Dragonshadow

by Barbara Hambly

  She kept her voice steady. “I’m called Jenny. If you like, I’ll help you leave Balgodorus.”

  Sharp little white teeth peeked out, biting the scarred and chapped lip. “He’ll catch me.”

  “He won’t.”

  “He catched me before.” She trembled, and Jenny felt a rush of fury at the man.

  “You didn’t have a true wizard protecting you before.”

  Crashing in the trees, boots in the stream, on the rocks. Impossible that Yseult didn’t hear—hadn’t she even learned that much?

  “You’re trying to trick me.” The girl backed again, and the dark pupils of her eyes were ringed in white. “You’re a witch for Commander Rocklys, and I heard what she does to witch-girls. I heard it from the Iceriders.”

  “She doesn’t do anything,” said Jenny. “She’s trying to start a school, to help mages learn.”

  “It’s all lies!” Yseult’s voice edged with panic. “She lies to ’em to get ’em to come, so she can feed ’em to demons!”

  “That isn’t true.” Jenny had heard that old tale a dozen times in a dozen different guises. It was a favorite with the Iceriders: John’s mother had told Jenny as a child that the kings of old drank the blood of witch-born children, or sacrificed them to demons on the rocks beside the sea, or on the lap of an idol wrought of brass. Other tales said they used a magic spell to transform them into sparrows, or mice, or cats.

  “She’s never harmed me, nor my son, who is mageborn, too.”

  “You’re lying to me!” Trapped between fear of Balgodorus and terror of the unknown, Yseult’s voice shrilled with panic. “You just want me to help you hurt my man.”

  “He’s not your man,” said Jenny tiredly. “He’s …”

  Yseult’s head went up. In the gloom beneath the trees voices cried out: “I’ll skin the bitch! Answer me, you little whore, or …”

  “I’m here!” cried Yseult desperately. “I’m here! She’s tryin’ to catch me, trying to kill me!” She flung a spell, rough and undisciplined, and Jenny’s belly and bones gripped with nausea and pain. At the same moment Jenny heard one of Balgodorus’ men cry out and fall retching among the brush. Limitations. Furious, Jenny flung off the magic, which had no more holding power than a child’s hand, and faded back into the green-black shadows beneath the trees.

  “Don’t hurt me!” she heard Yseult scream. “She magicked me away! She went there, see her in the trees?”

  She was pointing—her mageborn senses were at least that good—and Jenny turned and glided sidelong, wrapping the dark patterns of her plaids around her to break up the shape of her body. Balgodorus struck the girl, sending her to her knees in last year’s dead leaves, and Jenny felt in her bones the desperate flutter of unformed magic that Yseult tried to fling at him: make him forget, make him love me, make him not hurt me, make him go away …

  Nothing to the purpose, even had they not been shattered by the girl’s fear: not only fear, but her desperation to be loved by someone, even the man whose boot-toe smashed into her ribs. “It was her that made them spells!” Yseult sobbed. “She put that pain on you just now!”

  The men were spreading out, swords drawn, into the woods. Jenny remained still, veiled in mists and darkness, until they passed, while Balgodorus dragged Yseult to her feet by the hair, stripped her bodice from her back and welted her with his belt, new red marks burning on the white skin among the old. Only when he thrust her, shivering with her thin arms folded over her naked breasts, before him through the thickets toward the camp did Jenny finally turn away, and drift back to the manor.

  “And damn me if it wasn’t a thing like an iron wash-pot, and no dragon at all!” John leaned forward on the low cushioned divan and gestured earnestly with a handful of fish stew. Lord Ragskar glanced at Lord Ringchin, and then at the three gnomish Wise Ones who completed the circle at the High Table beneath an intricate canopy of pierced and fluted sandstone. All were still, startled, tongs and spoons of inlaid gold poised in their hands. Servants—gnomes all, in liveries of the bright soft silks woven beneath the ground and huge overelaborate jewelry—drew close to listen, and John pitched his voice into tones of deep distress.

  “So here I am, sittin’ me horse, feelin’ a complete ass with all these harpoons and arrows and such—I mean, I’ll go after any dragon in the northlands, but how the hell do you fight a wash-pot?—when me son come ridin’ out of the gate, and yells, I’ll draw it off, Da’, and goes after the thing with a spear. I shouted at him, but this sort of lid flips up in the thing and an arm comes out, a metal arm like a well-sweep, with iron claws on it, and grabs him, seizes him off his horse, and drags him inside it. And I’m throwing harpoons and firin’ the crossbow and none of it’s doin’ a bloody thing, and the arm comes out again and whacks me silly off me horse, except I snagged me boot in the stirrup and the horse goes tearin’ galley-west across the moor with me draggin’ along behind …”

  He saw the two gnome-kings clutch hard at their dignity and their manners and shut their mouths tight to keep from laughing at the image, and knew that he’d destroyed himself as any threat in their eyes. He glanced down at the hunk of pale flesh and sauce dripping in his hand, as if just remembering that he held it, and gulped it down, licking his fingers and then cleaning them fastidiously in the lotus-shaped glass goblet beside his plate. Tongs and spoon lay beside it untouched, the gems on them winking in the glow of lamps that hung on long chains from the ceiling. Clear pale light, far stronger than that of fire: hothwais charged with sunlight, beyond a doubt. John had always found his display of amiable barbarism—his dancing-bear act, as he called it—an effective means of getting people to underestimate him, particularly those who put stock in table manners. Or, in this case, those who had contempt for all of the tall men who lived above the ground. They didn’t have to know that Aunt Jane would have worn him out with a birch broom to see him eat with his hands.

  “I’ve been on this thing’s track for three days,” he went on after a time. “Did I say it had wheels? Well, sort of wheels—they were like two inside another three, and they moved …” He gestured vaguely, his hands trying to describe something that wouldn’t tell them anything, really. He’d seen some fairly bizarre designs in his studies of ancient engineering. The less said the better to the gnomes about dragons, or about mages who saved their lives in order to enslave them. “Anyroad, the thing I’m using to track them with—this thing Jen rigged up that will smell out the magic amulet around Ian’s neck—tracked ’em to the Gorm Peaks at the north of the peninsula here, or maybe to Yarten Isle beyond. I can’t tell, for it’s too far, and this device of Jen’s needs a thunderstone—a piece of a star—to work properly. And that’s why I’m here.”

  He wiped his fingers on his plaid, propped his spectacles, and leaned forward, his face desperate with genuine anxiety and the feigned earnestness of the man he sought to make them think he was: barbarian, braggart, and not terribly bright. “I need magic thingies, y’see,” he said. “Thingies to make this device of Jen’s work, and to get close enough to where this wizard’s hidden that I can find him and Ian. You know I’ve served your kin in Wyldoom, and served ’em well. And I’ve come to ask—I’ve come to beg—if there’s aught I can do that’ll get me these things from you.”

  Lord Ragskar’s pale eyes slid sidelong to touch those of his brother-king. Lord Ragskar was the smallest gnome John had ever seen, barely over two feet in height and with a disturbingly babyish, beardless face. He looked in fact like a child—a wildly overdressed child, with his collars and bracelets of heavy gold and slabs of opal and turquoise, his rings of jewels faceted as the gnomes knew how to do—until you saw him move. Lord Ringchin was larger, fatter, and older, but clearly it was Ragskar who was the brains of the pair.

  “In fact, there is.” Lord Ragskar set down his tongs and wiped his fingers on a napkin: John had used his to wrap around his hand when he seized a joint of hot meat. “There is a bandit.” He cleared his throat, and John leaned
forward and did his best to look like he believed every word. “A robber, who … er … entered the Deep some weeks ago to steal. Eluding the guards, he took refuge in the mine shafts, but he has attacked a number of guards—to steal weapons, so he is now well armed—and has tried several times now to break into the food stores on the Twelfth Deep.”

  He nodded to the foremost of the Wise Ones, a hard-looking creature like a densely withered apple, pale gold eyes peeking from beneath brows long enough to braid. “Lord Goffyer here, Lord of the Twelfth Deep, has attempted to scry him out, but Brâk—this is his name—has stolen scry-wards and so protects himself from being found. Moreover, as a human, Brâk is able to move faster than we, particularly where the levels are flooded, and in a narrow way his strength is greater than ours in single combat. We would take it as a great favor if you would deal with this man. Then we can speak of reward.”

  “I’ll do that very thing.” John sprang to his feet and managed to knock plate, cup, and three pieces of cutlery off the low stone table as he did so, not bad for a single swipe. “Oops. Sorry.” He held out his hand, grasping in turn the tiny, hard, muscular hands of each startled king. “You can count on me. Oh, and accordin’ to Cerduces Scrinus’ Principles, soda-water will take care of that stain.”

  John did not for a moment believe that any robber in his or her senses would attempt to thieve from the Deeps of the gnomes. In fact, he guessed that his target was the leader of escaped slaves. But simply having a square meal made him feel better, and afterward the Wise One Goffyer came to the guest chamber and gave him medicaments for his half-healed wounds.

  Despite this helpful hospitality, the moment Goffyer was out of sight John went over the chamber very thoroughly, pulling aside wall-hangings and propping what few pieces of furniture there were in front of any part of the delicately hued wall that looked like it might conceal a doorway. He slept with all the lamps of green and gold glass left burning and his satchel of poisons tied around his waist. The Wise One had made two discreet attempts to get his hand on it and hadn’t taken his eyes from it throughout the visit.

  In the morning, after another good meal, John stated his demands: a star-fragment, or thunderstone, which he knew were powerful magic that the gnomes never parted with; a few ounces of ensorcelled quicksilver, something that the gnomes also guarded intently; and incidentally a hothwais charged with heat to keep the Milkweed afloat. The gnome-kings said they would consider the matter. Then he armed himself in his doublet of iron and grubby leather, his iron cap, dagger, and fighting-sword— his bow would be useless in the inky tunnels—slung the satchel of poisons over his shoulder, and set out for the Twelfth Deep, where the “bandit” had last been reported.

  As he’d guessed, though only gnome-servants had been in evidence at dinner last night, at least some of the kitchen staff were human slaves, and they’d reported his presence to their brethren hiding in the deeper tunnels. Even before he left the passageways where the lamps burned bright he sensed himself being watched, though that might have been Goffyer. The Twelfth Deep was where the mine-workings began, both the active seams of silver and the abandoned ones that had been flooded or were infested with some of the more unpleasant creatures that dwelled below ground.

  They’d given him a lantern, which burned oil rather than carrying a hothwais, and its light seemed to shrink as he passed into the less and less frequented realms. Somewhere a whiff of foulness breathed from a rock seam: damp stone, then the stink of scalded blood and sulfur. Among the rocks the last lights burned blue and small.

  Passing these, he carried his single lantern far into the empty mines, then set down his weapons, and stripped off his doublet and cap. As he’d intended—and hoped—when he walked forward into darkness with his hands upraised, the escapees took him fairly quickly. Invisible hands seized him from the darkness and led him to Brâk, who was perfectly happy to bargain with him for enough soporifics to knock out the guards who prevented the slaves from escaping and a good map of the territory that lay between the Tralchet Peninsula and the first of the King’s new garrisons.

  “So it’s true the King’s sent his army again,” said Brâk. His voice was deep and musical, with an accent like an educated southerner and a courtier’s turn of phrase. “Good news, for everybody except the slave traders and the bandits and these pigs here.” John heard him spit. “And what of you, my four-eyed friend? Is it true there’s a mad wizard on the loose, raiding the garrisons and stealing horses in a magical iron wash-pot? Or was that just a tale to get old Ragskar to part with a thunder-stone? He won’t, you know. Those are strong magic, I’ve heard; strong enough from time to time to break the scry-wards we’ve surrounded our hideouts with.”

  “Oh, I knew that,” John said cheerfully. “What I need is a hothwais, and a strong one, charged with heat to keep the air hot in my balloons. I had to say somethin’, to let them talk me down.”

  Brâk chuckled, a deep rich sound in the blackness. “We have hothwais here among us that will hold heat for two weeks before we have to sneak back up to the forges and replenish their strength. If we win through to the outer air, we’ll need them less, once we can be away where the smoke of fires won’t show us up. So you’re welcome to them, my friend. We’ll leave them where you leave the maps, on the north side of Gorm Peak near the rear gate of the mines.”

  So it was that John returned to the brother-kings and excused himself from further search for their “bandit.” “For from what I glimpsed of them in the tunnels—and it was only a glimpse I got—it seems to me there’s a lot of ’em, and I’ll not work to kill my own people, who’re only tryin’ to free themselves.”

  “These are not slaves,” said King Ragskar firmly in his strange alto voice. “The bandit is a wicked man who entered our realm with many followers.”

  “Be that as it may,” said John. “I’ll not be tricked into workin’ for the profit of slave-drivers, no matter what the cost.”

  That was the only time, in the Deep of the Gnomes, that he genuinely thought he might have to fight his way out, which he knew he was in no shape physically to do. He doubted that even such heroes as Alkmar the Godborn would have been able to fight their way through the corridors and guardrooms that separated him from the main gate, and Brâk had warned him of the kings and especially of Goffyer. “Slaving and treachery is the least of the evils to fear from them, my friend,” the deep soft voice had said. “Things we can scarcely guess at are done here. It is best that you get out, and get out quickly. And if you see Goffyer come at you with an opal or a crystal vial in his hand, fight to the death.”

  But his performance of the night before had had its effect, and he saw it in the contempt in the gnome-king’s eyes. No one offered to demonstrate Goffyer’s magic opal; they even gave him food before they set him on his way. Regretfully John buried the food without tasting it—Let’s not dig ourselves a grave with our fork, Johnny—and spent the next several hours and the remainder of the Milkweed’s lofting power mapping the countryside around the small rear entrance of the Mines of Tralchet and down the vales below Gorm. He left these maps in the cleft of a great gray stand of granite. When he returned to the place on foot the following day, he found a fist-sized pale stone there, and several smaller ones, the air around them shaking with the heat. Written on the granite below were the words, Thank you. We will not forget, in the hand and style of the Court of the south.

  Alkmar the Godborn would probably have done it differently, John reflected with a sigh. But we all do what we can.

  On the fifth day after his departure from Alyn Hold, therefore, he lifted off from the rear slopes of Gorm Peak, under heavy ballast, and set forth again to the northwest. By noon he passed the cliffs and glaciers of the hard and terrible peninsula and saw below the green-black water tossing with luminous mountains of ice. Then the land fell behind him, and he was over open sea.

  Dark waves flecked with silver lace. White birds winging. Whiter still, icebergs carved and cut and hollowed
by the action of the water, and the constant thrumming of the wind. Cold and the smell of the sea. Weariness and silence. Checking the compass and checking it again, and praying the adjustments the gnomes had made to the engines would last until he reached his goal. There seemed no strength left in him now, and he did not know what he would do if anything went wrong.

  Sunset, and the dark backs of whales broke through the waves, blowing steamy clouds before they sounded again. The shadow of the Milkweed lying on the water for a time, longer and longer, and then twilight and the fairy moon.

  Dreams of Jenny. Dreams of Ian.

  A dawn of silence and birds.

  And after another day of checking the compass, adjusting the engines and the sails and watching the whales and the birds, after another light-filled night, sunrise showed him the rocky fingers of cliffs spiking the sea before him, north and south and stringing away into the west, endless, tiny, dark, and rimmed with white. The new light smote them, seeming to pick glints of silver from the rocks, distant and pure and untouched. And above the twisted cordillera of the Skerries of Light, dragons hung in the air, bright chips of color, like butterflies in the glory of morning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “M’am Jenny …”

  She heard the whispering in her mind, the familiar call of scrying, and let the images of John in his fantastic vehicle fade. He had evidently come unscathed from the fortress of the gnomes, though she had no idea what he had done there.

  “M’am Jenny, please …”

  Balgodorus had attacked again, fire-arrows and catapults and more of Yseult’s crude ugly spells of craziness and pain. Food was running low. Scrying the woods, Jenny had seen three more of Rocklys’ scouts, hanged or nailed dead to trees. Scraped raw with strain, Jenny understood his strategy, the same strategy he used against the girl who was his slave.

  Break her concentration. Wear away her ability to do her part in the manor’s defense.