Gareth shook his head, puzzled. "But why? It wasn't
a week before he tried to kill us—me and my father both."
"If that was him."
The boy stared at him, slowly-growing horror and real-
ization in his face. He whispered, "But I saw him."
"If she could take the shape of a cat or a bird, putting
on the form of the Master of Halnath wouldn't be beyond
her—Jen?" He glanced across the room to where she sat
silent, her arm resting across one up-drawn knee, her chin
upon her wrist.
"She wouldn't have taken on his actual being," she
said quietly. "An illusion would have served. Shape-
shifting requires enormous power—but then, Zyeme has
enormous power. However she did it, the act itself is
logical. If Polycarp had begun to suspect her intentions
toward Gareth, it would dispose of and discredit him at
once. By making you the witness. Gar, she removed all
chance of your helping him. She must have known how
bitter a betrayal it would be."
Numbly, Gareth whispered, "No!" struck by the horror
of what he had done.
Trey's voice was soft in the stillness. "But what does
she want with Gareth? I can understand her holding the
King, because without his support she'd—she wouldn't
exactly be nothing, but she certainly wouldn't be able to
live as she does now. But why entrap Gareth as well?
And what does she want with Bond? He's no good to her
... We're really only a very minor family, you know. I
mean, we haven't any political power, and not that much
money." A rueful smile touched one comer of her lips as
she fingered the rose-point lace of her cuff. "All this...
One must keep up appearances, of course, and Bond is
trying to marry me off well. But we really haven't any-
thing Zyeme would want."
Dragonsbane 157
"And why destroy them?" Gareth asked, desperate
concern for his father in his voice. "Do all spells do that?"
"No," Jenny said. "That's what surprises me about
this—I've never heard of a spell of influence that would
waste the body of the victim as it holds the mind. But
neither have I heard of one holding as close as the one
which she has upon your father, Gareth; nor of one that
lasts so long. But her magic is the magic of the gnomes
and unlike the spells of men. It may be that among their
secrets is one that will hold the very essence of another,
twining around it like the tendrils of a morning-glory vine,
which can tear the foundations of a stone house asunder.
But then," she went on, her voice low, "it is almost certain
that to have that kind of control over him, at the first,
she had to obtain his consent."
"His consent?" Trey cried, horrified. "But how could
he? How could anyone?"
Gareth, Jenny was interested to note, said nothing to
this. He had seen, however briefly, on the road in the
north, the mirror of his own soul—and he also knew
Zyeme.
Jenny explained, "To tamper that deeply with another's
essence always requires the consent of the victim. Zyeme
is a shapeshifter—the principle is the same."
Trey shook her head. "I don't understand."
Jenny sighed and, rising to her feet, crossed to where
the two young people sat side-by-side. She put her hand
on the girl's shoulder. "A shapeshifter can change some-
one else's essence, even as she can change her own. It
requires enormous power—and first she must in some
fashion obtain the victim's consent. The victim can resist,
unless the shapeshifter can find some chink of consenting,
some hidden demon within—some part of the essence
that wills to be changed."
The deepening darkness outside made the lamplight
even more golden, like honey where it lay over the girl's
158 Barbara Hambly
face. Under the shadows of the long, thick lashes. Jenny
could read both fear and fascination, that half-understand-
ing that is the first whisper of consent.
"I think you would resist me if I tried to transform you
into a lapdog, had I the power to do so. There is very
little of the lapdog in your soul. Trey Clerlock. But if I
were to transform you into a horse—a yearling filly, smoke-
gray and sister to the sea winds—I think I could obtain
your consent to that."
Trey jerked her eyes away, hiding them against Ga-
reth's shoulder, and the young man put a protective
arm around her as well as he could, considering that he
was sitting on the trailing ends of his extravagant sleeves.
"It is the power ofshapeshifting and the danger," Jenny
said, her voice low in the silence of the room. "If I trans-
formed you into a filly. Trey, your essence would be the
essence of a horse. Your thoughts would be a horse's
thoughts, your body a mare's body; your loves and desires
would be those of a young, swift beast. You might remem-
ber for a time what you were, but you could not find your
way back to be it once again. I think you would be happy
as a filly."
"Stop it," Trey whispered, and covered her ears.
Gareth's hold about her tightened. Jenny was silent. After
a moment the girl looked up again, her eyes dark with the
stirred depths of her dreams. "I'm sorry," she said, her
voice small. "It's not you I'm afraid of. It's me."
"I know," Jenny replied softly. "But do you understand
now? Do you understand what she might have done to
your father, Gareth? It is sometimes less painful to give
over striving and let another mind rule yours. When Zyeme
first came to power she couldn't have acquired that kind
of hold over you, because you would not come near enough
for her to do it. You hated her, and you were only a boy—
she could not draw you as she draws men. But when you
became a man..."
Dragonsbane 159
"I think that's loathsome." It was Trey's turn to put a
orotective arm around Gareth's satin shoulders.
"But a damn good way to keep her power," John pointed
out, leaning one arm across the hurdy-gurdy resting upon
his knees.
"I still can't be sure that this is what she did," Jenny
said. "And it still wouldn't explain why she did the same
thing to Bond. I would not know for certain until I could
see the King, speak to him..."
"God's Grandmother, he'll scarcely speak to his own
son, love, let alone me or thee." John paused, listening
to his own words. "Which might be a good reason for not
speaking to me or thee, come to that." His eyes flickered
to Gareth. "You know. Gar, the more I see of this, the
more I think I'd like to have a few words with your dad."
CHAPTER Vni
IN THE DEATHLY hush that hung over the gardens,
Gareth's descent from the wall sounded like the mating
of oxen in dry brush. Jenny winced as the boy crashed
down the last few feet into the shrubbery; from the shad-
ows of the iv
y on the wall top at her side she saw the dim
flash of spectacle lenses and heard a voice breathe, "You
forgot to shout 'Eleven o'clock and all's well,' my hero!"
A faint slur of ivy followed. She felt John land on the
ground below more than she heard him. After a last check
of the dark garden half-visible through the woven branches
of the bare trees, she slipped down to join them. In the
darkness, Gareth was a gawky shadow in rust-colored
velvet, John barely to be seen at all, the random pattern
of his plaids blending into the colors of the night.
"Over there," Gareth whispered, nodding toward the
far side of the garden where a light burned in a niche
between two trefoil arches. Its brightness spangled the
wet grass like pennies thrown by a careless hand.
He started to lead the way, but John touched his arm
and breathed, "I think we'd better send a scout, if it's
burglary and all we're after. I'll work round the three sides
160
Dragonsbane 161
through the shadows of the wall; when I get there, I'll
whistle once like a nightjar. Right?"
Gareth caught his sleeve as he started to move off.
"But what if a real nightjar whistles?"
"What, at this time of the year?" And he melted like
a cat into the darkness. Jenny could see him, shifting his
way through the checkered shadows of the bare topiary
that decorated the three sides of the King's private court;
by the way Gareth moved his head, she could tell he had
lost sight of him almost at once.
Near the archways there was a slither of rosy lamplight
on a spectacle frame, the glint of spikes, and the brief
outline of brightness on the end of a long nose. Gareth,
seeing him safe, started to move, and Jenny drew him
soundlessly back again. John had not yet whistled.
An instant later, Zyeme appeared in the doorway arch.
Though John stood less than six feet from her, she did
not at first see him, for he settled into stillness like a
snake in leaves. The enchantress's face, illuminated in the
warm apricot light, wore that same sated look Jenny had
seen in the upstairs room at the hunting lodge near the
Wildspae—the look of deep content with some wholly
private pleasure. Now, as then, it raised the hackles on
Jenny's neck, and at the same time she felt a cold shudder
of fear.
Then Zyeme turned her head. She startled, seeing John
motionless so near to her; then she smiled. "Well. An
enterprising barbarian." She shook out her unbound,
unveiled hair, straying tendrils of it lying against the hol-
low of her cheek, like an invitation to a caress. "A little
late, surely, to be paying calls on the King."
"A few weeks late, by all I've heard." Aversin scratched
his nose self-consciously. "But better late than never, as
Dad said at Granddad's wedding."
Zyeme giggled, a sweet and throaty sound. Beside her,
162 Barbara Hambly
Jenny felt Gareth shiver, as if the seductive laughter
brought memories of evil dreams.
"And impudent as well. Did your mistress send you
along to see if Uriens had been entangled in spells other
than his own stupidity and lust?"
Jenny heard the hiss ofGareth's breath and sensed his
anger and his shock at hearing the guttersnipe words fall
so casually from those pink lips. Jenny wondered why
she herself was not surprised.
John only shrugged and said mildly, "No. It's just I'm
no dab hand at waiting."
"Ah." Her smile widened, lazy and alluring. She seemed
half-drunk, but not sleepy as drunkards are; she glowed,
as she had on that first morning in the King's Gallery,
bursting with life and filled with the casual arrogance of
utter well-being. The lamp in its tiled niche edged her
profile in amber as she stepped toward John, and Jenny
felt again the grip of fear, as if John stood unknowingly
in deadly danger. "The barbarian who eats with his hands—
and doubtless makes love in his boots."
Her hands touched his shoulders caressingly, shaping
themselves to the muscle and bone beneath the leather
and plaid. But Aversin stepped back a pace, putting dis-
tance between them, rather as she had done in the gallery
to Dromar. Like Dromar, she would not relax her self-
consequence enough to pursue.
In a deliberately deepened north-country drawl, he said,
"Aye, my lack of manners does give me sleepless nights.
But it weren't to eat prettily nor yet to make love that I
came south. I was told you had this dragon eating folks
hereabouts."
She giggled again, an evil trickle of sound in the night.
"You shall have your chance to slay it when all is ready.
Timing is a civilized art, my barbarian."
"Aye," John's voice agreed, from the dark cutout of
his silhouette against the golden light. "And I've had buck-
Dragwsbane 163
ets of time to study it here, along with aB them other
civilized arts, like courtesy and kindness to suppliants,
not to speak of honor, and keeping one's faith with one's
lover, instead of rubbing up against his son."
There were perhaps three heartbeats of silence before
she spoke. Jenny saw her back stiffen; when she spoke
again, her voice, though still sweet, had a note to it like
a harp string taken a half-turn above its true note. "What
is it to you, John Aversin? It is how things are done here
in the south. None of it shall interfere with your chance
of glory. That is all that should concern you. I shall tell
you when it is right for you to go.
"Listen to me, Aversin, and believe me. I know this
dragon. You have slain one worm—you have not met
Morkeleb the Black, the Dragon ofNast Wall. He is might-
ier than the worm you slew before, mightier than you can
ever know."
"I'd guessed that." John pushed up his specs, the rosy
light glancing off the spikes of his armbands as from spear-
points. "I'll just have to slay him how I can, seemingly."
"No." Acid burned through the sweetness other voice
like poisoned candy. "You can not. I know it, if you and
that slut of yours don't. Do you think I don't know that
those stinking offal-eaters, the gnomes, have lied to you?
That they refused to give you true maps of the Deep? I
know the Deep, John Aversin—I know every tunnel and
passage. I know the heart of the Deep. Likewise I know
every spell of illusion and protection, and believe me, you
will need them against the dragon's wrath. You will need
my aid, if you are to have victory—you will need my aid
if you are to come out of that combat with your life. Wait,
I say, and you shall have that aid; and afterward, from
the spoils of the Deep, I shall reward you beyond the
dreams of any man's avarice."
John tilted his head a little to one side. "You'll reward
-?"
me'
164 Barbara Hambly
In the silence of the sea-scented night. Jenny heard the
other woman's breath catch.
"How is it you'll be the one to divvy up the gnomes'
treasure?" John asked. "Are you anticipating taking over
the Deep, once the dragon's out of the way?"
"No," she said, too quickly. "That is—surely you know
that the insolence of the gnomes has led them to plot
against his Majesty? They are no longer the strong folk
they were before the coming of Morkeleb. Those that
were not slain are divided and weak. Many have left this
town, forfeiting all their rights, and good riddance to them."
"Were I treated as I've seen them treated," John
remarked, leaning one shoulder against the blue-and-
yellow tiles of the archway, "I'd leave, myself."
"They deserved it." Her words stung with sudden
venom. "They kept me from..." She stopped herself,
then added, more reasonably, "You know they are openly
in league with the rebels ofHalnath—or you should know
it. It would be foolish to dispose of the dragon before their
plots are uncovered. It would only give them a strong
place and a treasure to return to, to engage in plotting
further treason."
"I know the King and the people have heard nothing
but how the gnomes are plotting," Aversin replied in a
matter-of-fact voice. "And from what I hear, the gnomes
up at the Citadel haven't much choice about whose side
they're on. Gar's being gone must have been a real boon
to you there; with the King half-distracted, he'd have been
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