Ширли Мерфи - The Dragonbards

He was no taller than six-year-old Marshy, broad and stocky, dressed in heavy ermine furs. His crown was a gold band studded with emeralds, sewn into the ermine hood that covered his ears and the end of his pale beard. His lined face was burned by sun and cold. His eyes were so dark, there seemed to be no pupils. He stood with his feet apart, and they were goat’s feet, hooved. The tops of his furred trousers were tied around his ankles with rawhide straps. Teb saw the delight in Kiri’s eyes, though her face remained solemn. The dwarf king’s sword was a blade of fine blue steel, its gold hilt studded with rubies. The other dwarfs, perhaps forty in all, were richly dressed, all armed with splendid blades.

“We are dwarfs of the nation of Stilvoke,” the small king said. He eyed the tall white dragons with respect but not, Teb thought, with fear.

“What do you do with the young dragon?” Teb said. “Where do you take her? What has happened to her?”

“The dragon has been drugged, young bard. We found her awash in the sea, her body beating against the cliffs. We hauled her out. There was half a dead seal floating beside her, stinking of the drug cadacus.”

Teb looked at Marshy, filled with pain for him. The child was pressed against the young dragon, his arms trying to circle her neck. So the dark also knew about the new clutch of dragons—if the dwarf could be believed. Did the unliving mean to kill the young dragons, or to capture them? He looked steadily at the dwarf king, his mind edgy with questions.

“I am Tebriel of Auric.”

There was a murmur of recognition among the dwarfs.

“My companions are Kiri of Dacia, and Marshy of Dacia.” Teb studied the dwarf king.

The dwarf looked back, inscrutable as stone. “The dragonling needs warmth, Prince Tebriel. Death is close on her. We are taking her to our cave. Unless you have a better plan.”

Teb moved close to the dragon and ran his hand down her neck and side. Her body felt chill and too soft, without the resiliency of life. Marshy pressed his face against hers. Seastrider reached to nose at her; then both big dragons lay down beside her and folded their wings over her and Marshy like a warm tent.

The dwarf band was silent. Their dark eyes had softened. A young woman soldier reached to touch Seastrider’s neck, in a subtle gesture of gratitude.

They are good folk, Tebriel, Seastrider said.

Perhaps you are right.

Of course I am right, she said curtly, and dismissed him by busying herself with the dragonling.

Teb watched her with a lopsided grin. She could be infuriating at times.

When the young dragon seemed warmer, Seastrider bit the traces from the wolves, freeing them of their burden, and she and Windcaller took the leather lines in their mouths.

“Our cave is five miles up the ravine,” the dwarf king said. The wolves disappeared quickly down the ravine. They had not been speaking wolves, who, out of friendship, might volunteer to pull the sleds. They had been wild wolves, huge and fierce. No one, Teb thought, could easily make friends with such creatures, except dwarfs. Teb reached down from Seastrider’s back, took the dwarf king’s hand, and the small king clambered up, smiling for the first time. The big dragons set out at a fast pace up the ravine. The dwarf troops trotted double time beside the sled. Teb sat a head taller than the king, his nose filled with the smell of the little man’s furs and of woodsmoke. The king sat very straight. Teb could feel his excitement at riding a dragon. Teb began to sense, with bard power, the past of this small man.

These dwarfs had lived under the ice mountains for many generations, mining and smelting, crafting fine metal, and weaving brilliant wool garments and blankets and tapestries from their herds of mountain sheep. Teb glanced across at Kiri. She saw his look and smiled.

I like them. She had lived a long time among street toughs and the soldiers of the dark, bereft of gentleness except among a chosen few. She had lived a long time warily, always on guard. These simple, honest folk pleased her.

They are like the speaking animals, Windcaller said. They are direct and hide no malice. The speaking foxes and great cats, the speaking wolves and owls and the otters, were among the bards’ dearest friends. The dwarfs, Windcaller said, are just as true.

Kiri looked across at Teb. Do you still doubt them?

Teb stared at her. I can be wrong. Aren’t you ever wrong?

Yes. But I never expect you to be.

Their eyes held for a moment; then Kiri lowered hers, her cheeks flushing.

Stilvoke Cave was marked by a large triangular opening in the side of an ice-covered dome that lay at the foot of the mountains. It was all the dwarfs and bards could do to get the linked sleds into the cave and slide the dragonling off onto blankets beside the central fire. King Flam was powerful for his size. Once he removed his outer furs, Teb could see that he was not fat, but strong and muscled. The cave smelled of roasting rabbits and baking bread. Folk streamed in from side caves to see the bards and the young dragon.

The two big dragons dug themselves a nest outside the cave, thrusting their heads in through the entrance now and then to look at the dragonling. She had not stirred. The dwarf women made a gruel, which Teb and Kiri fed her while Marshy propped her mouth open. The little boy pressed his shoulder between her upper fangs and with his crippled leg held down her lower jaw, balancing on his good leg. Teb held the big cookpot as Kiri ladled in trenchers of the gruel. Because the dragon had not waked, they got her to swallow only with the power of bard spells. Teb watched Marshy, gripped with the child’s painful love for the young creature.

Marshy was an orphan child, raised by the bards and rebels in Dacia. He had grown up stubbornly insisting there were still dragons on Tirror, though the other bards, Kiri and Camery and Colewolf, had no hope. It was only when Teb and the four dragons appeared in Dacia that the older bards knew that he was right. But now, when Marshy had found his own dragon at last, she was close to death.

Kiri’s dark eyes searched Teb’s, filled with Marshy’s pain. This was all Marshy had lived for—to join with his own dragon. “She can’t die,” Kiri whispered. “Use the magic of the lyre, Teb. Use it now.”

They had won the battle of Dacia with the power of the Ivory Lyre of Bayzun. But afterward, the lyre had seemed weakened.

The lyre, carved from the claws of the ancient dragon Bayzun, held all of Bayzun’s strength—and all his weakness. It, like the dying dragon, faded easily and built its strength again only slowly.

They had been wary of using it again, saving it for the most urgent need against the dark forces.

“It is needed now,” Kiri said. “Use it now.”

Teb touched one silver string. The lyre’s clear voice rang through the cave bright as starlight, embracing them with promise. He held its cry to whispered softness, for the presence of the dark was ever near. He did not want to draw the dark here. He joined his own power with the lyre, and with Kiri and Marshy and the dragons, to make a lingering song of life. Though it filled the cave only softly, it stirred every living soul within its hearing. . . .

Except the dragonling. She did not stir.

Teb looked at Kiri. The lyre’s subtle song was not enough. They might alert the dark, but he must make the magic shout, make the cave thunder with the lyre’s power, no matter how close were the dark unliving.

Kiri’s brown eyes went wide with wonder and with fear, and with a tender, consuming love that Teb sensed, but could not sort out—love for the young dragon, surely.