But then, sometimes his mind would lock against the hydrus in weak battle and he would lie shivering, knowing something that he could not bring clear, and then he did not call out to the young dragon, but weakly warned her away. Yet these transgressions were shortlived, and then he would once more cleave to the dark will of the hydrus, knowing that this was the true way.
He hardly remembered any life before this. The otters were a vague memory of something imagined, and there was nothing before that at all. Only the demands of the hydrus were real. The dragon must come; it was urgent that she come so they could begin their quest.
Oh, he would be a persuasive singer—the hydrus told him so. His voice was clear and strong, very right for the ballads, and the visions he made were sharp with detail. Linked with the dragon the songs would be rich beyond belief, and soon Tirror would know the real tales, and Quazelzeg would bring to all the nations a time of truth and new rule. For only in Quazelzeg’s plan was there truth. Only when all humankind and animals served the true masters in unquestioning obedience, putting aside their own unorganized and arbitrary pursuits, swearing fealty only to Quazelzeg’s vision, would there be true design and harmony on Tirror. And wouldn’t he sing of Quazelzeg’s virtues? All the songs, now, were filled with his virtues. Teb’s commitment built, and the small voice inside that cried out against the hydrus’s deceit was stilled by Teb himself.
Yet that voice would not be completely stilled and made him twist and fight in his sleep. But then when he woke, the dark would take him once more and he would call out to the dragon with all the lure he knew. She must come, the one dragon must come to him for him to be whole and skilled and able at Quazelzeg’s work. He must teach the joys of obedience, show each commoner the true way in serving the benevolent dark masters. And it was through the power of the dragon songs, bringing alive such joys, that all commoners could be made to understand.
He had no notion how much time had passed, nor did he care, the morning the hydrus brought him down off the wall simply by commanding him to dive. He dove willingly down into the small circle of sea, and the hydrus herded him through the opening and out into the sunken city.
Broken walls rose out of the water, thick with barnacles and moss. Tangled sea plants grew in shadowed ponds under low roofs and up stairways. Schools of small fish flashed through window openings. Eels hunted in dark watery chambers. The hydrus herded him toward a stair. He climbed, and found himself in a small room and heard a stone slab pulled across. Again he was a prisoner, and alone.
The room must have been situated high up in the palace, perhaps an attic or storeroom. There was a great stone basin that might have been for bathing, and when he tasted the water it held, it was fresh. He drank gulping, dipping his whole face in.
Around the base of the steps that led down into the sea, oysters and mussels clung in abundance, and it was this as much as the fresh water that made him know the hydrus was prepared to keep him here for some time. He pulled his knife from his belt and ate, stuffing himself, wanting the strength the food would give. It would take all the power he had to subdue the dragon and train her, all his strength, perhaps, simply to make her come to him, for it seemed he had been trying a long time.
*
Seastrider knew Teb called to her. Dawncloud also knew, and while the young dragon was in a frenzy to go to him and to battle the hydrus, Dawncloud bade her wait; Dawncloud bellowed a challenge to the hydrus and to the dark, her green eyes blazing, and she bade the dragonling wait. She saw her own songs warped and twisted and darkening Teb’s mind, so fury held her. She bid Seastrider wait, her voice like a clap of thunder. He must defeat the hydrus alone!
The dragonlings looked at her and were still, curling down in the nest, Seastrider shivering.
So they waited, knowing the awesome twisting of the dark songs, knowing Tebriel’s acceptance of the dark and, sometimes, his feeble battle. They knew the power that held Tebriel was like a killing fever. They waited, patient as only dragons can be patient, as night followed day and moon followed moon and winter brought raging winds and heaving seas. They felt Teb’s chill of body and spirit, his fear. They saw spring begin, a watery sun. They saw the otters searching, in Mernmeth and Pinssra and even as far as Naiheth. But the drowned city where Tebriel was held lay far, far from those submerged villages. They saw the otters give up hope at last, all but the white otter leader. They saw a time when Tebriel seemed lost, sunk steadily into the realm of the dark, grown thin and scowling and without joy. They waited with a dragon’s patience, all but Seastrider, who fidgeted and lurched out on the winds and could not be still and sent all her young power to join with Tebriel in his battle. And still they waited. Then at last, they saw Tebriel rise in his spirit and recapture a living strength. They saw him begin to battle with a new fierceness; they saw his consciousness accept and know, at last, the powerful treachery that gripped his senses.
*
It was spring. A heavy dark rain sloughed across the sea, beating at the leaden water. Teb lay along the high stone sill that ran along one side of the small stone room, looking out through the thin strip of window that must once have been an arrow slot. He watched the leaden sea and sky and shivered with chill, then felt hot even as the cold wind sloughed in. He had been ill for some days. Behind him in the stone room, rain poured down through a hole in the high roof, into the stone basin, its cold splashing dampening the walls; if he went down to drink, he would be drenched and even colder.
He had been trying all morning to make the dragon come to him. He was furious with the stubbornness of the creature and would rather put it out of his mind. But the hydrus made him keep on, directing his thoughts, demanding, and his own irritable temper mirrored the vicious temper of the hydrus.
He had grown very thin. His body ached often, and he was always cold. He went to sleep at night drowned by exhaustion, desperate and furious at his failure. He did not try to lure or cajole the dragon anymore, or beg her. He demanded. And when he demanded, she seemed to draw farther away. But the hydrus, in turn, demanded, and it would not let him rest.
Teb understood quite well his own importance and the importance of the dragon he must master. They alone could shape the beliefs of the people. The dark could conquer, the dark could enslave, but it was bard and dragon who could make all Tirror love the dark. It was bard and dragon alone who could forge a newly designed history of Tirror and shape people’s minds to believe it. It was bard and dragon alone who could weave into the minds of all Tirror a memory of the dark leaders as gods.
“And you will be a god, then, Tebriel,” the hydrus had told him, “you will be revered and loved. . . .”
Teb huddled into himself on the cold stone shelf, shivering, then hot. He knew in some distant part of his mind that he was sick, but thought, because the hydrus wanted him to think it, that his aching and discomfort were owing to his failure with the dragon. Its words “You will be a god” were hollow, and its words “You will be revered and loved” puzzled and upset him, so he kept dragging them back into his 3ewsconsciousness and worrying at them. “Revered and loved . . . and loved. . . .”
As the wind grew higher and the rain harder and his fever rose, he left the shelf and huddled down on the bed of rags where he slept. He knew very little now, except the word “loved” pounded with the pulsing of his aching head. Scenes began to come to Teb, born not of song but of the fever. Faces and voices filled his mind, and the word “loved” seemed tangled around them all like the golden threads within a sphere winding and twisting back, with no end. A girl with golden hair, the faces of dark otters, a man with a red beard and hair like the mane of a lion, his mother’s face . . . yes . . . loved . . . the King of Auric mounted on a black horse. . . . Father, I love you. . . . Dark furred faces with great brown eyes and then the white face of an otter who looked so deeply at him . . . love . . . Teb twisted and huddled down under the rags, and went weakly to the great basin to drink. The scenes continued and wove themselves into a huge golden sphere of endless pathways that filled his mind so that, as he came out of the fever at last, it was this sphere that held his thoughts and it was these scenes now that wove a skein of memory within him, the dark of the hydrus driven back.