The Ivory Lyre

Chapter 13

Accacia rose angrily and began to pace the dark garden. The seven candles flickered at her passing. Teb did not release the effort of his spell but sought to bring her back into it. When at last she turned, her eyes again held a hint of sleepiness. She spoke uncertainly.

“What knowledge . . . do you seek, Prince Tebmund?” She seemed to be trying to remember his exact words, as if all she could bring to mind was the power in which he had held her.

What had broken that power?

He brought all the force he could; he felt the dragons helping him.

“I seek only to understand.”

He was sweating, his body too tense, his mind torn with haste. The dark leaders would wonder, if they were gone too long. They could come searching.

Unless they knew. Unless it was their power that had warned her. He felt the forces of dark and light battle around him on a scale he could barely comprehend. As he brought the dragon magic around Accacia, shadows stirred across her still figure. She came slowly to the bench and sat beside him. He took her hands, drew her close.

“Trust me, Accacia. Tell me now . . . what talisman protects the palace of Dacia?” Her hands were warm within his, relaxed. “What difference would it make if you tell me? What harm . . . ?”

“What difference . . . ?” She sighed.

“What talisman prevents the dark from enslaving Dacia? What power so strong . . . ?”

“The power . . .” She studied their clasped hands as if puzzling over her own thoughts. ‘The power of the dragon,” she said heavily.

He stared, his blood racing. The dragon . . .

“The power of the dragon’s lyre . . .”

His pulse had quickened unbearably. Dragon . . . What did she know of dragons? And the dragon’s lyre . . . ? He had never heard of a dragon’s lyre, yet something stirred his memory to racing, and bard knowledge exploded, wanting to free itself.

“What is the dragon’s lyre?”

“The dragon’s lyre—the ivory lyre of the dragon called Bayzun,” she said dreamily.

The word “Bayzun” struck like fire through Teb, tumbling his thoughts.

He tried to collect his wits. He had no knowledge of such a lyre or of a dragon named Bayzun, yet his blood pounded at the words. Then the knowledge did surface, powers beat at him until soon the whole tale of the lyre had released itself from the dark side of memory.

The Ivory Lyre of Bayzun. Yes, he could picture it now—a small white lyre no bigger than the length of his two hands, a delicate lyre, its strings spun of silver and its thin fretwork carved with great skill. Carved from the ivory claws of a huge dragon, the ivory fitted together cleverly. The lyre was carved from the claws of Bayzun, the grandfather of all singing dragons.

He knew the lyre was lost. He knew that all knowledge of it had been wiped away from the minds of men, from the minds of all bards and dragons. He knew the spell that hid it had broken at this instant, because of his questioning. If one bard or dragon among us seeks it, the memory will come alive.

“Is the lyre here in Dacia?” he asked carefully.

She nodded.

The lyre had power, great power. It had once been known to all Tirror. Knowledge of the dwarf who had carved it, and of the dragon who had given his claws for its making, filled Teb’s mind.

But another knowledge touched him, too, woven into the tale of the lyre. There was one object, a stone tablet, that breached the spell on the lyre. It told the tale of the lyre and its powers. That tablet, too, must be here in Dacia. It was the only way the king—and Accacia—could know about the lyre.

He must find the lyre. The tablet was of no importance now that the spell was broken. But the lyre . . .

The Ivory Lyre of Bayzun could give him and the dragons forces they had not yet touched, to defeat the dark rulers.

Accacia stirred. “I see you have heard of the lyre.”

“I have never heard of it,” he said truthfully. “But its very name sounds magical, and by your look and the way you speak of it, it must have power.”

“It is a small lyre carved from the claws of the grandfather of all singing dragons—if you believe in such creatures.”

“I have heard they are extinct. If they ever existed.”

“I hope they are extinct. They could be very harmful to us. The power of the lyre itself is sufficient for us to keep the dark at bay.” She was becoming more aware once again as his own concentration lagged. He thought of Garit—if he could find Garit this night, what news he would have for him. He brought his force so strong his palms began to sweat.

“Where is the lyre, Accacia?”

“Sardira . . . moves it from place to place,” she said dreamily. “Treasure rooms . . . all over the palace.”

But he knew where it was now, or had been recently. It was that bright magic that had called to him from behind the locked oak door that guarded the upper treasure room. “How did King Sardira come by such a power?” he asked softly.

“It . . . I don’t know how it came here. A warrior brought it, I think. Such things, such dead facts, are of no importance.” She sighed. “The lyre has the power to drive back the dark enough so it cannot conquer Dacia. Power—if King Sardira were to take up arms against Quazelzeg and the dark lords, enough power, perhaps, even to conquer them.”

Teb stared.

“Sardira,” Accacia said softly, “prefers that the lyre stand as talisman only, a wall against the dark’s ultimate power. In this way, Dacia can take advantage of the dark’s power in safety. Dacia can take advantage of both sides, and yet remain free of both.”

Teb studied her, understanding Sardira’s purpose too well. A delicate balance between the perversions Dacia enjoyed in the company of the dark and Dacia’s total enslavement. The dark would not know what caused that power, would only know that some force stood against them.

“If the lyre did not exist, Accacia, and Dacia were enslaved, what would you do then?”

Her eyes were lidded with sleepiness. “I would still have my life as I choose. I would still have the luxuries I want.”

“You would be a . . . friend to the dark?”

“Yes.”

“And the dark would not crush you?”

She smiled. “I please the dark leaders.”

“And the lyre is kept safe,” he said softly, pulling her to him, “within the king’s treasuries. How many treasuries are there?”

“Several. Seven . . . eight.” Her voice was growing very sleepy. “Some very deep . . . deep in the core of the mountain, guarded . . . guarded by the fanged lizards.”

“How would one reach such chambers?”

“Deep passages, a complicated way. . . .” She kissed him lazily and subsided into a dreaminess that he did not, again, try to lift.

He sat a moment thinking of the lyre, then of Garit and the plans they could now make. Then he rose, pulled Accacia up and led her as one would lead a child, out of the garden and through halls lit only by her lantern. He left her in an empty reception room near where he could see the king and the un-men taking mithnon. He hoped he had blocked all memory of her words from her. She would find her way to more exciting company now.

He thought about Nightraider riding the winds alone, searching for Camery. As he went along to his chambers to change into his old leathers, excitement filled him that he might see Camery this night, that maybe Nightraider had already found her. Or maybe she had escaped Ekthuma and found her way to Garit. He would go down into the city, to Garit first, then to the stadium where the cats were held. Before he reached the stables, he found the three dragons waiting for him in the forms of wolves.

They made their way quickly over the route the mounted entourage had taken, skirting clutches of revelers and drunks and cadheads. No one bothered them, most backed away from the wolves, for these were not blinded creatures pulling carts, but fierce and snarling. Teb kept to the darkest shadows so his face would not be remembered.

He found Garit’s cottage, making sure by the position of the tower. The windows were dark, no crack of light. The steps were rickety, the front porch Uttered with rubble. He knocked softly. When no one answered, he went around to the back door and rapped again. There was no crack of light here, either, no sign that anyone was inside. After a few minutes he tried the door, found it locked, returned to the front. That door, too, was bolted.

He tried a shutter and found it securely fastened. He didn’t want to break in. He thought of leaving Garit some message, a few words scrawled on a board with a stick, but he didn’t want it found by someone else. He left at last, flattened with disappointment, the wolves walking close now in sympathy.

At the stadium they could hear a huge commotion. A crowd of men was shouting and slamming gates. Starpounder slipped in through a dark side gate to look, his wolf form hidden in shadow. He returned to say a band of soldiers was unloading several bulls and some guard lizards from carts drawn up inside the arena. There are too many, Tebriel. We will attract too much attention. We must return later, when they have gone.

Yes, Seastrider said. In the small hours when no one is here, we will release the cats, then go to Garit. Now let us be off to the sky. Wolf forms are not comfortable, and this city stinks.

They found a hill above the ruins where they would not be seen. The three began to change, the wolf forms to grow thin, then transparent.

But they did not turn to dragons. They remained wolves, thin as cloud, so the rough grass showed through. It was a long time before Seastrider’s true dragon shape began to waver over the thin wolf form, huge but only mist—as if the change into wolf had taken the last of a strangely waning strength. Teb tried to help her. The other two looked on, shadows of wolves.

Slowly Seastrider grew denser. Her wings showed thinly against the sky. She became almost solid, she tried to lift, she flew clumsily—then she faltered and fell to earth like a crippled bird, becoming only wolf again.

The other two had not changed. Teb felt their effort, but the evil on them was too powerful. They were trapped, shivering, their wolf eyes flashing. But they all kept trying, Teb with every ounce of power in him. At long last, when he thought it was useless, Seastrider began to find her shape again, stronger now until she coiled across the hill like thickening mist, turning whiter, denser, slowly gaining solid form.

At last she was a solid, living dragon.

She breathed out flame slowly, testing herself. Teb hugged her, pressing his face against her cheek. Soon Starpounder began to change, then Windcaller.

The dragons lifted skyward into the night, shaken, reaching with trembling effort for the clouds.

“Was it on purpose?” Teb shouted into the wind later. “Did the unliving do that on purpose? Do they know about you?”

“No, Tebriel. I think not. But there is more evil upon Dacia, now the unliving are here.”

Once the dragons were away from Dacia and out over the sea, their strength returned. They hunted shark and fed, coiled on a marshy island. Here they spoke together of the lyre of Bayzun, for the knowledge had flooded into the minds of the dragons when it burst into Teb’s own conscious thought.

“The spell is broken,” Seastrider said. “The spell Bayzun himself laid upon the lyre has been fulfilled.” She eased into a new position among the boulders. Teb shifted, too, to find the warmest spot against her scaly side.

“The lyre was fashioned from the claws of Bayzun,” Seastrider said. “Three claws he tore from his own foot as he lay old and weak, knowing he would soon die.

“Bayzun called forth the dwarf Eppennen, master carver of all the dwarfs of the northern lands, and bade him carve the lyre as he instructed. Eppennen did the work there in Bayzun’s own cave, never leaving until the lyre was completed, taking for his meals the small creatures that Bayzun was still able to kill. When Eppennen completed the lyre, Bayzun clasped it to his scaly chest and said spells over it to enhance its magic.

“The lyre was used only once,” Seastrider said, “against the first dark invaders. Its powers are against dark magic, Tebriel, not against normal human force. It will not weaken a warrior, but it will weaken the dark evils that drive him. It will strengthen the force of the bard magic. It will strengthen dragon song and the visions we make.

“When the first unliving tried to take the minds of Tirror and destroy the bards and dragons, Bayzun rose up with the last of his great strength and sang, clutching the lyre to his chest with his clawless foot. He drove the dark out with the lyre’s magic—his own power and the lyre together drove it out, a power that shattered the dark across Tirror. . . .

“The dark retreated back into other worlds for a while, though it would come again. Bayzun laid the lyre upon a pile of leaves that often pillowed his head. There it remained until Bayzun was mortally wounded by the spear of an evil man come secretly in the night, killing Bayzun when he was too weak to defend himself, stealing the lyre.

“But before he died,” Seastrider said, “Bayzun laid a curse on the lyre: that even if the dark held it, the dark could never use its power. All the dark could do in holding the lyre would be to prevent its use by the dragons and bards . . . or by anyone who would defeat the dark with it.

“Then,” she said, her breath spurting little flames, “then the un-men laid a countercurse: that the history of the lyre of Bayzun, and of Bayzun himself, would vanish from all bard memory and from the memory of all dragons, from the memory of all men and animals. He did not know that the dwarf had carved a tablet telling of the lyre.

“In his last gasping breath, Bayzun’s curse was the final one: that there would come a time when the dragons and bards would come together in force once more. At the beginning of that time the memory of the lyre would come alive again, if even one among us sought it.

“You sought it, Tebriel. Now,” she said, turning her long silver head to look at him, “now we must recover it from the treasure halls of Sardira. All dragons will know of the lyre, now the spell is spent. Dawncloud will know. All bards will know. . . . Your mother, your sister . . .”

“But how did the tablet get out of the cave to the palace where the lyre is? How did the lyre itself . . . ?”

“You know all that I know, Tebriel. There are still mysteries shrouded by the presence of the dark. But I see the dwarf Eppennen returning to that cave, to the corpse of Bayzun, and carrying the tablet away.” Seastrider licked a morsel of shark from her claws. “You will find the lyre, Tebriel. You will . . . among the treasure rooms of Sardira. Your powers are growing stronger. You concealed your true self at supper tonight very well. And you laid a strong mind-spell on Accacia.”

He touched her pearl-colored nose. “How much do you see, lurking in your disguise in the stable?”

“Quite enough.” He could feel her silent laugh like a small earthquake. “Sometimes I sense your thoughts clearly in spite of the aura of the dark; sometimes I do not. Though I sensed quite enough tonight to tell me that Lady Accacia’s flirting and her charm undoes you.”

“If it undoes me,” he said crossly, “how would I have been able to lay sufficient spell on her to learn of the ivory lyre?”

“I have trained you well,” she said smugly.

He leaped at her and pummeled her until she took his shoulder in her sharp fangs. He held still then, staring up at her eyes, like two green lakes above him. She did not press down even enough to dent his skin. When she released him, he jumped to her back and they were airborne in a wild release of craziness. She dove and spun, then beat out fast across the night winds, freeing them both in flight as wild as hurricanes.

She dove so close to waves that Teb was drenched, and soared so high he grew faint from the thin air. Windcaller and Starpounder did not follow them, and there was no sense of Nightraider on the night sky. The black dragon followed his search in deliberate isolation, all his strength turned toward one being.

At last Seastrider returned to Dacia. They both felt strengthened now by their absence from the dark power concentrated there. They felt ready to face it again. Teb’s mind was filled with the captive animals, and with Garit and Camery.

He had no idea whether the underground knew the great cats had been captured. He had no plan. But as Seastrider circled the stadium, they heard the harsh, angry scream of a great cat, wild with pain. Teb stiffened, touched his sword, staring down at the dark arena.