Ivory Lyre (20 page)

Camery touched her hand and pointed behind
them. Someone in the box below them gasped. Kiri felt the power and
saw the source of it approaching them.

Coming through the king’s private gate were
four soldiers carrying a litter chair. In the seat rode a thin,
wrinkled old woman dressed in the royal purple and green, her skin
like parchment, her wild white hair so thin her scalp showed
through. Kiri had not glimpsed the queen in years. The soldiers
carried her toward the royal box, but when she raised her hand they
paused. She looked up directly at Kiri and Camery, and a force
linked them that left Kiri breathless. This woman—
she
had
called them here.
She
was the source of the
power. . . .

Below them the box was astir. “The
queen
has come. . . .”

“The queen? I don’t believe
. . .”

In the arena, the bull faltered and fell to
its knees. Soldiers galloped in and prodded it. More lizards were
released, but they, too, faltered. The force of the dark and the
force of the light crashed around them. Kiri strained, heady with
the power that linked her and the queen and Camery.

But soldiers were dragging Teb toward the
center pole.
Fight them, Teb. Fight. . . we’re with
you. . . .
Her pulse raced; Camery’s face swam;
the queen’s pale eyes seemed huge. Kiri saw the soldiers falter
before they reached the pole, saw Teb spin, knocking soldiers to
the ground, saw the bear grab the bull by the neck and shake
it.

The bear had grown immense. It looked misty.
What was happening? Shapes were dissolving,
swirling. . . .

Something white like mist writhed in the
arena, and the bear was gone; something gigantic and coiling,
towering, a fog-thing growing denser, all pearl and silvery with
light. A dragon shape—a dragon . . . and the dragon’s
shoulder was red with flowing blood. A pearl-colored dragon filled
the arena, its wings spread to darken the stands. The crowd
cowered, silent.

The naked, blood-covered prince gathered up
his dragging chain and climbed painfully to the dragon’s back.
Nothing moved in all the stadium.

The dragon leaped into the sky suddenly,
beating its wings across the stands so its wind tore at the
cowering watchers. Kiri and Camery stared after it hungrily,
pummeled by dragon wind.

There was no other sound but that wind.

The dragon swept away fast, until it was
only a speck in the sky.

Then suddenly it was coming back, growing
larger. But now there were more than one.
“Four,”
Kiri
breathed.
“Four.”

Four dragons filled the sky, two white and
two black, now so low over the stadium that the stands and arena
were dark. Their wind tore at the crowd. Huge green eyes looked
down. Open mouths flamed. Teb looked down between the white
dragon’s wings, laughing. Their wind was so strong that satin
ripped from the king’s box. A woman shrieked. The stands exploded
in panic, the thunder of running, of stampeding and screaming,
filled Kiri’s ears.

One black dragon swept down so low his face
was right above them, golden eyes blazing. Camery stared up,
reached up to him.

Camery,
he thundered in their minds.
Camery . . . soon . . . I searched for you.
You are safe. Soon . . .
He banked, his wing sliding
over them so Camery’s hands stroked ebony feathers. He lifted,
twisting, blazing upward to join his brother and sisters.

The dragons swept higher as stampeding
crowds fought to get out the gates. Dragon wings shattered the
light when they banked. They twisted, then soared into cloud, moved
fast away from the stadium, grew smaller. . . .

They were gone. Gone.

Kiri stared up at the empty sky,
yearning.

Nothing moved in the arena. A tableau of
bloody bodies, a few bleeding horses crowded at one end. Dead
bulls, but no bear. The thunder of running and screaming still came
in waves. Kiri looked down at the queen.

The four soldiers still stood at attention
bearing her litter chair, but the queen did not look back. She lay
sprawled across the litter chair unnaturally twisted, with the
king’s jeweled knife through her heart.

Kiri was not sure later how she and Camery
managed to get out of the stadium, only that they kept fighting and
pushing toward the nearest entry. They found themselves at last on
an empty back street among the derelict buildings. Kiri’s thoughts
were filled with dragons, and with the sight of the poor murdered
queen. She was shivering.

When they turned to look back toward the
stadium, they saw only a few stragglers wandering; the crowd, once
stampeded, had been quickly absorbed back into the city. On the
road that approached the palace, they saw the long procession
moving upward, green uniforms and yellow. The flash of salmon pink
would be Accacia’s dress.

“What did we do?” Kiri said. “What did we do
back there? It was the queen’s power—the poor dead queen.” She
stared at the empty sky. “Oh, the dragons, Camery. The dragons
. . .”

Camery was crying. “Yes. Yes . . .
He is Nightraider. . . . Oh, Kiri . . .”
She dissolved into tears again.

Kiri watched her, glad for her but jealous,
too. She couldn’t help the icy loneliness that gripped her. She
knew quite well she should be filled with joy that there were
dragons. She was, only . . . to know there truly were
dragons made her yearning so much more powerful.

Camery raised her tearstained face, saw
Kiri’s look, and put her arm around her. “There will be a dragon
for you.”

They sat quietly for some time. Camery said,
“The queen died for what she did. She died for Teb.”

“We didn’t know what she was,” Kiri said.
“No one knew.”

“Dragonbard. She had the blood of the bards.
That was why he locked her away.” Camery climbed onto a low broken
wall, her grimy skirt blending with the stone. She pulled off the
rag that covered her hair, and it spilled out golden. “Why did she
come to the stadium? How did she know about Teb, what he really
was? I can’t forget her eyes. She knew about us.”

“No one in the palace knew about us,” Kiri
said. “The animals knew. And Papa and Garit, and Marshy. Maybe she
didn’t know about us. Maybe she knew about Teb, and came there to
save him. Then, when she sensed our power, she drew us there to the
king’s box, to help her.”

“Maybe. But how did she know about Teb? And
where is he now? Where have the dragons gone? Oh, Kiri, he was just
a little boy the morning I watched him ride away a prisoner, his
hands and feet tied. I thought he would die; I thought Sivich would
kill him. And now—now he’s riding dragons.” She wiped away tears.
“I can’t wait to see him, to talk to him.”

“I suppose he’ll return without the
dragons,” Kiri said. “They would cover the city. Unless they can
change into something small—tamer than a bear. They would be
. . .” She stopped, stared at Camery, nearly choking.
“Unless they can change . . . change into . . .
Oh!” Her breath came sharply as the vision filled her mind.

“They’re
not
horses,” she breathed at
last. “They never were horses. Two black stallions, two white
mares. . . . No wonder Prince Tebmund’s horses were
so wonderful. No wonder they were allowed to roam free.”

“Shape shifters,” Camery said, her eyes
alight. “Dragons . . . shape shifters. All of a sudden
the whole world is different.” She searched the clouds, the
horizon. “Oh, Kiri, would they go to Gardel-Cloor?”

Kiri had been staring at the sky, too,
praying they would return. She looked at Camery. “Oh, yes.”

Camery slipped down from the wall and tied
on her dirty scarf to cover her hair. They went quickly down
through the ruins.

But they had hardly reached the bottom of
the rubbled slope when the city exploded into shouting, the clang
of weapons, galloping across cobbles as the king’s soldiers pursued
rebel forces. Camery drew the dagger from her boot, Kiri clutched
her sword, and they moved in shadow into the city streets. Ahead, a
band of the king’s men, unhorsed, fought against baker and tinsmith
and tavern regulars who had stepped from their roles as useless
drunks and now wielded weapons stolen from the king’s stores. The
girls saw their own people attack and fall back into shadows,
attack again, feinting, leading the king’s troops into traps; they
saw their own people fall. They were motioned on each time, and
they ran.

Twice they were nearly trapped; once they
played dead and were almost trampled by the king’s mounted troops.
They ran for Garit’s street, dodging, racing. They reached the
ruined tower and wrenched the door open, and wedged it shut from
inside with a heavy timber.

It was only a small watchtower, so tight a
space they elbowed each other when they knelt to dig in the rubble
that littered the floor. Once they had pushed that into a heap,
Kiri pressed herself against the stone wall as Camery raised the
trapdoor.

Beneath were piles of arrows and five bows.
Camery grabbed up two, and they took all the arrows they could
carry, letting the door down silently. As they climbed the narrow
spiral that led to the top, Kiri thought of Gram, with the fighting
maybe raging close below the castle. But Gram would go up into the
palace kitchens with the servants, as they had always planned. No
one would notice one more woman; no one would care. The palace
would likely be safest. Gram knew it well enough to get through
into cave rooms beneath the mountain, and she knew how to find the
tunnels that led out to the other side where the mountain was wild
and unpeopled. They reached the broken top of the tower and
crouched low beneath its jagged stone parapet. Below them were
seven king’s horsemen pinioning three resistance soldiers against a
tavern wall. Both girls drew arrow and took aim.

*

The four dragons churned close to one
another in the heaving sea, the waters pink with Seastrider’s
blood, and with Teb’s. He treaded water beside her as she wallowed
to let the sea wash her wounded shoulder; the salt stung like fire,
but it would help to heal the torn flesh.

They remained resting in the rough sea for
some time; then the dragons reared up out of the waves, shattering
water with their beating wings as they rose, heading for the black
mountain above the palace, Seastrider’s flight slow and painful.
Below them as they flew, clashes of yellow and green marked the
soldiers of the dark forces locked in battle with the rebel armies.
They could see a pincer movement where two armies of king’s
soldiers had cornered a small band. Then, ahead of Teb, Windcaller
banked away to the north, and Nightraider and Starpounder
followed.

Far out on the sea, five ships were heading
for Dacia. The three dragons circled them, diving low to see whose
troops they carried. Dragons were no longer a secret; everyone
would know soon. They screamed their fury at sight of Quazelzeg’s
dark troops, and dove. Those troops would never see land. Teb and
Seastrider beat in limping flight for the black mountain.

She came down stumbling onto the far side of
the peak, and wound herself in between jutting boulders and twisted
trees until she seemed no more than a white stone ridge. The blood
had ceased to flow so hard, was only oozing now, but it was a large
wound, and ragged. Teb slid down from her back. When she had
settled and seemed to rest easy, he turned to leave.

“I do not like you going alone,
Tebriel.”

“And I do not like leaving you wounded. The
dark is too strong. It will be eager to get at you. You must
promise to fly at once if they come here.” He hugged her pearly
neck and laid his head against her cheek. “We must have the lyre.
The power that helped us in the stadium is gone.”

“She is dead,” Seastrider said. “The queen
is dead.” She stared at Teb. “The power that freed us, freed me
from the bear shape, is gone.” She sighed.

He nodded, thinking of the frail queen.

“And the dark has increased
its
power,” Seastrider said. “You must take care, Tebriel.”

Teb left her, not looking back. The dark’s
power might be stronger, and laced with hatred of the dragons, but
there were three bards now. And he sensed more. They would bring
their powers stronger, they would beat the dark as, today, they had
stifled it in the stadium.

He thought of Queen Stephana, willingly made
prisoner, and could not imagine a bard turning her back on
everything she truly was. Loneliness, he thought. She had believed
there were no more dragons. She hadn’t tried very hard to find
out. . . .

His mother had tried. She had gone searching
in spite of the pain it had caused to leave her family. To be a
bard held a commitment to others.

Well, Queen Stephana had fulfilled her
commitment today—her last living act.

He made his way up over the ridge, crouching
low so his silhouette would not be seen against the setting sun,
and started down the other side, above the black spires of the
palace, keeping to shelter near rock out-croppings and small trees,
moving in the mountain’s shadow. When he found a sharp black stone
that fit his hand, he took it for a weapon.

He hoped Kiri’s Gram would be there in the
cottage below the palace. He remembered her eager interest,
watching the four horses. He was naked, all but a breechcloth. He
needed clothes and a weapon. Maybe she could manage a disguise that
would take him safely through the palace. His chambers would be
watched; she was the only person he could go to. If Kiri trusted
her, then so could he.

He followed the black boulders that had
stacked themselves down the side of the mountain, until he came to
the south end of the palace above the servants’ quarters and the
kitchens. He slipped by these buildings quickly and saw no one,
though he could hear excited voices inside and sharp commands. He
could hear a stir from the far stable, too, the echo of a horse’s
scream, the thin sound of hooves pounding as, he supposed, more
troops were readied. He had skirted the palace at last. He slipped
over the wall where grapevines grew in an untended garden, and was
soon pressed against the door of the cottage he had seen Kiri
enter, knocking with soft, urgent blows.