Dragonbards (3 page)

“I am Tebriel of Auric.”

There was a murmur of recognition among the
dwarfs.

“My companions are Kiri of Dacia, and Marshy
of Dacia.” Teb studied the dwarf king.

The dwarf looked back, inscrutable as stone.
“The dragonling needs warmth, Prince Tebriel. Death is close on
her. We are taking her to our cave. Unless you have a better
plan.”

Teb moved close to the dragon and ran his
hand down her neck and side. Her body felt chill and too soft,
without the resiliency of life. Marshy pressed his face against
hers. Seastrider reached to nose at her; then both big dragons lay
down beside her and folded their wings over her and Marshy like a
warm tent.

The dwarf band was silent. Their dark eyes
had softened. A young woman soldier reached to touch Seastrider’s
neck, in a subtle gesture of gratitude.

They are good folk, Tebriel,
Seastrider said.

Perhaps you are right.

Of course I am right,
she said
curtly, and dismissed him by busying herself with the
dragonling.

Teb watched her with a lopsided grin. She
could be infuriating at times.

When the young dragon seemed warmer,
Seastrider bit the traces from the wolves, freeing them of their
burden, and she and Windcaller took the leather lines in their
mouths.

“Our cave is five miles up the ravine,” the
dwarf king said. The wolves disappeared quickly down the ravine.
They had not been speaking wolves, who, out of friendship, might
volunteer to pull the sleds. They had been wild wolves, huge and
fierce. No one, Teb thought, could easily make friends with such
creatures, except dwarfs. Teb reached down from Seastrider’s back,
took the dwarf king’s hand, and the small king clambered up,
smiling for the first time. The big dragons set out at a fast pace
up the ravine. The dwarf troops trotted double time beside the
sled. Teb sat a head taller than the king, his nose filled with the
smell of the little man’s furs and of woodsmoke. The king sat very
straight. Teb could feel his excitement at riding a dragon. Teb
began to sense, with bard power, the past of this small man.

These dwarfs had lived under the ice
mountains for many generations, mining and smelting, crafting fine
metal, and weaving brilliant wool garments and blankets and
tapestries from their herds of mountain sheep. Teb glanced across
at Kiri. She saw his look and smiled.

I like them.
She had lived a long
time among street toughs and the soldiers of the dark, bereft of
gentleness except among a chosen few. She had lived a long time
warily, always on guard. These simple, honest folk pleased her.

They are like the speaking animals,
Windcaller said.
They are direct and hide no malice.
The
speaking foxes and great cats, the speaking wolves and owls and the
otters, were among the bards’ dearest friends.
The dwarfs,
Windcaller said,
are just as true.

Kiri looked across at Teb.
Do you still
doubt them?

Teb stared at her.
I can be wrong. Aren’t
you ever wrong?

Yes. But I never expect you to be.

Their eyes held for a moment; then Kiri
lowered hers, her cheeks flushing.

Stilvoke Cave was marked by a large
triangular opening in the side of an ice-covered dome that lay at
the foot of the mountains. It was all the dwarfs and bards could do
to get the linked sleds into the cave and slide the dragonling off
onto blankets beside the central fire. King Flam was powerful for
his size. Once he removed his outer furs, Teb could see that he was
not fat, but strong and muscled. The cave smelled of roasting
rabbits and baking bread. Folk streamed in from side caves to see
the bards and the young dragon.

The two big dragons dug themselves a nest
outside the cave, thrusting their heads in through the entrance now
and then to look at the dragonling. She had not stirred. The dwarf
women made a gruel, which Teb and Kiri fed her while Marshy propped
her mouth open. The little boy pressed his shoulder between her
upper fangs and with his crippled leg held down her lower jaw,
balancing on his good leg. Teb held the big cookpot as Kiri ladled
in trenchers of the gruel. Because the dragon had not waked, they
got her to swallow only with the power of bard spells. Teb watched
Marshy, gripped with the child’s painful love for the young
creature.

Marshy was an orphan child, raised by the
bards and rebels in Dacia. He had grown up stubbornly insisting
there were still dragons on Tirror, though the other bards, Kiri
and Camery and Colewolf, had no hope. It was only when Teb and the
four dragons appeared in Dacia that the older bards knew that he
was right. But now, when Marshy had found his own dragon at last,
she was close to death.

Kiri’s dark eyes searched Teb’s, filled with
Marshy’s pain. This was all Marshy had lived for—to join with his
own dragon. “She can’t die,” Kiri whispered. “Use the magic of the
lyre, Teb. Use it now.”

They had won the battle of Dacia with the
power of the Ivory Lyre of Bayzun. But afterward, the lyre had
seemed weakened.

The lyre, carved from the claws of the
ancient dragon Bayzun, held all of Bayzun’s strength—and all his
weakness. It, like the dying dragon, faded easily and built its
strength again only slowly.

They had been wary of using it again, saving
it for the most urgent need against the dark forces.

“It is needed now,” Kiri said. “Use it
now.”

Teb touched one silver string. The lyre’s
clear voice rang through the cave bright as starlight, embracing
them with promise. He held its cry to whispered softness, for the
presence of the dark was ever near. He did not want to draw the
dark
here.
He joined his own power with the lyre, and with
Kiri and Marshy and the dragons, to make a lingering song of life.
Though it filled the cave only softly, it stirred every living soul
within its hearing. . . .

Except the dragonling. She did not stir.

Teb looked at Kiri. The lyre’s subtle song
was not enough. They might alert the dark, but he must make the
magic shout, make the cave thunder with the lyre’s power, no matter
how close were the dark unliving.

Kiri’s brown eyes went wide with wonder and
with fear, and with a tender, consuming love that Teb sensed, but
could not sort out—love for the young dragon, surely.

The dark captains move into the villages
two and three at a time to take control, warping minds with their
dark powers and with drugs, molding willing slaves. In the cities
their manipulations are more intricate, as they win the allegiance
of kings
.

*

Teb touched the lyre’s strings again. All
faces were turned to him, solemn and expectant. He slapped the
silver strings so the lyre’s music raged, summoning wild winds and
thunder across Stilvoke Cave. He brought to the young dragon’s
sleeping mind the power of dragons, the fearsome passion of
dragons, and their tangled past.

When he let the lyre’s music quiet to a
rhythm like pounding blood, he brought a vision of a dragon nest
cradled by mountain winds, where sky-colored eggs reflected clouds,
and where dragon babies shattered their shells and pushed up toward
the welcoming sky—but suddenly the lyre’s voice died, sucked away
to silence beneath Teb’s hands.

The cave was silent. Only the echo of the
lyre’s voice clung.

Still the dragonling did not stir. But Teb
could feel a change in her, subtle as breath, and knew the lyre’s
power had drawn her back from the thin edge of dying. Her body
seemed rounder, and her white scales had begun to shine with
iridescent colors. Marshy stroked and stroked her, murmuring and
calling to her. King Flam began, again, to feed her.

Suddenly she moved one forefoot.

But then she was still again, though she
began to swallow alone, without the need for magic. Teb stared down
at the small ivory lyre. Had he used up all its strength? Kiri laid
her hand on the warm ivory, her eyes questioning him. He touched
one string.

Silence.

King Flam said, “The flaw is in the ivory,
young bards. Do you not know that? It renews itself only
slowly.”

Teb stared at him. “How could you know such
a thing?”

King Flam smiled. “When you first found the
lyre, Prince Tebriel, when you broke the spell that hid it, all
Tirror knew once again of its existence.”

“Even so, how could you know something we
did not?”

“Has not much of your knowledge been
destroyed by the dark powers, Tebriel?”

“It has.”

“The dark was surely disturbed when you
broke the spell on the lyre. It cannot be pleased that you now
wield the lyre’s power. I expect the dark unliving would make every
effort to destroy your knowledge of the lyre’s one flaw. Would it
not?”

“But you . . .”

“The dwarf nation is an ancient family,
Prince Tebriel. It was our own dwarf ancestor who carved the lyre
from the claws of Bayzun.”

“You descend from the line of Eppennen?”

“We do. And our knowledge of the lyre, once
that knowledge was returned to us, is quite complete.”

Teb tucked the lyre back inside his tunic,
cursing the dark that confused the bards’ own rightful knowledge.
“Will you tell us how you found the dragonling?” he asked.

“We were fishing,” King Flam said. “When we
came around a bend in the cliff, she was thrashing and struggling
across the ice. Her face was smeared with blood, and the dead seal
lay next to her, half eaten. We had seen her often in the sky, with
her brothers and sisters. We knew the dark soldiers searched for
them.”

“Quazelzeg’s soldiers,” Teb said.

King Flam nodded. “Quazelzeg keeps a
disciple to practice his evil in this land, but the man is a dull
creature. When Quazelzeg wants something particular, he sends his
own troops. It is Quazelzeg’s ships that search for the young
dragons. Surely it was they who left the poisoned seal—surely they
who killed this dragonling’s nestmate.”

Teb’s hand paused in midair.

“Killed . . .” Kiri said.
“Oh, no . . .”

King Flam nodded. “There were six dragons in
the clutch. Three females, three males.” He spoke softly, watching
Teb, then returned to the rhythm of ladling. “One female was hunted
down some months ago by Quazelzeg’s soldiers. They caught her in
the swamp south of Stilvoke. They . . . beheaded
her.”

Kiri gasped.

“A trophy for Quazelzeg, I suppose. My folk
found her body by a lake in the marsh when they were dragging for
crayfish. The land is warm there, heated by the volcano. It is a
place that would appeal to dragons. Her wings were broken; she
could not have flown from her pursuers.”

Kiri turned away, sick.

“They will pay for it,” Teb said. “We must
get the other dragonlings to safety. Two bards are searching for
them now, up the coast.”

“The young dragons like to hunt up the coast
around the otter colony of Cekus Bay.”

“A nation of otters!” Teb said.

“Yes, the otters are good folk. We visit
them often. Their waters around Cekus Volcano are warm, the fishing
rich. But those waters are shark filled, too. The otter nation is
pleased to have the young dragons hunt the predators.”

“I lived with the otters of Nightpool for
four years,” Teb said. “They took care of me when my leg was
shattered and my memory gone. They raised me, taught me. They are
like my own kin.”

King Flam motioned for another pot of gruel.
“How did you end up there? What happened to you? We knew that your
father, the King of Auric, was murdered.”

Teb nodded. “By a trusted officer, a captain
named Sivich. I was seven, my sister, Camery, was nine. Sivich’s
men held us, made us watch him kill our father.

“After that, I was kept chained as a palace
slave for five years. Camery was kept locked in the tower.

“But when Sivich learned that a dragon had
been seen on Tirror, he decided to capture it, using me as bait. He
knew I was a bard though I myself did not know. He saw the dragon
mark on my arm. He thought the dragon would come to me. He built a
gigantic cage of felled trees and barge chain and chained me inside
it.”

The dwarfs had pushed close around Teb, to
hear the tale.

“I escaped in the midst of battle between
Sivich and the rebel leader, Ebis the Black. The dragon herself
burned the chains that held me. A soldier pulled me up onto his
horse, but his horse was shot and fell on us. The soldier was
killed, my leg was broken, and I got a blow on the head.

“I lay in the marsh unconscious until two
roving otters found me. They took me on a raft around the coast, to
Nightpool. They set my leg and doctored me when I nearly died from
fever. They were very patient, as patient as otters can be. I could
remember nothing, not even my name.”

“They are good folk,” King Flam repeated. “I
imagine they taught you many of their ways.”

“They taught me to dive deep and long and
bring up abalone,” Teb said, smiling. “They taught me many secrets
of the sea and many ways that I value.

“They taught me to eat raw fish, too,” he
said, laughing. “Your roasting rabbit smells better.” He took the
weight of the gruel pot from a dwarf and looked around the cave.
“There is a strength in this cave, King Flam. A sense of protection
and peace.”

King Flam nodded. “There are three
sanctuaries on this continent, Prince Tebriel. This one is
Mund-Ardref.”

Once, before the dark unliving invaded
Tirror, the cave sanctuaries had been meeting places that brought
humans and dwarfs and the speaking animals together in an easy,
loving companionship. On the walls of many of the sanctuaries were
pictures of the speaking foxes and otters and wolves, the great
cats and the speaking owls, and the unicorns—for unicorns had
roamed Tirror then, practicing a gentle, healing magic. The dark
had driven them all out. It had destroyed the comradery of the
sanctuaries and disrupted the nations of speaking animals, so that
they hid themselves. Humans had grown sour and afraid, and some had
grown obedient to the dark.