Then he shook himself, stood a moment to dry in the wind, and began to climb the cliff.
It was steep, but the outcropping stones and tough hanks of dry grass helped him. As he pulled himself over the edge, something snorted, and a band of horses shied and wheeled nearly on top of him, and pounded away across the hills.
Why hadn’t he been more careful? Why hadn’t he looked before he let himself be seen? He might have had himself a mount now if he’d used his head. And what if it had been soldiers? It was not a good beginning. As he swung up over the lip of the cliff, he resolved to take more care.
He stood looking out across the rolling green hills and at the little villages far distant along the west turning of the coast. Inland to the west, between two familiar hills and a grove of almond trees, stood the towers of home, stood the Palace of Auric. His memories crowded back, sweeping him away into scenes that were, each, a stabbing pain. It all flooded back, the beatings and the leg chains from which he still wore scars, the cruelty of Sivich and his guards. He stood brooding and angry, filled with the pain of his father’s murder, with the helpless fury holding him now as if no time had passed, as if he and Camery were still prisoners in their dead father’s palace. He remembered it all in every detail, the pain, the stink of the unkempt palace, remembered as if he were twelve again, chained in the cold stone cellar. Remembered . . .
Chapter 2
He had been barely twelve years old, a small, thin boy sleeping on the stone floor of a prison cell so deep in the cellars of the palace you could not tell night from day. It was near midnight when the guard’s boot nudged his ribs. His eyes flew open; then he squeezed them closed in the bright lantern light and curled tighter beneath the thin blanket he had doubled and tucked around himself. When the boot nudged harder, insistently, he scowled up into the light again and into Blaggen’s sleep-puffy face, lit from beneath by the swinging flame. Blaggen smelled of liquor, as usual, and of leather wet from his own urine, for he had dirty ways. The two guard jackals pushed closer to Teb, mixing their own rank smell, like spoiled meat, with Blaggen’s, their little mean eyes red in the light and wings dragging the floor with a dusty dry sound. They were heavier than Teb, and pushy. They slept in his cell and followed him in all his serving duties, their slavering grins eager for him to try escape.
Blaggen kicked him again, so hard it took his breath. Teb squirmed out of the tangle of blanket, confused and clumsy, but could not tear himself fully from sleep.
“Get up, son of pigs. Sivich wants you in the hall. There are soldiers to serve, thirsty from a long ride.” He emphasized thirsty with another nudge. Teb wanted to hit him, but knew better. The welts on his back still pained him from his last outburst of fury. Blaggen belched into his yellow beard and, tired of watching the boy squirm under his boot, jerked him up by the collar, jerked the cell door open with an echoing clang, and shoved Teb before him down the narrow black passage. Up three flights, Teb stumbling in darkness on the stone steps, the jackals crowding close.
In the hall the torches were all ablaze, and a great fire burned on the hearth. The room was filled with warriors, shouting and arguing and laughing. Sivich paced before the fire, his broad, black-bearded head jutting like a mean-tempered bull’s. Weapons were piled beside the outer door that led down to the courtyard: heavy swords; long, curved bows and leather quivers filled with arrows; and the oak-shafted spears.
Teb crossed to the scullery at once. Old Desma was there, yawning and pushing back her gray hair, doubtless dragged from sleep in the servants’ quarters just as he had been dragged from sleep in his cell. The deep window behind her was black with night, but a wash of light shone from the courtyard below, and he heard hooves clattering on stone and bridles jingling as the warriors’ horses were tended, then the echo of a man swearing; then a horse screamed. Desma glanced toward Blaggen and saw he had turned away. She put her arm around Teb and drew him to her comfortingly. Her old eyes were puffy from sleep. “I don’t like this midnight riding, I don’t like their talk. . . .” Then she broke off and pushed him away, because Blaggen had turned to look. She shoved a tray into Teb’s hands and began to pile on silver mugs, two and three to a stack, and a heavy clay jug of mithnon. As she turned Teb toward the door, she whispered, “Get away from the palace. Get away tonight if you can.”
“But how? How can I? Will you . . . ?”
She touched his face gently, her look was sad and closed. “I don’t know how. There’s no way I can help; they watch me too closely. He’s looking—pretend I’m scolding you.”
Teb left the pantry scowling and stumbling as if the old lady had been chiding him, and moved out among the elbowing men to serve up the dark, strong liquor.
He shuffled about holding the tray up to whoever shouted for it, and no one paid him much more attention, except to snatch up mugs and pour liquor, and berate him when the jug was empty. It shamed him to serve his father’s murderers. Before they had killed his father, these men had treated him with oily, smiling deference. He wished it were poison he carried instead of mithnon, and he promised himself for the hundredth time that when he was grown, these men would die by his hand. Each of them would die, and Sivich would die slowly, with great pain.
When at last the men settled around Sivich before the fire, the edge of their thirst dulled and their mugs refilled, Blaggen motioned Teb away to his corner. Teb’s arms ached from the heavy trays. He crouched against the stone wall on a bit of torn rug, the hump-shouldered jackals crowding close, and stared up through the small, barred window. A few stars shone in the black sky, and faint moonlight touched the tower, but he could see no movement within, and he imagined his sister asleep, curled up with her stuffed cloth owl. Once there had been a real owl, small and fat and filled with owlish humor. But Sivich had had the jackals kill it.
Now the two jackals began to bicker between themselves with low, menacing growls, pacing and hunching around Teb, their lips drawn back over long yellow teeth, the mottled, greasy hair along their spines rising in anger. They always pressed against Teb when they quarreled, and sometimes, snapping at one another, they bit him as well. He pulled away from them and huddled against the cold stone wall. The warriors were all talking at once, trying to tell Sivich something, shouting and swearing. What was the wonder they kept boasting about? What had flown over them? Teb had heard only snatches of talk as he served the liquor, a few words, questions broken by shouts for more drink. Now at last, one man at a time began to speak out under Sivich’s questioning, Sivich’s own voice sharp with excitement as the dark leader moved back and forth before the flicking tongues of flame.
“Where on the coast? Exactly where?” Sivich growled. “Are you sure it wasn’t a hydrus? What. . . ?”
“East of the crossing. It was almost daylight. We saw . . .”
“It flew, I tell you. Can’t no hydrus fly through the air. And there ain’t no common dragon that big. Nor that color. Never.”