Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

She had been in this room. She had lived in this room.

But when?

She had never been away from them until she left them that last time. She had worn the dress just before she went away.

Was it here she came, then? But why?

And returned to the Bay of Dubla only to drown there? His mind seemed frozen, unable to think clearly.

If she came here in the boat, how did she go away without it?

He stood looking at the dress and at the little room with its blanketed bed and two chairs and the cupboard. In a shelf below the mantel was a blue crock, a small paring knife, and a green plate, all of them familiar, all of them from the palace. The knife handle made of wrapped cord soaked with resin, as old Pakkna always fashioned his knives.

Dawncloud was watching him now, and he knew that she, too, saw his thoughts. All five dragons were watching him, the four young draped along the tops of the walls. He looked at his mother’s dress and could see her wearing it before the red flowers of the flame tree.

“Where did she go?” he whispered. “What happened to my mother? She didn’t drown in the Bay of Dubla. Where is she?”

Then he sensed Dawncloud’s own eagerness and confusion. He sensed her desire, and then visions began to touch him, and he knew, all in a moment, how Dawncloud had lost her bard to murder, how she had slept away her misery in Tendreth Slew, then awakened to seek out a mate.

“But now another bard speaks to me, Tebriel. Somewhere she lives, she who lost her dragon even before my own agony. Somewhere Meriden lives.”

“She . . . is a bard?” Teb said hoarsely, hardly believing it. But knowing it was so, and wondering he hadn’t guessed before. Her songs, her strength, the way she seemed drawn away sometimes, searching. “She is alive,” he cried, caught in wonder. “But where? Where?”

“She is alive, she who turned from the skies in her own misery, and then was drawn back again.” Dawncloud reared tall above the broken walls and stared up at the sky and out to sea. Then she writhed her great body down again, into the chamber.

“There is a door in this city, Tebriel. I don’t know where, but I will find it. A door that enters, by spells, into the far Castle of Doors. And from that castle, one can enter anywhere, into any world. She is someplace there. Meriden has gone through one of those doors. And I will follow her.”

“My mother is alive,” he said. “Why did she go? Why would she leave us?”

“She went,” Dawncloud said, her voice ringing, “to a mission for all of Tirror. She went hoping to return. Do you not see her boat is still here? She would have sunk it otherwise. She went to give of herself in the saving of Tirror. She went to seek the dragon she thought did not exist anymore on Tirror. And to seek the source of the dark, too, and to learn, if she could learn, how to defeat the dark.”

“But how can you know that? You didn’t know before, or you would have gone before, to find her.”

“Somewhere in this room is a paper with words written on it. The paper tells this message.” Dawncloud sighed. “If I were not destined to join with Meriden, if I were not destined to know and love her, I could not know these words.” She fixed him with a long green look. ‘The paper is here, Tebriel. Search for it. And I,” she said, stretching up, then winging suddenly to the top of the wall, so the room was filled with the cyclone of her wings, “I must search now, for the door through which she vanished.”

She rose up towering, then was over the wall and gone; he heard the tremendous splash of her dive. Then three dragonlings leaped from the wall to follow. Seastrider remained, looking down at him. He stood a moment, his heart pounding; then he stormed up the wall and leaped into the sea and was beating the water, swimming after Dawncloud, choked in the waves she made. He felt Seastrider beside him. “No, Tebriel. No.”

“I must,” he said, choking, “My mother is there somewhere. . . .”

Dawncloud was so far ahead of him she was almost lost from his sight; the rocking of her passage sent water slapping into his face and up the stone walls. He felt Seastrider’s annoyance at him, and her love.

“Come onto my back, then, or we will lose her.”

He slipped onto Seastrider’s back and she leaped ahead with a twisting speed, her wings beating like great sails. He could not see Dawncloud. And then:

“ I’m diving, Tebriel; hold on.” Seastrider dropped beneath the sea as he clung, and the water closed over him. Down, down . . . then up again, through a tall arch.

They were in a courtyard. Dawncloud filled the salty pool, rearing up before a dark stone gate all carved with symbols and held with a metal lock. He heard the words she whispered in her silent dragon’s voice, then she sang out loudly, so bright and wild he trembled. The dragonlings were singing with her, a strange song, not a ballad; this was a dragon’s command, and magical. The stone doors opened, and he could see nothing beyond but white mist, moving mist. Then Dawncloud was through. He leaped from Seastrider’s back to follow, but Dawncloud turned in the doorway, the huge silvery bulk of her filling it, and faced down at him, her great mouth open in a dragon’s terrible scream, so close to him he saw flame starting way back in her throat. “Stay back, Tebriel. Do not come here.”

“I must come. She is my mother.”

“All of Tirror is your mother. All of Tirror needs you and Seastrider. You would only hinder me here. How can I travel as I must, search as I must, with a small human companion? She is my bard, Tebriel. If she can be found, I will find her. A million worlds lie beyond this mist. I would lose you.

“Stay with Seastrider here. See to the tasks you were born to. . . .” And then with one thrashing motion she was gone into the mist, and the great doors swung closed again.

He paddled close to Seastrider, heartbroken. Then he slid onto her back, sadly, silently, and they returned to the small room where his mother had slept, the four dragonlings close together now, steeped in the sadness of losing their own mother.

“We sang the ancient song for opening,” Nightraider said, filled with wonder.

“We sang it all together in our minds,” said Windcaller.

“It opened for her,” said Nightraider. “And she went through.”

“She will be through the Castle of Doors by now,” said Seastrider. “She will be out into another world by now,” she said sadly. “Searching for Meriden.”

In the little room, as the dragonlings lay along the top of the wall, Teb began to search for the small bit of paper or parchment that would hold his mother’s handwriting.

He found it at last, tucked down between an empty wooden cask and an iron pot, beneath the oak bed. He knew it at once, and wondered why he hadn’t guessed before. It was not a slip of parchment but his mother’s brass-bound journal that she had kept just as Camery kept a diary. His mother’s journal, locked, and the key missing.

He supposed he could break the lock, but he was loath to. Dawncloud had told him the message, surely all of it. He put the little book in the pocket of his breechcloth, then climbed the wall and down again, to examine the boat, as Seastrider watched from above.

The boat’s name could still be seen, Merlther’s Bird , then the name of her port, Bleven. Merlther Blish’s boat, reported lost months before his mother went away.

“She deceived us,” he said, fingering the cracked letters. “She meant to go away all the time. She lied to us.”

Seastrider sailed down to land beside him, dwarfing the boat and weighting it to its gunwales. She rubbed her cheek against his. “She did what she must. For Tirror. You do not listen well to my mother.” She was annoyed with him. He regarded her evenly.