Dragonbards by Murphy Shirley Rousseau

Author:Murphy, Shirley Rousseau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, animals, fantasy, young adult, dragons
Publisher: Ad Stellae Books

Chapter 16

Rebellion against the dark is the greatest gift one can make to the Graven Light—it is the gift we must try to give.

*

Teb lay barely conscious, strapped to a tilting table. His mouth was bruised and torn; he was covered with sweat and blood. His drugged mind drifted among labyrinths of terror, and of obedience. Not even when he had lain for weeks on the drowned seawall, mind tortured by the black hydrus, had he sunk to the depths he now embraced. Now he loved Quazelzeg with a raw fear. Quazelzeg was All, was everything, Teb was a part of him, Teb’s will was Quazelzeg’s will.

He had no notion that Quazelzeg had left the room, nor would it have mattered—Quazelzeg was everywhere, his immediate presence only a minute part of his total presence; his power was in everything.

Teb had no notion that a small gray owl had winged into the room high against the ceiling shadows, then come to perch on the table to watch him. He would have killed it had he seen it. The floor was scattered with the tools of Quazelzeg’s torture and with the metal tubes the dark ruler had used to siphon the drugs into him. Quazelzeg had given him a boiled derivative of cadacus, powerfully intrusive and deforming of the mind.

As Kiri and Marshy approached down the dark passage, a sickening smell made them gag—the same smell as of the caged monster. Could Quazelzeg have brought the monster here? But how, in these small chambers? Soon they stood staring, from the shadows, into the chamber where the smell was strongest.

The room was lit by candles and rich with velvet and gold. Teb was not there, but in the corner stood a small cage. Inside, pressing against the bars, was a little dirty-yellow animal with creased and folded wings and an evil, wrinkled face. They couldn’t make out what it was, but its blazing red eyes searched the doorway and the darkness where they hid. When it glanced away, they went on quickly, following Tybee’s fluttering shadow. They had left Aven posted down the passage in a storage niche.

They found Teb alone in a bare room, pale, blood-streaked, unconscious. When Kiri untied him and took his shoulders, his head lolled against her. Marshy took his feet, and they fled down the passage and into the storage alcove. His hands and face felt so cold. They hid him behind some crocks and buckets, and Kiri wrapped her cloak around him. His breathing was uneven and thin.

“What did they give him, Aven? Would cadacus make him like this?”

“Boiled cadacus would. They put a metal tube down his throat. See the bruises around his mouth?”

Kiri didn’t want to look. She spit on her handkerchief and wiped blood from his face. If his body was so damaged, what scars did his mind hold? “Can we wake him?”

“No, it must wear off.”

She took Teb’s feet, Marshy and Aven took his shoulders, and they fled past the stinking room of the yellow creature and up the dark stone passages.

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