Beyond the Draak’s Teeth

by Marcia J. Bennett

  A moment or two passed, and he heard the song of “Vol-nada” floating over the water. The voice was Din-el’s, and it came from the Homeraft.

  Bhaldavin sighed deeply, wishing he could slip free of his ankle chain and go and find Lil-el. He wanted to talk to someone, and she was the only one who seemed to understand him.

  A small shaft of light suddenly fell across his shoulder. He turned and saw that the cabin door had opened a crack. He could hear the men inside talking, but the words were indistinct. He remembered Theon speaking earlier about a magic box. What, he wondered, was a magic box, and what were the men doing with it? Curiosity finally drove him to investigate. He carefully caught up his chain and approached the door.

  “… have been here for a week and still haven’t seen how this wondrous find of yours works!”

  Bhaldavin recognized Theon’s voice and gently pushed against the door, opening the crack wide enough so he could see inside.

  Theon moved around behind Gringers and took a seat opposite Hallon, who sat facing the door. Hallon had straight brown hair, a long narrow nose, brown eyes, and heavy eyebrows that met over his nose when he frowned, which he was doing at that precise moment.

  “Before I go gallivanting over some unclimbable chain of mountains,” Theon said, “I want to have some assurance that what we’re looking for does exist.”

  “It exists,” Hallon said, glaring at the small man. “The box proves it.”

  “Show me!”

  Diak drew a box from his lap and set it in the middle of the table. Diak was shriveled and wizened by age; his white hair was tied in a club at the back of his neck; his dark blue eyes were sunken in a skull-like face. But his voice was firm as he answered Theon’s challenge.

  “You look upon a mystery, Theon,” Diak said, smiling. His teeth, what few he had left, were yellow and crooked. “A mystery that comes down to us from the First Men, the Ral-jennob. Only a few have seen the magic box work, and no one, myself included, understands how it works. When you see the wonders that lie within the box, you will believe in our search for Barl-gan; unless, like others, you choose to see only evil in that which you don’t understand. ”

  Theon looked from the box to the old man, his dark brown eyes snapping. “You don’t frighten me, old man.”

  Diak reached for the box. It was approximately two hand lengths long and a hand length wide. It was decorated by intricate carving and showed evidence of having been painted at one time. He released the leather thong over the wood toggle on the front of the box, then carefully lifted the lid. Leather hinges prevented the lid from dropping back too far.

  “Our legends have it that man came from another world,” Diak began, “dropping from the sky in a great metal ship that carried perhaps as many as a thousand people. Judging from what I have learned from this device, I believe it was chance that brought our ancestors here and accident that kept them here.”

  Theon leaned over, trying to peer into the box that Diak covered with his hands. “Well?” he prompted, looking up with impatience. “Get on with it!”

  Diak reached into the box and drew out a small, mirrored octagonal container and set it gently in the middle of the table.

  “What is it?” Theon asked.

  Diak smiled indulgently. “It seems to be a device that produces mental images—or records lifelike images that may be retrieved upon command. A life recorder. In a way it’s very much like the journal I have here.”

  Diak reached into the box again, to take out a leather-bound book. “This journal was written seven to eight hundred years ago, I believe. I bought it from a man who claimed that it had been in his family for generations.”

  Diak laid a bony hand on top of the journal. “In this book are written many historic truths. Most people think of them now as only legends. The stories don’t go back to the First Men, but they do go back as far as the beginning of the Sarissan empire—over a thousand years ago. Much of our earlier history was passed down in spoken form, as it still is today.” Diak’s hand moved from the journal to the metal container. “But once there was another way.”

  Diak looked at Theon. “I can’t explain how this device works. For all of my tinkering with it, it still remains a mystery. But it does work. Gringers, Hallon, and I have all experienced its magic.”

  Theon frowned. “Magic?”

  “Just a term, young fellow,” Diak smiled. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Theon glared at the old man. “I’m not afraid!”

  “Good. Then let’s get started.”

  Bhaldavin pulled the door back further, enabling him to get a better look at the tabletop. He wasn’t familiar with the term magic, but one good look at the strange metal box sitting between the old man’s hands and the terrible scowl on Theon’s face told him that whatever magic was, it walked side by side with fear—all the more alarming since Theon wasn’t the kind of man to openly display such an emotion if he could help it.

  Bhaldavin almost turned away, not wanting to become involved with man’s magic, but something held him there, some intangible need to understand his enemies, especially the man Gringers, who professed to want Bhaldavin’s friendship, yet would not release him from his chain.

  Theon eyed the metal container with distrust. “What do we do?”

  Diak’s white bushy eyebrows raised. “We do nothing but watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “You’ll see.” Diak reached into the wooden box once more and drew out a small white piece of cloth. He unwrapped the cloth and exposed a luminescent green crystal which he set on the tabletop. He then pried off the top of the metal box.

  Theon started to reach for the crystal, but Gringers caught his hand in midreach. “Not wise, friend. I tried that once and got such a jolt that I was out for fifteen minutes.”

  “What is it? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stone.”

  “I’m sure it has a proper name,” Diak said, carefully picking the crystal up with the cloth, “but I don’t know what it is. I only know that when I put it in here”—Diak dropped the crystal into a small depression within the metal container—“and place a finger on one of the five dark-colored panels on the side of the box, things begin to happen.”

  Bhaldavin felt his heartbeat quicken. Cautiously he opened the door and stepped into the room. Diak had one of the power crystals known as fire stones, the precious crystals often found in Ni jewelry and used by the Ni Seekers.

  Bhaldavin was moving toward the table when suddenly the room dissolved around him and he found himself standing on a beach staring in open-mouthed wonder at a huge grayish sphere sitting like a small island in a body of water. Smoke poured from one of three dark openings in the sphere, and where the sphere touched the water, ribbons of steam rose to create a cloud overhead. There were several fat, buoyant boats in the water, and people were swimming hand over hand away from the sphere.

  Bhaldavin turned and found himself among strangers, most of them wet and clutching bundles made of a strange silver material.

  One of the odd boats approached the beach. Quickly people and supplies were unloaded. The first tide of swimmers reached the shore and straggled up onto the beach. Suddenly someone screamed and there was pandemonium in the water.

  Bhaldavin looked out over the heads of the swimmers and saw a large water draak rising out of the water, the body of one of the swimmers caught between its jaws.

  Arms and legs flailing wildly, the man was screaming for help; then his cries ceased abruptly as the draak sank back under the water.

  Words and song came to Bhaldavin’s mind as he waited for another draak to appear, for where there was one there would likely be others. Forgotten in that moment was the fact that these people were not Ni and had no claim upon him.

  Another draak appeared, but before Bhaldavin could sing even one note, a shaft of eye-blinding light shot across the water, catching the draak in the snout. The draak shook its head, roaring in pain. Another shaft of light struck th
e draak as it threw itself backward into the water. The splash of its tail sent water spraying high into the air.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Bhaldavin saw three men kneeling at the edge of the water, their arms held out straight before them. Each held something in his hands, but he couldn’t be sure what it was.

  There was a swirl of motion in the water. One of the kneeling men pointed at it, and a flash of light leapt from his hands. The water hissed and steamed where the light touched it.

  Bhaldavin was so lost in the wonder of the strange weapons the men were wielding that he felt a slight disorientation as the scene abruptly changed. Now he was watching people build something on a hill overlooking the water. The gray sphere in the water was still visible, but seemed to be sinking.

  He listened to the men and women as they worked around him; they were speaking a form of trader, which, if he listened closely, he could just make out, though many words eluded him.

  Again there was a shift in scene, and he was among a group of men walking along a narrow stone path with a wall of rock to the right and open space to the left. He looked down over the ledge of the trail and felt his stomach muscles tighten, for they were far above the valley floor.

  The man in front of Bhaldavin turned and spoke to him. “Do you think we’ll be any safer up here?”

  Bhaldavin didn’t know what to say. Where was up here? Suddenly he noticed that the man wasn’t looking at him, but rather through him, as if he wasn’t there. In that moment, he finally understood that what he was seeing wasn’t real, at least not for him; and in that same moment he also remembered the metal box in Diak’s hands and the stone that had activated the device Diak had called a life recorder.

  He blinked and rubbed at his eyes with his hand. The scenes continued; he couldn’t push them aside, though he knew they were not in his own reality. Slowly he reached out, his hand searching for what he knew had to be there. His fingers brushed a shoulder; then he found the tabletop.

  Gringers’s voice came out of the void. “Diak! Turn it off!”

  Bhaldavin gasped in pain as hands twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to his knees. A second later the scene around him disappeared and he was back on the raft, kneeling between Gringers’s legs.

  “What happened?” Diak demanded, looking from Gringers to Bhaldavin.

  Gringers let Bhaldavin get to his feet, but caught his wrist so that he couldn’t move away. “I felt someone touch me. I thought—I thought it was someone else. Seevan. I forgot about Bhaldavin.”

  Diak glanced at Bhaldavin. “No harm done.” He turned to Theon. “Well, what do you think about what you saw?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. You say you’ve shown these—these pictures to other people, and they weren’t interested?”

  “More afraid than interested,” Diak answered.

  Theon looked at Gringers. “You told me that Seevan saw this magic box work.”

  Gringers nodded. “He called it evil and named Diak a drogo, witch-man.”

  “I am outcast among many of the Lake Arden rafters because of Seevan’s big mouth.” Diak looked at Gringers. “By offering me shelter and a home, Gringers has also become somewhat of an outcast, tainted by association, as it were.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Hallon spoke up.

  Diak smiled at the solemn young man. “Yes, you too I have touched with my evil plans, and it irritates Seevan to no end, I am sure. He would get rid of me if he could find a way to do it quietly.”

  Theon shook his head. “I don’t understand. If Seevan doesn’t believe in Barl-gan, why should he care what you are doing?”

  “He wouldn’t care, except that I have drawn Gringers and Hallon into my plans.”

  Gringers spoke. “Hallon and I are cousins, Seevan’s sisters’ sons, almost as close a tie to Seevan as a true son. Seevan sees Diak as one who has usurped the love of two he considered his own. We’ve both denied any lessening in our love and respect for him, but he won’t listen, not as long as we stand with Diak.”

  Hallon stared down at his hands, folded before him on the table. “If we would renounce Diak and forget all of our plans to go searching for Barl-gan, Seevan would take us back with open arms.” Hallon’s head lifted. “But that we won’t do. No matter how he pressures us. I want to learn more about the First Men, because I believe the visions I see in the recorder. Just think! If man once knew how to create such things as this”—he touched the recorder—“what other marvelous things have we forgotten?”

  It was a long speech for so reticent a man. Theon was suitably impressed. “I hear what you’re saying, Hallon, and after seeing the box work, I know what you’re feeling. Still, a lot of time has passed. A lot! There may not be anything left to find. ”

  “It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Diak said, reaching for the box. “This lasted. Why not other things?”

  Bhaldavin stood quietly listening to the conversation between the men, his eyes on the glowing crystal resting inside the open container. The crystal should not have been in the possession of men. It didn’t belong to them. Such stones were meant to be in the keeping of the Ni-lach.

  Gringers’s grip on his arm had loosened. Bhaldavin glanced behind him to the open doorway. He knew he had no time to take the stone and hide it, but he could take it and throw it away, out into the water where the task of retrieving it would be difficult, if not impossible.

  Without the fire stone, the men couldn’t work their strange box, and without the box, Gringers and the others would have no guide to Barl-gan and therefore would not need him to sing draak for them. That would mean he could stay at Lake Arden with Lil-el until he found a way to gain his freedom. Perhaps he could even persuade Lil-el to leave her family and go with him, back to the Deep or to some other place where they could live freely, as Ni were meant to do.

  Better for all concerned if the fire stone was lost to the mud below, he thought. He pulled away from Gringers and snatched up the green stone.

  “Stop him!” Diak yelled.

  Bhaldavin moved so fast that he was almost to the door before any of the men could react. Theon darted around the end of the table; Gringers overturned his chair as he lunged for the doorway. Hallon leaped over the fallen chair and was only a step behind Gringers as Bhaldavin passed through the doorway.

  Bhaldavin felt a hand snag the back of his tunic; but he was hardly aware of it, for suddenly he was awash in a whirlwind of colored lights and sounds. Then a strange warmth flooded him, shutting off the world around him. He never felt the jerk on his leg chain, or the impact of his body against the raft as Gringers bore him down.

  “Get the crystal!” Diak cried from the doorway. “Don’t let him drop it!”

  Theon threw his weight into the tangle of arms and legs. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell one person from another. “Have you got him?” he yelled.

  “Yes, damn it,” Gringers snapped. “Get off me! I’ve got his hand. You get the crystal!”

  Theon followed Gringers’s arm down to Bhaldavin’s fist. He worked at Bhaldavin’s fingers, but couldn’t pry them apart.

  Diak appeared carrying a lantern. “Do you have it?” he asked anxiously, peering over Hallon’s shoulder.

  “I can’t get his fingers open,” Theon growled.

  Hallon went to a knee beside him. “Here, let me try.”

  Moments later he sat back. “I don’t believe it! His fist is like a rock.”

  Sitting on Bhaldavin’s stomach, Gringers glanced at Hallon and Theon, then tried his own strength against the long, slender fingers that seemed to have turned to stone. Like the others, he failed.

  “What do we do now?” Hallon asked.

  “The only way you’re going to get it is to break his fingers,” Theon said.

  “Diak, bring that light closer.” Gringers rolled Bhaldavin’s head up and held it up to the light. He slapped Bhaldavin lightly across the mouth. “Bhaldavin. Open your hand. Let me have the crystal.”

/>   “Look at his eyes move,” Theon said. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Bhaldavin!” Gringers said louder. “Bhaldavin, look at me!”

  Theon shook his head. “I don’t think he’s hearing you.”

  “It’s the crystal,” Diak muttered. “He shouldn’t have touched it with his bare hand. We have to get it away from him. There’s no telling what harm it might do to him if he holds it for very long.”

  Bhaldavin was unaware of the men hovering over him. The fire stone he held drew him into another world, and he was falling, tumbling over and over into darkness.

  Chapter 12

  BHALDAVIN WAS RUNNING. THE SARISSA WERE CLOSE behind. His mother ran before him, carrying baby Telia. Kion pushed young Dhalvad into his arms and slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Follow your mother!”

  Bhaldavin clutched Dhalvad tightly and ran after his mother, fear giving him strength. Moments later he reached the shelter of some trees and looked back, sure that his father was right behind him; but Kion wasn’t there. He was back in the open fighting four men, using a branch and his knife to keep the men at bay. Then suddenly Kion was down, his branch knocked aside.

  A man lunged forward, driving his sword into Kion’s chest. The other men closed in, their swords flashing in the morning sun. Again and again they struck Kion, hacking at his body until he stilled.

  Bhaldavin backed away, his inarticulate cry of grief causing Dhalvad to whimper in fright.

  One of the men looked up from the bloody corpse at his feet and pointed toward the youth.

  Bhaldavin turned as the men started toward him; he ran panic-blind for a few moments, ducking branches and taking the path of least resistance. Sanity returned when he heard a man shouting somewhere ahead of him.

  He veered to the left, searching wildly for a place to hide, but he could hear the snap of branches behind him and he dared not stop, fearing the enemy would blunder into him.

  Dhalvad was getting heavy in his arms. He shifted the child to his left hip and continued on, more slowly now, eyes alert for any movement in the dense bushes around him. Somehow he pushed his father’s death aside. His only thought now was to find his mother.