“There,” Meriden cried, pointing where a bright thin crack appeared in murky space. “There . . .” Bayzun was through. They plunged after him—and dropped into the sky above the battle.
Teb searched wildly for Thakkur. Bayzun dove, slashing at the unliving. Meriden’s sword flashed. Teb brought the lyre’s song ringing across the battle to drive the dark back. The lyre’s roar and Bayzun’s roar filled the wind. He saw the dark falter—and he searched for one small white figure amid the surging battle.
The dark fell back. Rebel warriors rose to storm palace walls. Monsters seething over parapets dropped down again into the courtyard, their screeching silenced.
Nightraider dove at a tangle of giant serpents; Camery slashed and cut at them. Ebis the Black rode down a screaming basilisk and cut its snake body to shreds. The great cats and wolves tore at the unliving. Dragons dove to burn. Marshy leaned down, clutching harness, to snatch up a wounded otter. The lyre’s song thundered across the battlefield, driving back the dark—but it was Bayzun who struck the coldest terror into the dark forces.
*
On a hilltop, Windcaller fought to drive warriors away from Kiri, who knelt, cradling Thakkur.
She had seen the hordes of dark monsters appear from nowhere, storming out of the palace. In that moment when defeat was certain, she had seen Thakkur fall. Windcaller had cut a swath through the attacking hordes, and Kiri had knelt over Thakkur in the little space Windcaller won. She held Thakkur’s body, trying to find a heartbeat. There was none. She rocked him, torn with grief for him, sick with despair.
Their world was dying, Tirror was dying. There would be nothing left but the dark. Teb was lost somewhere. Kiri’s stomach was twisted in knots. Thakkur’s poor torn body seemed an instrument of terrible prediction, mirroring the final and terrible end for them all.
Then something stirred her. Something summoned.
She heard the lyre crying out across the battle, silencing all cries with its fury. She saw the black dragon explode out of nothing, riderless and huge. She saw Seastrider . . . and Teb! She saw a white dragon she had never seen. A woman—Meriden!
The lyre thundered. The black dragon slaughtered. The rebel armies rallied, and the dark armies trembled and fell back as Kiri knelt on the battlefield, holding Thakkur and screaming with victory.
Teb saw her crouched before Windcaller, holding something white. He sped toward them, leaped down, and knelt beside Kiri praying that Thakkur was alive.
And knowing he was not.
Kiri and Teb cradled Thakkur between them, their eyes meeting in a storm of grief.
She smoothed Thakkur’s bloody white fur over his terrible wound. Teb pulled Kiri against his shoulder suddenly and fiercely, and held her tight, Thakkur couched in their circling arms.
When Teb rose at last, he held Thakkur gently. He turned away from Kiri to mount Seastrider. Kiri watched as they lifted away above the battle. She did not follow.
In the sky, Teb cradled Thakkur’s body inside his tunic, beneath the lyre. He stroked the lyre’s strings in a thundering dirge for Thakkur, its voice struck with grief and love. At its bright, ringing notes, the last of the dark hordes turned and fled into the palace. They pushed back through Quazelzeg’s golden Door, trampling each other, wraiths and incubi and monsters crowding through.
Among the dark warriors, only Quazelzeg paused.
When all the hordes had fled, Quazelzeg stood within the safety of the gold Door, burning with fury at what he had lost.
But there would be other worlds, other challenges. He turned to consider such worlds—his next quest.
He went white at what he saw.
He spun and tried to run, but light exploded around him, light so bright and consuming that the Door was lost in its brilliance. The light twisted Quazelzeg and sucked him in. He spun within its glow, screaming. . . .
Slowly he was consumed, by a light so powerful that it turned white the battlefield and the surrounding hills, and its clear brilliance burst like a nova across Tirror’s skies.
The terror of Quazelzeg’s scream remained long after his body was consumed. The light that took him was seen from Auric Palace in an exploding brilliance that cascaded across the sky; it was seen in Nightpool, where the few otters who had remained stared up in chittering wonder.
It turned the sky over Yoorthed so pale that the dwarfs ran out of the cave, shouting, “What is it?”
“Power,” King Flam said, staring at the shining sky. “What power?” a dwarf said, shivering. “Not the power of the dark,” King Flam cried, his voice thundering. He smiled at the gathered dwarfs.
“I would guess the battle has ended. This,” King Flam said, sighing with relief, “this is the greatest power—the power that holds us all.”
Chapter 28
The battlefield was still, every face turned toward the Graven Light. Not until that light faded did anyone speak, and then only in whispers.
“We did not kill Quazelzeg. . . .”
“The light . . .”
“The Graven Light. . .”
They moved at last, to kneel beside their wounded. They tended some wounded on the battlefield and carried the most grievously hurt to the palace. The voice of the lyre had stilled. The spirit of Bayzun was gone, back into the centuries. When the mortal dragons glided down to the palace, Seastrider, Windcaller, Nightraider and Starpounder crowded around their mother, bellowing and slapping their wings over her. They had been only dragonlings when Dawncloud had left them to search for Meriden. The bards slid down, laughing, amid the tangle of wings and sparring dragons. Teb turned away and went directly into the palace, carrying the body of Thakkur safe beneath his tunic.
Camery hugged her mother so hard Meriden gasped, laughing and hugging her back. They looked at each other silently, each seeing something of herself. Meriden touched Camery’s face, her hair.
“It’s still pale gold. I used to braid it all down your back. And when you rode, little wisps would come loose.”
“And when you washed it, I cried.”
Meriden laughed. “You had a tantrum, sometimes, when I washed your hair. Oh, you did cry. And—and when I went away,” Meriden said, “I cried. I had lost you—and Teb—and my true love.” She wept again, and they held each other for a long time.
*
Teb found tools in the palace and went alone across the hills to cut a straight oak. He hewed out a coffin for Thakkur and laid him in it, his whole being filled with grieving. He nailed on the lid and carried the coffin to the hill where he had first come with Seastrider. There he piled boulders around it until he could give Thakkur a proper burial. When he came down the hill, Meriden was waiting for him. He saw in her eyes clear knowledge of his pain.
Teb held her, needing her as if he were a child again. As they clung together, it might have been, again, that windy fall morning when he was small and she had held him and said good-bye.
He said, “I read your journal.”
“Yes.”
“How did you make the entries that . . . came later?”
Her eyes widened. “I . . . wasn’t sure I could. I hoped that maybe . . .” She shook her head, smiling.
“There are such powers beyond this world, Teb. I hoped . . . I wrote messages with spring water—on the ground, on stone walls, anywhere, because I was so lonely sometimes. As if writing words could link me to you. One message—the last message—I prayed that you would see that.”
She gave him a cool, steady look. “The diary pages I wrote when you were small—I was wrong not to tell you and Camery that you were dragonbards. I was as wrong as the unliving, who kept the true history from Tirror.”
“No. It was different. You meant to save us pain.”
“Not at all different. I took your own history from you. I did it to save you, but the result is the same.”