Dragon's Bane
Page 31
under Zyeme's spells, your father may not be capable of
fathering a child. And Zyeme needs a child, if she's to go
on ruling."
Jenny looked away from them, thinking about what it
would be, to be that child. The same wave of sickness
Gareth had felt passed over her at the knowledge of what
Zyeme would do to any child others. She would not feed
upon it, as she fed upon the King and Bond; but she would
raise it deliberately as an emotional cripple, forever
dependent upon her and her love. Jenny had seen it done,
by women or by men, and knew what manner of man or
woman emerged from that smothered childhood. But even
then, the twisting had been from some need of the parent's
heart, and not something done merely to keep power.
248 Barbara Hambly
She thought of her own sons and the absurd love she
bore them. She might have abandoned them, she thought
with sudden fury at Zyeme, but even had she not loved
them, even were they got on her by rape, she would never
have done that to them. It was a thing she would have
liked to think she herself could scarcely conceive of any-
one doing to an innocent child—except that in her heart
she knew exactly how it could be done.
Anger and sickness stirred in her, as if she had looked
upon torture.
"Jenny?"
Gareth's voice broke her from her thoughts. He stood
a few paces from her, looking pleadingly down at her. "He
will get better, won't he?" he asked hesitantly. "My father,
I mean? When Zyeme is banished, or—or is killed—he
will be the way he was before?"
Jenny sighed. "I don't know," she replied in a low
voice. She shook her mind free of the lethargy that gripped
her, a weariness of the spirit as much as the ache of hei
body left by the battering of Zyeme's spells. It was not
only that she had badly overstretched her own newfound
powers, not only that her body was unused to sustaining
the terrible demands of the dragon's magic. She was aware
now that her very perceptions were changing, that it wa?
not only her magic that had been changed by the touch
of the dragon's mind. The dragon in you answered, he
had said—she was starting to see things as a dragon saw.
She got stiffly to her feet, staggering a little against the
shored-up doorpost of the well house, feeling physically
drained and very weak. She had watched through the
night, telling herself it was for Zyeme that she watched,
though in her heart she knew the enchantress would not
be back, and it was not, in fact, for her that she waited
She said, "It isn't the spells that she holds him under that
are harming him. Zyeme is a vampire, Gareth—not of
the blood, like the Whisperers, but of the life-essence
Dragonsbane 249
itself. In her eyes last night I saw her essence, her soul;
a sticky and devouring thing, yes, but a thing that must
feed to go on living. Miss Mab told me of the spells of
the Places of Healing that can shore up the life of a dying
man by taking a little of the life-energy of those who
consent to give it. It is done seldom, and only in cases of
great need. I am certain this is what she has done to your
father and to Bond. What I don't understand is why she
would need to. Her powers are such that..."
"You know," John broke in, "it says in Dotys' Histories
... or maybe it's in Terens... or is it the Elucidus Lapi-
darus... ?"
"But what can we doT Gareth pleaded. "There must
be something! I could ride back to Bel and let Dromar
know it's safe for the gnomes to reoccupy the Deep. It
would give them a strong base to..."
"No," Jenny said. "Zyeme's hold on the city is too
strong. After this, she'll be watching for you, scrying the
roads. She'd intercept you long before you came near
Bel."
"But we have to do something!" Panic and desperation
lurked at bay in his voice. "Where can we go? Polycarp
would give us shelter in the Citadel..."
"You going to tell the siege troops around the walls
you want a private word with him?" John asked, forgetting
all about his speculations upon the classics.
"There are ways through the Deep into Halnath."
"And a nice locked door at the end of 'em, I bet, or
the tunnels sealed shut with blasting powder to keep the
dragon out—even if old Dromar had put them on his
maps, which he didn't. I had a look for that back in Bel."
"Damn him..." Gareth began angrily, and John waved
him silent with a mealcake in hand.
"I can't blame him," he said. Against the random browns
and heathers of the bloodstained plaid folded beneath his
head his face still looked pale but had lost its dreadful
250 Barbara Hambly
chalkiness. Behind his specs, his brown eyes were bright
and alert. "He's a canny old bird, and he knows Zyerne.
If she didn't know where the ways through to the Citadel
hooked up into the main Deep, he wasn't going to have
that information down on paper that she could steal. Still,
Jen might be able to lead us."
"No." Jenny glanced over at him from where she sat
cross-legged beside the fire, dipping the last bite of her
griddlecake into the honey. "Even being able to see in
darkness, I could not scout them out unaided. As for you
going through them, if you try to get up in under a week,
I'll put a spell of lameness on you."
"Cheat."
"Watch me." She wiped her fingers on the end of her
plaid. "Morkeleb guided me through to the heart of the
Deep; I could never have found it, else."
"What was it like?" Gareth asked after a moment. "The
heart of the Deep? The gnomes swear by it..."
Jenny frowned, remembering the whispering darkness
and the soapy feel of the stone altar beneath her fingertips.
"I'm not sure," she said softly. "I dreamed about it..."
As one, the horses suddenly flung up their heads from
the stiff, frosted grass. Battlehammer nickered softly and
was answered, thin and clear, from the mists that floated
on the fringes of the woods that surrounded Deeping Vale.
Hooves struck the stone, and a girl's voice called out,
"Gar? Gar, where are you?"
"It's Trey." He raised his voice to shout. "Here!"
There was a frenzied scrambling of sliding gravel, and
the whitish mists solidified into the dark shapes of a horse
and rider and a fluttering of dampened veils. Gareth strode
to the edge of the high ground of the Rise to catch the
bridle of Trey's dappled palfrey as it came stumbling up
the last slope, head-down with exhaustion and matted
with sweat in spite of the day's cold. Trey, clinging to the
saddlebow, looked scarcely better off, her face scratched
Dragonsbane 251
as if she had ridden into low-hanging branches in the wood
and long streamers clawed loose from her purple-and-
white coiffure.
/> "Gar, I knew you had to be all right." She slid from
the saddle into his arms. "They said they saw the dragon—
that Lady Jenny had put spells upon him—I knew you
had to be all right."
"We're fine. Trey," Gareth said doubtfully, frowning
at the terror and desperation of the girl's voice. "You look
as if you've ridden here without a break."
"I had to!" she gasped. Under the torn rags of her white
Court dress, her knees were trembling, and she clung to
Gareth's arm for support; her face was colorless beneath
what was left of its paint. "They're coming for you! I
don't understand what's happening, but you've got to get
out of here! Bond..." She stumbled on her brother's name.
"What about Bond? Trey, what's going on?"
"I don't know!" she cried. Tears of wretchedness and
exhaustion overflowed her eyes, and she wiped them
impatiently, leaving faint streaks of blue-black kohl on her
round cheeks. "There's a mob on its way, Bond's leading
it..."
"Bond?" The idea of the lazy and elegant Bond trou-
bling himself to lead anyone anywhere was absurd.
"They're going to kill you. Gar! I heard them say so!
You, and Lady Jenny, and Lord John."
"What? Why?" Gareth was growing more and more
confused.
"More to the point, who?" John asked, propping him-
self up among his blankets once again.
"These—these people, laborers mostly—smelters and
artisans from Deeping out of work, the ones who hang
around the Sheep in the Mire all day. There are Palace
guards with them, too, and I think more are coming—I
don't know why! I tried to get some sense out of Bond,
252 Barbara Hambly
but it's as if he didn't hear me, didn't know me! He slapped
me—and he's never hit me, Gar, not since I was a child..."
"Tell us," Jenny said quietly, taking the girl's hand,
cold as a dead bird in her warm rough one. "Start from
the beginning."
Trey gulped and wiped her eyes again, her hands shak-
ing with weariness and the exertion of a fifteen-mile ride
The ornamental cloak about her shoulders was an indoor
garment of white silk and milky fur, designed to ward off
the chance drafts of a ballroom, not the bitter chill of
a foggy night such as the previous one had been. Her long
fingers were chapped and red among their diamonds.
"We'd all been dancing," she began hesitantly. "It was
past midnight when Zyeme came in. She looked strange—
I thought she'd been sick, but I'd seen her in the morning
and she'd been fine then. She called Bond to her, into an
alcove by the window. I—" Some color returned to her
too-white cheeks. "I crept after them to eavesdrop. I know
it's a terribly rude and catty thing to do, but after what
we'd talked of before you left I—I couldn't help doing it.
It wasn't to leam gossip," she added earnestly. "I was
afraid for him—and I was so scared because I'd never
done it before and I'm not nearly as good at it as someone
like Isolde or Merriwyn would be."
Gareth looked a little shocked at this frankness, but
John laughed and patted the toe of the girl's pearl-beaded
slipper in commiseration. "We'll forgive you this time,
love, but don't neglect your education like that again. You
see where it leads you?" Jenny kicked him, not hard, in
his unwounded shoulder.
"And then?" she asked.
"I heard her say, 'I must have the Deep. They must
be destroyed, and it must be now, before the gnomes hear.
They mustn't be allowed to reach it.' I followed them
down to that little postern gate that leads to the Dock-
market; they went to the Sheep in the Mire. The place
Dragonsbane 253
was still full of men and women; all drunk and quarreling
with each other. Bond went rushing in and told them he'd
heard you'd betrayed them, sold them out to Polycarp;
that you had the dragon under Lady Jenny's spells and
were going to turn it against Bel; that you were going to
keep the gold of the Deep for yourselves and not give it
to them, its rightful owners. But they weren't ever its
rightful owners—it always belonged to the gnomes, or to
the rich merchants in Deeping. I tried to tell that to
Bond..." Her cold-reddened hand stole to her cheek, as
if to wipe away the memory of a handprint.
"But they were all shouting how they had to kill you
and regain their gold. They were all drunk—Zyeme got
the innkeeper to broach some more kegs. She said she
was going to re-enforce them with the Palace guards. They
were yelling and making torches and getting weapons. I
ran back to the Palace stables and got Prettyfeet, here..."
She stroked the exhausted pony's dappled neck, and her
voice grew suddenly small. "And then I came here. I rode
as fast as I dared—I was afraid of what might happen if
they caught me. I'd never been out riding alone at night..."
Gareth pulled off his grubby crimson cloak and slung
it around her shoulders as her trembling increased.
She concluded, "So you have to get out of here..."
"That we do." John flung back the bearskins from over
his body. "We can defend the Deep."
"Can you ride that far?" Gareth asked worriedly, hand-
ing him his patched, iron-plated leather jerkin.
"I'll be gie in trouble if I can't, my hero."
"Trey?"
The girl looked up from gathering camp things as Jenny
spoke her name.
Jenny crossed quietly to where she stood and took her
by the shoulders, looking into her eyes for a long moment.
The probing went deep, and Trey pulled back with a thin
cry of alarm that brought Gareth running. But to the bot-
254 Barbara HamUy
torn, her mind was a young girl's—not always truthful,
anxious to please, eager to love and to be loved. There
was no taint on it, and its innocence twisted at Jenny's
own heart.
Then Gareth was there, indignantly gathering Trey to
him.
Jenny's smile was crooked but kind. "I'm sorry," she
said. "I had to be sure."
By their shocked faces she saw that it had not occurred
to either of them that Zyeme might have made use of
Trey's form—or of Trey.
"Come," she said. "We probably don't have much time
Gar, get John on a horse. Trey, help him."
"I'm perfectly capable..." John began, irritated.
But Jenny scarcely heard. Somewhere in the mists of
the half-burned woods below the town, she felt sudden
movement, the intrusion of angry voices among the frost-
rimmed silence of the blackened trees. They were coming
and they were coming fast—she could almost see them
at the turning of the road below the crumbling ruin of the
clock tower.
She turned swiftly back to the others. "Go!" she said
"Quickly, they're almost on us!"
"How..." began Gareth.
She caught up her medicine bag and her halber
d and
vaulted to Moon Horse's bare back. "Now! Gar, take Trey
with you. John, RIDE, damn you!" For he had wheeled
back, barely able to keep upright in Cow's saddle, to
remain at her side. Gareth flung Trey up to Battle-
hammer's back in a flurry of torn skirts; Jenny could hear
the echo of hooves on the trail below.
Her mind reached out, gathering spells together, even
the small effort wrenching at her. She set her teeth at the
stabbing pain as she gathered the dispersing mists that
had been burning off in the sun's pallid brightness—her
body was not nearly recovered from yesterday. But there
Dragonsbane 255
was no time for anything else. She wove the cold and
dampness into a cloak to cover all the Vale of Deeping;
like a secondary pattern in a plaid, she traced the spells
of disorientation, ofjamais vu. Even as she did so, the
hooves and the angry, incoherent voices were very close.
They rang in the misty woods around the Rise and near
the gatehouse in the Vale as well—Zyeme must have told
them where to come. She wheeled Moon Horse and gave
her a hard kick in her skinny ribs, and the white mare
threw herself down the rocky slope in a gangly sprawl of
legs, making for the Gates of the Deep.
She overtook the others in the gauzy boil of the mists
in the Vale. They had slowed down as visibility lessened;
she led them at a canter over the paths that she knew so