Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

*

It was spring. A heavy dark rain sloughed across the sea, beating at the leaden water. Teb lay along the high stone sill that ran along one side of the small stone room, looking out through the thin strip of window that must once have been an arrow slot. He watched the leaden sea and sky and shivered with chill, then felt hot even as the cold wind sloughed in. He had been ill for some days. Behind him in the stone room, rain poured down through a hole in the high roof, into the stone basin, its cold splashing dampening the walls; if he went down to drink, he would be drenched and even colder.

He had been trying all morning to make the dragon come to him. He was furious with the stubbornness of the creature and would rather put it out of his mind. But the hydrus made him keep on, directing his thoughts, demanding, and his own irritable temper mirrored the vicious temper of the hydrus.

He had grown very thin. His body ached often, and he was always cold. He went to sleep at night drowned by exhaustion, desperate and furious at his failure. He did not try to lure or cajole the dragon anymore, or beg her. He demanded. And when he demanded, she seemed to draw farther away. But the hydrus, in turn, demanded, and it would not let him rest.

Teb understood quite well his own importance and the importance of the dragon he must master. They alone could shape the beliefs of the people. The dark could conquer, the dark could enslave, but it was bard and dragon who could make all Tirror love the dark. It was bard and dragon alone who could forge a newly designed history of Tirror and shape people’s minds to believe it. It was bard and dragon alone who could weave into the minds of all Tirror a memory of the dark leaders as gods.

“And you will be a god, then, Tebriel,” the hydrus had told him, “you will be revered and loved. . . .”

Teb huddled into himself on the cold stone shelf, shivering, then hot. He knew in some distant part of his mind that he was sick, but thought, because the hydrus wanted him to think it, that his aching and discomfort were owing to his failure with the dragon. Its words “You will be a god” were hollow, and its words “You will be revered and loved” puzzled and upset him, so he kept dragging them back into his 3ewsconsciousness and worrying at them. “Revered and loved . . . and loved. . . .”

As the wind grew higher and the rain harder and his fever rose, he left the shelf and huddled down on the bed of rags where he slept. He knew very little now, except the word “loved” pounded with the pulsing of his aching head. Scenes began to come to Teb, born not of song but of the fever. Faces and voices filled his mind, and the word “loved” seemed tangled around them all like the golden threads within a sphere winding and twisting back, with no end. A girl with golden hair, the faces of dark otters, a man with a red beard and hair like the mane of a lion, his mother’s face . . . yes . . . loved . . . the King of Auric mounted on a black horse. . . . Father, I love you. . . . Dark furred faces with great brown eyes and then the white face of an otter who looked so deeply at him . . . love . . . Teb twisted and huddled down under the rags, and went weakly to the great basin to drink. The scenes continued and wove themselves into a huge golden sphere of endless pathways that filled his mind so that, as he came out of the fever at last, it was this sphere that held his thoughts and it was these scenes now that wove a skein of memory within him, the dark of the hydrus driven back.

He rose one morning filled equally with the two needs, with the light and the dark. He could sense the hydrus down in the sea and feel its awful power over him. And he understood, for the first time in many months, that its evil must be defeated, and that it was within himself to defeat it. But still there clung within him, too, his awful need for the hydrus and the dark. Then the hydrus spoke to him.

You will not escape, Tebriel. This aberration will not last. You will bring the dragon to me—the young dragon.

I am not your slave. You are defeated now by the very fact of my awareness. But Teb felt afraid, and very weak, and was terrified that the hydrus could, again, drown his mind and twist it. You are driven out, hydrus! You will not conquer me now!

The power it sent at him threw him staggering to his knees. He struggled feebly. It held him with terrible strength so he could not rise; sweating and shaking, he fought it now with the last of his physical strength. He could feel its pleasure at his weakness.

But he could feel the young dragon, too, feel her power joining with his own. He stared down with fury at the black pool of sea where the hydrus lay submerged. You will not have us, dark hydrus. The dragon is of the light and only the light, as am I.

You will call her, Tebriel. You will make her come to you.

I will not. I will drive you out away from me into the open sea. Fear held him, but the beginning of triumph touched him, too.

If you could drive me out, weak mortal, you would die here. You would die here, alone.

So be it. But you will not have the dragon. Teb stared down at the hydrus’s shadow moving beneath the heaving sea. It was then the hydrus laughed, sending a shuddering echo through Teb’s mind, so his whole body trembled.

I have the dragon already, Tebriel. It is coming even now.

You lie. You are filled with lies, you know nothing but lies. But Teb, too, could sense a change, could sense the dragons’ sudden decision. . . .

*

“Now,” cried Dawncloud to her eager young, “now,” and the five dragonlings leaped from the lip of the nest onto Tirror’s winds, Seastrider raging in her hatred, vigorous and willful and beating the wind into storm as she fled toward that far sunken city. . . .

*

Teb sensed them winging between clouds and tried to drive them back, drive Seastrider away. Go back, go back, do not come here. . . .

On she came. And in the dark sea below, the hydrus laughed again, and then it came pushing up out of the sea. The dragon is coming to me, Tebriel. It will belong to me now.

If it comes at all, it will come to me, and together we will kill you. But, Teb thought, terrified, could the hydrus turn the dragon’s powers to darkness, as it had turned his own? He grabbed up his knife where it lay rusting, and stood up, dizzy and unsteady from the sickness, as the hydrus rose out of the dark water, sloughing water up the stone walls.

She does not come to you, Tebriel, but to me.

She comes to me, and you will have to kill me before you have her. Without me she is useless to you. Without me, you cannot control her. And I will never help you.

It reached at him, raging. If you are of no use to me, then you will die. You will not be used by the light.

“By the Graven Light,” Teb said, staring down at it. “The Graven Light will defeat you—has defeated you. . . .” He chose a spot between the eyes of the center head, his knife ready. The hydrus grabbed for him. Teb leaped with the last of his strength, straddled its huge nose, and thrust the knife directly in between the great eyes. The other two heads reached for him as bone and cartilage shattered. The hydrus screamed; blood spurted over Teb; the creature thrashed, throwing him off. As Teb sprawled on the stone floor, it reached again but went limp, flailing, then dropped down into the shelter of the sea. The sea went red in widening pools. Teb stood shaken, supporting himself against the wall, watching the red thrashing sea as the hydrus slowly pulled the boulder across the sunken portal. It would die now. Or it would mend. If it returned for him, he must be gone. How had he stayed so long in this place, without having the will to escape? When he was sure it had gone, he gathered the last of his strength and he dove, pulling himself down and down along the drowned stairs into the deep, bloodied water.