“I expect the owl will return very soon,” he said, rearing up on his sleeping shelf to stare at Teb. “You would do better to wait for him. He will have more news of Auric, for he goes to seek out the underground armies that are said to be based at Bleven.”
“Bleven is where Garit sent me.”
“Yes. It is possible your friend Garit has already rescued Camery. The owl could learn whether she is still in the tower and save you possible capture. It would be no trick for him to drop down into the tower at night and never wake the jackals.”
Teb knew that Thakkur was right, though all his anger at Sivich, all his instincts, tried to drive him out at once to attack the palace at Auric. But alone? What could he do alone?
“If you go now and are killed or taken captive again,” Thakkur said reasonably, “what good will that do your sister? And what help will that be to Auric, or to the forces that fight the dark?”
“What is the dark? I know what the foxes told me, that it is the unliving, that it—” Teb stopped abruptly, staring at Thakkur. “That it takes your memory away,” he said slowly. “Gone—they showed me, Renata showed me. It was like what I felt. Exactly.”
Thakkur looked back at him.
“Did the dark do that to me?”
The white otter shook his head. “I cannot tell, Tebriel. There are other things that make one’s memory fail. Injury, severe sickness. You cannot be certain it was the dark.”
The white otter moved, gliding across the cave and back restlessly. They could hear the laughter of a band of young otters playing in the waves. When Thakkur spoke again, it was sadly.
“You cannot know for certain. You cannot know precisely what the dark is, either, Tebriel, until you can know the turnings of Tirror’s past. Few on Tirror remember, yet only through understanding how Tirror was born can one understand the dark.”
“Tell me, then. Will you tell me?”
Thakkur settled onto his shelf and folded one paw over the other. And as he began the tale of Tirror, pictures came in Teb’s mind of all Thakkur told him, and of more, as if Thakkur’s words unlocked stores of knowledge in his own mind, hidden and surprising.
“Tirror was born a spinning ball of gases,” Thakkur said, “a ball of gases formed by a hand of such power that no creature can know its true nature, the power of the Graven Light. The ball spun and cooled to molten fire, then over centuries it turned to barren stone. All by design, Tebriel. It warped and twisted into mountains and valleys, but there was no tree or plant, no animal, no water to nurture life. Then the power of the Graven Light covered the barren, cooling world with clouds, and the clouds gave down water, and then life came. Small at first, then richer, more varied, until all Tirror knew creatures and plants and abundance.
“But from the very beginning, the fire and bareness and the promise of life lured the dark that always exists in black space, and that luring was not by design. The dark crept through crevices into the molten stone, and it lay dormant through all the changes, and even the power that made Tirror could not rout it. It insinuated itself into each new form the land took. And it waited. It is the opposite to the force of light that created Tirror, and perhaps for this reason it could not be routed. It is malevolent, it is thirsty, and it lay accumulating self-knowledge and earth-knowledge.”
Teb shivered. “And the light couldn’t drive it out?”
“The light did nothing.”
“But. . .”
“Perhaps it is a part of the pattern, that the dark be here. That it works its own forces and its own tests upon Tirror’s life. I don’t know, Tebriel. I know a soul can find true life or fall dying, according to whether it embraces the dark.” The white otter took up a small round stone and held it quietly, as if it soothed him. “Humans don’t remember, as they once did, the long-shadowed tale of this world, or even that there was a time before the small island countries existed. They don’t remember the five huge continents that once were the only land on Tirror.”
Teb tried to imagine huge continents, and no island nations, but could not. “How could that be? What happened to them?”
“Those five continents were drowned. The small island continents are the highest mountains of those vast lands; they are all that remains above water.
“Once there were great ice caps on Tirror, but then the weather grew warmer. The ice began to melt and flood the seas. The seas rose and flooded the land, and drowned the lowlands and the valleys and all the cities there. It did not happen quickly; the shores crept up and up, and folk moved slowly back. But many starved when the crop lands and pastures were covered.”
“How could people forget such a thing? How long ago?”
“Perhaps twenty generations. Humans have forgotten because the source of their world memory is all but gone.
“Once this knowledge was relived in every village, in every place where men and animals met, in ceremonies in the old temple sanctuaries. The past was brought alive by the skill of the singing dragons and the dragonbards, by the wonder of the dragon song. . . .”
A strange feeling gripped Teb, a sense of power that puzzled him, and he saw his hands were shaking and clasped them tight.
“But the force of the dark grew stronger, until at last it drove the dragons out, and captured or killed the bards. And the dark spread tales about the dragon song until soon folk no longer believed in it. And then, at last, it seemed there were no more dragons, not anywhere on Tirror. Memory died. And with its death, each person was separated from the rich multitude of the past, and was alone. Without memory, Tebriel, we cannot know what the present means. We cannot understand evil, or goodness. Our world is caught in despair. Perhaps it was the scent of despair that drew a more powerful dark to us, that drew the unliving into Tirror from far worlds.
“In the far north,” Thakkur said, “lies a black palace that once was hidden beneath the ice. Where it came from, no one knows. When the ice melted, it stood alone there, and it is girded with uncounted doors, and each door leads to a world beyond this world.
“It is believed that Quazelzeg came from there and brought the sea hydrus, and brought a terrible lust to join with the dark of Tirror. And that is when the dark began to rise and create forces to crush all world memory, bringing despair, and so in the end crushing all life except that which it will enslave.”
“He brought the sea hydrus,” Teb said. And he could feel again the creature’s dark evil. “It made a blackness in my mind. It destroyed . . . something I did remember. I thought, when I looked at it, that it. . . wanted to possess me.”
There was a long silence between them, in which, it seemed to Teb, questions and answers and knowledge passed back and forth, things Thakkur was unwilling to speak of, things subtle and secret and not to be spoken of, yet.
“It may well have wanted to possess you, Tebriel.” They stared at each other.
After a long time, Thakkur said, “It is told that, once, the dark leaders trained the hydrus to drive out and kill the singing dragons. Dark soldiers used to capture the baby singing dragons when they flew tame and gentle into the cities, and they put them into a pit with a hydrus. The babies would stand up on their hind legs and try to sing—until the hydrus tore out their throats.”
Chapter 14
It takes ten months to hatch a dragon. The eggs were cream colored and rubbery. By the time the dragonlings hatched in late spring, the shells were stained dark by the rotted carcasses. Dawncloud would lay her head close to each egg and listen to the new little creature inside, wriggling and changing position. When the first hatchling began to scratch on the egg, during a screaming storm that nearly tore the nest from the stony peak, Dawncloud hunkered down over it and cocked her great head, and smiled, filled with wonder and joy, then raised her face to the raging skies and screamed her pleasure out onto the storm.