Beyond the Draak’s Teeth Page 14

  The cold passage was long over, and it was time to begin the summer harvesting of spidermoss, a gauzelike fiber that when woven made a durable fabric that was much in demand throughout the Enzaar Sea territories.

  It had been two years since the Arden Lake clans had harvested a good crop of spidermoss, but all the weather signs had been excellent that spring. Everyone was sure that this year’s harvest would be one of the best, provided they reached the Moss Islands first and staked out their territorial claims before any of the other rafter clans to the south arrived.

  Bhaldavin watched the rafters from a position atop Seevan’s cabin. He was a full-fledged draak singer now, and it was his responsibility to protect all the rafts and boats within his sphere of vision. Di-nel was somewhere up ahead on another raft; Lil-el somewhere behind; and farther back still was Lil-el’s brother, Tesh.

  Bhaldavin had been with the rafters only four months, but already it seemed that he had always lived among them. He knew that part of that feeling was due to the fact that Lil-el and her parents had treated him as one of the family, filling the emptiness that the return of his memory had brought him. Also, Di-nel had gifted him with all the love and knowledge that was rightly due a son. His long conversations with the older Ni had helped to put many things into perspective, chief among them a partial understanding of the men known as rafters.

  Di-nel’s voice sounded from ahead, his trilling yodel unmistakable. Bhaldavin stood up, feet braced wide.

  Seevan passed by the cabin walking a pole. “See anything?”

  “Not yet,” Bhaldavin answered, scanning the river-banks.

  Several minutes passed before he saw the draak. It was a small brown fisher, a scavenger by nature. It wasn’t as much of a threat to the rafts as it was to those who manned the smaller boats that escorted the rafts.

  Bhaldavin took up Di-nel’s song as they approached the draak. It stood up on its hind legs, its forelegs hanging in a relaxed position, its spine-covered head almost level with the top of the cabin.

  “Sing it off,” Seevan ordered. “No sense in taking chances.”

  Bhaldavin nodded agreement, his glance never leaving the draak. He used one of the songs Di-nel had taught him, imitating one of the draak’s own danger signals. As it turned and splashed off along the riverbank, he realized that Di-nel could have sent the draak away but had held it purposely to give Bhaldavin a chance to practice his singing.

  Seevan slapped Bhaldavin’s foot as he poled toward the back of the raft. “Well done!”

  Though Bhaldavin hadn’t come to like the Ardenol clan leader as he had some of the other rafters, he did respect Seevan’s authority and felt a small glow of pride in the man’s praise.

  He sat down again and continued his surveillance of the river. It was strange, he thought, but in singing draak for the rafters he had found a sense of purpose, something he had never felt before. If not for the ankle chain, he thought he would actually be happy. The rafters were not unlike his own people in their calm acceptance of nature’s patterns, their humor, and their zest for living that manifested itself in their games and stories. The stories he liked best.

  At night, after the rafters had secured their boats and rafts and had set up watches, they would gather in groups to tell stories or sing. Several men were so highly respected for their talents in these crafts that they were called bards. Such men were often called in as arbitrators among the clans when there was a question about or dispute over territorial rights or trade agreements.

  The word bard translated into the Ni language was synonymous with the word elan-oden, or wise one. Bhaldavin remembered one of the elan-oden who had graced their small holding for more than a year and who had told stories about the Tamorlee, the One Who Never Forgets. The Tamorlee, having been in the Ni’s keeping for over seven thousand years, was the ultimate historian, the one to whom the elan-oden went for verification of a teaching.

  Thoughts of the Tamorlee brought to mind the green crystal in Diak’s care. How men had come to be in possession of such a large fire stone was something of a mystery, for the Ni had always jealously guarded those special pieces of crystal that glowed with the inner energy known as polu.

  Nara and Di-nel had been greatly disturbed when they learned that Diak was in possession of a fire stone and that he was using it as a source of energy to make his magic box work. But there was little they could do about it. Apparently, Diak had never returned to Gringers’s raft.

  Bhaldavin could still see the fire stone as it lay in Diak’s box. He was very much aware of the fact that touching the crystal had somehow changed him. Not only had it released the block on his memory, it had left him with a strange urgency to hold the crystal again. Remembering what had happened to him before, he knew he might well be in danger if he touched the fire stone again, but the threat of danger was far outweighed by an irresistible compulsion to become linked with the lifeforce within the crystal.

  Bhaldavin saw a small whirlpool near one of the boats to his left. Thoughts of the fire stone vanished as he scrambled to his feet. He recognized one of the boys in the boat heading straight for the whirlpool.

  “Samsel! Turn away!” he yelled. “Draak!”

  His warning came too late. A good-sized gray fisher rose out of the water, its right shoulder bumping the boat and tipping it over. While in the boat, the boys were in little danger of attack from a fisher draak, as fishers were not as aggressive as their larger cousins the blues, but once into the water, the boys became fair game. Their splashing strokes as they swam for the safety of the raft attracted the fisher’s attention.

  The excited shouts of the men and women on the raft drowned out Bhaldavin’s first few notes of song. The fisher lunged for Samsel, its pointed mouth open, its sharp teeth visible.

  The instinct for survival, coupled with the endless swimming games the rafter children played, saved Samsel’s life. A quick tuck at the waist and he dove downward, then darted to the left underwater, the maneuver bringing him out from under the fisher as it dove to follow him.

  Bhaldavin raised his voice in a high-pitched warble that overtopped the anxious cries of those aboard the raft. The other boy was now close enough to be pulled to safety, but Samsel was still in danger.

  Bhaldavin’s song caught the gray fisher just as it surfaced and sighted the boy a second time. The draak stopped almost as if it had run into a solid wall. It shook its head, trying to rid itself of the enticing sounds it heard; then slowly it subsided, sinking down into the water until nothing but its head was visible.

  Bhaldavin continued to sing as Seevan dragged his son out of the water, hugging him fiercely. Moments later the draak was gone, its small brain filled with thoughts of a large fish hiding beneath a log along the riverbank.

  As Seevan gave orders to several of the men to retrieve the overturned boat, Bhaldavin sent a warning call back to Lil-el to keep watch for the fisher. When he turned back around, he saw Samsel climbing the ladder to the roof of the cabin. The boy’s hair was plastered to his head; his clothes were dripping.

  “Thank you, Bhaldavin,” he said, his face pale.

  Bhaldavin nodded and dropped his hand to Samsel’s shoulder. “Perhaps you should stay a little closer to the raft,” he suggested.

  Before Samsel could reply, Seevan called to him. “Come, son. Your boat is ready.”

  Samsel stiffened and glanced down at the river.

  Seevan approached the cabin and held up his arms. “Come, Samsel, Kaffy is waiting for you.”

  Bhaldavin squeezed Samsel’s shoulder and let him go. Samsel’s lips tightened with determination as he went to the edge of the roof and fearlessly dropped to his father’s hands. Seevan swung him down, then turned and walked him to the waiting boat. As he helped Samsel into the boat, his hand lingered for a moment on top of the boy’s head. Samsel looked up with a forced smile.

  Bhaldavin watched the two boys paddle out until they were several boat-lengths to the side of the raft. Fear is somethin
g to be met and conquered, never run away from! That axiom had helped the rafters survive and grow strong. Bhaldavin turned his attention back to the river, musing over the rafters’ strength of spirit. Di-nel’s words echoed in his mind: “These are a good people, Bhaldavin. I like them.”

  “Even though they hold you and your family prisoner?” he had asked.

  Di-nel had smiled. “The rafters have a very strict code of right and wrong. In their hearts they know what they do to us is wrong, but they are afraid right now. When their fears have lessened, I have no doubt but that our freedom will be returned to us.”

  “How long before that happens?”

  “Soon, I hope, but I can be patient.”

  But I can’t, Bhaldavin thought. I want my freedom now.

  Day followed day, and slowly the rafters wound their way westward through the swampland waterways. Some days Bhaldavin used his voice so often that by nightfall he could barely speak. On those occasions, Nara would dose him with a concoction of lemel juice and lingerry syrup, a soothing drink that restored his voice within hours.

  Negotiating the waterways of Amla-Bagor took strength, determination, and luck. Every once in a while Bhaldavin saw the ruins of rafts along the riverbanks, their partially submerged hulks splintered and rotting. Each time he saw such a derelict, he couldn’t help but wonder to whom the raft had belonged and how many had lost their lives defending it.

  The dark chain of mountains called the Draak’s Teeth became more and more pronounced as the days passed. What had started out as a narrow strip of gray across the western horizon had grown into jagged peaks that stretched from south to north in what appeared to be an impregnable wall.

  Bhaldavin had glimpsed the mountains through breaks in the trees, but not until the rafts were poled out into the open at the edge of Lake Waunau did he begin to realize the magnitude of the barrier Gringers intended to climb. Did the man truly believe he could scale such forbidding heights?

  According to Hallon the answer was yes. Gringers still meant to climb the Draak’s Teeth, and he meant for Bhaldavin to go with him. Though Hallon had swallowed his pride and returned to Seevan, he had kept in touch with Gringers through Lil-el, who said that Gringers and Theon were with the Draper rafts. There was no report of Diak, but Hallon was sure the old man had to be somewhere among the Lake Arden rafters.

  Bhaldavin watched the raftmen maneuver their floating homes out of the river channel and onto the open waters of the largest freshwater lake in Amla-Bagor. All boats were tied to the rafts, and large sails were quickly put in place.

  It took the rafters three days to sail across the lake. On their fourth morning, they reached the borders of the Moss Forests. The forests were situated on a string of small islands that lay at the foot of the Draak’s Teeth. On these islands grew the famous clendarri trees, home for the sarian spiders that produced a spinning fiber unparalleled for strength and softness.

  First to reach the Moss Forests, the Lake Arden clans were free to choose the largest islands for harvesting— and there was an abundance of spidermoss that year. Clan boundaries were set and marked off by pieces of colored cloth. The following day there was a celebration on the Ardenol Homeraft.

  The celebration was in full swing by late afternoon. The Homeraft rested only a few lengths off one of the islands, so the overflow of visitors soon ended up on the island, where there was singing and dancing taking place. Earlier in the day, the island had been used for games between the clans.

  When not on duty, Bhaldavin watched the celebration from his place in front of Di-nel’s cabin. His ankle chain was locked into a ring on the outside wall. He did his best to ignore the chain by dividing his attention between the arrival of visitors from the other clans and the food and drink brought to him by Samsel and several other youngsters. After weeks on the river, he knew many of the rafters by sight. Those he didn’t know were introduced to him by Nara, who had chosen to keep him company.

  Suddenly Gringers appeared. He walked up the raft gangplank and smiled at Nara as he approached. “Hello, Nara, Lil-el asked me to ask you if you would spell her a little while. I don’t think she’s eaten yet.”

  Nara’s lips pursed in indecision, then she nodded and stood up. She touched the top of Bhaldavin’s head. “Would you like me to send Lil-el to sit with you awhile?”

  Bhaldavin knew Nara would not accept no for an answer. “If she would like, but tell her to eat first.”

  Nara gave Gringers a look that said she was none too pleased to see him there. “Does Seevan know you’re here?”

  Gringers nodded. “We’ve called a truce,” he explained, “until the harvest is over. Every pair of hands means more moss for trade. I’ve promised Seevan half of whatever Theon and I gather in exchange for clan rights this season.”

  Nara’s eyebrows raised in surprise, and her voice softened. “Can I believe what I’m hearing?”

  Gringers smiled. “I’m not always the spine-head Seevan names me, Nara, though I do, upon occasion, give people cause to think so. I know when it’s wisest to compromise.”

  Nara took a step closer to Gringers and looked up into his face, her crystal eyes intent. “And what about your wild scheme to climb the Draak’s Teeth?”

  Gringers shrugged. “Just a dream, Nara. One that will probably never come true.”

  “Sometimes dreams are better left alone, Gringers. You are wise to stay with Seevan. He means only good for you.” She nodded to Bhaldavin and started for the ramp. “I’ll send Lil-el along as soon as she’s eaten.”

  Gringers waited until Nara was gone, then sat down next to Bhaldavin just within the doorway of the cabin, from where he could see anyone approaching.

  “She’s a gentle soul,” Gringers said, “but she doesn’t fool easily. Do you think she believed me about the Draak’s Teeth?”

  Bhaldavin kept his eyes directed at the dancers on the island. He knew why Gringers was there, but he didn’t know how he was going to answer him. He wanted his freedom, but was not sure he was willing to pay the price Gringers would ask of him.

  Minutes dragged by as Gringers joined Bhaldavin in watching the festivities.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” Gringers said finally. “How has it been with you?”

  Bhaldavin looked Gringers in the eye. “I fare well enough.”

  “I see you still wear Seevan’s chain. I had hoped you would be rid of it by now. I guess I’ll have to do something about it. You certainly can’t climb the Draak’s Teeth dragging it.”

  Bhaldavin glanced up at the towering ridge that blocked out most of the western sky. “Do you really think you can climb over those mountains?”

  “It was done once; it can be done again.”

  “You’re sure your ancestors came over the mountains?”

  Gringers nodded. “There’s a song the bards sing about a man named Nathan Ardenol. It is sung that he braved the heights of the Draak’s Teeth in order to lead his people to a new land where they could live in peace and thrive. The rafters of Amla-Bagor are said to be the descendants of Nathan Ardenol and those people he brought with him.

  “The song goes on to tell of Nathan’s first meeting with your people and how friendship developed between man and Ni. It also tells about certain powers that Nathan’s people possessed: powers over illness, the ability to communicate over long distances, and the weaponry to kill draak.”

  Gringers looked at Bhaldavin and shrugged. “I know, it doesn’t sound possible. I wouldn’t have believed it years ago. But now that I’ve seen the pictures in the recorder, Nathan Ardenol’s story rings true.”

  “Are all men descended from Nathan’s people?” Bhaldavin asked, dropping his pose of indifference.

  “No. The Sarissa, who are light-skinned, and the Utura, who are dark, both claim that their ancestors came to the Enzaar Sea through the Straits of Annarothal by boat. The Sarissa claim that they are the direct descendants of the First Men, but it’s a known fact that raftmen pli
ed the waters of Amla-Bagor long before the Sarissa laid claim to the Escarpment as their home. I don’t know that it matters who came first, not now. All that really matters is finding Barl-gan and reclaiming the knowledge and powers of the First Men.”

  “When are you going?”

  “After the harvest. I’ve promised Seevan half of what Theon and I gather. The other half I’ll leave in trade for the clothes and supplies we’ll take.”

  Steal, you mean, Bhaldavin thought as he turned to face Gringers again. “I haven’t seen Diak. Is he with you?”

  “No. Seevan wouldn’t have him back. He’s with some friends. He’ll be safe as long as he stays out of sight.”

  Gringers started to say something else, but stopped as someone ascended the ramp. Theon had changed little in the weeks since Bhaldavin had seen him. He had let his hair grow long, and he wore a headband similar to those worn by the rafters, but still he was clean-shaven and fastidious in his dress. His bouncy walk, darting glances, and sly grin reminded Bhaldavin of the first time he had seen Theon in Garv’s cabin. He wondered if Theon ever thought about Garv.

  Theon smiled as he greeted him. “Hello, Little Fish. Ready to do some mountain climbing?”

  Bhaldavin shook his head.

  Theon glanced at Gringers, a frown replacing his smile. “What’s wrong? I thought you were going to talk to him.”

  “I was talking to him,” Gringers said sharply. “Sit down and let me handle this.”

  Theon muttered something under his breath, but did as Gringers ordered.

  Gringers pulled at Bhaldavin’s ankle chain. “Do you love your chain so much, Bhaldavin? I was told that you wouldn’t give Seevan your word not to run away. Does that mean you’ve come to accept your slavery? That you don’t want your freedom any longer?”

  Bhaldavin kept his eyes focused on the island dancers. Yes, he wanted his freedom, but the size of the mountains frightened him, and the thought of leaving Lil-el stirred memories of an emptiness within that he didn’t want to experience ever again.