquervell. Now that I have come through, I know better the nature of the Doors and of the Castle. Some of the rooms are caves; some are built of stone. But they are without number, and each room has a Door leading to a world, and the worlds, too, are without number.

A vision filled their minds of mountains thrusting up scoured by fitful winds, and ridges snaking away broken by caverns and man-made bastions. The scene shifted and changed, disappearing beyond fogs and coming close and sharp as time shifted. Only the center held steady, a stone vortex of angled roofs and towers growing from mountain ridges. The image held them, the power of the Castle of Doors held them.

“Maybe only there,” Teb said, “lies the power to defeat Quazelzeg and the unliving.” They bent over the page together and read silently.

I sense the increasing power of the dark. And I feel the power of the Graven Light. I know both powers grow stronger, confronting each other with relentless and steady intent. If I can draw Quazelzeg here, away from Tirror, I think I can destroy him. I must try. My powers are stronger now.

Take care, Tebriel. I know that you will come searching for me. I cannot prevent that. And I need you—but not before you are ready. Take care—that the dark within you does not triumph.

They sat stricken, touching the page. Meriden knew too well what fevers swept his mind—knew, as Thakkur knew. Thakkur’s warnings filled him, too. Take care, Tebriel, when you journey into Sharden. You are not invulnerable. Do not do this alone. Thakkur’s voice was as clear as Meriden’s, as if both were there with him, watching him.

Yet in this one thing, Teb knew, Thakkur was wrong. He must do this alone, no one else must go from Tirror. He looked at Kiri, torn between Thakkur’s wisdom, the threat to Tirror, and his mother’s need. Meriden must not face Quazelzeg alone. Perhaps she had done all she could to draw Quazelzeg away from Tirror, perhaps she needed him desperately now.

Certainly the other bards did not need him—with the dark, traitorous winds that swept him, he was the weakest among them.

This thought alone should have held him back, should have made him turn away from confronting Quazelzeg and endangering Meriden. But it did not. It only fired his determination to conquer that weakness—by facing the greatest challenge he could face. By defeating Quazelzeg and saving Meriden—by saving Tirror. Thakkur’s whisper, Do not let your pride lead you, went unheeded.

Kiri, shaken with fear, moved into his arms and pressed her face against him. She held him tight, willing him to stay. He pulled away and cupped her face in his hands.

“I mean to go at once. Seastrider and I must go alone.”

“You must not. That is what you must not do. That is exactly what Thakkur warned you about. Oh, please, you must not face the dark alone. Please, Teb. Face Quazelzeg within the love and strength of all of us together. We will all go together, battle him together. Not alone. Not—”

His flaring anger silenced her. “If you care for me, if you know me and care for me, you know I must do this alone.” He reached to remove the lyre.

“No!” she shouted. “No! If you must go alone, then you must take the lyre!” Her fear and anger were terrible. “You will not go into Sharden without it!” She stood defying him until he dropped the lyre back against his tunic.

As he turned away, she stood looking after him filled with the one consolation, that the lyre would give him strength.