Nightpool (8 page)

Pixen finished his instructions, and the
four foxes slipped away while the hoofbeats still pounded overhead
across the mountain.

“Sivich’s riders,” Pixen said. “Heading for
the west portal.”

Teb shivered. “They’ll come in there, too;
they’ll be all over the caves.”

“They won’t get in here,” Pixen
repeated.

“But can’t they look in through the slits?
Can’t they see us?”

“No man can climb that sheer wall. The slits
were meant for arrows once, during the five wars, long-seeking
arrows trained on the sea path below, and they could not be reached
by invaders. Now they are only for light and air, but still no man
can climb to them.”

“Then—then they’ll wait at both portals,”
Teb said, beginning to feel hopeless. “Wait for me to come
out.”

“There is another way out. A way no soldier
knows.” Pixen paused to scratch the side of his long, thin face
against his leg. Then he looked up at Teb with a bright gleam of
mischief. “You are small—you can manage the fox burrow to the
south. It comes out far below the west portal and is well hidden
among tumbled boulders and brush. Now it is time for rest, Tebriel,
for we will travel before evening.” Pixen curled down and wrapped
his tail around himself, and settled his nose against his tail.

Teb tried to rest, but he was nervous with
apprehension and thought he could still hear hooves. He made a meal
of bread and cheese, and sat watching the slits above. The cave
grew brighter and warmer as the sun dropped past noon and shone in.
Once he heard men just beyond the cave entrance, heard the shuffle
of boots and voices muttering. Twice he heard the jackals come to
the hole, snuffling and growling. The fox guards sat steady,
watching the hole, knowing the jackals couldn’t get through. These
jackals were not like the jackals of the far north, who resembled
small wolves. It was no wonder the foxes found their low-bellied,
hump-shouldered presence repugnant. Compared with those of the
delicate foxes, their broad flat heads and mouths like steel traps
were crude and disgusting. Teb held his knife ready, almost wishing
he could attack one of them, and was still holding it when Pixen
woke. The fox leader stared at it and grinned.

“That steel blade, together with a fox’s
ripping teeth, ought to do those belly-draggers in.” He yawned and
shook himself. “But your scent and ours are all over the caves,
Tebriel. I don’t think the creatures have sense enough to know
which is freshest, even when they come so near.”

They set out in early afternoon, Teb and
Pixen and the seven strong young foxes, to follow the winding
passages inside Nison-Serth south to the fox warren. At first the
passages were stone; then they turned to earth. Teb went on his
belly and began to feel like a mole. But he was not afraid now,
with the foxes to help if he got stuck, and by dusk they were in
the warrens. They stood in a central gallery with caves opening off
in all directions.

“The warren is new,” Pixen said, “compared
to Nison-Serth. Only a few generations have used it. We had no need
of dens in the old days, when men and animals shared Tirror
equally, for then we were wanderers, and we made the sanctuaries
like Nison-Serth and Mund-Ardref and Gardel-Cloor our bases. But
now, with the dark raiders on the land, we have taken to staying
where we have shelter to hide and raise our cubs. It is not a
carefree life, but safer.

“Once, when the first warren caves were
opened and dug out deeper and larger, there were humans often in
Nison-Serth. When the first wars began to enslave, humans helped us
to dig and clear the caves of fallen stone. The children would
crawl into the smaller caves, to dig there—so many
children. . . .

“But come, Tebriel, my den is just here, and
Renata will be waiting.”

Pixen led Teb on through a small ragged
opening, then down seven turnings. The low twisting passage grew
lighter; then there was brightness ahead. They came into a brightly
lighted cave with high ceilings and slits along the top letting in
the rays of the sun. Teb could see ferns through the holes and knew
the hilltop was there. At the back of the den a waterfall splashed
down, frothing over the pale walls, into a deep pool stained green
by the ferns that grew around it. And all around the den, the pale,
nearly white walls were carved with the pictures of foxes, and of
owls and all the speaking animals, as well as deer and rabbits and
mice, and with strange signs that Teb could not make out.

He thought at first that humans must have
done the carving, but then he began to see that each line was made
of three parallel lines such as might be made by claws.

“The stone is soft,” Pixen said, watching
him. “Limestone. Five generations of my family have carved their
dreams into these walls.”

“They are beautiful.” But they were more
than beautiful; they were powerful carvings that lifted Teb and
made him think of strange half dreams and grasp at thoughts that
eluded him, filled him with desires that he could not sort out. He
wanted to look and look, but then a high whimpering sound startled
him.

Opposite the pool against the far wall was a
large niche where four fox cubs were waking on a pile of rabbit
skins. Renata sat beside them, watching Teb with bright, curious
eyes.

Renata was smaller than Pixen, and so pale a
silver she was almost white, so her eyes looked huge and black in
her thin little face. Her chest and throat were snow white, like
her four feet, and her ears were rimmed with a line of dark gray.
Dark gray marked the tip of her silvery tail. She rose and came to
Teb and stood up on her hind legs to greet him, touched his hand
with her paw. He put out his arm so she could rest her paws there,
and she stood looking up into his eyes, sniffing his scent
delicately, quietly studying his face.

“You are Tebriel. You have grown so tall.
The first time I saw you, you were only a baby in the arms of your
mother. . . . I am so sorry about your mother, and
your father, Tebriel.

“But come, you must be tired. All that
crawling and hunching. Will you rest?”

“No, but I’d like to wash,” Teb said,
looking with longing at the pool.

The two foxes left him, and he stripped down
and jumped in, shocking himself with the cold. But in a few minutes
he was tingling warm. He scrubbed and splashed and was so enjoying
himself he didn’t see the cubs until they were all around the pool,
patting and slapping at the water, yipping and laughing at him.
Then the bravest one dove in and had a fine swim, and by the time
Pixen and Renata returned, Teb had dried himself and the cubs on
the soft rabbit skin Renata had left him. The cubs were asleep
again in a tangle near the pool, underneath the ferns. Renata
licked them lightly, then touched Teb’s hand with her nose.

“Would you like to see the rest of the
den?”

She led him behind the sleeping alcove and
through a small arch, and they were in a dim corridor with six
small caves opening from it. “Two are escape entrances,” she said.
“They lead to other clusters of dens and out a secret way.”

There were two storage dens for food. In
one, little carcasses of rabbits and mice and squirrels, none of
them speaking animals, had been laid to dry, and there were mounds
of hazelnuts. In the other were stores of blueberries and
bayberries and sweet nettle leaves, and heaps of dried mushrooms
and wild apples and plums. Beyond these rooms was a room for curing
hides, and then a latrine room, with a pit that could be covered
with earth, and another dug. When they returned to the central
cave, the cubs were awake and playing again. They raced at Teb and
circled him, yapping sharply, nipping at his legs and toes. He
knelt and gathered them in, furry and squirming, and in their
delight they toppled him so he lay sprawled with them on top.

Renata drove them off, scolding, and they
sat in a row, obedient to her but with sly little grins on their
faces. “Go play in the common,” she said at last, shaking her head
at them. And then they were gone, flicking their tails. “Now come,
Tebriel, we will make a meal, and then we will take you on through
the warrens, to the secret portal.”

She lowered her glance and nosed the chain
on his leg. “There is no way we can help you with that. It must be
terrible to have a chain on your leg.”

“It’s better than two chains, the way they
did it in my cell. If—when I get to Bleven, to the cottage of
Merlther Brish, I expect he can get it off.”

There were apples and plums and hazelnuts
for supper, blueberries and nettle leaves, and a dried pheasant.
Teb added his bread and cheese and the rest of the mutton, and the
foxes enjoyed the new foods as much as Teb enjoyed the fresh
fruits, which he had seen little of in the palace.

“Will Merlther Brish take good care of you,
Tebriel?” Renata’s ears were back, as if she would challenge poor
Merlther to do just that. “Will he feed you well, and
. . . will he love you?”

“I expect he will feed me well. And hide me.
I don’t know about the love, though,” Teb said, embarrassed. “I
think I would settle for just being safe from Sivich for a
while.”

Renata laid her head against Teb’s arm. “It
is ugly not to be loved. Your mother loved you very much, as did
your father.” Then she looked up at him. “And what of Camery? Where
is your sister, Camery?”

“She is in the tower, and captive,” Teb
said, and before he knew it he was telling her about the talk in
the hall, all about the sighting of the dragon, though, of course,
Pixen had heard it all before, and how Sivich meant to use him as
bait to trap the dragon and meant to use Camery to breed children.
“Because of the mark,” he said. “Only I don’t understand about the
mark. I don’t understand why it is important.”

Renata looked at him for a long time without
saying anything. Then all she said was, “You should keep the mark
covered, Tebriel. It might help to save you from Quazelzeg.”

“Who
is
Quazelzeg? Why does he seek
to enslave all of Tirror?”

“He is the unliving,” said Pixen.

“The dead . . . ?” Teb began.

“No, Tebriel. Not the dead. The unliving.
There is a vast difference.”

Teb waited, not understanding.

“Death, Tebriel,” said Renata softly, “is
not a condition. It is not a permanent state. It is merely a
passing through. A journey into another world, and into another
self. Death is not an ending.

“Don’t you remember, when you were small,
feeling that there was something you’d forgotten? Something you
almost knew, almost remembered—then it was gone?”

“I still do that,” Teb said.

“So it will be in the life after this one.
Fragments of this life and of all other lives will come to you
unclearly—for all are linked, Tebriel. You take from one into the
next, though you don’t remember.

“But to be unliving is very different. It is
not like the crossing-over experience of death. It is, precisely,
no
experience. Precisely
un
living. The unliving
embrace and feed on the opposite to everything we find warm and
joyous and filled with life. They feed on nothingness, on all that
turns from life. They hate folk who go about their own pursuits
with vigor and joy; they hate the strength one feels in self. They
want all creatures massed in sameness, and enslaved. They hate the
deep linking of one person’s life with another, the linking of
generations, the tales of one’s childhood and one’s parent’s
childhood, the memories that link a family, a nation, and so link
all of us. Let me show you. . . .”

The vixen looked deep into Teb’s eyes, and
her pale silver face seemed to grow lighter still and her dark eyes
larger until Teb could see nothing else, until he swam in that
bright darkness. “Remember your mother, Tebriel. See her
. . . see her . . . Remember your father, your
sister. Remember their faces, their voices, and the things you did
together. Remember it all. . . .”

The memories came flooding, a hundred
memories surrounding him. They were galloping over green hills, the
four of them, Cannery’s pale hair flying, their mother laughing as
her horse plunged up a steep hillside. Then they were at supper in
their quiet private chambers, their father was carving roast lamb,
the room filled with its sweet gamy scent, and there was a white
tureen brimming with onions and mushrooms. His mother wore a pale
yellow dress, and was laughing. All the memories came flooding:
being tucked into his bed, his first pony, Camery sewing a quilt,
his mother’s garden, Camery’s owl. . . .

And then suddenly the memories vanished. He
caught his breath. There was only emptiness.

There was nothing.

He could not remember how his mother looked,
could not remember the color of her hair, how his father
looked. . . . There was a
girl. . . .

His mind was gray and empty.

The only link he had with himself or
anything real was a pair of dark huge eyes in a pale face—what was
this creature? Why was he here . . . ?

“Who am I?

“My name—I don’t know my
name. . . .” He was
shaking. . . .

Then suddenly the world popped back to fill
his mind bright and loud . . .
alive—alive. . . . The tales of his father’s
childhood in Auric, running on the sandy shore . . . the
tales his mother told him, his own memories—all of it thronging and
churning in his mind singing and alive. . . .

The little silver vixen was there before
him, her dark eyes watching him with concern. “And so, Tebriel, you
have seen as the unliving would have it. They would destroy your
memory and knowledge, and so destroy your self.

“So is Quazelzeg,” she said. “He is the
unliving. And he would make slaves of us all.”