They bloodied it and slashed its sides and tore a wound down one head. They could see the pale, healed scars where its throat had been cut before, and its eye injured. They had grown skilled indeed with the heavy weapons, thrusting and slashing in the water until it backed and fled.
The second attack, four weeks later, brought it rising suddenly from the shallow landward bay, where it had come in deep and quietly in the night. It thrust up at the black sheltering rim of the island so the rock shuddered and the caves echoed. The defending otters leaped down onto it from the cliff and bloodied its gaping, reaching faces before it was driven back. One strong young male, Perkketh, clung to its neck and thrust at its head with his sword while others cut deep gashes in its leathery hide. But it killed Perkketh with one thrusting flip of its head as it heaved him against the cliff.
The Ottra nation mourned Perkketh and made ceremony for him in the meeting cave and buried him in the cave of burial close beside the green marsh. They planted his grave with starflowers. And in his farewell prayer for Perkketh, Thakkur said words that set Teb to thinking in a new way.
“Not of the sea and not of the land, the Ottra are wanderers all in that thin world that lies between. Each to its own place must cling, even in death must cling. And what comes after death when we rise anew, only a wisdom far greater than our wisdom can ordain. The Graven Light take Perkketh now and keep him in joy and in dignity.”
The third attack by the hydrus was close to the north shore of Nightpool just at Shark Rock, as Teb and Charkky were coming up at dusk from gathering oysters. It was low tide, and the oyster beds were exposed far out into the sea. Teb could see Ekkthurian and his two companions moving along at the far outer edge of the oyster beds just beside the sea trench, dragging a string bag of oysters between them. When the hydrus came up suddenly from the trench, Urikk dropped the bag and ran, but it snapped up Ekkthurian and Gorkk, then charged Teb and Charkky and Mikk as the guarding band on the cliff swarmed down. Teb crouched, his knife ready. The hydrus shook the two otters it held, bellowing, and reached with its third head for Teb. Teb dodged and leaped away, slashing at the reaching face, and blood spurted. The hydrus dropped Ekkthurian, screaming, then dropped Gorkk. The otter lay writhing and snarling. The hydrus advanced on Teb, all its attention on him, holding him frozen with the stare of those six immense eyes; yet it did not reach for him, and knowledge filled him, in that moment, that it did not want him dead.
When it did reach, it was gently, the middle head thrusting out, and its great thick lips mumbled over his face so he wanted to retch. He could not move. He knew it would carry him away, and his fear was so terrible it would be almost a relief to have it over with; then suddenly it lurched away as the otters attacked, thrusting and slashing: the otter guards from the cliff battled it back toward the sea. Teb was fighting beside them now. Otters leaped to its neck, and Teb leaped; they attacked the three heads until it bellowed with rage and twisted, flinging them off, and thrashed back into the deep sea. They stood looking after it, panting.
“Did we kill it?” Charkky said at last.
“I don’t know,” Teb said. “We hurt it, though. I think we hurt it badly.”
Several otters were being helped up the cliff trailing blood, Ekkthurian and Gorkk among them. Teb could see Mitta hurrying along the high ledge, with half a dozen others, to tend the wounded. He stared out at the sea where the waters still showed pink, then turned away from the group of otter warriors.
He walked for a long time along the edge of the water, rounding the island but seeing, in his mind, the wounded otters. Seeing Perkketh dead.
These things should never have happened. They must not happen again. He knew, now, that he must go away. That this one time, Thakkur was wrong. He must lead the hydrus, not here to the island again, but away from it. When he had circled the island, and come to where otters were gathered outside Thakkur’s cave, he learned there had been two deaths more. Gorkk, and a strapping otter named Tekket, who left behind him a wife and four cubs. Teb went to Thakkur, then, and found him alone. He sat in the cave in silence as the white otter puttered about, his paws busy for the first time Teb could remember. When at last he turned, Teb could see his grief.
“I am going away,” Teb said. “I will lead the hydrus away.”
“No. We will kill the hydrus, Tebriel. Given time, we can. If you go now, every otter will feel that he has failed, will know that you led it away because we have failed to kill it.”
“I will say that I go to search for my sister. That is true. And I feel—I would search for the dragon, Thakkur. The singing dragon.”
Thakkur nodded, and again there was a long silence between them, as understanding grew. Then he said softly, “Yes. But first you mean to seek the hydrus.”
“I must.”
Thakkur turned away, to stare out at the sea. When he faced Teb again, the sadness robed him heavily. He studied Teb; and saw in Teb’s face the resolve that would not be swayed. He said at last, “Give us, then, this night for ceremony, Tebriel. A feast of good-bye. Such a gathering would ease the pain of leave-taking for all of us. Will you allow us that?”
And so there was a feast, and gift giving, and Thakkur’s quiet predictions beforehand, which now came so clearly in the clamshell, as if Teb’s own increased power helped to bring them. For Teb did feel a power that excited him with its promise. And when, late in the evening, he sang the Song of the Creatures, he held the gathered otters silent and transfixed as he spun out living scenes of the speaking animals, amazing himself as well as them with the power of his conjuring. He felt his strength surging, felt forces within himself that he could not put shape to, felt skills begin to rise, filled with wonder and power. For long moments after the song was finished, the otters sat in awe; it was Ekkthurian who broke the stillness by rising to stomp away. Teb hardly noticed, for the sense of promise that filled him. Promise of a wonder he could not even name. A wonder that, now, gave added meaning to Thakkur’s predictions, which the old otter had spoken quietly while they sat alone.
“You will ride the winds of Tirror, Tebriel. And you will touch humankind and change it. You will see more than any creature or human sees, save those of your own special kind.
“I see mountains far to the north, and you will go there among wonderful creatures and speak to them, and know them.”
Thakkur predicted threat as well as wonder. “I see a street in Sharden’s city narrow and mean. There is danger there and it reeks of pain. Take care, Tebriel, when you journey into Sharden.”
The ceremony had made bright new songs tumble into Teb’s head, verses that captured, for all time, those moments of pleasure as the otters presented him with gold and pearls and polished shells and corals, verses that would bring their voices back years hence, and their gentle, bright expressions and funny grins.
There was feasting, the special lighted torches Charkky and Mikk had made, the great fire to roast the fish and shellfish in his honor. They laughed, and played the otter games of three-shell and clap, and it was late indeed when all found their ways to cave and bed. Teb lay on his stone shelf staring out at the stars and hearing the sea. He did not sleep.
He rose at first light and dove far out and swam for a long time in the cold sea, trying to lose the terrible homesickness that gripped him. Trying to lose the fear with which he began this journey to confront the hydrus; trying to understand better the sense of power that was now a part of himself, to understand how to deal with it. When he returned to his cave, there was Thakkur, coming to say a private good-bye.