Dragonshadow

by Barbara Hambly

  “That was Heronax of Ernine,” protested John. “He flew from Ernine to the Silver Isles in it—wherever Ernine was—and I’ve gie near got the thing working properly now. You’ll see.”

  He gathered her hair up in his hands, an overflowing double handful of oceanic night, and bent to kiss her lips. His body pressed hers to the tall, smooth-hewn post, and her hand explored the leather of his doublet, the rough wool of the dull-colored plaid wrapped over his shoulder, the hard muscle beneath the linen sleeve. Ian apparently bethought himself of some ingredient hidden inexplicably in the garden, for he wandered unseeing outside; the scents of the old house wrapped them around, moldy thatch and mice and the wild whisper of summer night in the Winterlands.

  The heat of her body’s changing whispered to her, and she whispered back, Go away. It was not just the little cantrips, the knots of warding and change, that turned aside those migraines, those flashes of moodiness, those alien angers. It was this knowledge, this man, the lips that sought hers and the warmth of his flesh against her. The joy of a girl who had been ugly, who had been scorned and stoned in the village streets, who had been told, You’re a witch and will grow old alone.

  The knowledge that this was not true.

  Later she breathed, “And your dragon-slaying machine.”

  “Aye, well.” He straightened from hunting her fallen hairpins, and the hard line returned to crease the corner of his mouth. “That’s near done, too. More’s the pity I spent this past winter tryin’ to learn to fly instead.”

  Early in the morning Jenny kindled fire under the cauldrons that Sergeant Muffle had set up in the Hold’s old barracks court. She fetched water from the well in the corner and spent the day brewing poisons to put on the ensorcelled harpoons. In this she accepted Ian’s help, and John’s, too, and it was all John’s various aunts could do to keep Adric and Mag from stealing into the court and poisoning themselves in the process of lending a hand. By the late-gathering summer twilight they were dipping the harpoons into the thickened black mess, and the messenger from Skep Dhû joined them in the court.

  “It isn’t just the garrison that relies on that herd,” the young man said, glancing, a little uncertainly, from the unprepossessing, bespectacled form of the Dragonsbane, stripped to a rather sooty singlet, doeskin britches, and boots, to that of the Witch of Frost Fell. His name was Borin, and he was a lieutenant of cavalry at the garrison, and like most southerners had to work very hard not to bite his thumb against evil in Jenny’s presence. “The manors the Regent is trying to establish to feed all the new garrisons depend on those cattle as well, for breeding and restocking. And we lost six, maybe eight bulls and as many cows, as far as we can gather—the carcasses stripped and gouged, the whole pasture swept with fire.”

  John glanced at Jenny, who could almost read his thoughts. Fifteen cattle was a lot.

  “And you got a good look at it?”

  Borin nodded. “I saw it flying away toward the other side of the Skepping Hills. Green, as I said to you last night. The spines and horns down its back, and the barb on its tail, were crimson as blood.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Ian, on the other side of the court, carefully propped two of the harpoons against the long shed that served John as a workroom; Sergeant Muffle leaned against the side of the beehive-shaped clay furnace in the center of the yard and wiped the sweat from his face. John said softly, “Green with crimson horns,” and Jenny knew why that small upright line appeared between his brows. He was fishing through his memory for the name of a star-drake of those colors in the old dragon-lists. Teltrevir, heliotrope, the old list said, the list handed down rote from centuries ago, compiled by none knew whom. Centhwevir blue, knotted with gold.

  “Only a dozen or so are on the list,” said Jenny quietly. “There must be dozens—hundreds—that are not.”

  “Aye.” He moved two of the harpoons, a restless gesture, not meeting her eyes. “We don’t even know how many dragons there are in the world, or where they live—or what they eat, for that matter, when they’re not makin’ free with our herds.” His voice was deep, like scuffed brown velvet; Jenny could sense him drawing in on himself, gathering himself for the fight. “In Gantering Pellus’ The Encyclopedia of Everything in the Material World it says they live in volcanoes that are crowned with ice, but then again Gantering Pellus also says bears are born shapeless like dough and licked into shape by their fathers. I near got meself killed when I was fifteen, findin’ out how much he didn’t know about bears. The Liever Draiken has it that dragons come down from the north …”

  “Will you want a troop of men to help you?” asked Borin. In the short time he’d been at the Hold he’d already learned that when the Thane of the Winterlands started on ancient writings it was better to simply interrupt if one wanted anything done. “Commander Rocklys said she could dispatch one to meet you at Skep Dhû.”

  John hesitated, then said, “Better not. Or at least, have ’em come, but no nearer than Wormwood Ford. There’s a reason them old heroes are always riding up on the dragon’s lair by themselves, son. Dragons listen, even in their sleep. Just three or four men, they’ll hear ’em coming, miles off, and be in the air by the time company arrives. If a dragon gets in the air, the man going after it is dead. You have to take ’em on the ground.”

  “Oh.” Borin tried hard to look unconcerned about this piece of news. “I see.”

  “At a guess,” John added thoughtfully, “the thing’s laired up in the ravines on the northwest side of the Skepping Hills, near where the herd was pastured. There’s only one or two ravines large enough to take a dragon. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out which. And then,” he said grimly, “then we’ll see who gets slain.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a ride of almost two days, east to the Skepping Hills. John and Jenny took with them, in addition to Borin and the two southern soldiers who’d ridden with him—a not-unreasonable precaution in the Winterlands—Skaff Gradely, who acted as militia captain for the farms around Alyn Hold, and two of Jenny’s cousins from the Darrow Bottoms, all of whom were unwilling to leave their farms this close to haying-time but equally unwilling to have the dragon move west. Sergeant Muffle was left in command of the Hold.

  “There’s no reason for it,” argued Borin, who appeared to have gotten the Hold servants to launder and press his red military tunic and polish his boots. “There’s been no sign of bandits this spring. Commander Rocklys has put this entire land under law again, so there’s really no call for a man to walk armed wherever he goes.” He almost, but not quite, looked pointedly at Gradely and the Darrow boys, who, as usual for those born and bred in the Winterlands, bristled with knives, spiked clubs, axes, and the long slim savage northern bows. Jenny knew that in the King’s southern lands, farmers did not even carry swords—most of the colonists who had come in the wake of the new garrisons were, in fact, serfs, transplanted by royal fiat to these manors and forbidden to carry weapons at all.

  “There’s never any sign of bandits that’re good at their jobs.” John signaled a halt for the dozenth time and dismounted to scout, though by order of the Commander of the Winterlands, roads in this part of the country had been cleared for a bow shot’s distance on either side. In Jenny’s opinion, whoever had done the clearing had no idea how far a northern longbow could shoot.

  Borin said, “Really!” as John disappeared into the trees, his green and brown plaid mingling with the colors of the thick-matted brush. “Every one of these stops loses us time, and …”

  Jenny lifted her hand for silence, listening ahead, around, among the trees. Stretching out her senses, as wizards did. Smelling for horses. Listening for birds and rabbits that would fall silent at the presence of man. Feeling the air as a wealthy southern lady would feel silk with fingers white and sensitive, seeking a flaw, a thickened thread …

  Arts that all of Jenny’s life, of all the lives of her parents and grandparents, had meant the difference between life and death in the
Winterlands.

  In time she said, quietly, “I apologize if this seems to discount Commander Rocklys’ defenses of the Realm, Lieutenant. But Skep Dhû is the boundary garrison in these parts, and beyond it, the bandit troops might still be at large. The great bands, Balgodorus Black-Knife’s, or that of Gorgax the Red, number in hundreds. If I know them, they’ve been waiting all spring for a disruption such as a dragon would cause to raid the new manors while your captain’s attention is elsewhere.”

  The lieutenant looked as if he would protest, then simply looked away. Jenny didn’t know whether this was because she carried her own halberd and bow slung behind Moon Horse’s saddle—women in the south did not customarily go armed, though there were some notable exceptions—or because she was a wizard, or for some other reason entirely. Many of the southern garrisons were devout worshipers of the Twelve Gods and regarded the Winterlands as a wilderness of heresy. In any case, disapproving silence reigned for something like half an hour—Gradely and the Darrow boys sitting their scrubby mounts ten or twelve paces away, scratching under their plaids and picking their noses—until John returned.

  They camped that night in the ruins of what had been a small village or a large manor farm three centuries ago, when the Winterlands still supported such things. A messenger met them there with word that the dragon was in fact laired in the largest of the ravines east of the Skepping Hills—“The one with the oak wood along the ridge at its head, my lord”—and that Commander Rocklys had personally led a squadron of fifty to meet them at Wormwood Ford.

  “Gaw, leavin’ who to garrison Cair Corflyn, if they get themselves munched up?” demanded John, horrified. “You get back now, son, and tell the lot of ’em to stay put. Do they think this is a bloody fox-hunt? The thing’ll hear ’em coming ten miles off!”

  The second night they made camp early, while light was still high in the sky, in a gully just west of the Skepping Hills. Beyond, the northern arm of the Wood of Wyr lay thick, a land of knotted trees and dark, slow-moving streams that flowed down out of the Gray Mountains, a land that had never been brought under the dominion of the Kings. Lying with John under their spread-out plaids, Jenny felt by his breathing that he did not sleep.

  “I hate this,” he said softly. “I’d hoped, after meeting Morkeleb—after speaking with him, touching him … hearing that voice of his speak in me mind—I’d hoped never to have to go after a dragon again in me life.”

  Jenny remembered the Dragon of Nast Wall. “No.”

  He sat up, his arms wrapped around his knees, and looked down at her, knowing how her own experience of the dragon-kind had touched her. “Don’t hate me for it, Jen.”

  She shook her head, knowing that she so easily could. If she didn’t understand about the Winterlands, and about what it was to be Thane. “No.” John loved wolves, too, and studied every legend, every hunter’s tale: He’d built a blind for himself so he could sit and watch them for hours at their howlings and their hunts. He’d drive them away sooner than kill them, if they preyed on the cattle. But he’d kill them without compunction if he had to.

  He was Thane of the Winterlands, as his father had been. He could no more turn his back on a fight with a dragon than he could turn his back should a bandit chief, handsome and wise as the priests said gods were, start raiding the farms.

  Jenny supposed that if a god were to come burning the fields and killing the stock, exposing the people to the perils of these terrible lands, John would read everything he could on the subject, pick up whatever weapon seemed appropriate, and try to take it on.

  The fact that he’d never wanted any of this was beside the point.

  An hour after midnight he rose for good, ate cold barley bannocks—none of them had been so foolish as to suggest cooking, within a few miles of a dragon’s lair—and armed himself in his fighting doublet, his close-fitting helmet, and iron-backed gloves. Jenny knew that dragons were neither strictly nocturnal nor diurnal, but woke and slept like cats; still, she also knew that most dragons were aground and asleep in the hours just before dawn. She flung a little ravel of witchlight close to the ground, just enough for the horses to see the trail, and led the way toward the razor-backed hunch of the Skepping Hills and the oak-fringed ravine.

  Mist swirled around the knees of the horses, floated like rags of silk among the heather. They left Borin on the edge of the heath, to watch from afar. Stretching her senses, Jenny felt everywhere the tingle and touch of magic. Had the dragon summoned these unseasonable mists for protection? she wondered. Would it sense her, sense them, if she raised a counterspell to send them away?

  For a star-drake’s body to be simply of one color, she thought, it must be either very young or very old, and if very old, its senses would fill the lands around, like still water that would carry the slightest ripple to its dreams. But this she did not feel. She had sensed Morkeleb’s awareness when she and John had first ridden to do battle with the black dragon under the shadows of the Deep of Ylferdun … The red horns and spikes and tail seemed to argue for a young dragon anyway, but would a youngster be large enough to be mistaken for something a hundred feet long?

  She touched John’s wrist and whispered, though they were close enough now to the head of the ravine to need absolute silence, “John, wait. There’s something wrong.”

  The ravine before them was a drift of gray mist. His spectacles, framed by his helmet, glinted like the eyes of an enormous moth. In a hunter’s whisper, he asked, “Can it hear us? Feel us?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t … I don’t feel it. At all.”

  He tilted his head, inquiring.

  “I don’t know. Get ready to run or to charge.”

  Then she reached out with her mind, her will, her dragon-heart and dragon-spells, and tore the mists from the ravine in a single fierce swirl of chilling wind.

  The slice and flash of early light blinked on metal in the oak woods above the ravine, and a second later something came roaring and flapping up from between the hills: green, red-horned, bat-winged, snake-headed, serpentine tail tipped with something that looked like a gargantuan crimson arrowhead and absolutely unlike any dragon Jenny had ever seen outside the illuminations of John’s old books. John said, “Bugger all!” and Jenny yelled, “John, look out, it’s an illusion …!”

  Unnecessarily, for John was turning already, sword drawn, spurring toward the nearest cover. Jenny followed, flinging behind her a blast and hammer of fire-spells, ripping up from the heather between them and the riders that galloped out of the woods.

  Bandits. The illusory dragon dissolved in midair the moment it was clear that neither John nor Jenny was distracted by its presence, and the bearded attackers in makeshift panoplies of hunting leathers and stolen mail converged on the cut overhang of a streambank that provided the only defensible ground in sight.

  Jenny followed the fire-spells with a sweeping Word of Poor Aim, and to her shock felt counterspells whirl and clutch at her. Beside her, John cursed and staggered as an arrowhead slashed his thigh. She felt fire-spells in the air around them and breathed Words of Limitation and counterspells herself, distracting her mind from her own magics. Behind the spells she felt the mind of the wizard: an impression of untaught power, of crude talent without training, of enormous strength. She felt stunned, as if she’d walked into a wall in darkness.

  John cursed again and nocked the arrows he’d pulled down with him when he’d dismounted; at least, thought Jenny, casting her mind to the head of the stream that the outlaws would have to cross to get at them, their attackers could only come at them from two sides. She tried to call back the mists, to make them work for her and John as they’d concealed the bandits before, but again the counterspells of the other wizard twisted and grabbed at her mind. Fire in the heather, at the same time damping the fire-spells that filled the cut under the bank with smoke; spells of breaking and damage to bowstrings and arrows …

  And then the bandits were on them. Illusion, distraction— Jenny c
alled them into being, worked them on the filthy, scarred, furious men who waded through the rising stream. Swords, pikes, the hammering rain of slung stones, some of which veered aside with her warding-spells, some of which punched through them as if they had not been there. A man would stop, staring about him in confusion and horror—Jenny’s spells of flaring lights, of armed warriors around herself and John taking effect… John’s sword, or Jenny’s halberd, would slash into his flesh. But as many times as not the man would spring back with a cry, seeing clearly, and Jenny would feel on her mind the cold grip of the other mage’s counterspell. Illusion, too, she felt, for there were bandits who simply dissolved as the illusion of the dragon had dissolved …

  And through it all she thought, The bandits have a wizard! The bandits have a wizard with them!

  In John’s words: Bugger, bugger, bugger.

  Jenny didn’t know how long they held them off. Certainly not much longer than it would take to hard-boil an egg, though it seemed far longer. Still, the sun had just cleared the Skepping Hills when she and John first saw the bandits, and when the blare of trumpets sliced golden through the ruckus and Commander Rocklys and her troops rode out of the hills in a ragged line, the shadows hadn’t shortened by more than a foot. Jenny felt the other wizard’s spells reach out toward the crimson troopers and threw her own power to intercept them, shattering whatever illusions the rescuers would have seen and attacked. Rocklys, standing in her stirrups, drew rein and fired into the thick of the outlaw horde; Jenny saw one of the leaders fall. Then a great voice bellowed, “Out of it, men!” and near the head of the ravine a tall man sprang up on a boulder, massive and black-bearded, like a great dirty bear.

  John said, “Curse,” and Rocklys, whipping another arrow to her short black southern bow, got off a shot at him. But the arrow went wide—Jenny felt the Word that struck it aside—and then battle surged around them, mist and smoke rising out of the ground like dust from a beaten rug. The spells she’d called onto the stream were working now and the water rushed in furious spate, sweeping men off their feet, the water splashing icy on John’s boots and soaking the hem of Jenny’s skirt. Then the bandits fled; Rocklys and her men in pursuit.