Teb supposed Ekkthurian’s little group had a right to be critical if they wished. But did they have a right to try to turn others against him?
“It will pass,” Mitta said. “Thakkur will deal with it.”
But it doesn’t take many folk to make misery when they speak with hatred. Teb and Charkky and Mikk and the younger otters kept more and more to themselves, and this did not please Thakkur. He did not want the island divided. Then the owl returned, and for a while the quarrel was forgotten.
With the coming of spring the colony had moved back into the caves on the outer rim, and though Teb missed Charkky and Mikk, it was nice to have solitude, too. The owl came swooping directly in from the sea one evening, dropping low along the cliff like a great black shadow, to darken the cliffside doorways and startle the otters at supper. His scream brought them out onto the ledge, staring. Teb had been sewing a pair of sharkskin flippers, fitting them to his feet, and he jammed the needle into his finger hard when the first cry came. He ran out to see the red-beaked old fellow flapping and scolding at a band of strapping cubs that were leaping along the ledge after him, huffing and swearing. The owl banked again, saw Teb, and turned back to land on Teb’s shoulder, almost throwing him down the cliff. The young otters were on Teb at once, clambering up his legs to get at it, shouting words Teb didn’t know they knew. Farther along the ledge he could see the white otter emerge.
“There he is,” shouted the owl. “It’s Thakkur I want to see.” He swept away, and Teb followed, running, and at Thakkur’s cave, the owl flew straight in and landed on a high shelf, his great ears straight out with anger as he stared down at the clambering youngsters who had followed. Thakkur stood looking up at him, his whiskers twitching with amusement.
The owl glared. “Your young haven’t any manners at all. I didn’t know otters could swear like that.”
“They can when they think the clan is threatened,” Thakkur said. “You must be Red Unat. I have heard of you. Old Bloody Beak, I’ve heard you called.”
The owl’s ears twitched. He scowled at Thakkur, then opened his beak in what might be a smile, though it looked more as if he would eat Thakkur. “Old Bloody Beak it is, Thakkur of Nightpool. And I have heard a tale or two about you.”
Otters had gathered thick in the cave. Charkky pushed close to Teb, his whiskers stiff with interest.
“Did you find the hydrus?” Thakkur asked. “Did it die from the wounds our otters gave it?”
“I tracked it by disturbances among the fishes, a great empty swath and the little fish all adither on both sides. I tracked it to Mernmeth, and there was blood on the waters there.”
“Mernmeth,” Charkky whispered to Teb, “is a drowned city north and east, where a great shallow runs out.”
“Did it die there?” asked Thakkur.
“It is still alive. It thrashed in agony, but it lived. I watched and patrolled the coast, very hard work in the icy weather. When it emerged again in dead winter, I followed it.
“It went north. It has been attacking the harbors along the Benaynne Archipelago, where Quazelzeg’s armies are raiding. It prevents escape by water, and Quazelzeg has taken many slaves and murdered hundreds.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” said Thakkur. “Though it is not unexpected.”
“If the dark raiders are not stopped,” said Red Unat, “no one will be safe from them. They are not men, and are much more dangerous than humans. Quazelzeg and those closest to him are, in truth, the unliving, dedicated to anything that negates life, that defiles and destroys the strength of life.”
Teb stood tense. All of this was so very familiar, and yet still the dark emptiness lay in his mind.
“At some point,” said Red Unat, “the animals must join against Quazelzeg. It is inevitable. The great cats and wolves, and the foxes, perhaps even unicorns, though they have disappeared from this hemisphere into the elfin lands. But mark you, the animals must join forces. Already there is talk of such things.” He settled more comfortably on his perch and fluffed his feathers. Thakkur sat up straighter on his sleeping bench, his broad white tail stretched along it, his front paws together, his whiskers stiff as he stared up at Red Unat.
“There is a resistance army growing among the humans,” the owl said. “But Quazelzeg is powerful, more powerful than many understand.
“He took five hundred hostages at Mevidin and is forcing them to serve as soldiers and camp slaves, even the small girls. He has divided his forces into three bands to drive wedges down into the Nasden Confederacy, and he strips the fields of food for his own forces, leaving the cities and villages to starve.”
Teb listened for a long time, sick at the talk and agitated with his own inner turmoil as memories tried to push out. That night his dreams were filled with wings. With the owl’s swooping wings, and with the fluttering wings of a tiny owl as it flew to his shoulder and whispered some message to him. He also dreamt of the heavy, dark wings of slavering jackals, as the creatures snarled and flapped around his face.
Then came wings so huge, so bright and glowing, that they were like pearl-tinted clouds descending. He reached out to them laughing, and the dragon looked down at him, her long green eyes lit with some wonderful message. Then fires came in his dreams. The hearth fire in a tapestried room, a cookfire surrounded by soldiers. Fires and wings twisted together, and there were faces. A red-haired man and an old graying man, and the face of a girl, golden and smiling.
He woke.
And he remembered.
Dawn had barely come, the sky and sea deep gray. He lay looking at the pale lines of waves, remembering it all, his father’s murder before his eyes in the hall, his mother’s drowning, his own enslavement, and Blaggen and the stinking jackals. His journey tied to the horse like a sack of meal, his escape with Garit and Pakkna. Nison-Serth and the foxes, the dear foxes.
The cage, and the dragon tearing at his chains, pulling them free, and searing them from his legs with her hot breath. He remembered running and dodging between racing horsemen, being snatched up by a horseman on a white mount, then falling. . . .
Then nothing, until he woke bobbing on the sea, soaking from the waves, the pain in his leg terrible. And Charkky’s and Mikk’s wet, concerned frowns.
He sat thinking for a long time, and then went along the cliff to Thakkur’s cave. He found the white otter making a meal of periwinkles and sea urchin roe that one of the cubs had brought him. He sat down quietly.
The white otter’s dark eyes looked him over. Teb looked back, filled with news. And with questions.
Thakkur finished the roe and rose to toss the shells into the sea; then he turned again to Teb. “You remember,” he said simply. “I see it in your face. You remember.” His dark eyes were filled with kindness and with wisdom.
“Yes, I remember. I dreamt, then woke remembering. So strange. How could I have forgotten it all? Even my sister?” The cool sea wind touched him as it circled Thakkur’s cave. He stared at Thakkur’s dark, caring eyes. “I am Tebriel, son of the murdered King of Auric. My father was killed by Sivich of the dark raiders. My mother drowned in the Bay of Dubla.”
They talked for a long time. Teb told Thakkur all that had happened on the journey to Baylentha, and much that happened before. He told a great deal about his mother, and once he felt tears start, but he choked them back. He told about the little owl carrying messages to Camery. And that Sivich intended to use Camery for breeding. Thakkur listened. But he offered no answers.
“I must leave Nightpool now. I must help Camery; somehow I must get her away from Sivich.”
Thakkur said nothing for a long time. He moved about the cave, looking out at the sea, rearing up to touch objects along the shelves. Then he dropped to all fours, and flowed up into his sleeping shelf, his movements liquid and graceful, from his broad white tail to his black nose and eyes.