Dragon's Bane
Page 29
head felt clear and alert, without the numbed weariness
she felt when she had overstretched her powers. She was
aware, down to her last finger end, of the depth and great-
ness of the dragon's magic, but was aware also of her
own strength against him.
Evening wind dusted across her face. The sun had sunk
beyond the flinty crest of the westward ridge, and though
the sky still held light, Deeping lay at the bottom of a lake
of shadow. She was aware of many things passing in the
Vale, most of them having nothing to do with the affairs
of dragons or humankind—the skreak of a single cricket
under a charred stone, the flirt of a squirrel's tail as it fled
from its hopeful mate, and the flutterings of the chaf-
finches as they sought their nighttime nests. Where the
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Dragonsbane 231
trail turned downward around a broken pile of rubble that
had once been a house, she saw a man's skeleton lying
in the weeds, the bag of gold he had died clutching split
open and the coins singing softly to her where they lay
scattered among his ribs.
She was aware, suddenly, that someone else had entered
the Vale.
It was analagous to sound, though unheard. The scent
of magic came to her like smoke on the shift of the wind.
She stopped still in the dry tangle of broomsedge, cold
shreds of breeze that frayed down from the timberline
stirring in her plaids. There was magic in the Vale, up on
the ridge. She could hear the slither and snag of silk on
beech mast, the startled splash of spilled water in the dusk
by the fountain, and Gareth's voice halting over a name...
Catching up her skirts. Jenny began to run.
The smell of Zyerne's perfume seemed everywhere in
the woods. Darkness was already beginning to collect
beneath the trees. Panting, Jenny sprang up the whitish,
flinty rocks to the glade by the fountain. Long experience
in the Winterlands had taught her to move in utter silence,
even at a dead run; and thus, for the first moment, neither
of those who stood near the little well was aware of her
arrival.
It took her a moment to see Zyeme. Gareth she saw
at once, standing frozen beside the wellhead. Spilled water
was soaking into the beech mast around his feet; a half-
empty bucket balanced on the edge of the stone trough
beside the well itself. He didn't heed it; she wondered
how much of his surroundings he was aware of at all.
Zyeme's spells filled the small glade like the music
heard in dreams. Even she, a woman, felt the scented
warmth of the air that belied the tingly cold lower down
in the Vale and sensed the stirring of need in her flesh.
In Gareth's eyes was a kind of madness, and his hands
were shaking where they were clenched, knotted into fists,
232 Barbara Humbly
before him. His voice was a whisper more desperate than
a scream as he said, "No."
"Gareth." Zyeme moved, and Jenny saw her, as she
seemed to float like a ghost in the dusk among the birch
trees at the glade's edge. "Why pretend? You know you;
love for me has grown, as mine has for you. It is like file
in your flesh now; the taste of your mouth in my dreama
has tormented me day and night..."
"While you were lying with my father?"
She shook back her hair, a small, characteristic ges
tare, brushing the tendrils of it away from her smooth
brow. It was difficult to see what she wore in the dusk—
something white and fragile that rippled in the stirrings
of the wind, pale as the birches themselves. Her hair was
loosened down her back like a young girl's; and, like a
young girl, she wore no veils. Years seemed to have van-
ished from her age, young as she had seemed before. She
looked like a girl of Gareth's age, unless, like Jenny, one
saw her with a wizard's eye.
"Gareth, I never lay with your father," she said softly.
"Oh, we agreed to pretend, for the sake of appearances
at Court—but even if he had wanted me to, I don't think
I could have. He treated me like a daughter. It was you
I wanted, you..."
"That's a lie!" His mouth sounded dried by fever heat.
She held out her hands, and the wind lifted the thin
fabric of her sleeves back from her arms as she moved a
step into the glade. "I could bear waiting no longer. I had
to come, to leam what had happened to you—to be with
you..."
He sobbed, "Get away from me!" His face was twisted
by something close to pain.
She only whispered, "I want you..."
Jenny stepped from the somber shade of the trail and
said, "No, Zyeme. What you want is the Deep."
Zyeme swung around, her concentration breaking, as
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Morkeleb had tried to break Jenny's. The lurid sensuality
that had dripped from the air shattered with an almost
audible snap. At once, Zyeme seemed older, no longer
the virgin girl who could inflame Gareth's passion. The
boy dropped to his knees and covered his face, his body
racked with dry sobs.
"It's what you've always wanted, isn't it?" Jenny
touched Gareth's hair comfortingly, and he threw his arms
around her waist, clinging to her like a drowning man to
a spar. Oddly enough, she felt no fear of Zyeme now, or
of the greater strength of the younger woman's magic.
She seemed to see Zyeme differently, even, and felt calm
as she faced her—calm and ready.
Zyeme uttered a ribald laugh. "So there's our boy who
won't tumble his father's mistress? You had them both to
yourself, didn't you, slut, coming down from the north?
Enough time and more to tangle him in your hair."
Gareth pulled free of Jenny and scrambled to his feet,
shaking all over with anger. Though Jenny could see he
was still terrified of the sorceress, he faced her and gasped,
"You're lying!"
Zyeme laughed again, foully, as she had in the garden
outside the King's rooms. Jenny only said, "She knows
it isn't true. What did you come here for, Zyeme? To do
to Gareth what you've done to his father? Or to see if it's
finally safe for you to enter the Deep?"
The enchantress's mouth moved uncertainly, and her
eyes shifted under Jenny's cool gaze. Then she laughed,
the mockery in it marred by her uncertainty. "Maybe to
get your precious Dragonsbane at the same time?"
A week—even a day—ago. Jenny would have
responded to the taunt with fear for John's safety. But
she knew Zyeme had not gone anywhere near John. She
knew she would have sensed it, if such magic had been
worked so near—almost, she thought, she would have
heard their voices, no matter how softly they spoke. And
234 Barbara Hambly
in any case, John was unable to flee; one deals with the
unwounded enemy first.
She saw Zyeme's hand move and felt the nature of the
spell, even as sh
e smelled the singed wool of her skirts
beginning to smoke. Her own spell was fast and hard,
called with the mind and the minimal gesture of the hand
rather than the labor it had once entailed. Zyerne stag-
gered back, her hands over her eyes, taken completely
by surprise.
When Zyeme raised her head again, her eyes were livid
with rage, yellow as a devil's in a face transformed with
fury. "You can't keep me from the Deep," she said in a
voice which shook. "It is mine—it will be mine. I've
driven the gnomes from it. When I take it, no one, no
one, will be able to contend against my power!"
Stooping, she seized a handful of old leaves and beech-
nuts from the mast that lay all about their feet. She flung
them at Jenny. In the air, they burst into flame, growing
as they burned, a tangled bonfire that Jenny swept aside
with a spell she had hardly been aware she'd known. The
blazing logs scattered everywhere, throwing streamers of
yellow fire into the blue gloom and blazing up in half-a-
dozen places where they touched dry weeds. Doubling
like a hare upon her tracks, Zyeme darted for the path
that led down into the Vale. Jenny leaped at her heels,
her soft boots in three strides outdistancing the younger
woman's precarious court shoes.
Zyeme twisted in her grip. She was taller than Jenny
but not physically as strong, even taking into account
Jenny's exhaustion; for an instant their eyes were inches
apart, the yellow gaze boring like balefire into the blue.
Like a hammerblow. Jenny felt the impact of a mind
upon hers, spells of hurt and terror that gripped and twisted
at her muscles, utterly different from the weight and living
strength of the dragon's mind. She parried the spell, not
so much with a spell as with the strength of her will,
Dragonsbane 235
throwing it back at Zyeme, and she heard the younger
woman curse her in a spate of fury like a burst sewer.
Nails tore at her wrists as she sought the yellow eyes with
her own again, catching Zyeme's silky curls in a fist like
a rock, forcing her to look. It was the first time she had
matched strength in anger with another mage, and it sur-
prised her how instinctive it was to probe into the
essence—as she had probed into Gareth's, and Mab into
hers_not solely to understand, but to dominate by under-
standing, to give nothing of her own soul in return. She
had a glimpse of something sticky and foul as the plants
that eat those foolish enough to came near, the eroded
remains of a soul, like an animate corpse of the young
woman's mind.
Zyeme screamed as she felt the secrets of her being
bared, and power exploded in the air between them, a
burning fire that surrounded them in a whirlwind of tearing
force. Jenny felt a weight falling against her, a blackness
like the dragon's mind but greater, the shadow of some
crushing power, like an ocean of uncounted years. It drove
her to her knees, but she held on, sloughing away the
crawling, biting pains that tore at her skin, the rending
agony in her muscles, the fire, and the darkness, boring
into Zyeme's mind with her own, like a white needle of
fire.
The weight of the shadow faded. She felt Zyerne's
nerve and will break and got to her feet again, throwing
the girl from her with all her strength. Zyeme collapsed
on the dirt of the path, her dark hair hanging in a torrent
over her white dress, her nails broken from tearing at
Jenny's wrists, her nose running and dust plastered to her
face with mucus. Jenny stood over her, panting for breath,
her every muscle hurting from the twisting impact of
Zyeme's spells. "Go," she said, her voice quiet, but with
power in her words. "Go back to Bel and never touch
Gareth again."
236 Barbara Hambly
Sobbing with fury, Zyeme picked herself up. Her voice
shook. "You stinking gutter-nosed sow! I won't be kept
from the Deep! It's mine, I tell you; and when I come
there, I'll show you! I swear by the Stone, when I have
the Deep, I'll crush you out like the dung-eating cock-
roach you are! You'll see! They'll all see! They have no
right to keep me away!"
"Get out of here," Jenny said softly.
Sobbing, Zyeme obeyed her, gathering up her trailing
white gown and stumbling down the path that led toward
the clock tower. Jenny stood for a long time watching her
go. The power Jenny had summoned to protect her faded
slowly, like fire banked under embers until it was needed
again.
It was only after Zyeme was out of sight that she real-
ized that she should never have been able to do what she
had just done—not here and not in the Deep.
And it came to her then, what had happened to her
when she had touched the mind of the dragon.
The dragon's magic was alive in her soul, like streaks
of iron in gold. She should have known it before; if she
had not been so weary, she thought, perhaps she would
have. Her awareness, like Morkeleb's, had widened to
fill the Vale, so that, even in sleep, she was conscious of
things taking place about her. A shiver passed through
her flesh and racked her bones with terror and wonder-
ment, as if she had conceived again, and something alive
and alien was growing within her.
Smoke from the woods above stung her nose and eyes,
white billows of it telling her that Gareth had succeeded
in dousing the flames. Somewhere the horses were whin-
nying in terror. She felt exhausted and aching, her whole
body wrenched by the cramp of those gripping spells, her
wrists smarting where Zyeme's nails had torn them. She
began to tremble, the newfound strength draining away
under the impact of shock and fear.
Dragonsbane 237
A countersurge of wind shook the trees around her, as
if at the stroke of a giant wing. Her hair blowing about
her face, she looked up, but for a moment saw nothing.
It was something she'd heard of—that dragons, for all
their size and gaudiness, could be harder to see in plain
daylight than the voles of the hedgerow. He seemed to
blend down out of the dusk, a vast shape of jointed ebony
and black silk, silver-crystal eyes like small moons in the
dark.
He could feel my power nearing its end, she thought
despairingly, remembering how he had turned on her
before. The terrible, shadowy weight of Zyeme's spells
still lay on her bones; she felt they would break if she
tried to summon the power to resist the dragon. Wrong
with a weariness close to physical nausea, she looked up
to face him and hardened her mind once again to meet
his attack.
Even as she did so, she realized that he was beautiful,
as he hung for a moment like a black, drifting kite upon
the air.
Then his mind touched hers, and the last pain of
>
Zyeme's spells was sponged away.
What is it, wizard woman? he asked. It is only evil
words, such as fishwives throw at one another.
He settled before her on the path, folding his great
wings with a queerly graceful articulation, and regarded
her with his silver eyes in the dusk.
He said, You understand.
No, she replied. / think I know what has happened,
but I do not understand.
Bah. In the leaky gray twilight beneath the trees, she
saw all the scale-points along his sides ruffle slightly, like
the hair of an affronted cat. / think that you do. When
your mind was in mine, my magic called to you, and the
dragon within you answered. Know you not your own
power, wizard woman? Know you not what you could be?
238 Barbara Hambly
With a cold vertigo that was not quite fear she under-
stood him then and willed herself not to understand.
He felt the closing of her mind, and irritation smoked
from him like a white spume of mist. You understand, he
said again. You have been within my mind; you know what
it would be to be a dragon.
Jenny said. No, not to him, but to that trickle of fire
in her mind that surged suddenly into a stream.
As in a dream, images surfaced of things she felt she
had once known and forgotten, like the soaring freedom
of flight. She saw the earth lost beneath her in the clouds,
and about her was a vaporous eternity whose absolute
silence was broken only by the sheer of her wings. As
from great height, she glimpsed the stone circle on Frost