Nightpool (3 page)

If Teb’s father wept, he did not let Teb and
Camery see his tears. He was stern and silent with the children
after her death, locking all his pain inside. It would have been
easier if they all could have shared their grief.

The king laid cloak and boot in a small gold
cask set with coral, which had held his wife’s favorite
possessions. He buried the cask at the foot of the flame tree in
her walled, private garden, and put a marker there, for her
grave.

After that his father was often absent from
the palace, busy at council with his lieutenants, planning war
against the dark northern raiders that preyed upon Tirror’s small
nations and were drawing ever closer to Auric. It seemed strange to
see him at council without the queen by his side, for they had
always shared such duties. As he planned his defenses, pacing among
his men, he seemed so filled with fury—almost as if he thought the
dark raiders themselves were responsible for the queen’s death.

Then his lieutenant, Sivich, gone suddenly
and inexplicably over to the dark side, had, with a band of armed
traitors, attacked the king and killed him. Sivich had always
seemed so loyal. He must have lived a lie all those years, cleverly
hiding his true intentions. Teb was there when it happened. He
fought the traitors beside his father until he was knocked
unconscious. He had been put into a cell and made a slave, and
Camery locked in the tower. From the tower, and from the door of
the palace, they saw their father buried in the courtyard in an
unmarked grave.

At first Camery’s pet owl had flown secretly
at night between the two children, whispering their messages
through the tower window and through the barred window in the hall,
until Sivich overheard and sent the jackals to kill the owl.

He expected Camery had cried a long time,
for Otus had been a dear friend. Once the messages stopped, Teb
yearned more and more to be with Camery, longed for her to hold
him, for she was the closest thing to a mother he had left. Now he
yearned to tell her about the dragon, for news of such a creature,
if in truth it was a singing dragon, was surely a symbol of
hope.

“Its shadow made the beach go dark,”
crippled Hibben was saying. “It screamed over the horses and made
them bolt.”

Sivich had risen and begun to pace, his
shadow riding the worn tapestries back and forth. “How long was it
in sight? Did it come straight at you, or—”

“Straight at us, its eyes terrible, its
teeth like swords,” Cech said, shaking his blond shaggy head, “and
the flame . . .”

“And
where
did it come from? Can’t
you agree on that? Didn’t you see where it went? How can I know
where to search if you can’t remember better than that!”

“The islands, maybe,” someone said
hesitantly. The men shifted closer together.

“Circled and circled the coast of Baylentha,
and bellowed,” little, wiry Brische said hoarsely. “Its fiery
breath, if it had come any closer, would have set the woods
afire.”

“Stampeded the horses—took half a day to
catch the horses.”

“It wanted something there, in
Baylentha.”

Sivich was silent for some time. Then he
raised his head straight up on those bulging shoulders and looked
hard at the men, and his voice came grating and low. “We ride at
dawn for Baylentha.”

The men shrank into themselves. Cech said
softly, “What do you mean to do?”

“Catch it,” Sivich said.

The room was still as death. Not a man
seemed to breathe. The crack of the fire made Teb jump.

“How?” someone whispered. “How would you
catch such a thing?” These men were killers, but now they were
afraid. Teb guessed that a great dragon is not the same as a
village full of shopkeepers and children, to murder carelessly,
easily. Not even the same as a king’s army. For an army is made of
men like themselves, while a dragon . . . a singing
dragon’s fierce power was well beyond even these men. Why he felt
the power of the dragon so strongly within his own small body, as
if he knew it well, Teb had no idea.

Well, these big sweating soldiers were no
match for it. He smiled to himself, warmed with pleasure at the
prospect of it eating them all, and imagined how it would be, each
one devoured slowly, with crushing pain.

Then in the silent room someone repeated the
question in a harsh rasping voice. “How would you catch such a
creature?”

Sivich drained his mug and wiped his mouth.
“With bait, man.”

“Bait?”

“Bait inside a snare.”

“What bait would a dragon come to? Surely
. . .”

“What snare would hold such a
. . . ?”

Sivich’s stare silenced the speakers. The
men shifted, and Teb waited, all held equally now.

“A snare made of barge chain and pine logs,”
Sivich said. The pines on the coast of Baylentha were tall and
straight. The barge chain used in Auric was as thick as a man’s
leg. The men stirred again, mulling the idea over.

“And what kind of bait?” Pischen
breathed.

There was silence again. Then Sivich turned
and looked over the heads of his men, directly toward Teb’s corner.
His voice came low and cold.

“The boy will be the bait.”

Teb sat very still. He could not have heard
right. He forgot to breathe, was afraid to breathe. Goose bumps
came on his arms, and the blood in his wrists felt like ice. What
boy did Sivich mean? Every man had turned to stare at him. Half
drunk, smirking, every face had gone blood-hungry. Teb’s mind
flailed in panic, like a moth trapped in a jar. He wanted to run,
but there was nowhere to run to. The jackals edged closer as they
sensed his fear. Sivich crossed the room, kicked the jackals aside,
and stood over Teb with one boot on Teb’s hand where he crouched,
the dark leader filling his vision, his eyes boring down into
him.

Sivich jerked him up by his ear so his body
went hot with pain and he stumbled and choked back a cry. Sivich
snatched Teb’s wrist in a greasy hand and twisted his arm back. Teb
turned with the arm, to ease the pain. Sivich stared at his forearm
where the little birthmark shone against his pale skin. Then the
dark leader dragged him across the room toward the staring men.

They crowded at once to look. Hibben of the
twisted hand drew in his breath sharply. But it was only a
birthmark, Teb thought. He had always had it. Why were they staring
at it? It was a dark mark, no bigger than the ball of his thumb,
and looked like a three-clawed animal foot.

Sivich’s fingers were hard as steel. “This
will trap a dragon. With bait like this we’ll have us a dragon easy
as trapping fox.”

The men sighed and muttered. Some pushed
closer to Teb, leaning over him to stare, pawing at his arm, their
strong breath making him feel ill.

“How can that catch a dragon? It’s only a
little mark. . . .”

“What does it mean? How can . . .
?”

But others among them nodded knowingly. “Ay,
that will trap a dragon—trap the singing
dragon. . . .” They stared at Teb strangely.

When at last Sivich was done with Teb, he
shoved him back toward the corner. Teb went quickly, sick inside
himself with something unnameable.

He crouched against the stone wall,
listening as Sivich described how the snare would be built, how Teb
would be bound in the center of it as the rabbit is bound in the
fox snare. And, Teb thought, with the same result, a bloody,
painful death, the dragon’s great hulk hovering over him as it tore
his flesh, just as the fox tears at the rabbit.

For even a singing dragon—if in truth it was
such—had to eat. No one ever said that singing dragons were
different in that way from common dragons. Surely the fables about
their skills as oracles were only that, fables born of their beauty
and size, and of the wonder of their iridescent color. Some folks
thought the dragon was a sign of man’s freedom. That didn’t, in
Teb’s mind, make it less likely to behave like other dragons when
it was hungry.

Or was it something other than hunger that
Sivich felt would draw the dragon to him? What was the mark on his
arm? Why was it important? Yet common sense told him that the
wondrous tales of the singing dragons were only myth; and certainly
there was nothing magical in a small brown birthmark.

Teb was not a king’s son for nothing. Wonder
and myth were one thing, but fact remained separate and apart. He
had spent many hours in the hall listening as his father threaded a
keen path between gossip and truth, in appraising the dark raiders
and preparing his men for battle. But even then, his father had at
last been wrong, had been misled by falsehood that looked like
truth. He had believed in Sivich’s loyalty, when Sivich was really
a clever pawn of the dark. He had died for his misjudgment.

Why did Sivich want the dragon? What could
he possibly do with it? Keep it in the trap forever? Poke it and
torment it? But you couldn’t keep a dragon captive, not that
dragon. Why would he want to?

Because the dragon was a symbol of freedom?
Must they destroy every such symbol, the dark raiders and their
pawns who had helped enslave half the northern lands? Must they
destroy everything loved by free men?

Yes, Teb supposed. If the dark raiders could
enslave the dragon, they would show all of Tirror they held the
last symbol of freedom in chains. Their power would be invincible
then. No one would defy them then.

Teb went cold as a harsh voice at the back
shouted, “A princess would be better bait. What about the
girl—hasn’t she the mark?”

“The girl has no such mark,” Sivich said
irritably. “Besides, I keep her for breeding.”

“No one breeds a girl of fourteen,” said
Hibben of the twisted hand. “They die in childbed all the time,
bred young.”

Sivich turned a look of cold fury on the
soldier. “Do you think I’m stupid? The girl will be kept to breed
when she can bear me the young I want, as many young as it will
take to capture every singing dragon that ever touches Tirror’s
skies. She will breed male babies with the mark.”

Hibben grunted, then was silent.

Teb watched Sivich. What
was
the
meaning of the mark? For it was the mark, surely, that had kept
Sivich from killing him as he had killed his father. He felt panic
for Camery, and knew she must get away. Both of them must. But how?
How could Camery escape from a tower with winged jackals circling
it? The guards never let her come down.

Sivich was talking about the snare again,
how many trees would be felled, how much chain was needed. Teb
listened, sick to despair at his helplessness. Would old Desma help
him? But she was too afraid. The only other servant he trusted was
Garit, and he had been sent to the coast to gather and train fresh
horses, and had taken young Lervey with him. There was no one. The
hall felt icy. He crouched, shivering, and listened to the drunken
talk. It was nearly dawn when at last the hall lay empty. A heavy
rain started, splattering in through the barred window. Teb pressed
exhausted against the stone, shivering and lost, and fell into a
sick uneasy sleep.

“Get the boy up! Get him out here! Do you
think we have all day!” Sivich’s voice thundered up from the
courtyard and jerked Teb from sleep. He lay struggling between
consciousness and dream, and realized he had been hearing shouts
and the sounds of restive horses for some time, pounding in and out
of his dreams. He tried to escape back into sleep, but now the
image of the dragon filled his head suddenly, the image of himself
in the dragon’s gaping jaws. He had gone to sleep thinking of that,
and didn’t know how to stop thinking it.

He reached for a blanket that wasn’t there,
then realized he was still in the hall. He had slept in the corner.
Someone had put the ankle chain on him, chained him to a ring in
the wall. The hall smelled of wet ash, and he remembered it had
rained. Rain always came down the chimney. The bars of the window
were wet, and water streaked the wall and puddled on the floor.
Beyond the bars, the sky was dull and heavy.

The jackals were stirring and snuffling.

A door banged suddenly, and Teb watched
Blaggen come across from the scullery. He could smell eggs cooking,
and ham, and could hear the din of men eating in the common
room.

Blaggen pushed the jackals aside and knelt
stiffly to remove Teb’s chain. There was a stain of egg on his
tunic, and his hair was uncombed. He dropped the chain into his
pocket and stood up, took a slab of dry bread and cheese from his
pocket, and handed them to Teb.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Put it in your pocket, then. Could be your
last meal.”

Teb wadded the food in his fist and shoved
it in his pocket.

Blaggen pushed him across the shadowed,
echoing hall and down the steps to the courtyard, then out among
the milling horses and warriors. The two jackals kept so close now
that he could hardly move. When they began to sniff his pocket for
the bread and cheese, slavering and growling, Teb turned his back,
slipped the food out, and gulped it. He hoped it would stay down.
He worked his way to the water trough, falling over the jackals,
stumbling between horses and men.

He drank. The water tasted like metal. He
turned away, feeling awful, pushing between two big war-horses and
wondering if he was going to throw up. Then when he looked above
him toward the tower, Camery was there at the window.

She stood very still, looking down at him.
Her face was so white, as if the sun of Tirror never reached her;
yet watery sun caught her now from low in the east, tangled in her
pale hair. She was hugging herself as if she were cold. They looked
at each other across that impossible distance. They could not
speak. Neither could know what the other was thinking. Neither
could know the fate of the other. Camery did not know, at the
moment, that they would likely never see each other again. She
would guess it when he rode away. And he thought, as he watched
her,
I won’t die! I won’t!