Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

*

The palace has been silent all day. They rode out for the coast at dawn, heavily armed. I am feeling very lonely. If I had a weapon I would go down among the jackals and try to get out. And die there if I failed, and maybe be happier. What is the good of staying in this tower and growing old and dying here and never living at all?

*

I feel better today. If he takes me out of here, no matter what he does to me, it will be better than the tower.

*

Something is happening in the courtyard. It is night, the servants are asleep. I can hardly see to write. There is some kind of movement down there, but the jackals are not growling.

*

And then the last lines, hastily written:

*

Someone has opened the door at the base of the tower, someone is coming up. I love you, Teb.

It’s all right, Teb. I’m going away, but I won’t write any name. I love you.

*

He sat for a long time, staring out at the brightening sea. Otters appeared, cascading off the cliff down by Thakkur’s, but he did not join them.

Surely it was Garit who had taken her away. If it had been Sivich, she wouldn’t have had time to write those last words after he appeared at the top of the stair. Besides, that entry had been written in the tower, and the owl had found the diary in the brewer’s house at Bleven.

She had carried it with her. But she hadn’t written in it anymore.

He put the little book on the shelf, and took down Garit’s crumpled note. And now he read it easily:

Do you give Tebriel into the care of the Graven Light and make him safe and teach him until the lion gathers its brood and the dove comes from the cage like an eagle. And until the dragon screams.

He sat thinking about the message. Surely Garit was the lion; it was an old family joke that he could be as fierce and as kind as the great speaking cats of the north, and his beard was as red as theirs. And the lion’s brood would be the army Garit had promised Teb, to win back Auric. And surely the dove was Camery. Had she come from her cage like an eagle? To fight beside Garit, perhaps?

“And until the dragon screams,” Teb thought. Those words gave him goose bumps, and he sat frowning and puzzled, almost grasping something, feeling a rising elation and a power within himself that was heady and frightening. And impossible. Until the dragon screams . . . Until the dragon sings, he thought. Until I sing. . . . He felt the strength within himself and did not know what to make of it.

Across the sea the bright gold sky was drowning in a heavy layer of mountainous cloud, and the sea had turned leaden and looked cold. The crowd of otters swimming out there didn’t seem to mind; they floated on their backs laughing and eating sea urchins.

Would the hydrus return to Nightpool? Was it looking for him?

Why?

What might it want with him? Did it have to do with this power he felt? With the impossible wonder he felt? The dark wanted him. . . . Because he touched a power he could not understand?

Who am I? What am I? He felt as uncertain, as lost to his own true identity, as he had felt when he had had no memory at all.

He put on his fins at last, sighted the deep, calmer pool below, and dove far out and straight and swam with strong strokes out toward the feeding otters. He sped along and was strong enough now with the flippers’ power to outmaneuver the waves. His flippers were like an otter’s webbed feet, driving him through the sea.

He doesn’t even have webs between his toes , Litta had said once, laughing. He looked back toward the cliff to see a line of sentries standing watch for the sea hydrus, and he thought Thakkur was right, stolen weapons would be a comfort when the creature came.

He reached the feeding otters, and Mikk started a game of catch with a small sea urchin. Later he gave Teb a lesson in diving and holding his breath, and Teb was pleased that he was growing more skilled. He had managed to pry three abalones loose and was taking them home to his cave to cook when Thakkur sent for him. He dropped the abalone on his sleeping shelf, slipped on his leather tunic, though it was very tight for him now, and went along to Thakkur’s cave.

The owl was there, and soon Charkky and Mikk and a good many others, too, came to join them, to plan a stealing raid for weapons to use against the hydrus.

“Sivich’s men are rounding up stray horses on the meadows,” the owl said. “If they camp on the eastern meadows near Nightpool, I will come to alert you. You can slip weapons away in the darkness, move off quickly again to the sea.”

“There is an underwater cave at the mainland, near our south shore,” Thakkur said. “We can hide the weapons there, hide ourselves there if need be.”

“But not you, of course,” said the owl. “Your white coat would show far too brightly; and Nightpool cannot risk losing its leader.”

“I mean to cover my coat with mud,” said Thakkur.

“Do you think I would send otters into a danger I won’t face?”

“We will vote on it in council,” said Shekken. “We do not want to risk losing you.”

“You will not vote in council. This is my decision, not Nightpool’s.”

*

But it was not to come so quickly, this stealing of weapons. Sivich called in his troops to make a series of raids north of Branthen, where attacks by the growing underground had fouled Quazelzeg’s plans, and no more soldiers were seen gathering horses until late in the fall as the sea took on an early phosphorescent gleam like fires under the water. Then the phosphorescence washed away and the water turned chill and gray, and the owl came winging down over Nightpool on a blustery afternoon to say that a band of Sivich’s men was working toward the coast, gathering strays. He went back to watch them, circling so high he was only a speck, and returned at dusk to report they had camped conveniently close to the south cliffs that fell down to the sea.

The moon was at half, and still too bright, but the wind was so high that it would hide any sound of their approach. They were a band of nine as they slipped down the south cliff and into the sea, Charkky and Mikk and Teb, Kkelpin and Jukka and Hokki, Thakkur and Shekken and Berthekk. And the owl, of course, circling overhead silent and invisible. Teb carried one knife in the pocket of his breechcloth. Thakkur carried the other. Berthekk carried a coil of twine Mitta had braided for them, to secure the weapons to logs, to drag them home. The only thing that could be seen clearly during that swim was Thakkur’s white head, and the paler oval of Teb’s own face. The moment they came up out of the water at the foot of the mainland cliff, Thakkur found a patch of mud and smeared himself with it, and Teb did the same, covering all his bare skin, until soon the two of them looked little different from the others. Except that Teb was a good deal taller.

They climbed the cliff in silence, and as they came out onto the grassy plain they could smell the horses, a hearty, sweet smell that stirred a powerful longing in Teb. They could see the camp in the distance, where the campfire still smoldered. It was late, and they hoped the camp was asleep, hoped the shadows passing back and forth in front of the red embers were only the legs of grazing horses. The little band crept forward as the owl circled overhead in the heaving wind. The horses would be nervous, restless in the wind, ready to run if Teb could free them. That would cripple their pursuers and be a setback for Sivich. A very small thing, in this war. But he supposed every small thing counted for something.

As they drew near, the horses began to stir. Teb heard one snort and knew they were watching the dark shadows creeping toward them. He tensed to run, or to fight. He could see the way the horses moved that they were tied to a common tether rope, each on its own short rope that he would have to jerk free.