Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane(Lit)

  but nobody asked me." He grinned and added, "I'm sorry

  you were disappointed."

  Gareth grinned back. "I suppose it had to rain on my

  birthday sometime," he said, a little shyly. Then he hes-

  itated, as if struggling against some inner constraint.

  "Aversin, listen," he stammered. Then he coughed as the

  wind shifted, and smoke swept over them all.

  "God's Grandmother, it's the bloody cakes!" John swore

  and dashed back to the fire, cursing awesomely. "Jen, it

  isn't my fault..."

  "It is." Jenny walked in a more leisurely manner to

  join him, in time to help him pick the last pitiful black

  lump from the griddle and toss it into the waters of the

  marsh with a milky plash. "I should have known better

  than to trust you with this. Now go tend the horses and

  let me do what you brought me along to do." She picked

  up the bowl of meal. Though she kept her face stem, the

  touch of her eyes upon his was like a kiss.

  CHAPTER IV

  IN THE DAYS that followed. Jenny was interested to

  notice the change in Gareth's attitude toward her and

  toward John. For the most part he seemed to return to

  the confiding friendliness he had shown her after she had

  rescued him from the bandits among the ruins, before he

  had learned that she was his hero's mistress, but it was

  not quite the same. It alternated with a growing nervous-

  ness and with odd, struggling silences in his conversation.

  If he had lied about something at the Hold, Jenny thought,

  he was regretting it now—but not regretting it enough yet

  to confess the truth.

  Whatever the truth was, she felt that she came close

  to learning it the day after the rescue from the Meewinks.

  John had ridden ahead to scout the ruinous stone bridge

  that spanned the torrent of the Snake River, leaving them

  alone with the spare horse^and mules in the louring silence

  of the winter woods. "Are the Whisperers real?" he asked

  her softly, glancing over his shoulder as if he feared to

  see last night's vision fading into daytime reality from the

  mists between the trees.

  "Real enough to kill a man," Jenny said, "if they can

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  76 Barbara Hambly

  lure him away from his friends. Since they drink blood,

  they must be fleshly enough to require sustenance; but,

  other than that, no one knows much about them. You had

  a narrow escape."

  "I know," he mumbled, looking shamefacedly down at

  his hands. They were bare, and chapped with cold—as

  well as his cloak and sword, he had lost his gloves in the

  house of the Meewinks; Jenny suspected that later in the

  winter the Meewinks would boil them and eat the leather.

  One of John's old plaids was draped on over the boy's

  doublet and borrowed jerkin. With his thin hair dripping

  with moisture down onto the lenses of his cracked spec-

  tacles, he looked very little like the young courtier who

  had come to the Hold.

  "Jenny," he said hesitantly, "thank you—this is the

  second time—for saving my life. I—I'm sorry I've behaved

  toward you as I have. It's just that..." His voice tailed

  off uncertainly.

  "I suspect," said Jenny kindly, "that you had me mis-

  taken for someone else that you know."

  Ready color flooded to the boy's cheeks. Wind moaned

  through the bare trees—he startled, then turned back to

  her with a sigh. "The thing is, you saved my life at the

  risk of your own, and I endangered you both stupidly. I

  should have known better than to trust the Meewinks; I

  should never have left the camp. But..."

  Jenny smiled and shook her head. The rain had ceased,

  and she had put back her hood, letting the wind stir in

  her long hair; with a touch of her heels, she urged The

  Stupider Roan on again, and the whole train of them moved

  slowly down the trail.

  "It is difficult," she said, "not to believe in the illusions

  of the Whisperers. Even though you know that those whom

  you see cannot possibly be there outside the spell-circle

  crying your name, there is a part of you that needs to go

  to them."

  Dragonsbane 77

  "What—what shapes have you seen them take?" Gar-

  eth asked in a hushed voice.

  The memory was an evil one, and it was a moment

  before Jenny answered. Then she said, "My sons. lan and

  Adric." The vision had been so real that even calling their

  images in Caerdinn's serving-crystal to make sure that

  they were safe at the Hold had not entirely banished her

  fears for them from her mind. After a moment's thought

  she added, "They have an uncanny way of taking the

  shape that most troubles you; of knowing, not only your

  love, but your guilt and your longing."

  Gareth flinched at that, and looked away. They rode

  on in silence for a few moments; then he asked, "How

  do they know?"

  She shook her head. "Perhaps they do read your

  dreams. Perhaps they are themselves only mirrors and,

  like mirrors, have no knowledge of what they reflect. The

  spells we lay upon them cannot be binding because we

  do not know their essence."

  He frowned at her, puzzled. "Their what?"

  "Their essence—their inner being." She drew rein just

  above a long, flooded dip in the road where water lay

  among the trees like a shining snake. "Who are you, Gar-

  eth of Magloshaldon?"

  He startled at that, and for an instant she saw fright

  and guilt in his gray eyes. He stammered, "I—I'm Gareth

  of—of Magloshaldon. It's a province of Belmarie..."

  Her eyes sought his and held them in the gray shadows

  of the trees. "And if you were not of that province, would

  you still be Gareth?"

  "Er—yes. Of course. I..."

  "And if you were not Gareth?" she pressed him, hold-

  ing his gaze and mind locked with her own. "Would you

  still be you? If you were crippled, or old—if you became

  a leper, or lost your manhood—who would you be then?"

  "I don't know—"

  78 Barbara Hambly

  "You know."

  "Stop it!" He tried to look away and could not. Her

  grip upon him tightened, as she probed at his mind, show-

  ing him it through her eyes: a vivid kaleidoscope of the

  borrowed images of a thousand ballads, burning with the

  overwhelming physical desires of the adolescent; the raw

  wounds left by some bitter betrayal, and over all, the

  shadowing darkness of a scarcely bearable guilt and fear.

  She probed at that darkness—the lies he had told her

  and John at the Hold, and some greater guilt besides. A

  true crime, she wondered, or only that which seemed one

  to him? Gareth cried, "Stop it!" again, and she heard the

  despair and terror in his voice; for a moment, through his

  eyes, she saw herself—pitiless blue eyes in a face like a

  white wedge of bone between the cloud-dark streams of

  her hair. She remembered when Caerdinn had done this
r />   same thing to her, and released Gareth quickly. He turned

  away, covering his face, his whole body shivering with

  shock and fright.

  After a moment Jenny said softly, "I'm sorry. But this

  is the inner heart of magic, the way all spells work—with

  the essence, the true name. It is true of the Whisperers

  and of the greatest of mages as well." She clucked to the

  horses and they started forward again, their hooves sink-

  ing squishily into the tea-colored ooze. She went on, "All

  you can do is ask yourself if it is reasonable that those

  you see would be there in the woods, calling to you."

  "But that's just it," said Gareth. "It was reasonable.

  Zyerne..." He stopped himself.

  "Zyeme?" It was the name he had muttered in his

  dreams at the Hold, when he had flinched aside from her

  touch.

  "The Lady Zyeme," he said hesitantly. "The—the

  King's mistress." Under its streaking of rain and mud his

  face was bright carnation pink. Jenny remembered her

  Dragonsbane 79

  strange and cloudy dream of the dark-haired woman and

  her tinkling laughter.

  "And you love her?"

  Gareth blushed even redder. In a stifled voice he

  repeated, "She is the King's mistress."

  As I am John's, Jenny thought, suddenly realizing

  whence his anger at her had stemmed.

  "In any case," Gareth went on after a moment, "we're

  all in love with her. That is—she's the first lady of the

  Court, the most beautiful... We write sonnets to her

  beauty..."

  "Does she love you?" inquired Jenny, and Gareth fell

  silent for a time, concentrating on urging his horse through

  the mud and up the stony slope beyond.

  At length he said, "I—I don't know. Sometimes I

  think..." Then he shook his head. "She frightens me,"

  he admitted. "And yet—she's a witch, you see."

  "Yes," said Jenny softly. "I guessed that, from what

  you said at the Hold. You feared I would be like her."

  He looked stricken, as if caught in some horrible social

  gaffe. "But—but you're not. She's very beautiful..." He

  broke off, blushing in earnest, and Jenny laughed.

  "Don't worry. I learned a long time ago what a mirror

  was for."

  "But you are beautiful," he insisted. "That is—Beau-

  tiful isn't the right word."

  "No." Jenny smiled. "I do think 'ugly' is the word

  you're looking for."

  Gareth shook his head stubbornly, his honesty forbid-

  ding him to call her beautiful and his inexperience making

  it impossible to express what he did mean. "Beauty—

  beauty really doesn't have anything to do with it," he said

  at last. "And she's nothing like you—for all her beauty,

  she's crafty and hard-hearted and cares for nothing save

  the pursuit of her powers."

  "Then she is like me," said Jenny. "For I am crafty—

  80 Barbara Humbly

  skilled in my crafts, such as they are—and I have been

  called hard-hearted since I was a little girl and chose to

  sit staring at the flame of a candle until the pictures came,

  rather than play at house with the other little girls. And

  as for the rest..." She sighed. "The key to magic is magic;

  to be a mage you must be a mage. My old master used

  to say that. The pursuit of your power takes all that you

  have, if you will be great—it leaves neither time, nor

  energy, for anything else. We are born with the seeds of

  power in us and driven to be what we are by a hunger

  that knows no slaking. Knowledge—power—to know

  what songs the stars sing; to center all the forces of cre-

  ation upon a rune drawn in the air—we can never give

  over the seeking of it. It is the stuff of loneliness, Gareth."

  They rode on in silence for a time. The woods about

  them were pewter and iron, streaked here and there with

  the rust of the dying year. In the wan light Gareth looked

  older than he had when they began, for he had lost flesh

  on the trip, and lack of sleep had left permanent smudges

  of bister beneath his eyes. At length he turned to her again

  and asked, "And do the magebom love?"

  Jenny sighed again. "They say that a wizard's wife is

  a widow. A woman who bears a wizard's child must know

  that he will leave her to raise the child alone, should his

  powers call him elsewhere. It is for this reason that no

  priest will perform the wedding ceremony for the mage-

  bom, and no flute player will officiate upon the rites. And

  it would be an act of cruelty for a witch to bear any man's

  child."

  He looked across at her, puzzled both by her words

  and by the coolness of her voice, as if the matter had

  nothing to do with her.

  She went on, looking ahead at the half-hidden road

  beneath its foul mire of tangled weeds, "A witch will

  always care more for the pursuit of her powers than for

  her child, or for any man. She will either desert her child,

  Dragonsbane 81

  or come to hate it for keeping her from the time she needs

  to meditate, to study, to grow in her arts. Did you know

  John's mother was a witch?"

  Gareth stared at her, shocked.

  "She was a shaman of the Iceriders—his father took

  her in battle. Your ballads said nothing of it?"

  He shook his head numbly. "Nothing—in fact, in the

  Greenhythe variant of the ballad ofAversin and the Golden

  Worm of Wyr, it talks about him bidding farewell to his

  mother in her bower, before going off to fight the dragon—

  but now that I think of it, there is a scene very like it in

  the Greenhythe ballad of Selkythar Dragonsbane and in

  one of the late Halnath variants of the Song of Antara

  Warlady. I just thought it was something Dragonsbanes

  did."

  A smile brushed her lips, then faded. "She was my first

  teacher in the ways of power, when I was six. They used

  to say of her what you thought of me—that she had laid

  spells upon her lord to make him love her, tangling him

  in her long hair. I thought so, too, as a little child—until

  I saw how she fought for the freedom that he would not

  give her. When I knew her, she had already borne his

  child; but when John was five, she left in the screaming

  winds of an icestorm, she and the frost-eyed wolf who

  was her companion. She was never seen in the Winter-

  lands again. And I..."

  There was long silence, broken only by the soft squish

  of hooves in the roadbed, the patter of rain, and the occa-

  sional pop of the mule Clivy's hooves as he overreached

  his own stride. When she went on, her voice was low, as

  if she spoke to herself.

  "He asked me to bear his children, for he wanted chil-

  dren, and he wanted those children to be mine also. He

  knew I would never live with him as his wife and devote

  my time to his comfort and that of his sons. I knew it,

  too." She sighed. "The lioness bears her cubs and then

  82 Barbara Hanbly

  goes back to the
hunting trail. I thought I could do the

  same. All my life I have been called heartless—would

  that it were really so. I hadn't thought that I would love

  them."

  Through the trees, the dilapidated towers of the Snake

  River bridge came into view, the water streaming high and

  yellow beneath the crumbling arches. Before them, a dark

  figure sat his horse in the gloomy road, spectacles flashing

  like rounds of dirty ice in the cold daylight, signaling that

  the way was safe.

  They made camp that night outside the ruined town of

  Ember, once the capital of the province of Wyr. Nothing

  remained of it now save a dimpled stone mound, over

  grown with birch and seedling maple, and the decaying

  remains of the curtain wall. Jenny knew it of old, from

  the days when she and Caerdinn had searched for books

  in the buried cellars. He had beaten her, she remembered,

  when she had spoken of the beauty of the skeleton lines

  of stone that shimmered through the dark cloak of the

  fallow earth.

  As dusk came down, they pitched their camp outside

  the walls. Jenny gathered the quick-burning bark of the

  paper birch for kindling and fetched water from the spring

  nearby. Gareth saw her coming and broke purposefully

  away from his own tasks to join her. "Jenny," he began,

  and she looked up at him.

  "Yes?"

  He paused, like a naked swimmer on the bank of a

  very cold pool, then visibly lost his courage. "Er—is there

  some reason why we didn't camp in the ruins of the town