Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

“My mother said she went to battle the dark. Do you not listen? She deceived you only because it was required of her, because it would be wisest. Not because she didn’t love you. There was no deceit in her heart, Tebriel.”

He stood quietly, looking at the little boat that had been pulled in so carefully between the stone walls in this shadowed watery world. And he knew Seastrider was right. She nuzzled his hand until he put his arm around her. At last he let wonder touch him and the true joy that his mother was alive.

It was later, when he had returned to the little room that had been her last chamber in this world, that he began to wonder if his father had known all along. That she was not dead. That she had meant to go away in this fashion.

He must have hated the dark all the more, because it made it necessary for Meriden to go away. He must have felt terrible anger that he could not help her. That he must stay and guard Auric, while she did battle in a world so far away he might never see her again. Had he known, guessed, that they would never be together again?

Seastrider soared off the top of the wall and dropped down into the room beside him.

“How can Dawncloud ever find her?” he said sadly.

“It will not be an easy search. Perhaps there are vibrations out among those worlds, just as there are in the sea.” She curled down around Teb and lowered her head on her back, making a cocoon for him. “Rest, Tebriel. When night grows darkest, we will go home. To the Lair. Tonight, Tebriel, you will sleep among dragons, at the top of the highest peaks.”

“And tomorrow?” he said, his excitement rising.

“Tomorrow . . . and tomorrow . . . we will begin to assess the dark, Tebriel. We will begin to discover how best we can battle it, to bring Tirror back to truth. We will begin to strengthen our powers—of creating image and memory and hope through song. We will begin to discover other powers.”

“What other powers? The opening of doors . . . ?”

“Perhaps. And perhaps we can master the magic of shape shifting, and perhaps other ways to confuse the dark.”

He leaned back against her warm, jeweled side and felt the strength of bard and dragon, teamed, and thought that, with training together, they might know more power than he had imagined. Together they would make song, would shape Tirror’s true past for those who lived today, and he knew that this was their one great weapon. For to know what has been is to know what can be. This was what the dark must destroy if it would win the minds of its slaves. If it would create a willing acceptance of slavery. As the night drew down, and the thin moon rose, Seastrider said, “We will go now,” and they swept out across the sea toward Windthorst and Fendreth-Teching, four bright dragons, one carrying her bard, he caught in the wonder of this first flight, caught in the wonder of beginning.

They passed over Nightpool in darkness, high against the stars where no earthbound creature could see them. Yet in the empty meeting cave, before the sacred clam shell, Thakkur saw. This vision was clear and strong. The white otter smiled, and put from him his loneliness for Tebriel, in the knowledge that Teb was now, in this time in the world, exactly where he belonged.

Above, so close to stars, Teb grinned too as he stared up at the heavens, then down toward the dark earth below him, and he thought, Tonight I will sleep among dragons. The night wind washed around him, stirred by Seastrider’s powerful wings, and he felt her laughing pleasure, like his own.

We are together now, Tebriel, and soon my brothers and sister may find their bards, and my mother return with Meriden, and we will be an army, then, to challenge the lords of the dark.

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About the Author

Shirley Rousseau Murphy grew up in southern California, riding and showing the horses her father trained. She attended the San Francisco Art institute and later worked as an interior designer while her husband attended USC. “When Pat finished school, I promptly quit my job and began to exhibit paintings and welded metal sculpture in the West Coast juried shows.” Her work could also be seen in many traveling shows in the western States and Mexico. “When we moved to Panama for a four-year tour in Pat’s position with the U.S. Courts, I put away the paints and welding torches, and began to write.” After leaving Panama they lived in Oregon, Atlanta, and northern Georgia before returning to California, where they now live by the sea.

Besides the Dragonbards Trilogy, Murphy wrote sixteen children's books and a young adult fantasy quintet before turning to adult fantasy with The Catswold Portal and the Joe Grey cat mystery series, which so far includes sixteen novels and for which she is now best known. She is the winner of five Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author of the Year awards—two of them for Nightpool and The Ivory Lyre —plus eight Muse Medallion awards from the national Cat Writers Association.

Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 2: The Ivory Lyre

Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 2. The bard Tebriel and his singing dragon Seastrider together can weave powerful spells. With other dragons searching for their own bards, they have been inciting revolts throughout the enslaved land of Tirror. Only if they can contact underground resistance fighters and find the talisman hidden in Dacia will they have a chance to break the Dark’s hold on the world.

Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 3: The Dragonbards

Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 3. Only the dragonbards and their singing dragons have the power to unite the people and animals of Tirror into an army that can break the Dark’s hypnotic hold over the world. Before their leader Tebriel can challenge the hordes gathering for the final battle, he must confront the dark lord Quazelzeg face to face in the Castle of Doors, a warp of time and space.

The Shattered Stone

An omnibus containing the first two books of the five originally published as the Children of Ynell series. In most regions of Ere to be a Seer, gifted with telepathic and visionary powers, means death—or does it? For some it may mean an even worse fate: destruction of their minds and enslavement by the dark powers determined to conquer the world. In Ring of Fire , Zephy and the goatherd Thorn are dismayed to discover that they themselves are Seers, but once they know, they are driven to escape from the repressive city of their birth and rescue others, many of them children, who have been captured and imprisoned by its attackers. Only the discovery of one shard of a mysterious runestone offers hope that they can succeed. In The Wolf Bell , set in an earlier time, the child Seer Ramad seeks the runestone itself with the aid of an ancient bell that enables him to control and communicate with the thinking wolves of the mountains, who become his friends. But will they be a match for his enemies, the evil Seers of Pelli, who are determined to control Ramad’s mind and through him, to obtain the stone for their own dark purpose?

The Runestone of Eresu

An omnibus containing the last three novels of the five originally published as the Children of Ynell series— The Castle of Hape, Caves of Fire and Ice , and The Joining of the Stone —which tell of the adult lives of the characters in The Shattered Stone . As a child Ramad of the Wolves had sought the potent Runestone of Eresu that could save his world from the dark, only to have it shatter at the moment it came into his hands. Now as a man, leader of his fellow Seers in their war against the dark powers, he knows it is up to him to find and rejoin the shards before evil Seers can do so. Following his true love Telien into far reaches of Time, he is followed in turn by the Seer Skeelie, who also loves him. The quest to make the stone whole again demands the commitment not only of Ramad but of others, ultimately including his son, for only far forward in Time can the final battle against the dark forces be fought.