Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane(Lit)

Fell, the mere below it like a broken piece of dirty glass,

  and the little stone house a chrysalis, cracked open to

  release the butterfly that had slept within.

  She said, I have not the power to change my essence.

  I have, the voice whispered among the visions in her

  mind. You have the strength to be a dragon, once you

  consent to take the form. I sensed that in you when we

  struggled. I was angry then, to be defeated by a human;

  but you can be more than human.

  Gazing up at the dark splendor of the dragon's angular

  form, she shook her head. / will not put myself thus in

  your power, Morkeleb. I cannot leave my own form with-

  out your aid, nor could I return to it. Do not tempt me.

  Tempt? Morkeleb's voice said. There is no temptation

  from outside the heart. And as for returning—what are

  you as a human. Jenny Waynest? Pitiful, puling, like all

  your kin the slave of time that rots the body before the

  mind has seen more than a single/lower in all the mead-

  ows of the Cosmos. To be a mage you must be a mage,

  and I see in your mind that you fight for the time to do

  even that. To be a dragon...

  "To be a dragon," she said aloud, to force her own

  Dragonsbane 239

  mind upon it, "I have only to give over my control of

  you. I will not lose myself thus in the dragon mind and

  the dragon magic. You will not thus get me to release

  you."

  She felt the strength press against the closed doors in

  her mind, then ease, and heard the steely rustle of his

  scales as his long tail lashed through the dry grasses with

  annoyance. The dark woods came back into focus; the

  strange visions receded like a shining mist. The light was

  waning fast about them, all the colors bled from straggly

  briar and fem. As if his blackness took on the softer hues

  of the evening, the dragon was nearly invisible, his shape

  blending with the milky stringers of fog that had begun

  to veil the woods and with the black, abrupt outlines of

  dead branch and charred trunk. Somewhere on the ridge

  above her. Jenny could hear Gareth calling her name.

  She found she was trembling, not solely from weari-

  ness or the piercing cold. The need within her was ter-

  rifying—to be what she had always wished to be, to have

  what she had wanted since she had been fourteen, ugly,

  and cursed with a terrible need. She had tasted the strength

  of the dragon's fire, and the taste lingered sweet in her

  mouth.

  / can give you this, the voice in her mind said.

  She shook her head, more violently this time. No. /

  will not betray my friends.

  Friends? Those who would bind you to littleness for

  their own passing convenience? The man who grudges

  you the essence of your soul out of mourning for his

  dinner? Do you cling to all these little joys because you

  are afraid to taste the great ones. Jenny Waynest?

  He had been right when he had said that there is no

  temptation from outside the heart. She flung back her

  long hair over her shoulders and called to herself all the

  strength remaining in her, against the star-prickled dark-

  240 Barbara Hambly

  ness that seemed to draw upon the very marrow of her

  bones.

  Get away from me, she told him. Go now and return

  to the islands in the northern sea that are your home.

  Sing your songs to the rock-gold and the whales, and let

  be forever the sons of men and the sons of gnomes.

  As if she had struck a black log that, breaking, had

  revealed the living fire smoldering within, she felt the

  surge of his anger again. He reared back, his body arched

  against the dimming sky. The dark wire and silk of his

  wings rattled as he said, Be it so then, wizard woman. I

  leave to you the gold of the Deep—take of it what you

  will. My song is in it. When old age comes, whose mortal

  frost you have already begun to feel upon your bones,

  press it to your heart and remember that which you have

  let pass you by.

  He gathered himself upon his haunches, his compact,

  snakelike shape rising above her as he gathered about him

  the glitter of magic in the air. Black wings unfurled against

  the sky, looming over her so that she could see the obsi-

  dian gleam of his sides, the baby-skin softness of the

  velvet belly, still puckered with the crimped, ugly mouths

  of harpoon wounds. Then he flung himself skyward. The

  great stroke of his wings caught him up. She felt the magic

  that swirled about him, a spindrift of enchantment, the

  star trail of an invisible comet. The last rays of sinking

  light tipped his wings as he rose beyond the blue shadow

  of the ridge. Then he was gone.

  Jenny watched him go with desolation in her heart. All

  the woods seemed laden now with the smell of wet bum-

  ing, and the murky earthiness of dead smoke. She became

  slowly aware that the hem of her skirt was sodden from

  kneeling in the wet path; her boots were damp and her

  feet cold. Listless weariness dragged upon her, from mus-

  cles pulled by exertion and Zyeme's spells and also from

  Dragonsbane 241

  the words the dragon had spoken to her when she had

  turned away from what he had offered.

  As a dragon, she would have no more hold upon him,

  nor would she wish any longer to drive him from the Deep.

  Was that, she wondered, why he had offered her the splen-

  did and terrifying freedom of that form? They said that

  dragons did not entrap with lies but with truth, and she

  knew he had read accurately the desires of her soul.

  "Jenny?" A smudged, dirty Gareth came hurrying

  toward her down the path. To her ears, used to the voice

  of the dragon, he sounded tinny and false. "Are you all

  right? What happened? I saw the dragon..." He had

  removed his specs and was seeking a sufficiently clean

  patch of his sooty, spark-holed shirt to wipe them on,

  without much success. Against the grime on his face the

  lenses had left two white circles, like a mask, in which

  his gray eyes blinked nakedly.

  Jenny shook her head. She felt weary to the point of

  tears, almost incapable of speech. He fell into step with

  her as she began slowly climbing the path up the Rise

  once more.

  "Did Zyerne get away?"

  She looked at him, startled. After what had passed

  between herself and Morkeleb, she had nearly forgotten

  Zyeme. "She—she left. I sent her away." It seemed like

  days ago.

  "You sent her away?" Gareth gasped, dumfounded.

  Jenny nodded, too tired to explain. Thinking about it,

  she frowned, as something snagged at her mind. But she

  only asked, "And you?"

  He looked away from her and reddened with shame.

  Part of Jenny sighed in exasperation at this foolishness,

  so petty after the force of the dragon's greater seduction;

  but part other remembered what it was like to be eighteen,

  and prey to the unco
ntrollable yearnings of the body.

  Barbara Hambly

  Comfortingly, she touched the skinny arm under the ripped

  lawn of his shirtsleeve.

  "It is a spell she had on you," she said. "Nothing more.

  We are all tempted..." She pushed aside the echoing

  memory of the dragon's words. "... And what is in our

  deepest hearts is still not what we are judged on, but rather

  what we ultimately do. She only uses'such spells to draw

  you to her, to control you as she controls your father."

  They reached the clearing, soggy and dirty-looking,

  like a garment upon which acid had been spilled, with

  charred spots and little puddles of gleaming water which

  still steamed faintly from the smolder they had quenched.

  "I know." Gareth sighed and picked up the bucket from

  the sodden ground to dip it once more into the well. He

  moved stiffly from pulled muscles and exertion but didn't

  complain of them as he once might have done. On the

  edge of the well trough, he found his tin cup and dipped

  water from the bucket to hand to her, the wetness icy

  against her fingers. She realized with a little start that she

  had neither eaten nor drunk since breakfast. There had

  been no time, and now she felt old and exhausted as she

  took the cup from his hand.

  "You just sent her away?" Gareth asked again. "And

  she went? She didn't turn herself into a falcon... ?"

  "No." Jenny looked up, as it came to her what it was

  that had bothered her about the events of the evening.

  "Morkeleb..." She stopped, not wanting to speak of what

  Morkeleb had offered to her.

  But even so, she thought, she could not have taken on

  a dragon's form without his help. His powers had broken

  through to the powers within her, but her powers were

  still raw and small. And Zyeme...

  "I defeated her," she said slowly. "But if she's as shape-

  crafty as you have said—if she has that kind of strength—

  Dragonsbane 243

  I shouldn't have been able to defeat her, even though my

  powers have grown."

  She almost said, "Even with the dragon's powers in

  me," but the words stuck on her lips. She felt the powers

  stir in her, like an alien child in the womb of fate, and

  tried to put aside the thought of them and of what they

  might mean. She raised the cup to her lips, but stopped,

  the water untasted, and looked up at Gareth again.

  "Have you drunk any of the water from this well?" she

  asked.

  He looked at her in surprise. "We've all been drinking

  it for days," he said.

  "This evening, I mean."

  He looked ruefully around at the clearing and his own

  soaked sleeves. "I was too busy throwing it about to drink

  any," he said. "Why?"

  She passed her hand across the mouth of the cup. As

  things were visible to a wizard in darkness, she saw the

  viscid sparkle of green luminosity in the water.

  "Has it gone bad?" he asked worriedly. "How can you

  tell?"

  She upended the cup, dumping the contents to the

  ground. "Where was Zyeme when you came into the

  clearing?"

  He shook his head, puzzled. "I don't remember. It was

  like a dream..." He looked around him, though Jenny

  knew that the clearing, soggy and trampled in the dismal

  gloom, was very different from the soft place of twilight

  enchantment if had appeared an hour or so ago.

  At last he said, "I think she was sitting where you are

  now, on the edge of the wellhead."

  Morkeleb had said. They did not think that I could see

  the death that tainted the meat. Was it Dromar who had

  remarked that dragons were impossible to poison?

  She twisted her body and moved her hands across the

  244 Barbara Hambly

  surface of the bucket that Gareth had drawn up. The reek

  of death rose from it, and she recoiled in disgust and

  horror, as if the water had turned to blood beneath her

  fingers.

  CHAPTER XIII

  "BUT WHY?" SQUATTING before the fire on his hunker-

  bones, Gareth turned to look at John, who lay in his nest

  of bearskin blankets and ratty plaids a few feet away. "As

  far as she was concerned, you'd slain her dragon for her."

  He unraveled the screw of paper in which they'd brought

  the coffee up from Bel, decided there wasn't enough to

  bother with measuring, and dumped it into the pot of

  water that bubbled over the fire. "She didn't know then

  that Jenny was any threat to her. Why poison us?"

  "At a guess," John said, propping himself with great

  care up on one elbow and fitting his spectacles to his dirty,

  unshaven face, "to keep us from riding back to Bel with

  the news that the dragon was dead before she could get

  your dad to round up the remaining gnomes on some

  trumped-up charge. As far as she knew, the dragon was

  dead—I mean, she couldn't have seen him in a crystal or

  a water bowl, but she could see us all alive and chipper,

  and the inference is a pretty obvious one."

  "I suppose." Gareth unrolled his tumed-up sleeves and

  slung his cloak around his shoulders once more. The

  morning was foggy and cold, and the sweat he'd worked

  245

  246 Barbara Hambly

  up clearing out the well house close to their camp in the

  ruined tanneries was drying.

  "I doubt she'd have poisoned you," John went on. "If

  she'd wanted you dead, she'd never have waited for you."

  Gareth blushed hotly. "That isn't why she waited," he

  mumbled.

  "Of course not," John said. "Dead, you're not only no

  good to her—if you die, she loses everything."

  The boy frowned. "Why? I mean, I can see her wanting

  me under her power so I'd no longer be a threat to her,

  the same reason she put Polycarp out of the way. And if

  she killed the two of you, she'd need me to back up her

  story about the dragon still being in the Deep, at least

  until she could get rid of the gnomes." He sniffed bitterly

  and held out his blistered hands to the fire. "She'd prob-

  ably use Bond and me as witnesses to say eventually that

  she slew the dragon. Then she'd be able to justify having

  my father give her the Deep."

  He sighed, his mouth tight with disillusionment. "And

  I thought Polycarp stretching a bit of cable over a fence

  sounded like the depths of perfidy." He settled the griddle

  over the fire, his thin face looking much older than it had

  in the jonquil pallor of the daytime flames.

  "Well," John said gently, "it isn't only that. Gar." He

  glanced over at Jenny, who sat in the shadows of the newly

  cleared doorway of the well house, but she said nothing.

  Then he looked back to Gareth. "How long do you think

  your father's going to last with Zyeme alive? I don't know

  what her spells are doing to him, and I know a dying man

  when I see one. As it is, for all her power, she's only a mis

  tress. She needs the Deep for a power base and fortress

  independent
of the King, and she needs the Deep's gold."

  "My father would give it to her," Gareth said softly.

  "And I—I suppose I'm just the contingency plan, in case

  he should die?" He poked at the softly sizzling cakes on

  the griddle. "Then she had to destroy Polycarp, whether

  Dragonsbane 247

  or not he tried to warn me of her. The Citadel guards the

  back way into the Deep."

  "Well, not even that." John lay back down again and

  folded his hands on his breast. "She wanted to be rid of

  Polycarp because he's an alternative heir."

  "Alternative to whom?" Gareth asked, puzzled. "To

  me?"

  John shook his head. "Alternative to Zyeme's child."

  The horror that crossed the boy's face was deeper than

  fear of death—deeper. Jenny thought with the strange

  dispassion that had lain upon her all that morning and

  through the previous night, than fear of being subjugated

  to the enchantress's spells. He looked nauseated by the

  thought, as if at the violation of some dark taboo. It was

  a long time before he could speak. "You mean—my father's

  child?"

  "Or yours. It would scarcely matter which, as long as

  it had the family looks." Bandaged hands folded, John

  looked shortsightedly up at the boy as, half-numbed,

  Gareth went through the automatic motions of forking

  griddlecakes from the skillet. Still in that gentle, matter-

  of-fact voice, he went on, "But you see, after this long