a beach with the packed coins that had spilled from their
torn sacks, and through it gleamed the darkness of the
floor, like water collected in hollows of the sand.
Morkeleb lay upon the gold, his vast wings folded along
his sides, their tips crossed over his tail, black as coal
and seeming to shine, his crystal eyes like lamps in the
dark. The sweet, terrible singing that Jenny had felt so
strongly had faded, but the air about him was vibrant with
the unheard music.
"Morkeleb," she said softly, and the word whispered
back at her from the forest of glittering spikes overhead.
She felt the silver eyes upon her and reached out, ten-
tatively, to the dark maze of that mind.
Why gold? she asked. Why do dragons covet the gold
of men?
It was not what she had meant to say to him, and she
felt, under his coiled anger and suspicion, something else
move.
What is that to you, wizard woman?
What was it to me that I returned here to save your
life? It would have served me and mine better to have let
you die.
Why then did you not?
There were two answers. The one she gave him was,
Because it was understood between us that if you gave
me the way into the heart of the Deep, I should heal you
and give you your life. But in that healing you gave me
Dragonsbane 223
your name, Morkeleb the Black—and the name she spoke
in her mind was the ribbon of music that was his true
name, his essence; and she saw him flinch. They have
said, Save a dragon, slave a dragon, and by your name
you shall do as I bid you.
The surge of his anger against her was like a dark wave,
and all along his sides the knifelike scales lifted a little,
like a dog's hackles. Around them in the blackness of the
Temple, the gold seemed to whisper, picking up the
groundswell of his wrath.
/ am Morkeleb the Black. I am and will be slave to no
one and nothing, least of all a human woman, mage though
she may be. I do no bidding save my own.
The bitter weight of alien thoughts crushed down upon
her, heavier than the darkness. But her eyes were a mage's
eyes, seeing in darkness; her mind held a kind of glowing
illumination that it had not had before. She felt no fear
of him now; a queer strength she had not known she
possessed stirred in her. She whispered the magic of his
name as she would have formed its notes upon her harp,
in all its knotted complexities, and saw him shrink back
a little. His razor claws stirred faintly in the gold.
By your name, Morkeleb the Black, she repeated, you
shall do my bidding. And by your name, I tell you that
you will do no harm, either to John Aversin, or to Prince
Gareth, or to any other human being while you remain
here in the south. When you are well enough to sustain
the journey, you shall leave this place and return to your
home.
Ire radiated from his scales like a heat, reflected back
about him by the thrumming gold. She felt in it the iron
pride of dragons, and their contempt for humankind, and
also his furious grief at being parted from the hoard
that he had so newly won. For a moment their souls met
and locked, twisting together like snakes striving, fighting
for advantage. The tide other strength rose in her, surging
224 Barbara Hambly
and sure, as if it drew life from the combat itself. Terror
and exhilaration flooded her, like the tabat leaves, only
far stronger, and she cast aside concern for the limitations
other flesh and strove against him mind to mind, twisting
at the glittering chain of his name.
She felt the spew of his venomous anger, but would
not let go. If you kill me, I shall drag you down with me
into death, she thoughts/or dying, I shall not release your
name from my mind.
The strength that was breaking the sinews of her mind
drew back, but his eyes held to hers. Her thoughts were
suddenly flooded with images and half-memories, like the
visions of the heart of the Deep; things she did not under-
stand, distracting and terrifying in their strangeness. She
felt the plunging vertigo of flight in darkness; saw black
mountains that cast double shadows, red deserts unstirred
by wind since time began and inhabited by glass spiders
that lived upon salt. They were dragon memories, con-
fusing her, luring her toward the place where his mind
could close around hers like a trap, and she held fast to
those things of her own life that she knew and her memory
of the piping of old Caerdinn whistling the truncated air
of Morkeleb's true name. Into that air she twisted her
own spells of breaking and exhaustion, mingling them
with the rhythm of his heart that she had learned so well
in the healing, and she felt once more his mind draw back
from hers.
His wrath was like the lour of thunder-sky, building all
around her; he loomed before her like a cloud harboring
lightning. Then without warning he struck at her like a
snake, one thin-boned claw raised to slash.
He would not strike, she told herself as her heart con-
tracted with terror and her every muscle screamed to flee
... He could not strike her for she had his name and he
knew it... She had saved him; he must obey... Her mind
gripped the music of his name even as the claws hissed
Dragonsbane 225
down. The wind of them slashed at her hair, the saber
blades passing less than a foot from her face. White eyes
stared down at her, blazing with hate; the rage of him
beat against her like a storm.
Then he settled back slowly upon his bed of gold. The
tang of his defeat was like wormwood in the air.
You chose to give me your name rather than die, Mor-
keleb. She played his name like a glissando and felt the
surge of her own rising power hum in the gold against his.
You will go from these lands and not return.
For a moment more she felt his anger, resentment, and
the fury of his humbled pride. But there was something
else in the hoarfrost glitter of his gaze upon her, the knowl-
edge that she was not contemptible.
He said quietly. Do you not understand?
Jenny shook her head. She looked around her once
again at the Temple, its dark archways piled high with
more gold than she had ever seen before, a treasure more
fabulous than any other upon earth. It would have bought
all of Bel and the souls of most of the men who dwelled
there. But, perhaps because she herself had little use for
gold, she felt drawn to ask again, Why gold, Morkeleb?
Was it the gold that brought you here?
He lowered his head to his paws again, and all around
them the gold vibrated with the whisper of the dragon's
name. // was the gold, and the dreams of the gold, he
said. / had discontent in all things; the longing grew upon
me while I
slept. Do you not know, wizard woman, the
love that dragons have for gold?
She shook her head again. Only that they are greedy
for it, as men are greedy.
Rose-red light rimmed the slits of his nostrils as he
sniffed. Men, he said softly. They have no understanding
of gold; no understanding of what it is and of what it can
be. Come here, wizard woman. Put your hand upon me
and listen with my mind.
226 Barbara Hambly
She hesitated, fearing a trap, but her curiosity as a
mage drove her. She picked her way over the cold, uneven
heaps of rings, platters, and candlesticks, to rest her hand
once more against the soft skin below the dragon's great
eye. As before, it felt surprisingly warm, unlike a reptile'.,
skin, and soft as silk. His mind touched hers like a firm
hand in the darkness.
In a thousand murmuring voices, she could hear the
gold pick up the music of the dragon's name. The blended
nuances of thought were magnified and made richer, dis-
tinct as subtle perfumes, piercing the heart with beauty.
It seemed to Jenny that she could identify every piece 01
gold within that enormous chamber by its separate sound-
ing, and hear the harmonic curve of a vessel, the melding
voices of every single coin and hairpin, and the sweet
tingling locked in the crystal heart of every jewel. Her
mind, touching the dragon's, flinched in aching wonder
from the caress of that unbearable sweetness as the echoes
awoke answering resonances within her soul. Memories
of dove-colored dusks on the Fell that was her home
pulled at her with the deep joy of winter nights lying on
the bearskins before the hearth at Alyn Hold, with John
and her sons at her side. Happiness she could not name
swept over her, breaking down the defenses of her heart
as the intensity of the music built, and she knew that foi
Morkeleb it was the same in the chimeric deeps of his
mind.
When the music faded, she realized she had closed her
eyes, and her cheeks were wet with tears. Looking about
her, though the room was as black as before, she thought
that the memory of the dragon's song lingered in the gold,
and a faint luminosity clung to it still.
In time she said. That is why men say that dragon's
gold is poisoned. Others say that it is lucky... but it is
merely charged with yearning and with music, so that
even dullards can feel it through their fingers.
Dragonsbane 227
Even so, whispered the voice of the dragon in her mind.
But dragons cannot mine gold, nor work it. Only gnomes
and the children of men.
We are like the whales that live in the sea, he said,
civilizations without artifacts, living between stone and
sky in our islands in the northern oceans. We lair in rocks
that bear gold, but it is impure. Only with pure gold is
this music possible. Now do you understand?
The sharing had broken something between them, and
she felt no fear of him now. She went to sit close to the
bony curve of his shoulder and picked up a gold cup from
the hoard. She felt as she turned it over in her hands that
she could have chosen it out from a dozen identical ones.
Its resonance was clear and individuated in her mind; the
echo of the dragon's music held to it, like a remembrance
of perfume. She saw how precisely it was formed, chas-
tened and highly polished, its handles tiny ladies with
garlands twined in their hair where it streamed back over
the body of the cup; even microscopically fine, the flowers
were recognizable as the lilies of hope and the roses of
fulfillment. Morkeleb had killed the owner of this cup,
she thought to herself, only for the sake of the incredible
music which he could call from the gold. Yet his love for
the gold had as little to do with its beauty as her love for
her sons had to do with their—undeniable, she thought—
good looks.
How did you know this was here?
Do you not think that we, who live for hundreds of
years, would be aware of the comings and goings of men?
Where they build their cities, and with whom they trade,
and in what? I am old. Jenny Waynest. Even among the
dragons, my magic is accounted great. I was born before
we came to this world; I can sniff gold from the bones of
the earth and follow its path for miles, as you follow
ground water with a hazel twig. The gold-seams of the
228 Barbara Hambly
Wall rise to the surface here like the great salmon of the
north country rising to spawn.
The dragon's words were spoken in her mind, and in
her mind she had a brief, distant glimpse of the Earth as
the dragons saw it, spread out like a mottled carpet of
purple and green and brown. She saw the green-black pelt
of the forests of Wyr, the infinitely delicate cloud shapes
of the crowns of the tall oaks, fragile and thready with
winter, and saw how, toward the north, they were more
and more replaced by the coarse spiky teeth of pine and
fir. She saw the gray and white stones of the bare Win-
terlands, stained all the colors of the rainbow with lichen
and moss in summer, and saw how the huge flashing silver
shapes of eight- and ten-foot salmon moved beneath the
waters of the rivers, under the blue, gliding shadow of
the dragon's wings. For an instant, it was as if she could
feel the air all about her, holding her up like water; its
currents and countereddies,. its changes from warm to
cold.
Then she felt his mind closing around hers, like the
jaws of a trap. For an instant she was locked into suf-
focating darkness, the utter darkness that not even the
eyes of a wizard could pierce. Panic crushed her. She
could neither move nor think, and felt only the acid gloat-
ing of the dragon all around her, and, opening beneath
her, a bottomless despair.
Then as Caerdinn had taught her, as she had done in
healing John—as she had always done within the circum-
scribed limits of her small magic—she forced her mind
to calm and began to work rune by rune, note by note,
concentrating singly and simply upon each element with
her whole mind. She felt the wrath of the dragon smoth-
ering her like a hot sea of night, but she wedged open a
crack of light, and into that crack she drove the music of
the dragon's name, fashioned by her spells into a spear.
She felt his mind flinch and give. Her sight returned,
Dragonsbane 229
and she found herself on her feet among the knee-deep
piles of gold, the monstrous dark shape backing from her
in anger. This time she did not let him go, but flung her
own wrath and her will after him, playing upon the music
of his name and weaving into it the fires that scorched
his essence. All the spells of pain and ruin she had wrought
into the poison flooded to her mind; but, like her fury at
; the bandits at the crossroads these many weeks ago, her
anger had no hate in it, offering him no hold upon her
mind. He shrank back from it, and the great head lowered
so that the ribbons of his mane swept the coins with a
slithery tinkle.
Wrapped in a rage of magic and fire, she said, You shall
not dominate me, Morkeleb the Black—neither with your
power nor with your treachery. I have saved your life,
and you shall do as I command you. By your name you
shall go, and you shall not return to the south. Do you
hear me?
She felt him resist, and drove her will and the strength
of her newfound powers against him. Like a wrestler's
body, she felt the dark, sutfurous rage slither from beneath
the pressure of her will; she stepped back, almost instinc-
tively, and faced him where he crouched against the wall
like a vast, inky cobra, his every scale bristling with glit-
tering wrath.
She heard him whisper, I hear you, wizard woman, and
heard, in the cold voice, the reasonance not only of furious
anger at being humbled, but of surprise that she could
have done so.
Turning without a word, she left the Temple and walked
back toward the square of diffuse light that marked the
outer hall at the end of the Grand Passage and the Great
Gates beyond.
CHAPTER XII
WHEN JENNY CAME down the steps of the Deep she
was shaking with exhaustion and an aftermath of common
sense that told her that she should have been terrified.
Yet she felt curiously little fear ofMorkeleb, even in the
face of his treachery and his wrath. Her body ached—
the power she had put forth against him had been far in
excess of what her flesh was used to sustaining—but her
Dragon's Bane Page 28
