When she saw the hall, her face was filled with such mixed emotions that all the crowd went still.
Pain was in her face, longing. A tangle of memories of the king. She went to the hearth and knelt beside the crock of fresh bay leaves and smelled them. Someone had remembered that she had always kept the spicy-scented leaves there. She moved around the room, looking.
When she turned back to the hearth, she laid her hand on the rough stone, and her thought touched the bards sharply. This palace had stood for many generations before the coming of the dark. It would stand long after the dark was only a memory. She unbuckled her scabbard and sword and hung them on the hook that, so long ago, the King of Auric had used. Then she gathered Teb and Camery to her. Teb reached for Kiri. Colewolf pulled the three children close. The bards stood together within the calm safety of Auric Palace.
It would be many months before Meriden would tell them about all of her life for those exiled years. It would be many years before Tirror would recover completely from its long siege. But that recovery had begun.
“We will bring all who want to come here to the palace,” Meriden said. “The sick to heal, and the orphans, just as Garit has done at Dacia. We will help teach them crafts, soldiering, whatever they wish.” She looked evenly at the bards. “We must keep a strong army. The dark has proven this—that the powers of bards and dragons alone are not enough.”
Teb hugged her, liking very much this person who was his mother.
“Perhaps we could join with Ebis the Black,” Camery said, “in training our young warriors and in defending Windthorst.”
“Perhaps we could,” Meriden said. “I think you make a good captain, my daughter. I think you would work well with Ebis.”
The hall had grown crowded. Meriden looked around at her friends. “The old sanctuaries—Nison-Serth, Gardel-Cloor—all will be way stations again, gathering places for all speaking animals and all humans.” Her face brightened, her eyes smiling. “We are free again—to travel as we wish. Each of us is free, to live how and where we wish.” She turned from them and went to stand before the hearth. When she turned back, every eye was on her.
“There are other worlds,” Meriden said, “that the slave masters have fought again and again to conquer. Those worlds that have held fast their freedom cherish that freedom well.”
She shook her head. “Tirror had never known that kind of challenge—until Quazelzeg and his disciples invaded us.
“Now . . . I think that now everyone on Tirror must find some way to join with the bards. I think that we must all work together, to remain free of those like the unliving.”
*
Teb stood, at dusk, in Auric’s tower. He raised a hand to Kiri in the courtyard, and she ran up the stairs to him. They stood close, leaning on the stone wall, looking out over the green meadows and the sea, watching the dragons. Some of them were winging over the sea lithe as swallows, diving for sharks. But Varuna and the dragonlings were stretched out across the meadow, their wings tucked close to their bodies, surrounded by calmly grazing horses.
“Varuna is telling the dragonlings of other worlds,” Kiri said. She turned to look at Teb. “He’s the most wonderful dragon in any world.”
Teb grinned at her. “He’s wild—fiery. He’s a fine dragon. The dragonlings are very impressed; all the dragons are. I know Seastrider’s thoughts about him. Really very admiring.”
She laughed. “I’d call Windcaller’s thoughts amorous.”
He smiled. “They can have some life of their own now—we all can.”
“You told me once you used to dream of dragons here, on the meadows of Auric.”
“I did. A sight just like that, with fine horses grazing among them, unafraid. I used to dream a lot of things about this land, and what I hoped it would be like someday.” He put his arm around her. “I used to dream about sharing it with someone. But I didn’t know who.”
“Do you know now?”
“Yes. I know now.”
She brushed her lips across his cheek, warm in his arms, and their minds saw and felt as one.
#
About the Author
Shirley Rousseau Murphy grew up in southern California, riding and showing the horses her father trained. She attended the San Francisco Art institute and later worked as an interior designer while her husband attended USC. “When Pat finished school, I promptly quit my job and began to exhibit paintings and welded metal sculpture in the West Coast juried shows.” Her work could also be seen in many traveling shows in the western States and Mexico. “When we moved to Panama for a four-year tour in Pat’s position with the U.S. Courts, I put away the paints and welding torches, and began to write.” After leaving Panama they lived in Oregon, Atlanta, and northern Georgia before returning to California, where they now live by the sea.
Besides the Dragonbards Trilogy, Murphy wrote sixteen children's books and a young adult fantasy quintet before turning to adult fantasy with The Catsworld Portal and the Joe Grey cat mystery series, which so far includes sixteen novels and for which she is now best known. She is the winner of five Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author of the Year awards—two of them for Nightpool and The Ivory Lyre—plus eight Muse Medallion awards from the national Cat Writers Association.
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 1: Nightpool
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 1. As dark raiders invade the world of Tirror, a singing dragon awakens from her long slumber, searching for the human who can vanquish the forces of evil—Tebriel, son of the murdered king. Teb has found refuge in Nightpool, a colony of talking otters. But a creature of the Dark is also seeking him, and the battle to which he is drawn will decide Tirror’s future.
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 2: The Ivory Lyre
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 2. The bard Tebriel and his singing dragon Seastrider together can weave powerful spells. With other dragons searching for their own bards, they have been inciting revolts throughout the enslaved land of Tirror. Only if they can contact underground resistance fighters and find the talisman hidden in Dacia will they have a chance to break the Dark’s hold on the world.
The Shattered Stone
An omnibus containing the first two books of the five originally published as the Children of Ynell series. In most regions of Ere to be a Seer, gifted with telepathic and visionary powers, means death—or does it? For some it may mean an even worse fate: destruction of their minds and enslavement by the dark powers determined to conquer the world. In Ring of Fire, Zephy and the goatherd Thorn are dismayed to discover that they themselves are Seers, but once they know, they are driven to escape from the repressive city of their birth and rescue others, many of them children, who have been captured and imprisoned by its attackers. Only the discovery of one shard of a mysterious runestone offers hope that they can succeed. In The Wolf Bell, set in an earlier time, the child Seer Ramad seeks the runestone itself with the aid of an ancient bell that enables him to control and communicate with the thinking wolves of the mountains, who become his friends. But will they be a match for his enemies, the evil Seers of Pelli, who are determined to control Ramad’s mind and through him, to obtain the stone for their own dark purpose?