Ширли Мерфи - The Ivory Lyre

In the black palace, servants ripped off the green tunics that marked their loyalty to the king. Palace guards came awake from their servitude and pulled off their uniforms but did not lay down their swords. Together they marched to the gates to join the gathering townsmen. Then all turned back into the palace, first to the great hall, then, finding it empty, to the king’s private quarters.

The dark general and his captains were there with the king. They saw the faces of the townsmen and paled. Those would be the last faces they would see.

When the dark leaders were dead, the people of Dacia marched down into the city to join the troops there, to rid Dacia of other dark captains. But not all men cleaved to the dragon song. For those whose minds had been destroyed, or who preferred evil, there was only dim confusion. They did not see the living past, but only a gray, moving haze. They did not hear the dragon song, but only a few far-off notes that they could not identify. For them, rescue came too late.

As the lyre stilled, as dragon song stilled, the city turned to the mopping up that comes after battle. It was then that a lone man began to climb the black mountain, his mind still filled with the music of lyre and dragons.

He climbed in silence while his troops secured their boat, for they had just crossed the sea from Igness. When he came up over the top of the cliff, black Starpounder keened, then bugled and reared up over the lone figure. Colewolf raised a hand to him, then leaped to his back, and Starpounder rose skyward.

Kiri watched them, choked with joy. She looked at Teb and swallowed back tears. Starpounder circled the mountain bugling as if his strident voice was plenty to speak for both of them, bard and dragon.

Much later, when the dragons and their bards filled the sky, Gram rode behind Kiri, excited as a child. They circled Dacia, swept over Edain and Bukla and the small islands of the archipelago, then dropped down to the sea cliffs that guarded the gate of Gardel-Cloor. The moment the dragons settled, the gate flung open and a little boy ran out, limping hardly at all, and climbed the cliff to them. Teb reached down from Seastrider’s back and pulled Marshy up before him, tucking the child’s legs into the white harness, and Seastrider swept aloft.

Out over the sea, Marshy sang alone, his voice given power by the dragons and by the bards who, in silence, joined him. Marshy touched each child in the war-ravaged city, made each know special things. He brought the last of the children out of hiding, many who knew nothing but darkness. They came running now, the child-slaves dragging their chains, swarming into Gardel-Cloor, following for the first time not cruel masters but a far greater power.

Chapter 21

The minute he was on the ground Teb grabbed Camery and squeezed her so hard she yelped. Then he held her away, and they really looked at each other for the first time. She was as tall as he. Her face was smeared with dirt and her bright hair tangled, but her grin was the same, that green-eyed devilish smile. The little girl was still there beneath the strength of a woman and soldier, and the awakened power of a bard. She looked him over and touched the scar on his arm.

“What did that? The scar has twisted your birthmark—the dragon’s mark.”

“Sivich’s soldiers cut me when they took me captive.”

“Garit helped you escape from them, he told me.”

“They caught me again outside a fox den at the back of Nison-Serth.”

“Then how did you get away?”

“The dragons’ mother released me from the dragon trap Sivich built to catch her. I was the bait. The otters found me with a broken leg and unconscious, and dragged me onto a raft and took me to Nightpool.”

She touched his face where a scar marked his chin. “And that? I want to know everything that has happened to you.”

He grinned. “I was climbing the sea cliff. A wave made me slip—the sea hydrus was chasing me.”

Her eyes widened. She looked down the sea cliff where they stood, at the crashing waves. “So much to learn about you, Teb. So much to tell each other.”

Above them on the cliff the dragons had settled among the rocks, twined around one another. The gate of Gardel-Cloor stood ajar. They could hear the tangle of voices inside and the laughter of children who had not laughed for a very long time.

“Camery, I think Mama is alive.”

Her eyes widened, not in surprise but in recognition. “I have believed that for a long time. I thought I only wanted to believe it. Tell me . . .”

“She is a bard, did you guess that? She went to search for her own dragon—her second, for the one she paired with originally was killed.”

“Where is she?”

“Do you know the Castle of Doors?”

“Oh . . . yes.” Camery swallowed, and pressed her fist to her mouth. “She went. . . through? Into . . .”

“Into other worlds. She went searching for Dawncloud, but Dawncloud was here all the time, was fast asleep in Tendreth Slew, so they didn’t sense each other. It was Dawncloud who saved me, who is mother of our four.”

“But where is Dawncloud now?”

“She went after Mama. But it’s a long story; let’s save some for later. Garit is down there. I caught a glimpse of him.”

They went along the cliff, then down and across stones wet with sea spray, and in through the carved stone gates of Gardel-Cloor. Garit grabbed Teb in a great hug, nearly crushing him, and Camery swept up little Marshy, who ran shouting to her, and whirled him around the great cave, in and out among the shouting children. Teb was surprised to find himself as tall as Garit; Garit had always seemed as huge as the red-maned bull that gave him his nickname. He smelled of horses and leather, and his smile was just as comforting as always. He pummeled Teb and shook him.

“So our Kiri was right. Prince Tebmund of Thedria was to be trusted, in spite of consorting with the king.”

“Did she say that?”

“She knew she shouldn’t trust you so soon, in spite of her feelings. Your strange, perceptive horses upset her.”

They looked toward Kiri and Colewolf sitting quietly together, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. They might have been quite alone, even though dozens of children crowded the cave and bands of rebel fighters kept arriving.

Men and women had begun to remove the children’s chains and tend their wounds, and a bathing tub of seawater was heating over a fire, the smoke rising up through a smoke hole. At the back of the fire several haunches were roasting, the smell of crisp meat filling Gardel-Cloor. The great cats wandered among the children, some licking wounds and some curled down among the napping little ones, couching small heads and warming their thin little bodies. And there were foxes. Teb stood staring. Five pale foxes gathered with the great cats, and one old otter.

“Yes, foxes.” Garit laughed. “And does the otter make you feel at home? The big fox is Hexet of Kipa. Go and greet them while I help tend to the children; then we’ll catch up, have a good talk. I have a thousand questions.”

Teb went to sit on a low stone before the animals; he wanted to gather them all in a big hug but wouldn’t embarrass them. Just to see foxes again and to see the dark, laughing face of an otter was wonderful. It was only a moment until they were all introduced, and Hexet was telling him that Brux, of the fox colony at Nison-Serth, was his cousin. Brux had helped to save Teb when he escaped the first time from Sivich. And the old otter, Lebekk, knew many at Nightpool, for he had traveled five times to that island.

“I know Thakkur well, and know what he has done for the resistance. Ever since you left Nightpool, Tebriel, he has sent cadres of young armed and trained otters up the coast to help the human rebels in any way they could. At Baylentha, when Ebis the Black put down a second uprising, it was the otters, working in team with Ebis’s agents, who discovered the source of the infiltrators and trapped them in their own fishing boats and sank them.”