Ivory Lyre (9 page)

Teb had a quick vision of Roderica going
down the dark hall carrying a lamp, unlocking that lonely, heavy
door.

“And don’t forget the queen’s porridge,”
Accacia said rudely. “She does so love her cold porridge.”

The queen.

Teb hadn’t known there was a queen, had
supposed her long dead. He glanced at the king, who had risen, and
saw no change of expression. He made an excuse as soon and as
deftly as he could and left Accacia. He hurried down the dark
passage until he saw Roderica ahead, her lamp casting a swaying
light up the dark walls. She approached a passage where brighter
lamps burned. He stopped and drew back into blackness as she flung
open double doors.

It was the kitchen inside; he could hear the
clanging of utensils and smell food and dishwater. She came out,
followed by a page boy carrying a breakfast tray. Teb waited until
they had rounded a bend, then followed. He waited again while the
food was delivered beyond the oak door. When the page had left, he
settled against the wall. He had no time to move away when Roderica
came out quickly, straight for him, and grabbed his arm.

She was a thin girl, tall, with an angled
face, sour and unsmiling. “Why did you follow me? I have no use for
spies, even if you are a prince.”

“I would like to visit the queen.”

“Why? No one visits her.”

“That’s why.” He thought the best approach
was the direct one. Roderica seemed serious now, without the
frivolity she displayed at other times. A strange girl, changeable
and confusing.

“I didn’t know there was a queen,” Teb told
her. “I thought her long dead. I am curious. Is there any harm in
that?”

She looked him over, not speaking, holding
the lamp high so her own face fell into angled shadows.

“Isn’t she lonely? Wouldn’t she like a
visitor?”

“She has me. I am all she needs. The king
would be furious if he knew you were here.”

“Do you mean to tell him?”

At that moment the door flew open and the
old woman stood leaning against the sill. “What is it, Roderica?
Who are you talking to? Bring him in here.”

She was dressed in a pale pink dressing gown
with quantities of ruffles, an old gray sweater pulled over it. Her
feet were shod in heavy sheepskin slippers. Her white hair flew
wildly around her thin, wrinkled face. She leaned heavily on the
doorframe as Roderica reached for her, then nearly fell as the
young woman steadied and turned her toward the bed. Teb followed
them into the room.

When she was ensconced at last under the
tumbled blankets, she fixed her faded blue eyes on Teb. “Well? Who
is he, Roderica? Why did you bring him here?”

“I didn’t. He followed me. He is a prince of
Thedria, selling horses.”

The old woman’s laugh ended with coughing.
“I do not buy horses, young man. I am past that.”

“I came
here
out of curiosity. Why do
they lock you up?”

“The king locks me up. He has no longer any
use for me. He finds my weakness and infirmities unpleasant. I am
content here with my own company. As you can see, it is a
comfortable chamber. I do not have to make any decisions here, or
be civil to visitors.”

It
was
an opulent chamber, but
windowless, one of the rooms dug from the side of the mountain. He
didn’t know how anyone could stand to be so trapped. He studied her
pale blue eyes, faded to white around the edges, and wondered if
she was mad.

“I suffer from a variety of ugly
infirmities, young man. They linger from the plague that beset
Dacia. I nearly died of it. I am comfortable here and not stared
at. Roderica takes care of my needs and brings me the palace
gossip.”

Teb stayed with her for some time, telling
her lies about Thedria. Whatever she knew of it would likely be
from her youth. Countries change. Roderica sat removed from them in
a far corner, knitting, looking sour and resentful.

The queen told him Roderica had been with
her since the girl was six, and was her only friend. She did not
speak of the king again. There was something about the old woman
that interested him, something that piqued his curiosity. Maybe she
would tell him more if he asked no questions. She seemed uncaring
about the affairs of the palace. When he mentioned war, as he
described his horses, she seemed to cease to listen, staring down
at her wrinkled hands and running one finger along her swollen
knuckles. He left her at mid-morning, walking back through the
dark, windowless halls with Roderica.

“She is lucky to have you for a friend,” he
said. “She must resent being shut away from palace life.”

“She does not resent,” Roderica said
sullenly. “The queen is of a very even nature.” She cast him a hard
look, devoid of all the coquettish giggling he had seen at other
times. “As for the queen’s interest in palace life, I bring her all
the news she requires.”

“And she is never angry at being a
prisoner?”

“The queen does not get angry.”

“Never?”

“Only if her meals do not suit her. I do the
best I can about them. As to the . . . larger issues, the
queen’s feelings remain removed from them. She does not believe in
being . . . emotional.”

“I see. And you?”

“What is there to be emotional about? People
will do as they please. Nothing will change them.”

His temper flared. He caught himself before
he turned on her, biting back his words.

He studied the sharp shadows cast up her
face by the lamp she carried. She puzzled him. She seemed a person
who followed whatever cause suited her at the moment without any
inner commitment—to good or to evil. As if she was little more than
a shell.

Maybe the old queen would prove to be much
the same, but for some reason he liked her better.

When Roderica left him, turning down her own
corridor, he went directly to the stables to see to the tedious
training of clumsy soldiers. As he saddled Seastrider he shared
with her, in silence, his thoughts about the queen and Roderica.
The queen was the more interesting of the two. She was abrupt, had
made rude comments about some of the customs of Thedria, and seemed
to soften only when he spoke of the talking animals of that land.
She caught herself at once, though, and was surly again. Maybe she
felt rudeness was a luxury of illness and old age.

He suffered a day of training, taking his
three mounted soldiers down the hills toward the city, where they
passed loaded wagons of grain bags and stores hidden in linen
wrappings. Many wagons unloaded at a long building behind the
stadium, and others made their way up the mountain to the palace,
to be emptied somewhere behind the inner wall. Food, he supposed.
But maybe weapons, too. Interesting that the country had
deteriorated so much that it must import food rather than grow what
it needed. All the land to the north was open. The farms there lay
fallow, fields of crusted brown soil and weeds that could be seen
clearly from the palace.

Teb used the sleep song again that night,
and the dragons took to the sky like startled birds, not pausing
until they were miles out over the sea, away from the palace and
all connected with it. Below them lay the small land of Liedref,
awash with the aura of dark.

On Liedref they found a young woman gone
sour and evil under enchantment of the dark. She had once served
the King of Edain as teacher and mistress of his children. He had
helped her escape Edain with the children, believing she would keep
them safe while he remained behind to battle the invaders. But she
was weak, driven by small, greedy envy. The dark found her an easy
mark. Soon she was its pawn, caring for nothing but its blood-lust.
She murdered three of the king’s children and took the other two
into slavery.

Even dragon song could not drive the dark
from her. Teb fought for her, surrounding her with visions of
warmth and caring from her past. But the dark was a mindless force
within her. It roared a challenge that pounded in Teb’s mind, so
his own voice faltered.

The dark won. The host it held was too weak
and had embraced its evil too long. In one last, losing effort to
free herself, the woman lunged at a dark disciple and stabbed him
with his own knife, stood watching his fallen body seep out
colorless blood. “I didn’t know they could die,” she whispered. “I
didn’t know . . .”

Then she plunged the knife into her own
heart, too weak to leave the dark, too filled with its ways to live
without it. “I didn’t know they could
die. . . .”

“They can die,” said Teb bitterly, as he
held the dying woman. He was able to free the children. The two
small girls came sleepily to Seastrider and put their arms around
her nose.

All the rest of that night, with the
lopsided moon hiding, then showing itself between clouds, Teb and
the dragons sang. They freed the minds of the thirty-seven children
and two dozen adults, saw consciousness come back to them and the
knowledge of who they were. Teb felt their understanding as they
were linked once more to their pasts. He felt the excitement of the
children as, newly freed, they thought for the first time of real
futures chosen without restraint. He felt Seastrider’s joy for the
children returned from slavery to life. He gave her a hug and
mounted. The dragons swept into the wind, racing dawn back to the
palace. They dropped down onto the hills as the first gray light
touched the sky. They changed quickly, to gallop back toward the
stable.

But near to the stables the four horses
paused, snorting and staring.

What?
Teb said.

Someone hiding in the dark,
said
Seastrider.

A whole army?

One person.

Well, go on in. What harm can one person
do?

The stable was still dark inside. Seastrider
approached it warily, the other three crowding close, their ears
laid back, their movements tense, ready to strike.

Teb stepped in quietly, filled with fear
that someone had seen them in the sky.

Yet it was still very dark. And no one could
have beaten them back to the stable. He lit a lamp far down the
alleyway. He filled the water and feed buckets, patted Seastrider
on the rump, pushed her toward her stall. She turned at once to
stare back toward the dark corner near the stable entry. When he
approached the corner, she followed him, ready to charge.

“You’d better come out,” he said evenly. “I
don’t like being spied on.”

A slim figure stepped out of the blackness.
It was Kiri.

She looked at him steadily. Neither spoke.
He studied her dark eyes for any hint that she had seen the dragons
in the sky, or seen the changing.

Her look was innocent, direct. She glanced
past him toward the horses with the same yearning expression he had
seen as she stood watching them from the almond grove with her
Gram. He liked her thick, straight lashes and the way her brows
looked like little wings. She seemed, Teb thought, more like a wild
creature than a docile palace page. Watching her steady eyes and
the set of her jaw, he wondered that she would take orders at all
from the high-handed royal family.

“I came to see the horses.”

“I heard you weren’t allowed in the
stable.”

“I’m not. But they’re too beautiful for me
to stay away. Do you mind? May I speak to them?”

Before he could stop her, she moved past him
to Seastrider, who stood with ears back and teeth bared. She laid a
hand on the mare’s cheek, and Seastrider thrust her ears forward at
once, then snuffled at the girl’s shoulder, her tail swinging
lazily. Teb gaped.

When she went to Nightraider, he blew
rollers into her neck, making her laugh, making a first-rate fool
of himself. The horses had never acted like that, not with
anyone.

“My father was horsemaster for the king,
long ago,” she said quietly. “Not Sardira. A previous king.” Her
look was steady. “I used to help him. When King Bayden died,
Sardira sent my father away and appointed a new horsemaster. He
said I was not to come near the stables. I guess I—” She went
silent, her expression going cold as she stared past him toward the
stable entry. Teb turned.

Another figure stood in the doorway, etched
against the faint dawn light, her skirts swirled around her.

“I guess you made a nuisance of yourself in
the stables, little cousin,” Accacia said. “I guess you tried too
often to tell King Sardira’s horsemaster how to run his business.”
She came across the stable alley holding her skirts up off the
earthen floor, though it had recently been swept clean and
smooth.

“You should not be here now, Kiri. Sardira
would be interested to know you have disobeyed.” Accacia was
dressed not for an early-morning ride, it seemed to Teb, but for a
formal parade, in a lavender satin riding dress that rippled like
water as she moved, shining black boots, and gold circlets binding
her bright hair. “I think you had better run along, Kiri. You must
not bother the prince. We are off soon on an important ride.”

Kiri turned to go, expressionless and
straight-backed.

“Wait, Kiri,” Accacia said. “Perhaps
. . .” She looked Kiri up and down. “If you will brush
the straw out of your hair and make yourself presentable, you may
serve as entourage page. I want four pages. Choose whatever three
you like. We leave directly after breakfast.” She dismissed Kiri
with a flick of her lace cuff.

The horses looked after Kiri eagerly as she
left the stable, but when Teb sought in silence for the cause of
their warmth toward her, they couldn’t tell him. Only that she was,
in the sense of their thoughts, one to care about. Their
expressions changed completely when Accacia approached them. When
she reached to stroke Nightraider’s nose he scowled and bit at her,
his teeth snapping inches from her face. She backed away, gasping,
her hand raised to strike him, then forced a little laugh.