Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

He explored every inch of the room below, coming up twice to fill his lungs, then diving again. He found at last a tiny hole through which he was just able to push himself, having no idea where it led, or whether the hydrus was there.

He surfaced on the other side of the wall, gasping, and found himself in a huge hall. The sea filled its lower floors. He climbed out, onto a great stone hearth, and took shelter within the huge fireplace. High above, niches gave onto the sky, and he could see the sun’s brightness. Sunlight in shafts across the salty pool picked out a stoppered clay jug that might have been floating there the many lifetimes since the land was flooded. When Teb heard the hydrus thrashing and bellowing—not dead at all, but furious at the discovery of his absence—he climbed up inside the chimney.

But the dragons were coming near. He would not be caught and held captive here. He wanted the sky; he wanted to reach out to them.

With a foot on either wall of the chimney, he forced himself up it until his head touched the thick stone slab that sat on its top as a rain guard. This was supported by four short stone pillars, to let the smoke out. Through the holes he could see the bright sky and feel the wind caress him. He began to dig with his knife at the mortar that held the slab. He could hear the hydrus splashing and snuffling in the hall below. It could not reach him here, but could the power of its mind make him fall? He quit digging and remained silent. His leg muscles began to twitch. The bellowing of the hydrus echoed up the chimney, and its mind forced at his, raging. Only now his own strength held steady.

Then he heard another sound that, in spite of the hydrus, set him to digging again.

A high, piercing keening filled the sky, a cry of challenge that drove the last shadows of darkness from his mind and flooded him with joy. He forced the stone off with one frantic thrust and heard it splash into the sea as he lifted himself out and saw the dragons winging between clouds, the immense pearl-hued mother and the five gleaming young. They banked down over him, their green eyes watching him, their iridescent bodies reflecting sun and sea. They circled him, their wings blocking out the sky, and Seastrider so close her wings caressed him. Then Dawncloud wheeled and soared away to drop down over the drowned rooftops, where the shadow of the hydrus lay beneath the sea, its blood still staining the water. Her tongue licked out and she dove, and the five dragonlings followed her.

The sea heaved as the dragons and hydrus battled, thrashing through the depths between broken walls.

Teb clung to the chimney, stricken, clutching his knife as blood boiled up and spread; he watched the bloody trail paint itself out away from the city.

Far out in the sea the disturbance made a geyser. Dawncloud leaped up through foam; then a dragonling rose beside her. Another, another, until four dragonlings were swimming back toward the drowned city. Behind them floated the body of the hydrus, half submerged. The fifth dragonling did not appear. Beside Teb’s chimney, Dawncloud crashed up out of the water screaming her pain and her loss for the one dragonling, the one left behind in the jaws of the hydrus, where they floated, dying together. Teb felt Dawncloud’s grief as his own, felt Seastrider’s weeping as the pale dragonling came to the chimney and wrapped herself around it and laid her head up along his body.

With the sun high overhead they clung so to the ruined chimney, the young dragon and her bard. And then at last Seastrider stirred, put away her grief, and began to study Teb.

Chapter 19

Teb stared into Seastrider’s eyes and felt complete. He marveled at how intricately her scales were woven along her neck and back and along the slim reptilian legs she wrapped around the chimney, scales that could have been crafted of diamonds and of pearls. Her face was slim, her nostrils flared, her two horns white as sunstruck snow, and her cheek felt warm and cool all at once. His mind filled with her songs, and now, together, they made the team for which both had been born. They looked at each other for a long time. Above the sea in the deep afternoon light, Dawncloud circled, keening her agony of mourning, as only a dragon can, for her lost child. The sea rang with her misery, the sunken city absorbed her cry and held it as it held the memory of ages. Moonsong was dead, sleek and beautiful and dear, and not even grown to the full fierce power she should have known, would never know.

It was much later that Dawncloud dropped down out of the sky to dive again among the ruined walls, searching. Teb could see her forcing between stone buildings and down narrow, drowned alleyways, her wings folded close to her body, her white undulating shape curling among watery broken stone and through water shadow, touched by light from the dropping sun. What drew her, now that the hydrus was dead?

“She seeks something,” said Seastrider, watching her with a puzzled cock of her head. “Perhaps some old memory, a secret from the ancient city. Perhaps something else.” She kneaded her claws into the chimney like a great cat.

They watched Dawncloud slip along the top of a broken wall, to lie looking down into a high attic room, then saw her swerve down into it and disappear. “Come on my back,” said Seastrider.

“Can you carry me? You are only young yet.”

“Come on my back.”

Teb climbed astride as he would mount a pony, and she lifted so fast into the sky she nearly took his breath. He sat clinging between her wings, caught in wonder as the sea fled below, the outlines of the drowned city clear now—the upper and middle baileys and the barbican, the lower and greater halls, the keeping gate and the guard tower all laid out, and the streets surrounding it, the rooftops and the lines of the three old roads leading away. Then suddenly Seastrider dove. Down and down. She came to rest on the edge of a broken wall to look down into the ancient chamber where Dawncloud lay curled upon the stone floor, her head resting on the oak bed. The chamber, quite dry, was furnished. Teb stared down at it with shock: bed and two chairs and even a rug on the floor, its corner protruding underneath Dawncloud’s claws. How could a room remain furnished, as if someone had just left it, after hundreds of years of rain and wind and the dampness of the sea? Why hadn’t it decayed, like the rest of the city?

There were even blankets on the bed, a cookpot on the hearth, and the charred remains of a fire.

Teb walked along the top of the thick wall, looking down. Dawncloud lay quite still, as if caught in some inner dream, her shoulder against a small cupboard that stood beside the hearth, its door ajar, a touch of red showing inside. It was as he rounded the corner that he saw, down in the water outside the building, the nose of a boat. He moved along the wall until he could look down on its deck, the deck of a small sailing boat.

Her sails had been carefully reefed, but were dark with mold. Her sides were covered with barnacles, but still he could see the bright paint in streaks on her deck and knew she had not sat here for hundreds of years. A few years, maybe. He glanced across at Seastrider perched on the wall watching him, and knew she touched his thoughts. Then he climbed down into the chamber, beside Dawncloud.

He touched the blanket beneath her huge head and ran his hand along her muzzle. He looked around the room, and knew someone had lived here, come here in the little boat to this drowned place. But why? Then he approached the cupboard, caught by the flash of red.

He pulled the door open.

Two gowns hung there. One was red, flame red, with braid around the throat in three rows, and buttons in the shape of scallop shells. He could see his mother in it quite clearly. It had been his favorite dress.