There were more ruins here from the ancient times, their stone walls describing generous courtyards, cluttered now with shacks. It had been a graceful city once. Teb saw it in inner vision as it had been long ago. Below the sea cliff, covered now by ocean, had once rolled green, rich hills descending to the Valley of Igness and its orchards and farms, its fields of wheat and rye that had made Dacia wealthy. As the sea had flowed up to cover the land, people had moved up, too, constructing hasty shacks and lean-tos, and digging insufficient drains that were now filled with refuse. The picture was clear in his bard memory, the frantic movement of shops and animals, the confusion, though the sea had risen slowly enough to allow that untidy emigration.
Thakkur, the white otter, had spoken of such things. That was before Teb’s bard memory came alive in his mind. Thakkur had stood tall in his cave, his dark eyes filled with ancient knowledge, his voice caught in sadness for the wonders that were all but forgotten. “Humans don’t remember . . . the long-shadowed tale of this world, or even that there was a time before the small island countries existed. They don’t remember the five huge continents,” Thakkur said sadly. They did not remember, Teb thought, the wonders of Tirror before the dark came.
Teb stroked Seastrider’s neck, seeing in vision with her the small city nations where each person pursued his own talent in craft or farming, seeing again the wonderful things that were made and grown with the help of the magic Tirror then knew. Seeing the intent bartering and trading as craftsmen traveled from city to city, and children traveled to learn their chosen trades, living with the animals, often, in the old sanctuaries, or with the mining dwarfs in the far mountains. Teb saw how folks’ vision of the world, and of themselves, flowed through time, from the very birth of Tirror, all linked in a continuity that had meaning for each person, all kept alive through the song of dragons. The dark had not been strong yet to cast its pall on the world.
Folk did not remember now, as they did then with dragon song, a vision of Tirror’s birth. “A ball of gases,” Thakkur had said, “formed by a hand of such power that no creature can know its true nature, the power of the Graven Light. But,” Thakkur said, “from the very beginning, the fire and bareness and the promise of life lured the dark that always exists in black space. The dark crept through crevices into the molten stone, and it lay dormant. Even the power that made Tirror could not rout it.” So the dark had come to the young world, so the dark had waited and grown stronger. It had driven the dragons out at last, and killed or captured the bards. Memory was at last destroyed. Then into Tirror from other worlds came dark beings to join it—came the unliving, came Quazelzeg and his kind.
Ahead, the pages slowed where six men were circled around two women fighting with sticks. The onlookers stared up at the soldiers. The women stopped fighting and stared, too, but no one moved out of the way until the pages drove them back. One staggering man threw up at Kiri’s feet. Two more hit out at the pages suddenly, knocking one to the ground, then fled. Pigs wallowed in a mudhole where cobbles had been removed. A little ragged girl came out of a shop carrying a screaming baby and stood staring as they passed. As the pages turned a corner, Kiri glanced back at the entourage. Her eyes met Teb’s in an instant of shared disgust; then she looked quickly away.
“It is a city of contrasts,” he said diplomatically, when Accacia turned to him. “I thank you for bringing me to see it.” He smiled. “Someone has taken the time to grow beautiful roses.” He indicated a tiny garden wedged between a cow pen and a closed shop, where a yellow rose vine bloomed.
Accacia sniffed. “Some of them keep flowers—but what is the use of it? They are only peasants. They would do better to grow beans in that space.”
It was then, as they turned a corner approaching the harbor, that Teb saw the slave children. A straggling line of ragged children hardly more than babies, carrying heavy bundles on their shoulders, in from the barges at the quay. Five children pulled a wheelless sledge piled with packets of cloth and long bundles that might have held spears. Teb could see chain marks on the children’s ankles. He supposed they slept chained at night, as he once had. Tattered tunics covered their backs, likely hiding scars from the lash. He wanted to leap down and cut them loose, and fight whoever would stop him. As he passed close to a line of straining children, he saw the blank, mindless stares that told him the rest of the story.
Beside him Accacia kicked her horse around a pile of barrels and seemed hardly to notice that her gelding nearly trampled three small children struggling with a hamper of clay jugs.
Seastrider had begun to tremble, shivering, so he leaned to rub her neck. She spoke to him with pain, not in words but with the same fury he felt. Seastrider, like every singing dragon, knew clearly all the sins and pain of Tirror’s long past. Yet she was driven to fury at the sight of the small slave children.
The four pages stopped at the foot of the cobbled street where it met the quay, and Kiri turned to look back. Their eyes met again for a moment; then he saw Accacia watching, and looked away. If this girl was Accacia’s scapegoat, it had not seemed to quell her spirit.
They took a different route returning to the palace, through a nearly abandoned part of the city where a few rag people camped between the broken walls in rooms without roofs. They circled the huge, stonewalled gaming stadium, flanked by a tangle of paintless cottages pushing so close to one another there was no room for animal pens. Accacia had begun a monologue about the intricacies of her family background, to which Teb hardly listened, when suddenly ahead a door opened, and a man with red hair and red beard threw a bucketful of dirty water into the gutter. Teb jerked Seastrider’s halter and stared. Garit. It was Garit. He swallowed back a shout and looked away. It was all he could do not to gallop ahead, leap down, and fling his arms around Garit.
Garit stood filling the doorway with his broad shoulders, his red hair and beard like flame, his eyes following the four pages. He hardly looked at Teb as he passed, surely did not recognize him, grown up. Memories flooded back, Garit teaching him to ride when he was five, holding his horse while he mounted, Garit saddling his mother’s mare and bringing a newly broken colt for her to ride. Garit’s reassuring voice, the night he helped Teb escape from Sivich’s army.
Teb leaned down to adjust his boot so he could look back. Garit returned his look seemingly without recognition. Yet was there a spark deep in his eyes? Teb could not be sure.
It had been four years. Teb had been only a child when he escaped from Sivich that night. He had grown, filled out, his face changed maybe more than he guessed. Teb stared ahead, filled with excitement. Garit was here in Dacia. Then maybe Camery was, too.
He made note of where he was in the city. When the entourage turned up a side street, Accacia was still talking, as if her pedigree was infinitely fascinating to him.
“. . . and her mother was my aunt Rhemia, so of course that makes me cousin to Abisha and in direct line of the throne in my own right, even if I were not to marry him.” She stopped speaking long enough to smile. Teb thought her vanity served her in one way. It had helped her retain her own history, even though her view of it was narrow and dull. Prince Abisha, riding ahead, did not turn to look back, though he must have heard her remarks. Accacia prattled on, seemingly unaware of her tastelessness. “That is on my father’s side, of course. I lived with my mother’s sister after my own parents died—with my aunt and cousin, the little page up there, Kiri. When my aunt died I saw to it, of course, that Kiri. . .”
Teb had ceased to listen and was watching Kiri. She was walking with a tighter gait, as if held by some new tension, as if she wanted to break away running and kept herself steady with effort. As the horses stepped out faster, heading for home, she swung out ahead of them as if relieved.
Had he seen her turn to look at Garit as she passed him? Garit’s hand had come up just then to stroke his beard, and Teb’s mind had been filled with his presence, so he was really not aware of Kiri.
Now tension filled Teb as
the possibilities teased at him. Could there be a connection between them? He thought of the way the dragons responded to Kiri, of seeing her in the candle shop that he thought could be a rebel meeting place. He thought of seeing her return to her cottage late one night, despite the dangers of the city. He watched her striding ahead, his mind filled with possibilities. He meant to find out about Kiri. Just as surely as he meant to return to Garit.
Chapter 10
Kiri burned with impatience after Garit signaled her. The slow march back through the city seemed endless. What could be so urgent that he would stand in plain view of the king’s entourage the whole time it was passing? The traps the king had set around the city? But she had told him about the traps, and together they had sprung seven and destroyed them. Had they missed one? Had one of the cats been caught? Her heart lurched. Elmmira? But it did no good to imagine such things.
When at last they reached the palace stable, she ducked away from the other pages, into a storeroom beneath the horsemaster’s dwelling to wait until the pages had gone on. From the shadows she heard Roderica’s voice and Accacia’s as the two young women mounted the stairs above her head, probably to comb their hair and repair face coloring in Roderica’s room, after sweating in the morning sun.
When they had gone she went quickly through the palace and servants’ quarters, then through the side gate and down to her own cottage, where she changed into rags. Gram forced two oatcakes at her and some hot tea, which she gulped. The old woman’s bright eyes questioned, but Kiri could only say, “Garit wants me—I don’t know why.” She tangled her hair, hugged Gram and kissed the old woman’s wrinkled cheek, then was off through narrow back streets toward the core of the city.
Perhaps Garit’s urgency had to do with the new child slaves. The children must have been brought by the three new boats that rode in the harbor. The youngsters looked so thin and hopeless. She could imagine what they were fed, and how they slept at night, squeezed together for warmth in their thin garments. The loads they had carried looked far too heavy. Those children would grow up bent in their bodies as well as their spirits, cowed and unresisting. There were the blinded wolves, too. The memory of them sickened her. They were not of Dacia; there had been no speaking wolves in the country for years. These poor animals had come by ship, just as the slave children had.
When she reached Garit’s lane just past noon, it was busy and crowded. Three women whispered and laughed as they gathered laundry from fences, half a dozen beggars rummaged in a heap of trash, and on the corner two men argued, swearing, over a stack of cured goat hides. Kiri sauntered like any other street urchin, gawking idly at the arguing men. She began to poke through a pile of trash beside Garit’s front step. When no one was looking, she slipped around quickly to the back door. It opened at once, so Garit had been watching through a crack.
One candle burned in the shuttered room. She could smell tea brewing and could smell cat. She saw that in the far corner Mmenimm, the chocolate-colored tom, slept with little crippled Marshy sprawled between his heavy front legs. Marshy’s arm was flung around Mmenimm’s thick neck, his twisted leg bent at an awkward angle. The shadows of the room took shape; Garit’s cot and patched blanket; the wobbly table and two wooden chairs; the iron stove and crowded shelves; Garit’s clothes, hung on pegs; a stack of scrappy firewood in the corner. Kiri sat down on the smaller of the two chairs and watched Garit pour out tea into cracked mugs. Everything about the cottage was old and dingy, not because Garit liked it that way, but because anything else would have been hard to come by and would have looked suspicious, as well. He passed her a basket of warm seedcakes that did not match the poverty of the hut. She took two, sipped her tea, and waited, watching Garit over the rim of her cup. He was like a great red bull, his flaming hair and beard shaggy, his shoulders broad, his face square, and his nose a bit flat. But his eyes were alive with kindness. She could see anger in his face, now, but something more, as well. She could see a stir of excitement deep down.
“That was a grand parade this morning,” he said, scowling. “The king seems bent on impressing this young prince from Thedria.”
“It is Accacia who would impress him.”
“Oh,” he said. “And you saw the lines of new slave children and the captive wolves?”
“Where have they come from? So many small children. And the poor wolves all blinded.”
“No, not blind. They only seem to be. A wolf can move very well by scent and hearing.”
“And the children?”
“They are slave, all right. They are drugged with cadacus, as well as with the powers of the dark.”
“Yes. I saw their faces. What is happening? Why were so many brought here? What do the dark leaders plan?”
“Things are changing, Kiri, and quickly. Something has happened on the far northern islands, something that will affect all our own plans.” Garit poured more tea, and she realized she had gulped hers.
He laid a hand on her arm. “The children are from Ekthuma, from Edosta, and even from the dark continent. More will be coming. They were brought with boatloads of arms and supplies—you saw the boats.”
She nodded.
“The child slaves will be used to shift the cargo and to wait on the soldiers that will be arriving. Dacia,” Garit said evenly, “will be headquarters for raids on more than just Bukla and Edain. Headquarters now suddenly, Kiri, in an attack far greater.” His eyes filled with challenge. “Something is happening in the north.” He paused, his face alight. “The outer islands, Kiri—the outer islands have rebelled.”
She sat staring.
Garit nodded. “Yes—Meron, Wintrel, Liedref. Birrig and Burack. Even Elbon. The outer islands are with us now. The islands of the north are with us.”
“But how did it happen? They were so far beyond help. Summer’s messages all say—”
“Something has changed the folk of the outer lands. Something has brought them awake, and it has happened only recently.” Garit emptied the teapot into her mug and pushed the basket of seedcakes at her.
“It was Summer who brought the news,” he said. “She was overheard and nearly captured in Ekthuma, and had to get out fast. She knows something has happened on the outer islands, but she isn’t sure what. She is filled with excitement, for whatever it was woke the island folk. They have killed their dark leaders or driven them out. On Wintrel, Yesod and his four consorts were forced over a cliff into the sea.”
“Yesod was so powerful. How . . .?”
“The reports were strange and garbled. In Birrig the townsfolk seem to have killed all nine dark leaders. On Liedref the tale is that a woman took the dark leader with her when she killed herself. I don’t know how it has happened. It’s amazing.” Garit’s eyes were afire. “The folk of the outer islands have risen. They made their way across the channel three nights ago in heavy seas, sailed and paddled every craft that would float.
“They sacked Lashtel, Kiri. Yes. They burned the city and sent the whole tribe of the unliving—Quazelzeg, too—fleeing back into the interior.”
Kiri gaped. “Quazelzeg?”
“Yes. But only because he was unprepared. That won’t happen again. I think he had grown complacent with so many victories. He will be twice as vicious now, twice as hard to destroy.”
She shivered. It was hard to imagine him as more vicious. She wished the rebels had been able to kill him. “I heard nothing in the palace, no messenger, no hint of it.”
“I think the dark leaders might not tell this to King Sardira so eagerly. It puts them in a bad light. Sometimes I think Sardira knows a secret that half frightens the dark forces. How else could Dacia have remained neutral so long?”
She was silent for a moment, thinking. “Once,” she said, “Accacia told me that the dark would never enslave Dacia. That it could not. Accacia laughed about it.”
“What could she have meant?”
“She would say no more. I thought it was one of her exaggerations. But maybe it wasn�
�t. If the dark can’t conquer Dacia, and if it is losing to the outer islands . . .”
“No, don’t think the dark is on the run everywhere, Kiri, and certainly not from King Sardira. Summer says they plan to use him, as we have supposed. That soon the dark leaders will converge here to see to the arms and supplies. They mean to attack not only Bukla and Edain but all the outer islands and destroy them, then march on all the continents of this hemisphere. They are livid with anger at this attack. Dacia will be their headquarters. Maybe that’s why they let it stay partially free. Perhaps it is more useful that way. Dacia is the central point. With Sardira’s cooperative ways, it is the perfect base. This move, now, the sudden arrival of soldiers and supplies in a push for all-out war, is simply much sooner than they planned.
“I saw a runner come down from the palace to investigate the new arrivals, as if the king didn’t know they were coming. He went among the ship captains, then returned hastily, this morning at first light. It was not until late last night that we knew, when Summer came slipping to my door. She sailed a small boat down from Igness, fleeing Vurbane’s troops under darkness. She is sleeping now in the sanctuary, guarded by Elmmira’s sisters.”
“Is she all right?”
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