Nightpool

Chapter 17

Teb remained on the meadows above the sea cliff only long enough to feel out of place and exposed. The band of horses he had startled as he climbed the cliff had disappeared beyond the hills. No one was in sight, but soldiers could appear from the hills; it was foolish to be traveling so openly across this land in the daytime. Even when he kept to the small stands of woods and the low valleys, he felt exposed. When he had passed the point of Jade Beach, he made his way down the cliff and walked along the rocks beside the sea, where he was safer from humans.

In midafternoon he gathered clams and mussels, built a small fire, and made a meal. He passed the cave of the ghost, and stopped to stare in as the hundreds of birds swept screaming on their own wind low above his head. The rocks were slippery as he crossed past the cave. He kept watching the sea, foolishly, for the sight of familiar otter faces and knew he would see none. He camped well before dark, away from the edge of the cliff, in a small stand of almond trees that grew nestled between two hills. He could hear the sea’s pounding close by, and the smell of the salt wind was comfortable, but he was too far from the edge of the cliff to be reached by those three giant heads, if the hydrus should come in the night. He felt it would come; he felt a sense of it almost as if he could smell it.

Maybe he only imagined that it wanted him. Maybe he only imagined the power he thought he could touch and that it seemed to want. Why would he have some mysterious power? Maybe he was just a homeless boy trying to become a man by imagining powers that did not exist.

But the songs had power. He had felt that power touch him, from his mother’s songs. And he had seen his own songs touch the otters. The power of the songs, he thought . . .

And he slept.

*

The hydrus was there when he woke. He didn’t know it was. He yawned and stretched and went down to the sea to wash, as he had done every day for four years, hardly looking, wanting that salty bath.

He swam, staying in close in a shallow bay, watching the sea now, wishing he could feel vibrations as the otters did; but feeling certain, too, that this new power he felt within himself would tell him if the hydrus was close. He came out and, as he dried in the early-rising sun, gathered his breakfast from the rocks.

Behind him the sea lapped gently. The early sun was warm on his back, its light reflected in flashes of his blade as he pried the mussels loose. The young ones were the most tender. He heard the cry of a passing gull; then suddenly the hydrus was over him, snatching him up, its teeth across his middle, his feet inside its mouth, his arms pinioned. All he could see was lips and face, those huge muddy eyes, and the land receding fast. And each time he moved, it bit tighter. His fist was clamped on his knife, but its teeth pressed on his arm. And though the hydrus said no word, he felt that it would speak. He hung rigid in its mouth watching the waves crest before its swimming feet. Then the other two heads came around to look at him, and the four muddy eyes saw everything about him. He didn’t want to look anymore, yet couldn’t help but look, and he felt his mind go empty. He was so afraid that at last terror left him, and he fell into a cold, emotionless state, where every detail was magnified. He watched its black, finned feet breaking the water. He watched the sea flash below. He studied the black pitted skin of its body, torn with bleeding wounds, and he smelled the creature’s blood. He saw every detail of the two faces, the elongated muzzles and wide mouths, the pale skin of the faces contrasted with the black wrinkled hide of the body, the coarse, bristling hair and muddy eyes: human faces warped into terrible parodies.

It traveled for a long way out into the sea. Teb lost track of time, but the sun came up high overhead and burned him, and then dropped behind the hydrus as the creature swept on. There was no hint of land, not even a jutting rock. The sea was the dark color that speaks of terrible depths. Fish swerved away from its swimming wake, fish that live only in the vast open sea. The sun dropped low in the sky on the watery horizon behind them. And then at last and suddenly, the hydrus dove; Teb gulped air once, then water closed over him and the hydrus was speeding down and down through water as dark as night. He would die now. Why was it diving? Why didn’t it just crush him in its jaws? Down and down in the darkness—or had it begun to rise again? It didn’t matter—he was drowning; his ears rang and his lungs were tight; he had to breathe in water, couldn’t hold any longer.

The hydrus broke out of water into a pocket of air; Teb gulped breath, panting. And then it dropped him back into the water; and as he floundered, he saw that stone walls surrounded the pool of sea where he struggled to keep afloat. He stared up at the stone walls and at a small smear of sky far above. Was he at the bottom of an immense stone chimney, somehow flooded by the sea? Or in a flooded tower perhaps? The hydrus was gone. Turning, he discovered the opening through which it had vanished, and saw the huge slab of stone blocking it, the water still rocking where the hydrus had pulled the rock across. His fear made him panic; he thrashed uselessly in the rolling water and gulped a mouthful and choked. He tried to calm himself, then began to study the rock wall, searching for handholds, for a way to climb.

*

Teb’s capture did not go unheeded. In Nightpool, Thakkur was shocked awake from a short nap, sat up in his cave confused, then, gathering his mind into clarity, went immediately to the big meeting cave, to the sacred shell. He stood letting the smoky surface dim and glow as he repeated and repeated Teb’s name; and Thakkur saw, and watched for a long time that terrible swimming voyage with Teb grasped in the mouth of the hydrus; but the visions faded and vanished before ever the hydrus dove.

Others knew of Teb’s capture, too. Though not so soon as Thakkur knew. At first Dawncloud knew only that something dark came seeking into her mind, wanting the songs she sang, something that coupled with her thoughts and tried to suck the words from her and distort them. As Thakkur strained to retain the dim vision in the foggy depths of the clamshell, as he saw at last the figure of Tebriel trapped among drowned stone, Dawncloud keened in bewilderment, then rocked in growing anger on her nest. The five dragonlings hissed with fury and stared north, and Seastrider rose up on the edge of the nest and keened out in fire-breathing confusion, knowing something was wrong but not able to understand what.

In the drowned, ruined tower of the castle Braudel, of the drowned city of Cophillon of the great drowned continent of Ancotas, a very long way from Nightpool, Tebriel at last found footholds sufficient to climb the height of the stone wall. It wasn’t easy climbing, for the mason had set the stones as tightly and evenly as he knew how, and only where a bit of mortar had washed away by high seas could Teb find any foothold. Seven times he climbed partway, then fell back, until it grew too dark to try. The night seemed endless as he hung in the chill, dark water clinging to one small niche in the stone, kicking to keep afloat and terrified he would fall asleep and lose his grip on the stone and drown. He began again to climb at first light. The hydrus had not returned, but he could hear it sometimes thrashing and heaving outside the wall. He thought of its wounds and hoped it was dying. He climbed again and again, weaker now, and his thirst was terrible. And then at last, bleeding and clutching, he gained the top of the wall and lay along it, panting and shivering, then fell into a druglike doze, waking sometimes to hear the sea pound below and to lie listening helplessly for the hydrus’s return. He hadn’t the strength or the courage to drop over the outside of the wall into the heaving sea. His head swam with blackness, and soon he was sweating and burning with the sun’s heat. He didn’t see until much later, when he woke fully, the three cupped niches along the wall’s top, where stones had broken away. They were filled with rainwater, and when he did see, he edged along the wall to them and drank them dry, unwilling to leave any for later. Who knew what would happen later?

He could not see land in any direction and could not imagine how far from Auric he might be. The sea heaved and rolled in a different way out here so far from land, its flowing surface broken only by the cluster of emerging tile rooftops and stone walls, ragged and crusted with barnacles, that thrust up out of the water. He knew he was seeing just the highest towers and tallest buildings of the drowned city. The exposed windows of the topmost rooms had lost their shutters, and looked hollow and forlorn. The walls below the surface went all wavy with the movement of the sea. The water all around the sunken city was lighter, greener, marking the shallowness of this place. It must have been a mountaintop city. The sea turned dark a way off, as the shelf dropped into the awesome depths, as Charkky called the deepest sea.

Which way was Auric? The sun sat so perfectly overhead that he had no idea of direction. Later, when the sun dropped, he would know. He could jump then, and swim for it. If he rested in the water, took his time, he could swim for hours.

If nothing bothered him. When night came he would follow the stars of the nine sisters, and Mimmilette, which Thakkur called the one-legged cub, and the pale smear of Casscassonne, Tirror’s false moon.

He leaned down to stare at the outside of the wall, then began to pry off barnacles and stuff the tough shellfish into his mouth. He hung there eating until he began to feel sick, then righted himself and sat astraddle again. The outside of the wall was rougher and would be easy to climb down. He was squinting around at the horizon, trying to see a smudge of land, when a stirring below made him turn back to stare down inside the tower. The hydrus was slipping through into it, huddling its three heads down to clear the space, then churning and flapping in the water as if it sought his drowned body. Then it stilled and stared up at him with all three faces. And it was now at last that the hydrus spoke to him, filling him with fear and disgust. One head spoke, and then another, echoing back and forth, the voices harsh and resonant and pounding in his mind, pounding all through him so he went weak and sweating. And it was then he knew deep inside himself that he could not escape. That it would have him, that if he climbed outward into the sea it would be out there at him in seconds, that somehow it would have him down from the tower. Every word it spoke increased his fear, though afterward he could not remember those words, only knew their meaning. It would have his mind; it would own him. The creature’s mind pulled at him so he felt he was falling down into the dark circle of the sea beside it. . . .

He did not fall. His mind went dizzy and empty, and he lay unconscious along the top of the wall unaware of anything, unaware of the hydrus that tried to command him. He was aware only of a world within, of songs exploding to show scenes of battle, ballads intricate and vivid with the seething life of Tirror.

The song gave him ships headed through heaving seas for a forested coast; it cried out in cadences that made men and horses leap into the sea and swim through surf to drive back defending armies; the song showed the land fallen waste, the crops and towns burned. It showed new cities rising slowly amid fear and starvation as the conquerors worked their slaves.

Then he saw children gathered, singing the same song he heard, and he saw the bard who led them, standing tall between the feet of a pearl-white dragon who sang with him; he heard her song so clearly he started. And she made the songs come to life more clearly than he ever had. He could hear the shouts, and smell the horses and the blood, smell the sweat of the soldiers and hear their cries. The dragon made it more real than ever he could have done. And he knew her—for it was himself there standing between her claws. He was certain all at once what his sense of power meant, and knew why he longed for the dragon: He knew at last with thundering clarity what he was born to do. The word “dragonbard” flared in his mind, and all the songs he knew glowed bright and waiting, meant to be told, meant to be sung, coupled with the voice of the dragon. It was bard and dragon together who made the songs live, made them real in the listener’s mind as if he were truly there hearing the shouting and feeling the pain and joy. She was a time-creature, taking the listener back, making him live that time so he knew it as a part of himself. Dragon and bard together, the making of song, the making of a magical reliving, the continued rebirth of life, and of hope.

But then the brightness faded and his songs began to darken and to change, and he could not prevent the changing. Now he saw himself forcing the will of the dragon, making it sing new, dark words. And in the darkness, he knew that dragons had no right to make songs, that only he could make them, painted in darkness, and that the dragon must be made to follow him. Oh, yes, she would follow. The colors of his songs were dark and fine, and a great crowd gathered to hear him and to believe him. He felt his own power rising, growing, saw the throngs that mobbed around him, yearning for his words. Yes, this was the way, the way of the dark, the way the hydrus showed him, yes. This was what he would do with his life—bring the dragon to him and train her to sing as he wished, as the dark wished, for he was the master, not she. His vision was steeped in shadows and black mists that matched the voice in his mind, strong and soothing and shaping his need, pushing back the flare of conscience that prickled him.

He lay, at last, spent, spread-eagled along the wall. The circle of sea at the bottom of the stone tower was empty now. Above him the sky was dark but cloud-driven, the sun long since gone and the sea wind chilled. He lay there for hours, listening, seeing, changing inside himself. He thought of the hydrus now with warmth and knew it had been right to bring him here, knew it was the wisest of creatures, knew it would care for him.

He sat up, ignoring thirst. He ate some barnacles, sucking their meager juice. He must bring the dragon here, the small dragon, the one called Seastrider, yes, and together they would make their songs here. He would train her here under the knowing guidance of the hydrus, he would train her to the true way. Dark songs, yes, compelling songs to lead in righteousness the hordes that must be led. . . .

At last he slept, flung across the wall.