Nightpool

Chapter 13

It was spring before the owl returned. They did not see the hydrus again, though a watch was kept at all times from the high ridge above Thakkur’s cave. Winter settled in early and fierce, cutting the warm autumn away with sheets of blizzard-cold wind, and the seas grew huge and pounding, so all the otters, even Thakkur, moved out of the seaward caves into those overlooking the inner valley.

Teb moved into Charkky and Mikk’s cave, bringing his new gull-feather blanket, to the envy of both otters. On the coldest nights they all three slept under it. He supposed he smelled as fishy now as the otters did, though he was still aware of their fishy breath at night. It was nice sleeping close to their warm, silky smoothness, and they were all three cozy and snug even on the stormiest nights. Both Charkky and Mikk had come to like cooked shellfish, and the three of them made their fires on the little beach below the south cliff where the waves rolled by at an angle. Hardly anyone came there. Twice a day they boiled up a succulent meal in the black iron pot. But it was here that Ekkthurian and Gorkk and Urikk appeared suddenly one evening from around the bend of the cliff, their black eyes flashing with fury and their teeth bared.

“I thought I smelled a stench,” said Ekkthurian. “Fire! It is fire! A vile human habit. And what are you two doing, Charkky and Mikk? One might expect it of a human, but young otters do not play with fire.”

“We are cooking supper,” said Mikk evenly. “Go away.”

Charkky stared at Mikk, amazed. It was not the custom to be rude to your elders. And then, taking heart from Mikk, Charkky showed his teeth to the sour old otter and gave him a low, angry growl.

“Thakkur said we could cook here,” Teb said. “He said I could make a fire.”

Ekkthurian scowled at the three of them and began to kick sand into the fire and the cookpot. Teb watched their meal ruined and did nothing. It was not his place, as an outsider, to defy Ekkthurian. He kept his anger in check with great effort, even when the thin otter turned on him with lips drawn back, his eyes slitted and his ears laid flat to his head. “Not only do you make fire, human boy, you bring other evil as well.”

“What evil?” Teb stood his ground, daring Ekkthurian to bite him.

“You have brought human weapons to Nightpool. Not only knives, but you assist the otters themselves in making a bow. It is against the ways of the animals to have such things.”

All three stared. How did Ekkthurian know? Mikk had found a fine piece of oak washed onto the beach, and they had, indeed, been carving out a bow and fashioning shell tips for arrows, the two otters working carefully at this new skill and very pleased with themselves.

“The bow isn’t hurting you; it might even help you someday,” Mikk said reasonably. “And the fires don’t hurt you, either. Why can’t you leave Teb alone?”

“He does not belong here. No human belongs here. He has turned Thakkur’s mind. Thakkur had no business allowing him in Nightpool.”

Teb stared at Ekkthurian, then turned away and emptied his cookpot onto the fire, drowning the flame and ruining their supper. Then he climbed the cliff beside Charkky and Mikk.

They ate raw food that night. But the next day, at Thakkur’s direction, they built their fire right on the ledge below the cave and cooked their supper there before a ring of curious, arguing otters. And it was then that two factions began to grow, one fanned by Ekkthurian’s fury, the other angered by his interference, until all over the island, otters were arguing.

Teb supposed Ekkthurian’s little group had a right to be critical if they wished. But did they have a right to try to turn others against him?

“It will pass,” Mitta said. “Thakkur will deal with it.”

But it doesn’t take many folk to make misery when they speak with hatred. Teb and Charkky and Mikk and the younger otters kept more and more to themselves, and this did not please Thakkur. He did not want the island divided. Then the owl returned, and for a while the quarrel was forgotten.

With the coming of spring the colony had moved back into the caves on the outer rim, and though Teb missed Charkky and Mikk, it was nice to have solitude, too. The owl came swooping directly in from the sea one evening, dropping low along the cliff like a great black shadow, to darken the cliffside doorways and startle the otters at supper. His scream brought them out onto the ledge, staring. Teb had been sewing a pair of sharkskin flippers, fitting them to his feet, and he jammed the needle into his finger hard when the first cry came. He ran out to see the red-beaked old fellow flapping and scolding at a band of strapping cubs that were leaping along the ledge after him, huffing and swearing. The owl banked again, saw Teb, and turned back to land on Teb’s shoulder, almost throwing him down the cliff. The young otters were on Teb at once, clambering up his legs to get at it, shouting words Teb didn’t know they knew. Farther along the ledge he could see the white otter emerge.

“There he is,” shouted the owl. “It’s Thakkur I want to see.” He swept away, and Teb followed, running, and at Thakkur’s cave, the owl flew straight in and landed on a high shelf, his great ears straight out with anger as he stared down at the clambering youngsters who had followed. Thakkur stood looking up at him, his whiskers twitching with amusement.

The owl glared. “Your young haven’t any manners at all. I didn’t know otters could swear like that.”

“They can when they think the clan is threatened,” Thakkur said. “You must be Red Unat. I have heard of you. Old Bloody Beak, I’ve heard you called.”

The owl’s ears twitched. He scowled at Thakkur, then opened his beak in what might be a smile, though it looked more as if he would eat Thakkur. “Old Bloody Beak it is, Thakkur of Nightpool. And I have heard a tale or two about you.”

Otters had gathered thick in the cave. Charkky pushed close to Teb, his whiskers stiff with interest.

“Did you find the hydrus?” Thakkur asked. “Did it die from the wounds our otters gave it?”

“I tracked it by disturbances among the fishes, a great empty swath and the little fish all adither on both sides. I tracked it to Mernmeth, and there was blood on the waters there.”

“Mernmeth,” Charkky whispered to Teb, “is a drowned city north and east, where a great shallow runs out.”

“Did it die there?” asked Thakkur.

“It is still alive. It thrashed in agony, but it lived. I watched and patrolled the coast, very hard work in the icy weather. When it emerged again in dead winter, I followed it.

“It went north. It has been attacking the harbors along the Benaynne Archipelago, where Quazelzeg’s armies are raiding. It prevents escape by water, and Quazelzeg has taken many slaves and murdered hundreds.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Thakkur. “Though it is not unexpected.”

“If the dark raiders are not stopped,” said Red Unat, “no one will be safe from them. They are not men, and are much more dangerous than humans. Quazelzeg and those closest to him are, in truth, the unliving, dedicated to anything that negates life, that defiles and destroys the strength of life.”

Teb stood tense. All of this was so very familiar, and yet still the dark emptiness lay in his mind.

“At some point,” said Red Unat, “the animals must join against Quazelzeg. It is inevitable. The great cats and wolves, and the foxes, perhaps even unicorns, though they have disappeared from this hemisphere into the elfin lands. But mark you, the animals must join forces. Already there is talk of such things.” He settled more comfortably on his perch and fluffed his feathers. Thakkur sat up straighter on his sleeping bench, his broad white tail stretched along it, his front paws together, his whiskers stiff as he stared up at Red Unat.

“There is a resistance army growing among the humans,” the owl said. “But Quazelzeg is powerful, more powerful than many understand.

“He took five hundred hostages at Mevidin and is forcing them to serve as soldiers and camp slaves, even the small girls. He has divided his forces into three bands to drive wedges down into the Nasden Confederacy, and he strips the fields of food for his own forces, leaving the cities and villages to starve.”

Teb listened for a long time, sick at the talk and agitated with his own inner turmoil as memories tried to push out. That night his dreams were filled with wings. With the owl’s swooping wings, and with the fluttering wings of a tiny owl as it flew to his shoulder and whispered some message to him. He also dreamt of the heavy, dark wings of slavering jackals, as the creatures snarled and flapped around his face.

Then came wings so huge, so bright and glowing, that they were like pearl-tinted clouds descending. He reached out to them laughing, and the dragon looked down at him, her long green eyes lit with some wonderful message. Then fires came in his dreams. The hearth fire in a tapestried room, a cookfire surrounded by soldiers. Fires and wings twisted together, and there were faces. A red-haired man and an old graying man, and the face of a girl, golden and smiling.

He woke.

And he remembered.

Dawn had barely come, the sky and sea deep gray. He lay looking at the pale lines of waves, remembering it all, his father’s murder before his eyes in the hall, his mother’s drowning, his own enslavement, and Blaggen and the stinking jackals. His journey tied to the horse like a sack of meal, his escape with Garit and Pakkna. Nison-Serth and the foxes, the dear foxes.

The cage, and the dragon tearing at his chains, pulling them free, and searing them from his legs with her hot breath. He remembered running and dodging between racing horsemen, being snatched up by a horseman on a white mount, then falling. . . .

Then nothing, until he woke bobbing on the sea, soaking from the waves, the pain in his leg terrible. And Charkky’s and Mikk’s wet, concerned frowns.

He sat thinking for a long time, and then went along the cliff to Thakkur’s cave. He found the white otter making a meal of periwinkles and sea urchin roe that one of the cubs had brought him. He sat down quietly.

The white otter’s dark eyes looked him over. Teb looked back, filled with news. And with questions.

Thakkur finished the roe and rose to toss the shells into the sea; then he turned again to Teb. “You remember,” he said simply. “I see it in your face. You remember.” His dark eyes were filled with kindness and with wisdom.

“Yes, I remember. I dreamt, then woke remembering. So strange. How could I have forgotten it all? Even my sister?” The cool sea wind touched him as it circled Thakkur’s cave. He stared at Thakkur’s dark, caring eyes. “I am Tebriel, son of the murdered King of Auric. My father was killed by Sivich of the dark raiders. My mother drowned in the Bay of Dubla.”

They talked for a long time. Teb told Thakkur all that had happened on the journey to Baylentha, and much that happened before. He told a great deal about his mother, and once he felt tears start, but he choked them back. He told about the little owl carrying messages to Camery. And that Sivich intended to use Camery for breeding. Thakkur listened. But he offered no answers.

“I must leave Nightpool now. I must help Camery; somehow I must get her away from Sivich.”

Thakkur said nothing for a long time. He moved about the cave, looking out at the sea, rearing up to touch objects along the shelves. Then he dropped to all fours, and flowed up into his sleeping shelf, his movements liquid and graceful, from his broad white tail to his black nose and eyes.

“I expect the owl will return very soon,” he said, rearing up on his sleeping shelf to stare at Teb. “You would do better to wait for him. He will have more news of Auric, for he goes to seek out the underground armies that are said to be based at Bleven.”

“Bleven is where Garit sent me.”

“Yes. It is possible your friend Garit has already rescued Camery. The owl could learn whether she is still in the tower and save you possible capture. It would be no trick for him to drop down into the tower at night and never wake the jackals.”

Teb knew that Thakkur was right, though all his anger at Sivich, all his instincts, tried to drive him out at once to attack the palace at Auric. But alone? What could he do alone?

“If you go now and are killed or taken captive again,” Thakkur said reasonably, “what good will that do your sister? And what help will that be to Auric, or to the forces that fight the dark?”

“What is the dark? I know what the foxes told me, that it is the unliving, that it—” Teb stopped abruptly, staring at Thakkur. “That it takes your memory away,” he said slowly. “Gone—they showed me, Renata showed me. It was like what I felt. Exactly.”

Thakkur looked back at him.

“Did the dark do that to me?”

The white otter shook his head. “I cannot tell, Tebriel. There are other things that make one’s memory fail. Injury, severe sickness. You cannot be certain it was the dark.”

The white otter moved, gliding across the cave and back restlessly. They could hear the laughter of a band of young otters playing in the waves. When Thakkur spoke again, it was sadly.

“You cannot know for certain. You cannot know precisely what the dark is, either, Tebriel, until you can know the turnings of Tirror’s past. Few on Tirror remember, yet only through understanding how Tirror was born can one understand the dark.”

“Tell me, then. Will you tell me?”

Thakkur settled onto his shelf and folded one paw over the other. And as he began the tale of Tirror, pictures came in Teb’s mind of all Thakkur told him, and of more, as if Thakkur’s words unlocked stores of knowledge in his own mind, hidden and surprising.

“Tirror was born a spinning ball of gases,” Thakkur said, “a ball of gases formed by a hand of such power that no creature can know its true nature, the power of the Graven Light. The ball spun and cooled to molten fire, then over centuries it turned to barren stone. All by design, Tebriel. It warped and twisted into mountains and valleys, but there was no tree or plant, no animal, no water to nurture life. Then the power of the Graven Light covered the barren, cooling world with clouds, and the clouds gave down water, and then life came. Small at first, then richer, more varied, until all Tirror knew creatures and plants and abundance.

“But from the very beginning, the fire and bareness and the promise of life lured the dark that always exists in black space, and that luring was not by design. The dark crept through crevices into the molten stone, and it lay dormant through all the changes, and even the power that made Tirror could not rout it. It insinuated itself into each new form the land took. And it waited. It is the opposite to the force of light that created Tirror, and perhaps for this reason it could not be routed. It is malevolent, it is thirsty, and it lay accumulating self-knowledge and earth-knowledge.”

Teb shivered. “And the light couldn’t drive it out?”

“The light did nothing.”

“But. . .”

“Perhaps it is a part of the pattern, that the dark be here. That it works its own forces and its own tests upon Tirror’s life. I don’t know, Tebriel. I know a soul can find true life or fall dying, according to whether it embraces the dark.” The white otter took up a small round stone and held it quietly, as if it soothed him. “Humans don’t remember, as they once did, 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 that once were the only land on Tirror.”

Teb tried to imagine huge continents, and no island nations, but could not. “How could that be? What happened to them?”

“Those five continents were drowned. The small island continents are the highest mountains of those vast lands; they are all that remains above water.

“Once there were great ice caps on Tirror, but then the weather grew warmer. The ice began to melt and flood the seas. The seas rose and flooded the land, and drowned the lowlands and the valleys and all the cities there. It did not happen quickly; the shores crept up and up, and folk moved slowly back. But many starved when the crop lands and pastures were covered.”

“How could people forget such a thing? How long ago?”

“Perhaps twenty generations. Humans have forgotten because the source of their world memory is all but gone.

“Once this knowledge was relived in every village, in every place where men and animals met, in ceremonies in the old temple sanctuaries. The past was brought alive by the skill of the singing dragons and the dragonbards, by the wonder of the dragon song. . . .”

A strange feeling gripped Teb, a sense of power that puzzled him, and he saw his hands were shaking and clasped them tight.

“But the force of the dark grew stronger, until at last it drove the dragons out, and captured or killed the bards. And the dark spread tales about the dragon song until soon folk no longer believed in it. And then, at last, it seemed there were no more dragons, not anywhere on Tirror. Memory died. And with its death, each person was separated from the rich multitude of the past, and was alone. Without memory, Tebriel, we cannot know what the present means. We cannot understand evil, or goodness. Our world is caught in despair. Perhaps it was the scent of despair that drew a more powerful dark to us, that drew the unliving into Tirror from far worlds.

“In the far north,” Thakkur said, “lies a black palace that once was hidden beneath the ice. Where it came from, no one knows. When the ice melted, it stood alone there, and it is girded with uncounted doors, and each door leads to a world beyond this world.

“It is believed that Quazelzeg came from there and brought the sea hydrus, and brought a terrible lust to join with the dark of Tirror. And that is when the dark began to rise and create forces to crush all world memory, bringing despair, and so in the end crushing all life except that which it will enslave.”

“He brought the sea hydrus,” Teb said. And he could feel again the creature’s dark evil. “It made a blackness in my mind. It destroyed . . . something I did remember. I thought, when I looked at it, that it. . . wanted to possess me.”

There was a long silence between them, in which, it seemed to Teb, questions and answers and knowledge passed back and forth, things Thakkur was unwilling to speak of, things subtle and secret and not to be spoken of, yet.

“It may well have wanted to possess you, Tebriel.” They stared at each other.

After a long time, Thakkur said, “It is told that, once, the dark leaders trained the hydrus to drive out and kill the singing dragons. Dark soldiers used to capture the baby singing dragons when they flew tame and gentle into the cities, and they put them into a pit with a hydrus. The babies would stand up on their hind legs and try to sing—until the hydrus tore out their throats.”