“But how can you know that? You didn’t know before, or you would have gone before, to find her.”
“Somewhere in this room is a paper with words written on it. The paper tells this message.” Dawncloud sighed. “If I were not destined to join with Meriden, if I were not destined to know and love her, I could not know these words.” She fixed him with a long green look. ‘The paper is here, Tebriel. Search for it. And I,” she said, stretching up, then winging suddenly to the top of the wall, so the room was filled with the cyclone of her wings, “I must search now, for the door through which she vanished.”
She rose up towering, then was over the wall and gone; he heard the tremendous splash of her dive. Then three dragonlings leaped from the wall to follow. Seastrider remained, looking down at him. He stood a moment, his heart pounding; then he stormed up the wall and leaped into the sea and was beating the water, swimming after Dawncloud, choked in the waves she made. He felt Seastrider beside him. “No, Tebriel. No.”
“I must,” he said, choking, “My mother is there somewhere. . . .”
Dawncloud was so far ahead of him she was almost lost from his sight; the rocking of her passage sent water slapping into his face and up the stone walls. He felt Seastrider’s annoyance at him, and her love.
“Come onto my back, then, or we will lose her.”
He slipped onto Seastrider’s back and she leaped ahead with a twisting speed, her wings beating like great sails. He could not see Dawncloud. And then:
“I’m diving, Tebriel; hold on.” Seastrider dropped beneath the sea as he clung, and the water closed over him. Down, down . . . then up again, through a tall arch.
They were in a courtyard. Dawncloud filled the salty pool, rearing up before a dark stone gate all carved with symbols and held with a metal lock. He heard the words she whispered in her silent dragon’s voice, then she sang out loudly, so bright and wild he trembled. The dragonlings were singing with her, a strange song, not a ballad; this was a dragon’s command, and magical. The stone doors opened, and he could see nothing beyond but white mist, moving mist. Then Dawncloud was through. He leaped from Seastrider’s back to follow, but Dawncloud turned in the doorway, the huge silvery bulk of her filling it, and faced down at him, her great mouth open in a dragon’s terrible scream, so close to him he saw flame starting way back in her throat. “Stay back, Tebriel. Do not come here.”
“I must come. She is my mother.”
“All of Tirror is your mother. All of Tirror needs you and Seastrider. You would only hinder me here. How can I travel as I must, search as I must, with a small human companion? She is my bard, Tebriel. If she can be found, I will find her. A million worlds lie beyond this mist. I would lose you.
“Stay with Seastrider here. See to the tasks you were born to. . . .” And then with one thrashing motion she was gone into the mist, and the great doors swung closed again.
He paddled close to Seastrider, heartbroken. Then he slid onto her back, sadly, silently, and they returned to the small room where his mother had slept, the four dragonlings close together now, steeped in the sadness of losing their own mother.
“We sang the ancient song for opening,” Nightraider said, filled with wonder.
“We sang it all together in our minds,” said Windcaller.
“It opened for her,” said Nightraider. “And she went through.”
“She will be through the Castle of Doors by now,” said Seastrider. “She will be out into another world by now,” she said sadly. “Searching for Meriden.”
In the little room, as the dragonlings lay along the top of the wall, Teb began to search for the small bit of paper or parchment that would hold his mother’s handwriting.
He found it at last, tucked down between an empty wooden cask and an iron pot, beneath the oak bed. He knew it at once, and wondered why he hadn’t guessed before. It was not a slip of parchment but his mother’s brass-bound journal that she had kept just as Camery kept a diary. His mother’s journal, locked, and the key missing.
He supposed he could break the lock, but he was loath to. Dawncloud had told him the message, surely all of it. He put the little book in the pocket of his breechcloth, then climbed the wall and down again, to examine the boat, as Seastrider watched from above.
The boat’s name could still be seen, Merlther’s Bird, then the name of her port, Bleven. Merlther Blish’s boat, reported lost months before his mother went away.
“She deceived us,” he said, fingering the cracked letters. “She meant to go away all the time. She lied to us.”
Seastrider sailed down to land beside him, dwarfing the boat and weighting it to its gunwales. She rubbed her cheek against his. “She did what she must. For Tirror. You do not listen well to my mother.” She was annoyed with him. He regarded her evenly.
“My mother said she went to battle the dark. Do you not listen? She deceived you only because it was required of her, because it would be wisest. Not because she didn’t love you. There was no deceit in her heart, Tebriel.”
He stood quietly, looking at the little boat that had been pulled in so carefully between the stone walls in this shadowed watery world. And he knew Seastrider was right. She nuzzled his hand until he put his arm around her. At last he let wonder touch him and the true joy that his mother was alive.
It was later, when he had returned to the little room that had been her last chamber in this world, that he began to wonder if his father had known all along. That she was not dead. That she had meant to go away in this fashion.
He must have hated the dark all the more, because it made it necessary for Meriden to go away. He must have felt terrible anger that he could not help her. That he must stay and guard Auric, while she did battle in a world so far away he might never see her again. Had he known, guessed, that they would never be together again?
Seastrider soared off the top of the wall and dropped down into the room beside him.
“How can Dawncloud ever find her?” he said sadly.
“It will not be an easy search. Perhaps there are vibrations out among those worlds, just as there are in the sea.” She curled down around Teb and lowered her head on her back, making a cocoon for him. “Rest, Tebriel. When night grows darkest, we will go home. To the Lair. Tonight, Tebriel, you will sleep among dragons, at the top of the highest peaks.”
“And tomorrow?” he said, his excitement rising.
“Tomorrow . . . and tomorrow . . . we will begin to assess the dark, Tebriel. We will begin to discover how best we can battle it, to bring Tirror back to truth. We will begin to strengthen our powers—of creating image and memory and hope through song. We will begin to discover other powers.”
“What other powers? The opening of doors . . . ?”
“Perhaps. And perhaps we can master the magic of shape shifting, and perhaps other ways to confuse the dark.”
He leaned back against her warm, jeweled side and felt the strength of bard and dragon, teamed, and thought that, with training together, they might know more power than he had imagined. Together they would make song, would shape Tirror’s true past for those who lived today, and he knew that this was their one great weapon. For to know what has been is to know what can be. This was what the dark must destroy if it would win the minds of its slaves. If it would create a willing acceptance of slavery. As the night drew down, and the thin moon rose, Seastrider said, “We will go now,” and they swept out across the sea toward Windthorst and Fendreth-Teching, four bright dragons, one carrying her bard, he caught in the wonder of this first flight, caught in the wonder of beginning.
They passed over Nightpool in darkness, high against the stars where no earthbound creature could see them. Yet in the empty meeting cave, before the sacred clam shell, Thakkur saw. This vision was clear and strong. The white otter smiled, and put from him his loneliness for Tebriel, in the knowledge that Teb was now, in this time in the world, exactly where he belonged.