Nightpool

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  The room must have been situated high up in the palace, perhaps an attic or storeroom. There was a great stone basin that might have been for bathing, and when he tasted the water it held, it was fresh. He drank gulping, dipping his whole face in.

  Around the base of the steps that led down into the sea, oysters and mussels clung in abundance, and it was this as much as the fresh water that made him know the hydrus was prepared to keep him here for some time. He pulled his knife from his belt and ate, stuffing himself, wanting the strength the food would give. It would take all the power he had to subdue the dragon and train her, all his strength, perhaps, simply to make her come to him, for it seemed he had been trying a long time.

  *

  Seastrider knew Teb called to her. Dawncloud also knew, and while the young dragon was in a frenzy to go to him and to battle the hydrus, Dawncloud bade her wait; Dawncloud bellowed a challenge to the hydrus and to the dark, her green eyes blazing, and she bade the dragonling wait. She saw her own songs warped and twisted and darkening Teb’s mind, so fury held her. She bid Seastrider wait, her voice like a clap of thunder. He must defeat the hydrus alone!

  The dragonlings looked at her and were still, curling down in the nest, Seastrider shivering.

  So they waited, knowing the awesome twisting of the dark songs, knowing Tebriel’s acceptance of the dark and, sometimes, his feeble battle. They knew the power that held Tebriel was like a killing fever. They waited, patient as only dragons can be patient, as night followed day and moon followed moon and winter brought raging winds and heaving seas. They felt Teb’s chill of body and spirit, his fear. They saw spring begin, a watery sun. They saw the otters searching, in Mernmeth and Pinssra and even as far as Naiheth. But the drowned city where Tebriel was held lay far, far from those submerged villages. They saw the otters give up hope at last, all but the white otter leader. They saw a time when Tebriel seemed lost, sunk steadily into the realm of the dark, grown thin and scowling and without joy. They waited with a dragon’s patience, all but Seastrider, who fidgeted and lurched out on the winds and could not be still and sent all her young power to join with Tebriel in his battle. And still they waited. Then at last, they saw Tebriel rise in his spirit and recapture a living strength. They saw him begin to battle with a new fierceness; they saw his consciousness accept and know, at last, the powerful treachery that gripped his senses.

  *

  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.

  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.

  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.