Dragonbards Read online

  From the reviews of The Dragonbards

  “Once again Murphy demonstrates a fine sense of storytelling, high adventure, scene setting, and characterization—human, animal, and evil monster. And her dragons remain some of the most appealing in contemporary fantasy.” —ALA Booklist

  “The concluding volume of the author’s generally acclaimed Dragonbards trilogy . . . assumes a harrowing narrative pace that builds to a grand, good-over-evil finale. . . . This is rollicking high fantasy.” —Christian Science Monitor

  The Dragonbards

  (Dragonbards Trilogy, Book Three)

  by

  Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 1988 by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  All rights reserved. For information contact [email protected]. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be resold, given away, or altered.

  This is the third book of a trilogy. It is preceded by Nightpool and The Ivory Lyre.

  Harper & Row edition (hardcover) published in 1988

  HarperPrism edition (paperback) published in 1989

  Ad Stellae Books edition, 2010

  Author website: www.joegrey.com

  Cover art © by Fernando Cortés De Pablo / 123RF

  Chapter 1

  I think there are no more singing dragons on Tirror. I have searched with my restless thoughts as surely as if I flew, myself, across Tirror’s winds.

  —From the diary of Meriden, Queen of Auric, written ten years before the battle at Dacia.

  *

  The swamp shone dark green, a steamy tangle of knotted, ancient trees thrusting up from sucking mud. It stank of rotting leaves and small decaying animals. Heavy moss hung down, and between the twisted trees, small pools of water shone. All was silence, the only sound the hushing whisper of insects, as if this land had lain untouched for a thousand years.

  But suddenly screams shattered the stillness. The shadows flew apart and the quiet water heaved as a white dragon came plunging through, bellowing with terror.

  Her iridescent scales shone with sky colors, and her wings were sculptured for flight. But she could not fly. One wing dragged, bloody and broken. Blood coursed down her gashed neck and shoulder staining a trail on the mud. The shouting behind her grew louder. She could hear the pursuing horses splashing and heaving. She fled between trees so dense that the arrow shafts sticking from her sides caught at them, jarring her with pain. Her broken wing pulled her sideways, and her great head swung as she reared to free herself from sucking mud. The shouts of the riders thundered just behind her. She tried again to fly, beating her wings in despair. Then she spun to face her pursuers, belching flame at the dark warriors.

  They did not fall back; they fired—their arrows pierced her face and throat. Floundering, screaming with pain, she tried to bring a vision to frighten them, tried to fill their minds with full-grown dragons swooping at them spitting sheets of fire.

  But no vision came. She was too unskilled, and the dark powers were too strong. She fled for a small lake between the trees, dragging her torn wing. Dizzy and seared with pain, she crashed heavily through a tangle of willows and dove deep.

  She stayed under until her breath was gone, feeling her blood wasting from her, her mind calling out to her nestmates and to a power greater than theirs.

  The horsemen drove their mounts belly deep into the lake. When the white dragon surfaced, gulping air, they had surrounded her.

  They made quick work of killing her.

  The young dragon floated on the bloody lake, her broken wings spread white across the red water. The cheering soldiers raised their fists in victory, their faces twisted into cold smiles. Three of them put ropes on her body and whipped their horses until they had pulled her to a rise of earth.

  They cut off her head and strapped it to the back of a packhorse, to carry as a trophy to their dark leader. Finished with her, they wheeled their mounts and stormed away through the mire.

  The soldiers were disciples of Quazelzeg, master of the unliving. Three of them were un-men, soulless creatures alien to Tirror. The other five were human men warped to the sick ways of the dark—all of them hated the singing dragons and the human bards they paired with.

  Chapter 2

  Perhaps I am the only dragonbard left, except Teb and Camery. I haven’t told them they are dragonbard born. They are only small children, and it would break their hearts to know.

  *

  The four dragons fought the wind across the open sea, rising and dropping as the icy blasts beat at them. They had passed over no land since morning. It was now past midnight, the freezing black sky pierced only by cold stars. Below them, the ocean was invisible except for the shine of whitecaps. The two white dragons shone sharply in the blackness, their sweeping wings hiding their riders. The two black dragons were nearly invisible.

  Teb slept sprawled along Seastrider’s white back, absorbing the big dragon’s warmth. When she banked across the wind, he jerked awake suddenly, drawing his sword. But he saw they weren’t in battle, and sheathed his blade again, smiling sheepishly.

  The battle is over, Tebriel, Seastrider said silently.

  I guess I was dreaming. He cuffed her neck affectionately. We’re alive, he thought, grinning. This time two days ago, I wasn’t so sure.

  Nor was I. She changed balance with a subtle twist of her long body and wide wings, and swung her head to look at him. He could feel her excitement, knowing there were young dragons ahead. Somewhere on that frozen land they would find the dragonlings.

  They will more than double our number, Tebriel. We will soon be a respectable army.

  He stroked her neck, sliding his hand down her gleaming scales. He hoped the four dragons would sense the dragonlings, once they reached Yoorthed’s bleak coast. They could never be sure, with the dark so strong, how much their powers would be crippled.

  Near to dawn a thin moon lifted out of the sea ahead, reflecting in the blocks of ice that now churned across the restless sea—ice that meant land was near. Teb could not sleep; he stared ahead searching for the first thin line of mountains and trying to sense a hint of the dragonlings.

  He was Tebriel of Auric, a prince exiled from his own land by his father’s murderer. He had not seen his home in four years. He was young and lean, his skin brown from flying close to the sun. His dark, serious eyes could laugh, but always with a hint of pain, or of anger deep beneath the joy. His dark hair was hidden under a leather hood; his lean hands were muffled in leather mittens. A white powdering of ice had collected along the edge of his hood and across his shoulders, and on the edges of Seastrider’s wings.

  As he turned to look back at the other four bards, his eyes lost their angry loneliness and his smile came quickly, with a terrible love for them—with a deep love for his sister, Camery. She was nodding between Nightraider’s black wings, trying to keep awake. Her long pale hair was tangled around her shoulders and around Marshy. The little boy rode securely in front of her, held tight and sound asleep.

  The other white dragon, Windcaller, drew even with Seastrider. Kiri lay sleeping along Windcaller’s neck, her arms through the white leather harness, her mittened hands tucked beneath her cheek, her dark hair spilling out of her hood. The two dragons stared ahead searching for land.

  Teb watched Kiri stir. Are you awake?

  Just barely, she thought, looking across the wind at him, yawning. When she turned to look out across the sea, she rose up suddenly, to look. “There’s an island! A rock—there among the icebergs.”

  The four dragons stared, embarrassed that they hadn’t seen it first. It was only a hump of granite nearly hidden by the tilting icebergs. Not much of an island, Teb thought, but maybe big en
ough for the dragons to rest. They headed for it, skidding across the wind.

  The dragons dropped to the rock like four huge birds landing on a tiny nest. They coiled down together and began to lick the ice from their wings. Camery wiped sleep from her eyes and slid down from Nightraider’s back, holding the sleeping child against her. She stood pressed close to the black dragon, shivering. “Wouldn’t a fire be wonderful? And a roast salmon, maybe.”

  Colewolf slipped down from the other black dragon. Might as well wish for a whole feast. He made a vision of hot meat and bread and gravies and pies that made the bards laugh. The older bard could not speak aloud. His tongue had been cut out by the dark leaders years ago. They thought that would prevent him from making visions, for the bard-visions were made by singing—they thought they had destroyed his magic, but they had not. Now, paired with his dragon, Starpounder, Colewolf was as powerful as any of the bards. Even before he had joined with the black dragon, he had been a formidable rebel spy. Colewolf and Kiri— father and daughter—had fought the dark well on Dacia.

  Once the dragons had licked the ice away, they thrust their heads over each other’s backs, to sleep. Dawn began to lighten the sky. Marshy woke in Camery’s arms, shivering. She pulled her cloak closer around him and leaned back against Teb, where he sat in the curve of Seastrider’s flank. Teb put his arm around her comfortably. They had been parted for many years, until the war in Dacia had brought them together. She had been a spy for the rebels, working with Kiri and Colewolf. Now, she snuggled close to him. Her voice was hoarse from the cold wind.

  “Can you find Mama’s diary in your pack, Teb? I want to see it; I can’t stop thinking of it; I want to read Mama’s words. To know that she’s alive—nine years since she left us.” She turned, in the circle of his arm, to look at him. “The journal of the Queen of Auric. Perhaps the only journal ever written by a dragonbard. And we never knew she was a bard—all our time together, we never knew.”

  Teb opened his pack and rummaged among a change of clothes and leather packets of dried meat. He drew out the oilskin package and unwrapped their mother’s small leather-bound diary. Before they had begun their journey to Yoorthed, he had retrieved it from where he’d hidden it in the dragons’ lair. He had had to break the diary’s lock.

  The first part contained memories of when the two children were small and comments about the dark invaders, how they were moving across Tirror conquering the small island nations. “The part about her leaving us is near the end,” he said. “But she thought about it for a long time; the entries are full of it.”

  Camery thumbed through the pages, whispering Meriden’s words as if, by speaking them, she could touch their mother and bring her back to them.

  “The wars are flaring across Tirror. Our island nations are being enslaved one by one. The dark invaders sow their seeds of forgetting, until we have no memory of our past. How easy it is for them. With the shape of the past driven from our minds, we are already half enslaved, and they can quickly defeat us. I bleed for my dear world.

  “We have become a world of lost souls, without ties, without history. Soon we will all be slaves of the unliving. And the dark leaders use their slaves cruelly.

  “The dragons have been driven out of Tirror by the dark, murdered by the dark, all the dragonbards they could find, murdered. If there are other bards, they have hidden themselves, as I have. I am not proud of hiding. But alone, without a dragon, what can one bard do? Alone, I cannot keep the past alive.”

  Camery looked up at Teb, her voice catching. He took the diary from her and began where she had stopped.

  “Teb and Camery, you may find this diary one day. You are only small children now. I have not told you that you are dragonbard born. I see the longing in you, that terrible restlessness, and I yearn to tell you. But haw can I? It would tear you apart to know your true natures, just as it has torn at me, for there is no dragon to join with.”

  Colewolf sat with his arm around Kiri, his daughter’s cheek pressed against his chest, and little Marshy sprawled across their laps. They listened to Meriden’s prophetic words and were filled with sadness for her.

  “I must leave this world,” Camery read, “and find my way into other worlds. It is the only way I can help Tirror. I know now that the Castle of Doors does exist—a way into those worlds. I have seen it in bard knowledge, though that knowledge is so often destroyed by the unliving.

  “I believe the last dragon on Tirror has gone through the Doors, and I must follow her.

  “Why has knowledge of the Castle of Doors touched me now? Why do I remember now? Am I growing stronger in what I am able to recall? Or has the dark revealed this to me, meaning to lure me away from Tirror? But why—what harm can one bard do to the powers that seek to destroy us?

  “I dare not go into Aquervell to find the Castle of Doors. The dark holds that continent too strongly. I think there is another Door; my bard knowledge touches it faintly. So much knowledge seems just beyond my reach. I believe there is a Door beneath the sea, in a sunken city off our eastern coast. I believe it joins the Castle of Doors by a warping in space and time. I will sail into the eastern sea and leave word behind that I have drowned. If I can find the Door and get through, and find the dragon, perhaps together we can discover a way to drive the dark from Tirror. Together, we can try.

  “What will become of my children? The dark will seek bard children; it will not allow one bard to live. Yet I must leave them. I am so torn and so miserable.”

  Camery’s green eyes filled with pain. “She didn’t know—that the dragon she sought was here, asleep for so many years. She didn’t know that Dawncloud would wake and go to search for her.”

  Teb shook his head. “Or that Dawncloud would leave a clutch of young behind—our four dragons—that there would be dragons on Tirror again.”

  “And now there are six more,” Camery said. “And Mama doesn’t know . . . if . . . if she is still alive, to know.”

  It was Colewolf who had learned of the six dragonlings, from a rebel soldier come recently to their own land from Yoorthed. The man had found a dragon nest atop a rocky isle and climbed to find the empty shells. Later, when Colewolf had given the four bards this information, in vision, his daughter’s dark eyes had been deep with yearning, for Kiri dreamed that perhaps her own dragonmate would be among them. And six-year-old Marshy’s face had held the same need.

  The dragons began to stir restlessly. The bards mounted up, and they took to the sky again. By mid-morning, a thin strip of white shone ahead, dividing sea and sky.

  They reached Yoorthed at midday. It stretched away below them, an empty plain of ice, broken in the distance by mountains.

  They winged along the ice cliff just above the sea, searching for caves. When they found none, they circled up over the plain and came down beside a gully filled with snow. The dragons dug into it with powerful claws, carving a cave out of the wind. Bards and dragons pushed down into the sheltering hole in a tangle. Nightraider rested his black head across Seastrider’s white shoulder. Colewolf could hardly be seen under Starpounder’s folded black wing. Kiri knelt to kiss her father, then settled beside Windcaller. Little Marshy snuggled against Teb, under Seastrider’s chin. Bards and dragons slept as the sun climbed the frozen sky and dropped toward evening.

  They woke suddenly. The sense of a creature in pain woke them, a shock of terror that jerked them all out of sleep.

  “Dragon!” Kiri cried, leaping up.

  Windcaller roared, thrusting up out of the cave to leap into the evening sky. The other three dragons bellowed and rose behind her, circling, sensing out.

  Chapter 3

  Ratnisbon has fallen, on our northern border, and half a dozen islands north of Vuchen Vek. In so many lands, young girls are chained within the palaces for the use of the unliving, and men and boys are tortured. No king or army seems any longer able to drive the dark out. My dear husband is the most vigilant of kings, but I fear even for him, and for our green, love
ly land.

  *

  “Young dragons,” Nightraider cried, circling above the bards. “Young dragons—to the north. . . .”

  “No,” said Seastrider, banking away. “One dragon to the south, near that far line of mountains. Can’t you sense her there? She is held immobile, filled with pain, dizzy. . . .”

  ‘To the north!” screamed Nightraider, snapping his wings against the red sky. “Four young dragons to the north.”

  “To the north,” echoed Starpounder. “Dragonlings in the north.”

  Teb stared up at the wheeling dragons, amazed. They seldom argued. But he, too, sensed dragons both to the north and the south. Though from the south, he thought, came the terrible shock of distress.

  ‘To the south,” roared Seastrider, huffing flame. She dropped out of the sky, flaring her wings to land beside him. “South!” she bellowed.

  “We’ll separate,” Teb said. “Seastrider and I, Windcaller and Kiri and Marshy will go south.”

  “It could be a trick of the dark, to separate us,” Camery said.

  “It could be. We will take care.” They might not be able to touch one another’s thoughts so far apart, with the dark so strong.

  Camery and Colewolf mounted up, and the black dragons headed north. They traveled in silence, searching the ice cliffs.

  The white dragons moved fast to the south, Teb leaning down between Seastrider’s wings to watch the frozen land. Marshy rode in front of Kiri, his legs tucked into Windcaller’s harness. The dragons skirted just above the crashing waves, watching the white cliff for caves, for claw marks in the ice, or any sign that a dragon had passed this way. They were gripped by the bleakness of the frozen land, by the absence of life. Teb looked across at Kiri.