Nightpool (23 page)

“And you will be a god, then, Tebriel,” the
hydrus had told him, “you will be revered and
loved. . . .”

Teb huddled into himself on the cold stone
shelf, shivering, then hot. He knew in some distant part of his
mind that he was sick, but thought, because the hydrus wanted him
to think it, that his aching and discomfort were owing to his
failure with the dragon. Its words “You will be a god” were hollow,
and its words “You will be revered and loved” puzzled and upset
him, so he kept dragging them back into his 3ewsconsciousness and
worrying at them. “Revered and loved . . . and
loved. . . .”

As the wind grew higher and the rain harder
and his fever rose, he left the shelf and huddled down on the bed
of rags where he slept. He knew very little now, except the word
“loved” pounded with the pulsing of his aching head. Scenes began
to come to Teb, born not of song but of the fever. Faces and voices
filled his mind, and the word “loved” seemed tangled around them
all like the golden threads within a sphere winding and twisting
back, with no end. A girl with golden hair, the faces of dark
otters, a man with a red beard and hair like the mane of a lion,
his mother’s face . . . yes . . . loved
. . . the King of Auric mounted on a black
horse. . . . Father, I love
you. . . . Dark furred faces with great brown eyes
and then the white face of an otter who looked so deeply at him
. . . love . . . Teb twisted and huddled down
under the rags, and went weakly to the great basin to drink. The
scenes continued and wove themselves into a huge golden sphere of
endless pathways that filled his mind so that, as he came out of
the fever at last, it was this sphere that held his thoughts and it
was these scenes now that wove a skein of memory within him, the
dark of the hydrus driven back.

He rose one morning filled equally with the
two needs, with the light and the dark. He could sense the hydrus
down in the sea and feel its awful power over him. And he
understood, for the first time in many months, that its evil must
be defeated, and that it was within himself to defeat it. But still
there clung within him, too, his awful need for the hydrus and the
dark. Then the hydrus spoke to him.

You will not escape, Tebriel. This
aberration will not last. You will bring the dragon to me—the young
dragon.

I am not your slave. You are defeated now
by the very fact of my awareness.
But Teb felt afraid, and very
weak, and was terrified that the hydrus could, again, drown his
mind and twist it.
You are driven out, hydrus! You will not
conquer me now!

The power it sent at him threw him
staggering to his knees. He struggled feebly. It held him with
terrible strength so he could not rise; sweating and shaking, he
fought it now with the last of his physical strength. He could feel
its pleasure at his weakness.

But he could feel the young dragon, too,
feel her power joining with his own. He stared down with fury at
the black pool of sea where the hydrus lay submerged.
You will
not have us, dark hydrus. The dragon is of the light and only the
light, as am I.

You will call her, Tebriel. You will make
her come to you.

I will not. I will drive you out away
from me into the open sea.
Fear held him, but the beginning of
triumph touched him, too.

If you could drive me out, weak mortal, you
would die here. You would die here, alone.

So be it. But you will not have the
dragon.
Teb stared down at the hydrus’s shadow moving beneath
the heaving sea. It was then the hydrus laughed, sending a
shuddering echo through Teb’s mind, so his whole body trembled.

I have the dragon already, Tebriel. It is
coming even now.

You lie. You are filled with lies, you
know nothing but lies.
But Teb, too, could sense a change,
could sense the dragons’ sudden decision. . . .

*

“Now,” cried Dawncloud to her eager young,
“now,” and the five dragonlings leaped from the lip of the nest
onto Tirror’s winds, Seastrider raging in her hatred, vigorous and
willful and beating the wind into storm as she fled toward that far
sunken city. . . .

*

Teb sensed them winging between clouds and
tried to drive them back, drive Seastrider away.
Go back, go
back, do not come here. . . .

On she came. And in the dark sea below, the
hydrus laughed again, and then it came pushing up out of the sea.
The dragon is coming to me, Tebriel. It will belong to me
now.

If it comes at all, it will come to me,
and together we will kill you.
But, Teb thought, terrified,
could the hydrus turn the dragon’s powers to darkness, as it had
turned his own? He grabbed up his knife where it lay rusting, and
stood up, dizzy and unsteady from the sickness, as the hydrus rose
out of the dark water, sloughing water up the stone walls.

She does not come to you, Tebriel, but to
me.

She comes to me, and you will have to kill
me before you have her. Without me she is useless to you. Without
me, you cannot control her. And I will never help you.

It reached at him, raging.
If you are of
no use to me, then you will die. You will not be used by the
light.

“By the Graven Light,” Teb said, staring
down at it. “The Graven Light will defeat you—has defeated
you. . . .” He chose a spot between the eyes of the
center head, his knife ready. The hydrus grabbed for him. Teb
leaped with the last of his strength, straddled its huge nose, and
thrust the knife directly in between the great eyes. The other two
heads reached for him as bone and cartilage shattered. The hydrus
screamed; blood spurted over Teb; the creature thrashed, throwing
him off. As Teb sprawled on the stone floor, it reached again but
went limp, flailing, then dropped down into the shelter of the sea.
The sea went red in widening pools. Teb stood shaken, supporting
himself against the wall, watching the red thrashing sea as the
hydrus slowly pulled the boulder across the sunken portal. It would
die now. Or it would mend. If it returned for him, he must be gone.
How had he stayed so long in this place, without having the will to
escape? When he was sure it had gone, he gathered the last of his
strength and he dove, pulling himself down and down along the
drowned stairs into the deep, bloodied water.

He explored every inch of the room below,
coming up twice to fill his lungs, then diving again. He found at
last a tiny hole through which he was just able to push himself,
having no idea where it led, or whether the hydrus was there.

He surfaced on the other side of the wall,
gasping, and found himself in a huge hall. The sea filled its lower
floors. He climbed out, onto a great stone hearth, and took shelter
within the huge fireplace. High above, niches gave onto the sky,
and he could see the sun’s brightness. Sunlight in shafts across
the salty pool picked out a stoppered clay jug that might have been
floating there the many lifetimes since the land was flooded. When
Teb heard the hydrus thrashing and bellowing—not dead at all, but
furious at the discovery of his absence—he climbed up inside the
chimney.

But the dragons were coming near. He would
not be caught and held captive here. He wanted the sky; he wanted
to reach out to them.

With a foot on either wall of the chimney,
he forced himself up it until his head touched the thick stone slab
that sat on its top as a rain guard. This was supported by four
short stone pillars, to let the smoke out. Through the holes he
could see the bright sky and feel the wind caress him. He began to
dig with his knife at the mortar that held the slab. He could hear
the hydrus splashing and snuffling in the hall below. It could not
reach him here, but could the power of its mind make him fall? He
quit digging and remained silent. His leg muscles began to twitch.
The bellowing of the hydrus echoed up the chimney, and its mind
forced at his, raging. Only now his own strength held steady.

Then he heard another sound that, in spite
of the hydrus, set him to digging again.

A high, piercing keening filled the sky, a
cry of challenge that drove the last shadows of darkness from his
mind and flooded him with joy. He forced the stone off with one
frantic thrust and heard it splash into the sea as he lifted
himself out and saw the dragons winging between clouds, the immense
pearl-hued mother and the five gleaming young. They banked down
over him, their green eyes watching him, their iridescent bodies
reflecting sun and sea. They circled him, their wings blocking out
the sky, and Seastrider so close her wings caressed him. Then
Dawncloud wheeled and soared away to drop down over the drowned
rooftops, where the shadow of the hydrus lay beneath the sea, its
blood still staining the water. Her tongue licked out and she dove,
and the five dragonlings followed her.

The sea heaved as the dragons and hydrus
battled, thrashing through the depths between broken walls.

Teb clung to the chimney, stricken,
clutching his knife as blood boiled up and spread; he watched the
bloody trail paint itself out away from the city.

Far out in the sea the disturbance made a
geyser. Dawncloud leaped up through foam; then a dragonling rose
beside her. Another, another, until four dragonlings were swimming
back toward the drowned city. Behind them floated the body of the
hydrus, half submerged. The fifth dragonling did not appear. Beside
Teb’s chimney, Dawncloud crashed up out of the water screaming her
pain and her loss for the one dragonling, the one left behind in
the jaws of the hydrus, where they floated, dying together. Teb
felt Dawncloud’s grief as his own, felt Seastrider’s weeping as the
pale dragonling came to the chimney and wrapped herself around it
and laid her head up along his body.

With the sun high overhead they clung so to
the ruined chimney, the young dragon and her bard. And then at last
Seastrider stirred, put away her grief, and began to study Teb.

Teb stared into Seastrider’s eyes and felt
complete. He marveled at how intricately her scales were woven
along her neck and back and along the slim reptilian legs she
wrapped around the chimney, scales that could have been crafted of
diamonds and of pearls. Her face was slim, her nostrils flared, her
two horns white as sunstruck snow, and her cheek felt warm and cool
all at once. His mind filled with her songs, and now, together,
they made the team for which both had been born. They looked at
each other for a long time. Above the sea in the deep afternoon
light, Dawncloud circled, keening her agony of mourning, as only a
dragon can, for her lost child. The sea rang with her misery, the
sunken city absorbed her cry and held it as it held the memory of
ages. Moonsong was dead, sleek and beautiful and dear, and not even
grown to the full fierce power she should have known, would never
know.

It was much later that Dawncloud dropped
down out of the sky to dive again among the ruined walls,
searching. Teb could see her forcing between stone buildings and
down narrow, drowned alleyways, her wings folded close to her body,
her white undulating shape curling among watery broken stone and
through water shadow, touched by light from the dropping sun. What
drew her, now that the hydrus was dead?

“She seeks something,” said Seastrider,
watching her with a puzzled cock of her head. “Perhaps some old
memory, a secret from the ancient city. Perhaps something else.”
She kneaded her claws into the chimney like a great cat.

They watched Dawncloud slip along the top of
a broken wall, to lie looking down into a high attic room, then saw
her swerve down into it and disappear. “Come on my back,” said
Seastrider.

“Can you carry me? You are only young
yet.”

“Come on my back.”

Teb climbed astride as he would mount a
pony, and she lifted so fast into the sky she nearly took his
breath. He sat clinging between her wings, caught in wonder as the
sea fled below, the outlines of the drowned city clear now—the
upper and middle baileys and the barbican, the lower and greater
halls, the keeping gate and the guard tower all laid out, and the
streets surrounding it, the rooftops and the lines of the three old
roads leading away. Then suddenly Seastrider dove. Down and down.
She came to rest on the edge of a broken wall to look down into the
ancient chamber where Dawncloud lay curled upon the stone floor,
her head resting on the oak bed. The chamber, quite dry, was
furnished. Teb stared down at it with shock: bed and two chairs and
even a rug on the floor, its corner protruding underneath
Dawncloud’s claws. How could a room remain furnished, as if someone
had just left it, after hundreds of years of rain and wind and the
dampness of the sea? Why hadn’t it decayed, like the rest of the
city?

There were even blankets on the bed, a
cookpot on the hearth, and the charred remains of a fire.

Teb walked along the top of the thick wall,
looking down. Dawncloud lay quite still, as if caught in some inner
dream, her shoulder against a small cupboard that stood beside the
hearth, its door ajar, a touch of red showing inside. It was as he
rounded the corner that he saw, down in the water outside the
building, the nose of a boat. He moved along the wall until he
could look down on its deck, the deck of a small sailing boat.

Her sails had been carefully reefed, but
were dark with mold. Her sides were covered with barnacles, but
still he could see the bright paint in streaks on her deck and knew
she had not sat here for hundreds of years. A few years, maybe. He
glanced across at Seastrider perched on the wall watching him, and
knew she touched his thoughts. Then he climbed down into the
chamber, beside Dawncloud.

He touched the blanket beneath her huge head
and ran his hand along her muzzle. He looked around the room, and
knew someone had lived here, come here in the little boat to this
drowned place. But why? Then he approached the cupboard, caught by
the flash of red.