Dragonbards Read online

  I could have sent you with your father. But . . . I like having you with me.

  She looked surprised; then her eyes softened with pleasure.

  “Cave ahead!” Marshy shouted. “Cave!” The child leaned so far out into the wind that Kiri grabbed his shoulders. A thin opening yawned in the cliff. The dragons circled, to hover beside it.

  “Go in,” Teb said. “Can you get in?”

  Seastrider studied the black hole, sensed the cave’s emptiness, and slid into the dark slit folding her wings close as Teb lay along her neck. Windcaller followed, Kiri and Marshy crouching low. The roof brushed their backs.

  Inside, the cave opened out into a large, echoing chamber that was almost warm. The riders slid down. Teb took a candle from his pack and struck flint. Flame chased the dragons’ shadows up the frozen walls.

  “There!” Kiri said, pointing to where claw marks scored the ice. Each set of claws was as wide as Marshy’s head—this was a young dragon, not yet full grown. The two dragons sniffed at the marks. Marshy stood on tiptoe and pressed his fingers into the deep scratches. His small hand trembled. His cheeks burned and his gray eyes glowed with a bright, urgent knowledge. Ahead of them somewhere in this frozen land was a very special dragon—the dragon with whom he must be paired. And ahead of them somewhere, his dragon was sick, perhaps dying. He knew this with a deep, instinctive insight.

  Deeper in the cave was a tumbled pile of sheep bones and the backbone of a deer. Marshy found where the young dragon had slept, a circle where the ice had melted and refrozen.

  “A female,” Marshy said, kneeling beside the slick circle to pick up a white dragon scale. All white dragons were female. Each pearly scale was as big as the little boy’s palm. The look on Marshy’s face was the same as Camery’s when she and Nightraider had found each other. It was the same look that had lit Colewolf s eyes when he met Starpounder, after believing for so long that there were no more dragons on Tirror.

  Teb watched Kiri and touched her thoughts. She was glad for Marshy; her mind filled with a prayer to the Graven Light that they would find Marshy’s young dragon in time. But she was torn, too, with a desolate yearning for that moment when she would join with her own dragonmate. Unsteady questions seared her, and the thought that she might never know her own dragon.

  Kiri traveled with Windcaller, but both she and Windcaller searched for another. There was no deciding who would belong to a certain dragon. Such a thing was without choice, established by powers far greater than even bards and dragons could control.

  “Please,” Marshy said, “we must hurry. She is sick, maybe dying.” The two dragons were poised at the mouth of the cave. The bards mounted and headed south again, watching for any movement across the ice plain that was fast dimming toward night. But it was not until the sky was nearly dark, the plain turned to heavy gray, that the two dragons sensed something.

  There, Kiri thought, a gully—that line . . .

  The dragons strained into the wind toward the thin scar that cut across the ice. As they neared it, it widened to a deep ravine. They circled and dropped, hovering, looking down into the cleft, at the shadowed procession that moved along the bottom.

  A procession of small men marched there, leading a train of sleds lashed together and pulled by wolves. Bound to the sled, her head lolling, her tail dragging through the snow, was the limp body of a young white dragon.

  She can’t be dead! Marshy cried. But the little boy’s terror filled them.

  Chapter 4

  The dark seeks to destroy the mystery of our pasts within us—and so destroy our sense of who we are. That is how they will enslave us—by creating a race without self-knowledge. Only dragon song can stop them. Oh, I dream of singing dragons with claws and teeth like ivory swords, tender and affectionate dragons, so clever at the vision making.

  *

  The dragons circled the ravine, driving a sharp wind down across the procession. The white dragonling’s body rocked limply on the line of sleds. They could not tell whether she was alive. Marshy stared down at her, his face white with longing and terror. The fur-clad soldiers flashed swords and spears, looking up at them with no hint of gentleness. These were not human men, but dwarfs. Teb watched them, his hand on his own sword. If the dragonling was dead, surely they had killed her. He clenched his knees into Seastrider’s sides. Dive!

  No, Tebriel. They have not hurt her.

  I said dive!

  Can’t you sense it? They are rescuing her. Seastrider swung her head around close to his face. The dwarf folk mean her no harm! She is near to death. Sick, with something foreign and horrible. It is not their doing.

  Seastrider spread her wings and dropped soft as a white flower beside the procession. Windcaller followed. The small men backed away against the snow cliff, their swords drawn but not lashing out. Dwarfs and bards remained still, watching each other. Seastrider said, They are afraid, Tebriel. But they are not evil. Marshy slid down from Windcaller and pushed boldly past the swords toward the small dragon. Teb and Kiri dismounted, to face the band’s leader.

  He was no taller than six-year-old Marshy, broad and stocky, dressed in heavy ermine furs. His crown was a gold band studded with emeralds, sewn into the ermine hood that covered his ears and the end of his pale beard. His lined face was burned by sun and cold. His eyes were so dark, there seemed to be no pupils. He stood with his feet apart, and they were goat’s feet, hooved. The tops of his furred trousers were tied around his ankles with rawhide straps. Teb saw the delight in Kiri’s eyes, though her face remained solemn. The dwarf king’s sword was a blade of fine blue steel, its gold hilt studded with rubies. The other dwarfs, perhaps forty in all, were richly dressed, all armed with splendid blades.

  “We are dwarfs of the nation of Stilvoke,” the small king said. He eyed the tall white dragons with respect but not, Teb thought, with fear.

  “What do you do with the young dragon?” Teb said. “Where do you take her? What has happened to her?”

  “The dragon has been drugged, young bard. We found her awash in the sea, her body beating against the cliffs. We hauled her out. There was half a dead seal floating beside her, stinking of the drug cadacus.”

  Teb looked at Marshy, filled with pain for him. The child was pressed against the young dragon, his arms trying to circle her neck. So the dark also knew about the new clutch of dragons—if the dwarf could be believed. Did the unliving mean to kill the young dragons, or to capture them? He looked steadily at the dwarf king, his mind edgy with questions.

  “I am Tebriel of Auric.”

  There was a murmur of recognition among the dwarfs.

  “My companions are Kiri of Dacia, and Marshy of Dacia.” Teb studied the dwarf king.

  The dwarf looked back, inscrutable as stone. “The dragonling needs warmth, Prince Tebriel. Death is close on her. We are taking her to our cave. Unless you have a better plan.”

  Teb moved close to the dragon and ran his hand down her neck and side. Her body felt chill and too soft, without the resiliency of life. Marshy pressed his face against hers. Seastrider reached to nose at her; then both big dragons lay down beside her and folded their wings over her and Marshy like a warm tent.

  The dwarf band was silent. Their dark eyes had softened. A young woman soldier reached to touch Seastrider’s neck, in a subtle gesture of gratitude.

  They are good folk, Tebriel, Seastrider said.

  Perhaps you are right.

  Of course I am right, she said curtly, and dismissed him by busying herself with the dragonling.

  Teb watched her with a lopsided grin. She could be infuriating at times.

  When the young dragon seemed warmer, Seastrider bit the traces from the wolves, freeing them of their burden, and she and Windcaller took the leather lines in their mouths.

  “Our cave is five miles up the ravine,” the dwarf king said. The wolves disappeared quickly down the ravine. They had not been speaking wolves, who, out of friendship, might volunteer to pull the sled
s. They had been wild wolves, huge and fierce. No one, Teb thought, could easily make friends with such creatures, except dwarfs. Teb reached down from Seastrider’s back, took the dwarf king’s hand, and the small king clambered up, smiling for the first time. The big dragons set out at a fast pace up the ravine. The dwarf troops trotted double time beside the sled. Teb sat a head taller than the king, his nose filled with the smell of the little man’s furs and of woodsmoke. The king sat very straight. Teb could feel his excitement at riding a dragon. Teb began to sense, with bard power, the past of this small man.

  These dwarfs had lived under the ice mountains for many generations, mining and smelting, crafting fine metal, and weaving brilliant wool garments and blankets and tapestries from their herds of mountain sheep. Teb glanced across at Kiri. She saw his look and smiled.

  I like them. She had lived a long time among street toughs and the soldiers of the dark, bereft of gentleness except among a chosen few. She had lived a long time warily, always on guard. These simple, honest folk pleased her.

  They are like the speaking animals, Windcaller said. They are direct and hide no malice. The speaking foxes and great cats, the speaking wolves and owls and the otters, were among the bards’ dearest friends. The dwarfs, Windcaller said, are just as true.

  Kiri looked across at Teb. Do you still doubt them?

  Teb stared at her. I can be wrong. Aren’t you ever wrong?

  Yes. But I never expect you to be.

  Their eyes held for a moment; then Kiri lowered hers, her cheeks flushing.

  Stilvoke Cave was marked by a large triangular opening in the side of an ice-covered dome that lay at the foot of the mountains. It was all the dwarfs and bards could do to get the linked sleds into the cave and slide the dragonling off onto blankets beside the central fire. King Flam was powerful for his size. Once he removed his outer furs, Teb could see that he was not fat, but strong and muscled. The cave smelled of roasting rabbits and baking bread. Folk streamed in from side caves to see the bards and the young dragon.

  The two big dragons dug themselves a nest outside the cave, thrusting their heads in through the entrance now and then to look at the dragonling. She had not stirred. The dwarf women made a gruel, which Teb and Kiri fed her while Marshy propped her mouth open. The little boy pressed his shoulder between her upper fangs and with his crippled leg held down her lower jaw, balancing on his good leg. Teb held the big cookpot as Kiri ladled in trenchers of the gruel. Because the dragon had not waked, they got her to swallow only with the power of bard spells. Teb watched Marshy, gripped with the child’s painful love for the young creature.

  Marshy was an orphan child, raised by the bards and rebels in Dacia. He had grown up stubbornly insisting there were still dragons on Tirror, though the other bards, Kiri and Camery and Colewolf, had no hope. It was only when Teb and the four dragons appeared in Dacia that the older bards knew that he was right. But now, when Marshy had found his own dragon at last, she was close to death.

  Kiri’s dark eyes searched Teb’s, filled with Marshy’s pain. This was all Marshy had lived for—to join with his own dragon. “She can’t die,” Kiri whispered. “Use the magic of the lyre, Teb. Use it now.”

  They had won the battle of Dacia with the power of the Ivory Lyre of Bayzun. But afterward, the lyre had seemed weakened.

  The lyre, carved from the claws of the ancient dragon Bayzun, held all of Bayzun’s strength—and all his weakness. It, like the dying dragon, faded easily and built its strength again only slowly.

  They had been wary of using it again, saving it for the most urgent need against the dark forces.

  “It is needed now,” Kiri said. “Use it now.”

  Teb touched one silver string. The lyre’s clear voice rang through the cave bright as starlight, embracing them with promise. He held its cry to whispered softness, for the presence of the dark was ever near. He did not want to draw the dark here. He joined his own power with the lyre, and with Kiri and Marshy and the dragons, to make a lingering song of life. Though it filled the cave only softly, it stirred every living soul within its hearing. . . .

  Except the dragonling. She did not stir.

  Teb looked at Kiri. The lyre’s subtle song was not enough. They might alert the dark, but he must make the magic shout, make the cave thunder with the lyre’s power, no matter how close were the dark unliving.

  Kiri’s brown eyes went wide with wonder and with fear, and with a tender, consuming love that Teb sensed, but could not sort out—love for the young dragon, surely.

  Chapter 5

  The dark captains move into the villages two and three at a time to take control, warping minds with their dark powers and with drugs, molding willing slaves. In the cities their manipulations are more intricate, as they win the allegiance of kings.

  *

  Teb touched the lyre’s strings again. All faces were turned to him, solemn and expectant. He slapped the silver strings so the lyre’s music raged, summoning wild winds and thunder across Stilvoke Cave. He brought to the young dragon’s sleeping mind the power of dragons, the fearsome passion of dragons, and their tangled past.

  When he let the lyre’s music quiet to a rhythm like pounding blood, he brought a vision of a dragon nest cradled by mountain winds, where sky-colored eggs reflected clouds, and where dragon babies shattered their shells and pushed up toward the welcoming sky—but suddenly the lyre’s voice died, sucked away to silence beneath Teb’s hands.

  The cave was silent. Only the echo of the lyre’s voice clung.

  Still the dragonling did not stir. But Teb could feel a change in her, subtle as breath, and knew the lyre’s power had drawn her back from the thin edge of dying. Her body seemed rounder, and her white scales had begun to shine with iridescent colors. Marshy stroked and stroked her, murmuring and calling to her. King Flam began, again, to feed her.

  Suddenly she moved one forefoot.

  But then she was still again, though she began to swallow alone, without the need for magic. Teb stared down at the small ivory lyre. Had he used up all its strength? Kiri laid her hand on the warm ivory, her eyes questioning him. He touched one string.

  Silence.

  King Flam said, “The flaw is in the ivory, young bards. Do you not know that? It renews itself only slowly.”

  Teb stared at him. “How could you know such a thing?”

  King Flam smiled. “When you first found the lyre, Prince Tebriel, when you broke the spell that hid it, all Tirror knew once again of its existence.”

  “Even so, how could you know something we did not?”

  “Has not much of your knowledge been destroyed by the dark powers, Tebriel?”

  “It has.”

  “The dark was surely disturbed when you broke the spell on the lyre. It cannot be pleased that you now wield the lyre’s power. I expect the dark unliving would make every effort to destroy your knowledge of the lyre’s one flaw. Would it not?”

  “But you . . .”

  “The dwarf nation is an ancient family, Prince Tebriel. It was our own dwarf ancestor who carved the lyre from the claws of Bayzun.”

  “You descend from the line of Eppennen?”

  “We do. And our knowledge of the lyre, once that knowledge was returned to us, is quite complete.”

  Teb tucked the lyre back inside his tunic, cursing the dark that confused the bards’ own rightful knowledge. “Will you tell us how you found the dragonling?” he asked.

  “We were fishing,” King Flam said. “When we came around a bend in the cliff, she was thrashing and struggling across the ice. Her face was smeared with blood, and the dead seal lay next to her, half eaten. We had seen her often in the sky, with her brothers and sisters. We knew the dark soldiers searched for them.”

  “Quazelzeg’s soldiers,” Teb said.

  King Flam nodded. “Quazelzeg keeps a disciple to practice his evil in this land, but the man is a dull creature. When Quazelzeg wants something particular, he sends his own troops. It is Quaz
elzeg’s ships that search for the young dragons. Surely it was they who left the poisoned seal—surely they who killed this dragonling’s nestmate.”

  Teb’s hand paused in midair.

  “Killed . . .” Kiri said. “Oh, no . . .”

  King Flam nodded. “There were six dragons in the clutch. Three females, three males.” He spoke softly, watching Teb, then returned to the rhythm of ladling. “One female was hunted down some months ago by Quazelzeg’s soldiers. They caught her in the swamp south of Stilvoke. They . . . beheaded her.”

  Kiri gasped.

  “A trophy for Quazelzeg, I suppose. My folk found her body by a lake in the marsh when they were dragging for crayfish. The land is warm there, heated by the volcano. It is a place that would appeal to dragons. Her wings were broken; she could not have flown from her pursuers.”

  Kiri turned away, sick.

  “They will pay for it,” Teb said. “We must get the other dragonlings to safety. Two bards are searching for them now, up the coast.”

  “The young dragons like to hunt up the coast around the otter colony of Cekus Bay.”

  “A nation of otters!” Teb said.

  “Yes, the otters are good folk. We visit them often. Their waters around Cekus Volcano are warm, the fishing rich. But those waters are shark filled, too. The otter nation is pleased to have the young dragons hunt the predators.”

  “I lived with the otters of Nightpool for four years,” Teb said. “They took care of me when my leg was shattered and my memory gone. They raised me, taught me. They are like my own kin.”

  King Flam motioned for another pot of gruel. “How did you end up there? What happened to you? We knew that your father, the King of Auric, was murdered.”

  Teb nodded. “By a trusted officer, a captain named Sivich. I was seven, my sister, Camery, was nine. Sivich’s men held us, made us watch him kill our father.