Nightpool

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  Blaggen kicked him again, so hard it took his breath. Teb squirmed out of the tangle of blanket, confused and clumsy, but could not tear himself fully from sleep.

  “Get up, son of pigs. Sivich wants you in the hall. There are soldiers to serve, thirsty from a long ride.” He emphasized thirsty with another nudge. Teb wanted to hit him, but knew better. The welts on his back still pained him from his last outburst of fury. Blaggen belched into his yellow beard and, tired of watching the boy squirm under his boot, jerked him up by the collar, jerked the cell door open with an echoing clang, and shoved Teb before him down the narrow black passage. Up three flights, Teb stumbling in darkness on the stone steps, the jackals crowding close.

  In the hall the torches were all ablaze, and a great fire burned on the hearth. The room was filled with warriors, shouting and arguing and laughing. Sivich paced before the fire, his broad, black-bearded head jutting like a mean-tempered bull’s. Weapons were piled beside the outer door that led down to the courtyard: heavy swords; long, curved bows and leather quivers filled with arrows; and the oak-shafted spears.

  Teb crossed to the scullery at once. Old Desma was there, yawning and pushing back her gray hair, doubtless dragged from sleep in the servants’ quarters just as he had been dragged from sleep in his cell. The deep window behind her was black with night, but a wash of light shone from the courtyard below, and he heard hooves clattering on stone and bridles jingling as the warriors’ horses were tended, then the echo of a man swearing; then a horse screamed. Desma glanced toward Blaggen and saw he had turned away. She put her arm around Teb and drew him to her comfortingly. Her old eyes were puffy from sleep. “I don’t like this midnight riding, I don’t like their talk. . . .” Then she broke off and pushed him away, because Blaggen had turned to look. She shoved a tray into Teb’s hands and began to pile on silver mugs, two and three to a stack, and a heavy clay jug of mithnon. As she turned Teb toward the door, she whispered, “Get away from the palace. Get away tonight if you can.”

  “But how? How can I? Will you . . . ?”

  She touched his face gently, her look was sad and closed. “I don’t know how. There’s no way I can help; they watch me too closely. He’s looking—pretend I’m scolding you.”

  Teb left the pantry scowling and stumbling as if the old lady had been chiding him, and moved out among the elbowing men to serve up the dark, strong liquor.

  He shuffled about holding the tray up to whoever shouted for it, and no one paid him much more attention, except to snatch up mugs and pour liquor, and berate him when the jug was empty. It shamed him to serve his father’s murderers. Before they had killed his father, these men had treated him with oily, smiling deference. He wished it were poison he carried instead of mithnon, and he promised himself for the hundredth time that when he was grown, these men would die by his hand. Each of them would die, and Sivich would die slowly, with great pain.

  When at last the men settled around Sivich before the fire, the edge of their thirst dulled and their mugs refilled, Blaggen motioned Teb away to his corner. Teb’s arms ached from the heavy trays. He crouched against the stone wall on a bit of torn rug, the hump-shouldered jackals crowding close, and stared up through the small, barred window. A few stars shone in the black sky, and faint moonlight touched the tower, but he could see no movement within, and he imagined his sister asleep, curled up with her stuffed cloth owl. Once there had been a real owl, small and fat and filled with owlish humor. But Sivich had had the jackals kill it.

  Now the two jackals began to bicker between themselves with low, menacing growls, pacing and hunching around Teb, their lips drawn back over long yellow teeth, the mottled, greasy hair along their spines rising in anger. They always pressed against Teb when they quarreled, and sometimes, snapping at one another, they bit him as well. He pulled away from them and huddled against the cold stone wall. The warriors were all talking at once, trying to tell Sivich something, shouting and swearing. What was the wonder they kept boasting about? What had flown over them? Teb had heard only snatches of talk as he served the liquor, a few words, questions broken by shouts for more drink. Now at last, one man at a time began to speak out under Sivich’s questioning, Sivich’s own voice sharp with excitement as the dark leader moved back and forth before the flicking tongues of flame.

  “Where on the coast? Exactly where?” Sivich growled. “Are you sure it wasn’t a hydrus? What. . . ?”

  “East of the crossing. It was almost daylight. We saw . . .”

  “It flew, I tell you. Can’t no hydrus fly through the air. And there ain’t no common dragon that big. Nor that color. Never.”

  Teb shivered, straining to hear.

  “Not a common dragon. Big. Bright. It—” Pischen’s voice broke as if the thin, wiry man were overcome with emotion. “Pearl colored, its scales all pearl and silver, and it reflected the firelight when it came down at us, all red and spitting flame, too. . . .”

  “Horns as long as a man’s arm,” someone shouted.

  Teb’s heart raced. They were describing a singing dragon. No other creature would be that color, and so big. But were there any singing dragons left in Tirror? He could imagine it there in the sky, yes, huge, a dragon as luminous and iridescent as the sea opal, its great delicate head finely carved, its luminous horns flashing in the firelight. Was it really a singing dragon they saw? Or only a common dragon, wet from the sea, reflecting the light of their campfire?

  Even before the five wars began, no one knew whether a singing dragon still lived anywhere in Tirror. Yet Teb had dreamed that one might lurk, hidden and secret, in the tallest, wildest mountains far to the north. He and Camery had stopped talking about dragons, though, after their mother died. Their father didn’t like such talk, particularly in front of others, his soldiers or the palace staff. He would hush them with an abrupt turn of the conversation, or send them on an errand.

  Well, Teb was used to his father’s anger, after his mother died. First she had gone away, and his father had let her go, had not gone after her, which Teb could never understand. Then his mother had drowned all alone, in the tide of the Bay of Fendreth, when her boat capsized. Though what she was doing there in a boat Teb had never known. And how she could have drowned, when she was such a strong swimmer, was always a puzzle to him. Except, that afternoon had been one of terrible storm and gale winds.

  It was a sheep farmer who saw her struggling and, in his little skiff, tried to reach her. He searched the sea for her body, finding only her cloak and one boot. He brought the cloak and boot to the gate just at dusk, his old eyes filled with tears.

  If Teb’s father wept, he did not let Teb and Camery see his tears. He was stern and silent with the children after her death, locking all his pain inside. It would have been easier if they all could have shared their grief.

  The king laid cloak and boot in a small gold cask set with coral, which had held his wife’s favorite possessions. He buried the cask at the foot of the flame tree in her walled, private garden, and put a marker there, for her grave.

  After that his father was often absent from the palace, busy at council with his lieutenants, planning war against the dark northern raiders that preyed upon Tirror’s small nations and were drawing ever closer to Auric. It seemed strange to see him at council without the queen by his side, for they had always shared such duties. As he planned his defenses, pacing among his men, he seemed so filled with fury—almost as if he thought the dark raiders themselves were responsible for the queen’s death.

  Then his lieutenant, Sivich, gone suddenly and inexplicably over to the dark side, had, with a band of armed traitors, attacked the king and killed him. Sivich had always seemed so loyal. He must have lived a lie all those years, cleverly hiding his true intentions. Teb was there when it happened. He fought the traitors beside his father until he was knocked unconscious. He had been put into a cell and made a slave, and Camery locked in the tower. From the tower, and from the door of the palace, they saw their father bu
ried in the courtyard in an unmarked grave.

  At first Camery’s pet owl had flown secretly at night between the two children, whispering their messages through the tower window and through the barred window in the hall, until Sivich overheard and sent the jackals to kill the owl.

  He expected Camery had cried a long time, for Otus had been a dear friend. Once the messages stopped, Teb yearned more and more to be with Camery, longed for her to hold him, for she was the closest thing to a mother he had left. Now he yearned to tell her about the dragon, for news of such a creature, if in truth it was a singing dragon, was surely a symbol of hope.

  “Its shadow made the beach go dark,” crippled Hibben was saying. “It screamed over the horses and made them bolt.”

  Sivich had risen and begun to pace, his shadow riding the worn tapestries back and forth. “How long was it in sight? Did it come straight at you, or—”

  “Straight at us, its eyes terrible, its teeth like swords,” Cech said, shaking his blond shaggy head, “and the flame . . .”

  “And where did it come from? Can’t you agree on that? Didn’t you see where it went? How can I know where to search if you can’t remember better than that!”

  “The islands, maybe,” someone said hesitantly. The men shifted closer together.

  “Circled and circled the coast of Baylentha, and bellowed,” little, wiry Brische said hoarsely. “Its fiery breath, if it had come any closer, would have set the woods afire.”

  “Stampeded the horses—took half a day to catch the horses.”

  “It wanted something there, in Baylentha.”

  Sivich was silent for some time. Then he raised his head straight up on those bulging shoulders and looked hard at the men, and his voice came grating and low. “We ride at dawn for Baylentha.”

  The men shrank into themselves. Cech said softly, “What do you mean to do?”

  “Catch it,” Sivich said.

  The room was still as death. Not a man seemed to breathe. The crack of the fire made Teb jump.

  “How?” someone whispered. “How would you catch such a thing?” These men were killers, but now they were afraid. Teb guessed that a great dragon is not the same as a village full of shopkeepers and children, to murder carelessly, easily. Not even the same as a king’s army. For an army is made of men like themselves, while a dragon . . . a singing dragon’s fierce power was well beyond even these men. Why he felt the power of the dragon so strongly within his own small body, as if he knew it well, Teb had no idea.

  Well, these big sweating soldiers were no match for it. He smiled to himself, warmed with pleasure at the prospect of it eating them all, and imagined how it would be, each one devoured slowly, with crushing pain.

  Then in the silent room someone repeated the question in a harsh rasping voice. “How would you catch such a creature?”

  Sivich drained his mug and wiped his mouth. “With bait, man.”

  “Bait?”

  “Bait inside a snare.”

  “What bait would a dragon come to? Surely . . .”

  “What snare would hold such a . . . ?”

  Sivich’s stare silenced the speakers. The men shifted, and Teb waited, all held equally now.

  “A snare made of barge chain and pine logs,” Sivich said. The pines on the coast of Baylentha were tall and straight. The barge chain used in Auric was as thick as a man’s leg. The men stirred again, mulling the idea over.

  “And what kind of bait?” Pischen breathed.

  There was silence again. Then Sivich turned and looked over the heads of his men, directly toward Teb’s corner. His voice came low and cold.

  “The boy will be the bait.”

  Teb sat very still. He could not have heard right. He forgot to breathe, was afraid to breathe. Goose bumps came on his arms, and the blood in his wrists felt like ice. What boy did Sivich mean? Every man had turned to stare at him. Half drunk, smirking, every face had gone blood-hungry. Teb’s mind flailed in panic, like a moth trapped in a jar. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. The jackals edged closer as they sensed his fear. Sivich crossed the room, kicked the jackals aside, and stood over Teb with one boot on Teb’s hand where he crouched, the dark leader filling his vision, his eyes boring down into him.

  Sivich jerked him up by his ear so his body went hot with pain and he stumbled and choked back a cry. Sivich snatched Teb’s wrist in a greasy hand and twisted his arm back. Teb turned with the arm, to ease the pain. Sivich stared at his forearm where the little birthmark shone against his pale skin. Then the dark leader dragged him across the room toward the staring men.

  They crowded at once to look. Hibben of the twisted hand drew in his breath sharply. But it was only a birthmark, Teb thought. He had always had it. Why were they staring at it? It was a dark mark, no bigger than the ball of his thumb, and looked like a three-clawed animal foot.

  Sivich’s fingers were hard as steel. “This will trap a dragon. With bait like this we’ll have us a dragon easy as trapping fox.”

  The men sighed and muttered. Some pushed closer to Teb, leaning over him to stare, pawing at his arm, their strong breath making him feel ill.

  “How can that catch a dragon? It’s only a little mark. . . .”

  “What does it mean? How can . . . ?”

  But others among them nodded knowingly. “Ay, that will trap a dragon—trap the singing dragon. . . .” They stared at Teb strangely.

  When at last Sivich was done with Teb, he shoved him back toward the corner. Teb went quickly, sick inside himself with something unnameable.

  He crouched against the stone wall, listening as Sivich described how the snare would be built, how Teb would be bound in the center of it as the rabbit is bound in the fox snare. And, Teb thought, with the same result, a bloody, painful death, the dragon’s great hulk hovering over him as it tore his flesh, just as the fox tears at the rabbit.

  For even a singing dragon—if in truth it was such—had to eat. No one ever said that singing dragons were different in that way from common dragons. Surely the fables about their skills as oracles were only that, fables born of their beauty and size, and of the wonder of their iridescent color. Some folks thought the dragon was a sign of man’s freedom. That didn’t, in Teb’s mind, make it less likely to behave like other dragons when it was hungry.

  Or was it something other than hunger that Sivich felt would draw the dragon to him? What was the mark on his arm? Why was it important? Yet common sense told him that the wondrous tales of the singing dragons were only myth; and certainly there was nothing magical in a small brown birthmark.

  Teb was not a king’s son for nothing. Wonder and myth were one thing, but fact remained separate and apart. He had spent many hours in the hall listening as his father threaded a keen path between gossip and truth, in appraising the dark raiders and preparing his men for battle. But even then, his father had at last been wrong, had been misled by falsehood that looked like truth. He had believed in Sivich’s loyalty, when Sivich was really a clever pawn of the dark. He had died for his misjudgment.

  Why did Sivich want the dragon? What could he possibly do with it? Keep it in the trap forever? Poke it and torment it? But you couldn’t keep a dragon captive, not that dragon. Why would he want to?

  Because the dragon was a symbol of freedom? Must they destroy every such symbol, the dark raiders and their pawns who had helped enslave half the northern lands? Must they destroy everything loved by free men?

  Yes, Teb supposed. If the dark raiders could enslave the dragon, they would show all of Tirror they held the last symbol of freedom in chains. Their power would be invincible then. No one would defy them then.

  Teb went cold as a harsh voice at the back shouted, “A princess would be better bait. What about the girl—hasn’t she the mark?”

  “The girl has no such mark,” Sivich said irritably. “Besides, I keep her for breeding.”

  “No one breeds a girl of fourteen,” said Hibben of the twisted hand. “The
y die in childbed all the time, bred young.”

  Sivich turned a look of cold fury on the soldier. “Do you think I’m stupid? The girl will be kept to breed when she can bear me the young I want, as many young as it will take to capture every singing dragon that ever touches Tirror’s skies. She will breed male babies with the mark.”

  Hibben grunted, then was silent.

  Teb watched Sivich. What was the meaning of the mark? For it was the mark, surely, that had kept Sivich from killing him as he had killed his father. He felt panic for Camery, and knew she must get away. Both of them must. But how? How could Camery escape from a tower with winged jackals circling it? The guards never let her come down.

  Sivich was talking about the snare again, how many trees would be felled, how much chain was needed. Teb listened, sick to despair at his helplessness. Would old Desma help him? But she was too afraid. The only other servant he trusted was Garit, and he had been sent to the coast to gather and train fresh horses, and had taken young Lervey with him. There was no one. The hall felt icy. He crouched, shivering, and listened to the drunken talk. It was nearly dawn when at last the hall lay empty. A heavy rain started, splattering in through the barred window. Teb pressed exhausted against the stone, shivering and lost, and fell into a sick uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 3

  “Get the boy up! Get him out here! Do you think we have all day!” Sivich’s voice thundered up from the courtyard and jerked Teb from sleep. He lay struggling between consciousness and dream, and realized he had been hearing shouts and the sounds of restive horses for some time, pounding in and out of his dreams. He tried to escape back into sleep, but now the image of the dragon filled his head suddenly, the image of himself in the dragon’s gaping jaws. He had gone to sleep thinking of that, and didn’t know how to stop thinking it.

  He reached for a blanket that wasn’t there, then realized he was still in the hall. He had slept in the corner. Someone had put the ankle chain on him, chained him to a ring in the wall. The hall smelled of wet ash, and he remembered it had rained. Rain always came down the chimney. The bars of the window were wet, and water streaked the wall and puddled on the floor. Beyond the bars, the sky was dull and heavy.