He wondered if her flirting was a cover, if she might be a contact with the underground, wanting to learn his true mission. She had given no hint of that. She could be just what she seemed, a little tart. He would hold his judgment and see where the flirting led. Seastrider thought her a common trollop. Seastrider had decided opinions. Well, that was the nature of dragons.
Seastrider’s comments about the soldiers who rode her weren’t flattering, either. All four dragons were hard put not to buck off their heavy-handed riders. It was difficult enough, they said, to hold the shape shifting for such long times without having to put up with the Dacian soldiers jerking their halters and kicking them. Teb did not point out to them that it was their idea to come here. He had a hard time convincing the Dacian soldiers, too, that these horses did not need bits in their mouths and would not tolerate spurs.
He thought how Garit would have ridden them, gentle-handed and wise, understanding at once their perceptiveness. Garit had stayed on as horsemaster after Teb’s father was murdered, serving the dark leader, Sivich, and certainly hating him. He had stayed to help Teb and Camery when the chance finally came. When Sivich’s men discovered there was still a singing dragon on Tirror, Sivich decided to capture it, using Teb as bait. It was the small birthmark on Teb’s arm that told Sivich he was a dragonbard.
Sivich had been an ignorant fool to think that a singing dragon would let itself be captured. Teb supposed that in his embarrassment at failure Sivich had kept the fact that there was a dragon again on Tirror a secret. Maybe he still dreamed of trapping her. He was a fool as well as an incredibly evil man. He followed the dark leaders eagerly. It was Sivich’s kind, more than any other, that helped the dark grow strong. Teb intended that Sivich would die painfully and slowly for the murder of his father.
Garit had outsmarted Sivich handily when he freed Teb from Sivich’s army before they reached the site of the dragon trap. Garit fled on horseback to lead Sivich’s soldiers away from Teb, where he hid in the sanctuary of Nison-Serth. Garit didn’t know Teb had been captured a second time and chained in the dragon snare. Surely it was Garit who had returned to Auric much later, to the tower, to free Camery. The great owl, Red Unat, winging across the channel to Nightpool, had brought Teb news that she was gone.
Teb began to pace again, impatient to join the dragons. He wondered—if he could bring folk awake, he and Seastrider, make folk cast off the mind-numbing dark, maybe he could make them sleep, too.
Half amused, he tried a song of peace, singing softly, his voice moving out onto the night breeze too quietly to be consciously heard through open windows. The song came to him easily, and he felt more power than he should; then he realized Seastrider was singing with him, a whisper of dragon song. They wove a subtle ballad filled with stars and soft winds, and pretty soon the palace lights began to be snuffed, one here, two there. The reflections of light from the rooms below him began to die.
At last the night was black, with only the stars for light. Teb slipped out his chamber door, to the shadows of hall and stair.
Chapter 8
The white mares were silhouetted against the night, the two black stallions visible only because they hid the stars. Teb swung onto Seastrider’s back. They headed at a fast trot for the hills. “We made good magic,” he said. “The palace sleeps soundly.”
“It was not our magic alone, Tebriel. There is power around us tonight. There is something in the palace of bright power. Can’t you feel it?”
“What kind of something? I can sense only the dark.”
“I don’t know what it is.” Seastrider tossed her head. “I expect you will be aware of it, given time . . . and a little freedom to breathe, among all the social complications of these humans.”
So she had sensed his frustration at the supper table. “Are you laughing at me?”
She didn’t answer but broke into a gallop, the other three beside her, and they headed for the far hills.
Once out of sight of the palace, they let their horse shapes slide away, and the four dragons burst skyward on the cold west wind. They swept out over the black sea, banking and gliding, spending their pent-up, restless passion in a storm of spinning flight.
When they settled at last, they dove for shark, Teb half-drowned as usual, his ears full of water and his boots full as well. On an outcropping rock the dragons made their meal. When they took to the sky once more, still possessed by wildness, Teb clung, dizzy and laughing. The lands below them were all dark, not a light anywhere. The sea heaved with patches of phosphorescence so it was brighter than the land-world. Against the shores, white waves broke.
They did not touch any country this night. They dove low, observing, sensing the dark. There was strong evil on Liedref: They picked out half a dozen other lands where they would return to battle the dark invaders. As dawn neared, the dragons made for Dacia, swooping low over the small continents that bordered the Sea of Igness. They came down over Dacia to the west, behind the mountain that held the palace. They could see the mountain’s wild western face where trees twisted between giant boulders. They hovered there listening, but there was no sound.
They made for the gentler hills, where the dragons shifted shape and trotted back docilely to the palace stables. Teb’s boots squinched seawater when he dismounted.
It was that morning that Teb, prompted by Accacia’s remarks, thought again of the locked door in the dark palace passage, where an old woman’s cracked voice had complained, “. . . porridge. I’m sick to death of porridge.”
*
Roderica had taken breakfast at the king’s table with her father. The horsemaster, Riconder, a square, silent man with a look of resentment about him, spoke little to Teb. He praised the horses, it seemed, only out of duty. When he rose, his daughter followed him, and Accacia, clinging to Teb’s arm, giggled. “Don’t be late with your ward’s breakfast, Roderica.”
Teb had a quick vision of Roderica going down the dark hall carrying a lamp, unlocking that lonely, heavy door.
“And don’t forget the queen’s porridge,” Accacia said rudely. “She does so love her cold porridge.”
The queen.
Teb hadn’t known there was a queen, had supposed her long dead. He glanced at the king, who had risen, and saw no change of expression. He made an excuse as soon and as deftly as he could and left Accacia. He hurried down the dark passage until he saw Roderica ahead, her lamp casting a swaying light up the dark walls. She approached a passage where brighter lamps burned. He stopped and drew back into blackness as she flung open double doors.
It was the kitchen inside; he could hear the clanging of utensils and smell food and dishwater. She came out, followed by a page boy carrying a breakfast tray. Teb waited until they had rounded a bend, then followed. He waited again while the food was delivered beyond the oak door. When the page had left, he settled against the wall. He had no time to move away when Roderica came out quickly, straight for him, and grabbed his arm.
She was a thin girl, tall, with an angled face, sour and unsmiling. “Why did you follow me? I have no use for spies, even if you are a prince.”
“I would like to visit the queen.”
“Why? No one visits her.”
“That’s why.” He thought the best approach was the direct one. Roderica seemed serious now, without the frivolity she displayed at other times. A strange girl, changeable and confusing.