Ivory Lyre (2 page)

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.

Chapter
2

Teb watched the dragons stir and wake. All
four turned to look at him. Even to a dragonbard, those four stares
all at once, bright and intent, were unnerving. He frowned, trying
to understand what they were thinking.

He had an impression of journey, of wheeling
flight. But they did that every morning. He had an impression of
cobbled streets and dim city doorways seen close at hand, of
palaces and crowds of people and the smell of taverns. Yes, their
sleeping thoughts had been the same as his waking ones. It is time,
Teb thought. Time for me to go into the cities.

The dragons nodded.

He felt shrunken and small knowing he would
walk alone and earthbound when for so long he had soared aloft
between the wings of dragons and had been protected by dragons.

But he and the dragons had done their work
on nearly all the smaller continents. Only a few islands were left.
Their usefulness through song was nearly gone for the present. The
larger lands were ruled by the dark, except for half a dozen, and
one bard and four dragons could not free the minds of a whole
continent at one time. The dragons would be discovered, the dark
put on alert. They must play the game close until their band was
larger.

He must join the underground. He must search
for bards. He must learn the ways of the resistance, and how best
to help it. He must make himself and the dragons known to the
resistance, so they could plan together for the greater battles to
come.

“Yes,” said Seastrider. “Yes. But you will
not go alone.”

He stared at her. What nonsense was this? He
had always known that when the time came, he must go into the
cities alone. “What do you plan to do?” he asked her, touching her
great silver cheek. “Walk the roads pretending to be my
war-horse?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will do that.”

Teb wished she could. It wasn’t a moment for
joking.

“I will shape-shift. We have spoken of it
before. It is not impossible.”

“But you said it was unreliable, with the
powers of the dark so strong. Even if you could make shape-shifting
magic strong enough to counter the dark, it could be dangerous. You
said you might not be able to change back.”

“With practice, Tebriel, we will manage.
Nothing in this life is without danger.”

“And what do you mean by
we?”

“One saddle horse and three to follow you.”
Seastrider stretched out over the lip of the nest, her wings spread
on the wind so she hung motionless in the sky. Then she turned and
curled down into a tight circle. Suddenly she vanished.

In her place reared a dazzling white mare,
her neck bowed and her green eyes blazing. Teb stood gaping.

Then Starpounder disappeared, and where the
blue-black dragon had coiled there wheeled a snorting blue-black
stallion. Then Nightraider, two stallions and a mare now, and then
Windcaller. So two and two they were, their eyes flashing with
powerful magic.

“How can you do that?” Teb said, caught in
wonder. “How can your bodies compress so? How . . .
?”

We do not compress,
Seastrider
managed to tell him.
Our bodies are caught in another dimension.
What you see of us is the stuff of magic, of the shape-shifting
spell, and not real.

Teb touched her shoulder and neck, and wove
his fingers in her mane. She felt very real to him, warm and
silken, with the wild, sweet smell of a good horse. He put his hand
on her back. She stayed steady. He tightened his hand in her mane
and with a sudden thrust leaped across her back and swung astride.
She stood quivering and snorting; then she reared and pawed in a
battle stance, so he had to grip tight with his knees. She galloped
in a small circle, leaping logs, then stood quiet, sweating.

Will I do?
she asked demurely.

“Oh, yes. Only . . . you are too
beautiful. All of you are. You will attract too much
attention.”

Seastrider lowered her head and looked at
him with wry teasing that made him laugh.
We cannot help being
beautiful, Tebriel. Dragons are the most beautiful creatures alive,
and so we have become beautiful horses.
They had no false
modesty, these dragons.

Teb sighed. “Not only will you make me more
conspicuous,” he said, “but the armies of the dark would like very
much to have such mounts as you. What will you do if they try to
steal you?”

When she did not answer, he grew annoyed. He
knew her silences. “What kind of plan are you cooking? Do you
want
to be stolen? But what good—”

Not stolen, Tebriel. You will travel as a
horse trader, and we will be your wares. Such fine mounts as we
should give you entree into any palace on Tirror.

“And may I ask where I have secured such
horses? And what you mean to do if someone buys you? What—”

Seastrider’s look silenced him.
You will
call yourself a prince from the far southern land of Thedria, which
lies beyond the vast expanse of sea and has no commerce with these
lands. The dark knows little of that place, I think, for we have
sensed no evil from that far continent. You will steal appropriate
clothes for a prince, and you will enter the strongholds of the
dark in style. And,
she said, tossing her head,
if we are
bought, Tebriel, no matter. No stable or fence or stone prison can
hold us.

“Well,” he said. “Well. . . all
right. But how have I come to these continents? By rowboat over the
wild seas hauling four horses?”

By seagoing barge, to barter your horses for
gold. You are the Prince of the Horsemasters of Thedria.

She had it all worked out. Teb pointed out
to her civilly that he had not intended to go among palaces but to
slip quietly into the cities among the common folk, where he could
gather information unnoticed by the dark rulers. If it was all the
same to Seastrider, he did not want to make himself an object of
immediate observation for the dark.

But if you are an object of great interest
to the dark, Tebriel, do you not think the underground will be
watching you even more closely? Do you not think they will be more
than anxious to learn about you, and to learn which side you might
favor, this very rich and mysterious prince? It will be much easier
to let the underground soldiers come to you, Tebriel, than to try
to search them out in strange cities.

Teb sighed again and said no more. The
horses disappeared and the dragons were there, still staring in
that annoying way. He stared back at them crossly, then turned away
to ready his pack.

He wrapped his mother’s diary in oilskins,
with a few other valuables he would not take, and hid them between
tree trunks in the wall of the nest. He would take the large packet
that contained the white leather from which he had cut Seastrider’s
harness, and the awl he had used to fashion it. He would need more
thread. He slipped the gold coins into his pocket, gifts from the
otter nation. With gold he could steal clothes, yet leave
payment.

He knew where they would go—they had
discussed it several times: Dacia, which lay far to the north above
a tangle of island nations. Neutral Dacia. They had swung low on
the night wind near to it more than once, and always they could
sense the powers of the dark there. Yet the dark did not rule
Dacia. He didn’t understand how this could be, how that country had
remained neutral. Both dark and resistance forces were strong on
Dacia. He didn’t know what had kept the dark from possessing that
country totally, for the small continent provided good cover for
the dark forces. From that base, the unliving could attack Edain
and Bukla and the tiny island nations of the Benaynne
Archipelago.

Surely the resistance had a strong spy
network and ways to steal food and weapons from the dark armies.
Perhaps the strength of the resistance alone was what kept Dacia
free, though Teb felt there might be a stronger force at work. He
would be very interested to learn why Dacia was not beaten back by
the dark, yet had not driven it out. Dacia would be a likely place
to find Garit, and maybe Camery, a good place to join the rebels in
any case.

The truly free countries were very
aggressive in destroying the unliving, for most humans felt only
terror of the wraithlike creatures. The very mention of the leader
Quazelzeg made warriors burn with hatred.

The slave makers sucked on the suffering of
humans as a leech will suck human blood. Fear in humans
strengthened the un-men, and pain in humans and animals was as
heady as wine to them. They would devise any means to increase and
lengthen such suffering.

But if Ebis the Black had driven them out,
and had kept his land free, so could others. Teb and the dragons
had gone twice to Ratnisbon, to sing the past alive for Ebis’s
people. Ebis understood that people needed that knowledge of
Tirror’s past, of their own pasts; otherwise they had no memory, no
knowledge of themselves, and no notion of who they really were or
what choices they had in life. Ebis’s people wanted to make their
own choices and would not allow the dark to rob them of that
freedom.