covering their heads with their arms, as if they supposed
that the broad-tipped iron war arrow would be stopped
by such slack old flesh.
Aversin lowered his bow and let his targets stumble
unshot into the wet wilderness of trees.
Gareth gasped, "He was going to kill them! Those poor
old people..."
Jenny nodded, as John came back to the road. "I know."
She understood why; but, as when she had killed the dying
robber in the ruins of the old town, she still felt unclean.
"Is that all you can say?" Gareth raged, horrified. "You
knowf He would have shot them in cold blood..."
"They were Meewinks, Gar," John said quietly.
"Shooting's the only thing you can do with Meewinks."
"I don't care what you call them!" he cried. "They
were old and harmless! All they were doing was gathering
kindling!"
A small, straight line appeared between John's reddish
Dragonsbane 59
brows, and he rubbed his eyes. Gareth, Jenny thought,
was not the only one upon whom this trip was telling.
"I don't know what you call them in your part of the
country," Aversin said tiredly. "Their people used to farm
all the valley of the Wildspae. They..."
"John." Jenny touched his arm. She had followed this
exchange only marginally; her senses and her power were
diffused through the damp woods, and in the fading light
she scented danger. It seemed to prickle along her skin—
a soft plashing movement in the flooded glades to the
north, a thin chittering that silenced the small restive noises
of fox and weasel. "We should be moving. The light's
already going. I don't remember this part of the woods
well but I know it's some distance from any kind of camp-
ing place."
"What is it?" His voice, like hers, dropped to a whisper.
She shook her head. "Maybe nothing. But I think we
should go."
"Why?" Gareth bleated. "What's wrong? For three days
you've been running away from your own shadows..."
"That's right," John agreed, and there was a dangerous
edge to his quiet voice. "You ever think what might hap-
pen to you if your own shadow caught you? Now ride—
and ride silent."
It was nearly full night when they made camp, for, like
Jenny, Aversin was nervous, and it took some time for
him to find a camping place that his woodsmanship judged
to be even relatively safe. One of them Jenny rejected,
not liking the way the dark trees crowded around it; another
John passed by because the spring could not be seen from
where the fire would be. Jenny was hungry and tired, but
the instincts of the Winterlands warned her to keep mov-
ing until they found a place that could be defended, though
against what she could not tell.
When Aversin ruled against a third place, an almost-
circular clearing with a small, fem-choked spring gurgling
60 Barbara Hambly
through one side of it, Gareth's hunger-frayed temper
snapped. "What's wrong with it?" he demanded, dis-
mounting and huddling on the lee-side of The Stupid Roan
for warmth. "You can take a drink without getting out of
sight of the fire, and it's bigger than the other place was."
Annoyance glinted like the blink of drawn steel in John's
voice. "I don't like it."
"Well, why in the name of Sannendes not?"
Aversin looked around him at the clearing and shook
his head. The clouds had parted overhead enough to admit
watery moonlight to glint on his specs, on the water drop-
lets in his hair when he pushed back his hood, and on the
end of his long nose. "I just don't. I can't say why."
"Well, if you can't say why, what would you like?"
"What I'd like," the Dragonsbane retorted with his
usual devastating accuracy, "is not to have some snirp of
a silk-lined brat telling me a place is safe because he wants
his supper."
Because that was obviously Gareth's first concern, the
boy exploded, "That isn't the reason! I think you've lived
like a wolf for so long you don't trust anything! I'm not
going to trek through the woods all night long because..."
"Fine," said Aversin grimly. "You can just bloody well
stay here, then."
"That's right! Go ahead, abandon me! Are you going
to take a shot at me if I try to come after you and you
hear the bushes rustle?"
"I might."
"John!" Jenny's cool, slightly gravelly voice cut across
his next words. "How much longer can we travel without
lights of some kind? Clouds are moving up. It won't rain,
but you won't be able to see a foot ahead of you in two
hours."
"You could," he pointed out. He felt it, too, she
thought—that growing sensation that had begun back along
the road; the uneasy feeling of being watched.
Dragonsbane 61
"I could," she agreed quietly. "But I don't have your
woodsmanship. And I know this part of the road—there
isn't a better place ahead. I don't like this place either,
but I'm not sure that staying here wouldn't be safer than
showing up our position by traveling with lights, even a
very dim magelight. And even that might not show up
signs of danger."
John looked about him at the dark woods, now barely
visible in the cold gloom. Wind stirred at the bare boughs
interlaced above their heads, and somewhere before them
in the clearing Jenny could hear the whisper of the ferns
and the rushing voice of the rain-fed stream. No sound
of danger, she thought. Why then did she subconsciously
watch with her peripheral vision; why this readiness to
flee?
Aversin said quietly, "It's too good."
Gareth snapped, "First you don't like it and then you
say it's too good..."
"They'll know .all the camping places anyway," Jenny
replied softly across his words.
Furious, Gareth sputtered, "Who'll know?"
"The Meewinks, you stupid oic," snapped John back
at him.
Gareth flung up his hands. "Oh, fine! You mean you
don't want to camp here because you're afraid of being
attacked by a little old man and a little old lady?"
"And about fifty of their friends, yes," John retorted.
"And one more word out of you, my hero, and you're
going to find yourself slammed up against a tree."
Thoroughly roused now, Gareth retorted, "Good! Prove
how clever you are by thrashing someone who disagrees
with you! If you're afraid of being attacked by a troop of
forty four-foot-tall septuagenarians..."
He never even saw Aversin move. The Dragonsbane
might not have the appearance of a hero. Jenny thought,
but he nevertheless had the physical reflexes of one. Gar-
62 Barbara Humbly
eth gasped as he was literally lifted off his feet by a double-
handful of cloak and doublet, and Jenny strode forward
to catch John's spike-studded forearm. With softness as
definite
as an assassin's footfall, she said, "Be quiet! And
drop him."
"Got a cliff handy?" But she felt the momentum of his
rage slack. After a pause he pushed—almoat threw—
Gareth from him. "Right." Behind his anger he sounded
embarrassed. "Thanks to our hero, it's well too dark
now to be moving on. Jen, can you do anything with this
place? SpeU it?"
Jenny thought for a few moments, trying to analyze
what it was that she feared. "Not against the Meewinks,
no," she replied at last. She added acidly, "They'll have
tracked you gentlemen by your voices."
"It wasn't me who..."
"I didn't ask who it was." She took the reins of the
horses and mules and led them on into the clearing, anx-
ious now to get a camp set and circled with the spells of
ward before they were seen from the outside. Gareth, a
little shamefaced at his outburst, followed sulkily, looking
at the layout of the clearing.
In the voice of one who sought to mollify by pretending
that the disagreement never happened, he asked, "Does
this hoUow look all right for the fire?"
Irritation still crackled in Aversin's voice. "No fire.
We're in for a cold camp tonight—and you'll take the first
watch, my hero."
Gareth gasped in protest at this arbitrary switch. Since
leaving the Hold, Gareth had always taken the last watch,
the dawn watch, because at the end of a day's riding he
wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep; Jenny
had always taken second; and John, used to the habits of
wolves who hunted in the early part of the night, took the
first. The boy began, "But I..." and Jenny swung around
to look at them in the somber gloom.
Dragonsbane 63
"One more word out of either of you and I will lay a
spell of dumbness upon you both."
John subsided at once. Gareth started to speak again,
then thought better of it. Jenny pulled the picket rope out
of the mule Clivy's pack and looped it around a sapling.
Half to herself, she added, "Though God knows it couldn't
make you any dumber."
Throughout their meager dinner of dried beef, cold
commeal mush, and apples, Gareth remained ostenta-
tiously silent. Jenny scarcely noticed, and John, seeing
her preoccupied, said little to her, not wanting to disturb
her concentration. She was not sure how much he felt of
the danger she sensed in the woods all around them—
she didn't know how much of it was only the product of
her own weariness. But she wove all her concentration,
all her abilities, into the spell-circle that she put around
the camp that night: spells of ward that would make their
campsite unnoticeable from the outside, that would thwart
the eye of any who were not actually within the circle.
They would not be much help against the Meewinks, who
would know where the clearing was, but they might pro-
vide a delay that would buy time. To these she added
other spells against other dangers, spells that Caerdinn
had taught her against the blood-devils and Whisperers
that haunted the Woods of Wyr, spells whose efficacy she
privately doubted because she knew that they sometimes
failed, but the best spells that she—or anyone to whom
she had spoken—knew.
She had long suspected that the Lines of magic were
thinning and that every generation attenuated the teaching
of magic that had been passed down from the old times,
the times before the Realm of Belmarie had united all the
West under itself and the glittering worship of the Twelve
Gods. Caerdinn had been one of the mightiest of the Line
of Heme, but, when she had first met him at fourteen, he
was already very old, feeble, and a little crazy. He had
64 Barbara Hambly
taught her, trained her in the secrets of the Line passed
from master to pupil over a dozen generations. But since
his death she had found two instances where his knowledge
had been incorrect and had heard of spells from her Line-
kindred, the pupils' pupils of Caerdinn's master Spaeth
Skywarden, which Caerdinn had either not bothered to
teach her, or had not known himself. The spells of guard
against the Whisperers that had more and more come to
haunt the Wyrwoods were ineffective and sporadic, and she
knew of no spell that would drive them or the blood-devils
out of an area to render it safe for humans again. Such things
might reside somewhere in a book, written down by the mage
who discovered them, but neither Jenny, nor any mage she
had met, had known of them.
She slept that night uneasily, exhausted in body and
troubled by strange shapes that seemed to slide in and
out through the cracks in her dreams. She seemed to be
able to hear the whistling clutter of the blood-devils as
they flitted from tree to tree in the marshy woods across
the stream and below them the soft murmurs of the Whis-
perers in the darkness beyond the barrier of spells. Twice
she pulled herself painfully from the sucking darkness of
sleep, fearing some danger, but both times she only saw
Gareth sitting propped against a pile ofpacksaddles, nod-
ding in the misty blackness.
The third time she woke up, Gareth was gone.
It had been a dream that woke her; a dream of a woman
standing half-hidden among the trees. She was veiled, like
all the women of the south; the lace of that veil was like
a cloak of flowers scattered over her dark curls. Her soft
laughter was like silver bells, but there was a husky note
in it, as if she never laughed save with pleasure at some-
thing gained. She held out small, slender hands, and whis-
pered Gareth's name.
Leaves and dirt were scuffed where he had crossed
the flickering lines of the protective circles.
Dragonsbane 65
Jenny sat up, shaking back the coarse mane other hair,
and touched John awake. She called the witchlight into
being, and it illuminated the still, silent camp and glowed
in the eyes of the wakened horses. The voice of the spring
was loud in the hush.
Like John, she had slept in her clothes. Reaching over
to the bundle of her sheepskin jacket, her plaids, her boots
and her belt that lay heaped at one side of their blankets,
she pulled from its pouch the small scrying-crystal and
angled it to the witchlight while John began, without a
word, to pull on his boots and wolfskin-lined doublet.
Of the four elements, scrying earth—crystal—was
easiest and most accurate, though the crystal itself had
to be enchanted beforehand. Scrying fire needed no spe-
cial preparation, but what it showed was what it would,
not always what was sought; water would show both future
and past, but was a notorious liar. Only the very greatest
of mages could scry the wind.
The heart of Caerdinn's crystal was dark. She stilled
her fears for Gareth's safety, calming he
r mind as she
summoned the images; they gleamed on the facets, as if
reflected from somewhere else. She saw a stone room,
extremely small, with the architecture of some place half-
dug into the ground; the only furnishing was a bed and a
sort of table formed by a block of stone projecting from
the wall itself. A wet cloak was thrown over the table,
with a puddle of half-dried water about it—swamp weeds
clung to it like dark worms. A much-bejeweled longsword
was propped nearby, and on top of the table and cloak
lay a pair of spectacles. The round lenses caught a spark
of greasy yellow lamplight as the door of the room opened.
Someone in the corridor held a lamp high. Its light
showed small, stooped forms crowding in the broad hall
beyond. Old and young, men and women, there must have
been forty of them, with white, sloped, warty faces and
round, fishlike eyes. The first through the doorway were
66 Barbara Hambly
the old man and the old woman, the Meewinks whom
John had nearly shot that afternoon.
The old man held a rope; the woman, a cleaver.
The house of the Meewinks stood where the land lay
low, on a knoll above a foul soup of mud and water from
whose surface rotting trees projected like half-decayed
corpses. Squat-built, it was larger than it looked—stone
walls behind it showed one wing half-buried underground.
In spite of the cold, the air around the place was fetid
with the smell of putrefying fish, and Jenny closed her
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