Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  ness. Last night's watching and the night's before weighed

  her bones, and she knew she would have to abandon her

  search. But knowledge of her own inadequacy drove her,

  206 Barbara Hambly

  questing inward into the forbidden heart of the Deep,

  desperate to find what she might before she returned to

  the surface to do what she could with what she had.

  She stepped through a door into a dark place that echoed

  with her breathing.

  She had felt cold before, but it seemed nothing now;

  nothing compared to the dread that congealed around her

  heart.

  She stood in the place she had seen in the water bowl,

  in the visions of John's death.

  It shocked her, for she had come on it unexpectedly.

  She had thought to find an archive there, a place of teach-

  ing, for she guessed this to be the heart and center of the

  blank places on Dromar's ambiguous maps. But through

  a knotted forest of stalactites and columns, she glimpsed

  only empty darkness that smelled faintly of the wax of a

  thousand candles, which slumped like dead things in the

  niches of the rock. No living thing was there, but she felt

  again that sense of evil and she stepped cautiously forward

  into the open spaces of black toward the misshapen stone

  altar.

  She laid her hands upon the blue-black, soapy-feeling

  stone. In her vision the place had been filled with mut-

  tering whispers, but now there was only silence. For a

  moment, dark swirlings seemed to stir in her mind, the

  inchoate whisperings of fragmentary visions, but they

  passed like a groundswell, leaving no more aftertaste than

  a dream.

  Still, they seemed to take from her the last of her

  strength and her will; she felt bitterly weary and suddenly

  very frightened of the place. Though she heard no sound,

  she whirled, her heart beating so that she could almost

  hear its thudding echo in the dark. There was evil there,

  somewhere—she knew it now, felt it close enough to leer

  over her shoulder. Shifting the bulging satchel upon her

  shoulder, she hastened like a thief across the slithery dark-

  Dragonsbane 207

  ness of the gnomes' dancing floor, seeking the ways that

  would lead her out of the darkness, back to the air above.

  Morkeleb's mind had guided her down into the abyss,

  but she could feel no touch of it now. She followed the

  marks she had made, runes that only she could see, drawn

  upon the walls with her forefinger. As she ascended through

  the dark rock seams and stairs of amber flowstone, she

  wondered if the dragon were dead. A part of her hoped

  that he was, for the sake of the people of these lands, for

  the gnomes, and for the Master; a part of her felt the same

  grief that she had, standing above the dragon's corpse in

  the gully ofWyr. But there was something about that grief

  that made her hope still more that the dragon was dead,

  for reasons she hesitated to examine.

  The Grand Passage was as dark as the bowels of the

  Deep had been, bereft of even the little moonlight that

  had leaked in to illuminate it before; but even in the utter

  darkness, the air here was different—cold but dry and

  moving, unlike the still, brooding watchfulness of the heart

  of the Deep.

  Her wizard's sight showed her the dark, bony shape

  of the dragon's haunch lying across the doorway, the bris-

  tling spears of his backbone pointing inward toward her.

  As she came nearer she saw how sunken the scaled skin

  lay on the curve of the bone.

  Listen as she would, she heard no murmur of his mind.

  But, the music that had seemed to fill the Market Hall

  echoed there still, faint and piercing, with molten shivers

  of dying sound.

  He was unconscious—dying, she thought. Do you think

  this man will live longer than I? he had asked.

  Jenny unslung her plaid from her shoulder and laid the

  thick folds over the cutting knives of the dragon's spine.

  The edges drove through the cloth; she added the heavy

  sheepskin of her jacket and, shivering as the outer cold

  208 Barbara Hambly

  sliced through the thin sleeves of her shift, worked her

  foot onto the largest of the spines. Catching the doorpost

  once again for leverage, she swung herself nimbly up and

  over. For an instant she balanced on the haunch, feeling

  the slender suppleness of the bones under the steel scales

  and the soft heat that radiated from the dragon's body;

  then she sprang down. She stood for a moment, listening

  with her ears and her mind.

  The dragon made no move. The Market Hall lay before

  her, blue-black and ivory with the feeble trickle of starlight

  that seemed so bright after the utter night below the ground.

  Even though the moon had set, every pot sherd and skewed

  lampframe seemed to Jenny's eyes outlined in brightness,

  every shadow like spilled ink. The blood was drying,

  though the place stank of it. Osprey still lay in a smeared

  pool of darkness, surrounded by glinting harpoons. The

  night felt very old. A twist of wind brought her the smell

  of woodsmoke from the fire on Tanner's Rise.

  Like a ghost Jenny crossed the hall, shivering in the

  dead cold. It was only when she reached the open night

  of the steps that she began to run.

  CHAPTER XI

  AT DAWN SHE felt John's hand tighten slightly around

  her own.

  Two nights ago she had worked the death-spells, weav-

  ing an aura of poison and ruin—the circles of them still

  lay scratched in the earth at the far end of the Rise. She

  had not slept more than an hour or so the night before

  that, somewhere on the road outside Bel, curled in John's

  arms. Now the drifting smoke of the low fire was a smudge

  of gray silk in the pallid morning air, and she felt worn

  and chilled and strange, as if her skin had been sand-

  papered and every nerve lay exposed. Yet she felt strangely

  calm.

  She had done everything she could, slowly, meticu-

  lously, step by step, following Miss Mab's remembered

  instructions as if the body she knew so well were a strang-

  er's. She had given him the philters and medicines as the

  gnomes did, by means of a hollow needle driven into the

  veins, and had packed poultices on the wounds to draw

  from them the poison of the dragon's blood. She had

  traced the runes of healing where the marks of the wounds

  cut the paths of life throughout his body, touching them

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  210 Barbara Hambly

  with his inner name, the secret of his essence, woven into

  the spells. She had called him patiently, repeatedly, by

  the name that his soul knew, holding his spirit to his body

  by what force of magic she could muster, until the med

  icines could take hold.

  She had not thought that she would succeed. When

  she did, she was exhausted past grief or joy, able to think

  no further than the
slight lift of his ribcage and the crease

  of his blackened eyelids with his dreams.

  Gareth said softly, "Will he be all right?" and she nod-

  ded. Looking at the gawky young prince who hunkered

  at her side by the fire, she was struck by his silence.

  Perhaps the closeness of death and the endless weariness

  of the night had sobered him. He had spent the hours

  while she was in the Deep patiently heating stones and

  placing them around John's body as he had been told to

  do—a dull and necessary task, and one to which, she was

  almost certain, she owed the fact that John had still been

  alive when she had returned from the dragon's lair.

  Slowly, her every bone hurting her to move, she put

  off the scuffed scarlet weight of his cloak. She felt scraped

  and aching, and wanted only to sleep. But she stood up,

  knowing there was something else she must do, worse

  than all that had gone before. She stumbled to her med-

  icine bag and brought out the brown tabat leaves she

  always carried, dried to the consistency of leather. Break-

  ing two of them to pieces, she put them in her mouth and

  chewed.

  Their wringing bitterness was in itself enough to wake

  her, without their other properties. She had chewed them

  earlier in the night, against the exhaustion that she had

  felt catching up with her while she worked. Gareth watched

  her apprehensively, his long face haggard within the

  straggly frame of his green-tipped hair, and she reflected

  that he must be almost as weary as she. Lines that had

  existed only as brief traces of passing expressions were

  Dragonsbane 211

  etched there now, from his nostrils to the comers of his

  mouth, and others showed around his eyes when he took

  off his broken spectacles to rub the inner corners of the

  lids—lines that would deepen and settle into his manhood

  and his old age. As she ran her hands through the loosened

  cloud of her hair, she wondered what her own face looked

  like, or would look like after she did what she knew she

  must do.

  She began collecting medicines into her satchel once

  more.

  "Where are you going?"

  She found one of John's plaids and wrapped it about

  her, all her movements stiff with weariness. She felt

  threadbare as a piece of worn cloth, but the uneasy strength

  of the tabat leaves was already coursing through her veins.

  She knew she would have to be careful, for the tabat was

  like a usurer; it lent, but it had a way of demanding back

  with interest when one could least afford to pay. The moist

  air felt cold in her lungs; her soul was oddly numb.

  "To keep a promise," she said.

  The boy watched her with trepidation in his earnest

  gray eyes as she shouldered her satchel once more and

  set off through the misty silences of the ruined town toward

  the Gates of the Deep.

  "Morkeleb?"

  Her voice dissipated like a thread of mist in the stillness

  of the Market Hall. Vapor and blue morning shadow

  cloaked the Vale outside, and the light here was gray and

  sickly. Before her the dragon lay like a dropped garment

  of black silk, held to shape only by its bonings. One wing

  stretched out, where it had fallen after the convulsions of

  the night before; the long antennae trailed limp among the

  ribbons of the mane. Faint singing still lay upon the air,

  drawing at Jenny's heart.

  He had given her the way through the Deep, she

  212 Barbara Hambly

  thought; it was John's life that she owed him. She tried

  to tell herself that it was for this reason only that she did

  not want that terrible beauty to die.

  Her voice echoed among the upended ivory turrets of

  the roof. "Morkeleb!"

  The humming changed within her mind, and she knew

  he heard. One delicate, crayfish antenna stirred. The lids

  of silver eyes slipped back a bare inch. For the first time

  she saw how delicate those lids were, tinted with subtle

  shades of violet and green within the blackness. Looking

  into the white depths they partly shielded, she felt fear,

  but not fear for her body; she felt again the cross-blowing

  winds of present should and future if, rising up out of the

  chasms of doubt. She summoned calm to her, as she sum-

  moned clouds or the birds of the hawthorn brakes, and

  was rather surprised at the steadiness of her voice.

  "Give me your name."

  Life moved in him then, a gold heat that she felt through

  the singing of the air. Anger and resistance; bitter resis-

  tance to the last.

  "I cannot save you without knowing your name," she

  said. "If you slip beyond the bounds of your flesh, I need

  something by which to call you back."

  Still that molten wrath surged through the weakness

  and pain. She remembered Caerdinn saying, "Save a

  dragon, slave a dragon." At that time, she had not known

  why anyone would wish to save the life of such a creature,

  nor how doing so would place something so great within

  your power. Cock by its feet...

  "Morkeleb!" She walked forward, forgetting her fear

  of him—perhaps through anger and dread that he would

  die, perhaps only through the tabat leaves—and laid her

  small hands on the soft flesh around his eyes. The scales

  there were tinier than the ends of needles. The skin felt

  like dry silk beneath her hand, pulsing with warm life.

  She felt again that sense, half-fright, half-awe, of taking

  Dragonsbane 213

  a step down a road which should not be trodden, and

  wondered if it would be wiser and better to turn away

  and let him die. She knew what he was. But having touched

  him, having looked into those diamond eyes, she could

  more easily have given up her own life.

  In the glitter of the singing within her mind, one single

  air seemed to detach itself, as if the thread that bound

  together the complex knots of its many harmonies had

  suddenly taken on another color. She knew it immediately

  in its wholeness, from the few truncated fragments Caer-

  dinn had whistled for her in a hedgerow one summer day.

  The music itself was the dragon's name.

  It slid through her fingers, soft as silken ribbons; taking

  it, she began to braid it into her spells, weaving them like

  a rope of crystal around the dragon's fading soul. Through

  the turns of the music, she glimpsed the entrance to the

  dark, starry mazes of his inner mind and heart and, by

  the flickering light of it, seemed to see the paths that she

  must take to the healing of his body.

  She had brought with her the medicines from the Deep,

  but she saw now that they were useless. Dragons healed

  themselves and one another through the mind alone. At

  times, in the hours that followed, she was terrified of this

  healing, at others, only exhausted past anything she had

  ever experienced or imagined, even in the long night

  before. Her weariness grew, en
compassing body and brain

  in mounting agony; she felt entangled in a net of light and

  blackness, struggling to draw across some barrier a vast,

  cloudy force that pulled her toward it over that same

  frontier. It was not what she had thought to do, for it had

  nothing to do with the healing of humans or beasts. She

  summoned the last reserves of her own power, digging

  forgotten strengths from the marrow of her bones to battle

  for his life and her own. Holding to the ropes of his life

  took all this strength and more that she did not have; and

  in a kind of delirium, she understood that if he died, she

  214 Barbara Hambly

  would die also, so entangled was her essence in the starry

  skeins of his soul. Small and clear, she got a glimpse of

  the future, like an image in her scrying-stone—that if she

  died, John would die within the day, and Gareth would

  last slightly less than seven years, as a husk slowly hol-

  lowed by Zyeme's perverted powers. Turning from this,

  she clung to the small, rock-steady strength of what she

  knew: old Caerdinn's spells and her own long meditations

  in the solitude among the stones of Frost Fell.

  Twice she called Morkeleb by his name, tangling the

  music of it with the spells she had so laboriously learned

  rune by rune, holding herself anchored to this life with

  the memory of familiar things—the shapes of the leaves

  of plants, gentian and dog's mercury, the tracks of hares

  upon the snow, and wild, vagrant airs played on the

  pennywhistle upon summer nights. She felt the dragon's

  strength stir and the echo of his name return.