Ivory Lyre (7 page)

There seemed to be a lot of social
ritual—state breakfasts and morning tea with the king, a lot of
dressing up. It was difficult to slip away into the city. He had
expected ritual, but not so early in the day. He yawned, and
thought of stealing up to his chambers for a short nap. He’d had
little sleep the night before, returning from the taverns of the
city to toss restlessly. He had gone well armed and was glad of
that, had changed some of his gold into the local silver reppets
stamped with Sardira’s profile. He had learned little of
importance, but there was a candle shop open quite late, with an
unusual amount of traffic, and that would bear watching. The night
before that, his first night in Dacia, he had escaped to the
horses, then to the sky, as soon as the palace darkened. He had
clung to Seastrider’s back, shouting into the wind with pent-up
frustration at fancy palace ceremonies.

They had invaded the island of Felwen with
their song and had caused three dark leaders to be hanged from the
manor house belfry. Teb smiled. It wouldn’t be a bad stay in Dacia
if they could escape every few nights to some action. He didn’t
think he was cut out to play the part of a palace dandy.

Well, but he must. He must be courtly and
smile and try to remember his manners.

That night, when palace windows darkened,
they were off again, this time over Wintrel, where the dragons
could sense an evil sabbath in progress long before they sighted
the island.

It was a dance of hate. A circle of fires
burned, and within danced twenty young girls, chained and naked,
forced to dance, prodded by pokers when they faltered. Teb could
feel the dark leader’s elation and knew he took strength from the
girls’ fear and pain. Yesod had dressed himself in the skin of a
goat, the horns bound to his forehead. His ugly laugh was cruel and
cold, his eyes flashing with hungry lust.

There were no woods on Wintrel. The dragons
wove themselves in among the boulders that lined its western shore.
Teb climbed the rocks and stared off north to the ring of ritual
fires. The music was pagan and invasive and made evil thoughts come
in him, so he welcomed Seastrider’s nudge and moved close to her
great flat cheek as they began to sing.

Slowly Teb and the dragons countered the
pagan music, weakened its force. Yesod and his four consorts began
to fidget. Teb watched the girls’ faces, saw them brighten. They
began to fight their chains.

But then Yesod’s power increased. The girls
cowered, and knelt in worship of Yesod. The dark leader smiled, a
leer as cold as winter. Teb and the dragons tried to bring their
powers stronger, but their images of freedom and dignity shattered.
They watched Wintrel’s people drop back into lethargy. The power of
this dark leader was too great. Teb was riven with fear of what
Yesod could do—of what he
would
do to Tirror, now that he
knew there were dragons.

Now, they must make sure that he died.

We must bring Yesod here to us,
Seastrider said.
It is the only way to destroy him. We must call
him to us with twisted images.

It was not easy to use their powers to call
forth evil. Teb sang of a dark time, of dark creatures, for all
history was a part of the dragon song. Yesod listened to that song.
He began to approach the dark images, moving mechanically. The
tangle of sirens and lamias and snake-tailed basilisks drew him to
them. He held out his hands to the twisting shadows but looked
beyond them at Teb and the dragons.

He knew they were singing, knew they were
luring him, yet he came on, embracing the dark mimicries that
flowed around him, wanting them with a lust for evil that drugged
reason. Teb’s blood went cold with fear of him.

Yesod approached the cliff, fondled by the
evil creatures. They led him with lurid gestures, with thoughts so
bloody he didn’t care that they were only shades. He reached toward
the cliff, thirsting for the dark songs, sucking on them. His
disciples followed him. The dark images moved over the crest of the
cliff and down it toward the sea, spinning titillating sensations
like steel scarves to draw the dark leaders.

The dark masters stepped out into air. They
fell. Yesod screamed once.

They lay below, twisted on the sharp stone,
dying. The sea’s tides would take them, then the sharks. Teb
thanked the Graven Light that the un-men, evil as they were, still
could die. They
were
the dark side of mortal, he guessed—the
black mirror image of what mankind should be.

The killing sickened Teb, but there was no
alternative. Each night, as more folk were freed, Teb could only
hope they would remain so and take up arms to join with the
resistance.

But that was their decision. Teb and the
dragons could win their freedom for them but could not choose what
they would do with it.

He must find a way to the underground soon.
Maybe he could help bring the newly freed peoples into it, if they
wanted to fight the dark. No one in the palace had given any sign
that they worked with the rebels. There had been no plying
questions to try to find out Teb’s own sympathies. Accacia’s coy
questions added up to nothing yet. He followed her the next
night—or thought he did—a dark, full-skirted shadow slipping deep
into the palace passages. He discovered when she lit a lamp that it
was not Accacia, but her friend Roderica, the thin, graceless
horsemaster’s daughter. Teb followed her on through dark, twisting
ways to an ironclad door.

He watched her unlock it and slip inside,
leaving the door ajar, the soft light of the room spilling into the
passage. He could see the end of a bed with rumpled blankets but
could not tell if someone was in it. He was about to move closer
when Roderica reappeared carrying a tray and set it down on the
floor of the passage as if meaning for servants to retrieve it. It
contained a bowl and mug. The bowl was half full of something pasty
like cold porridge, half a small meat pie, and a peach seed.
Roderica retreated and closed the door, leaving him in darkness. He
waited for perhaps an hour before light spilled out again. He had
pressed against the door to listen but could hear only the blurred
hum of two women’s voices. When Roderica came out, he was back in
the shadows. As she paused, the raspy woman’s voice from inside
complained.

“. . . porridge. I’m sick to
death of porridge.”

“I’ll tell them,” Roderica said. “Stewed
chicken and gravy, and no porridge.” She locked the door and
pocketed the key.

Teb followed her lantern light back through
the dark passages, committing the way to memory, remembering his
glimpse of the locked room, remembering the old, cracked voice of
the woman. The service on the tray had been of gold, with
embroidered linen. The bed frame had been ornate, the carpet rich.
But the door was kept locked.

He began to listen more carefully at the
interminable state meals and functions for mention of the prisoner.
He gleaned no information. He took himself down into the city,
among the taverns and brothels late at night, to listen to gossip.
He had found that if he dined with the king and lingered politely
afterward, he was soon released to spend the rest of the evening as
he chose.

Seastrider would not let him go alone this
time. She took the shape of a great gray wolf with some difficulty,
not a speaking wolf but a wild, roving wolf such as she sensed in a
small band on the black mountain. Teb went among the city flanked
by a natural killer. Though they were watched and followed, no one
came close to him. He asked oblique questions, lounging at tables
dressed in his old, stained leathers, and drank too much mithnon,
for which he was sorry the next day. He learned little of real
interest and felt stifled and shamed by the sick townsfolk stinking
of drugs. The white powdered cadacus was easy to come by, and he
was stared at strangely when he refused it.

No man would speak against the king, or
against the dark leaders from the north, though one old man said,
glancing around him with caution, “
They
aren’t afraid of the
dark ones.
They
hide things from them. . . .”
But when Teb tried to learn who
they
were, the old
leather-faced man took panic and fled the tavern. Teb dared not
follow; too many eyes were watching.

He learned nothing about the palace page,
Kiri, on these night visits. He saw little of her until the morning
she stood watching him from an alley that led off the main palace
courtyard.

He had been talking with Prince Abisha. He
left him as quickly as he could to follow her, but she had
disappeared. He saw her again two days later as he left his
chambers, her face dull and without expression; but her dark eyes
were alive before she turned away quickly through a side door. The
door seemed a private one. He didn’t follow her. Then one afternoon
he saw her in the city, trading for candles at the shop he had been
watching.

It was a tiny building made of rough boards
set against two walls of a stone ruin. It sold only candles, yet
its customers seemed many for such a place, and most of them strong
young people. Kiri went in carrying a string bag. He could see her
bartering a clay crock for candles. He stayed in the tavern across
the way, beside its small open window. When she came out, a mob of
roving boys no more than twelve were lounging around a small horse
corral attached to the tavern. They saw Kiri alone and, moving
quickly, were around her, striking at the heavy string bag with
sticks, and then at her legs and arms. Teb left through the window.
He gathered four of them by their dirty collars. The other three
fled up the muddy lane. Kiri stood gawking at him.

She was not in her page’s tunic but in dirty
rags, her face smeared with dirt, her feet bare. The two crocks in
the string bag, those she had not traded, were broken. Thick globs
of golden honey ran down through the mesh to puddle in the muddy
street. Teb saw the knife in her hand and knew without her saying
that she had been loath to use it on such children. She saw him
looking at it and, with no false modesty, lifted her skirt and
slipped it into the sheath tied against her leg.

“Children,” he said. “But they meant to hurt
you.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I would have had to
hurt them.”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the string bag, then
emptied it into the gutter, retrieving a dozen stubby candles
first, staring with regret at the pieces of broken crock scattered
in the honey and mud. “Gram’s good crocks. She had them a long
time.”

“Are you going back to the palace? I will
walk with you.”

Above them, as they climbed, the rising
hills with their crowded houses and stone ruins were all in shadow.
The high ridge of the mountain above the black castle flared red
with the setting sun. The smell of a hundred suppers cooking mixed
with the smell of soggy animal pens.

Teb said, “He does quite a business, that
candle-maker.”

“He makes the best candles in Dacia.”

Teb studied her. “It seems strange that his
customers are all so . . . they’re all healthy young
people.”

Her brown eyes were steady, her face lean
and alert. She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s strange. That
shop is the only one in Dacia where you can get candles that aren’t
tallow. These candles are beeswax. Tallow candles make people
cough.” She smiled at him. “I bring the candlemaker beeswax, along
with my honey.”

He looked at her closely. “All you get for
your wax and honey are a few candles in trade?”

“Oh, no.” She dug in her pocket and brought
out a handful of small silver reppets with the face of Sardira on
each. Teb looked at the coins and studied her solemn, innocent
face. His good sense told him the candle shop was a meeting place.
He wished he knew Kiri better. He would go back there. If the shop
was
such a place, and if Garit was in Dacia, then Garit
might appear there sooner or later.

Teb got no real information out of Kiri. She
was clever at fencing his questions. He was increasingly interested
in that skill.

He left her at her door, meaning to talk
with her again soon. Meantime there were other answers he wanted.
He wanted to know more about the ugly games in the stadium, and
whether captured rebel soldiers were tortured as a part of the
entertainment. He wanted to know how many dark leaders came to
Dacia for the games.

“You have told me little of the stadium
games,” Teb said, watching Accacia. “We have nothing like them in
Thedria. There must be huge crowds, visiting dignitaries?” He
busied himself breaking bread, served with the first course, of
shellfish. “Are such games enjoyed often, or only on special
occasions?”

“Oh, special occasions,” Accacia said
brightly. “When the leaders of the north come,” she said,
delicately forking a river clam from its shell. “When they come,
there is gaming at night in the stadium and feasting, and slaves
will dance in all the taverns.” Her golden-brown eyes were bright
with excitement.

He sipped at the pale wine. “What kind of
contests? Men against men, or against animals?”

“All kinds, giant cats battling wolves, or
both driven to attack chained prisoners.” Her color rose with
lust.

“Prisoners?” he asked casually.

“Enemies of the king, and of Dacia. There
are wild horses, too, battling with drugged bulls. Only not any
horses like yours, Prince Tebmund. Once,” Accacia said, tossing her
chestnut hair, “once there was a unicorn brought from the lands
beyond the sea, trussed up, and sold to King Sardira. It fought the
king’s brown guard lizards all alone until it bled to death.”

Teb clenched his jaws, watching her,
sickened. Unicorns were rare creatures, never seen on these lands
anymore, though their pictures were painted on the walls of the
ancient sanctuaries. Rare and valued creatures—if one had any sense
of value. The king’s guard lizards were as big as horses, with
triple rows of razor-sharp teeth and claws, as long as his hand,
like sharp curved knives. The king had shown him two, his first day
in the palace, pointing them out from a slit window, where the
lizards paced in a small inner court.