The Dragonbards

Chapter 27

Cries of battle echoed through the cave. Teb saw visions of animals falling and arrows piercing the diving dragons. He saw Snowblitz thrashing with a bleeding wing and saw the dark unliving striding among the fallen, tasting gore, swinging their swords and laughing. He tried to bring power with his own voice, with song. Sweating, choking, he could hardly use his cracking voice. The lyre remained silent.

There is only one way, Tebriel. Give the lyre to Bayzun. There it can regain its strength. Our armies are dying, Teb.

He had failed Tirror twice, failed them all. He must not fail now. He stood staring at Bayzun’s skeleton and could do nothing. Bayzun stared back at him, seeming engorged with eerie power.

Did not Bayzun command him to return the lyre? Why else was he here, but to return it? Again he knelt before the skeleton. What harm could come from Bayzun? He held out the lyre, reaching. . . .

But something stopped him, made him draw back. This was not the way. . . .

Thakkur’s words thundered in his memory. Do not underestimate Quazelzeg. . . .

He must trust nothing. To give the lyre from his grasp, in these endless and alien worlds, could risk everything. In one final, false step, he could give Quazelzeg and the dark a terrible power. Visions of the battle surged. He turned.

He saw Meriden astride her dragon, winging down the well of sky toward him.

But suddenly the dragon was gone. Meriden was falling, alone, falling through the endless cleft. . . falling . . . falling alone reaching out to him. Do not give the lyre. Dark winds tumbled her and flung her down chasms; boulders spun and bounced against her.

Quazelzeg’s voice exploded. “Give the lyre to Bayzun, and I will release her.”

“No!” she cried. “You will destroy everything!”

“Let her go!” Teb shouted. “I will NOT give the lyre! Release her!” But his voice choked with uncertainty.

Meriden was pulled through shifting winds and swept crashing into stone. She was pressed between stone walls so tight she was nearly crushed, could not lift her arms, stone crushing her cheek, twisting her body. . . .

“Give me the lyre!”

“I will NOT! Release her!” But he was shaking with terror for her.

Suddenly the rock exploded, throwing her into space again. Quazelzeg’s laugh was terrible, thundering echoing as she fell careening among pieces of the mountain. Visions of battle clashed around Meriden’s falling figure. The armies of light were pulling back. The whole of the universe seemed filled with the dark’s swelling power.

He must make the lyre speak. He must.

He tried, straining, and could not.

“Give the lyre! Save your mother! Save Tirror!”

Defeat filled him. He had no choice. He could not let her die—even for Tirror. He stared at Bayzun’s mutilated toes, from which the lyre had been carved.

“No, Teb! No!”

How could he help but give it? He reached out with the lyre. . . .

Quazelzeg appeared suddenly, blocking the skeleton, pulling the lyre from him. . . .

“No!” He struck Quazelzeg’s hands from the lyre, broke his grip with one sharp blow, knocked the un-man down as he jerked the lyre away. He shouted a bard’s song at Quazelzeg, wrought of all the pain and love in him. A terrible power of love rose out of him, a power he had nearly denied, love for Tirror, love for all the world he had nearly lost—love for his mother and what she was and for all those close to him. They would be nothing if Tirror were lost, they would all be lost, Meriden destroyed. In that moment of terrible understanding, his hands struck the strings again and the lyre sang out fierce and wild with love.

But in the moment that Quazelzeg had held the lyre, a rift had been torn between worlds. Quazelzeg’s laughter thundered. “Too late! Useless! Too late—the Doors are open now!” Teb saw the hordes pouring through onto the battlefield. A blood-faced shade scuttled through. A vulture with a woman’s eyes fled through. Too late. . . . The barrier had been torn. The dark hordes came rushing. Doors flung open across a thousand worlds and a black mass of monsters poured into Tirror, leaping onto the backs of the retreating armies, slashing at the horses’ legs. The lyre’s song rang out, and the attack faltered—but not enough. From every palace window and door, dark incubi and blood-licking demons crawled and flew, howling, reaching. The air was a tangle of screams and groans and stinks. Quazelzeg’s laughter thundered. ‘Too late, too late . . .” A young otter was stabbed, screaming. Monstrous vultures snatched up foxes and wolves.

“No!” Teb shouted. “No!” Not even the lyre was stopping them. “Bayzun!” he shouted. The lyre wailed. He prayed to the Graven Light, and he prayed to Bayzun. He slapped the silver strings with a love for Tirror that nearly tore him apart. The lyre’s voice rang so mightily he could feel it stinging his blood; suddenly it shouted a dragon’s raging bellow, and Teb shouted with it, “Bayzun!”

Bayzun’s skeleton vanished. The huge black dragon loomed over him, its breath blazing, its eyes like fire.

The voice of the lyre was Bayzun’s voice. The black dragon exploded past him out of the cave on immense wings, his red mouth open in a bull dragon’s bellow. Teb turned, playing the lyre with all the power in him, and Meriden was there astride Dawncloud, rocking on Bayzun’s wind beside the cave door.

“Now!” she cried. “Now . . .”

Teb leaped for Seastrider and felt Seastrider’s excitement, felt the closeness of the two dragons, mother and child. The lyre’s voice thundered as the dragons wheeled together up the cleft, following Bayzun. Where—where was a way through . . . ?

It was that moment, in vision, that Teb saw Thakkur fighting something dark and grinning, saw the white otter’s sword flash, saw him back the vampire-toothed demon away with snarling rage and drive his sword in; but too late—Teb cried out as Thakkur was struck from behind, as Thakkur fell. . . .

Thakkur . . .

And Teb could not reach him.

“There,” Meriden cried, pointing where a bright thin crack appeared in murky space. “There . . .” Bayzun was through. They plunged after him—and dropped into the sky above the battle.

Teb searched wildly for Thakkur. Bayzun dove, slashing at the unliving. Meriden’s sword flashed. Teb brought the lyre’s song ringing across the battle to drive the dark back. The lyre’s roar and Bayzun’s roar filled the wind. He saw the dark falter—and he searched for one small white figure amid the surging battle.

The dark fell back. Rebel warriors rose to storm palace walls. Monsters seething over parapets dropped down again into the courtyard, their screeching silenced.

Nightraider dove at a tangle of giant serpents; Camery slashed and cut at them. Ebis the Black rode down a screaming basilisk and cut its snake body to shreds. The great cats and wolves tore at the unliving. Dragons dove to burn. Marshy leaned down, clutching harness, to snatch up a wounded otter. The lyre’s song thundered across the battlefield, driving back the dark—but it was Bayzun who struck the coldest terror into the dark forces.

*

On a hilltop, Windcaller fought to drive warriors away from Kiri, who knelt, cradling Thakkur.

She had seen the hordes of dark monsters appear from nowhere, storming out of the palace. In that moment when defeat was certain, she had seen Thakkur fall. Windcaller had cut a swath through the attacking hordes, and Kiri had knelt over Thakkur in the little space Windcaller won. She held Thakkur’s body, trying to find a heartbeat. There was none. She rocked him, torn with grief for him, sick with despair.

Their world was dying, Tirror was dying. There would be nothing left but the dark. Teb was lost somewhere. Kiri’s stomach was twisted in knots. Thakkur’s poor torn body seemed an instrument of terrible prediction, mirroring the final and terrible end for them all.

Then something stirred her. Something summoned.

She heard the lyre crying out across the battle, silencing all cries with its fury. She saw the black dragon explode out of nothing, riderless and huge. She saw Seastrider . . . and Teb! She saw a white dragon she had never seen. A woman—Meriden!

The lyre thundered. The black dragon slaughtered. The rebel armies rallied, and the dark armies trembled and fell back as Kiri knelt on the battlefield, holding Thakkur and screaming with victory.

Teb saw her crouched before Windcaller, holding something white. He sped toward them, leaped down, and knelt beside Kiri praying that Thakkur was alive.

And knowing he was not.

Kiri and Teb cradled Thakkur between them, their eyes meeting in a storm of grief.

She smoothed Thakkur’s bloody white fur over his terrible wound. Teb pulled Kiri against his shoulder suddenly and fiercely, and held her tight, Thakkur couched in their circling arms.

When Teb rose at last, he held Thakkur gently. He turned away from Kiri to mount Seastrider. Kiri watched as they lifted away above the battle. She did not follow.

In the sky, Teb cradled Thakkur’s body inside his tunic, beneath the lyre. He stroked the lyre’s strings in a thundering dirge for Thakkur, its voice struck with grief and love. At its bright, ringing notes, the last of the dark hordes turned and fled into the palace. They pushed back through Quazelzeg’s golden Door, trampling each other, wraiths and incubi and monsters crowding through.

Among the dark warriors, only Quazelzeg paused.

When all the hordes had fled, Quazelzeg stood within the safety of the gold Door, burning with fury at what he had lost.

But there would be other worlds, other challenges. He turned to consider such worlds—his next quest.

He went white at what he saw.

He spun and tried to run, but light exploded around him, light so bright and consuming that the Door was lost in its brilliance. The light twisted Quazelzeg and sucked him in. He spun within its glow, screaming. . . .

Slowly he was consumed, by a light so powerful that it turned white the battlefield and the surrounding hills, and its clear brilliance burst like a nova across Tirror’s skies.

The terror of Quazelzeg’s scream remained long after his body was consumed. The light that took him was seen from Auric Palace in an exploding brilliance that cascaded across the sky; it was seen in Nightpool, where the few otters who had remained stared up in chittering wonder.

It turned the sky over Yoorthed so pale that the dwarfs ran out of the cave, shouting, “What is it?”

“Power,” King Flam said, staring at the shining sky. “What power?” a dwarf said, shivering. “Not the power of the dark,” King Flam cried, his voice thundering. He smiled at the gathered dwarfs.

“I would guess the battle has ended. This,” King Flam said, sighing with relief, “this is the greatest power—the power that holds us all.”