Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

spoken. But something whispered across her nerves, as

  it had all those weeks ago by the ruins of the nameless

  town in the Winteriands—a sense of danger that caused

  her to look for the signs of it. Under Mab's tutelage she

  had become more certain of trusting her instincts, and

  something in her hated to go closer than the ruined clock

  tower into the sunlight that fell across Deeping Vale.

  After a moment's consideration Gareth said, "The far-

  thest point in Deeping from the Great Gates would be the

  Tanner's Rise. It's at the bottom of that spur over there

  that bounds the town to the west. I think it's about a half-

  mile from the Gates. The whole town isn't—wasn't—

  much more than a quarter-mile across."

  "Will we have a clear view of the Gates from there?"

  Confused by this bizarre stipulation, he nodded. "The

  174 Barbara Humbly

  ground's high, and most of the buildings were flattened

  in the attack. But if we wanted a lookout on the gates,

  you can see there's enough of the clock tower left for

  a..."

  "No," Jenny murmured. "I don't think we can go that

  near."

  John's head came sharply around at that. Gareth fal-

  tered, "It can't—it can't hear us, can it?"

  "Yes," Jenny said, not knowing why she said it. "No—

  it isn't hearing, exactly. I don't know. But I feel some-

  thing, on the fringes of my mind. I don't think it knows

  we're here—not yet. But if we rode closer, it might. It is

  an old dragon, Gareth; it must be, for its name to be in

  the Lines. In one of the old books from the Palace library,

  it says that dragons change their skins with their souls,

  that the young are simply colored and bright; the mature

  are complex of pattern and the old become simpler and

  simpler again, as their power deepens and grows. Mor-

  keleb is black. I don't know what that means, but I don't

  like what I think it implies—great age, great power—his

  senses must fill the Vale of Deeping like still water, sen-

  sitive to the slightest ripple."

  "He pox-sure heard your father's knights coming, didn't

  he?" John added cynically.

  Gareth looked unhappy. Jenny nudged her mare gently

  and took a step or two closer to the clock tower, casting

  her senses wide over all the Vale. Through the broken

  webs of branches overhead, the massive darkness of the

  westward-facing cliffs of Nast Wall could be seen. Their

  dizzy heights towered like rusted metal, streaked with

  purple where shadows hit; boulders flashed white upon

  it like outcroppings of broken bone. Above the line of the

  dragon's burning, the timber grew on the flanks of the

  mountain around the cliffs, up toward the mossed rocks

  of the cirques and snowfields above. The ice-gouged homs

  of the Wall's bare and ragged crest were veiled in cloud

  Dragonsbane 175

  now, but beyond its hunched shoulder to the east a thin

  track of smoke could be seen,'marking the Citadel of

  Halnath and the siege camps beneath it.

  Below that wall of stone and trees, the open spaces of

  the Vale lay, a huge well of air, a gulf filled with pale,

  sparkly sunlight—and with something else. Jenny's mind

  touched it briefly and shrank from that living conscious-

  ness that she sensed, coiled like a snake in its dark lair.

  Behind her, she heard Gareth argue, "But the dragon

  you killed up in the gully in Wyr didn't know you were

  coming." The very loudness of his voice scraped her nerves

  and made her want to cuff him into silence. "You were

  able to get around behind it and take it by surprise. I don't

  see how..."

  "Neither do I, my hero," John cut in softly, collecting

  Cow's reins in one hand and the charger Osprey's lead in

  the other. "But if you're willing to bet your life Jen's

  wrong, I'm not. Lead us on to the famous Rise."

  On the night of the dragon, many had taken refuge in

  the buildings on Tanner's Rise; their bones lay every-

  where among the blackened ruin of crumbled stone. From

  the open space in front of what had been the warehouses,

  it had once been possible to overlook the whole thriving

  little town of Deeping, under its perpetual haze of smoke

  from the smelters and forges down below. That haze was

  gone now, burned off in the dragon's greater fire; the

  whole town lay open to the mild, heatless glitter of the

  winter sunlight, a checkerwork of rubble and bones.

  Looking about her at the buildings of the Rise, Jenny

  felt cold with shock, as if she had been struck in the pit

  of the stomach; then, as she realized why she recognized

  the place, the shock was replaced by horror and despair.

  It was the place where she had seen John dying, in her

  vision in the water bowl.

  She had done divination before, but never so accu-

  rately as this. The precision of it appalled her—every

  176 Barbara Hambly

  stone and puddle and broken wall was the same; she

  remembered the way the looming line of the dark cliffs

  looked against the sky and the very patterns of the bones

  of the town below. She felt overwhelmed by a despairing

  urge to change something—to shatter a wall, to dig a hole,

  to clear away the brush at the gravelly lip of the Rise

  where it sloped down to the town—anything to make it

  not as it had been. Yet in her soul she knew doing so

  would change nothing and she feared lest whatever she

  did would make the picture she had seen more, rather

  than less, exact.

  Her lips felt stiff as she spoke. "Is this the only point

  in the town this far from the Gates?" She knew already

  what Gareth would reply.

  "It had to be, because of the smell of the tanneries.

  You see how nothing was built near it. Even the water

  tanks and reservoirs were put up in those rocks to the

  north, rather than here where the better springs were."

  Jenny nodded dully, looking out toward the high rocks

  to the north of the town where he was pointing. Her whole

  soul was crying No! No...

  She felt suddenly hopeless and stupid, overmatched

  and unprepared and incredibly naive. We were fools, she

  thought bitterly. The slaying of the first worm was a fluke.

  We should never have been so stupid as to presume upon

  it, never have thought we could do it again. Zyeme was

  right. Zyeme was right.

  She looked over at John, who had dismounted from

  Cow and was standing on the rocky lip of the Rise where

  the ground fell sharply to the dale below, looking across

  toward the opposite rise of the Gates. Cold seemed to

  cover her bones like a vast, winged shadow blocking the

  sun, and she heeled Moon Horse gently over beside him.

  Without looking up at her, he said, "I figure I can just

  make it. The Temple of Sarmendes is about a quarter-

  mile along the Grand Passage, if Dromar was telling the

  Dragonsbane 177

  truth. If Osprey and I go full-pelt, we should ju
st about

  be able to catch the dragon in the Market Hall, just within

  the Gates. Saying he's able to hear me the minute I start

  down the Rise, I should still be able to catch him before

  he can get out into the air. I'll have room to fight him in

  the Market Hall. That will be my only chance."

  "No," Jenny said quietly. He looked up at her, eye-

  brows quirking. "You have another chance, if we ride

  back now to Bel. Zyeme can help you take the thing from

  behind, deeper in the caves. Her spells will protect you,

  too, as mine can not."

  "Jen." The closed wariness of his expression split sud-

  denly into the white flash of teeth. He held up his hands

  to help her down, shaking his head reprovingly.

  She made no move. "At least it is to her advantage to

  preserve you safe, if she wants the dragon slain. The rest

  is none of your affair."

  His smile widened still further. "You have a point,

  love," he assented. "But she doesn't look to me like she

  can cook worth a row of beans." And he helped her down

  from her horse.

  The foreboding that weighed on Jenny's heart did not

  decrease; rather, it grew upon her through the short after-

  noon. She told herself, again and again, as she paced out

  the magic circles and set up her fire in their midst to brew

  her poisons, that water was a liar; that it divined the future

  as crystal could not, but that its divinations were less

  reliable even than fire's. But a sense of impending doom

  weighed upon her heart, and, as the daylight dimmed, in

  the fire under her simmering kettle she seemed to see

  again the same picture: John's shirt of chain mail rent

  open by claws in a dozen places, the broken links all

  glittering with dark blood.

  Jenny had set up her fire at the far end of the Rise,

  where the wind would carry the smoke and the vapors

  178 Barbara Hambly

  away from both the camp and the Vale, and worked

  throughout the afternoon spelling the ingredients and the

  steel of the harpoons themselves. Miss Mab had advised

  her about the more virulent poisons that would work upon

  dragons, and such ingredients as the gnome wizard had

  not had among her slender stocks Jenny had purchased

  in the Street of the Apothecaries-in the Dockmarket in

  Bel. While she worked, the two men prowled the Rise,

  fetching water for the horses from the little well some

  distance into the woods, since the fountain house that had

  served the tanneries had been crushed like an eggshell,

  and setting up a camp. John had very little to say since

  she had spoken to him on the edge of the Rise; Gareth

  seemed to shiver all over with a mingling of excitement

  and terror.

  Jenny had been a little surprised at John's invitation

  that Gareth join them, though she had planned to ask John

  to extend it. She had her own reasons for wanting the

  boy with them, which had little to do with his expressed

  desire—though he had not expressed it lately—to see a

  dragonslaying close at hand. She—and undoubtedly John

  as well—knew that their departure would have left Gareth

  unprotected in Bel.

  Perhaps Mab had been right, she thought, as she turned

  her face from the ghastly choke of the steam and wiped

  it with one gloved hand. There were worse evils than the

  dragon in the land—to be slain by it might, under certain

  circumstances, be construed as a lesser fate.

  The voices of the men came to her from the other side

  of the camp as they moved about preparing supper; she

  had noticed that neither spoke very loudly when they were

  anywhere near the edge of the Rise. John said, "I'll get

  this right yet," as he dropped a mealcake onto the griddle

  and looked up at Gareth. "What's the Market Hall like?

  Anything I'll be likely to trip over?"

  "I don't think so, if the dragon's been in and out,"

  Dragonsbane 179

  Gareth said after a moment. "It's a huge hall, as Dromar

  said; over a hundred feet deep and even wider side to

  side. The ceiling's very high, with fangs of rock hanging

  down from it—chains, too, that used to support hundreds

  of lamps. The floor was leveled, and used to be covered

  with all kinds of booths, awnings, and vegetable stands;

  all the produce from the Realm was traded to the Deep

  there. I don't think there was anything there solid enough

  to resist dragon fire."

  Aversin dropped a final mealcake on the griddle and

  straightened up, wiping his fingers on the end of his plaid.

  Blue darkness was settling over Tanner's Rise. From her

  small fire. Jenny could see the two of them outlined in

  gold against a background of azure and black. They did

  not come near her, partly because of the stench of the

  poisons, partly because of the spell-circles glimmering

  faintly in the sandy earth about her. The key to magic is

  magic—Jenny felt that she looked out at them from an

  isolated enclave of another world, alone with the oven-

  heat of the fire, the biting stench of the poison fumes,

  and the grinding weight of the death-spells in her heart.

  John walked to the edge of the Rise for perhaps the

  tenth time that evening. Across the shattered bones of

  Deeping, the black skull-eye of the Gates looked back at

  him. Slabs of steel and splintered shards of burned wood

  lay scattered over the broad, shallow flight of granite steps

  below them, faintly visible in the watery light of the wax-

  ing moon. The town itself lay in a pool of impenetrable

  dark.

  "It isn't so far," said Gareth hopefully. "Even if he

  hears you coming the minute you ride into the Vale, you

  should reach the Market Hall in plenty of time."

  John sighed. "I'm not so sure of that, my hero. Dragons

  move fast, even afoot. And the ground down there's bad.

  Even full-tilt, Osprey won't be making much speed of it,

  when all's said. I would have liked to scout for the clearest

  180 Barbara Hamhty

  route, but that isn't possible, either. The most I can hope

  for is that there's no uncovered cellar doors or privy pits

  between here and the Gates."

  Gareth laughed softly. "It's funny, but I never thought

  about that. In the ballads, the hero's horse never trips on

  the way to do battle with the dragon, though they do it

  from time to time even in tourneys, where the ground of

  the lists has been smoothed beforehand. I thought it would

  be—oh, like a ballad. Very straight. I thought you'd ride

  out of Bel, straight up here and on into the Deep..."

  "Without resting my horse after the journey, even on

  a lead-rein, nor scouting the lay of the land?" John's eyes

  danced behind his specs. "No wonder the King's knights

  were killed at it." He sighed. "My only worry is that if I

  miss my timing by even a little, I'm going to be spot under

  the thing when it comes out of the Gates..."

  Then he coughed, fanning at the air, and sa
id, "Pox

  blister it!" as he dashed back to pick the flaming meal-

  cakes off the griddle. Around burned fingers, he said,

  "And the damn thing is, even Adric cooks better than I

  do..."

  Jenny turned away from their voices and the sweetness

  of the night beyond the blazing heat of her fire. As she

  dipped the harpoons into the thickening seethe of brew

  in her kettle, the sweat plastered her long hair to her

  cheeks, running down her bare arms from the turned-up

  sleeves of her shift to the cuffs of the gloves she wore;

  the heat lay like a red film over her toes and the tops of

  her feet, bare as they often were when she worked magic.

  Like John, she felt withdrawn into herself, curiously

  separated from what she did. The death-spells hung like

  a stench in the air all around her, and her head and bones

  were beginning to ache from the heat and the effort of the

  magic she had wrought. Even when the powers she called

  were for good, they tired her; she felt weighed down by

  Dvagonsbane 181

  them now, exhausted and knowing that she had wrought

  nothing good from that weariness.

  The Golden Dragon came to her mind again, the first

  heartstopping instant she had seen it dropping from the

  sky like amber lightning and had thought. This is beauty.

  She remembered, also, the butchered ruin left in the gorge,

  the stinking puddles of acid and poison and blood, and

  the faint, silvery singing dying out of the shivering air. It

  might have been only the fumes she inhaled, but she felt

  herself turn suddenly sick at the thought.

  She had slaughtered Meewinks, or mutilated them and

  left them to be eaten by their brothers; she remembered