Ширли Мерфи - The Dragonbards

Thakkur interrupted, holding up one white paw. “I find you a hero for enduring such tortures.”

Teb shook his head. “You told me about pride— about taking too much on myself. I walked into Quazelzeg’s lair and—and . . .” He stared at Thakkur, stricken. “Am I one of them now?”

“That is melodramatic, Tebriel. You are a dragonbard. You are the King of Auric. Perhaps . . .”

Teb stared at him miserably. “Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps . . . you had better start acting like both.”

Teb looked at Thakkur, his look filled with bitterness, then he turned away.

“Neither bard nor king allows himself anger beyond self-discipline, Tebriel. A leader tempers his anger—particularly anger at himself. He controls and uses it.”

Teb turned to look back at Thakkur.

“I have absolute faith in you, Tebriel—in your goodness, in your ultimate good sense.” Thakkur put out a paw.

Teb hesitated. Then he knelt and took Thakkur’s paw. Their eyes held for a long moment, in which Teb remembered much.

Chapter 23

We must confront the dark invaders. We must choose the horrors of war, or we will lose the freedom to choose. Perhaps too many of us have already lost that freedom.

*

From across the battlefield, the rebel leaders began to gather. Ebis the Black came galloping up surrounded by his officers, sporting a bandage around his forehead and another on his arm. His black beard was matted with blood, and there were wounds across his face. He shouted to see the bards alive, leaped from the saddle, and hugged them nearly hard enough to break bones.

“Cursed, blood-sucking bats. We lost twenty men.” He glanced toward the ridge as if he expected another attack.

“Camery has sent a patrol,” Teb said.

“Very good,” Ebis said, giving Camery a look of approval. He joined the soldiers and otters in improvising stretchers. “I can take the worst wounded to Ratnisbon Palace,” he said, “those who can be carried that far. My folk will care for them skillfully.”

While Ebis’s soldiers dug out a huge common grave for the human soldiers, the bards buried the animals with solemn ceremony. They marked their grave with stones laid in a circle to signify the endless sphere of life. The bards and dragons wove a song for them, and the living animals bowed down and grieved.

The dragonlings and children returned to say there were no troops beyond the mountains, no ships on the sea, no disturbance around Nightpool. There was a moment of powerful feelings as they said farewell to Ebis and those who had fought beside them, then the bards mounted up, the dragons lifted fast, and they headed for Auric Palace.

They sped across a light wind, the dragons stretching in wide, free sweeps, filled with the joy of freedom and with the healing silence after the shouting and screams of war. The bards looked at each other between glinting wings. This was freedom, this weightless lifting on the wind. They winged through a mass of heavy cloud and broke out into sunlight above Auric’s broad green meadows, skirted by the sea beyond. Rising from the meadows alone stood Auric palace, its slate roof reflecting the sun.

Smoke rose beyond the north wall; when they were close, they could see that troops were burning trash.

The palace gardens were dry and weedy, the orchard trees dead. They could see broken windows, and some of the roof slates were gone. But no neglect could mar the symmetry of the five wings built of pale stone, the angled courtyard wall, the wide expanses of windows, the twenty chimneys.

Of all the gardens, only their mother’s private walled garden was alive and green. Fed by a sunken spring, it was a tangle of branches and vines. It looked as if no one had entered it in years.

Four years, Camery thought. Four years since they had seen their home—twice that since anyone had cared for the grounds or the palace.

A crowd had gathered on the meadow outside the open gates, their shouts and cheers filling the wind. The dragons glided to the meadow in a ceremony of sweeping wings, and the bards slid down into welcoming arms—all but Teb. He remained astride.

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.