Dragonbards (18 page)

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.