Ivory Lyre (8 page)

Accacia’s knee brushed his leg, and the
candlelight shone on her hair. Teb wanted to ask more about the
prisoners, the enemies of the king. But Abisha across from him
heard every word, though the pale, flabby man ate methodically with
no change of expression, except an occasional small frown at his
fiancée. Teb didn’t dare ask outright how many dark leaders came
here, or who they were.

The king was watching him, too, whether
because of his questions about the games or because Accacia was
leaning too close to him, smiling too much, Teb wasn’t sure.

But it was not only the king’s stare or
Accacia’s too warm attention that made Teb edgy. There was
something else, something beyond this table, a presence or a force
that stirred in him a sharp pang of unease. This was not the first
time he had felt it. It touched him like a cold hand, then
vanished. A dark threat, telling him to beware.

Roast lamb was being served and trenchers of
vegetables and warm, fragrant breads. Teb fell to with enthusiasm.
For nearly five years in Nightpool he had lived on nothing but fish
and shellfish—raw at first, then cooked inexpertly by his own hand.
And before that, there were four years of dry bread and table
scraps when he was prisoner in his murdered father’s palace. He
wished now he could simply enjoy the wonderful food and not have to
try to work information from a woman who, too obviously, had more
intimate things in mind, and who drew the eyes of both king and
prince to him too critically.

“It is a fine dining hall,” he said,
speaking up table to the king, “beautifully appointed, and the food
is superior. I would guess there is no grander hall or fare
anywhere on Tirror.”

The king smiled. “The carvings are from the
eastern mountains of the Reinhollen dwarves, brought by barge when
my father ruled. The jewels were dug from our own mines, of course,
as jewels are dug, still, by my slaves.”

It surprised Teb that the king’s father
would still be mentioned, that any tradition was spoken of here.
Wherever the dark insinuated itself into the land, the past was
wiped from the memory of men, or at least from their conversation
and caring. He studied the hall. Its ornate, crowded, heavily
carved panels were more oppressive than beautiful. The mountain’s
black stone at the back lost itself in its own shadows, except
where water dripped out from underground springs, catching the
candlelight. Teb thought of another hall, his home in Auric, with
walls of the palest masonry and banks of windows. There, sunlight
seemed always to touch his mother’s face, and bright tapestries
hung everywhere.

By the time he was twelve the tapestries
were gray and tattered, the palace a dismal, smelly camp for
Sivich’s soldiers. His mother was gone. His father was dead, and he
and his sister, Camery, slaves to Sivich, his father’s killer. He
was startled when Accacia leaned over his arm.

“You must see the city for yourself, Prince
Tebmund. There will be no entertainment tomorrow, but I can show
you Dacia. We can ride out early in the morning if you like,
and—”

“A party to view the city,” Prince Abisha
interrupted. His look at his fiancée was cold and knowing. “A fine
idea. I will arrange it. But not tomorrow. Grain and stores will be
shipped tomorrow. The streets will be jammed with carts. The next
day, perhaps. We shall see.”

She glared, then retreated into an icy
smile. “Directly after breakfast would be best, while it is still
cool.”

Abisha didn’t bother to answer her. He
signaled for more roast lamb.

Teb thought in the morning he would take his
mounted trainees down into the city on the excuse of giving them
experience on crowded streets. . . . It would be
some action, something different, and he might see something of
value. He itched to be away from the supper table and up above the
earth looking down between Seastrider’s wings. He hated waiting
each night until the whole palace slept.

It was bad luck he had been assigned rooms
just below Accacia’s apartments and that she could see the stable
from her windows. It was interesting that she had made mention of
it this evening as he accompanied her into the dining hall. But
there was no law against his going to the stable, or against riding
at night.

“Do you not have stone carvers in Thedria?”
the king was asking.

“No. No dwarfs of any kind, nor have I ever
seen one,” Teb said truthfully. He could answer that kind of
question. The history of Tirror’s peoples was a part of all
dragon-song lore. It was questions about small new customs that
worried him and that could draw wrong answers.

“Then how do you decorate your palaces? And
what pastimes, Prince Tebmund, do the folk of Thedria find
appealing? Do you not have stadium games?”

Teb laughed. “I’m afraid our two palaces are
mostly rough and undecorated, King Sardira. And as for pastimes, I
suppose our folk have little time to pass in recreation. They farm
and fish, and even those of the palace find common work to do when
they are not working with the colts. I’m afraid you would find us a
dull lot in Thedria, quite unable to offer such luxuries as this
grand banquet, or such entertainment as your stadium games.”

It seemed forever to Teb before he was alone
in his chambers. He pulled off his fancy clothes and changed to his
leather trousers and tunic, folding the stolen clothes over a
silver clothes stand. The red wool was soft, very like a red dress
his mother had worn. Red was her favorite color. A picture of her
filled his mind; she was dressed in red, her silhouette sharp
against a red tapestry as she turned to look out her chamber
window, the sun full on her face.

She seemed to him, now, so much more than
his mother. He knew only that she traveled in worlds beyond Tirror,
searching for her own dragon mate. As a child he had not known, nor
would have understood, her need, though he had felt that she
yearned for something, something secret and wild that she would not
share with him and Camery. It left him puzzled and excited.

He and his mother and Camery were all flung
apart now, so they might never see each other again. He hoped it
had been Camery whom Nightraider sensed there on that small island.
He could see her in memory, a skinny little girl riding pell-mell
down the meadows on her fat bay pony, her knees tucked in and her
pale hair flying; he could hear her laughter when she beat him in a
race, and see her green-eyed scowl when she didn’t.

He paced his chamber, avoiding the heavy
furniture, watching the palace wings through his velvet-draped
windows. How long it took for all the windows to darken and the
palace to sleep. The wind was rising. He could feel Seastrider’s
impatience on the dark hills as the white mare snorted and
pawed.

He guessed he didn’t take much to court
life. He’d lived too long in his simple cave among the otters of
Nightpool, and then in the dragon lair. He guessed animals were
more open in their dealings than humans, not so impressed with
ritual. The animals had ritual, too, but of a simpler kind. The
foxes of the caves of Nison-Serth had their family rituals, but
they were gentle, loving ones, like bathing together in the
household pool.

The otters’ rituals had been more
complicated. But they were directly connected with council
meetings, not used for vanity, nor as background for mating, which
the otter families handled more directly. Teb was not without
desire for women, but he didn’t much like complicated flirting,
particularly when it concerned Accacia’s meaningful glances.

She had come to his door last night very
late because, she said, she heard noises on the stair. He had
pointed out to her that if the noises were on the stair, she would
have been safer behind her own bolted door. She had flashed him a
look of cold anger and left quickly, her blue robe swirling around
her ankles.

He wondered if her flirting was a cover, if
she might be a contact with the underground, wanting to learn his
true mission. She had given no hint of that. She could be just what
she seemed, a little tart. He would hold his judgment and see where
the flirting led. Seastrider thought her a common trollop.
Seastrider had decided opinions. Well, that was the nature of
dragons.

Seastrider’s comments about the soldiers who
rode her weren’t flattering, either. All four dragons were hard put
not to buck off their heavy-handed riders. It was difficult enough,
they said, to hold the shape shifting for such long times without
having to put up with the Dacian soldiers jerking their halters and
kicking them. Teb did not point out to them that it was
their
idea to come here. He had a hard time convincing the
Dacian soldiers, too, that these horses did not need bits in their
mouths and would not tolerate spurs.

He thought how Garit would have ridden them,
gentle-handed and wise, understanding at once their perceptiveness.
Garit had stayed on as horsemaster after Teb’s father was murdered,
serving the dark leader, Sivich, and certainly hating him. He had
stayed to help Teb and Camery when the chance finally came. When
Sivich’s men discovered there was still a singing dragon on Tirror,
Sivich decided to capture it, using Teb as bait. It was the small
birthmark on Teb’s arm that told Sivich he was a dragonbard.

Sivich had been an ignorant fool to think
that a singing dragon would let itself be captured. Teb supposed
that in his embarrassment at failure Sivich had kept the fact that
there was a dragon again on Tirror a secret. Maybe he still dreamed
of trapping her. He was a fool as well as an incredibly evil man.
He followed the dark leaders eagerly. It was Sivich’s kind, more
than any other, that helped the dark grow strong. Teb intended that
Sivich would die painfully and slowly for the murder of his
father.

Garit had outsmarted Sivich handily when he
freed Teb from Sivich’s army before they reached the site of the
dragon trap. Garit fled on horseback to lead Sivich’s soldiers away
from Teb, where he hid in the sanctuary of Nison-Serth. Garit
didn’t know Teb had been captured a second time and chained in the
dragon snare. Surely it was Garit who had returned to Auric much
later, to the tower, to free Camery. The great owl, Red Unat,
winging across the channel to Nightpool, had brought Teb news that
she was gone.

Teb began to pace again, impatient to join
the dragons. He wondered—if he could bring folk awake, he and
Seastrider, make folk cast off the mind-numbing dark, maybe he
could make them sleep, too.

Half amused, he tried a song of peace,
singing softly, his voice moving out onto the night breeze too
quietly to be consciously heard through open windows. The song came
to him easily, and he felt more power than he should; then he
realized Seastrider was singing with him, a whisper of dragon song.
They wove a subtle ballad filled with stars and soft winds, and
pretty soon the palace lights began to be snuffed, one here, two
there. The reflections of light from the rooms below him began to
die.

At last the night was black, with only the
stars for light. Teb slipped out his chamber door, to the shadows
of hall and stair.

Chapter
8

The white mares were silhouetted against the
night, the two black stallions visible only because they hid the
stars. Teb swung onto Seastrider’s back. They headed at a fast trot
for the hills. “We made good magic,” he said. “The palace sleeps
soundly.”

“It was not our magic alone, Tebriel. There
is power around us tonight. There is something in the palace of
bright power. Can’t you feel it?”

“What kind of something? I can sense only
the dark.”

“I don’t know what it is.” Seastrider tossed
her head. “I expect you will be aware of it, given time
. . . and a little freedom to breathe, among all the
social complications of these humans.”

So she had sensed his frustration at the
supper table. “Are you laughing at me?”

She didn’t answer but broke into a gallop,
the other three beside her, and they headed for the far hills.

Once out of sight of the palace, they let
their horse shapes slide away, and the four dragons burst skyward
on the cold west wind. They swept out over the black sea, banking
and gliding, spending their pent-up, restless passion in a storm of
spinning flight.

When they settled at last, they dove for
shark, Teb half-drowned as usual, his ears full of water and his
boots full as well. On an outcropping rock the dragons made their
meal. When they took to the sky once more, still possessed by
wildness, Teb clung, dizzy and laughing. The lands below them were
all dark, not a light anywhere. The sea heaved with patches of
phosphorescence so it was brighter than the land-world. Against the
shores, white waves broke.

They did not touch any country this night.
They dove low, observing, sensing the dark. There was strong evil
on Liedref: They picked out half a dozen other lands where they
would return to battle the dark invaders. As dawn neared, the
dragons made for Dacia, swooping low over the small continents that
bordered the Sea of Igness. They came down over Dacia to the west,
behind the mountain that held the palace. They could see the
mountain’s wild western face where trees twisted between giant
boulders. They hovered there listening, but there was no sound.

They made for the gentler hills, where the
dragons shifted shape and trotted back docilely to the palace
stables. Teb’s boots squinched seawater when he dismounted.

It was that morning that Teb, prompted by
Accacia’s remarks, thought again of the locked door in the dark
palace passage, where an old woman’s cracked voice had complained,
“. . . porridge. I’m sick to death of porridge.”

*

Roderica had taken breakfast at the king’s
table with her father. The horsemaster, Riconder, a square, silent
man with a look of resentment about him, spoke little to Teb. He
praised the horses, it seemed, only out of duty. When he rose, his
daughter followed him, and Accacia, clinging to Teb’s arm, giggled.
“Don’t be late with your ward’s breakfast, Roderica.”