The Ivory Lyre

Chapter 1

The four dragons fled through the sky, their wings hiding stars, the wind of their passing churning the sea below. The two black dragons were nearly hidden against the night, but the two white ones shone bright as sweeping clouds. The larger white dragon carried a rider, a slim lad. He was barely sixteen, well muscled, tanned, dressed in stolen leathers, with a stolen sword at his side. He stared down between the white dragon’s beating wings at occasional islands fast overtaken. Then he looked ahead with rising anger at the island that was this night’s target. His rage matched the dragons’ fury for what they sensed there on Birrig.

“The dark unliving rule there,” the dragons screamed. “They are soul killers—the dark side of mortal. . . .”

“Yes,” Tebriel answered, “but they will die. We free Birrig this night.”

They dove in a rush of wind, Teb bent low to see between Seastrider’s wings as the dragons dropped toward Birrig’s wood.

Meadows lay on the far side of the island, dotted by eight villages. The dragons gained the shore on widespread wings, then folded their wings close to their sides and slipped in among the twisted oaks of the grove in silence, pressing under the great branches, the leaves sliding noiselessly across their scales. Teb slid down.

He paced the wood, then returned to stand beside Seastrider, listening with his mind and inner senses just as the four dragons did. They could see in their minds the dark leaders who ruled here, and knew that the enslaved islanders slept a sleep as featureless as death. Even waking they would know little pain or wonder, so drugged were they with the powers of the dark. The dragons moved deeper among the giant trees. To be discovered was too great a danger, not for themselves, but for the cause they served.

“There are nine leaders,” Teb said softly, stroking Seastrider’s white cheek. She leaned her head against him, feeling his hatred of the dark; their thoughts were in perfect sympathy, these two who were so powerfully paired.

They are sheltered in the stone manor house, she said in silence. Two of the true dark, the unliving, and seven humans turned to the ways of the dark. She scraped her scales nervously against the rough sides of the oaks.

The other three dragons moved uneasily. Teb walked among them, touching and reassuring them. He could feel their tension nearly exploding, their hatred of the dark grown to a force almost visible in its intensity. It matched his own.

Of the dark leaders they saw in vision, five slept. Two of the humans were awake, locked in obscene embrace with the two unliving. The unliving never slept, though they never seemed to come fully to life, either. The pale, man-shaped beings were as coldly expressionless as spiders. Their color would rise a little at the lure of new evil or lust. They sucked upon men’s spirits and souls as certain spiders suck upon human blood.

Teb stood a moment filled with disgust, putting down his instinctive fear. Un-men, unliving, you will not take this land, not while dragons live to defeat you. You will give back the minds you have robbed. We will take them back.

In the vision that Teb and the dragons shared, the blank faces of the sleeping villagers were scarred and bruised and dirty. Many slept on the ground, tied by ropes to their places of work, too obedient to the dark to untie themselves. The miller was shackled beside the mill wheel; a carpenter sprawled among logs and tools; shepherds were leg-tied together beside a dung heap. A small child with a twisted arm lay huddled on rags in the corner of a barn, tied to a post where she had been pounding grain.

The dragons were clawing now into the soft mulch of the forest, tense with rage at the slavery the dark had created, ready to battle it. Teb leaped to Seastrider’s back, stroked her. Now, he said, now begin, and power filled them as they raised their voices in song, dragon and boy.

Power swelled as they made visions explode in the minds of the sleeping slaves. Now you will see truly once more. They warped time into another dimension so that the past came alive. People long dead came alive, as real as Teb himself. A forgotten time exploded into life, a time before Birrig was slave to the dark.

Now, suddenly, busy people filled the lanes and sheepfolds, shearing, lambing, making the dyes and grooming the wool and weaving the fine tapestries for which Birrig was famous. Loud, hard-living people. Dragon song brought alive the hot glances of the young as they sought their mates. A girl cuddled a baby. Small children ran among the looms. The blending voices of bard and dragon peopled the village and filled the minds of the present-day slaves, who woke and stumbled to their doors to gape. Before them in the streets, the past lived.

Folk came forth hesitantly, out into the busy lanes. They stepped into a world nothing like their drab one, and their faces lost confusion and brightened with understanding.

Untie yourselves, Teb shouted in song, tear off your chains.

Men and women fought to free themselves and reached out to touch the strangers who were their own ancestors. They could not touch them, yet were not perplexed.

The past is the lost part of you, Teb shouted. Feel whole again, now; defeat the dark, now. . . .

The child inside the barn was awake, tearing at the knots of her ropes. Freed, she stood for a moment not knowing what to do. Then she began to run. She ran in circles around the cottages, in and out among her ancestors like a colt gone wild.

Folk began to approach the woods, coming to the call of the songs. They moved through the Birrig of the present and the Birrig of the past all at once, seeking the source of the magic. But not all came toward the woods; some approached the manor house. The nine dark leaders stood there in the doorway shoulder to shoulder, their evil like a dark stench seeping around the building.

Destroy them, Teb said in song. It is your privilege to destroy them.

“The dark leaders know we are here,” Seastrider said to him.

“They must not carry the news beyond this island,” said Nightraider. “They must not live to do so.”

“They will not live,” said Tebriel. “Look.” He stretched up to see over the topmost branches, but he need not have. They could see it in their minds, the townsfolk drawing closer to the dark leaders, who backed away.

Now, Teb shouted. Now . . . It is your choice to kill them. They are the slave masters, they have murdered your children, they steal the world from you when they take your memory. . . .

The people of Birrig began to move toward the dark leaders, slowly and with purpose. The faces of the unliving turned from gray-tinged to deathly pale, and they mouthed enchantments. The faces of the seven humans who had willingly embraced the dark twisted into masks of terror, but Teb felt no regret for them. They had chosen this evil freely. If it had not been for their kind, the unliving would never have conquered these lands. An un-man screamed a curse, two humans turned to flee; and then the town was on them.

Teb slid down from Seastrider’s back. The other three dragons pressed close, to nuzzle him. He hated the killing, but it had to be done. The townsfolk truly had a right. And the dark must not be allowed to leave Birrig to spread word that there were singing dragons on Tirror. Not yet. Secrecy was their weapon. They were too few in number now; they must find other bards. He hoped they would find other dragons. They were not an army yet, and it would take an army of bards and dragons to free all of Tirror. The freedom fighters, secretly at work in many lands, could free men’s bodies but could not free their spirits; only the dragonbards could. If the dark thought it had driven out all the dragons and bards, if it thought Teb himself was dead, then let it believe that. It gave Teb more time. He watched the awakened slaves destroy their dark masters; then he and the dragons rose into the dawn sky, climbing fast to hide themselves among clouds. They made their way south to the Lair and the dragon nest.

The wind of their wings tore a storm across the sky that lashed at the branches of their nest as they descended. They circled the high, bare mountain peak once, then landed within the nest’s walls. It was like a fort made of great trees pulled up by the roots. The dragons preened themselves, cleaning their wings, wanting a short nap as is the way with dragons. Seastrider yawned, her mouth like a closet bristling with rows of white swords. She curled down beside her brothers and sister, their wings folded, their heads resting on tangles of smaller branches. Teb climbed the logs that formed the lip of the nest.

The wind hit him so fiercely it would have swept him over if he hadn’t held on to a thrusting branch. His dark hair whipped around his face, tugging loose from the leather band that tied it. He stood looking down at the land more than a mile below.

His view of Tirror and the southern islands was much as he would see in flight. Directly below him was the Bay of Dubla; beyond it, the small continent of Windthorst; then the sea stained red with the rising sun. He could see the Palace of Auric, a pale dot in the south of Windthorst. It was his palace, his kingdom, stolen from his family when his father was murdered. Teb had been held captive there as a child by his father’s killers. His father’s loyal horsemaster, together with the speaking animals, had helped him escape from those dark leaders when he was twelve.

His sister, Camery, had been left behind in the tower. But now she, too, was free, somewhere on Tirror, thanks again to Garit, the horsemaster.

East of Auric, beyond Windthorst’s coast, lay a tiny island. He knew every detail of Nightpool—the black rock caves, the green inner meadow and hidden lake. He had lived there for four years among the otter nation after he had escaped his captors. He missed the furry, fish-smelling otters. They had shaken water over him and nattered at him and chased him in the sea. They had cared for him all during his long illness when he hadn’t known who he was. He wondered, when he stood thinking of them like this, if the white leader, Thakkur, might be standing in the sacred meeting ca/e seeing a vision of him in the magical clamshell. He missed the island with its cozy caves, the gatherings and feasts. He missed Nightpool.

He wasn’t homesick for the palace at Auric. Rather, it was a surge of fury he felt, of hatred for the men who had destroyed his family. He knew a cold desire to take back his own, to avenge his father’s death, to avenge the mistreatment of Camery. He would bet any amount that she and Garit had gotten themselves involved in one underground army or another. He meant to find out which. He meant to find her, find both of them. He had perhaps already had a hint of her, but he wasn’t sure.

Three days ago, he and the four dragons had ridden a westerly wind over the land of Edain, and Nightraider had sensed the presence of a bard, a woman, and had descended fast to the unpeopled shore to search. They had found no one, but Teb had sensed a fleeting vision of golden hair, the clean line of a young woman’s jaw, and was certain it was Camery.

“There was a bard here on this place,” Nightraider had said, his great yellow eyes blazing with fierce loss as he reared up to search the cliff above the cave. The black dragon had lingered on the empty shore long after Teb and the other three had left. When he returned he was downcast. Teb knew Nightraider had found a hint of his bard in Edain, but no more than a hint. No clue that would lead him to her.

“The dark has hidden her,” the black dragon had bellowed, spitting flame.

“Perhaps,” Teb said. “Or maybe she hid herself. If it was Camery. Maybe she doesn’t know what she is. No one ever told me that I was of dragonbard blood.”

He had not realized his own destiny until years after the dark leader Sivich had tried to use him as bait to trap a singing dragon. He’d had no idea his mother was a dragonbard, and he was sure Camery hadn’t, either. Their mother had left them, riding away from the palace leading a pack horse. She had not returned. Their father would not explain. Later she had been reported drowned. It was not until years later, when Teb found her diary, that he knew she was still alive and learned she was a dragonbard, gone to seek her own dragon.

Seastrider began to dream, shivering, then shook herself awake. She stared at Teb with huge green eyes, then reached out to touch him with one lethal ivory claw as long as his forearm.

“We will hunt, Tebriel. Let us hunt.”

She spread her wings suddenly, rearing above the nest and staring seaward, then dropped down so Teb could mount. Knowing what was coming, he pulled off his sheepskin coat and boots, mounted, and tucked his cold feet against her warm sides. She soared west on a veering, icy wind out over the open sea. Teb clung and held his breath as she dove. The icy water closed over them, nearly knocking him off, his fists gripped hard in the white leather harness, his knees and feet tucked under it. The ice cold shocked him but turned to tingling warmth as his blood surged, the pressure of the water hard against him. The green water sped around him filled with light as Seastrider pursued the fish ahead. Teb let out his breath a little at a time, as the otters had taught him. Soon Seastrider was up, breaking surface, with a red shark twice the length of a man clutched squirming in her teeth.

“Not shark again,” Teb shouted. “I’m tired of shark. Can’t you catch a salmon?”

There are no salmon this time of year, she said in silence. She bit the shark deep enough to kill it and turned back for the Lair, where Teb stripped out of his pants and tunic. He hung them to dry beside his small fire while he cooked his shark steak. The other dragons hunted, the smaller female to the south, her white body flashing against the sea, the two black males ranging out westward until they were lost from view in the gray sky. Seastrider left him twice for more shark, for the dragons liked large breakfasts.

She also brought him a small golden sea trout and dropped it at his feet as the other dragons settled in, dripping quantities of water over the nest.

The trout caused an argument among them. Starpounder said Seastrider was spoiling Teb. They began to tussle, rocking the nest so hard Teb thought they would push it off the mountain peak, thrashing up into the sky, stirring a wind like a hurricane.

They descended at last, grinning at one another as only dragons can grin, and settled down side by side on the nest. It was still early, the sun barely up.

They could not do their work in daylight. Seastrider sighed and curled down in a tight coil against the side of the nest with the others. Teb stood watching them, feeling depressed in spite of the morning’s work.

They were too few. The other three dragons had no human bards to complete their magic. He didn’t even know whether there were any more bards on Tirror besides Camery, if she really had inherited their mother’s talent. He could remember her singing, innocently following their mother’s voice when they were small. Neither of them had guessed, then, what their song could mean someday. He meant to find her, and the best way was to join the underground. He didn’t feel ready, but the time was close. He didn’t like to think he was afraid.