Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  "To come here to risk my bones slaying a dragon and end

  up playing dancing bear for a pack of children." He sat

  on the edge of the curtained bed, working at the heavy

  buckles of his doublet.

  "Did Gareth speak to you?"

  His spectacles flashed again as he nodded.

  "And?"

  John shrugged. "Seeing the pack he runs with, I'm not

  surprised he's a gammy-handed chuff with less sense than

  my Cousin Dilly's mulberry bushes. And he did take the

  risk to search for me, I'll give him that." His voice was

  muffled as he bent over to pull off his boots. "Though I'll

  wager all the dragon's gold to little green apples he had

  no idea how dangerous it would be. God knows what I'd

  have done in his shoes, and him that desperate to help

  and knowing he hadn't a chance against the dragon him-

  self." He set his boots on the floor and sat up again.

  "However we came here, I'd be a fool not to speak with

  the King and see what he'll offer me, though it's in my

  mind that we'll run up against Zyerne in any dealings we

  have with him."

  Even while playing dancing bear, thought Jenny as she

  drew the pins from her hair and let her fashionable veils

  slither to the floor, John didn't miss much. The stiffened

  silk felt cold under her fingers, from the touch of the

  window's nearness, even as her hair did when she unwound

  116 Barbara Humbly

  its thick coil and let it whisper dryly down over her bony,

  half-bared shoulders.

  At length she said, "When Gareth first spoke to me of

  her, I was jealous, hating her without ever having seen

  her. She has everything that I wanted, John: genius, time

  ... and beauty," she added, realizing that that, too, mat-

  tered. "I was afraid it was that, still."

  "I don't know, love." He got to his feet, barefoot in

  breeches and creased shirt, and came to the window where

  she sat. "It doesn't sound very like you." His hands were

  warm through the stiff, chilly satins of her borrowed gown

  as he collected the raven weight of her hair and sorted it

  into columns that spilled down through his fingers. "I

  don't know about her magic, for I'm not magebom myself,

  but I do know she is cruel for the sport of it—not in the

  big things that would get her pointed at, but in the little

  ones—and she leads the others on, teaching them by

  example and jest to be as cruel as she. Myself, I'd take

  a whip to lan, if he treated a guest as she treated you. I

  see now what that gnome we met on the road meant when

  he said she poisons what she touches. But she's only a

  mistress, when all's said. And as for her being beauti-

  ful. .." He shrugged. "If I was a bit shapecrafty, I'd be

  beautiful, too."

  In spite of herself Jenny laughed and leaned back into

  his arms.

  But later, in the darkness of the curtained bed, the

  memory of Zyeme returned once more to her thoughts.

  She saw again the enchantress and Bond in the rosy aura

  of the nightlamp and felt the weight and strength of the

  magic that had filled the room like the silent build of

  thunder. Was it the magnitude of the power alone that

  had frightened her, she wondered. Or had it been some

  sense of filthiness that lay in it, like the back-taste of

  souring milk? Or had that, in its turn, been only the worm-

  Dragonsi>a»»e 117

  wood other own jealousy of the younger woman's greater

  arts?

  John had said that it didn't sound very like her, but

  she knew he was wrong. It was like her, like the part of

  herself she fought against, the fourteen-year-old girl still

  buried in her soul, weeping with exhausted, bitter rage

  when the rains summoned by her teacher would not dis-

  perse at her command. She had hated Caerdinn for being

  stronger than she. And although the long years of looking

  after the irascible old man had turned that hatred to affec-

  tion, she had never forgotten that she was capable of it.

  Even, she added ironically to herself, as she was capable

  of working the death-spells on a helpless man, as she had

  on the dying robber in the ruins of the town; even as she

  was capable of leaving a man and two children who loved

  her, because of her love of the quest for power.

  Would I have been able to understand what I saw tonight

  if I had given all my time, all my heart, to the study of

  magic? Would I have had power like that, mighty as a

  storm gathered into my two hands?

  Through the windows beyond the half-parted bedcur-

  tains, she could see the chill white eye of the moon. Its

  light, broken by the leading of the casement, lay scattered

  like the spangles of a fish's mail across the black and silver

  satin of the gown that she had worn and over the respect-

  able brown velvet suit that John had not. It touched the

  bed and picked out the scars that crossed John's bare

  arm, glimmered on the upturned palm of his hand, and

  outlined the shape of his nose and lips against the dark-

  ness. Her vision in the water bowl returned to her again,

  an icy shadow on her heart.

  Would she be able to save him, she wondered, if she

  were more powerful? If she had given her time to her

  powers wholly, instead of portioning it between them and

  him? Was that, ultimately, what she had cast unknowingly

  away?

  118 Barbara Hambly

  Somewhere in the night a hinge creaked. Stilling her

  breathing to listen, she heard the almost soundless pat of

  bare feet outside her door and the muffled vibration of a

  shoulder blundering into the wall.

  She slid from beneath the silken quilts and pulled on

  her shift. Over it she wrapped the first garment she laid

  hands on, John's voluminous plaids, and swiftly crossed

  the blackness of the room to open the door.

  "Gar?"

  He was standing a few feet from her, gawky and very

  boyish-looking in his long nightshirt. His gray eyes stared

  out straight ahead of him, without benefit of spectacles,

  and his thin hair was flattened and tangled from the pillow.

  He gasped at the sound of her voice and almost fell, grop-

  ing for the wall's support. She realized then that she had

  waked him.

  "Gar, it's me, Jenny. Are you all right?"

  His breathing was fast with shock. She put her hand

  gently on his arm to steady him, and he blinked myop-

  ically down at her for a moment. Then he drew a long

  breath. "Fine," he said shakily. "I'm fine, Jenny. I..."

  He looked around him and ran an unsteady hand through

  his hair. "I—I must have been walking in my sleep again."

  "Do you often?"

  He nodded and rubbed his face. "That is... I didn't in

  the north, but I do sometimes here. It's just that I

  dreamed..." He paused, frowning, trying to recall.

  "Zyeme..."

  "Zyeme?"

  Sudden color flooded his pallid face. "Nothing," he

  mumbled, and avoided her eyes.
"That is—I don't

  remember."

  After she had seen him safely back to the dark doorway

  of his room. Jenny stood for a moment in the hall, hearing

  the small sounds ofbedcurtains and sheets as he returned

  to his rest. How late it was, she could not guess. The

  Dragonsbane 119

  hunting lodge was deathly silent about her, the smells of

  long-dead candles, spilled wine, and the frowsty residue

  of spent passions now flat and stale. All the length of the

  corridor, every room was dark save one, whose door stood

  ajar. The dim glow of a single nightlamp shone within,

  and its light lay across the silky parquet of the floor like

  a dropped scarf of luminous gold.

  CHAPTER VI

  "HE'LL HAVE TO listen to you." Gareth perched him-

  self in the embrasure of one of the tall windows that ran

  the length of the southern wall of the King's Gallery, the

  wan sunlight shimmering with moony radiance in the old-

  fashioned jewels he wore. "I've just heard that the dragon

  destroyed the convoy taking supplies out to the siege

  troops at Halnath last night. Over a thousand pounds of

  flour and sugar and meat destroyed—horses and oxen

  dead or scattered—the bodies of the guards burned past

  recognition."

  He nervously adjusted the elaborate folds of his cer-

  emonial mantlings and peered shortsightedly at John and

  Jenny, who shared a carved bench of ebony inlaid with

  malachite. Due to the exigencies of court etiquette, formal

  costume had been petrified into a fashion a hundred and

  fifty years out of date, with the result that all the courtiers

  and petitioners assembled in the long room had the stilted,

  costumed look of characters in a masquerade. Jenny

  noticed that John, though he might persist in playing the

  barbarian in his leather and plaids among the admiring

  younger courtiers, was not about to do so in the presence

  120

  Dragonsbane 121

  of the King. Gareth had draped John's blue-and-cream

  satin mantlings for him—a valet's job. Bond Cleriock had

  offered to do it but. Jenny gathered, there were rigid sar-

  torial rules governing such matters; it would have been

  very like Bond to arrange the elaborate garment in some

  ridiculous style, knowing the Dragonsbane was unable to

  tell the difference.

  Bond was present among the courtiers who awaited

  the arrival of the King. Jenny could see him, further down

  the King's Gallery, standing in one of the slanting bars of

  pale, platinum light. As usual, his costume outshone every

  other man's present; his mantlings were a miracle of com-

  plex folds and studied elegance, so thick with embroidery

  that they glittered like a snake's back; his flowing sleeves,

  six generations out of date, were precise to a quarter-inch

  in their length and hang. He had even painted his face in

  the archaic formal fashion, which some of the courtiers

  did in preference to the modem applications of kohl and

  rouge—John had flatly refused to have anything to do

  with either style. The colors accentuated the pallor of

  young Clerlock's face, though he looked better. Jenny

  noted, than he had yesterday on the ride from Zyeme's

  hunting lodge to Bel—less drawn and exhausted.

  He was looking about him now with nervous anxiety,

  searching for someone—probably Zyeme. In spite of how

  ill he had seemed yesterday, he had been her most faithful

  attendant, riding at her side and holding her whip, her

  pomander ball, and the reins of her palfrey when she

  dismounted. Small thanks. Jenny thought, he had gotten

  for it. Zyeme had spent the day flirting with the unre-

  sponsive Gareth.

  It was not that Gareth was immune to her charms. As

  a nonparticipant. Jenny had an odd sense of unobserved

  leisure, as if she were watching squirrels from a blind.

  Unnoticed by the courtiers, she could see that Zyeme

  was deliberately teasing Gareth's senses with every touch

  122 Barbara Hambly

  and smile. Do the magebom love? he had asked her once,

  back in the bleak Winterlands. Evidently he had come to

  his own conclusions about whether Zyeme loved him, or

  he her. But Jenny knew full well that love and desire were

  two different things, particularly to a boy of eighteen.

  Under her innocently minxish airs, Zyeme was a woman

  skilled at manipulating the passions' of men.

  Wry? Jenny wondered, looking up at the boy's awk-

  ward profile against the soft cobalt shadows of the gallery.

  For the amusement of seeing him struggle not to betray

  his father? Somehow to use his guilt to control him so

  that one day she could turn the King against him by crying

  rape?

  A stir ran the length of the gallery, like wind in dry

  wheat. At the far end, voices murmured, "The King! The

  King!" Gareth scrambled to his feet and hastily checked

  the folds of his mantlings again. John rose, pushing his

  anachronistic specs a little more firmly up on the bridge

  of his nose. Taking Jenny's hand, he followed more slowly,

  as Gareth hurried toward the line of courtiers that was

  forming up in the center of the hall.

  At the far end, bronze doors swung inward. The Cham-

  berlain Badegamus stepped through, stout, pink, and

  elderly, emblazoned in a livery of crimson and gold that

  smote the eye with its splendor. "My lords, my ladies—

  the King."

  Her arm against Gareth's in the press. Jenny was aware

  of the boy's shudder of nervousness. He had, after all,

  stolen his father's seal and disobeyed his orders—and he

  was no longer as blithely unaware of the consequences

  of his actions as the characters of most ballads seemed

  to be. She felt him poised, ready to step forward and

  execute the proper salaam, as others down the rank were

  already doing, and receive his father's acknowledgment

  and invitation to a private interview.

  The King's head loomed above all others, taller even

  Dragonsbane 123

  than his son; Jenny could see that his hair was as fair as

  Gareth's but much thicker, a warm barley-gold that was

  beginning to fade to the color of straw. Like the steady

  murmuring of waves on the shore, voices repeated "My

  lord... my lord..."

  Her mind returned briefly to the Winterlands. She sup-

  posed she should have felt resentment for the Kings who

  had withdrawn their troops and left the lands to ruin, or

  awe at finally seeing the source of the King's law that

  John was ready to die to uphold. But she felt neither,

  knowing that this man, Uriens of Bel, had had nothing to

  do with either withdrawing those troops or making the

  Law, but was merely the heir of the men who had. Like

  Gareth before he had traveled to the Winterlands, he

  undoubtedly had no more notion of those things than what

  he had learned from his tutors and promptly forgotten.

  As he approached, nodding to this woman o
r that man,

  signing that he would speak to them in private, Jenny felt

  a vast sense of distance from this tall man in his regal

  crimson robes. Her only allegiance was to the Winterlands

  and to the individuals who dwelt there, to people and a

  land she knew. It was John who felt the ancient bond of

  fealty; John who had sworn to this man his allegiance,

  his sword, and his life.

  Nevertheless, she felt the tension as the King

  approached them, tangible as a color in the air. Covert

  eyes were on them, the younger courtiers watching, wait-

  ing to see the reunion between the King and his errant

  son.

  Gareth stepped forward, the oak-leaf-cut end of his

  mantlings gathered like a cloak between the second and

  third fingers of his right hand. With surprising grace, he

  bent his long, gangly frame into a perfect Sarmendes-in-

  Splendor salaam, such as only the Heir could make, and

  then only to the monarch. "My lord."

  King Uriens II of Belmarie, Suzerain of the Marches,

  124 Barbara Hambly

  High Lord ofWyr, Nast, and the Seven Islands, regarded

  his son for a moment out of hollow and colorless eyes set

  deep within a haggard, brittle face. Then, without a word,

  he turned away to acknowledge the next petitioner.

  The silence in the gallery would have blistered the paint

  from wood. Like black poison dumped into clear water,

  it spread to the farthest ends of the room. The last few

  petitioners' voices were audible through it, clearer and

  clearer, as if they shouted; the closing of the gilded bronze

  doors as the King passed on into his audience room

  sounded like the booming of thunder. Jenny was con-

  scious of the eyes of all the room looking anywhere but