Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane(Lit)

  itself?"

  It was patently not what he had been about to say, but

  she only glanced back toward the white bones of the town,

  wrapped in shadow and vine. "Yes."

  Dragonsbane 83

  His voice dropped. "Is there—is there something that

  haunts the ruins?"

  The corners of her mouth tucked a little. "Not that I

  know of. But the entire town is buried under the biggest

  patch of poison ivy this side of the Gray Mountains. Even

  so," she said, kneeling beside the little dry firewood they

  had been able to find and arranging the birchbark beneath

  it, "I have laid spells of ward about the camp, so take

  care not to leave it."

  He ducked his head a little at this gentle teasing and

  blushed.

  A little curiously, she added, "Even if this Lady Zyeme

  of yours is a sorceress—even if she is fond of you—she

  would never have come here from the south, you know.

  Mages only transform themselves into birds in ballads,

  for to change your essence into the essence of some other

  life form—which is what shapeshifting is—aside from

  being dangerous, requires an incredible amount of power.

  It is not something done lightly. When the magebom go,

  they go upon their two feet."

  "But..." His high forehead wrinkled in a frown. Hav-

  ing decided to be her champion, he was unwilling to believe

  there was anything beyond her powers. "But the Lady

  Zyeme does it all the time. I've seen her."

  Jenny froze in the act of arranging the logs, cut by an

  unexpected pang of a hot jealousy she had thought that

  she had long outgrown—the bitter jealousy other youth

  toward those who had greater skills than she. All her life

  she had worked to rid herself of it, knowing it crippled

  her from learning from those more powerful. It was this

  that made her tell herself, a moment later, that she ought

  not to be shocked to learn of another's use of power.

  Yet in the back of her mind she could hear old Caerdinn

  speaking of the dangers of taking on an alien essence,

  even if one had the enormous power necessary to perform

  84 Barbara Humbly

  the transformation and of the hold that another form could

  take on the minds of all but the very greatest.

  "She must be a powerful mage indeed," she said,

  rebuking her own envy. With a touch of her mind, she

  called fire to the kindling, and it blazed up hotly beneath

  the logs. Even that small magic pricked her, like a needle

  carelessly left in a garment, with the bitter reflection of

  the smallness of her power. "What forms have you seen

  her take?" She realized as she spoke that she hoped he

  would say he had seen none himself and that it was, in

  fact, only rumor.

  "Once a cat," he said. "And once a bird, a swallow.

  And she's taken other shapes in—in dreams I've had. It's

  odd," he went on rather hastily. "In ballads they don't

  make much of it. But it's hideous, the most horrible thing

  I've ever seen—a woman, and a woman I—I—" He stum-

  bled in his words, barely biting back some other verb that

  he replaced with, "—I know, twisting and withering,

  changing into a beast. And then the beast will watch you

  with her eyes."

  He folded himself up cross-legged beside the fire as

  Jenny put the iron skillet over it and began to mix the

  meal for the cakes. Jenny asked him, "Is she why you

  asked the King to send you north on this quest? To get

  away from her?"

  Gareth turned his face from her. After a moment he

  nodded. "I don't want to betray—to betray the King."

  His words caught oddly as he spoke. "But sometimes I

  feel I'm destined to do so. And I don't know what to do.

  "Polycarp hated her," he went on, after a few moments

  during which John's voice could be heard, cheerfully curs-

  ing the mules Clivy and Melonhead as he unloaded the

  last of the packs. "The rebel Master ofHalnath. He always

  told me to stay away from her. And he hated her influence

  over the King."

  "Is that why he rebelled?"

  Dragonsbane 85

  "It might have had something to do with it. I don't

  know." He toyed wretchedly with a scrap of meal left in

  the bowl. "He—he tried to murder the King and—and

  the Heir to the throne, the King's son. Polycarp is the

  next heir, the King's nephew. He was brought up in the

  palace as a sort of a hostage after his father rebelled.

  Polycarp stretched a cable over a fence in the hunting

  field on a foggy morning when he thought no one would

  see until it was too late." His voice cracked a little as he

  added, "I was the one who saw him do it."

  Jenny glanced across at his face, broken by darkness

  and the leaping light of the flames into a harsh mosaic of

  plane and shadows. "You loved him, didn't you?"

  He managed to nod. "I think he was a better friend to

  me than anyone else at Court. People—people our age

  there—Polycarp is five years older than I am—used to

  mock at me, because I collect ballads and because I'm

  clumsy and can't see without my spectacles; they'd mock

  at him because his father was executed for treason and

  because he's a philosopher. Many of the Masters have

  been. It's because of the University at Halnath—they're

  usually atheists and troublemakers. His father was, who

  married the King's sister. But Polycarp was always like

  a son to the King." He pushed back the thin, damp weeds

  of his hair from his high forehead and finished in a stran-

  gled voice, "Even when I saw him do it, I couldn't believe

  it."

  "And you denounced him?"

  Gareth's breath escaped in a defeated sigh. "What could

  I do?"

  Had this. Jenny wondered, been what he had hidden

  from them? The fact that the Realm itself was split by

  threat of civil war, like the Kinwars that had drawn the

  King's troops away from the Winterlands to begin with?

  Had he feared that if John knew that there was a chance

  86 Barbara Hambly

  the King would refuse to lend him forces needed at home,

  he would not consent to make the journey?

  Or was there something else?

  It had grown fully dark now. Jenny picked the crisp

  mealcakes from the griddle and set them on a wooden

  plate at her side while she cooked salt pork and beans.

  While Gareth had been speaking, John had come to join

  them, half-listening to what was said, half-watching the

  woods that hemmed them in.

  As they ate, Gareth went on, "Anyway, Polycarp man-

  aged to get out of the city before they came for him. The

  King's troops were waiting for him on the road to Halnath,

  but we think he went to the Deep, and the gnomes took

  him through to the Citadel that way. Then they—the

  gnomes—bolted up the doors leading from the Deep to

  the Citadel and said they would not meddle in the affairs

  of men. They wouldn't admit the King's troops through<
br />
  the Deep to take the Citadel from the rear, but they

  wouldn't let the rebels out that way, either, or sell them

  food. There was some talk of them using blasting powder

  to close up the tunnels to Halnath completely. But then

  the dragon came."

  "And when the dragon came?" asked John.

  "When the dragon came, Polycarp opened the Citadel

  gates that led into the Deep and let the gnomes take refuge

  with him. At least, a lot of the gnomes did take refuge

  with him, though Zyeme says they were the ones who

  were on the Master's side to begin with. And she should

  know—she was brought up in the Deep."

  "Was she, now?" John tossed one of the small pork

  bones into the fire and wiped his fingers on a piece of

  comcake. "I thought the name sounded like the tongue

  of the gnomes."

  Gareth nodded. "The gnomes used to take a lot of the

  children of men as apprentices in the Deep—usually chil-

  dren from Deeping, the town that stands—stood—in the

  Dragonsbane 87

  vale before the great gates of the Deep itself, where the

  smelting of the gold and the trade in foodstuff's went on.

  They haven't done so in the last year or so—in fact in

  the last year they forbade men to enter the Deep at all."

  "Did they?" asked John, curious. "Why was that?"

  Gareth shrugged. "I don't know. They're strange crea-

  tures, and tricky. You can't ever tell what they're up to,

  Zyeme says."

  As the night deepened, Jenny left the men by the fire

  and silently walked the bounds of the camp, checking the

  spell-circles that defended it against the blood-devils, the

  Whisperers, and the sad ghosts that haunted the ruins of

  the old town. She sat on what had been a boundary stone,

  just beyond the edge of the fire's circle of light, and sank

  into her meditations, which for some nights now she had

  neglected.

  It was not the first time she had neglected them—she

  was too well aware of the nights she had let them go by

  while she was at the Hold with John and her sons. Had

  she not neglected them—had she not neglected the pur-

  suit of her power—would she be as powerful as this

  Zyeme, who could deal in shapeshifting at a casual whim?

  Caerdinn's strictures against it returned to her mind, but

  she wondered if that was just her own jealousy speaking,

  her own spite at another's power. Caerdinn had been old,

  and there had been nowhere in the Winterlands that she

  could turn for other instruction after he had died. Like

  John, she was a scholar bereft of the meat of scholarship;

  like the people of the village of Alyn, she was circum-

  scribed by the fate that had planted her in such stony soil.

  Against the twisting yellow ribbons of the flames, she

  could see John's body swaying as he gestured, telling

  Gareth some outrageous story from his vast collection of

  tales about the Winterlands and its folk. The Fattest Ban-

  dit in the Winterlands? she wondered. Or one about his

  incredible Aunt Mattie? It occurred to her for the first

  88 Barbara Humbly

  time that it was for her, as well as for his people, that he

  had undertaken the King's command—for the things that

  she had never gotten, and for their sons.

  It's not worth his life! she thought desperately,

  watching him. / do well with what I have! But the

  silent ruins of Ember mocked at her, their naked bones

  veiled by darkness, and the calm part of her heart whis-

  pered to her that it was his to choose, not hers. She could

  only do what she was doing—make her choice and aban-

  don her studies to ride with him. The King had sent his

  command and his promise, and John would obey the King.

  Five days south of Ember, the lands opened up once

  more. The forests gave way to the long, flat, alluvial slopes

  that led down to the Wildspae, the northern boundary of

  the lands of Belmarie. It was an empty countryside, but

  without the haunted desolation of the Winterlands; there

  were farms here, like little walled fortresses, and the road

  was at least passably drained. Here for the first time they

  met other travelers, merchants going north and east, with

  news and rumor of the capital—of the dread of the dragon

  that gripped the land, and the unrest in Bel due to the

  high price of grain.

  "Stands to reason, don't it?" said a foxlike little trader,

  with his cavalcade of laden mules behind him. "What with

  the dragon ruining the harvest, and the grain rotting in

  the fields; yes, and the gnomes what took refuge in Bel

  itself hoarding the stuff, taking it out of the mouths of

  honest folk with their ill-got gold."

  "Ill-got?" asked John curiously. "They mined and

  smelted it, didn't they?" Jenny, who wanted news without

  irritating its bearer, kicked him surreptitiously in the shin.

  The merchant spat into the brimming ditch by the road-

  side and wiped his grizzled reddish beard. "That gives

  them no call to buy grain away from folks that needs it,"

  he said. "And word has it that they're trafficking regular

  Dragonsbane 89

  with their brothers up in Halnath—yes, and that they and

  the Master between them kidnapped the King's Heir, his

  only child, to hold for ransom."

  "Could they have?" John inquired.

  "Course they could. The Master's a sorcerer, isn't he?

  And the gnomes have never been up to any good, causing

  riot and mayhem in the capital..."

  "Riot and mayhem?" Gareth protested. "But the gnomes

  have been our allies for time out of mind! There's never

  been trouble between us."

  The man squinted up at him suspiciously. But he only

  grumbled, "Just goes to show, doesn't it? Treacherous

  little buggers." Jerking on his lead mule's bridle, he passed

  them by.

  Not long after this they met a company of the gnomes

  themselves, traveling banded together, surrounded by

  guards for protection, with their wealth piled in carts and

  carriages. They peered up at John with wary, shortsighted

  eyes of amber or pale blue beneath low, wide brows, and

  gave him unwilling answers to his questions about the

  south.

  "The dragon? Aye, it lairs yet in Ylferdun, and none

  of the men the King has sent have dislodged it." The

  gnome leader toyed with the soft fur trim of his gloves,

  and the thin winds billowed at the silk of his strangely cut

  garments. Behind him, the guards of the cavalcade watched

  the strangers in deepest suspicion, as if fearing an attack

  from even that few. "As for us, by the heart of the Deep,

  we have had enough of the charity of the sons of men,

  who charge us four times the going price for rooms the

  household servants would scorn and for food retrieved

  from the rats." His voice, thin and high like that of all the

  gnomes, was bitter with the verjuice of hate given back

  for hate. "Without the gold taken from the Deep, their

&nbs
p; city would never have been built, and yet not a man will

  speak to us in the streets, save to curse. They say in the

  90 Barbara Hambly

  city now that we plot with our brethren who fled through

  the back ways of the Deep into the Citadel of Halnath.

  By the Stone, it is lies; but such lies are believed now in

  Bel."

  From the carts and carriages and curtained litters, a

  murmur of anger went up, the rage of those who have

  never before been helpless. Jenny, sitting quietly on Moon

  Horse, realized that it was the first time she had ever seen

  gnomes by daylight. Their eyes, wide and nearly color-

  less, were ill-attuned for its glare; the hearing that could

  catch the whispers of the cave bats would be daily tor-

  tured by the clamor of the cities of men.

  Aversin asked, "And the King?"

  "The King?" The gnome's piping voice was vicious,

  and his whole stooping little body bristled with the raw

  hurt of humiliation. "The King cares nothing for us. With

  all our wealth mewed up in the Deep, where the dragon

  sits hoarding over it, we have little to trade upon but

  promises, and with each day that passes those promises

  buy less in a city where bread is dear. And all this, while

  the King's whore sits with his head in her lap and poisons

  his mind as she poisons everything she touches—as she

  poisoned the very heart of the Deep."

  Beside her. Jenny heard the hissing ofGareth's indrawn

  breath and saw the anger that flashed in his eyes, but he

  said nothing. When her glance questioned him, he looked

  away in shame.

  As the gnomes moved out of sight once again into the