Ширли Мерфи - The Ivory Lyre

“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.

The old woman opened the door at once as if she had been waiting for someone, then drew back with a gasp. Then she looked hard at his face, saw who he was, and pulled him inside. Her blue eyes were as bright as he remembered from that morning on the training field when they had seemed to spark with her admiration of the horses.

“I am . . . Prince Tebmund.”

“I can see that, even without your fine clothes. How did you come here? What is happening down there? The battles . . .”

“The rebels are fighting. You are Kiri’ s grandmother?”

She nodded. “You may call me Gram, as she does. Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She was in the stadium.”